Google Wants to Help Web Sites Make New Friends

From The New York Times - If you run a Web site, you may have a lot of new friends.

Last week, site owners learned they could add information about their users from MySpace and Facebook.

On Monday, Google introduced its take on the same phenomenon, Google Friend Connect.

Google puts two spins on this concept. First, its program is designed to allow very small Web sites to add some social networking features without sophisticated programming. All they have to do is copy a little code onto their Web pages. | Read full article

Dreaming of a 3-D Web

From The New York Times - Vivaty, the company I wrote about in Monday’s paper, represents the fulfillment of a 14-year-old dream to bring 3-D images to the Web.

The company, which will begin a private test of its service on Facebook this week, wants to offer 3-D chat rooms and social environments on any blog, Web site or social networking page. These will be integrated into the Web — smaller but easier to access versions of massively multiplayer platforms like Second Life.

Early Web designers have been thinking about three-dimensional Web images since the Web was first gestating in 1994. They created the VRML standard, so Web browsers could interpret 3-D graphics like a cube or logo, or other complex objects on a static Web page. | Read full article

Social Sites Don't Deliver Big Ad Gains

As Microsoft Corp. makes a $44.6 billion bet on Internet advertising with its unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc., there are signs that some of the biggest new places where consumers are flocking on the Web -- social networking and video-sharing sites -- are yielding advertising revenue slower than some Internet companies had hoped.

The latest warning that the hottest Web properties are proving difficult to make money from came from Internet giant Google Inc. While announcing disappointing fourth-quarter earnings Thursday, Google executives said the company was having a harder time than it expected generating ad revenue on social-networking sites and ... | Read full article

Is Wikipedia Planning a Facebook Competitor?

From Center Networks - Matthew Buckland out of South Africa has an interesting recap of a presentation by Jimmy Wales last evening. In his recap, Matthew wonders if Wales is planning a competitor to Facebook based on the slides that were shown. The slides were supposed to be about a new search product but Buckland saw it another way. He notes, "the screenshot that Wales briefly showed the audience looked very much like a Facebook profile page, than a search page. In fact it looked pretty much identical to a Facebook profile page. Could this mean Wales is developing a social networking, Facebook competitor too? Could it be some kind of search/social networking hybrid?"

With Wikipedia in the Top 10 of all trafficked sites and most likely larger than Facebook worldwide, a social network by Wikipedia could prove a serious competitor. Built on top of the network already in place on Wikipedia. | Read full article

MySpace hones targeting of online advertising

From The Globe And Mail - News Corp. has taken the next big step in the move toward commercializing social networks Monday by expanding MySpace's advertising platform, allowing advertisers to deliver precision-targeted banner ads based on user-created data.

Advertisers can now pinpoint exactly who they want to reach, based on data collected from users' personal profiles, the groups they join and the messages they post for their friends. For a studio looking to promote its latest vampire film, the technology represents the difference between advertising to movie fans en masse and reaching the 205 members of the Doomed Moviethon Horror Review group and others like it more directly. | Read full article

Google Hints at Social Network Plan

From The New York Times - Just days ago, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive was warning that social networking may be a fad.

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, is far less dismissive.

“People don’t appreciate how many page views on the Internet are in social networks,” Mr. Schmidt told a group of reporters at the end of its Zeitgeist conference, a two-day gathering of an eclectic mix of Google partners, competitors, social activists and politicians.

Social networks, he said, account for an “enormous proportion” of Internet usage, he added. “It is very real. It’s a very real phenomenon.” | Read full article

Pandora Will Rock Radio As We Know It

From Portfolio - Tim Westergren, chief strategy officer and founder of Pandora, stopped by Portfolio yesterday and talked to our staff about the future of his online radio company. He's working to eventually take Pandora public and describes its growth as linear, with half a million new users each month, capturing a total of .2% of radio listeners in the U.S. Pandora sets itself apart from other internet radio sites by allowing users to personalize their own radio stations through a 'music genome' that analyzes songs for rhythm, lyrics, genre, etc. and then feeds similar songs into the user's play list.

Though this is a great way to discover new artists and appreciate ones you never thought you would, as one Portfolio staffer pointed out, play lists can tend to sound homogeneous sometimes. But Westergren assures that there are ways of mixing up one's radio selection. "The secret sauce is that people interact a lot with Pandora."

Users can give a recommended tune a thumb up or a thumb down, and they can also learn how their play list was selected for them. To expand on the user interaction the company right now is considering ways to incorporate into the site elements of online social-networking. | Read full article

In Facebook, Investing in a Theory

From The New York Times - The Facebook frenzy is spreading.

Thousands of software developers are creating features for Facebook, the rapidly growing social network, many hoping to strike it rich alongside Facebook’s own employees.

Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif., opened its service to outside developers this spring, inviting them to create tools for the site and to try to profit from them. Since then, more than 4,000 “applications” have flooded onto the site, spicing it up with games or whimsical programs called widgets that let you turn your friends into virtual zombies and more practical tools that let users display images of their favorite books, music, movies and wine on their profile pages.

The wave of attention from users and developers has sent estimates of Facebook’s value soaring into the dot-com stratosphere. Last month, there were reports that Microsoft was considering a $500 million investment that would value the three-year-old company at up to $15 billion. | Read full article

Will Facebook’s Developers Defect to Other Platforms?

From The New York Times - Today I wrote about the rush of developers to write for the Facebook platform, and their inflated hopes of dot.com riches.

Facebook is sure to have competition in the business of allowing third parties to participate, and make money, on its service. Google is reportedly planning to open social network Orkut and perhaps Gmail to developers. So are social networks like Bebo, hi5 and Tagged, each popular with different Internet communities. | Read full article

Whyville Delivers Top Metrics For Virgin, Penguin Books, UT

From Online Media Daily - MARKETER BUZZ AROUND SUCH ADULT-FACING virtual worlds as Second Life has cooled, but brands like Virgin Records, Penguin Books and even the University of Texas Health Science Center have found success reaching tweens in Numedeon's Whyville.

The Pasadena-based virtual world--with a reported 2.4 million active users ages 8-15 (about 70% of whom are registered members)--allows kids to chat, play games and earn virtual currency called "clams"--and spend those clams on furniture for their virtual houses and accessories for their avatars, among other things. | Read full article

Why I believe Facebook's days are numbered

From The Globe And Mail - After Facebook, what?

The delicious riddle of Facebook's future is part parlour game, part billion-dollar question. It might just be me, but I'm hearing more grumbling than raving about the site these days. For people who joined earlier in the year, the novelty has worn off. The rush of long-lost acquaintances clamouring for renewed “friendship” has petered out. After all, one can only have gone to grade school with so many people.

There's also the fact that the only thing with tastes more fickle than a teenager is the media. In this corner, anyway, Facebook got so overexposed so quickly that we're getting loath to raise it again, what with readers' groans echoing pre-emptively in our ears. | Read full article

Facebook Diaries Launches Tonight

From NewTeeVee - We’re told that Facebook will be launching its joint project with Comcast’s Ziddio, Facebook Diaries, at about 9 p.m. tonight. The eight-episode weekly series spotlights topics like heartbreak, road trip, and wild nights, with pilot episode “Who Am I” already queued up at http://www.facebook.com/diaries.

Facebook has been playing around with the project for a while now since announcing it in February, even shooting some of its own video, but the series will be completely user-contributed clips, with editing and motion graphics by producer R.J. Cutler of Actual Reality Pictures. | Read full article

Should Yahoo Try Again for Facebook?

From The New York Times - Yahoo clearly wants a seat on the social-networking train. But how much should it spend for a ticket?

After years as the Web’s de facto welcome mat, Yahoo is facing competition on many fronts. Google, with its popular search service and an increasing number of Web applications, is part of the reason that Yahoo’s growth has stalled. But an analyst at Bear Stearns suggests that Yahoo is also being left behind by sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn — and said that an acquisition could be a good way to catch up.

Yahoo has already been thinking along these lines. It offered to pay nearly $1 billion last year for Facebook, which was originally an online hangout for college students but now allows anybody to log on and link up with their friends. More recently, News Corporation was reported to have offered to sell its MySpace unit to Yahoo in exchange for a large Yahoo stake, a proposal that Yahoo never publicly acknowledged. | Read full article

Disney Acquires Web Site for Children

From The New York Times - Racing to solidify its dominant position in children’s entertainment on the Internet, the Walt Disney Company said Wednesday that it had acquired a subscription Web site aimed at preteenagers, Club Penguin, in a deal that could total $700 million.

Disney said it would pay $350 million for Club Penguin, a virtual community that has soared in popularity since its founding in late 2005. More than 700,000 users now pay $5.95 a month to customize penguin characters and then chat and play games with other “penguins.”

And Disney has agreed to pay the founders, three fathers based in Kelowna, British Columbia, up to $350 million more by the end of 2009 if the site meets growth targets. “They could earn all of it or none of it,” said Thomas O. Staggs, Disney’s chief financial officer. “The growth they have to achieve is attractive enough that we would be pleased to pay.” | Read full article

MTV/Microsoft Study: Kids Love Technology, Don't Care How It Works

From Media Daily News - WHILE KIDS AND YOUNG ADULTS may be immersed in digital media, there are limits on what they want to know about the technology, according to new research.

A massive study--jointly produced by MTV Networks and Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions--surveyed 18,000 kids ages 8-14 in 16 countries, offering a wide range of results on digital entertainment and communications platforms.

One major finding is that kids are not focused on the detailed workings of the technology itself. It's how technology lets them communicate and be entertained. Only 20% of teens and young adults showed any "interest" in technology.

For the still TV-centric MTV, the study showed promising data for television viewing--59% of kids 8-14 still prefer traditional TV over the computer and the Internet. One major exception is in China, where the study noted that 8-14s prefer online over TV. | Read full article

Jesuits say take word of God to Second Life

From CNN -- Catholic missionaries have always trekked to dangerous parts of the Earth to spread the word of God -- now they are being encouraged to go into the virtual realm of Second Life to save virtual souls.

In an article in Rome-based Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, academic Antonio Spadaro urged fellow Catholics not to be scared of entering the virtual world which may be fertile ground for new converts wishing to better themselves.

"It's not possible to close our eyes to this phenomenon or rush to judge it," Spadaro said. "Instead it needs to be understood ... the best way to understand it is to enter it."

Second Life is a simulation game where players can create a virtual version of themselves -- an avatar -- and interact with other people in the three-dimensional world. | Read full article

Backfence.com - What Happened?

Backfence.com launched in trial markets as a hyper-local content site, poised to revolutionize local media in North America. But this week it announced it's shutting down. What happened? PBS MediaShift asked Backfence co-founder Mark Potts to give a post mortem.

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"There has been a lot of speculation about what went wrong at Backfence. To date, the company’s investors and I have tried to stay out of the second-guessing in the blogosphere and the trade press, largely because there are private business matters involved that we’ve chosen not to discuss.

"Indeed, as with many early-stage companies, some of Backfence’s problems were internal and self-inflicted, and actually had little or nothing to do with the many reasons wildly speculated about in industry blogs and in the trade press in recent days..." | Read full article

What's facebook worth?

Facebook was rumoured to have rejected being bought out for around $1 billion in order to stay independent. But what is it really worth? Valuations vary wildly depending on who you talk to. Reports indicate the company generated $100 million in revenue last year, and it's experienced huge growth this year, but monetization efforts haven't been blowing people away -- yet...

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