The News Corp owned MySpace social network has struggled to reign as the top social network in the U.S., only to be recently overtaken by Facebook.

Facebook continues to experience exponential growth and continues to innovate. Facebook firstly launched its Facebook Chat feature, allowing friends to easily chat straight from their Facebook profile, or though a supported IM client such as Digsby (PC), and Adium (Mac). Read the full story

If you still use MySpace, then you will be glad to hear that version 1.5 for the BlackBerry has now been released at http://myspace.com/blackberry. You can now easily navigate your friends’ status updates and also switch to full screen view when reading profiles. The app now also lets you save messages and send them later. It also delivers notifications to your BlackBerry a lot faster, but not as fast as the Facebook app on the BB. MySpace is certainly used more by artists Read the full story

The world’s largest conglomerate, News Corp, has posted a massive $6.4 billion loss. News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal, Fox, MySpace, Dow Jones & Co, among other popular companies. News Corp would not break down net profits for any specific company, instead only posting aggregate numbers. News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch said, “our results for the quarter are a direct reflection of the grim economic climate,” News Corp continues to cut costs at Down Jones including with salary freezes, and job cuts, and says it expects to save the company more than $40 million by June 2010. The Wall Street Journal also announced it would cut 25 editorial jobs today.

Popular social network aggregator, Power.com, has been banned by MySpace for storing user information directly on its own servers which poses a significant security risk to MySpace users. Facebook recently sued Power.com for similar reasons, that suit has been resolved as Power made significant changes to its service.
Rio de Janeiro based Power.com launched in November and is backed with $6 million in VC funding by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Power.com also had about $5 million in private equity during its initial private beta.

MySpace Music, which launched on Sept 25 2008, has announced it has added hundreds of thousands of new songs to its service by signing up Nettwerk Music Group, IRIS Distribution, RoyaltyShare, and other partners.

After increased pressure from the RIAA, Facebook has now banned the popular Project Playlist service which has millions of users. The app simply lets people upload and share MP3 songs from their social networking profile on various communities, including Facebook. MySpace more recently also banned the service from mounting pressure from the RIAA, EMI, UMG and Warner. Project Playlist now basically only has a licensing deal with Sony BMG, but it is highly unlikely Facebook or MySpace will un-ban the service. Project Playlist says it will try to work with Facebook to lift the ban.