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labels bank on mobile downloads

Record labels are predicting that this month's launch of three new mobile phone music services will usher a return of rising sales after years of decline.
Apple's music-playing iPhone grabbed the headlines with its arrival in Britain last week. But music executives are just as excited about the new unlimited downloads service launched on Vodafone. At the same time Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, has opened a digital music store here.

Some industry insiders are predicting a revolution that will see mobile downloading approaching that of highly developed markets such as Japan.
The world's biggest music company, Universal, is backing the MusicStation, the Vodafone service. Rob Wells, head of digital at Universal's international division, predicts the £1.99-a-week subscription service will have mass market appeal. "We are at a turning point in the UK," he says, predicting digital music sales here could offset falling CD sales within a year.
Global sales have been falling since 2000, down another 5% to $19.6bn (£9.4bn) last year, according to industry group IFPI. Although digital sales are rising fast, at a tenth of the total market, they have yet to make up for tumbling CD sales.

One place where the gap has been closed is Japan. Total music sales there edged up 1% last year. Japan's success in offsetting falling CD sales - something the IFPI calls reaching the "holy grail" - is largely attributed to the prevalence of mobile downloads.
IFPI director of technology Richard Gooch sees lessons for other music markets. He says: "There are cultural differences, and there are network differences at play so it's not simply the fact of having a mobile music service but in those countries where they have moved towards the holy grail it's generally been on the back of mobile.

1.Which Mobile phone company has launched the new downloading service?

2. Which other Mobile phone company has opened a digital music store here?

3.Will this be successful?

4.What are record labels predicting?

Google and MySpace have announced they are collaborating in a deal which could shake up the social networking industry. MySpace has agreed to join OpenSocial, Google's new platform designed to allow developers to build applications that will work on any website. MySpace joins other sites including Bebo, LinkedIn and Orkut in signing up to OpenSocial. 'Next stage' The participation of MySpace, which is the biggest network with more than 200 million users, will encourage many more developers to get involved. It will also be seen as a major challenge to Facebook, the fast-growing network which opened up its site to outside software developers in May. In a press conference in California, Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt and Chris De Wolfe, president of MySpace, said the two companies had been working on the deal for more than a year. The web has moved to its next stage," said Mr Schmidt. "We always knew the web would be social." Google said it had "reached out to everyone" in the social networking industry, and indicated that included Facebook.

Real test But the network, which was valued at $15bn (£7.2bn) after selling a 1% stake to Microsoft last month, appears to be sitting on the sidelines waiting to see whether OpenSocial takes off. Tens of thousands of developers have now written applications for Facebook, ranging from online Scrabble, to movie reviews and video sharing services. While Google has now staked its claim to be a big player in the social networking world, it is not yet clear just how big a threat it will pose to Facebook. That will depend on whether developers decide it is better to work with a system which will cut the cost of producing new applications for all sorts of sites. But the real test will be whether social network users care about just how open source their site is.

Questions:
1) Define the term ‘Social Networking’.
2) What other social networks are similar to the new combined Google and MySpace?
3) Is it definite that the collaboration will be successful?