A California court has ruled that a high school principal who sent a copy of a MySpace journal posting to a local newspaper is not liable for invasion of privacy. University of California at Berkeley student Cynthia Moreno wrote a journal entry on her MySpace page complaining about her hometown of Coalinga, Calif. The post was titled "An Ode to Coalinga" and began with "the older I get the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga" and then went on to make negative comments about Coalinga and its residents. The post was on Moreno's MySpace profile for about a week before she removed it. Roger Campbell, principal of Coalinga High School, saw the post and sent it to the local paper the Coalinga Record where it was published as a letter to the editor with Moreno's full name. After the letter was published Moreno's family received death threats and a shot was fired at their home. The family  later moved out of town. They sued for invasion of privacy and for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The claims against the paper were dismissed under the state's SLAPP statue (strategic lawsuits against public participation), which allows media to move to dismiss lawsuits that target speech in an attempt to block it.  The court ruled that Moreno gave up any claims of privacy when she posted the writing on MySpace. "Cynthia's affirmative act made her article available to any person with a computer and thus opened it to the public eye," the court said. "Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material." Moreno's claim against the principal for intentional infliction of emotional distress, the court said that a jury should decide if the principal's actions were "extreme and outrageous."  

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If you are among the millions of Americans dreading the next few days until April 15th, you are not alone. Tax season is upon us and as every form of media conspires to remind you of the significance of Wednesday, whether you do your own taxes or not, you are likely feeling some pressure. In this midst of this 1099-imposed national rise in stress, TurboTax (a leading self-service software solution to do your own taxes) is finding their authenticity through social media and helping to reduce (if not to remove) the stress involved in these last few days of taxes. TurboTax has been pioneering in their use of the web for several years now, using crowdsourcing to let people answer one another's questions at every step of the tax process and offering integration between financial systems to move tax information around - but this year they are using Facebook, Twitter and Myspace to help them not just stand out as a tax software solution, but to reinvent many American's experience of tax day in the process. Here are a few unexpected things they are doing - mostly powered by social media: Understanding the urge to procrastinate. Let's face it, social media tools and sites offer just about the best distraction you can think of to avoid doing your taxes. Rather than offering a guilt trip on why we need to refocus on our taxes, TurboTax has a contest called the "Super Status Challenge" so you can waste time on your social media sites answering challenge questions (where your answer needs to include the word TurboTax), while still remaining somewhat connected to your taxes. And instead of offering relatively useless prices, like free product ... they have a smart partnership with NBC to let people win dream trips to meet casts and crews of some of the most popular shows on the network. The whole campaign is like putting a sandbox in the classroom. We play a little, and (hopefully) get back to work. Talking like a human. From the first moment you log into TurboTax and are asked to agree to a legal message because their "lawyers made them do it," you don't have the sense that you're entering into a serious financial transaction. You are about to give TurboTax what may be the most sensitive financial data you own, and they are not weighed down with the perceived need to take you through thousands of words of legal disclaimers. This dedication to using natural language instead of legal mumbo-jumbo is carried through the entire site, which makes you thankful they seem to have hired copywriters in place of lawyers to write the content on each page of the site. Offering you a friend at a tough time. For many people, tax season seems like a time when the government is out to get you. It is the ultimate of an "us versus them" kind of situation, though arguably it should not be. At a time like this, you need a friend in the business, and that's what TurboTax wants to be. The site will offer helpful suggestions, guide you through every deducation and help you keep more of that money you worked so hard for. Allowing people to share the lesson they just learned. Doing your taxes every year is a bit like a treasure hunt. You learn new tricks, techniques and answers every year. As you do it, you get smarter about what is possible - and sometimes you can apply those lessons to next year. The other benefit of this, however, is that there is always going to be someone who has just learned the lesson you need to learn, or has the perfect answer to your question. Rather than assuming their own staff will have all the answers, as many customer service teams try to do, TurboTax has a robust community that lets anyone answer anyone else's question. Combined with many of their own moderators, it is a powerful way offer a support group for people as they do their taxes. Answering the unanswerable questions (in a way that actually makes sense). Pages of frequently asked questions are good, but the toughest questions are not frequently asked - and if they are, they are answered in a way that is nearly incomprehensible. If two unmarried people buy a house together, who gets the new $8000 homebuyer credit? You can imagine this question coming up for someone, but not among any list of frequently asked questions. TurboTax answers this very question on their blog, and has many such blog posts aimed at big tax questions like this. Sometimes you need more than 140 characters to explain something well. The TurboTax blog is a great resource that aims to do that. Take all these tools together, and you'll see how TurboTax is taking a nationally reviled day and making it a little bit easier to get through. Comments

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Research from comScore recently showed that auto makers are doing pretty well with online advertising. In particular, they are using the medium to push SUVs. comScore explains one example: In order to understand how automakers have taken to the online channel for marketing purposes, let’s take the example of one of the larger model-specific campaigns that ran in January: GMC Yukon. Using comScore Ad Metrix, our competitive display advertising intelligence service, we learned that the Yukon went to market with an online media strategy that delivered ad impressions across a broad set of site categories and achieved a commanding 34% share of voice versus its SUV competitors, with the campaign reaching 4.4% of the total U.S. Internet population an average of 2.7 times per person in just one month. Here's what total campaign levels looked like for January: "Right now, cost-effective marketing is more important than ever, and that may be a key reason why the auto industry is increasingly moving its ad spend online," says comScore's Jeff Hackett. Banner and Video display ads in general have continued to rise. There is no reason why auto makers wouldn't be on the bandwagon too. In fact, they're also utilizing social media. Nielsen has a comparison of Auto Ad Spend between popular social networks Facebook and MySpace: "When it comes to auto ads, MySpace continues to garner more overall ad spend: Honda, Chevrolet, Ford, Nissan and Toyota all recently ran ads, with the Honda Fit campaign generating more than 600 million ad impressions in the first quarter of 2009," says Nielsen. "A year earlier, Toyota generated over 2.5 billion impressions for its Matrix.  This year, Toyota has allocated more of its ad dollars to Facebook." I recently speculated that Facebook could cut into Google's ad revenue as the gap in unique visitors narrows between the two Internet giants. I wonder if that happened at all here. On a related note, there has been a decline in search engine advertising per ad in recent months.

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MySpace users who have an interest in citizen journalism have just been given an opportunity to get involved.  MySpace and Fox News teamed up this afternoon to launch an official uReport community page. According to a press release, "Members of the MySpace uReport community can become 'uReporters' by uploading video and photos tagged by specific news categories, including USA, World, Entertainment and Politics.  This content could be featured in relevant programming on FOX News Channel and foxnews.com . . ."  Which sounds pretty interesting from two angles.  First, citizen journalists stand the chance to have their work recognized on a national (or even international) stage.  Second, Fox News might start getting to some stories more quickly and with greater accuracy than its competitors. The MySpace uReport page isn't yet bustling with activity, however.  It boasts just 13 friends, and all four news sections are actually blank right now.  About all a would-be fan can browse are the profiles of some Fox News personalities. Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's cofounder and CEO, might like to give things a little time.  He stated, "This synergy with FOX News reinforces what MySpace is all about - providing users the ability to share, explore, connect and consume. . . .  [W]e're inspired by the creative, original content that the MySpace community produces and shares online - I look forward to seeing what they come up with when presented with the opportunity to be featured on-air."

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Big changes may be afoot at MySpace.  Although the info's far from being confirmed, a new report claims that CEO Chris DeWolfe - in addition to at least a couple other execs - is leaving the company on what could politely be called an involuntary basis.  Michael Arrington wrote last night, "[A] decision has already been made to terminate Chris DeWolfe's employment with MySpace.  We've also been told that the core MySpace executive team will follow. . . .  [O]ur guess is that it's the very senior team that will be terminated: cofounders Chris DeWolfe (CEO), Tom Anderson (President) and Aber Whitcomb (CTO)." If true, this would seem to signal that News Corp has lost all patience with the current MySpace-Facebook situation and is ready to take things in some radical new directions.  It's not every day that from-the-beginning leaders of established organizations get sacked, after all.  And the change wouldn't just be some boardroom matter, since Tom Anderson is a component of about every MySpace user's profile. Still, there's no guarantee that an executive overhaul will take place.  As Kara Swisher recently pointed out, Michael Arrington and TechCrunch have gotten a rumor or two wrong before (think Google-Twitter and Google-Digg acquisition talks, for starters). We've sent a request for comment to MySpace and will update this article if a reply's received. UPDATE: MySpace passed along a press release that states, "MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and News Corporation's Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller, announced today that, by mutual agreement, Mr. DeWolfe will not be renewing his contract and will be stepping down in the near future. Mr. DeWolfe will continue to serve on the board of MySpace China and will be a strategic advisor to the Company.   "Additionally, Mr. Miller announced that he was in discussions with Tom Anderson, MySpace's president, about Mr. Anderson assuming a new role in the organization."

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A recent study from Ball State University, the Email Marketer’s Club and ExactTarget found that only 13% of email marketers are integrating social media into their campaigns. However, 46% of them intend to do so this year. The study surveyed 351 email marketers and researched the habits of large brands like Carmex, TripAdvisor, and Papa John's. Each of these has been successful in their efforts to include social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Digg in their campaigns. "While the global reach, rapid adoption and high engagement found in social media have email marketers salivating at the potential these environments offer to engage with customers and prospects, the real challenge is how best to facilitate meaningful interactions," says Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy. Giving users some variety is probably a smart choice for starters. That's what Carmex does for example. "We want visitors to share the experience with their friends, but we don’t want to force them to use a channel they are uncomfortable with,” said Paul Woelbing, president of Carma Labs, the maker of Carmex. "By offering visitors choices, we are learning a lot about the dynamics of integrating email, social media and text messaging – namely that they complement each other very well." Still, users may not be so high on the idea of letting brands into their social media hang out sites. "Consumers are reluctant to invite marketers into social environments, and this is because they don’t want to see the channel overrun with irrelevant commercial messages," says Stewart. "However, marketers who are able to align their messaging with the distinct mindset of consumers engaging in social networks are posting positive results and building a quality following in these environments." This reminds me of something Hulu CEO Jason Kilar talked about in his keynote at ad:tech. He discussed effective magazine ads, which people don't even realize are ads. On another related note, there is an interesting aricle at the SimplyCast blog discussing specifically the integration of Facebook into email marketing campaigns. You may find this worth looking at. Also, ExactTarget actually has a social email solution it just unveiled at ad:tech called Social Forward.

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Compete has shared some interesting data looking at homepage visitors at the top publisher sites. Here is the top 12 in terms of domain visitors. Look at how the homepage visitors compare to the percentage of site visitors who visit the homepage. "Hompages present big opportunities for online advertising. For example, display advertising on Facebook consists mainly of small sponsored ads that blend with the rest of the content on profile and other pages within the site," says Jessica Ong on the Compete Blog. "It will be interesting to see if Facebook further monetizes its homepage." Here's another interesting graph: Other findings from Compete include: -  Ads on the homepages of both MSN and AOL reached 13% of homepage visitors, fewer than an ad on the Yahoo! homepage, which reached 16% of homepage visitors (based on analysis of March visitors). - In March, 22 million more people visited Google’s homepage than Yahoo!’s, despite Yahoo's interactive homepage and fresh content - Facebook rivaled Google in terms of homepage-to-domain visitors, attracting roughly 64% of site visitors to its homepage - MySpace saw the greatest jump in its ranking of homepage visitors, going from #11 in domain visitor ranking to #5 in homepage visitor ranking, with 72% of site visitors seeing the homepage - Homepage visitor traffic varies greatly at the top publishers – from 3% to over 70% of domain visitors - and this type of data is critical to executing effective media buying. Homepages that offer advertising are worth big money to advertisers. Compete's data is an interesting look into where the visitors are actually going. 

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Despite once being Rupert Murdoch’s golden boy, it appears MySpace founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe has fallen out of favor. News Corp has announced that DeWolfe will be stepping down "in the near future" and will be left with a role on the board of MySpace China and perhaps some other adviser role. There’s no announcement about who will take over from DeWolfe, but that’s not stopping AllThingsD from speculating former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta will get the job. And really, that says it all. MySpace was once the hottest social network on the planet, then Facebook had the audacity to open its network up to everyone. Say what you want about the numerous interface changes at Facebook, but it appears the MySpace rival is gaining audience simply because it doesn’t allow you to set up pages with flashing backgrounds and tacky MP3’s that auto-load. I’ve never been a fan of MySpace–so apply your bias filter here–but it just seems to me that Facebook has grown in popularity because when you look at the interface it’s structured and makes sense–which makes it a lot easier for the 35+ crowd to dive in. If Van Natta does indeed get the job, I hope his first task is to figure out how to make MySpace attractive to those that don’t obsess about Miley Cyrus or Zac Efron. Comments

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Tuesday evening, MySpace acknowledged that Chris DeWolfe, the company's cofounder and CEO, was leaving the organization.  Today, it looks like his replacement's officially ready.  Folks familiar with the corporate side of social networks may recognize the name Owen Van Natta.  Owen Van Natta Van Natta served as Facebook's chief operating officer and chief revenue officer for several years.  Before that, he spent even more time at Amazon.  Considering the amount of success those companies have encountered (admittedly, sometimes at MySpace's expense), he should prove to be a real asset. Van Natta's likely to use his experience to make some big changes at MySpace.  It seems almost definite that DeWolfe was forced out, and so the new CEO will be expected to explore new directions.  He may become almost the social media equivalent of Carol Bartz, cutting projects, making layoffs, and generally keeping people on their toes. One other big issue Van Natta will have to manage is a search deal with Google that's set to expire in 2010. Final confirmation of Van Natta's installation is still lacking, so we can't provide the standard PR quotes about how elated he is to join a terrific company, but the all of the formal stuff should be released later today.

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Last week, it was announced that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe was leaving the company, and that former Facebook Chief Operating Officer and Chief Revenue Officer Owen Van Natta would be taking his place. Then his second in command was confirmed to be former AOL executive Michael Jones, who will be taking on the role of Chief Operating Officer at MySpace. Now, MySpace has a new Chief Product Officer in Jason Hirschhorn. He has worked at both MTV and Sling, where he was in charge of development of Sling.com. Dan Frommer at SIA notes, "Hirschhorn is about as well-connected as you can get in the media business." Van Natta served as Facebook's chief operating officer and chief revenue officer for several years.  Before that, he spent even more time at Amazon.  Jones is the founder of Userplane, a video chat service that was acquired by AOL several years ago, PBJ Digital, and Investing.com. Last year, he started content publisher Tsavo Media, which is described as a site that delivers "highly relevant experiences to today's digital consumers." "Michael’s operational insight and knowledge of the social media market will prove to be a valuable asset as we set out to evolve the MySpace product offering,” said Jon Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corporation.  “From a product perspective, there’s no better choice than Jason, who is highly regarded as an incredibly talented innovator, media executive and leader, all qualities I know will greatly benefit our team and our users." "We were attracted to Michael’s unique background in building and operating successful businesses that fall directly in our sweet spot, and I look forward to leveraging his skill set as we further refine and shape the MySpace vision," said  Van Natta. "Jason’s reputation for creating compelling consumer experiences that leverage the intersection of technology, design and media is unmatched and we’re excited to have him join us." MySpace is still a huge site, but Facebook is growing much more rapidly. We all know people that have given up on MySpace and moved on to using just Facebook or Twitter or other networks. Perhaps new leadership in Van Natta, Jones, and Hirschhorn will kick MySpace growth back into gear. The industry will be very interested in seeing what moves MySpace makes under its new leaders.

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Last week, it was announced that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe was leaving the company, and that former Facebook Chief Operating Officer and Chief Revenue Officer Owen Van Natta would be taking his place. His second in command has now been confirmed as former AOL executive Michael Jones, who will be taking on the role of Chief Operating Officer at MySpace. Jones is the founder of Userplane, a video chat service that was acquired by AOL several years ago, PBJ Digital, and Investing.com. Last year, he started content publisher Tsavo Media, which is described as a site that delivers "highly relevant experiences to today's digital consumers." He has held the CEO title at Tsavo, but as he steps up to the COO position at MySpace, he will assume the role of advisor with Tsavo according to Mike Arrington at TechCrunch. "Jones won’t have the same authority in the No. 2 position at the company, but if Van Natta is smart enough to give him room to run it will be a good sign for the company," he says. It is no secret that while MySpace continues to have a lot of users, Facebook is growing at a much more rapid pace. I bet even you know somebody that has abandoned their MySpace profile and started concentrating more on Facebook and/or Twitter. I know a few. Perhaps new leadership in Van Natta and Jones will provide the spark MySpace needs to keep its users around. It will be interesting to see the changes that come about as a result of that leadership.

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As part of the shakeup that ousted co-founder Chris DeWolfe and ushered in former Project Playlist and Facebook's Owen Van Natta as the new CEO, MySpace has expanded its management team with two key hires. Michael Jones who comes from Userplane and AOL has been named Chief Operating Officer and Jason Hirschhorn joins as Chief Product Officer after a stints at Sling Media and MTV Networks. From the press release: "Michael’s operational insight and knowledge of the social media market will prove to be a valuable asset as we set out to evolve the MySpace product offering,” said Jon Miller, chief digital officer, News Corporation. “From a product perspective, there’s no better choice than Jason, who is highly regarded as an incredibly talented innovator, media executive and leader, all qualities I know will greatly benefit our team and our users.” “We were attracted to Michael’s unique background in building and operating successful businesses that fall directly in our sweet spot, and I look forward to leveraging his skill set as we further refine and shape the MySpace vision,” said Mr. Van Natta. “Jason’s reputation for creating compelling consumer experiences that leverage the intersection of technology, design and media is unmatched and we’re excited to have him join us.” “I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to build upon the successes of the company’s founders and am eager to work with Owen and Jon and the rest of the incredible management team at MySpace as we enter this exciting new phase in the company’s already revered history,” said Mr. Jones. Mr. Hirschhorn continued, “MySpace is one of the most alluring innovations of our time and I am honored to collaborate with Tom Anderson and the rest of the MySpace team to take what is already a stellar product into its next evolution.” Comments

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 Nielsen Wire posted a shocking statistic to its blog: Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. The post also included a comparison of Twitter’s retention rate, compared to Facebook’s and MySpace’s: But–and it’s a big but–did Nielsen fail to take into account that many Twitter users start off using the web site interface, then quickly migrate to a third-party application? That’s the suggestion Brendan O’Connell offered up. A quick look at Twitstat seems to back up his theory. Twitstat is tracking over 200 different Twitter applications and, as the chart below shows, only 27% of Twitter users are using the web interface: Of course, if we’re to question Nielsen’s numbers, we should also question Twitstat’s, but that 40% retention rate may not tell the full story. Comments  

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 Perhaps if labels make it easier for fans to purchase, they will buy more music; or so the theory goes.  MySpace Music, imeem and Spotify are just a few of the sites adding buy buttons.  Now some new players who each already have millions of website visitors are entering the online music retailing game.            In an experiment that has already launched in Australia, eBay is selling downloads next to used CD's. with Universal the first major label to sign on. The DRM-free MP3's are priced about 10¢ cheaper than major competitors including iTunes at $1.59 AU with albums $1 AU cheaper at $15.99 AU. eBay Australia spokeswoman Sian Gipslis said the online auction house chose to add new digital music sales to the website after banning digital download re-sales last year. Live Nation has experimented with downloads for some time as has its probable future partner... Ticketmaster.  Grabbing the new release when buying concert tickets seems a logical point of purchase and Live Nation has recently been expanding its offering.  Buying opportunities for hit product with fulfillment by one of two Live Nation subsidies Music Today and Fanfire are spread throughout the site, as well as, aggregated as part of a Live Nation Superstore. EMI has also just expanded its relationship with Fairmont Hotels to include a branded download store. As part of a music initiative, Fairmont is also extending discounts and additional benefits to members of its guest loyalty program including priority access and ticketing concerts featuring EMI artists.  The jury is out on the volume of sales that these kind initiatives generate. In fact,MySpace Music is already under pressure from labels to increase ita sales. But eBay, Live Nation and Fairmont Hotels each already have two advantages that increase their chances of success: 1) significant existing traffic and 2) on-file credit cards of potential downloaders. Comments

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At least 200,000 websites designed to spoof social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter exist on the Web and are growing, according to research by Websense Security Labs. Most of them, about 150,000 target Facebook users. With the aim of phishing for information, spreading viruses and malware, propagating spam, or avoiding email filters, the phony domains piggyback on the popularity of social networks and depend especially upon unsophisticated or unaware users to further cybercriminal agendas. Websense offers as hypothetical examples domains like unblock.facebookproxy.com, buy.viagra.twitter.1234.com or hotbabesofmyspace999.com, all of which are similar to many of the domains researchers are discovering.  (Credit: Websense) Facebook is an especially popular target because of its recent explosion of use among those in the workforce, particularly among 35-54 year-old demographic, which has grown 276 percent on Facebook in the past six months. Though it appears the number of spoof sites targeting Facebook is much larger than those targeting MySpace—150,000 vs. 50,000—Websense software engineer Mark Haffenden suggests numbers can be deceiving. As the currently hot social network, Facebook is more affected by spambots creating scores of clone websites. When adjusted for clones, MySpace is actually targeted more often, but it’s only a matter of a couple of thousand.  "These new threats illustrate that attackers will continue to target Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, along with other social networking sites, for three reasons," said Websense senior director of advanced content research, Charles Renert.    "First, these Web sites are popular so fraudsters are able to target lots of victims; second, people trust the content on it because they think it's from other people in their network; and third, they are easy to compromise because they allow anybody to create and post content. Traditional Web filtering is not enough to protect users from threats on trusted sites, and isn't enough to keep up with fraudsters generating new URLs almost instantaneously to avoid detection. Only real-time analysis of Web content can prevent users from being exploited by these attacks." Cybercrooks aren’t just planting their wares out in obscure areas of cyberspace and email inboxes, though. Some targets are much closer to home. Data gathered from Websense’s Threatseeker Network shows sites allowing user-generated content make up the majority of the top 50 most active distributors of malicious content. Over 70 percent of user-generated sites have hosted malicious content in the past six months, much of it in the form of comment spam.

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MySpace has partnered with Toyota to launch a music competition for unsigned bands or solo artists to submit an original song for the chance to land a recording contract with MySpace Records. The competition called "Rock the Space" runs today through July 1. Those interested in entering can visit Toyota's MySpace Music profile for submission details and contest rules. To enter the Rock the Space competition artists are required to submit an original MP3 demo. Contestants will be able to create a viral music widget with an embed code to share their music on MySpace and the web. MySpace users can participate by adding the music widgets to their profiles and commenting on the Toyota Music profile. In July, MySpace Records will select five finalists who will be featured on the Toyota Music profile and MySpace members will vote to choose the winner. The five finalists will receive a media allocation to promote themselves with My Ads advertising on MySpace. The Rock the Space winner will be announced in September and will receive a recording contract as well as a $10,000 musical instrument prize package provided by Fender. The winner's song will be available for download on the MySpace Music Homepage. The four runners-up will receive a MySpace Records Development Deal friends package.  

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 Music helped build MySpace and the top ranking social networker is continuing the tradition. Perhaps acknowledging that user generated content is no longer enough, the new section dubbed The Music Feed features three bands whose music is distributed by one of MySpace Music's major label owner/partners.    Eminem (Universal), Passion Pit (French Kiss/Sony) and Phoenix (EMI) hold the first slots on the newly minted page. McDonald's McCafe sponsors and the section's almost unreadable 4 inch tall site banner (click graphic above to enlarge) plus... a 6 inch tall McCafe video ad followed by a 2 inch tall McDonald's banner ad mean that users need to scroll down a full foot to see the first inch tall Featured Artist photo. That thin section is followed by another foot of MySpace Friends and comments. Poor design, made worse by policies encouraging individualization and bling on personal and band pages, has been a stumbling block for MySpace; and here on new company controlled pages, the results are no better.   Comments

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Why tweet in 140 characters or less when you can Tweet in full color video all day long? So query the video sharing sites like 12seconds.tv and twitvid.io which allow users to share video updates through their favorite microblog site—Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, friendfeed, et. al., ad nauseum. Whether you want to use your webcam or your mobile device, sharing video is only a couple of logins and a wee bit of hassle away. A bit too much hassle, apparently, for some. All that is changing. Now, these two video microblog sites will let you log in and start tweeting your videos using only your Twitter login information. No longer will users be required to set up a separate account on 12seconds.tv or twitvid.io. Simply visit the site, enter your Twitter account info, and…lights, camera, action! Sol Lipman is the creative brain behind 12seconds. He explained that the goal of the Twitter/12seconds marriage is easy integration. “What we really want to do is bring in just your conversations, and allow you to use video as a response platform for that conversation.” It really is that easy. Twitter users, regardless of whether they’ve used 12seconds or even know what it is, can go to 12seconds.tv, and log in using their Twitter username and password. 12seconds automatically sets up an account. After that, they can video tweet away—up to 12 seconds per tweet, that is. 12seconds doesn’t include any reply tweets, since it is intended to focus solely upon video. Thus, it is not stealing traffic from Twitter. It’s just enhancing it. Twitvid.io is doing the same thing. Chyrs Bader, the man behind the site, also chose to streamline Twitvid’s video-sharing by utilizing the Twitter login information. In his words, “We want to create a video sharing platform that does not have a destination site.” The amalgam of sites, logins, and platforms is creating some confusing issues for advertising revenue. But, ah, they’ll figure it out. Meanwhile, enjoy your easy video tweeting.

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There is still a lot to learn about Bing of course. Microsoft's new search engine hasn't been live that long. After reading the back and forth of Matt Cutts and Bing, I started wondering how Bing and Google were treating each other's results. Come to find out, that if you search Google (or other search engines) on Bing, you typically get a single "best match" result, with sub-results underneath it. You then get a link that says "search for other results containing..." When you click on that link, you get a regular SERP.  Perhaps even more interesting, underneath the sub-results, there is a search box that lets you search using Google (or whatever search engine the query was for...yahoo, ask, etc.). Now the results from a search with that box aren't displayed within Bing. I doubt they could get away with that. Although they do allow you to play videos from within a video search results page with a simple mouseover. I do find it somewhat interesting that they are making it easier for users to search with their competitors' search engines by providing the search box right in the SERP. It is perhaps fitting though, considering "Google" was the most-searched term on Microsoft's Live Search. It's not just queries for search engines that give you the one-result-SERP, though. Social networks appear to do the same, though not all of them. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Bebo all do it, but Twitter gives you a full-blow SERP. There are variations on the formula too. A query for MySpace will give you the one-result-SERP, and a searchable box, just like the search engine queries, but Facebook doesn't deliver the search box, but instead a customer support phone number. Twitter doesn't deliver the one-result-SERP, but still includes the searchable box in the top result. On a sidenote, Bing has some major relevancy issues with video search  (at least with a query for Google or Yahoo). On the first SERP here, I'm only seeing one result that has anything to do with Google whatsoever, apart from the fact that every video on the SERP comes from Google-owned YouTube. I mean seriously...the second result is a Britney Spears video. A Yahoo search brings up nothing about Yahoo, but a bunch of results from Yahoo. Google   Yahoo Make of all of this what you will. There are still no doubt plenty of tweaks to be made. After all, Bing isn't even supposed to be launched yet.

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Research from Nielsen shows that time spent on Facebook is up 700% from a year ago (that's April '08 to April '09). Meanwhile, MySpace has experienced -31% year-over-year growth. That doesn't look great for MySpace, but don't count out the still popular social network. MySpace is still beating Facebook when it comes to video. In April, Myspace visitors spent 384 million minutes watching video (an average of 38.8 minutes per viewer), while Facebook visitors spent only 113.5 million minutes watching video (an average of 11.2 minutes per video viewer). "We have seen some very exciting growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace. Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space. The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing, or a how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers," said Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen Online. "Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune. Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice." Gibs makes a very valid point. Look at the backlash that Facebook got from its users after it implemented the infamous redesign. Granted, the redesign is still in effect, and the site is still growing, but if something else comes along that people like better, you never know what can happen. In fact, this is why I find Google's rise as a social network all the more intriguing. But for now, Facebooks is obviously the dominant force to be reckoned with. It does have a problem with user retention from the over-55 crowd. Justin Smith suggests the following four reasons for this: 1. Facebook currently provides less value to this age group because most of their friends are still using other communication tools like email. 2. The real-time Facebook stream is too new and overwhelming for people less familiar with social networks to understand. 3. Seasonality of family communication. 4. Facebook was just a one-time thing. Smith goes into detail to back up each of these reasons in an interesting post here. He also looks at audience growth in the last two 60-day periods, providing the following graph: As you can see there has been substantial growth among the college age crowd. A while back, a study was released, indicating that Facebook was actually having a negative impact on the grades of students. The study looked at Ohio State University specifically. The Wall Street journal is showing a little more to this story now, citing newer studies that actually show Facebook use as being more common with students who get higher grades. Like anything else, it's how you use it, and not if you use it. What do you make of the Facebook growth data? How about Facebook's correlation with grades? Talk about it.

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Americans viewed a record 16.8 billion videos online in April, a 16 percent increase over March, according to new data from comScore. A surge in video viewing at YouTube during April contributed to the month's significant gains. Google sites were once again the most popular property with 6.8 billion videos viewed (40.7 percent online video market share), a 15 percent increase over March. YouTube accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media landed in the second spot with 513 million videos (3.1 percent), followed by Hulu with 397 million (2.4 percent) and Yahoo sites with 355 million (2.1 percent). Also making it into the top ten with less than 2 percent share were Viacom, Microsoft sites, Turner Network, CBS Interactive, Disney Online and AOL. Nearly 152 million Internet users watched an average of 111 videos per viewer in April. Google sites hit an all-time high of 107.9 million video viewers during the month. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 58.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo sites (45.4 million) and Hulu (40.1 million). Over three-quarters (78.6 percent) of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. The average online video viewer watched 6.4 hours of content. YouTube attracted 107.1 million viewers who watched 63.5 videos per user. MySpace captured 49 million viewers who watched 387 million videos (7.9 videos per viewer). Hulu accounted for 2.4 percent of videos viewed, but 4.2 percent of all minutes spent watching online video. The length of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.  

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MySpace's first international hire is moving on.  Jay Stevens, who was one of the founding members of the MySpace UK team and more recently held the title "Senior Vice President of Audience," has left the social networking company for the advertising entity known as the Rubicon Project.  Stevens was on MySpace's payroll for a little over three years, and his departure counts as a significant loss.  From a sort of symbolic standpoint, it must hurt MySpace to see him go considering the somewhat groundbreaking nature of his position.  The fact that MySpace brought him to L.A., where the Rubicon Project is based, is also bound to sting. Anyway, Stevens is joining the Rubicon Project as Vice President and General Manager, International, and even if MySpace will miss him, the move sends positive signals about the online ad market. Stevens said in a statement, "The Internet advertising industry is maturing and shifting to third party sales channels, and online advertising networks are becoming an increasingly prevalent and relevant part of the mix.  Display is on the upswing, brands are moving more money online, and publishers are looking for more efficient monetization strategies to squeeze as much revenue as possible from every last impression." Meanwhile, MySpace is losing big-time to Facebook in the UK.

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A significant number of MySpace employees may soon have to acquire cardboard moving boxes and update their resumes.  Although nothing's certain, there have been several indications that a large wave of layoffs will hit in the near future.  Jason Kincaid received warnings from at least two different, and perhaps well-placed, individuals.  He reported afterward, "One source describes the number of people affected as 'massive', while another source says that the layoffs will likely affect between 300 and 500 employees." Then there's what Richard Greenfield, a Pali Research analyst, had to contribute.  According to Eric Savitz, this expert "thinks large cuts are inevitable." And it would make a certain amount of sense for MySpace to streamline its operations, after all.  The economy's still not booming, and negative statistics about online advertising are easy to find.  Plus, News Corp.'s stock hasn't done well over the past year compared to either Microsoft's or Google's, so the move may satiate shareholders. MySpace did, in case you're curious, experience a 2.39 percent bump in unique visitors between April and May according to the latest Compete data.  Nine days ago, Nielsen put MySpace ahead of Facebook in terms of video, too.

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Layoff described by one source as ":massive" are coming to MySpace although there is no official word yet from the company.  MySpace shed 5% of its staff a year ago and laid of as many as 45 more last month. But these cuts will go far deeper, according to TechCrunch and could hit several hundred. Management will inevitably blame a tough economy and plummeting ad revenue, but declining traffic is the real culprit. Monthly unique visitors to MySpace have fallen from 64.6 million in June of 2008 to 56.8 million in May of 2009 while Facebook rose from 35.2 million to 113 million during the same period. New leadership has been brought in both at parent Fox Interactive and MySpace to turn the ship around with music as the cornerstone of the rebuilding process. A brief personal message to the head of MySpace Music: Good luck, Courtney.  This is going to be a tough one and you have many masters, Now is the time to get the indie and d.i.y. music communityies more involved again They helped create MySpace, and they can help make it relevent again. It won't cost millions either.  Just equal treatment and a place at the table. And you don't have a lot of time before Facebook finally jumps more into the music game.  They really have no choice but to. Believe it or not, a lot of us are routing for you. Bruce Houghton Comments

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MySpace just announced that it is cutting its staff by nearly 30%. The company says this is part of a plan to restucture itself into a more innovative, efficient, and entrepreneurial business. "Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta in a statement. "I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace.  Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product." The company says  the restructuring plan crosses all U.S. divisions of the company and lowers the total number of domestic staff at MySpace to 1,000 employees. "MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace," says News Corp. CEO of Digital Media Jonathan Miller. "I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward. I am confident in MySpace's next phase under the leadership of Owen and his team.” The move was not entirely unexpected. As Doug reported last week, there had been talk of "large" or "massive" layoffs on the way for the company. On a related note, Facebook has caught up to MySpace in the US in terms of unique visitors, according to comScore.

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Although it's only Tuesday, it wouldn't be at all surprising if Facebook execs start characterizing this as their best week ever.  First the vanity URL offering went off without a hitch.  Then the Swahili language version launched.  Now, new unique visitor stats indicate that Facebook may have defeated MySpace in May. Almost exactly one year ago, comScore claimed that Facebook had caught up to MySpace on an international level in this respect.  But MySpace was still quite a ways ahead in terms of unique visitors in the U.S. Unfortunately for new CEO Owen Van Natta, Erick Schonfeld reports, "Facebook is now as large as MySpace in the U.S., according to May data released today by comScore.  Facebook actually passed MySpace by a smidgeon, with 70.278 million unique visitors compared to MySpace's 70.255 million."  And as the graph shows, it doesn't look like the two companies are going to remain neck-and-neck for very long, either. In other growth-related Facebook news, engineer Chris Piro announced last night that over 1 billion Facebook Chat messages are being sent per day.  Again, it looks like Facebook's on track to have a really fantastic week.

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New data from ComScore shows Facebook passing MySpace in total unique US visitors for the first time in May. Facebook had 70.28 million U.S. users in May beating MySpace's 70.26 million. According to ComScore, Facebook users almost doubled from last year while MySpace lost 5%. The story is much the same worldwide with 123.9 million unique visitors globally visiting Facebook in May beating MySpace's 114.6M Facebook had 50.6 billion page views compared to MySpace's 45.4 billion.   The momentum also seems to be with Facebook for the forseeable future.  The recent addtion of vanity urls should strenghten the social networker's position.  MySpace is contiually rolling out innovations, but most seem to be greeted with a yawn in the press and fail to bring any measurable jump in traffic. MySpace still dominates in music.  But even there a promised rollout of a by option remains spotty leaving most users more content to buy their music elsewhere and label partners unhappy with the results. Be sure to vote in our MySpace vs Facebook poll. Comments

facebook myspace million users unique nthe globally music billion beating comscore visitors momentum seems urls spotty ahead measurable lost social

In a second wave of major restructuring, MySpace announced this morning that it will cut 300 of its 450 international staffers and close at least four overseas offices.. The moves on the heels of  Facebook passing MySpacein both visitors and page views in the US and worldwide and just a week after the social networker reduced it's domestic head count by 30% cutting 420 staffers. Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become regional hubs for MySpace’s international operations. Offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain would be placed under review for possible closure. Locally owned and operated MySpace China and a joint venture in Japan would not be affected. “With roughly half of MySpace’s total user base coming from outside the U.S., maintaining productive and efficient operations in our international markets is important to users worldwide and our immediate financial strength,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta in a statement.  “As we conducted our review of the company, it was clear that internationally, just as in the U.S., MySpace's staffing had become too big and cumbersome to be sustainable in current market conditions. Today’s proposed changes are designed to transform and refine our international growth strategy.” Comments

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MySpace announced Tuesday it will cut 300 jobs from its international staff and close at least 4 of its offices outside of the United States. The move comes after an announcement last week that the social networking site was cutting its staff by nearly 30 percent. MySpace's international staff will be cut from 450 employees to about 150 with offices in London, Berlin, and Sydney becoming the regional hubs for the company's international operations. Offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain are under review for possible restructuring. MySpace China, which is locally owned and operated, and MySpace's joint venture in Japan would not be affected by the proposed plan. "With roughly half of MySpace's total user base coming from outside the U.S., maintaining productive and efficient operations in our international markets is important to users worldwide and our immediate financial strength," said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. "As we conducted our review of the company, it was clear that internationally, just as in the U.S., MySpace's staffing had become too big and cumbersome to be sustainable in current market conditions. Today's proposed changes are designed to transform and refine our international growth strategy." MySpace has been surpassed by Facebook on a global level in terms of users and in May it took a small lead over MySpace in the U.S., according to comScore.  

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Active Twitter users are more engaged with online music and are more likely to make purchases than non-users of the microblogging service, according to a new report from the NPD Group. "NPD's latest music-acquisition study shows that there are segments of consumers who are more actively integrating Twitter as a key tool for communicating and networking," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD. "Based on their music-purchasing history, active Twitter users are simply worth more to record labels and music retailers than those who are not using Twitter." Russ Crupnick According to NPD's consumer tracking, 33 percent of Twitter users reported buying a CD in the past three months, and 34 have purchased a digital download, which compares positively to overall Internet users (at 23% and 16%, respectively). When Twitter users purchased music, they also spent more money than non-users. People on Twitter purchased 77 percent more online music, on average, than those not using the service. Twitter users are also much more likely than average Internet users to be engaged in online music activities - one-third listened to music on a social networking site, 41 percent listened to online radio (compared to 22% among all Web users), and 39 percent watched a music video online (versus 25 percent among all Internet users). Twitter users were also twice as likely than average Internet users to visit MySpace Music and Pandora. "Twitter has the potential to help foster the discovery of new music, and improve targeted marketing of music to groups of highly-involved and technologically savvy consumers, but it has to be done right," Crupnick said. "There must be a careful balance struck between entertainment and direct conversation on one hand, and marketing on the other. Used properly Twitter has the power to entertain -- and to motivate music fans to purchase more new albums, downloads, merchandise, and concert tickets."  

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