Since I’ve blocked out communications from Fast Company ever since their linkbait Influence Project started a couple of months ago, I didn’t see this below email sent to all “participants” of the project signaling its close (thanks Danny Sullivan!).

The Influence Project’s basic goal was to get people click on Fast Company links — the more links you personally got people to click on, the bigger your “influence.”

Blogger Jeremy Schoemaker heroically got enough people to do it, beating out Internet biggies like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, video blogger iJustine and even our own Michael Arrington in online influence according to the Fast Company rules.

iJustine did get her place in the Fast Company sun however, in a sprawling six page photo piece called “The New Faces of Social Media,” which actually included none of the top Influence Project influencers. (A much shorter article about those guys here).

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan points out the discrepancy between the two sets.

Online influencers according to The Influence Project

1. Jeremy Schoemaker
2. Shefqet Avdullau
3. Tod Sacerdoti
4. Cory Boatright
5. Greg Clement
6. Frank Kovacs
7. Sebastian Saldarriaga
8. James Dunn
9. Richard Lee
10. Pace Lattin

Online influencers according to the Mark Borden “The New Faces of Social Media” piece

1. Justine Ezarik
2. Jill Fletcher
3. Gary Vaynerchuk
4. Christopher Poole
5. Greg Allan
6. Jonah Peretti

Truth be told, it’s taken tl:dr.it about 20 minutes to summarize “The New Faces Of Social Media” so I haven’t actually read it, but the very fact that it’s paginated probably means that there’s nothing in it you as TechCrunch readers don’t already know.

Key takeaway: Instead of an article of any substance or a spot on the cover, non- web celebrity participants in the project got the following letter …

Bob Safian here, the editor of Fast Company.

I want to personally thank you for participating in our online experiment, The Influence Project, last summer. More than 30,000 people signed up, and more than 1.5 million individuals came to the site to show their support.

We promised to highlight all participants who submitted photos in the November issue of the magazine; that issue is now rolling out on newsstands across the country. (The cover image is of Lance Armstrong.) You can also view the final results of The Influence Project–and zoom in on specific photographs–at www.fastcompany.com/influence.

I hope you found The Influence Project a worthwhile experience.

Thanks again,

Bob Safian
Editor
Fast Company

Well, no Bob, as a participant, I most certainly did not find The Influence Project a worthwhile experience, not in the slightest. First of all you all but ignored the guy who actually won and picked your own winners, presumably because an opening picture of iJustine will drive more traffic to your website than a profile of the virtually unknown outside of the tech industry Jeremy Schoemaker.

And then, to add insult to injury, and despite your previous promises of this thing actually having some real world impact (a.k.a influence), you end up putting cyclist Lance Armstrong on the cover of what was vaguely designated as your Fast Company “Influence Project” issue because what? Oh, that’s right, while they may generate traffic, online influencers (even your self-designated “New Faces Of Social Media”) don’t necessarily sell hard copy magazines.

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In the summer of 2009 MySpace hired Katie Germinder, Facebook’s Director of User Experience and Design, as an SVP. Her primary job was to assemble a “swat team” of leading outside designers and user interface experts and re-imagine MySpace from the ground up. That team was made up of four people – including two former Apple designers and one ex-Facebooker – and worked out of a conference room in MySpace’s San Francisco offices for six months. They were creating a new site, located at remakingmyspace.com, and it was going to launch sometime right about now.

RemakingMySpace was going to be a new version of MySpace with every piece of legacy stuff thrown out the door. Users and employees would be solicited for input – to get new ideas and vote on already submitted ones – to rebuild the service brick by brick. Most of the work over the last six months was spent reimagining the design in various ways that would be shown to users, and building tools for the submission and consideration of new ideas. And “users” was broadly defined to include input from artists and bands, advertisers, etc.

It was bold, controversial and progressive. And now it’s also very, very dead. Germinder left MySpace last week. And the guy who hired her, former CEO Owen Van Natta, was terminated the week before.

So what happened? The project was trouble from the start. Germinder was strongly pushing the project, obviously, and had the support of Van Natta. But she was working outside of Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn’s organization. Hirschhorn hated the idea from the start, say multiple sources, and constantly worked to undermine it. He favored a much more straightforward redesign effort. And, sources say, VP Product Mike Macadaan was also an outsider to the project, and strongly disapproved say of the whole process.

None of that mattered as long as Van Natta was CEO and was able to push the project along. But once he was gone and Mike Jones and Hirschhorn took over as co-presidents, remakingmyspace was history. Within a day the team was dissolved and moved back into the product organization. The Apple designers, there as consultants, will likely be leaving shortly as their contracts expire.

We’ve spoken with sources on both sides of this. Some say that the the consultants were way too expensive and Hirschhorn and Jones thought the pace of the project was too slow. But others who knew about the project (the site was live for some MySpace employees) thought it was brilliant, and noted that six months wasn’t all that long for a project of this scope. There was genuine excitement within MySpace over remakingmyspace.com, and some are disgusted that it was all thrown away.

One thing that strikes us as odd is the fact that the chief complaints – expense and time – were no longer relevant. The project was effectively done and the expense of it was behind them. “This was killed out of pure vindictiveness,” says one source. Another said that Hirschhorn never even bothered to really understand it, he just wanted it killed.

So what comes next? A straightforward redesign that won’t rock the boat, says one source. Another says that many of the ideas from remakingmyspace will eventually make their way into whatever MySpace launches. Officially, all MySpace will say is “The reimagination of MySpace’s user interface is a top priority. Under Jason Hirschhorn, VP of Product Mike Macadaan and his team are leading the charge to redesign the site and create a beautiful new and exciting environment for our users.”

We’re now trying to track down and verify screen shots and the new logo for remakingmyspace.com. Stay tuned for updates.

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Aurora Feint started out as a puzzle game developer for the iPhone platform but has since evolved into the maker of a comprehensive social gaming platform dubbed OpenFeint that continues to attract independent iPhone game developers to join its rapidly growing community. Today, the startup is launching the private beta of OpenFeint X, which offers indie developers the ability to create Zynga-like free-to-play games including microtransactions and virtual goods.

With the success of Zynga and PlayFish on Facebook, Aurora Feint wants to help create more of these types of free-to-play games on the iPhone. Launched with Japanese investment partner and mobile gaming company DeNa Group, OpenFeint X will be rolled out to the general public in phases over the next few months. With the international investment in the project, we can assume that OpenFeint X is designed to develop games that appeal to global markets as well.

Using the new platform, developers can create games with a chat wall where players can interact with each other, a newsfeed showing recent in-game activity, and game nudges. And OpenFeint X’s premium services allows developers to use a cloud-based infrastructure to build and run a full virtual goods store, access detailed analytics, and include game-specific currency wallet.

The existing OpenFeint platform is quite popular amongst developers and already powers social gaming services for 12 million users and is growing at a monthly pace of 25 percent. The strategy of trying to develop Facebook-like free-to-play games through Open Feint isn’t surprising. Peter Relan, executive chairman of Aurora Feint, also happens to be the executive chairman of CrowdStar, a social game developer on Facebook, which makes develops Happy Aquarium, Happy Island and Happy Pets.

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After months of silence, Yahoo’s BOSS team is opening up to frustrated third party developers about the future of the powerful search platform. A few hours ago, Yahoo’s Ashim Chhabra left a post on the BOSS group forum, offering an explanation for why it has taken so long for Yahoo to relay information to developers, and giving them some idea of BOSS’s fate. The good news? BOSS will continue to live on in some form, but it’s unclear exactly how things will be changing and which services will be powered by Microsoft technology — and there may be fees involved. That uncertainly will probably leave some developers on edge, but at least they know the project isn’t being scrapped entirely.

Chhabra’s post was clearly prompted by the actions of some frustrated BOSS developers, who grew tired of being left in the dark and approached the Department of Justice to talk about how BOSS will be impacted by the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal. The DOJ heard their complaints, scheduling a conference call with them for next week. Chhabra’s post may help placate them for the time being. We’ve included his full post below:

Folks,

Thank you for your feedback. We understand your frustration. This process has been long for all of us due to the complex nature of our agreement with Microsoft, and we appreciate your patience.

Under this agreement, Yahoo! is permitted to continue offering the BOSS web service, with search results that would integrate Yahoo! services and content with algorithmic results provided by Microsoft. As always, our intention is to provide a BOSS offering as long as it makes business and economic sense to do so. We are still examining what the BOSS offering will consist of, with some services powered by Microsoft, unique content that Yahoo! currently provides, and the potential for additional Yahoo! content in the future.

Prior to the announcement of the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement, we’d already shared our intention to explore a fee-based structure for BOSS. We continue to explore an appropriate fee structure or other revenue model as we work through the future of BOSS.

As you know, we must receive regulatory clearance before actual implementation of the search deal with Microsoft can occur. Only then can we finalize the future shape of BOSS. Of course, we will provide additional clarity and certainty when we can.

Thanks for your attention!

Yahoo! BOSS team

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