Eideard

Users of online social network sites such as Facebook are editing their pages and tightening their privacy settings to protect their reputations in the age of digital sharing, according to a new survey.

About two-thirds, or 63 percent, of social networking site users questioned in the Pew Research Center poll said they had deleted people from their “friends” lists, up from 56 percent in 2009. Another 44 percent said they had deleted comments that others have made on their profiles, up from 36 percent two years before.

Users also have become more likely to remove their names from photos that were tagged to identify them. Thirty-seven percent of profile owners have done that, up from 30 percent in 2009, the survey showed.

“Over time, as social networking sites have become a mainstream communications channel in everyday life, profile owners have become more active managers of their profiles and the content that is posted by others in their networks,” the report said.

The Pew report also touches on the privacy settings people use for their profiles. The issue of online privacy has drawn increasing concerns from consumers, and the Obama administration has called for a “privacy bill of rights” that would give users more control over their data.

Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said their main profile was set to be private so only friends can see it.

Another 19 percent said they had set their profile to partially private so that friends of friends can see it. Only 20 percent have made their profile completely public.

The headlines in many articles on this topic describe folks was becoming “less social”. I’d say they’re just getting more sensible. Especially as reaction from members of the various networks react negatively to tales of broad swathes of info having been boosted by greedy marketers – positively as networks respond to criticism by offering more choices to limit distribution of personal demographics.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, has tweeted about how his company “screwed up MySpace in every way possible”…

It is the first time Murdoch has tweeted about the social network and his experience of owning MySpace for six difficult years, since joining the microblogging platform. It was in the context of several technology-related tweets he has written about the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which has been going on all week.

Murdoch tweeted: “CES again. Big three, Apple,Google and Amazon, and maybe Facebook dominant now and growing. Plenty of others good, but not in same league.”

He then wrote: “CES coming to a close. Seems like more innovation than ever, some great, all disruptive. Traditional coys [companies] feeling digital tornado.”

Murdoch has spoken out before about how difficult owning MySpace was, after finally selling it off to advertising company Specific Media and Justin Timberlake last year, for approximately $35m – just six per cent of what News Corporation paid for the business. Murdoch’s business is understood to have retained a small undisclosed stake in the social network, but is not involved in the day to day running of it…

MySpace, which started as a site on which users could share their interest in pop and rock bands, has in the last four years been totally eclipsed by the explosive growth of competitor Facebook.

“This was a good example of how to turn $580 million into a lot less virtually overnight,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, a technology research firm, at the time of the sale to Specific Media last year. “In many ways, it was a failed merger.”

Murdoch proved, once again, that corporate executives with their brain stuck in last century solutions and methods – will run modern Web exterprises as badly as the worst of their existing/declining ventures.

Murdoch proved incapable of innovation, unable to keep up with the crowded field of peers in the world of geek dynamism. And he wasn’t bright enough to hire someone who could.

Myspace was once the Internet’s equivalent of the hottest nightclub in town. In its heyday, the world’s dominant social network attracted some 3 million bands, 8,000 comedians and countless filmmakers and wannabes who came to see and be seen.

Now, Myspace is seemingly no place — a digital castoff that corporate parent News Corp. sold for $35 million in cash and equity to an Orange County digital media firm specializing in online advertising. That’s a fraction of the $580 million that the media giant controlled by Rupert Murdoch paid to acquire the site a scant six years ago, and well shy of its one-time $65-billion valuation.

Its dramatic fall is both a consequence of the fickle nature of today’s Internet generation as it is a tale of mismanagement, missed opportunities and miscalculations. Myspace’s decline — hastened by its failure to match the innovations of its chief rival, Facebook, speaks to what can happen when a mainstream media company seeks to capture technological lightning in a bottle…

The decision to acquire the hot social networking site landed Murdoch on the cover of Wired magazine, where he was lauded for embracing the Internet ahead of his old-media rivals, although critics ridiculed him for overpaying…

But Myspace’s red-hot success was short-lived.

The number of monthly visitors in the United States peaked in October 2008 at 76.3 million, according to measurement firm ComScore Digital Analytix. Over the last two years, the social network has shed an average of 1 million users a month, and its monthly traffic had dwindled to about 35 million users by May.

As Myspace’s users headed for the exits, so did the advertisers. Researcher EMarketer projects Myspace’s ad revenue at $184 million this year, down from $470 million in 2009. Myspace proved a drag on News Corp.’s earnings, with the division that includes the social network posting a profit only once in the last six years…

Murdoch knows how to leverage sports coverage in depth into profit in print media. He did the same with business news with the Financial Times. Dicking around with content, policy and politics at the Wall Street Journal may yet put that venerable paper into irreversible decline. All of his print acquisitions were worth siphoning capital from – while adding in deeper coverage of shallower topics when needed.

The folks who bought MySpace for 6% of what Murdoch paid have a sensible chance to turn it into a moneymaker, again. That’s good enough. Whether they wish to go farther than that – and can – is another tale, a different opportunity.

“Look what I just got from Intel!”

Pope Benedict gave a qualified blessing to social networking Monday, praising its potential but warning that online friendships are no substitute for real human contact.

Amazing insight, dude – for someone who defines women, gay folks, members of most other religions and atheists all as inferior beings.

The 83-year-old pontiff, who does not have his own Facebook account, set out his views in a message with a weighty title that would easily fit into a tweet: “Truth, proclamation and authenticity of life in the digital age.”

He said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity,” but warned of the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones…

The vast horizons of new media “urgently demand a serious reflection on the significance of communication in the digital age,” he said.

What part of communications matches the weight of “pronouncements” inside the corporate Catholic Church?

The pope did not mention any specific social networking site or application by name, but sprinkled his message with terms such as “sharing,” “friends,” and “profiles.”

Not a whole boatload of difference from the agitprop Madison Avenue crap ranging from my favorite laugher – renaming the War Department – to reactionary demagogues still trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare after decades and calling the process “reform”.

A bank robber who placed a Walmart bag on his head before passing a note with his real name on it was held at gunpoint by a customer today until Palm Bay police arrived and arrested him.

Floyd Francis said in the note that he wanted to rob the bank without a weapon because “I am a son of God.” He wrote that he goes by the name YungSoulji and provided the address of his MySpace.com page. Later, at the Police Department, he said Jesus told him to “go get money this morning, today.”

“I am a black Muslim. I am a black Christian. I am a Black Rastafarian … Always smoke weed get high,” the holdup note reads, in part.

Francis, 23, went into Space Coast Credit Union, 152 Malabar Road, a little before 2 p.m. and put the bag on his head while in line, then took off the bag and handed a teller the bag and the note, police said.

The note instructed the teller to, “put di money innah di Bag.” The teller complied.

A customer who saw what was going on and has a concealed-weapons permit got a gun from his car, pointed it at Francis and ordered him to the ground…

What is there to say? Anyone dumb enough to believe all the crap he believes – should commit the dumbest crime of the week?

Veterans Day Parade – NYC – 1975

Long skittish about forums such as Facebook and Twitter, the U.S. Department of Defense says that it is now OK with social networking services and other interactive Web 2.0 applications. A memorandum released Friday makes it official policy that the agency’s nonclassified network will be configured to provide access to Internet-based capabilities across all Defense components, including the various combat branches.

That’s not to say that the Pentagon is embracing all of the free-wheeling nature of blogs, tweets, and online video. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen will still be expected to refrain from activities that could compromise military actions or undercut readiness.

“Commanders at all levels and heads of DoD components will continue to defend against malicious activity on military information networks, deny access to prohibited content sites (e.g., gambling, pornography, hate-crime related activities), and take immediate and commensurate actions, as required, to safeguard missions (e.g., temporarily limiting access to the Internet to preserve operations security or to address bandwidth constraints),” the Defense Department said in a news release.

The Pentagon says it recognizes that social networks, among other Web capabilities, are useful tools for interaction both within the Defense Department and between the agency and the general public. It is also satisfied with the balance it has struck between network security and use of Internet-based tools…

The military has been using social-networking tools for some time, but policies have not always been consistent across the branches, and officials over time have wavered on how much they were willing to let individuals engage with the likes of blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and the like.

As long as it means I can continue to ignore them. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc., that is.

The Pentagon is always “interesting”.

Why is this man not smiling?
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Days after MySpace, the struggling social network site, replaced its chief executive, a leading media pundit has said that interference from its owner, Rupert Murdoch, has left the business in a state of “total desperation”.

Last week the site, which was bought by Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2005, made the shock announcement that Owen Van Natta was stepping down as chief executive after less than a year in the job…

Michael Wolff, author of The Man Who Owns the News, a biography of Murdoch, said that the roots of MySpace’s problems were much deeper. “It certainly is not [Van Natta's] fault – he inherited a business in which you could only manage decline,” he said.

Instead, he suggested, the reshuffle is indicative of a wider panic over the way in which News Corp deals with its online businesses.

“The thing that’s going on at News Corp right now is total, total desperation over this digital stuff,” he added. “Rupert is saying, ‘What’s going on with MySpace? What’s happening? Why isn’t this working?’ It’s impossible to explain to him that it’s not working because it’s over, because this is the way the technology business goes. Once it’s past, it’s really past. There is almost no way to get that back…”

While the site has generated plenty of cash for News Corp – at one point, advertising on the home page alone was valued at $1m a day – a series of missteps has left it in turmoil, struggling for success and flailing in the wake of its rivals…

Figures from comScore, the internet traffic analysts, suggest that MySpace has about 57 million users in the US, down from a peak of more than 75 million. Facebook, meanwhile, has experienced incredible expansion in the past 18 months and now boasts more than 400 million users worldwide…

I used to have a modicum of respect for Murdoch’s business acumen. Turns out it hasn’t moved much beyond the end of World War 2.

He’s getting what he deserves.

Bored by the status updates of your friends? Want to get rid of your online teenage years and delete your MySpace account? Tired of living your life so that you have something to tweet about?

Then get reality back, and commit social media suicide with Web2.0 Suicide Machine.

The Dutch website created by your unfriendly neighbourhood medialab moddr is designed to end users’ social lives on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn in a spectacular way.

No, users don’t just delete their account. The website makes a feast out of the decision as it shows you how it unfriends person after person on Facebook, or removes bit by bit the people you follow on Twitter…

To commit social media suicide you only need to select the social network on the website, enter the user name and your password. You even can send out your last words, which are displayed alongside your profile picture on a memorial page that Suicide Machine maintains.

The project seems to be quite successful. Since its launch in December, 56,243 friends have been unfriended, 202,386 tweets have been removed and 856 people quit their online lives, according to Suicide Machine’s figures.

But Facebook didn’t see the funny side of the site. The social network, which has just announced it has 350 million members, started to prevent its use by blocking Suicide Machine’s IP address yesterday, thus making it impossible to use the website to unfriend people…

So while Suicide Machine works well with Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, the only option for Facebook is at the moment to die hard.

Internet servers like MySpace cannot be held liable when minors are sexually assaulted by people they first meet on a website, a California appeals court has ruled in an opinion.

The ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles is consistent with federal appeals court rulings…

The appellate court consolidated several similar lawsuits brought by minor girls dubbed “Julie Does” and their parents or guardians, claiming that MySpace failed to implement available age-verification software or set the default security on the girls’ accounts to “private.”

But the Los Angeles-based appeals court found that a section of the Communications Decency Act immunizes Web servers against the girls’ claims of negligence and product liability…

Electronic Frontier Foundation spokeswoman Rebecca Jeschke said the opinion was “very important” in light of recent calls by several states’ attorneys general for online classifieds site Craigslist to remove what they claimed were illegal sex ads…

“The idea is, you hold the speaker responsible not the soapbox,” Jeschke said. “If you want any kind of social interaction on the Internet this is very important.”

At the rate we’re going, Americans – and lawyers [which I hold as a separate species from human beings] – should understand the Constitutional protection of Free Speech in another century or two.

Courtney Holt, head of MySpace Music
Daylife/AP Photo

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…

MySpace’s loss of status as the cool place to be is an object lesson in the notoriously fickle internet, where today’s cultural icon is tomorrow’s passing fad. From humble origins in 2003, the site led the so-called “Web 2.0″ revolution in which users could create their own profile pages and share content with friends. Murdoch’s purchase of MySpace for $580m was seen as a masterstroke as membership continued to soar, with celebrities and politicians joining the craze.

But then came Facebook, founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, which soon snowballed with an older and apparently more affluent demographic to steal MySpace’s crown. Gradually newspaper coverage of social networks switched from references to “MySpace and Facebook” to “Facebook and MySpace”. The rise of Bebo also undermined MySpace’s dominance, while Twitter is among the latest novelties eating into users’ attention spans…

There are clues behind the scenes that all is not well at Murdoch’s Fox Interactive Media, which runs the site.

Amit Kapur, MySpace’s chief operating officer, resigned after little more than a year in the post to set up a new company. He will be joined by Jim Benedetto and Steve Pearman, senior vice-presidents of engineering and product strategy.

And, no, I really don’t care. But, some of you do.