Webby News

When it first came to my attention last week, the race to a million Twitter followers seemed a bit ridiculous. After all, a good chunk of those followers are probably either spammers or bots. But then Ashton Kutcher decided to throw down the gauntlet and formally challenge CNN to a race to the landmark number. Then Larry King got involved. Then EA got involved. Then it was revealed that CNN didn’t even own the Twitter name Kutcher was racing. Then it bought the name. Is your mind numb yet?

Now, apparently, Ted Turner is ready to throw in the towel, and give the race over to Kutcher, if he comes through on his promise to donate 10,000 bed nets to fight malaria in Africa. Appearing on a radio show, Laura Turner Seydel, Turner’s daughter, said that she believed her dad would back Ashton in his quest for a million followers if Ashton comes through on his promise. And she will ask her dad to do so. During the interview (embedded below), Seydel says she has been following the “race” and has been “having a big laugh about it.”

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Earlier this week, we learned that MySpace’s current CEO Chris DeWolfe was on the way out, and fellow co-founder and default friend to millions Tom Anderson’s future was uncertain. Today, at least one piece of the puzzle has been filled in, as MySpace has announced that their new CEO is Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive.

In a statement, Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer of MySpace parent company News Corp said, “Owen combines a deep understanding of social networking, a keen business sense and the operational experience to guide MySpace through its next phase of growth. I’m confident his leadership will be an invaluable asset. I plan to work closely with Owen to shape our long-term vision around this vibrant community that already attracts more than 130 million users worldwide.”

In less corporate speak, Miller is essentially saying that someone from Facebook – the social network that unseated MySpace as world #1 – is exactly the person to bring MySpace back to prominence. At Facebook, Van Natta was Vice President of Operations and Chief Revenue Officer.

Which, makes his choice a bit surprising perhaps – MySpace’s problem isn’t really with monetization (at least compared with Facebook), but a feature-set that simply doesn’t measure up to its competition. On the other hand, Van Natta’s most recent job – CEO of Project Playlist– leaves the exec well-positioned to grow MySpace’s crown jewel – its online music service.

Let us know your thoughts on the selection in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook, MySpace

Tags: facebook, myspace, owen van natta

Remember Rob Spence? You know, the Canadian filmmaker dude with a camera prosthetic eye AKA Eyeborg? We just sat down with him for a few minutes and he talked to us about his Eyeborg project and what the heck he’s doing south of the border. Hit the jump for our exclusive pics and video.

Update: Images are now included.

“Twitter has certainly become an Internet phenomenon over the past few months, but March represented an especially big gain for the site as it added more than 5 million visitors versus the previous month,” commented Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “With numerous celebrities and media personalities - including Oprah - recently jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, the site shows no signs of slowing.”

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Why is it that you can book a table at a fancy restaurant through OpenTable, but you can’t book the bar for a corporate party? That is the question that a startup in New York City called Pogby is trying to answer. Barely in beta, Pogby is an event booking service founded by Joshua Gooch, who used to run JetBlue’s Website and helped build its TrueBlue customer loyalty program. Pogby aims to become the OpenTable of events, where corporate event planners and others can find and book venues for parties.

The site is really not much more than an online demo right now, with only a half dozen venues in New York City on the site. But Gooch and his VP of sales Duane Lawrence plan to sign up 50 to 100 restaurants, bars, and other event spaces in short order. They are focusing on New York City to prove the concept. (This is really early stage—the company is still looking for seed funding). Each venue on Pogby gets its own page with pictures for each available event space, along with a calendar showing availability and a booking engine. Gooch knows a lot about reservation systems from his time at JetBlue, and you can see some of the design influences on Pogby.

it’s a fairly simple concept. Find a venue, check pricing and availability, and book online. Pogby plans to charge venues an 8 percent commission fee for any bookings and eventually will introduce a $99/month subscription fee. A typical event can cost $4,000 or more, and event spaces typically go unused 70 percent of the time. So any extra events a restaurant or venue can capture is worth the fees. Why hasn’t anyone done this already?

“Casualties? Java and MySQL for sure, and perhaps Sun’s hardware business,” says CyberTech Rambler; “Oracle can utilize Sun’s Solaris and Java platforms….However the future of MySQL has not been mentioned and may not be so rosy,” notes Steve Kennedy. The blogosphere is abuzz with news and views in the wake of Oracle’s intended acquisition of Sun for $7.4BN announced this morning.

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This week, the social networking juggernaut MySpace made some sweeping changes, most notably ousting its current CEO and hiring former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta to fill the role. Is this the start of a MySpace comeback?

During 2008, MySpace held the lead in the US according to most metrics, and even while Facebook took first place in worldwide markets that year, MySpace held strong in the US. In early 2009, however, an increasing number of stat tracking firms reported that Facebook had taken the lead in the US market, too. At this point the trend is clear: MySpace has lost momentum, while Facebook continues to speed ahead.

Is MySpace doomed to oblivion, or can it make a Rocky-like comeback? With MySpace still a leading venue for bands, could MySpace Music turn the social network into a leader in online music? We want to ask you for your opinion, but first let’s look at what’s been happening to MySpace over the last year:

MySpace in Perspective: the Statistics

It’s no secret that MySpace has been at a ceiling with its traffic - according to Compete, it has been hovering at about 60 million unique visitors per month for almost the last year. Its U.S. traffic has been down by 11.40 percent for the year, which has to be troubling the social behemoth.

Only when MySpace’s lack of growth is compared to Facebook’s stellar rise though do you get the full picture - Facebook’s U.S. traffic is up by 195 percent, from about 31 million to 91 million. Facebook has over 200 million users, while MySpace claims somewhere over 130 million users - a 65 percent difference. And although it’s wise to question the reliability of web statistics, many of the other stat tracking firms agree: MySpace isn’t what it used to be.

Facebook also receives all the buzz - this graph depicts stories in Google News. Few businesses can stay in the game when their competitors are getting almost 3 times as much buzz. Counting mentions on Twitter provides an even wider chasm. Almost nowhere is anyone talking more about Facebook than MySpace, which can only lead to less attention, less users feeling the urge to join, and even more stagnation.

You probably knew most of this already, so I want to highlight one last important piece of information: MySpace held the title of the largest social network until just this year. It may seem hard to believe, but only a few months ago, MySpace was still the most visited social network on the web.

Although MySpace trending downwards has been an extended phenomenon, its loss to Facebook is very recent - MySpace isn’t so far behind that it can’t catch up.

MySpace Has Been Busy…