Webware

(Credit: Valleywag)

Following rumors that MySpace co-founder and "everybody's friend" Tom Anderson was lying about his age on his profile, Newsweek did a little digging. According to "professional license information, voter registration and utility and telephone service applications," Anderson is actually 36, not 32.

Which means that he was 31, not 27, when he co-founded MySpace, and apparently he was either self-conscious or sketched out (or both) about being in his 30s when he founded a youth-oriented social network.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington expressed concern, saying that "the fact that MySpace and News Corp. had knowledge of the lie, and did nothing to fix it, makes it worse." But Valleywag comments, "(it) would hardly make Anderson the first person to lie about his age on MySpace." (Yeah, a lot of those "99-year-olds" aren't telling the truth.)

In other news, "Tom" is known to be so insecure about his popularity that he adds every single MySpace user as a friend the moment that they sign up for the News Corp.-owned social-networking site, and he also seems to be too lazy to change his dorky profile photo.

Can we get some real news now, please?

If you want to watch a bunch of A-list bloggers and business folks at big-name news sites go a little ape, I recommend observing them when their Google PageRank takes a hit.

According to blogger Andy Beard, a number of high-profile blogs and news sites have had just that happen to them in recent days.

Some examples, according to Beard, include Engadget, which saw its PageRank drop from 7 to 5; Joystiq, from 6 to 4; and SFGate, Forbes.com and WashingtonPost.com, all of which had their PageRank drop from 7 to 5.

What's behind this?

Well, speculation in the blogosphere today has it that Google has decided to punish popular sites that accept paid links to lesser sites. As Valleywag puts it, "Google's bean counter, naturally, would prefer that you pay Google for sponsored links instead."

I'm working on getting comment from Google, but so far no luck. I'll update this post if I do get some comment.

Anyway, part of the buzz about this move is that some of the sites that are taking PageRank hits are the very sites (Search Engine Journal, Copyblogger, Search Engine Guide and the Blog Herald, among them) that cover search engine optimization issues, and some suspect that perhaps the search giant is punishing them for being critics.

Is that possible? Well, who knows?

But as Beard points out, not all the sites that saw PageRank losses engage in the practice of selling paid links. Instead, many of them are part of blog networks that have plenty of internal links between sites. For example, Engadget, which is part of the Weblogs Inc. network.

The guidelines that these sites may have abused? "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to Web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the Web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."

The real question is, what has changed? It's hard to imagine that all these sites suddenly changed their practices overnight. So for all these sites' PageRank rankings to have changed at once does indicate somebody over at Google is playing with slide rules or something.

Tech gossip blog Valleywag is attempting to counter the TechCrunch-spawned rumor that MySpace.com will be following in Facebook's footsteps and opening up its site to developers.

Sources in touch with the Gawker Media-owned blog allegedly said that MySpace is indeed brewing a developer platform strategy and that the News Corp.-owned social networking site will be making an announcement at next week's Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco--but the two are unrelated.

The announcement, according to Valleywag blogger Megan McCarthy (no relation), will instead deal with MySpace's instant messaging client. Additionally, she wrote, MySpace will be expanding from its Los Angeles base and opening a San Francisco Bay Area office.

McCarthy went on: "Apparently, Web developers, like vampires, shun warmth and sunlight. Unable to find enough talented engineers in L.A., MySpace has decided to open up more fogbound digs to tap San Francisco's pool of snooty, entitled, arrogant Webheads."

It's important to take this rumor with a grain of salt: Valleywag is first and foremost a Silicon Valley gossip publication. Additionally, this could be infused with a bit of TechCrunch-Valleywag rivalry, with one eager to debunk the other; it's no secret that the two blogs have a bit of friction between them.

Valleywag, whose bloggers like to refer to TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington with the epithet "horny," is typically banned from TechCrunch functions.

Guess we'll see who's right next week.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MySpace has acquired photo-sharing site Photobucket, according to a report on the Valleywag blog.

The deal could be announced as early as Monday afternoon, according to the blog.

Photobucket, the largest photo-sharing site on the Web with more than 40 million registered users, engaged in a public relations battle recently with MySpace.

MySpace accused Photobucket of violating its terms of agreement by "encouraging" its users to post advertisements in the photo slide shows they posted to MySpace.

Note: This post was cross-posted from a CNET News.com story.

Update: The deal has been confirmed, and is now set to close at around $300 million dollars. An official announcement from the two sides won't take place until an agreement is made.

Photobucket currently gets about 45,000 new video submissions a day, many of which are hosted on the MySpace member profiles. Despite being at odds with MySpace's own video hosting and sharing service, the Photobucket acquisition has the potential to strengthen MySpace's current photo sharing features.

More details can be found on CNET New.com.