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cubicle culture
Posts Tagged “
Myspace
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cubicle culture
brad greenspan
JumpTV rejects MySpace creator Brad Greenspan's takeover bid
Brad Greenspan swears he was the guy who actually created MySpace. Chris DeWolfe and everybody's friend Tom Anderson? They stole the idea from him! (After he stole it from Friendster!) Anyway, you'd think that creating the world's second most popular social network would lend Greenspan some street cred with aspiring entrepreneurs. Nope. Online video startup JumpTV just rejected Greenspan's$12.6 million for 25 percent of the company and went for a merger offer from NeuLion instead. "Mr. Greenspan's proposal was not in the best interests of the Company," reads JumpTV's release on the news. Maybe next time don't spend so much money on a failed Web video startup like Revver before trying to buy another one?
online video
Site visits slightly down overall, but YouTube picks up market share
Within a group of 63 online video destination sites tracked by HitWise, YouTube increased market share to 75 percent from 59 percent from May of 2007 to May of 2008. Visits among all the sites were down a scant over 1 percent, but time spent on the sites were up 9 percent. Why are views slightly down? One reason is because more visits are going to video destinations not in the top 63. Though 58 other sites not in the top five, taken together, lost share as well, from 12 percent to eight percent of totall visits.
ashley dupre
Ashley Alexandra Dupré approves your friend request!
The internet's favorite escort, Ashley Alexandra Dupré, wants to apologize for taking so long to approve your Friend Request on MySpace. "All of my pending friend requests from 3/12 through now were deleted by myspace (if you do not approve them within a certain number of days, they get deleted) so...please please please re-send and you should be approved automatically." We forgive, you, Ms. Dupré — we know you were busy. And shame on you, MySpace, for interfering with a working woman's self-promotion by blocking those friend requests.
social networks
Advertisers fighting with your friends and neighbors' sex lives for attention on Facebook
It's not Ning's porn-sharing communities, Facebook's co-ed antics, and MySpace's ninja sex angel users that prevent these social networking sites from making as much money off ads as hoped. It's the issue of getting quality attention with each insertion, writes Bryant Urstadt for the MIT Technology Review. He doesn't blame the "rude content" (you know, what the users do) or the advertisers getting skittish about running a banner adjacent to the list of people you've slept with. It's not users being naughty that's the problem — it's that no one knows how to sell against "bad behavior" yet. More »
great moments in customer service
No, we're not MySpace Tom, but here's our advice anyway
Dear Valleywag reader Hannah M.: It's true that sometimes Valleywag writes about News Corp.'s social network MySpace. This does not make us MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson, however. We apologize for any confusion. The Internet can be hard. We understand. By way of making up for this grievance, we've posted your email — addressing us as "MySpace Tom" — in hopes that Anderson will see it and take action. In the meantime, please also note that you should not email "Goob" at FacebookTalk.com for help with your Facebook account. He's isn't quite as nice as us when it comes to these kinds of mistakes. You are welcome a "bunnch."
facebook
Murdoch calls Facebook a "flavor of the month" as MySpace falls to second place in traffic
News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch told an audience at the Cannes ad festival yesterday that Facebook, "done a great job of being the flavor of the month the last six months of last year." Murdoch went on to dismiss the site as a simple "directory" and, comparing it to News Corp's own MySpace, said "they've not monetized as well as us." If that's the case, Murdoch has a low estimation of Facebook's money-making prowess indeed. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose company paid $900 million for the right to sell the ads for MySpace in 2008, said last month it still hasn't figured out a way to profit from the deal.
social networks
Tila Tequila demands cash or date with Mark Zuckerberg to ditch MySpace for Facebook
On the "yellow carpet" at the SpikeTV Guy's Choice Awards, Mahalo Daily host Lon Harris asked Tila Tequila what it would take for Facebook to woo the über-popular MySpace user. "A big fat check," she jokes at first. But after a little prodding, she admits that an appeal to the heart might also work, "if the person or whoever runs it is hot and takes me out on a date." Harris proceeds to explain that 24-year old co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is "pretty hot." He must like guys with long necks and big ears.
your privacy is an illusion
Faces of MySpace identity theft an ode to bangs and mascara
In order to prove ownership of a MySpace account, the company asks users to film themselves reading their account number to the camera. Brad Troemel assembled a number of these clips into Proof, a mesmerizing look into MySpace's user base. The clips were selected from a larger and more diverse collection of people and styles, but the bricolage of nothing but young women in various stages of punk, goth and emo nearly unanimous in their taste for spikey up-dos, bangs and heavy, heavy mascara certainly captures a zeitgeist. Does it seem just a little skeevy to anyone else that MySpace is assembling a collection of young women videotaping themselves for security purposes, even if unintentionally? Granted, at least the company isn't demanding sex in order to get user accounts restored. Full video after the jump. More »
Online Advertising
Fox's Batman ad on MySpace to trigger flashbacks for 9/11 survivors?
The MySpace homepage today features the same burning-building graphic used in the promotional poster for the upcoming Dark Knight sequel. It's not a new image, but by pushing the campaign online, it certainly reminds me of recent attempts to trigger epileptics by posting strobing images to epilepsy forums — since survivors of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder might cry "trigger." Maybe someone at Fox Interactive did it for the lulz.
design
Screenshots of MySpace's redesign, coming next week
Social network MySpace will go live with a site redesign sometime next week. Last night, the company unveiled screenshots. The changes aren't revolutionary. They are not supposed to be. When Fox Interactive began interviewing Web designers for the job last fall, they told the candidates the main goal was to match rival Facebook feature-for-feature. Screenshots, below. More »
poll
We're on to Round Two in our worst-tech-job contest. We've whittled down 10 terrible gigs down to five:
Finding the worst-entry level job in tech: Round Two
We're on to Round Two in our worst-tech-job contest. We've whittled down 10 terrible gigs down to five:- Online sales and operations account manager, Google
- Content acquisition intern, IODA
- Customer support specialist, Fox Interactive, MySpace division
- Windows support professional, Microsoft
- Part-time guide, Mahalo
online advertising
Display advertising spending grows, but grows slower as inventory gets cheaper
Spending on display advertising — banner ads and other graphical Web come-ons — increased 8.5 percent in the first quarter over last year to $2.92 billion, reports ad-measurement firm TNS. At the same time, the Internet's "reach" — a rough measure of media consumption and, therefore, advertising inventory — has grown 66.6 percent since April 2007, according to ZenithOptimedia. Shall we do an exercise in basic economics, folks? More »
strategery
Bewkes to shareholder: Just pretend Bebo is MySpace
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes's oops-did-I-Bebo-that tour continues. Yesterday at the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom conference, a shareholder asked Bewkes how $850 million for a third-place social network jibed with Bewkes's claim that disciplined capital allocation is a key priority for Time Warner. According to PaidContent, Bewkes said, “We did make a bit of a stretch." He then tried to reassure the worried shareholder saying, it was the “same thing when News Corp. bought MySpace.” More »
poll
He won't sell, but can Mark Zuckerberg successfully carry Facebook through to an IPO? That's what the latest matchup in our tournament to find tech's worst entry-level job comes down to. Otherwise, the key responsibilities for Facebook's user operations analysts and MySpace customer support specialists are very similar. Even the pay is roughly the same. A tipster tells us Facebook pays its customer service reps $34,500 per year — though that number might be higher now that Facebook stopped handing $600/mo. housing subsidies. Readers figure MySpace pays $37,000. So what's it going to be? The slightly lower-paying job at the risky startup with higher upside or a gig at News Corp.'s shiniest Web toy? Vote in our poll below.
More »
Pick your career poison: Facebook user operations analyst vs. MySpace customer support specialist
He won't sell, but can Mark Zuckerberg successfully carry Facebook through to an IPO? That's what the latest matchup in our tournament to find tech's worst entry-level job comes down to. Otherwise, the key responsibilities for Facebook's user operations analysts and MySpace customer support specialists are very similar. Even the pay is roughly the same. A tipster tells us Facebook pays its customer service reps $34,500 per year — though that number might be higher now that Facebook stopped handing $600/mo. housing subsidies. Readers figure MySpace pays $37,000. So what's it going to be? The slightly lower-paying job at the risky startup with higher upside or a gig at News Corp.'s shiniest Web toy? Vote in our poll below.
More »
sex trade
To the ex-cop offering $1,000 for fetish sex on MySpace: You're doing it wrong
Not even former lawmen know that trying to score sex play for pay on MySpace is a bad idea. Going to trial this week is Michael J. Curtin, a fired cop from Pennsylvania who tried to offer $1000 each to a pair of teenagers if he could suck their toes. The sad thing is, there's nothing criminal about the whole foot fetish thing: except the minors, the money, and MySpace. More »
online advertising
Why can't Facebook and MySpace make more money?
NEW YORK — While Google struggles to make back the $900 million it guaranteed to MySpace in 2006, Facebook revenues will maybe top $300 million in 2008 — which would put the price paid by Microsoft for its tiny piece of the social network at 50 times revenues. Why can't the social networks make more money? Don't ask Google's top U.S. ad salesman, Penry Price. "There's no answer yet how to monetize some of the places we're working today," Price told the audience at EconAds yesterday. At the same event, NeoAtOgilvy COO Greg Smith said "We're still trying to put ads on MySpace and everyone's asking why its not working. It's because its the wrong solution." More »
your privacy is an illusion
Want to see Paris Hilton's MySpace profile? How about Lindsay Lohan's? Don't worry about those pesky privacy settings. Thanks to "data portability," a faddish technology movement that the Valley has been buzzing about for months, you can see any profile you want on MySpace. Byron Ng, a Canadian computer technician with a knack for finding Web security holes, has discovered that Yahoo's integration with MySpace makes it easy to view photos for any profile. These images, which Ng obtained from Hilton's and Lohan's profiles, speak to the danger Yahoo and MySpace's lax data-sharing habits pose:
More »
Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan private pics exposed by Yahoo hack
Want to see Paris Hilton's MySpace profile? How about Lindsay Lohan's? Don't worry about those pesky privacy settings. Thanks to "data portability," a faddish technology movement that the Valley has been buzzing about for months, you can see any profile you want on MySpace. Byron Ng, a Canadian computer technician with a knack for finding Web security holes, has discovered that Yahoo's integration with MySpace makes it easy to view photos for any profile. These images, which Ng obtained from Hilton's and Lohan's profiles, speak to the danger Yahoo and MySpace's lax data-sharing habits pose:
More »
