Offerpal Media, one of the companies at the center of a bitter dispute over misleading advertisements on social networks, on Thursday launched a revised policy designed to "forbid any offers that are misleading, deceptive or otherwise objectionable."
Companies like Offerpal are enlisted by many of the big gaming companies built on social networks like Facebook; they help those companies make money by letting game players earn points and virtual goods by completing offers and surveys rather than paying real money.
They make a lot of money doing so. So do the game companies, like Zynga and Playfish (recently acquired by Electronic Arts), which in turn advertise heavily on the likes of Facebook to recruit new players.
But then the negative press started to emerge: many of these "free" offers and surveys actually had hidden costs attached to them that weren't adequately disclosed. Some companies like Zynga started backtracking and going so far as to ban offers altogether. Facebook and MySpace, the two biggest social-network platforms, made very public revisions to their policies. But the controversy continued, and both Facebook and Zynga were named as defendants in a federal class-action lawsuit.
Offerpal, which replaced its CEO amid the controversy, has now come out and said that while it's setting a basic standard for advertisement quality, game makers and publishers enlisting Offerpal's services can opt to be even more stringent. "Offerpal will rate all offers by quality and allow its partners to select a quality level of compliance ranging from 'Level 1' for minimal restrictions to 'Level 5' for highly conservative restrictions," a release explained.
Will the new restrictions keep angry bloggers and consumers--not to mention lawmakers--at bay? More importantly, are they going to amount to anything more than smoke and mirrors? We'll see.
CheckMySite, a company that monitors uptime of Web sites, announced on Thursday that Twitter still has some serious performance issues.
CheckMySite continually monitored Twitter's uptime over the past 12 months and found that Twitter wasn't able to maintain an effective uptime rate during that period, though it did perform better in some months rather than others.
CheckMySite's report found that Twitter's best uptime between October 2008 through the end of October 2009, was in December 2008, when the site was up 99.97 percent of the time. During Twitter's worst month, August 2009, the its site was up just 99.15 percent of the time.
Without any comparison, Twitter's figures probably won't mean much. Realizing that, CheckMySite compared the social network's uptime to Facebook and MySpace. According to CheckMySite, both Facebook and MySpace "have an uptime of 100 percent, meaning there is virtually no occurrence of frustrated access among visitors."
"Any company that has an uptime statistic of less than 99.9 percent should definitely work to improve the situation," Andrew Stock, CheckMySite's international sales director said in a statement.
Twitter has suffered from uptime issues almost since its founding. For a while, it was so bad that some postulated that it could lead to the site's downfall. In recent months, Twitter's uptime seemed to improve, though it experienced a few snags along the way. Evidently, things haven't been as good as some thought.
Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.
In the wake of a firestorm over just how much of social-gaming companies' profits can be attributed to potentially scammy offers and incentives, News Corp.'s MySpace has taken a stand (and, it could be said, taken advantage of the PR opportunity) by coming out vocally against them.
"We're adding a fifth principle (to our developer terms of use) that clarifies a specific use case that we feel is particularly damaging to the user experience: promotions that include hidden renewals without specific opt-in will not be permitted," a company blog post by CEO Owen Van Natta read. "Because it's our belief opt-out offers are misleading and do not have the best interests of the users in mind, we will be updating our Terms of Use this week to better clarify this for users and developers."
What exactly is he referring to? In many of the most popular (and profitable) games built for big social-networking platforms like Facebook and MySpace, players can progress faster in the game by either buying virtual goods with "real" money, or by completing offers and surveys from a partner company like the prominent Offerpal Media. Critics say that many of these offers aren't actually free, and unwittingly can sign users up for expensive subscriptions or programs.
After a public confrontation between TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and Offerpal CEO Anu Shukla at last week's Virtual Goods Summit event in San Francisco, game makers like Zynga and RockYou put out statements saying that they're cracking down on offers that are potentially misleading.
Could this lead to real industry changes? Yes. But keep in mind that Facebook, the biggest destination for these social games, already bans this stuff in theory. "Ads cannot be deceptive or fraudulent about any offer made," the company's advertising guidelines read, and adds "if an ad includes a price, discount, or 'free' offer...the destination URL for the ad must link to a page that clearly and accurately offers the exact deal the ad has displayed (and) the ad must clearly state what action or set of actions is required to qualify for the offer."
But judging by the amount of sketchiness that allegedly takes place on the platform, it seems like advertisers aren't necessarily following these guidelines. Whether MySpace's stance against them can lead to a legitimate crackdown has yet to be seen.
If you're expecting to get updates from celebrities on all their latest movies, you might be disappointed: Hollywood might be trying to curb celebrity use of social networks.
A Hollywood Reporter blog post recently reported that "there's a growing number of studio deals with new language aimed specifically at curbing usage of social-media outlets by actors, execs and other creatives." The studios hope confidential information about the films they're producing won't leak out on major social networks.
The Hollywood Reporter, Esq. blog reported that both Disney and DreamWorks have already added clauses to their talent contracts. A clause from Disney says that the actor should not make information available "via 'interactive media such as Facebook, Twitter, or any other interactive social network or personal blog.'"
Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For its part, DreamWorks said Wednesday that no such clause exists in its talent contracts. "Everyone is allowed to use Twitter and other social networks," a company representative told me in a phone conversation.
It was originally believed that Cameron Diaz and Mike Myers were among the first celebrities to be affected by a reportedly new anti-social-media clause included in talent contracts from major studios.
According to DreamWorks, all of its contracts for anyone involved in a movie feature standard, "boilerplate" language saying the signer cannot mention their work on the movie until the studio has made an official announcement. After that, everyone working on the film (including celebrities), are free to talk about their films on any social-media platform.
In the end, it's not all that surprising that the film industry might be targeting social media. Earlier this year, the National Football League made its social-media policy public. That policy banned tweeting prior, during, and after a game for all players, coaches, referees, and media on-hand.
But whether targeting social networks is really the right move is up for debate. The Hollywood Reporter said that the new clauses might have been a reaction to leaks by celebrities tweeting information before it was supposed to come out. Paula Abdul, the publication said, announced her decision on Twitter to leave "American Idol," surprising Fox executives. Hollywood is trying to limit such leaks going forward.
It's understandable. And Hollywood has always limited what the talent can say about films. But is social media really the best target? Is it not a fine promotional tool? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Updated at 9:43 a.m. Wednesday PDT to include comments from DreamWorks.
Hot on the heels of its appointment of a chief technology officer last week, News Corp.'s MySpace on Monday announced that Mark Rosenbaum has been hired as its chief financial officer.
Although the appointment marks the first time that the social network has had a CFO, it is Rosenbaum's second stint at News Corp. He headed up financial operations at Gemstar-TV Guide International, when it was owned by the Rupert Murdoch-helmed conglomerate. More recently, Rosenbaum served as a consultant to MGM.
Mark Rosenbaum's MySpace profile picture.
(Credit: MySpace)In his new position, Rosenbaum report directly to Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook executive who became MySpace's CEO in April, after the departure of co-founder Chris DeWolfe.
Less than two months after Van Natta's hiring, MySpace announced a layoff of nearly 30 percent amid stagnant growth and what was increasingly a losing battle against Facebook in its quest for social-networking dominance. The company called its aim at financial efficiency a "return to start-up culture."
Hiring a chief financial officer is, as a result, a logical step.
"Having led companies at every stage of their development, Mark understands both start-up culture and mature businesses, and is well-suited to guide MySpace's financial organization through its next phase of growth," Van Natta said in a release announcing Rosenbaum's hire. "We're thrilled to add someone with his pedigree and experience to the team."
MySpace has appointed Alex Maghen to the role of chief technology officer, the News Corp.-owned social site announced Tuesday. He replaces outgoing CTO Aber Whitcomb, who had been at the company since its inception.
Maghen was already at MySpace, serving in the CTO position of its MySpace Music division, a joint venture with the major record labels. Prior to that, he held CTO roles at Yahoo Entertainment and MTV Networks--the latter of which was also the former employer of current MySpace entertainment execs Courtney Holt and Jason Hirschhorn.
"The next phase of MySpace's evolution will further empower our incredible audience of consumers, developers, artists, content creators, and advertisers with the tools they need to broadcast, discover, and express themselves," Maghen said in a release. "The future of our technology organization will be guided by an open platform and world-class standards to create a place of invention for our technical staff as well as the world's development community."
MySpace has fallen out of the tech industry's favor, surpassed both in traffic and technological innovation by once-smaller rival Facebook--even though MySpace advocated developer-friendly open standards well before Facebook came out in full support of them.
There have been some promising signs of late on the technology front: a MySpace-Twitter status sync proved popular enough to make MySpace's URL shortener the second most popular on the microblogging service.
At one time or another, most of us have recommended an iPhone/iPod Touch app to friends or family members--usually by tweeting, e-mailing, or Facebooking about it.
Yappler Sync takes that concept to the next level, allowing you to build a custom list of the apps you like and then share that list via the social solution of your choice.
At the same time, Yappler Sync helps you discover more cool apps by perusing the lists built by others.
All you do is install the eponymous utility, which is available for Windows and Mac, then build your list and decide how to share it.
Unfortunately, I discovered a few irksome aspects of the service, starting with this: Yappler builds your list based on every app in your iTunes library, not just those currently in residence on your iPhone. Thus I ended up with some 270 apps to cull--and they weren't even listed alphabetically.
Meanwhile, it's not immediately clear how you're supposed to "discover" other users' lists (unless they're shared with you directly). The Yappler site catalogs all the apps in the App Store (84,000 and counting, in case you're wondering), with a handy advanced-search option that lets you specify criteria like price and rating.
But the only way to find other users and their lists is by perusing the reviews for any given app, then looking for clickable usernames. And once you do find another user's list, all you really get is a batch of icons. So JoeAppUser has Buzzingo on his iPhone--how does that really enlighten me?
Of course, Yappler Sync is more about the social aspect of app-sharing, hence the ties to Facebook, Twitter, and the like. And it's nice how it can automatically update your list when you install new apps. Plus, it's free, so I can complain only so much.
On the other hand, this isn't much different from posting, say, a list of books you've read. Without knowing more about each book and, more importantly, why you liked it, where's the value?
Although social networking may be seen as a personal-communications alternative to e-mail, those that find themselves on several social-media sites throughout the day generally spend more time reading and writing e-mail messages than those that don't engage in as much social networking, according to a study released on Monday by Nielsen.
After considering the impact social networks have on Web surfers' activities online, Nielsen tested its assumption that "consumption of social media decreases e-mail use" to determine how social networking has impacted e-mail.
To do so, the research firm broke its test population into four groups based on the amount of time they spend consuming social media. The first three groups were labeled low, medium, and high consumers of social media, respectively. The fourth group featured people who didn't use social sites.
Using that data as a framework, Nielsen, which recently partnered with Facebook to gauge user sentiment around the social network's advertising, then examined how often people in those groups used their e-mail programs over the course of a year.
After analyzing the data, Nielsen found that its hypothesis didn't quite hold up. According to the researchers, "it actually appears that social-media use makes people consume e-mail more, not less, as we had originally assumed--particularly for the highest social-media users."
Although the study ended there, researchers said that correlation might be due to "social media sites like Facebook (that) send messages to your in-box every time someone comments on your posting or something you've participated in, and depending on your settings, can send updates on almost every activity." The researchers also believe that the connections people make through social networks cause them to "extend those connections to e-mail, a phone conversation, or even in-person meetings."
Nielsen concluded that the study was simple, and it plans to "take a more robust approach to develop correlations between platforms to understand if this relationship is different across specific demographics and behavioral groups--rather than by levels of consumption."
Nielsen's findings follow on the heels of another study the company announced in March finding that "member communities," like social networks and blogs, are more popular than e-mail.
It has only been a week since MySpace launched its two-way sync with Twitter, but already the service has made an impact on the popular microblog.
MySpace's "lnk.ms" is now the second most used link-shortening service on Twitter, according to statistics compiled by Twitter link tracker Tweetmeme.
Over the past 24 hours, lnk.ms was included in 15.66 percent of all tweets containing links, Tweetmeme claims. It follows only Bitly, which was used in more than 69 percent of tweets featuring links to outside sources. TinyURL, Owly, and Isgd follow MySpace's lnk.ms with 10.43 percent, 2.75 percent, and 2 percent share of tweets, respectively.
MySpace hasn't divulged how many users are syncing with Twitter. A company spokeswoman told me in an e-mail message that MySpace cannot provide any details on usage yet. Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The fact that MySpace has been able to make such a mark on Twitter in just one week is quite a feat. When the company announced two-way syncing with Twitter last week, it allowed users of both social networks to update their status and syndicate that to the other network. MySpace's lnk.ms is the result of that.
Whenever a user who has activated two-way syncing updates their MySpace status, a snippet of that update is syndicated to their Twitter profile. A unique lnk.ms link follows that tweet. When the user's Twitter followers click on it, they can view the full status update. If the updates are kept private, the update can't be viewed by followers who aren't also friends with the user on MySpace.
Before we get too carried away over the success of MySpace's link-shortening feature, it should be noted that Tweetmeme's calculations are based only on links it processes. Also, the company tracks link-shortening usage over the past 24 hours, so we have yet to see how MySpace's service will fare in the long run.
But so far, it seems that MySpace has made its mark on the service. And by the looks of things, it doesn't seem the Twitter community's use of lnk.ms will be slowing down anytime soon.
(Via TechCrunch)
MySpace announced in a blog post on Monday that the company will now offer two-way syncing with Twitter. The service is being rolled out immediately.
According to the company, MySpace users can now update their MySpace status and syndicate that update to their Twitter streams. Twitter updates can also appear in the MySpace user's "status and mood." Users can decide if they want status updates to be one-way or two-way.
The new MySpace-Twitter sync in action.
(Credit: MySpace)MySpace said in the blog post that it's using OAuth to sync with Twitter. According to the company, users will be able to share data between the sites, but all account credentials will be protected, keeping user information "confidential."
When users post a status update on MySpace and syndicate that to their Twitter feeds, the tweet will feature the message and its link to "make commenting easy" on the user's MySpace profile. Twitter will display "MySpace" as the service the tweet originated from, similar to its display of TweetDeck, Twitterfeed, and other services that allow users to update their streams away from the site.
So far, MySpace's Twitter sync is in beta. The company said that it will be adding other networks to sync with soon. For now, you can try out the Twitter sync in your MySpace profile by inputting your Twitter credentials under the "sync" menu in account settings.
