A federal jury in Los Angeles gave a mixed verdict on Wednesday in the case of the MySpace cyber-bullying trial. A Missouri woman, Lori Drew, was convicted of three misdemeanor charges of computer fraud and unauthorized access to a computer system, for creating a false identity – a young, attractive man called Josh Evans – on the social networking site MySpace to attract (initially with the intent to spy on) and then harass, and badger a 13-year-old girl diagnosed with depression into committing suicide. Tina Meier, the mother of the girl Megan, is pushing for maximum penalty on Drew, who is 49, who could thus face up to three years in prison as well as a fine of $300,000 dollars. Drew was acquitted of the more serious charges against her.

The jury is still out, however, on whether social networks are doing their part to protect customers who are using their sites, according to technology and safety experts.

Social networks are inherently a vulnerable place for children as cyber-bullying is becoming more and more prevalent, says technology consultant Rob Enderle. Roughly one third of U.S. teenagers have at some point been victims of it, according to a study by the Pew Internet Project, which was released last year. Some 39% of social networking site users have reported being bullied in one way or another, as opposed to just 22% of teenagers who did not use such social networks.

The websites have security and safety personnel who comb through the networks looking for inappropriate content. "But the reality is that children are at risk on these sites," Enderle said. "Sites do what they can to mitigate those risks. But without becoming incredibly invasive, it would be very difficult for the sites to monitor this kind of behavior and prevent it."

According to Enderle, social networks were watching the Drew case, hoping for a stronger verdict which would be a deterrent. "Social networking sites are very concerned about this," Enderle said. "There is the potential liability, and it also reflects very badly on the site to be seen as a place for predators to prowl for children."

Facebook, another top social networking site, declined to comment on the verdict.

Linda Criddle, an online safety expert, says social networks must take responsibility for what goes on over their sites, and make them safer for consumers, instead of pushing the blame:

''I think the industry was hoping there would be a strong verdict blaming one user for abusing another because that way it's not their fault,'' Criddle said.

She went on to say that a number of social networking sites enforce their own terms of service, thus giving parents a false sense of security in letting their children use them.

''It's just the same as if you are at Disneyland and you scream profanities. That is not freedom of speech. You are on Disneyland's property. You have to follow their terms and conditions. If you don't, they escort you out of there,'' Criddle said. ''But these companies claim to have good standards and then do nothing to enforce them. They let people breach their terms and conditions and do nothing about it.''