• by Shankar Gupta , February 13, 2006

Playboy magazine has devoted photo spreads to the women of Enron, Starbucks, and the Ivy League. Now, the magazine's Web site, Playboy.com, is tapping into the Internet for a "Girls of MySpace" photo spread, featuring women from the social and blogging site.

Playboy.com Editor John Thomas said the magazine has always attempted to draw on the cultural zeitgeist for photo spread features. "MySpace is a very hot piece of pop culture," he said. "Be it Enron, or Starbucks, or 7-11, or whatever--what they've always done is focus on cultural flashpoints."

But the move comes at a dicey time for MySpace, which has found itself under scrutiny for exposing teens to possible danger. Last month, a 14-year-old New Jersey girl, Judy Cajuste, was allegedly murdered by a man in his 20s who met her through the site.

MySpace has also recently had a drop-off in advertising on the site. In December, MySpace garnered about 4.8 percent of all online display ads--down from the site's high of 12.4 percent in September, according to data from Nielsen//NetRatings.

The upcoming Playboy.com spread could now pose additional challenges for the site, said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Intelliseek. "There's no question that it complicates the debate. It's a site typically associated with teens, music mavens, and by and large younger segments," he said. "Because MySpace is so popular with teens, you might have a higher degree of sensitivity."

A MySpace spokeswoman disputed the characterization of MySpace as a "youth site," saying that the majority of the site's user base was at least 18 years old.

Blackshaw said that although the site might not be teen-heavy demographically, teens are nonetheless avid blog--and therefore MySpace.com--users. "We're in an environment where half of all teens have created blogs or personal home pages. Venues such as MySpace have fueled those percentages," he said. "MySpace is deeply woven into teen culture--that is without question; that is not to say that MySpace only represents teens."

Thomas said that MySpace is not participating in the pictorial, but Playboy.com has established its own MySpace page, which is promoting the search for women to pose; Playboy.com also has purchased ad space on MySpace.

Generally, Playboy's "Girls of" features do not partner with the featured organizations. "We don't consult with the companies," Thomas said. "It's a little bit different on MySpace," he said. "The company is not working with us on this, and is not embracing the pictorial per se--but they are, as I understand it, [okay] with us being embedded in their site."

Thomas said that the response thus far has been good. "This ranks up there with the best searches we've done," he said. "We'll probably shoot more than we usually do. We've been overwhelmed with the number and quality of submissions that we've gotten." He estimated that the site could have up to 30 different young women in the feature.

According to some industry-watchers, the question of sexual predators on a site is a major impediment to ad dollars. "'How do you intend to deal with sexual predators?' wrote entrepreneur Robert Young, on the media blog GigaOm.com. "Put simply, if that question is on the table, you can pretty much kiss major ad buys goodbye; and even if you're lucky enough to persuade a few of them with a well-thought-out containment plan, good luck securing high ad rates."

In a comments section of Young's blog entry, Shawn Gold, senior vice president of marketing for MySpace, said that the site was devoting significant resources to combating the problem of Internet predators. "We have been innovating in the area of child safety since the inception of the company," he wrote. "As most of the news has pointed out, we have 1/3 of our staff working on these issues."