“We have to pull it all together.”

This is not the first time Yahoo has had to publicly acknowledge the company’s discontentment with Yahoo 360. They also recognize their need to improve their position in a market ruled primarily by service providers such as MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster. Last year, rumors floated that Yahoo was looking to buy a social networking site, and that it talked with Facebook, but did not come to an agreement.

Reports from the Web 2.0 Expo’s sister event, Web 2.0 Summit back in November, read that Yahoo might remake Yahoo 360. According to PC World India, Weiner takes full responsibility for improving Yahoo’s position in social networking. No details have been released as to how Yahoo may use the social media sites to better rival social networking.

“MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit.”

It’s not the first time this has happened to Photobucket. MySpace usually claims bugs or security violations were the reasons for the shutdown, but videos from competitors such as YouTube have not been affected at all. Corporate masters at Fox Interactive Media would prefer MySpace users to only upload MySpace videos. All these events come incidentally close to the rumored news of Photobucket being up for sale for a whopping 300 million.

Recently, Myspace hooked a $900 million deal with Google, who will be placing a search platform as well as advertising space, on the myspace site.

Greenfield believes in the near future, NewsCorp’s goldmine networking site could lose around $75 million when they introduce Fox News Business Channel. If that’s not enough to put a check on myspace’s money-making high, two incognito American hackers have announced plans to reveal security slips on the site. The hackers are working under the names “Mondo Armando” and “Mstaschio”. They’ve decided to pick on myspace in particular.

“We could have just as easily gone after Google, Yahoo, MSN or ZDNet or whatever. Myspace is just more fun”, says Armando on the hackers’ live journal site.

Myspace should bounceback fine from these seemingly minor setbacks. Bottom line, myspace is a jackpot for newscorp, and they’ll come out just fine in the long run.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has managed to convince Michael Crook to stop filing bogus DMCA claims against websites carrying a picture of him that appeared on Fox News. A settlement of the EFF lawsuit requires him to withdraw his complaints, take a copyright law course, and apologize for interfering with the free speech rights of those he targeted.

Wired News will put the phrase, “We are the media,” to the test as it launches its Assignment Zero project. The project will run for two to three months, and offers any willing contributor a chance at being a reporter or editor. Results of the project will be published at NewAssignment.net and Wired. If it works, it would show that a widely separated group of people can report completely and well on news issues.

The next generation of search will be improved for people as it becomes more personalized. Google’s Matt Cutts told Read/Write Web that “personalization has a very high chance of being able to improve search for the average user.” Matt also talked about web spam, and said being able to offer spam free search in any language has been a big trend for Google both last year and this year.

Long-time YouTube critic Mark Cuban weighed in with an opinion on Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against the video sharing site and its owner, Google. Cuban said in a post at his Blog Maverick site that he hopes the lawsuit is not just a negotiating ploy. He sees no downside for Viacom and expects many more suits to follow Viacom’s action.

Google may be softening its stance on net neutrality. GigaOM writer Drew Clark cited recent comments made by Google senior policy counsel
Andrew McLaughlin that ran counter to Google’s publicly stated opposition to quality of service agreements. Although Google distanced themselves from McLaughlin’s comments by calling them his “personal view,” Google did sign an exclusive contract with Verizon to carry YouTube videos in November 2006.

Rumors of a MySpace News site have gained more credibility. Screenshots of the news portal at the social networking site were leaked to Wired News in the form of a sales document. The leaked data discussed how the site will be structured, but a launch date was not included. Previous rumors stated the launch would happen sometime in the second quarter of 2007.

The original social networking site, Friendster, has dumped Yahoo’s search and advertising services in favor of a new deal with Google. Friendster has been struggling to rebuild itself, and has fallen far behind MySpace and Facebook in membership and visits.

Some of the researchers behind the now closed Google Answers have launched a new question and answer site. Uclue.com is in beta and requires payment for answers from their researchers.

Yahoo executives told an investor conference that the work they did through 2006 has fixed the company. They have been seeing improved relevance from the new Panama ad system, which has led to better results for advertisers and for Yahoo.

France has banned anyone but professional journalists from filming or publishing violent acts. Citizen journalists who record incidents could face jail time. The proposed law is part of a clamp down on violence and people who film it for their amusement.

“MySpace is dedicated to ensuring that content owners, whether large or small, can both promote and protect their content in our community. For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create.”
Myspace has also created a content takedown tool to make it more accessible and practical for copyright owners to ask for removal of any unauthorized content.

Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye says that any site offering protection will have a better chance of succeeding in the online video world.
“With the explosive growth and popularity of MySpace, the recognition and filtering of copyrights will play an important role in its ongoing success.”

Myspace flies forward in front of YouTube to find and prevent copyright-protected videos. Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated in a conference call that YouTube would make changes soon, but gave no deadline.