News Corp.-owned MySpace is close to acquiring social music service iLike. According to technology blog TechCrunch (www.techcrunch.com) The deal, if it is sealed as widely speculated, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta assumed charge of the company in April 2009. The price tag is rumored to be in the neighborhood of $20 million. Representatives from MySpace and iLike were not immediately available for comment. The latest development comes within a week of i...

Search engine giant Google attracts greater loyalty from its users, who conduct more searches a month than those on Yahoo and Microsoft, according to a study carried out by research house comScore. According to technology-related website Ars Technica (www.arstechina.com), Google searchers conduct an average of 54.5 searches a month – that’s about double the number of searches that Yahoo and Microsoft users conduct combined. Yahoo and Microsoft search on an average 26.9 times a month...

How do you top the most original and popular showhome concept? Metropolitan Home, the definitive resource for modern design, and Showtime Networks, producer of award-winning TV series, are partnering for a second season of the ultimate multimedia showhouse, with double the space and twice as many designers. According to Showtime website (www.sho.com), Metropolitan Home's Showtime House, powered by Time Warner Cable, will celebrate its second season with twin penthouses located in the luxurious ...

Chris Messina may be bagging some coveted leading man roles on the big screen ('Julie and Julia, 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona,' the forthcoming 'An Invisible Sign') opposite some fine leading ladies (Amy Adams, Rebecca Hall and Jessica Alba), but the actor admits he doesn't always kill in auditions. "I'm scared when people go, 'I love auditioning.' I hate it. I'm bad at it," he was quoted as saying on the HBO website (www.hbo.com).  "I got cast in a pilot for HBO that J.J. Abra...

Workplace frustrations will always be there. What’s significant is how you cope with it and not let affect you. More importantly, one has to be careful in not washing your office linen in public domain and, certainly not on social networking sites. A woman, known only as "Lindsay”, made a grave blunder of venting her workplace frustration on the social networking site Facebook and was given the chop after she abused her boss on Facebook, conveniently forgetting that he could re...

For the sex offenders in the state of Illinois, it was a piece of news they could have done without. It was a development that could have only spelt disappointment and frustration. Illinois Governour Pat Quinn has signed a law making it illegal for all registered sex offenders to use social networking sites. The new legislation will bar sex offenders from using popular services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter--sites that hundreds of millions of adults (most likely, like you) use for profes...

New York-headquartered Universal McCann, a full-service media communications agency, recently published the Wave.4 Social Media Tracker that brought to light dramatic changes in the manner in which consumers are using the medium of internet to create and share their thoughts, pictures and videos. Affectionately called "Power to the People," this annual social media study saw Universal McCann question as many as 22,729 active internet users in 38 countries between November 2008 and M...

Ace social networking site Facebook has reportedly tested a simplified version of its social network service with faster load times called Facebook Lite. Facebook’s latest move, which is being seen as a bid to directly compete with rival Twitter, provides a stream of user updates and looks similar to the Twitter’s microblogging service. The California-headquartered social networking company has invited a select group of users to test the new stripped-down version of the site while ...

The rapid growth in stature of social networking websites has caused a great deal of unease among the job portals, reports a leading news agency. The ‘unease’ is clearly understandable as these social networking sites have become a massive hit with job seekers who not only look for career opportunities but also interact with potential employers online. The global meltdown has hit job seekers hard and now, these job seekers are taking help of social networking sites like Linkedin.com...

In a development that may not exactly sound like music to the ears of internet giants Google and Twitter, leading social networking company Facebook made public its decision to buy FriendFeed, the news and information-sharing service, founded in 2007 by four ex-Google engineers (Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh and Bret Taylor). Facebook’s latest acquisition will considerably help to consolidate themselves in the market given the fact that social messaging service provider Twit...