TechCrunch reports that MySpace will be holding the first presidential primary on Jan 1-2, 2008. In Michael’s post and in its comments, there are a number of contentions and concerns about this announcement, including: It’s a publicity stunt
It will really influence real world primaries
It won’t really influence real world primaries
“This is pure crap that will be spun as voter base support for a candidate.”
The pr

Following up on the recent news, suggesting many recruiters use search engines to pre-screen job candidates, business social network Viadeo reports 20% of employers find information about candidates online and 59% are influenced by what they find.
As we pointed out, sharing your drunken exploits on MySpace, could come back to haunt you.
Examples of online information that has been shown to create negative information include MySpace pages that re

War Games, as it turns out, is more than just an early Matthew Broderick movie. They’re a series of events involving prominent business schools, including Harvard, MIT and the London Business School. In the past, these war games have accurately predicted events like the AOL/Google search deal, “the game of digital entertainment supremacy last year, which was iPod versus News Corp. versus Microsoft versus Vodafone or Verizon, that Ap

My hat’s off to MerchantCircle. I’ve just read a Business Week article that explains how the company is serving local businesses with a network that borrows a few ideas from MySpace. It sounds like they’ve hit on a winner!
Using data obtained from public records and a proprietary Web crawler developed by cofounder Yamamoto, the eight-employee MerchantCircle builds the listings, then relies on merchants finding listings through word-of-mouth and search engines

Local CBS affiliate, WRAL, has just reported that Wake County Public Libraries plans to prevent computer users from accessing MySpace.com. The library already has filters in place to prevent users from viewing pornographic web sites and those same filters will now work against MySpace accounts.
The reason? Too many people using MySpace to view pornographic content, which school children could be exposed to.
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Business Week is reporting plans by many social networking sites to open up their network to content developers, in an effort to grow their user base.
[Facebook], MySpace.com, LinkedIn, Friendster, and Google’s orkut are expected to…open their code to third-party developers this year as well—promising to kick off a spurt of innovation in social networking.

Virgin Mobile is among the many company’s licking their chops, at the thought of tapping into these mega-networks

MySpace has announced a partnership with Audible Magic to identify and screen uploaded videos for copyrighted content.
Audible Magic uses audio fingerprinting technology to identify the audio digital signature in any video file and then looks for matches against a database of copyrighted content.
MySpace said it maintains a database of fingerprints uploaded by content owners

I just received word from PollDaddy HQ that they’ve added a new Flash version of their sweet-looking polls, which should allow users of MySpace, Bebo and Blogger (among others) to publish their own polls. And it looks just like this…
 

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A new Pew Internet & American Life Project survey of U.S. teens aged 12 to 17, reveals 55% of those with internet access visit social networking sites and of those 85% prefer MySpace.
Hidden in the data is a clue of how these teens will help ensure social networks become key to marketers in the future

If you’re familiar with StumbleUpon, the web surfing toolbar, you’ve probably spent countless hours hitting the “stumble” button and discovering sites that are eerily tailored towards your taste.
Taking that same concept, StumbleUpon has launched StumbleVideo, a web site that allows visitors to “surf” video content from MySpace, Google Video and YouTube, using the same technology used by the popular toolbar.
Earlier this week, I had a chance to sit down with StumbleUpon’s VP of Marketing, David Feller, and get a sneak peak at the new service