GigaOM

New data shows that Facebook is growing really fast in key overseas markets. That doesn’t necessarily mean more dollars for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company or end of MySpace, though it seems bad news for its smaller, middle of the road rivals. Continue Reading

In an interview published this morning in the Financial Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he wouldn’t be looking to pick up any other Internet companies just because the Yahoo deal failed. One can only imagine how far shares of Facebook would have plummeted on that comment had the social networking site been publicly traded. [...]

Like an aging matron sporting Juicy tracksuits, eBay’s announcement today that it’s partially opening up its developer’s platform by allowing programmers to build their applications directly inside the site is unlikely to change the fact that the auction site is no longer the hot new thing.
The move is reminiscent of ones made earlier this year [...]

The social networking space is finally getting a long overdue does of reality. A weakening economy and the resulting strain on advertising revenue means the social networking space is finally getting a long overdue does of reality, combined with a slowdown in growth, means things are going to get a lot tougher going forward.

Today at Google’s developer conference, MySpace said it would use Google Gears to power search and sort functions for its email, giving users a highly sought-after functionality at little cost to MySpace infrastructure. The move is a great one for MySpace, which is really pulling out all the stops in its rivalry with Facebook.
Making social [...]

Mobile browsing has clearly moved beyond 9-to-5 users and made inroads among the happy hour set. A recent survey by Opera showed about 40 percent (and about 60 percent in the United States, South Africa and Indonesia) of Opera Mini users visit social networking sites when surfing on a mobile. For those unfamiliar with the [...]