• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 28, 2007

Following YouTube's path, News Corp.'s MySpace today is expected to unveil its new and improved video service as a stand-alone Web site. Opening wide, the newly named MySpace TV will invite visitors to access and view video clips whether or not they have MySpace accounts.

Unlike Google's YouTube, however, MySpace TV will focus on longer-form and professionally produced content, which advertisers far prefer to unedited consumer-generated content bits.

Not exactly coming from left field, MySpace already ranks as the number two video site, following YouTube by a mere 8 million monthly viewers. (MySpace Video drew 50.2 million U.S. viewers in April, compared to YouTube's 57.9 million, according to comScore.) And any initiative untaken by MySpace will be aided by the 110 million visitors the social network attracts every month.

The move--first reported this week by The New York Times--is consistent with previous efforts by MySpace to keep its users on its own properties for as long as possible.

In that vein, MySpace recently acquired Photobucket, the hugely popular one-stop shop for uploading digital pictures and videos, along with Flektor, a provider of Web-based tools for editing photos and videos.

MySpace member pages will now link to a separate MySpace TV channel, which will display videos uploaded by users. And in true MySpace fashion, MySpace TV users will get to design their video pages in any way they like.

Ramping up its professionally produced content offerings, MySpace recently became the exclusive carrier of Sony's "Minisodes," a concentrated version of classic TV shows sponsored by Honda.

Later this year, MySpace plans to launch an online video editing service as an alternative to YouTube's Remixer suit of tools.