As far as we can tell, the guy who’s going to be taking over MySpace along with the rest of News Corp.’s digital assets doesn’t actually use the site itself.
The world’s second largest social network, MySpace, has found a new partner that may make the relationship between MySpace and Google a little more rocky: Microsoft.
The “Place for Friends” is starting to feel lonely. MySpace, the Rupert Murdoch-owned website once synonymous with social networking, is losing popularity and key staff in its biggest troubles since launching five years ago.Latest figures show that Murdoch is being beaten in the fight for social networks.
TechDirt is reporting that the ACLU has stepped in on behalf of several teens facing the threat of child pornography in Pennsylvania for sharing of nude pics of themselves. Unfortunately for a girl in New Jersey she is facing much more than just a threat as she was arrested yesterday for posting almost 30 explicit pictures of herself on MySpace for her boyfriend to see. “the ACLU has sued the prosecutor on the girls’ behalf, saying he shouldn’t have threatened them with baseless charges — which haven’t yet been filed — if they wouldn’t agree to probation and a counseling program. The prosecutor says he was being “proactive” in offering them a choice, but the ACLU says he shouldn’t be using “heavy artillery” to make the threats. As its attorney points out, teaching kids that this sort of behavior can bring all sorts of unwanted and unforeseen ramifications is a good idea, but threatening them with child-porn charges isn’t the best way to do it.”
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Jack Spine writes “The UK government, which is becoming increasingly Orwellian, has said that it is considering snooping on all social networking traffic including Facebook, MySpace, and bebo. This supposedly anti-terrorist measure may be proposed as part of the Intercept Modernisation Programme according to minister Vernon Coaker, and is exactly the sort of deep packet inspection web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee warned about last week. The measure would get around the inconvenience for the government of not being able to snoop on all UK web traffic.”
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Defeat Globalism writes in with a Canadian court decision that has ordered a man suing over injuries from a car accident to answer questions about content on his private “friends only” Facebook page. “Lawyers for Janice Roman, the defendant in the lawsuit, believe information posted on John Leduc’s private Facebook site — normally accessible only to his approved ‘friends’ — may be relevant to his claim an accident in Lindsay in 2004 lessened his enjoyment of life. As a result of the ruling by Justice David Brown of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, Leduc must now submit to cross-examination by Roman’s lawyers about what his Facebook page contains. Brown’s Feb. 20 ruling also makes clear that lawyers must now explain to their clients ‘in appropriate cases’ that postings on Facebook or other networking sites — such as MySpace, LinkedIn and even blogs — may be relevant to allegations in a lawsuit, said Tariq Remtulla, a Toronto lawyer who has been following the issue.”
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longacre writes “A man on trial in New York for possession of a weapon has been acquitted after subpoenaing his arresting officer’s Facebook and MySpace accounts. His defense: Officer Vaughan Ettienne’s MySpace “mood” was set to “devious” on the day of the arrest, and one day a few weeks before the trial, his Facebook status read “Vaughan is watching ‘Training Day’ to brush up on proper police procedure. From the article,’You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street,” Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. “What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room.” Except that trash talk in locker rooms almost never winds up preserved on a digital server somewhere, available for subpoena.'”
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Forget about rivalries with MySpace and LinkedIn. Facebook’s real competition is coming from upstart microblogging site Twitter By Sarah Lacy Every time monthly Web traffic numbers are released, you can expect at least a half-dozen blogs to run a graph …
A leaked memo states three executives at MySpace are leaving the company to form their own startup, led by COO Amit Kapur. He will be joined by senior VP of technology Jim Benedetto and and senior VP of product strategy Steve Pearman.
An anonymous reader writes “Three months after being awarded 3 million in a lawsuit against Atlantis Blue Capital for violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, Facebook earlier this week filed a federal complaint against ‘Spam King’ Sanford Wallace in San Jose District Court. Las Vegas night club manager Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw are also named as defendants in the suit.” These filings do not mark the first time Wallace has faced legal action; last May, MySpace won a 0 million judgment against him.
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