Category: Policy

Facebook and the FTC Announce A Deal, For Now

The Federal Trade Commission and Facebook have come to terms on consumer privacy, an issue the FTC formally raised in an eight-count complaint earlier this year. Both sides have announced the pact in their own particular way.

On Facebook’s blog, CEO Mark Zuckerberg strikes a diplomatic tone with a dash of mea culpa.

“Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information,” he writes. “That said, I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes. In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes…have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.”

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Facebook and Commenting Systems: Still Some Open Questions

I’ve always been quite interested in commenting systems for the Independent Web, and when it came time to redesign this site, I chose to use Disqus, an independent company that is a leader in the space. Disqus has its detractors, but it has many more fans. The company has nearly 1 million sites using the services and is rolling out new features very quickly.

I did make a conscious choice to *not* use Facebook’s Commenting system. And while I could have justified the decision on pure features (I think Disqus still wins there), it’s more based on my belief in the Independent Web. I prefer to not have this valuable portion of my own domain controlled by a major identity platform with which I have some basic philosophical differences. (In short, I do not agree with the company’s stance on identity, among a few other things).

However, I was curious if others felt the same way. Apparently, the answer is no, if the numbers are any indication. Last night I asked this question on Quora: How many websites use facebook commenting? I’m curious if the service is growing, slowing, or flat?  I also emailed people I know at Facebook, and tweeted it. By this morning, Facebook gave me the answer (oddly, it did not show up on Google search, but that may because the two companies are retarded when it comes to sharing access to each other’s platforms. That’s a whole ‘nother story).

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Only Connect: Facebook, From The Eyes of an Old Newbie

I recently joined Facebook. Have you heard of it?

I know, I know, that sounds crazy, given that I’m “an Internet guy.”  If you search for me on Google, say “John Battelle Facebook,” you see that I am already there, and that I have nearly 5000 “friends.” (The interplay between Google search and Facebook is worthy of an entire treatise, I’ll leave that for later). You’ll see I also have a fan page, which has about 5400 “fans” – I think that’s the terminology, though now I think Facebook has turned those fans to “Likes.”

But as many of you know from reading my past posts on the subject, I’ve been essentially “Facebook bankrupt” for years. The service has never been of much value to me, in the main because I made an early and fatal decision to accept any and all folks who asked to be my friend. (For details on that, see this post: I Blew It On Facebook.)

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Who Am I, According to Google Ads? Who Am I, According to the Web? Who Do I Want to Be?

Over on Hacker News, I noticed this headline: See what Google knows about you. Now that's a pretty compelling promise, so I clicked. It took me to this page: Ah, the Google ad preferences page. It's been a while since I've visited this place. It gives you a limited but…

Over on Hacker News, I noticed this headline: See what Google knows about you. Now that’s a pretty compelling promise, so I clicked. It took me to this page:

Goog Ad pref main.png

Ah, the Google ad preferences page. It’s been a while since I’ve visited this place. It gives you a limited but nonetheless interesting overview of the various categories and demographic information Google believes reflect your interests (and in a way, your identity, or “who you are” in the eyes of an advertising client). This is all based on a cookie Google places on your browser.

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Set The Data Free, And Value Will Follow

(NB: Much has been written and said on this topic, and this post is in no way complete. We'll be exploring this issue and many others related to data at the Web 2 Summit this Fall). Perhaps the largest problem blocking our industry today is the retardation of consumer-driven…

foreign_coins.jpg

(NB: Much has been written and said on this topic, and this post is in no way complete. We’ll be exploring this issue and many others related to data at the Web 2 Summit this Fall).

Perhaps the largest problem blocking our industry today is the retardation of consumer-driven data sharing. We’re all familiar with the three-year standoff between Google and Facebook over crawling and social graph data. Given the rise of valuable mobile data streams (and subsequent and rather blinkered hand wringing about samesaid) this issue is getting far worse.

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The Obama Valley Dinner: POTUS Got the Seating Chart Wrong

This one has bugged me for some time, but I've not had the time to write it. Now that I'm on a plane for the next four hours, and it has Wifi, I can finally get around to bitching out loud about the photo below: ' Now this photo was…

This one has bugged me for some time, but I’ve not had the time to write it. Now that I’m on a plane for the next four hours, and it has Wifi, I can finally get around to bitching out loud about the photo below:

obama valley dinner.png ‘

Now this photo was widely discussed when it was released by the White House, a few weeks ago. Folks speculated on who the people were that we couldn’t see (the woman with her back to us? The guy next to Zuckerberg?!), and while I may know who those folks are, that’s not my point.

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Do We Trust The Government With The Internet?

As you all know each day I summarize links I find worth reading, toss in a few lines of offhand commentary, and send it out as "Signal." So far a few thousand folks have subscribed to it, and while it's not exactly Pulitzer material, it's fun to do and…

apple-1984.jpg

As you all know each day I summarize links I find worth reading, toss in a few lines of offhand commentary, and send it out as “Signal.” So far a few thousand folks have subscribed to it, and while it’s not exactly Pulitzer material, it’s fun to do and it is a nice way of forcing myself to not just read the news, but think about it as well.

Last night, quite late it turns out (I had a dinner), I once again sat down to do Signal. The first piece I came across (from the WSJ) sparked something of a rant in me. I’m going to re-post it here, for this audience, to see if it sparks any kind of response.

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Apple Shows Its Colors?

Today news comes (from the NYT) that Apple has shifted its approach to content sales, no longer allowing content owners to directly sell access to their own content via apps on iTunes. This is ridiculous, and if it proves out, spells the end of the media's love affair with Apple…

Today news comes (from the NYT) that Apple has shifted its approach to content sales, no longer allowing content owners to directly sell access to their own content via apps on iTunes.

This is ridiculous, and if it proves out, spells the end of the media’s love affair with Apple and its platform. Mark my words. Apple’s crossed a line here, and in a short time, it will retreat back. If it does not, it will only power competition where purveyors of fine content can exist without Apple’s universal platform tax. The folks at Google/Android must be doing cartwheels this morning.

Then again, it could be that there’s nothing to this, and it was a random act. The Times piece is sourced to Sony, who may have simply misinterpreted Apple’s current rules – that’s Venturebeat’s speculation. We’ll see.

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Google Instant Isn’t Opinion, Apparently?

I was just reading this piece from Fast Company: Top Google Engineer: Google Instant Has No Brand Bias, and this quote struck me: "What we do at Google and what we've done for years is to not inject any subjectivity into these algorithms," says Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and…

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I was just reading this piece from Fast Company: Top Google Engineer: Google Instant Has No Brand Bias, and this quote struck me:

“What we do at Google and what we’ve done for years is to not inject any subjectivity into these algorithms,” says Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and head of the company’s search quality, ranking, and algorithm team. “We didn’t want to introduce any bias into the mathematical modeling–our modeling is predicting, given a letter, what’s the probability of completion.“

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Google, China, Wikileaks: The Actual Cable

When the Wikileaks story broke, I wrote a short piece chastising folks for blogging the assertion that one of the cables proves the Chinese government was behind the Google hacking which preceded Google's pulling out of the country. The cable is based on single sources, who are anonymous and…

Guardian Cable Google China.png

When the Wikileaks story broke, I wrote a short piece chastising folks for blogging the assertion that one of the cables proves the Chinese government was behind the Google hacking which preceded Google’s pulling out of the country. The cable is based on single sources, who are anonymous and second-hand, and that doesn’t pass the journalistic sniff test.

My colleague Matt McAlister at the Guardian has sent me the link to the entire cable, and while I stand by my original take on the story, it sure is intriguing to read. In fact, the details I find most interesting are the interactions alleged between Baidu and the Chinese goverment.

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