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Crack down against sex offenders from Myspace

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myspace2.jpgIn light of about 100 criminal incidents (sexual in nature) involving Myspace users, 8 attorneys general requested the popular social networking Web site to turn over the names of registered sex offenders using their site.

Led by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, other states include Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Last December, Myspace has partnered with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to identify and remove sex offenders in US from the site.

“MySpace can certainly take its own action to remove those sex offender profiles from their site. They say they are doing that but we want to know … exactly what steps they are taking,” said Cooper.

Originally posted on May 15, 2007 @ 8:38 am

NBC Digital goes social networking

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NBC DigitalNBC Digital is launching its own social network this fall. MyNBC, hoping to take a slice of the social networking pie, will be integrated into NBC.com.

“We are allowing our users to interact with their favorite shows on a deeper level, and are providing full immersion in our content,” explained Jeff Gaspin, president, NBC Universal Cable and Digital Content.

NBC also announced that it is ramping up its online presence, expanding “Heroes 360” and launching a similar project for “The Office.”

“The Office 360” will allow online users of NBC’s Web site to create their own branches of the comedy’s fictional Dunder-Mifflin paper company with different challenges to complete. The branches could be integrated into a network episode of the show.

On the other hand, “Heroes 360” Web offering will present more chapters of this season’s graphic novel feature and character backstories as the show evolves this season. NBC also will offer a Web-exclusive series on the site called “Coastal Dreams,” a soap opera geared toward a younger audience.

Originally posted on May 15, 2007 @ 8:37 am

Is Digg facing their greatest challenge right now?

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Digg screenshotDigg is in trouble, although they might not even know it, which I think they do but that’s beside the point. They’re in trouble because the people who are making their service interesting, the content providers, are starting to get pissed off. There’s a lot of talk of censorship around Digg these days; here’s the most recent Techmeme thread, which originates from a post by Neil Patel over at Pronet Advertising.

What happens to a social content service when it appears too frequently around this kind of accusations? A smaller one would falter, perhaps even crash totally, but Digg is not a newcomer nor a baby in the business. They’re the giant in their area, Netscape, Reddit, StumpleUpon and whatnot are just up and coming projects but not real competitors. Or are they? Could Digg actually alienate their core crowd with this proposed behavior? True or not, just the fact that there’s a discussion about wether Digg is censoring or not, and how they’re doing it (Digg users burying “anti-Digg stuff” is old news) is hurting the site.

Core Digg users will probably stay, but others will leave, in search of other places to share their stories with the world wide web. Like Netscape, Reddit, StumbleUpon and whatnot…

Originally posted on May 15, 2007 @ 5:51 am

Kyte.tv gets investment from Swisscom, Holtzbrinck Ventures

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kyte.jpg
Kyte.tv extends its list of global top-tier backers with experienced investors in telecommunications and new media
Following its recent launch, kyte.tv announced new investors: Switzerland’s leading telecommunications provider Swisscom and Holtzbrinck Ventures, the venture capital arm of one of Germany’s leading media companies. kyte.tv brings together user-generated content, social networking, and mobile services in a unique way.

Beside Swisscom and Holtzbrinck Ventures, kyte.tv has also received investment from Klaus Hommels, Oliver Jung, and Peter Schupbach, all amongst the top angel investors in Europe. These new investors join kyte.tv’s founding investors, including: Atomico (co-founded by Niklas Zennstrom), Draper Fisher Jurveston (investors in Hotmail, Baidu, Overture, and Skype), Draper Richards (founding investor in Skype), and Ron Conway (one of the early investors in Google).

“Both Swisscom and Holtzbrinck Ventures are great partners with strategic importance, especially in the European market,” said Daniel Graf, co-founder and CEO of kyte.tv. “Investment into kyte.tv on behalf of such important media and telecommunications companies is a great endorsement of the fact that kyte.tv is the first company to bring together user-generated content, social networking, and mobile services.”

Originally posted on May 15, 2007 @ 12:32 pm

DoD blocks soldiers’ access to 13 popular Web sites

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youtube.jpg The US Department of Defense (DoD) has waged a new war – this time against 13 popular Web sites including YouTube and Myspace. Claiming that these sites affected network bandwidth and opened numerous security gaps, DoD decided to curtail this benefit to all military personnel.

MySpace, YouTube.com, Metacafe, iFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV.com, 1.fm, Live365 and Photobucket are all victims of their own popularity. Removal of these sites are based not solely on popularity but also size and content of the files.

In an interview by TechNewsWorld with DoD’s Joint Task Force, Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) public affairs officer Tim Madden, he said, “This is a proactive measure that’s intended to maximize the availability of DoD network resources to support DoD missions, and it doesn’t prohibit military or DoD civilian personnel from accessing those sites from another computer. What we need to do in providing command and control for the GIG (the military’s Global Information Grid) is ensure timely and secure Net-centric capabilities across strategic operational and tactical boundaries.”

Originally posted on May 15, 2007 @ 9:22 am