MySpace to test news service to boost ad revenue

News Corp.'s MySpace social network plans to test a service on Thursday that scours the Web for news stories and lets users rate them, aiming to attract more advertisers to the Rupert Murdoch-controlled company.

The service, called MySpace News, resembles a mix of Google Inc.'s Google News, which collects stories and arranges them based on thematic similarities and Digg.com, which displays stories suggested by its readers and displays them according to their popularity ranking, executives said.

MySpace News is an attempt by the company to keep its more than 100 million unique visitors, according to comScore Network's March figures, on the popular social network site longer.

The service adds a social element to traditional news consumption by giving readers the ability to determine what becomes the top news on MySpace.

The launch is also part of News Corp.'s efforts to aggressively court entertainment and other types of content from other media sources as it seeks to bolster a leading position on the Internet, executives have said. News Corp. expects to generate over $500 million in revenue from its digital businesses this fiscal year.

Before the launch, MySpace users would have to leave the service to read news on the Internet. MySpace users on average spend about 10 minutes per visit in the United States and visit the site about 19 times per month, according to comScore.

The news service, long rumored, will have 25 main topics and about 300 sub-categories ranging from celebrities and gossip to autos and fashion.

"Many advertisers have expressed interest in the service, which allows them to target the MySpace community in a more direct way," Brian Norgard, co-founder of Newroo, a company purchased by News Corp. last year, which created MySpace News' technology, said in an interview.

Executives also said its service would draw from a wider collection of news sources than Google News. Google News draws from about 4,500 sources, according to its site. News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media executives declined to specify the news outlets.

The technology scans thousands of news sources and displays them on the site based on how popular the stories are to its readers who can vote on them.

But services such as Google News, which displays brief excerpts of stories and photos from other companies on its site, has angered some news organizations seeking to build their own Internet businesses. Google recently settled a closely watched copyright dispute with Agence France-Presse.

The deal now clears the way for Google to continue displaying text excerpts and photos from the agency.

News publishers can ask to have their news feed removed from the MySpace service.

myspace vulnerable to bugs

They won’t divulge their real names, they call their project a “whiny, attention-seeking ploy,” and they appear to take their fashion cues from Beastie Boys music videos.

But two hackers going by the names of Mondo Armando and Müstaschio promise to begin disclosing security vulnerabilities in MySpace, News Corp.’s popular social networking site, every day next month.

“The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites,” wrote Mondo Armando in an e-mail interview.

“We could have just as easily gone after Google or Yahoo or MSN or IDG or whatever. MySpace is just more fun, and is becoming notoriously [obnoxious] about responding to security issues,” he said.

These “Month of Bugs” projects have become a way for hackers to bring attention to both themselves and to security problems in certain types of products. Well-known hacker HD Moore kicked off the craze last year when he published one browser bug per day for the month of July. His effort was followed by a “Month of kernel bugs,” a “Month of Apple Bugs,” and a “Month of PHP Bugs.”

The MySpace hackers launched their project late Thursday expressing simultaneous enthusiasm and disdain for the task ahead. “If it ends up being just as lame as the Month of Apple Bugs, then we haven’t really missed the mark. If it’s funnier, then great,” they wrote on their project’s blog. “If it kills this Month of Whatever fad, then hurray for everyone, it’s over.”

They intend to primarily publish cross site scripting bugs, which can allow an attacker to execute malicious script within a victim’s browser, but they may also publish bugs that affect browsers or technologies like Flash or QuickTime.

Though the project, which launches on April 1, has all the appearance of a practical joke, one well-known hacker said he’d been contacted by the Month of MySpace team with legitimate security questions. “Those guys and I have been keeping in touch,” said Robert Hansen, chief executive of Sectheory.com. “It’s funny but it’s not a joke.”

Whatever comes of the MySpace bug month, security experts are paying more attention lately to vulnerabilities in Web sites that allow users to upload their own content.

Last December a fast-spreading worm hit MySpace, flooding users with spam and copying a malicious QuickTime file all over the MySpace network.

If these attacks continue, MySpace will have a tough time balancing security with its desire to provide interactive tools that users love, said Ken Dunham, director of VeriSign Inc.’s Rapid Response Team. “From a design perspective, it’s difficult to wrap your arms around it,” he said. “Even when they have countermeasures in place… it’s trivial to obfuscate to evade their detection mechanisms.”

News Corp. did not respond to requests for comment on the “Month of MySpace Bugs.”