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New Media News Every Morning

Digg, Facebook, reach 20M unique visitors

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Compete, an online traffic metrics provider, reports that Digg and Facebook reach the 20 million unique visitors mark for the month of May.

Digg has managed to grow their volume of visitors to about 1400 percent in a span of a year, while Facebook’s site traffic has been steadily increasing since early May since new application development platforms were launched.

Compete’s Jay Meattle noted in the company blog that about four days after YouTube hit the 20M mark, Google made a move to acquire them for 1.65B worth of Google stock. “There is certainly something magical about reaching 20 million,” he added. This means that Digg and Facebook become prime acquisition targets in the web today.

Here are Digg and Facebook’s metrics for the month of May, compared with the top social networking site, MySpace, and the largest video sharing site in the web, YouTube.

Compete

Let’s see which company acquires what within the next few months.

Originally posted on June 21, 2007 @ 3:32 pm

Internet Radio stations declare Day of Silence on June 26

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SaveNetRadioOn June 26, thousands of webcasters will go silent and cut off the music in protest to the royalty rate increase by the Copyright Royalty Rate Board.

Some of the participants of this protest includes Yahoo, Rhapsody, MTV Online and Live 365.

Jake Ward, SaveNetRadio coalition spokesperson, said in a statement:

“The arbitrary and drastic rate increases set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) on March 2 threaten the very livelihood of thousands of webcasters and their millions of listeners throughout the country,”

“The campaign to save Internet radio — a genuine grass-roots movement comprised of hundreds of thousands of webcasters, artists and independent labels, and Net radio listeners — has quickly brought this issue to the national forefront and the halls of Congress, but there is still more to be done before the approaching deadline of July 15.”

On the SaveNetRadio website, countdown to July 15 starts, tagging that day as “The Day the Music Dies”. Internet Radio broadcasters are calling on Senators and Congressional Representatives to heed to their call and save the future of web broadcasting.

The decision made by CRB to make webcasters pay for music played over Internet radio stations is effective on July 15 and will include retroactive payments dating back to January of 2006.

Some say that while this is merely an appeal for drastic change, this event could also be the end of the Internet Radio industry. We’ll know soon.

Originally posted on June 22, 2007 @ 9:41 pm

Yahoo to acquire sports network Rivals.com

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Yahoo is buying Rivals.com, an online network catering to fans of college and high school sports, a move that aims to place Yahoo at the helm of US sports market.

Since it was founded in 2001, Tennessee-based Rivals.com has built up an avid fan base of hardcore sports enthusiasts, operating on 105 college team sites and about 48 regional high school sites. To date, Rivals have more than 180,000 subscribers who regularly track local sports through the site.

“We are very serious about leading in the media space,” said Scott Moore, senior vice president for news and information at Yahoo. “This deal will help us connect with the college and high school sports fan.”

Besides bringing Yahoo a base of 2 million to 2.5 million fans of high school and college football and basketball, the deal is also one of the series of developments that analysts are expecting from Yahoo, following the management changes that happened this week.

The financial aspects of the deal was not disclosed but sources say that Yahoo brought it up to around $100M.

Originally posted on June 21, 2007 @ 7:30 am

eBay resumes advertising on Google

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eBay resumes advertising on Google’s US Adwords network after pulling out their ads for 10 days, a move that made the headlines around the web as being a spat between two of the largest Internet companies.

Following the pullout, eBay increased their spending on alternative advertising, primarily on Google’s rivals Yahoo Inc, Ask.com, and MSN. And now, even as they resume their advertising on Google Adwords, eBay claims that they don’t need to spend as much on the search giant’s platform as they have proven that their traffic is not entirely dependent on their paid listing. “Other partners, Yahoo and AOL and MSN, really stepped up and provided a lot of value,” eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said. “And natural search continues to drive a lot of valuable traffic to the site.”

“Over the last seven years, we have worked closely with eBay to drive customers to their site and build value for their business and the business of their sellers,” Google spokesman Brandon McCormick wrote in an e-mail. “We look forward to a continued partnership.”

eBay is Google’s largest paying search advertiser in the U.S.

Originally posted on June 22, 2007 @ 8:35 pm

MySpace officially launches beta version of IM service

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MySpaceIMMySpace officially launches beta version of MySpaceIM, the social network’s instant messaging service. With over 17M MySpaceIM users all over the world to date, the beta service has been circulating in MySpace since its soft launch a year ago, growing more than 250% in the last 6 months.

“This is a product with personality,” said Tom Anderson, president and co-founder of MySpace. “MySpaceIM was born out of user feedback and we’ve spent the last year listening to our community and tweaking it to match their needs. MySpace will continue to build an open, unique feature set that’s as creative and expressive as our users.”

MySpaceIM can be downloaded directly to the user’s computer, allowing them to add their Myspace friends in one easy step. Aside from instant messaging, they can also use this to send comments, view friends’ videos and pictures and read blogs.

Originally posted on June 20, 2007 @ 9:06 am