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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.

By the powers vested in me by the blogosphere I hereby declare this MySpace Charity Week! I urge everyone (who still has an active MySpace account) to login for a few minutes and post a bulletin, a few recent pictures or say hello to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. The “Forgot your password?” link may come in handy.
 
MySpace has seen some tough times lately. This May Facebook trumped MySpace as the number one social network in the U.S. and shortly after MySpace laid off 400 employees in an effort to stay afloat.
 
To pay tribute to MySpace as one of the driving forces of the social media revolution I think this movement is well worth five minutes of our time this week. MySpace is also still a great place to hear a plethora of new music from your favorite bands and artists.
 
Here is a 140 character friendly message you can send out on Twitter and Facebook…
 
MySpace Charity Week! Give MySpace a helping hand in slow times by making a few posts this week. Pass the word on!

I give credit to newly appointed CEO Owen Van Natta for captain-ing a sinking ship so let’s toss him a lifeline and maybe keep MySpace above water while they compose a strategy to turn things around.

An effort to restructure MySpace into a more innovative and entrepreneurial business results in News Corp cutting 30% of the social network’s staff this week, approximately 400 employees. MySpace has seen nothing but bad news lately, traffic has been dwindling and last month the platform was dethroned as the number one social media network in the U.S. by rival Facebook.
 
“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. These layoffs have been attributed to Google’s decision to heavily downsize it’s $300 million per year advertising deal with MySpace. Sources suggest Google is looking for something closer to $50 million per year.
 
While many MySpace employees appear to be expendable as of late, including former CEO Chris DeWolfe, co-founder Tom Anderson remains on the roster, and still friends with everyone.

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

Social Identity Theft, Brand Impersonation, and Character Assassination

Those of us who watch the television series NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) on a regular basis are undoubtedly familiar with Pauley Perrette’s bubbly goth girl forensic specialist character Abby Sciuto. Today while searching the depths of YouTube for intriguing social media footage I came across a video monologue shot by Perrette disparaging social networks and the proliferation of celebrity impostors.
 
The intriguing part is not Perrette’s overwhelming frustration with individuals who impersonate her on popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Twitter, but rather where she goes on to say (frame 2:28) that social networking sites are “contributing to identify theft because [they] do not ask to verify someone’s identity before they create a profile.” While most social networks have strict policies on impersonations of any kind and will go through the steps to verify identities and terminate account based on such reports, to say that this should be done prior to creating a profile or account would quickly slit the wrists of any viable social media business model.
 
Rather than stating my opinions on identity verification in a Web 2.0 world, here is the video for you to check out. Comments have been closed on YouTube but please let us know what you think in our comment section below.

Last week an article discussing Twitter’s lack of loyalty stated that this was not an issue for Facebook or MySpace. Well at least for the latter there seems to be a difference of opinion, or actually fact. Today an article in the New York Times discussing a MySpace makeover and the challenges facing their new CEO Owen Van Natta who is just starting his second week, also points out comScore statistics that show MySpace in actually losing users, most likely to Facebook. Several of my friends have used MySpace bulletins to let their friends know that they are moving to Facebook. Some even go as far as to change their profile names to phrases such as “Jenny (Who now only uses Facebook).”

Well in Twitter’s case, my opinion is that these flaky tweeters are simply the effect of Twitter’s recent popularity spike. Microblogging is not for everyone. I’m sure Twitter will settle into steady growth pattern in the near future. Perhaps if Twitter does add new features to their platform they may appeal to a wider and more dedicated user base. As for MySpace, they may need to focus their efforts on their younger users to bring some momentum back to their social networking super-engine! Both of these platforms still have alot of potential that I think has yet to be realized.