Social networking site Digg has dropped Google Ads on its site for rival Microsoft AdCenter. The details of the deal were not disclosed as both companies declined to comment.
Digg is MS AdCenter’s second high profile social networking client, the first was Facebook which was signed up a year ago.
This is what Steve Berkowitz, a senior VP of Microsoft’s online services group said of the deal:
“We actually now are in the forefront of what we believe is going to be the next generation of advertising,”
Microsoft AdCenter needed this kind of high profile advertiser to kick off its Advertising programme.
I’m not too sure this was such a good move on Digg’s part as most Digg users are anti Microsoft because of its monopolistic history with software applications.
Mark Zuckerberg is facing a lawsuit for allegedly stealing the idea and source code behind the internet phenomena that is Facebook.
The lawsuit was brought about 3 years ago by 3 of Mark’s Harvard fellow student who claim they hired Zuckerberg to help them build the site that was to be named ConnectU.
The 3 claimants, Cameron Winklevoss, his twin brother Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra are claiming for copyright infringement, stealing trade secrets, fraud and breach of contract.
Mark Zuckerberg was rumored -a few weeks back- to have refused a $2 billion offer from Yahoo. If this lawsuit hangs over the head of Facebook, it will be very difficult to sell the company to perspective buyers, well at least not for the price it would normally fetch.
Facebook is growing at an astronomical rate of 150,000 new members per day and boasts high profile celebrities such as Orlando Bloom, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, and TV presenter Jonathan Dimbleby.
MySpace has announced that it will upgrade the video service it currently has offers on its site. The upgrade will include a move to a seperate domain (MySpaceTV). The new site is supposed to rival YouTube in terms of service, presentation and content. MySpaceTV will be available to all MySpace users wether or not they have a MySpace account.
What I want to focus on here is the incestious relationship that exists in this industry. Let me clarify…
MySpaceTV is owned by NewsCorp founder Rupert Murdoch (owner of MySpace). The same Rupert Murdoch recently signed a 5-year billion dollar deal with Google (owner of YouTube) to be the exclusive supplier of text ads onto the MySpace site. Now if that isn’t incestious I don’t know what is, I wonder if the relationship will extend to MySpaceTV.
FYI, according to HitWise, the top Video Sharing Sites by market share on the net are…
I find it interesting that they’ve decided not to alter the logo to incorporate the various translations of “Broadcast Yourself”, instead they opted to include it only when you hover over the image.
So much for globalisation!
Watch Chad and Steve’s official Google Press Day announcement in Paris (includes a presentation on the background of YouTube):
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to be holding out for $2bn on a business he founded only 7 years ago. Not bad for a recently-turned 23-year-old Harvard dropout! The rumoured buyer, Yahoo! is not commenting on the news (understandebly, as it’s also rumored that a previous offer from Yahoo ($1.65 bil) for Facebook had already been rejected by the Social Networking giant).
A brief history of Facebook:
Facebook started is life as Facemash.com, an image rating site started by Zuckerberg while studying at Harvard. Facemash was similar to Hot or Not, allowing users to rate Harvard specific images, however the site was quickly taken down by Harvard officials only four hours after it had been live.
Zuckerberg took a leave of absence from the Harvard and a year later he dropped out. In 2004 he relaunched the site as Facebook.
Will the Yahoo-Facebook rumour hold? I think so. Facebook’s popularity is souring not only in the US but also internationally. More importantly, a purchase of this sort will give them a new strategic social distribution outlet for their ad inventory while simultaneuosly countering the deal forged between Google and My Space back in August 2006.
Side note: Mark’s own profile on Facebook shows him to only have 494 friends. He’s also disabled his option for others to add him as friend … get with the program Marc!
Social networking site Digg has dropped Google Ads on its site for rival Microsoft AdCenter. The details of the deal were not disclosed as both companies declined to comment.
MySpace
During the recent Google press event in Paris, YouTube founders 
