Combing The Shadows of MySpace


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Friday Apr 07, 2006

With every bright light comes the shadows – the dark edges ignored, even tolerated, for joy of illumination. MySpace.com’s brightness is blinding to a new generation of bloggers and marketers, but there are shadows (lots of them) lurking: some peripheral, and others nearer the corona.

Editor's Note: Is News Corp. effectively dealing with the online sexual predator issue? Are a "safety czar" and sensitive algorithms enough? Or should youngsters avoid the phenomenon altogether? Let us know your thoughts SyndicationPro.

The dark corners everyone has been eyeing as of late are inhabited by predators and pedophiles, the 21st Century boogey men playing wolf to the Riding Hoods. National press coverage has moved News Corp. and law enforcement to be more vigilant in seeking wolves where they lay.

But farther out from the light source (perhaps in the purplish spots behind your eyelids) there is a history, a complex web of associations, providing an almost mystical, almost mythical, back-story to one of the greatest Web stories ever told.

When News Corp. bought MySpace.com’s parent company Intermix Media in July of last year, a chunk of the site’s then 22 million “counterculture” members voiced concern over what impact a Rupert Murdoch run organization would have on their beloved online community. There were shouts of potential censorship, access fees, “right wing conspiracy,” exploitation, loss of privacy and ownership of content.

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Clearly, they got over it (or left). Since News Corp. took over, the site has enrolled nearly 70 million members, growing by 250,000 members per day, to top out as the second most viewed website on the Internet. Some suggest that there is an irony here, that will be addressed in more detail later, that those concerned iconoclasts should have been more worried about Intermix than News Corp.

Aside from the sexual predation issue, which News Corp. has addressed by appointing a “safety czar” to act as overseer, there have been periodic accusations of censorship.

MySpace.com spokeswoman, Dani Dudeck, says the accusations are a misunderstanding. The recent deletion of some 250,000 user profiles, she says, were algorithmic deletions of underage members and others that violated the terms of use.

Though they also get information from tipsters within, Dudeck says the MySapce team does not read blogs to find violations, or search video content to judge.

“[The algorithms] are functioning on the site only to uphold the terms of use. We don’t censor. We don’t scan blogs. We don’t judge our users’ content,” she said in a phone interview.

Algorithms scan the site detecting nudity, hate speech, hate icons and other violations of the terms. These algorithms are sophisticated enough even to detect if someone is lying about being under age (the age requirement is 14).

Dudeck would not expand on how the MySpace algorithms work, only to say that they look for certain semantic clues and inconsistencies.

This is part one of a two part series to be continued next week. Next week, we delve into the history of MySpace.com, its founders, and the controversy surrounding Intermix Media.

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Jason is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

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Firefox Gets Personal With Google Toolbar

New features made available with version 2 of the Google Toolbar for Firefox provide users with the ability to easily integrate newly discovered feeds into the Google Personalized Homepage or other feed readers.

The beta version of the Google Toolbar for Firefox may be found for users on the Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms.

Software engineer Justin Voskuhl posted about the latest and greatest from the Toolbar v2 at the Google Blog recently. The features he described indicate a much tighter integration between Google and the Firefox browser.

For example, with the Toolbar v2 installed, a user who signs in to Gmail will see a popup message with this text:

It looks like you're using Gmail. The Google Toolbar can set Gmail to be your default program for sending mail. Would you like Gmail to open automatically whenever you click on an email link?

"We've made searching better by including previous queries, spelling corrections, and suggestions for popular choices," Voskuhl wrote. And to help combat the growing problem of phishing, the Toolbar v2 now includes the Safe Browsing extension by default.

One option listed with the new features gives the Firefox user control over the layout of Firefox and the Toolbar. With the default layout, the Firefox search box appears in the top right corner while a Google search box displays in the Toolbar.

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David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

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Help!!!! A Beginner Needs PPC Assistance

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