You gotta laugh when the police are recommending falsification of records.

As far as Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Rocky Costa is concerned, "MySpace has absolutely exploded, and the only real way to protect ourselves -- besides filtering and firewalls -- is to always tell yourself, `I am not gonna give out authentic information.'" To kids, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology sociologist and psychologist Sherry Turkle, this is a mixed message at best. "You're encouraged not to be you, but then if you go online at a place where you shouldn't be and are not you, then we don't like it. Then, as soon as they're 18, we tell them to go to Match.com."

For millions, social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Xanga represent the perfect intersection of art, commerce and the human need to connect. Musicians, comedians and film studios use the sites to create fan bases. Advertisers buy space on them.

Yet at the same time, there's growing concern among some parents and school administrators that such Web sites encourage kids to share salacious stories and sexually charged photos and perhaps leave them vulnerable to predators. Many schools have sent notices to parents to be aware of possible problems. Others have lectured students on social etiquette and safety on the Internet.

Kids are certainly enthralled. "I know tons of people who are addicted."

If only MemeStreams supported inline images, it would be flooded with shy 11 year olds who live in Hoboken and have lame names posing as sexually aggressive 26 year olds from Manhattan with cool names. Can anyone find evidence of a MySpace identity being auctioned on eBay?

MySpace, which counts 42 million members and has surpassed eBay, Google and AOL in number of page views, is a place that invites strangers to mingle.

MemeStreams needs a link or a button on the home page that says Mingle! As for what it does -- is that important?

26? No, 11.

David Brooks writes about Myspace in today's NYT, decrying the upbeat whitewashing that takes place in the lovefest that is the Myspace social network. He characterizes its core demographic as "half-teen/half-adult." It's no surprise that, as a writer, he would lament the apparent fact that Myspace users are not avid readers, particularly of the kind of books he would write.

Brooks argues that the social dynamic of Myspace puts women squarely in charge, and he seems to find this arrangement a positive development. (So does Ms. Fleiss, apparently. See next.)

Ultimately, though, he seems to be reaching out for a highbrow Myspace -- a social networking site that is upstanding, intelligent, and compelling.

Interesting.

Which famous people and institutions are due for a comeuppance in the coming year?

I think the worm is about to turn on Google. The company's ascent has been too rapid, its successes too extravagant.

Cool just moved on.

Better get that Memestreams server upgraded!

Breaking Up With Google

I want my MTV — and my TiVo, Palm Pilot, iPod, podcast and, of course, blog. So does America still have any interest in the big, lumbering, predictable media of Hollywood and Manhattan?

Mass media's last blast

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

Al Gore tells it like it is

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Behind the walled garden they go ...

Good Bye, Tom! Good Bye, Nick!

Listening, it turns out, fills a big silence at the center of so much media noise. The memes of mainstream coverage - heroes and victims, right and left - did not situate well over Katrina. It is easy to tut-tut from a distance, to suggest that this was bound to happen and everyone should have gotten out of Dodge, but that does not reflect the practical issues that people without cars or money confronted.

The Pendulum of Reporting on Katrina

The target reader is a man over 35 who earns more than $100,000 a year, is already living the life he wants rather than merely chasing it, and presumably isn't too embarrassed to be seen reading a magazine that for more than a century has been associated with women.

"When people ask me, 'Who is this magazine for?' I say, 'Well, did you ever wonder who are the guys on the arms of the women who read Vogue?'

It's hard to think of a contemporary magazine that is analogous to Men's Vogue. In a way, it's a paean to the urbanity of The New Yorker, the glamour of Vogue and the cosmopolitan sparkle of Esquire of the late 60's and early 70's before, it seems, the world was divided into gay and straight.

Vogue Answers: What Do Men Want?

Seven months after Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS, exhorted his colleagues to re-engineer the network's evening newscast, the drafting process has reached an apparent milestone: the news division has begun to record and edit prototypes of how that broadcast could soon look.

Katie Couric, perhaps the biggest star on network news, whose contract with NBC's "Today" expires next year, was quoted in The New Yorker this month as saying she had met twice with Mr. Moonves and would make a decision on her future this fall.

CBS Moving to Find a New Look for News

Call it the Red Wine Syndrome. Take something that's known to be wildly destructive when taken in excess: something that can wreck your liver, destroy your family, create bloody mayhem on the highway and turn you into a pathetic, falling-down wretch. Then have some scientists announce that, taken in moderation , this thing can . . . prevent cancer!

If you're a drinker who's sick and tired of being scolded, you're going to be pretty excited about this news.

The 'Bad' Guy