My favorite aspect of the MySpace phenomenon is the swarm of creepy copy cat sites offering the same basic layout editing services. The purpose of these sites is to catch a viewer’s attention long enough to con them into clicking on a Google Ad for another competing MySpace site that is most likely using the exact same technique. It’s a vicious and apparently money making circle.

As a brief aside, this weird game of circular ad clicking has become the backbone of Google’s business. How does that make you feel?

In the last few weeks, the folks at MySpace have been taking steps to cut out these layout middlemen. First, they bought out Photobucket which gives them great leverage over the third-party image hosting sites that have been leeching the attention of MySpace users. After the Photobucket news, came rumors of MySpace acquiring Flektor which offers more profile enhancing services. After that rumor began gaining steam, MySpace released their very own layout editor that will most likely be the final nail in the coffin for these cheap “layout sites in a box” everyone has been using.

So why would MySpace go on this binge? I’d imagine they’ve become sick and tired of losing eyeballs to these other sites. People already spend a mind numbing amount of time on their site plus even more time on the profile editing sites as well. If you can combine the two under one house, which is what these acquisitions will help do, your going to see some nice growth on a site already seeing huge levels of traffic. MySpace would probably be foolish not to take these steps.