• Ross Fadner, Feb 20, 2008, 12:15 PM
  • Social Media: Catch Up...or Catch You Later Business Week Read the whole story...
  • Profiting From Facebook The New York Times Read the whole story...
  • Wikileaks Taken Offline BBC News Read the whole story...
  • MySpace Gives Scale To Free Music Experiment Financial Times MySpace has held discussions with Universal Music, EMI, Sony BMG, and Warner Music over a deal to bring free music to MySpace's 110 million worldwide members. However, reports across the Web diverge on whether the talks are preliminary or more advanced.

    UMG would have to settle an outstanding lawsuit it has against MySpace before any deal could take shape. UMG sued the News Corp. company for allowing users to post artists' songs and videos on their homepages without gaining the record label's permission to do so.

    Should MySpace and the four labels come to an agreement, News Corp. would then join Amazon.com, Wal-Mart and a host of other providers trying to chip away at Apple Inc.'s dominance of the online music market. Unlike Apple's iTunes, a pay-for-download service, MySpace would offer ad-supported streaming music for free. MySpace would then sell ads against the traffic and allow consumers to pay to download songs. Record companies believe this gives consumers a way to discover new music, which they hope will translate into higher sales. Read the whole story...
  • Nintendo Launches Fitness Product, Online Games for the Wii The Wall Street Journal Nintendo is forging into new video game territory yet again, with today's announcement of a new exercise product for the WIi called Wii Fit. The product, scheduled to launch on May 19 in the U.S., comes with a weight and motion-sensing device called a Wii Balance Board, which measures users' shifting weight as they stand on the platform in front of their TV sets. Wii Fit has already sold 1.4 million units since its Dec. 2 launch in Japan; it will retail for less than $100.

    Nintendo says more than 10 third party game developers are working on titles for the new device, one of which will be a skiing game from Namco Bandai.

    Separately, the company is also launching a new online service called WiiWare that allows game publishers to distribute new titles over the Internet directly to consumers instead of on discs. Nintendo says publishers won't need the company's approval to distribute games over WiiWare, although they will need to get them rated by an industry rating system. Read the whole story...
  • Alibaba, Softbank and Micro-hoo Forbes As it turns out, Alibaba will have a seat at the Yahoo negotiating table as the Web giant continues to resist a $41 billion (and shrinking) takeover from Microsoft. Yahoo owns a 39 percent equity stake in Alibaba, worth approximately $5.2 billion. Jack Ma, the company's founder, on Monday announced that it recently hired consultants to help influence the terms of a Yahoo sale. As Forbes says, "Alibaba might be used to majority rule in China, but it's making sure that strong connections fortify its minority voice in this possible buy-out."

    Indeed, if Yahoo is sold to Microsoft, a majority of Alibaba's shares will be changing hands. The ownership question is a complicated situation, because Japanese software maker Softbank, which owns 30 percent of Alibaba, has an existing business partnership with Microsoft, while also owning 3.9 percent of Yahoo's shares.
    Read the whole story...
  • Microsoft Feels Proxy Pressure, Too The Wall Street Journal Investors have plunged Microsoft's stock 14 percent since the company announced its intention to acquire Yahoo. The original cash and stock offer of $31 per share has now dropped to $28.89. Meanwhile, Yahoo shareholders are holding firm at $29.01 per share, indicating they remain confident that Microsoft will increase its original offer.

    Just about everybody thinks Microsoft will get Yahoo in the end. However, there are many ways to arrive at the inevitable, some of them more hostile than others. Most Yahoo investors (except those who own more Microsoft stock) want Microsoft to up its offer; some think Yahoo's standoff will bare fruit, while others think a proxy contest to replace Yahoo's board could deliver a higher sale price. Meanwhile, the board is scrambling to find a better offer, because a better offer would force Microsoft to up the bid.

    There's pressure on the Microsoft side, too, because even in a proxy fight the software giant would have to persuade Yahoo shareholders to elect its representatives. Over the last five years, 63 percent of hostile approaches resulted in the bidder raising their initial offer. Meanwhile, less than five percent of all proxy fights since 2001 were waged as part of a hostile acquisition attempt-and just five of the 27 tussles produced board seats for the hostile bidder. Read the whole story...
  • Key Facebook Exec Departs BoomTown/ D: All Things Digital Facebook has just seen its first major executive departure since the landmark deal with Microsoft valued the social network at $15 billion. Owen Van Natta, who was first Facebook COO and then Chief Revenue Officer and vice president of Operations, said in an interview that he had done all he could at Facebook and now wanted to become CEO of a consumer Web company.

    Van Natta had played a significant role in negotiating Microsoft's $240 million investment in the company. He had been a Facebook executive since September 2005, and retains a sizable chunk of Facebook stock. "Facebook has a really great management team in place now to take it to a new level," he says. Unfortunately, the CEO job at Facebook belongs to 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg. "We are now at a point where we have made some key hires and have strong businesses," Zuckerberg said. "What we are trying to be is a social utility, and we think we can connect the whole world." Read the whole story...