“Social is in the air.”
-David Glazer, Director of Engineering, Google

Facebook and MySpace announced this past week that they are making profile data portable if a user chooses to.  MySpace is calling this feature Data Portability and Facebook is calling it Facebook Connect.   And now Google is launching the same feature, but calling it Friend Connect.  About two dozen sites will have access to Google Connect initially, but expansion will happen in the coming weeks.

“You’ll be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web like Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, LinkedIn, orkut, Plaxo, and others. And quite simply, you’ll be able to do things together,” wrote Mussie Shore, Product Manager of Google on The Official Google Blog.

On May 28 and 29, Google is holding a two-day seminar to discuss the OpenSocial initiative.  The event information is located at: http://code.google.com/events/io/.

Between Facebook, MySpace, and Google opening up this week, any guesses on who will be the fourth?  Microsoft?  Yahoo!?  Second Life?  My bet is on Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. has become the apple of every company’s eye. Microsoft, News Corp., AOL, Google, and Legg Mason are all interested in a deal with Yahoo!

AOL, subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX)
Time Warner’s AOL LLC is looking to repurchase some of Yahoo!’s shares above Microsoft’s offer of $31 per share and essentially AOL would be folded into Yahoo! The deal would make AOL valued at $10 billion and the dial-up access business wouldn’t be included.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and News Corporation (NYSE:NWS.A)
Microsoft and News Corp. are planning to launch a joint bid together to buy Yahoo! While this partnership is not official yet, a Wall Street Journal source confirms that discussions are serious. If acquired, this would combine some of the Internet’s hottest properties such as Live.com, MSN.com, Yahoo.com, and MySpace.com. Yahoo! confirmed 3 days ago that they are interested in an acquisition if the deal is higher than what Microsoft had to offer.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Yahoo! is launching a new advertising platform called AMP! but wants Google to be part of the action. Yahoo! is talking to Google about outsourcing ad search sales to them. This deal was made official yesterday in the form of a short-term test. Google would handle a limited percentage of Yahoo!’s web search queries. This test will be used to determine the feasibility of a longer term search-ad outsourcing agreement. It is in Google’s interest to work out this deal in the longer run to make Yahoo! less susceptible for a Microsoft acquisition.

Legg Mason Inc. (NYSE:LM)
Asset Management company, Legg Mason owns a large percentage of Yahoo! As a shareholder, it is in Legg Mason’s interest to capitalize as much as possible from any potential deal. CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer wrote a letter telling Yahoo! that if they do not respond, then he’ll work directly with the shareholders. Legg Mason is only ready to support Yahoo!’s independence if the bid remains to be as low as it is now.

What happens to Yahoo! is anyone’s guess. Nobody said that running the #1 Internet property was easy.

Information Source:
[1] Wall Street Journal: News Corp., AOL Pursue Yahoo Deals by Matthew Karnitschnig, Kevin J. Delaney, and Merissa Marr

“We want to be very closely associated with online video, where we see a huge opportunity. There is a lot of online video available but very little is advertiser-friendly and even less of it is bought and sold on planner-friendly terms. We are going to capitalize on our knowledge of how television advertising is bought and sold, but adding the unique targeting and performance capabilities of online video.”
-Hernán López , President of .FOX Networks

News Corporation’s .FOX Networks division has acquired 56% in video advertisement company, UTarget. The Windsor, United Kingdom-based advertising company has 630 publisher websites with 15 second ads built in before the videos.

The acquisition price was undisclosed. Hernán López , President of .Fox Networks reported to paidContent that the its a “reasonable multiple” based on its revenue of the last 12 months: £5 million+. UTarget will now be called Utarget.Fox. UTarget ads will now be delivered to News Corporation’s subsidiaries such as MySpace in different countries.

Information Source:
[1] paidContent: Fox Buying Majority Of UK Video Ad Outfit Utarget by Robert Andrews

“Responding to the needs of our growing Hispanic membership, MySpace Latino offers content that is culturally relevant to Latinos in the U.S.,” stated Vice President Managing Director of MySpace Latino, Victor Kong. “Thanks to our strategic media and content partners, MySpace Latino will showcase the sports, entertainment, and video content that our users are most passionate about, while creating a truly U.S. Latino bilingual hub for our users online.”

Social networks are rushing to adapt to different languages and cultures around the world with MySpace and Facebook being no exception. Today MySpace officially unleashed their site in Spanish called MySpace Latino. MySpace has roughly 9.7 million Hispanic members using the social network.

One thing that MySpace beats Facebook at is catering their look & feel to the Hispanic community rather than just translating the language. MySpace Latino has several relevant partners such as ImpreMedia, the Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), Billboard en Español, and Remezcla.com. MySpace Latino has several relevant partners such as ImpreMedia, the Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), Billboard en Español, and Remezcla.com. MySpace Latino will also feature an exclusive show called Show Secreto that stars Tego Calderon, Locos por Juana, Circo, and a special guest.

Some of MySpace Latino’s newest communities include Acústico, Get Your Band, Backstage, La Oficina, Entérate, TodoFútbol and En Tu Ciudad.  Competitors include ElHood.com, Quepasa.com, MiGente.com, LatinosConnected.com, MyGrito.com, and Vostui.com

“We believe that the Web is becoming increasingly more social,” stated Chris DeWolfe, MySpace co-founder and CEO. “MySpace Music is a new way of experiencing music online that everyone can participate in.”

Los Angeles, Calif.-based social network conglomerate, MySpace.com is going back to their roots in a capitalistic way.  MySpace was originally a place for independent bands and artists to promote their music.  The site became so popular and easy to use than other social networks to the point where millions registered and it became the biggest social network of its time.  MySpace is now looking to capitalize on the independent music that is promoted within their own site, but only with the help of some friends.

These friends include Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, and Warner Bros.  Each of these companies will receive equity in MySpace added DeWolfe.  The new service will be called MySpace Music.  MySpace Music will allow artists to sell their concert tickets, merchandise, downloads, and ringtones through the social network and other News Corporation properties.  Some of the tracks by the artists will not have DRM. 

MySpace Music will be a separate company with a different board.  MySpace and Universal settled a lawsuit in 2006 where the social network paid the music company $100 million for settlement.  TechCrunch reports that $120 million will be provided for MySpace Music by News Corp. and this will be distributed amongst the 3 music companies.

According to commenters, MySpace has a problem with their mobile site.  Read the comments to see what the users have to say.

“It’s intended to be a completely open field. Any developer can sign up for and start building applications,” stated Kyle Brinkman, GM of MySpace Developer platform.

MySpace, the largest social network on the planet (so far) has announced that they have just launched their development platform. When Facebook first launched their Developers platform, several partners had applications already available for adding before independent programmers could get their hands on the Facebook APIs.

The MySpace Developer launch has documentation and sample code. There are some overviews of how Google OpenSocial works, which helps power many of the application scripts.  There are Developer blogs authored by Aber Whitcomb (CTO) and Allen Hurff (VP of Engineering).

The three APIs provided by MySpace Developers includes OpenSocial with MySpace extensions, MySpace Action Scripts, and REST API. REST API is code that makes faster communication available between MySpace and third party sites.

The directory of applications won’t be available until March.  It is expected that many applications that gained instant popularity on Facebook will be added on MySpace.

[Information Source: PC Mag/Mashable]

What would a social network be without an incubator to power the applications that are instant viral hits within their online communities? Facebook has it so MySpace is HAD to get it. Just like how MySpace had widgets first, so Facebook HAD to get it. And I won’t be surprised if Bebo and Friendster quickly respond by setting up their own shops as well. The name of the company that MySpace is setting up is tentatively going to be called Slingshot Labs according to The New York Times.

Facebook’s incubator had $10 million in size powered by the social network, Accel Partners, and Founders Fund.  They started this fund in September 2007 to encourage give developers an incentive to create rich applications to give Facebook more appeal and possibly make additional revenue for themselves.

Josh Berman (MySpace COO) and Colin Digiaro (Senior VP of International Corporate Development) may be the ones heading the incubator.  Amit Kapur (VP of Business Development) may step up as the MySpace COO to fill in for Berman [source: TechCrunch].

While the two incubators may become hyper-competitive against each other,  they both give a good enough of a reason to quickly develop widgets.  What might be interesting scenario is if both companies want to fund the same company because the company created a successful widget for both MySpace and Facebook.  Who would they choose?  MySpace has mainstream clout, but Facebook is growing at a faster pace than MySpace.  Would it be more prestigious to receive funding from Slingshot or fbFund?

As you give a goofy look at the camera pointing at you in a photo kiosk at an entertainment venue, you begin to wonder what captions and background you’ll use.  Now take this concept, slap it on the Internet in the form of a widget that can be Facebooked or MySpaced, and you’re ready to raise $50 million.

Business-savvy Internet entrepreneur and PayPal co-founder, Max Levchin did exactly that, as mentioned in BusinessWeek.  Slide raised $50 million and increased their valuation to $500 million.  This fourth round of investment was provided by Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price.

Photo widget companies is a proven model for acquisition targets, but is also a proven model for its vulnerability of mooching on other social networks’ user base.  For example, Photobucket was acquired by News Corp. in May 2007 at a price of $250 million in cash.  But before the acquisition, MySpace completely blocked Photobucket from accessing their users because of an advertising violation before making a truce. 

Altogether, Slide has raised over $75 million including investments from other PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel and venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla.  Thiel is an early investor of Facebook.  The other founders of Slide include Jared Kopf and Scott Banister, both also former PayPal employees.

Previous Slide coverage is available at: http://pulse2.com/category/slide/.

MySpace now has official custom social networks for two of the most populous countries in the world: India and China.  I am surprised that they did not release this earlier.  The social network has local Indian bands featured on the homepage and has partnered with Channel [V].  Channel [V] is a music TV channel broadcasted in India and several other countries. 

MySpace India also hosts a profile called indiHub, a channel that focuses on Blogs, Special Programs, Artist of the Week, and MySpace Extras.  The current artist of the week is New Delhi, India’s Jalebee Cartel.

MySpace has also hired Tarun Tripathi as their Director of Marketing and Content.  Tripathi is a former producer for Yash Raj films and will begin reporting to MySpace VP of Asia, Sung Lee. 

Now that MySpace is entering the social network steadily is Asia, Facebook should seriously consider doing the same.  Over half of the world’s population is located in that continent alone.  The more quality users Facebook can strategically attain, the higher their $15 billion valuation will become. 

[Information Source: contentSutra]