Just two months prior to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, Nike and Google have teamed up to launch a free social networking site for soccer fans. The site itself is very reminiscent to MySpace, but users can only enter the network through invitation. Nike is supplying the content and Google the technical support. Users can create Web sites, send e-mail, photos and video clips, and access Nike's TV and interactive spots for its World Cup campaign, "Joga Bonito." According to Business Week, Nike approached Google to do the project partly because of the immense popularity of Orkut, …

A new premium information network called Congoo lets users search premium or restricted content from trade magazines, newspapers and other publications. Users download a browser toolbar which they can use to gain access content. The free service only gives users access to a few articles. The idea is to whet consumers' appetites so they will buy subscriptions from publishers. The company launched its Congoo NetPass this week; so far its publisher list includes TheStreet.com, Editor & Publisher, The Boston Globe and The Chicago Tribune.

For the time being anyway, social networking is the new killer app, at least until the popular culture of consumer self-indulgence implodes, writes Diane Mermigas of the Hollywood Reporter. Social network providers like News Corp. and Facebook continue to struggle with their business models and compete for the top spot, but Mermigas says the dark horse on the horizon is GoingOn, an aggregator of social networks. GoingOn lets users create or join multiple social networks and apply outside Web services such as Skype and Bright Cove, the broadband video network. The idea, the company's founder says, is to keep the …

Thirty million Americans listen to Internet radio stations each week, according to estimates by radio measurement firms Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research. This represents a critical mass, and advertisers have started to take notice, but--as in other emerging marketing mediums--efforts to attract advertising have been hampered by a lack of audience measurement standards. "If we all settled on using [one set of numbers] it would be better," one Internet radio executive told The Wall Street Journal. As in the offline radio world, Arbitron is supposed to provide neutral audience ratings for the industry, but a growing number of Internet …

VeriSign has scooped up m-Qube, a major player in the nascent mobile marketing industry, for $250 million in cash. m-Qube is a third-party technology developer and ad distributor, helping companies develop, deliver and charge for mobile content, applications and messaging. Its client list includes Sony Pictures, CBS, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Warner Music Group, Reuters, GQ, and Virgin Mobile Canada. VeriSign GM Vernon Irvin said the acquisition is part of the company's plan to combine its applications and network infrastructure to enable content convergence over any device. Mobile marketing is "an integral part of what we do," an m-Qube …

In an interview with UK-based publication The Independent, Microsoft's Bill Gates, recently named the richest man in the world for the 12 th year running by Forbes magazine, discusses the future of media. Elaborating on the comment he made last year that "the future of advertising is the Internet," Gates says the availability of high-quality video will enable advertisers to come up with more ambitious and targeted creative work. Relevance is the key; you can cut down the cost of creative if you can reach a highly-targeted, broad variety of consumers. That kind of targeting will become standard, and will …

Phishing scams, which are fraudulent e-mails that request personal information and appear as though they come from a trusted source, are becoming more sophisticated, says a new AFP report. Often, these e-mails come from phishers posing as banks, saying they need to "verify" your account information, or that someone has gained "unauthorized access" to your account. A survey last year from First Data Corp. found that 43 percent of US adults had received at least one of the bogus e-mails. Of those, one in 20, or about 4.5 million people, gave up the requested information. Half of those ended up …

The so-called "Net Neutrality" bill that would keep Internet network providers from being able to allocate network bandwidth as they see fit is gaining some serious momentum from consumer groups. The American Association of Retired Persons, with its 35 million-plus members, is the latest--and biggest--among a growing list of companies to back the initiative urging senators to require net neutrality principles by law. While the AARP isn't typically the kind of organization you would think would back technology legislation one way or another, recent surveys show that some 72 percent of 50- to 59-year-olds access the Web on a regular …

Radio Disney knows how to reach its audience. Since its broadcast-only days, Radio Disney has evolved into providing content via satellite radio, cable TV, video-on-demand, and now podcasts. In a push to follow 6- to 14-year-olds around every media device they own, Radio Disney has expanded to podcasting, where it will produce original content and offer repurposed time-shifted content in a downloadable format. To date, Radio Disney says there have been 170,000 downloads of its podcasts, which so far have not included advertising. That will change, however, Disney executives told Ad Age. Starting in June, Radio Disney will insert …

A new venture from the former president of the company that brought us MySpace is now seeking to unseat Google and Yahoo at the top of the ad network business. Brett Brewer, the former head of Intermix Media, now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has just received $48 million in fresh venture capital to develop his new project, Adknowledge. Unlike Google and Yahoo, which are contextual network operators in addition to being search providers, Adknowledge aims to provide an alternative to text ads tied to keywords by placing behaviorally targeted ads in Web pages and e-mails. Brewer says search …