MarketMe 2.0

Popular Internet social network MySpace said on Tuesday it detected and deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders on its service, more than four times the figure it had initially reported.

The company, owned by media conglomerate News Corp., said in May it had deleted about 7,000 user profiles that belonged to convicted offenders. MySpace attracts about 60 million unique visitors monthly in the United States.

The new information was first revealed by U.S. state authorities after MySpace turned over information on convicted sex offenders it had removed from the service.

“The exploding epidemic of sex offender profiles on MySpace–29,000 and counting–screams for action,” Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement.

Blumenthal, who led a coalition of state authorities to lobby MySpace for more stringent safeguards for minors, and other state AGs have demanded the service begin verifying a user’s age and require parental permission for minors.

The minimum age to register on MySpace is 14.

“We’re pleased that we’ve successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead,” MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement.

The service has come under attack over the past year after some of its young members fell prey to adult predators posing as minors. The families of several teenage girls sexually assaulted by MySpace members sued the service in January for failing to safeguard its young members.

Late last year, it struck a partnership with background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings to co-develop the first U.S. national database of convicted sex offenders to make it easier to track offenders on the Internet.

Convicted sex offenders are required by law to register their contact information with local authorities. But the information has only been available on regional databases, making nationwide searches difficult.

As of May, there were about 600,000 registered sex offenders in the United States.

Gideon Yu, YouTube’s former chief financial officer, has been hired as Facebook’s new CFO, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.
Yu,36, replaces Mike Sheridan, who joined Facebook in September, according the Journal story. Why Mike Sheridan is leaving remains unclear.

Facebook is the place to be right now, as rumors of a sale or possible public offering continue to follow the company. Employees stand to profit in the event of a sale or IPO and this hasn’t hurt Facebook’s recruiting efforts.

“We’re not looking to sell the company, and we’re really not looking to IPO any time soon,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told the Journal. “Our board and we believe it’s probably best to push some of these things off as long as possible.”

Just ask a group of teen Internet entrepreneurs, who readily admit that traditional e-mail is better suited for keeping up professional relationships or communicating with adults.

“I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors,” Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.

“Sometimes I say I e-mailed you, but I mean I Myspace’d or Facebook’ed you,” she said.

To be sure, much has been written about the demise of e-mail, given the annoyance of spam and the rise of tools like instant messaging, voice over IP and text messaging. But e-mail has hung on to its utility in office environments and at home, even if it’s given up some ground to new challengers. It may be that social networks are the most potent new rival to e-mail, one of the Internet’s oldest forms of communication. With tens of millions of members on their respective networks, MySpace and Facebook can wield great influence over a generation living online, either through the cell phone or the Internet.

And if you’re among those who believe teens are the future, then e-mail could be knocked down a rung. For example, Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Online, a virtual world for teens and college kids, describes the age group as “the first and early adopters of new trends. Things they are doing are what everyone will be doing in five years.”

To hear the teen panelists tell it, that means e-mail will be strictly the domain of business dealings.

“If I’m talking to any friends it’s through a social network,” said Asheem Badshah, a teenaged president of Scriptovia.com, an essay-sharing site that launched this summer. “For me even IM died, and was replaced by text messaging. Facebook will replace e-mail for communicating with certain people.”

Almost on cue, a Microsoft executive sitting in the audience chimed in with a question to the teens, saying that given his work, he’s “interested in people not using e-mail.” He asked the panelists to comment about the fact that e-mail transmits to mobile devices, for example. Also, Facebook will send its members an e-mail anytime someone sends them a message on the social network.

Butler replied that she uses Facebook on her cell phone. “I need (Facebook) everywhere I go, but I log into e-mail only once a week,” she said.

More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, teens in the United States have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80 percent of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging.

Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old founder and president of MyYearbook.com, was the lone teen entrepreneur who said she still uses e-mail regularly to keep up with camp friends or business relationships. Still, that usage pales in comparison to her habit of text messaging. She said she sends a thousand text messages a month.

“I don’t know any teen who doesn’t have a phone with them all the time,” Cook said.

Still, the age group is a fickle bunch. All of the panelists said that they’re constantly looking for the next, new thing to stay current with friends; and they often use different social networks and tools to keep up with different sets of people.

Cook, for example, said she uses her own social network MyYearbook to talk to her friends from school, but she uses Facebook to keep up with what’s happening at Georgetown University, where she plans to attend school in the fall. Cook blogs at MySpace as a way to meet new friends, and she’s also on LinkedIn to mine new professional relationships.

“Teens are on lots of sites and picking and choosing activities from each one,” she said. “It’s based on who you actually want to talk to.”

Similarly, Ashley Qualls, president of WhateverLife, a graphical tool for users of MySpace, said she keeps adding on new social networks to her roster of memberships online. “People leave a trail of where they decide to go,” she said.

Badshah said that to subscribe to only one social network means losing out on friendships with people who are active on other rival social networks. That’s because having real estate on MySpace or Facebook means keeping tabs with only certain friends through messaging, blogs and recent photos. That the two major social networks don’t interoperate could be reason for a new social network that could act as an intermediary to aggregate friends in one place, Badshah said, much the way Trillian did for IM applications like Yahoo and AOL.

“It’s a problem for teens–you’re like losing out on some of your friends if you choose just one,” he said.

“To have all your buddy lists in one place, that’s where this is going,” Badshah said.

Send insights or tips on this topic to stefanie.olsen@cnet.com.
CNet.com

eHarmony.com
Our main beef with this online dating site is its power to cause utter despair. eHarmony claims its more “scientific” approach to matchmaking differentiates it from competitors — its users complete extensive personality questionnaires, in order to connect them to others based on compatibility. In early 2006, eHarmony announced that more than 16,000 couples had married during the previous year as a result of meeting on the site, citing a 2005 Harris Interactive poll. That’s about 90 people finding love every day, a track record bound to inflate expectations. On a more typical dating site, where users are prone to making snap judgments based on photos and sketchy profiles, if you don’t find that special someone you’re less likely to take it personally. It’s easier to shake off because, after all, that’s hardly the real you up there on that site. But if you’ve taken the time to answer eHarmony’s 436 compatibility survey questions and paid its premium charges ($21 to $60 a month, depending on how many months you prepay), and the site then delivers terrible recommendations — or worse, rejects you as unmatchable — what do you tell yourself then? The company’s advice, to stick with it for several months to improve your odds of finding a soul mate, sounds all too self-serving (the longer you use the site the more you pay). The site also discriminates against gays.

Evite.com
We’re only mad at Evite because we need it so much, and we know it could be so much better. The site, in short, is crying out for an overhaul. With more and more sites emphasizing flexibility and user control over content, Evite’s fill-in-the-blanks approach feels clumsy and dated. The ads are intrusive and navigation’s a drag. The service has also been slow to adopt some of the media sharing tools that have become standard ways of the Web. You can upload photos but only after the party, and you can forget music and video. The company says these features are in development. We can’t wait.

Meez.com
It has become trendy to tack poems, photos, icons, logos and other digital flotsam and jetsam onto email messages. We understand that digital signatures have a practical use, particularly when they provide the kind of info you’d see on a business card. And we don’t doubt that, for some people, a U2 lyric can express how they feel better than they could. But the 3-D animations and other digital doodads created with the help of Meez and other sites of its ilk — Blingee, Iconator — are just plain annoying. They also clog the recipient’s inbox with unnecessary bits. Sites like Smiley Central, which offers a seemingly endless assortment of cutesy creatures for dressing up email, instant messages and blog posts, require you to download a browser plug-in. The company insists the app is neither spyware nor adware, but it can still slow your computer down.

MySpace.com
It’s by far the most popular social network, and one of the top ten online destinations overall. And, yes, Time.com named MySpace one of our 50 Coolest Websites of 2006. But since then, things have taken an ugly turn, and we’re not just talking about poor page design. It seems the community has become infested with marketers and other opportunists who create false profiles and essentially spam other users, all under the guise of “making friends.” Of course, there have always been loads of MySpace profiles of fictional characters, created to help market a movie or promote some other brand. But it’s the bait-and-switch tactics from these leeches (Want to be my friend? Buy a ring tone! Fill out this survey!) that have taken things to a whole new—and sad—level.

SecondLife.com
We’re sure that somebody out there is enjoying Second Life, but why? Visually, this vast virtual world can be quite impressive, but it’s notoriously slow to load (it runs on free software you have to download) and difficult to navigate, even with a broadband connection. You interact in the space through an avatar, but creating and personalizing this animated representation of yourself is tedious. Movements feel clunky and there can be a terrible lag. As on many sites, there’s a learning curve for novices, but Second Life’s is simply too steep. And there are crazy people around every corner — disruptive types that spread graffiti and get in your way and throw you off your groove. Fans praise Second Life as a virtual hangout where you can meet and chat and buy sneakers and real estate (that’s fake stuff for real money) and dance and go bowling and have sex — suggesting that “virtual humans” doing “human things” online in Second Life is somehow less pathetic than, say, cooking Kaldorei spider kabobs or making magic pantaloons in World of Warcraft. The corporate world’s embrace of the place as a venue for staff meetings and training sessions does seem to lend Second Life a layer of legitimacy. But maybe it’s a case of some CEOs trying too hard to be hip.

Time.com

Amazon.com

The uber-e-tailer that never forgets its bookstore roots. The new print-on-demand service means customers can now order out-of-print, backlist and large-print books from several big publishers. Soon it will start selling DRM-free MP3s (meaning you can copy the songs for personal use and download them to any device) from EMI and other labels out of its new music store (iTunes already does). And, if the rumors are true — that Amazon is in talks to buy Netflix — before long it could own the market on movies, both digital downloads (through its Unbox service) and rent-by-mail. From handbags to hand vacs, Amazon really is a great place to shop for virtually anything, even shoes, though Zappos.com still has the edge there. And before you check out, it doesn’t hurt to see whether Overstock.com has any of the same items on special.

BBC.co.uk

World News. Sports. Radio. Articles and audio in 33 languages. PBS.org is content rich too; episodes of the series Expose: America’s Investigative Reports can be viewed here even before they air on TV.

Citysearch.com

Helps steer you to the right restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotels and spas in dozens of cities, with editors’ picks and user reviews, and a Yellow Pages directory that includes shops and other services. A mobile version lets you access listing info from your cell phone. Other local search services worth consulting: Yelp!, which relies on reviews by its members (a.k.a. “yelpers”), who now chime in from more than two dozen cities, and Attendio, which clues you in to events happening in your area.

Craigslist.com

Free classified ads in every category, organized by locale. To access ads that are posted elsewhere online, go to Oodle , which searches online versions of local, regional and national newspapers and other Web listings, such as iHomefinder, Local.com and PennySaverUSA.com — 75,000 sources in all — to help you find that next roommate/motorcycle/vacation home.

Del.ious.us

An immensely popular place to share your favorite Web links and see what other people are bookmarking. Search the site by keyword (each link is tagged with descriptors both general and specific), create your own list of favorites to share with everybody else, or add to an existing collection. It’s all about the tags. To see the most popular ones, click here.

Digg.com

The leader in social news, where users determine what’s important and interesting by submitting it, “digging” it and posting a comment. Click “Top in 24 Hours” to see the most popular articles, blog posts and other Web pages of the day. In recent months the site has expanded beyond tech news, adding separate sections for Science, World & Business, Sports, Entertainment and Gaming. Digg Labs continues to roll out new and visually interesting ways to view the links and find out immediately what’s hot (and what’s not). On BigSpy, stories pop up at the top each time they get another digg, the moment they get it. The bigger and bolder the headline, the higher the digg count. Arc, meanwhile, arranges stories in a circle; mouse over a piece of the pie to preview the link.

eBay.com

The online auction powerhouse sells one car every minute on eBay Motors; at StubHub, which eBay acquired in February, you can buy tickets baseball games, Broadway shows, concerts and other events. And the charity auctions at eBay Giving Works have helped buyers and sellers raise $100 million for more than 10,000 nonprofit organizations since the program started in November 2003. Also, check out the eBay Wiki to read about —or chime in on — all things eBay.

ESPN.com

The ads are way too aggressive, but this site’s got everything a sports fanatic needs. Speedy Net connection a must.

Facebook.com

This social network is not as popular as MySpace, but it also hasn’t been corrupted by marketers and fake friends. Once available to students only, Facebook has opened its doors everyone and has made dozens of third-party applications available for members to use on their pages, from iLike (music sharing) to Graffiti (lets you draw on your friends’ profiles) to Flixster (movie reviews) to Wis.dm (poll your friends!).

FactCheck.com

The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, is an independent, nonpartisan effort to cut through the routine spin and dissembling of politicians and other public figures. Staff writers check speeches, TV ads, news releases and other public statements for accuracy, and provide clarification and context.

Flickr.com

More than half a billion images are now posted on Flickr, a superbly designed sharing platform and social network for photo enthusiasts that, since June, also offers French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese and Korean language options. (Next up: video.) Upload and tag your images and make them available for community consumption, and see how they rate on “interestingness” and “gorgeousity;” join a group (there are more than 300,000 of them, and each one has its own theme); comment on other people’s images or subscribe to a photo stream. The cool Maps feature shows where photos were taken. For more private sharing and straightforward printing services, use Shutterfly or Kodak EasyShare Gallery. Or try the new, no-frills Picupine; it doesn’t offer printing or long-term storage, but it allows you to share your photos quickly and easily, without forcing you to create an account first. Once you’ve submitted your photos, the site creates a Web link you can then send to friends and family.

Google.com

The world’s leading Web search engine has helpfully gathered together a complete list of its ever-growing range of special features, tips and tricks. It also offers a wide range of useful Web tools and services, including Gmail, the free Web-based email you can now port to your cell phone port to your cell phone; Picasa, a great way to organize and edit your photos on your desktop (and share them online using the Web-album publishing tool); and the stellar Google Maps, which recently introduced Street Maps, 360-degree street-level photographic views that allow virtual movement through a location. The images were shot over several months by camera-equipped vans that simply drove up and down the streets of Denver, New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Miami (some of the results have raised protests from privacy advocates ). Google’s maps now mark public transit stops too. (As an alternative, HopStop does an excellent job providing door-to-door directions by subway or bus from any two points in New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington and San Francisco.)

HowStuffWorks.com

Easy-to-read explanations of how things work, from plasma converters to antibiotics to E-Z Pass. Now the site lets you upload photos and video to help supplement its written content. UNICEF sent in a video clip about land mines; NASA on sonic booms; and GE on photovoltaics.

Internet Movie Database

The Internet Movie Database is not just the Net’s more extensive directory of films and TV shows of the past, present and future —it is also a stomping ground for film buffs who like to quote dialogue, share trivia and recommend favorite flicks to their friends. Or, before you head to the theater or pop in that DVD, go to Rotten Tomatoes to see what all the critics have to say.

YouTube.com

It’s amateur hour! And we love it. This monster video-sharing hub has more visitors than all of its many competitors combined. Upload your own footage or just watch and enjoy the weirdness. There is some truly good stuff here, if you can find it. Browse by channel or category, or click to view the clips that are Top Rated or Most Discussed or Most Linked. Copyrighted material tends to come down just as fast as it goes up, so don’t be surprised if that link your friend emailed to you doesn’t work anymore.

Kayak

When planning your next trip, make this your first stop. The search engine works fast, scouring hundreds of travel sites to find the best airfares. You can compare rates on different travel dates, or check prices to several destinations at once. Create a profile so you don’t have to enter certain data every time you use it. When it comes time to choose a hotel, read the reviews on TripAdvisor.

National Geographic

There’s a ton of great content here — about animals, world adventures, the environment, the sciences, space — plus educational stuff too. Also check out National Geographic’s My Wonderful World, which aims to boost your geographic literacy, offering daily quizzes to test your global IQ — and be sure to see the special section for Kids & Teens.

Netflix.com

Digital movie downloads are getting easier, but most consumers still prefer their movies on DVD, and those slim red sleeves (with return postage prepaid) are still the best way to get ‘em. But, the question now, is whether Amazon.com will acquire the company, and if so, will it keep the website and the system intact?

Technorati.com

This blog search engine now searches for social media too —photos, video and music posted on online sharing sites — and a tag cloud on the home page shows you the hot topics of the day. Blogs are given an authority rating, based on how many other blogs currently link to it. The new BlogStorm also tracks blog love; register your site to receive free statistics. Another honorable mention goes to Sphere, where you can select a topic (Sports, Politics, Entertainment) and the site will generate links to the most popular blog posts, news stories and other related content.

TMZ.com

The best for celebrity and entertainment news. Recent scoops include a May 18 post about Andy Roddick’s buffed-up bod on the cover of the June/July issue of Men’s Fitness (the site’s crack team of reporters even scooped Roddick, who blogged about the seemingly doctored photo four days later: “little did I know I had 22-inch guns…”) Check out the latest paparazzi shots, browse the video galleries or click for an archive by name. (Full disclosure: TMZ is a joint venture between Telepictures Productions and AOL, which, like TIME and Time.com, is owned by Time Warner.) Can’t get enough? Check out Yahoo’s splashy new omg!, which is big on photos. (Brangelina with the kids! Kate Bosworth at the beach! Paris jogging — before being jailed!)

USA.gov

The official Web portal for the U.S. government, with links to every branch, agency and organization involved in federal business, plus reports, guides, reference material and other resources to help you navigate the system, and, whenever possible, get things done online. Each Web page of links is more specific than the last, so you can quickly drill down to the matter at hand. It took three clicks (and three seconds) to find NASA’s bank of images and animations of our home planet (select Science & Tech, then Physical Sciences, then Visible Earth), learn how to file for bankruptcy (Money and Taxes/Personal Finance) and read up on Medicare prescription drug coverage (Health). Also: FedStats.

TelevisionWithoutPity.com

Bitingly funny recaps of dozens of popular TV shows, plus forums for further discussion.

WebMD.com

A big portal packed with information about health and related issues. A recent redesign introduced a nifty new tool called Symptom Checker, which lets you self-diagnose—sorry, “pinpoint potential conditions”—in seconds by clicking on body parts and selecting from a list of specific complaints (just be sure to check with your doctor for a real diagnosis). The new WebMD Health Manager lets you store your personal medical records online and make them available to doctors. The new Revolution Health portal, which launched in April, has many of these same tools and features, including its own symptom checker (but WebMD’s has cool graphics). Other trustworthy sources of information about disease and other health matters: the Medem Leaning Centers, which aggregates top articles from leading medical societies on a wide range of topics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health.

Wikipedia.com

The people’s encyclopedia, with millions of articles written in hundreds of languages. It’s free, and anyone can edit. Its pages dominate Google search results, and the site is in the top 10 in terms of traffic. A vigilant group of volunteers helps maintain quality control. And now there’s Wikia, where you can create a wiki of your own and get help managing it. Other offshoots include the Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikispecies, a “directory of life.”

Yahoo!

We’ve already singled out a few of our favorites from Yahoo’s basket of goodies — Flickr, Del.icio.us, Bix — but the site is also number two in Web search. A free account with Yahoo Mail now comes with unlimited storage, and fewer restrictions on file attachments. You can also access your messages on your cell phone. Another favorite site within the mega-site is Yahoo! Answers, a community where visitors post questions, users respond, and everybody rates and ranks those responses. The site boasts 21.4 million unique U.S. visitors a month and more than 130 million answers to millions of questions ranging from, ‘How is yoga different from Pilates?’ to, ‘What do you do about The Annoying Guy at work?’ Meanwhile, new social networking site wis.dm takes an entirely different approach to online Q&A.

Time.com

Last month, Danah Boyd, a well-known researcher of teen culture online, argued that class divisions in the United States could be split between MySpace.com and Facebook.In essence, Boyd wrote, MySpace is home to a large population of “burnouts,” punks or alternative-scene teenagers whose parents likely didn’t go beyond a high school education. Facebook, in contrast, is a bustling hub for jocks, school nerds and prom queens planning for their university years. You get the division.

But what happens to the teens who don’t have constant access to technology, unlike those spending hours a day on MySpace or Facebook regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds?

Henry Jenkins, director of the media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said here Tuesday that the divisions are extending further to a so-called participation gap, which exists between teens who have 24/7 access to digital technologies and kids who can only get online from school or the library.

“We’re moving from a (digital divide that’s about) access to technology to one that’s about access to social skills and cultural knowledge that emerges from access to digital technologies,” Jenkins said in an interview at Mashup 2007, a two-day confab on teens and technology. (He posited this idea in a recent white paper published by the Macarthur Foundation.)

For example, Jenkins talked about how a group of kids who learned to read and write from Harry Potter books has gotten an education about corporate politics by defending their fan sites. Warner Bros. had sought to take down Harry Potter fan sites for infringing on its intellectual property, but the outcry from kids operating the sites was so great that the media giant backed down. (Apparently the kids learned from Harry what it meant to question and fight authority.)

Jenkins also cited a study from USC that showed that teens with less access to the Internet, when logged on, just grabbed information from a site like Wikipedia without thinking about it critically. In contrast, teens with more access possess a greater understanding of how a site like Wikipedia works through user-generated contributions, Jenkins said.

The Internet “is a birthplace for civic engagement,” Jenkins said. “Kids who don’t have access are scrambling to keep up or are left out altogether.”

News.com

The secret of Facebook’s success, and its future viability, hinges on how the social network site protects privacy, taming the anything-goes intrusiveness of what might as well be known as the World Wild Web.

Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said users want greater control over who sees their personal information, rather than expecting total privacy, or anonymity, the concept underlying much of the legal thinking on privacy for more than a century.

“Privacy is beginning to transform from the classic ‘right to be left alone’ to this notion that ‘I want control over my information,’” Kelly said in an interview on the sidelines of a Fortune magazine technology conference held here last week.

Started in 2004 by then-undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg as a social site for fellow Harvard University students, Facebook has been opened up over the last year to users of all ages, who have a degree of control over who sees what personal details.

These privacy controls paradoxically encourage users to reveal more about themselves within their approved circle of friends than they would do on the wide-open Web. As a result, many post mobile phone numbers, reveal political loyalties or even show changes in their dating status for friends to see.

Facebook has seen membership spike 25 percent to more than 30 million since May, when it turned the site into a big tent for outsiders to build software inside it. This lets users engage in online activities while limiting exposure to security pitfalls.

“We have tried to take a very control-based approach for our users, so Facebook information doesn’t leak out on the Web in general,” Kelly said. “Privacy, as anonymity, is declining, but privacy, as control, is on the rise.”

As a company, Facebook’s livelihood hinges on how it balances the trade-offs between privacy and openness.

The free, advertising-supported site runs a limited number of conventional Web banner ads. But it also is looking at how to offer ads that match people’s expressed interests without frightening users that their data will be abused by marketers.

“In a trusted environment you share more,” Kelly said of the business logic of insuring privacy. “There is an opportunity to target advertising, as long as you keep that trusted environment.”

Facebook board member and financial backer Jim Breyer, a partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners, said the company would do well over $100 million in revenue in 2007, be profitable, and have significant positive cash flow this year.

Breyer also sought to knock down rumors the company may be for sale–the latest speculation last week was that Microsoft should consider paying $6 billion for Facebook.

“We continue to focus on building the best stand-alone company we can be and, simply said, are not for sale,” Breyer said via e-mail on Saturday.

Facebook is no privacy nirvana, nor does it mean to be.

Indeed, its core function is to enable a kind of virtual voyeurism that makes it easy for members to post comments, photos and videos about their own lives while keeping tabs on what their network of online friends are up to.

It does this by offering an automated news feed of what friends are doing on their own Facebook profile pages–a kind of gossip column among friends.

Highlighting the tension over privacy at the core of the site, when the feature was introduced last September, members temporarily revolted until the company introduced greater controls over what information their friends could see.

In another example of how privacy protections play out on Facebook, photos are often shared among users, but individuals retain the right to delete their names from photo labels, providing a degree of insulation from personal embarrassment.

While large and growing, Facebook functions like an endless series of online private clubs. The average Facebook user has access to only one in 200 of its members, Kelly said.

Among diehard Facebook users, many of whom have hundreds of connections to friends, a more subtle privacy complaint arises. As it now stands, Facebook software treats friends pretty much equally, a byproduct of its college-campus roots.

But as more users add different types of contacts–bosses, family members, colleagues, business acquaintances–demand grows for more refined privacy controls to distinguish between various types of real-world relationships.

Kelly said the company was working to address the issue. “Stay tuned: We are all about user control,” he said.

ZDNet.com

NEW YORK — A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.