901am

New Media News Every Morning

MySpace announces first nationwide concert tour

By

myspace1.jpgMySpace announced the official launch of the ‘MySpace Music Tour,’ a new series of MySpace produced and branded concert events. The first MySpace Music Tour, presented by Extreme Style by VO5, will kick off Oct. 16 in Seattle, WA, and will be co-headlined by artists Hellogoodbye and Say Anything. Other bands will include MySpace Records artist, Polysics, and to-be-announced special guests. The Tour will include more than 30 shows across the United States throughout October and November 2007.

“MySpace has served as a platform for countless bands and musicians around the world to showcase and promote their music to millions of fans online,” said Tom Anderson, president and co-founder of MySpace. “With the new MySpace Music Tour concert series we are able to bring people face-to-face with the bands and artists they’ve come to know and love on the site. The kick-off tour has an amazing line-up of bands and I know the MySpace community will be psyched to see them live.”

Co-headliners Hellogoodbye and Say Anything have made their names as popular MySpace Music artists. Japan’s Polysics are touring in support of their first album for MySpace Records, Polysics or Die: VISTA!!!, which
comes out Oct. 9. Widely known for their hyper-kinetic live shows, Polysics perform new wave punk in Japanese, English and even their own space-language.

To date, MySpace has more than eight million bands using the site. MySpace music has allowed bands to share music and videos, announce tour dates and communicate with fans and others in the MySpace community, seamlessly integrating the web into shared online and offline experiences. MySpace Music has been the launch pad for exclusive, high-profile album releases from artists such as Gnarls Barkley, Panic! At the Disco, Lily Allen, Fall Out Boy, Timbaland, Modest Mouse, The Used, and many more.

Originally posted on August 29, 2007 @ 9:24 am

MySpace launches online animated series ‘Afterworld’

By

MySpace is launching an “ambitious” web program that happens to be the most expensive series to run on the widely known social network to date.

The Afterworld, a 130-episode series “about a man who wakes up in the future to find that most of the human race is gone”, debuts on MySpace TV today, releasing the first 10 episodes to start off, with each episode lasting about 2-3 minutes.

Afterworld is an animated program created by the Electric Farm Entertainment, a digital studio based in Santa Monica, with an initial budget of $3 million. Although financial agreements were not disclosed, Electric Farm is reported to be getting a cut of whatever revenue MySpace generates from the program.

YouTube has made lonelygirl15 a household name. Could this be MySpace’s big break?

Via LA Times.

Originally posted on August 24, 2007 @ 5:39 am

MySpace gets largest mobile network in US & UK, M:Metrics says

By

MySpace has the largest mobile network in US and UK with 12.3 million users accessing the social networking site using their mobile devices, a recent M:Metrics study shows.

From the 12.3 million MySpace mobile subscribers, America happens to be the largest market with 7.5 million users; followed by Italy with 1.3 million; UK with 1.1 million; and Spain, 751,000. Subsequently, Facebook follows MySpace in the mobile realm, garnering 2 million users in America and 307,000 in UK.

“Nearly every online social networking site has added the ability to connect to these communities with a mobile phone, allowing people to access profiles and share content while they’re on the go. With the mobile phone playing a central role in people’s social lives, it’s only natural that social networking sites are working to bridge the gap between the online and mobile worlds,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics.

True enough, social networking and web 2.0 startups continue to proliferate around the web and into our mobile devices. Twitter and Pownce, for example, have their own mobile way of updating, too. With this recent findings by M:Metrics, one shouldn’t be surprised that soon enough, other social networks will eventually add mobile functionality to their services also.

Originally posted on August 16, 2007 @ 4:23 am

Bebo unseats MySpace as most visited social networking site in UK

By

bebo.jpgcomScore released a study of UK traffic in July to a selection of leading social networking sites.

UK property Bebo.com became the most visited social networking site from within the UK in July, attracting 10.6 million unique visitors, an increase of 63 percent over the start of the year. It was closely followed by social networking behemoth Myspace.com, which enjoyed a 25 percent increase in traffic over the same time period, to reach 10.1 million unique visitors in July.

The fastest growing social networking site in terms of UK based unique visitors was Facebook.com, which grew 366 percent since the start of the year to attract an audience of 7.6 million unique visitors in July 2007.

Other comparable social networking sites also experienced growth over the same time period. HI5.com increased its UK based traffic by 36 percent to 1.9 million unique visitors, while Faceparty.com grew 9 percent to 1.7 million.

Originally posted on August 17, 2007 @ 1:05 pm

New filtering software blocks MySpace, Facebook

By

myspace-blocker.jpgSolid Oak Software, a company which provides Internet filtering products for parents and others, announced today a new program designed to block access to select popular social networking sites. CyberSitter Social Networking Blocker is available now for free personal usage.

CyberSitter Social Networking Blocker, said Solid Oak, is designed to block unauthorized access to MySpace and FaceBook. It also blocks access to several hundred known Web proxies that can be used to bypass filtering programs.

“We have been doing this longer than anyone else out there,” says Brian Milburn, president of Solid Oak Software. “We have the expertise, we know the web sites, and we know the dangers, and we are stepping up and giving away a tool we hope will help keep kids a little safer and help parents sleep a little better.”

Originally posted on July 31, 2007 @ 7:51 pm