Stories related to: MySpace

A Missouri woman has been indicted in the case of a teenage girl who killed herself after receiving cruel messages on MySpace, the AP reports. The woman, Lori Drew, is charged with pretending to be a teenage boy on the site and having a helper taunt the 13-year-old victim. Drew faces up to 20 years in prison on counts of conspiracy and accessing protected computers. More »

MySpace has been awarded $234 million from spammers in what's believed to be the largest such judgment ever, AP reports. A federal court ordered two notorious spammers to pay damages for sending hundreds of thousands of messages to MySpace members. The social networking site hailed the award as a “landmark.” More »

Facebook is seeing a lot of challenges lately, with ads selling at rock-bottom prices, revenue not nearly rivaling MySpace, and third-party developers defecting to OpenSocial networks (MySpace, again). But unlike other companies’ young founders, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t about to step aside. And thanks to his tight control of Facebook's board, he’s not about to be pushed out, either, Fortune reports. More »

Google is unveiling a new service that could effectively turn the whole Web into a social network, the Washington Post reports. Friend Connect allows visitors to participating sites to meet and interact with others who visit the same site. "Wherever people go on the Web, they want to have their friends with them, and this makes it possible," says one Google worker. More »

MySpace fell short of revenue targets in the most recent quarter, but, Adam Ostrow argues in Mashable, it’s still proven a phenomenal deal since Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought it for $580 million in 2005. Revenues from its unit are pulling close to its purchase price and it’s on track to make more with music downloads, sponsorships and targeted ads. More »

The Microsoft/Yahoo deal looks dead, and at least one company is celebrating: Google. Both companies are exploring other deals, but none will be as potent as MicroHoo might have been, BusinessWeek reports. That’s good news for a certain search giant. “Its two main competitors are separate and floundering,” said one analyst. “We think Google's the winner.” More »

Questionable postings and photos on social-networking web pages are becoming an issue with younger US teachers, the Washington Post reports, raising questions about where to draw a line between private expression and standards for public employees. A case in point is a substitute special-education teacher whose page includes a so-called "bumper sticker" reading, "you're a retard, but i love you." More »

US Internet users watched 10 billion online videos in February, cNet reports, with statistics released by ComScore showing a 66% gain from February 2006. Unsurprisingly, Google’s video sites (chiefly YouTube) accounted for 35.4% of the 10 billion views, the largest portion for any one site. More »

Critics in cyberspace can stay incognito, which makes them especially nasty. Radar lists the 10 most-scorned players on the web: Lori Drew: Her comments on a MySpace account drove a 13-year-old girl to suicide. John Fitzgerald Page: An online dater whose cruel remarks got world-wide coverage. Julia Allison: A sassy sex columnist who worked the web for a 6-figure gig. More »

MySpace has signed with a British production firm for international distribution of video content it develops, in a sign that News Corp's social network aims to be a breeding ground for small-screen programming. Indeed, in revealing the deal with the Shine Group—whose CEO is News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch’s daughter—MySpace declared itself “Hollywood’s digital playground,” the New York Times reports. More »

The Information Age is great in a lot of ways, but when it comes maintaining the privacy of public figures, it can be a real hassle. Just ask Matt Leinart, Paul LoDuca, and countless other professional athletes who can tell you just how easy it is to have their most unguarded moments appear on the Net—and land them in trouble. More »

Parents and educators are still puzzling over how a dispute among girls got so out of hand that it ended with six Florida cheerleaders giving a high school classmate a concussion in a vicious beating. Teen bullying is nothing new but the fact that the feud started on MySpace and ended up with a video posted on You Tube highlights new worries about cyberbullying, the Lakeland Ledger writes. More »

Six girls aged 14 to 17 lured another teen to a home, beat her and videotaped the ambush to put it on the Internet, Florida police say. The 16-year-old victim is recovering from a concussion and hasn't fully regained her vision. Her assailants, with whom she'd been feuding online, may be charged as adults with battery and false imprisonment, the Lakeland Ledger reports. More »

The world of online music buying looks set for a shakeup with the launch of MySpace Music, announced today. The joint venture between MySpace and three of the big four record labels aims to compete head-to-head with iTunes, CNET News reports. Music industry bigwigs are said to have long felt that iTunes was getting too powerful. More »

Microsoft is standing pat on its $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo, with no intention of upping its ante, reports the Wall Street Journal. The software maker’s Jan. 31 bid—worth $31 per share—was rejected by Yahoo as undervalued. Since then, pundits have waited for Microsoft to raise its bid, possibly as high as $40. More »

They’re known as millennials, the documentation generation, and the Look at Me’s. But what defines Americans born after 1982 is a mindset that every moment can be turned into a performance worthy of YouTube and MySpace and maybe parlayed into broader fame, Newsweek reports. Now sociologists are asking: Can healthy identities and relationships thrive in a generation obsessed with self-presentation and exhibitionism? More »

The lawyer for Ashley Alexandra Dupre—the call girl known as "Kristen" to resigned New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer—blasted the media yesterday for unauthorized use of revealing photos of the 22-year-old. Attorney Don D. Buchwald said the media has thrust Dupre into the "public glare" without her consent, the AP reports. More »

The woman introduced to the world this week as a prostitute named “Kristen”—aspiring singer Ashley Alexandra Dupre—is trying to maintain some privacy as she keeps close tabs on her Facebook and MySpace accounts, CNN reports. After the New York Times revealed her identity, she began cleaning up her profiles on the sites, seemingly trying to exert control over what the public could see. More »

Long gone are the days of Internet anonymity. Big Web companies know all about you, says a study commissioned by the New York Times . The Internet giants track users’ behavior across sites, gathering details on a typical person several hundred times a month. That information lets them target content and—most lucratively—advertising, leaving traditional media companies in the dust. More »

What to do when their father starts talking about “getting poked" is a question many high school and college kids are asking themselves these days. It's a modern-day dilemma: Do teens allow their folks into their friends network on Facebook and grant them access to blogs, photos, and messages? Parents are increasingly seeking oversight and entrée into their children’s digital world, the Washington Post reports—and many kids aren’t all right with that. More »