The study was called Project Gaydar and reported a high degree of accuracy in identifying the sexual orientation of people who explicitly did not share that on Facebook.

Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep.

In an age of renewed concerns about privacy surrounding Twitter, location-based networks such as Foursquare and Facebook’s new Places service, one wonders just how much information that you are not sharing is actually being shown to the world.

For instance, is it logical to deduce that when a persons tone online moves from gregarious to tame, they may be job hunting and wanting to put their best foot forward? Or maybe in the early stages of a new, burgeoning relationship? What can be surmised by a spate of new LinkedIn recommendations? Is a pattern of Twitter status update frequency something that can be reasonably used to deduce some meaning?

Many people are very cautious to curate their online identities in such a way that seems presentable to the outside world. They shape and form their identities for maximum benefit. But what are they not saying that is still being communicated?

My friend, and data monkey, Keith Casey and I are proposing a panel to explore this more at SXSW. We would love your vote to ensure we get selected. It’s a fun topic and one that is front and center in an age with increasing privacy concerns.

The service is an aggregation tool that pulls email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, even IMAP to name a few) together. I couldn’t get my IMAP email account functional but that could just be me. It’s been awhile since I had to configure email addresses manually. My Gmail account imported successfully without any special configuration.

In addition to email accounts, Threadsy also aggregates your Facebook Inbox as well as Twitter. Though no differentiation (visually) seems to exist for DMs and public messages in Twitter, it did manage to aggregate everything nicely and order them in the proper order. I’ve noticed that other products that trie to do this always seem to be a little glitchy on timestamps and sorting, so I appreciated this.

What you get is a consolidated inbox, as seen below. It’s very interactive and clicking on messages brings up helpful information about the sender.

The experience is also very smooth with interactive visual elements (swooshes and what not… to be technical).

My big question surrounding this service is why? There already seem to be a lot of social inbox tools. Gmail is increasingly becoming one everyday with the addition of Buzz, though it does not yet support aggregation of Twitter and Facebook content. I can see the benefits, but I wonder how many users will be sold on it.

Try it for yourself though. The first thousand people to click on this link get into the private beta program. Let me know how you feel about it.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s supposed to be going after Twitter or some nonsense like that.

I enabled Buzz on my Gmail account and then promptly disabled it (you too can disable it, if it’s already turned on for you, by clicking on the “turn off Buzz” link in the footer of your Gmail account).

I’m going on record today to say that Google Buzz is and will continue to be an absolute failure. The reasons why are fourfold…

No one cares about the Google community

This thing is all about tying the Google community together, though they do have support for Twitter and Flickr as well because, well… no one can ignore those massive communities and have legs for the long run. People care about the YouTube community (a Google property). To a lesser extent, people care about the Blogger community (a Google property). No one cares about the Gmail community. It’s email!!! It’s not about community, it’s about utility and communication. Not community. I get spam in my Gmail. I get business conversations in my email. I get a searchable index of messages sent back and forth over the last five years in my Gmail. I don’t get community in my Gmail. The only community feature in Gmail is Google Talk and I don’t use that in Gmail. I use it in an IM client (Adium).

Google is too spread out to worry about community. They have products to meet needs and diversify web experiences, but their forays into community have sucked. Badly. Last time Google’s OpenSocial was a factor in the collaborative, community space was… oh, well, never. That’s dominated by Facebook. Not Google. Last time Picasa was an actual factor in the photography community was… oh that’s right… never. That’s controlled by Flickr.

And the next time Google tries to be a player in the “status update” community will be… oh, that’s right, never. That’s because Twitter dominates. Just ask Identi.ca. Oh, and Facebook.

Friendfeed is still something small and irrelevant

Why do I bring up Friendfeed? Well, my argument against Friendfeed still exists. Even Louis Gray, one of the biggest historical champions of Friendfeed, acknowledges that it remains a small community. It never has and never will go mainstream. So why has Google essentially ripped Friendfeed off and expect different results?

Comment? Like? Sounds familiar…. Oh, Facebook and Friendfeed do that.

Buzz is insecure

It’s well documented at this point that Buzz is actually pretty insecure. Because it operates out of Gmail, it assumes that your most frequently emailed people should automatically be friends. Except that that assumption is inherently insecure because friends are publicly viewable. Take these hypothetical situations for instance:

• Bill has been corresponding with a major possible client under NDA. For any number of reasons, the communication should not be revealed to the public. Yet, due to the volume of email between Bill and his contact, his contact is automatically made a Buzz contact.
• Kelly is negotiating an acquisition of a company. If this information were public, the deal could be off.
• John is trying to take his wife on a big, secret getaway for her 40th birthday. In emailing with a variety of resorts over the period of several weeks, those resort contacts become part of John’s publicly viewable community.

Are we seeing the problem here? This is like Facebook Beacon all over again.

Why add more workflow and more social networks?

The argument has been made in favor of Buzz that Google has a huge Gmail userbase to jump off of. While this is true, this is one more area of workflow for users to utilize. Why do it? We have YouTube and Flickr and Twitter and Facebook? Do we really anticipate Buzz being added to the repertoire? I think not.

Buzz will have the same result as most other social networks: it will die. Very few have legs because very few are innovative and do new things. Twitter was an accidental success because it innovated on the concept of microcontent over SMS… yes, that’s how it started. Buzz is just one more has been and offers nothing new. It will stay in the bowels of early adopter-hood until it is forgotten.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Update: VentureBeat reports that Google has tweaked their privacy settings.

This was front and center over the past few days when one of our members, Hans, offered his opinions on Facebook’s new HipHop for PHP product. We have already expressed our intent to help make WordPress compliant with HipHop, something that will be beneficial to major WordPress sites like TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, WordPress.com, the NFL Blogs, the NY Times blogs, the Cheezeburger network (LOLcats, FAILBlog, etc) that carry large amounts of traffic. I hope to be able to consult with some of these organizations on moving into a HipHop system once my head is wrapped around it and WordPress is compliant.

Photo by Josh Hunter

Hans is an extraordinary developer. I have never met him personally, but his depth of knowledge on issues of security and scalability is downright frightening. He offered his own opinion of HipHop on the mailing list and so I’m going to pick on him a bit:

This HipHop thing is interesting, perhaps in much the same way as HipHop music: it feels like a hack. — And I mean that respectfully in both cases; I like hip-hop music, and appreciate how it pays homage to R&B roots, remixing/reinterpreting them, etc; and I think that the idea of taking one language and building it out to something else is also something I should support. After all, I’ve embroiled myself in code generation tools (e.g. Propel) that are operating on the same philosophical groundwork. But I also believe that there’s a general rule like “if you need code generation, there’s something wrong [in your design or in the tools you've chosen or ...]” … so those tools also feel like hacks.

In all of life, there is an evolution that happens. One iteration of something becomes better with improvements over time. This has happened on a micro level inside PHP. Without PHP 3 there would be no PHP 4. Without PHP 4, there would be no PHP 5. Ben Ramsey talked about this evolution before Christmas.

Why is it a hack to improve upon the tools used with a language? Is it a hack to use Memcached with PHP? Is it a hack to run on nginx instead of Apache or to implement FastCGI? All of these are third party software or extensions outside of PHP. So how is HipHop any different?

That’s all fair, but I feel like the problem here is that somewhere a long, long time ago, Facebook *must* have realized that they were going to have scaling problems. Long before they started having a problem, someone *must* have thought “maybe a compile-at-runtime language isn’t the right solution here”. I guess to me this cross-compiler is just a public way to admit that PHP is not the right tool for the job, but they’re stuck with all these developers that only know PHP so it was somehow cheaper to engineer a way to change PHP to C++ than it was to retrain developers on C++ (or, probably more realistic, Java).

I responded in that conversation with an only slightly edited response. While I appreciate, and always have appreciated, his frank, honest, high level view of PHP, web security, web applications, etc., he strikes me as somewhat naive and puritanical.

What I can say is *I*, along with dozens of other technology people in and out of DC, in and out of PHP, never look at our initial ideas as scaling ideas. We look at them as ideas and experiments to see if they have legs. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is counter-productive to think about scale before thinking of concievability (is that a word?).

There’s a reason why Rails (God help us) is popular. It’s a great prototyping tool. You stand up an app quickly and let it into the wild to see if it has legs. Does it go? What are the market influences? What are the
pros and cons? Do we have to adjust?

After a concept is proven, then a solid dev team with solid tech leadership brings in their expertise to see if the idea can be built into something sustainable. As a sidebar, please take a read of Brad Feld’s very awesome
post from a few years ago “The first 25,000 Users are Irrelevant“.

My point is, it’s silly and a waste of resources for startup people to start thinking about how big they might get maybe 5 years down the road. I think you’d find out that, in most cases, successful technology, web-based companies happened by some dumb luck. Twitter. Facebook. Name-the-popular-app. Dumb luck.

Hey, I’d even argue that when too much comp-sci brain energy goes into an app, you get things like Wolfram Alpha. Cool. But useless. And not nimble enough to actually do the scaling necessary to need all that comp-sci engineering prowess.

Balance, my friend. Balance.

Facebook (and others) start with PHP because PHP is fairly ubiquitous and easy as pie to drop into production. However, there is a point of no return where you are committed to PHP and that’s where HipHop comes in.

Personally, I wish we had HipHop when I was at b5media. We had a ton of scaling problems with PHP and we were running fully clustered Apache servers (25 deep, if I recall), sharded MySQL across 6ish database servers, and we had massive I/O bottlenecks. We ran eAccelerator and Memcached and had squid-based load balancing and damn if Grey’s Anatomy or the Oscar’s didn’t pin our entire network on more than one occasion. What could have happened with an alternate to opcode caching. What could have happened if I had resources to put on developing C++ binaries of our frequently used PHP libraries.

I’ll tell you. It would have rocked. We were already committed to PHP. We were already committed to WordPress. And when the company started, we were all volunteer resources. There was no assumption that our idea had legs or I think everyone on the team would have quit our jobs immediately and put everything into building that company. It took a year to get there.

This is, for better or for worse, the way companies get started in the real world.

By now, the news has hit the street about Facebook’s new PHP pseudo-compiler technology that is looking set to change the PHP world once again. It is called HipHop for PHP.

Here at Emmense, we build on PHP and more specifically, we build on WordPress. The PHP community as a whole continues to innovate the language and Facebook has been a longstanding member of that community. WordPress stands on the shoulders who have gone before, and there are certainly instances of large-scale installs of WordPress that could stand to use some acceration.

It is our intention, here at Emmense, to support the Facebook HipHop methodology where appropriate. We will be exploring the use and implementation of this technology in the days and weeks to come and will be working to build solutions that leverage it in the WordPress world for our clients. Where possible, our work will be conributed back to the WordPress core where appropriate.

While we expect that many more service providers will likely leverage this technology, we want to continue to lead in the WordPress community in an ever-open exchange of ideas between the PHP and WordPress communities.

More surprisingly, the acquisition was something like Sixth Sense where you watched the movie trying to figure out what the ending would be just to be totally blindsided as the credits rolled. Yeah, it was that sort of satisfactory “ah, you got me” moment.

I have had a torrid relationship with FriendFeed culminating with a termination of my account, causing much angst and name-calling from the puppets who have pushed FriendFeed as the only way to have legitimate conversations on the web. From my perspective, and others, it was a noisy, troll-filled social platform that, though having good technical features like real time feeds, also provided an almost cliché approach to communication.

Where the web has become increasingly fragmented and dispersed, fans of FriendFeed often touted it’s aggregation platform as the end of disbursement, a concept that I disagree with. Such end of disbursement also marks an end to competition, if allowed, and a navel-gazing mentality that assumes nothing can be better. Competition in the market place is good, and I chose Twitter.

What this means to consumers is unknown yet. Facebook has a historic closed stance and, though opening up certain APIs such as Facebook Connect, and allowing developers to develop applications for Facebook, it still stands as a relatively closed system. In order to really engage with Facebook, you really have to be using Facebook itself or the mobile apps built for Facebook.

FriendFeed has a robust API that developers can access to distribute or repurpose the content within. It has failed in many ways by not providing a really great application ecosystem, but on paper, it is much more robust of an open system than Facebook.

Facebook has certainly taken pages from the FriendFeed book, however, making their newsfeeds real time, and integrating their “Like” feature. However, it still is not as quick or reliable, much less intuitive for the user.

In an ideal world, Facebook takes almost all of the real time, and “Group” functionality of FriendFeed and integrates it into Facebook. Lose the walled garden, and keep the API open for developers. Time will tell, however, as these two companies figure out how to be “In a Relationship” with each other.

More on this acquisition from other sources:

• TechCrunch: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
• ReadWriteWeb: Facebook Just Bought FriendFeed
• Boomtown/Wall Street Journal: Facebook Acquires Non-Twitter, Oops, Friendfeed (Plus the Full Press Release)

This is fundamentally not all that out of sorts from what most services do when licensing user content, but their lawyers are clearly a a few cards short of a full deck of 52. Consumerist says it best:

Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

I’ve begun advising people, clients and otherwise, not to upload any content to Facebook except links. Links merely point to the actual content. Most blogs and content site these days provide a “Share with Facebook” tool that will allow readers (or yourself) submit content to Facebook. The sticky point is that you are not actually uploading the photo, or the video to Facebook itself. Merely an excerpt and thumbnail.

If you run a blog and you use Facebook, drop everything you’re doing and go over to AddThis, sign up to use their free widget and install it. We have it here and it’s a great enabler for readers that allows readers to share with more than just Facebook. Try it on this post.

Unfortunately, there’s no retroactive immunity. Like Congress with the Patriot Act and Stimulus Bill, this thing slid through in the dead of night without so much as a peep and you’re expected to swallow the pill and be happy with it. Facebook never offered you a chance to decline the new TOS, nor did they offer to grandfather content previously uploaded. So feel free to delete stuff you never meant to give away for any constructive or nefarious purpose out there – it’s gone.

I would caution against simply abstaining from Facebook, however. It is the worlds largest social network for a reason and avoiding it will mean a significant cost to your company, brand, etc. However, be wise in how you actually share that content.
— Photo by Pshab

Update: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg clarifies.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created””one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear

-snip-

We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.

Whoops. Facebook fumbles again.

As always, these are predictions. Last year, we were dangerously accurate with our predictions and would like to think that we have a good understanding of the business and technology marketplace in 2009.

Ray’s Predictions

1. By now, all VC firms have had the ‘triage’partners meeting — where they decide, whether existing portfolio companies will 1) receive additional funding, because they’re generating revenue and have the prospect of getting cash-flow positive; 2) be shut down (and recapture any remaining cash); and 3) receive no additional funding, but be left to their own devices (to get funding however they might on their own). In 2000, there were a good many in category #2, since dot.com rounds were in the $10s of millions; now, with social-networking investments averaging around $1M, there will be little cash if any to recover. But I predict there will be many in category #3 (also known as ‘the walking dead,’since they’re burning their cash, no matter how slowly, till it’s gone.)
2. Online advertising revenues in 2009 will continue to fall, as inventory outpaces demand. I *don’t* see the $$ flowing from other media to online offsetting this downward trend.
3. Consumers have discretionary (albeit small) $$$ to spend. In times of bleak economy, they seek distractions (gaming and feel-good entertainment), and will happily pay $0.99 for iFart. The hope for developers in the social networking space will potentially lie with commerce in real and virtual goods. Facebook and the others need to make this extremely easy for third parties, and it will most certainly happen in 2009. (Yes, despite what others are saying about FB’s party line.)
4. Consolidation always picks up in down times . . . good, small apps facing a difficult fund-raising environment reset their valuations lower, and robust companies with solid funding swoop in to pick up the team and technology on the cheap. It began in the fourth quarter with Pownce and others, will continue throughout 2009.
5. As an extension to this prediction — we’ll see more Intellectual Property for sale on eBay.
6. Apple will continue to grow its mobile share as others fumble about. Watch for new BlackBerry Curve to become the defacto standard for ‘button lovers.’

Aaron’s Take: While I agree with most of Ray’s predictions, I’m more bullish on early round VC. Even though we won’t see as much investment as we have, I believe it will still happen and companies that have already been funded will probably continue to receive investment funds, even if on down valuations, as long as they are somewhat viable. The reason is that most funds are long-haul investments of about 10 years.

Aaron’s Predictions

1. Consolidations will occur en masse this year. Small companies with angel funding or Series A funding will be lumped into bigger conglomerates as the acquisition threshold is low.
2. Brightkite will be acquired by Facebook, as poignantly pointed out by a commenter over at Read Write Web.
3. The second Google Android-powered G2 phone will be released to T-Mobile in Q1. As the first one was a proof of concept that had little impact, the second iteration will be an essential release to prove the Android platform. No other carriers will take the platform until the concept is proven, but T-Mobile is already there and will be the victim for the second release.
4. Twitter will *not* be acquired, but an advertising/partnership business model will emerge in Q2.
5. Apple will release 3 new products this year. That is it. Their growth will continue upward but will see a decline over growth patterns of previous years.
6. Net Neutrality will take a massive hit in 2009 with governments and companies looking to defend themselves in a down economy. The result will be regulations that will allow the big telecoms survive. Too big to Fail. Unless it’s the general public.
7. No clear winner in the “single identity” space. OpenID fades, fbConnect gets fleshed out and adopted by many while Google Friend Connect makes significant inroads with others. An emerging war akin to Bluray vs. HD-DVD emerges between Facebook and Google with the internet world divided evenly among the two. Blogs and social networks will tend toward Facebook while bigger sites and services, possibly including newspaper walled gardens, trending toward Google.

Ray’s Take: Aaron’s crystal ball looks pretty good to me . . . except that, like Jonah in the whale’s belly, Twitter will be devoured.

We started 2008 with CNETs Caroline McCarthy reporting that MySpace voters preferred Barack Obama on the left and Ron Paul on the right. As we know now at the end of 2008, there was one group of netroots voters that managed to be successfully heard and we now have a new President-elect. On the other side, the GOP demonstrated their complete ineptitude tapping into the grassroots by marginalizing the candidate that would have fired up their internet base. At least at the end of 2008, there are some pockets of common sense on the right, but those pockets will likely not be heard or heeded.

In the first half of 2008, ridiculous acquisitions, funding rounds and business plays flourished. An example was when job search site, Monster.com acquired San Francisco-based Affinity Labs for $61M. On contrast, companies receiving funding or valuations at the end of 2008, are doing so on devalued terms while other companies are laying off workers and cutting back contract costs in an effort to extend their runways as far as they can into the second half of 2009 or beyond.

In every way, 2008 ends in a Dickensian way, highlighting two sides of a very different coin and leaving investors and entrepreneurs with a scared and tentative look in their eyes.

We made our annual predictions early in the year, and wanted to review those predictions for those keeping track at home.

Macworld/Apple

We said: Since Macworld is right around the corner I don’t think we will see any real new products but rather a grow what they have to meet their projections. This means upgraded iPod Touches, iPhone 2.0, iPhone SDK, upgraded Apple TV, patches to Leopard, improved Cinema Displays and upgraded Macs/Macbooks. The only thing I could see would be integration of their multi-touch technology on laptops (like the rumored sub-notebook).

What actually happened: Apple announced Time Capsule, an iPhone SDK for developing Apps for the iPhone (now available through the iTunes App Store for the iPod Touch and the iPhone 3G), iTunes movie rentals, Apple TV 2, and the now famous Macbook Air.

Accuracy: We accurately projected the iPhone SDK, Upgraded Apple TV, and the Macbook Air with multi-touch. Later in the year, we would see the iPhone 3G, improved cinema displays and the release of the new Macbook/Macbook Pro lines. We consider 100% accuracy here in 2008 with a 50% accuracy for Macworld 2008.

Microsoft

We Said: Let’s face it, Vista blows. It’s slow, doesn’t have any real innovation under the hood and takes more horsepower to run. I predict they will continue forcing it down people’s throats and in revolt people will continue to order machines with XP. On the other side of the coin, the Xbox is rocking and I predict they will announce an integrated Windows Media Center/IPTV version with HD-DVD to compete with the Playstation 3. They have a real opportunity to own the living room since Apple TV has flopped.

What actually happened: Some manufacturers, including Dell, decided that based on actual customer demand and trends (wiping pre-loaded Vista systems and installing Windows XP), computers could be shipped with XP instead. In addition, the Xbox did receive a much-needed face lift (called Xbox Experience) that we talked about here, though it did not go as far as we expected. We did not predict the emergence of Apple TV/Xbox Experience/TiVo challenger Vudu at the beginning of the year.

Accuracy: We consider our predictions to be mostly inline with actual results, but we missed or misjudged several things along the way. We claim a 60% accuracy rating here.

Web 2.0

We Said: Ok, hype over. Game over. Most “Web 2.0″ companies will go into the dust bin of history because their marketing strategy or ideas just didn’t pan out. Also, as more companies adopt these technologies into their “œEnterprise 2.0″³ strategy there will be less of a rush to create another social network or AJAX-ified web site unless it has real value. Side note – kill the term Enterprise 2.0. The enterprise hasn’t changed, the apps have just gotten easier to develop.

What actually happened: We feel that this was an overly-generalized prediction. It could have been more specifically Enterprise 2.0, as opposed to Web 2.0. That said, there was an actual push and adoption into the Enterprise space. Most notable of all Enterprise 2.0 companies was Yammer which is build as a standalone Twitter for Enterprise. Yammer won the top award at Techcrunch50.

Accuracy: Though there certainly has been more focus in recent months on utility over “bling” (Ajaxified sites, as we put it), we don’t necessarily believe that corporate Web 2.0 has advanced far beyond “Corporate blogging”, but with Yammer like companies popping up, we’ll claim a 40% accuracy rating.

Twitter

We Said: Twitter will get bought – it is a cool tool but not a lot money to made behind it. It needs to be part of a bigger whole. They also need better infrastructure because they crash whenever there is a big tech conference. CES will be a big test for them.

What actually happened: Twitter did not get bought, and in fact, took a third round of funding. It may have been their failures of June/July that prevented an acquisition, and there certainly were rumors of a Facebook acquisition of Twitter recently. The company seems to have turned a corner on reliability, and have a business model in mind, even if it hasn’t been outlined. In addition, Twitter development continues to proceed with a release of an all new Twitter API in 2009.

Accuracy: 0% – hands down, we were wrong. The company continues to confound even the experts.

Pownce

We said: Pownce will die – Twitter won this battle. Game over.

What actually happened: Pownce died.

Accuracy: 100%. ‘Nuff said.

Digg

We said: Digg will get bought – After rumors of a sale for the last 18 months, they finally get bought by a media behemoth. Sale price? $300 million.

What actually happened: While Digg did not actually get bought, they are bleeding money as reported by TechCrunch this weekend. According to the TechCrunch, the Microsoft search deal which was supposed to bring in over $100M over three years is clearly not doing that at all.

Accuracy: We want to take some credit for seeing the dark side of Digg, but clearly cannot based on our actual predictions. 0%.

Yahoo

We Said: Yahoo will continue to struggle and have massive layoffs – Yahoo didn’t change much with their executive restructuring and they have really sucked at integrating their products. They are going to get hit with lower stock prices and will have to cut the fat out.

What actually happened: What didn’t happen, might be the more accurate question. We had the Microsoft-Yahoo deal that was on, then off, then on, then off. The forced resignation, by all accounts, of CEO Jerry Yang, the hostile board takeover (“hostile” in the loose sense, not the SEC sense) by Carl Icahn, and the devaluation of Yahoo stock to approximately half of what it opened the year.

As for the predicted Yahoo layoffs… Well, it’s such a bloodbath that sites like this exist to track the chaos.

Accuracy: Can we score a 110%?

HD-DVD vs Bluray

We said: HD-DVD and BluRay will not have a winner, still – This year is just going to continue the fight with hybrid drives getting cheaper so by 2009 the choice will be irrelevant.

What actually happened: Bluray won.

Accuracy: 0%

Google and Wall Street

We Said: Google’s honeymoon with Wall Street will end – With the acquisition of DoubleClick there is more of a chance for Google to fail. Along with it trying to change to many sectors, Healthcare and Energy to name a few, it will need to shore up its core competencies before people start to trash it and the stock will be worth half what it is today.

What actually happened: Everyones honeymoon with Wall Street ended with the collapse of the economy. Google has lost over 60% of it’s value, falling from a Jan 2 open of $685/share to the current trading number of $298/share.

Accuracy: We will claim 75% accuracy on this. We can’t claim 100% because the reason for the value loss is not similar. It’s just the nature of the market at this time.

Facebook

We Said: They are a necessary evil right now and their beacon debacle will need to be fixed in order for them to go IPO. They will be the new IPO darling as analysts are ready to trash Google.

What actually happened: Facebook did not IPO in 2008, though they had a significant investment from Microsoft at a highly questionable valuation of $15B. Experts like Kara Swisher don’t expect an IPO until 2010. I might add that with the economy the way it is, pre-collapse predictions of 2010 might still be ambitious. I personally doubt Facebook will ever IPO.

Accuracy: 0%

Bringing 2008 In for a Landing

It’s always tricky to really predict a year in advance. With the economy and turbulence in the various sectors and markets, 2009 will be highly tricky to predict. Predict we will do, early in the new year, though so stick around.

Have you gone through the check list of capital sources? Here are several (offroad from the traditional angel and VC route) that popped up in our discussions, plus a few others.

1. Sales! Duh. Number one will always be revenue. It was just February when Wired magazine chief editor Chris Anderson dubbed this the era of ‘Free.’(Yeah. A lot of good that’s doing us now.) But don’t blame him — he’s just the messenger. Consumer expectations have been set at $0.00 by big dogs like Google, Craigslist, and Yahoo, leaving everyone to figure out creative ways of making money in the new ecosystem. Wired elaborated with a wiki for Making Money Around Free Content that provides some novel notions for doing so. It’s even been suggested (heaven forfend!) that Facebook start charging — something, anyway, for a premium services (the freemium model) of some sort. Careful thought needs to be given to just what it is that paying customers get, above the non-paying. Look into currently working models (Flickr vs. FlickrPro, Mozy free online backups vs. MozyUnlimited and MozyPro, etc.)

2. Corporate Investment Corporate customers and prospective partners can be turned into investors. In pre-Web 2.0 era, it happened all the time — usually to ensure that the product or service would prevail, the corporation made an investment. The terms were often good, with one twist: if the startup were to fail, the corporate investor got rights to IP. So it was interesting to see Martha Stewart Omnimedia lead a $2.85M investment in Evite-clone Pingg. We’ll probably see many more of these in the coming months.

3. Consulting/Contracting Doing work for hire can be extremely morale-robbing for a startup that had its heart set on making a living with a new web application — but many startups have turned pragmatic. The duality approach is simply more conservative . . . but when external funding is in a state of flux (like now), it may be key to survival. What makes it hard is the emotional and cultural schizophrenia (maintaining a solid reputation in contracting, vs. the live-or-die passion for a product and the customers who count on it are two different head sets), but some organizations appear to be making it work (Intridea, SetConsulting), while other have made the full-scale transition from services to products (37 Signals).

4. CIT GAP Fund Not to be overlooked, Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) provides (through its GAP program) loans of up to $100k in the form of an interest-bearing promissory note that converts to preferred stock in a forthcoming round of fundraising. It’s a great, low-pain process that helped mobile-gaming platform Mpowerplayer and a dozen other Virginia-based startups. (Disclosure: I’m a shareholder in Mpowerplayer.)

5. Venture Loans Used to be, firms abounded that provided venture lending — growth capital and equipment financing to startups that had already secured equity investment from top-tier VCs. It was still a But these firms — which were a notch less risk-averse than banks, and usually in solid association with VCs (they only made loans to startups that already boasted top-tier VC investors). But a few entrepreneurs have recently mentioned offers of ‘loans from VCs’as a recent funding alternative. The exact nature of these isn’t clear — did they mean convertibles, which pop up whenever valuations get shaken up (like now)? But one thing to keep in mind: promissory notes and loans of any kind need to be repaid, even if the business fails. Moreover, they often have covenants that allow them to be called ahead of schedule. And finally, you may be asked to personally guarantee them. (Did you really want to lose your house?). I say, steer clear of them.

6. Bank Financing Banks, wha? Not often on entrepreneurs’radar, but if you’ve got any stream of revenue underway, financing receivables can be a relatively straightforward process for smoothing cash flow. In fact, whether you have receivables or not, or venture-capital funding or not, banking relationships should be struck up sooner rather than later. Credit lines can buffer slow-paying customers — this economy is certain to increase receivables aging — but everything you’ve heard about credit lines tightening is true. Even established businesses are seeing them dry up.

7. Factoring At one of my service companies, we relied on factoring to keep cash flowing. (Truth be told, we would have missed several payrolls without it.) Factoring firms — which purchase your invoices and collect on them, advance you some portion (up to 90%) of the invoice, depending on the caliber of the customer, and charge a fee (usually 1% – 3%) — can pull revenue that might normally arrive in 30 to 60 days ARO into a week or less. And, unlike banks, the only due diligence is verification of product acceptance; I bet they’re seeing a pick up in activity lately. Of course, you have to be comfortable with you customers knowing that you’re resorting to factoring (not exactly a sign of stability) . . . so better pick only those you have a close relationship with.

8. SBIRs Not too likely a candidate for social-networking startups, but a wide range of technology companies have taken advantage of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)and other grants. The Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Technology administers the SBIR program, as well as the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program. All told, 11 federal departments participate in the SBIR program and five departments participate in the STTR program, together awarding more than $2B annually to small high-tech businesses. Unfortunately, these things take time . . . sometimes more than a year.

Last bits of advice:

- Hoard cash — but don’t tie it up; in other words, even if you’ve raised capital, acquire PCs on credit (don’t lease them, if the lease lines need to be secured). And never secure borrowings with cash.

- Barter when you can — services of any sort.

- Co-habitate — during the last downturn, we opened up our oversized space to another company. If you’re looking for space, post on Craigslist and message boards to co-habitate — you may be surprised at the response.

- Crowdsource design work (logos, literature) you may need. Consider GeniusRocket, or Crowdspring, which Frank Gruber recently used to update his logo. Or do the logo your own damn self, until you can afford a professional.

- Pay with stock/stock options, rather than cash. Or a mix of the two. Worth a shot.

- Negotiate everything.

If you’re fortunate enough, you’ve been hit with this spam a dozen times in the last week. It is shadiness at it’s best and I will not hesitate to out PR individuals or firms, regardless of how much “clout” they have in the social space, if they do this to me again. It will not be automatic, although it might be. You’ve been warned.

The spam is a nifty little trick where you publish an event, group or picture of a product, service or event. Pretty typical Facebook activity, really.

Spamming PR people then use Facebook’s “tag” feature, something that is more in context for photos where you can tag someone that is in the photo and they receive a notification that they’ve been tagged. People like me are tagged in Facebook content where we have no context with the expectation that we will be notified of the content (event, whatever) and will click through and maybe cover their product.

So. Not. Cool.

Facebook, can you please put some granular privacy controls including “Friend groups” and “Group privacy” to allow us to control who can tag us, or rather who can NOT tag us?

Also, it would be fantastic if we could flag inappropriate conten t with cause. I would flag such spam content (which isn’t necessarily spammy, to be clear, just how it is delivered to us is) with the explanation that the content was delivered as a spam PR pitch.

PR firms, shape up. You are not relevant just because you connect with us on Facebook. Give us some credit.

Boy was I wrong.

In fact, accidentally Facebook became valuable to me again by keeping me engaged and connected to the hundreds of friends I have there.

Facebook used to be a fairly passive social community. By passive I mean, I found value in event RSVPs and occasional messaging. Certainly by all accounts, I was the exception as it seemed to be pretty active for other users as a wall post messaging system and an app platform. I block almost all apps universally as they annoy me, so I didn’t find the value. It was for these reasons that I had temporarily suspended my own account.

However, the other day I made a fairly innocuous status update, something I don’t do all that often and was surprised by the comments that that status update got. It was the first time for that for me. I was a Facebook Status Update Comment Virgin! And it was exciting! In fact, it made me want to do it again!

End of the day, Facebook was getting boring for many users including myself. It was passive. It was blah. It certainly was a way to keep in contact with people, but showed little real value beyond that.

The new design has given some people heartburn, but even that heartburn seems to be dissipating into quiet reluctance at worst and enjoyment by others as people realize that little stuff like feed commenting is now more exposed than ever. Facebook, for me, has once again become useful.

What are your thoughts?

For most, not good. First of all, BuddyMedia, Context Optional, and a few others are blazing this trail because traditional ads — display and links — don’t work, which is why (as we all know) there’s beaucoup excess inventory and CPMs are in the crapper. Second, consider this: branded apps are all about engaging users, and those 250,000 active users playing Rundezvous (the game BuddyMedia built on behalf of New Balance) are, uh, not on your app.

Third, what they’re doing contributes more to the overall signal-to-noise problem than you might expect. Not so much that they’re adding to the 32,000+ Facebook apps anywhere near what 400,000+ registered developers are piling on each day, but because each branded app media program includes buying engagement — Lazerow averages $1/user to get them to show up. (Oh, you hadn’t planned on spending $100k to seed your app?)

Finally, it stands to reason that these guys will get better at what they do. Since Rundezvous players earn ‘AceBucks’redeemable for actual (not virtual) running shoes, a whopping 57% of users came back at least nine times. BuddyMedia developed a Facebook version of InStyle magazine’s Hollywood Hair Makeover — an app that lets you swap your face with a celebrity’s, so you can see how you’d look in their hairstyle — which had negligible traffic on InStyle’s website.

At O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo in New York this week, Lazerow provided Makeover’s latest Facebook stats:

➢ 185,000 installs in 6 weeks

➢ average time on app: almost 7 minutes

➢ 47% of total user base has returned to the app more than 25 times

➢ the average user tried 3 hairstyles

Some pretty decent numbers. And, unlike traditional ad campaigns, this one hints at something that just could be perennial. (Women were even printing out the results and taking them to their hairdressers.) Dang, if there were a second-order viral component to it (more than than just telling your friends), it could kill.

So what’s a social app developer to do?

Well, it still starts with building a great app with true viral attributes, getting it up, testing, tweaking — nothing’s changed there. But if it’s revenue you’re after (duh), time for some new creative thinking. We’re working several angles for our startup, CHALLENJ, a social gaming utility (under construction). Here are two — maybe one fits what you’ve got.

1. Can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. If you’ve got a themed game, why not pull a BuddyMedia? Get your own advertiser, and turn it into a branded app. (Try to think of it as a sponsorship . . . rather than selling out.) This, of course, would be easier if you’ve already launched and are putting up some respectable numbers.

2. Market your engine. Less applicable to most maybe, but what we’re working on is something has some underlying functionality that’s not only useful for us, but would be useful to BuddyMedia and their ilk. Without going into detail, it’s analogous to, say, a polling app, or better yet, the functionality of social-debate platform CreateDebate.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. At the Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco this past June, Acclaim Games‘ Chief Creative Officer Dave Perry cited 29 business models for games.

There is still success to be had — and money to be made — if you’re creative. Time is not on our side, however. With apps that enable non-programmers to build apps now emerging — lolapps recently raised $4.5M to do just that — it’s only going to get noisier out there.

Then there was Facebook, the walled garden social network that restricted access to college and high school students, and businesses who had a Facebook presence. In all these cases, the confirming matter was a legitimate email address issued by the legitimate university, high school or business.

Web 2.0 drastically changed the way we do “internet”. No longer do people expect to pay for these services, they simply don’t. AOL recognized this fact a few years ago when then CEO Jonathan Miller suggested to the board that AOL should drop its subscription model and open up. AOL decentralized and became an open platform, including their very popular AIM service. AIM, a formerly closed protocol, now is run via Open AIM, a service which has allowed the interoperability between Google Talk, Jabber, and .Me, to name a few.

Facebook opened up big time. They decided to let the world see what was behind the curtain and were wildly successful. Though Facebook is still a walled garden in some respect to data, the walls keep falling with Facebook apps and Facebook Connect, announced last week.

As a final example of a traditionally closed walled garden throwing all caution to the wind and embracing the open internet environment, I give you the New York Times. NYT excessively applies metadata to all of its content, opening up the door for others such as Blogrunner, a Techmeme competitor which is actually owned by NYT. More notably to the traditional media norm, the registration requirement (which is almost always free at online newspapers) to view articles was removed giving full access to NYT content.

No registration. No hoops. Profit.

The challenge, as Seth Godin is probably about to find out, is when a business model is built around paid access (or even free but registration required). I’ve toyed with the idea of premium content for RSS subscribers only here. Though I won’t promise not to try it again, I can say it did not work. There was no increase in subscribers. There was even better content and resources, yes. But it does not work.

That said… one of the things that the open content movement seems to be bringing to light is single sign in. Facebook Connect, for instance, allows users to gain access to dedicated non-Facebook resources, free of charge and without forcing yet another account.

This doesn’t solve business model. I think the Pay per Play model is flawed inherently and though some people are successfully making money on older models, I don’t think the honeymoon can last.

That’s just me, though. Curious to hear what you think the best method of monetizing premium content is.

I personally think it’s all a bit much and want to explain what happened last night with a brief history on what happened involving Sarah and I at SXSW.

Sarah had the opportunity to interview Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder at SXSW. This came within a few months of the Facebook Beacon advertising and privacy fiasco which we covered here. Zuck is not known for public access and this was one of those few times where many in the room had an opportunity to talk to him. It wasn’t really planned that the audience would talk all that much. Handlers ensured that, if rumors are to be believed.

In the heat of the moment, and admittedly some egging on by folks on Twitter who know that I’ll say anything, anywhere (sometimes without thinking through ramifications), I heckled Zuckerberg with “Beacon Sucks“, the first of what would be many heckles from the crowd in that keynote. Get that, though? I heckled Zuckerberg.

This heckle lives on in infamy and everywhere I go, people laugh about it. “Oh, you’re that guy?”

I admit, it was pretty funny and I benefitted from the wave of infamy that went with it. But I want to be clear, I heckled Zuckerberg, not Sarah Lacy. Later in the Keynote, the audience turned on Sarah, but that was not me.

Last night, I spoke with Sarah one on one about the incident. A Flickr photoset was dedicated to the encounter, which I find slightly amusing.

Sarah was genuinely interesting, but she was naturally a little defensive when we first began chatting about the incident. I hope that the message I was trying to convey made it through: I was heckling Mark, not Sarah, and though I don’t apologize for the content of the heckle (Beacon does suck and still does), I do apologize for the unprofessional conveying of that message.

Personally, I hope that the entire incident can be put behind us. I don’t mind if the Beacon Sucks heckling incident never gets brought up again, but I may be wishing too much. In case the message didn’t translate, ” I’m sorry, for my part, in making you uncomfortable on stage, Sarah. While it was not the best interview, my message was for Mark, and not you. Hopefully you can forgive me and next time we see each other, it will be easier to laugh about the whole thing.”

And by the way, the Twin Tech Party rocked.

Update: Though it’s difficult to hear, here is a video taken at the event of this alleged “apology of the century”.

Update 2: Sarah says, “I do” – Umm, as in, she forgives me. :)

The thing about my “beat”, as they’d call it in the newspaper business, is that I’m not really all that interested in “the news”. I’m not trying to cover all the stories, nor am I trying to cover most of them. I’m not trying to “break” anything or peddle products. I want to understand how social software affects my life. And yours.

Text comments will be deleted in this thread as I want video comments. ;) Click on the Sessmic Video comments link below. If you don’t already have one, grab a free account over at Seesmic.com.

This is what I want to know. How has social software benefited you? This is open ended and I want you to define what I mean by this. Some example questions might be:

1. How you got a job using LinkedIn
2. How you found an old crush on Facebook
3. How blogging helped you gain support for a good cause
4. How you used Flickr to communicate to your family on the other side of the world
5. How you used Brightkite to track your migration habits
6. How Twitter made the World Series special for you
7. How you had a brilliant entrepreneurial idea from a discussion on FriendFeed
8. How you used VC portfolio companies to attract the attention of a VC and get funded
9. How you made a career by offering advice on a blog

These are easy examples. I want you to offer your own insight on how, sometime, somewhere, social tools have enhanced your life. Tell us your story on video. If you don’t, I’ll look like a complete idiot for this format – but I’m okay with that. :)

The description of the session is as follows:

This session will present an overview of Facebook advertising and marketing solutions, including the Facebook Social Ads system and the Facebook application platform.

Uh huh. Watch it live as I live blog this session beginning around 10:30 AM Eastern time using CoveritLive.

A month or so ago, I unceremoniously ditched Facebook. Kicked it to the curb.

See, the relationship was already on the rocks. She was apparently running around my back telling other people about my habits and sending me crappy anniversary gifts like Zombie requests.

I admit not being very loyal myself. I was having an affair with Twitter and a few other lovely socialites. They made my day, my week, my life. Reinvigorated my drained human experience.

And I know you now have chat which makes it easy for you to meet new people. I could use you to meet new people to but I’m more comfortable with my oldie but goodie Skype. Heck I can even talk to MySpace with Skype – hope you’re not having withdrawals or anything.

Look, I have a lot of exes. Firefox is my ex and I was married to her for 5 years. Since the 0.7 days, really. I had to let her go because she was messing up my lifestyle, and my lifestyle is the most important thing to me. Sure, I visit her now and then because there’s things that only Firefox can give me.

So Facebook, you’re going to have to do more than remind me of where I should be. That’s just a nag mentality. If you were useful to me, we might’ve worked things out. A month on, though, I’m not missing you.

Hope you don’t mind. You have plenty of other guys to play with.

Techcrunch is now reporting that Blockbuster is in fact being sued by a Texas woman who under the premise of a 1988 federal law called the Video Privacy Protection Act (18 USC § 2710) which was enacted after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork was b0rked when video rental history was released during his confirmation hearing. The law prevents video rental companies from disclosing personally identifiable data regarding a member and his/her rental history.

Sidenote: Can someone do a LEXIS/NEXIS search for me and find out if this law has ever been upheld by the SCOTUS?

This is pretty important. Admittedly, I have not done any significant research into how Beacon works with partners since late last year, but at the time, the data was shared by identifiable email addresses. How else do you associate a users partner activity with a Facebook account?

This flew in the face of their privacy policy which stated:

Blockbuster will not provide User or Member e-mail addresses to business partners, unless the User or Member has provided express permission to Blockbuster.

Regardless of whether a Facebook user has opted in or out of Beacon advertising within Facebook, express opt-in is required on the Blockbuster side. And at the time, and pertinent to this lawsuit, even with consent it is criminal for video rental companies to share this kind of data, per 18 USC § 2710.

Stick around Technosailor for more of what you need to know. ;-)

Update: Online Media Daily writes, “But the Beacon platform still allegedly transmits information about people’s activity from Blockbuster to Facebook, unless they have checked a box telling Blockbuster to never send such information.” Enough said.

For instance, earlier today I went in and declined 17 application requests and ignored 32 “Which Bible Character are you?” kinds of questions. It’s pointless noise that is distracting.

Here’s my goodbye video.

So this is my message. People, get real with this social media stuff. Social media is a tool. It is a means to an end. The end is creating a better life for yourself, increasing your productivity or increasing your business profit potential. I find it highly unbelievable that the ultimate value in life is wasting time on insignificant social interaction.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that social interaction is not valuable. Social interaction is highly valuable – when it helps you meet your end result. I use Twitter because it increases my “presence” marketing. I use Flickr because photos speak a thousand words. I use Tripit because it helps me organize my travel. I use my blog because it increases my chances of marketing myself, my brand and producing tangible business and personal opportunity.

In other words, social media in my life is a tool. There comes a time in everyone’s life where information overload becomes too much. Where the signal to noise ratio makes it impossible to be productive. Where the chaos makes it difficult to stay on target.

Today is that day in my life and the biggest culprit is Facebook. Goodbye Facebook.

For the things that I have benefitted from Facebook in, I encourage you to connect with me other places:

• Photo Sharing: Flickr
• Events: Send me a meeting request, dammit. Or use Upcoming.org
• Zombies: Go away!
• What am I doing? Twitter
• Notes: Subscribe!

Good night and good luck.

El problema está en que Scrabulous, la aplicación de Facebook, es una versión no licenciada del tradicional juego de Scrabble y Hasbro y Mattel, los dueños de Scrabble, le solicitaron a Facebook que no siguiera permitiendo el uso de su propiedad intelectual.

De inmediato han llovido innumerable acusaciones en contra de Mattel y Hasbro, que van desde que están abusando su posición de empresas fuertes y establecidas hasta que no tienen idea de como manejarse en el Siglo XXI. También hay algunos artículos y comentarios interesantes (en inglés).

Pero el caso no es tan blanco y negro como algunos quisieran. Para empezar, Mattel y Hasbro tienen no sólo el derecho sino el deber de defender sus propiedades y actuar responsablemente ante sus empleados y accionistas. Muchas personas han invertido esfuerzo, dinero e ideas en inventar juegos como Scrabble y por lo tanto no sería justo que quienes se beneficien sean Facebook y los desarrolladores de Scrabulous. Si Hasbro y Mattel no hacen algo hoy, mañana miles de copias de sus productos inundarán el mercado.

Por otro lado tenemos a los 600.000 usuarios de Scrabulous en Facebook. Ciertamente no sería beneficioso para Mattel y Hasbro pelearse con más de medio millón de fanáticos de uno de sus juegos; en el fondo, ninguno de ellos tiene la culpa de lo que está pasando.

Hasbro y Mattel han dicho que están buscando una solución amigable y hasta el día de hoy, el juego sigue activo en Facebook. Quizás Hasbro y Mattel han podido pensar mejor su estrategia inicial, desde el punto de vista de Relaciones Públicas, y comenzar con un acercamiento en términos más amigables… es precisamente en esta área que las compañías tradicionales tienen más que aprender; pero también debemos entender que están en todo su derecho de defender su propiedad intelectual.

Mattel y Hasbro han debido participar activamente en Facebook (y otras redes sociales), conocer mejor a sus clientes, hacer un estudio entre ellos a ver que les gustaba de Scrabulous y que otras opciones quisieran ver, y de este modo desarrollar ellos una versión legal y mejor de Scrabble. Siempre es preferible ganar una batalla con un producto mejor que con un abogado…

Technorati Tags:
scrabulous, facebook, social-networks, socnets, PR, relaciones-publicas, networks-sociales, intellectual-property, propiedad-intelectual

Tenemos también el caso de nuestros amigos de la vida real y aquellos de nuestra vida online. ¿Como incluimos a un grupo dentro del otro? Si un amigo de la infancia quiere conectarse por Twitter, ¿como afecta nuestra relación si lo rechazamos? Es posible que no queramos mezclar un grupo con el otro, sin que esto signifique que nuestro nivel de amistad haya cambiado. Si eliminamos a un amigo de nuestra lista de Facebook (quizás porque nos manda muchas invitaciones del juego de los Zombies), esto no significa que seamos más o menos amigos… aunque mucha gente pueda tomárselo así.

Podemos dividir nuestras relaciones en varios círculos concéntricos: la familia, los amigos, los conocidos, los agentes (vendedores, repartidores, proveedores, etc). Pero también podemos tener círculos paralelos en la vida offline, en la vida online, en la oficina, etc. A veces estos círculos se conectan entre sí, a veces no. A medida que un mayor número de nuestros amigos comienza a utilizar herramientas sociales online, esta intersección se hace más evidente y más dificil de separar.

Tecnologías como OpenSocial, Plaxo Pulse, Facebook PlatformArchitecture, OpenID, etc. que prometen permitirnos interconectar nuestros networks sociales, ofrecen esperanzas de que algún día podremos mantener todas nuestras conexiones ordenadas, separadas e interconectadas a la vez. ¿Será 2008 el año?

Google OpenSocial surgió como una respuesta a la Plataforma Facebook, ofreciéndole al resto de los networks sociales la oportunidad de crear aplicaciones que pudieran inter-operar entre los distintos sitios. Pero OpenSocial todavía no está listo y aún falta mucho por definir sobre su funcionamiento.

Facebook responde ahora con PlatformArchitecture, permitiéndole a cualquier website aprovechar el lenguaje de programación de Facebook. De este modo, cualquier website podrá ofrecer a sus usuarios gran cantidad de aplicaciones que ya existen para Facebook.

Estas iniciativas permiten que usuarios de networks sociales utilicen servicios ofrecidos por otros websites (iLike, por ejemplo) y que compartan experiencias con miembros de su mismo network social (Zombie, Acuario, etc).

Lo que falta es una herramienta que permita a los usuarios de un network social interactuar con los usuarios de otro network social. OpenID, OAuth y XFN son tres iniciativas encaminadas a lograr esto, pero que necesitan ser simplificadas (¿con deNerd-a-tex?) para poder ser entendidas y utilizadas por el grueso de la población.

Si te interesa saber más sobre estas tres iniciativas, déjanos un comentario aquí en la página y desarrollaremos el tema en una columna futura.

De esta forma podemos indicarle a Facebook nuestra fecha de cumpleaños a cambio de que nuestros amigos estén al tanto y puedan felicitarnos. A mint podemos contarle nuestros hábitos de consumo personales a cambio de información y recomendaciones para ahorrar. A LinkedIn le informamos en dónde trabajamos y así podemos conectarnos con nuestros colegas. A Google le permitimos almacenar nuestros correos, a cambio de la comodidad de tener acceso a ellos desde cualquier conexión. A Amazon le dejamos estudiar nuestros gustos a cambio de mejores recomendaciones. Y así sucesivamente.

Lo interesante de este modelo, es que es dinero renovable. A cambio de la misma información podemos obtener múltiples servicios, siempre y cuando uno de los proveedores de servicio no comparta nuestra información.

Cuando un proveedor de servicios decide compartir nuestra información sin nuestra autorización, esta pierde valor. ¿Si todos los websites conocen nuestra fecha de nacimiento, por qué darnos algo a cambio de ella?

En el caso particular de Facebook, ya han violado la privacidad de sus usuarios en dos ocasiones. Pero al parecer, el servicio que ofrece Facebook, o mejor dicho, el valor que obtienen sus usuarios es lo suficientemente alto para que la mayoría permita estos abusos. Eso, o simplemente no se dan cuenta de lo que está ocurriendo.

Cuando activaron el Mini-Feed, Facebook compartió información de las actividades de sus usuarios con el resto de sus amigos en Facebook. Y ahora con el caso del Beacon, Facebook y sus socios comerciales compartieron información entre ellos sobre las actividades de los miembros de Facebook en otros websites.

En ambas ocasiones Facebook ha recapacitado, explicado y ofrecido una solución. Pero también en ambas ocasiones Facebook ha preferido comenzar con la versión más abusiva de la privacidad de sus usuarios, rectificando solamente después de una reacción de estos.

Es sólo cuestión de tiempo para que los datos de más de 50 millones de usuarios estén comprometidos. Y entonces nuestra privacidad se habrá devaluado.

So, back to Zuckerberg. Mark posted an entry today on the Facebook blog apologizing for Beacon, admitting that the program was mismanaged from the start and that the response to the outcry were abysmal:

We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users.

Zuckerberg continues on to outline how to turn off Beacon altogether – and that’s where this is still breaking down. First, Beacon is still “opt-out”. That is, users still have to proactively turn the “feature” off. I’m guessing that most Facebook users are not paying attention to this whole Beacon uprising, and thus probably have no idea that there is something that can be turned off and how it would be turned off. The majority of Facebook users, I’d venture, are purely using the site to keep up with their circle of people. No one is paying attention to these higher-level issues – something I admit I’m disappointed in as I think these issues affect all users.

The reality is that Beacon is damaged goods and I will be surprised if partners don’t continue to drop the technology. It’s a huge mistake to send data to Facebook and let Facebook determine if the user 1) exists or 2) has not opted-out.

Someone I talked to recently described Facebook and Beacon as, “[Facebook] is like inviting the devil into your home by accident and now [Beacon] is seen as angel of death.”

No, despite Facebook’s steps to “right the wrong”, they have not gone far enough. At the very least, they need to make it completely opt-in and let their marketing department “sell” opting-in to their users. In an ideal world, Beacon is completely abandoned – something that might very well happen if the backlash doesn’t stop soon.

Get the details and install the extension here. And pass the word.

Distribución de Boletines de Prensa

Para distribuir boletines de prensa al mayor número de personas posible, están SanePR y PR-Web. Fáciles de usar, gratis la primera y paga la segunda, estas herramientas enviarán sus boletines de prensa a través de internet, a los servicios de noticias, buscadores y webs sociales. PR-Web es un poco más completo en sus opciones de distribución y análisis.

Interacción con los Usuarios

Para interactuar con los usuarios, Facebook permite crear grupos y páginas de productos. Los grupos permiten a los miembros conversar entre si, publicar contenido y hasta servir de moderadores. Las páginas de productos son un tanto más estáticas, pero permiten a los usuarios indicar su preferencia por el producto. Ambas opciones son buenas como métodos de distribución de información y recepción de comentarios de los usuarios. También podemos crear aplicaciones en Facebook que permiten a los usuarios relacionarse alrededor de nuestro producto o mensaje.

Twitter es otra herramienta ideal para diseminar información a un grupo de usuarios. La conversación puede ser de ida o de ida-y-vuelta si preferimos.

Second Life es un universo virtual en el cual podemos crear una presencia tan elaborada como queramos. Empresas como Sun, Pontiac y Reuters han creado versiones de sus oficinas en Second Life, donde los usuarios pueden obtener más información, probar nuevos productos y hasta asistir a conciertos y entrevistas.

La herramienta más básica para informar y recibir información de los usuarios es un blog. Estos permiten darle un toque más humano a un producto o marca, y pueden ser tan informales o frios como haga falta.

Análisis de Competencia

Parar terminar, Google Trends permite realizar análisis de competencia sencillos que pueden indicarnos si existe algún producto de nombre similar en un mercado de interés, o cuál de varios productos genera más búsquedas en Google.

¿Tienes alguna otra herramienta que recomendar? Anótala abajo en los comentarios.

Facebook Beacon, as we talked about, is a major privacy violator. Facebook’s official policy on this states that:

When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user can choose to opt out of the story in either instance, but the user doesn’t need to take any action for the story to be published on Facebook.

Putting aside the obvious problems surrounding Facebook’s opt-in/opt-out policy, the real problem lies in the fact that partner companies are sending data to Facebook without permission in the first place. Undoubtedly, it is a violation of their own privacy policies. This begs the question: will some big-shot lawyer come along and file a class action lawsuit on behalf of the 50M+ Facebook users who have fallen victim to this conspiratorial betrayal of their trust and privacy?

Let’s explore some privacy policies to see what these companies are allowed to do as it pertains to third parties and user data.

Hotwire has a policy that allows for third party release of info for specific purposes but stipulates that the firms cannot share the data with other organizations:

Hotwire will also share your information with business firms contracted to provide specific services to us, in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy. For instance, if Hotwire were to hold a sweepstakes offer on our Site, we may choose to hire a Sweepstakes Administration firm to handle the legal requirements surrounding entrant and winner selection and validation. We also share complete booking data for registered coolExtras members with Affinion Group, a loyalty marketing firm that administers coolExtras rebates. In situations such as this where your data is shared with a third-party firm, these firms are contractually obligated to only use your personal data for the purpose for which the relationship exists. These firms do not have the right to share your data with other organizations or contact you outside the bounds of their contract with us.

GameFly expressly forbids itself from transferring personally identifying data to anyone except in the case of a merger or acquisition or in the case of subpoena or cooperating with law enforcement:

Disclosure and/or Transfer of Personal Information

We may disclose any and/or all personal information about you in the good faith belief that we are required to do so by law, including but not limited to requests pursuant to subpoena or court order, and/or disclosure to local, state, or federal law enforcement, or other government officials pursuant to investigations they are conducting. In addition, in the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or other similar event, GameFly’s customer information may be transferred to our successor or assign.

Aggregate Information

We may provide our prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties with aggregate data about members and visitors to the GameFly Website. However, such data is anonymous, and we do not disclose personally identifying information about specific users.

eBay has not introduced Beacon yet, but appears to be angling to do so and also protect itself and its users, something I applaud. Furthermore, their privacy policy explicitly allows for such sharing of information.

Web beacons

A web beacon is an electronic image placed in the web page code that can serve many of the same purposes as cookies. Web beacons are used to track the traffic patterns of users from one page to another in order to maximize web traffic flow.

How eBay protects your privacy with third parties

eBay may work with other companies who place cookies or web beacons on our websites. These companies help operate our websites and provide you with additional products and services. They are subject to confidentiality agreements with eBay and other legal restrictions. eBay does not permit any of these companies to collect personal information using cookies or web beacons on our websites.

While eBay may be angling to protect itself, OVerstock.com has no excuse considering purchases are explicitly banned from being disclosed to third parties not involved in closing the transaction (e.g. credit card companies):

We may collect information actively generated by the purchase of a product or service, such as a payment method. We use this information to process your order and analyze and support your use of the Overstock.com web site. This information may be disclosed only to our staff and to third parties involved in the completion of your transaction, the delivery of your order or the analysis and support of your use of the Overstock.com web site.

Blockbuster is over the top with their privacy policy readily admitting to sharing personally identifiable information:

Blockbuster, its affiliates and franchisees (if permitted by Blockbuster) on occasion may disclose to their business partners certain data, such as names and addresses and the genre of products rented or purchased by Users or Members, so that the business partner may send their own direct marketing communications to Users and Members. Blockbuster will not provide User or Member e-mail addresses to business partners, unless the User or Member has provided express permission to Blockbuster. If you would prefer that Blockbuster not use disclose your personal information to its business partners for direct marketing purposes, subject to legal, or contractual restrictions and legal notice you may opt out of such uses and/or disclosures by (a) checking the appropriate “Opt Out” box in any applicable e-mail communication or e-newsletter, (b) sending an e-mail to blockbuster@custhelp.com (c) writing to us at 1201 Elm Street, ATTN: Online Customer Loyalty, Dallas, TX 75270 or (d) visiting your local BLOCKBUSTER store.

So the problem here is not only Facebook. Facebook pledges to protect these company’s users privacy. My question is… why is Facebook doing the job these companies should be doing in accordance with their own privacy policy. I will go out on a limb right now and say for the record that I will gladly sign on to any class-action lawsuit on behalf of Facebook’s 50M+ users who have had their privacy violated on account of this program. Companies like Coca-cola have wisely decided not to get involved. Others have foolishly determined that they will stay involved.

I guess we’ll let the dust settle on this.

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few weeks, Beacon is the program that Facebook marketed as a B2C advertising platform. Companies utilizing Beacon would benefit by automatically getting postings in the profile of a user utilizing the company’s website in some way, whether for purchase or otherwise. It was marketed to businesses as completely “opt-in” but as turned out to be exactly opposite.

The privacy concerns that have been demonstrated by the Beacon program is well documented. One guy bought his girlfriend a an engagement ring on Overstock.com and she found out about it by reading his Facebook profile where Overstock had posted this fact on the guy’s profile without him knowing. Personally, I’ve been dismayed to find my Gamefly activity documented as well as a car rental I purchased through Hotwire for later in the month.

Lots of people have proposed methods of “blocking” Beacon, but the fact is that whenever you are logged in, Beacon companies can (and will) post data to Facebook. Even if you opt to never show these details on your profile, Facebook still collects the data and quite possibly shares that demographic data with interested companies. Dare Obasanjo has detailed how broke Beacon really is…

Awhile ago, I wrote an article entitled “The Art of War: Facebook’s Strategy for Ultimate Victory“. In that article, I outlined how I thought Facebook had made all the right decisions and as a result would eclipse MySpace and other social networks as the premiere network around.

I am taking that article back. Facebook has not only violated all sense of trust on this matter, but faced with the problems, they’ve only made matters worse. (Sidenote: If you have a few hours, go through these court docs and tell me at the end if you trust Mark Zuckerberg or find him to be completely slippery. Also read this lengthy “pieced together account” of Facebook’s origins).

The real question here is there any real way to opt out? I don’t think there is.

1. The Privacy tab in Facebook – good for taking companies that use Beacon and that you’ve already engaged with out of a newsfeed – but what about future companies that I do business with?
2. Companies still sending data to Facebook regardless of if I’ve turned the privacy level way down. What is Facebook actually doing with this data? Telling me that it will be deleted is not a good enough answer for me. Beacon should be opt-in ONLY at the Facebook AND vendor levels.
3. The firefox extension for blocking sites. This is a good idea in principle but I shouldn’t have to do anything to maintain my own privacy!

To me, the only option here is deleting your Facebook profile – something I am very close to doing.

El programa Beacon permite a los participantes enviar notificaciones a Facebook sobre las activdades de los usuarios en sus websites. Por ejemplo, si compramos unas botas en Overstock.com, nuestros amigos de Facebook verán una notificación al respecto en sus páginas -de igual manera que nuestras actividades dentro de Facebook son reportadas en el mini-feed.

En teoría, los negocios participantes deben informar al usuario de esta opción y activarla sólo si el usuario así lo desea; pero en la práctica han habido varios reportes de notificaciones que aparecieron sin el permiso de los usuarios.

Ante las primeras críticas, Facebook modificó el funcionamiento del programa, permitiendo a cada usuario desactivar la notificación. Sin embargo, poco después anunciaron que ahora los usuarios deben aprobar la notificación en su página de Facebook antes de enviarla a sus amigos.

De este modo el sistema pasó de ser Opt-out (el usuario debe salirse si no quiere participar) a Opt-in (el usuario debe inscribirse si quiere participar).

Ciertamente es un adelanto en la política de privacidad del servicio. Pero al igual que cuando Facebook activó los mini-feeds, es preocupante que este nuevo servicio también haya arrancado con mal pie en temas de privacidad.