"Cox brings to MySpace a proven track record for crafting innovative strategies, structuring productive relationships, and building successful businesses and partnerships within the technology and online media industries," the company says.

Cox was Principal and Co-founder of Stratique Partners, an exec-level consulting firm specializing in providing strategic guidance for clients in the tech and media industries. "Since its inception Stratique Partners has advised over a dozen companies ranging from early-stage start-ups to leading consumer-facing product companies reaching more than 40 million users," MySpace says.

Before Stratique, Cox was the VP of Business Development at AOL. There, he directed partnership activities, led the acquisition of Weblogs, and played a "critical role" in crafting AOL’s open web strategy.

Cox joins the company as soon as today. He’ll be based out of the company’s Beverly Hills headquarters.

Sarah Rabil and Andy Fixmer wrote earlier this morning, "MySpace.com extended a search advertising contract with Google Inc. by one month as the News Corp.-owned social-networking website tries to secure a new agreement, according to two people with knowledge of the talks."

That may be a sign things are going well between the two organizations; it’s a little hard to imagine Google being so cooperative if Bing or Yahoo seemed to be MySpace’s first choice.

Or perhaps Google’s just trying to stay friendly with MySpace as it prepares its own social offering – the better to attract users and/or gang up on Facebook.

Regardless, Rabil and Fixmer noted, "News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said on Aug. 4 that MySpace was ‘actively engaged’ in reaching a new search ad deal, which will likely be worth less than the expiring Google contract.  The new agreement will be performance based, Carey said."

It should be interesting to see if something gets hammered out before the end of September.

"Sync with Facebook allows users to keep their friends on Facebook up to date on everything, including: sharing songs, latest photos, fun game apps, and more," says MySpace’s Jennifer Ruffner.

"The opportunities to experience and share this type of entertainment content are endless," she adds. "This is particularly exciting for artists who can now use this tool as a complement to their MySpace Music presence and share their vast library of content, including full album catalogs, to people who’ve liked their Facebook Page."

MySpace users also have the option to sync with their Twitter accounts. To set up the feature, MySpace users can go to their settings, check the box next to Facebook or Twitter (or both), and follow the steps that appear.

Guardian reports that Apple has refused to allow its iPhone to be included in the UK’s green ranking system, which gives phones a rating of zero to five based on their environmental footprint.

As you may have heard, Google unveiled a new feature in Gmail today that allows users to make and receive phone calls. In addition to this, Google will be setting up phone booths on college campuses and in airports. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land shares a video looking at the inside of the phone booth and talking to the product marketing manager about it:

According to PaidContent, Alibaba has acquired eBay auction management provider Auctiva. It recently acquired a similar service in Vendio.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times has an interesting profile of a startup called Stipple, which aims to tag the web’s images. It lets publishers add tags to parts of an image with info about its contents and related links. Launch partners include Six Apart, Jive Records and E.W. Scripps.

Ian Sheer at the Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece about online coupons and how they’re getting smarter. "Among the new approaches: computer programs to better target consumers with personalized deals and staff on the ground to help merchants," he writes.

ReadWriteWeb points to a video of Apple SVP of software engineering, Bertrand Serlet, who talks about using Apple’s private APIs.

According to Guardian, Facebook is now being valued at over $33 billion as investors try to secure a stake in it. Facebook shares are changing hands for up to $76 each, the publication reports. Still, it doesn’t look like there will be an IPO anytime soon.

Ad firm Specificmedia is being sued amid accusations that it is re-creating deleted cookies, according to Wired’s Epicenter.

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at the WSJ reports that Amazon has lost a big e-book deal with literary agent Andrew Wylie. This comes as the company also announced that its new Kindles are selling faster than any previous models.

"The new profiles offer clean and easy-to-use navigation and simplified organization of content, including a consistent theme throughout profile subpages (photos, playlists, videos and more)," MySpace’s Laurie Spindler tells WebProNews. "Better design tools accompany the new layout, giving users the opportunity to create a truly customized look for their individual profile."

"The new theme gallery feature[s] dozens of unique designs by talented artists to allows users, musicians, celebrities, and brands to customize their profiles with themes from popular graphic designers and tools to personalize the layout of their page," she says.

MySpace thinks the new look and feel will improve fan interaction for musicians. Musicians can actually upload more songs now as well. They can feature up to 25 songs.
 
"To develop the new theme designs, MySpace worked with top artists and graphic designers such as Studio Number One (founded by Shepard Fairey), Justin Harder and Buff Monster to bring innovative themes to the MySpace community," says Spindler.

"So far, more than 4 million users including musicians and celebrities such as Lady Antebellum, Silversun Pickups, Outkast, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Colbie Caillat, Russell Brand, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Eli Roth have upgraded to the new profiles," she says. "Even non-profits like Stand Up 2 Cancer and UNIFEM are taking advantage of the new profiles to engage advocates."

There is a profile guide here, and if you’re a MySpace user, you can upgrade your profile by going here. 

MySpace intends to roll out up to 40 themes in the coming weeks, and from the sound of it, more features as well.

"FAN and MySpace have worked together closely over the past several years and this integration will further align these two properties," said Jon Miller, Chairman and CEO of Digital Media for News Corp. "Adam has been an invaluable asset to News Corp, having led FAN’s growth from the ground up into one of the Web’s largest ad platforms, and we wish him well in the future."

"By fully integrating FAN’s platform and team, we are in a great position to further leverage FAN’s technology, which allows advertisers to serve the right ad to the right person and apply that to content across MySpace to provide a more relevant experience for our users,” said Mike Jones, President of MySpace. "The FAN team is incredibly talented and we’re excited to welcome them to the MySpace family."

Created in 2007, Fox Audience Network reaches over 150 million Internet users, according to the company. It supports monetization efforts across the News Corp.’s online content portfolio, as well third-party publisher sites.

Bain has been named Twitter’s President of Revenue. More on this here.

The app called MySpace Music Romeo allows users to choose from 15 music genres such as pop or hip-hop and 13 moods including "chill" and "studying."

Music Romeo features a "Love" icon that users can click on when a favorite song is played and it will be added to their "Love" list. The more songs a user loves, the more Romeo plays music based on favorites.

Music Romeo crawls a number of social sites along with web pages and blogs to keep tabs on what’s trending online in real-time. Users cans share what videos they are watching with others on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Other features of MySpace Music Romeo include:

*Purchase music from iTunes- Integration with the iTunes store allows users to download and purchase music or video.

*The web and iPad tablet are optimized for video viewing and allow for rich media content.

*While listening to a playlist, users have the option to skip up to 12 songs per day or six in one hour. A 15 second ad will play every 14 minutes.
 

MySpace tells WebProNews, "The new user homepage prominently displays the activity stream and simplifies the content discovery experience.  As users log-in to MySpace, there is a prompt to opt-in for an early look at the new homepage."

"This is a first in a series of changes that you’ll see designed to simplify the organization and display of content to benefit our users."

Clearly an emphasis on the news feed has worked well for Facebook, so it’s not surprising to see an increased focus on it from MySpace. The only surprise is that it has taken this long. While, the feed has been there for a while, it has not exactly been pushed too hard by the company.

There are various other sections on the sides pointing to things like games, movies, events, etc. MySpace highlights the new features:

A wider activity stream: The stream now spans the first two columns, featuring shared content and status updates from friends across your network. With this new design, we’re placing more of an emphasis on all of our great content by really making it pop from the moment you sign-in.

My Stuff and Recommendations: The new “My Stuff” module gives you quick access to photos, videos and music right from the homepage. Similarly, all recommendations (Featured Games, People You May Know, and Recommended Events) have been combined into one simplified “Recommendations” module.

New alerts system and address book importer: The new alerts system collects similar alerts and repositions them in a more visible and persistent location, enabling users to browse and interact with their alerts without ever leaving the UHP. A new version of the address book importer will help users find and connect with friends more easily.

A week ago, Marshall Kirkpatrcik at ReadWriteWeb obtained access to a link showcasing a MySpace experiment that looked to be kind of Digg-meets-Facebook type news feed. He described this: "The way the feature appears to work is that a MySpace editorial team, along with algorithms and business partnerships with trusted 3rd party content sources, will curate a stream of photos, videos and highlighted quotes. MySpace users can vote those bits of content up or down, comment on them, click through to the destination site (after an annoying interstitial page) to see the full content or most importantly subscribe to news topics (like Britney Spears) and get future updates delivered into the same news stream that their friends’ updates appear in."

It remains to be seen if this kind of functionality will be included in MySpace’s plans (that’s why it’s an experiment), but it doesn’t sound like it’s part of the initial redesign.

The real question is, does it matter? Is MySpace in a position to win back some of the social media enthusiasm it once had that has clearly gravitated towards Facebook and Twitter. MySpace does still have a lot of users, but from general conversation with people, it’s clear that a lot of "users" are using it less and less. Will this provide a fresh spark for MySpace? What do you think?

"We are troubled by the findings in this report, which suggest that the price of consumers’ unfettered use of the Internet increasingly is surrender of their personal information, preferences and intimate details to websites, data monitoring companies, marketers and other information gathering firms that seek to track them online and develop digital dossiers for a range of purposes, including marketing," the lawmakers wrote.

"As Congress prepares to consider comprehensive privacy legislation, we request responses to the questions that follow to better understand your companies’ practices in this area."

The representatives, who co-chair the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, asked for information on the companies’ tracking and targeting of consumers on the Internet, which is activated when users visit the websites.

Some of the questions Reps. Markey and Barton asked include:

What information about consumers does your company collect, either through your own website or through business relationships with third parties?

If your company tracks or targets visitors, how does it notify visitors to your company’s site of this practice?  If it does not provide notification, why not?

Does your company target individuals based on their health or financial status?  Are there any user search or usage habits that your company will not use for targeting purposes or tracking?  If yes, what are they?

Letters were sent to:  Dictionary.com; MSN.com; Comcast.net; AOL.com; Merriam-Webster.com; Photobucket.com; Answers.com; Careerbuilder.com; MSNBC.com; Live.com; Myspace.com; Yahoo.com; Verizonwireless.com; Yp.com; About.com
 

Either way, it involves users voting content up and down, while giving them a way to tap into updates on topics of interest.

Marshall Kirkpatrick obtained a link to the experiment, which is apparently called "MySpace Everything." Little is known about the company’s intentions for the feature or even if it will actually become a real feature, but it seems like a reasonable idea for a popular site struggling to stay relevant. Kirkpatrick explains:

The way the feature appears to work is that a MySpace editorial team, along with algorithms and business partnerships with trusted 3rd party content sources, will curate a stream of photos, videos and highlighted quotes. MySpace users can vote those bits of content up or down, comment on them, click through to the destination site (after an annoying interstitial page) to see the full content or most importantly subscribe to news topics (like Britney Spears) and get future updates delivered into the same news stream that their friends’ updates appear in.

Those streams of friends updates have been looking awfully quiet lately, as more and more people bail for Facebook and Twitter. This looks like it could be a great part of a solution to that problem. Facebook has not done a good job of helping people use its news feed as a personalized stream of information about topics of interest to them. Consumers do like to consume, after all, and celebrity news will probably always be hot.

Trying to look at it myself, I’m greeted with a message that says, "The function that you are currently trying to use is disabled and will be back shortly." Kirkpatrick has a screenshot.