• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 1, 2006

MySpace and Walt Disney Pictures announced a sponsorship deal on Friday to build buzz for this summer's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." The plan is for MySpace today to pick one "friend" of the movie's profile--corporate brands can create "personal" profiles with friends lists just like individuals--who will get first dibs on the movie's trailer, and the power to spread it throughout MySpace's community as he or she sees fit. Then, assuming the title of MySpace press correspondent, the winner will be sent to Los Angeles to participate in the film's press junket.

The inventiveness of the deal illustrates MySpace's efforts to parlay its huge popularity into profits. Indeed, despite displaying more Web pages per month that any site except Yahoo--and a membership base of over 70 million--the News Corp. property currently earns less than other, older Web companies, particularly Yahoo.

But special sections and deals, such as this one with Disney, are emerging as a potential boon to MySpace. Fast food chain Wendy's--another company to create a MySpace section--has attracted the attention of grassroots marketers now that about 100,000 MySpace members have joined the friends list of a profile kept by its animated square hamburger cartoon character.

As of Friday, the "Pirates" profile page had over 41,000 friends; about 400 comments had been posted across its four topic forums; and over 900 comments posted on its main page. "MySpace members use the network to discover pop culture and share it with friends, and the Disney approach for Pirates takes advantage of the power of MySpace and word-of-mouth marketing in a very efficient and clever way," Colin Digiaro, senior vice president of sales at MySpace, said of the deal in a statement.