Fear & Loathing

A Post-Newspaper Era

Michael Kinsley says if the New York Times disappears, there will still be news. Life After Newspapers. I'm not so sure. Since most Web news is repurposed content from newspapers, especially financial and investigative reporting, and because few if any sites can monetize or profit from online news distribution, when newspapers die I fear there will be little to replace them. Certainly NOT television.

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How Time Flies

It's been six years since the "shock and awe" of the war in Iraq.  And it's been just about that same period since I launched this blog in late March 2003.  At the time, I wrote that I was not sure what it would become.  I'm still not sure, but have been having fun -- with a few off and on breaks -- just expressing my views.  For those who honor me by reading, thank you.  For those who could care less, thank you, too, for again teaching me humility.

Generating Product Buzz with PPT - Pay-Per-Tweet

So Intuit is paying social media users to post reviews and plugs of TurboTax in Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere by paying for a mention of its flagship tax preparation software. This may be a good example of a corporation embracing Web 2.0 media savvy, but I think it is just as bad -- perhaps worse, if the relationship is undisclosed -- as pay-per-post used to create blogosphere traction by compensating those who post favorable comments. At the very least there has got to be transparency when a product placement is made for compensation. At the worst, it still stinks IMHO.

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Who Owns Social Media UGC?

Two weeks ago there was a major outcry within the Facebook community over revised Terms of Service (ToS) for the hugely popular social networking site. The gist of the protest was an implication in the new ToS that Facebook claimed "ownership" of user-generated content (UGC) and reserved the right to market it for for commercial purposes.

That conclusion would be rather stupid from a business perspective and was quickly disowned by Facebook management.  Facebook CEO Zuckerberg: “We Do Not Own User Data” [Mashable].  But because this was a Website policy, changeable unilaterally without user consent, it leaves unanswered the larger question of whether UGC is owned by the person posting the content, the person on who's page/site the content appears or the owner of the service/server.  The issue is WAY broader than Facebook.  It applies, for instance, to comments posted on newspaper sites, blogs, photos shared on Flickr and the like, and many more applications.

Today I am not trying to answer the question, rather raising some.  In the law of traditional commercial relationships -- say banking or telephony -- the "content" one shares with a company is owned by the corporation.  Your banking records can be obtained by the government without your consent because they are "owned" by the bank.  Only sector-specific privacy laws like Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which are altogether too rare in the United States, limit what the company can go with data arising from its relationship with customers.  Hence, Facebook was possibly wrong (although correct from a customer relationship standpoint) to argue that it needed a license from one user to display his/her content on the "Wall" of another user, even when the first person had affirmatively decided to share that UGC by posting it within Facebook.

But what of corporations as employers?  Since the law is settled, right or wrong, that a company owns emails generated on its systems, regardless of whether work-related, will that same conclusion hold for social communications sent and received via an enterprise Internet connection?  And what of copyright; if a user posts photos to a sharing site, does that act imply either abandonment of their ownership interest or the grant of a "fair use" right to republication in full to the world?

These are interesting, and perhaps important, questions in the developing law of social media.  Stay tuned here for more analysis and discussion as we make some tentative predictions of how the law will evolve and whether, in the ultimate analysis, it matters.

"Social Stream" May Become Email 2.0

Social streams of data are going to be an integral part of the web going forward. If "presence" is the new dial tone, as Jeff Pulver has opined, is the ubiquity, immediacy and interlinked nature of "status" publications the new email? So observed many influential pundits at this week's SXSW conference.

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Don't You Read My Tweets?

I had planned a much longer, analytical post about the relevance and importance of Twitter in the new Web 2.0 world. But this sketch, courtesy of Geek & Poke, was just too hard to resist.

Online trumps retail in 4Q. Tipping point or one off?

This day had to come, and it now has. And the Bragging Rights Go to Internet Retailers [WSJ.com]. So is it a paradigm shift or just a depressing response to the financial crisis?  Only time will tell, but I suspect the former.

Happy New Year

I've got to add a post just to have the blog calendar roll over to 2009, so you might as well take the opportunity to view video of New Year's Eve celebrations from around the globe.   New Year 2009: Celebrations Start Around the World [Telegraph].  Enjoy!  Note that I, for one, was not Tweeting at midnight. ;-)

Blackberry Part Deux

Hey! Mashable agrees with my Dec. 23 post, observing that "[l]ike the forgotten child in the orphanage, it seems no one talks about the still popular RIM smartphone anymore."  They're right in part.  People are only talking about how far RIM has fallen (57.6% in 2008 alone) and whether it can recapture momentum while continuing to lose market share!

Note to Readers: Would have added this as an update, but the other entry was drafted in a stand-alone blogging application that does not permit TypePad to edit HTML, thus I could not insert the Mashable link. Stupid product design.

Say Goodbye Blackberry

BlackBerry Storm Downgraded to a Depression [NYTimes.com].

Isn’t the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry? A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize inside.

After years on top, RIM is facing real competitive pressures these days. But trying to copy the touchscreen of the Apple iPhone seems retarded to me. GIving away RIM's key product differentiation feature. Is this the first sign of a long, slow decline.