Since I'm not at SXSWi and there's plenty of coverage of the keynote interview Sarah Lacy did with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday (which ended with the audience openly turned against her) I won't pretend to know what it was like to actually be in the room. I do know what it was like to watch the tweets fly by on Twitter during the event.

Communications tools like Twitter changed the way the audience reacted to the Zuckerberg interview. Immediate reactions were posted as tweets and then cross-posted on blogs and FriendFeeds within seconds. You didn't have to be in the room to know something strange was happening. And I can imagine those in the room, also getting their Twitter updates on their cell phones, were encouraged by all of the "live" comments to ramp up their criticism of Sarah Lacy's performance.

I'm not defending the way she conducted the interview. By most accounts I've read, she was guilty of making the story too much about herself instead of letting Zuckerberg talk. We're going to have to get used to the power our new communications tools have to motivate people - both positively and negatively.

Still, I wish I'd been there to hear all the phones buzzing and everyone texting tweets.

Facebook, MySpace Hit by Zero-Day Flaw - by Jake Soriano from Trend Micro   "A vulnerability in the image uploader used by MySpace and Facebook was recently discovered by security researchers, bringing about issues of the possibility of exploits and malicious users gaining access to affected systems."

Spam continues to increase, Symantec says - by Robert Vamosi from CNET   "Spam now accounts for 78.5 percent of all e-mail traffic, according to a new report from Symantec. That's up from previous months. And Europe, not the United States, can now claim to be the source of most spam."

Decision Time For Yahoo - by Michael Arrington from TechCrunch   "The dust is settling on Microsoft’s $31 per share offer to acquire Yahoo, and the options left open to the company are fairly well understood at this point. There will almost certainly be no White Knight or other buyout offer coming to the table."

Exclusive: The next Facebook privacy scandal - from CNET by Chris Soghoian  Are Facebook developers being given unnecessary access to your personal information - and your friends' info, too?

Update: EBay lowers fees and tightens seller standards - from InfoWorld by Juan Carlos Perez   "EBay unveiled changes to its online marketplace Tuesday that the company characterizes as sweeping and historic and that are aimed at boosting sales by making the shopping experience simpler and safer."

Blu-ray Disc--The New VHS? - from PCWorld by Steve Bass   "In which our columnist declares his loyalty to the Blu-ray camp."

MySpace came to an agreement with 49 states today to revamp its policies and technology designed to protect children from online predators. The New York Times' Anne Barnard reports in Tuesday's edition about the deal the company made with the attorneys general of every state except Texas plus the District of Columbia.

TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld responds to the news with a review of the current child protection efforts of leading social sites MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Orkut. In general, MySpace is already ahead of the rest in trying to identify potential predatory activities on its site, and suggests that the other sites may have to spend some money to catch up.

While any efforts to protect minors from sexual predators and other unsavory characters online is admirable, the effort to keep computers "safe" for kids is similar to other attempts to protect ourselves from high-tech computer crime. We have to make sure we have anti-virus and firewall software, we have to keep them updated and all of our software patched, in order to present at least a minimal defense against those who are determined to infect our computers and steal our personal information. But ultimately, the most effective defense against online predators is parental involvement and the setting of limits.

I commend MySpace for making the effort (and the others if they follow suit, which they certainly will, if only for public relations reasons), but like the v-chip in all current television receivers, if parents abdicate their responsibility to someone - or something - else, the risk to their children rises immediately. If you're letting your teens use MySpace, Facebook or other social networking sites, you need to understand exactly what those sites are about. Even if your child is mortified by the idea that mom or dad have their own MySpace account (in the interest of research, of course!), it's important that you know how they work so you can make educated decisions about your child's involvement with those sites.

Of course, if they're so mortified they don't want to use the site anymore because a parent can see what they're up to, maybe that's a positive result in itself. Don't get me wrong: I have both a Facebook and MySpace page, and I enjoy keeping in touch with the few older friends who have also jumped on the social network bandwagon, not to mention a few younger friends who I think are a bit bemused that I'm "on MySpace." These types of interactive web applications are part of the future, and they won't be legislated away. So it's all the more important for parents and guardians to keep up so that reasonable limits can be discussed and enforced.

Photo credit: Michal Zacharzewski, SXC

Facebook users who added the "Secret Crush" application to their profile got a surprise recently when they found that instead of revealing who that secret someone might be, they received an invitation to visit a website and download adware files that would produce pop-up ads on their computers.