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MySpace has revealed plans to create a mobile version of their online social network. It will be free for users through advertising by Fox Interactive Media and Millennial Media. At first advertising will be limited to Fox but should be opened to others by the end of the year.

Here is a quote from a Financial Times interview:

“Accessing the Internet from a mobile phone will soon be as common as text messaging and voice calling, and it’s FIM’s goal to deliver these new free, ad-supported experiences as additional options for our users on top of our incredibly popular premium mobile services,” said John Smelzer, Senior Vice President and GM of Mobile for Fox Interactive Media.

As Mr. Smelzer suggests, mobile phones will help people be more connected to their Space by sending and receiving MySpace messages and friend requests; commenting on pictures and profiles; posting bulletins; updating blogs; finding and searching for friends; and viewing or changing mood status.

Technorati Tags: socialmediamyspacesocial networkingweb 2.0

Last May, it was speculated that Google would buy China’s primary portal, Sina. However, many were unsure if it would be good idea for Google to own a news portal were all the content was “filtered” by the Chinese government.

Yesterday, Google announced a new partnership with Sina Corp as part of its continued efforts to provide value in China. Under a strategic partnership agreement, Google’s search service will be embedded in Sina’s search box, according to the Sina news release.

“This partnership leverages the strong offerings of two Internet powerhouses to provide Internet users in China [with] a better overall experience,” Sina’s chief executive officer Charles Chao said in a statement.

The deal will see Google users gain easier access to Sina’s news content as well as co-operation in advertising and search services.

Google partnerships in China include Soso.com and 163.com. With this deal, Google now has a close relationship with the 2nd, 5th and 6th most popular search and portal destinations in China, with Google.cn sitting down at 7th. Within the next 18 months, China will have a wider population of broadband users that the US and Google’s strategy of building relationships with the top 10 portals is a great way to increase awareness and much desired market share.

Technorati Tags: sinagoogle新浪china

Powerset is has been carefully flying under the radar screen on how their new (well-funded) “natural language” search engine works. After some initial media attention last fall, the company has been locked up and isn’t saying much.

On Saturday night, while I was watching the “Four Eyed Monsters” video, Powerset showed a screen shot (see below) of a sample search result on their blog. Many of us have been waiting to see how their product works and this sneak peek showed us that Google isn’t able to effectively match the natural language search on Powerset… even with the use of quotes.

The example they used in the sample was “politicians who died in office.” Clearly, doing the same search in Google does not produce results that are as useful as the same search done on Powerset. It will be interesting to see what happens when they launch and whether or not Google will find a way to improve their engine.

Technorati tags: powersetgooglesearch enginenatural language search

Yesterday Google announced that they have agreed to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash (nearly twice the amount what they paid for YouTube acquisition). Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. Google gets access to DoubleClick’s advertising software and, perhaps more importantly, their customers and network.

Google, which is based in New York City, will provide an efficient way to manage both search and display ads online, according to Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.

“We’ve come to an agreement to purchase DoubleClick,” Schmidt said in a conference call from Argentina, where]Google is opening a new office.

“It is something we have thought about for a very long time.”

DoubleClick was founded in 1996 and revenue is currently around $300 million/year. 10x revenue for a mature internet company seems a bit high to me. However, $1.6 Billion for YouTube seemed too high for a company that has no revenue and a pile of copyright infringement liabilities.

I think this acquisition may be so high because Google was willing to pay whatever price necessary to keep DoubleClick out of Microsoft’s hands. Also the acquisition could strengthen Google’s position with respect to Yahoo, its chief rival in Internet search and advertising and a leader in the sale of display ads.

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When I first started “designing” websites, everything was text-based.

Eventually, there were browsers that could display graphics, but it wasn’t until Netscape came along when the phrase “Web Design” took on a whole new meaning. I couldn’t view the webpage on a Mac in the beta version of Netscape, and I couldn’t create graphics in Windows 3.11. So in those days, I fired up my Mac to create the graphics and used a PC to view what I created.

The old <img> tag that we used back then to embed images into a web page, hasn’t really changed in over a decade. Well, history may have just been rewritten.

Wecome to “Image2.0″

This morning, the smart people at AdBrite launched “BritePic“, which adds more functionality to embeded image than you ever could before. All you do is change the embed code, and it will allow you to add a caption, a watermark, zoom, share and other features. If that’s not cool enough, you can also add an advertisement to the photo if you want. So, replace the <img> tag with some javascript and when the user hits your page, they will have a whole new user experience!

britepicadbrite

With PayPerPost, bloggers get paid by site owners to blog. They earn money to write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing their opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers.

This brings up an ethical question about the honesty of an opinion when people are being paid to say it. In order to solve the trust problem, PayPerPost created “Badges” which is intended to provide transparency and full disclosure.

A new service BegForPost takes on the ethical question of services like PayPerPost that has advertisers paying bloggers to write about their products. BegForPost does not have the ethical baggage that PayPerPost must carry. There’s no payment, no conflicts of interest, only begging for coverage.

web-20 pay per postinternet marketing