Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

MySpace's Travis Katz Speaks!

While BoomTown was abroad recently, we did video interviews with lots of folks, like Facebook’s Owen Van Natta. We also talked with MySpace’s SVP and GM of international, Travis Katz, but did not get around to posting it.

So here’s the video, where we talk about key trends abroad, the markets that will really matter going forward in terms of growth for dominant players like MySpace and Facebook.

Both face a plethora of competitors, especially homegrown ones, as well as the challenge of creating meaningful social-networking experiences in a variety of languages.

For example, according to stats released in October by comScore, the European social-networking scene had 127.3 million unique visitors in August, 56% of the population. More than three-quarters of the U.K. were online with almost 25 million unique visitors in the same time period.

Bebo was slightly ahead of MySpace in the U.K., followed by a fast-growing Facebook and also Hi5.com.

That kind of competition abroad should be one of the more interesting stories for social networks going forward.

Here’s the video:

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”