Posts Tagged ‘Mike Jones’

The integration of former fierce rivals Myspace and Facebook continued with Wednesday’s release of the Myspace Music Artist App, which allows artists to publish all of the content on their Myspace Music profiles to Music tabs on their Facebook fan pages, without having to manage profiles on two separate social networks.

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Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons became the latest celebrity to “Hijack” Myspace, as he will use the social-networking site to host the Hip-Pop Challenge, a contest seeking unsigned hip-hop and pop artists, through Thursday.

Simmons will choose all content to appear on the Myspace homepage, including music play lists, political and culture commentary, and excerpts from his new book, Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All. He will also launch the site’s curators program by selecting an official hip-hop curator in a six-month contest entered by uploading videos explaining why users deserve to be considered for the role.

I’m Hijacking Myspace.

Russell Simmons | Myspace Video

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Myspace’s October launch of a redesigned Web site and shifting of its focus to entertainment apparently wasn’t entertaining enough in the handful of weeks since it went live, as the News Corp.-owned social-networking site confirmed speculation that it would lay off 500 employees, or roughly one-half of its staff.

While News Corp. claims that it the moves were made “in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability,” they could also be interpreted as making Myspace leaner in hopes of a potential sale.

The statement from CEO Mike Jones:

Today Myspace is implementing a significant organizational restructuring that will result in a 47 percent staff reduction across all divisions globally and impact about 500 employees. With our recent relaunch as an entertainment destination for Gen Y, we introduced a much tighter focus, a significantly streamlined product, and an updated technology platform.

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Myspace began rolling out its redesigned Web site and new product suite in beta Wednesday, aiming for a full rollout to all of its global users by the end of November.

The refocusing of the social-networking site to an entertainment hub will bring with it new features, including easier access to Myspace-exclusive content and fare from around the Web, as well as enhanced sharing tools.

Myspace also said it will focus more on curators, giving its more influential users the resources, tools, and platform to expand their reach.

The Myspace home page can be viewed in three different formats: the list view, or the traditional Myspace look; the grid view, a magazine-like format; and the play view, which allows users to watch, forward, and resize their updates to full-screen.

More details from the social network’s Meet the New Myspace announcement:

The redesigned Myspace welcome page showcases fresh content as it bubbles up across the beta site in real time. Additionally, once a user logs in to Myspace, the page will instantly populate with content based on the individual’s interests, creating a unique, contextually relevant discovery experience.

To complement the online experience, Myspace will soon release a mobile version of the beta site, accessible on any mobile browser. A new Myspace app for iPhone and Android devices will follow later this year.

Myspace has released a suite of initial features that empower people to discover, collect, and display entertainment content, while also offering tailored recommendations. These features include:

Welcome to the new Myspace

myspace | Myspace Video

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This evening MySpace sent out a press release announcing that the company’s CEO, Owen Van Natta, is stepping down and will replaced by Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn who will serve as co-Presidents. There are a number of interesting components of this news story. The most interesting is that we’ve been hearing rumors that Owen Van Natta was under strict orders to turn the company and if it wasn’t turned around within 6 months he was out. The other interesting tidbit is that Techcrunch recently published that Jason Hirschhorn was exiting the company.
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Tsavo Media, which includes a portfolio of both search and user generated sites, introduced Twithority or Twitter Search by – Authority. It’s a search engine for the popular microblogging service.

Twithority sequences results by rank, with highest ranking users first, and time (with most recent tweets first), within the top 10,000 Twitter users.

“We’re filtering results in a meaningful way and working with manageable numbers, so Twitter can be of even greater value,” says Tsavo founder and CEO Mike Jones.

A few weeks ago, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone (@biz) wrote on the Twitter blog that active Twitter users have grown 900% in the last year.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Mike Jone of Userplane. We had time to discuss Userplane’s recent partnership announcement with Converdge. I also explored what services Userplane currently offers, what sort of monetization models Userplane currently uses and how Mike sees chat platforms evolving over the coming months.

One thing I brought up during the conversation was the recent launch of Meebo’s competing platform and what his thoughts were. I also suggested that AOL work on acquiring Meebo to integrate into Userplane. Mike couldn’t confirm that an acquisition was in the works unfortunately!

Mike took time to discuss some new features that Userplane will be releasing in the coming weeks as well as discuss his thoughts on how Userplane fits into the social application space. Listen to my podcast with Mike to hear more!