Sound the alarms! The U.K.'s Telegraph news outlet has a story that seems to prove the unthinkable: that onetime social-networking rivals Facebook and MySpace could actually be working on some kind of partnership.
Two years ago this would've been a huge deal. Now? I'm really not surprised.
"The move could potentially see MySpace music and video footage being shared on Facebook via its Connect platform, which allows people to log into third-party sites using their Facebook ID," the article by Emma Barnett explains.
It then quotes Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg as saying that "we would like to have (MySpace's) content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users" and that "we are open to working with MySpace and are in talks with them at the moment."
MySpaces CEO Owen Van Natta, who used to have a similar role at Facebook to the one that Sandberg does now, is likewise quoted as saying "we are in talks with Facebook, and other sites, about how we could partner with them."
See, here's the deal. Sandberg and Van Natta are quoted in pretty ambiguous terms. But any third-party company on the Web is at liberty to implement Facebook's log-in standard with the Facebook Connect API: over 15,000 sites had, at last count. The catch with MySpace is that both sites are so large, they'd naturally be in some kind of talks about it simply to handle infrastructure issues (and likely more). The Huffington Post, for example, struck a deal with Facebook to power its "Social News" feature with Facebook Connect rather than just to chuck in some Facebook Connect code.
Partnering with Facebook is actually excellent positioning for MySpace, because the News Corp.-owned social site has been attempting to differentiate itself from pure social networking: a game that Facebook has clearly won. By hinting that it could strike a deal with Facebook, MySpace is putting out a major "we're different" message as it tries to establish itself as a pop culture hub. Facebook's the one providing the platform for the content; MySpace is the one providing the content itself.
For Facebook, meanwhile, you could take this as a "look, we've won" move. After all, it's a validation of the power of the social network's content platform that a company like MySpace--which used to dwarf Facebook in size--would want to use it for distribution.
Facebook has partnered with liberal news outlet The Huffington Post in an officially sanctioned implementation of its Facebook Connect product.
Called HuffPost Social News, the new site aggregates Huffington Post stories that a given user's Facebook friends have recommended or commented on, and shares the user's Huffington Post activity on their Facebook profiles in turn.
It's a concept fairly similar to TimesPeople, the sharing service that The New York Times launched last year.
"Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news--both the stories they love and the stories they hate--with friends," Eric Hippeau, Huffington Post's still-new CEO, said in a release. "It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends."
This use of Facebook Connect is unusual because Facebook typically does not undertake many official partnerships with third-party sites when it comes to its developer APIs. And this particular partnership may come under some scrutiny: The Huffington Post, which began as a political news site and has since expanded into many other areas of coverage, is controversial--not only in terms of its partisan leanings (it was co-founded by left-of-center pundit Arianna Huffington) but because the majority of its bloggers are unpaid and because some critics have argued it relies too heavily on third-party content that it doesn't always pay for.
But the social network's executives appear to have given The Huffington Post their stamp of approval, at least when it comes to the site's model for news consumption.
"The Huffington Post has led a revolution in how people discover and consume news," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, herself a veteran of the political world, said in a release. "With the integration of Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News is now leading the way to make news even more of a social experience, giving people new ways to share and filter news and current events through their networks of friends on Facebook."
Facebook likely hopes that this partnership will be a sort of example to the news industry--which is obviously looking for some new ideas right now--and that other media outlets will, in turn, build similar products.
Google made two announcements Thursday that further advance the company's goal of becoming a power player in television advertising in addition to the Web.
First, the company announced that Harris, which manufactures communications equipment for business and government clients, will be integrating Google's advertising platform into the products it sells to media and communication companies. This means that Harris clients can use Google's service to manage ad inventory, which Mark Piesenan, director of strategic partnerships for Google TV ads, said will "offer media companies the opportunity to leverage (Google's) automated online marketplace, providing a new and efficient sales option for their ad inventory."
Additionally, Google has partnered with CoreMedia Systems, which makes an advertising analytics product called CoreDirect. The CoreDirect software will now start indexing statistics from Google TV ad campaigns.
These partnerships are on the behind-the-scenes side of things, but Google has been making some network partnerships as well: last month, Google announced it will be selling some TV ad time for NBC Universal, and will also be selling inventory for Dish Network and Bloomberg.
Digital video recorder TiVo is set to release a software upgrade that will let users access YouTube videos on their televisions, the company announced Thursday. The deal with the Google video-sharing site, originally announced in March, is scheduled to start rolling out in a few weeks.
TiVo owners will need a Series 3 or TiVo HD box to be eligible for the software upgrade, which will be further extended in the near future to allow them to log into their own YouTube accounts to access playlists and the like.
It's not terribly revolutionary. The Apple TV box has given owners access to YouTube for over a year now. TiVo already lets viewers watch select online videos and podcasts--but in downloadable form, not streaming form.
And as my colleague John Falcone has put it: now, where's my Hulu box?
The common wisdom might be that the film industry loathes Google's YouTube, but that might be changing.
Lions Gate Entertainment, the studio responsible for classics like Dirty Dancing and recent TV hits like Weeds, has signed a revenue-sharing deal with the video hub.
It was alluded to by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Madison & Vine conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, subsequently confirmed by Lionsgate.
It's not clear how extensive this deal will be. Presumably, it means that Lionsgate would create a branded "channel" on YouTube, and serve its TV and film content accompanied by advertising. That's not particularly innovative, but the Hollywood Reporter added that additionally, short clips viewable for free could be accompanied by a link for a full-length digital purchase. In other words, you might not get free full-length movies.
Right now, most film studios limit their involvement with YouTube to trailers and promotional clips, but if one signs a more extensive deal, others could follow suit--though probably not Paramount, DreamWorks, or MTV Films. Those are owned by Viacom, which has famously sued YouTube.
But it's likely a blow for Hulu, the NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture that was created last year to provide a more civilized outlet for television and film content on the Web, promising higher ad revenues, no chance for piracy, and a refreshing lack of goofy user-generated videos.
If Lionsgate is willing to brave the hordes of skateboarding-dog videos posted on Google's site, that all could change. Then, however, Lionsgate and YouTube could face a whole new problem: whether that revenue-sharing deal actually results in decent profits.
- prev
- 1
- next
