Online Media Cultist

We’ve entered a mad phase of acquisitions, and there’s no sign that it will abate anytime soon.

Consider today: Fox Interactive Media has announced the acquisition of Photobucket (which has been in the works for a while) and Flektor, a nifty little video- and audio-editing service.

The big picture: MySpace (which is owned by Fox) is beginning to gobble up some of the more popular (Photobucket) and innovative (Flektor) services that were born of and thrive within its orbit.

Also announced today: CBS is to buy music social network Last.fm for a reported $280 million.

The big picture here is that traditional media is now delving wildly into new media via acquisitions in an attempt to stay relevant and profitable long-term.

Last.fm has long been a favorite of the music-loving web 2.0 set. Its social networking and music recommendation capabilities set it apart amidst a sea teeming with music widgets, streaming services, and MySpace also-rans.

Last.fm’s purchase in particular really does signal yet another clear sign that the whole game has changed, that traditional “one way” communication popularized by the rise of television is over, and the new era of interactive and, more importantly, community-powered entertainment- and information-services is now dominant.

Business 2.0 Beta makes the great point that CBS should use this opportunity to let the Last.fm community control the programming at moribund terrestrial radio stations.

And that’s just the beginning. I wonder what will be next.

Just picked up via Twitter: a Mashable breaking news report that MySpace is to acquire Photobucket.

If you’ve been following this relationship, you know that it was only recently that the leading social networking site and one of the leading third-party widget/media hosting companies were hating on each other. Then, a few weeks ago, they strangely lavished praise and love on one another as Photobucket videos were reinstated within the MySpaceverse and all seemed right with the world.

At the time, I wrote: “When MySpace lays down the hammer on the next third-party widget or embeddable service, I’ll be very curious to see what Photobucket has to say about that.”

Looks like with its acquisition by MySpace, they won’t be saying much at all!

A few weeks after Photobucket lambasted MySpace for blocking its millions of users from embedding Photobucket videos on the most popular social networking site on the Interwebs, everything appears to be sunshine and roses once again.

Says Photobucket: “Following discussions with MySpace, we’re pleased to announce that all Photobucket videos and remixes are enabled once more on MySpace with immediate effect. Both our companies are committed to putting our users first.”

So I guess Photobucket no longer believes that by “limiting [its users’] ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media.”

When MySpace lays down the hammer on the next third-party widget or embeddable service, I’ll be very curious to see what Photobucket has to say about that.

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch writes: “But the interesting part of this story is what I don’t know yet - who blinked first and why…. MySpace made their point quite clearly. However, the negative press surrounding the incident was perhaps more than they anticipated. With their point made, allowing Photobucket back in had little downside.”

Tony Hung snortingly muses about whether or not MySpace and Photobucket settled their differences over “a glass of milk and cookies” and then more pointedly asks if Photobucket had to pay out-of-pocket for the privilege of being admitted back into the MySpace realm.

Both TechCrunch and The Social Web agree that MySpace has publicly demonstrated its power over companies that make a living based upon MySpace users. Steve O’Hear says that, “What is clear here is that MySpace has all of the power and can suddenly block any third party widget if it chooses.”

I still contend that MySpace may be in danger of hitting that tipping point at which both its users and outside services will get ticked off enough to go play in another sand box. More than ever before, MySpace users also maintain one or more other social networking profiles. Once people get a quorum of their friends and contacts on a competing service, MySpace will be in the rearview. This more than anything else may explain Facebook’s continued astronomical climb in popularity.

Meanwhile, Photobucket is doubling its data center space, Data Center Knowledge notes.

MySpace rose to prominence for a bunch of reasons – many of them not replicable, to the chagrin of the many hundreds of social networking start-ups looking to get a zillionth of MySpace’s user base – but one of them was a freewheeling, laissez-faire spirit that basically let people do whatever they wanted with their profiles, including jamming every kind of third-party widget, add on, and crappy font creator that let kids feel as though they were really creating their own personalized home online.

But as MySpace ramps up the monetization of its massive audience, it is making choices that are altering the (lack of) ground rules that helped to make it the Kleenex of social networking websites. By forging lucrative alliances with companies like Snocap, it is at the same time moving to block music players, widgets, and other add-ons produced by companies who do not have such an agreement in place.

The latest news comes in the form of a professional yet pissed off-sounding post from the official Photobucket (a leader in the photo and media hosting space) blog: “Today MySpace made the decision to prevent Photobucket users from posting their videos and remixes to their MySpace pages.” It then goes on to accuse MySpace of subverting the rules in the age of the open platform – the social media platform that fueled the rise of MySpace and YouTube and Photobucket and Flickr, and on and on: “We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media.”

For a quick round-up of reaction around the blogosphere, check out The RSS Blog.

MySpace is within in its rights to act this way, of course. Just as companies are free to look to newer and more freewheeling platforms (like Twitter) to develop for.

And just as its audience is free to move on to one of the many hundreds of social networking start-ups, who will welcome them with open arms, and in most cases a freewheeling and laissez faire spirit.