MySpace and Facebook are rumored to be working in conjunction with each other on a new project. The new project involves MySpace users having the ability to share content on Facebook using Facebook Connect. The rumor was started by The Telegraph UK.
This deal is probably being set up by current MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta. Natta was the previous Chief Revenue Officer and VP of Operations at Facebook. This means that you may start seeing MySpace Videos and music being embedded on the Facebook News Feed. Last week Natta even said that he does not consider Facebook to be a competitor any more.
I think that this would be a good deal all around for both parties. Facebook users would see more artistic expression provided by MySpace users. Artists on MySpace would have a bigger audience.
Josh Elman was the former platform manager at Facebook. But now Elman is joining another California based social networking slash micro-blogging firm Twitter.com. Elman is joining Twitter at a time where the micro-blogging company is receiving a lot of interest from third party developers.
TweetDeck is one of the most used Adobe AIR applications and Tweetie is one of the most downloaded applications on the iPhone. When Elman worked at Facebook, he was responsible for Facebook Connect. Elman was also responsible for cleaning up the design of the social network after applications made Facebook look very cluttered.
Elman has also previously worked for LinkedIn, Zazzle, and RealNetworks. Louis Gray broke the news of Elman’s hire after spotting the Twitter official list of employees. Twitter has about 113 employees.
Netflix Inc. is another company that has joined in on the Facebook Connect bandwagon. Netflix linked their ratings system to the social network so that when a user rates a movie on the video rental service website, it gets linked to their profile.
This move is slight competition to LivingSocial. LivingSocial is a Facebook application system where users can vote on music albums, beer, books, iPhone applications, movies, restaurants, ski slopes, TV shows, and video games.
Netflix has over 10 million subscribers. Netflix is hoping to leverage that user base to connect with Facebook’s 175 million users. “Movies make for great conversations,” stated Netflix VP of Product Management Gibson Biddle.
Power.com is a social networking company with 5 million users and is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The company raised $8 million Series A investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. On December 30, Facebook sued Power.com.
Power.com aggregates all of the activities from different social networks and places it on one page. Facebook claims that Power.com is violating copyright and trademarks. Facebook also referenced the scraping of proprietary data from the social network in the lawsuit.
“After discussing the issues with Power.com for about a month without reaching a resolution, we filed a lawsuit to enforce our terms of service, maintain the integrity of our site and to assure our users’ privacy and security are protected,” stated Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook.
Steve Vachani, founder of Power.com stated that his company has been in discussions with Facebook to get their feedback. Facebook suggested that Power.com uses Facebook Connect instead of scraping the data directly.
Facebook attempted to stop Power.com for using data without permission. The first complaint was sent on December 1 when Power.com was first announced. On December 12, Vachani stated that Facebook Connect would be implemented in two weeks but then asked for an extension. After December 26, Power.com kept using Facebook in an unauthorized manner.
That was the last straw. Stay tuned for more updates regarding this lawsuit.
