My Name is Earl - Be My Friend ...

Bob Dylan has 15,814 friends. Film director Kevin Smith has thousands. My Name is Earl, the US sitcom that is a hit in Britain, has just 12, but that is likely to change.

All three have taken advantage of the web's current phenomenon, MySpace, to promote their latest products.

People who log on to the MySpace page for My Name is Earl can enter a competition to have their picture included in the credits at the end of the first shows of the second series, due next month in the US.

Far more than a piece of aimless internet horseplay, the Friends of Earl Sweepstake is a cross-promotion between NBC, which airs the show in the US, and 20th Century Fox TV, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation empire, which also owns MySpace.

The growth of MySpace and its popularity among young people, a key market, has turned it into a potent marketing tool.

Bob Dylan has used a MySpace page to promote the release of his first new album in five years, due at the end of this month. His friends range from the glamorous to the forgotten, but the message behind the page is clear: buy the album. Indeed the entry on the page is a press release from Dylan's record company.

Earlier this summer, anyone who added Clerks director Kevin Smith's MySpace page to their list of friends was promised a mention in the credits to his film Clerks II. The credits ran to 10,000 names.