Flawed audience measurement firm Nielsen is shutting down its social networking site Hey, Nielsen after more than a year of getting members to reveal personal information and viewing habits for free. Indeed, Nielsen is shuttering the one service that's both cost-effective and informative, so they can focus on more flawed, but wildly more profitable services. "Asked by one member, screen-named Cookieduster, if the members of Hey! Nielsen who selflessly volunteered their own personal information, preferences and insights for more than a year weren't 'owed a summary report of how our input was used (what research projects and for whom?) and what it might have meant,' Nielsen replied curtly, 'We cannot share any client details as this info is confidential. Your feedback has been very useful and we appreciate your participation.'" [MediaPost]
Whoops, Facebook changed again and somehow you didn't notice. Maybe it's because Scrabulous is gone and there is no longer a reason to be on Mark Zuckerberg's crazy merry-go-round of high school and college acquaintances?
Or maybe you did notice, and in protest of your precious social-networking site getting revamped and all your widgets dissapearing, you joined the fifth most popular group on Facebook right now: "I Hate the New Facebook." Yeah, no big deal, you're basically just standing up for your Internet rights, you know, like the hippies, or like those Spartas in the 300. You're a freaking hero with your signing of online petitions.
You know what the Facebook executives do when you join your little groups in protest? They laugh at you:
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Koobface is not the latest thingamajig in the arsenal of objects you can throw at other Facebook users. Instead, Koobface is a set of two new computer worms (like viruses, but more interested in spawning than infecting) that are spreading themselves all around Facebook and its lesser predecessor MySpace through the sites' comments sections. Users are tricked into involuntary computer infections when they click on links titled "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street," which might've been a headline on TMZ but is actually a nefarious attempt to get people to download a video player "patch." And if you upgraded to the "new" Facebook, you probably deserve it. [D'Technology]
There's been a little too much death going on in these parts lately. So let's tune in to another one!
Meet 23-year-old Akilah Amapindi, a Jamaican native who was scheduled to be a panelist at the National Association of Black Journalists in Atlanta. (Disclosure: We were once a member of ABJ.) Unfortunately she fell ill and eventually died, with doctors now believing she contracted malaria during an internship in Namibia.
Even more unfortunate, however, is the Staten Island Advance's telling of her story. Among Amapindi's achievements, we're told, is her Friendster membership.
No kidding. And Friendster is also the source for much of her life story, since copy/pasting is so much easier than picking up a phone.
She was also a member of friendster.com, a social networking Web site popular with recent college graduates.
Photos on both sites show Ms. Amapindi in cheerful times — posing with her sorority sisters, hanging out with friends, always beaming with a wide smile.
On friendster.com, she describes herself as well read, with an interest in writing, dancing, "antics, hijinks and tomfoolery."
"Akilah is awesome, what else to say?" wrote one of her friends, "Anne," in a March 2004 testimonial on the Web site. "Akilah is the queen of laughing and having a good time."
Other friends on the site describe her as fun-loving and popular, and tough when she needed to be.
According to the Web site, she went to prep school in Jamaica.
Reporting hasn't gotten this innovative since Google search results started determining popularity or newsworthiness. Just make sure to revise your social networking profiles, as we're pretty sure you don't want your obit including mention of your Facebook group "Jessica Simpson Is Hot And Other Blondes I'd Fuck."
You can never really trust those nosy bloggers, but an Om Malik guest writer thinks he's got an explanation for why Rupert Murdoch plunked down nearly $600 million to purchase social networking site MySpace.
Not to secure ad inventory targeted at the MTV generation but – gasp! – to create an actual competitor to Viacom's MTV.
Much like Viacom’s CBS decided to use the broadband web to bypass cable and compete against the 24-hour news networks like CNN and FoxNews (see PaidContent’s coverage here), the acquisition of MySpace positions Murdoch to challenge the dominance of MTV in their category.
"Their own category?" If you're keeping score at home, that pretty much concludes Murdoch wants nothing to do with music videos.
Most of us long ago tired of meta-media coverage (though traffic levels for this website might suggest otherwise), or at least claimed to. Now we need to prepare for meta-social networks, or the Friendster of Friendsters. Not that we need them like, say, Howard Kurtz.
But apparently it's a brilliant use of technology and the ability of founders Tony Perkins (of AlwaysOn) and Marc Canter (of Macromedia) to drum up funding.
Perkins and Canter are launching GoingOn, not to be confused with MoveOn.org or colin-farrell-nicole-narain-sex-tape.com.
Perkins and Canter said they want the company to be a "network of networks" — a platform open for integration with other social networking players, such as Tribe or Friendster, and other large media companies, such as Yahoo, and even other corporate sites. All these players could create their own networks on GoingOn.
At least we'll have a way to integrate TheFacebook and A Small World so we can find freshly graduated future slaves to run our lux errands.
