Social Networking

In a challenge to social-networking giant MySpace, Facebook will open itself to outside software developers. With 65 partners—including Microsoft and Amazon—cleared to build web applications within the site, the scrappy No. 2 is attempting to transform itself into an all-in-one destination. The lure: Partners don't have to pay for access or share revenue with Facebook. More »

YouTube, the viral-video nemesis of many a gaffe-prone political candidate, will co-sponsor a Democratic presidential debate July 23rd in Charleston, South Carolina. CNN is the television partner for the debate, which will be the first of six, the DNC announced yesterday.  More »

MySpace as a national security threat? Yes, says the Department of Defense, which is blocking service members' access to the site—as well as YouTube and 11 other popular destinations troops use to communicate with family and friends—on department computers as of today. The department calls the online traffic a drain on bandwidth and an "operational security challenge." More »

A panel of top television executives at a Vegas conference yesterday went on the offensive against their digital rivals, blasting the perception that cell phones, the Web, and other digital formats are killing their business. Quite the contrary, pronounced Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons: "The Googles, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux Nation." More »

The glow of a computer screen morphed into a harsh spotlight on the Barack Obama campaign this week during a bitter dispute over control of a MySpace page bearing the senator's name. Obama reached out last night—over the phone, not in an email—to the disgruntled supporter who created the page, but the damage is done. More »

If John McCain fails in his presidential bid, he may have a future in karaoke. The senator-turned-songbird's impromptu performance of "Bomb Bomb Iran"—set to the tune of the Beach Boys classic "Barbara Ann"—at a South Carolina campaign rally has picked up 118,000 YouTube views since being posted yesterday. More »

After a British teenager invited a few friends to a party on MySpace, over 200 non-virtual revelers trashed her family's house. In a story being circulated by alarmed parents all over the Commonwealth, 17-year-old Rachael Bell's parents came back from vacation to find $48,000 worth of damage to their home. "Whoever has come in here are worse than animals," mum says. More »

Mexican drug cartels are making themselves at home on YouTube, posting music  videos that show off the bloodied bodies of their tortured and executed competitors. The gangs have turned to the Internet to recruit members, plan attacks, and intimidate and threaten rival gangs. The result is an al-Qaeda–like virtual network that the tech-lite Mexican police have been slow to tap for information. More »

A seven-year-old song resurrected on YouTube has five punk rockers facing time in a Turkish prison. The song, an anti-authoritarian rant against the Turkish college entrance exam by the band Deli, was the sound track to a video posted by a fan, who lip-synched the lyrics while jumping around frantically on camera. More »

Cable networks are boycotting eBay's experiment in auctioning television airtime to ad houses, in a decision that could ground its nascent spin-off site. The networks protest that Online Media Exchange, which eBay claimed would reduce inefficiency, doesn't account for today's complex targeting and multimedia promotional packages. More »

With Viacom incubating "the biggest copyright lawsuit in history" against YouTube, the video-sharing site is beginning to smell a bit like Napster. Which leads Clive Thompson to ponder in New York why the Google boys decided to acquire YouTube—and its looming crisis—last year. And why, once they had, they decided to stare down Sumner Redstone instead of sharing revenue. More »

TV biggies NBC Universal and News Corp. are teaming up to hit YouTube with the full force of their their combined TV content, offered online for free. Starting this summer, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and News Corp. subsidiary MySpace will hope to win over internet users (and the advertising that goes with them) with shows like 24 and Heroes . More »

An employe of the tech company that handles Barack Obama’s website admits making the notorious “Vote Different” YouTube video portraying Hillary Clinton as Big Brother – now one of the most watched videos on the web. Phil de Vellis writes on The Huffington Post that he created the attack ad to make a personal point about the future of presidential campaigns. More »

A Turkish court banned YouTube on Wednesday after Greek videos on the site insulted Turks—in particular Ataturk, the country's modern founding father—calling them homosexuals. The videos, part of an escalating "virtual war" between Greek and Turkish citizens belittling each other, were deemed an insult to Turkishness, a crime punishable by imprisonment. More »

“We are not really that high-tech of a company,” the man who brought classifieds into the Internet age, Craig’s List founder Newmark, tells the New York Observer, explaining why he uses a combo of customer feedback and his own memory—instead of techie solutions like IP-address blockers or email tracing—to track the real estate scammers who populate the site. More »