Michael Wolff, author of the new Rupert Murdoch bio "The Man Who Owns the News," stirred up some controversy this week in an interview with BusinessWeek's Jon Fine, during which he classified MySpace users as low class. "If you're on MySpace now, you're a (bleep) cretin. And you're not only a (bleep) cretin, but you're poor," Wolff said, adding: "Nobody who has beyond an eighth grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people." To his credit, Fine didn't agree. He pointed out that bands have to be on MySpace. MySpace Music has become "a powerful driver" …

The merger of Clearwire and Sprint Nextel's WiMAX business, which has been in the works since May, has been finalized, according to reports across the Web. The new Clearwire Corp. assumes Sprint's "Xohm" brand and will now operate its service under the name "Clear." Despite the many challenges it faces -- including a weak economy and questions about whether WiMAX can compete with standard high-speed Internet offerings -- the new entity managed to cobble together $3.2 billion in Phase I funding from Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable, Google and Bright House Networks. Clearwire is the brainchild of Craig McCaw, a …

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe thinks his company will grow its advertising revenue in 2009 despite the global recession. "Our revenue and profits are significant and they continue to grow," DeWolfe said at the Reuters Media Summit in Los Angeles. As for the deepening economic crisis, he added, "We haven't really seen any impact, other than we think we could have grown even more than we have." MySpace revenues grew 18% in the third quarter. The social networking giant has been successful in implementing new advertising systems like MyAds, a behavioral targeting system for small businesses that DeWolfe says now has …

Cnet's Rafe Needleman explains the controversy surrounding the decision to allow Facebook Connect onto the site. For starters, he says that Cnet's own log-in system is much-maligned inside the company by factions who want it changed, or in some cases, eliminated. Still, others feel the company should be collecting more information about Cnet's registered users. The controversy underlines the importance of the log-in/registration system. "The value of a Web service lies in its users," Needleman says. "More users means more opportunities to profit -- by selling advertising based on what you know about your users, by selling the users services …

Does Power.com have the power to unseat the likes of MySpace and Facebook as the top social networking site? Probably not, but the Rio de Janeiro-based company, with its tools for synchronizing social networking features and services, will be useful to those overextended users with multiple social networking accounts. Power.com currently allows you to view and manage your Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, MSN Messenger, Orkut, and YouTube accounts all from one location. It hopes to soon add LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Skype and others soon. The company raised $2 million in funding last year and looks set to …