MySpace Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe said that he’s “cautiously optimistic” about ad revenue for the News Corp.-owned social network in the face of a recession, Reuters reported Monday.
Speaking at the outlet’s Reuters Media Summit, DeWolfe said that MySpace’s “revenue and profits are significant and they continue to grow in spite of the poor economy.” Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. division that encompasses MySpace, Photobucket, and other digital properties, was declared the top destination for display ads on the Web several months ago.

SimpleDB, one of Amazon.com’s suite of online services that people can use to build Web sites or other computing operations, is out of private beta testing.
The service lets programmers store database records at Amazon and extract specific data from them. Along with the shift to public beta testing, Amazon cut the price for storing data from $1.50 to 25 cents per gigabyte per month.
SimpleDB, introduced nearly a year ago, is a newer arrival into the Amazon Web Services suite. Other services let customers process data, store raw data, distribute content, …

Another one bites the dust? Pownce, a would-be Twitter rival that was heavily hyped due to the involvement of Digg co-founder Kevin Rose, is closing its doors in two weeks.
It’s not quite going away, according to a post from Pownce founder Leah Culver on the start-up’s official blog. The technology has been sold to blog platform Six Apart, which runs TypePad and Movable Type. And its two full-time employees, Culver and Mike Malone, will be joining Six Apart’s team.
“We’ll be closing down the main Pownce Web site two weeks from …

One of the companies adopting Facebook‘s new log-in system, Facebook Connect, is CBS, parent company of CNET and publisher of Webware. I’m glad we’re on board with this program, even if I do feel it’s a bit of Faustian deal. Here’s why.
First of all, CNET’s own log-in system (which you see when you want to leave a comment on a CNET blog post, write a user review, or participate in other CNET community features) is not universally loved inside CNET. There are factions here at the company who want it …

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates.
And guess what? Google’s dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.

Power.com is an ambitious social utility that brings together all the networks you have on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, as well on instant-messaging networks like AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger.
If you have have a presence on more than one network, it’s worth a look, though it has its own interface that awkwardly sits on top of your existing services when you use it.
The biggest draw of Power is that it really does bring everyone in your networks together for you. On the Power …