MySpace boss optimistic about 2009

Chris DeWolfe, the CEO of MySpace, says that the social network can increase revenues in 2009 despite the dire state of the wider advertising market.

"Our revenue and profits are significant and they continue to grow in spite of the poor economy," DeWolfe told the Reuters Media Summit in New York. "We’re up 18 percent year-over-year as of last quarter and we’re cautiously optimistic that we can continue to grow our business."

He added: "We haven’t really seen any impact, other than we think we could have grown even more than we have. We see a lot of companies switching dollars from offline media to online media, which is good for us."

Earlier this year Peter Chernin, president COO of MySpace’s owner News Corp told TBIvision: "We are five years into operating a social network as a business, so this challenge isn’t new. He added: "To reach $1 billion revenues faster than Google did will be some achievement."