Posts Tagged ‘Social Networking Sites’
MySpace to Lay Off 30 Percent of Staff
MySpace, the social network owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said it will cut 30 percent of its staff to lower costs as it struggles to stay popular in the face of rising competition. MySpace will be left with about 1,000 employees, it said in a statement released on Tuesday. The company declined to say how many people work at the service, but the percentage suggests that about 400 people will lose their jobs.
The cuts, which were presaged in several blog reports in recent weeks, are the biggest move so far by new management at the social network and an attempt, it said, to return the service to a “start-up culture.” “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered by our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” MySpace’s new chief executive, Owen Van Natta, said in the statement. “I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace.” News Corp named Van Natta as CEO in April. He replaced Chris DeWolfe, one of MySpace’s co-founders. News Corp’s new digital media chief, Jonathan Miller, said MySpace “grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace.” The layoffs will happen across MySpace’s operations, though many of its employees are based in Los Angeles. A company spokeswoman declined to say when employees will learn that they are losing their jobs.
MySpace is facing increasing competition from social network Facebook. Facebook and Twitter, a website that lets people tell others what they’re doing, are surpassing MySpace in buzz and popularity in the technology and media worlds. The job cuts came the same week as the number of Facebook users in the United States surpassed those of MySpace for the first time, according to Web measurement company comScore. Facebook’s edge was narrow, with 70,278,000 unique visitors to its website in May versus MySpace’s 70,237,000. Still, the change marks a key triumph for Facebook. MySpace’s U.S. user numbers have fallen since October 2008. Worldwide, Facebook had more than 307 million unique visitors in April, according to comScore, the latest month for which data was available. MySpace had more than 123 million. MySpace forms a large part of Fox Interactive Media, a News Corp unit that houses several of the company’s digital operations. The unit, which people in the media business call “FIM,” recently called off a move into a large office building in Playa Vista in Los Angeles. MySpace also is facing the likelihood that an advertising deal with Google Inc that brought it $300 million a year over three years will be renegotiated on terms that will be far less lucrative to the social network when the original contract expires in 2010.
Google Increasingly Battles Facebook in Search
Google has long been the king of search, dominating rivals including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But it increasingly sees social networks such as Facebook as challengers to its search engine, a Google official said.
As people search out advice online for everyday, personal decisions, the standard list of links served up by Google is not seen as intimate or trustworthy, Google Group Product Manager Ken Tokusei said Monday. For decisions such as choosing a restaurant or a day care provider, social networking sites or known review sites have an advantage, he said.
Such sites offer information from friends or acquaintances, and Tokusei said users tend to trust that information more. This puts Google’s results at a disadvantage.
“We haven’t gotten to the point where results are seen as if they come from someone you know,” he said.
The search giant has begun to offer tools for users to rate results and delete unrelated links, but it still has work to do, he said.
As Internet users gain savvy and experience, they also expect better-honed answers to queries. Sites such as WolframAlpha, launched earlier this month, comb the Internet for data, and analyze it to provide specific answers to queries, rather than a list of sites.
Google Inc. does something similar for some searches, providing price quotes for “Sony stock” or an answer for “Tunisia capital.” But it also provides the familiar list of sites to dig further, a strategy it is unlikely to change.
“It’s a matter of determining what kind of information the user is looking for. But we will always serve some links to pages with our results,” said Tokusei.
He spoke to reporters at Google’s Japanese headquarters in Tokyo, where he gave an overview of the company’s basic search tools.
Google has developed a host of expanding tools and services, from a mobile operating system to an online word processor, but it devotes 70 percent of its employees and resources to search.
The company still faces fresh competition from its traditional rivals, which are regrouping in an attempt to take back market share.
Microsoft has failed to make much headway in repeated Internet ventures. But the deep-pocketed company, which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into improving its search engine, continues to develop a new search technology, part of which is called “Kumo” internally.
Yahoo, which has seen its share of total online searches conducted plummet to Google, is tweaking its search results, cutting out some links and emphasizing images and video.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has said he is still interested in buying part of Yahoo after a proposed deal was turned down last year.
Tweets Can Spell Trouble in Divorce Cases
Anu Sharma, 30, suspected that her husband was lying to her every time he cited urgent business tours to stay out of the house. One day she finally got proof in the form of a tweet. The next day, she filed for divorce, using the tweet as evidence.
When it comes to fighting a divorce case, tweets are not necessarily sweet. Your status message on social networking websites can even be used as secondary evidence in court cases.
Legal experts say tweets and messages on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut can reveal one’s state of mind; therefore they can be taken as secondary evidence in legal matters. This clause comes under the IT Act of 2000, amended in October last year.
Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer, said: “The IT Act of 2000 was primarily legislation promoting e-commerce and the concept of social networking was not even heard of then. Thus, this clause was incorporated because of the widespread use of microblogging and social networking sites.”
“This trend is catching up now, specially in divorce cases, although it started only last year,” Duggal told IANS.
Citing Anu Sharma’s example, Duggal said: “Her husband used to give her excuses that he was going out on business tours. But instead he would meet friends and socialise. Finally, he was caught when on one of his ‘so called’ business tours, he tweeted: ‘Having a great time with friends over beer, I am in town, come over and join me.’
“Tweets and status messages are usually taken up as secondary evidence. And they are as important as the primary ones,” Duggal told IANS.
He said even an angry tweet or status message like, “I hate my wife”, if produced in court as a printout or screen shot becomes secondary evidence.
“Any written word available in the public domain can be used under this Act. A statement like this can be used on grounds of mental cruelty,” added Duggal.
Agreed Karnika Seth, attorney at law firm Seth Associates who specialises in cyber crime.
“There are couples who are filing for divorce on reasons which could not have been proved before, but with tweets and status message updating several times a day, it works as additional evidence, often making adultery easy to prove,” Seth told IANS.
She also added that many people used to hire private detectives, but this had become a new way of finding the truth.
“In one such case, a man had e-mailed threatening messages to his wife. His IP address could be traced, but the message was not digitally signed, thus the messages were taken as a secondary evidence and a divorce case was filed.”
Seth said a numeric address or domain name given to a website to track it is called IP address. Digital signatures are specially designed icons or even one’s original sign encrypted on the e-mails are the two criteria on the basis of which primary or secondary evidence is distinguished.
According to her, blogs and chat messages can also be used as evidence.
As the clause is only a few months old, no specific statistics is available yet on how many people have used tweets or status messages in legal matters.
Maninder Walia, researcher with the website Cybersmart, feels the act curbs people’s freedom of speech and thoughts.
“The idea behind this act is to control the ever expanding cyber crime which is a threat to national security. But when it comes to freedom of speech and thoughts, this act may be a hindrance,” he said.
Walia feels if a person writes on his or her status message about drinking a lot or something similar, this could also be presented as evidence tagging him or her as an alcoholic in court.
He feels social networking sites are easy interaction platforms, hence things written as tweets, status messages in good humour or otherwise should not be put under the scanner.
“The law needs to pinpoint what kind of information should be used as evidence and in what cases. The act should be reviewed; the internet is moving fast, the law should not lag behind technology,” he said.