broadstuff

D'you recall when the wheels came off Friendster's bus? When they started to think they would lead and their customers would follow supinely? Or digg's little user revolution? Santayana once said that those who cannot recall the past are doomed to repeat it, and Facebook were a tad forgetful over FaceAds - and are thus having their own Friendster moment. As The Henry Blodget Blog notes:

We already hate the idea of bombarding friends with lists of the crap we buy. The fact that Facebook will only let us opt-out of that bombardment on a case-by-case basis (at the virtual cash register at third-party sites) is infuriating.

If we may indulge in a bit of "we told you so"...(and its not as if no-one else told them at the time either....we were just one of many).

We said that on this evidence they didn't have a cluetrain about how social nets worked......we suggested a better approach, and even warned them that the legal eagles would be after them!

Anyway, they have been hit by the double whammy of civil liberty watchdogs MoveOn and 2,000+ (and rising) pissed off punters using their own Facebook group to mobilise against them.

Don't you love irony

Over to the Blodgett Blog again:

After MoveOn complained, Facebook said MoveOn "misrepresented" the truth. MoveOn immediately fired back:

"If Facebook's argument is that sharing private information with hundreds or thousands of someone's closest 'friends' is not the same as making that information 'public,' that shows how weak Facebook's argument is," Green said in an e-mail. "Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission--and it's time for Facebook to reverse this massive privacy breach."

Ouch.....here's our next bit of free consultancy - if I were Facebook I'd invest in a bit of decent PR* - that was an unnecessary own goal, bettered only by the hundred year event speech!

Anyway, the solution is fairly obvious - eat humble pie :

Facebook should immediately make Beacon 100% opt-in. Not because MoveOn is complaining--because the current system will drive users right out the door. The tiny minority of Facebookers who want to bombard friends with lists of the crap they buy--and friends who are actually interested in hearing about this--can elect to do so. The vast majority who don't should never have to hear about this ridiculous concept again.

And what of that $15bn valuation I hear you ask........well, we said it was hard to believe the first time round....now its even harder. Shark jumping practice time methinks.....

Postscript - even the Forrester team, who praised FaceAds initially, are starting to have second thoughts
now.

* A PR friend of mine has since told me they have pretty good PR people, so it sounds like a listening to them issue?

From the too good to be true dept:

It is well known that the amount of data you leave around is there forever, and youthful indiscretions on Facebook today will come back to haunt you later - but who would have thought digital footfalls on a Wiil could expose infidelity. Sez the Register about a US soldier who suspected cuckoldry but whose wife denied it:

However, he continued: "All that changed when I plug in my Nintendo Wii for some Wii Sports. I flip through the Wii menu and visit the Mii channel so I can peruse the many friends that I have created with the guys that I played with in Iraq. As I go through the characters I see there is a Mii that I have not created."

Tony concluded: "I went into the Wii message board and click on the calendar option. Through this menu I was able to identify the many nights my wife's Mii and this other Mii character played Wii bowling."

And she was bowling with his balls.....

We've said it before. we'll say it now, and we'll say it again - be careful about what you put online - it will come back to haunt you.....

Great post by Will McInness here, I'll redo it in full:

These are the archetypes I've noticed using Twitter.

1. Mickey ME-ME-ME!
2. Tina Trivia
3. Freddy Fragmentation
4. Polly Phoney
5. Cedric Spam-again
6. Lucy Local
7. Ozzie Occasional

Mickey ME-ME-ME!

Constantly posts, and has racked up over 12,000 updates in less than 10 days. Old wounds from playground days cause constant need to be talking about and promoting self - more than 80% of tweets are about self successes. Remaining 20% of tweets are self-promotion-by-proxy, bigging up cronies and analgazing towards the few people loftier than selves.

Tina Trivia

Sweet, endearing, and decent person basically having a fiddle with Twitter.
Tweets once a day with something like: 'got foot scrub caught in drawer - took me ages to get it out again. Probably have a beer now'.

Freddy Fragmentation

Is a publisher or micropublisher (blogger, other website / service) boshing out stream of syndicated content from main platform to Twitter because it's another available outlet in this ever-fragmenting media consumption world.

Polly Phoney

Got into it to say they had for professional reasons. Genuinely they feel they understand it and know which box Twitter fits in, but actually don't at all.

Cedric Spam-again

Cunning new age spamming twat that is followed by 9 people and is following 34,873 people, because they've realised that people get a high when they get a mail saying 'Spam Captain is now following you'. Working the numbers. Should have their intimate bits nailed to a fridge door.

Lucy Local

Has a ring of local mates moderately or heavily using Twitter. Is using it overwhelmingly as a social network and actually finds it very useful for keeping in touch and ambient intimacy with people they already care about and/or know.

Olivia Occasional

Potters about with it. Posts infrequently - once one week; 3 times in a day on another day.

Me? I'd hope I was mainly Lucy (oo-er - OK, maybe Louis) Local, but I have been known to send the odd nauseating Mickey Me-Me-Me! tweet too.

You'd have to be a regular twitter user to recognise these, but if you are I wonder which you are

And of course there's Anne Arbitrage, who is using it as a free texting platform

I guess we're Freddie Fragmenters as we post on Twitter and Jaiku ( and RSS and email) for different readers.....we used to post on Facebook till they threw us off for the heinous crime of being a (gasp) Blog....

As to les autres, I find that the ambient intimacy aspect is the most interesting...and on that score I find it amazing that the biggest story on Techmeme today is that the Facebook "is" will be no more

To be honest, my view of a lot of these things is "get a life - go Blogging "

Went to an interesting NMK event last night - PR in the Wild - to hear 3 people I respect speak - Sarah Ogden and Will McInness of the Brighton Mafia (Midnight Comms and NixonMcInness respectively), and Drew Benzie whose blog I follow. Topic was the changes that the "NEW" new media is forcing on PR overall. The circus was whipped into shape by Roger Warner of Velocity. I made some notes in what was a spirited discussion, but Renaissance Chambara beat me to it so I'll ste.. - I mean link to - Ged's notes:

Measurement however is the fly in the ointment for PR people as they aren’t there yet. Wadds observed that PR needs to tie measurement back to the P&L or the balance sheet in order for it to be relevant and posed the question of how many people were making good money and margins from online PR at the present time?

This bottom line question alongside ‘will PR agencies be killed by integrated/digital/ ad agencies’; seemed to be the elephant in the room based on the post-forum discussion I had with a number of people.

We see the same elephant - I asked where people thought the money and impact was and where it was going, and at that point I sensed a schism between what is happening now - as Drew pointed out, corporates are paying for old PR poured into new bottles - and where it is going. Will noted that the real impact is the ability to listen, Sarah that it is a "parasite industry" and needs to redefine its role.

I think they are all correct - they are describing an industry in transition (or disintermediation as Drew put it), but in elephant fashion - ie all seeing different bits of it. The money today is going into stuff that is probably less impactful than it was in the old media, but the metrics - or more precisely, their calibration - there are metrics up the wazoo - are not yet fully understood to show where the real impact will lie. PR is a "parasite profession", in that it piggybacks off the old media at present, but as that collapses it has to find new channels (hosts?) for its art - and those are soft arts, largely around listening, influencing and storytelling rather than easy-to-measure advertising.

I personally think that PR is the best placed of the marketing arts to operate in the "new" Social New Media, (see here) but that they will need to integrate with the technology / strategy side of interactive media as it is evolving so fast right now (Drew alluded to this, and Sarah and Will's outfits work together). We also have direct experience of this as increasingly if you are doing the platform and strategy work you get involved in the front end media - like iBall for example.

I also couldn't help ask a Facebook question, and wondered (i) if the panel would have handled the recent FaceAd launch better, and (ii) if everyone in the room advising clients to go on Facebook had ever read the T&C (worryingly few had, and fewer were bothered...). This drew quite a bit of spirited debate (I was later told their UK PR agency was in the room) and I hope a good time was had by all.

Alcohol as ever oils the social intercourse, and we had some very good discussions afterwards as well.....wild, man

...the comments section on this post in Dealbreaker is well worth reading (tip of hat to Howard Lindzon for link). Its about George Soros doing the Trophy Wife (sorry, Sugar Daddy) thing - my favourite:

Like most of Soros' strategies for the past fifteen years, he's just following behind positions that other big players have already taken.

Truly nothing is sacred - scary

But it also sort of encapsulates what the Blog Media is about - Trophy wiving is nothing new, but its a Blograg thats reporting on it, and its the user community that are creating a new piece of content - a "witstream" if you like - where they spark off each other to create an overall piece which is a great read.

Honest Guv, fell orf a lorry so it did!

Wossat? Why not do a bit of Identity Fraud? Nah mate, you don't unnerstand - we can get far more of the readies flogging it to all the Ad and social Network companies who are desperate to get all the scoop on the Yoof Market.

(Today the UK Chancellor admitted the Govt had "mislaid" the data of about 7m, maybe up to 15m kids in the UK - and with a total population of 60m, that's pretty much all the kids in the UK we reckon).

The records include parents' and children's names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers and in some cases, bank or building society details.

He said the missing data was not enough to access accounts on its own but anyone who thought they had been the victim of fraud would be reimbursed by the banks.

Clearly the Treasury was too busy trying not to lose a bank at the time Bang goes any plans the UK Govt had of a national health database in the near future though !

Wossat Rupe? You want it all exclusive? Yerrrrr.....but it'll cost ya, mate....

Yesterday Amazon launched the Kindle e-Reader, and as Dave Winer complained, the GeekPress clamped on in a big way (see Techmeme this time yesterday) without really knowing what they were talking about. (We were too busy being thrown out of Facebook yesterday to comment).

Anyway, Sez Dave:

Steve Levy writes an article that appears in Newsweek about new hardware from Amazon, and it's an instant coral reef, within an hour or two it's the top item on TechMeme and there's a whole ecosystem of thought about it, published by people who have no information other than what they read in Levy's article.

But rest assured, dear reader - having worked on e-Reader projects ourselves (see here), we can honestly say that we do know what we are talking about

So, lets talk a bit about Kindle then:

Kindle is available starting today for $399 at http://amazon.com/kindle.

OK...road warrior / pro-sumer market for now.

Downloads Content Wirelessly (via EVDO), No PC Required, No Hunting for Wi-Fi Hot Spots

Interesting...thats a lot of onboard cost and weight, its a small computer rather than a pure reader - why not just use bluetooth to hook to a PC or Mobile?

No Monthly Wireless Bills or Commitments

Clearly...people already pay for mobile and broadband. Amazon says it has to pay, so thats a subsidy model (or more likely built into the book charges) - weakness if a reader comes out that can piggyback off PC / Mobile

Reads Like Paper

No, nothing reads quite like paper yet, though the next generation e-papers are getting good.

Books, Blogs, Magazines and Newspapers
On an e-Reader - well I never! Oh...you mean there's a price tag?

The same Amazon shopping experience customers are accustomed to is offered in the Kindle Store, including customer reviews, personalized recommendations, 1-Click purchasing, and everyday low prices. Additionally, Kindle customers can download and read the first chapter of most Kindle books for free.

Kindle customers can select from the most recognized U.S. newspapers, as well as popular magazines and journals, such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, TIME and Fortune. The Kindle Store also includes top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland, including Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine and The Irish Times. Subscriptions are auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle overnight so that the latest edition is waiting for customers when they wake up. Monthly Kindle newspaper subscriptions are $5.99 to $14.99 per month, and Kindle magazines are $1.25 to $3.49 per month. All magazines and newspapers include a free two-week trial.

Ah...a closed loop end to end system like...oh...iTunes, but with stuff costing more. Who would have thought? And even blogs...but no longer free, we note, and an incredibly limited choice!

The Kindle Store has over 300 blogs on topics ranging from Internet and technology to culture, lifestyle, and humor, to politics and opinion. Examples include Slashdot, TechCrunch, BoingBoing, The Onion, The Huffington Post, and ESPN blogs. Blogs are updated and downloaded wirelessly throughout the day so Kindle customers can read blogs whenever and wherever they want. Wireless delivery of blogs costs as little as $0.99 each per month and also includes a free two-week trial.

Not a dicky bird about the DRM I note....what gives there, Amazon?
(Update - more on DRM here in boing boing. Not good news.)

Holds Hundreds of Books in 10.3 Ounces
On the heavy end of design envelopes (for its size)....clearly a lot of in-board gear

Built-In Dictionary and Wikipedia

Well well...and a thesauraus too, we'll bet!

Long Battery Life

More weight

Search (of the Kindle store for Stuff to Buy variety)

Surprise

Annotation and Bookmarks

A must have


Ergonomic Design
Not sure about this one...that screen looks a bit small to give a book-like experience

Adjustable Text Size
Must have

Personal Documents
At a price:

Customers can take their personal documents with them on their Kindle. Customers and their contacts can e-mail Word documents and pictures directly to their unique and customizable Kindle e-mail address for $0.10 each. Kindle supports wireless delivery of unprotected Microsoft(R) Word, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP files.

Comes Ready To Use

Must have.

Our take - this will limit its own market - device is too clunky (and small screen) for general use, and the economics are usurious - making me pay $0.10 every time I want to download my own stuff is unacceptable. $399 is quite a heft considering you have to keep on paying into a closed system to buy content ( Quiz - do closed systems usually sell stuff at (i) premium or (ii) discount).

In addition, this device disobeys the No. 1 Law of all consumer devices - The Free Ride - this device does not give me any benefits for my existing assets - my connectivity, geekware, material I have already - and quite simply it doesn't allow people to enjoy material from their friends' collections for free (unlike, say, a book, where I buy it and loan it to you for...free)

(Afterthought - Its something I'd have expected a mobile phone company to come up with...)

The delightfully curmudgeonly Nick Carr notes that:

The only thing that will keep books great is respect for the individual author, the individual reader, and the sanctity of the book as a closed container. When that respect goes, the book goes with it.

Its just that with a real book, the sanctity is pay once lend many. With this, its the gift that keeps on taking.

Postscript - not trying to be snarky, but whats with the tame research houses coverage of stuff these days? Facebook got a paean of praise from Forrester, this one from Jupiter, while the blogosphere is much more balanced....and free!

Post Postscript - and even the Blodget Blog only got the "pay for free newspapers" one today (thats Wednesday, two days later) - read da small print ladz

We are following Bug Labs with interest.....the idea of modular component based hardware is (we reckon) potentially quite disruptive....its the antithesis to both the "you need different devices to do each thing" and the "one device fits all" schools. Anyway, here is the first little bugger out the labs.



Silicon Alley Insider is less polite, The Henry Blodgett noting that:

It is a SERIOUSLY geek toy--similar to a build-your-own-radio kit. Can't imagine he's going to sell many to end users. Is there a market in OEM-land?

I don't know...for a generation growing up with Heathkits and Meccano, what could be better

Bill Thompson has written a good article here on Privacy, Trust and the conflicting interests of users and for-profit providers

Trade union activist and online campaigner Eric Lee put it succinctly in a recent blog post when he noted that 'Facebook is a poor replacement for a real online campaigning strategy for unions. And it makes us vulnerable to the whims of those who own the company'.

Hushmail seems to offer a good service, but its 'simple' service offers little real security when it matters. Far better to install your own encryption software, like the freely available GnuPG, and take responsibility for your own security.

And Facebook may make it easy to set up a group, but it will never be as good as having your own server, your own code and your own security mechanisms in place. Organise a group on Facebook and it belongs to them; organise it on your own server and it belongs to you.

Especially when, as we have just found out, you can be booted off Facebook without notice (we noted the similar risk as well with sites in trouble)