Whoops, Wrong Target Demographic …
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 25, 2007 at 9:30 AM PT
“MySpace is clearly leading the social-networking category with the largest, most engaged audience as compared to all other social networks,” Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix, said that earlier this month in a press release noting that MySpace is outperforming all other social-networking sites. Little did he know that a few weeks later, MySpace would reveal that it’s outperforming its rivals in other ways as well. Specifically, in the growth and engagement among its registered sex-offender community.
Myspace.com revealed yesterday that it had located and deleted the profiles of 29,000 registered sex offenders from its site–29,000, enough to populate an entire city with sexual predators. It’s also more than four times the number the company reported earlier this year.
“The exploding epidemic of sex-offender profiles on MySpace–29,000 and counting–screams for action,” Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement. “Our information demands reveal shocking new skyrocketing numbers of convicted sex-offender profiles on MySpace. Each of these 29,000 separate profiles reflects a potential predator willing and able to exploit a child.”
Good thing Hemu Nigam’s CV includes stints as director of consumer-security outreach and child-safe computing at Microsoft, as well as a federal prosecutor for child-exploitation cases for the U.S. Justice Department, because he’s clearly in his element in his new gig as MySpace’s chief security officer.
