myspace

Offerpal Media, one of the companies at the center of a bitter dispute over misleading advertisements on social networks, on Thursday launched a revised policy designed to "forbid any offers that are misleading, deceptive or otherwise objectionable."

Companies like Offerpal are enlisted by many of the big gaming companies built on social networks like Facebook; they help those companies make money by letting game players earn points and virtual goods by completing offers and surveys rather than paying real money.

They make a lot of money doing so. So do the game companies, like Zynga and Playfish (recently acquired by Electronic Arts), … Read more

CheckMySite, a company that monitors uptime of Web sites, announced on Thursday that Twitter still has some serious performance issues.

CheckMySite continually monitored Twitter's uptime over the past 12 months and found that Twitter wasn't able to maintain an effective uptime rate during that period, though it did perform better in some months rather than others.

CheckMySite's report found that Twitter's best uptime between October 2008 through the end of October 2009, was in December 2008, when the site was up 99.97 percent of the time. During Twitter's worst month, August 2009, the its … Read more

MySpace on Wednesday acquired social-networking site Imeem for an undisclosed sum, but sources with knowledge of the deal say is worth about $8 million.

The News Corp.-owned MySpace has agreed to pay $1 million in cash, but the total figure also includes money for accounts receivable and employee earn outs. Regardless, the price is a big loss for investors who poured upwards of $30 million into the pioneer ad-supported music service.

An Imeem spokesman declined to comment.

Imeem will continue to operate as a standalone site, at least initially, according to the sources. One source said that Imeem's … Read more

In the wake of acquiring smaller digital music services iLike--and now, it looks like, Imeem--MySpace continues to attempt to align itself as the foremost player in the digital music industry. On Wednesday, the News Corp. division rolled out a music charts page to track the most popular music getting listened to on the social site.

It's fairly self-explanatory. There's a prominent "movers" section featuring artists that have seen an uptick in activity recently, and music can be filtered by genre, country, and label category (indie, unsigned, or major). Then there are links to "friend&… Read more

Om Malik over at GigaOm advanced the story about MySpace's efforts to acquire Imeem on Wednesday.

The news that Rupert Murdoch's MySpace was in talks to buy Imeem, a long struggling social-networking site focused on music, generated a lot of headlines on Tuesday.

Judging from the glut of media coverage but relatively few reader comments at some of the sites covering the story, this is one of those events that journalists care more about than the public (don't know what it's like at other sites, but MySpace stories don't generate big readership numbers).

Be that … Read more

Multiple sources are reporting that MySpace is in talks to acquire Imeem, the social-networking music service that has struggled with financial problems for some time.

Peter Kafka at All Things Digital is reporting that negotiations are in the late stages and that MySpace is making the deal to acquire some of Imeem's talent and technology. News of the talks was first reported by TechCrunch.

Here's my contribution to the news: two sources with knowledge of Imeem say CEO Dalton Caldwell was in New York recently looking for new investors. Imeem was again running short of cash after coming … Read more

In the wake of a firestorm over just how much of social-gaming companies' profits can be attributed to potentially scammy offers and incentives, News Corp.'s MySpace has taken a stand (and, it could be said, taken advantage of the PR opportunity) by coming out vocally against them.

"We're adding a fifth principle (to our developer terms of use) that clarifies a specific use case that we feel is particularly damaging to the user experience: promotions that include hidden renewals without specific opt-in will not be permitted," a company blog post by CEO Owen Van Natta read. &… Read more

What's former MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe up to these days? He wants to be the next big name in the social-gaming craze, we hear.

In late July, TechCrunch floated a report that DeWolfe was hitting up big private equity outlets to amass cash, at least $100 million, for a new venture that would involve "a roll-up of an Internet industry vertical," but TechCrunch didn't specify what that sector was. Three months prior, DeWolfe had been ousted from the troubled MySpace and replaced by former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta.

Now, several well-placed sources have told CNET … Read more

How far we've come in such a short time. When I began this blog in 2007, finding a particular song online was an exercise in frustration. You could subscribe to an all-you-can-eat service like Rhapsody, but cheapskates and occasional music listeners either had to dig deep, engage with a questionably legal file-trading service, or settle for 30-second previews from iTunes or one of its Web-based competitors.

Since then, as readers of this blog know, dozens of sites offering free streaming music have emerged, from the dead-simple like Songerize and its successor Songite (enter a song title to play it … Read more