catherine deveny axed by The Age over Logies Twitter feed

can’t say i’m surprised, or particularly displeased.

however. here’s a whole can of worms for every journalist/columnist who tweets, facebooks or blogs.

just how far can a company go in taking an employee’s ‘personal’ twitter account and attaching it to their own branding?

if deveny had said ‘i work for The Age and i really hope Bindi Irwin gets laid tonight’, that’s one thing. but she didn’t.

did The Age pay her to tweet? i’m willing to bet they didn’t. No more than the Gold Coast Bulletin pays me to tweet via my @cate3221 account. of course they DO pay me to tweet via the @GCBulletin account. and what i say there is vastly different than what i say on my personal account.

but it’s not always that clearcut.

does catherine deveny work for anyone else? are they entitled to sack her for her tweets because they don’t like the fact that the public recognise that she works for them and therefore her tweets are associated with them?

can of worms, people. big, deep can of worms.

facebook … *resigned sigh* … tch

i’ve made no secret of the fact that facebook is not my favourite thing. it’s all a bit high school, truthfully. and trust me, that’s not a good headspace for me.

but i am nothing if not pragmatic. clearly a bucketload of people use it. and as socnet maven for goldcoast.com.au, i’ve been up to my ears in optimising our ‘presence’ … ugh … over there at High School Central.

i have a facebook page … feel free to take a look and ‘friend’ me if you’re so inclined … and now, god help me, i have a fan page, where i’ll be posting news about whatever writing i’m doing.

so there ya go. i’ve sold out. but never fear. i shall never desert my beloved twitter.

myspace lays off 30% …

… of its american staff.

this comes as an enormous surprise to precisely nobody who’s ever had anything to do with any social networking sites.

myspace, owned by my boss, rupert murduch, sucks. it’s sucked for a long time now, and it’s been shat on from a great height by facebook, which is now being shat on by twitter, tumblr, flickr and, well, just about anything that isn’t facebook or myspace.

myspace is the socnet for those less mature than facebook users, which is to say, pretty damn farkin’ immature.

yes, i hate them both. i admit it.

this from mumbrella:

The company, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said it was “part of a plan to restructure itself into a more innovative, efficient, and entrepreneurial business”. The move will leave MySpace with about 1000 employes in the US.

The company was unable to say today what the implications would be for its operations in the rest of the world including Australia although Mumbrella understands that its structure is under review here too. MySpace Australia is led by Rebekah Horne, an Aussie who also heads up MySpace UK and Europe.

The company issued a straight-talking press statement. In it, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said: “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company.I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.”

And Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s CEO of Digital Media said: “MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace.”

one commenter on that story suggested this might be the real reason:

Google revenue is the difference between profitability and the opposite of profitability at MySpace and its sister sites. And unless a new deal is negotiated that can bring in similar revenue after next year, MySpace is facing massive layoffs and a general downsizing of its business, we’ve heard from multiple sources close to MySpace.

Here’s the good news: Google is at the table negotiating a new deal to take over in July 2010.

Here’s the bad news: Sources say Google thinks the deal is worth, tops, $50 million – $75 million per year, significantly less than the $300 million/year they’re paying now.

Why? Sources say that while Google has gotten plenty of advertising impressions (MySpace uses any excuse to put Google search results and Google ads in front of users), those ads don’t convert well. Add to that the dramatic shrinking of MySpace page views and the predictive modeling gets ugly.

Google knows MySpace is shrinking by about 20% a year. And unlike the last time they negotiated with News Corp., they now have nearly three years of actual operating history with the company. They’ve got real data to value the deal.

Unless Microsoft or perhaps Yahoo comes in and bids very aggressively, MySpace is going to get slaughtered in the negotiations.

yes, indeedy, it’s bottom line time. news corp credo has always been – and i don’t think i’m being controversial in saying this – make money or die.

goodbye, myspace.