Facebook CEO Michael Zuckerberg's decision to open up the social network to any consumers and outside developers willing to participate has drawn almost unanimous praise, not to mention unprecedented growth. With 29 million users, up 5 million from just three weeks ago, Facebook is growing at an average 150,000 users per day. Venture capitalists across Silicon Valley are even quizzing their potential investments on their "Facebook strategy." "Call it escape velocity or whatever you want, but social networking now has it. Facebook now has it," writes Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, whose latest company, Ning, helps users build simple …

Nielsen/NetRatings today is expected to announce an unprecedented move in the practice of Web site measurement: It is planning to do away with rankings based on total page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at Web sites. New broadband technologies like online video and other embedded Web applications, called "widgets," are making page views less relevant in determining a Web site's usage. Nielsen already uses its panel data to measure the average time consumers spend on a given Web site, in addition to the number of user sessions, but now it will focus on presenting both …

Kevin Rose, the 30-year-old entrepreneur who started the community-based article voting site Digg.com and the Web video production firm Revision3, is at it again. His new project is a social networking, instant messaging, file-sharing hybrid called Pownce. Given Rose's track record, venture capitalists are lining up to get a glimpse. "I probably would invest in Pownce if he's going out for funding," Digg and Revision3 investor Ron Conway said. The idea behind Pownce is a powerful one, but its nothing new: Users create profiles, assemble a list of buddies, and can swap messages, invitations, photos, music and any …

Given the resurgence of Facebook and social networking, you may be wondering where Google stands on social media. YouTube is really the only social media site in the Web giant's vast catalog of services, but it's hardly a social network. But Google is creating a social networking technology -- and it heavily leverages the company's industry-leading search technology. The prototype, called "Socialstream," is being developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Human Computer Interaction Institute, and has been billed as an aggregator service of social networks that interacts with and draws data from users' existing social networks. "A service …

Saturday's Live Earth concert, Webcast on MSN, broke records, attracting the largest online audience for an entertainment show by generating more than 9 million streams. The previous record was held by the 2005 Live 8 concert to fight poverty, Webcast on Time Warner's AOL, reaching 5 million Web users-which is not the total number of streams. MSN's number points to the total number of times the event was logged into; this does not reflect the number of unique users. As Microsoft said in its statement, a Web user could have viewed clips of the two-day event several times. AOL …

The video game world is getting ready for the annual E3 (electronics entertainment expo) show in Los Angeles, which for years has been the industry's main promotional event. The tone is decidedly lower-key than in previous years, as organizers scale back the number of invitations and sponsorships it doles out. And the general public is no longer allowed. Is E3 is becoming a more exclusive or less important event for the video game industry? "The new E3 is a very provincial event," says Rob Fahey, editor of the popular industry site gamesindustry.biz. It's ironic that as the new Web-fueled …

Forget Microsoft. Google's biggest competition these days comes from the social media growth machine, Facebook. Google may have an "operating system for search" and a big bank of data about each of its users, but the future belongs to the masses of individuals -- and Facebook, the second-largest social network on the Web, knows comparatively more about each of its users. Google should be scared because facebook is growing at a stunning rate--it has nearly 30 million users now--with no signs of stopping. This, in part, is thanks to founder and CEO Michael Zuckerberg's bold decision to open up his …

In an SEC filing on Friday, aQuantive Inc. said it had cleared a major regulatory hurdle in its bid to be acquired by Microsoft Corp. for $6 billion. It passed the Federal Trade Commission's waiting period to review anticompetitive fallout from mergers and acquisitions without a request for further information. By contrast, the government organization a few weeks ago solicited further information from Microsoft rival Google over its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. Now, shareholders will vote on August 9 on whether to sell the company to Microsoft for $6 billion. At that kind of premium, the vote …

Apple, Inc. continues to strike a series of significant deals with companies like AT&T, Google and Universal Music Group, but the computer maker-cum-electronics giant has a spotty history with its business partnerships. The iPhone launch once again showed that the company's ability to attract buzz is unparalleled, but early reports of sluggish network performance and customer activations killed some buzz. But Apple's problem isn't finding partners--everyone from software developers to airline companies are lining up--it's sustaining them. UMG's decision not to renew its standing contract with Apple is symptomatic of a greater problem, analysts say. "Apple always looks …

Some consumers who bought iPhones thought they could resell them immediately for profit, but they were wrong. Regular consumers who posted ads on Craigslist while waiting on line for prices ranging from $800 to $1,200 didn't receive the kind of responses they anticipated. One would-be reseller says he had no takers and had to return the phone. He said his reseller friends had no luck, either. Clearly, the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii craze is not being repeated here. Across the nation, people who thought they could start mini iPhone businesses are crestfallen that supply has met demand. …