Another MySpace Acquisition

MySpace nabbed another one! For a meager $10-20 million, the News Corp giant purchased a newly launched service called Flektor. Flektor is a photo-sharing service similar to Slide or RockYou, both of which are popular MySpace widget-makers. With Flektor, you can make killer widgets using audio, video, photos, text, effects and transitions, and, of course, it integrates quite nicely with the just acquired Photobucket (oh, and Flickr, too). It’s nice that you don’t have to re-upload photos that you already have online at one of these services - you can just pull them in. With the tools provided, including Quickstart Wizards and a simple to use, drag-and-drop interface, anyone can make great widgets, not just the "creative" types.  I hadn’t even heard of Flektor yet, but the acquisition buzz brought it to my attention. I’m definitely going to check it out now.

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Photobucket, recently banned, then forgiven and un-banned by MySpace has now been acquired by the media giant for $250 million. Photobucket’s popularity with the MySpace set made it the most popular photo-sharing service, in terms of numbers of users, with a user base of 17 million uniques per month. It was, in fact, Photobucket’s popular photo-sharing widgets designed for MySpace that made it so popular and pervasive in the first place. Does this mean that MySpace is now interested in acquiring popular widget-making services? It would not be a bad move on their part to buy the companies that make MySpace the customizable, youth-friendly behemoth that it is today - especially if the companies had a user base that included some non-MySpacers which could potentially be enticed to sign up.

I’ve made some changes over at MySpace. My current profile is now private and the only friends I’m going to keep on there are my family and close friends…as in people I see, know, hang out with, and talk to in my real, offline life.

For my online friends, fellow bloggers, blog readers, and fans, I’ve set up a separate MySpace profile: myspace.com/sarahintampablog. The new page is pretty sparse right now, but over the next couple of weeks, it will be built up. If I’ve never met you in real life, then you might be removed from my private profile, but feel free to send a friend request to the new profile!

Hopefully, you all will understand; the online world is a wacky place sometimes, and I need to actually know you before we get too personal. I hope to see you over on my new MySpace!

Breaking news for Photobucket/MySpace users: yesterday MySpace decided to block Photobucket users from posting their videos and remixes to their MySpace pages. The reason? Photobucket recently began an ad-sponsored slideshow encouraging users to post these ads in their bulletins and profiles. The ads focused on the upcoming Superman 3 movie. MySpace stated that ads such as these were in violation of MySpace’s terms, so they had no choice but to block Photobucket from the MySpace community. Photobucket now joins the growing list of blocked services, including Revvr, Vidilife, and Stikam. Outraged? The Photobucket blog post about this issue suggests some actions you can take to let MySpace know. I think it’s time we let them know exactly what we think by ditching MySpace for some other up-and-coming wannabe service like Virb!  Oh wait…hold on…I just got an email on MySpace…ummm…well, why don’t you guys start and I’ll…uh…meet you over there…

Can you believe there’s actually a business that lets you fake your popularity on MySpace? Websites like FakeYourSpace let you add "friends" (who look like hot models) to your MySpace profile. There are girl and guy models to choose from, but something tells me the girls are more popular. FakeYourSpace recently got into trouble, since they were using models from iStockPhoto without their consent. The website is online now, but they’re currently looking for actual models.

Although the "faking" practice isn’t illegal, it’s certainly of questionable morality. However, there must be enough cyber-losers out there, to keep the business afloat (scary, isn’t it?). So be warned: you cannot judge a myspacer by their friend list. If someone has too may good-looking friends, be suspicious!

Upscoop is a new service that helps you find your friends on social networks such as Myspace, Friendster, Classmates, Flickr, Hi5, and many more. To use Upscoop, you enter your email address and password, and the service will search your contact list and display results. However, not all of your contacts are searched at once. Depending on how many contacts you have, Upscoop will search some, then email you later on when the rest have been searched. It could take a few hours to up to a day to have all of your contacts searched, and you’ll receive an email when you can log back in to see more results. Still, I can’t complain because, for me, this service is a lifesaver — MySpace bombs out when importing my contact list, so I have not yet been able to use this feature on that site. (I suppose this could be because the auto-store feature of Gmail has created a massive contact list.)

So, fair warning - you may be getting an add from me soon!

Piczo CEO Jeremy Verba claims that the Piczo website is "…the biggest social networking site you haven’t heard of yet." He may be right. As of October 2006, Piczo boasted 17 million sites registered by its users (10 million uniques) and 2.5 billion page views per month. (For comparison’s sake, Facebook had 7 million users as of March of this year.) The U.K. import began as a photo-sharing site, but, upon user requests, branched into social networking.

However, what’s different about Piczo is that there is no search feature - adding a friend is on an invite-only basis. As more and more MySpacers clutter up their profile with casual friends & acquaintances, finding the friends you really want to network with becomes a challenge. Additionally, privacy concerns at both MySpace & Facebook (MySpace has sexual predators & Facebook users were in an uproar over the news feed) have many users wanting a more private place to network.

Today, TechCrunch reports that Piczo is growing at a rate of 35,000 new users a day and that they have just made a deal with Flock to distribute a Piczo-branded version of the browser. So, will Piczo be the next MySpace or even the next Facebook? I think it’s possible. As MySpace aged and grew, the teens and early 20’s kids joined Facebook; but where will their kid brothers and sisters choose to hang out? Piczo could be a good bet.

I was reading an excellent post on TechCrunch about your current online TV-viewing options, of which there are many, and I saw that Fox Television is offering episodes of "24" for a $1.99 download on MySpace. Although I’ve never watched the show, I thought it would be cool to check out their MySpace page. Strangely, despite numerous reports that this starts today, I cannot for the life of me find the the MySpace page in question…and none of the articles are linking to it. A little help?

Goodness. You know a website has gotten HUGELY popular with the kiddies, when "cheat sheets for parents," like this one from Wired, are being published. Like the chat rooms of the 90’s, MySpace has become big enough to incur parents’ fear. The schools are blocking the site at the firewall, the predators are surfing the kids’ profiles, and the nightly news is warning all of the newest online danger. MySpace became popular because of its music scene and customizable profiles, and once EVERYBODY went on MySpace, so did you (unless you’re boycotting on principle). MySpace is the site of the ’00s (what are we calling this decade, anyway?), and honestly, that’s quite a shame. It’s so old-school that it looks like a throwback to Web 1.0: you can copy and paste HTML code to jazz up your profile? Go blind watching blinking flashy banner ads? Fall asleep to the loading of pages so slow it’s reminiscent of dial-up? Deal with bugs and broken features so often it has become part of the MySpace experience?

For all the glitz and glamour surrounding us bleeding-edge bloggers cheering on the Web 2.0 company du jour, the fact is, the majority of the population is years behind us, having just discovered personalized pages and, wow!, social networking.

So, anyway, yeah, I’m on there.

Yeah, I’m late to the game on this one…it’s about time I set up a profile there, don’t you think? Here we go:  http://www.myspace.com/sarahintampa