Launched in August of 2003, MySpace quickly became a popular social networking site. Owned by the News Corporation, which also owns Fox Media; it is the brainchild of Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolf, Josh Berman and Tom Anderson. By June 2006, MySpace had become the most popular social networking site in the United States. MySpace held onto this spot until April 2008, when Facebook overtook it in popularity and overtook it in the number of accounts. In June of 2008, MySpace laid off 30 percent of its employees.

One of the reasons that MySpace is suffering a decline is the enormous amount of ads on its pages. When MySpace first started, it was a simple way for people to stay in touch with family and friends. It has now developed into a platform for corporations and celebrities to attract customers. When I sign onto my MySpace page, it’s like, “Hey, is that an ad, or it an actual link to something I want to see?” Sometimes it is so hard to tell.

Yahoo announced Wednesday its plans to sell its online job search website, HotJobs, to one of its rivals - Monster Worldwide (monster.com) - for $225 million in cash.

As a part of the deal, Monster.com will now provide Yahoo with job listings and employment content. Monster hopes to take control of HotJobs between June and October.

Yahoo purchased HotJobs in 2002 for $439 million. The deal announced today reflects the service's diminishing value as the high unemployment rate cuts into the demand for help-wanted advertising.

Google, which began as a search engine based out of a garage, has in the past decade grown to encompass far more than just search queries. It's stepped on the toes of Microsoft when it began to create online applications through it's Google Docs program, and it started moving into Apple's territory when it began dabbling in browsers and touchscreen mobile phones. Google also began work on an alternative operating system - Android - and in the future plans to release netbooks with its OS. Wednesday was a day that both Google and Apple without a doubt declared war on eachother -- Apple revealed that they are strongly considering replacing Google search and apps on their iPhone with Microsoft and Bing offerings, and Google announced that they will be entering the online movie rental business.

Apple and Microsoft battled it out in the computer arena in the 1980s. Microsoft clearly came out on top with a large majority of the world now owning personal computers with Microsoft operating systems. Apple, however, remained a popular alternative to Microsoft, and the two companies have remained bitter rivals.

According to a class-action lawsuit, internet service provider WideOpenWest LLC(WOW!) installed spyware on its networks which in turn gave a third-party online advertising company unrestricted access to all inbound and outbound communication. The suit was filed in US District Court in Chicago on Wednesday, and claims that WOW gave NebuAd Inc. virtually unlimited access to the personal information of at least 330,000 people in Cleveland, OH; Columbus, OH; Detroit, MI; Chicago, IL; and Evansville, IN.

NebuAd's advertising system works by exploiting normal browser platform security behaviors through the forging of IP packets. This allows its own JavaScript code to be written into source code trusted by the browser.

The lawsuit claims that NebuAd paid WOW for each person that they spied on and then used the information obtained to deliver customized ads based on their internet search perferences. In addition, the suit says WOW lied to Congress last year when it said it made an agreement with NebuAd.

That means that WOW also misled its customers. The company's literature specifically states that customers should "rest assured that WOW does not and will not share personably identifiable information with any advertiser."

If you're like many people, Black Friday does not appeal to you at all. The massive lines, the waiting,the parking, and the chances that something will be sold out after you've already invested a lot of time trying to secure the coveted item are all the things you hate about the post-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza. You'd much rather avoid the crowds and order things from the comfort of your own home, and that's where Cyber Monday comes in. Today is the day for the hottest deals of the holiday season, online only.

As with Black Friday, the Cyber Monday deals can be overwhelming if you don't go in with a plan or know where to look. The best resources for finding deals - now and at any other time of the year - are without a doubt Slickdeals.net and FatWallet.com. Thousands upon thousands of people are members of these sites and help to keep tabs on all of the deals currently going on. Some of Cyber Monday's top deals are featured on those sites today, so if you're in search of a bargain, be sure to check them out.

A playful Facebook message to his pregnant girlfriend about pancakes saved Rodney Bradford, 19, from being convicted of a crime he didn't commit. Prosecutors dropped a robbery charge against the Brooklyn teen after learning his Facebook account status had been updated with the inside joke "WHERE MY IHOP?" from a computer inside his father's Harlem apartment one minute before an Oct. 17 stickup of two men in Brooklyn's Farragut Houses.

Bradford said, "They had on me Rikers Island for 12 days. It was really miserable. If it wasn't for Facebook I'd still be on Rikers Island."

His stepmom, Ernestine Bradford agreed. She said:

"Facebook saved my son. Normally, we yell at our kids, 'Oh, you're on the computer!" It's completely different. If it wasn't for Facebook, my son wouldn't be here."

Electronic footprints created by Bradford's posting on Facebook backed up multiple witnesses who said that he was at his dad's house that day. It also refuted a victim's claim that he recognized one of the robbers as Bradford, who lives in Farragut Houses.

Bradford's lawyer, Robert Reuland, said:

Unlike your Yahoo email account, which ceases upon death, Facebook wants to keep your profile alive. Upon the request of friends or family, Facebook will "memorialize" profiles of those who have died.

These accounts will be different than regular Facebook profiles. For example, any contact information will be removed and people will be barred from logging in. The profile also will not be included in the "suggestion" section, and only the deceased person's confirmed friends will be able to find them in a search.

According to the billionaires over at Google, the recession is over and things are improving. During the opening moments of a New York City press conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt used the time to reinforce a message he has been giving for a few months now: that Google thinks the worst is behind us, things are looking up now, and that the company is spending accordingly:

"We are clearly seeing aspects of recovery, and what is notable is that we’re seeing aspects of recovery not just in the United States but in Europe. I had been in error in assuming that there would be a lag, that it would the US first and Europe second. Asia, of course, was never significantly hit in the first place. So that means from a Google perspective that.. we never stopped hiring, but we told our team internally and again, we’ve said to many other people tht we are increase are hiring rate and our investment rate in anticipation of a recovery."

Google co-founder Sergey Brin was also present. During the hour long press conference they covered quite some ground.

Gmail users will happy to learn that Brin was upset by the recent Gmail outages. He said that Google is now working to both prevent future failutres as well as to react more quickly if and when they do happen. He noted, however, that conventional email systems fail much more frequently (Gmail uses cloud computing).

Previously, Schmidt has said that he expected Google to begin making an acquisition per month. At today's press conference, he noted that those would likely be small, 5 to 10 person companies, and that it is unlikely they would be in the market for something similar in size to their YouTube acquisition. Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube. Reading between the lines, Schmidt is saying that we shouldn't expect them to offer up billions for Twitter.

Further speaking on acquisitions, Schmidt commented:

"I think that DoubleClick and YouTube will be two of our best acquisitions. DoubleClick is already close to paying back, and YouTube will get there soon. But bear in mind that any major acquisition now will involve a regulatory review, because of our size and because our competitors will make sure of that."

After a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that Google reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger who created the "Skanks in NYC" blog on its Blogger.com platform, the woman whose identity was revealed - Rosemary Port - plans to sue the Internet giant. Speaking for the first time since the ruling, Port also says that model Liskula Cohen should blame herself for the uproar.

Port said,

"This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing. By going to the press, she defamed herself. Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my web site: one from me looking at it, and on from her looking at it. That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated.

Port, 29, added that she is furious with Google for revealing her identity. She is so upset that she is planning to file a $15 million federal lawsuit against them.

The Fashion Institute of Technology student added:

Three of the web's most popular social networking websites - Facebook , Twitter and LiveJournal - were both targeted in malicious Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks Thursday morning. Twitter first acknowledged that their downtime was a result of a DDoS attack, followed sometime later by Facebook, and then LiveJournal.

During the attacks, Twitter was completely inaccessible to users. Facebook fared a bit better and worked, although not completely. Facebook users encountered quite a few errors rather than an inability to access the site altogether. LiveJournal users also encountered a number of problems.

What does this mean? This was a deliberate attempt by some nefarious group to take down three of the most popular social media sites. Given the strength and size of the infrastructure of these sites, the attacks had to have been coordinated and planned for months.

It's likely that the FBI will jump in to investigate the origin of these attacks today. Just when we the public might find out who was behind it, however, remains to be seen.

There could be other sites out there as well that were or are still affected. Have any of your favorite social media sites been acting funny today? Let us know in the comments.