April 3rd, 2008
Official: MySpace to form joint venture with major record labels
We knew it was coming but now it’s official
MySpace has announced the formation of MySpace Music, a new joint venture with three of the four major record labels: Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and Warner Music.
The new service, which will roll out in stages over the next few months, will offer ad-supported music streaming on MySpace, as well DRM-free downloads (MP3), ringtones, and other e-commerce offerings (think: t-shirts and concert tickets).
Two notable takeaways from the announcement:
First is the inclusion of Universal who prior to today had an ongoing lawsuit with MySpace over copyright infringement on the social networking site. Presumably that’s now been settled (see TechCrunch).
Second is the notable omission of EMI, who are said to still be in negotiation with MySpace. I wonder what the hold up is, considering the deal was favorable enough for the other three major labels.
MySpace vs iTunes
More broadly, this new joint venture is all about leveraging MySpace as a serious media property, whereby social networking is organized around major brand and professionally-produced content as much as it is around so-called User Generated Content. And for the major record labels, it’s the latest move to weaken Apple’s hold on the digital music download market, especially now that iTunes is the number one U.S. music retailer.
April 2nd, 2008
Can the UK government regulate US-based social networking sites?
For some time now, the social networking phenomenon and issues around safety - child protection, identity theft etc. - have been very much in the media spot light in my home country, the UK. And the past few weeks have been no different — except it’s the UK government that’s been setting the media agenda as it grapples with how to regulate children’s use of sites such as Bebo or MySpace (the former of which is especially popular with British teens) despite that fact that these companies reside outside of the country. Read the rest of this entry »
March 27th, 2008
Facebook adds me-too feature - “People You May Know”
Facebook has quietly rolled out a new feature called “People You May Know”, which, as the names suggests, attempts to identify members of the social networking site who you likely know but haven’t actually “connected” with yet i.e. invited to be a “friend.”
If you’re a LinkedIn user, then the new functionality will be all too familiar — the business-oriented social networking site offers an identical feature with the same name! Having said that, LinkedIn recently copied one of Facebook’s most innovative features: the news feed that aggregates ‘friend’ updates and activity on the site.
Perhaps, however, the broader takeaway is that almost all social networking features are easily replicated, resulting in the broad functionality being a commodity. The end result is that it’s often the network effects only that distinguish one service from another.
(image via CNET)
March 25th, 2008
Microsoft in “spam” partnership with five social networks
I’m not sure whether to call this data portability or just making it easier for social networking services to spam a user’s contacts. But either way, Microsoft have announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo and Facebook, to enable Windows Live Messenger users to looks for contacts on either of the five social networking sites and vice versa.
Creating a “two-way street”, as a Microsoft calls it, the partner social networks will utilize the company’s recently announced Windows Live Contacts API so that members can import Windows Live contacts to their respective sites. — and in a return of favor, Microsoft is introducing a new website (www.invite2messenger.net) that people can visit to invite their friends from any of the partner social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list. Read the rest of this entry »
March 25th, 2008
Non-profit OpenSocial Foundation formed as Yahoo jumps onboard
Yahoo today announced their support for OpenSocial, the Google-led standard for developing applications that work across supporting social networks (e.g. OpenGadget).
Except, technically at least, OpenSocial isn’t the sole property of Google anymore, following the formation of the non-profit OpenSocial Foundation, whose custodiands MySpace, Google (and Yahoo) will “ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web”, according to the press release.
Similar to the community-driven OpenID effort:
The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction.
More tidbits from the announcement:
- all specifications are available under a Creative Commons copyright license
- public community involvement shapes the specification’s direction
- an open source reference implementation called Shindig is being created and developed as a project in the Apache Software Foundation incubator, available at http://incubator.apache.org/shindig/
In many ways the formation of the OpenSocial Foundation doesn’t really change anything, at least for the consumers of social networking sites that already, or have plans to, support OpenSocial. As for the partnering sites themselves or third-party developers who were wary that Google’s influence over the ’standard’ could be too great, the creation of a non-profit, along with Yahoo’s participation, might go some way to addressing their concerns.
March 25th, 2008
imeem brings licensed music to the Platform party
Another day, another platform.
This time it’s imeem’s turn to offer third-party developers a way to build applications for its media-oriented social networking site.
The imeem Media Platform “enables developers to quickly create applications for imeem that integrate our community, features, and our music, video, and photo content”, according to the site. More specifically, imeem is offering third-parties the hooks to tap into users’ social graphs (including friends and associated profile data), along with all of the media housed on the site and with the inherent licensing issues taken care of. The latter is quite a big deal as it significantly lowers the barriers (i.e. cost) to developing rich content-centric web apps, such as music and video mash-ups/games or any kind of application where IP rights would otherwise need to be secured first. In addition, the Media Platform API offers uploading and transcoding of media content and access to imeem’s recommendation engine — again, all at no cost.
There is a catch, however. Read the rest of this entry »
March 24th, 2008
LiveJournal’s new owners stick it to Advisory Board
No more ad-free, free user accounts.
Having pledged to “do no harm”, blogging and social networking platform LiveJournal’s new Russian owners are no longer offering new users the Basic Level account, “which traded a pared-down feature set for an ad and cost free user profile”, reports ReadWriteWeb.
When SUP purchased LiveJournal from previous owners SixApart back in Decemer, the company announced a 100 day plan, giving details of how it would develop the service, as well as setting up a LiveJournal “community” dedicated to communicating any changes and soliciting feedback. In addition, LiveJournal, Inc (the new U.S. company created by SUP to manage the site) announced the formation of the LiveJournal Advisory Board. The board was to be made up of both industry experts and members of the LiveJournal community.
A key member is LiveJournal’s founder, Brad Fitzpatrick, who recently left Six Apart for Google, and he’s not happy with the ending of Basic Level accounts. Read the rest of this entry »
March 21st, 2008
Companies get profiled on LinkedIn
LinkedIn, the career oriented social networking site, has rolled out a new feature today called Company Profiles, described as “a new research tool that helps you find and explore companies that you might want to work for or do business with.”
Each Company Profile page, of which there are initially 160,000 or so, is deceptively simple, featuring a short description of each company, along with some other size and history (licensed from BusinessWeek’s Capital IQ database). However, the fun really starts (can you have fun on LinkedIn?) with the additional ’social’ data that LinkedIn supplements, pulled from existing user profiles. Read the rest of this entry »
March 20th, 2008
Report: AOL ignored senior management doubts over Bebo buy
Compared to many in the tech press and blogosphere, I came out quite positive on AOL’s acquisition of Bebo — citing its fairly modest price tag ($850M) compared to what News Corp. paid for MySpace nearly three years ago ($580M) and the ludicrously high valuation of Facebook ($15B) that Microsoft’s recent investment in the so-called “social utility” implied.
However, according to Silicon Alley Insider, my optimism also runs contrary to many of AOL’s senior management who, according to the report, had serious doubts over the business case for buying Bebo. Read the rest of this entry »
March 18th, 2008
Lookout LinkedIn, Facebook adds granular privacy controls (IM to follow)
At a press event today (Techmeme), Facebook unveiled new privacy controls for the so-called social utility, along with an official Instant Messaging application.
The improved privacy settings enable users to have much greater control over who in their social network can view specific content. One group of “friends” can be given access to certain content, a photo gallery for example, while another group will be restricted. Another setting allows more granular control, whereby profile information is visible to second and third-degree contacts rather than the site’s members as a whole (reports news.com), not dissimilar to the way in which LinkedIn or Multiply works. Read the rest of this entry »
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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