Category: Uncategorized

MEDIA POST — Aug 15 — As thefacebook, a social networking service for college students, prepares to expand to 1,400 U.S. four-year colleges next month, the company is also preparing to broaden a program that allows advertisers to create sponsored groups for discussions centered around products. The initiative started quietly several months ago with MasterCard as the first sponsor. Since then, other sponsors have included Apple, Victoria's Secret, and Electronic Arts. John Verner, a senior media planner with Freestyle Interactive, Electronic Arts' agency for the campaign, said the boards for EA's sports titles draw tens of thousands and "gives them a forum to just trash talk, and sound off about what they like or hate about the game. It takes on its own life without us having put a lot of time into managing it."

The full article was originally published at Media Post, but is no longer available.

EWEEK — Aug 12  — Friendster is preparing to roll out an enterprise version of its social media network. Competitors offering similar technologies include Visible Path Corp. and Entopia Inc. During a one-week period in the fall, Lycos entered the social-networking fray with Lycos Circles, LinkedIn nabbed $10 million in funding, and IAC's ZeroDegrees moved out of beta.

The full article was originally published at eWeek, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Also, Spoke.com offers a (controversial) 'sales prospecting tool' and Ryze.com is a popular 'business networking.'  I especially like that Ryze has real world business networking mixers around the country. 

INTERNET NEWS — Aug 8 — Google is expected to announce the acquisition of Meetroduction later this week, a source close to the transaction told internetnews.com. Chicago-based Meetroduction launched the first version of Meetro, "location-aware social networking software," on Aug. 4. The idea of Meetro is to find people to hang out with in the physical world. Meetro combines instant messaging with automatic local buddy finding. Users can log in and browse or search profiles of other members in order to find someone compatible who's nearby and also logged in. The area to be searched can be narrowed to a quarter mile. FULL ARTICLE @ INTERNET NEWS

VILLIAGE VOICE — Aug 10 — MySpace's incorporation of Craigslist & Evite-like features and generous bandwidth allotment have made it an attractive destination.  Teri Everett, a representative of Fox Interactive, said, "we're just going to go on letting them do what they do, since that's what's made them so successful."

The full article was originally published at Village Voice, but is no longer available.

BUSINESS WIRE — Aug 10 — Robert Coshland, who served as Senior Producer at Disney's Buena Vista Games division, has left to head start up studio Republik Games, Inc. as CEO. The new company is already at work on a soon-to-be-announced online dating game and a related web community.

Mark Brooks: I'm surprised we haven't seen much connection with gaming on online dating sites yet.  It should be a nice retention tool.

LINE 56 — Aug 9 — LinkedIn has debuted its fourth premium service, enhanced search for power users. The other premium services are a job board, a business-to-business (B2B) service provider directory, and LinkedIn for Groups.  Says Konstantin Guericke, the company's VP of marketing, "we've got 3.3 million users. The most action is on LinkedIn."  The power of the company's model lies in its sharp focus on the business community. "You can reconnect with old colleagues, hire lawyers for patent issues."

Mark Brooks: I'm one degree of separation away from Pierre Omidyar, eBay's Founder, courtesy of the CEO of Meetup.com.  VC's abound, CEO's and product managers are all a referral away.  Well done Linkedin.

MARKET WATCH — Aug 3 — New research out of the U.K. indicates that men who spend money on so-called "worthless" gifts — such as theatre tickets or dinners — aren't wasting cash. Researchers Peter Sozou and Robert Seymour at University College London had males and females indicated their prospective partners' attractiveness. Males chose gifts, in terms of extravagant, valuable or cheap, based on their attraction to the females in question. Female accepted or declined the gifts and then chose whether to mate with the male.  Males who gave valuable gifts regularly, would be taken Advantage of and wouldn't be able to accurately assess the females' feelings. But the offering and acceptance of "worthless" gifts — dinners rather than diamonds — showed who the truly interested and attracted females were.  So, going overboard and blowing a lot of money is not a good idea. It sets in motion a high financial precedent that may be easily manipulated.  Go easy on the spending and get to know someone new through reasonably priced or cheap activities.

The full article was originally published at Investors.com, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Good advice.  As Dr Jama Clark would say, guys, don't be 'doormat.' 

MARKET WATCH — Aug 3 — New research out of the U.K. indicates that men who spend money on so-called "worthless" gifts — such as theatre tickets or dinners — aren't wasting cash. Researchers Peter Sozou and Robert Seymour at University College London had males and females indicated their prospective partners' attractiveness. Males chose gifts, in terms of extravagant, valuable or cheap, based on their attraction to the females in question. Female accepted or declined the gifts and then chose whether to mate with the male.  Males who gave valuable gifts regularly, would be taken Advantage of and wouldn't be able to accurately assess the females' feelings. But the offering and acceptance of "worthless" gifts — dinners rather than diamonds — showed who the truly interested and attracted females were.  So, going overboard and blowing a lot of money is not a good idea. It sets in motion a high financial precedent that may be easily manipulated.  Go easy on the spending and get to know someone new through reasonably priced or cheap activities.

The full article was originally published at Investors.com, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Good advice.  As Dr Jama Clark would say, guys, don't be 'doormat.' 

ASSOCIATED PRESS — Aug 3 — White Buffalo Ventures appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it had complied with anti-spam laws and argued that the University of Texas violated its rights by filtering out 59,000 e-mails in 2003. The 5th Circuit panel found that the federal anti-spam laws do not pre-empt the university’s policy and that the policy is permissible under the First Amendment.  The Austin-based service had legally obtained the addresses from the university, but the university started blocking the e-mail messages saying White Buffalo was part of a larger spam problem that had crashed the computer system.  UT issued a cease and desist order, but White Buffalo refused to comply. So UT blocked the e-mail messages.

Mark Brooks: Shouldn’t the students decide?

ASSOCIATED PRESS — Aug 3 — White Buffalo Ventures appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it had complied with anti-spam laws and argued that the University of Texas violated its rights by filtering out 59,000 e-mails in 2003. The 5th Circuit panel found that the federal anti-spam laws do not pre-empt the university’s policy and that the policy is permissible under the First Amendment.  The Austin-based service had legally obtained the addresses from the university, but the university started blocking the e-mail messages saying White Buffalo was part of a larger spam problem that had crashed the computer system.  UT issued a cease and desist order, but White Buffalo refused to comply. So UT blocked the e-mail messages.

Mark Brooks: Shouldn’t the students decide?