Myspace, Social Media | featured news

Kevin Systrom's smartest move was to sell Instagram to Facebook early, before having to deliver even an iota of revenue. My prediction is that we’ll look back on Facebook's acquisition of Instagram as a bust—much in the same way we now view News Corp.’s purchase of Myspace, AOL’s purchase of Bebo, and Excite@Home’s purchase of Blue Mountain Arts.

Once the shark is jumped, the downfall begins, and a social media site loses relevance, it's officially over for them. MySpace, Propeller, Yahoo! Buzz, Pownce, Mixx -- the list of social sites that couldn't turn it around goes on and on. Digg is proving to be the exception and it's an important twist for every social media site alive today.

Myspace, the once dominant social-networking site that faded into obscurity during Facebook's rise to dominance, added 1 million new users over the past month, according to the company.

Despite new ownership and an injection of Justin Timberlake celebrity cachet, the bad news just keeps coming for Myspace.

You thought bringing sexy back was hard? Try Myspace. Pop-star, actor and occasional reason to watch "Saturday Night Live" Justin Timberlake will apparently play a "major role" in guiding the floundering social-media site after its sale this week.

Facebook has more users than ever, says comScore. With its most recent privacy backlash seemingly behind it, Facebook surged ahead to a new traffic record in the U.S. during the month of June. According to comScore, the social network pulled in more than 141 million unique visitors in the U.S. during the month, beating its previous record (set in May) by better than 11 million.

MySpace has launched a new initiative to invite social game developers like Playdom, Zynga

The social networking site plans to return to its roots by pushing entertainment content and jettisoning portal-like features. In a last-ditch effort to revive struggling MySpace, owner News Corp. has adopted a new strategy that it hopes will give the site's millions of users a reason to keep coming back.

The buzz around realtime search of social networks has mostly surrounded Twitter and Facebook. Collecta, OneRiot and the search giants, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo all tap into Twitter (and Facebook too) to capture the realtime stream of content. But MySpace is also getting into the game, recently releasing a set of real-time APIs that both OneRiot and Google will be tapping into to provide content from the social network. Today, real-time search engine Collecta has launched a search platform that offers a real-time view into MySpace.