MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users

Brad Stone
The New York Times
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
pg C3
The Story
The Summary: Myspace is starting to crackdown on its user's personal use of the site, such as selling and advertising.

But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.

“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly,” wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. “MySpace will now only allow you to use ‘MySpace’ things.”

Rupert Murdoch owns Myspace. He also owns FoxNews. These two are about polar opposites in the realm of users and media. I would totally expect something like this. He's one of the richest men in the world. He's not known for generousity, that's for sure. Rupert Murdoch wants money... it shouldn't be a surprise.

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

Basically, you can't use any embeded program that myspace didn't create or authorize. When you think about it, that's a lot. It makes me think how far they'll go. Will I not be able to put up a picture or animation that wasn't created by/for myspace? Will I be able to put up silly quizes anymore? Part of what sets myspace apart from facebook is the creativity and flexibility of being able to use html. If this current trend goes, we might lose our freedom of expression (on myspace).

At first I was scared by the whole free HTML stuff, it kinda freaked me out, especially when people go overboard, and you can't really read what's on their site anymore. Will I not be able to go to pimpmyspace anymore and used their layouts? Will they all have to be customized through myspace's offical editor?

But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace’s actions undercut the notion that the social networks’ users have complete creative freedom. “We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can’t do anything that violates terms of service,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t they call it FoxSpace? Or RupertSpace?” Mr. Goldberg said, referring to the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch.

I'm surprised there isn't more reference to Fox and it's sister stations on myspace. Maybe if more people realized who owned it, less people would use it. I've been a myspace user for less than a year, and I like it so far. You can always tweak your security or opt not to give out certain peices of information. Part of what I've come to love about it is the personalizability of the site. Everyone's page looks different, everyone's.

“Every attempt everyone has ever made to try to dictate what a person’s Internet experience will be has ended up coming up empty,” he said. “You have to accept the fact that you are never going to be the be-all and end-all of everyone’s experience. They are one click away from everyone else on the Web.”

As for Ms. Tequila, who wrote on her blog that she was a personal friend of Mr. Anderson, the MySpace co-founder, she wrote that she felt bad about blasting the site but that she could not stay silent.

“You guys used to be so cool,” she wrote of MySpace. “Don’t turn into a corporate evil monster.”

Myspace seemed like the anti-corporate. Conservatives hate it. "What's with this social networking stuff, anyone can see your picture, your address, your phone number....ANYONE! It's evil... I don't like it" People have been up in arms about the use of it by minors, and how it creates a haven for child preditors. Simple solution: help your child create their page. Not only do you have a degree of control over what goes on their page, but you also embrace their use of the site, rather than just monitor it. (too big-brother)

Myspace has had this aura of newness and rebellion about it, but that is slowly going away as we begin to understand it, and as it becomes just another pocket in Rupert Murdochs already large pants.

All the World’s a Story

David Carr
The New York Times
Monday, March 19th, 2007
pgs C1&C2
The Story
The Summary: Crowdsourcing, a type of wiki for journalism, has become an experiment headed by Jay Rosen, of New York University.

A new experiment wants to broaden the network to include readers and their sources. Assignment Zero (zero.newassignment.net/), a collaboration between Wired magazine and NewAssignment.Net, the experimental journalism site established by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, intends to use not only the wisdom of the crowd, but their combined reporting efforts — an approach that has come to be called “crowdsourcing.”

The idea is to apply to journalism the same open-source model of Web-enabled collaboration that produced the operating system Linux, the Web browser Mozilla and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

This caught my eye (obviously) because it is the perfect example of my (hopefully) future profession and the principles of this class (Weblogs and Wikis) coming together in an educational experiment.

In this instance, the topic will be be crowdsourcing, so the phenomenon will be used to cover the phenomenon itself. Citizens with a variety of expertise — the “people formerly known as the audience,” as Professor Rosen describes them — will produce work to be iterated and edited by experienced journalists.

“This is designed as a pro-am approach to journalism. I think I saw possibilities here that others did not, and you can only do so much writing about it,” Professor Rosen said. “There is so much up for grabs right now, and the barriers to entry, the costs of doing something have become low enough to where it seemed it was best to just give it a try.”

The information will be provided by they general public, but it will still be formed into a readable article by someone who is trained and gifted enough before it is formally published (or so I think)

Of course, there’s an economic rationale, as well. Many hands make light work and cheap ones if they belong to volunteers. But Gannett is also betting that people will be more compelled to stay with a product they helped make. (Ms. Carroll said that jobs will not be cut, but redefined. We’ll see about that.)

I think that this is a great tool for learning. An opportunity for those such as myself to practice their craft. The gathering information part is the scary part for me. I'm really good about the writing part. Give me a police report and I can give you an article, but ask me to interview the victim, I might just be scared sh*tless. If I the public provides resources I would definately find it easier to write something, I can sit at my desk and pump it out in no time.

“We are not creating a robot that is some kind of journalism machine,” said Ms. Sandler, the editor of the project. “This is not a death knell or a new utopia.”

“It’s like throwing a party,” she added. You program the iPod, mix the punch and dim the lights and then at 8 o’clock people show up. And then who knows what is going to happen?”

I think I'd need to see the results before I can form a fair opinion, but I like the idea, it's definately worth experimenting with. There's a portion of the public who wishes they could be journalist, this allows them to itch that scratch without completely overhauling their lives, it also eases up journalists, creating a source for quotes and first-hand accounts of events.

Hot but Virtuous Is an Unlikely Match for an Online Dating Service

Brad Stone
The New York Times
Monday, March 19th, 2007
pgs C1 & C2
The Story
The Summary: True.com, a relatively new online dating site has been critized by fellow sites and users alike for its advertising and other practices.

True’s rise has been controversial. The company has riled competitors like Match.com and Yahoo Personals, which say that True’s lowbrow advertisements clash with its high-minded lobbying and legal efforts. True, which conducts criminal background checks on its subscribers, is the primary force behind a two-year-old campaign to get state legislatures to require that social Web sites prominently disclose whether or not they perform such checks.

Honestly, the whole online dating thing kinda creeps me out. I mean, you really can't find decent people in your area? There's no one to date you unless you look online? It's kinda strange to me, but there are pleanty of people that have fallen in love and gotten married because of online dating sites. Maybe it's the whole eHarmony commercials, really. First off, the eHarmony dude is kinda creepy all by himself. Then there's the "we look so you don't have to" thing. I don't want some creepy dude to tell me who's good for me. There's one commerical that comes to mind where a couple says that they weren't looking correctly because they didn't know what to look for, and eHarmony showed them the way. CREEPY!!!! It's like some strange religion.

“True is the controversial child in the Internet dating industry. They are loathed by everybody,” said Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine, a Web site on the industry.

Mr. Vest, a Vietnam veteran with a Texas accent, brushes off the criticism. “If there was a popularity contest among the entire population of the United States, I most assuredly would come out at the very bottom of that,” he said. “But you are not going to stop me by calling me names.”

True joined the crowded online dating scene in 2004. To distinguish itself from the pack, it offered a range of personality and sexuality surveys. It also hired the data broker ChoicePoint to perform background checks on customers to ensure that they had no criminal record and were not married.

I like the idea of criminal background checks, but they only work if the person is being 100% honest. And we all know former criminals are known for being completely honest (yes, I know that a lot of people do their time and grow up and move on) As far as the company knows, it could be some guy with a stolen wallet. In theory, they're great.

Mr. Vest sold his company to Wells Fargo for $128 million in 2001, then gravitated to the online dating market, with the professed aim of restoring family values. “I looked at the divorce rate and said, ‘That’s a bunch of nonsense. I can do something about that,’ ” he said. He himself underwent what he called a painful divorce in 1991 and has remarried.

True.com grew too quickly in its first year and sailed into financial trouble. At the end of 2004, Mr. Vest, its primary investor, laid off 90 employees, more than half its staff.

Soon after, True became more aggressive, and sex-themed, in its advertising. While the site continued to pitch itself as a safe way to date, its ads now featured voluptuous women and slogans like “Come and get them while they’re hot.”

Really, isn't dating just about sex anyway? Who hasn't watched latenight TV and seen the ads for Tango Personals or RedHot DateLine? Those give me the creeps, too. First of all, you know the people on the other end of the like aren't anywhere near as attractive as the people in the commericals, and second, the "dates" the girl has on the phone will probably end up being creepy phone sex that she doesn't realize she's a part of until it's way too late. I've seen the True ads on Myspace, they are definately give off the same vibe. That hot guy is not waiting. for me.

The ad carpet-bombing has worked in one way: last year, True jumped to the top of several lists of the most visited personals sites. According to comScore Media Metrix, True.com’s 3.8 million visitors in February put it slightly behind Yahoo Personals and Match.com, but ahead of older rivals like eHarmony and Spark Networks, which owns JDate.com and other sites.

However, True still significantly trails those players in more important categories, like time spent on the site. That suggests that many users are either not signing up for paid memberships or are quickly dropping the service once they do.

So they can get people to their site, but not to use it. Makes sense. Who hasn't clicked errantly into blank space before a page loads, only finding the ad that will go there is already linked, and whoops, you're at true.com. (I've fallen victim to this several times while our internet is slow) All in all , True sounds almost worse than eHarmony (can you believe it?). They're really false advertising and bad business practices to boot.

Preston Roder, a 54-year-old liquor store manager in Mundelein, Ill., said he tried to quit True.com last September after an unfruitful yearlong membership but was still hit with an array of charges over the next four months.

“True is a big company, but they could care less when you try to cancel,” said Mr. Roder. “They got your money so they are through with you.”

My dating advice: don't look for "the one" If it's meant to be, they'll come to you. They're not using an online dating service. On the other hand, if you want a one-night stand (and possibly and STD) go ahead and check out Tango or RedHot.

Will you regret staying home with your baby?

Leslie Bennetts
Glamor Magazine*
April 2007
pgs 269-270
The Story
The Summary:The article was adapted from a new book: The Feminine Mistake and looks into the dangers of choosing to be a stay-at-home mom.

Across the country, young women are jettisoning careers to stay home with their children. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an estimated 5.6 million mothers stayed home to care for their families in 2005, about 1.2 million more than a decade ago. The trend of opting out “has been broader than previously believed, with women at all income levels taking job breaks,” The Wall Street Journal reported recently.

Women originally entered the workplace in large numbers during WWII, and then not again until the late 70's/early 80's with the women's movement and the ERA. Since then staying at home or working have been major choices in motherhood. Some women feel that they have stretched themselves thin, others feel they had too much time on their hands. There's a story behind everyone's choice. But choices can have consequences.

Staying at home with your kids can be a fulfilling choice, but it’s also a risky one, and you should know beforehand what those risks are. Divorce, a spouse’s job loss, widowhood—all these leave far too many women broke and unable to support themselves and their children. I decided to write my new book, The Feminine Mistake, to warn a new generation about the hidden costs of financial dependency.

Divorce and a spouse's job loss are probably the hardest situations to deal with (people, especially in the midwest, often are more willing to help someone when their spouse has died, divorce and job loss are seen as bad, controlable things) Divorce is the one no couple wants to think about when they walk down the aisle or are the guest of honor at a baby shower, but statistically, half of all married couples end up going through it.

There's also the question of getting back into the workforce. If your husband just lost his job, do you really think it will be easy for you to jump into a job with just as much pay?

In fact, it’s not so easy to reenter the working world, and a time-out can inflict heavy penalties. More than a quarter of women who want to go back to work don’t manage to do so, according to a 2005 study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, and only 40 percent of those who resume work return to full-time employment. If they get a job after opting out, their paycheck takes a major hit: The same study found women lose a staggering 37 percent of their earning power when they spend three or more years out of the workplace.

Let's say you choose to stay home with your kids until your youngest is in kidnergarten, at 5 years old. You decide to have three children, each 2.5 years apart. That puts you out of the working world for 10 years! Look at the technological changes alone that have happened in the last 10 years. Imagine that in a specialized industry! At my part-time retail job, the product in my store has changed and evolved so much in the 2.5 years I've worked there. Leaving for a week and going back is stressful.

“It’s very nice to believe, ‘I don’t have to worry, I can have someone take care of me,’” says Lucy Peters,* a stay-at-home mother who was 33 years old when her husband left her and ceased to support her and their two children, even though he was earning more than half a million dollars a year. “But you never know when he’s going to stop wanting to take care of you, or lose his job, or drop dead. There are too many what-ifs to be lulled into a sense of complacency like that.”

I don't like the idea of someone "taking care of me" at least not financially. I've spent 7 years with varied degrees of financial indepedence, and it's nice to not have anyone to answer to about my spending. When I dropped $200 on Sex and the City, the Series I didn't have anyone making me feel guilty for spending money on something I knew I wanted, and would get plenty of use out of. Name one housewife who could do that. When someone else provides your money, you loose a part of yourself. You don't know how to take care of yourself.

As for the stress of working motherhood that Eames is dreading, it may be exaggerated. In one study, sociologists found that homemakers who went to work full-time reported a decrease in psychological distress. Many experts believe working women enjoy more power and more options in their lives, crucial components of happiness.

Moreover, their children turn out just fine. “The research on the impact of working mothers on kids shows that there isn’t any,” says Pamela Stone, Ph.D., a sociology professor at Hunter College in New York City. “Since the forties, this has been researched every which way.”

It's not bad to be a working mom. No one said you had to be working 80 hours a week, either. Part time is fine. The article in the magazine shared tips about the smart financial moves to make if you do choose to stay home with your children, like putting away money in your name, making sure the benefits of you husband's life insurance go to you and/or your children, and making sure your name is on all bank and investment accounts.

I can understand why one would want to stay home with their children, but I don't get why one would want to drop out of the workforce/world completely. Even if you voluneteer one day a week at a soup kitchen or animal shelter for a few hours, it looks good on a resume 10 years down the road. A voluneteer spot where work would have been looks better to an employer than "stayed home with kids" There are plenty of women who didn't, why wouldn't he hire one of them.


*I'm a big magazine reader, and I found this article very interesting, so even though it's not in the New York Times(NYT), I felt it deserved a spot on my blog. Also, the NTY was not available over spring break, which is why the two previous articles have no page numbers, only web addresses.

In an Easter Dress, a Social Set Revealed

Guy Trebay
The New York Times
Sunday, March 18th, 2007
The Story
The Summary: A classic dress is a window to the working women of the past.

Who can say when the cherry dress came into being? People here can tell you only that it was always there. For 50 years the cherry dress has been the holiday uniform for the fine-featured towheads at places like the St. Louis Country Club or exclusive Midwestern summer resorts like Harbor Point or Charlevoix, Mich. For 50 years, the cherry dress has been a consistent best seller at the Woman’s Exchange of St. Louis, a modest nonprofit shop and institution itself about as old as electrification, having opened its doors in 1883.

Clothes have become a throw-away item, especially in the middle class. We wouldn't dream of spending $500 on a pair of shoes, but spend $20 on a pair that will go in the garbage at the end of the season. The clothes the middle class can afford aren't made as well as they once were, and their prices reflect this. (I recently bought a slough of $2 shirts and $3 skirts at Rue 21, stating that even if they don't last, or I wear them once, I only spend $2) This dress looks back on a time when you bought an item, wore it until you couldn't anymore, and then passed it along to the next person.

What is it about the cherry dress, one may ask? What was it about any of the simple preppy staples that turned into classics, things like penny loafers or blue blazers or button-down shirts?

They functioned so well that people forgot to change them. They were so stylistically generic that, for a very long while, they escaped the tentacles of fashion. They were so reassuringly dowdy that they became background, no small point in a world where people still think that it is one who wears clothes and not the other way around. And they were durable.

“There’s a timeless quality to them, and they’re dresses that you hold on to,” Carrie Polk, one of four sisters with deep family roots in this river city, said of cherry dresses. “Three generations in our family have worn them. They’re like clothes from before the disposable-clothes era, with hems the size of Texas. You didn’t just spill chocolate on one and pitch it. You got it cleaned and ironed, and if you grew, you brought down the hem.”

...that place itself is a historical rarity, perhaps the largest among the remaining outposts of a once-thriving national network of nonprofit “exchanges” for women’s work.

Of scores that existed at the height of the movement, there are now about 20 left, including outposts in Memphis, St. Augustine, Fla., and Brooklyn. The women’s exchanges, voluntary social service agencies, originated in 19th-century Philadelphia as places for genteel ladies fallen on hard times to discreetly earn a living without leaving home.

Imagine the time when it was scandelous for a woman to work outside the home, at least women of a certain stature. Even the richest women these days have some sort of income, even if it is "just for fun." The idea of the Women's Exchange is interesting. It was a job, an consignment shop that you brought your homemade goods to to sell. The idea of it is almost shocking in our foreign-made $2 shirt world.

Even as the populations of consigners shifted from genteel ladies down on their luck to new immigrants trying to find a toehold, the women’s exchange in St. Louis stayed afloat, in the way that successful retailers do, by understanding its market. The city has an unusually robust country club scene and its members patronize the gift shop and tearoom as avidly as their mothers and grandmothers did.

The few exchanges that have stayed afloat do so by family tradition. The story of the woman who sews the cherry dress is somewhat inspirational.

It's nice to see old traditions going strong. There is so much that has died in the wake of large chains and franchises. Unique-ness in region and industry is becoming a thing of the past. I can get the same hamburger anywhere in the world thanks to McDonalds, and the same shirt thanks to Walmart. When I go to a new place, I want to expeirience the local flavor, but there's less and less of that. I can go to Applebee's in Bemidji, why would I want to go to one in Chicago or New York? St. Louis has it's Cherry Dress, I hope it holds on to it.

Critics to Marketers: Suicide Is No Joke

Stuart Elliot
The New York Times
Wednesday, March 14th 2007
The Story
The Summary: Several people and groups are upset with television ads that feature their main characters facing suicide.

The backlash against a spate of advertising with suicide themes has claimed a third commercial. Washington Mutual has stopped running a spot that showed actors playing bankers poised atop a building as if about to jump.

The commercial for Washington Mutual, by Leo Burnett in Chicago, was among four spots — all appearing in early February — that had suicide as a central point in their humorous or lighthearted narratives.

Suicide is a serious issue. It's so serious, we can't talk about it. Suicide is scary. It's one of those scary things we think will go away if we avoid it, if we don't talk about it. It's at the top of the list of scary things to talk to teens about. (Other topics include sex and drugs) One of the largest myths about suicide is that talking about it to someone will put the idea in their head, but that's as far from the truth as anything. (again, like sex and drugs) You can't prevent something without discussing it.

So-called shockvertising, in the form of ads that are deliberately provocative to draw attention to themselves, is becoming increasingly popular. The reasons include a need to stand out amid the growing clutter and the rise of Web sites like YouTube, which enable people to watch repeatedly — and share with friends — attention-getting ads.

“So many commercials rely on shock value that we’ve gone to the edge on all possible shocks, death,” said Barbara Lippert, the ad critic for the trade publication Adweek.

“But suicide and buying stuff, they’re not exactly go-togethers,” Ms. Lippert said. “There’s an insensitivity that makes no sense.”

I don't find the WaMu ad (or the GM ad, for that matter) offensive. I don't see how they can be offensive. The suicide portrayed in the WaMu ad was a false threat, the suicide in the GM ad is that of a robot... in dream.

I don't see how these ads can harm overall. Neither of these ads make light of people with mental illness. The WaMu guys are old coots threatening a last ditch effort. The GM robot is at his last end. He's obviously depressed, but it's not making fun of depression in it's humor. I only see these ads as a way to spark conversation about suicide.

“It was not borne out of any desire to be dark or do harm,” Mr. Hirshberg said. Rather, “in building a character, a robot, to get across the idea of G.M.’s commitment to quality,” he added, “the most natural place to go for the story, if someone’s obsessed with quality and fails, is suicide.”

“In the last 10 years, 300,000 people have died from suicide in this country,” Mr. Gebbia said, yet “you see this kind of ad poking fun at suicide.”

“You wouldn’t see an ad poking fun at someone dying of AIDS or cancer,” he added. “We don’t think it’s appropriate to make fun of suicide or people with mental illness to sell products.”

A conversation starter about suicide in the mainstream media is something we need. Most movies about such topics get swept under the rug, ending up on channels that aren't taken seriously, like Lifetime, televison for women. Humor about serious topics can be offensive, but if done right, can be witty and enlighting, sparking conversation and raising awareness.

A Youth Ministry Some Call Antigay Tests Tolorence

Jesse McKinley
The New York Times
Friday, March 9th, 2007
pg A10
The Story
The Summary: A Christian youth group based out of Texas that has a repuation for being anti-gay is holding a large youth conference in San Francisco, "the Gayest city in the country."

A two-day event called BattleCry starts Friday at AT&T Park, the downtown baseball stadium. Organizers say the gathering, which includes performances by Christian rock bands and inspirational speakers, is a way for young Christians to speak out against what they view as destructive cultural elements, including sex on television, obscene music and violent video games.

The youth group scene is that one last effort for churches to get their hooks into teens before they go off in to "the real world." I have no problems with Christianity. I call myself a Christian, I hold many Christian beliefs. I do have a problem with the church scene. I grew up Catholic (the church of all churches) but have been exposed to several other Christian religions. Their major flaw is the lack of free thinking. They tell you how to think about certain subjects by handing out literature or more directly by sermons.

But several prominent San Francisco political leaders say Mr. Luce’s group is the one doing the damage, using its young members as a conduit for a message of intolerance.

“They are being fed, spoon-fed, hate,” said Tom Ammiano, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors, who is gay. “And it is incumbent on any group receiving that hate, particularly gay people, to speak out.”

The message is normally: "This is wrong, here's why it's wrong..." but never stating the good about it. Example: Premarital sex. There isn't one church that will tell you that most people who do end up waiting to have sex get married very young. A 1995 study showed that 40% of people that married under the age of 20 eventually get divorced. Statistics show that most people can either wait for sex, or wait for marriage, but not both. Churches don't like to tell the awful truth.

Ben Rosen, a San Francisco organizer with World Can’t Wait, which is leading the protests, said his group was trying to repudiate what it sees as the deeper goals of BattleCry, including “imposing their biblical fundamentalist worldview on the country.”

That said, Mr. Rosen said protesters recognized that they were dealing with a delicate balance of expressing their opinions without appearing to be intolerant themselves.

“We’re not out to yell at kids that believe in Jesus; that’s awful,” he said. “It would be great,” he said of BattleCry, “if it didn’t have this very serious, very pernicious backbone to it.”

Fight fire with fire, fight closed mindedness with open thinking. As long as all protest remain peaceful (Christians claim to be peaceful, the gays tend to be peaceful) I love the idea.

Mr. Luce echoed that sentiment, saying his group loves gay people, but does firmly believe their sexuality is sinful.

“We see homosexuality like a lot of other things that do harm to us, like lying, or cheating, or stealing,” he said, adding that he said he had seen studies suggesting that many gay people are depressed or unhappy. “And it’s not very loving to leave them in that state and not show them another way.”

A perfect example of Christians giving one side of a story. Wouldn't you be depressed if there were entire groups telling you that a your sexual preferance was a sin? If thousands of people told me being blonde was a sin (and yes, I was born with this hair color, it wasn't a choice, and I don't want to change it!) I think I would be pretty depressed, too.

Joe D’Alessandro, the president of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, a private nonprofit group, said the two-day event was too small to have a significant impact on the local economy, but he said its organizers should be allowed to hold BattleCry nonetheless.

“I think we have to practice tolerance, whether or not they practice tolerance,” Mr. D’Alessandro said. “I’m gay myself, and I find their beliefs very offensive. But they have a right to come to our city.”

I'm impressed by the San Francisco city officials. They are definately doing the righ thing, but you know an uber-Chirstian southern city would probably turn down a gay rally.