09/05/2008 by swordfish.

Facebook is to add a slew of new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyber bullies.

At the heart of the changes are efforts to ban convicted sex offenders from the site and finding better ways to verify users’ ages and identities.

The agreement was announced by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in a deal along with other attorneys general around America. “This marks another watershed towards social networking safety,” he said. It will “protect kids from online predators and inappropriate content,” he added.

It comes on the heels of a similar comprehensive agreement that 49 states and Washington, DC, made with MySpace last January.

Source: BBC Technology News

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11/04/2008 by swordfish.

Yahoo may have played a blinder by tying up with Google and hinting at a deal with AOL, but Wall Street still thinks Microsoft will win the takeover battle.

Yahoo announced earlier in the week that it was planning to trial an advertisement sharing scheme with Google, which sent analysts into a spin predicting a possible three way alliance with AOL.

Hours later, Microsoft trumped the announcement with the New York Times reporting that MySpace owner News Corp was in talks to join Microsoft’s bid for the web company. “Everyone is just exploring. The best option is to accept the Microsoft deal. I just see Yahoo as a mature brand and AOL as declining brand” says fund manager Mike Binger at Thrivent Financial, which owns small stakes in Yahoo and Microsoft.

Source: PC Pro

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09/04/2008 by swordfish.

Yahoo has added video sharing to its Flickr photo website in an effort to carve a niche in an on-line arena dominated by Google-owned YouTube.

Short videos can be posted along with pictures on Flickr pages that let users share images photo-album style with select people, as opposed to the way videos are displayed on YouTube for the world to see.

“Flickr is a very different experience from anything else out there,” Flickr director Kakul Srivastava said, demonstrating the video-sharing feature for AFP in the Internet firm’s San Francisco office. “We are not trying to be the highest volume site, but we are trying to be the most interesting, authentic and personal.”

The video-sharing feature rolled out Tuesday in eight languages on Flickr websites worldwide.

Only people with “pro” premium accounts, costing 25 dollars annually, can upload videos to their Flickr pages.

Source: Yahoo News

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28/03/2008 by swordfish.

A recent security lapse on Facebook which allowed access to private photo libraries highlights what can go wrong if companies use public social networking sites without security, experts warn.

Users’ pictures, including those of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and socialite Paris Hilton, were exposed on the site, even though the photos were tagged as being visible only to the member and associated friends.

David Lavenda, vice president of marketing and product strategy at web security firm WorkLight, said: “Just imagine what would happen if a business-to-consumer document such as an employment contract were to leak in this way.

Source: VNUNET

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18/03/2008 by swordfish.

Amazon is looking to harness the potential money-making opportunities in social networks, by launching two new applications for Facebook users.

Amazon Giver allows users to view other users’ Amazon “wish lists”, and click through to buy items. It also generates recommendations for individual users based on their Facebook profile page interests and likes.

The Amazon Grapevine application, meanwhile, updates users’ friends if they write a product review on Amazon or update their own wish lists.

Industry experts say that “this move shows the increasing maturity of Web 2.0, and the trend towards personalisation in e-commerce”.

Source: Yahoo news

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14/03/2008 by swordfish.

Time Warner’s AOL internet division will buy social network Bebo for $850m (£418m) in cash, bolstering its consumer web offerings even as the media conglomerate mulls splitting off the business.

Privately-owned Bebo claims about 40 million global members, and the deal promises to significantly expand AOL’s growing business of selling advertising on the internet outside of the US.

The site is one of the top social networks in Britain and the market leader in Ireland and New Zealand, but it is yet to create the same buzz in the US.

Source: ZDNet

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