Announced just a few hours ago, MySpace states it is implementing redirects on links that users add to the social network.

I’ve just run a few tests and haven’t noticed any changes, but perhaps the new strategy that MySpace says is to decrease spamming is yet to propagate throughout the entire network.

The bulletin from Tom states:

“Latest Update: Apr 25, 2007 12:00pm, PST
Hey everybody, we just launched another program to stop dirty spammers from hasseling [sic] you. When you input a link in myspace it may be converted to a redirect link. You’ll start seeing them around the site. They look like this: msplinks.com/adf9sd9f. These links are legit and we are creating them. They are not viruses or whatever else your conspiracy theorist friends told you. They still point to their original url, but let us easily turn off links to spam, phishing, or virus sites. booyah!”

… the word “may” suggests only certain types of links will be flagged?

Given that I haven’t been able to see any changes, I don’t know how widespread this is or what it applies to; e.g. comments, internal messaging, profiles - if you’ve seen the feature active, I’d love to hear about it.

If it did apply to profiles; this would mean any link love from search engines (as little as it may be) in relation to inbound links will disappear.

Generally speaking, it would also give MySpace a stack of interesting stats of who is clicking on what, where they are winding up and how often a link is clicked. I greatly admire what MySpace has achieved in turning the web on its head; but spam issues aside, I think there’s more to this than meets the eye - perhaps not as a primary motivation, but a welcome side effect.

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