MySpace Music will introduce the masses to free legal music online, but littler sites, like Imeem, Last.fm and SpiralFrog, have been offering the same service for ages
Every day, millions of people use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to stay in touch with friends, make business contacts and procrastinate at work.
Starting today, the new MySpace Music service will offer its members more than 2 million tunes from the catalogs of four major music labels -- for free.
Anytime you tinker with something that millions of people use daily, you're going to upset some folks. Remember those redesigned $20 bills a decade ago -- the ones people said looked like Monopoly money?
The Wall Street Journal is borrowing elements from popular Internet hangouts like Facebook as it seeks to boost usage
Myspace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have had an uneasy relationship with the music industry. Nearly every music act has a MySpace page; some of them, like British pop diva Lily Allen and American psychedelic-funk purveyor Gnarls Barkley, have used the social network to become stars. But two years ago Universal Music Group discovered unauthorized songs from U2 and Jay-Z on MySpace and sued the site in federal court.
When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off.
It was only a matter of time -- a growing litter of online communities for cats and dogs are giving their owners a new way to show off their loved ones
Randy Turner knows there's a huge gap in age and technology between him and his adolescent students.
It's been the talk of the music industry for months. Perhaps as soon as September, MySpace, the huge social networking site with 120 million users, will unveil an ad-supported music service with free songs from three of the four major record labels: Universal, Sony and Warner Music. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe has promised it will launch "a new chapter in the story of modern music."
MySpace Music will introduce the masses to free legal music online, but littler sites, like Imeem, Last.fm and SpiralFrog, have been offering the same service for ages
Every day, millions of people use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to stay in touch with friends, make business contacts and procrastinate at work.
Starting today, the new MySpace Music service will offer its members more than 2 million tunes from the catalogs of four major music labels -- for free.
Anytime you tinker with something that millions of people use daily, you're going to upset some folks. Remember those redesigned $20 bills a decade ago -- the ones people said looked like Monopoly money?
The Wall Street Journal is borrowing elements from popular Internet hangouts like Facebook as it seeks to boost usage
Myspace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have had an uneasy relationship with the music industry. Nearly every music act has a MySpace page; some of them, like British pop diva Lily Allen and American psychedelic-funk purveyor Gnarls Barkley, have used the social network to become stars. But two years ago Universal Music Group discovered unauthorized songs from U2 and Jay-Z on MySpace and sued the site in federal court.
When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off.
It was only a matter of time -- a growing litter of online communities for cats and dogs are giving their owners a new way to show off their loved ones
Randy Turner knows there's a huge gap in age and technology between him and his adolescent students.
It's been the talk of the music industry for months. Perhaps as soon as September, MySpace, the huge social networking site with 120 million users, will unveil an ad-supported music service with free songs from three of the four major record labels: Universal, Sony and Warner Music. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe has promised it will launch "a new chapter in the story of modern music."
A crossbreed between MySpace and YouTube, Doggyspace allows dog owners from all over the world to come together, create profiles, and share photos and videos of their pups
The popular online hangout Facebook is sporting a new look to reflect changes in how its members communicate with each other and how they share photos and updates about their lives
When eMusic launched 10 years ago, the online music subscription service faced some long odds. It refused to protect songs from illegal copying, which ruled out major label acts like Britney Spears.
The online hangout Facebook is getting more serious about grammar. No more should users see jarringly incorrect declarations such as "Debbie changed their profile picture"
Facebook Inc.'s quest to lure more advertisers to its popular online hangout is getting an assist from Visa Inc.'s marketing machine
Matt Cohler, one of the key members of Facebook's original management team, is taking a job at a venture capital firm
MySpace and Facebook only account for half of all visits to social-network sites. What about the 4,000 other sites?
Late last year Mark Zuckerberg, the 24-year-old CEO of social-networking phenomenon Facebook, got onstage before a Madison Avenue crowd and declared that he was leading a once-in-a-century media revolution. Long story short: The revolution hasn't panned out. Six months later, advertisers could be forgiven for mistaking Facebook for a smaller MySpace or a much larger Friendster (remember them?). And far from changing media as we know it, the virtual home of Superpokes, Funwalls, and other such time wasters is showing cracks in its foundation.
When Microsoft walked away from its blockbuster bid for Yahoo, the media sought desperately to keep the news coming even when there wasn't much left to say. That seems to be how The Wall Street Journal came up with the notion that Microsoft had approached Facebook about an acquisition. It's not true.
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, will add more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies
First it was instant messaging during office hours that gave us the thrill of passing notes in class. Then it was ogling ourselves on Web cams, ranting our minds on blogs, uploading our baby photos on Flickr and poking each other on Facebook. These days, as corporate records show, we choose to spend our lunch breaks watching YouTube, if not chatting over Skype.
Facebook, the 71-million-member social network, has attracted lots of adults during the last year as it became a global technology cause celebre. But I'm hearing more and more of these grown-up newbies questioning whether the service is really worth their time. Some find it more annoying than useful, and can't really figure out any benefit.
Facebook fans are getting a new toy this week. With the launch of Facebook Chat, users will be able to communicate in real time with friends on the site.
MySpace, the world's largest social networking site, is invading Apple's turf with an online music store backed by three record labels.
Remember where electronic mail was 15 years ago? If you didn't already have an e-mail address, you probably knew someone who did. And if you were sending and receiving e-mail, you'd probably discovered that it could be a game-changing business tool.
It's already hooked America's youth, and now Facebook is set on winning the hearts of two potentially lucrative demographics: Adults and the rest of the world.
Dear FSB: Is it wise for a small business to have a corporate homepage on Facebook? One of our employees mentioned it. Some say it's good marketing; others say it's not. What are the pros and cons of doing it?
In three days, Ashley Alexandra Dupre went from being an unknown 22-year-old aspiring musician to the fifth most-searched subject on Google because of her alleged sexual encounters with New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
Ever since Microsoft announced its surprise bid for Yahoo last month, the heat has been on Time Warner to figure out its next move for AOL, the former Web juggernaut that could be left out in the cold if its two main rivals merge.
AOL will pay $850 million to acquire global social networking site Bebo.com in an all-cash deal announced Thursday.
MySpace galvanizes protestors to attend mass demonstrations; 1.8 million Britons sign an online petition, leading to widespread press coverage and government embarrassment; and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting it out for the Democratic nomination on Facebook.
I've never met Pete Carroll. As far as I know, we've only been in the same room once -- at a crowded press conference at the Beverly Hilton the day before Carroll's USC team faced Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl. But this much I know about the man.
Now it's Google's turn to be hounded by an upstart. Facebook, the popular social networking site, has lured top Google executive Sheryl Sandberg to serve as its chief operating officer.
Online social networking site MySpace has been talking with major record labels in an effort to allow users to listen to copyrighted music for free on the Web site, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Rock the Vote uses music and popular culture to get young people involved in politics, so it's probably no surprise that the group is using Facebook to reach plugged-in voters.
News Corp. is not considering a bid for Internet giant Yahoo, said CEO Rupert Murdoch during an earnings call with analysts Monday.
The social networking site lost out to MySpace and Facebook in the U.S., but it's found a new life across the Pacific
Popular social networking site Facebook has been asked to remove the Scrabulous game from its Web site by the makers of Scrabble, agencies have reported.
MySpace has long been under fire by parents and politicians alike for exposing children to online sexual predators. Now, the industry's largest teen social networking site is calling on the industry to make kids safer.
For years, I've been befuddled by LinkedIn. I knew it was supposed to be the social network for work, but to me it was like war. "What is it good for?" I asked myself repeatedly, even as I occasionally poked around and accepted requests to link with people. I belonged to it, but I really didn't know why.
In the space of six months, startup social networking music site imeem has soared to the top of the charts.
"The press rarely grants an autumn reprise for those it loved in the spring," once wrote the great New York Times columnist Russell Baker. How true in the case of Internet-darling-turned-reviled-evildoer Facebook.
Social networks like Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com might seem a little intimidating when you first try them. But if you build a profile and start connecting with people, you'll get in the swing.
Let's try an experiment. Like most people these days, you've probably spent too much time in front of your computer today. So, quick -- name three brands you saw in online display ads within the past 24 hours.
With social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace now in the digital dating mix, there are plenty of new chances to meet the right -- and wrong -- people online.
Don't compare Facebook's new ad system to anything you've seen on Google, television, or any other advertising medium you can think of.
An analysis of web-surfing data suggests that Gen Y-ers would rather spend their time with Facebook than with sex
Meet the "digital natives." They are the teens and tweens who flock to MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites.
Facebook Inc. is looking to hedge funds and private equity investors for an additional $260 million in investments on top of the $240 million in funding it's already receiving from Microsoft, according to The Wall Street Journal.
With its $240 million equity investment announced Wednesday, along with a commitment to expand its pre-existing relationship as exclusive third-party representative for advertising on Facebook, Microsoft has cemented its connection to the company Silicon Valley is obsessed with.
Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday that it is investing $240 million for a minority 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, a price that values the social networking site at $15 billion.
With Facebook slowly creeping up on MySpace, is there room for two social networking sites?
The popular social networking Web site Facebook says it is taking new steps to protect its users from online predators.
Google is the elephant in nearly every corner of the Internet, from search and advertising to web-based e-mail, online mapping, and home-brewed video. With its share price setting new highs this fall, its market cap ($188 billion) is now large enough to buy the New York Times, the Washington Post, Gannett, and Time Warner - twice. Or Facebook many, many times over.
Last Thursday afternoon before the most hyped class at Stanford University was about to start, instructor B.J. Fogg and his four teaching assistants attempted to solve this engineering problem. How do you cram 100 students into a classroom that only seats 56? Arrange chairs at long tables near the fire exits.
I'm one of those early-adopter types, for better or for worse. I bought an IBM PC the week it went on sale in August 1981, ordered my first CD online a few years after that, and by the early 1990s was pestering everyone I knew to get an MCI Mail account. iMac, iTunes, iPod - I was right there, adopting early and often. I also was a proud and enthusiastic user of a Newton MessagePad for about a week.
A seemingly innocuous change is coming to Facebook that could pose a threat to business networking site LinkedIn: the ability to separate your work "friends" from your social ones.
Figuring out how to sort through personal profile pages to target ads has become a top priority for both MySpace and Facebook. But in the new California gold rush to turn valuable information that people reveal about themselves into advertising dollars, lesser-known social networking sites are getting left behind.
Been poked by anyone recently? Or maybe you've been turned into a zombie, or perhaps you've added Scrabulous to your applications?
Not a week goes by, it seems, that someone from my past doesn't invite me to join the ranks on the professional networking site LinkedIn. I get pinged by old girlfriends, former classmates and onetime colleagues. I've never felt so wanted.
For all of Facebook's recent successes, MySpace continues to thrive. That's the theme of my recent big Fortune story on the MySpace/Facebook battle, "As Facebook takes off, MySpace strikes back." Meanwhile, innumerable permutations of the seductive social networking model continue to arise, because this is increasingly the kind of Internet that users are showing, with their behavior, that they want.
The creative minds behind such TV shows as "Thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life" are launching a Web-based show, hoping to find the artistic freedom online that they say is lacking on broadcast networks.
Consider the Web site LinkedIn a late entry into the already crowded 2008 presidential race.
MySpace is considering lifting a ban on commerce on the popular social networking site as a way to increase its own profits, according to a published report.
It's 2020. You get home from work, kick off your shoes and relax -- on your very own tropical island. That night, your friends teleport over with other glamorous guests, all nipped, tucked and primped to perfection, for a hedonistic cocktail party at your five-star beach house, decked out in expensively understated chrome, crystal and fine Italian furniture.
Social networking Web sites are increasingly juicy targets for computer hackers, who are demonstrating a pair of vulnerabilities they claim expose sensitive personal information
Popular Internet social network MySpace said Tuesday it detected and deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders on its service, more than four times the figure it had initially reported.
Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, said Tuesday it would buy U.S.-based photo-sharing social networking site Twango, but did not disclose the price.
If you have a new product or service and want to hold a launch party, Simon Stevens is your man. He'll take care of the logistics. He'll provide a DJ and live musicians. He'll take care of the security, too, discouraging obnoxious types from ruining the event.
In our second annual ranking, Business 2.0 has compiled an unabashedly subjective list of people, products, trends, and ideas that are transforming the world of business.
Yahoo!, the No. 2 search firm that has struggled in its battle with Google, said Monday that Terry Semel was out as chief executive officer, to be succeeded by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.
With LibraryThing, a book club for the digital age
For some, it's chocolate. For others, it's coffee or cigarettes. But as this Easter approaches, some young and devout Christians are anxious to return to what they gave up for Lent: Internet sites Facebook and MySpace.
MySpace continued its push toward becoming a key Web video destination by announcing a partnership to debut a new original show hours before it appears on any other site.
Photobucket is the most important site on the Internet that hardly anybody understands. Unpretentiously, it has built an essential service that didn't need to shout out for attention, the way MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, or other related sites have. Yet it's built an audience of 38 million members, a figure now growing more than 80,000 per day. That's up from just 50,000 members at the end of 2003.
Real estate deals may be slowing in the real world, but in the three-dimensional online one of Second Life the market remains hot. Now Coldwell Banker, one of the nation's largest real estate brokerage firms, is entering Second Life, aiming to help bring order to the chaotic world of virtual real estate.
When News Corp. bought Intermix Media, the parent of social networking site MySpace, in 2005 for $580 million, some wondered if Rupert Murdoch had lost his mind.
It's getting crowded on the Web 2.0 frontier, but there are still some startups that truly stand out. Business 2.0 Magazine identifies the ones most likely to strike gold in 2007.
1 NETWORKED INVESTOR
At a Starbucks in downtown Mountain View, Calif., two 30-something men anxiously await the arrival of Reid Hoffman, one of Silicon Valley's most sought-after angel investors. It's 4:30 on a Sunday ...
Last November in Beijing, IBM gathered 2,000 employees, with 5,000 more watching on the web, to unveil a series of global initiatives on digital storage, branchless banking, and the like. During th...
In a wide-ranging speech Thursday morning, News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch discussed plans for a new cable business channel, the growth opportunities for social networking site MySpace, the 2008 presidential race and why he liked "Borat" so much.
LinkedIn, a company that runs a popular online service that allows people to share business contact information, announced Monday that it has raised $12.8 million from two prominent venture capital firms.
There's been plenty of hubbub about Second Life and the limitless possibilities offered in a virtual reality where a banker can become a virtual filmmaker, a housewife can be a virtual business tycoon and 46-year-old man can be a virtual 23-year-old vixen. The focus has been on people making real money in an online virtual world, but for those who have heard of eBay, the idea that everyday people can make money on the Internet isn't so revolutionary.
Last November in Beijing, IBM gathered 2,000 employees, with 5,000 more watching on the web, to unveil a series of global initiatives on digital storage, branchless banking, and the like. During the presentation, CEO Sam Palmisano walked up to an onstage PC, logged onto the online three-dimensional virtual world called Second Life, and took command of the cartoon-like "avatar" that represents him there.
Four families have sued the popular social-networking site MySpace and its owner, News Corp., after their teenage daughters were solicited online and sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.
You've bought the odd thing on eBay, watched the Dove Beauty model get a quick fire makeover on YouTube and the verb "to Google" is part of your everyday speech -- but how do you take your Internet usage to the next level and become a fully-fledged member of the Web 2.0 digerati?
The president and chief operating officer of News Corp., the parent company of top social networking site MySpace as well as traditional media properties such as the Fox television network and movie studio, told investors that News Corp. plans to invest more heavily in MySpace this year but will be careful to not make changes that could alienate the site's users.
Aiming to take advantage of its already-impressive momentum, San Francisco's Linden Lab, developer of the Second Life virtual online world, will announce Monday that it is taking the first major step toward opening up its software for the contributions of any interested programmer.
Dot-com mania is back...kind of.
If you've ever tried to look for a photo of a person using Google, Yahoo or another popular search engine, you know that it can be a frustrating, and far from perfect, experience.
Reid Hoffman's angel investment in Flickr, now owned by Yahoo, is an example of how deals get made via LinkedIn connections.
We asked the brightest minds in business how they do what they do � and how you can cash in on their advice in the coming year.
You've probably never heard of Kevin Michael, a 22-year-old singer who has a soul-drenched falsetto and performs with an acoustic guitarist who makes beat-box sounds with his voice. Yet when he per...
We asked 50 of the brightest minds in business how they do what they do - and how you can cash in on their advice in the year ahead.
General Motors' Pontiac division is spending thousands of dollars to create a make-believe dealership that will sell make-believe cars for as little as a few dollars a piece.
The classroom of the future isn't on a college campus. It's in the virtual world of "Second Life."
Second Life, the three-dimensional virtual world, has been getting tons of press lately. In the software, which anyone can download for free, you travel around as an "avatar" representing yourself (with a different name), through a huge range of spaces - beautiful natural environments, shopping malls, museums, clubs, homes, apartments and cities. So far, it's signed up 1.3 million members.
You've bought the odd thing on eBay, watched the Dove Beauty model get a quick fire makeover on YouTube and the verb "to Google" is part of your everyday speech -- but how do you take your Internet usage to the next level and become a fully-fledged member of the Web 2.0 digerati?
Online media company Yahoo!, which is struggling to keep pace with top rival Google, reported third quarter sales Tuesday that were lower than expected, earnings that matched analysts' forecasts, and a current quarter outlook less robust than previously forecast.
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