You’ve probably seen the news: MySpace has reached an agreement with 49 states to take steps to make their site a safer place for kids. I just have one quick comment.

I think the state governments are attacking this from completely the wrong angle. Governments can put all the pressure they want on MySpace, and as soon as MySpace has adequate controls and age verification, the kids will have moved elsewhere.

Now don’t get me wrong, MySpace certainly has an obligation to do what they can. I’m glad to see them cooperating, especially because they only have a PR incentive to do so. They actually have a disincentive from a business perspective.

The advertisers go to MySpace to reach kids of all ages, so MySpace needs to continue to make it easy for the kids to sign up. But you lose your street cred with the kids when you let the parents in.

Providing parents the controls they want while also giving advertisers the access they demand are objectives that are fundamentally at odds with each other.

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Just like any normal Myspace user, I tend to browse my friends bulletins to see if there is anything of interest that might catch my eye. A Myspace bulletin is like an announcement message, it gets posted to all of your friends bulletin boards for them to see. So, a few days ago, I came across a bulletin from my Myspace “friend” and digg.com founder, Kevin Rose. (I don’t know Kevin, he’s my “friend” in the loosely connected, easily created Myspace way.)

The URL in the bulletin from Kevin takes you to hxxp://stalkertrack.com.

It’s highly unlikely that Kevin intended to send this bulletin. It should be noted that this was not an isolated incident.

This piqued my interest, so I decided to “digg” a little deeper to find out why a few web-savvy folks would openly give out their login credentials to a service that is not promoted or supported by Myspace itself, and is even actively discredited by the Myspace founders.

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