In the social networking arms race, without a doubt Facebook and Myspace are the leading contenders. But now, at least on a global stage, it looks like a definitive leader between the two giants has emerged, with Facebook claiming double the visitors of Myspace. Reported by TechCrunch, according to a new data report from comScore Facebook drew more than 200 million unique visitors in the month of December compared to Myspace’s number, just over 100 million. Just six months ago Facebook and Myspace were tied around 100 million visitors, but Facebook’s numbers shot up at a rate of 10.8...

As social networking tools change the way we communicate, spammers have begun turning their attention to services such as Facebook and MySpace, tricking users into installing viruses, launching fraudulent websites and deploying malware throughout their computers and networks. While spamming via e-mail services remains prevalent, spammers see social networks as the new horizon. Spammers have managed to set up phony social networking accounts, by breaking the protections set in place by a safeguard known as CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), the...

Blogging just got more social: Facebook has launched its Connect Plugin Directory in addition to its Connect program. If you’re a blogger, that means you can let your visitors comment on your site using their Facebook credentials. If you’re a reader, once you comment using your Facebook details, you can have the comment automatically published on your Facebook newsfeed. Facebook launched almost two weeks ago the Connect program, that lets websites authenticate users with their Facebook login credentials. Now bloggers, thanks to the new Connect Plugin Directory, have a simple way to...

One hour after Google did a public launch of Google Friend Connect, Facebook launched Facebook Connect. The simultaneous launch is not a coincidence — the two competing services are battling for mindshare as they strive to be the frontrunners in data portability. The companies want users to be able to use their Google and Facebook logins to enter third-party sites. It benefits users and third-party sites and allows Facebook and Google to collect more information about what users are doing online. There are some key differences between the services. Google’s service uses OpenSocial....

Google and Facebook separately announced the general availability of their respective data portability programs on Thursday. Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect are generally designed to extend social-networking capabilities broadly across the Web. In the real world, this means making it possible for people to use their previously created Google and Facebook accounts to sign in to other Web sites that accept them. That way, people don’t have to create an account for every Web site that requires one, reducing the number of log-in details they need to remember. MySpace’s Data...