There are a lot of folks rooting for an IPO from the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn or even Zynga. And then there’s FriendFinder Networks, a money-losing collection of porn sites and social networks that announced its IPO a year ago but never pulled the trigger. FriendFinder is back, but looking for less cash this time around.
Here’s the Flixster/MySpace deal Kara Swisher sussed out on Christmas Eve: News Corp. is handing over its Rotten Tomatoes movie review site, previously owned by its IGN unit, to the movie-centric social network and will get an equity stake in the combined company.
Despite MySpace’s well-documented woes, the site still attracts a very large audience. Want to see what they’re chatting about as they say it? Here you go: Real-time search engine Collecta has produced a site that does nothing but index MySpace users’ comments, shout-outs, videos, etc.
How did you spend Christmas? Hitwise says it knows: The Internet traffic tracker says you spent at least part of the holiday visiting Facebook, making the social network the most popular U.S. site on the Web.
The inevitable filing from privacy groups asks the Feds to force Facebook to roll back its “privacy” settings. No idea if that will work. But if the clamor gets loud enough, it might reach the ears of people who really matter: Marketers who pay to reach the site’s users.
The deal was done last month and now both parties are officially announcing it: MySpace has bought Imeem and is in the process of shutting it down. Imeem users will be directed to MySpace Music, and they can go ahead and delete their Imeem Android and iPhone apps, which will no longer work.
Here’s yet another content creator that’s convinced Apple has a tablet device in the works: Condé Nast says it will have a digital version of Wired magazine ready for the purported gadget by the middle of next year and will eventually create similar versions for all of its 18 titles.
But Condé, like other publishers, says Apple won’t actually talk to the company about its plans for the device–or even acknowledge that it has plans.
Did Rupert Murdoch wait way too long to fix MySpace? It’s easy to get that impression from the News Corp. earnings call today.
The takeaway: The site is losing traffic and money and is going to get at least $100 million less from Google than it once thought. “It’s a work in progress,” News Corp. says, over and over again.
Here’s a good way to get your hands on scarce venture capital money: Create a start-up geared around Twitter-like “real-time” sharing and conversations. The newest entrant: Hot Potato, a buzzy start-up that’s supposed to let users converse about a particular event, whether they’re attending it in person or watching from afar. When it’s up and running, that is. The five-man crew doesn’t have users or a product just yet. But it has just raised around $1 million.
Just how big are MySpace and Facebook? Big enough to account for nearly one in five of the display ads Web marketers buy in the U.S. That has nothing to do the number of dollars the two social networks generate, since their ad impressions are famously cheap. But at least it gives you a sense of the services’ potential.
Facebook offered to buy TipJoy, then changed its mind. Now the micropayment start-up has closed, and a co-founder is working for…Facebook.
As Kara Swisher just reported, News Corp.’s MySpace has hired media consulting firm Media Link, along with Media Link President Wenda Harris Millard, to overhaul the social network’s sales group.
Here’s the complete internal memo from CEO Owen Van Natta, which describes Millard’s position as head of the ad sales group as an “interim” one, and announces that former sales boss Jeff Berman is out.
Now that MySpace has finished its acquisition of iLike, what is it going to do with it? Don’t think music, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta stressed in a press conference today, think about “socialization of content.”
What does that mean? It means the social network has spent $19.5 million on engineering talent to help overhaul its site.
See? You don’t just have to be a buzzy social network to suffer through security problems. You can be a relatively staid Web 1.0 giant, too. eBay is warning developers who build programs that incorporate the online marketplace’s engine about a security breach.
Looking for lots of specifics about the $200 million at $10 billion valuation deal that Facebook and Digital Sky Technologies just announced? Then you have come to the wrong conference call, my friend. But for what it’s worth, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did sound fairly upbeat and confident during his chat with reporters Tuesday morning–the way you’d expect someone who just cashed a check for a couple hundred million to sound.
The big picture: Even though Facebook’s official valuation has slid from $15 billion (November 2007, when Microsoft invested) to $10 billion, Zuckerberg is OK with that, arguing that 1) that deal was done at the peak of the market, and 2) it was never really a financial deal, but a way for Microsoft to partner up with Facebook.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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