The Inquisitr » kiwibox

Meebo and Universal Music to Share Services

JR — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:20:41 +0000

Meebo has struck a new deal with Universal Music Group to share content and services.

Meebo will begin offering ad-supported videos from UMG artists such as Kanye West, Ludacris, and The Killers on its site. The artists will use the platform to promote new and upcoming albums.

In the meantime, UMG will begin integrating Meebo’s chat rooms into the artist’s official Web sites. UMG has previously embedded Meebo Rooms for specific events like listening parties. This will mark the first time, though, the services will be intertwined in such a broad fashion.

This is just the latest in a string of UMG content-sharing partnerships. The label signed a deal with teen social networking site Kiwibox in October that brought thousands of its videos to the site in an ad-supported manner, with artists keeping part of the revenue.

As for Meebo, it has been around for just over three years. It claims 40 million users at its meebo.com chat site alone, not counting various partnerships and third-party implementations.

Meebo

Teen Social Network To Get Label-Supported Streaming

JR — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:00:57 +0000

A major record label has struck a new social networking deal — with a teen-targeting twist. Universal Music Group (UMG) is partnering with teen-friendly site Kiwibox to create a new streaming service, the two companies will announce this morning.

The deal will make thousands of UMG artist videos available for free on Kiwibox.com. The media will be ad-supported, with artists getting a share of the revenue. (The specific percentages are not being released.) Current UMG artists include Jay-Z, The Killers, Snow Patrol, and Kanye West.

Kiwibox, purchased by Magnitude Information Systems in 2007, combines interactive social features with both professionally written and user-generated content, all in a magazine-style layout. The site saw a major makeover in August, which included the debut of an expanded internal video section. The new service — fittingly set to be titled “Kiwibox Music Videos” — will launch before the end of the year and will be integrated with the existing content.

Will the offering draw users over from existing streaming services such as Imeem and the recently launched MySpace Music? Probably not. But for its own devoted base of teen and pre-teen users, the option is sure to add a nice layer of functionality to an already robust site — not to mention the additional avenue of exposure it’ll provide for the artists always vying to reach that very demographic.

Kiwibox Gets Long-Planned Makeover by Magnitude

JR — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:00:16 +0000

Teen social network Kiwibox is officially relaunching today — the culmination of a project in the works since the service was purchased by Magnitude Information Systems one year ago.

Kiwibox 2.0, as it’s being branded, features a new look along with expanded widget-enabled profiles and additional game options. The service also now offers a revamped video section and weekly magazine, both of which contain user-submitted news and celebrity reports.

“Members contribute content to Kiwibox, which goes through a collaborative editorial process before getting published to the site for the entire member base,” CEO Lin Dai told The Inquisitr, describing the configuration as “content meets social networking.”

Up next: Dai tells us Kiwibox will be getting integration tools that’ll let members interact with profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and other social network services.

Magnitude received $3 million in funding when it acquired Kiwibox last August. The social network has been around since 1999.

Our vote: The update is a significant improvement from the old, somewhat dated design carried over from before Magnitude’s purchase. The new look far more effectively showcases the service’s Web 2.0-style interactive approach and will no doubt be welcomed by Kiwibox’s young, web-savvy audience. The wealth of teen-targetted and teen-created content may be able to lure in some devoted MySpace users, particularly those in the younger teen/pre-teen years — and the closely controlled content, compared to the free-for-all alternatives, will certainly be of comfort to parents who are involved in their kids’ online activity. The upcoming social network interaction tools will only help the efforts to get MySpacers involved without forcing them to choose between the two.