Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace social network on Tuesday announced the launch of MySpace Karaoke, an online karaoke service powered by kSolo, which Fox Interactive Media acquired in April 2006. The service allows users with a microphone to view lyrics in real-time while singing along to licensed tracks, with the ability to record and share their performances with friends.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace on Thursday announced the public launch of its Application Gallery, which features more than 1,000 approved applications for the service developed using the Developer Platform the company launched in February. MySpace rival Facebook has been offering a developers' platform since last May, while Google announced its OpenSocial social media development platform in November.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s MySpace (NYSE: NWS) and NBC (NYSE: GE) News on Tuesday launched Decision '08, a new section on MySpace's IMPACT Channel that will feature in-depth election-related news, analysis and discussion. The site offers news feeds and daily videos from NBC News and MSNBC.com, as well as user-generated content from MySpace.

Mumbai, India - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace on Thursday officially launched its latest localized site in India, promoting the new service with a rock concert featuring local artists, and a developer platform workshop. The company also said it signed a deal with Star TV, India's largest television network, to create an original network television program, "Campus Star," that will be featured on Channel V. The new show, currently airing on television in India, is a nationwide college talent competition featuring celebrity judges and the voting MySpace audience.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace on Thursday announced the launch of its first original U.K. co-production with Hammer Films, "Beyond the Rave." The 20-episode series, which will air new 5-minute episodes twice weekly, is MySpace's first 18-plus rated content, requiring users to sign in before viewing. Featuring a cast that includes actors from films including "Marie Antoinette," "The Descent" and "Eastern Promises," the horror series follows a British soldier about to ship out to Iraq, on a search for his girlfriend at a rave that is not what is seems. The series will be offered in 19 countries with subtitles; the companies also plan to eventually offer the series on DVD.

Facebook has had an update feature similar to Twitter for a while. Now Facebook has a feature that lets users add feeds from other web services like Flickr and del.icio.us — just like FriendFeed. From a technology perspective, Twitter and FriendFeed are now reducable to Facebook features. Even if those two apps are currently more robust than their equivalent Facebook features, there’s nothing to stop Facebook from copying them in their entirety.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace on Tuesday announced the launch of a new localized version of its service in Korea, and said that another site for India will launch later this week. The Korean-language version of MySpace will compete with Cyworld, currently the most popular social network in the country. When the company launches its site for India, MySpace will count a total of 30 localized versions available in 15 languages.

Miami - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace online social network on Tuesday announced the official launch of its MySpace Latino destination, which features culturally relevant content from partners including ImpreMedia, Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), Billboard en Espanol and Remezcla.com.

A recent Reuters article discussed the missed opportunity by the music industry to capitalize upon searches for bands & artists that result in a visit to Wikipedia. A typical search result on a band or musician will display their own website, MySpace profile, and Wikipedia entry. For the majority of the most-searched bands & artists, these results are the most visited websites, with some variations in the rankings. A quick look at the websites visited immediately following a search for the top ten most-searched bands & artists for the 4 weeks ending March 29, 2008 shows that for 8 out of 10 of them, Wikipedia is more commonly receiving traffic from the searches than MySpace (although MySpace also ranks high for many as well).

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox Interactive Media unit, which houses MySpace, IGN, Photobucket and other Web entertainment properties, this week announced a restructuring that saw the departure of chief revenue officer Michael Barrett, and the launch of a new Audience Network for its ad technology, to be headed up by Adam Bain. The moves come as Fox Interactive Media is expected to fall short of its $1 billion revenue target for its fiscal year ended June 30, TechCrunch reported, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace online social network on Thursday announced details of an anticipated new music service, a spin-off that will be a joint venture with major labels Universal Music, Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG and Warner Music (NYSE: WMG) owning minority stakes. The fourth major, EMI, is not party to the deal initially, but people involved in the negotiations told The New York Times it would probably join soon.

Mountain View, Calif. - Google (NASD: GOOG) announced on Tuesday that Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) has joined its OpenSocial network, which will allow developers to create applications that work across many different social media sites. Google also announced that it has formed a new non-profit foundation, with Yahoo and News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace, which will work to advance the initiative while "ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction."

Following on from last week's post, Is Facebook on the decline in the UK?, I thought that this chart might be of interest. Facebook's market share of UK Internet visits last week (w/e 22 March 2008) was equal to its previous record high of 2.16% during the Christmas week (w/e 29 December 2007).

Boulder, Colo. - Fuser.com on Monday introduced its application that allows MySpace users to view Facebook messages and wall photos from their MySpace page. The company said its application is one of the first 200 accepted by MySpace under its new application development platform. Fuser otherwise offers a service that lets users check all their e-mail and social networking accounts from one Web-based inbox.

Shanghai – Video-sharing site Youku.com, based in China, has teamed with social networking site MySpace to tackle the market, Reuters reports.  Trying to become China’s version of YouTube, Youku’s CEO Victor Koo said both companies hope to gain traffic from the partnership, and to share products in the future.  Launched in December 2006, Youku sees over 100 million daily video views, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace online social network announced on Friday a new Internet safety public service announcement, safety-related website, and partnerships with nonprofit organizations iKeepSafe and Enough is Enough. The PSA, which will encourage parents to talk with teens about the Internet use, will air over the next two months across Fox broadcast and cable networks. "MySpace is stepping-up our safety education efforts," said Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer. "We believe that parents are the first line of defense when it comes to protecting teens in the offline and online worlds, and they should have as many educational resources as possible to safeguard their families."