MySpace just added RSS feeds for their user blogs.

The format is as follows:

http://blog.myspace.com/blog/rss.cfm?friendID=####### where the #’s are the numeric friend id (NOT your custom username).

Now if only they’d add the ability to sync my real blog to my MySpace blog, like Friendster has done for months now.

Online Marketing is dead, and Web 2.0 killed it.

Who cares if an album is a featured artist on AOL or Launch or MSN anymore? The pendulum is in the process of swinging so that what ends up getting music in front of people is whether pitchfork or largeheartedboy or buzzgrinder likes it, and whether they have a MySpace page that you can add to profess your love (something I like to call the EgoWeb - the space that people have online that says ‘look at me, this is what I like, arent I so cool?’)

I’m not saying we’ve hit critical mass yet; certainly more people use LiveJournal to gripe about their lives or post naked pictures of themselves, but we’re headed to a place that’s scary for companies that want to have some sort of influence over how their media is presented to the world, and where it can be seen, especially for those specializing in products that aren’t necessarily that blogger-friendly (i.e. Classical music to name one totally random example)

Being on both sides of the fence (as both a blogger and a marketer) it’s a difficult thing to mesh. On one hand, as a consumer I’d put more faith in having someone whose tastes I know mesh with mine recommend something, however on the other hand, there is ever-increasing number of blogs and other individual points-of-presence and no easy way for companies itching to spread their content around to be as relevantly ubiquitous as possible to communicate on a broad scale. This leads to the ‘marketing’ being run by people with no particular interest in bridging the knowledge gap that inevitably will appear when there isn’t an effective way to get new music to people who aren’t lucky enough to get every release a label puts out and so won’t necessarily know when something they might like will appear.

I guess I just wish I had more faith in the populist approach it seems the web is turning slowly toward. As they say, when everything is important, then nothing is important, and the chance of any one thing to rise above the noise gets lower and lower as the number of myspacers and bloggers approaches infinity.

Hey, anyone want to enter to win a CD and a stereo?

Anyone?

Just click here!

[Update: talking to mrg led me to this addendum]:

Sure there are influencers, the *coff* Ultragrrls and such, those who always seem to have a handle on the Next Big Thing a year before everyone else, and though those people will always force themselves to get a seat at the table, where is there room for content providers at that pre-posting level anymore? Or is there. Everyone loves to vilify labels, but if you’re a local band from Arkansas who would have been good enough to get signed to the mighty Columbia bulldozer of publicity who would have gotten you on the cover of Spin, does having a MySpace page and getting mentioned on Coolfer really end up having the equivalent impact?

I’m hardly an industry apologist (spend 5 minutes with me talking about how we’re treating our consumers and you can figure that out), but…I think you guys are gonna miss us if we leave.

I was about 5 seconds away from suggesting this very thing to my lovely friends at Warner Brothers (Hi, Lindsay!), but I guess at least one other person over there is as twisted as I am.

[Via MovieJuice]

Always good to come home to messages like these in ones friendster inbox. For the record, there is no mention of anything remotely resembling anything that would insinuate that I might be the least bit interested in the church

Message: Hey!.J My name is alvan A worship leader, tv
producer Artist searching…………………………..for
people who wanna share in what they do in
obeying God service to man. I Lead an
international multicultural mission orient music
band. we record travel to different continents doing
crusades concerts & lot of adventure in doing what
it takes to reach this generation. it is very
fulfilling!…. & excitiNG!..!…. to see lives change.
My Pastor is from the Netherlands with a whole
team from almost every where. Our Church is
youthfull exuburant colourfull and down right real a
network of more than 30,000 churches in different
continents of the world. check some out on my
profile and the ministries web site
www.agtereek.org if you can. Why all this I am
looking for people to share in what it takes, activity
partners who are doing however small or big, to
influence this Generation, lets inspire and
strenghten to the Glory of God. i see in your
interest Ministry. Wanna Chat?……!

Alvan

Feel free to respond on my behalf.

Posted today on Friendster’s home page, we find the following message:

“Many of you have written to express concern about the suit by New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer against MySpace’s parent company, Intermix Media, Inc. for distributing “spyware”. We want to reassure you that Friendster does not sell or release its membership data, does not install spyware, and would never compromise your safety on the Web.”

Ouch.

[Update: Now it's gone. I wonder how many angry lawyers called.]

David Duchovny has a blog.

Someone thinks the makers of Independence day may be hiring people to post comments on AOL messageboards, but they’re probably just being paranoid.

What would Roger Ebert say?

Oh, and by the way, this was written in 1996

The future of interactivity on the web (and what makes Google Maps so cool (doesn’t have to refresh to redraw) is SAJAX.

And a pretty girl (SFW)

Kinda takes the edge off having to pay $70 for video games soon, but not really.

Okay, so Becky from NetFlixFan posted a comment to a previous entry which got me thinkin bout the ol’ NF and some minor things that keep me from total stupid-grin fanboyism.

I’m a NetFlix addict. I always have between 490 and 500 movies in my queue. A lot of these at the moment are TV shows on DVD, so it’s important that certain items in my list always arrive in order (I’m in the middle of watching The Shield, and just finished a run of Buffy (still one of the most amazing shows in TV history, I think), so imagine my annoyance when instead of The Shield season 2 arriving, yesterday I got the second season of OZ, skipping season 2 and 3 of the first show and season 1 of Oz entirely.

Now, I’m sure the ones that were skipped are among the more popular rentals, but sending me season 2 of a show that I haven’t seen season 1 of doesn’t make any kind of human sense.

So perhaps NF can introduce some kind of “lock” mechanism on their queue page so that discs that are ‘locked together’ must be delivered in order. I’d much rather get a standalone movie from further down in my list and come back to the series discs than have to either return-and-readd or keep 4 discs while I cycle the one that came through on time in the hopes that the ones that I actually wanted would come through.

Reed, are you listening?

Can RSS Save Email Marketing … My opinion: most certainly, but its better done in tandem with email. Theres some things that just do better with a graphical layout format, and RSS is not very good at summarizing things just yet.

Email vs. RSS: Pros and Cons from MSDN. Pretty simply laid out, actually.

For those of us with RSI thumbs, a lil secret people don’t want you to know about is that you can quite easily Text Message from AIM Shhhhhhh…

This is what happens when you ask a bunch of geeks where they met their SOs…its actually kinda sweet. Anyone wanna hook me up with a free match.com subscription? I’m so lonely *sniffle*.