NY TIMES — Apr 23 — Chris DeWolfe bought the MySpace.com address in 2002 and first used the site to sell E-scooters. He became a master of aggressive forms of online marketing; e-mail, pop-ups. eUniverse/Intermix backed him with Myspace which tapped into three passions of young people: expressing themselves, interacting with friends and consuming popular culture. Fox Interactive Media (News Corp.) is stitching together several Web properties into a big Internet company focused on youth. MySpace may rival eBay and Craigslist as a place where nearly anything is bought and sold. On advertising…the best way to get, say, a television show in front of the MySpace audience is to win the hearts, one by one, of thousands of members who will display the show to all of their friends. Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers created a profile for the animated square hamburger character from its television campaign and ~100,000 people signed up to be "friends" with the square. DeWolfe is opening an office in London to coordinate MySpace's expansion in Europe and cutting deals to let members connect to MySpace over cellphones. MySpace has spent $20 million, in part to nearly double its staff of 250 (1/3 customer service). FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: Myspace was a internet design company in 1996, sold virtual hard drive space in 2000, scooters in 2002 and kicked off as a socail network in 2003. I remember calling them to see if they wanted to sell the company in 2003, while they were still smaller than Friendster. The underground site went mainstream. They've done a great job being big AND 'underground.' However, there are still opportunities for other flavors of social network. Enter Bebo and Tagworld.
PR NEWSWIRE — Apr 26 — A special conference concerning background checks for the internet dating and social networking industries will be held July 13-14, 2006 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. The 2006 San Francisco Internet Dating Conference will focus on pending legislation and their impact, background search technologies and legal regulations. Also, methods of combating fraudulent credit card transactions. Attending the event will be senior executives from all aspects of the online personals industry, legislators, payment processors, mobile and telecom execs, software companies, marketing firms and entrepreneurs. LINK 
