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Updated at 3:37 p.m. PST with statement from MySpace and Facebook.

Within the last week, researcher Elazar Broad has disclosed two ActiveX vulnerabilities in the tools that MySpace.com and Facebook users use to upload images to their sites. On Sunday, Broad disclosed a buffer overflow vulnerability within the Facebook image upload control. Last week, Broad disclosed a similar buffer overflow flaw within MySpaceAurigma's ImageUploader ActiveX; the MySpace vulnerability also affects Facebook users.

Facebook and MySpace use controls repackaged from Aurigma Imaging Technology. Vulnerable to the recent attack scenario are FaceBook PhotoUploader 4.5.57.0, Aurigma … Read more

It may be a toss up today whether the talk around the office will be more about the game (way to go Giants) or about the commercials. The commercials of course are a big draw for many and at least an entertaining bonus for others. Big name companies employ big name ad firms to come up with something that will hopefully be extraordinary and memorable. And at $2.7 million for 30 seconds, getting the most bang for the buck should be a no-brainer.

But unlike some of the popular TV shows, if the Super Bowl ads are any indication, … Read more

Social networking is one of the biggest and fastest-evolving phenomena on the Web, and Microsoft's proposed takeover of Yahoo will undoubtedly send it in new directions. More than anything, a MSFT-YHOO acquisition will shake up the debate over just how you can make money off a Facebook or MySpace.com--because they're running out of time to figure that out.

Should the Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition go through, expect them to try to corner the social-network advertising market.

The common wisdom is that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo is a real force in social networking. Both companies own multiple social media properties, … Read more

Kara Swisher at All Things Digital reported on Thursday night that Facebook held an all-hands meeting earlier in the day to talk company finances--and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg was remarkably candid.

The 23-year-old executive announced that projected revenue for 2008 had been elevated from $300 million to $350 million; that's a big jump up from its 2007 revenue of $150 million. For better or worse, the privately held company plans to spend $200 million this year on capital expenditures (as Swisher puts it, "a whole lot of servers"), and Facebook's employee headcount is expected to rise … Read more

Social media has certainly come into its own over the last year. Whether you log more hours online than you do sleeping or are the type that only turns your computer on every couple of days — gasp — there is a good chance that you have some familiarity with social media, even if you didn't know that's what it was.

Maybe you get a chuckle every now and then from a video on YouTube, upload photos to Flickr for friends and family to see, ask and answer questions on Yahoo Answers, do a little networking and reconnecting with old … Read more

You may be friending and poking your acquaintances on social networks, but that doesn't mean you are paying attention to the ads. Or, maybe Google just made a bad deal with MySpace in which it guaranteed to pay a lot of money even if you don't click on the ads.

Google's fourth-quarter results missed expectations on Thursday, partly due to a rise in traffic acquisition costs that cut into revenue. Executives acknowledged in a conference call with analysts that they made less money serving up ads on social networks than they expected.

The news, which prompted a … Read more

Social-news company Loomia announced Wednesday that it has launched a new application called SeenThis, which connects news sites with social-networking sites so users can learn what their people on their friends' lists have been reading. Loomia's inaugural partners in SeenThis are The Wall Street Journal, NBC Universal, and CNET Networks, parent company of CNET News.com.

Like many other "recommendation engines," Loomia's technology can suggest content items to a reader based on what he or she has already viewed. SeenThis goes a step further by using social-networking sites' APIs--the one that the current content partners are … Read more

Updated at 11:08 a.m. PST.

New York's lawmakers have introduced legislation to keep convicted sex offenders off the likes of Facebook and MySpace.

In a press conference on Tuesday, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, State Sen. Joseph Bruno, and Assemblyman Sheldon Silver unveiled details of the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (E-Stop), a new bill to crack down on the presence of sex offenders on the Internet, specifically on sites where they could get in touch with minors. The legislation aims to restrict convicted sex offenders' Web use, banning them from social networks … Read more

StyleFeeder, a social shopping site that aims to do for the retail sector what StumbleUpon did for browsing or Last.fm did for music, has announced that it's pulled in $2 million in Series A venture funding from Highland Capital Partners and Schooner Capital.

The start-up, based in Cambridge, Mass., plans to use the $2 million to hire more employees.

StyleFeeder, which has operated until this point on seed funding, operates a "recommendation engine" for fashionistas based on which products users rate and then purchase through affiliates. Much like other recommendation sites, StyleFeeder then suggests related products … Read more