News Corp. may allow users to sell goods and advertise their websites on MySpace, reports The Los Angeles Times. It explains that users have already found ways to work around the current ban on peddling wares, so MySpace might as well find a way to make money off any resulting commerce. [The Los Angeles Times]
Richard Thompson, a blogger who tracks the Memphis, Tenn. news scene at Mediaverse Memphis, has done a follow-up interview with Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark.com. Last week, Curtis, left, fingered Darrell Phillips, to his right, a new media manager at News Corp.-owned TV station WHBQ Fox13, as an all-but-certain suspect behind attempts to hack into the site. He based his accusation on an all-but-conclusive trail of electronic evidence. Thompson, at first skeptical of the accusation, seems to be giving it more credence, as Curtis confirmed that Fark has plans underway to seek legal action. After the jump, the latest revelations.
Some observers think that Fotolog's rumored sale price, at north of $100 million, is too rich. After all, the photo-sharing site has a mere 10 million users, putting the price on each user's head at $10 and up, while Photobucket, with 40 million users, reportedly sold to MySpace for an amount in the range of $250 million to $300 million, valuing its users at $6-$7.50 apiece. But that facile analysis ignores two important factors — factors which tell us much about the changing market for Web companies.
MySpace, the News Corp.-owned social network for the unwashed masses, heroically sued spammer Sanford Wallace to stop him from abusing the site. Wallace allegedly created 11,000 fake profiles and spoofed MySpace login pages to gain access to legitimate users' accounts. MySpace also claims that he used an automated program to control the fake and hijacked profiles to send out links to adult-oriented websites in comments and messages, bringing him enough traffic to collect about $1 million in revenue from his websites. A federal court injunction prohibits Wallace from having a MySpace profile or sending emails implying that he is affiliated with the Fox Interactive Media property. Pity, that. For a while, Wallace made it look like exploiting emo teenagers with unfortunate hair was an even easier way to riches than writing a Facebook app.
A source close to the company tells Valleywag that Fotolog, the social network and photo-sharing site, has been sold to a large Latin American company for an amount over $100 million. Fotolog CEO John Borthwick, who's on his way to Italy for a family vacation, hasn't returned a request for comment. Update: "As if," emails Fotolog cofounder Scott Heiferman. Still, the rumored sale, if true, makes eminent sense for Fotolog — and for Borthwick. Fotolog, though based in New York City, never took off in its home market. But overseas, especially in Latin America, it's huge. The site, which asks users to post a single photo every day, now counts more than 10 million members. While clearly successful, Fotolog is just one of many ventures for Borthwick, a former executive at AOL and Time Warner — and a sale would free him up to pursue those.
Local TV reporters are infamous for practicing "ambush" journalism — but as they try to take their gotcha practices to the Web, increasingly they're the ones ambushed. The first rule of hacking, after all, is "Don't get caught." And Fox newsman Darrell Phillips may have broken that rule, Drew Curtis has told Valleywag. Curtis, left, is the founder of Fark.com, a thoroughly juvenile, and entertaining, social news site where users pick the headlines. Phillips, to his right, is the new media manager at WHBQ Fox13, a News Corp.-owned TV station in Memphis, Tenn. And Curtis claims to have assembled all-but-conclusive electronic evidence that Phillips has tried to hack into Fark's servers, potentially breaking several laws.
Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown," looks at the Wikipedia Scanner episode, in which a website made it vastly easier to trace edits made to the online encyclopedia back to the organizations that made them. He notes that two News Corp.-owned media properties — the Times of London and Fox News — reported on the scandal without noting their own, er, contributions to Wikipedia. Fair enough. But, then again, did Olbermann note any edits made by his colleagues at NBC?
While NBC Universal and News Corp. struggle to launch (and name) their online-video venture, NBC has decided, on its own, to lay siege to YouTube from another angle. Demonstrating exactly how well old media understands new media, NBC's USA Network is launching an online-video destination site for... wait for it... advertising! It's a brilliant, sure-to-fail idea.
"The Wall Street Journal is the greatest newspaper in America and one of the greatest in the world," said Rupert Murdoch in a conference call concerning News Corp's 22% rise in annual profits yesterday. "That's why we put such a premium on it and why I spent the better part of the last three months enduring criticism normally levelled at a genocidal tyrant." Poor thing! We're sure he only expected the kind of soft-pedalled criticism his papers generally direct at the tyrants in China. Anyway, what's gonna happen to Dow Jones once they hand Rupe the keys?
Ever since it awarded a $4.5 million book deal to then-Speaker Newt Gingrich while Congress was preparing to address issues of media ownership, News Corp. has vigorously denied that any publishing arrangements it makes with influential political figures (Republican Senators Lott, Specter, Hegel, and Hutchison; Supreme Court Justice Thomas) are some kind of favor-buying ploy or campaign donation. So it was sort of weird to see this in the Post, News Corp.'s sister paper to the Wall Street Journal, today!
Wanna hear a funny story? Guy spends every day of the past three months combing the internets for every bit of Rupert Murdoch minutiae he can find, rising with the dawn to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a daily post of interest to only about seven people. Then, on the biggest two days of the story, when actual civilians are sort of interested in what's going on with the Wall Street Journal? He's trapped in jury duty! Could he be any more bitter? No. Will you have to hear about all about jury duty later? Probably! Life is just unfuckingfair. Anyway, here's the day in Murdoch, like you give a shit.
Fark, the insanely popular social-news site, with equally insane headlines, is an excellent source of ideas for lazy TV-news producers. So excellent, in fact, that an Indiana newspaper busted Fox News for picking up the story of a lurid homicide from a Fark link to the site. It also, jokingly, speculated that Fark would be Fox owner News Corp.'s next takeover target. On a lark, the site's founder, Drew Curtis, ran a Photoshop contest asking users to imagine what a Rupert Murdoch-owned Fark would look like. But it clearly struck a chord — and no surprise, since Fark's users and Murdoch's newsmen share the same mentality when it comes to headlines. Would the tabloid-like megablog really be such a bad fit within News Corp.'s growing Internet empire? (Illustration by bengieboy)
And we're done. From the Wall Street Journal:
Yesterday, the Bancroft family was undecided about accepting Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones. Today? The deal seems likely to happen, but who the hell knows? There's a proposal on the table for "the Dow Jones board to create a fund to cover payments to firms advising Bancroft family members." Those payments are expected to be around $30 million, but "the money would be paid only if at least one of two key holdout shareholders agreed to the deal: Christopher Bancroft and a group of trusts managed by Denver law firm Holme Roberts & Owen."
We've finally found a way to make our Rupert Murdoch roundups of any interest to the general public! If (when) the News Corp. titan completes his takeover of Dow Jones, he'll have the right to rename the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Would he? The Street.com seems to think so? But what would he call it? The best we can come up with is the "Suck It, James Ottaway Industrial Average," which is not very good. Please leave your alternatives in the comment section!
Although fans of high-definition video had already been deriding the Hollywood in Hi-Def site, created by backers of the Blu-ray disc format, for days, it appears our Friday post may have helped provoke a response. The site's masthead now clearly states "Built for Blu-Ray, Powered by Blu-Ray Supporters" and the About Us page has been thoroughly revised, removing any doubt that this "forum" is actually an advertisement. Although much of the site still uses generic "hi-def" headers which could fool newcomers, we are happy to have contributed a small part to the eventual demise of this deceptive promotional campaign. The site description from the About Us page, before and after our post, following the jump:
