MySpace to offer email addresses to users

I tip my hat to MySpace. Losing traction to a competitor putting out kitschy services (i.e. Facebook and it's many applications)? Put out a service that actually revolves around what your users care about and use. I know personally quite a number of people that use MySpace and Facebook as a means of communicating with close friends, as opposed to traditional email; often which is reserved for more professional or less personal communication requirements.

Already though, I can tell there are going to be detractors "People wont take an @myspace.com email seriously" but I truly believe the idea behind this is to capitalize on connections already made, and simply remove the abstraction of a profile page to talk to the people on your friends list with much easier access.

MySpace just jumped ahead of the curve.

Is it just me, or does it seem that @myspace.com will become equivalent to what @aol was. A few years ago if someone told me their e-mail address was @aol I would never look at them the same way again, it just couldn't be helped. I wonder, in what way the @myspace will be different, will it be more negative?

What's strange is that I have 27 double-verified email addresses on my webapp that are on the myspace.com domain already since 2007. Myspace employees or what?