MySpace Making Promises After Facebook Miss Step On Privacy

MySpace has indicated in a post to users that a "simplified" version of it's privacy settings will be rolled out in the next few weeks. The announcement comes in the wake of the much publicized changes to Facebook's privacy settings which has drawn the ire of user over privacy concerns.

"While MySpace at its core is about discovery, self expression and sharing, we understand people might want the option of limiting the sharing of their information to a select group of friends," says MySpace's co-president Mike Jones. "We respect our users' desires to balance sharing and privacy, and never push our users to an uncomfortable privacy position."

This may just be MySpace's lease on life... while many Facebook users are abandoning ship.

Source: cnet and MySpace

MySpace Lays Off 400

After the dust settles at MySpace the social networking site will be 400 employees fewer, leaving about 1000 in an attempt by Owen Van Natta (former Facebook executive who recently became CEO of the company) to return to a “start-up culture.” In a statement Van Natta said “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company. I understand these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.” The onetime leader in social networking sites, MySpace has taken a bit of a backseat to Facebook of late and it would appear is feeling the pinch.

Source: NYTimes

Yahoo Supports OpenSocial

In a press release today, Yahoo! Inc. announced they have agreed with MySpace, and Google to form the OpenSocial Foundation "to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web." "Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users," said Wade Chambers, Vice President - Platforms, Yahoo!. The move is a bit surprising since the OpenSocial initiative was a Google brainchild, and the two are arch rivals. The press release quotes both MySpace and Google representatives but the real question is what does Microsoft think?

Wired Exposes MySpace Flaw

According to a Wired.com blog post, MySpace has had a serious security flaw since at least October that was being exploited openly without reaction from the site until the news went mainstream. The bug allowed "voyeurs, hackers, entrepreneurs and lechers" to view private photo galleries and profiles to be viewed without permission. It was so well known in fact that websites such as MySpacePrivateProfile.com emerged that took advantage of the flaw and made it easy to peer inside the private postings of thousands of MySpace users. In a Threat Level Blog post, Kevin Poulsen writes "Barely 24 hours after my story hit the front door of Wired.com, MySpace has, without comment, closed the backdoor, and the websites that were exploiting it are no longer delivering private photos." The question then becomes did MySpace know about the bug all along? If this flaw was so well known that websites have been exploiting it for months why didn't MySpace fix it? Are the that oblivious to what was going on or where they quietly enjoying the extra page views? This will be interesting to follow.

MySpace and States Agree on Safety Guidelines

According to the Globe and Mail, and many other sources, MySpace and 49 state Attorney's have agreed on a broad set of guidelines to help protect youth online. "MySpace, ..., agreed to take further steps to ensure safety, including developing an e-mail registry that would allow parents to prohibit their children from creating an online profile for the network, according to the attorneys general." With 110 million global users and much popularity with the younger set, MySpace was a natural target for the states. “This is an industry-wide challenge and we must all work together to create a safer Internet,” MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement. Texas was the only holdout state.

California DMV turns to YouTube to get it's message out

Someone at the California DMV is thinking! The government agency responsible for motor vehicle safety and driver training has decided to target the places young people hangout... YouTube and MySpace. “We are always looking at ways to reach people, teens especially,” said department spokeswoman, Jan Mendoza. “And let’s face it, the Internet is huge. We thought it would be really cool since YouTube is free.” What impresses me about this is that here is a government agency that has decided to use technology to it's advantage without investing $ millions building something that nobody will use. Far too often IT departments feel as if they have to own the technology, and that's a little bit self serving in my opinion. Of course we are not talking about sensitive data here. The New York Times has the story.

MySpace partners with Hollywood duo to deliver Web TV show

MySpace has announced an exclusive deal with Hollywood producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, for the rights to a new Internet drama they are working on, called Quarterlife. Under the terms of the deal MySpace has a 24-hour window during which the webisode will only be available on MySpaceTV. It will then appear on Quarterlife.com. Viewers will be able to interact with the cast members through their MySpace pages. Zwick and Herskovitz are best known for their television shows Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life and MySpace officials are saying the show will offer “the highest-quality serialized content ever to appear on the Internet. We're talking about the same production values as 24 or Prison Break.” The Globe and Mail has more.

Unions fight for right to Facebook

The Register has a story about the opposition of labour unions in the UK to the growing trend in IT departments of blocking social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Brendan Barber, General Secretary of The Trades Union Congress is quoted as saying "It's unreasonable for employers to try to stop their staff from having a life outside work, just because they can't get their heads around the technology." I think perhaps he's missing the point a bit, the problem is workers crossing the line between outside life and work duties. Blocking sites is not necessarily the answer either, but having a clear Internet usage policy would go a long way to avoiding abuse.

MySpace makes your eyes water

MySpace has inked a deal with The Onion to provide it's satirical audio, video, and print content to a branded Onion page within the social networking site. First up is the Onion News Network available on MySpaceTV portal. In typical Onion style Sean Mills, president of The Onion, is quoted as saying "The news business is like the tobacco business: you want to reach new readers at as young and impressionable an age as possible," Gotta love the Onion!

FBI turns to spyware to trace bomb threat

According to this CNET post the FBI remotely installed spyware on a MySpace account suspected of being used by a bomb threat hoaxster. The software was designed to phone home with the IP address of the suspects computer and other information garnered from the PC. The suspect was a former student of the High School that was subject of the threats. The FBI had reported in 2001 that it was working on such software, a virus called Magic Lantern, but hasn't said much about it since. I wonder if MySpace cooperated in this case or if it was done totally cloak and dagger?

Does your social networking sight define your social standing?

A research study performed by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley, suggests that users of two popular social network sites, Facebook and MySpace, tend to come from two different social classes.

In her draft report she states "Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class',". She says that Facebook users tend to be white and put a lot of stock in continuing education. In contrast MySpace users tend to come from homes where the parents did not attend college. The MySpace users also tend to come from immigrant families, she writes, "MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers,"

I really hat labelling 'classes' of society, to me it makes a lot of sense that one group of like minded people will flock to one site while others with contrary views/beliefs will migrate to the other, it's human nature.

Check out the entire story at the BBC.

Your favourite shows from childhood in 6 minutes or less

Sony has re-purposed some of your favourite old television shows and released the trimmed down versions on the myspace minisode network. Now you can take a trip down memory lane and view the original Charlies Angels, Starsky & Hutch, Diff'rent Strokes, VIP, T.J. Hooker... the list goes on. The videos are all edited down to between 3 and 6 minutes, just long enough to get the plot and keep you from wasting too much time watching really bad TV. Though I'm having difficulty viewing any of these at the moment, seems like a lot of people need their Farrah Facett fix.