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Some promising news from the MySpace camp comes with the pending acquisition of the number one music application on Facebook, iLike. The deal is set to close around $20 million and puts Facebook in an uncomfortable position, with it’s number one social media competitor owning one of the top applications on the Facebook platform.

In a recent SWOT analysis MySpace recognized music and entertainment as a strength, declining market share as a weakness, iLike as an opportunity, and Facebook as it’s number one threat. Going back to business basics has allowed MySpace to make a very smart move while biting it’s thumb in the direction of Palo Alto, CA.

How Facebook plans to respond once the deal goes through is anyone’s guess. Banning the music application will probably be a bad move with over 30 million iLike users on Facebook. Allowing MySpace to have internal influence over a portion of Facebook users may not be a good option either. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

The top story on the social Web this week is Facebook’s acquisition of social media aggregator FriendFeed. The transaction is reported around $50 million. FriendFeed’s traffic is an estimated 1 million visitors per month which is minute compared to Facebook’s 250 million. With a recent Facebook valuation of $10 billion though, the numbers make sense.

Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang says it was “a good move for Facebook,” but it may have been a little premature for FriendFeed. “They could have given it a couple more years. With some marketing, they could have developed into a viable social media competitor,” says Owyang.

Others seem to have a difference of opinion. PC World reporter David Coursey states, “Purchasing FriendFeed, which seemed to be going nowhere, seems like an enlightened act of charity. The four … former Google stars that founded the company get a graceful exit from FriendFeed and an excuse when the service eventually shuts down.”

In my opinion this was a win-win situation for FriendFeed and Facebook; a lucrative deal for FriendFeed’s former Google engineer founders; and Facebook scoops up a so-far proven service that contains valuable insight into social media features that Facebook has yet to explore on it’s own platform.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is considering blocking all access to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace from military computers. The concern is that these platforms “make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users,” says a U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) source.

Price Floyd, the new Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs social media czar for the Pentagon, states that embracing these technologies is the reason Secretary of Defense Robert Gates hired him. The goal is to “enable [Gates] to engage and hear from people in a way and manner that wasn’t possible before,” says Floyd.

Despite concerns, Floyd is moving forward with several Web 2.0 projects. You can find the Pentagon Channel on Twitter @pentagonchannel and you can also become a fan of the Pentagon Channel on Facebook. Other initiatives include involving blogs in the military’s “Early Bird” clipping service and a new Department of Defense website launching this month that will include links to Facebook and Twitter accounts along with a section that will allow visitors to propose questions for the Secretary of Defense.

Source: Wired

A little buzz has been stirring this past week originating from a post on consultant Cheryl Smith’s blog describing how her husband [Peter Smith] received a dating advertisement through Facebook displaying her photo along with the text, “Hey Peter, Hot singles are waiting for you!”

Facebook allows third-party advertisers to use your pictures and “relevant social actions” within advertisements targeted towards your friends.

“Facebook Ads make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends.”

If you want to avoid dating your husband or force your friends to view boring generic advertisements then you can change this setting by navigating to…

Settings > Privacy Settings > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads

Change to…

Appearance in Facebook Ads [No one]

For now I’ve decided to keep my setting on [Only my friends] because I enjoy being a cheap poster boy for unscrupulous Facebook apps.

A recent independent study conducted by Nucleus Research reports approximately 1.5% of enterprise productivity is lost due to employees accessing Facebook in the workplace. The study shows that 77% of company employees have a Facebook account and nearly half of all workers access Facebook on company time.

One in 33 employees say they only access Facebook from the office and some employees admit to using Facebook for several hours per work day.

“If your profitability is say two percent, this could be the difference between staying open or closing shop,” says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research for Nucleus Research.

I am curious to know if they asked employees what else they would be doing to kill time in the absence of Facebook. Rubberband ball anyone?

Excuse me while I update my Facebook status.

Source: Nucleus Research

Want a great deal? Check what your favorite brands are posting on Facebook and Twitter. Interacting with consumers through social media is becoming increasing more vital to corporate marketing strategies. The ability to globally broadcast praises and complaints about companies and brands has businesses very active on social networks.
 
“All the departments have gotten some sort of feedback from customers online. We benefit and our customers benefit,” says Amber Talbot, online public relations specialist for Scottrade. Talbot builds relationships with customers by monitoring what is being said about Scottrade online. The ability to search in real-time through Twitter allows companies to track keywords related to their brands and trademarks.
 
Starbucks spokeswoman Bridget Baker says, “It’s a great way to connect with customers. It’s where the people are.” Starbucks has almost 250,000 followers on Twitter and over 3 million fans through Facebook. This week Starbucks is giving away 800 coupons per hour for pints of ice cream to Facebook fans.
 
Scottrade and Starbucks also leverage the power of YouTube to offer customers educational and promotional videos.
 
MasterCard posts company news through Twitter, Victoria’s Secret and Gap provide original content for their Facebook fans, Zappos frequently tweets and posts specials from it’s 6pm.com discount site, and Southwest Airlines is active on the above mentioned along with Flickr and LinkedIn.
 
These are just a few examples of how social media networks are becoming important tools for businesses and consumers to communicate and interact.

Source: US News

Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment firm that recently purchased a 2% preferred stock stake in the Facebook social media company is looking to acquire an additional $100 million in common stock shares. The $200 million agreement in May of this year valued Facebook at approximately $10 billion.

The deal this week for current and former Facebook employees is offering $14.77 per common stock share which carries a lower valuation of $6.5 billion. This is not to say that Facebook is now valued at $6.5 billion, rather that common stock does not offer the same privileges and guaranties for shareholders as preferred stock. “If the Facebook employee has been locked up several years, it’s a good opportunity for them to sell some shares and get some liquidity,” says Stuart Campbell, a lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle who focuses on startups.

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen last week stated he expects company revenues to reach $500 million in 2009.

Rival platform MySpace finally lost traction to Facebook in the United States this May based on comScore traffic statistics. Facebook has been the number one social network in the world for over a year now.

Source: Bloomberg

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen in a Reuters interview stated that he anticipates the social networking giant to reach $500 million in 2009 and billions more in five years. “There’s every reason to expect in my view that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now,” Andreessen said.

The core source of Facebook’s revenue is engagement advertising however the company has been actively exploring alternative revenue streams such as virtual currency as a way of monetizing Facebook applications.

Andreessen also made news this week announcing a new $300 million technology venture capital fund with partner Ben Horowitz. The new VC firm appropriately named Andreessen Horowitz will focus on startup companies targeting the Internet, cloud computing, software, networking, and related industries.

Facebook is a sharing and social networking platform that is constantly in development. Recent and upcoming changes are focused on reflecting three basic principles in which Facebook grounds effective privacy for it’s users. Control over who we share information with and Simplicity in use allows us to effectively create the Connections we desire.

Control reflects Facebook’s desire to give users the ability to share specific information with targeted audiences. Earlier this year Facebook added the “Everyone” option which allows users to share parts of their profile with all Facebook users. On the flip side Facebook wants to give us the ability to limit certain details about ourselves down to select groups of users such as family, co-workers, or a circle of friends. This option will compliment the “Create a New List” function on our Friends page. Right now the list function is strictly a news feed and friend filter but soon it will also serve as an access control for each individual update.

Increasing control functions can sometimes complicate things. Facebook noticed over time that privacy settings corresponding with the addition of new features created undue complexity and confusion. Focusing on Simplicity, new developments have consolidated those settings to a single page along with the standardization of control options. Also, overlapping settings have been removed and profile fields considered to be similar have been combined.

To make sure that users are making desired Connections with these new changes, Facebook will be asking us to reaffirm some of our settings over the next few days. This new Transition Tool will enable us to select which parts of our profile we feel comfortable sharing, giving us the choice to be as open or reclusive as we would like.

Previous privacy settings will carry over as these changes take effect and no new information will be shared with outside sources, such as advertisers.

Source: Facebook Blog

According to the latest comScore data Facebook is now the number one social network in the U.S., surpassing MySpace by just over 20,000 visitors in May. Data released today from comScore shows Facebook received 70.278 visitors in May while MySpace trails behind with 70.255 million. Facebook has been the number one social networking site globally for a little over a year.
 
For several months now MySpace numbers have been stagnant while Facebook has seen steady growth. With the introduction of vanity usernames this past weekend, the buzz around Facebook seems to remain strong; this topic is one of the few mentions MySpace has received recently. Since Owen Van Natta took over as MySpace CEO the site has seen a drop of around 700,000 unique visitors. While we can’t blame Van Natta for jumping aboard a sinking ship, we’re still waiting to see some drastic improvements to the social networking platform (not in the form of bright blue IM bars).

Source: TechCrunch