MySpace Advertising Performance Improves

MySpace Advertisers already know, performance at the social network giant has increased by leaps and bounds over the past several months, while prices continue to drop.

Is the performance boost because younger kids are abandoning the network in exchange for more niche driven communities? Perhaps the new ad placements and improved interface have finally combined to form the special sauce for conversions. Maybe all the other advertisers just left (haha)!

This past year MySpace ran into a ceiling on traffic, the year over year growth digits aren’t as exciting (in fact traffic is down year over year, 10% just last month) as past years and the site looks doomed from almost every angle. Maybe just the realization they would go out of business forced MySpace to start acting like a business.

While Twitter and many other newer social networks will likely hit a ceiling then deflate, MySpace may just survive long enough to buy the guys who are in the spotlight today. As ad rates continue to drop, MySpace continues to step up and work harder.

At the end of the day, traffic prices and conversions are all that matter and MySpace is running away with the lead for advertisers no matter how you slice it.

HULU Subscription Fees Set For 2010

Chase Carey, Deputy Chairman of News Corp, revealed HULU will begin charging for subscriptions as early as 2010. While Carey said that some content would remain free, he explained that a free model of distribution did not do their content justice.

I think a subscription based model could work well for HULU. They are capturing a lot of content and broadcasting it in unique ways. Example: I was able to watch the every play of the last Notre Dame football game in about 42 minutes. This was the fastest paced football I’ve ever seen. All parts of the broadcast that didn’t involve game play were cut out. This literally changed the football viewing experience 180 degrees for me.

We all understand the downsides that come from free services. The YouTube Lag problem has been driving me nuts for months. I’d gladly pay a few dollars each month for better service. HULU has picked up on this and is running with it. Would you pay for HULU?

Kanye West Is Dead Hoax

Kanye West isn’t dead, yet after 48 hours the rumor will not die. I saw a new rumor last night Kanye’s mom had died, it could even be true, I’m so confused by all this nonsense flying around on Twitter.

I think Balloon Boy got everyone excited to fake the Kanye West funk. Now getting a lie re-tweeted 200 times is almost an art form. I’ve noticed recently, around 30% of the trending topics on Twitter at 3am are hoaxes or half truths (maybe this % is lower than real life, lol).

While it’s funny and interesting to watch, over the long run this type of activity could devalue twitter.

Do you find the hoaxes entertaining? Do you think they improve or decrease your Twitter experience? Is the trending topics list an open door for spammers? Does anyone gain from this type of exposure? Post your feedback in the comment box below.

Drew Carey to Donate $1 per Follower

Drew Carey offers a $1 million dollars donation to Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong Foundation if he can reach 1 million followers on @DrewFromTV by the end of the year. He goes on to say he’ll prorate the donation relative to the number of followers he receives, just incase he doesn’t hit $1 million.

Mr Carey was put in the social spotlight when he offered to bid $25,000 for the @Drew name, being auctioned by a terminally ill cancer patient. When he realized no one was even bidding close to that amount,

Drew decided to take it a step further and offered to donate $100,000 to LiveStrong if the name @Drew received 100,000 followers by Nov 9th (the original ending date of the name auction).

Here is the video clip where Drew Carey announces his $1 million follower challenge:

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Twitter Problems and Updates

Twitter is Down, Biz Stone Sleeps.

Twitter downtime problems continue. The service has been down for 5 hours. While founder Biz Stone is passed out after a night of taste testing his latest vintage of Twitter Wine, twitter users are wondering if the Old Fail Whale is going to be beached all day.

How can Twitter screw up so hugely in a 24 hour time span?

Yesterday was a big day on Twitter. The #BeatCancer frenzy went into full swing very early on. I worked through the previous night and got to see it all develop. There was to be an epic attempt to set a world record for most social mentions of a #hashtag, all in support of raising money for cancer research.

What is #BeatCancer?

It’s a an organization that got brands to donate 1 cent everytime someone included #BeatCancer in any messages they posted. Obviously everyone in the twittersphere was excited to get behind this and see it occupy the #1 position all day as we’d celebrate the money we were helping raise.

The celebration would never happen. Some sort of filtering mechanisms kept #BeatCancer from even appearing in the trend list. This led to confusion, that was met with disinformation and rumors that the entire #BeatCancer drive was a hoax.

Have hackers in Chemotherapy DOS’d the Fail Whale? Did Mr Stone give everyone the day off? Does anyone even work at Twitter? The people at TweetDeck seem to do 50x faster/better job at development, maybe Biz should pick up the phone.

Twitter Status Blog Fail

While researching 20 seconds for this article I noticed Twitter now uses Tumblr for their status blog. The funny thing is after 5 hours of being offline, the status blog doesn’t mention any problems. FAIL.