tech stuff » myspace

Lawyers: Woman in MySpace case should get 3-years in prison

Cody Taylor — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:00:10 +0000

A Missouri mother should serve three years in prison for her role in a MySpace hoax on a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide, federal prosecutors said in court documents filed Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Bill Would Declare Your Blog a Weapon

Cody Taylor — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:00:07 +0000

Mike writes “Law prof Eugene Volokh blogs about a US House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others that could make it a federal felony to use your blog, social media like MySpace and Facebook, or any other Web media ‘to cause substantial emotional distress through “severe, repeated, and hostile” speech.’ Rep. Sanchez and colleagues want to make it easier to prosecute any objectionable speech through a breathtakingly broad bill that would criminalize a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment. The bill is called The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, and if passed into law (and if it survives constitutional challenge) it looks almost certain to be misused.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

White House Joins Facebook, MySpace, Twitter

Cody Taylor — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:00:37 +0000

theodp writes “The official White House Blog called the move WhiteHouse 2.0 as the Obama administration unveiled its membership in a trio of the social-networking leaders: Facebook (157,606 fans and counting), MySpace (174,817 friends and counting) and Twitter (34,612 followers and counting).”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Web Analytics Databases Get Even Larger

Cody Taylor — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:00:08 +0000

CurtMonash writes “Web analytics databases are getting even larger. eBay now has a 6 1/2 petabyte warehouse running on Greenplum — user data — to go with its more established 2 1/2 petabyte Teradata system. Between the two databases, the metrics are enormous — 17 trillion rows, 150 billion new rows per day, millions of queries per day, and so on. Meanwhile, Facebook has 2/12 petabytes managed by Hadoop, not running on a conventional DBMS at all, Yahoo has over a petabyte (on a homegrown system), and Fox/MySpace has two different multi-hundred terabyte systems (Greenplum and Aster Data nCluster). eBay and Fox are the two Greenplum customers I wrote in about last August, when they both seemed to be headed to the petabyte range in a hurry. These are basically all web log/clickstream databases, except that network event data is even more voluminous than the pure clickstream stuff.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook Has Twitter Envy – But Why?

Cody Taylor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:17 +0000

It is no secret that Facebook has Twitter envy. The number one social networking site is not content to win over rival MySpace. It is not satisfied being far ahead of Google on the social web. Facebook now has Twitter firmly in its crosshairs.

Former Facebook Executive To Be Named CEO of MySpace

Cody Taylor — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:00:19 +0000

Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will be named CEO of MySpace, as early as tomorrow, said sources close to the situation.

MySpace Fires Employee After Data Breach

Cody Taylor — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:00:12 +0000

“On Monday, workers for the social networking site learned of a data breach orchestrated by a fellow employee, who collected names, Social Security numbers and compensation information of many of his co-workers.”

Academics To Predict Next Twitter and Its Pitfalls

Cody Taylor — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:00:08 +0000

An anonymous reader writes “University researchers in the UK have put together a team tasked with predicting the next big thing in terms of communication technologies, in a bid to tackle ethical pitfalls before they become a problem. This is in the wake of the rise of social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, which has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of personal information available online.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Last of the Facebook Holdouts

Cody Taylor — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:00:15 +0000

Still having trouble boarding the social media bandwagon? You’re not alone. They’re a rare breed, some might even say an endangered species. But as social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter continue to build populations surpassing those of many countries, the last of the Web 2.0 holdouts remain proud to be freewheeling free agents.

Facebook Takes a Dive: Why Social Networks Are Bad Business

Cody Taylor — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:00:09 +0000

There has been turmoil at Facebook and MySpace.That may be because neither one of them will ever make a cent of profit.