Imeem — another music streaming story ends in tears?
If I were Spotify, I’d be paying close attention right now.
Imeem, which was one of the first music startups to work out streaming deals with all four major record labels, is going to MySpace for a bargain basement price of $1 million in cash, according to TechCrunch. (Update: Sources tell us the acquisition valuation is closer to a range of $7 to 9 million. That’s $1 million in cash plus earnouts to retain key employees.)
Neither… Continue Reading
5 O’Clock Roundup: Moving into a networked era, Tumblr envy, Open Web
Watch out Lexis-Nexis and WestLaw! Google’s coming: You can now read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts with Google Scholar. Expect an oligopoly (as in the legal research industry) to feel some pressure as Google rolls out another free and disruptive service. You can search by cases, topics or specific phrases. You can also explore how different rulings are cited by other judges and later opinions.
Google also experiments… Continue Reading
Web 2.0: MySpace launches music video hub, artists dashboard
MySpace, battling to maintain relevance as it loses market share to Facebook, is refocusing on the area that brought the company early success by launching a music video hub and rich analytics for artists.
The social network unveiled an artists dashboard that gives musicians better analytics to manage their relationship with fans at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today. Not only that, the company is building a hub for music videos incorporating content from… Continue Reading
MySpace fills out ranks with MTV, iLike execs
MySpace announced the filling of four slots in its executive ranks. MTV veteran Nada Stirratt has joined as chief revenue officer. iLike founders Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi — the two are brothers — have become SVP of business development and SVP of Technology, respectfully (iLike was acquired by MySpace earlier this year.) Finally, Dustin Finer has been hired as Chief People Officer.
Here’s MySpace’s bio on Stirratt, from the email announcement of her hiring:
“Prior to… Continue Reading
MySpace appoints Alex Maghen to CTO
MySpace promoted Alex Maghen to become its chief technology officer today. He replaces Aber Whitcomb who is leaving.
Maghen was the chief technology officer for MySpace Music, the social network’s last bastion of dominance against competitors like Facebook. Before that, Maghen was the CTO for MTV Networks. He’ll report to chief operating officer Mike Jones.
MySpace adds two-way Twitter connection
Social network site MySpace is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. It’s letting users sync their status updates with Twitter, adding another social networking service to the list of companies integrating with the fast-growing microblogging network. (See right for an example.)
The News Corp.-owned property is using OAuth to share limited data with Twitter. Tweets originating from MySpace will include a link to drive traffic back to the social network.
The move comes as other services have moved… Continue Reading
MySpace plays catchup to Facebook’s open-source tools
Last Thursday, Facebook released Tornado Web Server, an open-source software library that “can handle thousands of simultaneous standing connections.”
Facebook’s motive was no secret: Tornado was designed to make it easy for other web sites to connect to Facebook, to scrape customer info and to reuse it on the FriendFeed site — whose parent company and staff Facebook acquired last month. Making it easy for more sites to maintain a huge number of continuously updated high-speed… Continue Reading
Hitwise: Facebook’s lead over MySpace balloons with Connect
Facebook attracts almost twice the number of visits that MySpace does, widening its lead with Connect, according to web analytics services HitWise.
The social networking site first surpassed News Corp.-owned MySpace back in May, but mobile applications and its Facebook Connect service allowed it to boost that gain, according to HitWise. Connect makes users’ basic profile information portable so they can use their Facebook ID to access other services on the web. The company now has… Continue Reading
MySpace taps Martha Stewart, Yahoo vet to run ad sales
Wenda Harris Millard, who led ad sales for Martha Stewart, Yahoo, and Ziff Davis, has taken over ad sales at MySpace, according to a blog post by CEO Owen Van Natta. Technically, Millard isn’t becoming a MySpace employee, but she effectively replaces Jeff Berman, whose resignation was announced in the same post. Millard’s company, Media Link, will oversee day-to-day ad sales operations.
Millard is the latest in a series of successful execs Van Natta has brought… Continue Reading
MySpace will expand iLike beyond music
MySpace officially announced its acquisition of music recommendation service iLike today, but said the platform and popular Facebook application will be expanded beyond music to other areas of the site, such as videos and gaming.
“We believe what iLike has created isn’t limited to just music, and should extend all of the areas important to MySpace users, such as entertainment, video and games,” chief executive Owen Van Natta said in a conference call.
As such, the acquisition… Continue Reading
MySpace’s iLike buy raises questions about Facebook
updated
The reported sale of popular online social music application iLike to to MySpace for the surprisingly low price of $13.5 million set off a flurry of rumors and fragmented reports across the web earlier today — some calling it a quickie fire sale, others claiming it spells doom for all web-based music distributors, and many questioning why Facebook would let its most popular music application fall into the hands of its rival.
One of the biggest… Continue Reading
Roundup: CalPERS nosedives, eBay beats the street, Hollywood picks World of Warcraft director
Ebay whups analysts with $327M profit – Bloomberg reports that the most-visited U.S. e-commerce website has reported sales and profit that beat analysts’ estimates. The San Jose, Calif., company reported second-quarter net income of $327.3 million, or 25 cents a share, on $2.1 billion in revenue. PayPal and Skype grew impressively, but the company’s marketplace sites such as Shopping.com didn’t do so well.
CalPERS takes its worst plunge ever — The California Public Employees’ Retirement System yesterday… Continue Reading
MySpace layoff email, the complete message
MySpace CEO Owen van Natta did what everyone knew he was brought in to do: pull the trigger on 420 of the company’s 1,420 employees.
Nowadays smart companies don’t put out press releases on layoffs. Instead, they send an email to staff that’s guaranteed to be leaked onto the Internet.
Here’s van Natta’s after-the-firings message to the remaining staff. Nice of them to include an exact headcount. The best line is, “Becoming more innovative is an ongoing… Continue Reading
MySpace confirms layoffs, up to 30 percent cut
Last week, sources told TechCrunch that up to 25 percent of MySpace’s staff could be laid off. The News Corp.-owned social network has basically confirmed the news today, with new chief executive Owen Van Natta taking a dig at past management in the company press release: “ Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company.”
The cuts will come across the company’s US divisions, and bring down… Continue Reading
Facebook, MySpace still better than Twitter for connecting people to your site?
Major television events are continuing to see good results when they integrate social media, especially using services that let people take their social networking identities with them around the web. The latest example is media conglomerate Turner Networks, which recently told AdAge about its experiment in letting users log in and chat to each other using Facebook, MySpace and Twitter while watching the NBA Eastern Conference Finals and last weekend’s NASCAR race, the Pocono 500,… Continue Reading
Roundup: Verizon Pre not coming too soon, the fall of Vidoop, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Verizon won’t be offering the Palm Pre within half a year — Lots of coverage on Techmeme.
“The Fall of Vidoop” – A fascinating, in-depth look at issues inside the secure storage company, as told by former employee and web developer Chris Messina.
Facebook gets SMS – Receive text messages about your friends’ latest status updates (yes, kinda like how Twitter works).
How should Twitter, the company, use Twitter, the service? — ReadWriteWeb explores the idea.
Best Buy… Continue Reading
Could social gaming run afoul of gambling laws?
A variety of social network gaming applications are making lots of money from virtual goods. But could these services soon find themselves in trouble for allowing gambling — and get slapped with large fines or other punishment? The question matters like never before, and the answer’s not clear — although from my research, the risk seems relatively low.
Some companies, like Zynga, are rumored to be bringing in revenues of more than $100 million through games… Continue Reading
Roundup: Twitter’s lack of youth, Google Local’s new dashboard, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Young adults not embracing Twitter (yet) – The microblogging service has found an older audience than Facebook’s early users.
Google Local gives small businesses their own web dashboard – The dashboard, designed to lure businesses to claim their profiles on Local, will deliver something akin to Google Analytics.
Later-stage valuations tumble – During the first quarter of 2009, the median valuation for a later-stage venture deal fell 43 percent compared to the same period last year, according… Continue Reading
Roundup: 18 Android phones coming this year, MySpace hoping for innovation, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google: Expect 18 Android phones by the end of the year — That number could be as high as 20, says Andy Rubin, senior director for mobile platforms.
News Corp. and MySpace execs say MySpace needs to innovate — During an interview at the All Things Digital conference (owned by News Corp., incidentally), MySpace chief executive Owen Van Natta also discussed concerns that the site might lose its lucrative search deal with Google, saying the… Continue Reading
Roundup: Has Della got its groove back? Hulu, Google, etc.
Here’s the latest action:
Dell revises “Della,” its netbook marketing web site targeting women, after allegations of sexism — As Jezebel covers.
The once and future Valleywag — Owen Thomas (pictured right) is leaving to become editorial director of NBC Bay Area later this month. Ryan Tate will be taking over. Here’s Thomas’ farewell post.
The New York Times will figure out how to charge for some content by the end of June — The New York Observer has learned.
“Does Hulu,… Continue Reading