This week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) brought together leaders of the interactive marketing and advertising ecosystem to Carlsbad, California, for its 2010 Annual Leadership Meeting to discuss and debate the key issues facing the future of marketing and advertising. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in last night’s closing keynote and to share the stage with our very own co-President Jason Hirschhorn.

During our keynote Jason and I elaborated on MySpace’s core offerings from an entertainment standpoint. With exclusive access to music, videos, artists, and other compelling entertainment, the site has long been a destination for discovery and we really wanted to show this crowd how MySpace is thinking differently about the advertiser experience and illustrate the level of sophistication that we are able to bring to the table.

In December, Google announced plans to implement the MySpace Real-Time Search API, which would push publicly available updates from our users to Google in real-time. The implementation is now LIVE on Google and we couldn’t be more excited to be the first social networking platform to light up real-time integration with Google.

Empowering our audience to share, discover and showcase content – whether it’s music, movies or games – is core to the MySpace experience. This partnership increases our users’ ability to share and showcase content across the open Web and gives people outside the MySpace network even more ways to discover new content.

You never think about the behind the scenes of a website as ubiquitous as MySpace unless something goes wrong – you see an error response or the site isn’t quite running as quickly as you’re used to. People rely on social media to share, discover, connect and communicate, and expect their favorite site to be waiting for them no matter what. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are people out there who spend all of their energy making sure a site is always up and running well.

One of those people is Linh Chung – Linh runs the Production Operations team at MySpace and is in charge of making sure the site is always up, the platform runs smoothly, and users are receiving a great user experience. The Production Operations team manages a huge undertaking when you consider that MySpace is utilized by more than 100 million users in 29 countries around the world, yet the team is only comprised of roughly 24 people.

For the past few days I feel like I’ve taken a crash course on The GRAMMYS. Growing up as a kid, and working as a music-obsessed DJ, watching my favorite artists on the GRAMMYs has been a bit of a tradition. I remember watching Janet Jackson perform “What Have You Done for Me Lately” in 1987 and Michael Jackson’s memorable “Man In the Mirror” performance in 1988. I never anticipated to not only attend the awards show once again, but actually working as a red carpet correspondent for MySpace Music, CBS, and the GRAMMYs. As cheesy as it sounds, it was a dream come true!

I can also say that I have a new appreciation for not only the GRAMMYs, but the entire national organization that operates 365 days out of the year in 12 major cities. I’ve learned a lot about programs like Music Cares that help musicians and artists in need during financial hardships for things like healthcare and other expenses.