The new CEO for MySpace, Owen Van Natta, told the Financial Times that MySpace is going in a different direction to become the destination for music and entertainment and that “Facebook is not our competition [anymore]," admitting that MySpace has raised the white flag and admitting defeat.
You know your friends are fooling around on Facebook because there's evidence to prove it: Â Someone just milked a cow on their farm. Â Someone else just won 500 gold coins. Â Everyone wants you to be a part of their mafia family. Â Playing games is one more way to connect with Friends on Facebook. Â The sign up process couldn't be simpler since it uses your Facebook info, and it's easy to join in with friends on the same game because their info is culled from your profile. Â In this episode of The 5, we're taking a look at popular time wasting games on Facebook.
Some states have found a new way to collect back-taxes: social networks.  Rather than directly collect taxes based on social networking use, some states are looking for tax-cheats who brag about their tax evading habits.
Tagged.com, sketchy social network provider and all around creepy business, is being accused of unscrupulous email practices by New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. During the registration process, like many web2.0 companies, users can add their friends via their email address books, but Tagged has a default option to automatically spam all of a user's address book with invites. The company maintains since users don't disable the option, they're consenting to the mass mailers, but it looks like Cuomo and company disagree.
First there was MySpace, then there was Facebook, and even though the company was born right around the same time as the other two, Multiply hasn't caught fire the way the other two dominant social networks have. While tech industry knee-jerk reactioneers might think of the company as "yet another social network," the company isn't exactly sitting around waiting while the users magically come out of nowhere. Today, the company rolled out its latest iteration, which focuses on more of the multimedia and privacy features that have come to define Multiply. Rather than a catch-all party-promotion music-mashups hotspot, Multiply CEO Peter Pezaris says Multiply has always been focused more toward the digital mom who's looking for a way to share and organize photos, in addition to other regular social network mainstays like wall posts, blogging, and other expected activities.
Should TechVi viewers use the network? We don't expect the social network to replace Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn for daily use, but taking a quick peek at the interface and prevalent privacy options, it's clear that this service might find use with parents, or family members who have young children.
Using the site, Multiply seems to lack the early-adopter polish of Facebook. For instance, when I tried to import my contacts from GMail, either all of my friends were on the service (not the case), or multiply seemed determined to spam them, as asked me for hundreds of relationships, rather than adding people who might have already been on the service.
Beyond my total inability to find friends on the service, which is likely due to a mix of target audience and not enough time spent in the persuit of said friendships, the interface takes a pretty simplistic approach to sharing media, and thankfully sharing videos, pictures, links, events and the like with people outside of the Multiply network seemed to work fairly well.
If the tortoise and the hare taught Multiply anything, it's that slow and steady will eventually win the race. For his company's sake, I hope the fable holds up well, because while the company hasn't beat any of the "biggies" like Facebook or MySpace, they're at least trying to differentiate in a crowded, and well publicized field. Multiply 4.0 seems to be on the right track, but hasn't hit blockbuster status just yet, which might be the way privately minded users want to keep it.
