SpeedPlexer Blog

One clever mom from Southern California, after reporting her children missing 15 years ago, decided to do her own investigation using Facebook to see if she could find them. After all, they were ages 2 and 3 when their father took them and ran off, so now they’d be teenagers, and would very likely be online and into social networking. 

Her clever use of internet speed paid off. The Associated Press reported, “The mother had found her daughter’s Facebook profile after searching for her name on the social networking site in March.” They didn’t go into detail if their names had been changed, or if she had to sift through hundreds or thousands of kids with the same first names, which is what we would imagine.  Who would kidnap someone and then not change their names? And why wouldn’t the authorities be able to find someone who hadn’t changed their names?  If it’s that easy, couldn’t the police be doing it too?

The kids have been living with their father in Florida. The mother apparently wrote directly to her daughter upon finding her, but the teenage girl told her mother she didn’t want to be in contact. It’s our guess that this is why the mother then chose to report the information to the police. She can’t have made life easier for the teenagers by having their father arrested for kidnapping and violating child custody orders. 

Now the kids are living with a friend of the family, while they await the results of their father’s July 17th hearing in Florida.

Read the full Associated Press story on Yahoo at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100606/ap_on_re_us/us_found_on_facebook.

If you haven’t noticed, the music industry has changed. It’s challenging to go to a store and find an artist’s album to buy on CD anymore. Because of that, music industry managers like the guys who rep Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber are looking for ways to make the most of new-new media. 

Troy Carter is Lady Gaga’s manager and Scooter Braun manages Justin Bieber. Together, they presented a panel “Success Strategies for Musicians in the Digital Era,” at the recent TechCrunch Disrupt Conference.  What qualifies them? Both know the power of social media to build a following for their artists. On Twitter, Lady Gaga has 4.3 million followers, Bieber has 2.8 million. On YouTube, combined viewing of Lady Gaga’s top three videos just passed the one billion views mark, and Bieber’s VEVO channel shows 380 million views. 

They’re hoping to strike up some partnerships with the up-and-coming platforms to truly redefine the music industry. Braun said backstage after the panel,  “I went out and flew out to San Francisco and spent two weeks just meeting with new, young entrepreneurs out there because I want to know who’s next and [I] realized that the power that our artists have created for themselves on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube are very, very valuable for launching these new platforms.” TechCrunch reported that Braun sees it as a symbiotic relationship in which the artist brings visibility to a company and gains a new way to engage fans.

Check out the video interview on TechCrunch’s site, and see if you can come up with the next big thing to deliver music to the world with internet speed!

Despite maritime thievery in Somalia or the world of illegal copying and distribution of entertainment, the image of the pirate in most people’s minds remains the one Disney banked on with their recent series of films. Maybe that’s why Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, joined forces with social network Meezoog to create a dating site. 

It makes some sense, we suppose, that if people are passionate enough about movies, music, software and games to download them through Pirate Bay, rather than using the more conventional routes, they might find someone who shares their passions.

The thing about Pirate Bay, of course, is that they are all about open sharing.  Their only real issue with anyone is if they misrepresent what they’ve shared.

Maybe they’re hoping that the many women who love rebels will feel comforted by the same openness, using the social networking component that Meezoog’s technology allows, so that girls can consult with each other, and with internet speed.  The social networking component is supposed to encourage people to be more honest about how they portray themselves. Their social graph is supposed to offer a sort of filter – because if your friend trusts someone enough to connect with them, maybe you can too.

Or maybe Pirate Bay is just moving into territory that will bring them fewer legal hassles, since much of what people want to share is actually stuff that other people would prefer they buy.

So be ye warned: pirates may be exciting, but they’re not known to be extremely trustworthy, nor are they known to spend much money on dates!