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After struggling for more than a year to attract advertisers, cable TV networks and radio stations to its Online Media Exchange, eBay has decided to close it down.

I have been a total skeptic on proprietary messaging within social networks. After all, who on earth would want a proprietary tool when e-mail reaches everybody? I love it, though, when circumstances change a deeply ingrained opinion. The technology business has a way of doing that. You've likely heard the expression, "I live in Outlook." Well I used to. Now I hop rather awkwardly between Outlook and Gmail. Could I soon live in LinkedIn? Could you?

I keep on meaning to go Gmail only, but never get around to it. And Gmail has some performance and even some reliability issues, so, hedging my bets for a while seems sensible.

In that context LinkedIn's InMail just seemed like an irritation. However, I am now re-evaluating that. Partly because I am thinking that I may need something like SalesForce, just a basic contact manager. There are many good SalesForce alternatives; we are totally spoiled for choice in that area. But that seems like one more thing to manage/learn and possibly pay for (or use a free service that may not survive).

So, LinkedIn doing both starts to make sense. With a few provisos. The first is a pricing scheme I can agree to. That does not include Free, I don't trust Free in this context, because it too often means, "lock you in and then charge you too much later." Nor will I pay $20 or $50 per month for something that limits how many mails I can send.

Their $60 per year plan sounds good. That's $5 per month. But I would want unlimited mails for my own contacts whether they are in LinkedIn or not. They can still charge me for the right to send mails to people in LinkedIn who I don't know, which sounds like wonderful spam control. So for $60 I get Gmail like functionality. OK, InMail is a long way from Gmail, but all that is is some email software, and I am sure LinkedIn can license, buy or build some good webmail software, ideally with offline sync capability from day one.

Not only would this give them a really solid subscription revenue base, but every email would be viral marketing for LinkedIn.

Why would I use this rather than Gmail? Four reasons:

1. Automatic contact management, particularly the self-updating nature (i.e., a contact changes jobs and I can see that and their contact details are always up to date).
2. One less system to use, as LinkedIn is becoming enough of a habit that it now takes time each day.
3. Built-in spam filter based on white-list. Yes, Gmail has great spam control, but it is still a total pain in Outlook.
4. LinkedIn actually helps me sell/recruit/buy through networking. That is a totally different level of value proposition from just helping me to send emails or manage contacts.

Could InMail send/receive mail outside LinkedIn? Of course it could. Email standards are open.

I can envision all kinds of cool CRM 2.0 type features based on the social graph.

Of course, all this is possible because Microsoft has been asleep at the switch. It has been apparent for many years, to many people that the real social graph is in the email system and Microsoft Outlook/Exchange is where biz people keep their emails. Microsoft could have done this already, easily. Possibly they still could, but they are leaving it a bit long.

I am sure Google gets the opportunity. They have the same social graph within Gmail. I wonder what they have brewing in their labs?

Once you make the decision to break the Outlook habit as I have already done, the next step to something like InMail is not a very big one. Already my contact database in LinkedIn is more up to date and clean than my Gmail one.

Like all social networks, LinkedIn is under pressure to "open up." They may be be able to push back on that front if they create enough value so that biz people decide to live in LinkedIn as opposed to living in Outlook and SalesForce or the equivalent CRM. That would save hard $ from those services, so its a good recession play as well. LinkedIn has some weak plays for RSS aggregation, but they can easily do something better that makes LinkedIn more like a fully customizable start page.

LinkedIn could be the big IPO story that will validate this market and the one that we've been waiting for since Google went public.

Filed under: Ask Engadget, Storage

Yeah, we've let you folks toss out suggestions for a similar question back when a 1TB internal HDD was nothing more than a pipe dream, but it's about time we gave this one an update, don't you agree? Hear Ian out:

"I was wondering which portable hard drive was good enough to stand up to the life of a student. Something that can take a few bumps and not be harmed. It doesn't have to be huge in capacity, but I need one larger than 80GB. I'd obviously like FireWire and USB 2.0 if possible, but I'm not trying to spend a fortune here either."

Had any particularly good / bad experiences with battle-tested portable HDDs? We want to hear 'em all, so don't be shy, alright? To get your question up in the lights, send us a note at ask at engadget dawt com -- just don't forget to include the secret password.

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Filed under: Ask Engadget, Storage

Yeah, we've let you folks toss out suggestions for a similar question back when a 1TB internal HDD was nothing more than a pipe dream, but it's about time we gave this one an update, don't you agree? Hear Ian out:

"I was wondering which portable hard drive was good enough to stand up to the life of a student. Something that can take a few bumps and not be harmed. It doesn't have to be huge in capacity, but I need one larger than 80GB. I'd obviously like FireWire and USB 2.0 if possible, but I'm not trying to spend a fortune here either."

Had any particularly good / bad experiences with battle-tested portable HDDs? We want to hear 'em all, so don't be shy, alright? To get your question up in the lights, send us a note at ask at engadget dawt com -- just don't forget to include the secret password.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Reuters - When tens of thousands of Koreans converged in the center of Seoul on Tuesday for a mass protest against the new president, many were clutching two vital items: a candle and a mobile phone loaded with snazzy features.

Mashable is heading out to Boston as part of the U.S. Summer Tour. So far I’ve had a funny little anecdote about each of the towns here on the list, but regrettably, the only connection I have to Boston are a couple of web-designing neighbors of mine that once lived there.  If I had to judge the entire town based on those folks, though, I’d imagine that this is going to be one of the cooler stops on the tour, as I keep in contact with them to this day.

Hoping to get some more cool contacts of your own? You won’t do any better than our SummerMash event here, where aside from El Capitan Cashmore, Karen Hartline and Brett Petersel, you’ll have a bevy of Boston locals to meet at the Roxy Nightclub.

We will provide the food, fun, adult beverages and music, just add Bostonians (Bostan-ites? Bosses? Just come to the party, is what I’m trying to say). All the pertinent details below!

When: August 5th, Tuesday, 7:00 - 10:00 PM
Where: The Roxy 279 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02116
What Else?: Drinks Tickets, Light Appetizers and a few surprises!

RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only
Socialize: Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and Upcoming
Press Passes: Please inquire through events [at] mashable |dot| com for Press Passes

Local Sponsor:

‘TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel community, with more than 25 million monthly visitors, six million members and 15 million reviews and opinions. Real advice from real travelers.’

*There are 2 more “Local Sponsor” positions available. For more info please contact: Brett and Adam at events [at] mashable |dot| com

Local Media Partner:

“Bernardo’s List is an email newsletter about upcoming events for entrepreneurs, investors and tech execs in New York and other cities nationwide. Signup is free at http://www.bernardoslist.com!”

Tour Sponsors*

The Sun(TM) Startup Essentials program is designed to help startup businesses off the ground by providing access to industry-leading systems at deep discounts, free world-class software and web-based training, discounts on partner hosting services, and more.

Yoono’s mission is to make the social web accessible, easy and fun for everyone. Its newly expanded service socializes your browser, helps you manage your digital life and brings the best of the web into one single browser-based application. Today, 1.3 million users are leveraging Yoono.

*There is 1 more entire “Tour Sponsor” available. For more info please contact: Brett and Adam at events [at] mashable |dot| com

Touring Video Partner

Launched in February 2006, Stickam emerged as the first and largest Web site dedicated to live interactive video streaming. Stickam’s cutting edge technology delivers millions of streams each day, reaching over two million registered users. They are continuing on the path of social interactive TV by adding features that nurture its growing community and tech-savvy broadcasters. Whether you are famous for 15 or 150,000, Stickam.com is where you will find your friends and fans. See and be seen at Stickam.com, The Live Community.

Exclusive Ticketing Partner

“Eventbrite is the world’s largest self-service online ticketing site. Eventbrite makes it easy for anyone to sell-out an event.”

Tour Media Partner

“Thrillist is a free daily email that sifts through the crap to bring you the best of what your city’s hiding. Each day, you’ll get one quick email with info on the best food, drinks, gear, services, and events. Whatever it is, we promise it won’t suck. Get on the list.”

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Sponsor Opportunities for 1 to all 7 US Summer Tour Cities
MashBash NYC Recap and Thanks
Mashing in the USA: Is the Bay Area Overrated?
Announcing US Summer Tour 2008 - Save the Date & Call for Sponsors
SummerMash Boston
SellaBand Signs New Partners for Worldwide Concert Tour
Eventful Hosting Energizer Encore Competition for Third Straight Year

It was sort of inevitable given Facebook’s monster growth over the last few years, but April 2008 was the milestone: Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, according to data released by Comscore and shown above. Both services are attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each month.

Most of Facebook’s user growth, however, has been in international markets - MySpace is still dominates Facebook in the U.S. market, with 72 million monthly uniques. Facebook has 36 million monthly uniques, up from 23 million a year ago.

Facebook added 75 million monthly uniques over the last twelve month, but just 13 million of those visitors are located in the U.S. MySpace added 5 million U.S. uniques during that period - at this rate it will take 4+ years for Facebook to catch up to MySpace in the U.S. market.

There’s a real question about how valuable all these international users are from an advertising standpoint. We’ll be publishing our thoughts on that next week.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Updated at 9:47 p.m. PDT with more details.

News Corp.'s MySpace is set to release a major redesign next week, company representatives said late Thursday evening. The site doesn't look that different; it's still clearly MySpace. But a number of features have been revamped to improve user experience: namely, the homepage, navigation tools, profile editor, search features, and the MySpaceTV player.

A formal release is set to go out on Monday, and the first new features will show up on the site on Wednesday.

The redesign effort has been under way for more than six months, with the goals of appealing to a broader demographic and letting users interact with the site more (i.e. keeping them around), and has involved in-home studies for testing purposes.

The relaunch of the homepage proper has been kept somewhat under wraps, likely because a "major" advertiser is set to take over the site when it debuts. But MySpace has been liberal with the details of most of the other new improvements. They're not particularly revolutionary, but should still do a thing or two to combat user experience complaints on the social network.

The MySpace profile editing tool, for example, has been modified so that HTML expertise is less of a prerequisite. A sidebar lets users browse through themes and alter them with a color palette, rather than hard-coding changes.

The MySpaceTV player, which technically competes with YouTube, has been improved to support high-definition video and improved full-screen mode as part of the Flash 9 release. The embeddable player now has internal search as well as a way to view the top MySpace videos; it's still playing catch-up with the likes of YouTube, but it's still a big improvement.

One of the most heavily altered sections of the new MySpace is search; now, MySpace members will navigate through a set of tabs to search personal profiles, music profiles, the entire MySpace site, videos on MySpaceTV, or the Web as a whole. The site has also worked with the Lucene open-source search engine project.

MySpace's chief rival, Facebook, is also set to unveil a redesigned profile page in the near future; developers on its application platform are already testing it out. MySpace's redesign does not appear to alter the experience for developers who are building on its OpenSocial-compatible platform.

MySpace additionally has a data portability project, "Data Availability," on the way.

Over the past six months, News Corp.'s social network has been working on a revamp of the entire site--just as rival Facebook has been working on interior decoration as well.

This post was updated at 9:47 PM PT.

News Corp.'s MySpace is set to release a major redesign next week, company representatives said late Thursday evening. The site doesn't look that different; it's still clearly MySpace. But a number of features have been revamped to improve ...