Social networking

Now that the digital equivalent of a super-vac, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, has sucked up some decent music start-ups--Imeem and iLike--for a song, to bolster the social-networking site's efforts to expand into an entertainment portal, what's next?

According to several sources, the News Corp. unit has turned its omnivorous attentions on Flixster, the popular social-networking site for movies.

Sources said such a deal is not immediately imminent, but that MySpace has been conducting extensive due diligence on the San Francisco-based Flixster, part of a plan to combine it with Rotten Tomatoes, another News Corp.-owned site run … Read more

AOL is reportedly in talks to sell its ICQ instant-messaging service to a Russian Internet investment group.

Digital Sky Technologies (DST) is in negotiations to acquire ICQ for between $200 million and $250 million, according to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. ICQ, which AOL purchased in 1998 for $400 million, has about 8.4 million unique monthly visitors in Russia and is the No. 1 instant-messaging service in that country, according to market researcher ComScore.

AOL, which was recently spun off from Time Warner, was rumored last month to have hired investment bankers Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co. to find a buyer … Read more

When rich people sue rich people, it often seems that the only possible winners can be rich people.

Which perhaps doesn't engage the emotions of spectators quite as much as, say, when rich people are caught with their plus fours around their ankles.

Still, the current lawsuit between eBay and Craigslist does offer a small window into our own daily lives. You know, the one through which we decide whether we believe what someone is telling us.

This legal spatula is being flipped in Delaware Chancery Court, its essence revolving around how much of Craigslist eBay really owns. Is … Read more

Many people I know are frightfully attached to their iPhones. They treat them as if they were a peculiar and exotic lover, one they can hardly believe they have managed to seduce.

The finely calibrated minds at Strand Consult have taken this analysis to a particularly simple conclusion: iPhone users are, the consultants say, really quite nuts.

The Strand thinkers released an opinion entitled "How will psychologists describe the iPhone syndrome in the future?." It focuses on the sorts of people who buy into Apple's great success.

Here's a flavor of the somewhat-skeptical nature of Strand'… Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

It's been a bad week for those, like me, who feel the debate over data privacy too often casts information businesses as evil Halloween monsters, determined to terrorize and humiliate their customers just for the fun of it.

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission held the first of three conferences on privacy and technology, at which a parade of consumer advocates and legal scholars warned of an imminent data apocalypse.

Recent events seemed, alas, to support that view. Sprint, for example, reported that over the last 13 … Read more

Although those aged 65 and older make up less than 10 percent of active Web users, a new Nielsen study has found that over the past five years, the number of seniors using the Internet regularly has increased by a 55 percent.

According to Nielsen, there were just 11.3 million seniors actively using the Web in November 2004. Five years, later, there are now more than 17.5 million seniors surfing around. Senior women have picked up the Web faster than men, outpacing men by 6 percent.

Seniors aren't just going to the Web, they're staying there. … Read more

The FTC seems to have discovered something the rest of us already knew. Kids are easily able to access adult content in virtual worlds.

A report released Thursday by the Federal Trade Commission found that minors are exposed to violent and sexually explicit content in online virtual worlds. The congressionally mandated report, "Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks," discovered that while most of the adult content appeared in virtual worlds geared toward teens and adults, some showed up on virtual sites designed for kids. Further, some of the virtual worlds for teens and adults allow or encourage … Read more

Sites owned by Yahoo, AOL, and Google have joined Facebook and MySpace in expelling New York sex offenders from their rolls.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that Google's Orkut.com, AOL's Bebo.com, and Yahoo's Flickr.com are among 13 additional social-networking sites to use sex offender data available through New York's Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (E-Stop) to find and disable accounts associated with registered sex offenders.

Other companies that have agreed to cooperate include BlackPlanet.com, Classmates.com, Flixster.com, Fotolog.com, hi5.com, MyLife.com, Stickam.com, … Read more

Hot on the heels of Friendster's recent face-lift, the onetime social-networking pioneer has found a buyer.

MOL Global, a Malaysian online payment company, has agreed to purchase Friendster, the companies announced late Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not revealed, but rumors last week said a likely asking price would start around $100 million.

"This combination is a natural progression of our relationship and will be an industry-changing event," Richard Kimber, chief executive officer at Friendster, said in a statement. "The new combined entity gives Friendster the kind of financial backing, retail distribution, and e-commerce infrastructure … Read more