The Regali Kitchen has released a great free rance of web cupcake icons. You might also notice that Myspace is missing!

• Free Google Plus Icon Set – August 19, 2011
• WPZoom Release Free Social Media Icon Set – April 15, 2011
• Seven Icon Pack: Amazing 475 Top Quality Icons Free for Personal and Commercial Use – April 2, 2011
• Free Glossy Icon Set: 20 High Quality Semi-Transparent Icons – February 21, 2011
• Awesome New Twitter Follow Buttons & Icons – August 22, 2011

Web Cupcake Icons originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

I have always been savvy with technology and computers – I started working with my first computer at the young age of 8 and when I was 10, I taught myself how to program in BASIC literally overnight. For some reason, though, I didn’t immediately jump on the Facebook bandwagon the moment it became mainstream. It seemed silly, frivilous and simply trendy. I had been using MySpace and enjoyed the ability to control the look and feel of my page. I managed to find a few old friends on it, but most of them never posted anything. Mostly I just used my page as a personal blog to track my mundane life.

Then one day, I finally took the leap. I joined Facebook.

At first the pages looked dull and boring. A stark contrast to MySpace’s colorful pages, flashing blinkies and auto-loading music and videos. But what I quickly realized is that everyone I had on MySpace was also on Facebook and… guess what… they were actually posting! Next I realized that not only were my old friends there, but so were dozens more. To date I have connected with nearly my entire High School class, a childhood best friend I thought I would never find, old teachers, college friends, remote family and even old boyfriends (most of whom I was already still on speaking terms with). While these may not be people I feel the need to converse with on a regular basis, I feel priviliged that I can know what great (or terrible) things are happening in their lives, offer congratulations or condolenses, provide advice, wish happy birthday’s or just simply “Like” their status because… well… I liked it!

Today, like many people, I am hooked on Facebook. I have not only used it to connect with friends, but I have also used it to promote businesses I have been a part of and to follow other businesses I have interest in. And let’s not forget the oh-so-addicting games. So what if Facebook never existed? Where would be then?

Perhaps MySpace would have remained more popular. Or perhaps social networking as we know it today wouldn’t exist – at least not at the level it is now. Businesses would still rely solely on expensive advertising, email marketing and banner ads. While these methods are still used, Facebook’s advertising has been, in my experience, invaluable.

Some say people would call, write or speak in person more. But let’s be honest here, when was the last time you called someone just to update them on your life or find out about theirs? In High School? 15 years ago or so? People tend to stay in their own circles – in their comfort zone. Facebook allows us to open up and reach outside of our circle. It extends our comfort zone.

One thing is for certain, the world would be a less “friend”lier place. I never would have found my childhood friend or connected with classmates who had been outside my circle in High School. This also means I never would have intended to attend a reunion, which I now look forward to. Facebook has given me the ability to reach outside my daily circle and laugh, cry and vent with old and new friends alike. It has rekindled friendships and connected me with people I thought I would never get to talk to again.

So despite the addicting games and countless hours easily wasted away with Facebook, I am thankful it was created. I am thankful I took the leap. I am thankful for finding friends.

Case in point: Life just wouldn’t be the same without Facebook.

• Raptr Is the Ultimate Gaming Service: Connects PSN, Xbox and More – May 16, 2011
• PopCap Games Acquires ZipZapPlay and Their Facebook Games – May 2, 2011
• History of Social Media – November 19, 2010
• Virus Infecting Mac and Linux – October 31, 2010
• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010

Where Would We Be Without Facebook? originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

It seems as though Myspace is trying to get their music product back on track and at the center of this is a new product called Wildfire. Myspace are testing their new Wildfire product, which aims to help bands control all of their social networks.

MySpace Music vice president of Product Roberto Fisher, who shared preliminary details at a meeting held Saturday by the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA) in Los Angeles.  ”Are you aware of the people that are most valuable to you in social media marketing, to help amplify what you do?” Fisher posed.  ”Wildfire is designed to help you understand the tree of engagement that happens in the time that someone does something.  So, we can pinpoint in any tree of distribution the people that gave you the most reach when they heard something and re-amplified it.”

So, it’s “where in the trees you should invest,” instead of burning the whole tree with a blowtorch, according to Fisher, which sounds like a refreshingly targeted idea.  But this involves a lot of close observation, on a massive scale.  Accordingly, MySpace is essentially ‘wiring every single action’ that happens in the social networking sphere as it relates to artists, and then assigning scores to the most valuable ‘branches of the tree.’  ”You can score it all,” Fisher described.  ”I can tell you if user A is more valuable than user B.  And when you did X, these are the things that caused Y to happen.”

• MySpace Assures imeem Users, Playlists Are Safe – December 22, 2009
• US Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace and Facebook – August 5, 2009
• MySpace Music Launches – September 26, 2008
• Web Cupcake Icons – September 20, 2011
• Where Would We Be Without Facebook? – April 29, 2011

Myspace Music Testing out Social Network Aggregation Tool originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Click on the image to get the full view.

• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• Free Black Icons Set for Social Media and Twitter – September 12, 2010
• Facebook Connect Battles For Your Information – December 1, 2008
• Where Would We Be Without Facebook? – April 29, 2011
• How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg – October 31, 2010

History of Social Media originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Koobface appears in social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace and now they will not infect only Windows computers. One of the common messages we should receive indicating the presence of Koobface: “Is this you in this video?” once we click on the link it will try to run an applet from Java which will install a malware in the OS.

As for Windows, Koobface will run a local web server and an IRC Server, acting as a Botnet and as a DNS changer; and of course will try to reproduce to other computers.

Intego assures that the Intego VirusBarrier X6 and X5 detect and eradicate this malware, but we must avoid running any unknown Java applet in our computer, and if so, we should detect an installation is running and quickly cancel it.

• Mozilla Removes Dangerous Add-On – July 17, 2010
• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• US Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace and Facebook – August 5, 2009
• Koobface Attacks and Twitter – July 12, 2009
• Social Networking Site for Collectors – June 29, 2009

Virus Infecting Mac and Linux originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

• How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg – October 31, 2010
• History of Social Media – November 19, 2010
• Free Black Icons Set for Social Media and Twitter – September 12, 2010
• Social Networking Site for Collectors – June 29, 2009
• Front Page of Digg Impossible? Try HYPick For Better Results – February 3, 2009

Social Media Demographics originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

As you probably know, MySpace is the favorite site for many bands to start distributing new songs but of course the only way to listen it is using the website with an Internet connection. Grab That File! gives us the possibility for a direct download of the MP3 file.

The use of it is pretty simple: Login using your Facebook account; enter the MySpace URL with that contains the music; and download the file you want.

Of course, there’s a big disclaimer saying that you should only download music that does not infringe any copyright laws.

• Download MP3 Music for Free – September 26, 2010
• Free Music Downloader: iOS and iPhone App to Download Music from Music Blogs – August 17, 2011
• Amazon Cloud Drive as Dreamy as it Claims? – April 29, 2011
• Skreemr is Live Again: Best Free Music Mp3 Search Engine – March 2, 2011
• How to Upload MP3 files to YouTube – October 24, 2010

Download Music from MySpace with Grab That File! originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

I think that’s the real question. For those of you that have followed the MySpace Acquisition of imeem and the eventual realization that users could not access their playlists, Crenk is wonders if people still care. There was no doubt that users of the imeem music service were dedicated to the platform and infuriated at how MySpace handled the acquisition.

With no warning at all the entire platform was shut down leaving developers and users in the dark. A lot of users left for other music sites, sites that appeared to be more stable. Now acquisitions can happen at any time, but two things were for sure. First users wanted to know where their music was and were unhappy with the response by MySpace, and secondly that many users detested the MySpace music platform and did not want to be affiliated with it.

Still, it’s nice to see that MySpace as still followed through with its promise of bringing back the playlists and there will be no doubt that users will migrate and begin to engage one another again, just on a different platform. Now it’s only fair to note that MySpace was not officially responsible for the imeem platform going down. Users were unawares that money had run out and services were on their way to being shut down with or without MySpace’s involvement.

For full reports and a step by step process to access your music accounts, take a look at the article from TechCrunch.

• MySpace Assures imeem Users, Playlists Are Safe – December 22, 2009
• Web Cupcake Icons – September 20, 2011
• AOL Consolidating Blog Brands into 20 Power Brands! – July 4, 2011
• Where Would We Be Without Facebook? – April 29, 2011
• Myspace Music Testing out Social Network Aggregation Tool – April 4, 2011

MySpace Breathes New Life into imeem Playlists originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

imeem playlists moving to MySpace Music

were nowhere to be found. MySpace’s acquisition is not responsible for imeem going away, as the suffering company would have surely gone the way of the dinosaur on its own, but rather, shutting off the API killed a lot of apps, desktop and mobile alike. The impact was felt the world over as no word was even given, no warning, not even an explanation was made at the time of this event.

Recently MySpace has done right with the imeem community by assuring them that their playlists are fine, and are simply being ported over to MySpace music playlists. While I’m not entirely sure of MySpace’s music porting capabilities, I’d have to assume this is not an overnight process. Nevertheless, MySpace’s imeem acknowledgement provides some comfort to avid imeem users, but little those that have already migrated to other platforms. The service’s dedicated fans were the most spurned by this transition in ownership, and perhaps MySpace’s assurance comes too little too late.

In the announcement MySpace encourages users to use the existing music service provided by said company while the transition is taking place. It states it has the largest licensed digital catalog of music, hoping to lighten the blow even more, but for some of us, MySpace is not a site we thought of when we thought of music. Will the acquisition of imeem, will this change? Should be interesting to see the response once the imeem playlists have been brought over.

• Myspace Music Testing out Social Network Aggregation Tool – April 4, 2011
• Seesmic’s Acquistion of Ping.fm Secures Future Goals – January 5, 2010
• MySpace Music Launches – September 26, 2008
• History of Social Media – November 19, 2010
• How to Handle Several Twitter Accounts – September 19, 2010

MySpace Assures imeem Users, Playlists Are Safe originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

It’s is about to be purchased by the floundering MySpace – perhaps in some desperation to heal their wounds. Anyway, I’ll give you a quick run down on what iLike has to offer.

Firstly, it combines all of the great music facilities into one profile from across loads of different social networks such as Bebo, Hi5 and FaceBook. So instead of flying around all the different social networking sites to discuss music you can simply go to iLike.

They’re also in tune with the music scene with tons of news and song updates. iLike will also detect what city you’re in and inform you of upcoming concerts and festivals in your area.

And, as expected you can get songs their (well, iTunes). On the homepage there are free Mp3 songs from lesser-known artists that you can download for free. They also have popular songs that you can buy.

iLike also has different arrangements with many different singers and bands. For example, at the time of writing this article they were promoting Creed’s upcoming tour. The smaller things include loads of applications for download and cool pictures and videos for your enjoyment.

A great service for the chatty music fan.

• MySpace Music Launches – September 26, 2008
• Download Music from MySpace with Grab That File! – May 19, 2010
• Album Art to Complete Your Collection – February 10, 2010
• Twitter: Local Trends Go Live! – January 27, 2010
• Phitter: A Twitter Like Fittness Community – January 8, 2010

iLike – Soical Networking for Music Fans originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

However, when it comes to Web 2.0 they’re left quivering in their combat boots. The USMC has just announced that it is placing a network wide ban on Web 2.0 sites such as Twitter, MySpace and FaceBook in an effort to make their systems more secure.

They say that these sites are easily hacked and used by hackers and scammers and indeed those against US operations to post links to malicious sites in the hope a marine on R&R or a USMC staff member might click on them.

This would expose the soft underbelly of the USMC’s network and would lead to disaster. Here is what the USMC order read :

• “These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries…”
• “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”

• Virus Infecting Mac and Linux – October 31, 2010
• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• Social Media Revolution – September 6, 2009
• Social Networking Site for Collectors – June 29, 2009
• Facebook Connect Battles For Your Information – December 1, 2008

US Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace and Facebook originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

While social networks are great at connecting people and bringing them together for various aspects, sometimes a nice site is what you’re looking for. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and such just don’t server your needs, and perhaps you’ve tried the Ning communities to no avail.

For those of you out there that are collectors of various things such as stamps, bottle caps, dolls, coins, or just about anything else, Colnect is for you. This social networks brings togethers collectors from around the world to buy, sell, trade, and share stories and locations with people. This niche specific network is amazingly popular, so if you’re a collector and missing that special, cornerstone piece to your collection, perhaps this network can help you complete your empire!

• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• Book Worms Unite with BookSprouts – December 30, 2008
• Facebook Connect Battles For Your Information – December 1, 2008
• Virus Infecting Mac and Linux – October 31, 2010
• Online Tribes Can Avoid GigaTribe – November 10, 2009

Social Networking Site for Collectors originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

There is no doubt that the market is becoming overrun with social networks. While there is value in a great number of them, after awhile they all starte to look the same. With only slight variations it makes a person wonder why one would be different from the rest if they are all so similar. That being said, the grand-daddy of the social network medium, MySpace, might be on the endangered species list.

It’s no surprise that during an economic crunch that “re-structuring” is inevitable, but recently we’ve seen a large number of the  U.S. staff released from the company, and now the wave appears to be hitting Europe. After reading an article on TechCruch it got me thinking if MySpace is even relevant anymore.

It’s become a marketing ground for new bands, comedians, and other entertainers. The playground to the 15 and below crowd, it fails to reach the depth that other social networks like Facebook have reached in recent years. Much like AOL was a pioneer and has slowly been phased out of importance, is the same happening to the social networking pioneer MySpace?

Do you still use MySpace? If so for what? Do you find it relevant in  your life, why or why not? I’d love to gauge the readership of Crenk and find out if MySpace is even a blip on the radar in terms of connecting with people.

• Social Networking Site for Collectors – June 29, 2009
• Facebook Connect Battles For Your Information – December 1, 2008
• Official Google Social Network: Google+: Facebook Competitor – June 29, 2011
• Where Would We Be Without Facebook? – April 29, 2011
• Customize your Facebook Fan Box – February 3, 2011

MySpace An Endangered Species? originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

In recent months the number of social networks has grown exponentially. At the beginning of this boom there were obvious leaders in the market, networks like MySpace and Facebook come to mind. In that time there have been a lot of networks looking for their place online, attracting niche groups from within the online community. Other networks were developed that had entirely different purposes, but still remained under the guise of a social media tool such as Twitter, Yelp, and Digg to name a few.

Everyone can see that at some point all this development will culminate a scenario where thousands of networks will be fighting for the dominant number of users, the smaller networks either dying out or being bought out. We saw this in a recent purchase of Pownce by SixApart, whose plans are to disable the service, but acquire the users via another service that will undoubtedly be under the sole development of SixApart. Users are given the option to transfer their data, but ultimately there is an example of services being absorbed by larger offerings due to the over abundance and saturation of the market.

Facebook Connect is now becoming the new battleground for social networks. The face of the war for users is changing, and MySpace and Facebook are battling for dominance. Luckily for users, we will ultimately benefit, and the winner is yet to be determined.

Facebook, In It to Win It

Facebook Connect was announced mid-summer with an expected launch of 24 partners on board. The concept was to create a portal by which users of Facebook could sign on and using their profiles, access data on other social networks, all without leaving the Facebook platform. By allowing users to port their profile data to third-party Web sites, several opportunities become available to the user.

• You can leverage your identity across the web in trust environments for ease of use
• Take your friends across various networks ensuring trusted social context anywhere you go
• The piece of mind knowing that the privacy settings you set on Facebook will go with you as you cross the boundaries into other networks
• Actions you make on partner sites will be shared with your friends on Facebook, keeping them in the know about what you like, what you’re doing, and what you find interesting

The idea of the project is to create a deeper, enriching experience using Facebook as the anchor for all your social media experiences.

What’s In It For Partner Sites?

The curious thing anyone would ask is why the networks would come together in such a way that their services rely on large sites like Facebook? For starters, the instinct to survive as to be at the top of the list. Networks are competing for users, all of them hoping to break out and be the leader in their respective niche. Secondly, by partnering you ensure that the millions of users that Facebook states they have will eventually bleed over onto the partnering network.

For example, by utilizing Facebook Connect a user and sign in and perhaps read about Digg. Wanting to be a part of the Digg community the user only has to select the partner and the profile data will port over to the Digg profile creation page instantly making it easier for the user to begin their Digg experience. The benefit is obvious ease of use, but also new users, and the power of link backs which gives the social sites their traction. By sharing contact lists, you increase the power of the network and Facebook benefits by being the hub for all of your social media access.

Currently MySpace is also fighting is also in the fight for your time, your identity and your data on the social networks, but Facebook has come out of the gate with very powerful alliances.

I’m curious to see the outcome of this online competition from two of the largest social community sites on the net today.

• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• Social Networking Site for Collectors – June 29, 2009
• Pownce-ing On The Opposition – December 23, 2008
• History of Social Media – November 19, 2010
• How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg – October 31, 2010

Facebook Connect Battles For Your Information originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

What started as a pay service quickly changed to a free model, and since then they have had a lot of success attracting the 3-12 year old demographic. Recently KidZui has changed a lot of the functionality of their site, and have introduced some new tools to make the site fun for parents working with their kids. Parents are encouraged to participate on the site with their kids so that everyone is in the know as to what the child is looking at and sharing online.

KidZui offers limited profiles that offer superficial details about the user, the site offers no real two way communication to prevent those looking to lure children, and tabs where users can share the sites they’ve visited, approved videos, and even a section for homework help. Status can be set by the user, but instead of typing there is a menu of premade options that can be chosen from. Again, this introduction is to get the child used to the idea of larger social networks, but still maintain a safe environment for kids to enjoy their time online.

If you’ve got kids, I recommend you check out KidZui and get your kids prepared for the future of communication!

• iLike – Soical Networking for Music Fans – August 19, 2009
• Social Networking Site for Collectors – June 29, 2009
• MySpace An Endangered Species? – June 20, 2009
• Facebook Connect Battles For Your Information – December 1, 2008
• MySpace Music Launches – September 26, 2008

KidZui, Social Network for Kids originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

• Flock Changing Out Firefox Framework for Chrome – June 16, 2010
• Web Cupcake Icons – September 20, 2011
• Nerrot: The Simplest Bittorrent Site Yet – May 5, 2011
• Zamzar Free File Converting – May 1, 2011
• Where Would We Be Without Facebook? – April 29, 2011

New Release Keeps Flock Soaring originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

There is some validity to using MySpace as a way to generate traffic to your site, but as I explained in the comments of Daniel’s site, it’s very short lived, but a nice spike when it happens.  The drawback however is time, it simply takes a lot of time to make blog posts on MySpace linking back to your own blog’s article, same goes for bulletins.  Being the wonderful thing that is the Internet, I set out to find a way to have WordPress automate this for me, and that is what this review is about.

A very short and quick search on Google led me to the MySpace Crossposter v2.0a plugin for WordPress.  It is almost totally what I was looking for.  As described on their site,

The WordPress to MySpace Auto Crossposter is a WordPress plugin that publishes all of your WordPress blog entries to your MySpace blog at the time of publication. This allows you to publish as usual on your WordPress blog, but to also capture and retain your MySpace audience without any extra effort.

Each time that a new WordPress post goes live it will automatically be sent to MySpace for publication.

Users of the plugin have the option of publishing a notification or a whole story to MySpace.

Perfect!  The download is just like any other plugin, in a zip file.  Extract it and FTP it into the \plugins directory of your web server.  Login to the admin panel of WordPress, activate the plugin and then go to Settings > MySpace Crossposter to configure it.  I will warn that this plugin is not nearly as simple or clean to install as most all other plugins are.  Once you land on the configuration page you need to enter the Database settings from when you originally setup WordPress.  The settings are located in your root directory on your web server in the config.php file, which I had to download because I honestly didn’t remember them.

Once that is taken care of, enter both the URL to your blog and your blog name, along with your MySpace login email and password.  Lastly is the option to post Notification style, which is a link to your blog, the title of the article posted and a direct link to it, or Whole Blog Entry, where the entire blog post will be republished on your MySpace blog.  Default setting is to Notification sytle, which is what I’d suggest leaving it as, it will help drive more traffic to your site and you won’t have to worry about formatting issues.

Click Submit and the settings are saved, you don’t have to do anything else besides write new content.  I tested this out and it worked flawlessly, posting a new blog post on my MySpace page mearly seconds after it was published on my site.

The benefits of doing this are many, most importantly it exposes your articles to more people right away and it also helps create back links into your site.  While I don’t foresee this as being a huge source of traffic, it is none the less a source.  For those people who are active on MySpace and have a lot of friends, it couldn’t hurt at all and it takes no time to do, since it’s fully automated.

Hopefully they can automate the need during intial setup to have the database information already inserted as I think a few bloggers might be turned off by the thought of screwing up their MySQL table information.  The whole process took only a few minutes to install and configure though, so I can’t complain.

Now if only I could find a WordPress plugin that would do the same with bulletin postings on MySpace, I’d be fully automated and could spend more time writing.  This is a plugin I’d recommend to anyone who is looking for an easy way to cross post articles to the largest social networking site on the internet right now.

• Web Cupcake Icons – September 20, 2011
• SimpleReach Slide: WordPress Simple Related Post Plugin – July 24, 2011
• Tumblr Passes WordPress.com in Blogs – June 17, 2011
• How to Add Google +1 Button to Your Website – June 6, 2011
• Windows Phone 7 Theme for Your WordPress Blog – May 31, 2011

MySpace Crossposter plugin review for WordPress originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

It just seems like a natural progression for MySpace to enter the music foray with their own MySpace Music site. Just 24 hours old and already MySpace Music has a huge following, and an interesting model that looks to beat out all other music sites. Four major labels on board (Universal, Warner, Sony, EMI), several major publishers, and even the largest independent music provider look to make MySpace Music stand out on its own merit.

Users are able to stream any of the music on the site for free, create playlists of up to 100 songs, share their lists, their streams, and even participate in ranking and viewing other users music selection. All of this creates a music social network that is bound to grow just as fast at their social network specific site, MySpace. New music is also introduced exposing users to new artists and up-can-comers, with the added ability to purchase music which is done through Amazon’s music download service. You want a ringtone? No worries, via Jamster any song on MySpace music can also be yours to carry on your mobile.

The flexibility of MySpace music is unheard of, and I look forward to seeing its growth.

• MySpace Assures imeem Users, Playlists Are Safe – December 22, 2009
• iLike – Soical Networking for Music Fans – August 19, 2009
• Myspace Music Testing out Social Network Aggregation Tool – April 4, 2011
• Download Music from MySpace with Grab That File! – May 19, 2010
• Streaming Music Online Via Browser – November 15, 2009

MySpace Music Launches originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook