MySpace said on Monday it and online advertising technology company Auditude are working with Viacom Inc’s MTV Networks to make money from video clips that its users put online.When people who use MySpace, the online social network owned by News Corp, post video clips online, Auditude’s technology will let MTV run online ads beside them.

The arrangement lets MTV make money from video clips of shows that it owns the rights to, such as “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” regardless of whether the people who upload the videos have permission to put them on the Internet.

“There is a very strong, aggressive trend to user-syndicated or user-curated content,” said Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing. “Rather than fighting that aggressive trend, you’d rather go with it.”

Berman declined to say how much money MySpace, MTV and Auditude could make from the arrangement, but described the opportunity as “significant.”

The arrangement, which MySpace also is discussing with Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros, also gives the company “an enormous amount of data about how the audience is interacting with and virally promoting your content.”

It is an alternative to the usual situation in which people post the clips online, only to have the videos’ owners complain that it was without their permission. MySpace and Google Inc, which owns YouTube, typically remove content once it shows up on their sites and copyright owners complain.

Maybe it is a good time to check your Facebook page right now, whether your boss is around or not.

The same with Bebo, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any of your online social network profiles.

Because if you believe what a British think-tank has to say about social networking, it just might be a good thing for your employer, too.

The London-based Demos has released a report that suggests social networking sites may benefit the workplace by helping employees establish new contacts, strengthen ties with clients, or learn more about what is happening in other parts of their industry.

These same workers may use social networking sites to keep in touch with former co-workers, who can pass on useful tips and information to their former workplace.

Nurturing and hosting networks can bring benefits in terms of productivity, innovation and workplace democracy,” reads the report written by researchers Peter Bradwell and Richard Reeves.

Bradwell told CTV’s Canada AM on Friday that the report “Network Citizens: Power and Responsibility at Work” has probed a subject that has become an issue in workplaces in recent years, but has yet to be fully explored.

“The kind of focus of our report was looking at a lot of the very real benefits that people and organizations find from social networking,” he said. “But also to just bring out some of the challenges that might have been ignored so far.”

The report, released Oct. 29, also points to the difficulties of trying to ban such networks from the office.

It is becoming difficult to separate workers and social networking as they become increasingly intertwined, the report argues, and “smart businesses” recognize this.

“Bans on Facebook or YouTube are in any case almost impossible to enforce,” reads the report. “Firms may as well try to put a time limit on the numbers of minutes allowed each day for gossiping.”

But the report does warn that social networking can also pose problems for the corporate world: Such as online clubs and cliques that are the antithesis of what social networking is supposed to be about.

Bradwell said workplaces should keep open lines of communication about the way these sites should be used, but there is no need for “strict, overt surveillance” of the ways employees are making use of social networking.

Social networks have a large opportunity in the mobile space, but much of that potential remains untapped, according to a mobile researcher from Direct2 Mobile. Nick Lane, chief researcher of Direct2 Mobile, said networks like MySpace and Facebook haven’t fully convinced their users to migrate to mobile handsets. Both companies are making aggressive attempts though, as Facebook’s iPhone application is routinely one of the most-download, and MySpace mobile is featured prominently in the Android Market.

MySpace has about 114 million users, and Lane estimates that about 4% or 5 million users access the site from wireless handsets. “But if MySpace can eventually encourage 20% of its PC-based followers to embrace mobile as a complement to their PC-based experience, that would generate a healthy 35 million mobile users,” Land wrote.

Other studies have shown that MySpace and Facebook are the most popular mobile social networking sites, but Lane said the two may be a bit confined in the mobile space due to their business models. Neither is likely to charge a subscription fee for mobile access, and advertisers may not have much interest because the companies do not provide robust meta data.

But Lane is still optimistic about mobile social networks, particularly if wireless companies can convince half of the estimated 580 million social network users to migrate to mobile.

“290 million people paying a $3 per month subscription would generate $10.4 billion per year. Or $7.92 billion based on an ad-funded free model with a CPM of $3 on an average of 25 page impressions per user per day,” Lane wrote. “However you approach it, there is a vast untapped market just needing that little incentive to make the leap ‘over the air.’”

Another possible revenue model is location-based advertising, but MySpace and Facebook currently have location-based functionality. This potentially opens the door for companies like Loopt, Brightkite, Buzzd, and others.

Social networking is going corporate. The popular technology used by millions of people to share ideas and photos on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and others is catching on at companies to improve productivity and communication among workers.

Private, internal social networks make sense as companies grapple with a slumping economy that has made travel cost-prohibitive even as workforces are spread out as never before, tech analysts say.

“Companies are asking, ‘How can we make our workforce more productive?’ ” says Kevin Martin, an analyst at market researcher Aberdeen Group.

Corporations increasingly are “exploring and experimenting” in the use of social networks to improve business operations, says Gina Bianchini,CEO of Ning, a social-networking site for businesses and consumers. It makes revenue from Google AdSenseand premium services.

“There’s been a definite shift the last two months,” she says. “There is a genuine interest now rather than a casual curiosity before.”

Facebook, YouTube, MySpace era. Cyberspace is the place to be, but often not the place to be seen, for student-athletes.

For the past several years on campuses nationwide, coaches and athletic department personnel collectively have cringed at the thought of what can show up in cyberspace on those sites that demonstrates objectionable behavior by student-athletes.

“It is a hot topic in college athletic departments,” said Christine Susemihl, senior associate athletic director at Colorado State. “Even institutions that several years ago were not touching it find they have to. They at least have to have dialogue with their student-athletes.”

The broad question has become, “How to deal with it?”

Administrators at Florida State and Kentucky have issued ultimatums to their athletes to be careful what they post, according to USA Today, and Loyola University Chicago forbids its athletes to belong.

A sampling of Division I schools along the Front Range shows a variety of approaches toward dealing with such sites, though all say it is an issue they are monitoring.

At the University of Colorado, associate athletic director Ceal Barry believes putting the onus on individual sports to nudge their student-athletes toward responsible behavior is the best course.

“I feel like it’s very difficult to legislate,” said Barry, the school’s former women’s basketball coach. “We don’t have a departmentwide policy … what are you going to do, make (offenders) run laps?”

Instead, Barry said, CU’s student handbook features a section outlining guidelines on cyber activities developed by the student-athlete advisory committee. The belief was, “If it came from their peers, it would be more effective.”

In most instances, it has been. But along the way, there have been slip-ups.