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Report: Rumored Google, News Corp. bids make Blinkx shares soar

Reuters is reporting that shares of Blinkx, a publicly traded video search site based in the U.K., climbed 50 percent on Friday following rumors that corporate giants Google and News Corp. may be vying for an acquisition.

On Friday morning, Blinkx shares were trading at 36.75 pence, their highest value since September. That puts the company's valuation at 102 million pounds, which is equivalent to $199.2 million.

Blinkx has been publicly traded since 2007, when it merged with search engine Autonomy. As part of a clause in its initial public offering filings, Autonomy is slated to … Read more

MySpace announces 'Data Availability' project with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, Twitter

This post was updated at 10:34 a.m. PDT.

News Corp.-owned social-networking site MySpace has announced a new initiative called Data Availability, a way for members to share profile data with other social and community sites across the Web.

Co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, Chief Operating Officer Amit Kapur, and vice president of technology Jim Benedetto announced the new development in a press call Thursday. DeWolfe called it "an innovative offering to empower the global MySpace community to share their public profile content and data to Web sites of choice throughout the Internet."

Inaugural partners in … Read more

Murdoch's Internet wing to miss ambitious revenue goal

Rupert Murdoch is admitting that the U.S. economy's pressure on advertising budgets is putting the squeeze on News Corp.

News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, which oversees all News Corp. Internet business, including MySpace.com, is expected to fall $100 million short of its ambitious $1 billion annual revenue goal, according to a Reuters report. While on News Corp.'s fiscal third-quarter earnings conference call, however, the News Corp chairman and chief executive reportedly called FIM's business "very healthy" and promised "well over" $1 billion in revenue in fiscal 2009.

"There's … Read more

'Something's up' at LinkedIn, per blog reports

Oh, Valley gossip: VentureBeat speculates we might soon hear about some big company buying business social network LinkedIn. The evidence? A board meeting that "went way over the scheduled time," and sources who say "good news" is on the way. Even VentureBeat admits it's a stretch, but asserts that "something's up."

LinkedIn isn't commenting. VentureBeat later added a note suggesting that the "good news" might be additional funding, not an acquisition.

Along with Digg and Plaxo, LinkedIn is one of those social-media companies that people just like to talk about… Read more

MySpace's developer application gallery goes live

This post was updated at 5:15 a.m. PDT on April 28 with comment from MySpace in the last paragraph.

And now for your daily dose of minor social-networking developer application announcements: MySpace.com announced on Thursday that the "application gallery" for its developer platform has made its official debut. Members of the site can browse the offerings and add applications created for the OpenSocial-compatible platform to their profiles.

"The MySpace Application Gallery enables the most meaningful and diverse online experience available on the Internet to date," MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe said in … Read more

NBC News powers election site on MySpace

Social network MySpace might've chosen MTV as its media partner for the 2008 presidential primaries, but on Tuesday it'll be launching an election news hub in conjunction with the more traditional NBC News and MSNBC.com.

Called Decision '08, the new site is part of MySpace's "Impact" political channel, and showcases election news (complete with links to MySpace profiles of NBC News anchors and analysts), opinion, video from MSNBC, polls, and a discussion forum.

This is very similar to what MySpace rival Facebook is doing through a partnership with ABC News. For NBC, it's … Read more

Now at MySpace: 'Community builder' platform, new sales and marketing chief

News Corp.'s social network MySpace.com made two advertising-related announcements Tuesday: the launch of a new "community building" platform so that advertisers can easily create a presence on the site, and the promotion of Jeff Berman to president of sales and marketing.

The ad platform, to put it simply, helps advertisers build MySpace profiles for their brands, complete with friend lists, widgets, blog entries, and ads provided by the site's HyperTargeting ad program. If they aren't familiar with MySpace's structure or with the CSS and XHTML code skills necessary to make those profiles extra-sparkly, … Read more

Report: Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo on its own

Microsoft, while entertaining an alliance with News Corp. or other options, would rather buy Yahoo on its own, Reuters reported Sunday, citing a source close to the company.

In addition, an unnamed source told Reuters that News Corp. is talking to Yahoo directly about a tie-up, though the source didn't share details.

Microsoft's attempt to acquire Yahoo has spawned a flurry of possible alliances and counter-alliances, none of them confirmed by the companies except a partnership under which Yahoo will test use of Google's search ads.

MySpace expands to Korea, with India on the way soon

News Corp.'s MySpace.com has launched the latest of its international editions, MySpace Korea. Like many of its other regionally focused portals, MySpace Korea includes popular music and video content and social-networking profiles. No surprise there.

But in Korea, MySpace faces an extra snag: The small Asian nation is famously tech-adept, with broadband penetration and mobile technology seemingly light-years ahead of the U.S. (and here, MySpace doesn't exactly have a reputation as a technology leader, though it remains the most popular social-networking site). Other social-networking sites, like the virtual world Cyworld, already have a lock on the … Read more