April 2010
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Timeline Of Privacy Erosion
Kurt Opsahl has pulled together a timeline of Facebook’s eroding privacy model:
Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2005:
No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.
Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2006:
We understand you may not want everyone...
So You Wanna Be A User Experience Designer
Great post from Whitney Hess on UX ‘guiding principles’, like ‘have empathy’ and ‘present few choices’. I smell a book!
20 Guiding Principles for Experience Design
Stay out of people’s way When someone is trying to get something done, they’re on a mission. Don’t interrupt them unnecessarily, don’t set up obstacles for them to overcome, just pave the road...
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Microstreams In Business: Research Study And...
Over the next few months, I will be developing a report on the use of microstreams in the business context, called Social Architecture: Microstreams In Business. I plan to analyze the promise and actual benefits of streaming applications in the business context.
The report will provide in-depth review and analysis of general purpose technologies such as Twitter and Facebook in the business ...
Philadelphia Edglings Rethinking Journalism
Apparently, a bunch of folks in Philly are doing more than eating cheesesteak: several recent events demonstrate that that city is on the cusp of big changes.
First, Philadelphis Newspapers was bought by its creditors so the three majors — the Inquirer, the Daily News, and Philly.com — are not longer in local hands.
Second, The William Penn Foundation announced plans for a ‘regional...
Joining Somesso Advisory Board
Lost in the events of last week was the announcement of my joining Somesso’s advisory board. Somesso are the group, led by Arjen Strijker, that teamed with Headshift for the recent Social Business Summit in London. I look forward to finding ways to develop some interesting new vehicles to collaborate with Somesso this year.
Niqab While Driving?
The French continue their crackdown on concealing the face for religious reasons (or is it more a protest against the rights of a secular state?):
via Reuters
A 31-year-old French woman has been fined for wearing a full veil while driving, a further sign of France’s effort to clamp down on the niqab, the Islamic veil that leaves only the eyes uncovered and that President Nicolas Sarkozy says...
Private versus Public DNA
Does each individual own their DNA? Can we prohibit others from taking cell samples, if thet does not endanger us? Is the human genome something that we should hold in common, as a resource like the air or the oceans, or is it like mineral rights, which are controlled by those that own the land they reside under?
The Havasupai Indians sued Arizona State University for ‘misusing’...
Stop The Anonymous Quotes!
I have been among the many who have complained about the New York Times cavalier attitude about quoting anonymous sources, usually with the flimsiest of excuses: ‘The senior official declined to be named, because he is not cleared to speak publicly on the topic,’ or the like. They shouldn’t be quoted, then. These are political tools, not people frightened by a despotic...
Web Coupons And The End Of Privacy
As another indication of the transition to a publicy-based society, web-based coupons carry a whole lot of information abou the person that found and printed those coupons:
Stephanie Clifford, Web Coupons Know Lots About You, And They Tell
Coupons from the Internet are the fastest-growing part of the coupon world — their redemption increased 263 percent to about 50 million coupons in...
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Twitter Is Doing Exactly What Fred Wilson Said
I have been so heads down on the Social Business Edge event (1pr 19, in NYC; being livestreamed at http://www.livestream.com/socialbusinessedge starting at 9:30am) that I hadn’t read the stories about Twitter’s Ev Williams announcing their own URL shortener in in the works.
They have a URL shortener working now, for direct messages, ostensibly as a way to track malicious sites and...
Ning In The Death Spiral?
I had missed the departure of Gina Bianchini from Ning a month ago (around the time of my mother’s death, and I wasn’t paying much attention), but the current plans that the new CEO, Jason Rosenthal, has sounds like the death spiral has started. He’s laying off 40% of the staff — 70 people — and canceling free accounts. As Jason Kincaid points out, this is going...
Twitter Ads
When Twitter announced it was building and buying its own clients, it seemed fairly clear that the purpose was to own the user experience, and although Ev Williams couched the announcement as driven by concern for confused users (see Twitter Raising The Infrastructure: App Builders Better Run For The Ultrastructure) the reality is much more mercantile: they are going to be serving up ads.
...
Nikkei Wants A Closed Web
Japan’s largest business newspaper, the Nikkei, is outdoing Murdoch. Not only have the erected a pay wall, but they are trying to control all links referencing pages on their new web site:
Hiroko Tabuchi, Nikkei Restricts Links to Its New Web Site
Japan’s largest business newspaper, the Nikkei, joined the trend of other news sites last week by requiring readers to pay to view its Web ...
Social Strategy and Social Architecture
In a recent post, Umair Haque reminds us of McLuhan’s famous insight: “The medium is the message.” And how McLuhan explained that was this: ”The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” And then Umair takes flight:
Today, the meaning is the message. The “message”...
The Power Of Pull
John Hagel comments on the theme of the just-released book he wrote with John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, The Power of Pull:
Pull allows each of us to find and access people and resources when we need them, while attracting to us the people and resources that are relevant and valuable, even if we were not even aware before that they existed. Finally, in a world of mounting pressure and...
Twitter And The NY Times
A few recent slips with Twitter catch the attention of Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the NY Times:
Nobody edits Times reporters on Twitter, and its prevailing style — fast, chatty, personal — can lull a user into opening up far too much. The Times has written guidelines for social media. As Philip Corbett, the standards editor, put it, they boil down to a warning that Times staffers on...
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Twitter Raising The Infrastructure: App Builders...
So, Fred Wilson’s recent blog post (see Fred Wilson Plotting Twitter’s Future) turns out not to have been the ramblings of philosophical market observer: it looks more like the starter’s gun at the outset of a footrace.
He suggested that Twitter might start to fill ‘holes’ in its architecture, holes that may be occupied by other applications built by third parties....
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Fred Wilson Plotting Twitter's Future
Fred Wilson has written a post about Twitter’s future, one that reads like a market analyst wrote it. The problem is, Fred is one of the original investors in Twitter, and sits on the board, so I have to wonder what this is all about. Is this Twitter policy? Did he pass this by the management there? Is he going public with this a week before the Twitter developer conference to prepare people...
Transparency And Trust: The Edelman 2010 Trust...
As our society careens into a challenging and turbulent era, our value systems change. For the first time, trust and transparency trump product quality in our decisions about brands:
via Edelman
I have to wonder if this is a permanent shift in the social fabric, or a temporary phase induced by the financial turmoil of the recent past. I am betting on a permanent change in cultural...
Craig Newmark on Trust
I think Cory Doctorow’s Whuffie idea has gotten too deep into Craig Newmark’s thinking about trust and reputation. This is from his newest piece on this topic:
Craig Newmark, Trust and reputation systems: redistributing power and influence
How do we trust the custodians of trustworthiness? We need to have some confidence that they’re not fiddling the ratings, that...
Foursquare Is Useless To Me
John Battelle has a thoughtful essay on why Foursquare just doesn’t work for him. Perhaps it’s the Blackberry, the fact he’s the wrong demographic, or that he doesn’t understand what it means to be connected on the service.
Despite the the hype, and the bazillion friend requests, it doesn’t mean anything. Or as he puts it, “the service is, to my mind, poorly...
Redbox To Stream?
Ryan Lawler, Redbox Could Take On Netflix in Streaming
Redbox could get into the online video streaming business, if a recent survey is any indication. According to High-Def Digest, Redbox has reportedly asked customers if they would be interested in a streaming service that would put the kiosk rental company in direct competition with industry leader Netflix.
The survey asks Redbox users...
Fred Wilson Sketches The Product Trajectory For...
In four hours of use, Fred Wilson tells Apple what they need to do to make iPad a monster: make it lighter, improve wifi, add multitasking, get a broader range of apps.
Fred Wilson, Thoughts On The iPad: Not A Mainstream Computing Platform Yet
Reading (and watching some video) is how I will use the iPad. It is just not that good for much else. I sat in the family room and watched the Duke...
Paul Miller Skewers The Joojoo
Paul Miller, Fusion Garage Joojoo Review
There are just so many things we wish Fusion Garage did differently with the JooJoo. Even putting aside the fact that Apple’s $499 iPad brings more to the table than just web browsing, the JooJoo is less portable, has a worse (if larger) screen, is unintuitive to use, and ships with half-baked software. We commend the start-up on its nice ...
The Nuclear Option For Broadband
So, the broadband providers — in principle — would like to have the right to control what passes through their pipes. Of course, we, the people, would not be benefitted in they could slow down Skype or BitTorrent packets, or if NetFlix was slower than CBS movies. Net neutrality is a social good, but might irk the providers.
The recent decision of the US Court Of Appeals ruled...
Hot News: Who Owns Facts?
‘Hot news’ is one of the bricks that the old mainline media companies are using to build a wall to keep out the future, although it tuns out to be an old brick:
James Boyle, Hot news: The next bad thing
Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists spend a lot of time trying to figure out the next big thing; the new trend, product or web service that will take us by storm....
Yelp's Yowling
I don’t believe for a second that Yelp has decided to drop ‘favorite review’ (a feature that allowed paying advertisers to pick a glowing review to appear above all others) out of the goodness of their hearts, or that it was causing confusion. It was intended as a goad to make small businesses advertise, perhaps after bad reviews started to show up from supposedly unhappy...
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More Disasters On The Horizon: The Pressing Need...
The earthquake Sunday along the US-Mexico border is (another) wake up call for preparedness:
Jesse McKinley, In California, Louder Calls to Prepare for Quakes
Seismologists say a major earthquake is almost a certainty in coming decades, given the region’s seismic history. But a recent study by the California Emergency Management Agency found the majority of the state’s households failing to...
Hinchcliffe&Co Acquired By Dachis Group
In a move that will surprise few, Dachis Group has acquired Hinchcliffe&Co. Dion Hinchcliffe is a well-known and highly regarded writer, speaker, and consultant in Web 2.0, social business, and cloud computing circles. Dachis Group is a fast growing consultancy, dedicated to helping its clients capture value through social business design. It seems a perfect fit.
I spoke with Dion about...
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Jeff Jarvis on The Hunt For The Elusive Influencer
Jeff Jarvis is right when he makes the point that those with the most followers may not be the most influential; but he misses the fact that some people might still be more influential than others:
Jeff Jarvis, The Hunt For The Elusive Influencer
[…] trying to find the big influencer with big audience is really just old mass marketing in a cheap dress. Old mass marketing (go with the...
Marc Aronson on The End Of History (Books)
We treat copyrights as individual possessions, jewels that exist entirely by themselves. I’m obviously sympathetic to that point of view. But source material also takes on another life when it’s repurposed. It becomes part of the flow, the narration, the interweaving of text and art in books and e-books. It’s essential that we take this into account as we re-imagine permissions in a digital...
Clay Shirky on The Collapse Of Complex Business...
I have some problems with the unitary model of complex societies that Shirky relies on in this analysis, but let’s poke at it a bit:
Clay Shirky, The Collapse Of Complex Business Models
[…]
In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter looked at several societies that gradually arrived at a level of remarkable sophistication...
PostRank Announces DoucheRank
via email:
PostRank™ Announces the Launch of DoucheRank™ Social Judgment Service Waterloo, Ontario, Canada — April 1, 2010 — PostRank Inc.™, developers of the groundbreaking social engagement metrics analysis platform and service, is excited to announce the launch of their new social judgment service, DoucheRank™ (http://doucherank.com).
DoucheRank™ is the result of months of...
The Cost Of Truckers Texting Is Too High
AP, U.S. Proposes Permanent Ban on Commercial Drivers’ Texting
The Transportation Department proposed on Wednesday to make permanent a ban on text-messaging by drivers of commercial trucks and buses.
The plan, which was announced on an interim basis in January by the Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, would apply to drivers of interstate buses and trucks over 10,000 pounds.
The proposal...
Thai Protesters Using New Tech
Another set of protesters, able to do at a low cost what could not have been done before at all, because of the democratization of media and the rise of mobile devices:
Thomas Fuller, Young Thai Protesters Shed Culture of Restraint
The haves in Thailand have a lot — the country has one of the most inequitable income distributions in Asia, a wider gap between rich and poor than in China,...