Facebook Closing In On MySpace.

Facebook is rapidly closing the gap with US socnet leader MySpace, according to Compete. Facebook blossomed to 49.4 million visitors between November 2007 and November 2008, wile MySpace dropped down to 56.4 million visitors.

See actual chart.

How to Use Social Networking Sites for Marketing and PR

The New York Times provides some helpful tidbits on advertising on LinkedIn.

More here

Power.com: One Ring to Rule All Social Networks?

With what looks to be a fair amount of fanfare, a company virtually unknown in the U.S. is aiming to disrupt the fast-growing social networking business. Tonight, Rio de Janeiro-based Power.com, which already boasts 5 million registered users, is coming out of relative stealth to offer a way to view all your social networks and synchronize your friends, updates, photos, and everything else on all of them. The company’s tagline: “All your friends is one place.”

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Facebook Connect: Scary But Good

Facebook Connect, the technology that lets its members sign onto third-party sites with their Facebook identification, has just gone live. This allows people to bring profile information, friends, photos, events, and groups to participating sites.

It seems Facebook could use information posted by its users to help other sites deliver more targeted ads. Likewise, those sites could tell Facebook what its members are doing elsewhere, helping make its own ads more targeted.

CNET has their thoughts on the matter.

One of the companies adopting Facebook's new log-in system, Facebook Connect, is CBS, parent company of CNET and publisher of Webware. I'm glad we're on board with this program, even if I do feel it's a bit of Faustian deal.

Here's why.

MySpace CEO Cautiously Optimistic On 2009

MySpace can grow advertising revenue in 2009, its chief executive said, even as the economic crisis erodes big media companies' bottom lines.

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If You’re On MySpace Now, You’re A [expletive] Cretin.

Businessweek's Jon Fine interviews the author of a Rubert Murdoch bio, and argues with him over the value and prospects of MySpace.

More censored language here

Social Web’s Big Question: Federate or Aggregate?

A sharp increase in the number of web services and social networks has many of us yearning for a single sign-on, which has led to the idea of “federation.” On the flip side, we also want one place to manage our diverse web services in one place — in other words, aggregation. These two diametrically opposed views of how we are going to come to grips with our social web are going to face an intense debate until consumers vote with their clicks.

The debate rages on