John Battelle just got jiggy to the fact MySpace.com is offering a Craigslist-like classified advertising service. Given MySpace's astounding growth (see this week's BusinessWeek story), maybe it's time for Craigslist founder Craig Newmark to give some serious thought to doing an IPO or selling out. The hounds  (a.k.a. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.) are barking at the door so perhaps the time is right/ripe for Craig to shuck his quasi-public service philosophy and give himself some financial muscle for whatever he wants to do or fund next. It's just a thought but what do you think a site with nine million unique visitors is worth?

For folks south of the border, the aggressive marketing activities of XM and Sirius are nothing new but it's still pretty impressive for us Canadians as both satellite-radio players have recently launched their services after receiving regulatory approval (also known as having to add Canadian content). The weekend newspapers (National Post, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail) had  full-color four-eight-page special sections from Sirus that showed consumers pretty much everything they wanted to know about the service (but may have been afraid to ask!). Meanwhile, the major retailers such as Best Buy, Future Shop, Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart are also pumping sales of satellite receivers with attractive prices that make you say "Well, why the heck not?". Frankly, I'm not a big satellite radio fan but I don't have a long commute, and prefer to listen to local news and sports. One of the problems I had with satellite radio was the lack of choice, which seems somewhat strange given it offers more than 100 channels. When it's boiled down, there are only about eight rock/pop music stations on XM, and they still have to appeal to a wide audience to justify their place on the "dial". This means they tend to be fairly generic, which is why you get broad channels that focus on music from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, for example. Still, there is a large audience out there for people who have long commutes or dislike commercial radio or simply like the idea of more than 100 commercial-free channels. And at C$15 a month, or 50 cents a day, it's far lss than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. While you will not see me with a satellite radio - at least for now - it would not be a big surprise me to see plenty of  Canadians jump on the bandwagon this holiday season.