The New York Times, in newsprint form, with its daily 1.1 million circulation, and Sunday 1.7 million, makes between $1.5 and $1.7 billion a year (the company does not break out the exact figure). Times.com, with its 40 million unique online users a month, likely makes less than $200 million a year. Cruelly, an online user is worth much less -- because his or her value can be so easily measured -- than a traditional reader.

To replace its $1.5 to $1.7 billion traditional business with its online business ... it could look to MySpace: while the Times's 40 million monthly users generated, in May, 489 million page views -- this is the number that interests advertisers -- MySpace's 50 million monthly users, deeply entertained by its user-created content, generated 29 billion page views.

That's a whopping 580 monthly page views per user for MySpace, versus a measly twelve for NYT. Judging by the statistics for 2005, MemeStreams is more in the range of NYT than of MySpace.

Why isn't MemeStreams stickier? What will it take to get every registered user to visit the site daily and generate 20 page views? There ought to be a plan!

Panic on 43rd Street | Vanity Fair