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slingshot labs
Posts Tagged “
Myspace
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slingshot labs
YouTube blowing away competition as distribution platform
TubeMogul, a startup which allows content creators to post video clips to multiple sites at once and track aggregate views for the clip across sites, did a survey of over 200,000 clips and how much traffic they garnered after 90 days. The results? The average clip got more views on YouTube in three months (3,092) than on the next eight video sites combined (2,092). [NewTeeVee]
strategery
Murdoch on Microsoft-Yahoo: "There won't be a deal"
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who says shareholders shouldn't give corporate raider Carl Icahn control of the company because he has no plan other than to sell to Microsoft, got a boost from an unexpected supporter: News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch told reporters at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley retreat that "in six months, (Microsoft) will walk away." The crusty mogul added: "There won't be a deal. There's bad personal feelings." More »
yahoo raid
Yahoo refuses to pay News Corp. $15 billion for MySpace
There's desperate — and then there's "paying $15 billion for second-place has-been social network MySpace" desperate. Not even Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, under pressure from a mixed-up Microsoft, angry shareholders, and crazy-old-coot corporate raider Carl Icahn to do some kind of deal, is that desperate. Yang is taking so much heat for blowing merger negotiations with Microsoft, botching the company's reorg, and losing top talent that he's probably going to lose his job come August 1, when the company holds an annual shareholder meeting. But despite all that, a source close to the company told Reuters that Yang refused a bailout deal with News Corp. that would have combined Yahoo with MySpace because "News Corp. sought a value of as much as $15 billion for those assets." At long last, we're happy to credit Yang for a smart move! More »
cubicle culture
MySpace's parking hell
Lost amidst the hullabaloo over Fox's $350 million new LA headquarters for MySpace and its other Web properties: Just how bad the parking is at MySpace's current office. A former employees tells me that finding a spot in the morning regularly took an hour of circling. In announcing the new office, Fox Interactive CEO Peter Levinsohn reminded employees he had "communicated with you about our space and parking challenges." Anyone have that memo? I'd love to read it. In the meantime, consider this: MySpace won't completely move into the new facility until 2010, meaning its engineers will continue to spend countless hours circling parking lots instead of coding for the next two years. Plenty of time for Facebook to widen its technical lead over Rupert Murdoch's aging social network.
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
