MySpace has joined forces with the Wall Street Journal for “MySpace Journal,” a competition to send one lucky MySpace user to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The winner will be a “special correspondent” on behalf of the entire MySpace community and get to join the Davos press corps. If this sounds familiar, it’s because YouTube has a Davos contest too.

The World Economic Forum is an annual meeting that brings together political and business leaders, intellectuals and journalists to discuss pressing global issues like the environment and poverty — this year’s theme is aptly themed “Shaping the Post-Crisis World.”

Starting today, aspiring reporters can upload a video of themselves explaining why they deserve to attend the forum, as a response to one of three pre-selected questions — for example, “If you were given the opportunity to take one person (living or historical figure) to Davos in order to make an impact on the conference, who would it be and why?” Entrants must also keep their answer to 90 seconds or less, so I wonder if those crazy speed-talking college debate kids will have an advantage.

The winner will be selected by a panel of expert judges, including Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington and MySpace co-founder and chief executive Chris DeWolfe. The prize includes an all-expenses paid trip to Davos, a press pass and “Congress and Media Centre access.” The MySpace community doesn’t get to vote, but users get to rate their favorites.

What’s unclear is exactly what this MySpace correspondent will get to do, besides write about the experience on a special MySpace blog that will be syndicated to the Wall Street Journal’s web site. They will also attend a lunch with Wall Street Journal editors, and “upload conference photos and interact with other reporters on-site,” according to MySpace’s press release. Fortunately, Davos is also the largest ski resort in Switzerland. Schuss!

Though my idea of the average MySpace user (a 16-year-old who overuses acronyms — LOL — and loves sparkly things, iPhone applications and Beyonce) doesn’t totally mesh with the idea of the average Wall Street Journal reader (a 52-year old male who enjoys traveling, the opera and golf), the partnership between MySpace and the Wall Street Journal makes sense. They’re both owned by News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s mega media empire. Interestingly, anti-globalization activists frequently stage protests in Davos against what rocker/philanthropist Bono has called the meeting of “fat cats in the snow.”

This isn’t MySpace’s first time at the citizen journalism rodeo. MySpace previously partnered with The New York Times in a contest to send two individuals to Africa as the traveling companions of Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. The winners posted reports and videos to a blog on The NY Times, with excerpts available on MySpace and mtvU. MySpace also hooked up with NBC to send correspondents to the Democratic and Republican conventions last fall. So, snickers and “OMG, economics!” comments aside, it’s clear that the winner of the Davos contest will not be stumped by the questions on the application. Although one of the official entry questions on the contest site and press release is confusing me, if only for its lack of proofreading (perhaps the contest winner can also add copyediting to his or her duties):

Today, at the CES consumer electronics conference, Toshiba introduced its plans for offering “connected” television — and social network MySpace is going along for this ride. In partnership with a variety of web sites, including Yahoo, the electronics manufacturer is introducing “TV widgets,” or small windows that can show you information like local weather and and your stocks’ daily performance. MySpace, for its part, is introducing a made-for-TV widget that lets you use MySpace while watching TV. For example, you might use MySpace’s status update feature to tell friends about a show you’re watching.

The News Corp.-owned social network will let its users do this through MySpaceID, the company’s initiative for helping other sites and services make use of MySpace user data. It’s all a neat idea. One can imagine a MySpace user sending a message to all his friends saying “guys check out this basketball game on channel 5, the Blazers are about to win.” MySpace plans to roll this widget out to any connected TV, not just those made by Toshiba. Other television makers are busy working on the same idea; here’s our look at Samsung’s effort. But current tools for turning your TV into a computer haven’t proven especially popular. Will users even bother using MySpace on their TV to talk about a basketball game when they can do so by, say, having their laptop open as they’re watching. After all, I’m already doing the latter right now.

Facebook has grown to 150 million users this month, more than half of whom use the site every day, according to company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Other social networks, like MySpace, Friendster, hi5, Bebo and Orkut, have also become popular around the world over the last decade, and they all boast tens of millions of users. But none are as large or growing as fast as Facebook

Take a look at the comScore chart, above, and the tables below. Facebook hit 200 million unique visitors two months ago, according to the most recent available data from comScore, after growing a blistering 116 percent from a year earlier.

MySpace reached only 121 unique visitors in November and grew a slow 16 percent over the previous year. Hi5 did pretty well, coming in at 58 million uniques with a 89 percent growth rate. Orkut also did pretty well, too, coming in at 46 million with 86 percent annual growth. Things were quieter for Friendster and Bebo: 31 million with a 10 percent growth rate and 24 million with a 20 percent growth rate, respectively.

Important note: the discrepancy with Facebook’s internally-reported numbers is due to comScore’s measurement techniques, as well as differences in how it defines visitor. It’s not clear how different comScore’s numbers are from other social networks’ internal numbers, but comScore is generally accurate, so for comparison purposes the trends among the sites is clear.

Why is Facebook growing?

The site has differentiated itself as a place where you share real information with real friends in a secure setting — in spite of launching years after some of its rivals. It started on college campuses in early 2004, and only let you connect with people you knew on campus. It opened up over the years to new “networks” — high schools, companies, and eventually cities and countries — but it always retained this concept of privacy. While rivals like MySpace made your user profile public, Facebook even today only lets other see excerpts of your profile unless they’re friends with you or in the same network as you. The result is that Facebook has near-universally convinced its users to provide real information about themselves; on MySpace, for example, people often create and use fictional profiles.

Facebook built on its real-world foundation through other features it has rolled out over the years, like its news feed showing a running stream of what your friends are doing on the site, and status updates that let you tell your friends what you’re up to. The company introduced a redesign this fall that, among other things, focused the interface even more on these features. In 2007, it let outside developers build applications that live inside of Facebook. Applications on the platform can use friend relationships and communication features like news feeds to promote themselves. More than 95 percent of users have added at least one application — presumably, these apps have helped users come back to the site more often, stay on it for longer, and give them another reason to invite their friends. The platform has not been without controversy, as we’ve covered extensively, but it continues to draw thousands of developers.

Facebook has also introduced a tool for users to translate its site into 35 languages so far, with 60 more in development. More than 70 percent of of users are now outside of the U.S. — although its U.S. traffic is rising, too, as you can see below.

What are the other companies to do?

They’ve launched their own versions of news feeds and their own developer platforms. Some, like hi5, also have their own user-driven translation services. But they’ve all evolved differently. They don’t seem to have the same vision for getting users to add their real identities, and then help them to share information more easily. Instead, many — like MySpace — are more focused on entertainment. MySpace Music launched last year, for example, and lets users create and stream playlists of music on the site.

Sure, none of these social networks are billion-dollar businesses right now. One can only assume that they’ll eventually make a lot of money on advertising through getting the daily attention of millions. With revenue the big remaining question, what these sites can’t afford in the meantime is ceding traffic to Facebook.

British singer/songwriter Lily Allen has revived a feud with U.S. pop star Katy Perry (of “I Kissed a Girl” song fame), threatening to post Perry’s phone number on Facebook should Perry make any more disparaging comments about her. Isn’t that the sort of drama that MySpace is usually associated with, not Facebook? It looks like celebrity tastes in social networking sites are changing, if not exactly growing up.

Perry, who remarked that she was a “skinnier version of Lily Allen,” was criticized by Allen for having “crass” lyrics and not writing her own songs.

“I have Katy Perry’s number, someone did me a favour. I’m just waiting for her to open her mouth one more time then it hits Facebook,” Allen wrote on her Facebook profile, according to The Sun.

Allen also joined two anti-Katy Perry Facebook groups, including Katy Perry? Who the hell does she think she is? where she, under the profile name Lily Rose Allen, declared her approval on the group’s wall. Celebrities have lately taken to including their middle names to distinguish their profiles from the scads of imposters on Facebook, unless you’re Lindsay Lohan and don’t understand Facebook’s policy on using your real name.

It’d be easy for Katy Perry to change her phone number, a lot easier than dealing with a hacked phone, as Paris Hilton found out in 2005. What’s interesting is the recent migration of celebrities from MySpace to Facebook, along with what feels like the rest of the world, with 600,000 to 700,000 new users joining Facebook each day. Longtime MySpace users that I know openly admit on their Facebook statuses and in their profiles that they’re new to the Facebook and don’t quite know how to use it yet, but the shift is significant.

Lily Allen, whose popularity was ignited by fans discovering the demos on her MySpace music page in 2005, has blogged over the past three years on MySpace. Allen’s raw, uncensored posts resonated with readers used to airbrushed pop stars, as she wrote in May of 2007 that she was “fat, ugly, and sh***er than [Amy] Winehouse,” drawing thousands of supportive comments as well as vicious ones. She also chronicled her experiences of being interrogated at U.S. customs for assaulting a photographer and drug use. Her fan base has swelled to over 453,000 friends, making her one of the top 10 most popular musicians on MySpace in 2008.

So why would a celebrity so ingrained with the MySpace audience take her grievances to Facebook? Maybe it’s because of the site’s emphasis on sharing real information — users will believe a phone number posted on Facebook more readily than they do on MySpace, especially since MySpace isn’t exactly known for being a source of accurate information. Allen’s Facebook Fan Page is a study in minimalism compared to her cluttered MySpace music profile, with fans posting their reaction to the fight on the wall. Or maybe it’s because Allen’s reportedly dating art mogul Jay Joplin, who at age 45 is part of Facebook’s fastest growing user demographic? Does Facebook come off as more grown-up than MySpace, despite being younger?

I went so far as to try and befriend Allen (or at least the most convincing imposter) on Facebook, asking her why she chose Facebook as the drama venue of choice and not MySpace. I’ll certainly update you if she replies. Maybe Allen can give us insight into why she’s jumped the MySpace ship for Facebook.

On that note, I leave you with Katy Perry’s performance of the hit single “Hot N Cold” at YouTube Live, which is an apt metaphor for her relationship with Allen. They fight, they make up, they fight again (but they don’t kiss).

[photo via Katy Perry]

Major music labels, including Warner, EMI and Universal Music Group, have been in litigation against online music company Project Playlist since this spring. They accuse the startup of not honoring its pledge to keep copyright-infringing music off its service. The latest twist: Today, MySpace has temporarily removed Project Playlist widgets from the site. The reason, sources close to MySpace say, is pressure from the labels.

Project Playlist claims to have more than 38 million fans. It lets users find and share music through widgets on MySpace and other social networks, including an application on Facebook (still currently available). From my understanding, MySpace is the startup’s single largest audience; the Facebook app only has 660,00 monthly active users, for example. Of course, the social networking site has a joint venture with the record labels to offer its own music-sharing service, MySpace Music. It has no choice but to honor labels’ requests; normally, it lets third-party music companies function on the site. Others, like imeem, have worked out separate deals with labels in order to avoid this sort of situation.

The music industry separately said it would stop suing music listeners themselves, instead working with their internet service providers to stop them from doing illegal downloads. Clearly, its efforts to fight music startups has not abated.

There’s a strange angle to this situation: Owen Van Natta recently left his executive job at Facebook to become chief executive of Project Playlist, after apparently turning down an offer to run MySpace Music.

We’re still waiting for comment from Project Playlist and Facebook. Here’s MySpace’s statement:

MySpace is an open platform that welcomes all developers to build rich and legitimate applications for its global community. We take copyright issues very seriously and our goal is to help developers build a substantial business by creating an environment that respects rights holders and protects their content.

MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist. Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform. Any third party widgets (including any music widgets) are welcome on MySpace so long as they do not include infringing content—we encourage our users to utilize the many legitimate applications found on MySpace and across the Web.

AOL is working on a new initiative to make its instant message service, AIM, a central social feature to any web site, well-placed sources tell me. Starting next year, a user on a social network might use AIM to create an IM chat list from their friends list on their favorite social network. They could then IM each other without having to use a separate chat application.

Oh wait, what does that remind me of? Ah yes, Facebook Chat (pictured), MySpace IM, and most of all, Meebo’s Community IM service. In fact, AOL is closely mimicking these interfaces, sources say. But AOL apparently wants to differentiate itself through tying everything around Bebo. Here are some more details that I’m hearing about the service:

AOL will use chat technology developed by Userplane, a startup it bought in 2006 for somewhere around $40 million. Userplane already offers a way for sites to integrate chat, but it’s a basic chat widget. AOL’s new chat service will feature a toolbar integrated at the bottom of partner sites, showing things like how many of a user’s IM friends are online and free to chat.

The new effort is being spearheaded by AOL employees at Bebo, the social network AOL bought for $850 million this spring, according to sources. Bebo rolled out a new “social inbox” earlier this month (screenshot below), that integrates AIM and other web services to try to create a central online hub for users. That service uses the concept of “lifestreaming” to let you share feeds of information from other sites: Photos from Flickr, videos from YouTube, status messages from Twitter, etc…

Details about AOL’s larger plan have been vague. But it apparently got Yahoo execs all excited when they heard about it during AOL-Yahoo merger talks, Kara Swisher has previously reported. The new service, she heard

[I]ncludes offering AOL’s various social-networking tools–-such as chat rooms, news feeds and instant messaging–-to be easily embedded by any Web site. The service will be called “Site Social,” with plans to use AOL’s advertising platform to help monetize the offering.

But to be clear, AOL’s effort isn’t just about making these features easily embeddable. It’s about making AIM a ubiquitious IM service that every other web site will use to offer its own IM services. So — and I’m speculating here — imagine signing up for your favorite social network, signing in through AIM, then chatting with your friends on that network. Or imagine the ability to send links you share on IM back to Bebo’s new service, for your friends on Bebo to see.

Apparently, though, AOL has been feeling jealous of Meebo and its IM integration service with other sites. For example, Perfspot, a social network that claims 20 million monthly unique visitors, is featured as an IM partner on Userplane’s site. But Perfspot is dropping Userplane to use Meebo’s CommunityIM service, I hear. AOL has been going around to some of Meebo’s partners, trying to get them to switch to AOL’s forthcoming service.

AOL is playing catch-up, in other words. Earlier today, Meebo announced integration with MySpace and Facebook — a way to chat with all of your friends on those sites, from within Meebo. CommunityIM now has more than 30 partners. Aside: AOL parent company Time Warner is also an investor in Meebo.

So what’s going to make AOL’s new service interesting? If AOL can tie in the 80 million users it claims to have on Bebo, AIM and its other chat service, ICQ, the company could regain its position as a central social destination on the web.

(For what it’s worth: I asked Bebo about this article and it said it “doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.”)

Twitter was at the center of a bit of a stink today when Google announced that it was integrating the micro-messaging service in its Friend Connection service. This led to a flurry of questions in the tech blogosphere as to why Twitter was integrating with Google and no one else?

Silicon Alley Insider first stated “Twitter Chooses Google, Not Facebook,” but later changed that headline after Twitter co-founder Biz Stone corrected them, saying that Twitter was working on Facebook Connect integration as well. Twitter’s chief executive Evan Williams also sent out a tweet (Twitter message) explaining that:

For the record: Twitter did not “choose Google, not Facebook.” We’re working with both. We have more to do on the FB side b efore launch.

This led TechCrunch to write “Twitter Humiliates MySpace” because it didn’t bother mentioning them in any social service integration talk. You see the trend?

To stop this, Stone decided to write a blog post entitled “Let’s All Be Friends!” In it, he write that “Twitter plans to integrate with the open initiatives offered by our friends at MySpace, Facebook, and Google.”

So that leaves me wondering what other social network I can mention that Twitter is neglecting? How about Nasza Klasa, the largest social network of Poland? After all, it did make Google’s Zeitgeist list this year. Why are you not working with them Twitter?

The nerve.

You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeatniks Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison and Dan Kaplan. Oh, and we have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well.

Hold onto your trendy fedora hats, MySpace just released its “Top 8 of 2008″ awards, presumably because Top 10 lists are just so 2007. The lists include the top eight site searches in the categories of music, film, comedy, technology and video. Things I didn’t want to learn? Dane Cook remains the top comedian on MySpace (though his detractors have their own MySpace profile).

The top 8 search terms:

1. Twilight

2. Chat

3. MySpace Layouts

4. Jennifer Hudson

5. Beyonce

6. Mobsters

7. Lil Wayne

8. Taylor Swift

The overall search rankings overlapped with a lot of the other top 8 MySpace lists, such as Mobsters being the most downloaded application on MySpace, Taylor Swift topping the list of searched musical artists, and Lil’ Wayne being featured in one of the most streamed songs on MySpace Music.

Google and Yahoo’s top search terms of 2008 — Britney Spears, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin — were nowhere to be seen on MySpace’s list, so it’s safe to say that MySpace’s search serves a different function than Google’s or Yahoo’s.

MySpace’s demographic skews much younger than the large search engines and doesn’t actually cater to everyone. Customization of profiles, the ability to chat (and bicker) with friends, stream music and entertaining videos has always been the biggest draw of MySpace’s media offerings. Let’s face it, middle schoolers and high schoolers are more interested in vampire love stories like Twilight and comedian Fred Figglehorn than the economic crisis right now. Okay, and this self-professed crazy Twilight fan may have contributed to the rankings:

The funniest pairing of search rankings has to be the list of top 8 most popular non-celebrity bloggers, with Evolution is a Fact coming in #2 followed by Christians United in Christ. PostSecret, the inspiring community art project where people anonymously mail in their secrets written on homemade postcards, tops the list.

What does it mean when the Jonas Brothers are nowhere to be found in the rankings, despite having one of 2008’s top YouTube videos, with over 49 million views?

Here’s the latest action:

Yahoo flushes its “poison pill” — One of the reasons Microsoft decided not to go hostile in its bid to buy Yahoo was that the company had a so-called “poison pill” plan in place in which hundreds of millions of dollars would have likely been due to employees who left due to their unhappiness with any Microsoft/Yahoo merger. A few Yahoo shareholders decided to sue the company to remove this plan, and today the company has settled that suit by drastically altering the plan so that compensation would only be granted to those who are basically demoted in any future merger or acquisition deal, The New York Times Bits blog reports.

This news comes on a day when Yahoo laid off more than 1,500 workers. The company is also still seeking a new chief executive following Jerry Yang’s decision to step down. If some company, let’s make up one called Icrosoft-May, were to want to do a deal, it might be an opportune time.

Crain’s shutters its print version — The financial weekly will now only exist online, following a trend that we’re starting to see among the previously powerful print publications. PaidContent has more.

WordPress hopes “Coltrane” is a love supreme — The blogging platform which powers some of the biggest blogs on the web (and this one as well) has released the 2.7 version of its software which it is calling “Coltrane.” It has a completely new interface and claims to make tasks a few clicks faster. Hey admins, can we upgrade?

Latest Firefox beta has multi-touch support — Mozilla’s Firefox 3.1 beta 2 supports gestures similar to the ones that users of Mac laptops (which feature multi-touch in the newer trackpads) are accustomed to with the Safari web browser. But there are some other interesting gestures as well such as “Twist Right” and “Twist Left” for previous and next tabs. MacRumors has more.

CBSNews.com and CNET newsrooms to merge, with layoffs — CBS Inactative, which bought CNET earlier this year will merge its newsroom with CBSNews.com’s, according to paidContent. Layoffs are coming as well, though it’s not yet clear how many.

MySpace launches a new toolbar for browsers — This internally developed project will give users real time alerts and notifications from the social network. It will work on IE 6.0 or higher as well as Firefox 2.0 or higher. There is no Mac support yet, but it’s coming. Social network addicts rejoice. MarketWatch has more.

Apple firmware update fixes newer MacBooks — Users had been having issues with the new notebooks trackpads should find those resolved. CNET has more.

Sequoia RIP presentation inspired by former Stanford University chief — Sequoia partner Michael Goguen says that the entire presentation was the outgrowth of a Sequoia partners meeting with Eric Upin, the former Stanford University investment chief who joined Sequoia earlier this year to launch an asset management organization (think a smaller version of Makena Capital). Upin laid out such a startling economic forecast that Sequoia’s venture capitalists felt their portfolio companies needed to be informed ASAP. peHUB has the full story.

Applying to a position in Obama’s cabinet and administration is tougher than climbing Mt. Everest while performing open-heart surgery. But even after a candidate’s passed the intense vetting process, it doesn’t mean they automatically stay out of trouble, as we’ve just seen with head speechwriter Jon Favreau.

The seven-page, 63-question application contains the usual queries about previous employment, finances and legal issues. But Question number 58 of the questionnaire asks for the applicant to provide links to any websites where they have personal profiles on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Applicants also have to fess up to whether or not they’ve ever blogged, sent incriminating e-mails or kept a diary, making this the most invasive application yet. However, the application forgets to ask, “Are you foolish enough to be caught groping a life-size cardboard cutout of the future Secretary of State?”

Favreau’s answer would be yes, since a recent Facebook photo catches him in exactly that predicament. Among other photos, Favreau is seen clasping his hand to the cardboard chest of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (and no, his hand’s not over her heart) while another friend tips a beer to her lips.

What’s strange is the timing. The Facebook photos (which were up for about two hours yesterday afternoon) surfaced soon after Favreau was recently appointed director of speechwriting for the White House, and were immediately taken down along with every other image of Favreau except a profile photo. The photos, taken recently at a party, were up for such a short time that it seems someone didn’t get the memo about not posting anything that could embarrass the President-elect.

What’s most interesting is that the transition team vetting document specifically asks about photos on social networks, as well as any other identity/name a candidate has used online. Now something as seemingly innocuous as posting as a fan to a band’s website or a blog rant written during one’s angsty teenage years could bring an application into question. Oversharing on social networks has been a major issue for employers and universities, with a MySpace profile costing a woman her college degree among other stories. Even the seemingly lighthearted world of beauty pageants has been affected, with a blackmail scandal involving Facebook photos of Miss New Jersey last year. We’re sure that Favreau has penned a very eloquent apology to Sen. Rodham Clinton and President-elect Obama.

[ photo via The Washington Post ]