Food: Momofuku Noodle Bar

Social Network/Webculture/Foodcandy/Foodies
Found on: foodcandy.com

Momofuku Noodle Bar Restaurant

163 First Avenue

New York New York

United States 10003

cross-street: 10th Street

(212) 475-7899 (phone)

H.Tomato's review:

I just love this place, even though it's more expensive than you think when you start ordering. It's basically a noodle bar but the ingredients are supreme - Berkshire pork, the current must on every New York menu, unctuous noodles and great broths. My favorite bowl is actually kimchi stew that has no noodles in it.

At the risk of sounding like a geek?

Social Network/Web Culture/Website/iUSETHIS
Foud on: osx.iusethis.com




I love my Mac and my Mac loves IUSETHIS.com and from what I can tell a lot Mac users are flocking to this site to do download, bookmark, comment on some of the newest and most up to date OS X applications.

Here's IUSETHIS.com's top 3 FAQs:

1. What is iusethis.com?

iusethis.com is a new way for you to organize your applications as well as discover new ones. You can also use it to check if your apps are up-to-date.

2. What are the advantages of iusethis.com?

We believe that iusethis.com uses a much more democratic way to rate apps, by counting the number of users you can define the value of an app to a much higher degree then using ratings.

3. Why should i register?

You can store the apps you use on iusethis, so it's easy to download them again if you get a new computer. You will also be able to help others pick the best apps, and we can suggest new apps to you based on your profile.

I thought it might be fun to start posting some of the higher rated apps people are you using on IUSEIT.com onto Mypopspace, maybe it'll help out a few of my Mac friends out there -- stay tuned.

Getting a recount on MySpace users

News/Social Network/Myspace/Margaret Kane
Found on: cnet.com

Just how popular is MySpace?

The social networking site is clearly trendy among the teenage set. But can it really claim 100 million active accounts, a figure that has been bandied about? At least one blogger disagrees.

A post on the ForeverGeek site analyzed a random sample of 303 accounts, and found that only 42 percent had logged into their accounts within the past month.

"It turns out that MySpace really has roughly 43,000,000 users. Very unscientific? Yep. More accurate than the 100,000,000 myth? Damn straight. The 100,000,000 number is inflated by 133 (percent)," the author wrote.

MySpace's real heroes

News/Social Networks/Myspace/Musci/Gerald M. Gay
Found on: azstarnet.com

There's no doubt that MySpace.com has played an integral role in promoting up-and-coming musical talent since starting up three years ago.

Rarely, however, does it get any shout-outs in return.

Hip-hop rock outfit Gym Class Heroes changed that this year with the song "New Friend Request" about the trials and tribulations of finding love on the social networking Web site.

The upbeat track features vocalist Travis McCoy dropping lyrics over a mix of looped beats and rock guitars and percussion. It stands as the first major song written about the popular online destination.

Elvis has just left the star system!

Webculture/Social Network/Myspace/Male Profile
Found on: Popyourit!

Who is the Elvis Trooper, where did he come from, is he really Elvis or a Clone, and why is he here? These are just some of the many questions that may have brought you here. Well, there are no answers to be given here, just a photographic documentation of the many Elvis Trooper sightings that are being reported across this great land of ours.

If you are ever so lucky as to have your own Elvis Trooper sighting, then I suggest you get photographic proof, as most people will never believe you when you tell them about seeing him. Feel free to approach the Elvis, as he does not bite, hard, and is always willing to get his picture taken with you. And if you don’t approach him then look out, he might just approach you for a picture anyhow. And if you are lucky enough to brave having a picture taken with the Elvis Trooper, then feel free to Email us so we can see your proof, and might even post your sighting.

Facebox - Insane Growth?

News/Social Networks/Facebox/Peter Cashmore
Found on: Mashable.com



Facebox, a new social network that sounds a little too much like Facebook, is getting a few mentions in the comments after going from zero to hero on Alexa over the past 10 days or so. The reason is pretty simple: Facebox isn’t a new site, but rather a relaunch of an established brand. The site is the product of Belgian company InCrowd, and began five years ago as a community site called ASL.TO - it then became Redbox, a social network for Belgians. Beginning late last year, they rolled out more “-box” sites across Europe, and this month it seems they’re trying to consolidate those under the Facebox brand. Hence the appearance of a site coming from nowhere. At the moment, they’re reporting 10 million European users and more than 1 billion monthly pageviews - presumably that’s an aggregate of all their existing networks.

When I Grow Up I Wanna Work in Advertising

Youtube/Social Network/Web Culture/Video
Found on: Youtube.com

Agency: Meyocks Group
Use: ADDY Awards intro
Description: Spoof of Monster's "When I Grow Up" campaign

Tags monster advertising grow up


Embedding was disabled by request of the ad adgency
( so just click on the image)

Youtube Stats (as of this post):

Views: 56,713

Comments: 11

Favorited: 112 times

Some of my favorite comments:

reshfromrikers

Hey! I'm not staying up at night writing the great American novel, it's a gritty heist screenplay!

taperry

Goota laugh...otherwise I might start crying. ;-)

Live Voice Communication Comes To Second Life

News/Social Networks/Second Life/Shel Hotz
Found on: webpronews.com














"The line between the virtual and physical worlds is becoming thinner every day. As more complex interactions take place in virtual spaces, better communication is essential."

These words come from Rob Seaver, CEO of Vivox, an integrated online voice communications company. Vivox announced that, beginning October 4, it will give away a million free phone minutes and distribute group chat "microphones" to residents of Second Life. Vivox's technology will let SL residents make calls to other residents as well as use in-game phone booths to call any land line or mobile phone in North America. Residents visiting the Vivox kiosk can get their virtual hands on one of a few Vivox microphones that will allow up to five people have a live group voice chat.

Cingular to Sponsor YouTube Battle

News/YouTube/Cingular/Videos/Ed Sutherland
Found on: internetnews.com

Cingular Wireless is tuning into the hot community video site YouTube by sponsoring its "battle of the bands" competition.

In YouTube Underground, a promotion running Oct. 2 through Oct. 18, members of the online video-sharing site vote on videos submitted by independent musicians.

Cingular said its sponsorship is a natural extension of its efforts to attract subscribers, "demonstrating our unique approach to mobilizing the music experience for our customers," John Burbank, vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

MSN Mulls Rewarding Video Site Users

News/Social Networks/MSN/Video/Brian Morrissey
Found: adweek.com



NEW YORK Microsoft is considering offering users of its new video-sharing service incentives. The service, Soapbox on MSN Video, launches early next year and represents Microsoft's attempt to compete in the user-created content sphere dominated by rivals like YouTube.

MSN has plans to compensate popular video creators, according to Rob Bennett, general manager of entertainment and video services at the company. It will also offer inducements to others who share, label videos and other activities that help the community grow and thrive, he added.

"We're looking at ways to provide incentives to all aspects of the community process," he said.

Microsoft could tap into its existing rewards system, Microsoft Points, which it uses with xBox, Bennett said. Another option would be to provide active users songs via its upcoming Zune digital music service.

News Corp plans MySpace in China

News/Social Networks/China/Myspace
Found on: FT.com

Rupert Murdoch said on Tuesday that his wife, Wendy Deng, was working with senior News Corp executives to help bring the company’s popular MySpace social networking site to China.

“We have to make MySpace a very Chinese site,” Mr Murdoch said at a media conference organised by Goldman Sachs. “I have sent my wife across there because she understands the language.”

Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp, bought MySpace last year as part of his strategy for the digital age. MySpace has become one of the most popular sites on the internet because of the ease with which people can communicate and share text, pictures and video.

Yahoo to Stream Gore's Current TV

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Video
Found on: marketingvox.com

Content from Al Gore's Current TV will begin streaming on the newly launched Yahoo Current Network, which is targeting the 18-34 demographic.

Gore hopes to expand Current TV's audience beyond cable, where the network's reach is 30 million, a low figure by TV standards - and too low for Nielsen to rate, reports Business Week. Yahoo Current Network will feature four channels of streaming video, and Gore's Current TV will supply content - both professional and amateur videos.

Yahoo Flirts with Facebook, YouTube Seeks Partner

News/Social Networks/Faceboo/YouTube
Found on: marketingvox.com

Rumors are flying about the possible sale of two hot internet properties, Facebook and YouTube.

Social-networking site Facebook, which has been expanding beyond its core audience of college students, is apparently in negotiations with Yahoo to be acquired for possibly up to $1 billion, according to the NY Times Dealbook blog, which cites a Wall Street Journal article. Facebook has apparently also held separate discussions with Microsoft.

Stylehive bookmark of the week: BlackBerry 8700

Web Culture/Social Bookmarking/Stylehive
Found on: Stylehive.com

Description: The BlackBerry 8700c Wireless Handheld™ and BlackBerry 8700r Wireless Handheld™ provide the ultimate balance of performance, design and function.

Tags: celebrity, gift bag, mobile, oscars, phone, tech gear, wireless

URL: blackberry website

Losing Their Cool: The Downside of Expanding Hot Social Networking Sites

News/Social Network/Webculture/Facebook
Found on: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Facebook, a social networking site known as an online meeting place for college and high school students, is opening its doors to more people in an effort to grow beyond its current nine million registered users. The problem: The move could be risky if it blurs the company's focus and dilutes its brand.

Social networking sites often connect people within certain demographic groups -- such as students, business people, independent music fans or twenty-something urbanites -- using tools such as chat, uploaded pictures from users and online diaries.

For Facebook, the move to expand comes amid backlash over two features the site added September 5, 2006, dubbed "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed," which allowed users to track information updates of others in their social circles. When a person's profile changed, updates would be broadcast to people who subscribed to the feed. These updates could include such personal information as a subscriber's decision to break off a romantic relationship or start a new one. Although the same information was available for viewing in a person's profile, some users objected to the lack of control over the distribution of their personal information. On September 8, Facebook issued a mea culpa in response to these privacy concerns, and now Facebook's new features have more finely tuned privacy controls. As CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it in Facebook's corporate blog: "We really messed this one up."

Internet Key to Brand Relationships with College Kids

News/Webculture/Youthtrends/Stats
Found on: marketingvox.com

About one-third of 800 college students recently surveyed by Burst Media say they use the internet more than 10 hours during a typical week; 20.3 percent say more than 20 hours. Less than 20 percent say they spend more than 10 hours a week watching TV or listening to the radio; sizable numbers say they spend less than three hours per week watching TV (30.1 percent) or listening to the radio (45.6 percent).


Click to enlarge

College students are also multi-media multitaskers. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they use a computer while watching television, and 60.2 percent say they typically use a computer when listening to the radio. Male college students are more likely than female college students to say they use a computer while watching television (68.6 percent vs. 58.8 percent).

Is Tigarah “Baile” Funk’s next Superstar?

Webculture/Social Network/Myspace/Music
Found on: Popyourit!

After contemplating a career as a politician or ambassador, TIGARAH felt she could best speak her mind if she made music her life. So, shortly after majoring in political science at Tokyo’s renowned Keio University, she started writing songs on her own in her tiny room in Tokyo, inspired by the Baile Funk music from Brazil.

In several trips to Sao Paulo and Rio, TIGARAH immersed herself in Brazilian culture and recorded music together with local musicians. It was in Rio where TIGARAH started collaborating with producer/beatmaker MR.D and they since formed a duo who write and produce everything together. Since 2003, they’re recording tracks on a regular basis in Los Angeles.

Vivox Gets Second Life

News/Web Culture/Social Networks/Second Life/David Radd
Found on: biz.gamedaily.com

Vivox announced today it has signed a deal with Illusion Factory. Under terms of the agreement, Vivox will supply voice communications to the online community in Second Life. This comes on the heels of Vivox's new partnerships with Icarus Studios and BigWorld Technology.

"We reviewed all of our options for the inclusion of high quality voice communications that are in pace with the new means of learning, entertaining and promoting that we are implementing into Second Life," said Illusion Factory CEO, Brian Weiner. "Vivox was the natural choice for quality and its advanced managed service. Vivox offers the most innovative communications solution, the only one of its kind, which will enable Second Life Avatar's to speak to one another on IF Island."

Microsoft Gets on Video Soapbox, Calls out YouTube

News/Social Networks/YouTube/Soapbox
Found on: marketingvox.com

Microsoft's Soapbox on MSN Video site aims to challenge not only YouTube, which has become synonymous with viral and user-generated video, but also Google Video, Yahoo Video and Revver, reports CNET. Codenamed Warhol, Soapbox on MSN Video will have no ads, at least for now, but Microsoft may monetize videos by showing them on the MSN Video site or creating a "viral video hub," Rob Bennett, general manager of entertainment and video services at Microsoft, is quoted as saying.

Users will be able to watch videos together via Windows Live Messenger, and Windows Live Spaces users will be able to link their videos to their profiles and control who can watch them, reports Media Post.

The 25 Worst Web Sites

News/Social Network/Web Culture/Myspace
Found on: pcworld.com

MySpace has topped a list of the 25 worst websites. The list was compiled by PC World and released on September 18.

Most of the websites on the list were created during the golden age of the internet. However, it is an up-and-coming youngster, MySpace, which has topped the list. Windows Update and Hotmail were also unlucky enough to be listed.

Most of the websites rated because they were fraudulent, had a poorly designed page layout, failed to protect private information, or required too much personal information from their users.

PC World's 25 worst websites

1. MySpace.com

2. CyberRebate

3. Cartoonnetwork.com

4. CD Universe

5. AllAdvantage

My New Website - Popyourit.com

News/Web Culture/Website/Popyourit!
Found on: popyourit.com



Okay, I guess I'll start by thanking my wife Molz for letting me stay up into the wee hours of the night to work on yet another website - love you hun!

Popyourit.com is my new project that I've been working on for the last few months but it's origins can be traced back to this site, Mypopspace. When I first started Mypopspace.com, I wanted to blog about the web/pop culture, youth trends and relevant news I found on social network sites. After a few months, Mypopspace started to transform into more or less a hub for news related stories about the dozen or so social network sites that I belong to and pop culture quickly took a back seat, well that got a little boring and if you know me at all, I hate to be bored and thus the catalyst for this project was sparked.

So what's it's all about? Well, here's what I put on the "About" page found on the site:

Popyourit! brings the celebrity web culture found on the internet’s social networks to you and let’s you decide who is worthy of being a web phenomenon!

So if you’re a “Myspace” rockstar, a “Tagworld” popstar, a “Second Life” ava-star or just a webstar wannabe — you just might get popped!

There's a lot of innovating stuff that is still being tossed around and getting worked on but for now, it's just me and a handful of friends having fun, so come on in, hangout, get to popping and get some web culture in your life, all you have to do is click here to get started.

Pop!

News: Site Previously for Students Will Be Opened to Others

News/Social Network/Facebook/Saul Hansell
Found on: nytimes.com

Facebook, the popular social networking Web site that has mainly focused on college students, is preparing to open its membership to everyone.

The move is meant to help the site expand, but it risks undercutting one of its attractions: it has been more exclusive and somewhat more protected than MySpace, its larger and more freewheeling rival.

Started two years ago, with Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard undergraduate, as a co-founder, Facebook first restricted membership to people who had e-mail addresses issued by a college or university. It has expanded somewhat since then, allowing high school students to join (if they are invited by an existing member) along with people who work for certain large companies (if they have a corporate e-mail address).

Facebook plans to expand its membership within a month. It had planned to open its doors wider today but postponed the decision after new features begun last week provoked protests among members who complained that the changes revealed too much personal information. The site quickly introduced new options that allowed users to control how information about them is displayed.

Ten video sharing services compared

News/Social Networks/Video Sharing
Found on: dvguru.com



The number of video-sharing sites has shot through the roof recently, as dozens of companies try to become the Flickr of the online video world. To this end, many video services have started offering new features like editing and remixability in an attempt to snatch a piece of the ever-expanding online video pie. But for the average user--who just wants to post a video on the 'net and share it with some friends--there are already too many options out there. All one really wants to know is, which site is going to work, with the least amount of hassle?

To test each service, I uploaded my demo reel (a 15MB Sorenson 3-encoded Quicktime file) to each site and compared video quality, site interface, community features, and functionality. Where applicable I also tried to embed the resulting video in a Wordpress page. Many of these sites are still in beta, and their functionality could change in the coming months, but if you're looking to post and share video today, this is the current state of things.

News: Xanga fined $1 million under child privacy act

News/Social Network/Xanga/Laws
Found on: news.com

Xanga.com, a social-networking and blog site, has been ordered to pay $1 million in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

The FTC said in a statement Thursday that Xanga, which has been in operation since 1999, had been letting people create accounts even if the dates of birth they entered indicated that they were under the age of 13. The terms of the child privacy act, enacted in 1998, stipulate that parental notification and consent are required for a commercial Web site, including a social-networking service, to collect personal information from children under the age of 13.

In addition, the FTC alleged that Xanga's policies regarding children were not sufficiently clear on its site and that parents were not provided a means to access and control their children's information. It is estimated that over the past five years, a total of 1.7 million Xanga accounts had been registered with a birth date that implied the person was under 13. Overall, privately held Xanga has 25 million registered users.

News: Real-World Security Breach at Second Life

News/Social Networks/Second Life/Security
Found on: marketingvox.com

Second Life, the site where 650,000 people play out fantasy lives online, has suffered a computer security breach that exposed the real-world personal data of its users, writes Reuters.

Linden Lab, which owns Second Life, said in a post to its users that its customer database - including names, addresses and passwords and some credit card data - had been compromised. All Second Life "residents" are being required to request a new password.

Second Life is inhabited by animated characters that users design for themselves to interact with others. Users buy and sell virtual land and build businesses with "Linden Dollars," which can be exchanged for real currency. Some 286,000 residents have used the site in the past 60 days, according to a count on the home page.

News: What Teens Are Doing In MySpace

News/Social Networks/Youth Trends/Myspace
Found on: cbsnews.com

Exactly what are teens doing on sites like MySpace? If you ask them, they'll most likely tell you they're "just hanging out."

Hanging out on MySpace and other social-networking sites is sort of like networking in the adult sense of the word, except that teens aren't reaching out to their extended network of friends with some purpose in mind, as we think of it. Instead, they're engaged in conveniently asynchronous but also real-time collective and interactive self-expression. Whew — it's not easy being a teenager! Let's take a look at what this self-expression is all about, from teens' and the experts' points of view.

MySpace profiles represent teenagers' online selves — not so much an extension of who they are but who they see themselves to be at the moment, expressed in comments, photos, and music.

News: Value of YouTube 'clip culture'? Junk CPMs

News/YouTube/Video/Donna Bogatin
Found on: ZDnet.com





In “YouTube yearly revenue potential: Fred says $150M a year, I say $20M.” Jason Calacanis deflates the latest YouTube fantasia, responding to Fred Wilson’s “YouTube’s Potential Revenue.”

Fred Wilson literally disclaims the validity of the metrics he himself uses to calculate the revenues YouTube “could be generating”:

Let's say that advertisers will pay on average a $15cpm for a ten second pre-roll ad in front of licensed content and high quality user generated content (lisa nova, etc). And let's say that 60% of the videos being served on YouTube are unlicensed content that could be licensed with the right business deal. And let's say that another 20% of the videos being served on YouTube are user generated content that is high quality. That leaves 20% of the videos being served that are not monetizable. I realize these are unsubstantiated assumptions, but my point is not to be accurate, it's to make a point.

News: Gamers wired into social networks

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Gamers
Found on: abc.net.au

Gaming can be a sociable experience, according to a new study that questions the myth of the lone gamer sitting at the computer, disconnected from society.

The US study says games involving multiple players can act like informal gathering places like pubs and coffee shops, so can boost the players' social connections.

Assistant Professor Constance Steinkuehler of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Assistant Professor Dmitri Williams of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at people playing so-called massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).

"By providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function as one form of a new 'third space' for informal sociability," the researchers write.

While such sociability won't offer "deep emotional support", they add, it has the benefit of exposing players to a wide range of viewpoints and a more diverse social environment.

News: Advertising on Social Networks: The New Frontier?

News/Social Networks/Advertising/Debra Aho Williamson
Found on: eMarketer.com

Say hello to advertising 2.0.



Measuring ad spending on social network sites is as much of a work in progress as is defining social networking. With so much of the business being created almost on the fly, there is very little concrete detail on which to pin an estimate.

Advertising on social networks can take a variety of forms — ranging from large-scale profile pages and banner ads bought directly from social network sites to a low-cost run of site ads placed by ad networks and search ad spending — and thus any ad spending estimates must take into account the relative cost and amount of each type of advertising that exists on social network sites today and in the future.

News: The Young Drive Internet Video Adoption

News/Youthtrends/Internet/Video
Found on: marketingvox.com

Some 10 million Americans age 12 and over have downloaded television shows from the internet - seven million in the past 30 days alone, according to the MOTION biannual study of digital video behaviors by global market research firm Ipsos.

Younger Americans are driving growth in many digital video activities, including TV show downloading: 10 percent of young adults age 18-34 (14 percent of 18-24-year-olds and 7 percent of 25-34-year-olds) have downloaded television programs (seven percent have done so in the past month) - nearly double the overall rate of TV show downloading.

News: Facebook's New Privacy Controls Save Face

News/Social Networks/Facebook/Privacy
Found on: marketingvox.com

Following an overwhelming privacy backlash as a result of changes introduced this week, Facebook said on Friday it has adopted new privacy controls.

Facebook will now allow users to directly control what information is shared with their friends about their activities on the network, reports Reuters. Newly introduced features this week - "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed" - immediately informed users what their friends were up to on the social network, resulting in tens of thousands of users crying foul.

Users can now directly control "who sees what information in News Feed and Mini-Feed...just as they requested," Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Facebook, said in a statement. "We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them," Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.

Youthtrends: Hot Topic's Trying Trends

News/Youthtrends/Fashion/Hot Topics
Found on: msnbc.msn.com

A resurgence of punk fashion might be underway, but Hot Topic's still got challenges.

It appears all things '80s-inspired are trying to creep back into fashion this year, and ever since I heard the news I've wondered if maybe some of the punk fashions that hit the mainstream in that decade might follow suit. I'm seeing more hints that that may be the case -- and some investors may well wonder if punk and goth wardrober Hot Topic(NASDAQ:HOTT) might benefit from such a turn of events.

A fashion supplement called Fashion Rocks, which recently arrived in my mailbox via snail mail with some Conde Nast publications, caught my eye with a feature exploring punk music and fashion. And I recently saw a USA TODAY article that claimed "new age" punk influences may well be coming back. Accoutrements like fingerless gloves are hitting the shelves once again, with Hot Topic being one of the retailers stocking them, as well as Urban Outfitters(NASDAQ:URBN).

Music: Popularity has nothing to do with it!

News/Social Networks/Music/Pandora/Jeff Leeds
Found on:taipeitimes.com

Seth Ford-Young is a professional bass player who performs up to five nights a week with local jazz and rock bands and occasionally lends his talents to recording sessions for artists like Tom Waits. But these days he has an unusual second gig.

As a senior music analyst at Pandora Media, he spends roughly 25 hours a week in an office suite here, listening to songs by artists like Sonny Boy Williamson and Memphis Slim and dicing them into data points. Is the singer's voice gravelly or silky? Is the scope of the song modest or epic? Does the electric guitar sound clean or distorted?

As he listens, Ford-Young fills out a scorecard on which he can rate hundreds of traits in each song on a five-point scale. Bit by bit, Pandora's music analysts have built a massive archive of data, cataloging the minute characteristics of more than 500,000 songs, from alt-country to bossa nova to metal to gospel, for what is known as the Music Genome Project.

At pandora.com visitors are invited to enter the name of their favorite artist or song and to get in return a stream of music with similar "DNA," in effect a private Internet radio station microtailored to each user's tastes. Since the service made its debut last November, more than 3 million people have signed up.

Music: MySpace - Meet the Band, Buy the Song

News/Social Networks/Music/Myspace/Yuki Noguchi
Found on: washingtonpost.com

Technology is taking the middleman out of the music business, giving artists a bigger array of tools to get their songs in the MP3 players of potential fans around the world.

That trend is hurting the classic record store chains, such as Tower Records, and thousands of independent stores, but it's also opening doors to digital music sales direct from the artist to the fan.

The latest development in that direction comes from MySpace, a social networking site that has brought new audiences to many bands. Now MySpace is adding a music-store feature that will allow artists, labels and the site itself to cash in on the popularity of those songs.




Related story: Snocap Launches

News: MySpace Members Poke Fun at Phony Profiles

News/Social Networks/Myspace
Found on: marketingvox.com

MySpace users are growing disenchanted with the social-networking site because it's "becoming too corporate, overrun with ads, and less authentic," writes MediaPost. The article points to a dilemma that publishers of similar sites face: the measure of their success is advertising revenue, but granting marketers extensive access can undermine the authenticity and appeal that made the site attractive to users, and therefore advertisers, in the first place.

News: Just for kicks (How Run D.M.C. and others revolutionized the sole)

News/Web Culture/Youth Trends/Sneakers/Justin Eisinger
Found on: sdcitybeat.com




When MC Rev Run stared into a camcorder in 1986 and pitched an endorsement deal to Adidas by demanding, �Gimme a million dollars!� it seemed unclear if he actually expected anyone to listen. Regardless, it was a spot-on representation of the Run D.M.C. credo, often summarized as �they were gonna dress on stage like they would in the streets.�

As it turns out, execs in Adidas� L.A. office were listening. They had been for a few years, ever since rap's three bad brothers single-handedly saved the Shell Toe sneaker from oblivion. The shoe giant decided to bank on the tremendously successful "My Adidas" song (then No. 10 on the black charts �with a bullet�). They put on a special concert in New York City, at which the crowd waved 10,000 pairs of Shell Toe Superstars overhead.

That million dollars bought Run D.M.C. unparalleled commercial success which the group used to become genre-breaking, crossover mega-stars, and ultimately sparked the sneaker-culture boom. Ironically, the lyrics to "My Adidas" were inspired by Run D.M.C.s own critics; the anti-conformity anthem was a response to those who dissed their stick-up kid style:

We took the beat from the street and put it on TV/ My Adidas are seen on the movie screen/ Hollywood knows we�re good if you know what I mean/ We started in the alley, now we chill in Cali.

Related story: Nice Kicks

News: Warner gets a Second Life

News/Web Culture/Social Networks/Second Life/Wade Hahn Chan
Found on: fcw.com

Mark Warner has found a new way to promote his political action committee (PAC): virtually.

The former Virginia governor and rumored 2008 presidential candidate has created an avatar of himself in the 3-D sandbox game cum social networking application Second Life.

“Social technologies can be great tools for political change, and virtual worlds like Second Life might be the next tool for engaging people in the real-world democratic process,” Warner said.

“It will allow us to reach people through a whole new medium.”

Warner also counted his virtual looks as another incentive to meet him in the real world.

“My avatar is...pretty funny looking,” he said.