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LONDON (Reuters) - Online publishers are doing well despite an economic downturn, and the ones who are best positioned to succeed are strong brands with quality content, the head of the Online Publishers Association said on Friday.

Web sites have an edge over traditional media by offering advertisers the ability to target consumers in a cost-efficient and highly focused way, the association's president, Pam Horan, told Reuters during the OPA's “Forum for the Future” in London.

“This ability to highly-target the right consumers, and do it in a way that is very efficient, means that online publishers should continue to see significant advertising growth even during this difficult economic period,” Horan said.

The expected growth rate for online advertising spending in the U.S. this year is a still robust 23 percent, down from 25 percent last year, according to data from eMarketer.

While both global media brands and local online publishers should be able to weather the storm, the ones with the strongest brands and quality content are likely to be most successful in attracting advertisers, Horan said.

In an ever-expanding global economy, foreign readers are becoming increasingly important for publishers, Horan said. Advertising categories such as travel and financial news are particularly well placed to make money from foreign visitors.

The continuous evolution of digital publishing platforms is another reason why the prospects for online advertising revenue are brighter than for traditional media.

The mobile Web, video and social media are seen as key growth areas for advertising revenue.

But Horan said the jury was still out on how publishers and advertisers can monetize social networks, such as Facebook.

“We see great examples of how it can be leveraged for brand building and traffic but as a revenue stream it still remains to be seen.”

The time spent on a site has to be put into perspective, she cautioned. Community activities account for only seven percent of the time U.S. consumers spend online each month, according to the OPA's Internet Activity Index.

That compares to more than 40 percent of their time spent with content, making it the most significant category of online activity and thus the most important category for advertisers.

(For a blog from the OPA conference go to http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2008/05/15/cutting-through-th e-clutter-at-opas-global-forum/)

The former chairman and CEO of PurchasePro.com, a business-to-business software broker that died during the dot-com bust, has been found guilty of securities fraud, witness tampering and other crimes, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Charles “Junior” Johnson, who resigned as chairman and CEO in May 2001, was found guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia of conspiring to commit securities fraud, securities fraud, witness tampering and obstructing an official proceeding. Judge Walter Kelley released his verdict Thursday after a bench trial that finished in December.

Johnson founded PurchasePro.com in 1996, and the company was one of the dot-com boom's early success stories. PurchasePro, which had a close relationship with AOL, sold computer software through a B-to-B marketing license, allowing businesses to buy and sell products on the Internet, to participate directly in PurchasePro's own Web-based marketplace and to create their own branded marketplace using PurchasePro's software.

The company went public in September 1999, and shares leapt 117 percent the first day to close at US$26.13. In December 1999, the company's adjusted stock price hit a peak of nearly $396 a share.

In March 2000 and April 2001, the company signed deals with AOL, the latter to jointly develop a B-to-B marketplace called Netscape Netbusiness Marketplace. But in late April 2001, the company announced its earnings would be significantly lower than Wall Street expectations, and that same month, investors filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, accusing its executives of improperly recognizing revenue as a way to pump up stock prices.

In August 2002, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating AOL's relationship with PurchasePro, and in September 2002, PurchasePro filed for bankruptcy.

Johnson, 47, of Las Vegas, was indicted in January 2005. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for the charges he was found guilty of Thursday.

Johnson and his co-conspirators, including other senior officers at PurchasePro, conspired to falsely inflate the revenue the company announced to investors from the sale of PurchasePro marketplace licenses as well as the revenue generated for AOL, the DOJ said. Johnson worked with company employees Robert Geoffrey Layne and James Sholeff to inflate revenue for the first quarter of 2001, the DOJ said.

The three men misled PurchasePro's auditors by forging documents, altering fax headers and backdating contracts, and then placing the documents in PurchasePro's files where the auditors would find and rely on them, the DOJ said. Layne and Sholeff each pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison terms.

“Corporate officials will be held accountable when they deceive unsuspecting investors, as today's verdict proves,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, chairman of the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force, said in a statement. “The task force will continue our efforts to improve the integrity of the marketplace and bring to justice those executives who violate the law.”

Johnson originally faced trial on the securities fraud and witness tampering charges in a jury trial that began in October 2006 before Judge Kelley. Johnson's first trial ended after Kelley granted a motion from Johnson's defense attorney to withdraw from the case, causing a mistrial.

In the retrial, which began in October 2007, an obstruction of justice charge was consolidated with the original securities fraud charges. In addition to the guilty verdict on the original charges, Kelley also found Johnson guilty of obstructing a federal proceeding as a result of his conduct during his original trial.

Six other PurchasePro executives, including Sholeff and Layne, have pleaded guilty to charges related to the stock inflation scheme.

In December 2004, a criminal complaint was filed against AOL charging the company with aiding and abetting securities fraud at PurchasePro. As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, AOL agreed to accept responsibility for the conduct of its employees in transactions between AOL and PurchasePro, cooperate fully in the continuing criminal investigation, adopt internal compliance measures, and pay $150 million into a compensation and settlement fund and a criminal penalty of $60 million. 

Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise

by Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly

John Wiley & Sons; 203pp; $29.95

It's 3 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, and my local San Francisco coffeehouse is packed. It's a sea of open laptops, with nearly all the people wearing headphones as they type away. Located about a block from the famed intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets, this hippie coffee shop seems an unlikely place to do work: The baristas have more tattoos and piercings than you'll typically find at Starbucks (NasdaqGS:SBUX - News), but the place has good coffee, free Wi-Fi, and plenty of power outlets — a holy trinity for people like me. You see, I'm a member of that growing army of people who telecommute or work virtually, so to speak.

In addition to enabling us to work nearly anywhere, technology has ostensibly made it easier for corporations to operate globally, with teams of far-flung workers collaborating daily. Yet even with the growing number of tools they can use to communicate anytime and anywhere, many remote workers struggle with the psychological distance that comes from an overreliance on electronic interaction, according to Uniting the Virtual Workforce, a new book by Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly.

The authors coin a term, “virtual distance,” to refer to the feelings of separation engendered by communicating by e-mail, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and other tools. If you've ever had a misunderstanding with a colleague via e-mail, you've experienced virtual distance. But more than just making people feel bad, the authors say, this virtual distance can be a serious problem that inhibits collaboration, impedes innovation, diminishes employee satisfaction, and hurts the bottom line.

No Shared Context

Lojeski and Reilly cite an insurance company that lost $3 million on one project alone because of issues surrounding virtual work. Some companies, including Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ - News), have even asked that information technology workers begin working in corporate offices again. Yet the authors argue that recalling workers to the office won't necessarily solve the problem. That's because physical distance is only partly to blame. Virtual distance can also entail operational distance, where there's no shared context among workers in different departments. Or it can involve what the authors call “affinity distance,” which are marked differences in workers' value systems or social behaviors.

For instance, when I was freelancing several years ago in Pittsburgh, I wrote articles for a Phoenix trade magazine whose editor was located in Washington. I never once spoke to my editor in person or on the phone. All of our communication was by e-mail. The virtual distance was substantial, but not merely because we were located in different states. Operationally, I'd never worked with an editor who didn't ask a single question about my stories or give me any feedback, ever. And the affinity distance was enormous, as I knew absolutely nothing about this man, including his past work experience, what he looked like, or if he had a family.

Yet, the authors say virtual distance can be managed, offering tips to map out where it might exist in your organization and strategies for managing it. For starters, Lojeski and Reilly stress that face-to-face meetings are most crucial when first getting a project off the ground, when there are major hitches that need to be discussed openly, and when presenting results to clients. Other suggestions include issuing an e-mail etiquette guide for the team so that everyone, regardless of age or culture, can better manage expectations.

Photos Beside the Phone

One case study in the book describes how Karan Sorensen, chief information officer for Johnson & Johnson's (NYSE:JNJ - News) pharmaceutical research & development, took such steps to manage virtual distance during a global infrastructure project. Sorensen first brought the group together for a face-to-face meeting so that team members could get to know one another. Early on, they set up rules of engagement, such as how each individual liked to communicate best, to address cultural differences. On conference calls, the staff kept photos of everyone by the phone, and Sorensen made sure to alternate call times so that certain people weren't always stuck dialing in at midnight. By getting her team to collaborate better, Sorensen completed the project under budget and well ahead of deadline, saving J&J more than $200 million over three years.

Case studies like these are where this book shines, and it could have benefited from more, especially in Chapter 2, where the authors spend about 25 pages defining their three components of virtual distance. The pace picks up in the second half, delivering strategies to overcome virtual distance and an interesting chapter on how to best innovate with a virtual workforce. All told, the authors provide solid advice and a good starting point for managers who want to figure out why their virtual teams aren't communicating well or aren't delivering strong results. Judging from the crowds who showed up to hear Lojeski speak on a recent trip to Silicon Valley, there are plenty of companies grappling with these issues.

As for me, I'm lucky now to work with an editor who manages virtual distance well. With some well-timed face-to-face meetings, a few phone calls per week, and plenty of e-mail messages, we've managed to work well together for nearly two years. I know what he looks like, his professional history, and the names of his children. And I now get plenty of feedback and questions on my stories, some of which I answer from my favorite perch in my local coffeehouse.

Slow progress on the net’s new addressing system risks breaking it into regional blocks, warns the OECD.

The problem may comes as nations move to the new scheme at different paces, says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The need to update is getting more urgent as the pool of addresses for the existing system begins to run dry.

The remaining 14% of these addresses will run out within three years, warns the OECD.

More work

In a report prepared for a forthcoming ministerial meeting on the future of the internet economy the OECD recommended that governments and businesses get on with the task of shifting to Internet Protocol version 6 .

IPv6 is the latest version of the specifications used to ensure data travelling across the net reaches the right destination.

Currently the net uses IPv4 but its potential pool of 4.2 billion addresses is close to depletion.

Shifting to the new addressing scheme was “critical for the future of the internet economy” said the OECD.

But it admitted that progress towards IPv6 was “very slow” because the benefits of adopting it were hard to quantify in the short term.

The OECD said technical workarounds that translate between the two versions could help companies cope as transfer to IPv6 rolls on.

However, it said, the only real solution was to fully implement IPv6.

The report said that economics might force the issue as the cost of using IPv4 might rise as firms are forced to take ever more extravagant efforts to cope with the diminishing pool of addresses.

It urged governments to mount extensive education campaigns, beef up IPv6 expertise at all levels of government and encourage its adoption by specifying it in tenders for work.

There were some deployments of IPv6, said the OECD, citing work in Japan to use it for communication between earthquake sensors. China is also using the 2008 Beijing olympics as a test bed for IPv6 networking.

The OECD report warned against delay, saying: “Experience to-date with IPv6 also suggests that IPv6 deployment requires planning and co-ordination over several years.”

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters Life!) - Maps showing noise levels in towns across England were published on Friday in an attempt to reduce the disruption caused by factories, planes, trains and cars, the British government said.

Residents in 23 towns and cities will be able to check how noisy their area is by visiting a new government website, www.defra.gov.uk/noisemapping.

The site collapsed on Friday morning due to “unprecedented demand.” A message said engineers were working on the problem.

Ministers say the maps represent the most thorough attempt yet to grasp the scale of a problem that some studies have linked to serious illness and educational difficulties.

The maps, drawn up to meet a European Union directive, will be used to help cut noise in the worst-affected areas.

“They will provide a springboard to go forward and tackle unnecessary and unreasonable noise pollution,” said Environment Minister Jonathan Shaw.

“We will use them to draw up action plans to reduce noise where practical from major roads and railways, as well as from urban areas.”

The maps were created using data taken at industrial sites, roads, railways and airports. They cover 50,000 miles of roads and 3,000 miles of railways.

The information was collected by airport operators, the Department for Transport, the Highways Agency, Network Rail and the Environment Agency.

London, Manchester, the West Midlands, Liverpool and Nottingham are among the areas covered by the maps.

Researchers have linked loud noise to illness and educational problems in children.

In February, a European Commission-funded study of people living near airports found that the roar of engines instantly raised blood pressure. High blood pressure can lead to stroke, heart failure, heart attack and kidney failure.

In 2005, a team from Queen Mary's School of Medicine, London, said loud aircraft noise could impair children's ability to read and perform memory tests.

(Editing by Steve Addison and Paul Casciato)

San Francisco - In the four months since InfoWorld asked businesses and individuals to sign a petition at SaveXP.com asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP for sale beyond the planned June 30 general end-of-sales date, more than 200,000 have signed up to add their voices. As of May 15, the count was 200,805 signatures, excluding duplicates and fake signups.

“We're pleased and a little bit amazed that so many people from throughout the world have felt so passionately about the need to keep XP on the market,” said Executive Editor Galen Gruman. “We had heard grumblings throughout much of 2007 about dissatisfaction with Vista's high hardware requirements, questionable interface changes, slow performance, and incompatibilities with third-party software, but no one seemed to want to say so in public. That's changed since the petition's launch on Jan. 14.”

The campaign has caused a media frenzy, with stories in most major newspapers and news Web sites, as well as in blogs and radio programs. Recently, for example, Business Week noted in a recent story on increasing enterprise adoption of the Macintosh that Windows Vista was perhaps one of the biggest stumbles in tech history. A separate report noted that large companies such as General Motors and Alaska Airlines are skipping Vista and instead waiting for the next version of Windows, code-named Windows 7. And a major tech analyst firm has warned that Microsoft's many mishaps with Vista are putting the Windows franchise in jeopardy.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seemed to suggest that the company might give XP a reprieve — something it had done six months ago when it extended XP's end-of-sales date from Dec. 31, 2007 to June 30, 2008, due to customer resistance to Vista, But his PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, quickly issued denials that any change was imminent, suggesting that the voices seeking to keep XP were a small minority.

Through its PR firm, Microsoft has declined to meet wit InfoWorld to receive the petition and discuss the concerns of its customers who have signed it. Microsoft has repeatedly stated that it is satisfied with its sales of 140 million copies of Vista, which analysts and press reports repeatedly note include copies of Vista preinstalled on consumer PCs (for which XP has not been an option since spring 2007 at most retailers) or copies shipped to enterprises who exercise their rights to “downgrade” their systems to XP. There is no data on the willing adoption of Vista.

Microsoft has extended XP's life for sub-$400 PCs and for PCs meant for poor countries — neither type of PC can run the more resource-intensive Vista. But Dell has gone a step further, announcing it would install XP on select new systems after June 30 using the “downgrade” license option from Microsoft in which a customer pays for Vista Business or Vista Ultimate but gets XP installed instead.

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang spent months fending off Microsoft Corp.’s unsolicited takeover bid. Now he may only have a few weeks to persuade the software maker to revive its last offer of $47.5 billion, or risk being fired in a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Spurred on by outraged shareholders, Icahn notified Yahoo Thursday that he will lead a revolt to oust Yang and the rest of the Internet company’s board unless they renew negotiations with Microsoft that fell apart May 3 when the two sides couldn’t agree on a price.

In a response late Thursday, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock signaled that the Sunnyvale-based company is prepared to battle the New York financier.

Bostock criticized Icahn for having a “significant misunderstanding of the facts” about Microsoft’s offer and the Yahoo board’s response. He also emphasized that Yahoo remains open to a sale “if it offers our stockholders full and certain value.”

To pressure Yahoo, Icahn has nominated an alternate slate of directors to replace the current board in an election scheduled July 3 at Yahoo’s annual meeting. If the uprising is successful, an Icahn-led board presumably would fire Yang as CEO and try to negotiate a sale to Microsoft.

In his letter to Bostock, Icahn lambasted the board’s actions as “irresponsible” and “unconscionable,” given that Yahoo’s stock stood at $19.18 before Microsoft first made its bid. He urged the board to reopen the talks.

“I believe that a combination between Microsoft and Yahoo is by far the most sensible path for both companies,” Icahn wrote.

Bostock defended Yang and the Yahoo board in his letter to Icahn. “We continue to believe that Yahoo’s current board has the independence, the knowledge, and the commitment to navigate the company through the rapidly changing Internet environment and to deliver value for Yahoo and its stockholders,” Bostock wrote.

To gain leverage in the looming battle, Icahn revealed that he has spent more than $1 billion snapping up 59 million Yahoo shares and options to give him a 4.3 percent stake in the company. He plans to seek approval from the Federal Trade Commission to acquire up to $2.5 billion in Yahoo stock, including his current holdings.

Icahn’s challenge opens a dramatic new chapter in a saga that began Jan. 31 when Microsoft stunned Yahoo with a takeover bid that started out at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, and then rose to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, earlier this month.

The showdown now features at least five billionaires with diverse agendas:

Yang and fellow Yahoo co-founder David Filo, who believe Yahoo is worth at least $53 billion; Icahn and basketball team owner Mark Cuban, who has agreed to help shake up the company that made him rich; and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who, until recently at least, viewed Yahoo as a key weapon in his crusade to topple Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc.

Hoping to seal the deal, Ballmer orally offered to buy Yahoo $33 per share. But Yang and Filo — speaking on behalf of Yahoo’s board — sought $37 per share, a price the stock hasn’t reached in more than two years. The impasse prompted Ballmer to withdraw the bid.

Yahoo shares rose 61 cents, or 2.3 percent, to finish Thursday at $27.75. That’s the stock’s highest closing price since Microsoft broke off talks.

While Icahn made it clear he wants Yahoo sold to Microsoft, there are no guarantees the software maker is still interested in buying its rival.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on Icahn’s letter, saying the Redmond, Wash.-based company has “moved on.”

Besides Icahn, the alternate slate of nominees includes Cuban, who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $8.1 billion in stock in 1999. Cuban used part of his Yahoo windfall to buy the Dallas Mavericks, a National Basketball Association franchise that he still owns. He called upon Yahoo to sell to Microsoft in a February blog posting.

If Yahoo can’t find a way to placate Icahn, the battle threatens to distract Yahoo and the rest of the company’s management from their turnaround efforts, said James Post, a Boston University professor specializing in corporate governance and ethics.

“Senior management cannot concentrate on managing the business when they are concentrating on managing critical relationships with angry shareholders,” Post said.

And there’s no doubt Yahoo shareholders are furious, said Darren Chervitz, co-portfolio manager of the Jacob Internet Fund, which owns about 100,000 Yahoo shares.

“There’s a strong feeling that Yang and the board did not do their fiduciary duty,” Chervitz said. “They had a very strong offer on the table and did everything to brush it aside, if not sabotage it.”

Paulson & Co., a New York hedge fund that owns 50 million Yahoo shares, said Thursday that it will back Icahn’s alternate slate of directors if Yahoo’s board doesn’t negotiate a sale to Microsoft.

Icahn has a long history of challenging corporate boards overseeing troubled companies. Most recently, he has forced major changes at Blockbuster Inc. and Motorola Inc. He also played a pivotal role in the recent $8.5 billion sale of business software maker BEA Systems Inc. to rival Oracle Corp., which dropped an earlier bid of $6.7 billion.

The billionaire investor’s other notable nominees to the Yahoo board include: venture capitalist Adam Dell, whose brother, Michael, founded Dell Inc.; and Frank Biondi Jr., the former chief executive of Viacom Inc.

Icahn also recruited two nominees that Microsoft reportedly lined up for a possible hostile takeover attempt that never materialized. Those two are advertising executive Edward Grey and former Nextel Partners CEO John Chapple.

The revolt threatens to jettison Yang, 39, from the company that he started with Filo, 41, while they were graduate students at Stanford University 14 years ago. Together, Yang and Filo still own 134 million Yahoo shares, or nearly 10 percent of the company.

Yang has argued Yahoo eventually will be worth more than Microsoft’s last offer if it can expand its share of a rapidly growing Internet advertising market. He has pledged to boost Yahoo’s net revenue growth by 25 percent in 2009 and 2010 — well above the company’s recent pace of 12 percent.

“It is irresponsible to hide behind management’s more than overly optimistic financial forecasts,” Icahn wrote Bostock.

Although Ballmer and other Microsoft executives have been saying publicly they don’t need to buy Yahoo to bolster the company’s unprofitable Internet operations, many analysts have dismissed the statements as posturing.

Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal believes Microsoft will eventually buy Yahoo for $33 or $34 per share. The “body language from Yahoo and Microsoft do not suggest that both companies have really moved on,” Aggarwal wrote in a Thursday research note.

If the two companies really abandoned hope for a deal, Aggarwal reasons they would have already announced other moves indicating they were heading in a new direction.

For instance, Yahoo has been discussing a possible advertising partnership with Google for weeks without agreeing to a deal. And if Microsoft weren’t still interested in Yahoo, Aggarwal believes the company would have already announced another acquisition or “radical changes” in its strategy for building a more compelling Internet search engine.

___

Associated Press Business Writer Jennifer Malloy in New York contributed to this story.

Yahoo has rebuffed billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s plan to oust the current board of the net portal.

Mr Icahn is amassing a stake in Yahoo in an attempt to force out the current board over its handling of a failed merger deal with Microsoft.

Mr Icahn backed the bid by Microsoft to buy Yahoo, which directors rejected.

Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock has written to Mr Icahn saying it was not in shareholders’ interest to allow him and his “handpicked nominees” to take over.

Mr Bostock also criticised efforts to use the board fight to as a way to “force a sale of Yahoo to a formerly interested buyer”.

Mr Icahn has said Yahoo’s directors were wrong to spurn Microsoft’s offer to buy the company for $33 a share - a figure which valued the company at $47.5bn (?24.36bn).

In his letter, Mr Bostock rejected Mr Icahn’s claim that Yahoo had been acting “irrationally” in its dealings with Microsoft and said the company had exercised “diligence” and been willing to negotiate.

“The record of our efforts to engage Microsoft in meaningful discussions is unequivocal,” wrote Mr Bostock.

No offer

In his proposal to take over the Yahoo board when shareholders gather in July, Mr Icahn claimed that not putting Microsoft’s offer to the investors was “unconscionable”.

He said the offer was a 72% premium to the value of Yahoo shares before the bid was tabled.

“I and many of your shareholders strongly believe that a combination between Yahoo and Microsoft would form a dynamic company and more importantly would be a force strong enough to compete with Google on the internet,” said Mr Icahn.

As well as hoping to install a new board of directors when shareholders meet, Mr Icahn has said he will resume talks with Microsoft.

But in his response Mr Bostock repeated that there was no longer any deal on the table from Microsoft.

“May I remind you that there is currently no acquisition offer on the table from that company (Microsoft) or any other party,” he wrote.

“That said, we have been crystal clear in our stance that we have been and remain willing to consider any proposal from any party including Microsoft if it offers our stockholders full and certain value.”

Stake battle

In his letter, the first response from Yahoo since Mr Icahn launched his fight to replace the board, Mr Bostock rehearsed the actions the board had taken while negotiating with Microsoft.

Wrote Mr Bostock: “Your letter reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about the Microsoft proposal and the diligence with which our board evaluated and responded to the proposal.”

He continued: “A fair minded review of the factual record leads to one conclusion: That Yahoo’s ten-member board, comprised of nine independent directors along with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, remains the best and most qualified group to maximise value for all Yahoo stockholders.”

Microsoft has already said that, contrary to rumours of it possibly making another move later in the year, talks with Yahoo are over.

To help his bid to remove the board, Mr Icahn has reportedly bought around 59 million Yahoo shares - a 4.4% stake in the company. He has declared a desire to buy up to $2.5bn worth of shares - a 7% stake.

By comparison Yahoo boss Jerry Yang and fellow co-founder David Filo hold 10% stakes in the company.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Embattled Yahoo Inc has struck an advertising partnership deal with WPP Group that will let WPP buy ads on Yahoo's online ad exchange, the companies said late on Thursday.

Yahoo, which recently spurned a $47.5 billion unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp only to face a proxy battle led by activist investor Carl Icahn this week, said the deal would first involve WPP units GroupM and 24/7 Real Media.

In a statement, the companies said that as part of the deal, WPP advertising agencies would, through its 24/7 Real Media arm, develop a proprietary advertising media trading platform that takes advantage of Yahoo's Right Media exchange.

Yahoo acquired Right Media last year in a bid to expand sales of the online display advertisements preferred by corporate brand marketers beyond its existing base of blue-chip clients to social network sites and other sites off Yahoo.

“More and more, we see the need for agencies and media and technology companies to work together to create a new level of value,” said Mark Read, director of strategy and chief executive of the London ad conglomerate's WPP Digital unit.

WPP will also work with Yahoo to develop a WPP marketplace, giving WPP's ad agencies wider access to potential advertising inventory, or places to advertise, across the Internet, as well as insight into how to buy ads cost-effectively for clients.

The WPP-Yahoo marketplace will also be open to outside publishers, helping to increase the overall volume, while cutting the costs, of the WPP ad-trading marketplace.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard, editing by Will Waterman)

A federal grand jury has indicted a mother on charges relating to harassment on MySpace, which preceded a 13-year-old girl's suicide.

The indictment, returned Thursday in Los Angeles, marks the first time that a social networking site user has been prosecuted on federal charges related to accessing protected computers.

Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Mo., has been charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress on a 13-year-old girl, Megan Meier. Because of juvenile privacy rules, the victim — who killed herself after receiving taunts on MySpace — is referred to in the indictment only as M.T.M.

Prosecutors said Drew posed as a teenage boy who feigned romantic interest in the victim. The “boy” later told the girl during an online chat in October 2006 that the world would be a better place without her. Less than an hour later, Meier hanged herself. She died the next day.

Court documents state that Drew and others registered as a member of MySpace under the name “Josh Evans” and flirted with Meier for about four weeks.

Once Meier believed she was having an online romance with a 16-year-old boy, Drew and her co-conspirators broke off the relationship.

“This adult woman allegedly used the Internet to target a young teenage girl, with horrendous ramifications,” U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said while announcing the indictment. “After a thorough investigation, we have charged Ms. Drew with criminally accessing MySpace and violating rules established to protect young, vulnerable people. Any adult who uses the Internet or a social gathering Web site to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences.”

Prosecutors said Drew and her co-conspirators violated MySpace's “terms of service,” which are mandatory for creating an account. They prohibit people from using fraudulent registration information; using accounts to obtain personal information about juvenile members; using the MySpace communication services to harass, abuse, or harm other members; and promoting false or misleading information.

“Whether we characterize this tragic case as 'cyberbullying,' cyberabuse, or illegal computer access, it should serve as a reminder that our children use the Internet for social interaction and that technology has altered the way they conduct their daily activities,” Salvador Hernandez, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, said in a news announcement. “As adults, we must be sensitive to the potential dangers posed by the use of the Internet by our children.”

Drew is scheduled to appear in court in June. If convicted, she faces up to five years in federal prison on the conspiracy count, and up to five years on each count of accessing protected computers for the purpose of intentionally inflicting emotional distress on Meier.

Investigators in Los Angeles pursued the case because MySpace's servers are located there. The social networking site cooperated with authorities and is named as a victim in the case.

Drew has also been the victim of cyberbullying since news of her alleged actions became public.

See original article on InformationWeek.com