Project Playlist, a Palo, Alto, Calif.-based service that allows you to create and share playlists, has signed up EMI Music, a move that will allow users access to EMI’s catalog. They previously ran afoul of record labels but seem to have made peace with them. Earlier this year, Project Playlist signed up the Sony BMG label. I like these kinds of socially aware playlist companies because they allow me to not only listen to my favorite tunes, but to discover new artists. (Related: More playlist startups.)

Traffic Marketplace, a Los Angeles-based ad network, has acquired fbExchange, an ad network focusing on Facebook and social media applications, for an undisclosed amount of money. TMP is going to use fbExchange to diversify its online advertising business to social networks. I first wrote about fbExchange back in 2007. It’s the brainchild of 83Degrees, a San Francisco-based idea factory started by Narendra Rocherolle, Julie Davidson and Nick Wilder. The trio are also co-founders of Webshots and 30Boxes.

“For us, our business is about exploring new ideas and growing them until they find a good home,” said Rocherolle when I reached him for a comment. Another Facebook-oriented advertising network, Lookery, which launched during the early days of the Facebook App Mania, sold off its advertising network and has refocused its business, too.

In response to a post by Steve Hodson, “Is Social Media Becoming a Social Mess?,” Elliot Ng said something that resonated with me deeply, even more than the valid question being asked by the original post.

“My problem with social media is that it is heavily focused on itself. Tweeting about Twitter. Blogging about blogging. You know what this reminds me of? The house of cards that our friends in Washington and Wall Street have created. Mortgages sliced and diced and resold many times… This is exactly what the social media community is doing. Reverberating from one tool to the other. Reaggregating onto aggregator services.”

This is a sentiment echoed by some readers in response to my post, Social web’s big question: Federate or Aggregate. Dameon Welch-Abernathy was increduclous about the fact that “Companies are building services atop services without a proven business model. Has anyone taken a step back and realized just how crazy this is?” Another reader had an even more colorful metaphor and compared the rise of many social web apps to “building floating gas stations for the flying cars that are still in early prototype state.” Continue »

Given how much has already been written about Facebook Connect, you would think that the service has been available for eons. In fact the service that was first announced in May — which allows you to use your Facebook login to access Facebook’s partner web sites, desktop apps or mobile devices, then broadcast what you’re doing on those sites to all of your Facebook friends — officially launched today.

Nearly 100 web sites have implemented Facebook Connect as part of a pre-launch rollout. The social networking site claims that as a result, these sites are getting 66 percent more registrations and have 50 percent more engagement. I’m not sure how they calculate this with such pin-point accuracy; it seems like marketing hocus-pocus to me. Nevertheless, the number and quality of launch partner sites is one reason why Facebook is going to get more traction compared to its rivals. These are all highly trafficked services (with few exceptions) that will help Facebook Connect become part of the social web infrastructure.

Since I, too, have written extensively about Facebook Connect already, I won’t spend any more time on it. As background, just read two of my previous posts.

There is one school of thought which says that Facebook Connect could have a direct impact on blogs and blog comment aggregators like Disqus as FC can subsume some of their functionality.

Cyworld, the South Korean social network that launched in the U.S. with a splashy party in 2006 has packed up its bags and left the U.S. market. The social network, backed by SK Telecom, will layoff its entire U.S. staff and will continue to operate the English-language site from South Korea. The service really didn’t get any traction. Its localization efforts were mediocre at best. I bet other smaller marginal social networks meet the same fate.

I blame David Hasselhoff.

Everything was going fine for the web — the financial world had been unwinding its overleveraged excesses for nearly a year without nary a ripple into Silicon Valley — until the launch of HoffSpace, a social network revolving around the oogachaka-ing, burger-wagging actor.

Some bloggers called it a bizarre nightmare. Others decried it as the end of social networks. They were probably joking. But they were right.

Continue »