The mystery of Ashley Alexandra Dupre’s disappearing MySpace page is solved. The profile of Eliot Spitzer’s alleged call girl at myspace.com/ninavenetta was accidentally deleted by MySpace, in response to the flood of people checking out her profile. This set off a feeding frenzy between cyber squatters jostling for control of the hottest space on the social networking site. The profile changes hands frequently, as MySpace canceled accounts, before finally restoring

The newspaper watchdog in the UK, the Press Complaints Commission, is stepping into the debate over the use of material from social networking sites. The head of the body, Tim Toulmin, told the BBC that the organisation has commissioned research to find out if people are aware that material they upload could be used by journalists. It follows complaints to the PCC from people about material used by the press

The BBC has e-mailed staff over the use of photos from social networking sites, reports the MediaGuardian. It advices journalists to be cautious about the use of such personal material. The advice goes beyond talking about issues copyright and verification, mentioning the idea of “intended audiences“. The e-mail told staff that: Simply because material may have been put into the public domain may not always give the media the right

The thorny relationship between journalists and social media has once more been propelled into headlines, following the fake Facebook profiles of Bilawal Bhutto. AFP was reported to have barred its journalists from using Facebook or Wikipedia as sources. Or rather, it has told its reporters not to simply to rely on these sites the sole source for a story. Anyone in journalism will tell you that this is just good

As it is coming up to the end of the year, journalists are busy putting together lists looking ahead to 2008. The Guardian has published a list of what it reckons could be the next big thing in social media, such as video site Seesmic.com and social travel site Dopplr.com. The BBC has a slightly different take, with a list of lesser-known social networking sites, under the headline, “Don’t be

Could the stickiness of social sites such as Digg, Facebook or YouTube be explained by the notion that they function as hidden games? The Read/WriteWeb blog points to an ebook by C. Weng on this very idea. In The Web: Hidden Games, available for free on Lulu, Weng argues that: Officially, they are social networks, news aggregators, etc. and not designed as game sites like Second Life is. However, these