MSNN-My Social Networking News

Facebook planning targeted adverts

2007-08-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

Facebook is planning to implement a Google AdWords-style advertising system that will target messages at a user's individual profile, according to media reports.

A report in The Wall Street Journal suggests that the advertising system is now the company's top priority.

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed to the newspaper that the company is working on a new system of advertising, but refused to say whether it will be based on adverts targeted at personal data.

The plan is reportedly at a very early stage and the social networking site is expected to launch a trial service soon.

If the system works in the same way as Google's, marketers will be able to buy keywords that see their ads run next to matched user content.

According to The Times, the advertisements will appear differently from the website's banner ads and boxes and could be mixed up with a user's daily 'news feed'.

Facebook currently has 30.6 million visitors and is predicted to make a profit of $30m (£15m) on its $150m revenue in 2007.

Why Facebook Is the Future

2007-08-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

On Aug. 14 a computer hacker named Virgil Griffith unleashed a clever little program onto the Internet that he dubbed WikiScanner. It's a simple application that trolls through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia, and checks on who is making changes to which entries. Sometimes it's people who shouldn't be. For example, WikiScanner turned up evidence that somebody from Wal-Mart had punched up Wal-Mart's Wikipedia entry. Bad retail giant.

WikiScanner is a jolly little game of Internet gotcha, but it's really about something more: a growing popular irritation with the Internet in general. The Net has anarchy in its DNA; it's always been about anonymity, playing with your own identity and messing with other people's heads. The idea, such as it was, seems to have been that the Internet would free us of the burden of our public identities so we could be our true, authentic selves online. Except it turns out--who could've seen this coming?--that our true, authentic selves aren't that fantastic. The great experiment proved that some of us are wonderful and interesting but that a lot of us are hackers and pranksters and hucksters. Which is one way of explaining the extraordinary appeal of Facebook.

Facebook is, in Silicon Vall--ese, a "social network": a website for keeping track of your friends and sending them messages and sharing photos and doing all those other things that a good little Web 2.0 company is supposed to help you do. It was started by Harvard students in 2004 as a tool for meeting-- or at least discreetly ogling--other Harvard students, and it still has a reputation as a hangout for teenagers and the teenaged-at-heart. Which is ironic because Facebook is really about making the Web grow up.

Whereas Google is a brilliant technological hack, Facebook is primarily a feat of social engineering. (It wouldn't be a bad idea for Google to acquire Facebook, the way it snaffled YouTube, but it's almost certainly too late in the day for that. Yahoo! offered a billion for Facebook last year and was rebuffed.) Facebook's appeal is both obvious and rather subtle. It's a website, but in a sense, it's another version of the Internet itself: a Net within the Net, one that's everything the larger Net is not. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a classy, upmarket feel to it--a whiff of the Ivy League still clings. People tend to use their real names on Facebook. They also declare their sex, age, whereabouts, romantic status and institutional affiliations. Identity is not a performance or a toy on Facebook; it is a fixed and orderly fact. Nobody does anything secretly: a news feed constantly updates your friends on your activities. On Facebook, everybody knows you're a dog.

Maybe that's why Facebook's fastest-growing demographic consists of people 35 or older: they're refugees from the uncouth wider Web. Every community must negotiate the imperatives of individual freedom and collective social order, and Facebook constitutes a critical rebalancing of the Internet's founding vision of unfettered electronic liberty. Of course, it is possible to misbehave on Facebook--it's just self-defeating. Unlike the Internet, Facebook is structured around an opt-in philosophy; people have to consent to have contact with or even see others on the network. If you're annoying folks, you'll essentially cease to exist, as those you annoy drop you off the grid.

Facebook has taken steps this year to expand its functionality by allowing outside developers to create applications that integrate with its pages, which brings with it expanded opportunities for abuse. (No doubt Griffith is hard at work on FacebookScanner.) But it has also hung on doggedly to its core insight: that the most important function of a social network is connecting people and that its second most important function is keeping them apart.

Siphoning MySpace tunes using Safari

2007-08-25T00:38:00.000-07:00

When it comes to protecting digital content holders from the hordes of naughty file grabbers, you'll be hard pressed to find a more zealous partner than Apple. So we were surprised to learn that Apple's Safari browser makes it easy to download MP3 files hosted on MySpace that are supposed to be limited to streaming only.

MySpace programmers have taken pains to obfuscate the location of the MP3 file music artists embed into their MySpace profiles. Until now, pirates had to use programs like Ethereal or Burp to divine where a tune was stored. But thanks to a Safari feature called the Activity Window, that cumbersome process is no longer necessary.

We read Dave Shanley's writeup of the technique and were able to replicate the process, although with a few minor modifications.

At the moment, we're huge fans of the Dexateens, a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, quintet that plays a gritty, southern-fried psychedelia infused with punk. (So moved are we with their song "Makers Mound" from their most recent album that the sectors of our hard drive where that song is stored have been damn near ground to dust.)

So we were eager to see if we could use the technique to acquire "Lost and Found," a demo that we're pretty sure can't be acquired anywhere else. It took us a little while, but we got it. Here's how:

Fire up Safari and point it to the Dexateens MySpace profile. "Lost and Found" should start playing.
Select Activity from the Window menu to show a list of every connection the browser is making. About halfway down the resulting list, you'll see a link that contains the string "musicplayerxml.ashx." In our case, the full string is http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/musicplayerxml.ashx?b=16390798. Double click on it.
Safari will open that link, but it won't tell you very much without a little prompting. To do this, choose View Source from the view menu. You now have a window that contains lots and lots of links. Finding the link to the demo is as simple as searching for the string "mp3."
Doing that will reveal the link http://cache09-music02.myspacecdn.com/69/std_532891bc2226eddebd6420a3deee2c33.mp3. Cut it and paste it into your browser and you'll have the MP3 on your desktop in no time.
There are a few caveats. MySpace appears to behave differently depending on your IP address. For instance, if you're in California and put the last link into a browser, you're likely to get an error message indicating you are not authorized to access the file. We got around this by using the Unblock City web proxy.

We were also stymied by QuickTime, which popped up as soon as we were able to access the page. It presented us with a window pimping QuickTime Pro, which we were told is needed to actually download the file. Now, we know there's a way to change settings so QuickTime isn't invoked each time we click on an MP3 link, but we really, really wanted to download this demo. So we simply uninstalled QuickTime.

(We'd be indebted if someone would add a comment below reminding us how the hell to appoint some other player that doesn't try to punt pesky up-sell pop-ups.)

The lesson here is the same one we've heard over and over. Technology designed to limit what can be done with files distributed over the net to millions of people are at best a mere inconvenience. There's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Once you release something online, it's pretty much out there forever.

It's also worth noting that it's MySpace that has left the door open here. Safari is just an enabler that makes the hack easier than using a third-party app.

The insecurity doesn't seem to be lost on the Dexateens. The MP3 file containing their demo is encoded at a paltry 96 kbps. Any fan worth his salt is going to want a better sounding version of this song once it becomes available.

MTV, MySpace Join Forces For Voter-Candidate Talks

2007-08-25T00:37:00.000-07:00

MySpace and MTV have teamed up to give presidential candidates and voters a platform for online discussions.
The plan announced Thursday will allow voters to send e-mail, text messages or instant messages to candidates during 11 live events from September through December of this year.

The events will be held mostly on college campuses in the mtvU network of more than 750 U.S. colleges and universities linked with its 24-hour college channel. They will stream live on the Internet through MySpaceTV and MTV.com.

College journalists from mtvU's College Media Network are scheduled to participate.

The two companies said voters can increase their chances of getting into the audience by adding the official event profile on MySpace.com to their Top 8 friends list and being one of the first to show up when a new campus location is revealed.

MTV.com users who submit the most compelling online videos on how they're addressing election issues that impact their community will be flown to the events.

A moderator will choose the questions, while political experts and an MTV newsperson will provide support. The events will also feature real-time polls.

Democratic Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama, as well as former Sen. John Edwards and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, have agreed to participate.

Republican participants include: Senators John McCain and Sam Brownback, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.

Edwards will be the first to appear during the one-hour events. The debut will be streamed from New Hampshire on Sept. 27.

MySpace Ad Targeting Expected To Grow Over Next Year: Report

2007-08-25T00:36:00.000-07:00

As Rafat noted earlier this week, the WSJ expressed some excitement over Facebook’s plans to place targeted ads inside users’ profile pages. Today, there is similar breathlessness from Pali Capital concerning MySpace’s (NYSE: NWS) marketing deal with Coca-Cola. In a research paper, Pali hails August 17, 2007 “as a monumental day for social networking and Myspace in particular,” as Coke paid $1 million to have its logo splashed across the entire home page of the Fox Interactive Media social net for the entire day.

MySpace has begun to leverage the data input by each MySpace user into their profile from a group of predefined menu choices (related to questions such as drinker, children, education, smoker, religion, college, employer, etc…). Within the next year, MySpace will be able to target ads based on what users write and place on their Myspace page itself, such as what TV shows members like to watch or music they listen to. Aside from focusing on members’ login pages, the ad targeting will be used across all of the MySpace programmed, “safe” advertising sections, such as the Music homepage and MySpaceTV. The company will avoid MySpace users’ personal pages, leaving those areas to be sold via ad networks. Therefore, Pali concludes, the most valuable advertising real estate across MySpace should become targeted over the course of the next six- to 12 months.

From the note: “Benefiting from continued growth in domestic unique users (now up to 70 mm vs. 54 mm in July ’06 and 21 mm in July ’05), and international unique users (now above 40 mm vs. 25 mm in July ’06 and 7 mm in July ’05), with user engagement continuing to climb (simply more and more to do on Myspace) and the first-full year benefits of the Google search deal, advertising revenues are expected to be around $40 million in August ’07 climbing to north of $80 million monthly over the next 12 months.”

MySpace.Com Death Threats

2007-08-25T00:35:00.000-07:00

Athens, Alabama police arrested a man for allegedly posting a threat against the officers on a MySpace page. Police arrested 19-year-old Robert Bradley Tanksley Thursday afternoon, and they charged him with inciting to riot. Tanksley is a member of the Alabama National Guard. Police said a person who used to live in Athens contacted Athens police after seeing a message on a MySpace page that said --quote--
"Kill an Athens Cop today... There Bastards." That's how it was spelled.
Police investigated and found that Tanksley posted the message. They say Tanksley admitted during questioning to posting the item. He told police he was upset at the police department because officers impounded his vehicle last week when they cited him for
driving on a suspended license. Tanksley said he regrets posting the message and wants to
apologize to the Athens Police Department.

MySpace Pedolphile Turns Out to Be a Hoax

2007-08-25T00:34:00.000-07:00

pedophile terrorizes the town of Erwin by using the popular MySpace website, but when police investigate they find the website and pedophile are fakes.

Investigators tell Eyewitness News the culprits were children.
Debby Potter says her children use MySpace, but is scared by who they may run across. "It's spooky and it's scary. I think my space is fantastic for the kids... cause both of my girls go on it and they enjoy talking to their friends," Potter said.

Erwin Police say a man named Mr. Henry Dibbs set up a webpage on MySpace and described himself as a single man, a reformed drug addict and someone who likes to meet children.

Erwin Police investigator, Lt. Hank Hairr explains, "He specifically named that he would like to find someone who could meet his needs both mentally and sexually and specifically described it possibly someone between the ages of 13 and 18-years old."

According the website Mr. Dibbs said he used to hang out at the Erwin Municipal playground and watch the children play. The problem is, there was never a Mr. Dibbs at all."

Debbie Potter reacted with shock. "Well... I really didn't find anything out about it until I read the paper. And it was like... oh my God! There's enough spookiness out already and this is not anything we needed. I mean... it's horrible."

Parents swamped the Dunn Daily Record with complaints about the site. The paper held off doing a story until Erwin Police and the SBI could find who was responsible. "The found that it was juveniles that actually created this site and responsible for making the post on this site," Hairr said.

Police told the parents about the prank by teens and the website has been shut down. So far the youngsters have not been charged with a crime, but the investigation continues.

MySpace Defends Search Technology For Sexual Predators

2007-07-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

MySpace.com is doing all it can to minimize criticism that its popular social network is a haven for sexual predators. Last week, the site reacted to the revelation that it had grossly underreported the number of registered sex offenders signed up for its service by touting its use of a real-time search capability it developed with an online identification provider.

"Follow our lead," says MySpace's Nigam

In May, attorneys general from Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania teamed up to demand information from MySpace about its success in finding registered offenders. Soon after, MySpace announced that it had deleted profiles of 7,000 offenders. However, last week North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said more subpoenaed information revealed that MySpace had identified an additional 29,000 profiles matching data in its search of databases of registered sex offenders.

MySpace pointed to its partnership with Sentinel Tech Holdings that allowed it to remove the offenders from its site. "Through this innovative technology, we're pleased that we've successfully identified and deleted these registered sex offenders and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead," Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, said in a statement.

The politicians weren't mollified. The new figure "screams for action," said Blumenthal.

A Significant Step
MySpace said in December that it was working with Sentinel Tech, an online verification service, to develop a means of ferreting out registered sex offenders who use the site. The system, called Sentinel Safe, would allow MySpace to comb Sentinel's collection of publicly available records. "Sentinel Safe will allow us to aggregate all publicly available sex offender databases into a real-time, searchable form, making it easy to cross-reference and remove known registered sex offenders from the MySpace community," Nigam said in a statement at the time. "The creation of this first-of-a-kind real-time, searchable database technology is a significant step to keep our members as safe as possible." MySpace hired Nigam a year ago from Microsoft, where he was the director of consumer security outreach and child-safe computing, to help counter mounting fears consumers have about sexual predation within its social network.

Critics wondered about the discrepancy between MySpace's original report of 7,000 sexual predators and the 29,000 it reported only two months later. North Carolina's Cooper pointed out that the 29,000 figure represents only the offenders who used their real names to sign up. MySpace has about 180 million registered profiles on its site. MySpace executives declined to be interviewed.

"These numbers dispel any doubt that age verification and other reforms are overdue and undeniable," said Connecticut's Blumenthal. "Steadfast opposition by MySpace to age verification and parental permission for minors has no shred of credibility."

Cooper is proposing a state law that would require parental approval before kids could sign up on social networking sites. "This proposal requires that these Web sites get a parent's OK before children under 18 join and post personal information, and give parents the chance to see what their children post," he said. A Clayton, N.C., mother was unable to get MySpace to delete profiles of several of her daughter's classmates who are under 14, Cooper said.

For its part, MySpace is backing legislation that would force predators to register their e-mail addresses so Internet companies can more easily identify them.

'Dark Horse' revived on MySpace

2007-07-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

The comic book "Dark Horse Presents" came back to life Friday in a 21st century form young people gravitate toward -- MySpace, it was announced in San Diego.

The inaugural August online issue of "MySpace Dark Horse Presents," includes comics such as "Sugar Shock" by artist Fabio Moon and Joss Whedon, creator of the TV cult hit "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"; "The Umbrella Academy," by Gabriel Ba and Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance; "Samurai" by Ron Marz and Luke Ross; and "Comic-Con Murder Mystery" by Rick Geary.

Dark Horse Comics, a pioneer in creator-owned and -licensed comics material, ran in print from 1986-2000.

The announcement came during Comic-Con International in San Diego.

"We are thrilled to help resurrect 'Dark Horse Presents' in its new digital format and continue the long and storied legacy of this comic institution classic," Shawn Gold, MySpace senior vice president for marketing, said in a news release.

Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson said the online version's goal is the same as the original: "(Bring) new and talented creators to the forefront of comics culture, and also to give industry luminaries a chance to retain the rights to their work."

MySpace generation targeted by alcohol companies

2007-07-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

ALCOHOL companies are targeting teenagers through MySpace and Facebook in a bold attempt to reach a generation unaffected by traditional advertising.

Brand names such as Toohey's Extra Dry, Cougar Bourbon, and McKenna Bourbon are already attempting to sneak into once-private “communities”, and their parent companies say many more brands will follow suit.

Younger demographic

Lion Nathan’s Amy Lawrence told NEWS.com.au that the social networks were useful for targeting the younger demographic.

“Increase media fragmentation together with the popularity of online social networking across an increasingly broad group of consumers means we have to adapt to remain relevant, particularly to our 18-29 year-old drinkers,” Ms Lawrence said.

Fosters Group spokeswoman Felicity Watson denied that there were strategies in place across their brands.

But Ms Watson also said Cougar, which was part of the Fosters Group, had set up a MySpace profile of fictional spokesman Barry Dawson and accompanying advertisements.

For users unfamiliar to the character, it is not readily apparent that the page was actually set up by Cougar’s marketing team.

“Obviously we’re looking at online opportunities… (but) it’s not something we’ve been actively involved in,” she said.

“I guess, because there is a growing trend… there is a growing presence (for advertisers).”

Viral campaigns

Managing director of interactive marketing company HotHouse Simon Van Wyk said getting noticed in online communities was the key to a good viral campaign.

“What (companies are) doing is pasting (advertisements) in their FaceBook or MySpace profiles and then hoping that other people - and their list of friends - see them and engage with them,” Mr Van Wyk said

“Most of the successful viral campaigns are seeded across a number of community sites, and that’s really what drives their success.”

Ms Lawrence said the Tooheys Extra Dry uncharTED band competition was a good example of using MySpace to become part of the online world.

“Tomorrow’s big music acts are using social networking spaces to find audiences and uncharTED is helping them do that,” Ms Lawrence said.

“Because we’re providing them with something of worth, they’re happy to have us as part of the community.’”

Unsophisticated strategies

Online marketing expert from Deakin University, Stewart Adam, said it could be a while before advertisers’ strategies for conquering the MySpace generation were effective.

“I don’t think many companies have figured out how to use MySpace and Facebook,” Dr Adam said.

He also said marketers face an uphill battle in trying to become integrated into communities filled with young people, who were more likely to spot a marketing campaign.

Facebook, MySpace Aid Presidential Candidates

2007-07-25T15:32:00.001-07:00

Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and long-shot Republican Representative Ron Paul of Texas may not be leading all national polls, but their use of social networking Web sites tops their presidential rivals.

Obama has more Facebook and MySpace "friends" than the other presidential contenders: 250,000, which is about 100,000 more than his main Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton, N.Y., who leads in traditional voter polls.

Almost every major Democratic and Republican candidate has personalized Facebook and MySpace profiles, adding information ranging from lists of their favorite books to campaign promises.

Will online success mean election success?

Reading and Discussion Questions
While gauging a candidate's success in online fund raising is possible, with Obama again leading the pack, predicting whether having the most online "friends" will translate into support next year is still in question in the presidential race.

"The Holy Grail in politics currently is how to convert online enthusiasm into off-line action which results in votes," said Andrew Rasiej, a political analyst who runs the Web site techPresident.com, a site that tracks how candidates use the Web and how Internet users are affecting the elections.

"There's no demonstrative data that proves that online fervor is precipitous in any way."

Every campaign has staff members monitoring their Facebook and MySpace pages, and the major candidates "have one or two staff members paying attention to [their profiles] full time," Rasiej said.

And Facebook recently added a mechanism that allows users to build applications, or new features, on their profile pages, potentially expanding candidates' ability to contact supporters.

Different campaigns, different styles

Campaigns appear to be approaching social networking differently.

Joe Rospars, Obama's director of new media, recently posted on the campaign's Web site that the senator is taking the new medium seriously, using it to attract and organize volunteers.

"We decided to make the attempt to combine the organic support and community-building of [an online] grassroots effort with the official campaign outreach efforts," Rospars wrote on the Web site. The campaign is hoping to reply to every person who sends a message via the social networks.

Ron Paul, who has become known for his strong online support, takes a more laissez-faire approach.

According to Jesse Benton, Paul's communications director, the congressman's profiles are maintained by his grandchildren, which he said adds a personal touch. Benton said the campaign also tries to respond to each message but does not attempt to organize volunteers, target a specific audience, or use the number of friends as an indicator of voting patterns.

"We're not really trying to tightly manage how these social networks are used," Benton said. "We're kind of letting these tools shape as the Internet and our supporters demand. We're just putting it out there and whoever is attracted [by] our message and wants to network and talk about Ron Paul is welcome."

Paul leads his fellow Republican candidates in both Facebook and MySpace friends.

Using Web sites to generate money

Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, one of the leading Republican candidates, is looking to Facebook and MySpace to raise money.

Stephen Smith, director of online communications for Romney, said in a June 8 NewsHour report that the campaign is banking on users learning about the former governor and then making an online donation.

Visitors to Romney's site "have the means right here, from that very moment, of connecting with him, either learning more about his message, or MySpace has a donation which it builds in right into the page so they can start the contribution process with one click," Smith said.

Rasiej also said social networking has the ability to generate significant revenue for campaigns but not just by adding a donation button to their Facebook or MySpace pages.

"Online fund raising is a complete misnomer. Money is a byproduct of online communities, not the product, and social networks are representative of the online communities," he said.

"If you want to raise money online by tapping into the fervor of these online communities, then you should do everything you can to bolster or nurture the community. It's so ludicrous that campaigns are not paying more attention to the social networks."

MySpace starts Mexican version

2007-07-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

MySpace started a Mexican version as part of international growth plans that include expanding in 10 other countries in the next year.

MySpace Mexico began a test phase in January and page views since then have jumped 67% while sign-ups climbed 39%, the company said.

The website's community in Mexico has more than 1.5 million users, adding to MySpace's 115-million-person network in 18 countries.

Enterprise Social Networking Systems Gain Increasing Traction in Online Branding

2007-07-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

“Our latest hires join our team of individuals who understand the unique challenges facing brands that wish to reach targeted audiences through social networks," said Neighborhood America's CEO Kim Patrick Kobza, as the company announced the addition of two top digital networking industry professionals to spearhead its new business and online community branding initiatives – including Lisa Mogull, who joins from the front lines of the online social networking movement.

As Neighborhood America's director of business development/media, Mogull will be leveraging 12 years' experience acquiring revenue-generating content via entertainment industry partnerships – in addition to online communities – at Yahoo! Inc. Under her direction at Yahoo! Live Events, chats quickly became the de facto gathering place for online events.

In her new role at Neighborhood America, Mogull will usher in organizations seeking measurable and reliable social network platforms.

“Brands today are beginning to wake up and realize that in order to capture their target audience, they need to enter into a dialogue with the consumer,” she said. "I sought out the leader in the industry; a company that I felt was delivering a solution unparalleled in providing what brands need: guidance and the necessary tools for creating strategic, purposeful social networks."

Neighborhood America has recent enjoyed success with enterprise social networking systems powered by its SaaS solution and services – including Scripps’ “Rate My Space” on HGTV.com, Rodale’s Men’s Health “Transform 2007,” as well as user-generated content initiatives for ABC, CBS and FOX News. With Mogull's help the company will be delivering its proven solution to even more top-tier businesses looking to strengthen their brand through the building of online communities and the exchange of user-generated content, as it has already done for customers such as ABC, CBS, the Department of Defense and The Weather Channel.

Facebook in court over ownership

2007-07-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

Social networking website Facebook faces legal action today from the founders of a rival site over claims that their ideas were stolen, in a case that could lead to a change of ownership at the fast growing $10bn (£4.9bn) internet business.
The founders of the ConnectU site allege that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, stole their site's software code while he was working for them as a Harvard student.

They have accused Mr Zuckerberg of fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets, and have demanded to be given ownership of Facebook.

ConnectU now has 70,000 users, while Facebook has become a worldwide success with 52 million users, 6 million of whom are based in the UK.
Already the subject of a $1bn approach from Yahoo!, the company said this week it would only consider selling out for more than $10bn.

In their suit, brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, claim Mr Zuckerberg worked for them on a project called Harvard Connection, which aimed to create a network for the university's students and alumni.

They also claim that they asked Mr Zuckerberg in November 2003 to complete software and database work on the site, and asked him to finish his task before they graduated from Harvard in June 2004.

In the suit they allege that Mr Zuckerberg "never intended to provide the code and instead intended to breach his promise ... and intended to steal the idea for the Harvard Connection website, and in fact he did so".

Mr Zuckerberg went on to launch Facebook in February 2004 - three months before ConnectU started its own service.

Both Facebook and ConnectU allow users to post personalised profiles and create networks with other users.

Facebook has asked a judge at a Boston district court to throw the case out today.

In court documents, Facebook's lawyers say that ConnectU's "broad brush allegations" are unsupported by evidence.

"Each of them had different interests and activities," they wrote. "Only one of them had an idea significant enough to build a great company. That one person was Mark Zuckerberg."

A computer programmer/blogger brings word via Boing Boing that Thailand has unblocked YouTube again, more than three months after several videos poste

2007-07-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

Amid accusations that Facebook Inc. stole key ideas for its popular social web site, the company hired YouTube's former chief financial officer.

The hiring of Gideon Yu on Tuesday may be a sign that the Palo Alto company intends to remain independent. He succeeds Michael Sheridan. The company didn't say why Sheridan was replaced.

Yu became CFO of YouTube in September, helping to negotiate the video-sharing web site's $1.6 billion sale to Mountain View-based Google Inc.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Boston Wednesday delayed ruling on Facebook's motion to throw out a lawsuit filed against its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, saying he needed more information about allegations that he stole key ideas from creators of ConnectU, a rival site.

Judge Douglas Woodlock gave ConnectU until Aug. 8 to make their allegations against Zuckerberg, which include fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets, more specific.

The Associated Press reported that Judge Douglas Woodlock warned ConnectU, "Dorm room chit chat does not make a contract."

"There have been too much preliminary skirmishes in this case by too much posturing," AP reported the judge said. "The purpose of litigation is not to resolve the suit, but rather to gain leverage for settlement."

Facebook started a few months before ConnectU went online in 2004.

Facebook filed a separate lawsuit in California in 2005, accuding ConnectU of hiring programmers to hack into Facebook's site, steal e-mail addresses and contact Facebook members to try to get them to switch to ConnectU.

A previous lawsuit by ConnectU was dismissed on a technicality but refiled in March.

Originally, Facebook was just for students, who had to have email addresses from schools to register. But in September the site opened itself up to more users, hoping to cash in on the notoriety of rivals, particularly MySpace, which is open to anyone.

At the time, Zuckerberg defended the move, insisting that Facebook would consist of many small social networks rather than one large one, and would thus be distinctly different from other social web sites like MySpace.

Ticonderoga Ventures, Inc. Announces Mobile Social Networking Industry Executives Gather in San Francisco for a Conference on July 26-27

2007-07-24T15:19:00.001-07:00

Ticonderoga Ventures, Inc. announces that major executives from the social networking industry, the mobile telecom industry and the venture capital industry are registered to attend this week's Mobile Social Networking Conference. The business conference is on Thursday and Friday (July 26-27, 2007) at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown San Francisco.

The Mobile Social Networking Conference and Expo (www.SocialNetworkingConference.com) will focus on management, technology and marketing for the mobile and wireless social networking industry.

Attending the event will be senior executives from all aspects of the social networking industry and online personals industry, as well as executives from wireless telecommunication firms, cell phone and PDA manufacturers, software companies, marketing firms and entrepreneurs. The event has also drawn the high levels of attendance and interest from venture capitalists.

Speakers at this event include executives from: MySpace, Nokia, Sprint-Nextel, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Visible Path, Piczo, Rate.ee (Estonia), ComScore, FAS Research, Tickle, Userplane, Juice Wireless, AirG, VideoEgg, Social Networking Watch, Kyte.tv and others.

Topics include: Business development for mobile social networking, mobile carriers and business models for building mobile communities, SMS, MMS, content distribution for mobile social networks, future PDA and cell phone generations, software developments (including JAVA and J2ME), mobile browsers and contract negotiation for integration of social networking sites with mobile networks.

Interest in this event is greater than was originally anticipated. The hotel is sold out of all sleeping rooms the nights of the event. On-site registration is available the morning of the event.

The San Francisco event will have a final panel session with wireless carriers, phone manufacturers, software developers and social networking executives present to discuss and debate on the direction of this newly developing market and how it can be properly monetized.

Nokia sets sail for social networking with Twango acquisition

2007-07-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

Nokia Corp. continued to expand beyond mobile into the broader Internet market with the acquisition of Twango Inc., a Redmond, Wash.-based social-networking startup.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Nokia reportedly paid nearly $100 million for the 10-employee company.

Twango—which is not to be confused with Dwango Wireless, a Seattle-area mobile content that tanked last year—allows users to share photos, video clips, audio and other files through a single site. The outfit was founded in 2004 by former managers from Microsoft Corp., and earlier this year launched an XHTML site enabling users to consume media and share files from their phones.

The acquisition may mark Nokia’s riskiest move yet as it expands from handset manufacturing into a cross-platform provider of consumer-facing products and services. The company last year picked up digital music distributor Loudeye Corp. for $60 million as well as gate5, a German developer of location-based technology, for an undisclosed sum.

Twango appears to have gained considerable ground as a one-stop shop for sharing a variety of types of content, but the company competes against a seemingly infinite number of social-networking sites that are beginning to step into mobile. Nokia is betting that Twango’s ability to support multiple types of media on both PCs and handsets can help it close the gap on more established sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Flickr, among others.

“Nokia’s unique vision for social media aligns perfectly with Twango,” said Twango co-founder Jim Laurel. “It’s really exciting to imagine what we can achieve by combining our social media experience with the resources of a company that has played such a major role in shaping the mobile landscape. Now, we will have the resources to deliver on our vision to enable people to capture and enjoy their personal media on mobile devices, desktop computers and in all the other places that are important to them.”

Social Networking Site hi5 Lands $20 Million

2007-07-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

Social network hi5 today announced it has secured $20 million in venture capital funding. Led by Mohr Davidow Ventures the new funding will enable the company to expand services and grow into new markets with its popular website.

With more than 60 million registered members, hi5 is a top 10 site in more than 25 countries around the globe. Prior to this financing, the company had operated profitably for the last two years.
"hi5 has developed a strong global brand and loyal audience around the world, and we are very enthusiastic about the large market opportunity, the business momentum, and the great team they have assembled," said Jon Feiber, an MDV Partner, and new hi5 board member. "When we were evaluating potential investments in the social networking space, hi5's massive global community and track record of profitability made it a clear choice. We're excited to help the hi5 team continue to extend its reach."

Each day, millions of people connect and communicate with each other using hi5's global platform. hi5 provides a platform that breaks down location barriers, making it easier for people to stay connected with friends around the world.

"As a leading international social network, we recognize the value and opportunity in markets across the World, and we are in a strong position to continue our rapid growth," said Ramu Yalamanchi, CEO of hi5. "With the support of MDV, we'll be able to continue to invest in our platform, and to make it more valuable and relevant to our membership across the globe."

Brothers aim to hold Facebook founder accountable

2007-07-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

The men behind a lawsuit filed against the founder of Facebook say the main aim of their accusations is to hold Mark Zuckerberg, head of the social networking site, accountable for his actions.

Three former Harvard students, twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra have filed a lawsuit accusing Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for their social networking site.

The lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2004, alleges copyright infringement, the stealing of trade secrets, breach of contract and fraud.

"The fraud that's been perpetrated here is partly against us, but it's also against 30 million people who believe the site was developed in an ethical way and that it was the true creation of Mark Zuckerberg, when in fact it couldn't be further from the truth," Cameron Winklevoss told CTV's Canada AM.

According to the Winklevoss brothers, Zuckerberg's tenure with their social networking site, now known as ConnectU, lasted between three and four months. But once the brothers learned of Zuckerberg's Facebook project in a Harvard student newspaper, his employment was terminated, they said.

"We basically entrusted him with all of our source code and business plan and models and everything that we had pretty much been working on for up to a year about, prior to engaging him," Cameron Winklevoss said.

"So, he basically did what you could call a brain drain and kind of took off with it under our noses."

The brothers said they have evidence of email exchanges with Zuckerberg, source code evidence and the testimony of other programmers to back up their claims against Zuckerberg.

Facebook has since become one of the most popular social networking websites. It gains 150,000 new users a day and is reputedly valued at billions of dollars.

While the brothers said it would be "satisfying" to see Zuckerberg in court on Wednesday, they said their motivation with the lawsuit is not monetary.

"Of course the magnitude (of Facebook) is incredible today," Tyler Winklevoss said. "But we've been waging this battle, if you will, since day one."

NC AG: MySpace Finds More Sex Offenders

2007-07-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking Web site - more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago, North Carolina officials said Tuesday.

North Carolina's Roy Cooper is one of several attorneys general who recently demanded the News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people )-owned Web site provide data on how many registered sex offenders were using the popular social networking site, along with information about where they live.

After initially withholding the information, citing federal privacy laws, MySpace began sharing the information in May after the states filed formal legal requests.

At the time, MySpace said it had already used a database it helped create to remove about 7,000 profiles of sex offenders, out of a total of about 180 million profiles on the site.

Cooper's office said Tuesday, however, that now the figure has risen past 29,000.

Two MySpace spokeswomen did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Cooper is pushing for a state law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles, and require the Web sites to verify the parents' identity and age. For example, social networking sites would have to compare information provided by a parent with commercial databases. Sites could also force parents to submit credit cards or printed forms.

Cooper is working with law enforcement officials in other states in pressuring MySpace to use age and identity verification methods voluntarily. Based on media reports, Cooper's office found more than 100 criminal incidents this year of adults using MySpace to prey or attempt to prey on children.

Most recently, a Virginia man pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping and soliciting a 14-year old girl he met on MySpace.

"All we're doing is giving parents the right to make a choice whether their children can go online," Cooper told a state House committee considering the bill on parental involvement and verification. He said the measure would lead to "fewer children at risk, because there will be fewer children on those Web sites."

Advocates for Internet companies and privacy issues testified against the proposed restrictions, saying the broad parental verification standards would be found unconstitutional because they prohibit free speech or impede interstate commerce. The experts who testified also said Cooper's idea isn't foolproof, because children could fabricate their parents' information and purported consent.

The parental verification requirement "makes promises to consumers that cannot be kept. It is dangerous language," said Emily Hackett, executive director of the Washington-based Internet Alliance, whose clients include Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Yahoo Inc. and VeriSign Inc. "There is no way to eyeball a user."

The bill has already passed the North Carolina Senate. Now it goes to a House subcommittee for more consideration.

State Sen. Walter Dalton, a Democrat who is a primary sponsor of the bill, acknowledged that it won't stop all sexual predators from getting on social networking sites. But he said it addresses a problem that shouldn't be ignored, Dalton said.

"There is obviously a compelling state interest to protect our children from sexual predators," he said.

Facebook, Accused Of Copying Idea, Gets Hearing

2007-07-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

A judge is expected to decide this week whether to proceed with a lawsuit that claims Facebook's founder stole source code, trade secrets, and intellectual property from people who hired him to work on a social networking site.
U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock is expected to hold a hearing in Boston Tuesday to decide whether to the defendants' motion to dismiss the case. The lawsuit, filed in March, claims that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed to develop a Web site with students who were working on a similar online meeting place ConnectU and agreed to keep information about the project secret. Soon after Zuckerberg began the work, he registered Facebook's domain name, the plaintiffs said in court filings.

The plaintiffs want the court to shut down Facebook, give them control of the Web site, and award them profits from the social networking site.

Harvard University students, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narenda, claim that Zuckerberg agreed to develop their Web site idea in 2003, worked on it for a while, disappeared, then promised a "functioning" Web site around the time he registered Facebook.com. Within weeks he launched Facebook. Now, it has about 30 million members and the company recently rejected a $1 billion offer from Yahoo!

The lawsuit is the second filed by ConnectU. A judge threw out an earlier case because of a legal technicality. Facebook also filed its own countersuit claiming that ConnectU is abusing the legal process.

Facebook's lawyer referred calls to the company's public relations representatives. A company spokesperson said the company does comment on pending litigation. In motions to dismiss, the company's lawyers argue that the plaintiffs fail to show that specific conversations and agreements took place on specific dates, or that they have grounds for fraud complaints, among other arguments.

Social networkers ripe for ID theft

2007-07-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

Social networkers are opening themselves up to identity fraud by posting too much personal information on their profile pages, according to credit information provider Equifax.

As more and more people sign up to MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Friends Reunited and others, increasingly large amounts of personal information is becoming available to fraudsters and identity thieves.

"Fraudsters are taking advantage of the craze for social networking, and people do not realise the significance of the information they put out on the web and who may be accessing it," warned Neil Munroe, external affairs director at Equifax.

"More and more consumers are signing up to these sites every day and the chances are they'll put on their date of birth, location, email, job and marital status.

"We do not want to stop people using these sites, but we do advise them to limit the information they make available to stop people stealing their identity."

Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs, told vnunet.com that a whole new level of social engineering is emerging on the internet.

"Many consumers have only just made their first foray into this new and exciting web 2.0 development," he said.

"The last thing they will be expecting is that the same water which they treat as entertainment is already muddied with the kind of individual that makes a career out of identity theft, spam and phishing."

Equifax offers five tips to help avoid becoming a target for criminals on social networking sites:

Do not include common verification such as date of birth or mother's maiden name
Use privacy settings on profiles so that only close friends can view the information
Do not publish holiday dates or other information that could leave you vulnerable to break-ins
Do not publish information which could ruin your chances of a new job, as potential employers often search social networking sites
Be wary of everyone. Photos and profiles are often deceptive

The Next MySpace Could Be A Cluster Bomb

2007-07-23T21:16:00.001-07:00

The rise of the social network has caused the rise of other, perhaps predictable, things: copycat networks; and investor curiosity. Blame MySpace and Facebook. Blame (or congratulate) Hi5, known, apparently, everywhere but the US, for extracting $20 million out of venture capitalists.

Blame early-stage venture capitalist firm Lightspeed and partner Jeremy Liew for getting me started on this.

I say this might be predictable because we see it in every other market: something is a smash, surprising success, incredibly or potentially profitable, and all kinds of somethings just like it pop up to ride the wave until the public can't stand it anymore.

Cases in point: every search engine that came along after Google; every new YouTube-esque video site; every reality show sneezed out of LA after Survivor; every hottie bottle-blonde teen pop sensation to ever walk off the stage of the Mouseketeer's Club.

Oh yeah, and the Spice Girls.

Point is, they offer nothing new.

Mr. Liew, whom I said you could blame, was prompted by Hi5's funding success and did some digging to find out which social networks out there had the highest user engagement.

That's an interesting choice because it is indicative of where metrics are truly going. It's not just about unique visitors anymore. It's also about time spent with potential consumers. A hundred broke customers are worth far less to marketers than 10 ready-to-spend customers.

Excuse me while I state the obvious.

Liew provides us with charts and graphs, illustrating that Orkut, the Google-owned network primarily popular in Brazil and India, seems to have the most deeply active members, who outrank MySpace in terms of average pages viewed per visitor.

Orkut also nearly matches MySpace in terms of average visits per visitor. MySpace is still, by far, the king of the social networks, though, with over 100 times the number of visitors Orkut has.

In terms of all things considered – unique visitors, average pages per visitor, and average visit per visitor, MySpace trounces all competition, including the recently much-lauded Facebook.

"Myspace continues to dominate Facebook on all three key metrics, suggesting that reports of MySpace’s death are greatly exaggerated, Facebook apps notwithstanding."

Heh. Good one, Jeremy.

But these you've heard of. The next question is: which will be the next blockbuster? Inquiring investors want to know.

Recently, on a gut feeling, I announced the dawn of the niche network era. But in all actuality, I don't think a niche network – though valuable for pinpoint targeting purposes – will be able to attract enough interest, from users or investors, on its own.

Liew notes two surprises on his engagement chart lists, neither of which he had heard of, nor I, and most likely, nor you, but made both top 11 lists in terms of engagement.

One is Hoverspot.com, which appears to be, like so many others, a clone of MySpace – very vanilla, very J. Crew, very, um, Microsoft Zune. Standard, a suitable alternative, like tofu, Hyundai, Ask.com, or the other white meat.

But unless everybody defects from MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged.com, Friendster – you know, the social networks that look just like it – it's hard to imagine it being a blockbuster.

But I've been wrong before. I was wrong about Emo music.

What's more interesting to me are the true originals, and the fact that a social networking site called VampireFreaks.com is on that list. Talk about niche. Are there enough vampire freaks to make an impact, even if they're really engrossed in their network? Well, they have more visitors than Orkut, if that tells you something.

It tells me there's a surprising number of vampire freaks out there. But there's a limited number of things, as a marketer, you can expect them to bite on.

Ba-rum-bum.

However, if you gather up the vampires, the bar flies, and the full-time moms, and put them under the same roof – in separate rooms, of course – you may be on to something really brilliant: a network of niche networks already divided by demographics.

I don't expect any one social network to take over the industry giants. I expect clusters of them, bought and bundled and monetized, to it.

Class War: MySpace Vs. Facebook

2007-07-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

A flurry of recent articles have observed that young people are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves, setting off speculation that MySpace is becoming the latest victim of fickle teens following the hot new thing.

Not so, says University of California, Berkeley, researcher Danah Boyd. Not all teens are leaving MySpace, she wrote in a recent essay--instead, they're splitting up along class lines.

Boyd confirms what teens in any high school across the country already know: Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing MySpace for Facebook since it opened registration to the general public in September, while working-class kids still flock to MySpace.

That could have big implications for advertisers targeting the coveted teenaged population online, three-quarters of whom have a profile on a social network. Both sites have been powerhouses for advertisers because of their huge, wide-reaching audiences, says Robin Neifield, chief executive of interactive marketing agency NetPlus Marketing. That strategy could change if the sites become more like the niche social networks popping up across the Web for groups of like-minded people from similar backgrounds.

Boyd's essay came amid speculation about the future of the social network giants. Despite the fact that MySpace still gets more than twice as many unique visitors as Facebook, it's littered with postings announcing that users, often teens, are switching to its rival.

The number of Facebook visitors ages 12 to 17 jumped 149% over the past year, while MySpace lost 27% of teens, according to ComScore Media Metrix. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ) owns MySpace, even lamented in an interview that he was losing readers to Facebook. News Corp. is rumored to be considering swapping MySpace for a 25% stake in Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ).

Estimated ad revenue for 2007 calendar year for Facebook is $125 million, $525 million for MySpace, according to research firm eMarketer. Together, the two account for 72% of all online advertising on social networks.

There's a reason why the "goody-two-shoes, jocks, athletes or other 'good' kids" are going to Facebook, says Boyd, who studies social networks and youth culture and made her observations based on formal interviews with 90 teens, informal interviews with hundreds more, and the perusal of tens of thousands of teens' online profiles.

Facebook launched in 2004 as a site for Harvard students. Gradually, it opened up to other college students, then to high school kids if a college student invited them. "Facebook is what the college kids did. Not surprisingly, college-bound high schoolers desperately wanted in," Boyd writes.

MySpace, meanwhile, is the "cool working-class thing" for high school students getting a job after graduation rather than heading to the Ivy League, Boyd writes. Constant local news stories on predators targeting kids on MySpace further alienated the "good kids," she says. Both companies declined to comment on Boyd's essay.

Her analysis could help marketers figure out which sites to target--help she says they desperately need. "Many of the advertisers that I have met are extremely savvy about offline marketing but complete fools when it comes to online marketing," ignorant of who visits Web sites and why, Boyd wrote in an e-mail interview with Forbes. Paying attention to demographics could help. Hot Topic (nasdaq: HOTT - news - people ) should target MySpace, for example, while J. Crew (nyse: JCG - news - people ) should focus on Facebook.

"As an advertiser, in my opinion, Facebook users are more qualified to convert and more apt to buy a shirt, so I would go there before MySpace," says Josh Mohrer, director of retail for BustedTees, an online purveyor of hipster clothes and sometime Facebook advertiser.

Facebook can lure advertisers with its affluence, says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an online marketing analysis firm. His data backs up Boyd's conclusions that Facebook users are richer than those on MySpace. Still, MySpace attracts so many more viewers that "there's no way marketers are going to leave," he says.

NetPlus chief Neifield says she's not paying too much attention to Boyd's observations. Advertisers should look beyond demographics when placing ads and instead analyze online behavior like who visited other sites with similar content, who downloaded what or who clicked on which ads, she says. "It's not very often these days that we buy based on demographics alone."

MySpace sex risk 'overblown'

2007-07-23T21:14:00.001-07:00

Fears that teenagers using the social networking website MySpace are exposing themselves to sexual predators by disclosing too many personal details are probably overblown, researchers say.

Criminologist Assistant Professors Sameer Hinduja of Florida Atlantic University and Justin Patchin, a political science researcher at the University of Wisconsin, randomly selected 9282 profiles out of the 100 million purportedly available on MySpace.

Of the 2423 profiles created by people aged under 18, a total of 948 were set to 'private', meaning that only friends could view them.

Of the remaining 1475, about 8% revealed their full name, 57% included a picture, 28% listed their school, 81% identified their city and 0.3% provided their phone number.

A total of 4% included an instant messaging name, and 1% an email address.

The researchers, writing in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescence, say that predators can glean important personal snippets from these 'shop window' postings.

But overall they say situation is not as alarming as critics of MySpace suggest.

"When considered in its proper context, these results indicate that the problem of personal information disclosure on MySpace may not be as widespread as many assume, and that the overwhelming majority of adolescents are responsibly using the website," they say.

The site has come under fire from parents, teachers and law enforcement agencies after several cases in which men molested under-aged girls they had met through MySpace.

In response, MySpace launched a campaign to promote online safety and hired a chief security officer.

MySpace is the most popular social networking site and the fourth most popular English-language website in the world, according to figures cited in the paper.

The researchers warn that youngsters may be setting themselves up for problems if they post details about alcohol or drug use or other personal details on their profiles.

Such data can be seen by bullies, their parents, their school and the police, as well as by potential employers, who increasingly trawl through such sites as part of a background check.

Deleting or updating incriminating profiles does not wipe out copies of older versions, which search engines cache on their computer servers.

How many people use MySpace?

The paper also questions how many people use MySpace and how often they use it.

The authors note that of the 9282 profiles they randomly selected, 548 or 6% had been deleted, were no longer active or were otherwise invalid.

Another 278 profiles, or 3%, had been posted by musicians promoting their work.

Of the 1475 accessible profiles posted by those under 18 years old, around 30% of the teenagers had not logged in to view their profile in over three months, and about 5% of these had not done so in more than a year.

"This finding ... calls into question the claim of 100,000,000 MySpace users," say the researchers.

"Results from our study suggest the number of regular or active users to be significantly less."

They also contend that 8% of the publicly posted teen profiles showed evidence that the youngster had deliberately inflated his or her age.

This was presumably done to circumvent MySpace's age policy, the researchers say