Muzui, a social gaming site that lets you play casual mobile and Flash-based games online or on a cell phone with friends today announced that it has launched the service to the public.

When you decide to play a game in Muzui, you can either sign up or play as a guest. If you play as a guest, you won’t be able to connect with friends in the social sphere, but you can play as much as you’d like. But the main premise of Muzui is to forgo playing alone and join the site to interact with others in a game environment.

Once you sign up (Muzui lets you use your Social ID from Facebook or MSN if you’d prefer to use that), you can add friends and start playing games. If you play games with others, you can start collecting coins regardless of whether you win or lose. The coins act as a meter to show others how experienced you are in using the service and may or may not help gauge your skill level.Source:TechCrunch

Once the brainchild of Microsoft Research, Wallop joined the fray of social networks back in 2006 when the company’s CEO told the world that it wanted to compete with the likes of Facebook and MySpace, but do so by providing users with an unlimited capacity to upload digital media and have a revenue model that didn’t revolve around advertising, but instead it would revolve around the sale of “self-expression items.”

At that time, the company believed that everything was in place and it was ready to confront the world of social networks with a service that could easily compete on the same level as Facebook and MySpace.

Evidently, it was wrong.Source:TechCrunch

Best Buy announced today that it has acquired Napster for $121 million in cash. The company said that it will keep Napster’s executive team and will leave the Napster service and its estimated 700,000 users in place without changing much in the near-term.

During the 2008 fiscal year ending March 31, Napster had revenue of $127.5 million, and a loss of $16.5 million. The loss was an improvement over its last fiscal year, though, when it lost $36.8 million.

Best Buy ostensibly believes that it can eventually make Napster turn a profit or, at the very least, provide a service that is valued by its customers (Best Buy was a Napster partner in 2004). But how does acquiring Napster help the company in any way?

Napster, the original peer-to-peer music sharing network that has since transformed itself into a legal subscription service, is being acquired by Best Buy. The electronics retailing giant will be paying $121 million to buy Napster – a more than 85% premium to where Napster’s beleaguered shares were trading as of Friday.

Although Napster was able to sign up more than 700,000 subscribers, the service was never profitable and was on track to run out of cash sometime next year. Under Best Buy’s ownership, that problem is resolved, and the combined companies are confident that they can use Best Buy’s massive reach and distribution to improve the business, in addition to leveraging Napster to sell other digital products to consumers.

In corporate speak, Best Buy says “We can foresee Napster acting as a platform for accelerating our growth in the emerging industry of digital entertainment, beyond music subscriptions. We’re very excited to add these capabilities to leverage our existing relationships with the labels, the studios, and the hardware providers. We believe Napster will be an outstanding addition to our already robust portfolio of partners and offerings in the digital music space.”

While Napster was the first big name in online music (and actually sold its name for $8 million after being shut down by music industry lawsuits in 2002), it has been lapped many times over by Apple’s iTunes, with the pay-per-download model proving far more popular than all-you-can-eat subscriptions.

Napster has recently moved to catch up, launching a web-based version and offering DRM-free downloads. In the end, that wasn’t nearly enough to make Napster a successful standalone business, but Best Buy is certainly one of the more logical places for the company to land.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Napster Investor Settles Last Lawsuit for $130MNapster to Offer Wireless Downloads on AT&TNapster Launches a New Web-Based Version of Subscription ServiceNapster Loses CFO; Shares Hit a New LowNapster to Offer DRM-Free MP3 DownloadsWill 6 Million DRM-free MP3s Restore Napster’s Former Glory?Napster Raising Prices. Is it Going Out of Business?

Best Buy has announced plans to acquire Napster today for $121 million in cash. From the release, the proposed acquisition includes Napster’s approximately 700,000 digital entertainment subscribers, its Web-based customer service platform, and innovative mobile capabilities. In conjunction with the definitive merger agreement, Napster CEO Chris Gorog and key members of senior management of Napster have entered into employment agreements, effective at closing, pursuant to which they have agreed to continue as the Napster leadership post-acquisition.

Napster, which recently launched one of the world’s largest MP3 stores, had fiscal 2008 revenue of $127.5 million, an increase of 15 percent over the prior fiscal year; a loss of $16.5 million, an improvement compared with a loss of $36.8 million the prior fiscal year; and positive cash flow for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008.

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Please be aware that we just received word from a Napster user that the Napster service will have a rate increase at the end of this month. The price will be going up 30% from $9.95 to $12.95 but if you act now you can lock-in an exciting annual rate at the $9.95 price! The official memo is below.

I struggle with the reasoning behind why anyone would use Napster in its current form. You don’t own the music, you are just renting it for listening purposes. it can’t be used on the most popular music device today and it’s expensive. With all of the DRM talk lately, it just doesn’t make financial sense to me. Can someone help me understand what the draw is for becoming a Napster subscriber? One theory I’ve heard is that people can easily crack the WMA DRM making it easy to get all the songs you want.

Update: Adam (Ostrow) from Mashable has also posted about the rate increase. He notes, "As someone that sits in front of a computer for the better part of the day, an unlimited streaming plan makes sense for me, since I can listen to as much music as I want."

Uhm, I don’t get it Adam - why not just load up the radio function on iTunes and get all the songs you want all day?

Official memo:

Dear Member,

We wanted to let you know about an important pricing change to your Napster membership.

For the first time in over four years, we are increasing the Napster monthly subscription fee from $9.95 to $12.95. This change will take place beginning on January 30, 2008. As a valued member, we would like to extend a special offer to keep your existing monthly rate.

If you switch to an annual subscription now, you can lock in your existing rate of $9.95 per month. With this special offer, you will be billed $119.40 – a $36 savings over the new monthly rate – for a full year of Napster.

Wired music writer Eliot Van Buskirk decided to cancel his online subscriptions. His anti-DRM talk made me sleepy, but what woke me up was the ludicrous amount of time Van Buskirk spent on the phone with Napster and Rhapsody. No doubt many subscribers hang up after half an hour and let the charges accumulate. The real moneymaker for these companies may not be DRM, but CRM.