Why I Now Use Facebook

You knew that when Rupert bought MySpace he wouldn't be content with their umpteen revenue streams and would seek to make bank off of people's profiles.

MySpace, the world's largest social networking site and work procrastination tool, will finally start capitalizing on all that personal information its users have been innocently (or, as is the case with many profile photos, not-so-innocently) putting into their profiles.

The New York Times reports that executives at Fox Interactive Media, the New Corporation unit that owns MySpace, have been tinkering for about six months with technology that can tailor ads to the personal information of its 110 million active users.

The company plans to unveil its "completely new paradigm" of online advertising to investors today.

"We are blessed with a phenomenal amount of information about the likes, dislikes and life's passions of our users," said Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media.

Of course, privacy advocates are miffed that these stated life's passions are being used to sell stuff to the passionate folks who naively entered the information without knowing what it would be used for.

"Miffed"? I'd say a little more. There's not even an opt-out for this that I can see. In Rupert's world we're all supposed to be good little consumers while he gets rich off our likes and dislikes. Some would say that the problem is commidifying these Web 2.0 sites necessarily forces you to break that trust with the user. Of course, MySpace was already raking in $40 million a month before this change. Not buying it. Selling people's personal information to make a buck goes too far. MySpace is kind of yesterday's hangout, anyway.