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ShareLooks like Rupert Murdoch’s got a little to sweat about besides maybe not having the GOP stay in power next year. According to Tech Crunch, Facebook is now catching up to MySpace in terms of the number of unique visitors (aka web users) coming to its site. What that means is that FB isn’t the underdog anymore and now, maybe more than ever, is a potent force not just in online social networking but increasingly, it’s becoming a place for music heads to congregate, which its connections to Last.fm, Imeem, iLike and other music-related widgets that are popping up all the time. That means not just more ad dough but also developers, fans and bands might be flocking to them more and making them more of a king-maker in the entertainment world.
Then there’s the fan-friendly guys of Metallica who have laid off demanding that web users get sued and are now somewhat more fan-friendly to blogs. A recent scuffle occurred when some blogs were told to take down reviews of the metal-heads upcoming album. Mind you, these were not negative reviews either. Lars and friends decided that this was bad PR (which they know all too well) so they blamed their management and were gracious enough to let the blogs put out their nice reviews of the band. It was definitely a boneheaded move to begin with and by using management as a scapegoat, if that’s the case, makes the band look better and actually heroic in stopping this madness. That would be the story line if you weren’t a skeptic like I am. Part of what makes me cynical is this tidbit at the start of their press release: ‘... rarely do we feel the desire/need to respond to the “blogosphere”’ Boy, that drips with contempt, doesn’t it? Sounds like they think the blogs are a bunch of stupid bozos who they shouldn’t take seriously. Kind of like the people who wouldn’t want them posting about the band in the first place…
