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MySpace will open its doors to software developers allowing them to create games and media-sharing applications for the popular social network, reports the BBC.

MySpace will formally launch its “Developer Platform” next Tuesday but is already allowing people to sign up. The tools have been developed with Google and will allow programmers to create programs similar to those used by millions on rival site Facebook.

Facebook opened up its site to outside developers last year. It has since had great success, with nearly 15,000 applications written for the site.

These include photo-sharing and music recommendation tools as well as games such as scrabble. However, despite its popularity, Facebook still lags behind MySpace in terms of overall users. MySpace has around 200 million registered users, compared to 63 million who use Facebook.

Last October MySpace announced that it would join OpenSocial, Google’s platform designed to allow developers to build applications that will work on any website.

Other networks such as Bebo, LinkedIn and Orkut already use the tools.

The tools, available from 5 February, will allow developers to build applications that make use of MySpace member profile information and their connections with other users.More at BBC News.

Dec 24, `07 — Badoo, a social networking website which offers users the chance to pay to be popular while banning all advertising, is set to launch into an increasingly crowded UK market, says Mark Sweney of Guardian Unlimited.

Sweney further writes, “At the moment, Badoo is a relatively unknown web brand. However, Google recently rated it number two on its “fastest rising” list - behind the iPhone and ahead of Facebook - in its annual report based on the most popular web searches.

The fledgling company positions itself as a “natural evolution of existing social network and blogging sites”.

Badoo’s unusual business model works against the received wisdom of the primarily advertising-led efforts of established firms such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

“We wanted to be advertising free in order to have a ‘clean’ site so our users weren’t subject to adverts which we know can be a turnoff,” said Neil Bryant, the managing director of Badoo.” More at Guardian Unlimited.

NEW YORK — Dec 13, `07 — Rupert Murdoch won control on Thursday of a long-coveted prize, The Wall Street Journal, as Shareholders of Dow Jones & Co. gave final approval Thursday to a $5 billion bid from Murdoch’s News Corp to acquire the media company, the final step needed before one of the world’s most influential newspapers, The WSJ, changes hands.

The controlling shareholders of Dow Jones, the far-flung Bancroft family, had initially rebuffed Murdoch’s approach this spring, but eventually enough of them agreed to accept his rich offer of $60 a share to ensure his bid would succeed.

Dow Jones held the shareholder vote in a hotel in the financial district of lower Manhattan, near its headquarters. The formal closing of the deal is expected to occur either later Thursday or Friday. The vote was 60.27 percent in favor.

Murdoch’s bid of $60 per share represented a massive premium of 65 percent over the price Dow Jones shares had been trading at before his offer became public.

With annual revenue of about $2 billion, Dow Jones is relatively small in an age of conglomerates. But it is one of the most influential forces in American media, especially in financial news, where Mr. Murdoch has placed some very big bets of late. The company includes The Journal, whose daily domestic circulation of more than 2 million ranks second only to USA Today, and Dow Jones Newswires, the Dow Jones indexes, the Factiva information and archive service, Marketwatch.com, and other properties.

Last week Murdoch named a longtime News Corp publishing executive Les Hinton to be CEO of Dow Jones, replacing Rich Zannino, who is leaving the company.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla –BUSINESS WIRE– Dec 13, ‘07 — MySpace and Sprint announced today that Sprint will be the first US wireless carrier to link to the free MySpace Mobile Web site once it officially launches in early 2008, at no additional charge to Sprint data subscribers.

This means that Sprint customers with enabled phones will be able to click to access MySpace from the Sprint portal. The new version of MySpace Mobile will feature rich graphical design, a revamped email interface and other new features. The site is currently in beta at http://mobile.myspace.com.

In addition to the new MySpace Mobile, Sprint customers will also be able to directly link to other leading mobile Web sites from Fox Interactive Media (FIM), including IGN, FOXSports.com on MSN, RottenTomatoes, AskMen, its network of MyFOX local affiliates and the newest addition Photobucket. The agreement was announced this morning by FIM President Peter Levinsohn at Sprint’s annual Application Developer Conference in Hollywood, FL.

NEW YORK — Dec 13, ‘07 — Rupert Murdoch is poised to fulfill his dream of taking over The Wall Street Journal as a hard-fought takeover of Dow Jones & Co is expected to be completed Thursday.

Dow Jones shareholders are scheduled to vote later today on Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp takeover offer and the acquisition “is expected to be completed shortly thereafter,” both companies said in a statement last week.

Dow Jones & Co shareholders holding more than 50 percent of the voting power of the company approved its $5.6 billion sale to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the Wall Street Journal Web site said on Wednesday.

A count of the proxy votes ahead of a Thursday shareholder meeting showed shareholders owning more than half of the company’s voting power threw their support behind the deal, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

Dow Jones’s board approved the deal in July after members of its controlling family, the Bancrofts, said they would support the sale.

Ahead of the deal’s closing, Murdoch appointed News Corp veteran Les Hinton as Dow Jones chief executive and named Times of London editor Robert Thomson as the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

As Murdoch, 76, closed in on his long-sought prize, The Wall Street Journal, he gave his son, James, an expanded role in the media empire, naming him to a position apparently aimed at grooming him to head the conglomerate.

News Corp announced Friday that James Murdoch, 34, the youngest of Murdoch’s four children, will be the boss of News Corp in Europe and Asia, effective immediately.

As chairman and chief executive of the company’s businesses in Europe and Asia, James Murdoch will also oversee the Wall Street Journal Europe, the British newspapers The Times and The Sun as well as Australian publications controlled by News Corp.

News Corporation is the umbrella company for an empire that also includes the Fox News Channel, the New York Post newspaper, the Fox Hollywood film studios and television network and the rapidly growing Internet social networking site MySpace.

Dec 07, ‘07 — Rupert Murdoch installed his own leadership team at Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. on Friday, a week before his acquisition of the company is expected to close. He also tapped his son James as heir apparent to his media empire News Corp.

Les Hinton, who has spent his career at News Corp.’s newspapers, will become CEO of Dow Jones next week, following a vote of the company’s shareholders on Dec 13. Hinton currently oversees News Corp’s papers in the United Kingdom, including The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sun, and News of the World.

Robert Thomson, editor of The Times, will become publisher of the Journal. Dow Jones also owns Dow Jones Newswires, Barron’s and a news database business called Factiva.

James Murdoch was named boss of News Corporation in Europe and Asia on Friday in a move seen as putting him in line to succeed father and media mogul Rupert Murdoch as head of the sprawling empire.

The promotion of James Murdoch, the youngest of four children, marks a remarkable rise through the boardroom ranks for the only family heir inside News Corp, the US conglomerate chaired by his Australian-born father.

The younger Murdoch, who assumes his London-based post with immediate effect, is in charge of assets including News International UK, Sky Italia, the Asian-based Star TV and News Corporation Europe, the group said in a statement.

As chairman and chief executive of Europe and Asia, Murdoch will also oversee the Wall Street Journal Europe, The Times and The Sun as well as Australian publications controlled by News Corp.

The 34-year-old leaves his post as chief executive of British satellite television broadcaster BSkyB, in which News Corp is the leading shareholder, but will assume his father’s role as BSkyB non-executive chairman.

The reshuffle, which confirms what a source earlier told Reuters, appears to address the long-term speculation of who will eventually take over the media and communications conglomerate from the 76-year-old media mogul.

Rupert Murdoch’s older son, Lachlan, 36, had initially been seen as the leading contender during his time at News Corp but he left the group in 2005 to start a new venture.

Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, 39, has also been viewed as a dark horse candidate over the years. The former managing director of Sky Networks struck out on her own in 2000 and launched her own TV production company.

“This is grooming James for a larger role longer term at News Corp,” Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield said. “He has proved himself beyond a doubt over the last several years at BSkyB.”

James Murdoch joined Sky in November 2003 and has expanded the company from its pay-TV roots to add broadband and telephony services. News Corp owns 39 percent of the company.

But like his father, he has proved to be a risk taker. He has also drawn the attention of regulators, leaving the group engaged in three separate investigations and a law suit with fierce rival Virgin Media.

His most audacious move came in November 2006, when he purchased a 17.9 percent stake in Britain’s biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV.

Murdoch said the purchase was a long-term investment but its rivals accused him of trying to prevent ITV from being bought by NTL — now renamed Virgin Media — and the deal is still being investigated by the UK Competition Commission.

San Francisco, Calif — Dec 05, ‘07 — Beacon, the online advertising system that was supposed to light Facebook’s way to riches, has created such a dark storm of controversy that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg today told users they could turn it off.

The dramatic reversal in the face of huge public outcry is an attempt to restore the company’s battered image with its more than 55 million users and the marketers trying to reach them.

Excerpts from Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Thoughts on Beacon’ on The Facebook Blog

About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared.

But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn’t have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.

It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better.

People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we’re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don’t want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won’t store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we’ve heard about from you.

More at The Facebook Blog.

San Francisco, CA — Nov 29, ‘07  — Seeking to keep the peace in its popular online hangout, Facebook has overhauled a new advertising system that sparked privacy complaints by turning its users into marketing tools for other companies, the AP is reporting.

The AP further reports, “Under the changes outlined late Thursday, Facebook’s 55 million users will be given greater control over whether they want to participate in a three-week-old program that circulates potentially sensitive information about their online purchases and other activities.

Facebook provided two different opportunities to block the details from being shared, but many users said they never saw the “opt-out” notices before they disappeared from the screen.

With the reforms, Facebook promised its users will now have to give their explicit consent, or “opt-in,” before any information is passed along.

The concessions were made after more than 50,000 Facebook users signed an online petition blasting the system, called “Beacon,” as a galling intrusion that put the Palo Alto-based startup’s pursuit of profit ahead of its members’ privacy interests.

More than 40 different Web sites, including Fandango.com, Overstock.com and Blockbuster.com, had embedded Beacon in their pages to track transactions made by Facebook users.” More at AP.

NEW YORK — News Corp’s Internet division plans to launch an online network to sell advertising across Rupert Murdoch’s sprawling empire and even to other media companies as early as the first half of next year, reports Reuters.

Reuters further reports, “Fox Interactive Media (FIM) President Peter Levinsohn told the Reuters Media Summit in New York on Monday, Nov 26, that the network, internally dubbed “FIM Serve,” is the subject of discussion across the company after first being built for its MySpace online social network.

“It could happen as early as the first half of next year,” he said. “We’re ready to go … we’re starting to have conversations outside now.”

The launch of a broader ad network follows a frenzied buying spree of privately held ad networks by Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner’s AOL and Google to dominate the fastest-growing segment of the global advertising industry.

He noted that the ad network focuses on graphical display advertising and would not conflict with the company’s partnership with Google, which provides search listings.

The seeds of News Corp’s online ad push come from its work to better target MySpace users, a project which it launched over the summer called HyperTargeting. The technology mines the profiles of its 110 million global users to bring them ads more relevant to their interests.

But across the Internet, subjecting users to more marketing has drawn the ire of privacy advocates. Rival social network Facebook faced a backlash from thousands of users after it allowed marketers to place ads on user pages based on products they bought online. More at Reuters.

New York — Nov 26, ‘07 — Reuters is reporting on News Corp’s popular online social network, MySpace, planning to launch Facebook-style “news feeds” in the next 30 to 45 days, citing Fox Interactive Media President Peter Levinsohn.Reuters further reports, “News feeds, which alert a user to what their friends and colleagues are doing, have been one of the most popular features of MySpace rival Facebook.

“The concept of a news feed is something we are very focused on, and we’ll be well down the path in the next 30 to 45 days,” Levinsohn told the Reuters Media Summit.

He said his company also plans to let users express different versions of themselves by creating more than one profile, for example one for family, one for friends and another for work.” Reuters.

DARDENNE PRAIRIE, Missouri — For nearly a year, the families living along Waterford Crystal Drive in this bedroom community northwest of St. Louis kept the secret about the boy Megan Meyer met in September 2006 on the social-networking site MySpace.He called himself Josh Evans, and he and Meier, 13, struck up an online friendship that lasted for weeks. The boy then abruptly turned on Meier and ended it. Meier, who previously battled depression, committed suicide that night.

The secret was revealed six weeks later: Neighbor mother Lori Drew had pretended to be 16-year-old “Josh” to gain the trust of Meier, who had been fighting with Drew’s daughter, according to police records and Meier’s parents.

After their daughter’s death, Tina and Ron Meier begged other neighbors to keep the story private. Let the local police and the FBI conduct their investigations in privacy, they pleaded. But after waiting for criminal charges to be filed against Drew, neighbors learned that local and federal prosecutors could not find a statute applicable to the case.

The community’s patience dried up. Furious neighbors — and in the wake of recent media reports, an outraged public — are taking matters into their own hands. In an outburst of virtual vigilantism, readers of blogs listed the Drews’ home address, personal phone numbers, e-mail addresses and photographs of the couple.

Cyberbullying has become an increasingly creepy reality, where the anonymity of video games, message boards and other online forums offer an outlet for taunts. Yet drawing the line between conduct that is illegal and constitutionally protected free speech can be difficult.

On Wednesday, Nov 21, City officials unanimously passed a measure making online harassment a crime, days after learning that a 13-year-old girl killed herself last year after receiving cruel messages on the Internet.

The six-member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. Mayor Pam Fogarty said the city had proposed the measure after learning about Megan Meier’s death.

“It is our hope that by supporting one of our own in Dardenne Prairie, we can do our part to ensure this type of harassing behavior never happens again, anywhere,” Fogarty said, adding, “after all, harassment is harassment regardless of the mechanism or tool.”

The four-page measure defines both harassment and cyber-harassment, essentially making it illegal to engage in a pattern of conduct that would cause a reasonable person to suffer “substantial emotional distress,” or for an adult to contact a child under 18 in a communication causing a reasonable parent to fear for the child’s well-being.

City attorney John Young said constitutionally protected activity would be exempt. The measure would apply when one of the people communicating was in Dardenne Prairie.

City officials also passed a resolution encouraging state and federal officials to outlaw cyber-harassment and cyber-stalking. A state lawmaker has questioned how state law could be altered without running afoul of First Amendment constitutional issues guaranteeing freedom of speech.

Dardenne Prairie is an upper-middle-class enclave of about 7,400 people 35 miles northwest of St. Louis. Over the years, the flat expanse of farmland has been taken over by subdivisions, bistros and strip-mall cafes.

Targeted online advertising is set to face increased scrutiny from European Union regulators concerned about invasion of privacy, threatening the growth of a potentially big online revenue-booster for media companies. Reports, Astrid Wendlandt of Reuters.

“This is a very hot topic that can be expected to be part of our work programme next year,” Gabriele Loewnau, a senior legal adviser for the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, said on Friday, Nov 23. The German commissioner currently heads the European Union’s advisory body on data protection matters, the so-called Article 29 Working Party.

When an individual makes an online search or purchase, the computer can remember the entry through so-called cookies and pass on the information to advertisers.

Brussels’ heightened awareness comes as more than 13,000 Facebook users have signed a petition protesting against the networking site’s new advertising system which alerts members of friends’ purchases online. Members can opt for their transactions to be kept private but critics say the option is easily missed.

Some Facebook members have even threatened to leave, complaining the new system allowed their friends to find out what they were planning to give them for Christmas. The Facebook petition was led by the civic action group MoveOn.org.

FAST GROWING

Online advertising is the fastest-growing segment of the ad industry, gaining more than 25 percent a year, or more than five times the recent average annual growth all media included.

“Online sites have to make sure they are not intruding people’s privacy, otherwise targeted advertising will backfire,” said Vincent Bonneau from French telecoms research group Idate. More at Reuters.

Some users of the online hangout Facebook are complaining that its two-week-old marketing program is publicizing their purchases for friends to see.

Those users say they never noticed a small box that appears on a corner of their Web browsers following transactions at Fandango, Overstock and other online retailers. The box alerts users that information is about to be shared with Facebook unless they click on “No Thanks.” It disappears after about 20 seconds, after which consent is assumed.

Users are given a second notice the next time they log on to Facebook, but they can easily miss it if they quickly click away to visit a friend’s page or check e-mail.

“People should be given much more of a notice, much more of an alert,” said Matthew Helfgott, 20, a college student who discovered his girlfriend just bought him black leather gloves from Overstock for Hanukkah. “She said she had no idea (information would be shared). She said it invaded her privacy.”

The new program lets companies tap ongoing conversations by alerting users about friends’ activities through the feeds. About 40 Web sites have decided to embed a free tool from Facebook, known as a Beacon, to enable the marketing feeds.

The idea is that if users see a friend buy or do something, they’d take that action as an endorsement for a movie, a band or a soft drink. But it also raises privacy concerns.

Users are able to decline sharing on a site-by-site basis, but can’t withdraw from the program entirely.Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org formed a protest group Tuesday and had more than 6,000 members by Wednesday. The group is calling on Facebook to stop revealing online purchases and letting companies use names for endorsements without “explicit permission.”

Facebook user Nate Weiner, 23, said he uses a tool for the Firefox Web browser called BlockSite, which he says prevents sites from sending data to Facebook.

“What if you bought a book on Amazon called ‘Coping with AIDS’ and that got published to every single one of your friends?” he said. More at AP.

Related Article:  Young Warned Over Social Websites

BBC News is reporting on The Information Commissioner’s Office in UK warning young people about the online footprint they leave on social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook.

BBC News further writes, “Millions of young people could damage their future careers with the details about themselves they post on social networking websites, a watchdog warns.

The Information Commissioner’s Office found more than half of those asked made most of their information public.

Some 71% of 2,000 14 to 21-year-olds said they would not want colleges or employers to do a web search on them before they had removed some material.The commission said the young needed to be aware of their electronic footprint.

The ICO also said young people could be putting themselves at risk of identity fraud because of the material they post on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

ICO deputy commissioner David Smith said: “Many young people are posting content online without thinking about the electronic footprint they leave behind.

“The cost to a person’s future can be very high if something undesirable is found by the increasing number of education institutions and employers using the internet as a tool to vet potential students or employees.”

“We have to help teenagers wise up to every aspect of the internet age they’re living in. It may be fun but unfortunately it is not the safe space many think it is.”" More at BBCNews, ICO.gov.uk

Nov 09, ‘07 — Avoid Alicia Keys’ Web page on MySpace. It’s been hacked and has become the latest vehicle for malware on the Web.

At the time of this  posting, MySpace was displaying this “Function Disabled” message when trying to open “New Messages” or “Inbox” of MySpace account.

Roger Thompson, CTO at Exploit Prevention Labs, has found multiple hacked MySpace pages, including the page for Alicia Keys, the social networking site’s fourth most popular music artist. Also hacked were pages for Greements of Fortune, a French funk band, and Dykeenies, a rock band from Glasgow.

When visitors click almost anywhere on these infected site, they are directed to co8vd(.)cn/s, which appears to be a Chinese malware site. The visitors then see a box on their screen telling them they need to install a special codec to view the video – a legitimate possibility on any site rich in media. But if the visitor clicks ‘yes’, the site installs software that appears to be a rootkit and DNS changer. This would allow the hackers to take over what you see on your browser and what you download onto your computer.

Excerpts from Roger Thompson’s Blog:

“Attacks on MySpace seem to be on the rise. First, at the end of October, there were a number of links added as friend-comments that went via MySpace’s open-redirector (MSPlinks) to exploit sites in China. This was reported publicly on the FunSec mailing list. (All myspace friend-comments _seem_ to automatically redirect thru MSPlinks, probably as a way to try to filter out spam and phishing, but a downside is that the URL is base64 encoded, and is thus impossible for a human being to eyeball, and therefore possibly reject … the effect of the well-intentioned msplinks is thus to make an open-redirector)

Now, we keep finding MySpace pages that have had some sort of image-background link injected, that are reaching out to a different site in China that is both throwing exploits and using social engineering to install rootkits and (probably) dns-changers.

The interesting thing about this is that rather than using an iframe for an automatic embed, as they usually do, they’ve added some sort of image background href, with a large size … 8000 by 1000 pixels, with the effect that a click that slightly *misses* a control or link on the page, ends up going to the exploit site.

The fact that this site is media-rich, with lots of sound and videos means that the FakeCodec trick will be much more effective. The click-er is probably expecting to see a vid, or hear a song, and is quite likely to think he genuinely needs to install something extra.” More at Exploit Prevention Labs.

On the heels of MySpace, Facebook unveils Facebook Ads with  60 Leading Consumer and Internet Brands Announce Participation in New Ad System.

New York, NY — Facebook Social Advertising Event — Nov 06, 2007 – Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg today introduced Facebook Ads, an ad system for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want. Through Facebook Ads, these users can now learn about new businesses, brands and products through the trusted referrals of their friends.

“Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online,” Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

The keynote opened the Facebook Social Advertising event, which also featured senior executives from landmark partners including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft, Sony Pictures Television and Verizon Wireless. More than 60 major consumer and Internet brand partners were highlighted at the launch of Facebook Ads.

Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.

More than 100,000 Facebook Pages Launch Today
Zuckerberg detailed how Facebook Pages allows users to interact and affiliate with businesses and organizations in the same way they interact with other Facebook user profiles. More than 100,000 new Facebook Pages launched today covering the world’s largest brands, local businesses, organizations and bands.

Distribution through the Social Graph
Advertising messages will gain distribution through what Facebook has termed the “social graph,” the network of real connections through which people communicate and share information. When people engage with a business’ Facebook Page, that action will spread information about that business through the social graph.

Unique Ads with Social Actions
“Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system.” More at Facebook.

ROCHESTER, NY–BUSINESS WIRE–Nov 05, ‘07–According to the latest Harris Poll, the number of adults who are online at home, in the office, at school, library or other locations continues to grow at a steady rate. In the past year, the number of online users has reached an estimated 178 million, a ten percent increase.

In research among 2,062 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone in July and October, 2007, Harris Interactive found that 79 percent of adults are now online. This is a steady rise over the past few years, from 77 percent in February/April 2006, 74 percent in February/April 2005, 66 percent in the spring of 2002, 64 percent in 2001 and 57 percent in Spring of 2000. When Harris Interactive first began to track Internet use in 1995, only nine percent of adults reported they went online.

The amount of time that people are spending online has also risen. The average number of hours per week that people are spending online is now at 11 hours, up from 9 hours last year and 8 hours in 2005.

Internet Access Increases at Home and at Work

The proportion of adults who are now online at home has risen to 72 percent, up from 70 percent in 2006 and 66 percent in the spring of 2005. The percentage of those online at work has also risen, now at 37 percent, and up from 35 percent in 2006. The largest increase is among those adults who are online at a location other than their home or work as this has risen from 22 percent in 2006 to 31 percent today. It appears people who do not have access at home or work are increasingly turning to other outlets to get online. More at BusinessWire.

New York, NY — Nov 05, ‘07 –The popular online hangout MySpace is expanding its program for letting advertisers target their pitches using personal details on users’ profile pages.

Since July, MySpace has allowed more than 50 leading advertisers, including Procter & Gamble Co., Ford Motor Co. and Yum Brands Inc.’s Taco Bell chain, to target any of 10 interest groups, such as movies, travel and auto.

In the program’s second phase, launching Monday, MySpace is adding an 11th category, television, along with hundreds of subcategories, such as horror movies. Even that is subdivided into “teen screams,” “satanic stories,” “vampires” and others.

Like other social-networking sites, MySpace offers a mix of messaging tools to encourage its visitors to expand their circles of friends. Central to it are personal profile pages where users can post photos and video clips, blast messages to friends and have visitors leave comments.

But targeting can also backfire if users believe their personal expressions are being misused.

When MySpace’s chief rival, Facebook, introduced a feature last year that allows users to more easily track changes their friends make to profiles, many users denounced it as stalking and threatened protests and boycotts. Facebook had to quickly apologize and agree to let users turn off the feature so that others can’t easily see what they do. Facebook was scheduled to announce its own ad program Tuesday, though officials refused to discuss its nature.

Adam Bain, executive vice president for products and technology at Fox Interactive, said the company spent a year developing its program and created user panels to study privacy and other issues. “The thing we heard from them is they wanted advertisements to be more contextually relevant to them,” Bain said. “If they have to live with ads, they want an ad to be engaging.”

Bain said MySpace only examines information users already make public in their profiles. For example, if a user indicates support for the Boston Red Sox, lists “Hoosiers” and other sports movies as favorites and posts a background image of surfing, that user would be a candidate for sports-related ads. That person may also write about guitars, so music-related ads might appear, too.

Bain said the company doesn’t use any personally identifiable information from user accounts, nor does it analyze what profiles users view (A user’s friends list, though, would be factored in because it is public). By year’s end, he said, users also would have a chance to decline targeting.

MySpace also is opening up the program to smaller advertisers through self-service tools. A jazz band, for instance, would be able to create a banner ad leading jazz lovers to the band’s MySpace profile page. (Links to external sites are not yet permitted using self-service.)

Google, which already has a deal to place those text-based ad links on MySpace, is now trying to bring that success to display ads, an area MySpace could try to challenge with the launch of its self-service targeting tools.

Mountain View, CA–November 1, 2007–Google today announced the release of OpenSocial — a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web — for developers of social applications and for websites that want to add social features. OpenSocial will unleash more powerful and pervasive social capabilities for the web, empowering developers to build far-reaching applications that users can enjoy regardless of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use.

The proliferation of unique APIs across dozens of social websites is forcing developers to choose which ones to write applications for — and then spend their time writing separately for each. OpenSocial gives developers of social applications a single set of APIs to learn for their applications to run on any OpenSocial-enabled website. By providing these simple, standards-based technologies, OpenSocial will speed innovation and bring more social features to more places across the web. Users win too: they get more interesting, engaging, and useful features faster.

Three APIs Available Now

The OpenSocial APIs give developers (with users’ permission) access to the data needed to build social applications: access to an application user’s profile information, their list of friends, and the ability to share their activities with friends. OpenSocial resources for developers and websites will be available at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial.

Developers will have access to:
- Three JavaScript and Gdata APIs to access social functions
- A live developer sandbox on orkut at sandbox.orkut.com
- Sample code, documentation, and a support group available at code.google.com

Websites will have access to:
- A tool to help OpenSocial-enable their websites
- A support forum for communicating with Google and other websites
- Sample code, documentation, and a support group available at code.google.com

Server Optional

OpenSocial is built upon Google Gadget technology, so you can build a great, viral social app with little to no serving costs. With the Google Gadget Editor and a simple key/value API, you can build a complete social app with no server at all. Of course, you can also host your application on your own servers if you prefer. In all cases, Google’s gadget caching technology can ease your bandwidth demands should your app suddenly become a worldwide success.

MySpace

MySpace, the world’s largest social network, and Google today announced that they are joining forces to launch OpenSocial— a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web. The partnership spearheads an initiative to standardize and simplify the development of social applications. Today’s announcement underscores MySpace’s commitment to supporting standards that foster innovation in an increasingly social Web.

As a founding member of OpenSocial, MySpace will provide critical user mass and platform guidance. The OpenSocial standards are designed to evolve through contribution from the open source community and as new features are developed by various partners. Global members of the OpenSocial community include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. More at Google here and here

San Francisco, CA–November 1, ‘07–Google has signed on MySpace, the world’s largest social network, to its platform for allowing outside developers to write programs for social Web sites.

Reuters further reports, “The addition of MySpace gives the Google platform greater strength against fast-growing Facebook, which opened up its site to developers in May and has since seen its user base grow to more than 48 million people.

Google and MySpace said on Thursday they had been working together on the project for more than a year. News Corp.-owned MySpace has some 110 million users worldwide.

Google unveiled its OpenSocial platform earlier this week, saying it would give outside developers tools to write programs for any of its social network partners.”

October 31, ‘07 — Sydney Morning Herald reporting on Newsweek busting MySpace co-founder & CEO, Tom Anderson, for faking his age.

SMH further reports, “The thirtysomething millionaire who co-founded the popular social networking site MySpace has been outed as an age-faker. Newsweek magazine reports that Tom Anderson was lying about his age since launching the site in 2003.

Anderson’s MySpace profile lists his age as 32. But according to Newsweek, he will in fact turn 37 next week. And that would have made him a 32-year-old when the site launched, not a 27-year-old wunderkind.

The magazine obtained driving licence information, voter registration and telephone service applications which showed Anderson’s birthday as November 8, 1970.”

Jessica Bennett of Newsweek reports, “But it turns out that Tom, who, along with cofounder Chris DeWolfe, made a fortune when News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, may have a secret: his real age. According to public documents obtained by NEWSWEEK—including professional license information, voter registration and utility and telephone service applications—Anderson is five years older than he claims. His online profile currently lists his age as 32, but it appears he was actually born on Nov. 8, 1970, meaning he’ll turn 37 next week, not 33. (Happy birthday, Tom!)

Is it a big deal? Anderson, who has said he was 27 when MySpace launched, built an empire by tapping into the youth market. History might’ve unfolded differently if those first few users had known that the site’s hipster co-architect was already well into his 30s. “Young people don’t want someone their dad’s age running a site they think is cool,” says Pete Cashmore, the founder and editor of Mashable.com, a blog that covers social networking.”

More at SMH, Newsweek.

 Oct 31, ‘07 – Yahoo! announced on Tuesday it is adding media-playing features, large file transfers, new languages and other tools to its instant messaging service, Yahoo! Messenger. The move comes as a growing number of rivals — from AOL to social network sites like MySpace — boost their positions in the market for instant messaging services.

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 launched as a beta and has added features similar to ones seen on social networks or media-sharing sites, including extra room to post a picture or other image next to contact names and the ability to share video or photos within a message screen. The service is adding languages from six new markets, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India and Vietnam, for a total of 25 international markets.

Yahoo! Messenger is one of the largest instant messaging service, with about 27.7 million users in September, up 19 percent from a year earlier, according to data from tracking firm comScore. AOL reported about 30.2 million users. Y! Messenger

Oct 30, ‘07 — The Associated Press is reporting on Google is setting up a distribution network for social networking applications, adding a new twist in the Internet search leader’s brewing rivalry with rapidly maturing startup Facebook.

Although Google confirmed its plans late Tuesday, its new social networking platform won’t be unveiled until later this week. On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.   

Google hopes to build a one-stop shop for software developers who create tools that make it easier to share music, pictures, video and other personal interests on social networking sites like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace.com. The popularity of these applications, also known as “widgets,” has grown dramatically since Facebook opened its Web site to accommodate outside developers five months ago. 

Facebook now hosts more than 8,000 widgets, helping to boost its worldwide audience to about 50 million users and elevate its market value to $15 billion after Microsoft Corp. paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the Palo Alto-based company last week. More at AP

Ten internet users have landed film roles after they auditioned on the social networking site MySpace. Readers of the website chose the movie’s director and several of the actors after producers asked people to participate in the auditions.  

The unknowns, who include a student and an aerospace engineer, star alongside actors Paul Nicholls and Tim Healy. Faintheart, billed as a romantic comedy, is due to be released by the summer of 2008. 

The movie, which is being backed by Film4 and Vertigo Films, tells the story of Richard, a sales assistant who spends his weekends as a Mighty Norse Warrior in battle re-enactments. MySpace users will also contribute to the script. More at BBCNews