NEWS: Those wrinkles aren't from squinting YouTube, Myspace, computer gaming -- a big chunk of users approach middle age

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Joe Garofoli
Found on: sfgate.com

New media is no longer just the province of the pubescent. A growing share of its audience is old. Ancient. Like, even over 40.

According to a September study of YouTube users by Nielsen NetRatings, a leading online analyst, one-third of the video sharing site's audience is over 45 years old. The same research found that more than 30 percent of the folks flitting about social networking powerhouse MySpace.com are between 35 and 49; 27 percent are over 45. A third of iTunes users are in their wealth-building years. Even the audience for Xanga.com, a less-heralded online social networker, is stumbling toward middle age, with 20 percent of its population over 45.

Stylehive bookmark of the week!

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

Description: Remember when you were promised all those amazing future tech innovations? Just around the corner was supposed to be a shining technology utopia with flying cars, personal space travel to distant galaxies, and bio-implantable cell phones. It's almost disappointing enough to make you sit at home and watch old episodes of "Space 1999".

Price: 179.99 USD

Tags: bluetooth, computer, cool, gadget, gadgets, keyboard, technology

URL: http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/

NEWS: Six Apart Turns to MRM for New Ad Ideas

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Kevin Newcomb
Found on: clickz.com

Six Apart launched Vox, a new hosted blogging community, and has teamed up with MRM Worldwide to plot the ad strategy and develop new ways for marketers to get involved.

Where Six Apart's LiveJournal community is heavily used by teens looking to connect with new friends, Vox is designed as a tool for (mostly older) users to share stories, photos, videos or audio with family and existing friends. Access to all content can be controlled by the blog's owner with five levels of privacy for each piece of content.

Vox does have social tools as well, with a "question of the day" and "Vox Hunt" to let all members share their ideas on a certain topic or post photos of objects found in a daily scavenger hunt. It also lets users connect their Vox blog with services they may already be using, such as YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket and iFilm.

Queen of the MOG Wars

Web Culture/Social Network/Myspace/Music
Found on: Popyourit!

MOG is an online community where music lovers can discover people through music and music through people.

There you’ll find Anna, she’s a Mogger (a person who blogs about music on mog) and she’s one of the best.

Anna’s blurb:

Current Activity #1: Bassist of Right Said Fred Zeppelin (an all-girl mostly-Led Zeppelin covers imaginary band)

Current Activity #2: courtesy of sentinel329 - Super High Evil Instigator Queen of the Mog Wars

Goth Names: Deranged Insanity, Beautifully Chaotic

My MOG Is Where: Sophisticated Taste In Music Comes To Die

NEWS: Myspace/Facebook Vs. Niche Networks

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Pat McCarthy
Found on: internetfinancialnews.com






The WSJ has a story talking about a slowdown in traffic for these two combined with anecdotal stories of problems and negative experiences. Essentially those problems boil down to it being too popular, too much spam, too much advertising, and "creepy experiences".

Beyond these, I think that these sites still lack some utility for a large percentage of the population. As a married guy approaching 30, the only real use I have for Myspace is really to maybe find some old friends and send messages there instead of email. However, this doesn't mean I'm a boring guy without any interests, it's just that Myspace is so vast and large that really finding and interacting with my core interests while I'm in the mood to do so doesn't happen.

NEWS: MySpace Phishing Attack Appears on 3000 Pages

News/Social Networks/Myspace/Kelvin Beercroft
Found on: mashable.com

Earlier this week I detected many fake MySpace login pages setup for phishing login credentials. I thought there was something important to report but after further investigation I found that these pages did absolutely nothing because the HTML missed an important attribute in the post form. This is the “action” attribute which tells the form what to do when you click login. “They’ve been neutralized by my MySpace”, I thought. But I was wrong.

A proportion of these pages are today active and will steal your email and password if you give it to them. The fake login pages are very convincing and even fooled Firefox into automatically filling in my credentials. Even cautious Internet users could get caught off guard by this trick.

It appears they then use the compromised accounts to spam other MySpace users via bulletins. But they do more than just send out spam. They also add their fake login code to the compromised pages in a tricky way so that it hides the original page underneath, giving them even more fake login pages.

NEWS: Wendy's Hits A YouTube Nerve

News/Social Network/YouTube/Lisa Beragnoli
Found on: mediapost.com

THREE WENDY'S COMMERCIALS, MASQUERADING AS videos and posted on YouTube, are drawing some ire--and lots of visits--from the site's outspoken fan base. Two of the videos use dialogue peppered with modern slang against vintage-looking black-and-white footage. One, entitled "Molly Grows Up," has the main character ordering her first 99-cent Junior Bacon cheeseburger and Frosty. The other, "Are You Popular?", takes place in a high-school cafeteria and features boys talking about the popularity of certain girls. The third video, entitled "Frosty vs. Fries," is an animated action film.

All clips are "presented" by the Better Value Bureau, and both send viewers to www.bbv99.com, a website for Wendy's 99-cent value menu. The videos refer to Wendy's-branded products, but not the chain's name, per se.

As of Thursday, "Molly Grows Up" had received nearly 300,000 views and comments ranging from "LOL" to "it was so stupid it was hilarious." "Are You Popular" proved less popular, with about 1,200 views and comments ranging from "funny stuff" to "this is corporate skullduggery.

Rapper Finds Sister Via MySpace

Social Network/Web Culture/Myspace/Music
Found on: spin.com

The rapper located his long-lost sister on the community website. No word on whether she accepted his friend request.

The Game has 173,609 MySpace friends, but the one person he might be itching to ensure accepts his friend request is his long-lost sister, whom he found while searching the community site. The rapper randomly decided to search the name of the sister he hasn't seen since childhood one night, and was shocked when he located her.

NEWS: Vox Lifts Off and You’ll Love It

News/Social Network/Blogging/TechCrunch/Marshall Kurtpatrick
Found on: techcrunch.com

Six Apart announced last night the launch of its newest social networking site, Vox (Vox announcement here). The company that owns LiveJournal, Moveable Type and Typepad has done a lot of things right with this new site. The benefits of having waited for consumer desire to mature before launching a social networking site are clear in Vox.

The service developed a reputation among some people during its beta period as a social network for artsy San Francisco elitists - but everyone needs a beta testing group and that’s a pretty good one to have. Vox was originally known as Comet and we first wrote about it here.

NEWS: TBS, MySpace host online comedy contest

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

Aspiring comedians can strut their best jokes on the Internet by entering a video contest sponsored by MySpace and U.S. cable television network TBS.

The 'Stand Up of Sir Down Comedy Challenge' allows comics to submit clips of their act through the myspace.com Web site.

TBS said Wednesday the top five contestants, as voted by MySpace users, will appear on a one-hour TBS special with host George Lopez Nov. 17.

JON BRION...MEANINGLESS

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

I remember the first time I saw Jon Brion perform at Largo (a small club in L.A.), the room was packed with music aficionados all waiting patiently for the virtuoso. I was on my second gin and tonic when out of the corner of my eye he appeared. He walked up to the stage with a what seemed to be a glass of beer (black & tan) in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other -- oh, this is going to be good.

Jon Brion's blurbs:

Music producer/composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist... it's safe to say that Jon Brion excels at whichever musical hat he choses to wear. Remarkably self-taught in music, Jon has collaborated with and/or produced albums for Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, David Byrne, the Eels, Sean Lennon.

NEWS: Boost Pushes Mobile Social Networking

News/Social Networks/Mobile/Brian Morrissey
Found on: adweek.com

The social networking craze is coming to cell phones.

Boost Mobile is hoping to increase membership in its fledgling cell phone-based social network, called Hookt, with a customized car contest directed at teens and young adults.

The mobile operator has teamed with West Coast Customs, a car customization chain that's developed the MTV series Pimp My Ride. Registrants for the social networking service, which costs 50 cents a day, will be entered into a sweepstakes to win a customized Dodge Charger from West Coast Customs.

Hookt's existing 300,000 customers will also be given an opportunity to enter the contest via an ad that will run on the mobile network's welcome screen. It will promote the contest via radio spots and online ads in places like MySpace.

A Second Life to Live

Webculture/Social Networks/Second Life/NPR
Found on: npr.org

Over the last few years, many people's real lives have begun to spill over more and more into their online lives, and the population of virtual worlds is booming. Six and a half million users quest for powers and treasures in the online game site World of Warcraft, and hundreds of thousands live at least part of the time in an online world called Second Life.

For those of you immersed in "first lives," a virtual world is an interactive Internet environment which can be accessed by multiple users. Not all of these worlds are games. In Second Life, some people have businesses that generate thousands of dollars in real money, some socialize, and some attend events that blur the line with the real world.

NEWS: YouTube's no friend to copyright violators

News/Social Networks/YouTube/Greg Sandoval
Found on: cnet.com

People posting copyright material on YouTube shouldn't be surprised if the company makes no effort to protect them in a copyright battle.

The video-sharing site may hand over information on those who post video clips of movies and TV shows if they're accused of copyright infringement, something perhaps not well known by those who do so.

Robert Tur, a Los Angeles-based journalist who recorded scenes of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, filed suit against YouTube in July after seeing numerous clips of his video on the site. In a letter to Tur, YouTube attorneys said he should instead go after the person who posted the video, according to Tur's attorney, Francis Pizzulli.

"Mr. Tur was advised that...he could file a lawsuit against the YouTube user," Pizzulli said. "Mr. Tur was informed that it was YouTube policy to provide copyright owners with user identification information (after receiving a valid subpoena)."

GOOD KARMA, BAD KARMA, PUNKROCK KARMA

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

Watching last week's "Project Runway" finale, I thought for sure that they were going to rob Jeffery Sebelia from showing at Olympus Fashion Week, all because of some hubbub another contestant started, but justice was served and not only did Jeffery Sebelia show at Olympus but he won the 3rd season of Bravo's runaway hit show.

NEWS: Nielsen To Provide Video Game Rating Service

News/Media/Youth Trends/Advertising/Nielsen
Found on: nielsenmedia.com

Drawing on its extensive resources in media audience measurement, Nielsen Media Research today announced that it is launching GamePlay Metrics, a new rating service for video games. The all-electronic ratings service will establish new metrics for the buying and selling of advertising in video games, while also tracking the activities of gamers across other media platforms, such as TV and the Internet.

GamePlay Metrics will be the first offering from the newly created Nielsen Wireless and Interactive Services division. The new data will enable the video game industry to develop an advertising business model to offset the steep development costs of new titles for next-generation consoles. In addition, the metrics will give advertisers a greater level of precision for targeting the digital consumer.

Nielsen's new measurement service will provide advertisers, agencies, hardware manufacturers and game developers with independent, high-quality, quantitative demographic data for negotiating the buying and selling of in-game and around-game advertising.

NEWS: Turning social network traffic into dollars

News/Social Networks/Myspace/Media/Stefanie Olsen
Found on: cnet.com

The most popular social networks haven't had trouble attracting millions of members, but the advertising dollars have typically been more elusive.

Sites like MySpace and Facebook have made progress with some advertisers by the sheer magnitude of their traffic and audience. But it's a work in progress, given advertisers' reluctance to associate their brands with sometimes-inappropriate user material.

New technologies are on the horizon now to help social networks appeal to these discerning advertisers.

Hotsoup.com, Social Networking For “Opinion Drivers,” Opens Tomorrow

News/Social Networks/Website/Jimmy Guterman
Found 0n: paidcontent.org

Hotsoup.com a social networking site for debating political issues will be served up tomorrow and we got an early look. In a press call, founder Allie Savarino said the site was intended to serve the millions of influencers in the U.S. who are looking for a voice. Founder Chip Smith chimed in that there are 30 million such opinion drivers. The various founders—there are 10 in all—said this is all about the community and social networking a lot, but they also rolled out video clips from some of the celebrities who they say will be contributing to the site, folks such as Lance Armstrong, Jack Valenti, and that longtime political analyst Randy Jackson. (If you want to know what’s on Mary Matalin’s iPod, Hotsoup is certainly is the place to go.)

NEWS: JibJab Creates Short-Form Comedy Series

News/Social Networking/JibJab/Video/Mike Shields
Found on: mediaweek.com

JibJab, the viral video company perhaps most famous for its popular animated clip lampooning the 2004 presidential campaign, has launched a short-form sketch comedy series geared for the Web and mobile devices.

The new show, The Great Sketch Experiment, goes live Today on both JibJab.com and VCast, Verizon's mobile video platform. The show's two to four minute clips features six JibJab-recruited sketch comedy troupes performing original scenes, each using the same set. The clips have been directed by John Landis, of Animal House and Blues Brothers fame.

From now through Nov. 16, viewers will vote on which of the six sketches is the best, with the winning troupe receiving a $10,000 development deal with JibJab.

Stylehive's HOT New Features and Launch Party

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

The busy bees at the Stylehive were extra busy last week, launching two new features in conjunction with the official launch of the site.

I especially like the new "FOLLOWS" feature that allows you to stay on top of what your favorite Hivers are bookmarking (read blurb below for more details.).

I've been a big fan of the site from day one and now with the addition of these new features, I have found myself even more immersed in what I think is the ultimate interactive "window shopping" web portal for what's hot, right now -- congrats to all the bees at the Stylehive for a great launch and party!

Emily Chang’s Flickr stream and blog post

Blurb from the Stylehive Blog post:

Follow the Leaders and Mix Your Own Magazine in the Hive!

The Stylehive is releasing two new features this week, “follows” and “magazine feed”.

To see the new features, go to your My Hive page and click on the tabs labeled “follows” and “magazine”.

With the new “follows” features you can easily stay on top of Hive members bookmark recommendations, wishlists and the people they follow for inspiration. The new “follows” features allows you to:

• Get a daily or weekly email update on the people your follow in the Hive
• See who is following you
• See who is submitting the hottest recommendations
• See who has been posting recently in the Hive
• Discover new people to follow by checking out whom others follow

In addition, the Hive is releasing the first part of our “mix your own magazine” feature set. The part we are releasing today is a “magazine” RSS feed which is a feed made up of all the bookmark recommendations of all the people you “follow” in the hive.

NEWS: Meta video search engine PureVideo Search launches

News/Web Culture/Videos/Website/Amber Maitland
Found on: pocket-lint.co.uk



PureVideo Networks has launched a meta search engine for videos, called, unsurprisingly, PureVideo Search.

It claims to combine crawl-based search with feed-based search to return the most relevant results from across the web. PureVideo Search also displays 35 charts from various top video sharing sites, including MySpace, YouTube, AOL Music, Fox Sports, CNN, and BusinessWeek.

PureVideo Networks is the operator of StupidVideos.com, and GrindTV.com.

NEWS: What MTV says about Google-YouTube marriage

News/Youth Trends/Videos/MTV/Elinor Mills
Found on: cnet.com

Google began distributing clips from MTV Networks over its AdSense advertising network in August, in what Jennifer Feikin, Google's director of video and multimedia search partnerships, said at the time was the first, but not the last, syndication deal of its kind.

"It's an amped-up form of AdSense," Feikin said. "We really have high hopes for this test, and we will look to roll the model out to other content providers."

While the search giant is staying mum about how exactly it plans to make money off the massive index of videos it's acquiring with YouTube, Google watchers are taking a hard look at the video projects Google has already tackled to gain insight into its plans. At stake, some argue, is the future of online video. If Google, with its wildly successful ad network, can find a way to "monetize" YouTube's viewership, it will point the way for other big Net video companies.

NEWS: Howard Stern reaches out to new Internet audience

News/Web Culture/Sirus/Steve Gorman
Found on: reuters.com



Ten months after leaving the commercial airwaves for subscription-based Sirius Satellite Radio, shock jock Howard Stern is out to attract a broad new online audience with his first-ever free Internet broadcast.

Stern's four-hour-plus program will be made available live online at no charge for two days, October 25 and 26, to promote an Internet radio service Sirius is launching this week. A formal announcement was planned for Monday morning.

The new service offers more than 75 channels of CD-quality programming over the Internet -- without the need to buy a Sirius satellite receiver -- for a monthly subscription fee of $12.95, the company said in a press release.

NEWS: GrindTV.com Unveils Its Fresh New Design

News/Web Culture/Youth Trends/Website
Found on: home.businesswire.com



GrindTV.com (www.grindtv.com), the most comprehensive destination for extreme and action sports videos, today launched a brand new version of its popular website. The new Flash based GrindTV.com has an updated design that includes a sleek new color scheme and distinct channels for each sports category, enabling better navigation and community interaction.

Every channel - Surf, Skate, Snow, Moto, Bike, Air, Wind, and Wake - has its own dedicated videos, photo galleries, industry news, and profiles, and all differ in appearance to echo each sport’s unique lifestyle. The separate channels allow members to focus on the sports content which they are most passionate about and connect with other like-minded fans.

Every week on the homepage and every day on each channel, GrindTV.com features new profiles, events, albums, athletes, and GrindTV original programming. Established features such as upload, search, and rate are also available to members on the new version, and users can share videos via e-mail, instant message or by using an embeddable player to post clips to their social networking or blog pages.

“Everyone at GrindTV surfs, skates, wakeboards, or snowboards. We’ve taken our passions and experiences and designed our dream action sports destination,” said Curtis Beck, General Manager of GrindTV.com. "Having just exceeded one million unique users a month, and the addition of over one thousand videos and 25,000 photographs, gives us the confidence to take our site to the next level.”

In just under a year, GrindTV.com has established an audience of more than one million die-hard action sports fans a month, major partnerships with the likes of AOL Winamp, MSN, TagWorld, Windows Mobile, and Helio, as well as chief advertisers, Sony PlayStation and Nissan. Likewise, the website has attracted a growing list of content submissions from action sports companies like Body Glove, Billabong, and Studio 411, interested in distributing branded videos to GrindTV’s highly targeted audience.

NEWS: Google acts to ease News Corp concerns

News/Social Network/Myspace/Google/Aline van Duyn
Found on: ft.com

Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt on Wednesday met senior News Corp executives to smooth over any concerns raised by the search giant’s acquisition of YouTube and ensure the co-operation of MySpace in Google’s effort to make money from user-generated video.

Mr Schmidt flew to Los Angeles for a meeting scheduled to include News Corp’s top executives, Rupert Murdoch and Peter Chernin, the first since Google bought YouTube for $1.65bn on Monday

The decision to fly to Los Angeles reflects the importance that Google attaches to its News Corp and MySpace relationship.

In August, the two companies teamed up, with Google agreeing to pay the fast-growing social networking site $900m in a multi-year search and advertising deal.

NEWS: Social network members saying bye-bye to traditional media

News/Social Networks/Myspace/Media
Found on: internetretailer.com

Members of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook increasingly are turning away from traditional media and instead looking to peers for product information and recommendations, according to new research from Compete Inc., a market research firm that specializes in how consumers interact with brands online.

This change provides marketers with a new opportunity to reach consumers by launching initiatives that interweave e-commerce and social networks, the research firm says.

Shelfari: MySpace for Books?

Social Networks/Website/Shelfari/Alice Hill
Found on: realtechnews.com



Call me jaded, but books and MySpace don’t quite go together for me as much as music and TV. New startup Shelfari is hoping you’ll MySpace it up by sharing your shelf of favorite books and leaving notes for pals on readings you have enjoyed.

We Say: Great concept (despite the mandatory MySpace meets…. premise) but Amazon does book recommendations the best, and MySpace seemingly does the rest. The graphics are much clearner than both services though. Who says you can’t judge a shelf by its cover?

Mark Williamson says:

Alice,

Thank you for taking the time to review Shelfari today. Full disclosure: I am one of the co-founder of the site.

Despite some of the press we got today we don’t think of Shelfari as a “Social Networking Site”, since the primary purpose of a social networking site is connect users with other users. We are a “social media site” which means we focus on connecting people to media (books in our case).

NEWS: Burger King Tunes in DiddyTV

News/Cross Promotion/YouTube/Kathleen Sampey
Found on: adweek.com

NEW YORK Music and fashion mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs has formed an alliance with Burger King to create a co-branded channel on YouTube called DiddyTV, the company said.

The channel, which went live on Saturday, features music tracks from Combs' new Bad Boy/Atlantic Records CD "Press Play," which goes on sale Oct. 17. Artists appearing on the collection include Jamie Foxx, Kanye West and Mary J. Blige. Fans will also have access through the channel to video clips and other original content. Combs will appear in an upcoming Burger King advertising campaign in support of the new channel.

VIDEO: Most popular girl on Myspace

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

Tila Tequila's (the most popular girl on Myspace) interview on MSNBC

Tags tila tequila

Youtube Stats (as of this post):

Views: 26,005

Comments: 43

Favorited: 65 times

Some of my favorite comments:

mikeabundo

The prototype for a social media pinup girl.

dineorizzo

"I dont sleep at all.." oh.. she is a tweaker

WEB CULTURE: More Griefing Attacks - I give up!!

Web Culture/Social Network/Second Life/Ed Baron
Found on: edbaron.blogspot.com

That's right, I've been on for the past 3 or so griefing attacks, yes I have pictures, no i won't post them. Why? well it's to much, plain and simple I can't keep up with it and with an average of 2 attacks a day it's just getting out of hand. I will prob. post the more prominant attacks here to inform the public but I have 20 or so pics from the most recent attack and it's the same as the rest.

NEWS: Second Life Adding Web to User Profiles

News/Social Network/Second Life/Mark Wallace
Found on: 3pointd.com

Christian of the Electric Sheep Company sends news that Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, will soon allow users to display Web pages in their in-world profiles. According to this blog post from one Linden developer, a new tab will soon be added to users’ profiles (as seen above) that will load from a URL field. “This feature should make it out sometime after this coming release, and to a public preview before then,” according to the post.

While it’s not Web on a prim (a feature that would allow multiple users to view the same Web page displayed on an object in the world itself), it would allow people to more easily perform Web-based functions from within Second Life. Cookies and password fields may not be supported (either at first or at all), so browsing will be limited in power, but one problem with SL at the moment is the task of disseminating information. Being able to load your profile with information is one kluge for this.

NEWS: Google Has Acquired YouTube

News/Social Networks/Video/Michael Arrington
Found on: Techcrunch.com

Moments ago the deal was confirmed. In their largest acquisition to date, Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in an all stock transaction. Both companies have approved the deal, which should officially close in the fourth quarter. YouTube’s 65 employees will remain with the company at YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters.

Details are also emerging that Yahoo was in the bidding war until very close to the end.

Google is hosting a conference call and webcast to discuss the deal. It is just starting now. You can hear it live at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html. If you miss it live, a replay of the call will be available until midnight Monday, October 16 at 888-203-1112 domestically and 719-457-0820 internationally.

NEWS: Is ‘Snakes On A Plane’ Movie Campaign Questionable?

News/Social Networks/Webculture/Marketing/Angelique Van Engelen
Found on: bizreport.com



FastCompany blog contributor Lynne Johnson is no stranger to marketing. Herself an online marketing specialist, she professes to have been somewhat overly surprised at New Line Cinema’s way of telling her about the premiere of Snakes on A Plane.

The company teamed up with the Social Networking site TagWorld and the phone company VariTalk, which specialises in cell phone viral marketing. The creative marketing product that subsequently hit the road allows people to create cell phone messages using Samuel L. Jackson’s voice to alert each other to the movie.

NEWS: MindShare Finds Many Kids Watch TV Via Web

News/Social Networks/Yout Trends/Videos/Tom Siebert
Found on: mediapost.com

TEENS AND TWEENS ARE INCREASINGLY watching television on the Internet, according to a study released yesterday from MindShare Online Research group. The survey explored how kids and teens use digital media and technology and the habits of young people related to the Internet, iPods and cell phones.

In a survey of 800 kids between the ages of 8 and 17 and split evenly between the sexes, one-third of respondents ages 12-17 and one-fourth of those ages 8-12 said they view television programming on the Internet. About 12 percent also said they watch programming on their video game systems, with single-digit levels of respondents watching on their cell phone or iPod or other MP3 player.

NEWS: Wal-Mart's MySpace Experiment Ends

News/Social Networks/Wal-Mart/Rachel Rosmarin
Found on: forbes.com

Just ten weeks after launching its own version of MySpace, Wal-Mart shut down “The Hub."

In place of the site, where teens were formerly encouraged to upload photos and videos and create shopping lists of their most desired Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) wares, is a redirect to Walmart.com and a note that reads, “Sorry, but the School Your Way promotion has ended.”

Related Links:

Back in July Wal-Mart launched a MySpace-ish website for the totally uncool teenager at its "School Your Way" website AKA "The Hub".

NEWS: MTV and Microsoft join for youth technology research

News/Social Networks/Yout Trends/MTV/Jennifer Whitehead
Found on: brandrepublic.com

MTV and Microsoft are embarking on a research project to find out the social impact of technology on the world's youth.

Young people in China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the US and the UK will be asked about how digital media have an impact on their lives.

The new research will look at the impact of viral video, instant messaging, email, social networks, mobile phones and online gaming.

The idea is to expand the research outside understanding the habits of early adopters or focusing too much on the technology itself.

It hopes to shed light on issues such as how today's youth differ from their predecessors; whether boys and girls use technology differently and why; and the role of entertainment media and brands in the future.

NEWS: Fox To Put TV Shows on MySpace, Affiliates

News/Social Networks/Fox/Myspace/Geoff Duncan
Found on: news.digitaltrends.com

News Corp. plans to offer full versions of selected Fox television shows via MySpace and the Web sites of local Fox affiliate stations after the episodes are first broadcast.

News Corp. today announced a new digital video service dubbed Fox on Demand, which will make full episodes of select Fox television programming available via Fox's hot online property MySpace as well as the Web sites of two dozen local Fox affiliate stations after the shows are first broadcast. Shows will be available in their entirety on an ad-supported basis; programming to be made available via the sites includes Fox shows Bones, Prison Break, Standoff, Vanished, Talk Show with Spike Feresten, Til Death, The Loop, and Justice. Other shows may appear throughout October and November.

NEWS: Study Shows Video Gaming is Increasingly a Social Experience

News/Social Networks/Webculture/Gamers
Found on: biz.yahoo.com

Nielsen Entertainment today released its third annual Active Gamer Benchmark Study, which shows that the social elements of video games are becoming an increasingly important part of the overall gaming experience. The research found that among the roughly 117 million Active Gamers in the U.S. in 2006, more than half (56%) play games online, and that 64% of all online gamers are women.

Moreover, while gaming has conventionally been thought of as a solitary experience, the new study reveals that Active Gamers spend upwards of 5 hours a week playing games socially, led by teenagers who are socially involved in gaming about 7 hours per week.

VIDEO: METAL BY NUMBERS

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

Comedian/Actor Brian Posehn recently completed work on his first music video.

Tags Brian Posehn Relapse Records



Youtube Stats (as of this post):

Views: 382,730

Comments: 1752

Favorited: 3562 times

Some of my favorite comments:

SATANBOT3000

Brian Posehn is a genius

Burningthepriest312

ARE YOU ALMOST!! READY*Voice cracks* DAMNIT I MISSED IT.XD Good Song. Love the word Gaytarded =)

pringlewheel

i like the music but that guy SUXXXX!!!!

The person who wrote this is a retard

Found on: Popyourit.com
Patton Oswalt Mitch Hedberg Jim Gaffigan David Cross Dane Cook Anthrax White Zombie

Online Video Not a Priority

News/Webculture/Video/Steve McClellan
Found on: adweek.com

NEW YORK While most consumers now consider the personal computer to be their "must have" electronic communications device—TV is a distant second—watching video on it is not a primary task.

According to research from the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, watching online video ranks just seventh among users' primary PC activities.

That's one finding of the study, released this week, which examines how consumers view video on devices such as PCs, iPods and mobile phones compared to how they watch traditional television.

The study also indicated that ads are not interchangeable from one video platform to the next. The smaller the screen, the less tolerant viewers are of lengthy commercials.

News: MySpace offering voter 'tools'

News/Social Networks/Webculture/Myspace
Found on: newsday.com

The youth-heavy online hangout MySpace.com is launching a voter-registration drive to instruct its members in civics.

In partnership with the nonpartisan group Declare Yourself, MySpace is running ads on its highly trafficked Web site and giving members tools such as a "I Registered to Vote on MySpace" badge to place on their personal profile pages.

"Young people in this country ... are really engaged in what's happening in their community and want to make a difference," said Jeff Berman, MySpace's senior vice president for public affairs."

"The key is to make it easy for them to get engaged. By putting these tools on MySpace and putting it in front of their eyes, you make it far more likely they will use them."