MySpace is adding a new feature today that allows users to embed video streams within their activity streams. Powered by Redux, videos are seen directly within an activity stream and instantly plays video that you or a friend has shared, selected as a favorite, uploaded, and rated from your Stream.
The actual player will show a real-time stream of MySpace videos based on what their friends are sharing and what’s trending on MySpace. The player will also include comments from friends that scroll/change. And users can also see which friend posted the content. → Read More
It seems as if the ads for Sony’s upcoming movie The Social Network — you know, the Facebook movie — are everywhere on the Internet. They’re here on TechCrunch, they’re on VentureBeat, they’re on Techmeme — they’re just about everywhere but Facebook itself. In fact, they’re even on rival MySpace. In fact, the movie is sponsoring a whole section of the other social network. Yes, the Facebook movie is sponsoring MySpace.
Again, this isn’t too shocking considering that the ads are everywhere on the web. But it has to be a little bit of a slap in the face for MySpace, which was once the king of the hill in the space but has long since been passed — and lapped — by Facebook. Now, not only is MySpace’s rival important enough to warrant a movie, but that movie is paying to help keep MySpace afloat. → Read More
Social networks worldwide are estimated to bring in $3.3 billion in advertising dollars this year, according to updated estimates by eMarketer. That number represents a 31 percent increase from 2009′s $2.5 billion. A full 39 percent of that amount, or $1.3 billion, will go to Facebook.
In the U.S., social ad spending is estimated to rise 20 percent to $1.7 billion. Facebook is gobbling up even more market share in the U.S. It is expected to make up 50 percent of that amount ($835 million), compared to a 36 percent share last year (when it’s U.S. advertising revenues were estimated to be $500 million out of a total of $1.4 billion). → Read More
According to the latest research from eMarketer, advertisers will spend $1.28 billion worldwide to reach Facebook’s 500 million users compared to $665 million in ad revenue in 2009. US ad spending on Facebook is estimated to be $835 million this year, up from $500 million in 2009.
The picture was not so rosy for ad spending on MySpace. MySpace is expected to bring in just $347 million this year (down from over $400 million in 2009) and the number is forecasted to drop by 14 percent to $297 million in ad revenue for 2011. Facebook worldwide ad spending is expected to reach $1.8 billion in 2011. → Read More
Fortune’s Daniel Roth asked News Corp. Digital Chief Jon Miller about MySpace at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Aspen. Miller joked “well it’s still around” and went on to say that there are some exciting things coming soon.
MySpace is “pregnant with product,” Miller says, and adds that they want to “go younger” to get back to the core part of their user base. He also added that MySpace has been surprised with how quickly mobile usage has ramped, and that it took them a little bit by surprise. They’re embracing mobile in a big way now, he says.
The new MySpace should launch sometime in the mid Fall, he says. When asked what MySpace looks like a year from now, he said to expect a “very revitalized experience.” → Read More
A survey that went out this morning called the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), garnered a lot of attention around the blogosphere. While this survey is nothing new, this year, they included a few “social media” sites for the first time. And the results were interesting. Or, at least, the results basically said Facebook sucks. And that’s interesting.
But here’s the thing. I’ve read this survey over a few times, and I’m still getting nothing out of it. Sure, the company behind the results, ForeSeeResults, wants me to know that Facebook and MySpace rate behind 95% of the other companies they survey (and even 90% of government agencies) according to their index. But what does that mean? That people don’t like these social networks? Okay, so what does that mean? I’m just not convinced that any of this means anything at all. → Read More
A new study by ForeSee Results and the American Customer Satisfaction Index finds that U.S. consumers regard social media sites Facebook and Myspace as lowly as they regard cable providers, airlines and the I.R.S.
The Annual E-Business Report for the A.C.S.I. study encompassed thirty online media brands in the categories of: portals and search engines, news and information sites and for the first time in July 2010, social media sites… → Read More
The number of visitors to MySpace UK has halved in the last six months, TechCrunch Europe has learned, leading to a fresh round of layoffs at the London office of the social networking site.
According to internal figures that we’ve seen, monthly visits to MySpace UK are down from a peak of just under 10 million at the start of the year to around 5m as of the end of June 2010. If indeed this is the case – and we have every reason to believe the stats are authentic – it would appear to show a pretty staggering decline.
MySpace declined to comment on the details of this story aside from issuing the following statement: “We don’t publicly share internal data but these figures aren’t accurate.” However, we stand by our well placed sources.
Furthermore, in a bid to mask the decline in its userbase, our sources say that MySpace UK has been using a strategy of buying up cheap and sometimes unrelated Google keyword ads in order to “generate dirty traffic” to bump up the publicly accessible comScore stats. Ironically, according to our sources, Facebook.com is also now the third biggest referrer of traffic to the site. → Read More
The number of visitors to MySpace UK has halved in the last six months, TechCrunch Europe has learned, leading to a fresh round of layoffs at the London office of the social networking site.
According to internal figures that we’ve seen, monthly visits to MySpace UK are down from a peak of just under 10 million at the start of the year to around 5m as of the end of June 2010. If indeed this is the case – and we have every reason to believe the stats are authentic – it would appear to show a pretty staggering decline.
MySpace declined to comment on the details of this story aside from issuing the following statement: “We don’t publicly share internal data but these figures aren’t accurate.” However, we stand by our well placed sources. → Read More
I’m sort of scratching my head at the Wall Street Journal’s article (mostly behind a paywall) that MySpace is in negotiations over some kind of new search advertising deal.
“News Corp. is in discussions with Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. about replacing MySpace’s crucial search-advertising partnership with Google, which expires next month, according to people familiar with the matter,” says the WSJ, which is also owned by MySpace parent News Corp.
Well, yeah. Their deal with Google is ending. Supposedly in August, although the Google agreement I read said it ended in June 2010. Everyone knows MySpace has been trying to figure out a way to replace that $300 million/year in revenue. And everyone knows it isn’t going to happen.
But anyway, here are some interesting things that the WSJ left out of their article: → Read More
GarageBand.com, the well-known indie music store, discovery & review service and online community, will be discontinued as of July 15th, 2010, more than 10 years after it first saw the light of day.
In an email sent to users this morning, the company that spawned social music discovery service iLike (now part of MySpace), the GarageBand team says users can register for an iLike account to have their music, profile pic and bio automatically linked up and ported over. → Read More
Less than a month ago I asked the MySpace Co-Presidents, Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn (pictured left), if it was possible to effectively run a company with two equal leaders. Their answer – they’ve made it work. I asked if they were both there for the long term. Jones said “Assuming News Corp. will have us we’re going to stay heavily engaged.”
Well, you know what they say about assumptions. Tomorrow MySpace will announce the departure of Jason Hirschhorn, we’ve heard from multiple sources inside and outside of MySpace. And we’ve also heard that Jones will be named CEO.
The two were promoted to co-presidents in February when previous CEO Owen Van Natta was fired. Van Natta held the CEO spot for less than a year – he was hired to replace founding CEO Chris DeWolfe in April 2009. → Read More
San Mateo, CA-based BrightEdge is today taking the wraps of its enterprise-class, on-demand SEO platform, after hammering on it for the past couple of years along with some early adopting key customers such as MySpace, Symantec and VMware.
Originally founded in 2007 by former Salesforce.com exec Jim Yu and Lemuel Park, BrightEdge provides online marketers with cloud-based SEO software designed to help them increase revenue from organic search in a measurable way. → Read More
Hitwise, the web analytics firm, has a report out today that claims that social networks now receive more UK Internet visits than search engines.
Which, if the case, would imply that Google should be considerably worried about its future battle with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, as online marketing spend will surely follow Internet foot-through. Or does it?
According to Hitwise, during May, social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits and search engines accounted for 11.33%, representing the first ever month that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK. → Read More
A report in the Wall Street Journal this evening reveals that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and a number of other popular social sites are passing along data that advertisers could potentially use to identify users who click their ads. The article is focused on Facebook in particular, which appears to have been passing along the most data of the aforementioned sites and has also been embroiled in a major privacy controversy.
The Journal article doesn’t get into too much technical detail, but it sounds like Facebook and the others are failing to scrub ‘referring’ URLs that are always passed along whenever a user clicks a link. This is actually normal behavior — typically when you click a link on a website, the site you’re being directed to will get to see where you came from. The issue is that these social sites include some identifying information as part of their URLs; when you visit a friend’s Facebook profile, the resulting URL might include both your friend’s username and your Facebook ID, which could be used to associate you with the ads you’re clicking on. → Read More
Last week, as the outrage grew over the privacy implications of Facebook’s new ambitions to spread its tentacles deeper into the Web, Michael offered some advice to MySpace. This is MySpace’s moment to shine, he argued:
MySpace, the once great social network that still has scores of millions of active users, should be reworking their policies and products at a feverish pace to provide the perception of giving users fair and easy to use privacy controls along with a promise never to change those controls without their express permission. YOUR DATA IS SAFE WITH US is how the messaging would read.
It looks like MySpace took our advice. Today, co-president Mike Jones announced that MySpace will roll out new, simplified privacy settings. → Read More
Another day, another MySpace executive resignation. Dani Dudeck, Vice President of Global Communications, has resigned from MySpace, says a source, and will shortly become the top communications executive at Zynga. Her new title will be General Manager of Corporate Communications.
It was just a week ago that MySpace execs Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi announced that they were leaving the company. Two days before that the top two execs at Slingshot Labs, MySpace’s research and development arm, resigned. And the list goes on and on and on.
Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights? → Read More
Last August, MySpace acquired social music service iLike. As part of the deal iLike founders (and twin brothers) Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi joined MySpace’s executive team, with Hadi becoming SVP of Technology and Ali taking the role of SVP of Business Development. Today, we’ve confirmed that both men will be stepping down from their executive positions at MySpace. Hadi will be leaving the company entirely to pursue opportunities as an advisor and angel investor (as well as work with tech-related non-profits), while Ali will stay on board as a strategic advisor. iLike cofounder Nat Brown remains at MySpace, where he’s head of Mobile.
Reached for comment, MySpace gave us this statement:
MySpace SVP of Technology Hadi Partovi is stepping down to pursue other opportunities. In addition to continuing his work as an advisor and angel investor to various startups, he will be following his passion for education by working directly with technology focused non-profits. Hadi leaves as a valued friend to the company, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.
I fully understand that Facebook must be an extremely hard site to design. I mean, it has 400 million users, many of whom use it several times a day. If you make on little change, millions of people are going to freak out, and get confused. For an example of this, see any time Facebook tweaks anything on its site. But saying that a lot of Facebook is a cluttered, complicated mess is an understatement, in my opinion. And that’s why the news today that Facebook has killed off the lite version of its site is disappointing — not because it was great, but because it was better.
When Facebook Lite first debuted back in September (after an accidental preview in the U.S. in August), we hailed it as a return to the simpler roots of Facebook. Gone were the mess of settings, bottom menu bars, and crap applications — the emphasis was almost entirely on the stream, profiles, and events. Since then, Facebook has tweaked its full version to be more Lite-like, including the removal of the ridiculous bottom toolbar, the addition of icon indicators along the top toolbar, and a clearer emphasis on events. To be clear, Facebook proper today looks much, much better than it did a year ago. But some elements are still a mess, such as the ugly comments under feed items. And some continue to get worse, like the headache-inducing privacy settings. → Read More
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