Myspace Settles With FTC | 55,000 Twitter Accounts Breached

Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Myspace Faces 20 Years of Government Scrutiny for Privacy Violations (Mashable) Myspace’s privacy practices will be kept under close watch by a third-party observer for two decades as part of a settlement related to an investigation of the company’s advertising sales strategy, the Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday. The agreement also prevents Myspace from making “future privacy misrepresentations” and requires it to make significant changes to its privacy policy. The New York Times The FTC asserted that from January 2009 through June 2010, and again from October 2010 through October 2011, Myspace transmitted information, including internal identification numbers of users, and their ages and genders, to outside ad networks that served ads to Myspace. Using that information, the FTC said, third parties could obtain the user’s name and other personal information and use a file placed on the user’s computer to view a history of websites the user had visited. AP The settlement is similar to deals the FTC struck previously with Facebook and Google. In March 2011, the FTC settled with Google over charges that it deceived users and violated its own privacy policy when it started a social-networking service called Buzz. In November, the agency reached a settlement with Facebook in which the company agreed to get explicit approval from its users before changing their privacy controls. CNET Myspace was sold by News Corp. to digital-media company Specific Media last June for a rumored $35 million. News Corp. had purchased the social networking site in 2005 for $580 million with the hopes of using it to drive traffic to Fox's various media efforts. PC Magazine In a statement, Specific Media said it "thoroughly examine[d] the company's business practices and, where applicable, make improvements" following last year's purchase. "A major focus of this review was to ensure that Myspace delivered advertisements to consumers in a manner that safeguarded their privacy," Specific Media continued. Facebook IPO Will Be Tough for Investors to Get in on (USA Today) Investors who "like" Facebook may now be able to put their money where their clicks are. Given the large degree of attention on this IPO, though, investors shouldn't expect to actually get shares or make money on them. CNBC Facebook revamped its roadshow presentation for day two in Boston after New York investors lamented long waits, stale information and limited face time with management. At Tuesday's meeting, no video was shown, and Facebook management kept their opening remarks extremely brief to allow for a better dialogue with those present. The second difference was not a crowd pleaser: no Mark Zuckerberg. VentureBeat The secret details of the $1 billion deal between Facebook and Instagram are more convoluted than anyone thought. VentureBeat has learned that Instagram chief executive and co-founder Kevin Systrom first got an offer and a term sheet from Twitter, then shrewdly doubled the value of his young company by striking a deal with Facebook. AllFacebook Facebook got some good news on the patent-litigation front, not related to its squabble with Yahoo!, but involving a patent suit originally filed in November 2008 by Leader Technologies. Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., upheld a ruling by the U.S. District Court, District of Delaware, in July 2010 that Leader took too long to seek protection for its invention, making its patent invalid. The Huffington Post Psychologists say Facebook addiction is real -- and now it can be measured. Researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway have developed a new tool, the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale, to measure obsession with the social media site. Chen Guangcheng Has a Posse and Ai Weiwei is Everywhere: Memes as Dissent in China (Nieman Journalism Lab) Memes are “the street art of the social web,” said An Xiao Mina, a designer and artist in Los Angeles, Calif. But in China, a country that represses speech and the press, the lulz can turn deadly serious. Donate Unused Twitter Characters To #Hashtags4Heroes To Help Wounded Soldiers (AllTwitter) In honor of National Military Appreciation Month, check out Hashtags4Heroes, a campaign designed to raise awareness and advocacy for the Wounded Warrior Project and the servicemen and women it supports. Raytheon and the Wounded Warrior Project have come up with a pretty painless way for you to help wounded soldiers -- donate unused characters in your tweets. Hackers Target Twitter Spammers in Massive Account Data Breach (ZDNET) Twitter is investigating after 55,000 account details -- including username and password combinations -- were published online. Account details seemingly belonging to spammers were uploaded to Pastebin, a code-sharing site often used by hackers to post the results of their hacking escapades. Japan Poised to Limit Gambling-Style Collecting in Social Games (ars technica) Many in and around the video game industry have long been concerned with the way many social games seem designed to encourage compulsive spending on digital gewgaws rather than strategic gameplay decisions. Now, the Japanese government looks poised to crack down on one of the more pernicious and addictive forms of virtual good sales, arguing that it runs afoul of the country's lottery laws. Twitter Fights Subpoena in Occupy Arrest Case (AP) Twitter is resisting an attempt by New York City prosecutors to gain access to the account of an Occupy Wall Street protester. The micro-blogging service has filed court papers asking a judge to quash a subpoena in which the Manhattan district attorney had demanded the tweets and user information of writer and activist Malcolm Harris. Garrett Camp Steps Down as StumbleUpon CEO, Will Serve as Chairman (TechCrunch) StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp has announced that he’s stepping down as CEO and becoming chairman of the company’s board. The change is effective immediately. Obama’s ‘Life Of Julia’ Keeps Democrats At Social Media Forefront (WebProNews) Last week, the Republican party launched a Social Victory app to try to get a foothold onto what has been a one- sided battle: The fight for social media dominance. This fight was utterly dominated by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and some strategists pointed to this as a huge reason why he won so handily.

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Myspace Settles With FTC | 55,000 Twitter Accounts Breached | Memes as Dissent in China

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