3pointD.com

[Via Glitchy:] The Prefix magazine blog has an entry about the band Arctic Monkeys and the fact that their MySpace profile reportedly fetched more than $2,000 on eBay. The eBay auction had apparently been invalidated and removed from the site by the time I clicked through from Prefix. The sale (or attempted sale) is part of what’s been a recent surge in sales of MySpace profiles that have a large number of friends, which are apparently being farmed by marketers looking for new ways to reach potential customers. What’s especially amusing in this case is that (a) the Arctic Monkeys themselves seems to have little idea of who or what MySpace is, and (b) MySpace is said to have been partly responsible for the band’s rise to the top of the UK charts. More interesting from a 3pointD perspective, though, is the financial value of a broad friends network, and the privacy implications of such a sale. If I link to you, are you free to sell my link to someone? How much am I worth as a link, anyway? The Arctic Monkeys’ friends — all 49,450 of them — were valued at about 4 cents apiece. Surely I’m worth more than that?