Buzzsonic.com

Here’s a really useful widget for people with blogs or multiple memberships at social networks, bookmarking sites and the like. If you’re like me you probably have profiles at a bunch of different websites, Flickr, MySpace, Digg, YouTube and such. With ShowYourself you can combine all your profiles on the web into one neat looking widget that you can put on your blog, your MySpace page or anywhere on the web.

With developer Dustin Bachrach’s app you type in your usernames for the sites you use and clear the checkboxes for those you don’t. The ShowYourself widget-builder lists around two dozen popular destinations, from AIM to Last.fm to YouTube, and you can easily add others.

Via Lifehacker.com

Related Links
Yahoo Widgets (Yahoo.com)
WordPress Widgets (Wordpress.com)

A lot of fuss yesterday caused by a sensationalist Guardian headline “YouTube Overtakes MySpace”. Writer Mark Sweney writes:

“YouTube has established itself at the top of the league of the new generation of community websites by becoming even more popular than MySpace, according to research.
The video sharing site has taken a 3.9% share of global internet visits a day compared with 3.35% for MySpace, according to internet analysis company Alexa.”

What the article fails to tell readers is that the figures were taken from the small percentage of Internet Explorer users who have the Amazon owned Alexa toolbar installed on their browser, hardly an exhaustive user demographic. A fact only Mashable and GigaOm seemed to notice.

Related Reading

YouTube vs MySpace (GigaOm)
YouTube Now More Popular Than MySpace (Mashable)
Who’s Video Is It Anyway? (BusinessWeek)
YouTube Is World’s Fastest Growing Website (Mashable)
MySpace’s Trip to the Top (Slashdot)

Nothing new here I guess. Another frustrating time for anyone trying to access their MySpace page over the weekend with a series of outages for the ‘world’s busiest web property’.

The problems continued over the weekend into Monday morning where the site seemed to be completely down. I understand the problems of trying to scale to a user base so massive (between 45 and 80 million users depending on who you listen to) but still it all seems very shoddy when you consider the money floating around here. When was the last time Google or Yahoo was unusable?

Related Reading
MySpace Closed After Power Outage (BBC News)
MySpace Down Due to Power Outage (Digg)
Power Outage Knocks MySpace Offline (Netcraft.com)

As you would expect with something as ubiquitous as MySpace (much like with Google) and its huge user base there’s an ever increasing army of unofficial ‘hacks’ adding features to the insanely popular social networking website.

Mashable have covered “feeding the Myspace beast” well so far here…and here
“The list of sites that feed the MySpace beast is growing longer by the day: RockYou, Slide, Photobucket, NooZ, Abazab, Umundo, Kiko Events, Frappr, BuddyPing, Sitepal, Stickam, Bunchball, MyPickList and Nabbr are among the more interesting plays….”

Some other interesting recent additions include MyWhatSpace a PC desktop app that lets you separate your MySpace friends into groups and send messages to all the members of any group at once. Sounds like a promising idea in theory but I couldn’t get the small app to run and load past the whole page of Adsense ads that greets you on the login page. Web 2.0 news site TechCrunch were overly gushing in praise for the app this week nevertheless.

There’s a possibility that the service violates the MySpace terms of service. The company has already shut down two other services (DatingAnyone and SingleStat.us) operating alongside MySpace in recent months.

The other new service affiliating itself as a ‘MySpace add on’ this past week is Supcast, a free service that allows you to send a text, picture or voice message from your phone directly to your MySpace or blog. Supcast joins a growing list of similar services which include Umundo and Abazab.

Trakzor is another neat idea. Simply put, you add some code to your MySpace profile and Trakzor tracks your visitors. The downside is the app only works if other MySpace users have the Trakzor code added to their profile too. This looks like a service that perhaps MySpace should add for marketers as a premium add-on themselves ?

Elsewhere Frappr, the popular Google Maps mash-up have added a neat hack that adds your MySpace user name to Google Maps and gives you a map of all your friends which you can add to your profile. There’s another unofficial MySpace map service here which maps out users by zip code.

MySpace News Coverage
MySpace Hacked! (TMZ.com) 16 July 2006
MySpace Soars, Hitwise Defends Figures (TechWeb.com) July 14 2006
MySpace vs Yahoo! Mail, or Apples vs Oranges (Jeremy Zawodny) July 12 2206
MySpace Not What You Think ( I Speak Of Dreams) July 11 2006
MySpace the 27.4 Billion Pound Gorilla (TechCrunch.com) June 13 2006
The MySpace Economy (MicroPursuasion.com) June 8 2006
Dont Believe the MySpace Hype (CNNMoney.com) June 7 2006
Feeding the MySpace Beast (Mashable.com) April 19 2006
MySpace Business Lesson:Communication (Wisdump.com) April 18 2006
Scenes From the MySpace Backlash (Wired.com) Feb. 27 2006
Users Crowd Into MySpace (BusinessWeek.com) Nov. 15 2005
Why Murdoch Really Bought MySpace? (GigaOm.com) Aug.6 2005

Wirehog, a new breed of file-sharing program spawned by the creators of Thefacebook, made its official debut this week. The program, which is integrated with the popular social networking website for more than 250 colleges and universities in the USA, facilitates the transfer of files between digital ‘friends’ who can share anything from documents and photos to music and movies.

Unlike popular file-sharing programs such as Kazaa and Morpheus,whose users have been the targets of recent lawsuits and which allow users to search and download among a worldwide network of computers, Wirehog only facilitates downloading between two acquaintances in a fashion more akin to the file-transfer feature on instant messaging programs. Users connect directly to their friends’ computers and can only access files already designated for sharing.

The RIAA and MPAA pursue illegal file sharers by connecting to peer-to-peer networks and searching for specific movie or music files owned by their members. Once a user is found sharing such illegal files, the RIAA or MPAA download the offending file, make a note of the user’s Internet Protocol address and choose whether or not to pursue a lawsuit against the individual.

Jarad Carleton, an IT Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan in Palo Alto, California, likened Wirehog to Aimster, a P2P application that piggybacked on AOL’s instant messaging software. “The theory was that you could more safely trade copyrighted material if you were only trading within a trusted community of friends that you choose to include in your contact list,” he told TechNewsWorld.

But if Wirehog takes off like thefacebook.com, which reached the half-million user mark last month after less than nine months online, it could attract the attention of anti-piracy groups which have lobbied and waged legal battles against programs which ‘encourage’ file-sharing.

Chad Tilbury, the director of worldwide Internet enforcement at the Motion Picture Association of America, said a program like Wirehog could run a afoul of copyright laws. “Certainly, we dont really want to group something like this with these mass engines of piracy like Kazaa and others”, Tilbury said. But he said no file-sharing program would necessarily be immune from litigation.

The Beta test of Wirehog is currently only open to Facebook users from Harvard and Stanford. With more expected to be added soon.

Related Reading

Wirehog P2P Melds Social Networks and File-Sharing [TechNewsWorld.com]
Facebook to Feature File Sharing Device [the Dartmouth Online]
Next-Generation File Sharing with Social Networks [OpenP2P.com]
Facebook Creator to Debut Wirehog [the Harvard Crimson]
New P2P Software Could End Illegal Music Squabbles [the Register]
Grouper Beta Review [PCMag.com]
File Sharing Goes Social [Shirky.com]
P2P Routing with Social Networks [Stanford.edu] 19pg pdf