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The Dating Game Goes Social

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The Dating GameRemember that TV show which helped singles meet the person of their dreams? Quirky and funny, The Dating Game was one of the most popular TV shows in the old days. If I remember correctly, The Dating Game was even franchised in different countries. Not much has changed in the face of dating in that people are still on their own quests to find their perfect match. If anything, dating has merged with technological developments, creating new options.

Everyone knows about online dating and how it has become a viable alternative for many people. 3G Studios, a Reno, Nevada-based developer, has introduced a new element into the equation: a dating game that can be played with real people via social networks. Surprising? Not really. Silly? Probably.

The format of The Dating Game is not totally different from the TV show. A game will have a bachelor, or a bachelorette, seeking a date. There will be three potential dates who remain anonymous until the bachelor/bachelorette makes a decision. He or she will be asking personal questions which each of the contestants must answer. After several rounds, the person seeking a date will make his or her choice and gets to go on a date with the winner. Of course, the date may either be virtual or for real, depending on the people involved. The game is available for Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster – among others. (So people still do use Friendster???)

This new game raises a lot of questions, one of which is with regard to security. The developers deals with this issue by allowing avatars instead of photos. Personally, I think that if someone wants to play a dating game using his or her social networking account, then security would probably not be an issue for that person. Then again, if you take a look at that screenshot above, you might have second thoughts about playing the game.

In any case, if you are single and you find yourself having nothing to do this weekend, grab The Dating Game for free. Or you can read a book. That’s probably more productive.

Expert Gives Facebook Only 5 More Years

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Facebook is on a roll, isn’t it? In the past month or so, we have been hearing about all sorts of new features from THE social network platform. Some of the more recent ones include the Friendship Pages and Groups. And, just the other day, we heard about their “Gmail Killer.” So one would think that Facebook is here to stay – at least for a very very long time, right?

Not according to Dr. Jeffrey Cole, a digital consumer expert. If you’re doubting his prediction, bear in mind that this is the guy who said that MySpace would suffer the same fate (decline) four years ago. While MySpace is still around – I just logged in earlier to listen to some indie music – no one can deny that it is but a shadow of what it used to be. Oh, and check out Dr. Cole’s other credentials: Director of the Centre for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California and a director of the World Internet Project.

So Dr. Cole said that in five years, Facebook is going to be what MySpace is today. However, he states one major difference: there will not be a single social networking platform anymore. Instead, we are going to have many smaller communities.

His predictions are not limited to social networking platforms. He also mentioned that the iPad will be the last man standing in the realm of tablets – mainly thanks to the Apple brand – and that it will change the face of traditional print.

If his track record is anything to go by, we might just see his words becoming reality sooner than we think. Let me ask you though, do you think Facebook will be “gone” in 5 years?

MySpace Launches a Better Looking My Music 2.0 in Beta

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Are you still using MySpace? I’m pretty sure there are still some if not many of you who are still maintaining your MySpace account. Or perhaps you’re still active in MySpace? If you are, you’re probably waiting for MySpace to launch its new My Music portal. Well, it just did, went out live in beta.

My Music 2.0 aims to become your hub where you can build and manage social playlists from My Space’s comprehensive online music catalog. And what does the new My Music 2.0 offers? Quite plenty actually, which include a new sleeker UI and several nifty features.

Some of MySpace’s My Music 2.0 key features that you may like and actually end up using include:

  • sortable song grids with a slicker drag and drop feature
  • subtle “reveals” which display the information and features as you need them
  • in-place edits and settings
  • vertical scrolling improvements
  • playback in-page

In addition, My Music 2.0 now also lets you broadcast playlist on your MySpace profile and share it directly with your friends. There is also a new “song activities” module which displays the latest song related to your activities. This makes it easier other MySpace members to discover most recent music that their friends or other members are sharing.

You can check out MySpace My Music 2.0 from this link.

AOL Acquires Social Networking Site Bebo for $850 Million

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AOL will be acquiring the social media network Bebo for 850 million dollars. The deal comes in the aftermath of Yahoo’s reported courting for the site.

An excerpt from Mashable

Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO at AOL explains the move:

“What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social web, and the monetization opportunities that leverage Platform-A across our combined global audience. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”

This is one of the major deals to go through in the social networking space and follows on the prediction made by several industry analysts that social networking sites by themselves may not be able to generate enough revenue to sustain operations. Bebo was by no measure a struggling site, enjoying a membership of over 40 million with immense popularity among the Europeans (it is number one social network site in Ireland).

There is a lot of speculation on how the deal would perhaps make the chances of a Yahoo AOL partnership unlikely. The acquisition will boost the total network of AOL’s social media services to 80 million.

An excerpt from Associated Press

Ron Grant, AOL’s president and chief operating officer, said the deal should help AOL expand internationally and Bebo grow in the United States. He said the all-cash deal, expected to close in a month, also should give AOL an engaged audience from which it can generate additional advertising revenue.

“This is going to be the cornerstone of our strategy to really go after the social media space,” Grant said in an interview, adding that AOL would be looking to integrate Bebo with its instant-messaging communities, AIM and ICQ.

The move will enable AOL to expand revenues from its advertising services and Bebo, the third most popular social networking site in the US, will be a perfect complement to AOL’s behavior based advertising platform. While MySpace and FaceBook have had their share of trouble in effectively advertising to their vast audience, AOL would look to apply a very effective strategy to benefit here.

With Bebo, AOL is looking forward to international growth. Bebo supports the FaceBook platform and is also part of the Google inspired OpenSocial platform. The whole 80 million social graph that comes to AOL with this acquisition falls short of only MySpace’s scale.

Social networking sites have been a major attraction for internet media companies. But it is to be seen how they design the perfect advertising strategy that is acceptable to their users and gets results at the same time.

Yahoo! Mulls Partnering with Time Warner to Ward Off Microsoft’s Bid

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Yahoo obtained an extension to the deadline for nominating candidates to its boards. Yahoo was reportedly in talks with Time Warner for forming a joint venture with AOL in its attempt to ward off the Microsoft bid of $44 billion and the expectation that the Redmond giant would attempt to nominate candidates to Yahoo’s board to have its way.

An excerpt from Time

In a statement, Yahoo said the extension would allow its board “to continue to explore all of its strategic alternatives for maximizing value for stockholders without the distraction of a proxy contest.”

Yahoo and AOL declined comment on the reports Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that Yahoo and Time Warner have stepped up discussions over AOL.

The AOL-Yahoo partnership, if it goes through would be a major victory for Google. The search firm already owns 5% stake in AOL. It is the follow-up that needs attention since a Yahoo-AOL could either prove a strong competitor to Google’s advertising platform or outsource the search part to Google, adding that much discomfort to Microsoft’s advertising network.

Yahoo has also been touted to be in talks with News.corp for a deal that could perhaps see the web portal make the most of the uber social networking site MySpace, owned by News.corp.

From the competitiveness perspective it is doubtful whether the Microsoft- Yahoo combination could mount a well targeted attack upon Google. The merger of the firms entails a merger of two differing cultures and hierarchies that could essentially take a significant amount of time to materialize. Also, Google would flex all its muscles to have the deal scrutinized by the Justice departments.

Yahoo and Google have been the star companies of the internet era. While Yahoo took the portalized approach to content, essentially aiming to be the one stop destination for all all content, Google stuck to its core functionality of search and never attempted to own the content waters but only offered services around content available on the web.

Though Yahoo has been reeling through tough times, its hard to tell whether the portalized approach has no future. With mobile technology adoption progressing at a rapid pace, the portalized approach may see the emergence of the next technology giant. While the whole media sees Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo as a way to topple Google in the search space, the Redmond giant may perhaps be having the emerging consumer mobile market in its mind.

Do you feel the potential deal would make or break Yahoo ?