Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Tila Tequila was told by MySpace to take down a widget which linked to an online music store called Hoooka.com, she responded by ranting at the company for its request.

Her response was: "Myspace will now only allow you to use "MYSPACE" things and that means you cannot find other ways to promote yourself. You're just stuck here. Myself and my millions of 'friends' on MySpace have been so loyal and MySpace would not be where they are today if it were not for 'US' so please I ask you guys ... don't sell out on us now."

This gets into all sorts of issues that we'll be talking about in a number of posts soon. But what I wanted to focus on here is the funny way that Tila looks at this. After she rants at MySpace, she then turns around and writes to her own "friends" on MySpace concerning what they're doing to her. It's funny when you understand that she's basically saying the same things about her fans as MySpace basically told her.

At the end of a short note on her page she says: OH YEA....AND PLEASE....I AM NOT SOME KIND OF ADVERTISING TOOL! DON'T F...en TRY TO USE ME OK? Like I always have people writing me asking me to post up advertising bulletins for them since I can reach lots of people....dude...f... off! I feel so f...en used! Also people keep asking me how to put music on their page, if they can use my server to put music up and blah blah blah....you know what?? I AM NOT A WEBMASTER NOR IS MY OFFICIAL WEBSITE A HOST FOR YOUR MUSIC FOR ONLINE COMMUNITIES! *breaths* Jesus....I think that is all for now...other than that...I love you guys. You gimme something to do when I am bored at 4 in the morning.....no seriously....you guys totally rock....just stop using me for stuff ok?

In other words she wants to be able to "use" MySpace for her personal gains without any restrictions, but when her fans attempt to do the same thing with her MySpace hosted site, she rants at them for doing the same thing that she rants at MySpace for doing to her.

This is the underlying problem with a number of ways that some Web 2.0 companies started. They offer everything for free and wide open, but eventually you've got to pay the piper ... and that time has come. Nothing is for free. And simply using a service for free doesn't require that somebody can do anything they want if it doesn't benefit both parties. This is going to be a continuing battle for quite a while to come. YouTube hasn't even began to experience this for the most part; but they will.

While Tila isn't exactly the smartest kid on the block, maybe she needs to use her brain a little to understand that she is saying the same thing that MySpace said to her. She wants to use MySpace as an advertising tool, but when her "friends" want to do the same with her, God help them for asking.