Published: 21 Sep 2007

“In recent months this skirmish has moved to a new Web 2.0 arena – MySpace,” reports online market research firm Compete Inc. “In June, Priceline announced they would join their competitor with the release of a dedicated MySpace page. Since this announcement Priceline’s Negotiator page has captured more unique visitors than Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome page.”

Sharing info on share of UVs to both MySpace pages in July, it was highlighted that the Negotiator (77 percent) was ahead of Roaming Gnome (23 percent).

Some interesting discoveries found on the two pages:

· The Gnome is 300 years old, he is on MySpace for “Dating” and one of his top friends is Sasquatch.
· The Negotiator is “Single” and has a body type of “More to Love”.
· The Gnome narrowly wins the friend battle, with 13,762 friends to the Negotiator’s 12,884.

“Although the Negotiator is currently winning the MySpace engagement campaign, Travelocity is sitting atop the head-to-head site traffic contention (Share of UVs to both sites in July – Travelocity 63 percent, Priceline 37 percent).”

“The Gnome vs. Negotiator MySpace pages are an interesting and comical example of what tactics companies are employing in order to get an edge in the online world. With essentially zero cost associated with maintaining a MySpace page, there is really no downside to the campaigns.”