The "virtual fifth label" is now friends with MySpace. Merlin, an organization that represents independent music companies, is supposed to have signed a deal with the social network that should nicely complement MySpace's existing partnerships with EMI, Sony, Universal, and

released some interesting findings from a study exploring the different ways Americans are using social media to "redefine their lives." The study looked at 1,228 social media users in the United States."Word of mouth has always been the most powerful

Shhh, can you hear that? What you're hearing is the collective shrieks from Twihards everywhere as The Twilight Saga: New Moon is upon us. For those of you asking yourself, what is a Twihard? I've included the definition below.twi-hard nounA

Google is going to start letting webmasters know when the software they run on their site is outdated. Through Webmater Tools, Google will begin alerting users of new versions of software when they are released. "One of the great things

uSocial is a controversial advertising company that specializes in social media. For a fee, it promises to get stories on the front page of Digg, direct followers to a Twitter account, and/or find someone Facebook fans (among other things). But

Microsoft has launched a new site for Bing, where users can go to find out the latest features that have been implemented into the search engine (excuse me, "decision engine"). The site's called ."You can see each feature in action

All of the search engines are rushing to incorporate more social media elements into their interfaces. Examples of this are evident in things like . You can see it in . You can see it in . Really you can

Barnes & Noble said today it has sold out of its new nook e-reader due to high demand and shipments will not arrive in time for Christmas."nook continues to be the fastest-selling product at Barnes & Noble, and pre-orders have

Sometimes you just have to know when to call it quits, and a new report indicates that Bebo has decided now's the time to cut its losses in Australia. Bebo is supposed to end its operations in the country before

NBC said today "The National Dog Presented by Purina" will be available online Thanksgiving Day (Noon - 2 p.m. in all time zones) at NBCSports.com.The television broadcast will also be available online after 2 p.m. ET on .To complement the

Amazon.com has announced that Susan Boyle's upcoming album, "I Dreamed a Dream," has become its largest global pre-order in the history of the online retail giant.The album will be released by Sony Music Entertainment on November 23. Boyle became a

Google's Matt Cutts discussed how the search engine handles sites that that are "in the cloud" with regards to how listings are affected. Matt's was a response to the following user-submitted question:Can moving my website to "the cloud" harm my

Google has added some new real estate search features to Google Maps. Earlier this year, Google expanded this functionality by letting you select "real estate" from the "more" menu. Now you can just search for "real estate" or other real

Sony has plans to launch a new online service next year that will allow users to download music and movies to their televisions."I'd like it to get off the ground as quickly as possible," said Kazuo Hirai, executive vice president

It looks like the eBay-Skype spectacle has finally come to a close. Despite all of the arguments (legal and otherwise) that cropped up at one point or another, representatives of both companies announced last night that the sale of Skype

Back in the summer, Twitter announced that it was working on an API to give developers the ability to geotag tweets. The company has now made that available. There is no geotagging on Twitter.com yet, but Twitter apps will now

There's a lot of change going on with Twitter these days. Recently we got the highly-anticipated , which helped us to organize our streams and discover new, interesting people to follow. Then Twitter began rolling out its , which seemed

For all of the great opportunities that can come from social media, there are plenty of negatives that come with it as well. This is of course why many businesses are hesitant to adopt social media strategies and/or let their

YouTube is readying the launch of an automatic captions feature for the site's videos. This and a new automatic caption timing feature will make it easier for anyone to add captions to their videos, and will enable anyone to read

Update: Google has officially retired the Google Base search page. The company :As we announced we'd be doing , we've retired Google Base's separate search page today. We don't expect that this change will have much impact for data providers.