Valleywag: Myspace

MySpace inflates its music numbers

Owen Thomas — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:00:00 PDT

Remind us: Were we supposed to be impressed that MySpace's minor update to its music feature, dressed up as a joint venture with the record labels, has streamed 1 billion tunes in "a few days"? Before the launch of MySpace Music, MySpace was already streaming 5 billion songs a month, largely thanks to the blaring, automatically played music on most of its users' profiles. How many days are "a few"? In the ordinary course of business, MySpace would play 1 billion songs anyway — whether anyone liked it or not. You'd have to be sleeping with a MySpace flack to think this was a big story.

MySpace inches toward Madison Avenue credibility

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:00:00 PDT

News Corp.'s hire of a Yahoo veteran, Valeh Vakili, reported yesterday, as MySpace's senior vice president of sales strategy and operations could prove to be a coup. Madison Avenue only buys ads on News Corp's social network MySpace inventory for their clients "if they have to," one agency exec told me in August. MySpace ads are seen as spammy and unattractive, and agencies don't want to damage their clients' brands by association.

But another problem for MySpace has been its ad sales team, which a different agency exec complained to me last month is still full of pre-News Corp. amateurs. MySpace ad sales team in New York needs "a connected, pro leader" whom the agencies know and trust, this source said. "There is nothing so valuable as a professional sales force" — one like Yahoo's. Vakili is the third Yahoo exec to join MySpace in recent weeks.

MySpace brings in Yahoo veteran

Owen Thomas — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:00:00 PDT

As Yahoo tries to catch up to Google in automated advertising, it continues to lose the human capital now-departed managers like Wenda Harris Millard so carefully built. The latest defection: Valeh Vakili, an eight-year veteran of the portal's salesforce, who has joined MySpace as a senior vice president in charge of sales strategy, based in New York, the heart of the ad business. The Valley's algorithmists scoff at MySpace's naive "hypertargeting" ad strategy, which lumps users into broad groups (sports fans, for example). And yet those very simple labels are very easy to explain to the very simple people who buy large amounts of advertising. True, MySpace has struggled to meet its revenue targets. But for anyone who believes that people still have a role in the buying and selling of ads, it's a better place to be than Yahoo.

Michael Arrington wants you to read about MySpace Music, not his love life

Owen Thomas — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:18:59 PDT

If you didn't believe our report that TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is in bed with MySpace's top flack, Dani Dudeck, read the obsessive startup blogger's latest story on MySpace Music, which claims that MySpace has "streamed" 1 billion songs. Considering that most MySpace profiles are set to start playing a song, whether you like it or not, as soon as you visit them, that's not that impressive. Arrington leads his story by comparing MySpace streams to iTunes sales, and then acknowledges it's not a "fair comparison." His readers, in the comments, went much further, citing our report and questioning whether the affair with Dudeck clouded Arrington's judgment. Those comments have been — what's the word? — unpublished.

LiveUniverse struggling to pay employees, clients

Jackson West — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:40:00 PDT

It's only a matter of a few hundred dollars, but after high acquisitive LiveUniverse acquired affiliate movie marketer Peerflix, blogger Eric D. Snider stopped receiving the until-then-regular checks. Which happened around the exact same time that we got a tip — in late August — that LiveUniverse didn't have enough cash to pay employees on payday. And it's just the latest in a string of bad signs.

Besides Peerflix, the company started by jilted MySpacer Brad Greenspan has also purchased struggling companies PageFlakes and Revver in the last year, and Greenspan made a personal investment in Flurl, but was turned away by JumpTV.

All that wheeling and dealing while not paying attention to basic operations like payroll? Flashy products and technology that may or may not actually exist? "Out of touch" sounds about right.

Greenspan and friends will probably just blame the market as management shorts employees, since that's all the rage these days. But this looks a lot like a textbook case of "excess and lack of self-discipline" to me. Who may end up the winner in all this? The Hollywood Hills Cat Burglar, who seems to have gotten away from Greenspan's mess just in time. (Photo by Getty/Alberto E. Rodriguez)

John McCain, defender of Internet children everywhere

Melissa Gira Grant — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:40:00 PDT

Congress has passed a bill compelling registered sex offenders to submit "email addresses, instant message addresses and other identifying Internet information" to law enforcement. The legislation is sponsored by John McCain, who is not uncoincidentally running for president. The bill, which has passed both houses of Congress and is expected to be signed into law by Bush, aims to protect children from sexual advances on social network sites. Facebook, MySpace, and others are meant to cross-check their user databases with the federal list, and, in the parlance of these types of laws, "delete online predators." But these bills are so broken from the start: what's to keep a past sex offender from just using multiple online identities? Oh, and then there's that whole sticky issue of protecting freedom of speech for those who've served their criminal sentences. Courts in Utah — yes, that Utah — have just ruled on that, providing bad news for those who supported the McCain bill.

After a challenge to a similar state law in Utah last week, a federal judge restored a sex offender's right to anonymous speech online. Though the judge stated that this decision should not apply unilaterally to all registered sex offenders, her ruling is the first to question the conventional wisdom: that curbing online speech can curb sex crimes.

Free speech advocates and social network analysts have long been claiming that this approach won't work. First, there's the problem of the expansive definition of "sex crime" — from violent assault to public nudity. On that basis, Flickr has at least one employee who, after bending over bare-assed for his colleagues, could be banned from the Internet. Add to that that state and Federal lawmakers still can't seem to grasp the qualitative difference between a sixteen year old flashing her boycrush and a fifty year old posing as the same sixteen year old. Toss with a little bit of election-year mania about being tough on crime, and you get a botched bill that may only drive sex offenders further from the public eye — the opposite of the safer, happier Internet McCain hoped to create.

(Photo by soggydan)

Michael Arrington's MySpace Music review, the 100-word version

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:00:00 PDT

We know what TechCrunch's Michael Arrington got out of sleeping with MySpace PR executive Dani Dudeck: Screenshots of MySpace Music before the service launched. But what was Dudeck's quid to Arrington's quo? To find that, it's worth examining all the nice things Arrington has posted about her employer over the past couple of months.

On MySpace's Data Availability, a feature which lets MySpace users link their profiles to other services like Twitter, versus Google's similar Friend Connect, he wrote:

MySpace is taking a much more interesting approach than Google.

In an early post about MySpace Music, Arrington gushed:

Music almost certainly plays a part of MySpace’s continued dominance of Facebook.

About MySpace friend-in-chief Tom Anderson's hacking back in the 1980s, Arrington dutifully wrote:

Frankly, my opinion of Tom Anderson just rose significantly.

A week before MySpace Music launched, Arrington quit playing games and just posted free ads for the service. None of that approached the review Arrington gave MySpace Music the morning it launched.

MySpace has done something incredible at a big picture level: they’ve created both a compelling music experience for users as well as a realistic, long term business model for labels and artists in a world where recorded music moves towards free. Depth of catalog and usability is far beyond what other free streaming services like Last.fm and iMeem currently offer. And when it comes to listening to music, the pop out player, pictured above, is excellent. It’s a great resource for users, and it’s likely to become the center of the revenue ecosystem for artists, particularly unsigned artists starting to make a name for themselves. Indie labels are in a great position, too. A lot of positive press is rolling in around this launch, and it’s much deserved.

MySpace launches music site, biz prays it's the next MTV

Jackson West — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:20:00 PDT

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe wanted a one-stop music shop that would have included event ticket and merchandise purchases along with streaming audio and paid downloads. What he got were agreements from the four major labels for the streaming audio and a deal with Amazon to sell digital downloads. Which is something. Also, there's handful of big-name sponsors like McDonald's and Toyota, and MySpace certainly still has a huge user base of music lovers. Whether or not this is "the one" for the record industry remains to be seen. How's the service?

Of course, it's highly-compressed digital audio, and therefore pretty crappy. But I have to admit, the offerings go well beyond the pop selected for the Jonas Brothers' playlist — while I'm sure the cashiers at Amoeba Records might still sneer at the selection's depth, my searches for everything from Os Mutantes to Gas Huffer, Blind Willie McTell to Mongo Santamaria came up with multiple tracks to choose from. Eventually. The site is currently running incredibly slow, which may be a good sign of interest or a critical fumble of the launch. Users frustrated in the process of creating playlists might just go back to Last.fm, Imeem, iTunes or any of a number of other places to preview and purchase tracks.

MySpace launches a self-serve ad network, hopes you like banners

Paul Boutin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:00:00 PDT

Two weeks after News Corp COO Peter Chernin told an audience in New York that MySpace ads are ahead of target, the site launched a self-serve ad system at advertising.myspace.com. Aimed primarily at musicians and small businesses, the ads start at a $25 minimum for a campaign. The big difference from Google's AdWords: MySpace ads only link to other MySpace pages. Here's a summary of Mashable's writeup on the system:

Ads are banners, not text — either 728×90 or 300×250.
The ads must link to another MySpace page, rather than offsite.
Minimum campaign buy: $25
The ad system seems tied to the pending launch of MySpace Music, a venture with the Big Four record labels.

Ex-Facebook COO Owen Van Natta to run MySpace Music?

Owen Thomas — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:20:00 PDT

Embarrassingly, MySpace unveiled its plans for MySpace Music without a CEO in place. The store's set to open later this month, but who will mind it? The Los Angeles Times suggests the shortlist is down to two names: Owen Van Natta, Facebook's former COO (left), and Andy Schuon, a longtime Universal Music executive (right). TechCrunch says Van Natta is a "top contender." Insiders say MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is wooing him even more aggressively than Paris Hilton.

Van Natta is well qualified, and the job involves partnerships and business development, two areas where he's especially skilled. And he's long said he wants a CEO job at a consumer Internet company, but I'm skeptical he'll take the gig. He strikes me as too independent to answer to meddling MySpacers and hidebound music-industry executives. He also likes to be involved in the product, and it sounds like MySpace Music is mostly developed already. Schuon seems a more likely candidate. His main qualification: He previously ran Pressplay, an online music-industry joint venture. That's also the main strike against him, since Pressplay was a huge flop.

MySpace Music -- like Muxtape, except people who wear deodorant will use it

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:00:00 PDT

MySpace Music, a joint venture between the News Corp. social network and music labels Universal, Sony and Warner,finally launches next week, says Fortune, though it still won't have a CEO. MySpace users will be able to listen to and organize playlists full of songs from all three music labels for free. (EMI is the lone holdout, which means no coldplay.) Playlists will include affiliate links to Amazon.com's MP3 store. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe says ad revenues and song kickbacks are going to save the music industry, replacing lost CD sales.

Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell, whose company already offers a similar product,

BlackBerry adds a MySpace app

Paul Boutin — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:20:00 PDT

You'll be able to hit Tila Tequila from your Bold starting next month, says BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. I found this one-paragraph writeup hiding in a long News.com post on today's doings at CTIA in San Francisco:

RIM will now offer customized access to the popular social-networking site, including instant, push-based messaging to BlackBerry and MySpace users, real-time status and mood updates, camera integration, and optimized photo management. Also as part of this collaboration between the two companies, RIM has created a BlackBerry community page on MySpace for users to access BlackBerry smartphone, content, videos, games, ringtones, skins and other features.

MySpace for BlackBerry is expected to be available globally in October.

3 reasons nobody buys ads on MySpace unless they have to

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:40:00 PDT

News Corp. COO Peter Chernin told Wall Street investors yesterday that social network MySpace is selling ads "above where we expected" and better than the rest of the marketplace. Which is funny, because a Madison Avenue's interactive ad agency exec was just telling me the other day that "you buy MySpace only if you have to. If there's an alternative, go for it." There are three reasons why.

Though MySpace has worked hard to improve its overall site design, its been plagued by spam-happy advertisers and banner-ad schemesters from its very beginning. Because of that and the site's junky-looking past (and we think present), MySpace remains a "tarnished" brand. Brand managers don't want to soil their own through association.
Ad buyers tend to buy ads from people they know. MySpace's ad sales force has had a lot of turnover and its been hard to form relationships with them, says our guy.
Though our guy doesn't use it, the people in his agency who do tell him MySpace's vaunted ad-targeting technology called "Hypertargeting" doesn't work. Sure, its good enough at telling an ad buyer who are the users who would visit the page on which the ad would appear, but it doesn't help to make sure the ad fits within the page's context. "Are [users] seeing the ad? Or are they trained to ignore it?" Also, our guy has some branding advice for MySpace. Get rid of the "hyper" in "hypertargeting." Like as if it were called Xtreme Targeting, the "hyper" makes it sound like News Corp is trying to dress up the technology as more than it is. Which, of course, it probably is.

MySpace China CEO quits, with Rupert Murdoch's wife in the wings

Owen Thomas — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:40:00 PDT

Why doesn't News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch just make it official? His wife, Wendi Deng, serves as "chief strategist" for MySpace China, the media conglomerate's Internet outpost in her homeland. MySpace China CEO Luo Chan has just quit. Just promote her already, Rupert! You're not going to have any luck recruiting an outsider to fill the spot, when it's obvious Deng runs the show. And you'll never hear the end of it from her until you do. (If you're not familiar with Deng's colorful history before she married Murdoch, you should read up on it, courtesy of a pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal article.)

Facebook's search engine second fastest-growing on the Web

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:20:00 PDT

What did Microsoft get when it signed a deal in August to serve ads against search results on Facebook? The right to make money off the second-fastest growing search engine on the Internet, according to a ComScore study. Facebook served 173 million search queries in July 2008, up 10 percent from 157 million in July 2007. Facebook doesn't allow its users to search the rest of Web from its site. Even then, its search engine reached a sixth the size of Microsoft's own.

A dandy of a deal for Microsoft? Perhaps not. Look closer at ComScore's chart and you'll see that the fastest-growing search engine is MySpace, which gets all of its search ads from Google. Google doesn't make much money from them, though, CEO Eric Schmidt admitted earlier this summer. Probably because no one searches MySpace for something to buy. Will Facebook prove any different?

Rupert Murdoch damns MySpace with faint praise

Owen Thomas — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:00:00 PDT

Employees of Fox Entertainment Group, the News Corp. entity which includes most of the media conglomerates U.S. arms, recently got a peppy letter from septuagenarian CEO Rupert Murdoch and COO Peter Chernin. After lavishing Fox's movie and television units with praise — "record market share," "double digit profit growth," "critically acclaimed releases," Murdoch finishes the letter with this tepid phrase:

... finally our digital efforts at Fox Interactive media are paying off with continued success of MySpace and the other FIM portfolio businesses.

If MySpace were actually successful in Murdoch's eyes, don't you think he'd have found some suitable piece of hyperbole? Inspect the letter for yourself:

Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
Max Levchin, Slide
Robin Li, Baidu
Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
Elon Musk, SpaceX
Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
Mika Salmi, MTV
Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
Quincy Smith, CBS
Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
Evan Williams, Twitter
Andrew Zolli, PopTech

MySpace deletes burn victim's photos

Paul Boutin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:40:00 PDT

"BJ McCombs was severely burned in a fire at the age of 18 months," explains the support group set up on MySpace after the site removed photos McCombs's parents had posted of their late son. BJ's photos had been deleted by MySpace staff after another user reported them as offensive. "You may feel singled out," reads a message from a MySpace representative to McCombs's mother in Sullivan, Indiana. "But be assured we delete each and every one of these images as we locate them." Mrs. McCombs says MySpace threatened to delete her profile if she reposted the pics. Coverage from local media in the Terre Haute area seems to have stayed MySpace from re-removing the photos, now uploaded to the group's pages.

Revamped McCainSpace is hours of fun -- for Obama fans

Paul Boutin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:00:00 PDT

Ow, stop! The candidate's awkward, reading-my-lines intro clip. The front and center posts by a guy whose icon reads "STR8T." His angry typo, "Will Obama ascend from the heavens and bless us all?" Just when we'd forgotten about McCainSpace, they went and revamped it. The effort would've been better spent on more YouTube clips, the one place on the Internet where the White Tornado is beating Barack. Here's McCain's awkward video hello, and a sampler of the senator's supporter-generated videos:

4chan hacker holds rapper Soulja Boy's MySpace account ransom

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:40:00 PDT

A miscreant from the sordid 4chan message-board community sent rapper and social media whiz-kid Soulja Boy a text message the other day, telling him to fork over $2,500 if he wanted control over his MySpace account back. "I sent him a text message back," says Soulja Boy in a clip below, " I said fuck you, bitch. Do what you do. This motherfucker got to be fucked up." Then Soulja Boy contacted MySpace and got his account back. Now he's offering fans $10,000 for the name of the hacker. Valleywag commenter Rex Sorgatz suggests a security tip for the young man: "Perhaps his password shouldn't have been SupermanDatHo."

What MySpace gets about advertising that Facebook doesn't

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 07:40:00 PDT

Both top social networks Facebook and MySpace redesigned their sites this summer, but while we prefer the look and feel of Facebook — isn't that nice? — so far only MySpace's redesign has actually earned its company more cash. ComScore reports MySpace served the most ad views on the Web last month. Analyst Rich Greenfield of Pali Research says MySpace was able to charge major brands like Sprint, Verizon and Wendy's more than it used to for many of them.

Why? Greenfield says the site's redesign, which put a huge ad space at the top of the site's home page, allows MySpace to "reach far beyond the 'social media' advertising category and to target far larger portal advertising budgets." Wired reports that MySpace also now charges advertisers extra for Friday ads on the homepage, because that's when film companies want to push new movies.

Facebook, which has a much cleaner, more user-friendly interface, doesn't allow similar site takeovers and in fact removed homepage banners as part of its redesign. The difference between the sites is simple: MySpace is trying to make a buck, right here, right now — and Facebook wants to find an innovative new advertising product so it can be bigger than Google.

Science says poking won't make you more slutty

Melissa Gira Grant — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:20:00 PDT

Using social networks to find sex only make kids these days look sluttier. The reality? A new study of 2,000 MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo users aged 16 to 24 finds they're not happy about the reputation. A full 69 percent believe the media portray them unfairly as "sex maniacs." Those surveyed will be happy with the study's results:

It shows that, yes, kids today are using posts and pokes to flirt, but they're also using social networking sites to share sex ed with each other. What's not to like about a new generation of honest, well-informed sluts? And with 93 percent using social-network communities regularly, at least they're faithful to the sites that bring them together.

"Vesting in peace"

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:40:00 PDT

Connected Ventures cofounder Zach Klein — the guy who spread a rumor that the Mormons were trying to buy Facebook — continues his stay in San Francisco. The latest phrase he's learned from the natives: "vesting in peace."

The phrase Vesting in Peace, which means you work for stable company increasing in value, and you’re doing as little as possible until your stock options are worth something — just enough to be perceived as functional, but never to the point of exertion.

Klein gets this mostly right, though he fails to note where it most frequently happens: At startups after they're acquired. Most of the original YouTubers, for example, are only at Google because they're still vesting in peace.

(Photo by sfllaw)

random_play

Alaska Miller — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:40:00 PDT

A Fox News exec let it slip that Facebook users are "more sophisticated" than Myspace users. But, honestly, what does that even mean? Today's featured commenter, random_play, explains with SAT-style analogies:

In related news:

Meghan Asha is more sophisticated than Mary Rambin.

Gossip Girl is more sophisticated than The Hills.

Night Train is more sophisticated than Thunderbird.

Peanut butter is more sophisticated than jelly time.

Fox News VP calls Facebook users "more sophisticated" than MySpace users

Jackson West — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:40:00 PDT

In the tangled web woven by media conglomerates and Web companies, MySpace which is owned by News Corp. under Fox Interactive Media has a partnership with news broadcaster MSNBC — the cable partnership between Microsoft and NBC. Fox News, another News Corp. property and direct MSNBC competitor, has now signed a deal with Facebook, which counts Microsoft as the lead investor. Admitting that Facebook is now leading MySpace in the social networking space, Fox News VP of development Joel Cheatwood told reporter Brian Stelter, "They also have a user that’s a little older and a little more sophisticated." Enough with the diplomatic double-speak, Cheatwood — tell us what you really think.

Chris De Wolfe's gain is Fox execs' loss

Owen Thomas — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:00:00 PDT

News Corp.'s online arm, Fox Interactive Media, has struggled to attract online talent while paying them like a startup would. (News Corp. shares just don't cut it.) The solution for the unit, which includes MySpace and a passel of lesser-known websites: a long-term incentive plan, or LTIP, which offers a sort of phantom equity to executives in the division. In the last few weeks, the numbers for the most recent fiscal year which ended June 30 were distributed, and they were "disastrously low," says a tipster. "Most executives were already looking to leave," he says. "They hated FIM and the only reason they were staying was because of promises made about the LTIP." True, FIM hasn't quite made its aggressively optimistic numbers. But executives believe the real reason their bonuses are so low is MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe's fat contract.

DeWolfe and his MySpace cohort, Tom Anderson, renewed their contracts last fall with News Corp. last year for $15 million apiece, spread over two years. Paying that amount has, FIM executives believe, left nothing for them. "They're pissed," says our tipster.

Then again, do these puffed-up Fox executives deserve much more than they're getting? Pop quiz: Name a Fox Interactive property other than MySpace.

Facebook sex cruiser's 450 underage friends could land him in jail

Melissa Gira Grant — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:40:00 PDT

Most teenage girls on Facebook and MySpace would ignore messages from a guy calling himself "jadedwasted." That's the nom de Web of Warren Nanney, a guy whom Idaho cops are investigating for allegedly approaching young women for sex on social networks. On Facebook alone, Nanney had "over 500 contacts, 500 people listed as friends and 90 percent of them were under the age of 18," according to local police. Nanney was also allegedly cruising MyYearbook.com, a site the investigators say they'd never heard of before. (It's one of Barry Diller's favorites.)

A+ to Facebook for brand recognition? But it wasn't the profiles or messages that took down Nanney — it was after one 17-year-old woman who did meet with Nanney called the cops, fearing for her safety. As much as law enforcement relies on the open surveillance they can engage in online, it's still the girls themselves who best know when to sic the cops on a creep.

MySpace music venture lonely at the top

Owen Thomas — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:20:00 PDT

MySpace Music, the joint venture between the social network and three big record-label groups, is struggling to find a CEO, according to The Deal. There's a long list of prospects who have turned the News Corp.-owned social network down: Ian Rogers, the former head of Yahoo Music; Jim Bankoff, formerly of AOL; Eric Garland, the highly quotable head of file-sharing research firm BigChampagne; and former Launch CEO Dave Goldberg, who now works at Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence and is married to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, which makes the L.A. job geographically undesirable. But what's most amusing about MySpace's failed CEO search is the excuse MySpace is now giving for putting off a hire: The team is so close to delivering a product that hiring a boss now would just screw things up. Makes sense — but it raises the question, why hire a CEO at all?

Terry Semel spawn Courtenay dating MySpace star Tila Tequila

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Plasticly popular MySpace personality Tila Tequila and Courtenay Semel, the daughter of ex-Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, attended a premiere together last night in Los Angeles. There, the pair confirmed a more successful merger than Semel senior ever managed. “I’d seen the show [A Shot at Love] and just needed to meet her and it just happened,” Semel told People magazine. “It’s true what they say about lesbians," said Tequila. "You meet and then the next day you move in together, because I can’t get rid of her. She pretty much lives at my house.” We think this is the only Yahoo-MySpace deal we'll see happen. (Photo by AP/Steinberg)

Worldwide visitors to Facebook up 153 percent in a year

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:20:00 PDT

Metrics firm ComScore reports that 132 million unique visitors logged onto Facebook in June 2008, up from just 52 million in June 2007. 117 million worldwide users visited MySpace during June 2008. Its Facebook's first definitive traffic victory, from a source advertisers actually pay attention to, over MySpace. Way down on the list at No. 6 — past the fast-growing Hi5, past still-kicking Friendster — there's AOL CEO Randy Falco's $850 million social network, Bebo, which saw 24 million visitors in June.

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe out and about with Paris Hilton

Owen Thomas — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:01:31 PDT

That's so not hot: Chris DeWolfe, the CEO of MySpace, is dating Paris Hilton, Michael Arrington reports. Or if not dating, they've at least been seen together a lot, from Hollywood to the Hamptons. We wonder: Is it a coincidence that Hilton has fallen into DeWolfe's circle? Only two months ago, we reported how MySpace's security holes had further exposed the starlet, by making her supposedly private photos on the social network public. DeWolfe is married, but separated; Hilton has another boyfriend. So perhaps this isn't so much dating as tech support.

We kid, of course. What this really confirms is what we knew all along: DeWolfe is a wannabe Hollywood type; rather than a hit movie, he has a hit website. Or had. It's precisely when stars begin fading that they begin prime targets for the paparazzi. MySpace has seen better days. As has DeWolfe. That he's hanging out with the likes of Hilton tells us all we need to know about the future arc of his career. It reminds us, in fact, of the idea of Yahoo merging with MySpace. Yes, that once seemed hot, too.

Fox exec on MySpace: Google's ads aren't working, but ours are

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:20:00 PDT

News Corp. reports earnings tomorrow — but no one's worrying about how many copies of The Simpsons Fox sold on Blu-ray. Wall Street's worries are centered on how ads are doing on MySpace. After months of denials, a Fox executive has conceded the obvious to the Wall Street Journal: Google's keyword-pegged ads are bombing on MySpace. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said as much in discussing his company's results, but MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe was quick to deny a problem at the time. With Fox Interactive's parent company, News Corp., reporting quarterly results tomorrow, we suspect the Fox source let the bad news leak early in an effort to mix a hint of optimism in the story. The result:

Instead of a deeper look at why the Google-MySpace partnership is failing, the Journal produced an explainer on MySpace's nearly-year old "hyptertargeting" ad product — the one that, according to the Journal, enables MySpace to double the amount it charges advertisers by categorizing users "into more than 1,000 'buckets,' including rodeo watchers, scrapbook enthusiasts and Dancing With the Stars viewers." Concert organizer Live Nation and shoemaker Adidas bought some inventory and walked away pleased, the story tells us.

One problem: like all behavioral targeting technology, "hypertargeting" faces increased scrutiny from Congressmen on a privacy kick. Another problem: targeted or no, many marketers don't believe MySpace users pay any attention to ads while they're cruising each other's profiles.

American Apparel buys half a billion online ads a month

Jackson West — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Skanky-chic clothing retailer American Apparel reached nearly 48.9 million unique Web surfers with 489 million display ad vews in the month of April according to ComScore, with 24 percent of those impressions being garnered on MySpace, 19 percent on Facebook, and another 12 percent on AOL's banner-laden AIM software client. The ads have stirred controversy for the prurient use of Helvetica. How's it affecting the bottom line?

The company raked in $111 million last quarter, a 50 percent increase year over year — though the company's bookkeeping is notoriously unreliable, the share price is down to an all-time low, and a fifth sexual harassment suit is still pending against visionary pervert Dov Charney, founder and CEO. That explains why American Apparel is so happy to advertise on the social networks that frighten more staid brands: The rates are cheap, and the company doesn't have to worry about tarnishing its reputation.

MyYearbook scores $13 million to cater to more 13 year olds

Alaska Miller — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:40:00 PDT

MyYearbook, a social network for teens turned off by the old people thronging Facebook and MySpace, has raised an additional $13 million in venture capital. The social-network startup wooed by Barry Diller's IAC last year, but a deal never happened. The site claims to be the third biggest social network in the U.S.

Some prize: Numbers from Hitwise give MyYearbook 1.5 percent of U.S. traffic to social networks. Compared to MySpace's 71.9 percent and Facebook's 16.9 percent, that's a limp into bronze. Norwest Ventures Partners, US Venture Partners, and First Round Capital participated in this second round of funding. MyYearbook says that it will "use the money to create new services and make more money." One likely way it will do the latter: Dropping Glam Media as its online-advertising network so it can keep more of its advertising revenues.