Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

In a story that was first reporting on by TechCrunch - Newsweek as officially confirmed that Tom Anderson, co-founder and everyone’s first friend on social networking leader MySpace lied about his age! He is actually about to turn 37, not 33 like his profile says. Read the full horrific article below for all the sketchy details: 

"Whether you’re a MySpace addict or a Luddite who logged on once to see what all the fuss was about, you’ve likely met Tom. As the public face of MySpace, cofounder Tom Anderson has become a celebrity since the site launched in 2003 because he’s every user’s first "friend": when you join MySpace, your profile is automatically linked to his. But it turns out that Tom, who, along with cofounder Chris DeWolfe, made a fortune when News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, may have a secret: his real age. According to public documents obtained by NEWSWEEK—including professional license information, voter registration and utility and telephone service applications—Anderson is five years older than he claims. His online profile currently lists his age as 32, but it appears he was actually born on Nov. 8, 1970, meaning he’ll turn 37 next week, not 33. (Happy birthday, Tom!)

Rumors about Anderson’s age began to spread last week, when the blog TechCrunch suggested that he was 36 or 37. Anderson and MySpace declined multiple requests for comment, and the company would not confirm his birth date. "I’m pretty bummed out about it," says 25-year-old Andrew Haynes, a Seattle comedian. "I’ve always taken MySpace with a grain of salt, but Tom was my first friend. It’s kind of messed up that he lied to me." Either way, he’s laughing all the way to the bank."

I received an email over the weekend that talked about the Facebook / Microsoft deal, since this topic has been talked about forever I ignored most of it. However, the article did include a chart that I found to be very interesting (but not really surprising). We all knew Yahoo and MySpace ruled worldwide traffic scene in terms of pure page views. But what surprised me was not who topped the chart or that Google controls 3 of the top 8, it is that Orkut, Google’s social networking platform ranks just behind Facebook. How did Orkut, which does not have a stake in the US social networking market, get so big without anyone noticing? I know that they are huge in countries like Brazil and India but still, to be ranked just behind Facebook without the US market is amazing. Makes you wonder what will happen when Google decide to open Orkut, or whatever social networking platform they are developing, to everyone. One thing is for certain, once that happens this list will change - its obvious Orkut will jump up but will MySpace and / or Facebook drop down?

MySpace, the leading online social network, will soon be announcing their plans to launch a games section sometime in Janauary 2008. The new MySpace Games will be powered by online game distributer Oberon and feature hundreds of free, easy to play, casual games. “This was a very clear area for us that answered a need for enhancing the fun factor on MySpace,” said Amit Kapur, MySpace’s vice president of business development. Both MySpace and Oberon plan on adding features to games that allow MySpace users to invite friends to play multi-player games.

I have always wondered why MySpace didn’t but more focus on keeping users on their site. As we all know MySpace has million upon millions of profiles - but the average time spent on MySpace is dropping fast. MySpace games will help keep their loyal users on their site (and keep them away from other social networking sites like Bebo and Facebook) and drive more repeat visits overall.

Facebook, the social networking giant,  announced today on their developers website that they are opening their Application Directory and App pages to people who are not logged in…and allow search engines to index the pages. Yup, you know all of those applications that you see on Facebook, well now everyone can find them - not just registered users. This is a huge deal for all of those developers out there who are trying to get their application to be the next big thing for Facebook users.

The information that will be available for search engines will include reviews and the app discussion board. Akhil Wable, a leader developer at Facebook, had this to say about the announcement: "The goal of this change is to increase visibility for your applications, so users can find applications that they love using, and you can have more potential users trying your applications. You should start seeing your application about pages in web search results in a few days."

So expect to see more articles on "Facebook SEO" in the next few days, because as we all know nothing drives SEO like money.  

Jaiku, the social media company based out of Finland, announced today on their website that Google is acquiring the small startup. Jaiku, which has been competing for the past few months with Twitter and Pownce for global attention, is not commenting on the terms of the deal or specific plans. Jaiku posted a vague and bland Q&A about the purchase on their website. I was one of Jaiku’s first beta users and have wrote about them on numerous occasions. I am a little stunned by the purchase since I was never floored by Jaiku’s features or technology. In fact I was hoping that Google would have bought Twitter since I have been a huge fan (and user) for some time. But, hey my stock isn’t in the hundreds so I will trust Google knows what they are doing. ***10.10.2007 update*** Got an email from Jaiku this morning announcing the deal: Wonderful Jaiku users, Exciting news, Jaiku is joining Google! While its too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not! All our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will continue to be able to invite your friends to Jaiku. We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition at http://jaiku.com/help/google Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders