MySpace launches music site, biz prays it's the next MTV

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe wanted a one-stop music shop that would have included event ticket and merchandise purchases along with streaming audio and paid downloads. What he got were agreements from the four major labels for the streaming audio and a deal with Amazon to sell digital downloads. Which is something. Also, there's handful of big-name sponsors like McDonald's and Toyota, and MySpace certainly still has a huge user base of music lovers. Whether or not this is "the one" for the record industry remains to be seen. How's the service? More »

5 tech companies getting soaked by Wall Street's meltdown

If Silicon Valley is mentally disconnected from this week's Wall Street mess, it's because ad-supported companies dominate the Valley these days. High-net-worth investors aren't reeled in with cheap banners, so the demise of Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch hardly pinches budgets. Lehman spent just $501,900 on ads, both online and off, in the first half of 2008. Merrill Lynch, which has a much larger consumer business, still only spent $38 million on advertising last year. Still, some 150,000 people will lose their jobs in this week's fallout. That's a lot of tech infrastructure no one will want to pay for anymore. Lehman, for example, spent $309 million on IT last quarter alone. What's more, Lehman's investment banking connections run deep in the Valley's world of startups, VCs and big company buyers. Below, five tech companies that find themselves wishing they could unleash themselves from Wall Street's fate. More »

Chris De Wolfe's gain is Fox execs' loss

News Corp.'s online arm, Fox Interactive Media, has struggled to attract online talent while paying them like a startup would. (News Corp. shares just don't cut it.) The solution for the unit, which includes MySpace and a passel of lesser-known websites: a long-term incentive plan, or LTIP, which offers a sort of phantom equity to executives in the division. In the last few weeks, the numbers for the most recent fiscal year which ended June 30 were distributed, and they were "disastrously low," says a tipster. "Most executives were already looking to leave," he says. "They hated FIM and the only reason they were staying was because of promises made about the LTIP." True, FIM hasn't quite made its aggressively optimistic numbers. But executives believe the real reason their bonuses are so low is MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe's fat contract. More »

Fox exec on MySpace: Google's ads aren't working, but ours are

News Corp. reports earnings tomorrow — but no one's worrying about how many copies of The Simpsons Fox sold on Blu-ray. Wall Street's worries are centered on how ads are doing on MySpace. After months of denials, a Fox executive has conceded the obvious to the Wall Street Journal: Google's keyword-pegged ads are bombing on MySpace. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said as much in discussing his company's results, but MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe was quick to deny a problem at the time. With Fox Interactive's parent company, News Corp., reporting quarterly results tomorrow, we suspect the Fox source let the bad news leak early in an effort to mix a hint of optimism in the story. The result: More »

Has News Corp. acquired TechCrunch? Everyone's talking about it, but it's not happening

A startup founder tells us that, over the weekend, he and his friends overheard TechCrunch writers celebrating the sale of Michael Arrington's blog to News Corp.'s Fox Interactive unit — Rupert Murdoch's home for MySpace, Rotten Tomatoes, and other wayward websites. The source tells us that the deal has been signed, but TechCrunch is waiting for its summer party at August Capital's Sand Hill Road offices to announce it. Another source who's spoken recently to Arrington says that a deal is on. But a highly placed News Corp. source says there's "no truth" to the rumor. What's behind this wave of TechCrunch sale talk? More »

MySpace's parking hell

Lost amidst the hullabaloo over Fox's $350 million new LA headquarters for MySpace and its other Web properties: Just how bad the parking is at MySpace's current office. A former employees tells me that finding a spot in the morning regularly took an hour of circling. In announcing the new office, Fox Interactive CEO Peter Levinsohn reminded employees he had "communicated with you about our space and parking challenges." Anyone have that memo? I'd love to read it. In the meantime, consider this: MySpace won't completely move into the new facility until 2010, meaning its engineers will continue to spend countless hours circling parking lots instead of coding for the next two years. Plenty of time for Facebook to widen its technical lead over Rupert Murdoch's aging social network.

Fox's Batman ad on MySpace to trigger flashbacks for 9/11 survivors?

The MySpace homepage today features the same burning-building graphic used in the promotional poster for the upcoming Dark Knight sequel. It's not a new image, but by pushing the campaign online, it certainly reminds me of recent attempts to trigger epileptics by posting strobing images to epilepsy forums — since survivors of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder might cry "trigger." Maybe someone at Fox Interactive did it for the lulz.

Finding the worst-entry level job in tech: Round Two

We're on to Round Two in our worst-tech-job contest. We've whittled down 10 terrible gigs down to five:

• Online sales and operations account manager, Google
• Content acquisition intern, IODA
• Customer support specialist, Fox Interactive, MySpace division
• Windows support professional, Microsoft
• Part-time guide, Mahalo

Follow the link for each job to see a picture of their locations, a list of key responsibilities, first hand accounts of why each job is so bad and how much they pay. Then, come back here and vote, below. More »

Eric Schmidt admits MySpace remains junk

Back in August 2006, when Google agreed to pay News Corp. $900 million to serve ads against MySpace, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin bragged, "Whoever said it remains to be seen whether we can monetize [MySpace], hopefully it's a little clearer this week." Almost two years later, "monetizing" MySpace seems more difficult than ever. At least, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought," Schmidt told a German reporter.

We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you'll buy a washing machine. It is not a long term problem but it is taking us longer than we thought.

Customer support specialist, Fox Interactive, MySpace division

Customer support specialist, Fox Interactive, MySpace division More »

News Corp. wants to buy videogame website Newgrounds

Slide executive Keith Rabois isn't the only one who sees serious cash in silly games. To get more in on the action, News Corp. property IGN is trying to acquire Tom Fulp's Newgrounds, a Flash videogame portal that specializes in violent games like The Last Stand 2, featured in the video embedded above. A sale could be lucrative for Fulp. More »

News Corp.'s Chernin on Fox Interactive's $1 billion target: "Yes, we will fall short"

Fox Interactive Media, News Corp.'s Web division overseeing properties including MySpace, Photobucket and Rotten Tomatoes, saw its revenues drop in the second quarter to $210 million., from $233 million in the previous quarter. News Corp. president and COO told analysts today that the division would not meet its $1 billion revenue goal for its fiscal year, likely coming up $100 million short. He began the call: "Let me begining by saying yes, we will fall short of what were very aggressive projections." Insiders whisper that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch set the numbers high to put pressure on MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe. DeWolfe and MySpace friend-in-chief Tom Anderson signed a two-year, $30 million contract last fall to continue running the site. More »

Ross Levinsohn gets ready for another knife fight

Former Fox Interactive exec turned venture capitalist Ross Levinsohn only needs to finish the paperwork to become the biggest name on Microsoft's list of 10 nominees to replace Yahoo's board, TechCrunch reports and BoomTown confirms. The high-profile rubber-stamping position should suit Levinsohn's ego just fine. More »

MySpace savior still hasn't produced miracle ad cure

Rupert Murdoch's new handpicked president of FIM Audience Network, Adam Bain, has the requisite big idea to save MySpace: an ad network which lets his salespeople sell ads all over the Web, not just on MySpace and other News Corp. sites.The idea is to take what MySpace has learned about its own users and share it with publishers and advertisers, to better target ads. What behavioral insights Bain expects to garner from "thanks for the add" isn't clear. But at this point the Fox Interactive Media Audience Network remains little more than a thought bubble — and Bain left it to MySpace's top US sales exec, Bryce Emo (pictured), to deliver the news. More »

Fox Interactive's new Santa Monica digs: the Yahoo Center

When the reshuffled Yahoo Media Group in Santa Monica holds an all-hands on April 15, it's going to be awfully tempting for Adam Bain to send spies. He's the the head of Fox Interactive's new ad network and his unit moving into the "Yahoo Center," reports PaidContent. Talks over renaming the place are underway. We nominate: "Bill's place." (Photo by stevelyon)

Why a little Bebo wouldn't be so bad for MySpace

Yesterday, we reported that MySpace continues to beat Facebook soundly in traffic. But some, including Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget, reject the U.S. numbers we cited from Hitwise, saying worldwide traffic indicates "Facebook is coming up behind MySpace like a Ferrari about to blow past a bus." And how could we ignore such a simile? It's totally awesome, dude! So here's a chart comparing worldwide traffic for Facebook and MySpace, from ComScore. More »

What was Rupert Murdoch doing visiting Bebo?

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch recently paid a visit to social network Bebo, according to Bebo employee Emma Carlsgaard, who posted an update to her Bebo profile about the sighting. What's Rupe doing visiting Bebo? A recent rumor suggests acquisition talks. More »

Fox Interactive Media missed its internal revenue targets for July and August. So, unless they have an extraordinary September, FIM will miss for the quarter. Perhaps the Google/Myspace ad deal isn't working out as well as Tom had hoped. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Heads-up, entrepreneurs. Ready to sell your startup? Reconnect with every contact you have at Fox Interactive. Rupert Murdoch is about to go on a shopping spree. [Financial Times]

Fox Interactive head: Brad Greenspan is a loser

Fox Interactive head (and MySpace buyer for News Corp) Ross Levinsohn (pictured) on Brad Greenspan, the former MySpace founder who's sued MySpace for allegedly lying about its value to investors, and Fox for allegedly censoring him: More »

MySpace founder accuses company of defrauding investors of $20 billion

Good thing MySpace can't possibly be worth $20 billion as a crazed analyst projected last week — because if it is, ousted founder Brad Greenspan has a bone to pick. More »

Loose wires: You enter a maze of twisty startups, all alike

• BusinessWeek reports on the Hewlett-Packard leak probe and ensuing scandal: "The HP board will meet on Sunday. The company declined to say if this is an emergency meeting of directors to discuss the fallout from the probe." Right, they decided to meet on Sunday for no particular reason. Just for brunch, actually! Mimosas! WE'RE ALL GOOD FRIENDS HERE. [BusinessWeek]
• Blogger Rick Abruzzo writes the stats sheet for a Net Neutral. Skills and items include Ring of Michael Arrington ("Can cast Shit Into Sunshine, once per day") and All Your Mace Are Belong To Us. [Supr.c.ilio.us]
• Nothing snarky to say about GigaOM blogger Liz Gannes's profile of the Slim Devices, makers of the Squeezebox music player. I just like the article. [GigaOM]
• Fox Interactive head Ross Levinsohn would tell new players in the Internet market, "Don't copy the original; be authentic." Or, like Ross, buy the original. [AlwaysOn]
• A secondhand guide to Digg's story-promotion algorithm shows it's really complex, harder to game than you'd think, and probably ugly as sin on the backend. [MarketingShift]

GigaOM's right: Fox Interactive should go public

Fox Interactive Media is primed to go public. There's no word yet on parent company News Corp's plans for FIM, but all its ducks are in a row: More »

Who can make the most boring Google/Fox illustration?

There are many tricks to gussying up a dry article, and the flashiest is to slap an illustration in the corner. (Now you know why nearly every Valleywag article has a picture.) Photos of people are ideal; after that come still-life photos (mostly gadgets or handiwork), illustrations, or screenshots. Dangling at the bottom of the food chain are logos. More »

Remainders: YouTube still doomed

• Tech blog GigaOM explains why Fox Interactive won't buy YouTube. For why no one else will, see this Valleywag list. [GigaOM]
• Viacom doesn't need YouTube either, thanks to a sweet distribution deal they just cut with Google Video. With this deal, other sites can embed shows from MTV, Comedy Central, and such; the embedded vids carry ads, and Viacom and Google split the revenue. In other words, everything New Media is Old Media again. [International Herald Tribune]
• Google is paying $900 million to Fox Interactive if all goes right with its plan to power the search on several Fox sites — most importantly, MySpace. [Battelle's Search Blog]
• The San Jose Mercury News discovers, two months after the fact, that blogger Robert Scoble left Microsoft. Call it the "Late Edition." [Mercury News]
• Did BusinessWeek backpedal by editing the print version of its "Digg is worth $200 million" story after bloggers tore apart the online version? Or did the magazine always plan tell online readers one thing and print readers another? [Techdirt]
• Our big sister Gawker, exploiting the convergence of media and tech to totally step on our turf, reports that tech-media vet Alan Patricof dumped $5 million on the Huffington Post. (Disclosure: Founder Arianna Huffington is Gawker publisher Nick Denton's honorary girlfriend, judging by their party photos. I have a writer's account at the Huffington Post that I never bothered using. Patricof writes for the Huffington Post. One of Patricof's older investments was a startup run by Michael Wolff, who called Patricoff a crank in his book Burn Rate.) [Gawker 1, Gawker 2]

Microsoft and IBM: The new flipmeat chowhounds

Got a single-featured startup? Done pretending you have the revenue to go public? Dot-commers, forget about selling your flipmeat to the usual Web 2.0 carnivores. The classic consolidaters of the industry are back in business. More »

Wagged, sagged, body-bagged: Things we've decided are dead

Nick Carr, long-time flamebaiter turned linkbaiter, declares Wikipedia dead. (No fair pointing at the very live site!) We can't let Nick be the only one gunning for Steve Gillmor's coroner job. So in the interest of upping our own fake authority, here's Valleywag's table of what's wagged, sagged, and body-bagged. Apologies to Wired — that is, we're so very sorry. More »

Fox flipmeat: Handicapping the horses

Since Fox Interactive prez Ross Levinsohn said "We bought someone in this room" — at a Web 2.0 clusterfest — the bloggers have gone mad trying to guess which piece of flipmeat Fox chowed down on. Or, as VC blogger Paul Kedrosky puts it, Fox bought itself "a kazoo chorus of unwitting hype-meisters noisily playing the 'guess the company' game." More »

Who did Fox buy?

Okay, 'fess up — one of you pieces of flipmeat now belongs to Fox, according to that video from Web 2.0 Under the Radar. There are only so many options — TechCrunch counts 31. Maybe Riya, definitely not Tailrank (though its founder Kevin Burton says he's already been "congratulated" on his sale after he joked about it). More »

Fox: "We bought someone in this room."

Valley superblog TechCrunch came out yesterday with exclusive video of a buyout un-announcement at yesterday's Under the Radar conference. The admission came from Ross Levinsohn during an on-stage interview with TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington. The Fox Interactive president paused and blurted, "We have bought someone in this room." More »