Category Archives: Social Networks

Facebook tells me I’m overweight – this is *good* targeted advertising?

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Logging into Facebook I was assaulted presented with an advertisement featuring a picture of an incredibly fit fellow’s chiseled abdomen with the caption “48 YR OLD Overweight?”….

I suppose I should be thankful this was not a picture of a shirtless Mark Zuckerberg, but ..

I’m 48 so I can’t believe this was a coincidence – obviously Facebook is using my personal information to target ads to me – using the information they said they’d keep confidential and I really don’t want shared with any old Tom, Dick, or Hairy bodybuilder advertisers.

As I’ve noted before online privacy is largely an oxymoron, and I’m really not very concerned about the privacy “violation” here.  However something about this pisses me off – I think partly because after all the hype – including from people like me – I hate to think this is the best we can do with targeted advertising.

Sure, I’m a *little* overweight but I don’t need the bogus overpriced green diet junk advertised to me here by Mr. Muscleydude.    This is the classic type of junk product “seen on TV” presented in an annoying way using information I don’t want given out to advertisers.   In my book Facebook has already pushed past the limit of advertising more than is welcome by me, and I get the strong feeling that with revenues in question we’ll see a lot more of these marginally relevant ads in the future.

Who are your 150?

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An increasing body of research is suggesting the humans have evolved for a group size of about 150.   Known as “Dunbar’s Number”, the idea is that in groups larger than this size our efficiency breaks down.    I think the working assumption is that we cannot track more than this number of people without losing a lot of resolution, and that we work best when we have a good and high resolution relationship with people:  http://www.commonsenseadvice.com/human_cortex_dunbar.html

Is Lou Dobbs’ Head Going to Explode?

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Update:  Dobbs is leaving CNN:   http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/11/lou.dobbs.leaving/index.html

CNN’s Lou Dobbs personal crusade to rant about the plethora of problems with our bizarre immigration policy came to a fun “head” tonight as he berated and then looked ready to jump out of his chair to strangle the very composed Paul Waldman of a (liberal/ left) media watchdog group called Media Matters.

The group studied stories on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” and suggest the obvious:  Dobbs’ routinely crosses the line of reasoned journalism in his personal crusade to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

“When was the last time you did a positive story about immigrants”  Dobbs:  “I don’t know”.

I’m more than tired of blowhards like Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Keith Olbermann all of whom routinely discard good standards of quality journalism in favor of either bombastic nonsense or simplifications of complex issues.   These guys are not journalists – they are *entertainers*.    That is OK, but stop the pretense!    TV “news” is mostly garbage now, and we should all be very, very ashamed.

Online Abuse and Harassment: Where are the Rules?

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I’m reposting from my WebGuild post about the Ariel Waldman case where she is accusing Twitter of failing to enforce their Terms of Service over a what Ariel says was a case of very bad harassment and abuse on Twitter:

Are there appropriate standards of conduct for social network communication or does anything go in the wild west of social networks, twitter, and blogging?

Ariel Waldman was the target of an online “stalker” who posted abusive comments about her via Twitter. She’s understandably upset about the harrassment and posted a long note about getting no satisfaction from Twitter despite responses including a call with the Twitter CEO, who seemed to feel the case fell outside of Twitter’s responsibility.

I’m trying to get Twitter’s response to Ariel because I have a feeling there actions may hinge on a couple of twists that complicate what at first appears to be a clear cut case of putting free speech – which should be protected at great cost, above threat speech – which is a plague on the online world and should be harshly policed by the online and offline community including law enforcement.

The first issue is that Ariel blogs about some very “emotionally charged” topics with sexually charged language (though I saw no sign of what I would call abusive language in a quick scan of her blogs). However Twitter may be thinking that to censor comments about her or her topics while keeping Ariel’s own stuff online would not be in keeping with some sort of fairness standard (I agree this would be a weak argument based on Ariel’s description of the abuse).

The more relevant twist is that Ariel is the community manager of Pownce, a social microblogging site that is very much in direct competition with Twitter. Unless Ariel is certain that Pownce would handle this situation very differently from how Twitter is handling it she really needs to explain why this is calling out Twitter so powerfully rather than making more general statements about how the very lax online abuse standard are threatening the online social fabric.

This problem very powerfully emerged last year when Kathy Sierra, a prominent and excellent blogger, quit blogging entirely after several death threats against her. Although most of the community expressed outrage an alarming number of prominent bloggers suggested that free speech issues trumped the death threats, and came irresponsibly close to supporting what they seemed to see as the right of harrassers to threaten violence against others.

So it is important to make clear here that my personal view (which is not necessarily that of WebGuild) is that Twitter is wrong as are any social networks that allow harassment of community members. Whatever tiny advantages we might gain in free speech from an “anything goes” policy are washed away as debate is stifled under the threat of the virtual violence turning into real violence.

Update: Twitter Replies to Ariel

In their reply at GetSatisfaction, a customer resolution website, Twitter suggests that this case might be viewed differently by people if the comment stream was available. Presumably both Ariel and Twitter have a copy, so it should be published in the interests of fairness to everybody concerned.

Update 2:  Ariel’s Mom Checks in at her blog:

Mom Says:
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:31 pm

Yes, this is Ariel’s real mother. Those of you who are easily manipulated by media driven celebrity conspiracy theories or actually believe there is no such thing as integrity any longer will ignore this post. Too bad for you.

I am not here to comment on twitter, TOS, freedom of speech, the “sexiness” of ShakeWellBeforeUse or if Ariel is a c—. If I said she wasn’t, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

I CAN attest to one thing. It IS a fact Ariel’s stalker has been after her for over 3 years beginning in her home town—before she had a high profile on the web. I have seen the physical evidence and know it to be threatening. Ariel did nothing to initiate this situation, the person in question is mentally unbalanced and deeply insecure. The person found out where she lived and made it known to her. Ariel has done everything within her power (talking to the person and friends of the person, police, legal advice, adjustment of lifestyle) to defuse the situation all to no avail. I had thought when she moved to the city, these attacks would end, but they have not. There is more than mere name calling going on. There is a history of vindictive harrassment. Whatever else you think about how she is handling it is your opinion, but she did NOT make this up.

Since I have known Ariel all her life I can tell you one thing. She plays by the rules. She does not manipulate people or situations for her own gain. And she is too smart to screw up her own reputation as a consultant in social media to try and play competing services against each other. All speculation on that account is ridiculous.

And Mom to Ariel: you could have told me you were going to blog this rather than let me randomly find out about it on my own.

Yahoo Microsoft: Is the fat lady almost singing at $34?

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Henry Blodget is whining that the Yahoo Microsoft deal is back to where it started, but I think Henry’s wrong … again!     

I’m glad Henry was wrong about the rumor that Yahoo’s Q4 would beat expectations because it was part of the reason I bought YHOO then, and even though the stock dipped due to a bad Q4, it surged on Microsoft’s offer of $31 per share so I’m well in the black.   But now he’s wrong to say the deal is not almost done.  I think this Yahoo Microsoft merger is coming very soon to an internet near you.

Citibank Analyst Maheney upgraded Yahoo this morning, anticipating a boost in the MS bid to $34.   Hey, maybe he read my blog post of about 6 weeks ago where I suggested Microsoft raise their bid to $34?    

Unlike Henry, I think this is not back to where it all started at all!

Yang didn’t want to merge, now he sees it as almost inevitable.  Yahoo board wanted more, now they know anything past initial offer is gravy.  Part of the show was probably the board protecting itself against lawsuits from the unlucky minions who bought their Yahoo at $35+, some at over $100.

Barring a Q1 miracle that would recalibrate Yahoo prices without help of MS bids, I think the fat lady is now almost done singing on this deal.

 Disclosure:  long on YHOO

Facebook owes me $1.50 per year!

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Over at WebGuild I was doing some simple calculations about my value as an information slave to social networks like Facebook.    Using their 150MM revenues last year and dividing by approximately 100 million current users, we get a value of only $1.50 per year per average user.

The value of an average user in terms of the capitalization of these companies is obviously much greater.  Facebook is (over) valued by some measures at 15 billion based on Microsoft paying 240 million for a tiny share.   By that metric I am worth $150 to the company.    By traditional stock metrics this should jive  in logical ways with the revenue and profit potentials, but the internet economy has shattered many of the old sensibilities about company values, which these days are largely a function of hype, competitive takeover strategies, and other unusual metrics.

Digg for sale! Again. This time it’s for real. Maybe.

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TechCrunch is reporting that Digg is likely to get sold soon – probably to Google and probably for about $200,000,000.   Good for Kevin Rose and the VC folks, but I’d like to know from the key Diggers if they’ll feel any loyalty to the new owners or to the project.   Also, do they think they are owed more than … zero… on this deal?  

Social sites do offer their participants something of value = participation and platform – but are there “losers” in these equations? 

How do the high level participants who have put in thousands of hours and made the site what it is feel about these cash outs?

I’m wondering how often distribution of equity during the  *liquidity* event properly reflects the building of equity.    Entrepreneurial capitalism correctly asssumes you need to highly reward risk to get folks to take business risks and innovate.   But as Mike Arrington has noted entrepreneurs have a value system that appears to actually assign a high value the thrills and chills of the experience.   Thus to get optimal production and innovation it appears to me we need to pay “deeper” on these big internet deals.   In the case of a YouTube, DIGG, or Facebook I’d find a way to reward those down the food chain in some proportion to their contribution to the enterprise.   It’s possible that these rewards would be small enough that I’m wrong to think this matters much in the overall equation of optimizing the capitalist experience, but even a modest reward would brand the mega deals as “fairer” than simply a situation where fat cats effectively exploit self-motivated worker bees who have generated the user content and social networking that the market values so highly right now.

CNN’s Anchor Desk blog – a great idea

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Anderson Cooper is one of my favorite reporters because he’s sharp and pays a lot of attention to the critical issues in the developing world. 

He’s also got a great feature at his show AC 360, which is a blog open to comments during CNN’s nightly broadcast of the show.   Although most of the comments I’ve read would not be considered deep or inspired this idea of having viewers check in with the anchors and provide feedback is a step in the right direction of more “Democratic”, news community driven news.     I’m not sure if this will ultimately make the news better or worse, but participation is certainly something they should be experimenting with.   Good for you, CNN and AC!

Adobe Air – offline to online is good

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Adobe is launching an application that will allow people to work offline on forms and other content which will then automatically be posted to websites when they go back online.   This is an excellent “transitional” application because many users still have to “log on” to the internet via slow modems or other cumbersome connections, and this will help them participate more actively in the online ecosystem.

That said, I’m increasingly convinced that the explosion of user content is to some extent…over.   Certainly we’ll continue to see huge volumes of content pour online, but at least in terms of the USA it is fair to say that internet access and publishing are is now so easy and cheap it seems unlikely there are millions waiting in the wings to jump online.    Some studies are suggesting that “most” internet users have little interest in blogging or commenting or participating actively – rather they want to read and socialize but not produce much content.     Another interesting factor is that young women appear to be the top content producers in many social networking environments rather than geeky boys who are more likely to spend online time playing games.   It’s going to be very interesting to watch the new media trends shake out in the coming years.  

WSJ reports