MEDIABLITZ

PlayboyU announced the launch of a college only community on Ning . Owen Thomas of Valleywag told CNBC doesn't think the bunny has any bounce, but I disagree. Basically because there is a need for "gated communities" online especially among students as everyone essentially invades their Myspaces and Facebooks. The front page successfully conveys the sense of an exclusive club and Mashable has screenshots of inside pages which look very robust and uniquely designed. The front page also stresses that the visitor is "not allowed" and you have to apply with an ".edu" email address to get in. People respond well to being told that they can't have something, it makes them want it. And the fact that you have to be in college (or at least have an .edu email) makes it prone to socially desirables. Myspace and the dating sites have gotten so big that it's essentially impossible to trust the people you meet there and Facebook is being invaded by o...

The TV biz is on a crazy rollercoaster. Fox cancelled 'Anchorwoman' after one airing. It was a cheesy premise: former swimsuit model becomes anchorwoman at a Texas TV station. Mmmm, let me think, kind of like the TV Guide show. Apparently only 2.5 million people tuned in (so-so cable numbers) which was a dramatic decrease from 'So You Think You Can Dance' numbers of the prior week. The unaired episodes will be available at Fox's nifty new Myspace page which called 'Fox On Demand.' Brownie points for synergizing. Fox On Demand has a healthy selection of full episodes of Fox's programs on and off air. The promo page for the show hosted on the fox.com server although it looks like a Myspace page is full of glitz and cheescake. This show was described as a "scripted reality show" which means the characters didn't have enough entertaining things to say so someone else wrote the lines for them, which is sad and always looks fake. Kiss of d...

Not. I'm spending more time building profiles than I am being social on these sites. Ken at KenRadio.com provides these snazzy IQ media reports daily. A couple of days ago he distributed " Social Network Marketing, the Sky is the Limit" (Note: You may have to login to view it, Ken is building his own social network complete with yet another profile to fill out, his numbers say he has 15,000 folks). He did an amazingly comprehensive chart of 90 social networking sites with a brief description of their type and their user number. I don't know where he got these numbers you will have to ask him. I sorted them by user number and excluded the "unknowns" and networking sites exclusively for specific geographic or demographic users. I took off any sites with less than 1,000,000 members since that seems to be the magic number for advertising viability. That seems to be his focus, not membership premiums which I'd just like to give a shout out to Flic...

y broadband connection went down earlier this year, and I was briefly forced to use a dial-up Internet service provider. I considered which of the icons to click on my desktop: “Free 6 Month AOL Membership,” or “EarthLink,” or “NetZero First Month Free!” I went for the 30-day free trial on EarthLink, and up popped a headline-news crawl. This provoked something of a flashback to 1997, when this innovation—basically, information you’ve requested being automatically delivered to your computer—was called “push technology” and was going to transform the experience of cruising the information superhighway. Wired magazine, at the very apex of its hyperbolic frenzy, infamously pronounced : “Push!” “The Web browser … is about to croak. And good riddance.” Continued

Feb 15, 2007 So, MySpace or yours? A latecomer to the revolution finds that, even here, some things haven't changed. I thought of MySpace as a storm that would pass. If I didn't panic, it would blow by like Hurricane Friendster and I would never get hit. I would never have to come up with an ironic yet welcoming "headline," or decide who would make my "Top 8." The whole thing seemed like a juvenile fiasco that was tossing my girlfriends asunder and causing them to regress emotionally. If I could wait it out, it would pass and I could avoid pillaging Ferlinghetti for quotes on embracing life. MySpace just seemed undignified for those over 29 … which I'm not, if you go by my résumé. Just don't check my license. The point is, I knew if I could clutch my disdain, I wouldn't be forced to cobble together a list of "Favorites" that would appeal to my target dem...