AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

I launched this “Media and Technology” blog last year as a more efficient way of sharing information about the subjects that AFI staff and other interested parties should know about in the expanding world of online media, social networking, nonprofit management, and related topics. The AFI “Media and Technology” blog is more a record of [...]

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The Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK — Nickelodeon is building up its virtual world in a bid to increase revenue in the real world.
The company is expected to announce Thursday that it is developing an entire virtual world based on the network hit “SpongeBob SquarePants” that likely will add games, avatars and a strong social-networking component connected [...]

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MEDIAWEEK
Users of the popular young adult-centric virtual world There.com will soon be able to quote from there favorite movies–using actual clips from those movies.
There.com, which is owned by Makena Technologies, has embarked on an innovative partnership with Paramount Digital Entertainment to license short clips from thousands of movies and TV shows. Via the social networking [...]

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Red Herring
Friendster fully launched its developer program with a directory of more than 180 applications Tuesday. Popular widget developers RockYou, Slide, Clearspring, Imeem, Jangl, and gBox were the first developers to participate in the social-networking site’s pilot program put together in October.
“This is a great opportunity for the entire ecosystem of widget and application companies [...]

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Facebook Gets $60 Million Additional Investment From Hong Kong Billionaire Li Ka-Shing: Report — Paid Content

Facebook has closed another big tranche of its planned funding round, this time from an unlikely source: Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, who has made an investment of $60 million, reports Kara on AllThingsD. Ka-Shing is better known as the [...]

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Social Site Rankings (October, 2007) - Tech Crunch
Last month, I asked comScore to run some numbers on traffic to social sites (comScore calls them social networking sites, but they are not all social networks). This month, I asked them to do the same run again for October, 2007. Below are the results, which show both [...]

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Amway Adds Entertainment to Product Line
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 19 — Amway, the door-to-door peddler of vitamins and soap, wants to reinvent how Hollywood sells entertainment.
Stephanie Diani for The New York Times
The owners of the multilevel marketing company are pouring millions of dollars into a new online store called Fanista (pronounced fa-NEE-sta). The Web [...]

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The social website started by a Harvard dropout is stealing the spotlight from Google. LA Times
PALO ALTO — – Google Inc. is used to being the center of attention, the giant that executives at other Internet companies wish Silicon Valley would shut up about already. For the moment, they’ve got their wish. People here can’t [...]

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