MySpace Quietly Launches Site-Wide Image Search

MySpace has introduced a new image search feature to its integrated search engine, allowing users to quickly search through photos shared by their friends and the MySpace community. While MySpace did not officially announce the new feature, the company has confirmed that it recently went live, and indexes around 3 billion of the site’s photos. The addition reflects MySpace’s apparently increasing focus on its search engine, which also includes the site’s video and music content along with a Google-powered web search.

Users are given the option to search through photos their friends have shared, those with viewing rights set to ‘public’ by other MySpace users, or images on Photobucket, which was acquired by MySpace’s parent company in 2007. MySpace says that all results are shown through a “social lense”, which means that the engine pays attention to keywords in your profile and who your friends are to try to generate the most relevant results...

CLIP MySpace Begins Monetizing Music Videos With Impressive Results

by Jason Kincaid on February 6, 2009

In an effort to monetize the growing number of music videos on its site, MySpace has just launched a new pilot advertising initiative that places attractive overlays at the bottom of some clips, allowing users to buy the song they’re listening to or immediately jump to the artist’s homepage.

The new initiative stems from MySpace’s partnership with Auditude, a content detection and management company that can identify copyrighted content and serve relevant advertising, even on user-submitted video. Now Auditude is applying the technology to music videos, which in the past have largely relied on banner ads and static text links to music stores for monetization.

On Wednesday the site, in a partnership with Warner Music Group, placed an overlay ad on a video for My Chemical Romance’s cover of Desolation Row. Users were presented with the option to buy the song either on Amazon, or (in an interesting twist) on a vinyl disc. Over the 24 hours that the ad ran it posted an impressive 1.2% click-through-rate (significantly higher than rates seen on typical banner ads), encouraging MySpace and Auditude to expand the program to more videos. Today the site began displaying advertising on U2’s new single Get On Your Boots, with plans to expand the program more broadly in the near future.

Much of the overlay’s success probably stems from the fact that it doesn’t look too much like an ad - it actually shows informative content like the album the song came from, the year it was released, and a link to the artist’s profile. I wouldn’t say I like having it there, but MySpace could have done a lot worse. And frankly in the current economic climate it’s encouraging when companies can find advertising methods that actually work without being ridiculously annoying.

YouTube launched a similar program three weeks ago, allowing content owners to insert overlays for products into their videos (MySpace’s overlays are significantly more attractive, but they both serve the same purpose). YouTube wouldn’t provide any exact numbers, but a representative confirmed that in general the site has seen significantly improved clickthrough rates when ads are embedded in videos themselves, as opposed to appearing in surrounding banner ads.

Just How Stupid And Poor Are MySpace Users, Exactly?

If you thought Randall Stross’ attack on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what Michael Wolff has to say about MySpace. In a dinner interview with BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine, Wolff says:

…if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.

That’s just part of a much longer interview in which Wolff goes into detail on exactly why he thinks MySpace will go the way of AOL. He also makes some blatantly incorrect statements, such as “All of the growth now in MySpace is international,” which is incorrect. In the last year MySpace has grown about 10% in the U.S., adding 7.5 million monthly unique users to a total of 76.4 million. Non-U.S. users have grown from 45 million to 54 million, a 17% increase. (source: Comscore)...

Michael Wolff's Calm, Reasoned Analysis Of MySpace, And The "Cretins" That Flock To It

Posted by: on December 01

Part of writing my latest column required interviewing Michael Wolff, a friend and the author of the new Rupert Murdoch bio “The Man Who Owns The News.” After some negotiation, the interview took the form of a lengthy discussion-cum-argument. Sort of like what we do sometimes for this outfit, only with dinner and at much greater length.

Portions of what we discussed were entertaining enough—at least to me—to warrant posting here. In excerpt below, which is lightly edited for clarity and profanity, Michael and I argue over the value and prospects of MySpace.

Michael Wolff: MySpace. They [meaning News Corp] know they have a huge problem. They’re quaking in their boots about MySpace. It always was a little rustling when I was there, there was this rustling—

Jon Fine: What do you identify as the problem?

MW: Facebook...

DeWolfe: Recession Hammering MySpace's Growth

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe told a Reuters conference that following the worldwide financial crises, MySpace hasn't "really seen any impact, other than we think we could have grown even more than we have."

Michael Wolff: MySpace And Its Braindead Users Are Going To Zero

BusinessWeek's Jon Fine takes Rupert Murdoch tell-all author Michael Wolff out for dinner. Michael then reveals the secret he didn't put into the book: why Murdoch's News Corp (NWS) is trying so hard to ditch MySpace:

MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe And Warner Music’s Edgar Bronfman At Web2.0: Music, Music, Music

Ed: Content (starving artists at Myspace), Distribution (Bronfman), Wholesale/Retail (iTune)

LiveBlogging MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe And Warner Music’s Edgar Bronfman At Web2.0: Music, Music, Music (And Money)

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and Warner Music Group’s Edgar Bronfman take the stage with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit this evening. The topic: The Future Of Music.

The time is ripe. MySpace has launched it’s new MySpace Music initiative; Facebook continues to explore its options.

Our live notes are below:

John Battelle starts things off by noting that MySpace Music continues to not have a CEO (they’ll announce it shortly). DeWolfe says they’ll make an announcement shortly - it isn’t coming this evening.

Bronfman on how Warner Music is different than the other labels: Says he came to Warner at the beginning of 2004, and it was clear that they had to innovate to grow, not litigate. Until MySpace Music came along, he says, there was no online ecosystem for music (MySpace Music sells songs, streams songs, sells ringtones and will eventually sell concert tickets and other merchandise).

He says there is no one channel that will replace CD revenues. It will take a whole series of business models, he says, adding that the music industry will look very different in five years. Even download revenue won’t be the most important revenue source.

DeWolfe on iTunes v. MySpace Music: says there has been a lot of friction between labels, artists and users. MySpace wanted to bring everyone together, he says. He talks about how great Napster was for the user, but the artist didn’t get paid. He wanted a service that paid the labels and artists, and gave users a great experience. Says now is the time - 20% of Warner’s revenues are from digital sales.

He says the biggest difference with MySpace Music is the community - that the MySpace community can help users choose what to consume.

Bronfman on Apple: gives them credit, they pulled off a sexy device combined with a great service.

Bronfman on evolving from packaged goods model to multi-channel digital world: Says they’ve reorganized the company to move from a few large distributor customers and now have 500 or more customer agreements. They also have hundreds of SKUs every time they release a single, whereas they only had 3 per song before.

Distribution is a commodity, he says. The key is owning the master recordings and focusing on editorial and marketing.

DeWolfe on the month since launch: over 1 billion streams in first few days. Over 80 million playlists created. 5 million bands uploading music.

Battelle asks Bronfman how the industry got comfortable with DRM-free music. He says DRM is great in theory but doesn’t work in practice. They are facing reality and adapting to a “very different world than any content industry has ever faced.” Says they are guinea pigs but they are finding their way through it.

DeWolfe says MySpace likely won’t create a device, but will focus on backing original music, live events, etc.

DeWolfe says MySpace Music isn’t competitive with iTunes; rather that MySpace Music will help Apple sell more iPods.

Bronfman says MySpace Music is great way to filter and develop talent. It’s expensive to develop talent, he says, to bring them to their full potential. Says that it takes much more effort to break an artist than it ever did before because people’s attention is so split.

Bronfman on Radiohead’s experiments with their new album this year: he was disappointed that so many users chose to take it for free. Battelle suggests many of the downloads were sampling. Bronfman says it’s important to work with an artist over their career to sometimes give music away to sell tickets, sometimes sell music to promote events, etc.

Bronfman says that every new artist they sign they take rights in every revenue stream. Calls these 360 rights, and that over 1/3 of their artists are under these contracts. He says that they can’t make the investment they need to make unless they have these rights, and their incentives won’t be aligned.

Discussion of Facebook. Battelle says that Facebook overtook MySpace in U.S. traffic this year - DeWolfe corrects him and says MySpace is still much larger than Facebook. He also says 70% of Facebook users are on MySpace too. Says he isn’t worried about Facebook music, they have no artists and there are massive barriers to entry. MySpace has passionate music lovers and a deep sales team.

Bad News For MySpace: Growth Curve Flattened. Good News For MySpace: It's A Real Business

Bad News For MySpace: Growth Curve Flattened. Good News For MySpace: It's A Real Business

from Silicon Alley Insider by Peter Kafka

Bad news for Rupert Murdoch: Goldman Sachs figures his Internet business is worth perhaps $3 billion -- about half the value he was trying to get for it earlier this year. The good news: Goldman didn't generate its numbers by placing a value on the eyeballs that MySpace and the rest of Fox Interactive Media have attracted, or even the revenue they're generating. Instead, Goldman derived its estimate based on FIM's earnings. That is:MySpace and the rest of Murdoch's Web properties are now a real business, making real money.

That's worth remembering as we enter the late stages of the Web 2.0 boom, where buyers and sellers are still scrambling to place a value on revenue-light, or revenue-free, startups like Digg orTwitter. Murdoch and company have been dinged -- fairly -- for failing to deliver on aggressive revenue and earnings targets the company set out a year ago. And they're still struggling to convince advertisers to pay up for the billions of page views they generate.

But even if it's not what Murdoch had hoped for/promised, there is real money there: Analyst Mark Wienkes figures FIM (mostly MySpace, but also Photobucket, IGN, etc) is going to generate $155 million in EBITDA in (calendar year) 2008. At a 15x multiple, that's $2.3 billion. At 20x, $3.1 billion. That's about 2x what he spent acquiring the properties in the last few years. And Mark sees MySpace's top and bottom lines marching steadily upward (note that the chart below is for News Corp.'s fiscal year, which turns over every July).

The disappointment for Murdoch are those year-over-year growth numbers -- cable guys, not go-go Web companies, are the ones that are supposed to be delivering 12% growth. But it's been clear for some time that MySpace's US audience has peaked, and that it's going to be fighting very hard against Facebook and other competitors for international eyeballs...

CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox - In Context With Internet Growth

Ed: Impressive numbers from CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox; however, in context, growth counts. Facebook adds 250,000 members per day. This is the total circulation for a medium sized metropolitan newspaper or TV station.

How Facebook stays afloat adding 250,000 users per day

Posted by Dan Farber

A few weeks ago I talked with Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, about the challenge of innovating quickly and building stable infrastructure while 250,000 new members are added to the social network every day. Check out the video on ZDNet...

What are the challenges that you see--let's say you're at 80 million unique users per month, 250,000 being added per day and 50,000 transactions per second. What happens when you get to 500 million or a billion if you ever get there?
Heiliger: Hopefully, tremendous things. I think we can only look forward to those days...

Quincy Smith Named CEO Of CBS Interactive, CNET

from Silicon Alley Insider by Michael Learmonth

CBS completed its acquisition of CNET and chief executive Les Moonves named Quincy Smith, the dealmaker who pushed the acquisition, as CEO of the expanded digital unit.

Former CNET CEO Neil Ashe becomes president of CBS Interactive, reporting to Smith (SAI 100 #8). After the acquisition, CBS says it's now the 8th-largest Web network in terms of unduplicated unique visitors, according to ComScore.

The digital group will be organized into five vertical categories. How is CBS integrating its $1.8 billion acquisition? Per CBS's release:

Technology: CNET.com is the number one Web site in the computer and consumer electronics category, reaching more than 18 million people every month with daily premium content offerings. From the latest product reviews to breaking news from the digital world, as well as video and program downloads, CNET.com has become the leading destination for people looking to navigate today's digital world...

FIM Moving To New LA HQ In Playa Del Rey; Consolidating All LA Offices

from paidContent.org by Staci D. Kramer

Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS) is celebrating its third birthday* by finally announcing a new headquarters that should be big enough to house all of its LA staff in one place: 300,000-plus square feet in the Horizon at Playa Vista in Playa Del Rey. In an internal memo to his staff, FIM president Peter Levinsohn described the deal "the single biggest real-estate transaction in Los Angeles in the last 25 years. When we move to our new facility between June of 2009 and January of 2010, not only will we enjoy the distinction of having one of the largest corporate headquarters in the LA area, but we will be housed in a state-of-the-art facility that reflects our corporate identity and culture." The space includes "an exclusive gym, internal and external eating facilities, volleyball courts, and lots of green space ..." It will house about 2000 FIM employees, which is all its LA staff...

ABC Considers Major Online Newscast Overhaul; CBS Looks To CNET, Celebs For Boost

from paidContent.org by David Kaplan

When it comes to all the tropes the broadcast networks continue to cling to, the national evening news shows are arguably the most in need of drastic change. As the shows' millions viewers are getting older and older, ad support is dwindling. While the networks' online versions of the nightly news were meant to invigorate the stale productions and attract younger viewers, it turns out that the webcasts are struggling as well. David Westin, ABC's news-division president, tells WSJ that the Disney-owned network isn't ready to pull the plug on the two-year-old World News webcasts, but ABC is clearly groping for ways to make its online news relevant. Westin: "I want to look at it and say, 'What have we learned from it?' 'How can we reconfigure it?' 'What can we do better?'"

-- ABC's numbers: Last Monday, internal traffic showed ABCNews.com logged 7.8 million pageviews, though the company claims it averages about 8.4 million. Within that, the 15-minuteWorld News webcast got 145,000 hits, while three million clicks went to the news site's photo gallery featuring shots of celebrities and "the pregnant man." Though general hard news has been met with indifference, sections devoted to health and politics have been relative bright spots, suggesting that ABC might try to focus on niche verticals.

-- CBS' (NYSE: CBS) solution: celebs and tech: CBS plans to overhaul its online news with some assistance from CNET (NSDQ: CNET) once the merger closes. And noticing the same insatiable appetite for celebrity news, CBS Interactive promises to deliver more of that kind of coverage with a new destination due "in coming weeks."...

Sports Shorts: ESPN360-Cricket; NBCU-Beijing; YES-NYT

from paidContent.org by Staci D. Kramer

-- ESPN360.com Will Carry Exclusive Live Cricket Coverage: ESPN360.com has the exclusive U.S. broadband rights to live and replay coverage of the 2008 Asian Cup Cricket Tournament from Pakistan June 24-July 6. The six-team, 13-match biennial tournament includes national teams from Pakistan, India, UAE, Bangladesh, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. ESPN's (NYSE: DIS) Cricinfo.comwill carry extensive highlights and provide 3D animation of each match.

-- Vista Media Center Users Can Download NBC Olympic Video Highlights: Yesterday I wrote about NBC Sports demanding that audio and video from Olympics trials come down from other sites before Beijing. Here's an example of how NBC is trying to expand access to its own video, albeit in a very limited way: NBC Olympics on the Go, powered by Wavexpress, will allow viewers with Windows Vista Media Center to set up automatic syncing of NBC-provided channels to laptops for commuter viewing "up-to-HD quality on the go". No word on whether this will work with portable devices that usually can sync with Media Center but it doesn't sound like it. Release...

Murdoch: WSJ Will Take NYT Market Share In "Months"; Baffled By The YHOO/MSFT Mess (NWS)

Murdoch: WSJ Will Take NYT Market Share In "Months"; Baffled By The YHOO/MSFT Mess (NWS)

from Silicon Alley Insider by Peter Kafka

We love listening to Rupert Murdoch talk, mostly because Rupert Murdoch loves to talk. But perhaps because we're professional Rupe-watchers, we've heard a lot of what he had to say about News Corp., the news business, MySpace, etc. On the other hand, because his D chat was a leisurely, discursive romp of an interview, there was all sorts of interesting Rupe musings about the economy (the U.S. is deeply screwed for at least 18 months, but he's a big believer in a long boom), politics (he hasn't decided who he's voting for, but he's ready for Obama to make him a believer), and Keith Olbermann (not interested in hiring back his former employee to work at Fox News, in case you were wondering). We'll sum that up in a separate post.

For the tech and businesss set:

• Rupe talked a big game re: plans for the WSJ. He thinks he'll take market share from the NYT in a matter of months by pushing into general news.
• He can't figure out the Yahoo/Microsoft deal at all: He doesn't understand how Jerry's been able to not sell the company when offered a huge premium, and he can't figure out why Microsoft was unable to make it happen. One theory: MSFT isn't used to making huge deals.
• Hulu important to him because it's a way to control his copyrighted material. But if that's the case, why didn't he sue YouTube, a la Viacom? "We had mixed feelings about it, but when it came down to it, we figured it was doing more to promote our shows than it was to hurt them".

Transcript notes follow, video at end of post...

Will Newspapers Survive? [The Chart]

from Gawker by Nick Denton

News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch told the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference that print newspapers would outlast him. Not so sure. Industry analyst Mark Potts has been telling clients that rising online advertising will finally offset the decline of print revenues by about 2012. (That's his chart on the right, with online revenue in red making up for the shrinking blue, so overtaken by events that it now represents the optimistic scenario.) But the American Journalism Review challenges Potts' assumptions: traditional newspaper revenues are declining more rapidly than the analyst predicted; and the AJR's Charles Layton reckons their websites will never make up the difference (see left). Ouch.

News Corp: Selling Ads For MySpace Is Hard Work!

News Corp: Selling Ads For MySpace Is Hard Work!

Silicon Alley Insider by Peter Kafka

News Corp. execs did more than just admit that they weren't going to hit their revenue goals for MySpace and Fox Interactive Media today. They also fessed up to another open secret: Selling ads on social networks is a really difficult.

How difficult? Consider that even while MySpace and all of the other FIM sites continued to grow, FIM revenues dropped from $233 million in Q2 to $210 million in Q3; about a third of that total came from a 3-year guaranteed deal from Google.

That explains why former FIM chief revenue officer Mike Barrett got shown the door last month. But News Corp. COO Peter Chernin didn't point the finger at Barrett for the shortfall, and he didn't blame the larger economy, either -- even though his boss Rupert Murdoch said that US consumer spending was "stressed".

Instead, Chernin said, FIM/MySpace's problem is endemic to all social networks: It's awfully difficult to turn all those page views into money. Our paraphrase of his remarks:

We remain incredibly optimistic about social media. But there are specific challenges 1) Tons of inventory. Lack of scarcity creates a liquidity challenge. Working on bringing big brands aboard. 2) People who are visiting social networks there for different reasons, different uses. Figuring out how to target. 3) What's the value of a "friend"? Trying to figure out new metrics to communicate with marketers.

None of this is news. The news is that News Corp. is now saying it out loud, and tempering expectations for MySpace, which a couple of years ago looked unstoppable. Now it looks more like a very big, very hard to monetize Web property.

For the record, Chernin spent much of the call talking up MySpace/FIM's prospects, which aren't awful -- they're just not as good as they thought they were a year ago. Here's a summary of his talking points:

• Branded revenue is up 21% over last year and branded sell-through is trending up for the year with a 19% increase from Q1 to Q3.
• Performance revenues were up 24% year over year.
• Most importantly, as MySpace user base continues to grow, we're actually earning more money per user. FY 08 revenue [display + search] per unique is up 49% over last year.
• 54% of all social network ad dollars are going to MySpace (eMarketer, 12/07)
• Hundreds of HyperTargeting campaigns have been run in last eight months - with 20% or more of all orders today including HyperTargeting.
• Seeing double CPMs for HyperTargeting vs. non-Hyper-Targeted
• Orders with HyperTargeting are about 60% larger
• Enjoying considerable number of repeat orders with about 75% of advertisers ordering HyperTargeting again.
• Also, seeing successes in sales of key pages with sought-after branded advertisers and attracting many high-profile brands for the first time this quarter, including Novartis, Wrigley, Virgin Mobile, Unilever and Toyota. Several have stepped up to the popular branded 'skin' of the MySpace home page which goes for a 70% premium on the standard homepage buy.
• Major category growth including Automotive, up 73%, Consumer Electronics, up more than 300%, Beverage, up 600% and Education up 850% year over year.
• MySpace is at an all time high in terms of audience reach and engagement according to both comScore and Neilsen -- more than doubling Facebook's U.S. audience with 73 million users compared to Facebook's 36 million.
• And minutes spent on MySpace in the U.S. far surpass Facebook - 242 vs. 167 minutes per user per month.
• MySpace TV continues to grow and is the number two online video site after YouTube.
• IGN and Photobucket are up 40% year to year in unique visitors worldwide. IGN remains the number one games information property and in the past quarter, its Direct2Drive service surpassed one million games sold. Photobucket's worldwide page views for March 2008 were 2 billion - up 85% year on year
• FoxSports.com is up over 20% in worldwide unique visitors year on year and recently launched its mobile WAP site expanding its reach further - the Number one mobile WAP site for mobile sports information.

Coming Soon To The Endangered Species List: Online Ad Sales Teams?

from paidContent.org by David Kaplan

The self-serve ads option has been all the rage for search ads the last few years. Increasingly, now, do-it-yourself is becoming similarly popular for the display ad space. Over the past several months, a number of companies have come up with DIY offerings: Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS)began testing a self-serve option for its local TV websites and on MySpace, as Facebook's DIY program has been drawing interest from small advertisers as well.  Meanwhile, a slew of relatively new vendors like AdBrite, AdReady and AdItAll have all been pushing self-serve display-buying options as well. On the web publisher side, AOL (NYSE: TWX) just released PubAccess, a self-serve tool aimed at small publishers as a way to manage their display ads. Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which was credited with helping spur the rise of search ads with its self-serve system, has launched a similar service. Lots more after the jump…

-- Less hassles at low prices: The WSJ points out that the emergence of DIY ad services for display have the potential bring in greater numbers of small advertisers who can't afford display ads through the current route. Self-service also appeals to those marketers who can't afford demands like Yahoo's (NSDQ: YHOO) usual service, which requires advertisers to commit thousands of dollars per month as a price of admission to place display ads across its portal. Contrast that with the few cents its costs to reach a thousand users with Facebook's and MySpace's DIY systems. Aside from the cost, the typical DIY method of buying display ads is a tortuous, time-consuming one: as the WSJ explains, the exercise generally entails choosing among 15 standard sizes and several basic formats; then advertisers have to pay someone to design the ad; once that's done, they have to pick which network to buy space from, test the ads and ultimately track them. The other option involves paying an agency still more thousands to handle the job for them, something smaller marketers can't do.

-- Going the way of travel agents?: Display ads are expected to be 40 percent of the $20 billion online ad market over the next few years. That growth is dependent on the process becoming more simple and less expensive. As the self-serve option takes hold, WSJ compares the likely shakeup in the online ad industry to that of travel agents, a business that has been marginalized as consumers have tended to plan their own trips online as well. So although ad sales teams function might be as essential as a result of all this increased automation, the current system isn't like to hold either, given that sites are already having trouble hiking their prices and stagnation is a possibility. The prospect of self-serve options bringing a wider class of advertisers into the system and making the practice less costly and arduous is, in the end, considered crucial to the growth of the online ad industry.

TV Ad Sellers To Ad Buyers: Don't Even Think About Spending Money On The Web!

Silicon Alley Insider by Michael Learmonth

Just in time for the network upfronts, which start next week, the Television Bureau of Advertising and Nielsen roll out a study to remind everyone that Americans still spend 53% of their media time in front of the tube.

Not sold on TV ads? Then the study has another nugget for you: When Nielsen asked 1,246 adults which ads were "most persuasive," only 5.1% said ads on the Internet. That's a lot lower than TV (69.9%), newspapers (9.5%), and even radio (7.5%).

Of course, most of the ads consumers are exposed to on the Web are crappy, low CPM ads anyway. And we'll point out again who's sponsoring this study: TV advertisers.

But we bet that there's likely an underlying truth here: Consumers have become hardened to the barrage of commercial messages they're served on the Web. None of this, though, solves TV's fundamental problem: That it has been losing viewers over time, and that the trend is certain to accelerate.

NEWS: MySpace Apps Moves Out Of Beta

MySpace Apps Moves Out Of Beta

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

MySpace Application Gallery, MySpace’s app directory which launched in limited beta back in March, is now fully live and open to the public.

The MySpace application gallery allows users to browse applications and integrate them into their MySpace page and profile, giving what MySpace describes as “a more engaging and entertaining online experience.”

The biggest difference between todays launch and the beta launch is a link on the main MySpace page to the app page: minor in words but major in promoting MySpaces apps to MySpace’s user base. Users will also have one-click access to the Application Gallery from their home page through their individual control panels.

Since the beta launch, the MySpace Application Gallery has resulted in over 2.1 million installs from over 1,000 approved applications.

MySpace Apps Are Go For All Users

...MySpace officially opened its Application Gallery to all users this morning after launching it in public beta last March. In that time over 1,000 applications have been approved and added to the gallery and there have been over 2.1 million application installs across the site. Today, MySpace began promoting applications to users by adding an i... ReadWriteWeb

NEWS: Photobucket Plays Catch Up To Flickr, Public API Released

Ed: Convergence of photo and video. Google has Youtube and Picasso. Yahoo has Video and Flickr. Fox has Myspace and Photobucket. Facebook is number 1 photo sharing site. AOL has legacy projects. 

What about music? Apple has iTunes for music, video, and photos - but not shared. 

Photobucket Plays Catch Up To Flickr, Public API Released

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

Photobucket, acquired by Fox Interactive Media in May 2007 for $300 million, is releasing their API to the public today and will allow third party developers to build photo/video storage and visualization to their applications. Adobe, AOL, FotoFlexer, Intercasting, RockYou, Slide and Snapvine are being announced as launch partners. API documentation is available at developer.photobucket.com.

Previously the API was released only to signed business development partners, and had limited functionality. Functionality includes log in via OAuth, album creation and editing, content uploading, content sharing via email, search and metadata access (tags, titles, descriptions, etc.).

Photobucket is also promoting third party services on their API, at gallery.photobucket.com.

Flickr has had an API available since late 2005, with hundreds of third party applications built on the base service.

Photobucket Opens API, Seeks Developers

from PC World: Latest Technology News

Photobucket plans to release an API on Tuesday that will allow external developers to create applications that include content...

MySpace Snubs Fox, Gives Space To NBC News

from Silicon Alley Insider by Michael Learmonth

Here's one very odd marriage: News Corp's MySpace ispartnering with NBC News, and not corporate sibling Fox News, for political coverage and analysis through the election. As of Tuesday, NBC News video with personalities like Brian Williams, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews took up prominent placement on MySpace's Decision '08 political news section, and got their own MySpace pages.

So, why isn't MySpace partnering with its News Corp. (NWS) corporate cousins over at Fox News, or the WSJ, for that matter? 'We work with companies that are in family and out of family all the time,' Lee Brenner, executive producer of political programming at MySpace, told the Hollywood Reporter.

The deal includes video from the MSNBC cable news channel, though no sign yet of Keith Olbermann, who made a name for himself bashing FNC's Bill O'Reilly. The MySpace-NBC deal is similar to the ABC News-Facebook partnership struck last fall

Sony BMG joins Nokia's unlimited music service

from CNET News.com - Business Tech

Nokia customers get access to any Sony BMG song for a year, and they get to keep the songs forever. Is this the music model of the future?

Nokia Signs Sony BMG for Free Music Offering

from NYT > Technology

Nokia will offer free 12-month access to music from artists of Sony BMG to buyers of its particular music phones, the cellphone maker said.

NEWS: Social Network Conversations - Myspace, Six Apart, Ning, Marc Andressen

Six Apart Launches Ad Network, Moves Into Services
from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

Six apart is launching an advertising network for blogs and will begin offering professional services (design, implementation, development, optimization) after acquiring New York based creative agency Apperceptive (this was correctly guessed by Cameron Barret in a Friday post (see comment 156) asking for readers to tell us who they thought Six Apart acquired).

Advertising Network - Six Apart Media

The company is now competing with Federated Media Publishing, Glam, the upcoming Technorati ad network and a number of others to get bloggers to join their network...

MySpace Gets New Ad Boss, Faces Same Challenge (NWS)
Silicon Alley Insider by Peter Kafka

As we had previously heard, MySpace (NWS) has turned marketing head Jeff Berman into its chief ad guy, as well. Jeff formally moves from EVP of marketing and content to the new title of president of sales and marketing. Somebody at News Corp. -- presumably MySpace boss Chris DeWolfe -- likes Jeff an awful lot: This is his second promotion since January; prior to that he was the head of MySpace TV. As far as we can tell, he's never been in sales before.

The moves follows the defenestration of Mike Barrett, who ran ad sales for Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. unit made up of MySpace and a handful of other web properties. Mike and his team had been laboring, unsuccesfully, to meet the sales goals that Rupert Murdoch laid out for FIM last summer.

Techmeme River

Anthony Ha / VentureBeat
Social network creator Ning raises $60M at $500M valuation  —  Make-your-own-social-network company Ning has raised a $60 million fourth round of funding.  —  Co-founder Marc Andreessen, who also founded Netscape, says the funding came at a whopping $500 million pre-money valuation.

Adam L. Penenberg / Fast Company:
Ning's Infinite Ambition  —  Brain Trust: Ning chairman Marc Andreessen (he built Netscape back in the day), with Bianchini, at the company's HQ in Palo Alto. |  It isn't just a site where users can build their own social networks — Ning is a model of how to create a perpetual growth machine.

Charles Hudson / Charles Hudson's Weblog:
Social Networking Advertising - It Will Be Even Harder than we Think  —  I've had a few experiences in the past few weeks that continue to bolster my belief that monetizing social networks and communities will continue to be a lot harder than people think.

Ning Raises $60 Million Fourth Round; $500 Million Pre-Money Valuation

from paidContent.org by Joseph Weisenthal

Automagically, news of Ning's latest funding comes out concurrently with a rather glowing piece in Fast Company… the make-your-own social network has raised a $60 million fourth round from unspecified institutional investors investors, valuing the company at $500 million, pre-money. The company last raised $44 million last summer, which then valued the company at $170 million. On his blog, founder Marc Andreesen explains: "We raised the money to enable us to keep scaling given our accelerating growth (over 230,000 networks on Ning now, growing at over 1,000 per day) and to make sure we have plenty of firepower to survive the oncoming nuclear winter. At current growth rates, we don't need it to get to cash flow positive, but having lived through the last crunch, it's good to be conservative with these things." He also noted that the round was led by Allen & Co.

Andreesen's comments aren't the first to tie a big raise with fears of a coming downturn. Last week, Fabrice Grinda, founder of free classifieds site OLX also suggested that his company's latest round was in part insurance against a recession.

Ning isn't alone in offering what could be called a white label social networking platform, but unlike a number of its competitors, like KickApps, it's made a point of targeting users, as opposed to just businesses. Not that it doesn't do have a B2B side. It's most well known site seems to be Thisis50, the official social net of the rapper 50 Cent.

Blogging Software Firm SixApart Buys Social Media Agency Apperceptive

from paidContent.org by Rafat Ali

SixApart, the blogging software firm with products like MovableType, Typepad and Vox, is now moving up the value chain into offering advertising and consulting services, and has bought New York City-based social media creative agency, Apperceptive. The financial details were not disclosed. Apperceptive has worked with Six Apart for the past two years, and its clients include Huffington Post, Washington Post (NYSE: WPO), Gothamist, Boing Boing, Major League Baseball, and others...

Travel Ad Network Raises $15 Million First Round
from paidContent.org by David Kaplan

Travel Ad Network has completed a $15 million first round funding led by Rho Ventures, Village Ventures and individual investors, the company tells us. The ad network, founded in 2003, plans to use the funds to support general growth efforts, including the development of new products and establishing itself in additional, though unspecified markets. The company, based in New York City, also has offices in Canada and the UK. TAN's vertical ad net, which is focused mainly on travel sites that cater to upscale consumers, drew 9.3 million uniques in March, according to comScore—ranked fifth behind Expedia, Travelport, Travelocity and Southwest Airlines. In the past year, though, TAN's experienced strong traffic growth and is up 97.9 percent over March '07's 4.7 million uniques.

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