I've seen many instances of the "MySpace effect" on the growth of online startups. YouTube, Userplane, and Slide are just a few companies benefiting from easy integration with MySpace and its millions of users.

Niall Kennedy has two interesting weblog search engine posts. Firstly that Think Partnership have passed on the IceRocket acquisition. Reading between the lines on the risk factors in Think Partnerships recent Form 8-K filing is rather insightful. Fourteen acquisitions since 2002 is tough for any organisation at the best of times to integrate successfully.

Secondly the comScore breakdown of Technorati traffic which has seen an uplift from 500k unique visitors per month at the end of 2005 to 4.5M unique visitors in April 2006. Of this 29.6% is attributable to MySpace which Niall suitably refers to as the MySpace effect. I've asked via his comments if there is any correlation between the uplift in traffic and Technorati's Firefox search engine add-on and Technorati mini. Both features have substantially increased my Technorati usage.

UPDATE : Niall responded to my question with the below comment :

Technorati’s Firefox search box and Technorati mini would not show up in comScore’s top inbound or outbound sources of traffic to the site. The Technorati search add-on has no referrer and the Technorati mini generates pageviews from within the site as well as in consistent refresh.

UPDATE 2 : Alexander Muse shares his thoughts on Think Partnership : IceRocket developments