15
Jul
2009
MySpace to push deeper into entertainment
The waning prospects of MySpace, once the dominate social network, are pushing parent company News Corp. to make some startling moves.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., said he plans to reshape MySpace into an “entertainment portal.”
The Journal reported that MySpace will enable the site’s users, the number of which is quickly shrinking, to access entertainment and related information. Murdoch, however, didn’t offer the paper any details about what this new entertainment focus would include.
The statements, made at the Allen & Company Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, come as Facebook continues to outpace MySpace in almost every relevant metric. The big question is how much would a facelift like the one proposed by Murdoch help the site? Read the rest of this entry »
11
Jul
2009
Power.com Countersues Facebook Over Data Portability
The Data Portability wars just got a little more interesting. Power.com, the service that lets users aggregate their social networks into a single hub, is countersuing Facebook for restricting users’ ability to export and move their own data. The company is claiming that Facebook is unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS), and is stifling competition by refusing to allow third party services like Power.com to access the data, among other things. This should be fun.
It’s been over six months since we last heard about these two duking it out, so here’s a quick refresher: Power.com launched last August, offering users the ability to import their latest updates and user information from Facebook, MySpace, and a number of other social networks. It did so by tapping into the social networks’ APIs when available, but also by scraping user data when they couldn’t access it through other means ? a big no-no for most social networks, as we saw with the Scoble/Plaxo fiasco. It didn’t take long for Facebook to file suit against Power.com for scraping user data and storing user credentials (another violation of Facebook’s ToS). A week later we heard that the two parties might be close to a settlement, but apparently that didn’t work out ? the suit is still pending. Read the rest of this entry »
11
Jul
2009
Facebook Lures Advertisers at MySpace’s Expense
An eMarketer study says ad sales are climbing at Facebook, which recently surpassed MySpace in the number of U.S. visitors
Facebook has won over millions of users from social networking pioneer MySpace. It’s becoming more alluring to advertisers, too.
Even as overall U.S. advertising spending on social networks declines this year, ad sales are on the rise at Facebook, and the company is gaining a larger slice of the pie at the expense of News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, according to a new report from marketing researcher eMarketer. Read the rest of this entry »
