“Lots of times the families will go down to Kinko’s,” the funeral director tells me. “They can do a memorial folder thing down there.” Do you help them get photos off Flickr, off Facebook? “We don’t really help with that.” * * * The old woman looks up from her…

David A. Yovanno is the CEO of Gigya, Inc. , a leading social optimization platform for online business. He can be found on Twitter at @daveyovanno or e-mail dave(at)gigya(dot)com. Now that most social networks are supporting functionality on third party sites — via Facebook Connect , Sign in with Twitter , Yahoo! Open Strategy…

Ever since Owen Van Natta stepped down as CEO of MySpace last month, there has been a lot of speculation surrounding the future of the social networking site. Can it function with two co-presidents? Can it turn things around and restart its growth? Can it remake and re-imagine itself for today&#…

Alice in Wonderland isn’t as popular as a Tiger Woods confession, it seems. MySpace hosted a live stream for the movie last night, with streaming video partner Ustream counting almost 400,000 views over the evening. Those are strong numbers … if it weren’t for the easy comparable of Tiger Wood’s live …

NBC has set up a fun Twitter tracker for the Winter Olympics, representing Tweets about each sport in a visual interface. The Olympic Twitter Tracker , developed by Stamen Design, is an interesting addition to the standard stream of Tweets, which NBC also provides. The feature was announced on the Twitter blog…

MySpace Video is hosting an exclusive Alice in Wonderland movie event with director Tim Burton tonight. Burton will introduce the cast and show off some footage from the film, and there will be performances from the Almost Alice alternative music album. The event will stream live at 8:00 p.m. EST tonight …

Microsoft Outlook has just become a lot more social through new partnerships with Facebook and MySpace and an existing one with LinkedIn. You might remember back in November that Microsoft announced Outlook Social Connector , a new Office 2010 feature that hooks up social feeds into the Outlook inbox. The initial partner for the program…

Want to catch a show tonight — without having to deal with the giant who inevitably steps in front of you the minute the band takes the stage? Well, tonight at 8 p.m. EST/5 p.m. PST, you can watch the UK eletcro-pop band Hot Chip via Livestream on MySpace. The physical show…

Virtual memorials are nothing new — people have been paying their respects to departed loved ones on Facebook and Myspace for years. But a Facebook page set up for Henio Zytomirski, a 6-year-old Polish boy who was killed during the Holocaust, is truly revolutionizing the way we recount history and remember …

According to a report by Sophos , malware and spam are on the rise on social networks such as Twitter , MySpace , Facebook and LinkedIn . In the last year, 57% of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites, an increase of 70.6% compared to last year. Furthermore, 36% of users claim they’ve been…