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According to comments from MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe in today’s New York Times, the social network plans to launch a startup incubator to help develop companies that will feed in to the so-called “MySpace economy.” From the report:
"Mr. DeWolfe is nurturing another project that promises to help MySpace grow: an incubator that will form new companies and function like a start-up. The company, tentatively named Slingshot Labs, will be financed by the News Corporation but exist as a separate company. Mr. DeWolfe anticipates that it will nurture four or five consumer Web sites at a given time."
It’s a similar idea to fbFund, the program launched by Facebook to provide capital to startups that build applications for their platform. However, unlike fbFund, it sounds like the MySpace startups will be in-house (versus fbFund, which is more of an angel fund backed by VCs), and the investments would presumably be bigger in size (versus the $25,000-$250,000 Facebook has indicated they are investing in individual fbFund companies).