MySpace: I'm not quite dead yet

You know you've heard it said with great authority, "MySpace is dead!" Well, maybe not so much.

Sure, Facebook is gaining ground. Sure, MySpace tends to get tarred with a bad rap every time something shady happens in social networking land, but there's one key factor that, perhaps more than anything else, will decide whether MySpace, Facebook, and every other social site out there makes it or not... money.

A great Fortune article covers the MySpace-Facebook race, how the sites are different, how they're the same, and how they're competing not only for eyeballs but for dollars. Fortune's Kirkpatrick writes, "The research firm eMarketer calculates that in 2007, MySpace will sell $525 million worth of advertising, 58% of the social-networking industry's total. (Facebook will sell $125 million - less than a quarter as much.)"

Doesn't sound like a dead company to me.