According to reports doing the rounds, News Corp's popular social networking site, MySpace, is in talks with the four major record companies -- Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Sony BMG Music Entertainment -- to start a music service that will offer free music streaming for PC users. The service could possibly be named "MySpace Music.

In addition, MySpace is also considering the possibility of paid, per-song MP3 downloads as well as subscription plans. According to Reuters, MySpace has held talks with the companies over the past few weeks to gauge their interest in such a service, which would compete with Apple's iTunes.

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According to reports doing the rounds, News Corp's popular social networking site, MySpace, is in talks with the four major record companies -- Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Sony BMG Music Entertainment -- to start a music service that will offer free music streaming for PC users. The service could possibly be named "MySpace Music.

In addition, MySpace is also considering the possibility of paid, per-song MP3 downloads as well as subscription plans. According to Reuters, MySpace has held talks with the companies over the past few weeks to gauge their interest in such a service, which would compete with Apple's iTunes.
Universal, however, seems to be a hurdle in this potential joint venture: earlier, in 2006, Universal had filed a lawsuit against MySpace charging the site of encouraging users to share music and music videos illegally.

MySpace has for long been playing a music hub for established as well as unknown bands. They are allowed to sell original music directly through their profile pages.

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In one of the first rulings of its kind, a Staten Island judge has said that a teenage girl could be charged with violating a restraining order by using MySpace.com to reach out to people she was told not to contact.

The girl, Melisa Fernino, 16, of West Brighton, Staten Island, was charged with three counts of criminal contempt in September after she was accused of sending a MySpace “friend request” to Sandra Delgrosso and her two daughters on Aug. 23. The order was put in place after Ms. Fernino made several violent threats against Ms. Delgrosso, who had dated her father, and against her two daughters, said a Staten Island official who insisted on anonymity because the case originated in Family Court, where proceedings are private.

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A Melbourne man was arrested on charges of sexual abuse after an investigation was conducted by the Story County sheriff's office into an online meeting the man had with a 14-year-old girl from Nevada after contacting her through her MySpace Web page, authorities said.

Anthony McGrew, 23, was charged Monday with five counts of sexual abuse in the third degree stemming from two encounters he allegedly had with the girl after contacting her in late October.
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McGrew turned himself in to authorities on Friday and was being held on a $500,000 bond. On Monday, a judge reduced his bond to $65,000.

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If you are a regular on a social network, chances are that you feel disoriented without your daily fix. And if you are a victim of prohibition in office or load-shedding at home, the yearning can cause anything between angst and neurosis.

A teenager quoted in MIT Tech Talk sums up the trend succinctly: “If you are not on MySpace, you don’t exist.” The network clocked 45.2 billion page views in August 07, miles ahead of 17.4 billion page views of the entire world’s blogs put together during the same period. Rival Orkut has over 45 million communities on it and a relatively smaller Facebook boasts of 2.2 billion friends tagged in 1.7 billion user photos. A sizeable section of users on top global networks are Indians despite dozens of India specific sites like BigAdda, Yaari or DesiMartini.

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Software developers across the globe now have a chance to integrate their developments into MySpace with the launch of a new developer platform.

MySpace has premiered the Developer Platform Site, created as a "sandbox", in which software wizards worldwide can craft mini-applications, called widgets, for MySpace member profile pages.
The site (http://developer.myspace.com) has open standards for building, testing, and deploying mini-applications called widgets for MySpace.

According to Chris DeWolfe, chief executive officer and co-founder of MySpace, "The future of the global social Web will leverage the creativity of the masses to produce meaningful and diverse social experiences, pushing the industry to be more innovative and progressive."

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This spring's Internet Safety Event in Macomb will feature as its keynote speaker the mother of a Missouri teen who committed suicide after an adult neighbor harassed her on the Web.

Tina Meier became a nationally recognized speaker after her daughter, Megan Meier, took her life just days before her 14th birthday in 2006. She will speak at 6:30 p.m. at the April 1 Internet Safety Event sponsored by the Macomb Online Safety Team (MOST) and the Hancock-McDonough Regional Office of Education.

Meier's daughter's death has been attributed to cyberbullying through an account on the social networking Web site MySpace.com. The account, purportedly belonging to a 16-year-old boy, was created and monitored by a friend of the Meier family.

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As News Corp.'s MySpace gets set to open its platform to outside developers, the social network site said Wednesday that Amit Kapur will lead the effort in his new role as COO.

In addition to overseeing "development and implementation of all global business operations," Kapur, who was promoted from vp business development, will have responsibility for the growth of the new MySpace Developer Platform.

Beginning on Tuesday 2/5, outside developers will be able to begin building applications and features for use on the social network, though MySpace is withholding most of the other details of the program until next week. It has set up a page for developers to preregister for the platform at developer.mypsace.com.

The company has not said when the applications will be able to be applied to pages on the social network.

MySpace also has not released information on what kind of revenue share the platform will have with third parties. But the company said it "will actively work to help developers monetize and promote their applications."

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 LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- MySpace, the world's most popular social network, and MTV, the leading global youth brand, along with the Associated Press, today announced "Closing Arguments: A Presidential Super Dialogue." The event will offer candidates polling above 10%* a final chance to address the nation -- particularly the energized and pivotal youth voting bloc -- in advance of Super Tuesday, an unprecedented moment in U.S. political history, when more than 20 states hold presidential primaries or caucuses. Frontrunner candidates Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee are the first confirmed participants for the next installment of MySpace and MTV's acclaimed Presidential Dialogue Series, taking place Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 6 PM ET on-air, online, radio and mobile phones. The Associated Press will distribute a live feed and on-demand highlights of the Dialogue to the 1,800 media sites in its Online Video Network; nearly 600 of those are local TV, newspaper or radio sites in states with Super Tuesday primaries. John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama and John Edwards have all been invited to participate in the event as well.

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 A 15-year-old Florida girl's MySpace page has been hijacked and defaced with sexually explicit and hateful content, Tampa Bay affiliate FOX 13 reported, raising questions about security on Internet networking sites and what is being done to improve it.

The Oldsmar, Fla. teenager, who identified herself to FOX 13 only as "Becky," believes her page was taken over by a group of former friends. She says she can no longer access the page or take it down, even though it still bears her name.

Becky's mother says she has contacted MySpace, but has yet to hear from anyone or receive any help. She warned other teenagers to protect themselves from similar attacks by remaining vigilant and keeping their passwords to themselves.

In the meantime, Becky had a message for her tormentors and cyberbullies everywhere.

"I just want them to know that they need to think about other people's feelings," she said.

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