Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan is fed up with the way Google and Facebook are rolling out new services with major privacy implications with the default settings opting you in–and it sometimes being tough to figure out how to opt out.
Tag Archives | social networking
Opting Out of the People-Centric Web
Here’s a good post on how to opt out of Facebook’s new Web-wide features. As it shows, if you try to shut off outside services’ access to your data, Facebook attempts to convince you you’re making a terrible mistake. It reminds me of Microsoft Bob’s impertinence circa 1995.
The Web–and tech in general–won’t be truly people-centric until software and services simply comply with our requests rather than second guessing them…
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Facebook Tries to Facebook-ize the Web (Plus: Technologizer Gets a Like Button)
“L’État,” Louis XIV famously said, “c’est moi.” I sometimes think that Facebook has a similar attitude about its relationship to the World Wide Web.
At its F8 conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, the dominant social network announced an array of new features designed to spread little bits of Facebook around the entire Internet. They include Google Friend Connect-like widgets for injecting social stuff like comments and activity feeds into any site; a new Like button that any site can add to any piece of content; and what Facebook says are much easier options for integrating other sites with Facebook than those offered by the existing Facebook Connect (a name which is going away). It’s also allowing third-party sites to hold onto data they receive from Facebook (previously, they were only allowed to cache it for a day).
The new features are already live in examples such as Microsoft’s Docs.com and an upgraded version of Pandora that plays music from artists you’ve liked on Facebook and lets you see what your friends are listening to. Facebook also says that its new pan-Internet Like button showed up a billion times in the first 24 hours after its launch.
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FriendFeed Is Not Going Anywhere, Says Co-Founder
VentureBeat’s Anthony Ha reports from the Facebook f8 developer conference that FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor is in attendance, and says that the site will not be shutting down. Facebook acquired the site in August of last year, and FriendFeed developers were re-tasked to responsibilities within Facebook. Taylor now works as Director of Product for the social networking giant.
Taylor confirmed that Facebook still has no plans to develop anything for the service, however as of yet it still remains alive and well. “For all two of you out there, thank you, FriendFeed users,” he joked.
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Microsoft Melds Office With Facebook
Facebook’s F8 developer conference kicked off today, so the Web is rife with Facebook-related news. One interesting tidbit: Microsoft is launching a beta version of something called Docs, which lets Facebook users collaborate on documents with their Facebook pals, in the browser or in the desktop versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (The name “Docs” may prompt confusion with Google’s Office rival Google Docs, but Microsoft apparently owns Docs.com–and if I owned it, I’d want to use it for something like this, too.)
The beta as it’s been rolled out is semi-open: Anyone can view documents. But uploading, editing, and creating new ones requires an invite code. I’m don’t have full acess, so I can’t explore all of Docs’ features, but the idea doesn’t look so complicated: Basically, it’s a version of Office 2010’s workgroup features and Web-based apps that makes your Facebook friends your workgroup.
It’s tough to judge Docs until I get get full access to it, but it looks like it could be handy. One major question I still have: Even though this is clearly built on some of the Office 2010 Web technology, is it an entirely separate world–or can I create a document in an Office 2010 Web app and share it via Docs, and vice versa?
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No More Free Ning Networks
Ning, the service that lets anybody create a social network on any topic, is undergoing some big changes. The company, which hosts 2.3 million social networks, says that it will shut down its free version and require network creators to either switch to a paid plan or leave Ning. It’s also laying off forty percent of its staff.
Back in 2007, Ning cofounder and chairman Marc Andreessen visited PCWorld (where I worked at the time) and explained how Ning would be able to cover the costs of free networks through advertising. I liked the idea, and hey, he’s Marc Andreeseen, so I bought the idea. Here’s cofounder Gina Bianchini making the same case in a 2008 Cnet video. But it looks like the strategy didn’t pan out.
When we chatted with Andreesseen, he was also passionate about the fact that Ning let network owners tinker with their network’s source code–but Ning eventually shut off that feature in favor of letting users install apps on their networks.
It’s yet the latest evidence that it’s dangerous to assume that free services will be around forever, at least as free services. I wonder how many Ning networks will convert to paid services, how many will move elsewhere, and how many will just go away?
Technologizer has a Ning network–but not one that’s very active or inspiring. That’s at least partially our fault, for not promoting it more aggressively. Mostly, though, we discovered that the social side of Technologizer was going on in article comments as well as on Twitter and Facebook. Even though we’re already paying Ning customers, we may quietly close down our presence there at some point–let us know if you think that’s a lousy idea. But I’m still a fan of the idea, as expressed both at Ning and its competitor SocialGo (which already focused on paid services).
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Needed: Tweetie for Android
I’m still at Twitter’s Chirp conference, where Cofounder Ev Williams told a questioner In the audience that there will be an official Twitter client for phones based on Google’s Android operating system. He wouldn’t say if the company I’d building a new or will acquire an existing app. But he said they’d hoped to have been ready to announce the details at Chirp but fell short, so I assume it’s not too far off.
And I know what I think Twitter should do: it should bring Tweetie–er, Twitter for iPhone–to Android. The application which Twitter bought last week has just about everything about doing Twitter on a phone figured out perfectly. Why build or buy something else for Android that almost certainly wouldn’t be nearly as good? Shouldn’t the mobile Twitter experience be consistent across all phone platforms?
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I’m Not Sure if I Follow Google Follow Finder
Good grief, more Twitter-Google news from the Chirp conference! Google has launched something called Google Follow Finder, a tool designed to help you identify Twitter users you might enjoy following. Enter your Twitter handle, and it’ll list people who tend to be followed by followers of people you follow–I think I have that wording right–as well as people who follow the same people you do.
Unfortunately, Google Follow Finder may be too good at identifying folks you should be following. I’m not sure if my experience was typical, but when I tried it, it looked as if it made no attempt to determine whether I was already following anyone it mentioned. Consequently, the vast majority of recommendations it made were for accounts that already rank among my favorites (actually, eighty percent or so were personal friends, colleagues, and acquaintances).
As Google’s blog post on Follow Finder notes, you can also enter names of Twitter users besides yourself–ones you already know you like–and find new people to follow that way. But the venerable Mr. Tweet, which has a similar mission, seems to be much better at analyzing your own Twitter data and telling you about people you don’t already know you like.
If you try the service and have better results than I did, let me know…
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Twitter’s Big News Day
I’m at Twitter’s Chirp conference at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, in an auditorium crammed to the rafters with Twitter developers and other interested parties. The mood seems slightly subdued–maybe folks are concerned over Twitter’s encroachment into areas traditionally left to third-party companies–but there’s lots of news. Such as…
The Library of Congress is archiving every tweet ever tweeted. As much as I love Twitter, my impulse was to be jokey and dimissive–“what’s next, YouTube comments?”–but as I think it over, I’m glad it’s doing so. There’s an awful lot of our digital heritage that’s already gone, and it’s better to err on the side of saving everything than to let interesting stuff (like the most significant tweets) slip away. (The announcement doesn’t, however, explain precisely how people will be able to get access to these tweets, or find the ones that anyone will care about in, say, 2047.)
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Twitter Tiptoes Into Advertising
For what seems like eons, people have been asking Twitter how and when it’s going to start making money, and the company’s executives have always said that they’ll move to monetize the site only when they can do it right. Today, Twitter is announcing its first big money-making idea. It’s a form of advertising called Promoted Tweets, and it’s no big whoop–basically, brands with presences on Twitter will be able to pay to put (clearly-labeled) tweets about their products at the top of search results. I can’t imagine anyone but the most adphobic among us hating the idea, but it also seems unlikely that Promoted Tweets alone will pay to keep Twitter free forever. They’re clearly a first step rather than the final answer.
Twitter will talk more about Promoted Tweets–and the future of Twitter in general–tomorrow at Chirp, the first official Twitter conference. I’ll be there, and will let you know what we learn…