The Hobbit Fans

Fans of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit have been stirred into frenzy recently, with the announcement of the start of production of the movie. Many fans on The Internet Movie Database site have expressed their concerns, with some proposing a boycott of the movie if either Peter Jackson won’t be directing, Ian Mckellan won’t star as Gandalf, or Howard Shore, the Oscar-winning composer for Lord of the Rings won’t be composing the score for The Hobbit.

With the confirmation of Pan’s Labyrinth’s Guillermo del Toro, known for his dark-fantasy style, as director, it certainly looks like that particular group of 3 would not be catching it in the cinemas in 2010, even though Mckellan has been rumoured to agree to a reprisal of his role. Peter Jackson is overseeing the production of the movie after reaching an agreement with New Line Cinema despite a financial feud stemmed from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Other fans at the online satirical news magazine The Spoof have taken a more light-hearted approach, poking fun at the media’s obsession with it. They have come up with a mock cast, with Adam Sandler playing the role of Gollum, the creepy underground creature, claiming that ‘Del Toro wanted to bring in a younger audience and feels that the "Jewishness" that Sandler will bring to the role will make the audience feel the tension’.

The Spoof has also not spared the production behind The Hobbit from ridicule, purporting that “they need some lovable characters so that McDonalds can base toys on them for their happy meals and get a lot of merchandising out of the film."

New Social Networking Phenomenon

Yuwie, the new social networking phenomenon, is paying users to browse others' profiles, inviting friends, leave comments, upload photos - everything that people already do. Yuwie's founder, Korry Rogers, pounced on the fact that teenagers are using popular sites like Myspace and Facebook almost obsessively, that they've become the new target space for advertisers.

While other networking sites are reaping massive profits from advertisers, with Facebook earning a reported US$150 million in 2007, Yuwie, which started in June 2007, plans to half its profits and share that amongst its users.

Mr Rogers, a web designer from Oklahoma, explains, "If someone only refers three of their friends, who refer three of their friends through 10 levels, that one person will collect a percentage of advertising revenues from about 88,000 end-users, which could be about $8,800 [£4,427] per month for that person." Users receive money through a Paypal account, which means that under 18s can get paid, even without what a legal definition of a job.

Yuwie, as of March 2008, has over half a million users and increasing exponentially. Its success would depend on the popularity of their applications available to the user, which now consists of a comments section, photo album, and a layout that can be personalised. The Yuwie creators are now looking to install applications that will rival that of Facebook and Myspace, to promote itself as the social networking site for youngsters.