Google and Facebook will be adding music to their offerings through agreements with iLike.com, Lala.com and Imeem.com. According to a NY Times blog post, next Wednesday, Google will announce a new feature of its popular search engine that will return with search results music files hosted by a iLike and Lala. If a user types in a search for Tiesto or Kaskade, the search results will provide links to pop-up music players and the user may stream the tracks directly from the search engine, without having to go to the site's themselves.

Wow! How MySpace grew to over 1,400 employees, no one knows? Maybe that's the worldwide number. Regardless, the company, which was acquired by News Corp a few years ago for what was then thought as a steak, is trying to streamline operations and get back to the "start-up" mentality that helped to fuel it's growth. This blogger highly doubts putting senior executives from companies like AOL and Viacom in charge of anything at MySpace resembles anything close to stealth mode.

New track from Basement Jaxx surfaces on MySpace.

According to a recently published research paper, "Does Chatter Matter," NYU Stern Professor Vasan Dhar along with his former student Elaine Chang, discovered there is a direct correlation between the number of blog posts on the Web and subsequent sales of albums being discussed. In a sampling of 108 album releases from January and February of last year, Dhar and Chang found sales were three times the average if "legitimate blog posts reached a threshold of 40."

As social networks go, MySpace and Facebook have been getting all the love lately. What many people (um, Americans with their heads in the sand) don't know is that many social networks are thriving. Some, well beyond our borders. San Francisco based Friendster.com was one of the first out of the gate. Then MySpace came to the party, quickly building a 100+ Million user base on the backs of artists and record labels. Many Internet analysts considered Friendster dead in the water. But, as the company's cited 53 Million registered user base shows, there's gold in those hills. No, not the hills you or I might trudge over in the good'ol U.S. of A. I'm talking about the hills of Asia, where Friendster is the #1 social networking destination. Let's not forget the rest of the world, where it makes the Top Ten and is widely considered to be the overall #3 or #4 online community (depending on who's counting). Bebo.com is #1 in the U.K. Can you guess where they are? San Francisco, of course!