MySpace has suffered a number of "indignities" lately, Portfolio says. The social network has faced stagnating growth while rival Facebook continues to surge ahead, now approaching the News Corp. company's perch as the No. 1 social net in the U.S. MySpace Music, its joint music venture with the major record labels, has boosted usage among existing members but "has not caught fire" with the general public. Has MySpace lost its "cool factor?" In an interview, CEO Chris DeWolfe claims that MySpace is maintaining a strong growth position despite the economy-first quarter revenues are up 17%, he says. Profile portability is …

Search and social media guru John Battelle lashes out at analysts from Sanford Bernstein who claim in a New York Timesarticle that monetizing Twitter "would be difficult at best and likely unsuccessful." Their claim is that subscription fees are out of the question, ad revenues would likely be minimal, and that people who sign up for free services tend to resent companies trying to make money from the business later. Well, "If it was easy, everyone would do it," Battelle replies, adding that he can pinpoint at least three "major potential revenue streams" for Twitter. They are: …

Speaking at a media conference in New York, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker spoke about the future of Hulu, the joint online video venture between NBC and News Corporation. Zucker admitted that the transition from traditional to digital media is still a challenging one for big media firms. "We're at digital dimes now," he said. "There's a lot more to go before we get to dollars." Even so, Zucker claimed that Hulu is progressing ahead of schedule and would eventually make money, although he admitted that such services would probably not completely replace lost advertising revenue from TV, print, and …

ComScore this week reported that daily Web usage on mobile devices had doubled in the last 12 months, with nearly 22.4 million U.S. mobile using their devices to surf the mobile Web. According to another new study, demand for mobile broadband is only going to increase around the globe, in spite of the recession. Infonetics Research says that by 2013 there will be more than 1 billion mobile broadband users, versus 210.5 million at the end of 2008. And these will be connections using 3G technologies, notes GigaOm's Om Malik, who points out that sales of mobile broadband PC cards …

MySpace is once again following Facebook with new features it's adding to its MySpaceID distributed identity service. Similar to Facebook Connect, MySpaceID will now allow users to log into partner sites using their MySpace identities, see updates from their friends and publish information on those sites. The idea is to become more relevant to more people by making it easier for users and developers to access MySpace data from around the Web. "It's not clear how people will use these new tools, but an obvious use is for entertainment-related sites," says VentureBeat's Eric Eldon. MySpace has always been a major …

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi says Apple's new virtual goods platform for the iPhone "will likely produce a bonanza of revenues for game developers and publishers." The new platform should go live this summer once the new iPhone 3.0 software, which was also announced today, becomes available. As Takahashi notes, more than 2,000 of the 6,000-plus games on the iPhone are ad-supported applications, but it's "pretty hard" for developers to generate significant revenue from advertising alone. However, virtual goods models allow consumers to try games for free, paying only for add-ons like new levels, character customizations, or some sort of special power. …