MySpace has been hosting live music concerts - "secret shows" - relying solely on word-of-mouth promotion, reports MediaPost. The most recent show, scheduled for today (Friday) in New York City, features Franz Ferdinand. The first show was in January, a concert by Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins in Los Angeles; two more - O.A.R. in West Columbia, S.C., and NOFX and Dead to Me in West Hollywood, Calif. - have taken place since then.

To receive tickets and notifications for secret shows, which are not recorded or broadcast, users must add the "SecretShow" profile to their list of friends and place in a "top 8" position, which appears on each MySpace profile's front page; they then print out their page and take it to an announced location.

The undertakings highlight MySpace's strengths as a social network, with roots in music. "It's certainly makes MySpace a very cool place to be…. Now they're really crossing from the virtual world to the real world," according to Jim Nail, CMO of Cymfony.