According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, the new MySpace (aka: Project Futura) is coming to some users on October 15, though that is subject to change. According to his sources, it will include a lot of white space and focus on the activity stream. Sounds like another familiar social network.
Michael Calderone, in an article at Yahoo News, talks about the Associated Press monitoring CNN, and claiming that the netowrk is routinely using its reporting, even since CNN announced it was dropping the AP’s service.
According to Jennifer Van Grove at Mahable, McDonalds experienced a 33% increase in "foot traffic" to stores with a Foursquare campaign. The company’s head of social media says the 33% increase was in check-ins, and they consider check-ins the same as a person entering the restaurant.
Danny Sullivan talked to Eric Schmidt this week about Google’s ranking factors. Watch the amusing response from Schmidt in this video Sullivan posted:
Google is doing a lot with predictions these days. At Google I/O earlier this year, Google announced the Prediction API. More recently, it launched Google Instant, with the goal of giving you your results before you even finish typing the query. Today, Google is talking about some research its doing in trying to predict when searchers are frustrated with their results. The company also launched some new features to the Prediction API.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune reports that notebook sales growth has gone negative, suggesting that the iPad might have something to do with that.