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Facebook, the college friend-finder website that competes with News Corp.'s MySpace, added features that track what users do on the site, prompting protests from users. The new features show changes that members make to their personal site, such as adding pictures, and automatically alert members of user groups about their activities on Facebook, the Palo Alto-based company said. In response, more than 265,000 Facebook users have joined a protest group called Students Against Facebook News Feed.

Universal Music Group sued MySpace.com on Friday, alleging that the social networking site that bills itself as a source of "user generated" content instead trades on "user stolen" songs and music videos. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, described MySpace as a "vast virtual warehouse" of pirated works from some of the company's best-known artists, including Mariah Carey, Diana Krall and U2.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. will invest 590 million yen ($5 million) with Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son's Softbank Corp. in a Japanese version of the social networking website MySpace. News Corp., which last year paid $580 million for MySpace, will put up the money in a 50-50 partnership with Tokyo-based Softbank, Japan's largest provider of high-speed Internet access.

Internet social networking giant MySpace.com plans to announce today that it has introduced a video-filtering program that should automatically remove copyrighted material from its website. The pilot program, according to MySpace, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire, will begin by weeding out unauthorized content belonging to Universal Music Group and NBC Universal.

MySpace is trying to create a friendly space -- for advertisers. News Corp.'s fast-growing Internet social network plans to announce a marketing deal today with the Improv chain of comedy clubs to bring performances, behind-the-scenes footage and other content to the new humor section of MySpace. Executives hope to laugh all the way to the bank. MySpace Comedy is a key element of News Corp.'

Signaling its ambition to turn MySpace into an entertainment marketplace, News Corp. today is expected to unveil plans to sell downloadable copies of 20th Century Fox movies and TV shows through the popular social network and other Fox Interactive Media websites. The announcement comes a week after Fox signed a major advertising deal with Google Inc., intensifying News Corp.'s race against Viacom Inc. and other entertainment companies to cultivate younger audiences online.

MySpace said Tuesday that it would serve up a broad array of branded news and entertainment channels on its social-networking website, including video clips from small Web studios and from bigger media names such as National Geographic and the New York Times. The step continues the rapid expansion of video on the News Corp.-owned site, which is based in Beverly Hills.

The social-networking website MySpace.com is launching a free, advertising-supported cellphone version as part of a wider bid by parent News Corp. to attract advertising for mobile sites, the company was set to announce today. The new version will work with all U.S. phone carriers and allow users to send and receive messages, comment on pictures, post bulletins, update blogs and request, find and search for friends. Fox Interactive Media, which oversees News Corp.'

Cingular Wireless began a program to let independent musicians create and sell ring tones through News Corp.'s MySpace.com, an online social networking site. Cingular is working with InfoSpace Inc., a seller of ring tones, mobile-phone games and data, to create the tones, David Garver, executive director of marketing for Cingular, said at the CTIA Wireless 2006 trade show in Las Vegas.

The popular online hangout MySpace.com said Tuesday that it would develop technologies to help block convicted sex offenders, the News Corp.-owned website's latest attempt to address complaints about sexual predators and other dangers to teens. Santa Monica-based MySpace is partnering with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. of Miami to build and deploy within 30 days a database that will contain the names and physical descriptions of convicted sex offenders in the U.S.