Digital Media

YouTube, which is already trying out the movie rental business, wants to get into TV, too.

Google's video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me.

YouTube already lets users watch a smattering of TV shows for free, with advertising. Now it envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable.

Sources say the site's negotiations with the networks and studios that own the shows are preliminary. But both sides seem optimistic, since models for such deals already exist. No comment from YouTube.

The biggest stumbling block may be consumers. That's because Google is talking about streaming the shows, instead of letting consumers download them to their computers, as both Apple and Amazon do. But the networks and studios, who control pricing, will want to sell the streamed shows at the same price as downloads--they fear that offering them at a different price will force them to go back and rework their existing deals.

Executives at YouTube and TV insist that the disparity is simply a perception problem, and cite studies that show that most people who download TV episodes only watch them once, anyway. But that's a tough sell.

It's also possible that YouTube may skirt the issue by launching a TV rental business without the big hits that Apple and Amazon offer. One possibility: It could start by moving immediately to long and mid-"tail" shows and videos that aren't available other places, and don't have to match existing prices.

No matter how it does it, YouTube is likely to be just one of several outlets trying to get consumers to pay for TV on the Web in 2010.

Among others: In addition to its a la carte offering, Apple is trying to create a monthly subscription service. Hulu, the free TV site co-owned by News Corp.'s Fox, GE's NBC Universal and Disney's ABC, is expected to launch a subscription service of its own. And cable operators like Comcast will be launching different versions of "TV Everywhere" services, which give subscribers expanded access to online shows.

TV executives are generally enthusiastic about all of the above, since they are meant to create additional revenue streams without threatening the industry's existing business. That is: They're supposed to protect it from the digital disruption that has ravaged music, newspapers, etc.

But while Web users have an insatiable appetite for video, they've yet to demonstrate much interest in paying for it. If any of this is going to work, that will have to change.

Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

Miley Cyrus is undoubtedly one of the world's greatest and most important musical artists.

So when she recently decided to leave Twitter and rapped on YouTube about it, one imagined that investors in the supposedly billion-dollar company shivered uncontrollably for several days.

As did some who watched the haunting performance in her rap video.

However, now the teeny singer has gone further. She believes that Twitter should be banished from our firmament. And I mean firmament.

You see, in an interview with the B96 radio show in Chicago, embedded for your pleasure, the pop divette declared: "Twitter should just be, like, banned from this universe."

I should say that Miley's speaking voice isn't quite as mellifluous as her singing. What could be? However, please peruse this video and, when it gets to around the 3.30 mark, you might enjoy Miley's Twitter tirade.

A highlight of her invective was, perhaps: "Because people, like, honestly, like, I mean people wanna know why, like, you're, like, unhealthy, and, like, you need, like, get out and do stuff and, like, be in the world instead of being like this (pretends to be hunched over a keyboard) all the time. And, like, all I did was, like, lay in bed all the time."

I know there will be some who might fear that Miley has removed herself from Twitter because the 140 character limit did not allow her full expression of her likes and thoughts.

However, I am confident that this deeply introspective performer is merely trying to warn her fellow teens of the dangers of immersing yourself far too much in, well, yourself.

As she further cautioned: "I"m not really a big fan of the Internet any more. I don't really get online."

Should you or your children be concerned that Miley might disappear entirely from the Internet, please rush to purchase some of Miley's fine recordings, which are available at iTunes.

Moreover, at MileyCyrus.com, you can secure examples of her highly stylish, Miley stylish collection of clothing. Regretfully, the current link doesn't go through directly to the Miley Cyrus collection on Walmart.com, which might be something of an oversight. You can also still find Miley on Myspace.com/mileycyrus.

Alternatively, you could spend all of your energies trying to save Fuzzy.

You see, Fuzzy's owner, who is possibly humorous or perhaps, like, demented, has declared that she will kill her cat Fuzzy on November 16 unless Miley returns to the world of the tweet.

At Twitter.com/mileysavefuzzy, you can participate in the important debate concerning Fuzzy's future.

You can also go to Mileysavefuzzy.com to learn more about how Fuzzy is to be cooked in the event of his demise. Eating a cat is not, allegedly, illegal in the country in which Fuzzy resides.

How can anyone not, like, like the Internet?

Rumors have begun to trickle from Googleville that the Jolly Search Giant is beginning to change its mind about those fickle fellows who espouse creativity.

You know, the sort who don't necessarily think you should research 41 different shades of blue. The sort, indeed, who sleep under their desks at ad agencies.

Which leads me to wonder whether a certain rebalancing might shortly occur in the tender relationship between the left-brainers and right-brainers of product selling.

The Web largely began as a functional experience, where everything you looked at was created by those who felt that what it does would always be a little more more important than how it looks. Partly because these people had no idea, nor did they really care, how to create something that actually looked truly inviting.

Few might agree that Google and YouTube, despite the fact that huge numbers of fingers populate them daily, are the most aesthetic of locations. Utilitarian would be the polite way of describing their sense of design.

A 10-year-old mathematician's idea of pulchritude would be a less charitable version. Somehow, every time I go to YouTube, in particular, it feels like the crummiest of Blockbusters, with DVD boxes that are fraying at the corners.

A little like a crummy video store?

(Credit: CC Original Hamster/Flickr)

Ad agencies, very heavy on pretty and very light on engineering, at first tried to mimic print ads and billboards and squeezed them into a medium that was far more individual, far more personal than any seen before.

The Googlies thought ad agencies somewhat risible relics of a disappearing world--like a bunch of Don Johnsons trying to deal with the brainy world of CSI.

Yet while the Web is still very functional, it is also the place where we increasingly live far too much of our lives. We watch TV on the Web. We read papers on the Web. We find lovers on the Web. And we continue to tell them how much we love them on the Web.

I know that some people feel that the pages of, for example, Yahoo Sports and the Huffington Post have been occasionally enhanced by wallpaper ads that add energy to the home pages without taking away from the content.

So advertising, done right, surely has a chance to make Web pages more attractive, more involving, and more inspiring.

There was a time in the U.K., for example, when the TV ads were actually more interesting than much of the programing. It is possible. It does happen. Brazil is another country where advertising can be far more involving far than the latest soap opera.

As Google decides that display advertising is where the new money will inevitably be, ad agencies might just think about creating work that makes Google's pages a little more inviting, a little more, dare one say it, exciting.

How strange it might be, in some optimistic future, if advertising created by outsiders actually helped Google with its business as well as advertisers with theirs.

The advent of Bing has shown that just a little aesthetic sense might, in fact, help to attract real people out there, those scouring the Web for anything that might brighten their day.

Just imagine if Google's and YouTube's pages were adorned with ads that offered wit, charm, and design sense as opposed to little blue words offering last minute vacations or little yellow words promising erectile function.

Might that be good for business? Might it even encourage YouTube, in particular, into a redesign?

Prince Philip is the tall chap who married the queen of England, enjoys making beautifully inappropriate comments, and feels intimate contact with his television might be necessary in order to make it work.

In a revealing interview, only some of which seems to have appeared on the Buckingham Palace YouTube channel, the prince laid bare his electrical dysfunction, one that many might, secretly or not, actually share.

His interviewer, a rather well spoken chap called Kevin McCloud, brightened up the pages of London's Times newspaper with some of the prince's heartfelt words.

Perhaps the most elegant of the phrases turned by the 88-year-old prince was: "To work out how to operate a television set, you practically have to make love to the thing."

It has never been my habit to wonder about the conjugal behavior of the regal.

However, once one's mind goes quickly beyond boggling in order to consider how one might make one's plasma pulse race, one begins to appreciate that many people do find it rather difficult to grasp even 10 percent of their gizmos' workings.

Prince Philip photographed moving swiftly.

(Credit: CC Steve Punter/Flickr)

Of course, the prince's imagery is so disconcerting that I wonder just what actions came immediately before the creation of, for example, Prince Charles.

However, Phil the Greek, as he is sometimes known in pejorative circles, will no doubt receive some sympathy for his giddy criticism of technology's grave new world. Why can't things be just blindingly simple, especially for those whose eyes are not quite what they used to be?

Not satiated with his criticism of televisual operations, the prince turned his mind and, one feared, his devilishly seductive eyes, toward the Web.

"The Web sites I've seen are so awful it's untrue," he told McCloud. "They're so unfit for purpose I'm surprised anyone tolerates them."

Surely he has a point. There are so many ill-designed sites on the Web that one's eyes sometimes water with pain. However, given the prince's somewhat outre position on the subject of televisions, many will find themselves caught in the uncomfortable posture of now considering which Web sites the prince has, um, actually visited.

Please might readers suggest something appropriate, as I fear my own thinking has been addled and muddled by the prince's highly colorful imagery.

There are those moments in the business cycle of a young dynamic brand when people look back and say: "If only that hadn't happened."

And so it is with Twitter. And so it is with Miley Cyrus.

You see Miley, she who is sometimes Hannah Montana, was rapidly becoming one of Twitter's most trusted Swiss Guards. She had almost 2 million followers.

Now the sheep have lost their shepherdess. For Miley Cyrus has silenced her tweets, starved her Twitter feed, and drifted off into the uncertain socially not-working darkness from which some stars never return.

This is clearly a disaster for Twitter. Microblogging needs micro people to bring in the macro crowds. Cyrus, who is possibly only four or five years old in real life, was one of Twitter's most durable pre-pubescent predilections.

After her painful and dramatic departure, how can coming generations take the brand seriously?

Perhaps worse, though, is the means Cyrus chose to deliver her beating on tweeting. Yes, she went on YouTube. And, yes, she performed a "Good-Bye, Twitter" rap.

In the rap, she dismisses the idea that she was forced to quit Twitter by her boyfriend, Liam Hemsworth, an Australian actor perhaps most famous for his role as, well, Miley Cyrus's boyfriend.

If my ears served me correctly, Cyrus seems to suggest in this musical tour-de-farce that she was concerned that she had begun to "tweet her pimples."

I was not aware that she had pimples, nor that she had attempted to tweet them. But I am concerned that she may have tried to do this without the appropriate medical supervision.

However, before my cup of concern overflowed into my glass of cabernet, I could hear the world's next Streisand rap that no one really cares if she's "playing with Noah" or "doing my hair."

I am not sure who Noah might be, but the underlying arc of pain seems to have been caused by those horrid gossipy tabloids trawling through her tweets, like investigative journalists digging into Elton John's garbage cans, in search of juicy information.

In a disturbingly out-of-sync climax, Cyrus declares she wants "her private life private" and that is done "trying to please."

It is a confessional that will surely make so many of the world's parents weep. Indeed, Cyrus admits that she became a little obsessed with Katy Perry and Britney, but that she is now "peacin' out."

As I peace together this seminal moment in social-networking history, I find myself saddened beyond measure that one of the world's great Twitterers may have been forever lost.

Nonethless, I know that you, together with the Twitter hierarchy, will cling on to the fact that one of the world's other great rappers, Kevin Federline, appears to still have a Twitter account.

(Credit: Smarty Pants)

Kids may gobble up junk food, but it seems they love playing with Nintendo devices even more.

Out of the 100 most loved brands for America's children and tweens, the Nintendo Wii and DS scored the first and second spots, according to a report by research firm Smarty Pants.

The survey "Young Love" found that even tempting snacks like Oreos and M&Ms trailed behind the Nintendo gear, taking the third and fifth spots in the list, respectively. Other techie items loved by 6- to 12-year-olds included the iPod at number 12, Sony's Playstation at 14, YouTube at 36, and Microsoft's Xbox at 42.

Kids participate in more than $500 billion in consumer spending each year, according to Smarty Pants, and their parents consider their favorites when buying everything from snacks to entertainment, both of which popped up heavily on the list.

"From Crayola to iPod, kids' most loved brands are familiar, iconic brands that delight kids and parents with variety, value, family-friendly content, and simple pleasures," Smarty Pants President Wynne Tyree said in a statement. "Interestingly, the top brands are not traditional 'for kids only' brands; in fact, many are not marketed directly to kids."

To compile the report, Smarty Pants questioned 4,700 American kids and their parents online over a period of nine months. Covered in the survey were more than 260 consumer brands across 20 different product categories.

The brands that kids liked most, said SmartyPants, were the ones that offered high-quality family time, age-appropriate content, parent-approved indulgence, variety/choice, "cool" accessibility, and chatter-worthy advertising.

Lawyers working on a $1 billion copyright lawsuit filed by Viacom against Google's YouTube may have uncovered evidence that employees of the video site were among those who uploaded unauthorized content to YouTube.

In addition, internal YouTube e-mails indicate that YouTube managers knew and discussed the existence of unauthorized content on the site with employees but chose not to remove the material, three sources with knowledge of the case told CNET.

The e-mails, according to the sources who asked for anonymity because of the ongoing litigation, surfaced during an exchange of information between the two sides of the legal dispute. They are one of the cornerstones of Viacom's case, as well as that of a separate class action lawsuit filed against Google and YouTube by a group of content owners, the sources said. The group includes a European soccer league and a music-publishing company.

Such evidence could be a major blow to YouTube's defense. If managers possessed "actual knowledge" of copyright infringement on the site and did not quickly remove it, the company may not be entitled to protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe-harbor provision, according to legal experts.

"The facts you described could very well be the smoking gun that puts a hole through Google's case," Roger Goff, an entertainment attorney not involved in the case, told CNET News. "(If the facts are accurate), Google will have a very difficult time claiming that (its staff members) don't undermine its protection."

The provision, established in 1998, was designed to give online services a measure of protection from liability for infringing materials uploaded to their sites--as long as they meet a certain criteria, including:

• (A)(i) The services don't have actual knowledge that the material, or an activity using the material on the system or network, is infringing.
• (ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or
• (iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material.

The entertainment industry has been skeptical about YouTube's claims that it did not have knowledge of the once-plentiful amounts of infringing content available on the site. Clips from popular TV shows, feature films, or sports events would often bubble up in YouTube's Most Viewed or Most Discussed sections.

It should be noted that the correspondence described by sources likely make up only a sliver of the material exchanged, and there's no way to know the full spectrum of internal discussions regarding copyright at YouTube.

"The characterizations of the supposed evidence, made in violation of a court order, are wrong, misleading, or lack important context and notably come on the heels of a series of significant setbacks for the plaintiffs," Aaron Zamost, a YouTube spokesman, said Monday evening. "The evidence will show that we go above and beyond our legal obligations to protect the rights of content owners."

Any questions about what YouTube employees may or may not have uploaded to YouTube must also be asked of Viacom's employees. Court documents show that on August 25, Viacom agreed to turn over records that shed light on "Viacom's decisions to upload or authorize the uploading of videos to YouTube" and on the company's policies "for allowing videos to remain on YouTube for marketing promotional or other business reasons."

This suggests that Viacom employees also uploaded clips to the site. A company representative declined to comment.

Viacom has long acknowledged that it was one of the first to promote shows online by posting clips to YouTube. But the conglomerate has also said the uploading of clips does not undermine or diminish its copyright claim.

YouTube's counterargument has always been, how is the company supposed to know the difference between pirated and legally uploaded clips when companies like Viacom are among those uploading material?

Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006, a price tag that set the bar for Web 2.0 acquisitions. Long before that, many in the film and television industries claimed that YouTube was building a big audience by enabling people to pirate professionally produced television shows and films.

Since Viacom first filed its suit in March 2007, accusing Google and YouTube of encouraging users to commit intellectual-property theft, many online services and entertainment companies have closely watched the case because of its broad implications. What the YouTube-Viacom suit could help settle, to some degree, is who is responsible for policing and initiating the removal of pirated materials--the copyright owners or the operators of online services?

But should the case ever go to trial, the outcome may be less significant than legal experts once predicted. While the lawsuit has meandered in the courts for 30 months, other legal battles featuring companies with less marquee value have already gone a long way toward determining Web services' key issues surrounding copyright.

Two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz issued a decision saying video site Veoh was not responsible for copyright violations committed by users because it was entitled to protection under the DMCA. Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, had filed a copyright suit against Veoh that experts said was very similar to the YouTube-Viacom case. Matz's decision appeared to set an important precedent that would help YouTube and Google argue against Viacom, the parent company of MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures.

"The issue is whether Veoh takes appropriate steps to deal with copyright infringement," Matz wrote. He concluded that it had.

YouTube supporters cheered Matz's ruling, believing that it would apply to YouTube's situation because the Web's largest video site had long established and enforced a "takedown policy," whereby the company removed infringing content, once notified by a copyright owner. And later, the video site took steps not required by the DMCA by establishing a state-of-the-art filtering process that helps block material from being uploaded to the site.

But attorneys for Viacom and members of the class action are expected to argue that YouTube's filtering system is a gaping hole in YouTube's defense. One of the major complaints that content owners had about YouTube was that before the company launched its filtering technology, they were forced to file takedown notices for every instance of infringement. In some cases, an entertainment company could remove a popular clip, only to see someone else upload it again seconds later.

Lawyers for Viacom and the class action group are expected to argue that if YouTube was notified that a specific clip was pirated, and had the power to prevent copies from going up but did not act to remove them, the company violated the DMCA.

The plaintiffs use as evidence a paraphrased statement from Chad Hurley, YouTube's CEO, and one of its three co-founders, which appeared in The New York Times in February 2007, the sources said.

"(Hurley) said the company was still working on its filtering technology," the Times wrote. "He said it had agreed to use it to identify and possibly remove copyrighted material from Warner Music, and it would discuss a similar arrangement with Viacom as part of a broader deal."

A Viacom representative said at the time, "They are saying we will only protect your content if you do a deal with us--if not, we will steal it."

The YouTube-Viacom suit is unlikely to go to trial before next year. Certainly, with YouTube wooing entertainment companies as it attempts to battle Hulu, Netflix, Crackle, iTunes, and other digital-video outlets, there exists the possibility that YouTube and Viacom will come to some kind of settlement.

A settlement might be anticlimatic, but could be the best for all concerned.

Since 2006, many observers have scratched their head over what prompted Google to pay $1.65 billion for the video site YouTube. We're now a little closer to the answer.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in May, "I believe YouTube was worth somewhere around $600 million to $700 million."

(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET)

The blockbuster acquisition for the 18-month-old start-up played a large role in sending valuations in the tech sector skyrocketing. Although YouTube made little revenue, the all-stock transaction gave Google control of a company many believed would change the face of mass entertainment. It also led to criticism from skeptics who thought that Google would never get its money back.

Google has revealed little about how it decided to pay $1.65 billion but CEO Eric Schmidt said under oath last spring that he was willing to pay a premium--a big one--for YouTube. Leading up to the acquisition, Schmidt told Google's board of directors that his estimate of YouTube's worth was somewhere between $600 million and $700 million, according to court records reviewed by CNET.

A Google representative declined to comment about Schmidt's valuation.

Schmidt had his reasons for asking his board to OK an offer of $1 billion more than what he thought the site was worth. The CEO made the comments during a deposition he gave in May as part of the copyright lawsuit Viacom filed against Google and YouTube in 2007. In short, he believed that Google had to offer that much, or competitors, presumably Microsoft or Yahoo, would walk away with the increasingly popular video site.

"This is a company with very little revenue," Schmidt said while being questioned by Stuart Jay Baskin, a Viacom attorney. "(YouTube was) growing quickly with user adoption, growing much faster than Google Video, which was the product that Google had. And they had indicated to us that they would be sold, and we believed that there would be a competing offer--because of who Google was--paying much more than they were worth...We ultimately concluded that $1.65 billion included a premium for moving quickly and making sure that we could participate in the user success in YouTube."

Three years later, that user success continues: YouTube has grown from 12 million unique users (in May 2006) to more than 100 million users just in the United States. Every minute, more than 10 hours of video is uploaded to the site. But Google is also fighting a $1 billion copyright lawsuit with entertainment giant Viacom, which claims that YouTube encouraged users to violate its copyright. On top of that, the company is still trying to figure out how to turn its prize acquisition into a profitable business.

YouTube managers have toiled to find the right way to generate revenue, experimenting with a wide range of advertising methods and models--everything from prerolls to overlays. Perhaps most importantly, managers changed their approach to copyright owners.

Whereas Hollywood executives once called YouTube a "rogue company," the video site can now boast numerous partnerships with top entertainment companies, including as Walt Disney, CBS (publisher of CNET News), Sony Pictures, and Metro Goldwyn-Mayer. YouTube also has deals with all four major music labels. And YouTube's finances may finally be turning the corner: company representatives have hinted in the past several months that it's on the road to becoming the kind of revenue generator that Google always envisioned.

Whether Google paid too much for YouTube then is a sort of barroom debate among media analysts, not unlike arguing whether the New York Yankees overpaid on free-agent ballplayers in the off-season. James McQuivey, a digital-media analyst at Forrester Research, said that if he were in Schmidt's shoes, he would have made the same deal.

"It actually becomes worth the additional value because Google can tie all of its advertising expertise and search traffic into YouTube," McQuivey said. "It's not like it's going to pay back that $1.6 billion any time soon, but what it does is, it ensures that these millions and millions of viewers are coming to a Google-owned site rather than someone's else's site...As a loss leader goes, if it never makes its money back, its still going to be worth it."

McQuivey acknowledged that those focusing only on hard business numbers are probably not going to agree with him. Count Josh Martin among them. Martin, a research analyst, was an early skeptic of YouTube's profit potential, arguing on behalf of Yankee Group Research that Google overpaid.

"I don't think Schmidt is wrong in assuming that someone would have overpaid for YouTube," Martin said. "If Google was willing to overpay for it, then someone else would have too. But it was a bad business decision for Google. We said it at the time, and three years later, we have been proven right."

Martin said that when Google priced YouTube, it should have deducted heavily for the legal liabilities, as well as for the company's ability to draw an audience, if it couldn't offer pirated content.

"You go back to the reason why YouTube was popular, and it was because of (the 'Saturday Night Live' skit) Lazy Sunday," Martin said. "That is what put YouTube on the map. So it was popular because it had access to content that it shouldn't have had and that you couldn't get elsewhere because no one else was willing to put it up illegally...Clearly, (Google's leaders) needed to understand what was driving momentum behind YouTube."

The following is an edited excerpt of Schmidt's deposition:

Stuart Jay Baskin, a Viacom attorney: And what was management's valuation?

Schmidt: Much lower than we paid for it.

Baskin: And how was that communicated to the board?

Schmidt: I told them.

Baskin: So why don't you tell us what you remember telling the board in connection with the valuation?

Schmidt: I believe YouTube was worth somewhere around $600 million to $700 million.

Baskin: And you communicated that to the board?

Schmidt: I did.

Baskin: Of Google?

Schmidt: I did.

Baskin: What methodology did you use to come up with that number?

John P. Mancini, an attorney working for Google, objects.

Schmidt: My judgment.

Baskin: Was it based on cash flow analysis? Comparable companies? What were you using as the basis for your judgment?

Mancini objects.

Schmidt: It's just my judgment. I've been doing this a long time.

Baskin: So you orally communicated to your board during the course of the board meeting that you thought a more correct valuation for YouTube was $600 million to $700 million; is that what you said, sir?

Mancini objects to characterization of the testimony.

Schmidt: Again, to help you along, I believe that they were worth $600 million to $700 million.

Baskin: And am I correct that you were asking your board to approve an acquisition price of $1.65 billion; correct?

Schmidt: I did.

Mancini objects.

Baskin: I'm not very good at math, but I think that would be $1 billion or so more than you thought the company was, in fact, worth.

Mancini objects.

Schmidt: That is correct.

Later...

Baskin: Can you tell us what reasoning you explained?

Schmidt: Sure, this is a company with very little revenue, growing quickly with user adoption, growing much faster than Google Video, which was the product that Google had. And they had indicated to us that they would be sold, and we believed that there would be a competing offer--because of who Google was--paying much more than they were worth. In the deal dynamics, the price, remember, is not set by my judgment or by financial model or discounted cash flow. It's set by what people are willing to pay. And we ultimately concluded that $1.65 billion included a premium for moving quickly and making sure that we could participate in the user success in YouTube.

Should you be one of those who believe that men are neanderthal, socially awkward hairy animals while women are socially aware, smoothly sensitive beings, then I have some statistics that might increase your estimation of your own superior judgment.

According to research by Brian Solis, sourcing his data from Google's Ad Planner, the majority of functioning beings on almost all social networking sites are women.

Published on Information Is Beautiful, the numbers might create an encouraging belief that if social networking is the future, then the future is female.

Solis's figures suggest that there is only one major social-networking site that is predominantly male: Digg. I know you'll recoil uncontrollably when I tell you that Digg appears to be 64 percent male.

(Credit: Information Is Beautiful)

On the other hand, LinkedIn and YouTube seem to enjoy an equality of fraternity and sorority. While Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr and MySpace, to name but a few, are all, like the population of Brazil, queendoms.

Perhaps the most extraordinary numbers come from MySpace. Somehow, the rather messy nature of the site, the tradition of an excess of spam and porn, might suggest that this was a male-oriented (slightly sleazy males, some might imagine) haven.

These numbers, however, suggest that MySpace is 64 percent female. Which makes one ruminate as to why the home page currently has so much blue and so little fuchsia.

It will be tempting, indeed, for many to put these figures down to traditional psychological differences between the sexes: women like people and men like, well, peeing in public.

However, one might also conclude that women simply resort to more virtual contact because their real world physical everyday life leaves them rather more dissatisfied than it does men.

Lately there seems to have been much evidence that women are increasingly miserable.

Celebrated and, one might have imagined, happy women such as Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post (The Sad Shocking Truth of How Women Are Feeling) and Maureen Dowd of The New York Times (Blue is the New Black) have lamented the lot of Lot's Wife, Mother, Sister and Daughter.

Might misery be driving women to MySpace?