• by Shankar Gupta , April 14, 2006

Social networking site MySpace this year quietly began hosting live music concerts, the latest of which features Franz Ferdinand playing the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City today.

News Corp's MySpace has relied solely on word-of-mouth to promote the live concert initiative, dubbed "secret shows." To receive tickets and notifications of upcoming secret concerts, MySpace.com users must add the profile "SecretShow" to their list of friends, , and place the profile "SecretShow" in a "top 8" -- a coveted position that appears on the front page of each MySpace profile, and then print out a page, bringing it to an announced location.

The live concerts play to MySpace's strengths, both as a destination for music acts and fans and its viral environment. Jim Nail, chief marketing officer for word-of-mouth/consumer-generated media firm Cymfony, added that the initiative bolsters MySpace's music-insider cachet. "It's certainly makes MySpace a very cool place to be, because these people are getting the inside track on these tickets that you're just not going to get anyplace else," he said. "Now they're really crossing from the virtual world to the real world, so that you can get tickets to this live performance."

Nail also said the initiative is likely to garner a significant amount of word-of-mouth attention. "What gives it momentum is this uneven distribution of information," he said. "The idea is that if everyone knows about it, there's no reason to tell anybody about it-- It's only appealing if only a few people know about it."

The secret shows are not recorded or broadcast in any way, a MySpace spokeswoman said, and the only media associated with the event will be photos posted on the SecretShows MySpace profile.

The initiative began in January, with a concert by Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins in Los Angeles. Since then, there have been two others--O.A.R. in West Columbia, S.C., and NOFX and Dead to Me in West Hollywood, Calif.