Tag Archives | Facebook

Xbox Live, Facebook and Twitter: Incompatible

Posted by Jared Newman on November 17, 2009 at 5:10 pm

Here’s a telling moment from my first experiences with social networking on Xbox Live: While rifling through status updates on Facebook, I spotted a comment that seemed worthy of a response, which would’ve taken forever to type on my controller. Also, there was a Web link which the Xbox 360 couldn’t access. So I got off the couch, walked into the next room, and typed out a response on my computer, then spent the next five minutes looking at the Web site in question.

That’s a failure, and it carries over to Xbox Live’s Twitter implementation as well. Both features went live on the Xbox 360 today along with Last.fm’s Internet radio service and the Zune Marketplace, a facelift for the console’s existing video storefront that includes 1080p video and online movie-watching parties.

Of all the new features, I’m mostly interested in how the Xbox 360 does social networking. With Sony readying Facebook support on the Playstation 3, and the PS3 blockbuster Uncharted 2 allowing you to post in-game progress to Twitter, the games industry seems to be latching on to social networking.

Input is the obvious problem. Unless you spring for a $30 Xbox 360 Messenger Kit (which you’re cheerily reminded about when starting up Facebook), both networks feel trapped behind glass. You can read what other people are doing, but participating is a chore.

However, the feeling of looking-but-no-touching goes beyond input. On Twitter, you can’t visit Web pages because the console doesn’t have a Web browser. That’s too bad, because external links are as much a part of Twitter as the things people say. Facebook suffers from the same problem, and more: You can’t add friends, you can’t use apps and you can’t modify your profile. You can’t even poke people.

The major problem is that Facebook and Twitter are made for the open Internet, while the Xbox 360 is a walled garden. Looking at full-screen photo albums in Facebook is a redeeming quality, but ultimately social networking is incompatible with the closed system of consoles. I don’t expect to use Facebook or Twitter on the Xbox 360 too often, and when Facebook comes to the Playstation 3, I’m not expecting a markedly better experience.

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Judge Cans “Spamford”

Posted by David Worthington on October 29, 2009 at 10:22 pm

Today, a California court awarded Facebook $711 million in civil damages against Sanford Wallace, the notorious sell proclaimed “spam king” who is also known by the derisive nickname ‘Spamford.’ The court found Wallace guilty of violating the CAN-SPAM act, and he could face time in prison if convicted.

Wallace allegedly accessed Facebook accounts without obtaining permission, and used them to make bogus wall posts and spam the account holders’  friends. Those actions run afoul of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which sets guidelines for commercial e-mails, which are enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Wallace is best known for his e-mail marketing company Cyber Promotions, which was at one time the largest source of unsolicited e-mail in the world. In the proceeding years, another Wallace venture called SmartBOT faced FTC action for infecting computers with spyware.

Facebook believes that the judgment will help put spammers out of business. “We’re confident that today’s ruling will act as a powerful deterrent against those who would abuse Facebook and its users,” spokesperson Simon Axten said in a statement to the press.

I’d ask Wallace for comment, but I’m hesitant to offer him my e-mail address. Once again, he’s proven himself to be a real class act.

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Think Before You Tweet

Posted by David Worthington on October 28, 2009 at 12:29 am

My roommate recently put a bug in my ear about an October article in the New York State Bar Association Journal. The premise was simple: You can be held accountable for what you post on social media Web sites, and some people have gotten themselves into a real fix.

Author Michael Getnick recounted stories of clients facing libel suits for making defamatory statements about everything from apartments to clothing. In another case, an attorney that told a court that there was a death in her family was busted for playing hooky when the presiding judge saw Facebook status updates about weekend revelry.

Clients and attorneys alike also pose the risk of revealing personal or privileged information, Getnick wrote. A tweet made during court hearing could also be considered disruptive, he noted.

Outspoken Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 for criticizing the officiating during an NBA game. A job applicant tweeted his or herself out of a job. A UK officer worker cost herself her job by stating that her job was boring.

Getnick suggested that lawyers should always remember that anything that is posted in social media Web sites is permanent, searchable, and shareable. Getnick must be channeling my mother who always told me to “think before you speak.” The same thing goes online. Have you ever posted something that you later regretted?

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MySpace Looks Past Social Networking

Posted by Ed Oswald on October 27, 2009 at 3:43 pm

myspaceMySpace has been especially busy it seems in recent weeks to recast itself as an entertainment destination as it cedes the social networking space to Facebook. In fact, the two sides are talking about ways they could work together, according to comments made to the Telegraph newspaper.

Facebook is apparently interested in MySpace’s content, which they suggest could be incorporated into Facebook through its Connect feature. Both sides have confirmed that talks are indeed ongoing, but haven’t really specified how far the talks may be.

One thing is working in Facebook’s favor: MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta is a Facebook alum. So I don’t think its a far stretch to say that Natta himself probably is leading MySpace into the willing arms of its now larger rival.

I’m not saying this was his plan all along — but when you’re getting to the point that MySpace is, everything should be on the table.

This isn’t the only partnership that MySpace is apparently working on. Next up, Microsoft. Kara Swisher reports that Redmond is looking at MySpace Music to beef up its music offering on MSN, another potentially lucrative move. With MSN Music struggling, teaming up with a market-leading service like MySpace’s just makes good business sense.

In the end, it looks like MySpace has just about given up on social networking from recent news that’s coming out of the company. I guess we’ll find out soon if that was a smart idea or not, no?

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Facebook for the Departed

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 26, 2009 at 10:40 am

Over at Facebook’s official blog, Max Kelly has written about what happens to a Facebook profile when its owner passes on. Facebook offers a service called memorializing which leaves the account in place but mostly freezes it in time:

When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased’s privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.

Sounds like a good idea to me–I like the idea that when someone passes on, he or she won’t disappear altogether from the online world. (Actually–this may sound creepy, but I don’t think of it that way–I’ve been known to leave departed acquaintances in my address book as little reminders of our friendship.)

As far as I can remember, my only deceased Facebook friend  is sci-fi legend Forrest J. Ackerman, but he doesn’t really count–I was a fan of his, not a friend. His account’s still very active, but as far as I know it was maintained by friends of his even when he was still with us…

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Facebook’s New Front Page Looks DOA

Posted by Ed Oswald on October 25, 2009 at 7:48 pm

Facebook LogoFor a market-leading company, Facebook’s moves are sometimes so half-baked that it’s practically mindnumbing. The latest example of this is the site’s new home page. For whatever reason, Facebook has tweaked the news feed to become more of a “top stories” format then a chronological timeline of your friends’ activities.

(If you’re curious, here is why the company says the change was necessary.)

Oh yes, you still can get the old layout, but that’s now something you have to click through for and is called “Live Feed.” The site has attempted to make up for this by making that feed actually real-time: you no longer have to reload for the latest updates.

This was sprung on users without any warning at all. I initially thought Facebook was choking yet again when I noticed the status updates were all jumbled up. I actually didn’t realize there was a change until I noticed a news article highlighted on Techmeme.

Apparently, neither did most of my friends. “What the hell is wrong with Facebook now?” one said. Those that did notice what just happened were not much kinder. “This new layout sucks!” was a common meme.

Now Facebook groups are popping up demanding the old news feed come back. One called “Facebook: SWITCH BACK TO THE OLD NEWS FEED!!!” has garnered some 648,000 members in just two days. Another has about 440,000 members, and yet a third with over 51,000 users.

Such rapid opposition signals to me that Facebook is going to have a lot of trouble keeping this around. But it also should be a concern to those with interests in the social networking company: it is repeatedly making questionable decisions that really seem as if they are not being thought out very well.

Facebook has grown exponentially as MySpace has collapsed. But at the same time, MySpace seemed to think through changes before it made them, or realized sometimes it’s good to leave things alone.

I see no good reason why Facebook needed to mess with the news feed. To begin with, this Twitter-like layout wasn’t really popular with its users, and now they’ve messed with it again in a move that seems to have significant opposition.

If they keep doing this, Facebook’s time at the top may not be long-lived. In the end the customer is always right.

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Will the CIA Snoop on Social Networks?

Posted by David Worthington on October 19, 2009 at 8:58 pm

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has bought a stake in a company that monitors social media as part of an ongoing clandestine effort by the agency to aggregate content from public sources, Wired is reporting.

The CIA has invested in Visible Technologies, a company that produces technology for search engine marketing for social media. The CIA’s interest in its technology is obvious–the agency needs to keep pace with the latest communications technology.

Over 70 percent of Facebook’s users are located outside of the United States, in over 180 countries. “There are more than 200 non-U.S., non-English-language microblogging Twitter-clone sites today. If the intelligence community ignored that tsunami of real-time information, we’d call them incompetent,” Lewis Shepherd, the former senior technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Wired.

The advent of cloud computing raises more concern, because services store data among data centers all around the world. I recently wrote a detailed report about how laws that safeguard your privacy are not the same in every country. If messages pass through a server overseas, does that give the CIA the right to browse the content even if a user is a U.S. citizen?

The CIA is barred by law from domestic spying in the United States, but in the past, the agency has employed creative ways to bypass the law, to hide documents from Congressional review, and to set up an illegal dragnet of domestic communications services. In the last case, Congress gave telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution after it allegedly learned about the spying.

Of course, most folks’ Tweets are public, and even if you don’t share everything with the entire world on Facebook, it’s less private than a phone conversation. Does the notion of the government monitoring social network activity make you nervous?

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Secret Service Investigates Facebook App

Posted by David Worthington on September 28, 2009 at 7:02 pm

Facebook LogoFacebook polls typically ask questions as mundane as “what’s your favorite breakfast cereal?” But over the weekend, a poll asking whether U.S. President Barack Obama should “be killed” was anything but mundane, and drew the attention of the Secret Service.

The poll gave respondents four options: Yes, Yes if he cuts my health care, Maybe, and No. It was created by an unknown user of a third party polling application that runs on Facebook. The Secret Service became aware of the application, and is investigating.

For its part, Facebook suspended the offending application after the incident was brought to its attention this morning, said director of policy communications Barry Schnitt. He added that it has asked the developer to institute better control procedures to monitor user-generated content.

This poll would be less worrisome if it did not happen amid a climate of threats against the President. Last month, the Secret Service acknowledged that threats had increased by 400 percent since Mr. Obama’s inauguration. There have also been incidents of conservative religious figures in the United States openly wishing for his death.

The United States has a history of political violence, and even a casual suggestion might be enough to set off an unstable individual. The poll was wildly irresponsible. I would only hope that those responsible will be held accountable.

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Is Twitter Worth a Billion Dollars?

Posted by David Worthington on September 24, 2009 at 4:41 pm

FailbucksTwitter, the micro-blogging company with no fully-disclosed revenue model, has reportedly raised around $100 million in private equity from T. Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners, placing its total valuation at about one billion dollars. It’s Twitter’s responsibility to share its business plan with investors, but I see nothing but a new manifestation of the dot-com bubble. Call it a microbubble.

Board the hype machine and rewind back to 1996 when a hot start up company called Mirabilis revolutionized how people communicated with a technology known as “instant messaging,” compelling AOL to acquire it for $407 million. What payback did AOL receive on that bubble investment?

While it’s true that Twitter is not ICQ, and there is no doubt that it is under more pressure than ever to find a business model, it still hasn’t shown how it will pull in revenue. This week, executives ruled out running advertisements for the remainder of the year. What other rabbit is in its hat?

On the bright side, Twitter is a small company without high expenses, and its messaging platform is hugely popular (even though many of its users are sleepers). Maybe its management is more visionary than I am.

Also, Twitter would not receive financing if it did not have plans to spend it. I’m sure that AOL had grandiose plans for ICQ too. Instant messaging became a generic technology, and nothing has convinced me that the same thing will not happen to Twitter.

There are open source alternatives cropping up, as well as start-ups like eSwarm that have applied micro-blogging to solve different problems. Facebook has also invested more to soup up its Twitter-like events stream.

Twitter is looking far less distinctive than it did a year ago. Does anyone disagree?

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Your Stance on Facebook

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 16, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Facebook LogoIn a blog post yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network he founded now has 300 million members. That’s worldwide, but it also happens to be roughly the same number of people who live in the United States–give or take a few million. For a service that’s only slightly over five years old–and which has been open to non-students for less than three years–it’s a lot of people.

Facebook doesn’t seem to inspire the controversy, passion, and hype of oh, say, Twitter: It’s just part of the air that a lot of us breathe these days. The single thing that I like best about it is that it’s put me back in touch with old friends from every stage of my life, including pals I had before I was able to walk.

Which doesn’t mean that everyone’s on Twitter–I know smart folks who are still thinking it over, or who have intentionally steered clear–or that everyone who’s tried it is a fan. T-Poll time:

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