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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

MySpace: A Place For 'Cretins'



, December 2, 2008









MySpace: A Place For 'Cretins'


Cnet

Michael Wolff, author of the new Rupert Murdoch bio "The Man Who Owns
the News," stirred up some controversy this week in an interview with BusinessWeek's
Jon Fine, during which he classified MySpace users as low class. "If
you're
on MySpace now, you're a (bleep) cretin. And you're not only a (bleep)
cretin, but you're poor," Wolff said, adding: "Nobody who has beyond an
eighth grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards
people."




To his credit, Fine didn't agree. He pointed out that bands have
to be on MySpace. MySpace Music has become "a powerful driver" for them
and for the site. "And second of all," Fine said, "If I am to accept
your reasoning -- even
though I don't -- as the success of The Sun (a News
Corp.-owned British tabloid) will tell you, there are lot of cretins
out there and you can make a lot of money off cretins."



Cnet's Caroline McCarthy reads between the lines: "MySpace encourages
glitter text," while Facebook "mandates that members must use their
real names," so one is going to attract a classier crowd than the
other. But, as Fine notes, it
doesn't really matter what kind of audience your site caters to, as
long as it makes money. And MySpace is still "the flagship property of
the top destination for display ads (Fox Interactive Media) on the Web.
Facebook, meanwhile, is
still seen as an experimental ad medium."
-
Read the whole story...




Power.com: All Your Friends In One Place?


BusinessWeek

Does Power.com have the power to unseat the likes of MySpace and
Facebook as the top social networking site? Probably not, but the Rio
de Janeiro-based company, with its tools for synchronizing social
networking features and services, will
be useful to those overextended users with multiple social networking
accounts. Power.com currently allows you to view and manage your
Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, MSN Messenger, Orkut, and YouTube accounts all
from one location. It hopes to
soon add LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Skype
and others soon. The company raised $2 million in funding last year and
looks set to add another $6 million this year.


According to the company's press release, here's how it works:
Users' "Power start page shows them all of their friends, messages, and
content -- from all their social networks, instant messengers, and
email accounts -- in one place ...
Once users log on to Power.com, they are automatically logged on
everywhere that matters. They go from Power.com to their page on any
one of their social networks with one click."





As BusinessWeek's Robert Hof points out, it's kind
of like Meebo, which lets you sign onto all of your instant messaging
accounts from one place, on steroids. "We're taking down the boundaries
between social sites," says CEO Steve
Vachani, who tells Hof that he doesn't see the efforts by Facebook,
Google, MySpace and others to take their profile information to other
sites as open enough to be all-inclusive. That said, while Power.com is
easy to set up, "putting all
this information together can get a little dizzying, especially when
single services such as MySpace and Facebook are already looking mighty
cluttered all by themselves." -
Read the whole story...

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