MySpace’s John Faith sees half of all its users going mobile
MySpace has seen impressive growth in its mobile services over the last six months, especially outside the U.S. At the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, I recently caught up with John Faith, the vice president and general manager for the social network’s mobile services, to learn more. In the interview below, he tells me about MySpace’s collaborations with mobile carriers, handset manufacturers and content creators around the world, to help it deliver a more compelling… Continue Reading
GamesBeat 09 preview: an interview with Facebook’s top gaming dude
Our GamesBeat 2009 games conference on March 24 will explore the frontiers of gaming such as emerging gaming platforms. Facebook certainly qualifies as one of the hottest game platforms, now that it has 5,000 games. When the social network opened its platform up in 2007, it had no idea that games were going to become a big part of it. But now it’s up to Gareth Davis, the program manager for games in Facebook’s platform… Continue Reading
Facebook’s redesign continues to be a hit with U.S. users
The average U.S. social network user apparently wants to read feeds of photos, links, status updates, videos and comments on Facebook, according to the latest statistics from Compete. The firm’s newly-released study of U.S. web traffic to social networks in January is the latest vindication for the feed-focused redesign that Facebook finished rolling out last fall. The average user had 11 sessions on Facebook when the company started rolling out the redesign last summer, but… Continue Reading
Roundup: Google sees results in Washington, sex offenders out of MySpace, Motorola’s big loss and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google is making friends in Washington — After Microsoft and AT&T’s lobbying power killed its Yahoo search deal, Google has proven to be the quick study in politics and now seems to have friends in high places…the highest places, the White House. The Wall Street Journal breaks it all down.
Sex offenders no longer welcome on MySpace — The social network banned some 90,000 of them — so they moved to Facebook? That’s what a… Continue Reading
Fuego Nation launches its private beta for rich media social network
Fuego Nation is launching a private beta of a new kind of social network today.
That may not seem like a very downturn kind of thing to do, and Brogan Keane, founder and chief executive, acknowledges it’s going to be tough. But Keane also believes he has a different kind of social network. This one focuses on passions. It’s about the things in your life you care about most or find most inspirational. It’s about showing… Continue Reading
MySpace and Wall Street Journal contest to make World Economic Forum in Davos “a place for friends”?
MySpace has joined forces with the Wall Street Journal for “MySpace Journal,” a competition to send one lucky MySpace user to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The winner will be a “special correspondent” on behalf of the entire MySpace community and get to join the Davos press corps. If this sounds familiar, it’s because YouTube has a Davos contest too.
The World Economic Forum is an annual meeting of political and business leaders, intellectuals… Continue Reading
CES: MySpace wants to friend your television, but do you?
Today, at the CES consumer electronics conference in Las Vegas, Toshiba introduced its plans for offering “connected” television — and social network MySpace is going along for this ride. In partnership with a variety of web sites, including Yahoo, the electronics manufacturer is introducing “TV widgets,” or small windows that can show you information like local weather and your stocks’ daily performance.
MySpace, for its part, is introducing a made-for-TV widget that lets you use MySpace… Continue Reading
Facebook’s traffic growth leaving rivals in the dust
Facebook has grown to 150 million users this month, more than half of whom use the site every day, according to company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Other social networks, like MySpace, Friendster, hi5, Bebo and Orkut, have also become popular around the world over the last decade, and they all boast tens of millions of users. But none are as large or growing as fast as Facebook
Take a look at the comScore chart, above, and… Continue Reading
Facebook: The new battleground for popstars? Lily Allen takes on Katy Perry
British singer/songwriter Lily Allen has revived a feud with U.S. pop star Katy Perry (of “I Kissed a Girl” song fame), threatening to post Perry’s phone number on Facebook should Perry make any more disparaging comments about her. Isn’t that the sort of drama that MySpace is usually associated with, not Facebook? It looks like celebrity tastes in social networking sites are changing, if not exactly growing up.
Perry, who remarked that she was a “skinnier… Continue Reading
Warner, EMI, Universal force MySpace (and Facebook?) to remove Project Playlist
Major music labels, including Warner, EMI and Universal Music Group, have been in litigation against online music company Project Playlist since this spring. They accuse the startup of not honoring its pledge to keep copyright-infringing music off its service. The latest twist: Today, MySpace has temporarily removed Project Playlist widgets from the site. The reason, sources close to MySpace say, is pressure from the labels.
Project Playlist claims to have more than 38 million fans. It… Continue Reading
AOL using AIM chat to boost Bebo, challenge Meebo
AOL is working on a new initiative to make its instant message service, AIM, a central social feature to any web site, well-placed sources tell me. Starting next year, a user on a social network might use AIM to create an IM chat list from their friends list on their favorite social network. They could then IM each other without having to use a separate chat application.
Oh wait, what does that remind me of? Ah… Continue Reading
Meebo: IM friends with your MySpace, Facebook friends
Ever wanted to instant-message with all of your friends, across social networks? Starting today, you can chat with your friends on MySpace and Facebook, through online IM aggregator Meebo. The way it works is that you sign in to Meebo’s home site using your identity on either social network. Meebo already integrates with AOL’s AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and Microsoft Live Messenger, so now you can chat with all of these friends together with… Continue Reading
Twitter disses Nasza Klasa (Poland’s social network)
Twitter was at the center of a stink today when Google announced that it was integrating the micro-messaging service into its Friend Connection service. This led to a flurry of questions in the tech blogosphere as to why Twitter was integrating with Google and no one else?
Silicon Alley Insider first stated “Twitter Chooses Google, Not Facebook,” but later changed that headline after Twitter co-founder Biz Stone corrected them, saying that Twitter was working on Facebook… Continue Reading
MySpace announces Top 8 of 2008 awards, vampires win
Hold onto your trendy fedora hats, MySpace just released its “Top 8 of 2008″ awards, presumably because Top 10 lists are just so 2007. The lists include the top eight site searches in the categories of music, film, comedy, technology and video. Things I didn’t want to learn? Dane Cook remains the top comedian on MySpace (though his detractors have their own MySpace profile).
The top 8 search terms:
1. Twilight
2. Chat
3. MySpace Layouts
4. Jennifer Hudson
5. Beyonce
6…. Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo flushes its “poison pill,” Crain’s goes out of print, WordPress goes 2.7 and more
Here’s the latest action:
Yahoo flushes its “poison pill” — One of the reasons Microsoft decided not to go hostile in its bid to buy Yahoo was that the company had a so-called “poison pill” plan in place in which hundreds of millions of dollars would have likely been due to employees who left due to their unhappiness with any Microsoft/Yahoo merger. A few Yahoo shareholders decided to sue the company to remove this plan, and today… Continue Reading
Confused yet? MySpace updates data-sharing service, fighting Facebook (and Google)
MySpace’ web-wide identity service is announcing that it will get some new features soon. This is the latest attack in a two-and-a-half-sided battle the company is fighting with rival Facebook and frenemy Google.
MySpace hopes its service will eventually make it a central social hub for the web, by letting users sign into other web sites using their MySpace identities. Starting soon, it will let MySpace users on those sites send information about their activities back… Continue Reading
Hand over all your Facebook photos to Obama, please
Applying to a position in Obama’s cabinet and administration is tougher than climbing Mt. Everest while performing open-heart surgery. But even after a candidate’s passed the intense vetting process, it doesn’t mean they automatically stay out of trouble, as we’ve just seen with head speechwriter Jon Favreau.
The seven-page, 63-question application contains the usual queries about previous employment, finances and legal issues. But Question number 58 of the questionnaire asks for the applicant to provide links… Continue Reading
Facebook to Google: my Connect is bigger than yours
Facebook and Google have both opened services to the public today that intend to let you easily access any web site using versions of your pre-existing online identity. They both intend to help you find friends on other web sites to interact with, thereby making social interaction much simpler potentially anywhere on the web.
Facebook’s service, Connect, is now available for any web developer to access and implement. So is Google’s service, Friend Connect. Both sites… Continue Reading
Google Friend Connect tries to sneak up on Facebook Connect (again)
Social network Facebook has been slowly rolling out its new service, Connect, over the last few months. The service lets users sign in to other sites using their Facebook identities, find Facebook friends on those sites and share information from those sites with the rest of their friends back on Facebook’s home site.
Google now appears to be busy trying to steal a little thunder. It offers a competing initiative, called Friend Connect. Web publishers have… Continue Reading
MySpace aims to bring mobile videos to the masses
Social network MySpace is launching a new worldwide service that will let its users watch videos on its mobile site from their phones. Mobile video has not been a smashing consumer success. But MySpace’s mobile site (m.myspace.com) gets more than 10 million monthly unique visitors and more than 3 billion monthly pageviews, the company says. So the introduction of video could give mobile-video streaming a big boost.
MySpace users will be able to watch any video… Continue Reading