Crave

Love by Cartier, an ad campaign that's not exactly for the emo-teen demographic.

When you think about "bling" on MySpace, you probably think about glitter text on profiles, or maybe Swarovski-studded Sidekicks, not Cartier jewelry. But that hasn't stopped the legendary luxury brand from launching a promotional campaign on News Corp.'s social network.

Starting Thursday, Cartier began featuring branded pages for its "Love by Cartier" product line for MySpace's English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese sites. They'll be online for a year, and will feature new music from 12 artists, including Phoenix, Grand National, and Lou Reed.

Considering MySpace got its start as a hub for music lovers, the Love by Cartier campaign is appropriate in that respect. But considering MySpace is also best known as a youth site, the advertising of luxury brands seems out-of-place--you wouldn't think the audience would be there. Love by Cartier, after all, also has a campaign on the elite, invite-only social network Asmallworld, which has a jet-set user base that seems a much more appropriate target for a pricey jewelry brand.

But MySpace representatives say the site's image is a bit misleading, citing ComScore statistics that estimate a quarter of its traffic comes from households with annual incomes over $100,000. Scoring a brand partner like Cartier, they say, is indicative of its transformation from a social network to a global Web portal.

"Given MySpace's breadth, depth, and technology, we're able to function as a global social portal empowering brands to effectively reach audiences across our 29 localized communities," Travis Katz, managing director of MySpace's international division. "Cartier has been quick to embrace the opportunities presented by community, by offering all lovers of the brand exclusive and innovative content."

But don't think that MySpace has gotten an Eliza Doolittle-esque makeover. The newly redesigned home page on Thursday afternoon was branded with a campaign for the Pixar robot adventure movie Wall-E.

No matter how this story ends, it will have a big impact on all Web users. If Microsoft takes control of Yahoo, for example, many of Redmond's Web properties will likely get scuttled while Yahoo's become even bigger. If Google and Yahoo do a deal, the price of Internet advertising will go up (since the combined network would control the majority of keyword advertising), and so on. For the full rundown of what could change, what's likely to happen, and all the latest news, check out News.com's complete coverage of Yahoo and its suitors.

Executives from MySpace officially announced the creation of MySpace Music, a service that will be jointly operated by News Corp.'s MySpace and, at least initially, three out of the four top record labels.

The Thursday morning teleconference MySpace held with the press was anticlimactic since details about the service have been leaking for weeks.

The service will roll out gradually over the next three to four months and offer free streaming music, unprotected MP3 downloads, ringtones, and e-commerce offerings such as merchandise and ticket sales, said MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe. Among the top four music companies, EMI was the lone holdout. A source with knowledge of the negotiations said that MySpace and EMI continue to seek a deal.

For more on this breaking story, see News.com's coverage.

News Corp.'s MySpace and Viacom's MTV are partnering again, and this time it's on a weekly TV show. But the program, a countdown show called MySpace Chart, will only air on the U.K. network MTV Two (the equivalent of the U.S. MTV2 channel) and there are no plans yet to bring the show stateside, an MTV Networks representative told CNET News.com.

Members of the social network, which initially gained traction as a way for independent music artists to gain buzz, will vote on select music videos each week that will then be showcased in the hour-long MTV Two show. MySpace Chart premieres on the evening of March 16; a week earlier, pages on MySpace and MTV Two will go live to kick off voting.

MTV parent company Viacom does have its own social-networking project, the "distributed" service called Flux. But partnering with MySpace can give them access to the massive site's audience. "The audience for MTV Two and MySpace are incredibly similar," Philip O'Ferrall, vice president of digital media for MTV Networks' U.K. and Ireland region, said in a statement. "Not only are they both incredibly passionate about their music tastes but they are powerful advocates for the latest upcoming artists, which both MTV and MySpace have a history of showcasing."

Additionally, for MTV, it's a way to bolster the company's new-media credibility; for MySpace, it helps to solidify its role as a pop-culture hub as the market for social networking grows increasingly crowded. In the U.K., MySpace not only competes with Facebook but also with the more youth-oriented Bebo--which syndicates some MTV video content as part of its "Open Media" platform.

MySpace's U.K. arm already had collaborated with MTV in order to find a new anchor for its MTV News show. In the U.S., the two partnered for a series of "presidential dialogue" events leading up to the Super Tuesday primaries.

Photobucket, the massive image-sharing site that was acquired by News Corp. last year, announced Tuesday the debut of its mobile Web site.

On the new site, now live at m.photobucket.com, members of the photo-sharing site can browse their own photos as well as public images, upload photos to the site from their mobile devices, and access a limited home page. In the future, the company has said, Photobucket Mobile will expand to allow video functionality as well as options to embed photos in social-networking profiles.

A statement from Photobucket cited that demand for mobile photo-sharing access is high. According to an internal survey by Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. division that runs Photobucket, 80 percent of users who responded to the survey own camera phones, 36 percent use the camera every day, and 52 percent access the mobile Web on their handsets.

Not to mention the fact that some other popular image-sharing sites, like the Yahoo-owned Flickr, already run mobile Web sites, as do social-networking sites like Facebook that have photo-sharing features; Photobucket needed to catch up with the competition.

And if cell phones are too small for your taste, Photobucket has a deal with TiVo so that you can access your online albums on your nice big HDTV.

Apparently, fast-forwarding through commercials just isn't enough. TiVo announced on Monday that users of select photo-sharing services are now able to access their image collections through its set-top boxes.

The digital video recorder manufacturer has partnered with two photo-sharing services--the Google-owned Picasa Web Albums and Fox Interactive Media-owned Photobucket--in order to enable users to surf through their photo albums as well as their friends' and family members', provided that their TiVo boxes are broadband-connected.

A release from the company emphasized the fact that photos are viewable in the highest resolution possible, which on the TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD devices means full high definition.

In addition, the TiVo interface makes it possible for users to search the overall database of public Picasa or Photobucket images by keyword.

The Photobucket search interface on TiVo

(Credit: Photobucket/TiVo)

It's yet another step in TiVo's quest to make its equipment more versatile than the standard DVR--and to make it an appealing choice in a market that remains tepid.

"At TiVo, we're focused on the entire entertainment experience, from movies to music, and in this case--memories," Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing, said in the company's statement. "By working with these well-respected and popular photo-sharing partners, TiVo enables families to share their pictures in new, fun ways."

This fall, TiVo announced a deal with RealNetworks' Rhapsody to bring the subscription-based music service to its devices.

TV and film writers will officially go on strike starting Monday at 12:01 PST, a spokeswoman for the Writers Guild of America said on Friday.

As the weekend may bring more negotiating between the guild and the group representing film and TV producers, one of the main sticking points is Internet revenue, according to a story published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.

The writers want a share of ad revenue generated by online broadcasts of TV shows. Producers insist that the Web is more of a promotional tool and hasn't brought in much money.

The dispute comes as TV networks and cable channels are posting more and more shows to the Web soon after they appear on television. For example, NBC Universal and News Corp. last week launched a test version of Hulu.com, a new online video outlet where full-length TV shows from both companies appear.

ABC, CBS, and Viacom have steadily increased the number of offerings online in recent months. Feature films are still too big to distribute easily over the Web, but it's generally believed technology improvements will likely solve those problems. The writers want assurances that when that happens they will share in the profits.

The writers say they're trying to avoid missing out on Internet money in the same way they missed out on the DVD bonanza that has fueled much of the growth in the film industry over the last decade.

The writers agreed to a deal soon after the mass adoption of the VCR that eventually earned them 4 cents per DVD sale. They now are demanding a bump to 8 cents.

According to several publications, the producers and writers remain far apart on this issue.

Don't look now, but the so-called clown company may get the last laugh.

Sure, Hulu.com is still saddled with a silly name. The video site started by NBC Universal and News Corp. also isn't packaged very well, and offers too few shows and too little to do outside of watching video.

But a review of a test version of Hulu, which launched Monday, reveals that Hulu nailed the basics. Fans of The Simpsons, Bionic Woman, or My Name is Earl can go to the site, click on a couple of links, and watch the TV shows in their entirety. The images are clear, free of any of the aggravations that sometimes plague streaming video, such as stalled pictures or pixilated images.

One thing is for sure: watching full-length episodes of Heroes and King of the Hill at Hulu is far superior viewing experience than watching grainy, five-minute clips at YouTube or other video-sharing sites.

I've heard all the reasons skeptics give on why Hulu is destined to fail. Big media companies simply don't get the Web. YouTube has all the users, most of whom aren't interested in watching long-form content online. The networks are better off allowing YouTube to promote their shows to a whole new generation. In the months leading up to Hulu's launch, critics and YouTube employees began calling the joint venture "the clown company."

Nonetheless, NBC and companies like Viacom have insisted on controlling their own material and distributing their shows online themselves.

Delivering high-quality images free of charge and providing simple site navigation is all mainstream TV fans need. They won't care that NBC decided last week to stop posting promotional clips on YouTube. They care about watching their favorite shows. They will go wherever they can do that; at Hulu.com or at any of the partner sites that have agreed to distribute Hulu's material, such as MSN, Yahoo, and AOL.

To be sure, Hulu needs work. The site featured a bare bones look, just a laundry list of show titles and thumbnails. Click on a link and a video player appears. Below the player are links to other recent episodes. Right off the bat, I felt myself wishing they offered shows from previous seasons. If you've never watched Heroes before, a show with lots of characters and subplots, good luck trying to get caught up on Hulu.com.

I also couldn't find any shows with commercials in them, and ads could go a long way toward spoiling the viewing experience if they're too intrusive. The good news for Hulu is that advertisers should love the service. They've been working with video for decades on broadcast TV. TV shows, not three-minute clips, are what advertisers understand.

The site could use some fan reviews or message boards, as well as a way to bone up on a show's plot and back story. Most importantly, Hulu need more shows. If the site is to become a true online video powerhouse, it has to offer content from CBS, ABC, and HBO.

Winning over those rivals won't be easy, but it could be vital to Hulu's success.

(Credit: Valleywag)

Following rumors that MySpace co-founder and "everybody's friend" Tom Anderson was lying about his age on his profile, Newsweek did a little digging. According to "professional license information, voter registration and utility and telephone service applications," Anderson is actually 36, not 32.

Which means that he was 31, not 27, when he co-founded MySpace, and apparently he was either self-conscious or sketched out (or both) about being in his 30s when he founded a youth-oriented social network.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington expressed concern, saying that "the fact that MySpace and News Corp. had knowledge of the lie, and did nothing to fix it, makes it worse." But Valleywag comments, "(it) would hardly make Anderson the first person to lie about his age on MySpace." (Yeah, a lot of those "99-year-olds" aren't telling the truth.)

In other news, "Tom" is known to be so insecure about his popularity that he adds every single MySpace user as a friend the moment that they sign up for the News Corp.-owned social-networking site, and he also seems to be too lazy to change his dorky profile photo.

Can we get some real news now, please?