• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 16, 2006

An American cultural icon has landed in the leading American social networking site with the posting of a MySpace profile to promote the new "Superman Returns," premiering June 28.

By Thursday evening, just five days after the site quietly went live, the profile had attracted 12,719 MySpace "friends," many responding to the site's slogan, "Show us your 'S'," with photos of themselves striking the iconic shirt-ripping pose to reveal the well-known symbol--including at least one fan who had the "S" tattooed directly on his chest.

The Web site also offers a basket of downloadable extras like "Superman" wallpaper, ring tones including the famous theme as well as songs from the new soundtrack, buddy icons, and official photos. Visitors can watch 5 TV ads and view photo galleries of other MySpace members showing their Superman loyalty.

Ian Schafer--CEO of Deep Focus, which designed the profile for Warner Bros.--said affiliation by other MySpace members began as soon as the page went live, but surged with the posting of site-wide promotions: "There's a trickle, but then when there's a promotion throughout the network, there's a huge spike--and then a very high plateau that keeps going."

Schafer said the rate of friend affiliation was similar to that for the profile Deep Focus designed for HBO's hit series "Entourage," which accumulated about 30,000 friends in just a few weeks: "I'd say in the first week before promotion we got about 30 percent of our 'friends,' and the remaining 70 perfect came after the site-wide advertisement."

To drive MySpace users to the Superman profile, ads were posted throughout the site, including next to individual member profiles, Schafer said. He added that MySpace is "getting the bulk of our clients' attention." In part, Schafer said, that's because the site's acquisition last year by News Corp. lent "credibility" and a sense of "staying power" to the site: "MySpace's audience is primarily younger, and that kind of audience is very transient with trends--but basically with Fox behind it, there's a little more of a safety net in the minds of advertisers. They can be pretty sure MySpace as an entity will be cross-promoted with other content and supported technologically. For one thing, there will probably be more server upgrades."