Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » MSN

Glam Media Hires Former Microsoft Exec Bruce Jaffe

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:33:13 +0000

Glam Media has hired Bruce Jaffe as the new CFO of the company. Jaffe is a former Microsoft executive. Jaffe will be replacing Stephen E. Recht, who will retain the position through the summer.

Jaffe was most recently the CFO of the MSN unit at Microsoft. Jaffe ran the corporate development group and was highly involved in Microsoft’s $6 billion aQuantive deal. [AllThingsD]

Google Passes MSN On Alexa, But Live.com Increases Rapidly and Yahoo! Maintains Gold Medal

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:16:44 +0000

I just noticed that on my Alexa.com toolbar (owned by Amazon.com), Google’s rank looked a little different.Â The web information company’s toolbar was telling me that Google is no longer glazed in bronze.Â It had a silver spoon in its mouth.Â Oh for crying out loud, If you don’t get my metaphor, what I’m saying is that Google is now ranked #2 and MSN is ranked #3.

Alexa’s Global Top 10:
1.) Yahoo!
2.) Google
3.) MSN
4.) YouTube
5.) Live.com
6.) MySpace
7.) Orkut
8.) Facebook
9.) Wikipedia
10.) Hi5

Looking at the top 10 web sites, Google has the most presence on Alexa.Â They are ranked #2 and they own #4 and #7.Â Whereas, Microsoft only owns #3 and #5.Â Google also has a presence on #6 because they have an exclusive advertising partnership with MySpace.com.Â Microsoft counteracted that move by signing an exclusive partnership with #8 website, Facebook.com. It seems like both companies were playing with their domains a little bit over the last year or so.Â We saw the rise of Live.com this past year and GMail.com shifted over to the Google.com servers.Â Below is a chart comparison from Alexa:

Notice the instant growth of Live.com?Â This is perhaps because Hotmail.com shifted over to Live.com servers.Â Seeing as how Live.com is constantly growing and MSN.com is slipping a little bit, I’m curious to see what Microsoft will do with MSN to ensure it doesn’t slip more.Â And also, what will Yahoo! do to maintain #1.Â Over the next couple years, we should see some interesting changes in the Top 10, especially seeing as how it felt like YouTube and Wikipedia came out of nowhere and claimed their current spots.

MSN: 10 Million Earth-Shattering Simultaneous Views

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:42:46 +0000

Over the past weekend, several companies including MSNBC, Esurance, MSN, and The Absolut Spirits Company, teamed up to host Live Earth, a concert starring some of the big names in music. MSN enabled anyone with access to the Internet to watch the concert streaming… well… Live.

Footage from the event is still available at http://LiveEarth.MSN.com^[1]. At a certain point on the day of the concert, 10 million viewers watched the footage simultaneously on MSN. The previous record holder was AOL, the company that streamed 2005′s Live 8 concert.

Some of the featured artists performing in the concert included Madonna, Metallica, Beastie Boys, Crowded House, Sarah Brightman, Snoop Dogg, Genesis, Black Eyed Peas, Duran Duran, etc^[2]. The event was also supported by various climate groups and former U.S. Vice President, Al Gore. Al Gore recently starred in a movie called An Inconvenient Truth which was directed by Davis Guggenheim. An Inconvenient Truth focuses on Al Gore’s plight in bringing attention to global warming.

Al Gore also recently wrote a book called The Assault on Reason. There is an interesting-to-read portion of the book dedication available on Amazon.com^[3].

[1] MSN Live Earth
[2] NewsFactor.com:Â Live Earth Sets Internet Video Streaming Record (via Yahoo! News)
[3] Amazon.com: The Assault on Reason (Hardcover)