Major Record Labels Form Joint Venture With MySpace

from the to-do-what-exactly? dept

There's been some buzz about this all week, but now it's official that MySpace has teamed up with three of the four major record labels (the smallest, EMI, is still holding out, though it may join eventually) to create a joint venture offering called MySpace Music. The company is separate, but connected to MySpace. Unfortunately, the details are incredibly vague. So far, it seems to say that the new company will "let people listen to tunes and watch videos for free on the Web, as well as buy merchandise, concert tickets, and music through downloads." That's a pretty broad description, and while it sounds good upfront, execution is everything. And, historically, the major labels haven't executed particularly well when it comes to creating online music offerings. Already, it seems like they're hedging by saying that they're not committed to offering DRM-free music from this service. In fact, it often seems like these efforts are designed to fail. So, let's take this as a tentative step in the right direction, though with the expectation that the labels will likely do something to screw this up along the way. At the very least, it's the labels recognizing they need to change -- even if they still haven't come to terms with how to actually change.

Filed Under: business models, music, record labels, social networks
Companies: myspace, sony bmg, universal music, warner music

Mother And Daughter Still Blame MySpace For Not Protecting Her From Sexual Assault

from the go-after-the-money dept

Two and a half years ago, we wrote about a teenager who sued MySpace following a sexual assault, saying that it was the site's fault that she was assaulted. This despite the fact that she had signed up for the site, lied about her age and the actual assault (obviously) happened outside of MySpace. That's not to say that a crime didn't happen, but it's quite difficult to see how it could possibly be MySpace's fault. In fact, a judge made exactly that point in dismissing the lawsuit last year, noting that MySpace was protected under section 230 safe harbors, and even if it wasn't, it would "cripple" 3rd party communication systems if you could attach liability to them for every crime committed that touched on those services. The judge also pointed out that this seemed like a clear case of a parent trying to blame a big company for her own failings: "If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace."

Of course, that's not good enough for the girl and her mother, who have now appealed the case, still claiming that MySpace somehow is responsible. The girl's lawyers claim that MySpace still had a responsibility to protect the girl, even though he doesn't explain how it can protect a girl who lied about her age and then went off to meet with a much older guy in real life. It's difficult to see how that can possibly be MySpace's fault -- but the rule of thumb these days is always sue the big company that has the most money. As for the older guy accused of the sexual assault, he's been indicted, but last we heard, his lawyers were also thinking about blaming MySpace. After all, if the girl is blaming MySpace, then how could it be the guy's fault?

Filed Under: blame, safe harbors, sexual assault
Companies: myspace, news corp

Bill Gates Joins The Growing Social Network Exodus

from the nothing-lasts-forever dept

Extrapolation of what's happening "now" is one of the most dangerous things in trying to predict the future. If something is growing quickly today, it doesn't mean that will last. Take social networks for example. Historically, they have a pretty standard pattern. There's a huge rush of growth, as people think it's new and neat, and they sign up all their friends. Then there's a flat period where people are still using it, but some begin to question why. Then people start to realize that, beyond reconnecting with some old friends and acquaintances, there really isn't that much to do there -- and that realization may come even sooner if they're getting bombarded with advertisements. It happened way back in the '90s with Six Degrees. It happened with Friendster in the first half of the decade. Yet, some people and companies believed that MySpace and Facebook would be different. Certainly, both companies recognized this problem to some extent, and have worked to add more things that you can "do" on their sites. Both still get a ton of traffic and usage and aren't going anywhere soon. However, there are some worrying signs. Google recently noted that the ads it's put on MySpace don't perform very well (which is something of a problem, since Google has guaranteed at least $900 million in ad revenue to MySpace). And, now, reports are coming out that users are, on average, spending noticeably less time on both MySpace and Facebook, with some leaving it behind. And, what better way to amusingly drive that point home, than to point out that even Bill Gates has killed his Facebook page just a few months after Microsoft dumped $240 million into the company?

Filed Under: bill gates, growth, social networks
Companies: facebook, myspace

How Could MySpace.co.uk Have Been 'Abusively' Registered Six Years Before MySpace Existed?

from the time-warp dept

Arbitration rulings over domain name disputes sometimes have hard to understand results. Take, for example, the fact that MySpace has now won the right to the MySpace.co.uk domain. The arbitrator found that the domain name was an "abusive registration," despite the fact that the owner had registered it in 1997, six years before MySpace existed. However, by setting up a parked page and putting ads on it, the arbitrator found that the registration was apparently retroactively abusive. This seems open to rather widespread abuse. If you want to own someone else's domain name, all you have to do is build a bigger company based on that name and then point to their parked page and demand they hand it over?

Filed Under: abusive registrations, arbitration, domain names
Companies: myspace

Hey MySpace, Aren't You A Little Late To The 'Portal' Bandwagon?

from the retro dept

Brian Stelter opens his piece on MySpace on a generally positive note, suggesting he was intending his write-up for the New York Times to be a sympathetic look at the company's relationship to its corporate parent, owned by Rupert Murdoch. But the article ends up painting a picture of a site without a clear vision of its future. In probably the most damning paragraph in the article, an advertising executive says that the MySpace's parent company had envisioned the site as a portal, but that he "thought they would be much further along with that today." For about a decade, websites have tried to mask their lack of focus by labeling themselves portals. A decade ago, that strategy worked pretty well for Yahoo! in 1996, when it had enough content to really make it stand out from the crowd. But it's hard to imagine that a similar strategy will work in 2008. Users have many more choices and more sophisticated tools for finding the content they need, so the attraction of a one-size-fits-all portal is much lower.

I suspect that the fundamental problem is that it just doesn't make much sense for an "old media" company like News Corp. to own a tech startup like MySpace. They key to MySpace's success in the years before the acquisition was precisely that the company didn't need to produce content; users created "content" of their own by swapping messages, posting pictures and music, etc. Social networking sites are fundamentally technology platforms that enable users to share their own content with one another. Trying to produce "original content" for the site is a step in the wrong direction. There's no way they can satisfy the diverse tastes of their millions of users, but they can waste a lot of money trying. And while MySpace focuses on becoming more like the mainstream media, its competitors—especially Facebook—are working feverishly on enhancements to their underlying technology platforms. Meanwhile, the MySpace user experience continues to deteriorate. I regularly get spam from other MySpace users (although this has become less common in recent months), the site is littered with gaudy banner ads, and I encounter error messages a lot more frequently than I do on Facebook. These are the sorts of problems that an 80-year-old newspaper mogul like Murdoch just isn't going to know how to deal with. He is, by all accounts, a brilliant businessman, but he's not a technologist, and it was probably a mistake for him to buy what was fundamentally a technology company.

Filed Under: content, portals, social networks, technology
Companies: myspace, news corp.

Nissan Builds Internal MySpace While Sun Builds Internal Second Life

from the social-media-inside-the-enterprise dept

There's been a lot of talk over the last couple years about "enterprise 2.0" efforts to bring the types of applications in the "web 2.0" world into the enterprise. How successful those efforts have been is still an open question -- but companies keep on looking for such solutions to improve internal communications. Two stories today suggest exactly how that's happening. Business Week has a story about how Nissan is trying to build an internal "MySpace" to get employees more connected with each other and make the flow of information and the sharing of ideas more useful. Meanwhile, Sun, who has been trying to push more workers to telecommute for years, is now trying to build its own Second Life-type virtual world for employees from around the world to interact as if they were in an office together. While it's worth noting both of these experiments as clearly taking a consumer internet service and moving it into the enterprise, there's still a huge question of how useful either service will be. They both make nice stories for the press, but that doesn't mean either will get enough adoption to really be useful. Lots of companies have had internal intranet-type collaboration services in the past that don't get any use. Repainting the same thing with the broad 2.0 brush won't automatically make them useful.

Filed Under: social media, social networking
Companies: myspace, nissan, second life, sun

What Else Can We Blame On Facebook? How About Helping The Mob?

from the any-other-conspiracy-theories dept

Constantine von Hoffman has been doing a nice job tracking both how security firms are blaming Facebook (or any other popular social network) for just about anything, but also how the press keeps falling for it. His latest find is to trash an Australian news organization for writing up a whole article on how Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace are popular feeding grounds for organized criminals without bothering to talk to a single other source than a security firm who has a vested interest in generating headlines and making people worried about security. As Constantine notes, he has no reason to doubt that the claim true, but it seems like the press should at least look for a second, less biased, source for confirmation.

Filed Under: organized crime, security, social networks
Companies: facebook, linkedin, messagelabs, myspace

Studios Unveil Meaningless 'Guidelines' For User Content Sites

from the audible-magic-full-employment-agreement dept

There's a lot of talk about the new "guidelines" that were announced today mainly by the big television studios, along with a few smaller players in the online video space. The press coverage highlights two things: this is a big deal and it's notable that Google didn't agree to join. I'm not sure either thing is really true. Reading through the actual principles, about the only thing that's noteworthy is how pointless they are. If anything, they're basically a "full employment for Audible Magic" document in that they require companies to install the type of filters that Audible Magic is selling (though, it's still questionable how well they work). There are some totally meaningless statements about supporting fair use, but no details on how that's actually to be done. In other words, these principles are basically "everyone should install filters that block unauthorized content and... uh... the content companies will remain aware that fair use sort of exists sometimes." That's somewhat meaningless. Google's reason for not joining, even though it has come up with its own filters, is that it doesn't see why it should agree to stand by any specific guidelines that go above and beyond what the law requires, as there could be conditions under which such guidelines hold back necessary innovation. The bigger point, though, is how truly meaningless these guidelines are. If those guidelines are truly effective in stopping some unauthorized content on these sites, that content (and many users) will simply migrate elsewhere. In other words, it won't stop that unauthorized use of content and it won't help any of the companies that have agreed to the principles. That means that the impact of such things is likely to be pretty much nil.

Filed Under: copyright, guidelines, user generated content
Companies: audible magic, cbs, disney, google, microsoft, myspace, nbc universal, news corp, viacom

Turns Out Those Six Thousand People Who Are Your 'Friends' On MySpace Aren't Really Your Friends

from the no,-really? dept

This seems unlikely to come as a surprise to most people, but despite the number of tools and applications such as social networks for getting people to network with each other, the number of close friends that most people have hasn't really changed -- and it almost always involves people who have gotten to know each other face-to-face rather than online. This isn't particularly surprising or new, nor does it suggest that there's anything less real about online friends. It just confirms what pretty much everyone knows: while it's certainly possible to meet and get to know people quite well through online venues, meeting in person still has plenty of benefits -- especially for reaching a closer level of friendship.

Filed Under: friends, relationships, social networks
Companies: facebook, myspace

Some Reasonable Advice On Facebook At Work From British Trade Unions

from the ain't-so-bad dept

We've seen a bunch of ridiculous reports lately blaming Facebook for lost productivity and saying that nearly half of all companies now ban Facebook at work. Those studies were both biased and misleading -- often coming from companies that were trying to sell filtering solutions to companies. Over in the UK, however, it's nice to see the Trades Union Congress (TUC) there say that banning Facebook at work is going too far and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, the group recommended that companies come up with some straightforward usage policies. All in all, the group's comments seem quite reasonable, noting that there are benefits to these services and banning them outright is simply an overreaction. The report also notes that banning sites like Facebook won't stop employees from slacking off at times and it probably won't even stop them from figuring out ways to get to Facebook. Instead, it makes more sense to focus on encouraging them to use social networking sites in a reasonable way and then just focusing on whether or not the employees are actually getting their jobs done.

Filed Under: internet filters, personal surfing, social networks
Companies: facebook, myspace