People familiar with CEO Steve Hansen’s plans say he intends to lay off about 50 of the company’s 240 employees, and will end up hiring another 25 people in the coming months.

The company also plans on shifting its focus away from its blog advertising network business, and to concentrate on a core group of music and pop-culture sites it owns, including Celebuzz, Idolator, and Spin, the magazine it bought last year and turned into a digital-only property.

Earlier this year, the company raised a new $15 million round from existing investors, including Redpoint Ventures and Focus Ventures.

Hansen, a digital veteran whose resume includes GeoCities and Yahoo, was hired as BuzzMedia’s president last summer; he was elevated to the top job amid chatter that the company had missed sales targets. In a letter to the staff he has distributed this morning, Hansen describes the firings and hirings as a “rebalancing of existing skill sets and the addition of new ones … There is a lot that is right at Buzz, but much that still needs to change.”

Some of the changes may not come as a surprise to BuzzMedia’s staff; other Web publishers say they’ve been seeing BuzzMedia resumes circulate in the last few months.

Here’s the full memo:

Note to The Company

When first joining BuzzMedia, I told you that while successful, the company needed to evolve in order to achieve it’s true potential. Today we will be making a number of difficult, yet necessary organizational changes across all departments and levels of the company in order to achieve that goal.

Transformation sometimes requires making very hard decisions. Make no mistake about it, today will be difficult for all of us but our success is dependent upon greater focus on our audience, evolving our portfolio of brands, all supported by powerful technology and data. We need to align the organization around those objectives and today is a first step, albeit a very hard one.

Proper organizational alignment requires a rebalancing of existing skill sets and the addition of new ones that focus on those key areas that will help us keep pace and grow stronger within our industry. Embarking on that path necessitates a number of painful personnel reductions that will directly or indirectly impact all of us. The fact that so many friends and colleagues will be effected by what is happening today is not a referendum on them as contributors. On the contrary, today we will be saying goodbye to a group of people that have shown great passion, commitment and sacrifice for BuzzMedia. We owe these individuals a debt of gratitude for they were an important part of what Buzz is today and I’d like to thank them all.

These changes are not made lightly. Over the past several months I’ve met with many of you to better understand how the company works. I’ve taken great pains to personally review structure, process, priorities and people. There is a lot that is right at Buzz, but much that still needs to change. Success in our world will come down to having the right people focused on the right tasks and providing them with the resources they need to succeed.

While difficult in the short term, the changes being made today will make us a healthier company in the long run.

In 2013 we really need to focus on doing three things very well:

• Drive higher level of audience and audience engagement on our owned and operated sites
• Provide better solutions for our advertising partners and users
• Create a technology/publishing/knowledge platform that will support all of our sites

Successfully achieving these goals will allow us to legitimately lay claim to being a market leader in the digital publishing world. That is my goal for 2013. The world that we live in is getting more competitive by the day and doing a much better job for our audience, advertisers and editors is essential.

Although today is a difficult but necessary step in the evolution of our company. we make these changes from a position of market leadership, strong financial support and historical revenue momentum. And because we move forward from this position of strength, we can use these challenging times to become even better.

I think at a time like this it’s particularly important to reaffirm to you my commitment to transparency, accountability and high standards — both internally, with our partners and throughout our industry. Our reputation and how we treat each other is just as important to me as our financial success. I want each and every one of us to be proud of what we’re builing here — and how we’re doing it.

Affected employees will be notified mid-day today. I have also scheduled a company wide call for Friday at 10:30AM PST. Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have questions.

From everyone on the executive team, I wish you all the best moving forward.

Steve

And you say you’d also like to read lots of articles from People.com on your iPhone, without going to People.com?

Voila! Meet People Magazine’s CelebWatch app, which will fit that very specific bill. And say goodbye to People’s old mobile apps, which got about 500,000 downloads over the last three years.*

Think of the new one as a very curated mashup of Twitter and People’s Web site, and you’ll get the basic idea.

This is the kind of app that will be very useful if you want to keep track of everything Rihanna says on Twitter, and everything People.com says about her (and other famous people).

But it won’t do you any good if you like to use Twitter for other stuff, like telling people what you had for breakfast, or tracking revolutions in Egypt, or anything else.

Even if you’re not a candidate for CelebWatch, the app is still worth noting for the strategy Time Inc. is using here: It’s selling access to the app  for $1 a month, or $10 for a year, and giving it away for free to People’s “all-access” subscribers, who are already getting print and digital bundles.

It’s the second part that’s more important. Time Inc. executives will be pleased if they see a few new dollars coming in from app sales. But what they really want to do is make their magazine subscriptions more valuable. Maybe throwing in something that costs other people a buck a month will help.

“We wanted to have a mobile pillar for the business we’ve already built out,” says Jennifer Ogden-Reese, who heads up consumer marketing for Time Inc.’s Style & Entertainment Group.

To spell that out: People, which has 2.4 million subscribers, is perhaps Time Inc.’s most important title. So if a modest app like this helps keep those numbers up, it’s going to gain a lot of stature.

*And if you’re an Android user, hang tight. People says your version is coming soonish.

The 30-second spot shows a day in the life of a woman who uses products she discovered on OpenSky, including a meat and cheese platter recommended by Bobby Flay, an iPhone case from Alicia Silverstone and perfume from actress Mariel Hemingway.

As the company gets ready for its second-ever Christmas season, OpenSky founder and CEO John Caplan calls the TV commercial a “modest test” to tell the world about the emerging commerce company. The commercial, created by ad agency dw+h, officially begins airing today on Bravo, the Food Network and HGTV.

Since its start in 2011, the company has been focused on connections-based e-commerce, meaning that consumers “follow” people on their network to receive product recommendations. The end result is that consumers can find new items serendipitously, much like scrolling through Pinterest or Facebook, rather than entering terms into a search bar. “In traditional e-commerce, consumers suffer from the paradox of choice,” Caplan said. “And in connections-driven commerce, everything they’ve seen is relevant to who you are. It’s entertaining and it’s engaging.”

A year ago, the company raised $30 million in capital; today, it has two million members who have made more than 30 million connections. In six words, he boldly calls it, “Pinterest with a universal shopping cart.”

Some of the company’s other metrics are also trending in the right direction: The average repeat buyer makes seven purchases a year and places an order size of around $85. Caplan declined to provide the company’s annual revenue, but said sales jumped almost 50 percent between August and September. During a recent week, sales topped $700,000.

The company provides plenty of incentive for experts to become product endorsers since they receive a share of the gross profit from each item sold. Shaquille O’Neal, who recently joined, already has 180,000 connections and has adopted the theme of doing “the shopping for the kid in all of us.” In a video, he recommends a turntable that plugs into your computer and converts vinyl to digital, while telling folks to follow him at OpenSky.com/shaq. Honestly, it’s more entertaining to watch than OpenSky’s commercial, but here’s that anyway:

This year, none other than Justin Bieber is scheduled to stop by the event, while repeat attendee Lady Gaga is not.

And CES is also about to get Snookified.

Lady Gaga first appeared at CES in 2010, when it was announced she would be taking the role of creative director at Polaroid. Attendees and members of the press went a little goo-goo for Gaga, who certainly livened up the event. At last year’s show, the Lady of the hour again appeared at the Polaroid booth, and unveiled three new products (two of which, we reported earlier, have yet to hit the market, as is not uncommon for some of the products showcased at CES).

A spokesperson for Polaroid said Lady Gaga is still currently creative director for its Grey Label line, but is not scheduled to be at CES this year due to her demanding schedule.

So, let’s get to Bieber. The 17-year-old singing sensation is scheduled to appear at a booth for TOSY, a Vietnamese robotics company. I’ve been told he is not doing interviews, so all the 14-year-old girls out there wishing they were the Tavi Gevinson of consumer electronics coverage can hold off on bombarding the CEA with requests for press badges.

On to Snooki: The pint-sized “Jersey Shore” star will be there, not for high-tech tanning beds or electronic Bumpits, but to help hype iHip, a maker of audio accessories. Snooki, a.k.a. Nicole Polizzi, is hosting a fist-pumping VIP party at the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino during the week, and will also be making appearances on the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Other celebs expected to be in attendance at the big show: Actress Eliza Dushku, who will be at the show as an ambassador for the Entertainment Matters program sponsored by Variety magazine and Ericsson; 50 Cent will announce new audio products through his company, SMS Audio; fitness guru Jillian Michaels will kick things off at the Sports and Fitness TechZone; Dennis Rodman is going as part of the launch of Paltalk’s Firetalk (and at 6’6″ won’t be hard to spot on the floor); and actor Seth Green will appear at the booth for Shodogg, a service for controlling video-watching across multiple screens, using a smartphone (we can’t hardly wait!). Finally, Ludacris will be there, representing SOUL Electronics.

Last year, “Survivor” star Jeff Probst made a CES appearance, during which he gave some tips on how to — heh — survive the show. Probst did, in fact, survive, but won’t be making it this year.

More notable names are likely to appear, but whether there will be anyone big enough to drown out the buzzing, pinging and ringing of the electronics — and the shrill sounds of Biebermania — is still to be determined.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
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Here’s a very cute video trailer, titled “Off the Grid,” for the upcoming Academy Awards, the annual movie award show that will feature the return of host Billy Crystal.

It features cameos from a few well-known celebrities. Enjoy:

This morning, News Corp. CEO and majordomo Rupert Murdoch, his son James (who is also a top company exec) — as well as former employee and full-time lightning rod Rebekah Brooks — march on down to the British Parliament to answer questions from a committee there about the ever-growing PhoneGate scandal.

For those living under a rock, News Corp. is embroiled in ever more serious controversy about who knew what and when (also where, why and how much) in the hacking of phones of a myriad of well-known people in the U.K. by its News of the World tabloid newspaper.

Besides celebrities and politicians, that has included the voicemails of a murdered girl, an appalling act that has galvanized public opinion and the weak spines of legislators into action in this inquiry.

It’s sordid, it’s ugly and it makes for what could be an explosive event, starring the man who brought you “Titanic,” Glenn Beck, “Glee” and, most recently, the sale of Myspace.

There’s no question, getting the 80-year-old Murdoch on the ropes will be the aim of the committee members holding the hearing, and how one of the world’s most famous and legendary media moguls performs — or does not — will be a big deal to both interested observers and News Corp. shareholders.

By way of full disclosure, that’s not me, but this site is owned by Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp. In other words, somewhere up the corporate food chain, Murdoch is my boss.

In any case, that has never stopped me or AllThingsD.com from telling it like it is, so here is the liveblog of what is sure to be a doozy of a media event:

6:36 am PT:: It all starts for the Murdochs, as soon as the former Scotland Yard head John Yates has completed questioning about the police’s obvious bungling of the various investigations over the years.

Rupert Murdoch and his son, James Murdoch, are on, looking grave and dressed in grey.

Sitting behind them are Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, and his top adviser at News Corp., Joel Klein, who is heading up the phone hacking scandal internally at the company.

The hearing — in a room that looks like a high school debate could take place there — starts off politely enough.

But the first question is directed toward James Murdoch about his clearly incomplete investigation when phone hacking allegations were first made many years ago. He begins with an apology.

“These actions do not live up to the standards of News Corp.,” says the younger Murdoch.

He is interrupted by his father, Rupert Murdoch, who notes rather dramatically: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

The questioner quickly asks the obvious query, after James Murdoch claims News Corp. was not in full possession of the facts when execs had told a previous committee there was no reason to believe there was more widespread hacking.

Were News Corp. execs lying?

James Murdoch continues to insist that the bulk of evidence came out — “real evidence” — in later civil trials. And also, that News Corp. is now investigating the situation fully.

He throws around words like “proactive action” and “transparency,” which is probably cold comfort now to those hacked when things were less clear to News Corp.’s senior management.

Now up, Rupert Murdoch, who is asked quickly about statements he made about not tolerating wrongdoing and who had lied to him at News Corp. about the phone hacking.

Apparently, he “didn’t know” a lot about the hacking that took place, while also defending the non-hacking employees of his company.

But the questioner is still on him about exactly what he did know about the situation, which seems to be — at least according to his testimony — a lot of I-don’t-knows.

6:53 am: It continues about what Rupert Murdoch knew and when he knew it and what he did. Or not.

As Rupert Murdoch keeps up with this tone of not being clued in to what have turned out to be critical events, James Murdoch wants to keep jumping in with the details, which he is eager to impart.

“At what point did you find out criminality was endemic at News of the World?” asks the questioner.

Rupert Murdoch does not like the word endemic, but stresses that he was “shocked, appalled and ashamed” by the case of the murdered girl, Milly Dowler.

The questioner seems frustrated by Rupert Murdoch’s answers, which are, for the typically razor-sharp media mogul, unusually slow.

Like a persistent terrier who wants to perform, James Murdoch is back again offering to serve up the deets.

7:04 am: Now, it is onto the closing down of News of the World: Was the tabloid shut down because of the criminality?

“We had broken our trust with our readers,” says Rupert Murdoch. “We felt ashamed for what had happened.”

A new questioner is on, with a bizarre query about why Rupert Murdoch came in the back door of the Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street on a recent visit there.

It’s a cloddish effort to show him as a powerful puppetmaster to pols, but only serves as a punch line.

Back on track, with questions about whether there was hacking in the U.S., which Rupert Murdoch said he could not believe had happened.

More questions about how badly the company acted, which came down to the questions about whether he was “ultimately” responsible for the hacking.

“Nope,” says Rupert Murdoch, who keeps insisting he relied on others, some of whom apparently “misled” him.

It’s an astonishing admission and, really, excuse, given he has been chairman, CEO and a very strong leader of News Corp. for more than a half-century.

7:16 am: A new questioner, who asks who decided to close down News of the World. It was Murdoch himself, his son and other execs.

Next up, why did News Corp. pay off a victim of hacking, which James Murdoch did without informing his father or the News Corp. board.

James Murdoch essentially points out that it is typical to do this in companies of the global scale of News Corp.

These are apparently very busy, busy, busy people, who do not seem to have time to notice how such juicy and best-selling scoops might have been magically produced by News of the World.

Onto ethical conduct guidelines, which News Corp. has in a pamphlet form, says James Murdoch, but pages which some at the company have obviously never cracked.

Rupert Murdoch is asked again about his culpability in the case, which he continues to maintain he does not shoulder the blame.

James Murdoch does note that the company “will think more forcefully … about our journalism and ethics.”

Given the situation, in which every day brings a new revelation of bad acts by News Corp. employees, this promise of better behavior seems to be a case of much too little and very, very late.

Rupert Murdoch still uses the opportunity to stress the need for a free press, despite its excesses.

7:31 am: More about the payments to settle with phone hacking victims and how soon the company realized the problems were more widespread.

James Murdoch talks about how he might have acted differently had he known more then as he does now.

“If we knew now what we knew then,” says James Murdoch, “we would have taken more action and moved more aggressively.”

But what else is he going to say? It’s a could-have, would-have, should-have line of questioning that is eliciting very little in the way of true information.

Finally, a good point about “willful blindness,” which is a term from the Enron scandal about avoiding knowing about problems you really should have known about.

“Is that a question?,” asks James Murdoch. It is a statement, actually, and a decent enough one.

“We didn’t do that,” says Rupert Murdoch firmly this time.

Still, soon enough, Rupert Murdoch is insisting he was not as involved as people have imagined him to be with the management of his newspapers.

A new questioner is pressing this important point, but Rupert Murdoch is not biting on a query about his legendarily hands-on managing style.

“I’d say, ‘What’s doing?’” he explains about his conversations with editors, but adding he might not have been told about payoffs to phone hacking victims.

The questions are in the deep weeds here, but it’s still interesting that Rupert Murdoch continues to maintain that his life was too busy to wallow in the details, however controversial and important those details might be.

7:55 am: More and more don’t-knows pile up and up in a giant mountain of acts perpetrated by someone somewhere, but not the Murdochs.

“I can tell you I was surprised as you were,” says James Murdoch about certain payments to various hackers and those who were hacked.

Was it Les Hinton, who then ran News International and later Dow Jones, from which he recently resigned?

Could be! Maybe! Mistake were made! Who knows!

Well, someone does!

It moves onto Brooks, the tarnished News International exec and editor whom Rupert Murdoch does note he still trusts. Finally, some certainty!

Brooks is definitely one of the more compelling characters in this drama, although the media focus on her striking red hair color seems odd and vaguely sexist, as if she is some flame-haired she-devil from media hell. She might certainly be guilty in this mess, but her fabulous hair has nothing to do with it.

(Rupert’s mane is grey, by the way, and James’ is brown, if you really need to know.)

Fascinatingly, Murdoch’s backing of Brooks has been strong and consistent, despite intense criticism of her by many in this scandal.

The payment of legal fees of perpetrators and payments to the victims in the hacking seems to obsess one questioner, who wants News Corp. to stop doing it.

Murdoch says he’d like to if contracts did not preclude that, which essentially means News Corp. will keep up forking over the legal fees and payments.

8:12 am: The attention turns to how James Murdoch found out about the various emails that showed there was more evidence of hacking than was first thought about and what he felt about it.

He says very little, noting that the matter is under police investigation. It’s not don’t-know now, but can’t-say.

The hearing is beginning to feel a little rope-a-dope, with the Murdochs apologizing and taking blows, saying very little — either claiming lack of knowledge or lack of ability to comment about the ongoing police inquiry — and tiring out the questioners.

It is a classic tactic of the boxing champion Muhammad Ali and it works in the ring.

Whether that will be the case with PhoneGate remains to be seen, but it certainly has made what could have been a more explosive hearing much less so.

Instead, it seems to have turned into a what didn’t the Murdochs know and when didn’t they know it hearing.

On questioner gets this irony. “That’s frankly unsatisfactory,” he says about the Murdochs continuing shock and surprise at the thorny situation they find themselves in.

Maybe it seems a little hard to believe, but the persistent story from James Murdoch is that they were told by their lawyers, the police and others that nothing was awry once the initial phone hacking investigation was complete and only found out about the larger problem in later civil lawsuits.

But, asks the questioner to Rupert Murdoch, should his editors and managers at News of the World have known about it?

Of course, they should have.

But, once again, the legendary media baron, who made his fortune and fame in disseminating news and information across the world in newspapers, on television, on satellite and on the Web — at least for now — can’t say.

So, was he “kept in the dark” about the situation? Rupert Murdoch acknowledges he might have asked more questions, although he noted his British newspapers were only a small part of his massive empire.

But, he adds, “Anything that is seen as a crisis comes to me.”

Well, not the phone hacking crisis, it seems.

But, they’re sorry. So sorry. And, of course, humbled.

8:54 am: Suddenly, there is a disturbance, in which someone seems to have possibly attempted to accost the Murdochs.

But it is not clear what has happened, as the hearings are suspended for 10 minutes.

James Murdoch leaps up quickly to protect his father, which he has been doing in this hearing verbally already, where the strategy seems to be to let him largely do all the talking.

Even faster on her feet and with arms raised toward a man in a plaid shirt and carrying a pie plate with shaving cream is Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi.

The man seems to have managed to get some of the foam on Rupert Murdoch, but Wendi Deng appears to have partially thwarted her husband from receiving a full pie in the face.

It’s the first striking visual of this hearing, protecting the patriarch and the king of the empire from harm, no matter what.

Here is a video of the incident:

According to Britain’s Channel 4: “As the man was being led away in handcuffs escorted by a single police officer, he refused to give his name, saying: ‘As Mr Murdoch himself said, I’m afraid I cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation.’”

9:09 am: The room is cleared, so it is only the Murdoch crew behind James and Rupert Murdoch, and now the committee is even more solicitous.

Rupert Murdoch is without his jacket and his wife is being commended for her most excellent left hook.

Still, it’s back to business and the questioner does zero in on a major disconnect over how two media execs as famously aggressive and involved as the Murdochs were so passive in this hacking situation.

It “was a terrible shock,” says James Murdoch.

The same is said about what would be even more disturbing and recent allegations of the hacking of the victims of the 9/11 bombings.

Both father and son say there is no evidence of this so far, but they were surely looking into it.

While it certainly did not come through in what have largely been feckless questions from the committee, the final questioner does correctly ask the pair if they might want to pay more attention.

The last question is for Rupert Murdoch and finally gets to the real query everyone wants to ask.

Noting Murdoch is “captain of the ship,” she asks if he has considered resigning.

“No,” answers Murdoch firmly.

“Why not?” she presses.

“People let me down and it’s for them to pay,” says Rupert Murdoch. “But I think, frankly, I am the best person do clean this up.”

He finishes up with a statement about being sorry, how he was also betrayed and how phone hacking and bribery is wrong.

“Saying sorry is not enough, things must be put right,” he says.

Finally, something we do know.

Not unless you’re famous.

WhoSay, it turns out, is a sort of HootSuite for the stars, helping them manage their social media presence and making sure photos and videos are posted on a page the stars themselves can control and eventually monetize.

I spoke with WhoSay CEO Steve Ellis yesterday about his 18-month-old company and what it has accomplished so far. First, the start-up basics: Los Angeles-based WhoSay has raised $6 million from investors including Amazon and High Peaks Ventures. The premise for WhoSay was developed at Creative Artists Agency but now the company works with all sorts of talent agents and managers. Ellis himself previously sold his start-up Pump Audio to Getty Images.

The WhoSay product, which has been out for nine months, has hundreds of users, and they collectively have 570 million social media fans across Twitter and Facebook and get “multiple tens of millions of page views per month,” said Ellis. More than half the content posted on the service is uploaded directly from WhoSay’s various mobile apps.

WhoSay doesn’t offer a public index of all its clients, though it’s obvious who’s using WhoSay since the pages themselves are all public at WhoSay.com and their tweets use the URL shortener Say.ly. Other users include Ellen DeGeneres, Dwayne Johnson, Diane Keaton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Silverman, Cristiano Ronaldo, Shahrukh Khan, Steve Martin and Katie Couric.

“Our clients create value in media space but don’t get return for that value,” said Ellis, pointing out this includes both new media and old media — huge amounts of entertainment coverage is driven by pictures and videos from the lives of stars, taken from their own Twitter posts or bought from paparazzi.

Any social media service will retain at least some control over the rights to use and monetize the content its users upload. WhoSay, by contrast, says it won’t do anything without its users’ permission and without paying them too.

“This will never be a consumer application,” Ellis said, though he added that he can’t exactly specify the criteria for admitting WhoSay users. Today WhoSay is primarily television and movie stars, and the company hopes to beef up its sports, politics and finance roster.

WhoSay does advise stars to post their own updates, but Ellis says he always tells them “Authenticity doesn’t mean you have to tell people what you had for lunch.” For instance, Diane Keaton often posts pictures of art she finds interesting. Tom Hanks has created his own series of publicity stunts for his new movie “Larry Crowne” (I had no idea Tom Hanks was such a goofball). James Franco used WhoSay to post videos from his iPhone while he hosted the Academy Awards (though he appears to have since deleted his social media presences).

But Cristiano Ronaldo’s most-viewed WhoSay picture of all time is indeed a picture of his plate of food (I think it’s this one), Ellis said.

Today WhoSay integrates with four platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Myspace. Next will be Tumblr and international social networks, especially in China, Ellis said. The company has also started doing larger deals, for instance signing up all the contestants in the recent Miss USA pageant.

The next big thing, Ellis said, will be commercializing the service with an ad sales partner, which is coming soon.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110628/whosay-brings-social-media-to-the-stars-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110617/terrell-owens-loves-his-fans-and-more-from-twitter-analysis/ http://allthingsd.com/20110617/terrell-owens-loves-his-fans-and-more-from-twitter-analysis/#comments Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:55:46 +0000 Jared Diamond http://allthingsd.com/?p=88085 Despite all the tired wisecracks about the triviality of Twitter’s content and the supposed narcissism of its users, it’s clear that the popular microblogging site has established itself as a playground for celebrities. Though the world may not care about the song currently playing on your iPod or the tacos you ate for lunch, people are interested in whatever Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift deem worthwhile enough to say.

With that in mind, the always-sophisticated Journal sports section recently bandied around this question: What could famous athletes like LeBron James be writing about that’s so fascinating to more than 2.1 million followers? To calm our inquiring minds, we read nearly 2,000 tweets written by the five active athletes with the most followers in the four major sports (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) and analyzed their content.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110617/terrell-owens-loves-his-fans-and-more-from-twitter-analysis/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110307/how-does-twitter-verify-celebrity-accounts/ http://allthingsd.com/20110307/how-does-twitter-verify-celebrity-accounts/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:20:29 +0000 Alexandra Cheney http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=37342 While Twitter continues to give celebrities, athletes, musicians, actors and others a platform to directly connect with their fans, the social networking site remains tight-lipped about how it determines if those stars are really who they say they are.

The real Charlie Sheen joined Twitter on March 1. Prior to that, an imposter or “squatter,” as Twitter refers to those tweeting under a false name, had secured the handle @charliesheen. The faux Sheen was quickly removed and the former “Two and a Half Men” star slipped into the handle with a “verified” blue check on his account. He now has more than two million followers.

Twitter has 175 million users and counting and only select, mostly high-profile people are granted “verified” status. How are verified users vetted? Twitter refused to explain the process, saying via e-mail, “we continue to very selectively verify accounts most at risk for impersonation on a one-off and highly irregular basis.”

But what does that actually mean?

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110307/how-does-twitter-verify-celebrity-accounts/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110212/howard-stern-and-twitter-just-made-me-watch-private-parts-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20110212/howard-stern-and-twitter-just-made-me-watch-private-parts-again/#comments Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:13:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29740 “Private Parts” is a 1997 movie that most Howard Stern fans have a hazy fondness for and everyone else ignores. So why is the movie’s title now trending on Twitter?

Because Stern has spent the afternoon delivering a scene-by-scene, Tweet-by-Tweet, DVD-style commentary while the movie has been playing on Time Warner’s HBO. It’s an incredibly simple idea, and a surprisingly compelling one: I gave in about 30 minutes ago and have had a hard time doing anything else since.

And while the movie will have ended by the time you read this, my hunch is you’ll be hearing about it for some time.

That’s because the idea of using Twitter to augment TV–particularly live TV–is something that Twitter’s executives have been actively promoting for some time now. Both because people are already doing it on their own, and because they think it will help them capture some of the huge TV ad marketplace, which still dwarves online.

“It’s taken the DVR out of the equation again,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said last month. “People feel like they have to watch the show, while it’s going on.”

And Twitter ad sales boss Adam Bain used today’s (spontaneous?) Stern seminar to expand on that message, and  hand out instructions to the TV business.

And I think he’s sort of right. I’m very happy to Twitter away, and read responses, during a certain kind of TV show. Such as a live event like the Oscars–one that I sort of care about, but not so much that I can’t look away for a few minutes.

But I’ve got no interest in twittering during “Justified,” because I really, really like that show. And there aren’t many celebrities whose tweets can get me to watch a show I don’t like.

Still, as I type this, I’m half-watching the last few minutes of a 14-year-old movie I haven’t thought about for a long time. So maybe the Twitter folks are on to something….

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110212/howard-stern-and-twitter-just-made-me-watch-private-parts-again/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/yahoos-got-a-digital-newstand/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/yahoos-got-a-digital-newstand/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:23:57 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57572 Chief Product Officer Blake Irving defines Yahoo as “the premier digital media company in content and context.” That’s a far shorter answer than the one he provided for the “what is Yahoo” question last year. A bit more cogent too. And it sets the stage for the company’s latest push into mobile content, Livestand, which it announced moments ago.

Designed to offer consumers content based on their interests, Livestand is a sort of personalized digital newsstand for tablets. It will feature content from Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! News, Flickr and celebrity gossip site OMG, and it will customize that content according to user preference as well as time of day. “Tablets are great for a laid-back experience, but most magazine content remains trapped online,” Irving said this morning . “But consumers don’t want a digitized magazine. They want rich media, they want connections beyond just commenting.”

Which is what Yahoo is trying to give them in Livestand. The platform will be integrated with Yahoo! Finance as well as Yahoo! Mail, and it will support content sharing and commenting. “We see this as the next generation of Yahoo and we’re putting the full force of Yahoo behind it,” Irving said.

The hope here, of course, is that this will play well with advertisers dissapointed by shallow digital experiences. “You don’t exactly curl up with your PC, the way you do with a magazine,” said Irving. “With Livestand, brands can finally match the intimacy that magazines once brought to their audiences.” That means offering them ads that adapt and respond to user interaction and the tools to create “a TV-like ad experience.”

Yahoo Livestand will debut on iOS and Android in the first half of 2011. No word yet on subscription pricing.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/yahoos-got-a-digital-newstand/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/bubbly-voice-twitter-service-launches-in-the-philippines/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/bubbly-voice-twitter-service-launches-in-the-philippines/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 06:53:20 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3444 I last wrote about Bubble Motion, provider of the Bubbly mobile messaging service, exactly a year ago. At the time, the company had 150,000 users. Today, it has more than seven million.

Bubble Motion, which is funded by Sequoia Capital and others, is now launching Bubbly in the Philippines, after releases in India, Indonesia and Japan (chosen because of their deep mobile phone penetration). Its launch partner in the Philippines is Globe Telecom.

By the midway point of this year, Bubbly will be rolled out to all major carriers in those four countries, for a total potential audience of 800 million.

Bubbly allows users to send each other voice-based status updates. People who follow a user receive an SMS each time a new status message is posted, and pay to listen to the status message with a fee added to their regular phone bill. This can be used both for communicating with friends and family and for subscribing to updates from celebrities.

Users pay either a monthly subscription fee for celebrities in India and Indonesia, or per message in the Philippines and Japan, following the carrier billing styles in each country. The average user gets one to two messages per day.

Celebrities on Bubbly often have two to three times as many followers as they have on Twitter, bragged Bubble Motion CEO Tom Clayton on a phone interview on Wednesday. And that’s despite the fact that Bubbly costs money and Twitter is free.

Part of the reason is Bubbly has more reach than Twitter in the four countries it has launched in, Clayton said, given it is a mobile service and Twitter is often accessed over the Internet.

But grooming a stable of stars might not be defensible in the long term, given Twitter is ramping up its mobile efforts and celebrities may want to have a broader reach than they can achieve with local phone carriers and voice updates. Clayton said another edge his company has is the infrastructure it has built to deliver voice files–250 million of them since Bubbly was first launched–without overloading carrier networks.

Clayton said Bubble Motion, which has raised about $30 million in funding, is not profitable yet but is growing revenue with a direct correlation to its traffic, which is to say, doubling every quarter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/bubbly-voice-twitter-service-launches-in-the-philippines/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110125/google-deal-for-saynow-to-make-google-voice-more-interesting/ http://allthingsd.com/20110125/google-deal-for-saynow-to-make-google-voice-more-interesting/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:02:50 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=2284 I’ve been a Google Voice user since before it was even called Google Voice. Back in 2007, I was fascinated by the potential of GrandCentral–the service Google acquired and transformed into Google Voice.

For one thing, once I gave out my new number to a handful of friends, I had this one goofy friend for whom I recorded a custom greeting. Every time he would call, I’d let it go to voicemail and he’d start every message laughing at some silly in-joke I’d leave for him in the greeting. Okay, I grant you not many people would go to the trouble to do that, but if you knew this guy, you just might. Update: A few readers pointed out in the comments that this feature is re-enabled in Google Voice, and they’re correct though it’s not exactly easy to find.

Ever since GrandCentral became Google Voice, it’s been a lot less fun to use. That custom-greeting feature is gone, as are some of the funnier Web calling buttons that GrandCentral had offered. Maybe that’s one of the reasons behind today’s acquisition by Google of SayNow.

Details are scant about what Google has in mind, but a source close to the deal tells us that the intent on Google’s part is to make Google Voice “even better in a world of Skype and Facetime,” which implies that the next step for Google Voice is some form of video calling.

SayNow made a name for itself by giving celebrities like Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers (remember them?) and the cast of “Glee” a phone number for fans to call and hear the occasional message. And at the start of the football season, ESPN used it to send the message embedded below from former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka to some 1.6 million fans on Facebook. Another feature gave celebs a way to hold live conference calls that fans could dial in and listen to. The biggest SayNow client was the rapper Soulja Boy, who racked up 50 million calls totaling some 100 million minutes of call time. If nothing else, Google can learn from the team at SayNow how to promote the service and get people interested in using it.

SayNow also has a serious side, an enterprise application called Big Call, aimed at making conference calls for businesses easy. The company says it was built by an intern in a week.

The deal for SayNow comes on the same day that Google made its long-awaited number-porting feature official, suggesting that Google Voice is going to be the focus of a lot more time and attention in the coming months.

Ditka’s season-opening greeting for Facebook users is below.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110125/google-deal-for-saynow-to-make-google-voice-more-interesting/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-at-dces/ http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-at-dces/#comments Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:49:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27773 Twitter has crossed the threshold from Web novelty into something substantial. Now Dick Costolo’s job is to turn it into a business–one big enough to justify the sky-high valuation investors have given the messaging company.

He’ll talk to Kara Swisher about the company’s efforts to sell advertising on the service, and if we’re lucky, he’ll give us a glimpse of his improv comedy roots, too. Don’t be shy, Dick!

Dick starts off by insulting Kara’s vest. “Matador casual,” he calls it. Good one! Kara responds by asking him why he’s hanging out at CES.

The same reason everyone else is, Dick says: To talk to industry people. For example, he’d like to get device makers to preload some features like “Fast Follow.”

Kara wants to know if Dick would like a “Twitter button” installed on phones. No, says Dick. But he’d like Twitter to work the same way on different platforms.

So how do you make that happen?

Dick: We’re assigning a product team to make sure that this happens.

Kara: And you’re talking to TV people, too? What’s that about?

Dick: Yep. Because mainstream TV viewing, more and more, they have a device in their hand when they’re watching TV. Like on “Glee.” The characters tweet while the show is on. [This baffles Kara.] When “Glee” starts, tweets per second for “Glee” shoot up, and stay up 100 times that level until the show ends, and then they drop.

That has interesting implications. Like, it takes the DVR out of the mix, because you have to watch in real time to make it worthwhile.

But we don’t know if all of this means Twitter while you watch TV, or Twitter actually on your TV screen.

Kara: Is it important for you to be on the screen?

Dick: We’re already on the screen. But we don’t know if that will be the mainstream experience.

Kara: We had Steve Levitan from “Modern Family” talking about how the Web doesn’t help him, but that he and his team like Twitter.

Dick: Sure! “I was having a conversation with Conan O’Brien, as one does” and he was talking about the importance of Twitter to him, and how the 140 character limit is the right length for a joke. It’s definitely the case that network TV people like Twitter, because it gives them feedback, like they’re in the theater, watching how the shows play out.

Kara: Keep talking about celebrities! I love celebrities.

Dick: Sure! The folks that we’ve hired to work with talent and agencies, etc., we think of those people has high-value publishers. They have a huge following. A lot of people are on Twitter just to hear what those folks have to say.

The interesting thing about the top 200 to 300 tweeters–a lot of them are musicians, actors, etc. LeBron James, etc. I think Lady Gaga is number one. But! They’re not all celebrities. There’s CNN Breaking News. And the New York Times. And other brands like Gary Vaynerchuk, who aren’t really that known outside that world.

And Twitter is disaggregating some of those businesses. Like a third of all the players in the NFL playoffs are using Twitter actively. And many players have more followers than their teams. [Here Dick explains football to Kara.] That’s fascinating.

Kara: Let’s go back to phones. Whats the most important device? Tablet? PC? Phone?

Dick: Mobile is a more and more and more common use of Twitter–40 percent of all tweets created on mobile devices. That might seem low, but it was 25 percent a year ago. 50 percent of active users are also active on mobile.

But Twitter ought to work platform to platform. We want to be agnostic.

Kara: What about what’s coming out from Palm? Working with them?

Dick: Not yet.

Kara: What about games? Talking to those guys?

Dick: Yep. Like with Microsoft on their Xbox, you can see integrating tweets into people who have discussions on Xbox.

Dick: You lost interest in the answer to your question. [True!]

Kara: You’re so annoying.

[Some laughter. Not a lot, though!]

Dick: Anyway, the important thing for us is consistency across device to device to device.

Kara: Speaking of working consistently, how’s that going for Twitter?

Dick: Right. So, we raised a bunch of money. We’re hiring “tons of engineers and operations engineers” in the last year. We hired 100 people in Q4, out of about 350 total. And we’re working very hard on erasing our “technical debt.”

Kara: “That’s a great word for fuck-ups”

Dick: Anyway, we’ve got a guy assigned to this pretty much exclusively. And there used to be a tolerance for this, and now there isn’t. If someone fires a pistol next to your ear every hour, after a while you stop flinching when you hear it. It’s crucial that we do this, both for our users and our engineers, who shouldn’t have to get up at 3 am all the time.

Kara: Time for a vision question, which stumps Yahoo. What is Twitter? What is your vision?

Dick: “We want to instantly connect people everywhere to what’s most important to them.”

See, that’s a good statement. We’re not just a social network that’s connecting people. It’s connecting for a purpose.

So some people meet girlfriends on Twitter. And other people get tickets to shows they like on Twitter. Etc.

And you don’t have to tweet to get a lot of value out of it.

Kara: What’s the percentage of people who just read Twitter, and don’t tweet themselves?

Dick: Rising. And we have to make that easier to do. “We’re going to spend a lot of time making that consumption experience much better.”

Kara: What’s your business plan?

Dick: To continue to raise money!

[hohoho]

Dick: I’m going to steal Jeff Weiner’s line. We’re a technology company that’s in the media business. Our business model is an advertising model [cough, cough, that's familiar! You're welcome!] So we’re selling ads, and we’re letting people promote their accounts, etc. And we really don’t have to do anything else. Our engagement rates on these ads are ridiculously high. When we saw our stats this last spring when we launched, the numbers were so big we thought we were measuring it incorrectly.

Kara: Is that a big enough business to be a standalone company and/or IPO?

Dick: It’s enough to be a standalone company.

Kara: Sell or IPO?

Dick: We want to be a standalone company. It’s my sincere hope. We’ve accomplished 1 percent of what we want to do.

Kara: You like to sell companies, though.

Dick. Yes, I had two companies that I sold. But that doesn’t mean we’ll sell this one. I’ve had two kids too. But I shouldn’t get a reputation for having kids.

Kara: What’s up with people buying and selling secondary shares of Twitter. It’s an issue for Facebook. What about you?

Dick: We keep an eye on it, and talk to employees about it. But I just think that there are other people that are focusing on it and paying attention, and I’ll let them talk about it. But I just don’t think about that stuff on a day-to-day basis.

Questions and Answers

Q: [sorry missed it].

But answer seems to be about whether Twitter is a platform company or not. Dick quotes Ev Williams by saying they’re not a platform company–they’ve had an API. They want people to be able build off Twitter and build into Twitter. Which requires a more robust API.

Kara has more questions. How do you look at yourself as a leader?

Dick: As a very bald leader.

Kara: But you’re very different than Evan.

Dick: Right. Two components. Three founders at company: Ev, Jack, Biz. They all come at it from a different angle. Jack thinks about simplicity and elegance and the mobile experience. Ev thinks about the user. Biz is “the protector of the brand and the guardian of the culture.”

Kara: He’e the guy who goes on Colbert.

Dick: And he’s great at it. Anyway, those guys are great. My focus is on operational greatness. I try to emulate operators like Ben Horowitz (Opsware) and Susan Wojcicki (Google).

Q: What’s up with that internal page rank for each user? asks Ben Parr from Mashable.

Dick: Your’re not exactly right. We play around with stuff like that. But there’s nothing robust that we would think of productizing anytime soon, and we don’t use it for things like resonance, which we use in ads.

Q: [Sorry, couldnt quite understand.]

Dick is talking about WikiLeaks in general, says there was something specific about WikiLeaks today that he can’t talk about. In general, he hates government mandates to keep things quiet. And he hates that a woman in China was punished for retweeting something. He reiterates Twitter’s desire to connect people with useful information. “We’re going to lash out at things that prevent us from doing that, as aggressively as we can.” The proof is that we’re banned in China. “We’re not going to sacrifice what we’re trying to do to, you know, get into this country over here.”

Q: How will you work with brands in the future, vs. advertising?

Dick: Our promoted suite of stuff doesn’t simply let advertisers use a giant bullhorn. This stuff has to be organic. “It almost is like a quality-assurance program.”

[Some context for what Dick wouldn't talk about: Feds Subpoena Twitter Seeking Information on Ex-WikiLeaks Volunteer].

Dick is now talking about Twitter and international growth and language. Twitter is growing fast in the U.K. but not in Germany. Why is that? Because German has really, really long words. “There’s a bunch of stuff we want to do, and have to do” just to make things usable in those languages.

Last question, from Kara: What’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen at CES?

Dick won’t give a one-word answer. CES is a “quantum conference.” Some years are transformational, some are incremental. “This seems like it was an incremental year.”

And we’re done! Thanks all for your patience. We’ll have video up over the next few days, which should help fill in the gaps left by my lousy note-taking.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-at-dces/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/trying-out-a-revamped-myspace/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/trying-out-a-revamped-myspace/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 23:02:26 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1581 Thanks to the popularity of Facebook, it’s easy to assume that all social networks are designed primarily to connect friends with one another. But many of these networks—think Twitter, Yelp and LinkedIn—aren’t focused on that. Instead, they provide information from strangers, business contacts and group postings on a variety of topics. Myspace is now also shifting in this direction after Facebook decisively overtook it as the most popular social network.

Last month, the company rolled out a revamped version of Myspace, which is owned by News Corp., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. I’ve been testing it to see what has changed and if it’s worth using. Its interface is cleaner than the old version of Myspace and I found it easy to navigate. It’s also inviting for non-members or people who’ve long-since given up on Myspace. But I can’t definitely say I like it enough to add it to my large list of social networks.

Step one of this site’s rehab was a new focus. Myspace (myspace.com) was redesigned to serve as a source of information about entertainment. People who use it can follow five categories—TV, music, movies, celebrities and comedy—that include more than 100,000 topics. News about these topics comes from sites all over the Web and is arranged on users’ home pages to show loads of information at a glance. A Discovery tab at the top of the page shows content related to trends on Myspace makes suggestions based on a user’s preferences and taste. A spokesman said the Myspace topics can be expanded, but for now, if you’re fonder of, say, books, theater or hard news, Myspace won’t be a good fit.

Step two for Myspace included making nice with its old competitor. It now works with Facebook Connect to pull in people’s Facebook “likes” and interests, which automatically generate customized Myspace pages for new users.

The final step of the Myspace redesign was its emphasis on music. The site still contains one of the largest Web music catalogs that plays full versions of songs for anyone who visits Myspace. New versions of band profile pages look more organized. And all artists with band profiles will have ReverbNation’s FanReach email product integrated into their profile to help them create targeted email campaigns for fans.

Was Myspace’s rehabilitation worth the effort? I’ve been using it for a week and it has taught me a lot more than I knew about things I care about. I had no idea that one of my favorite TV shows, TNT’s “The Closer,” recently said that 2011 would be its last season. Nor did I know that Anthony Bourdain blogs about his role as a judge on “Top Chef Masters.” These items and others appeared on my Home page after I performed the process that the Myspace site refers to as a Facebook Mashup.

The Facebook Mashup does a few things automatically for you, in addition to generating a Myspace page filled with topic-related news. A playlist is created in the Music section of your page that contains artists whom you “like” on Facebook (or whom you indicated while setting up an account). And the Videos section of the Myspace page will reflect your tastes in a list of Followed Channels related to your Facebook preferences.

The Home page can be seen in one of three views—List, Grid or Play—and icons at the top of the screen let users toggle among these views. My favorite was Grid View in the Full Grid View format, visible by clicking a small box at the top of the page.

Some of the content displayed on my Home page was mixed up. For example, a tile representing the story about Mr. Bourdain’s blog (originally posted on Celebrifi.com) displayed with it a photo of actor Tom Cruise, who wasn’t mentioned in that post. Another Tom, Tom Colicchio, chef and a “Top Chef Masters” judge, was mentioned in the post, but that doesn’t explain the mix-up.

Anything that falls into the 100,000 plus topics of Myspace’s realm can be found via a search box in the top right corner of the page, but this box is confusingly labeled, “Search People.” Though Myspace still allows users to search for and friend one another, the label on this search box is puzzling, given the greater reach of the site.

You can watch video content from Hulu.com (of which News Corp. is part owner) without jumping to a new page. And videos also come from other sources like TMZ and the NFL.

Users can earn recognition badges—icons that show up on their page—for their involvement on Myspace, and can become curators of topics, awarded on the basis of users’ involvement and how much other people respond to their activity.

This week, a Myspace mobile app was launched in Apple’s App Store, and an Android app is due out next year.

Myspace successfully reinvented itself in a way that could very well get people using it again, but Facebook’s more personalized social network may be more valuable than a rich library of entertainment content.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/trying-out-a-revamped-myspace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101115/tweeting-to-sell-cars/ http://allthingsd.com/20101115/tweeting-to-sell-cars/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:00:12 +0000 Suzanne Vranica http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32523 Car companies have long tapped high-profile celebrities to spread word of mouth about new cars by test driving them around town. Now they are turning to a similarly powerful but cheaper source: young social-media influencers who have strong online followings.

For its new compact Lexus, Toyota Motor Corp. is enlisting people with a strong following on Twitter and other social media to create buzz around its products.

Its new campaign includes online videos that show actress and comedian Whitney Cummings interviewing an array of social-media heavyweights as they take the Lexus CT 200h for a spin around their hometowns. The stars of the campaign include Baratunde Thurston, Web editor of satire website the Onion; Brian Solis, a marketing guru and social-media expert; and Richard Quitevis, or DJ Qbert, a well-known disc jockey.

“If we have people that are active in social media, then they can bring followers with them,” says Dave Nordstrom, Lexus’s vice president of marketing.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101115/tweeting-to-sell-cars/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100923/latest-prize-in-celebrity-auctions-is-a-tweet-not-a-meet-and-greet/ http://allthingsd.com/20100923/latest-prize-in-celebrity-auctions-is-a-tweet-not-a-meet-and-greet/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:00:27 +0000 Tamara Audi http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30247 The top bidder so far in an online charity auction to raise money for a Haitian orphanage is willing to pay $14,900 for access to Zachary Levi, star of the TV series “Chuck.” And bids are mounting.

But not the sort of access you might expect. Mr. Levi’s fans aren’t bidding to have dinner with him, or even to talk with him on the phone. All Mr. Levi will have to do is follow the winning bidder’s thoughts and insights on Twitter, then repeat the Twitter messages, or tweets, and mention the winner in tweets Mr. Levi sends out. “I’m just as shocked as anyone,” Mr. Levi said of the bidding frenzy.

The charity auction, launched last week by an Atlanta church, has fans bidding between $50 and $15,000 to win virtual relationships with major and minor celebrities.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100923/latest-prize-in-celebrity-auctions-is-a-tweet-not-a-meet-and-greet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100921/ladylike-fun-and-games-boomtown-visits-sugar-hq-for-an-update/ http://allthingsd.com/20100921/ladylike-fun-and-games-boomtown-visits-sugar-hq-for-an-update/#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:42:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33974

It’s been a dog’s age since BoomTown revisited Sugar Inc., the scrappy women-focused content start-up run by Brian and Lisa Sugar.

I first paid a visit to the San Francisco headquarters of Sugar three years ago to check out the flagship PopSugar (celebs), GeekSugar (tech), CasaSugar (home) and YumSugar (food) sites.

Since then, it has moved into a range of other arenas, via acquisition, such as:

ShopStyle.com for Web commerce; FreshGuide, which makes women-aimed city guides that show off daily offers in a wide rage of arenas, such as beauty, health and fitness; and video shopping start-up Shopflick, which is now a Los Angeles-based branded entertainment unit called Sugar Digital Entertainment.

And, most recently, in mid-July, it launched a fashion game on Facebook called Retail Therapy. where you run your own fashion boutique.

While mine would be all jeans, T-shirts and Puma Mostros, it is an interesting idea from a content company, injecting into the content model doses of virality, commerce and user passion.

And, of course, Sugar has launched the requisite Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPad apps.

Last summer, Sugar also cut its ties with NBC Universal by buying back its shares and got a Series C funding of $16 million from Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia has been an existing venture investor, having put $5 million into Sugar in late 2006. NBC invested $10 million in 2007.

And while Sugar has had serious acquisition flirtations with Yahoo (YHOO), it currently remains on the road to building a new media content company of the future from scratch.

Here’s a talk I had with Brian Sugar last week about that and more, as well as a tour of Sugar’s office.

Also below, a very funny video called “The Zoeinator,” which Sugar did for Rachel Zoe’s Zoe Report, as an example of its branded content efforts:

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100921/ladylike-fun-and-games-boomtown-visits-sugar-hq-for-an-update/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100106/ces-from-lady-gaga-to-punky-brewster/ http://allthingsd.com/20100106/ces-from-lady-gaga-to-punky-brewster/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:06:48 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/20100106/ces-from-lady-gaga-to-punky-brewster/ Celebrities pop up at every annual Consumer Electronics Show, with Tom Cruise, Slash, Stevie Wonder and Hulk Hogan making appearances in recent years.

CES 2010, which starts Thursday, is no exception–as long as you keep your definition of celebrity broad.

One of the boldface names already lighting up the Twitterverse is Lady Gaga. The pop star has her own line of headphones, but she’ll be in Las Vegas with Polaroid to talk about a new line of imaging products in what is likely to be a packed press conference.

Reality television will be represented, with “Real Housewives of New York” star Jill Zarin at fellow photo company Kodak’s (EK) booth.

Soleil Moon Frye, best known for her role as Punky Brewster on the ’80s TV series, will also appear with Kodak. Ms. Frye, now a thirtysomething mom, is listed as the co-founder of the Little Seed, a green children’s boutique.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100106/ces-from-lady-gaga-to-punky-brewster/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091211/stings-iphone-goes-unused-donna-karan-hopes-for-a-razr-upgrade/ http://allthingsd.com/20091211/stings-iphone-goes-unused-donna-karan-hopes-for-a-razr-upgrade/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:54:53 +0000 Lauren Goode http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=19019 One might think celebrities would have multiple cellphones or at least use a smart phone to help manage their Rolodexes, but that’s not the case for some of the boldface names gathered at Donna Karan’s Urban Zen loft Thursday night.

Several of them said they barely use cellphones at all, despite the numerous calls they receive.

Ms. Karan, who uses a Motorola (MOT) Razr, said “a new phone” was at the top of her Christmas list.

“I text a lot–all the time,” the designer said. “But then the texts disappear on me. I’m not sure where they go.” (A text message appeared on her phone just then.)

“Oh, and I don’t use email,” Ms. Karan added. “I’m really more of a visceral person, I guess.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091211/stings-iphone-goes-unused-donna-karan-hopes-for-a-razr-upgrade/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091202/tiger-woodss-online-rep-takes-a-hit/ http://allthingsd.com/20091202/tiger-woodss-online-rep-takes-a-hit/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:45:48 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=18604 The ongoing coverage of Tiger Woods after his car accident last week has taken a toll on his online reputation, digital-marketing firm Zeta Interactive said.

The New York agency monitors blogs, tweets and other online posts to gauge positive and negative “buzz” about celebrities, companies and other topics.

Mr. Woods’s buzz rating was overwhelmingly (91 percent) positive prior to the accident but has since dipped to 74 percent positive, 26 percent negative.

In contrast, David Letterman’s positive buzz rose to 79 percent positive, 21 percent negative, five days after his infidelity scandal broke, up from 76 percent/24 percent. Other celebrities, including Alex Rodriguez, Rihanna and Robert Pattinson, have also seen their ratings hold steady or even rise amid unflattering news reports. Prior to the accident, Mr. Woods had a higher positive-buzz rating than all of them, according to Zeta.

Mr. Woods was injured around 2:25 a.m. Friday after crashing his SUV into a fire hydrant and tree. Although tabloids have speculated that he and his wife, Elin Nordegren, were fighting, the police said that neither alcohol nor domestic-violence claims were involved.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091202/tiger-woodss-online-rep-takes-a-hit/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090914/bing-now-with-visual-search/ http://allthingsd.com/20090914/bing-now-with-visual-search/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:11:57 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=24682 Hoping to further differentiate its new Bing search engine from market leader Google, Microsoft is moving away from the proverbial “10 blue links” we so often associate with the search experience. During a presentation at the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco, the company announced Bing Visual Search, a Silverlight-based feature that replaces those links with images.

“A study conducted by Microsoft Research shows that consumers can process results with images 20% faster than text only results,” Microsoft’s Todd Schwartz explained. “So it’s clear that images play a big part in helping consumers with a variety of search activities….Visual Search allows you to quickly scroll through the galleries or do a one-click refinement using the quick tabs on the left, which are specifically relevant to the type of results you are browsing through.”

Think of Microsoft’s innovation as iTunes Cover Flow for search. And though it currently works only for mainstream queries (celebrities, dog breeds, iPhone apps, FBI’s Most Wanted, etc.) it’s quite impressive. And if Microsoft (MSFT) works quickly to extend it beyond its currently limited purview, Visual Search could do much to differentiate Bing from Google (GOOG). Certainly, Google doesn’t offer anything quite like it at the moment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090914/bing-now-with-visual-search/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20090324/what-would-pinocchio-tweet/ http://allthingsd.com/20090324/what-would-pinocchio-tweet/#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:22:17 +0000 Elizabeth Holmes http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=9751 Twitter may not have figured out a way to turn a profit yet, but that hasn’t stopped its users from monetizing the site.

Sponsored tweets are becoming more popular. Brands are recruiting well-known Twitterers to spread the word about a specific product or service. For example, Marcelo Tas, a Brazilian television personality, signed a deal with Telefonica (TAR) to help pitch its new Internet and phone service.

But marketers aren’t just looking for celebrities with hundreds of thousands of followers. They are also going after Web personalities with a more targeted following.

Enter Melanie Notkin, the 40-year-old New York entrepreneur behind the site SavvyAuntie.com. She has built a community of what she calls PANKs (Professional Aunt, No Kids). She offers advice on things like gifts an aunt could buy her niece or nephew.

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