Great to hear a local startup in Asia got funded. But I must say that I agree that such tools are pretty meaningless. There are just too many free tools around to help with the tracking.

I met the folks before and the difference they have is the way they mine the collected data and present it in a meaningful ways to its clients.

They got really good traction in Asia too

Settings on ‘Updates’ page do not control the Visibility / Privacy options of “Personal Info” or “Status” themselves, only the creation of an Update entry for those items. The same goes for any 'Update'.

Now for the rest of your question.
Are you saying that your status on your Messenger interface is reflecting when you've changed your Profile photo?

If so…

Click this:
Sign in if prompted to.
There's one that says 'Status Updates'. Change it to 'No One'.
If you don't see it then you will need to click 'Show All Yahoo! Sources' first. Then you'll get this ridiculously long list of completely irrelevant things to have to choose 'No One' on and no way to get rid of them.
Click the orange 'Save' button at the bottom of the page.
You will not get the usual orange bar at the top of the page to confirm the save.

And you might find something here: http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2008/07/08/status-menu-makeover-in-90-beta/

Try Bravehost (www.bravehost.com), a Bravenet (www.bravenet.com) tools.

or

try Multiply (www.multiply.com), a free and complete site to make blog, upload music (mp3), upload pictures and videos, and much more.