At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, MySpace Inc. co-President Mike Jones launched a new “MySpace Games” strategy designed to showcase online games on the site and to draw more developers.

Social games are becoming a big component of the company’s overall strategy to refocus itself on being a social entertainment destination for its core 34 and younger audience.

“Just as MySpace made a real commitment to music, to have the best musicians and have the best content, we’re now making the same type of commitment with games,” Jones said.

MySpace, a unit of media conglomerate News Corp., saw its lead in the social media world obliterated in the past year by Palo Alto’s Facebook Inc., which now has more than 400 million active members worldwide.

And some MySpace observers began writing off the Beverly Hills firm as a social network has-been last month following the surprise ouster of chief executive Owen Van Natta after just 10 months, with Jones and Jason Hirschorn assuming an unusual dual-leadership role as co-presidents.

“I haven’t seen very many companies that go from being the talk of the Internet to the dog of the Internet and back again,” said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst for Internet research firm eMarketer. “That’s not to say they can’t, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

But in an interview, Jones countered that while MySpace had lost its way, the company still has more than 100 million users, about 80 percent of whom are in the United States.

“If people want to write it off, that’s fine, but the reality is we have a massive amount of audience in the U.S. and globally,” Jones said. “We generate crazy amounts of page usage, we have huge brand advertising relationships and people use MySpace for a lot of different purposes. It’s hard, in my mind, to write it off.”

Music – specifically singers and bands – originally helped build MySpace’s popularity and is a reason members still log on, so the company is now refocusing on entertainment.

And social gaming has become one of the hottest uses of social networks. For example, the Facebook-exclusive game FarmVille, from San Francisco’s Zynga Inc., spread virally and in less than a year has about 83 million players.

About one-third of MySpace members play games each day and play about 1 billion minutes per month. Jones said he believes MySpace can boost those numbers by year’s end to 50 percent of the audience and at least 2 billion minutes per month.

The company is also working on a site redesign, although that isn’t expected to roll out until later this year.

Analyst Augie Ray noted that MySpace wasn’t the only social network to announce a new game strategy Wednesday. San Francisco-based Hi5, which has more than 60 million members, also announced a game developer platform.

Yet Ray said it’s unclear whether either company can line up the type of exclusive games that will become big enough hits to attract members. Even one game that MySpace highlighted, Paradise Paintball, already has 50,000 players on Facebook.

But Ray said MySpace can still remain relevant even if it never catches Facebook as long as it can carve out a solid niche like entertainment.

“The truth is MySpace doesn’t want to get back into the game,” Ray said. “What they want to do is be a specialty social experience.”

MySpace has been talking about a social game focus for several months, but part of the turmoil that forced Van Natta out was because “they couldn’t seem to get things out the door,” Williamson said. “To see them getting something out the door is refreshing, but it still feels like they’re playing catch-up.”

“Are they going to be as big and as powerful as Facebook? No one really knows now, but maybe they don’t have to be anymore,” she said.

We deserved more – Martinez

That would also only help Milner’s bid to impress Capello, with the likes of Aaron Lennon and now David Beckham struggling with injury.
Wigan, on the other hand, remain just four points off the relegation zone and looking nervously over their shoulder with eight matches of the season remaining.
Predicting Wigan results has not been an easy task this season, with Roberto Martinez’s side managing to beat Chelsea and Liverpool only to suffer heavy defeats by Portsmouth and, most recently, Bolton.
But this was one of the Latics’ more encouraging displays, even if their early verve going forward was not quite matched by their frail backline.
Charles N’Zogbia and Hugo Rodallega were generally to the fore going forward, the latter forcing Villa keeper Brad Friedel to save low down with a long-range effort on 20 minutes, while defender Maynor Figueroa also stung the American’s palms from outside the box.
The Norwegian caused the home backline problems all night, and it was from his far-post header that McCarthy, under no pressure, inexplicably volleyed into his own net 25 minutes in.
A quarter of an hour later and Carew should have grabbed Villa’s second, Chris Kirkland beating his shot away after Ashley Young’s through-ball, while Milner will have been disappointed not to have done better with a couple of efforts from the striker’s flick-ons.
Before that, though, Wigan had drawn level. Villa’s lead had lasted less than two minutes when Caldwell rose to glance N’Zogbia’s free-kick into the far corner – and it was little more than they deserved.
However, although Marcelo Moreno let fly with a couple of shots from range, after that Villa’s pace and incision going forward slowly began to tell and Wigan were reduced to trying to contain Villa.
Caldwell, heavily criticized for his performance during Saturday’s 4-0 defeat at Bolton, was particularly impressive – but he could do little about Milner’s strike when it came.
Kirkland flapped at a Young corner, the ball was only half-cleared, and Milner pounced to slam low into the net from 25 yards.
Wigan responded by sending on Victor Moses, and the signing from Crystal Palace was certainly a livewire as the hosts pushed and probed around the Villa defense.
But, in truth, the Latics rarely looked like snatching a point despite their efforts, and in fact it was Villa substitute Steve Sidwell that came closest to a fourth goal in the game when his deflected shot nearly crept past Kirkland in injury time.

“I love Chelsea, I love this stadium, I love these people but I am a professional,” stated Mourinho, who emerged from the tunnel before his players to take his seat in the Stamford Bridge dugout ahead of kick-off.
“I celebrated a lot in the dressing room. I’m happy because I won. I am not happy my ex-players lost, because Roman [Blues owner Abramovich] lost or because the fans go home unhappy.
“It is a very important victory for me as a coach but it is not the victory of my life. It was hard to prepare myself to come here as an enemy.
“I exchanged some text messages with [Chelsea captain] John Terry before the game and I told him someone will go home happy and someone sad. My people will always be my people but I was the enemy – and the enemy won. That’s life.
“Somebody asked if I would still be special if I didn’t win. Now I can say I am not so special to the Chelsea supporters, who will probably never forgive me.”
“Who knows, in the future I may coach another English team and I will come here [again] as an opponent,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti had no complaints about the result that meant the Blues failed to reach the final eight for the first time since 2006.
“We didn’t play how we wanted to. Inter put some pressure on our midfield and we had a lot of difficulty,” conceded Ancelotti, who saw Blues striker Didier Drogba sent off in the 87th minute for kicking Thiago Motta.
“We played better in the first game and now were not able to repeat the same play so Inter deserved to win.”
The Italian added that Chelsea’s early Champions League exit increased expectations for the remainder of the season.
Ancelotti commented: “I think the players were disappointed at the end of the game because we lost. Nothing special happened.
“I’m disappointed because we lost and are out of a very important competition. I want to say best wishes for Inter because I have nothing against Mourinho or against Inter.
“Now we have two important competitions we want to win. We’ll have more pressure on the next few games but we must be strong and have good control of our emotions.
“Maybe this defeat could be a very good motivation for the next few games. We have to be strong after this defeat. We have to have a new motivation, a good motivation, for the future.”

He was speaking at the Chicago Auto Show show in the US where he said that the company had plans to launch Kizashi in the Indian market.

Though the date and timings of the launch have not been announced as yet, according to reports Suzuki’s latest sports sedan would be at the showrooms by the end of the year.

Brown said the Kizashi would be sold in India and that he did not think the launch in India was that far into the future.

The Kizashi is a mid-sized sedan and according to a number of auto reviews, it offers an option, some fresh blood in the stale water. According to auto experts, it would be the car to buy, for people, who do not want to buy and Accord or a Jetta because everyone they know seem to have one.

The Kizashi is priced between $26,749 and $27,484.