Digg: A Cautionary Tale for Web 2.0 Companies?

A perceptive take on the risks and uncertainties of developing and investing in 'social media' companies; they have one thing in common - they're selling a service, not a product. I think this is summarised very well in the statement...." The basic problem is that these new-media companies don’t really have customers; they have audiences. Starting a company like Digg is less like building a traditional tech company (think Apple or HP) and more like launching a TV show.". And as we know, TV audiences are notoriously fickle



Also liked the quote attributed to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg... “the biggest competitor for us is someone we haven’t heard of.” Might be true, but I think they should also check out the elephant in the room - by the name of 'Google'!

Amplify’d from www.neatorama.com

Redesigns are fraught with potential problems, but it seems that the implosion of Digg after its latest redesign serves as a particularly striking guide of what NOT to do.

Digg’s collapse has become a cautionary tale for so-called Web 2.0 companies in Silicon Valley, even the current crop of superstars, like Facebook and Twitter. The basic problem is that these new-media companies don’t really have customers; they have audiences. Starting a company like Digg is less like building a traditional tech company (think Apple or HP) and more like launching a TV show. And perhaps, like TV shows, these companies are ephemeral in nature. People flock in for a while, then get bored and move on. [...]

But Digg’s traffic had begun to slide even before the bad redesign, due to a much larger problem: Twitter. That site started out as a way to let people blast out 140-character posts, but has evolved into a way for people to pass along links to news items they find interesting. Williams insists that Twitter and Digg perform completely different tasks.

That’s true. They are different. But this is how disruption happens in tech. It’s hardly ever about direct competition. Rather, something comes out of left field and provides a new way to do something. There have been plenty of Digg clones, but none of them ever hurt Digg very much. And nobody could have predicted that Twitter would take the place of Digg—not even the guys who created Twitter. And, if history is a guide, Twitter itself will be disrupted by something equally impossible to predict. This is why Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said at a conference a few months ago that “the biggest competitor for us is someone we haven’t heard of.” Read more at www.neatorama.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/dzwr

The Future of Social Media (slideshow)

• Social TV is slowly but surely making its entry in the social world offering you the possibility you watch television, real time or on demand, while checking tweets about the program and interacting with friends or likeminded people who are watching the program
• Dating already was a social affair, but with the introduction of augmented reality and layer apps the dating scene will change. You do have to get over your cozy couch but the chance of being blown off is way smaller. Just grab your phone and see who your match is
• In former days you use to call your friends or go to your next door neighbor to ask which product you should buy. After that you use to need a computer. Now,  a phone is all you need. Just walk around and your social network will tell you via air tags how they rate certain object, stores and restaurants

Source:  ViralBlog

Posted via email from Pot Pouri

Social Media Policies and Guidelines

I've been running a regular social media training event for some time now and have gradually built up a fairly comprehensive knowledge asset at the Social Media Toolkit Wiki that I use as the foundation for the training. Given the general thirst for information on social media policies and guidelines, I thought I'd collate a few of the more popular links here. I hope this is useful to anyone who is in the process of developing policies or guidelines, or indeed, for anyone interested in Social Media. If anyone knows of other useful links, please let me know and I'll add them to this list.

Employee Guidelines

• Civil Service guidance on participation online
• New Zealand Government – Guide to Online particpation
• Carl Haggerty’s Social media and online participation guidelines
• Intel’s Social Media Guidelines
• IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines
• Social media explorer – Employee Policies for Social Media Participation
• Scout blogging – Corporate Guidelines for Using Blogs and Forums
• Sun Microsystems Communities: Sun’s Guidelines on Public Discourse
• BBC personal use of Social Networking and other third party website
• CIPR Social Media Guidelines
• Draft guidance for New Zealand State servants using social media
• Gartner Public Web Participation Guidelines
• Greteman Group (Marketing Agency)
• CISCO Internet Postings Policy
• HP Code of Conduct
• Harvard Law School – Terms & Policy
• US Navy – Web 2.0 – Utilizing New Web Tools
• CIPR Chartered Institute of Public Relations Social Media Guidelines
• US Air Force Social Media Policy (includes flow chart)
• Porter Novelli
• Government Policy
• Dow Jones Social Media Interaction Policy
• Harvard Law School Blogs Terms of Use
• Sun Guidelines on Public Discourse
• Dell’s Online Communication Policy
• United States Airforce “new media and the airforce”
• Telstras 3 r’s of social media engagement

Blogging guidelines

• Councillor's Guide to Blogging (SiS)
• BBC staff blog guidelines
• USA.gov – Government and Social Media – advice on blogging
• BlogCouncil – Disclosure Policy
• Opera Employee Blogging Policies
• Electronic Frontier Foundation How to Blog Safely about Work
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation blogging rules
• Opera Blogging Policy
• Sun Blogging Guidelines (pdf)
• GM Motors Blogging Policies
• Media companies: For Journalists entering into public debate
• IOC Olympic Athletes Blogging Policy
• Yahoo’s Personal Blog Guidelines for staff

Twitter Guidelines

• Learning Pool's Twitter Guide
• The ultimate list of Twitter tools

General Guidelines

• Using Social Media: A Guide for Councillors
• A Councillor's Guide to Social Media
• Liz at LGEO Research
• Carl Haggerty’s notepad
• Web 2.0 in Local Government- Steve Dale
• Laurel Papworth
• 123 social media
• Govloop
• Christyweb
• Mashables 10 must haves for your social media policy
• Stap isi – where to post local government online guidelines
• Step two designs – Moderating internal discussion forums, blogs and other social media
• IBM Social Computing Guidelines
• The Guide to on-line participation (NZ Gov)
• Ten things you should cover in your Social Networking Policy
• Social Media Policies and Guidelines Database
• Social Media Guide for Public Involvement (Orange County USA)
• Local by Social: How developments in social media might affect, and be used in, the work of local government.

Posted via email from stephendale's posterous

Is Facebook Privacy Just An Oxymoron

I've long thought that if you treasure your privacy, then don't use a social network! They exist to share information - about you and the people that use it. I must admit, Facebook seems to be worse than most in playing fast and loose with personal data, and the closed nature of the platform makes it quite difficult to know excactly what they're doing. Giving them the benfit of the doubt on this particular issue, I don't think they may have realised that the Facebook User ID is being shared between apps, but I think the problem is symptomatic of their overall 'laissez faire' attitude to privacy (except of course Mark Zuckerberg, who clearly worries about his own privacy!) So if you treasure your privacy, don't use a social network, and definitley not Facebook.

Amplify’d from www.marketingpilgrim.com

With the box office for “The Social Network” beginning to feel the effects of everyone in the social media industry already seeing it and the likelihood that the rest of the world doesn’t care, it’s time to get back to real business for Facebook. Oftentimes, though, real business and Facebook is more about what Facebook is supposedly doing ‘to’ people rather than ‘for’ them. Today is no exception.

Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.

The rest of the article essentially says what we already know because we follow this stuff including major app / game developers like Zynga who are getting more data than they should. Anyone who looks at what apps in the Android store are looking at when you download them should know that supplying you with fun is not the end game for most developers. Why? Because they need to make a living too so the best thing they can sell is your data.

The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online—a practice the Journal has been examining in its What They Know series. It’s unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to “dramatically limit” the exposure of users’ personal information.

“A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared by a user’s Internet browser or by an application,” the spokesman said. Knowledge of an ID “does not permit access to anyone’s private information on Facebook,” he said, adding that the company would introduce new technology to contain the problem identified by the Journal.

Wait a minute. Hasn’t Facebook been taking steps like this all along? Apparently not. It’s hard to really know what Facebook is or is not doing and where they are actually doing or not doing it. It appears as if that rule #1 in their PR department is to be sure to “Baffle them with BS” which results in no one knowing if Facebook has or has not actually done anything substantial to protect users privacy.

As for the developers of these games that are taking your data and selling it? They must either be coached by Facebook or they learn well with their coy responses to inquiries about their perceived privacy transgressions.

Defenders of online tracking argue that this kind of surveillance is benign because it is conducted anonymously. In this case, however, the Journal found that one data-gathering firm, RapLeaf Inc., had linked Facebook user ID information obtained from apps to its own database of Internet users, which it sells. RapLeaf also transmitted the Facebook IDs it obtained to a dozen other firms, the Journal found.

So let’s face it. No mater how many people suck up to Mark Zuckerberg and claim that he is a nice guy who is trying to change the world blah, blah, blah (and there are seriously big industry names who like to publicly profess their admiration etc for Zuckerberg) the evidence points that underneath all the buzz, he likely has a black heart when it comes to privacy concerns.

So don’t expect the term Facebook privacy to ever mean anything. They need your data to make money. It’s that simple. As a result do you think that Facebook and its entire ecosystem are going to just stop trying to get your data? I hope you’re not that gullible no matter how ‘nice’ the real Mark Zuckerberg is or is not. Read more at www.marketingpilgrim.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/daoh

Government announces abolition of Local Area Agreements

Reads like a breath of fresh air - but will the puppet strings really be cut, or is there an alternative performance management scheme lurking in the shadows? Taken at face value this sounds like an excellent (and brave?) move by the coalition, and gives local authorities some freedom and incentive to innovate. Will be interesting to see what is in the Localism Bill when it comes before Parliament, and what the 'General Power of Competence' actually means in practice. Call me gullible if you want, but this all looks very positive IMHO.



The full text of Eric Pickles' speach can be found at:



http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2010/10/pickles-scraps-laas-and-slams-islington-for-paying-invoices-twice-.html

Amplify’d from www.publicfinance.co.uk

Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles today announced the abolition of the 152 Local Area Agreements.

LAAs were introduced in 2004 by the Labour administration. They allowed councils with their local partners to define their own priorities and select 35 of the most appropriate targets from a set of national performance indicators.

But Pickles criticised the bureaucracy surrounding this system. ‘There are 66 pages of guidance telling councils how to report on national indicators,’ he told council leaders and local government professionals at Hammersmith and Fulham town hall this morning.

‘So today I am scrapping the existing Local Area Agreements. Instead of national indicators, I promise you that we will only require one set of data from you.

‘Instead of inspections, we are going to give councils want they want – freedom and power – to be able to take your own decisions on housing and planning. That is the foundation of the Localism Bill, which will be unveiled in a few weeks. Councils will be able to organise themselves, and do whatever they want through a General Power of Competence.’

He also said that next week’s Comprehensive Spending Review would streamline the sources of funding given to councils.

‘We counted 58 funding streams for housing and regeneration and 80 agencies involved in economic growth in their area.  By the time the money is coming, the forms have been filled in and the conditions have been satisfied, there is always going to be less money. Where is the incentive to be efficient or imaginative, what is the point of listening to local residents, as opposed to central government?’

Pickles added that he did not want to be an ‘overbearing parent, handing out pocket money and telling you how it should be spent’. He said the Spending Review would bring down the ‘artificial barriers’ that dictate what money should be spent on.

‘We are going to put as much money as possible into just one cheque for councils to work out for themselves how to spend it. But this brings responsibility to protect frontline services, to commission really effective and productive services,’ he added. Read more at www.publicfinance.co.uk

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/co4r

MurderMap - London Homicide Mashup

URL:  http://www.murdermap.co.uk/murder-map.asp

Well spotted by my colleague Conrad Taylor, a new geospatial application that plots more than 400 homicide cases reported by court reports and the Old Bailey's archives. Something for the 'gruesome violence' mashup category maybe. You can even do deep dive query's according to the type of murder weapon used, e.g. ligature, knife, gun, etc. I'm not quite sure of the utility of this app, though possibly useful for the housing market (am I moving to/living in an area where I'm more likley to be shot or stabbed?).



"Maybe it shows there is a fate worse than death and it is to be mashed up afterwards" CT.



"Murder Map... which launched in May, uses web application Google Maps

to plot more than 400 homicide cases, based on news agency Central News'

court reports and the Old Bailey's archives."

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/cnt9

Bonfire of the Quangos

Download now or preview on posterous

Public-Bodies-List-FINAL 14-10-2010.pdf (432 KB)

The promised axe is coming down hard today on 192 quangos that will be abolished, with another 289 being radically overhauled. 380 quangos are staying.

As one insightful blogger noted:

The regular hoeing to keep the soil clean has rather been neglected these last few years. Hence the need now for the Round-up and flame-thrower approach. It’s brutal, but it’s cleansing. With the rubbish cleared, the productive can be nurtured.

Any bets on when the first new quango of this coalition will be created?

Posted via email from stephendale's posterous