It was a banker, and not P.T. Barnum, who first said "there's a sucker born every minute," writes Paul La Monica of CNNMomey.com. That axiom may prove true for major media companies in the coming
months. He notes that News Corp.'s social networking site MySpace was sold for $580 million last year, sending shock waves through the traditional media industry and contributed to a big rally in the
company's stock. Now, "old" media firms are supposed to be scrambling to find their own MySpace to get reach teens and young adults. "And I fear that the rush to become a hipster online play could
lead media companies like Walt Disney, Viacom and my parent company Time Warner to repeat the mistakes many of them made at the height of the last dot.com mania and overpay in their attempts to uh,
out-Fox News Corp. and MySpace," La Monica writes. "It appears that News Corp. was savvy and scooped up [MySpace] for a bargain of a price. But other social networking sites, sensing the desperation
among the larger media companies, now seem to be holding out for even bigger paydays."
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