Google Friend Connect

1. Google Introduces Social Bar
   http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/02/12/google-introduces-social-bar
2. Google Friend Connect
   http://www.google.com/friendconnect/
3. Blog example using Google Friend Connect
   http://blog.go2web20.net/Ref1
4. Xoopit adds Facebook data to Gmail
   http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/02/hands-on-xoopit-pokes-gmail-adds-it-to-facebook.ars
   

I'm not jumping on the bandwagon yet; however, I think Google Friend Connect shows good innovation. In many ways it is a reaction to Facebook Connect, but Google, I think, aims at an audience with less technical knowledge. I think that this could be a great step forward. Instead of building a closed space to network, Google Friend Connect essentally lets any site opt in to the network and form a new node. The tools seem more straight forward than Facebook's and allow even the average blogger to leverage the service.

I once spoke about the idea of collaborative reading of a site -- i.e. when you visted a site you might be able to see coments, highlights, margenalia, your friends left on the site. Diigo does something similar right now as a browser plugin, but lacks the ability to tie into a ready list of "friends." I still need to play with Friend Connect more, but if it could allow me to filter content and see just comments by my friends, I think that would be a great step. Further enhancements to allow highlight- and margenalia-sharing among friends would be awesome additions.

Of course, one last way this service would be greatly enhanced is if I could keep all of my Facebook friends. While Xoopit does not focus on Friend Connect, it does bring together Facebook and Gmail in a great new concept. Further (optional) integration with Facebook would be, in my opinion, a win for Gmail and Friend Connect. I do understand wanting to keep a competator a bay; however, as old affrim goes: "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Facebook Turns Five

1. Facebook Clocks Fifth Birthday
   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7868403.stm
   
2. Facebook is Five
   http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/02/facebook_is_five.html
   

Facebook turned five on February 4th. There really is not anything new to report, and most of the articles are simple summaries of Facebook's development. I liked the above BBC articles. One looks more at the history of Facebook, and the other details some of the challenges Facebook faces in monetizing its traffic.

Update: 2009-02-13
Why Facebook’s Future Is Mobile
http://gigaom.com/2009/02/10/why-facebooks-future-is-mobile/

With 25 million mobile users, one blogger suggests targeted, location-aware, paid advertisements could be the trick to balance the books.

Sexting

1. Teens who `sext' racy photos charged with porn
   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100252658

I did say a lot was happening recently, didn't I? This is one last new trend I think interesting to investigate. Without too much of my opinion, sexting is a new trend developing as individuals (especially high school students) text message (SMS, multimedia message) friends pictures of themselves in a sexually revealing manner to flirt with/tease one another. Legally, however, these photos may be illegal given the age of many participants. Some prosecutors are charging youth with child porn felonies for sending or receiving such messages.

The NPR story is new, but this trend is a bit older than this blog. Below I pasted some previous notes from older stories on this topic. These notes where written at the beginning of December and represent an amalgamation my interpretations and quotations from the respective stories.

• http://voices.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2008/12/sexting.html
• http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/sextech/teen-voices.aspx
• http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/sextech/PDF/SexTech_Summary.pdf
• http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/12/11/2008-12-11_kentucky_fried_chicken_trio_photographed.html
• http://www.ypulse.com/tag/sexting/

Technology adds distance? Makes more brazen?
One other comment on what I think links the sexting stuff and the KFC story together - the teens on the Today Show sexting story talked about the distance technology adds into the equation, allowing them to do more brazen things than what they would do in real life. I talk about this a lot when I speak on cyberbullying - the girls aren't thinking about photos being passed around or imagining themselves in a room full of teen boys looking at them as they took the photos. Just as the KFC trio didn't think about a co-worker watching them bathe. Technology does make it easier to flirt, bully, share and do other stuff you wouldn't do face-to-face.

• "Sext Me." NBC - 4 KNBC: Video (Los Angeles, CA) December 10, 2008, Local: NewsBank Access World News. . (Video)
  

Just because a message is meant to be fun doesn’t mean the person who gets it will see it that way. Four in ten teen girls who have sent sexually suggestive content did so “as a joke” but many teen boys (29%) agree that girls who send such content are “expected to date or hook up in real life.” It’s easier to be more provocative or outgoing online, but whatever you write, post or send does contribute to the real-life impression you’re making.

Once post can never delete:
Facebook policy, account termination leaves messages, photos, etc.
What control does a consumer have? What control should they have?
Restricting Access, Making redistribution criminal, etc.

The computer mediated communication theory says the absence of social context clues is the major distinction between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face conversation. The theory emphasizes that participants in a computer-mediated conversation often lose attention easily because there is no one physically present to stop them from doing so.

• Sonya Cisneros. "Sunday night 'sext' messages ruining traditional booty calls." Daily Skiff, The (Texas Christian University) (Fort Worth, TX) March 20, 2008, State and regional: NewsBank Access World News. .

The Law and User Content

1. YouTube Copyright System Gone Mad, EFF Prepares to Sue
   http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/02/03/03readwriteweb-youtube_copyright_system_eff_action.html
2. EFF Legal Victories
   http://www.eff.org/victories/
3. Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig
   http://www.free-culture.cc/
4. YouTube, AP, Hurting Fair Use
   http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/02/05/youtube-ap-hurting-fair-use
   

YouTube's automated copyright violation identification system, ContentID, has gathered increased attention recently. As Lessig writes in his book, Free Culture, the decision about whether a work violates copyright or is "fair use" used to be made almost exclusively by people, usually a judge. Increasingly, however, this decision is made by computers. YouTube anxious to avoid lawsuits is inclined to take down any borderline content rather than "risk it." Indeed, even innovators/artists you have a legitimate fair use claim may be hesitant to distribute a video lest they be forced to prove that fair use claim--the cost of which is often so prohibitive that the content is more easily taken down.

The video mentioned in the NYT is of a young girl playing the piano and singing Winter Wonderland (a song which incidentally would be in the public domain, but for the US congress retroactively extending copyright in a somewhat constitutionally dubious way: see Eldred v. Ashcroft and the Copyright Term Extension Act).

As these decisions about fair use--whether in the case of user-content take down or digital copy protection on books, music, and movies--are increasingly made by uncompromising machines and not judges/humans. And as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits disabling copy protection technologies, a large part of our historically "free culture" is greatly threatened.

I highly recommend Lessig's book, which has an excellent discussion of what is at stake in this "copyright war".

Location (Again)

1. Did Google Just Kill All the Other Mobile Social Networks?
   http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/02/04/04readwriteweb-did_google_just_kill_all_the_other_mobile_social_.html
   
2. Google Latitude: Ready to Tell Your Friends (and Google) Where You Are?
   http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/02/04/04readwriteweb-google_latitude_location_aware.html
3. Google Maps Goes Social
   http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/02/04/google-maps-goes-social/?mod=rss_WSJBlog?mod=
4. Tracking Friends the Google Way
   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123371579418246547.html
5. Privacy fears over Google tracker
   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7872026.stm
   

I still do plan to write on internet divisions created by language, but there was been so many other news stories recently, that that post may have to wait a bit. One new product release generating substantial media attention is Google Latitude. It is a mobile social networking application that runs on (smart) cellphones.

Latitude lets user "check in" and display their location to friends. Mobile social networks are not new (Brightkite, Loopt, and others), but release of automated, location aware technology by a large Internet company is. The user benefits of connecting with a friend who is in town or happens to drop by the same mall where you are is a desirable feature. Likewise, location aware technology is important for Google searches from mobile devices. Thus, if I search "gas" Google could potentially tell me several gas stations in my vicinity and their prices. This location aware technology can be much more accurate than past systems which simply included a zip/postal code to narrow the results.

While PC-based social networks often rely on email address as the unique key, mobile networks might rely on phone number in the future. (Or, as in the case in Japan, where each cell phone has a unique email address that the user chooses this email address may be used. This incidentally is how the Japanese social network Mixi is used, and many Japanese, not having a home computer, primarily access Mixi from their cell phones.)

Adding such additional information into Google's hands worries some. Such data, along with browsing habits gathered from those using the Google Toolbar, search history, shopping data from Google Checkout, etc. creates an ever more complete and revealing picture of users. Currently the US lacks comprehensive laws on how this data may be used, how long it may be retained, and what may be gathered in the first place. Truly this data can be put to beneficial use by refining search results (mobile and PC-based, by integrating location data from mobile phones with the id of a desktop searcher, for example); however, this data could also be put to nefarious use. Without constraining innovation, I think at the very least Congress might act to require company's to disclose in an easily understandable and forthright manner the data gathered, its retention period, and an easy data removal process.

Internets: Division through location, langauge

1. Japanese Social Media Prism
   http://asiajin.com/blog/2009/01/31/japanese-social-media-prism/
   
2. AP IMPACT: Fake 911 calls difficult to prevent
   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100121162

Network Neutrality advocates promote the web as the largest source of free information and argue it must remain that way. Promoting network neutrality in 2007, now President Obama stated, "one of the best things about the Internet ... is that there is this incredible equality there." (CNET) But just how "equal" is the Internet?

I recently posted on CNN blocking international viewers from watching the American Presidential Inauguration. This is not an isolated example. Thus living outside, I cannot use Hulu, Pandora, Amazon UnBox, a long list of US radio stations, and many other services. Similarly, outside of the UK I cannot watch BBC content on the new iPlayer. Outside of the US or Japan anyone can purchase a stream to watch MLB Baseball games live, but within these two countries they will not take your money. In some cases, the division is intentional: as more and more of the "free" web content is ad-supported, providers are looking to restrict it to targeted markets. In other cases, intelectual property law prevents providers from showing content abroad.

iTunes provites an illustrive example. Apple operates a different store for every country. A song released in one country may not be available in another. Likewise iTunes can charge different prices in different locations for the same content. The first restriction may be demanded by content providers; the second is simply in iTunes best interest. Unless a user has a credit card (or gift card) from another location, he/she is barred from entering another country's store. Even then the iTunes Terms of Service expressly forbid access to the service outside of one's country and warn that violation could result in account termination, although I have not heard of this ever happening.

Users in different locations have access to different content and services. Google and other reflect this distinction by running different crawlers in different countries. Thus an identical search on www.google.com, www.google.co.jp, or www.google.co.uk will produce different results. Google.com redirects users to one of the other countries site's based on the users IP Address. This is a numeric identifier that identifies each computer on the Internet. In the same manner that phone location can be faked (see NPR story), so can one's IP address; however, this is not something the average user usually can do.

Through this technologal division and langual divisions (to be dicussed in the future) users are left with access to differing pieces of the Internet (even when wishing to pay for content). Thus it the Internet fractures into many internets.