Archive for July 24th, 2006
News Corp isn’t shy about explaining how it plans to take the most powerful social network on the planet to the next level. “It’s so not about social networking anymore. It’s about what is next,” said Fox Interactive Media chief Ross Levinsohn. The idea is to make MySpace a peer recommendations network for generating leads across a wide range of niches — from restaurants to authors to just about anything. “If you start creating social categories, and they are limitless,” Levinsohn said. “Then social networking becomes a great resource.” MySpace will also expand into sports and gaming, improve mobile functionality, boost user-created video and launch new MySpaces across the globe.
July 24th, 2006
The brand new broadband site FoxAtomic.com has teamed with JumpCut to promote the upcoming Fox Filmed Entertainment remake of Revenge of the Nerds. Users can upload a video audition and edit it on FoxAtomic.com using JumpCut’s functionality. And of course, share it with their friends. The winner gets a role in the movie. Very cool idea.
July 24th, 2006
Back in 2002, the government blocked a DirecTV-Echostar merger attempt, but now Rupert Murdoch says the television landscape has changed. “I think it would be much harder for the government to turn it down,” he said, setting off rumors of a possible renewed merger attempt. But would increased broadband penetration and the advent of IPTV be enough to change the FCC’s mind?
July 24th, 2006
As John Battelle explains, YouTube is not sitting as pretty as you might think. Since much of its content originates from copyrighted sources, new owners would be inheriting some legal challenges. “If Time Warner bought YouTube (for example), how long do you think it’d be before competitors sued to get their copyrighted stuff off?” Battelle writes.
July 24th, 2006
A power outage at its headquarters in Los Angeles crashed MySpace for 12 hours over Sunday night and Monday morning. “The area where MySpace’s servers are stored had massive power outages and the backup generator failed,” a company representative explained. “With power resumed, the network is now up and running.” The rolling blackouts are due to scorching temperatures across Southern California and the rest of the West Coast.
July 24th, 2006
Publisher alert: Those sites that are taking your ad revenue may in fact be produced by those writers you’re laying off. Some journalists have found opportunity online amid the mayhem in the changing print media business. David Carr talks to journalists-turned-web-publishers Om Malik, Nina Munk, and Rafat Ali about their side businesses that have grown in some instances into very successful online ventures. (NYT, reg. req.)
July 24th, 2006
In an interview with Charlie Rose, AOL co-founder Steve Case apologized for the 2001 mega merger that destroyed some $200 billion in shareholder value. Although Case called the deal’s aftermath a “disappointment,” he said he still believed it was “a good idea.”
July 24th, 2006
Called MTV Flux, the upcoming TV channel will allow people in the UK to upload videos and messages and have them displayed alongside music videos. Each message will be accompanied with an avatar (graphic) selected by the user. The channel will have no traditional schedule, and all of the user content will be pre-screened before air. If the experiment works, MTV would roll out Flux in the US. “At the end of the day, all of our channels might be Fluxed. It might be the redefinition of our television channels,” said Michiel Bakker, managing director of MTV in the UK and Ireland. (Via PaidContent)
July 24th, 2006
