Odds and Sods

TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy on Spotify's twt that they are now the No 2 music site in Europe and "closing in on the world title":

A lot of our startup heros have an arrogant swagger: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs. (Some would even venture to say Michael Arrington…) Arrogance may even be a good thing. A grounded, humble company would never think it could beat huge, well-funded competitors.

But here’s the thing: When you’re going to be this arrogant for this long, you have to, at some point, show something to back it up. Just read the comments on every Spotify post we’ve done over time to see how weary even the fans are getting of the endless promises of a US launch and the blase downplaying that the labels may have an issue with, oh, say, giving away music for free. And, yet, we get this Tweet today announcing the company’s impending world domination.

Let’s ignore for a moment how few people actually pay for the service in Europe. Spotify, how about a single US deal before you spike the football?

For TechCrunch, surrounded by the creme of Silicon Valley hypesters, to call Spotify "arrogant" is - well, if Americans didn't understand irony before, this is it! Clearly Spotify's US PRs haven't handed over the month's protection money

Actually, I'm glad articles like this are still being written on AOLTC - partly so I can snark 'em, but more because my main worry with AOLTC is that, in order to secure Big Ad $, it will go all safe.

The Facebook Movie is out this weekend, to critical acclaim. It apparently paints Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as an ambitious, single-minded, semi autistic, unscrupulous and basically thoroughly unpleasant little sh*t (ie all those traditional things a Silicon Valley CEO should be ). In fact it is apparently so OTT that some even start to root for him! (I should at this point say I have yet to see the movie and am going from the perception of the vast amount of press and friend's responses in said digital new meedja). Needless to say, his friends* are rushing to his defence - Messrs Lessig and Cohler for example:

Lessig:

But as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed. As I watched the film, and considered what it missed, it struck me that there was more than a hint of self-congratulatory contempt in the motives behind how this story was told. Imagine a jester from King George III’s court, charged in 1790 with writing a comedy about the new American Republic. That comedy would show the new Republic through the eyes of the old. It would dress up the story with familiar figures—an aristocracy, or a wannabe aristocracy, with grand estates, but none remotely as grand as in England. The message would be, “Fear not, there’s no reason to go. The new world is silly at best, deeply degenerate, at worst.”

Not every account of a new world suffers like this. Alexis de Tocqueville showed the old world there was more here than there. But Sorkin is no Tocqueville. Indeed, he simply hasn’t a clue to the real secret sauce in the story he is trying to tell. And the ramifications of this misunderstanding go well beyond the multiplex.

Personally I thought reaching for George III and de Tocqueville is one straw of desperation short of wrapping Mr Zuckerberg in the US Flag and Constitution! Then there is Mr Cohler quoted in Venturebeat:

Cohler came down on the fiction side, describing the movie as a “Hollywood fairy tale.”

Beyond the premise, Cohler said there are “a billion little details” that were off. For example, Zuckerberg and his cohorts in the film talk about how the site has to be cool, but Cohler said that’s getting things backwards. The team always wanted the site to be useful, not cool.

The problem they both - and Facebook - have is this thing of Perception vs Reality. I recall one of my Business School professors telling me, 20 years ago, that in marketing perception IS reality. And the one thing the new digital media does is amplify the message from any company, for good or ill. And the thing about this movie is that, whether true or not, it tells a story not that different from the de facto perception of Facebook in the market. You just have to Google "Facebook" and you see a story of fallings out, lawsuits, worries about data scraping and mining etc etc. "By their deeds shall ye know them" is a very old - and apt - aphorism, and Social Media is a very powerful way of getting those deeds out into the Body Public.

Against the broad backdrop of technology history, Facebook sounds quite a bit like Microsoft in its heyday, or Oracle, and Saint Steve is no picnic to work for either. But the problem they have, the perception among many industry watchers, is that there is more dirty laundry to come, and their creation (as one Venturebeat source puts it) is "tied up with original sin". Which is of course what will magnify the amplification effect of social media's fascination with Facebook even more.

Not, of course, that all this has any impact on Facebook's growth yet - 500 million users is pretty impressive - and to get there so shortly probably requires most of those qualities Mr Zuckerberg is accused of having. Of course, 10 years from now when he is part of The Establishment and has his own Charitable Foundation, all those qualities listed will have undergone semantic shift and he will be re-cast as an ambitious, determined, driven executive "not known for taking prisoners" and will join the pantheon of Great Visionary Executives. Perception will have changed into a new reality.

Update - many more have leapt to Facebook's defence, it has been quite interesting to see the various angles used given that, as I note above, the direct "it's not true" approach won't wash:

- The New York Times says its a Generation Thing, oldies think its a morality tale and the youth think its cool, that omelettes need a few eggs broken etc. Sounded more to me that he was talking more about a good old ethical tale, is does the End Justifies the Means vs the Orginal Sin Will Bring You Down. Which, of course, is a classic setting in any great tragedy - this is MacGeek.

- Then there is the Daily Beast arguing that its crap beause it only treats women as doting groupies, sexed-up Asians, vengeful sluts, or dumpy, feminist killjoys. I am so disappointed that they have not also taken the opportunity to excoriate the film for ignoring so many other needful minorities. Shame on The Beast

- The Huffington Post argues (via Jeff Jarvis and Antonio Vargas ) that its simple - Hollywood doesn't understand Facebook, and it's really just Olde Media being snarky about New Media owing to not understanding it.

- In a related spin, SAI tries to link it to Cyberbullying of Brave New Media

- TechCrunch argues that the film disappoined vs expectations on its openingweekend, only bringing in $23m vs a budgeted $25m despite the hype. Oh, and Batman - The Dark Knight brought in $158m on it's opening weekend so this movie is clearly a flop.

Unfortunately for les critiques, these sorts of noises are unlikely to do much more than drive people to see the movie. Isn't social media wonderful as a marketing tool

Incidentally, like many others I love the Taiwanese Video Precis up top.....

*That is, the friends who were not vigorously contributing to the movie, or suing him......

...or maybe not. We have been watching the twists and turns of Craigslists' - ahem - "adult" classifieds for some time, and in the last week or so various Attorneys General have slapped "do not publish" stickers on. This was hardly unpredictable, they have been threatening this for some time (how about this post of ours in 2008) but of course now everyone is shocked, shocked I tell you.

Jeff Jarvis believes this is a move by an Olde Meedja Not-Quite-Conspiracy, though in my view he spoils his argument a bit by an aside on the Germans vs Google (see asterisk* at end of piece):

So why are government and media going after craigslist? The same reason, I think, that media and government in, for example, Germany are demonizing Google (even as the German people give Google its biggest market share anywhere in the world). They’re going after the disruptors, the biggest disruptors in sight.

Since craigslist and the internet have existed, newspaper classified revenue has fallen by $13 billion a year, leaving that money in the pockets of former advertiser-customers. Since Google and the internet have existed, many more billions have left traditional media as Google offered their former ad customers a better deal.

The New York Times today belittles craigslist’s censorship, calling it a “stunt” and “ploy” and labeling as “screeds” craisglist CEO Jim Buckmaster’s defenses of the service—and of free speech—against attorneys general and against ratings-starved CNN ambushing Craig.

Perish the thought that Craigslist are trying to protect $44m of their own revenue, eh Jeff

And just what has the naughty NYT said - well, they are alleging that Craigslist just might be playing the whole thing for PR, the cads, and may not really be serious about shutting it down - like they did last time (and did we mention the $44m):

Craigslist, by shutting off its “adult services” section and slapping a “censored” label in its place, may be engaging in a high-stakes stunt to influence public opinion, some analysts say.

........

Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, was more skeptical about Craigslist’s intentions. “Certainly because of the way they did it,” she said, “it leaves an open question as to whether this is truly the end of adult services on Craigslist or if this is just a continuing battle.”

For a site that prides itself on being a neighborly town square, Craigslist has been increasingly pugnacious in response to its critics.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist’s chief executive, has written screeds on the company blog explaining and defending Craigslist’s efforts to combat sex crimes, including manually screening sex ads and meeting with advocacy groups.

So there you have it, gentle reader - and if it all seems a mite po faced and puffed up to you - the bloggage, I mean (The basic issue is simple - do the US citizenry want, or not want, their biggest online classifieds website to pimp pro gals, and that will be fought in court, and as the NYT points out the law is currently on craiglist's side) then I think you are right - as the great philosopher Tom Lehrer noted the last time this came round in the 1960's:

Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of Freedom of Speech and stifling of free expression and so on, but we know what's really involved: dirty books [Ads] are fun. That's all there is to it. but you can't get up in a court and say that I suppose. it's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the constitution unfortunately.

His manifesto on the subject, "Smut", is sung in the Tom Lehrer youtube vid at the top. Pretty much says all you need to know on the subject. (As he points out, in teh 1960's the Supreme Court protected the right to publish, well, smut.)

* Those naughty Germans are after Google because they were sniffing WiFi data without telling anyone, and nor are Google collaborating in removing people's data according to EU data protection law. These are things that Europeans unreasonably think might be a bit Evil (as opposed to Disruptive)

Update - I would like to say Danah Boyd has written a marvellously insightful piece on the subject, but I can't get past the issue that she calls craigslist an ISP. And its in HuffPo.

Must say I am enjoying the Pronouncements of Chairman Schmidt, we have been following them ever since the Repeal of Privacy:

"if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"

......last year. This is of course the same Google that refused to speak to CNET journalists for months after they published stuff about Schmidt - obtained from Google searches. And then there was the contretemps about a certain lady.

More recently there were the glorious pronouncements on serendipity being calculatable, and various other things.

But now, we have two more - firstly, the removal of free will with a free (albeit Ad supported) algorithm:

"We're still happy to be in search, believe me," Schmidt told the Journal. "But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type....I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Secondly, the best way to avoid the Googleworld of zero privacy is:

that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.

I haven't changed my name yet - but I have changed my router ID and WiFi net name to confuse those snooping little StreetSneaks. Next step is camo-netting and WW2 false building to confuse Google Earth....

Personally I favour legislation telling Google to cull the data after a while instead, as the EU proposes. But my favourite is:

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he says

They do actually - its called the Singularity - its when all that stuff happens, and you plug your brain into the matrix, and it knows serendipitously what you want next.

But what the Singularity lot don't realise, as they march off to their next Great Mind Meld, is that Google is planning on running it. Well, what other logical conclusion can you take from these pearls?

You heard it here first.......

Update - never mind Google, watch your Soap Powder (hat tip @socialtechno)

Yet another early Facebook stakeholder has crawled out the woodpile, this time claiming 50% of The Face Book - SAI:

The first transaction, which appears undisputed at this point, covers web-development work Mark was to perform for a Paul Ceglia company called StreetFax. No issue there.

The SECOND transaction (and this is the key part) calls for Paul to PURCHASE (yes, it says "purchase") a 50% interest in a project that Mark is already working on--an online yearbook for Harvard students known as "The Face Book". There are also penalties for late completion that increase this ownership percentage over time.

The reference to "The Face Book" transaction is repeated many times, in separate sections of the contract.

As SAI is quick to point out, there are a few things that need sorting first:

Where is the original contract (and has a judge seen it)?

The document we have all now seen appears to be an electronic copy of paper-based contract. Electronic documents are vastly easier to forge or doctor than paper-based documents. The first order of business, therefore, is for both parties to examine the original contract to assess whether it is genuine. This analysis will eventually likely include ink testing and other forensic analysis.

Why did Paul Ceglia wait 7 years to make this claim?

Facebook's vast value has hardly been a secret for the past few years. In 2007, Microsoft invested in the company at a valuation of $15 billion. It seems beyond bizarre that, if Paul Ceglia remembered this contract existed, he would wait until now to file this lawsuit. The most plausible explanation might be that he forgot about the contract and then stumbled upon it. But "why now?" would seem a simple and reasonable question for him to answer, especially in light of the fact that he and his wife were arrested for grand larceny last year for allegedly defrauding customers of his wood-pellet company. (That doesn't mean he's guilty of defrauding customers or that he's now trying to defraud Facebook, but it certainly makes this a reasonable question.)

Where is the payment-trail evidence?

If Paul Ceglia gave Mark Zuckerberg $1,000 to fund "The Face Book" in exchange for 50% ownership in the entity, there is presumably a simple payment trail we can follow that proves this. This would take the form of a canceled check, perhaps, or a wire transfer. It is presumably possible that Ceglia made the payment in cash, but this would be highly unusual, even for a payment this small (normally, when you make an investment in a company, you WANT a payment trail).

In other words it is pretty clear cut that we don't know enough yet to know if the document is genuine, never mind whether there is a case or not. Of course this hasn't stopped every TV and Blog lawyer (and non lawyers) jumping on the bandwagon.

However, two things that do make this curiously more credible:

(i) This is not the first time Mark Zuckerberg has paid other people who claimed similar, (in a strictly no-fault way you understand)

(ii) So far the strongest denial from Camp Zuckerberg has been that "I think we were quite sure that we did not sign a contract that says that they have any right to ownership over Facebook,"

Being non-lawyers and not on TV, as yet we refuse to prognosticate on the validity of the document. But on past form, we're offering 3/2 odds on a payoff

The Faebook Story - its somethin you just couldn't make up - no one would believe it!

Researchers at the Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Sciences, along with researchers from Harvard Medical School, set out to determine how happy or sad Americans are at different times of the day and week by looking at happiness indices implied in Twts - NYT

Some of the results are more obvious than others. For example, during the workweek people are happier in the early morning and late evening, before and after the daily grind.

Researchers also observed interesting geographic results. People sending Twitter messages on the West Coast seem happier “in a pattern that is consistently three hours behind the East Coast.” Over all, judging from a video the researchers created, when Twitter users are upset, the most negative areas appear to be the middle of the country and the East Coast.

The research also found that people are much happier on weekends; the peak of happiness on Twitter is reached on Sunday mornings. The unhappiest moments are on Thursday evenings, before the last day of the workweek begins.

To visualize the data the research team created maps called cartograms, in which the sizes of states are based on the number of Twitter messages originating from them.

They looked at 300 million twts over a 3 year period. Overall report is over here

As the NYT notes, Twitter is becoming the Digital Anthropological equivalent of Rwanda and Uganda'a Gorillas and Chimpanzees.

I was in South Africa - my home country - last week (hence the lack of posts on Broadstuff). Now, as many of our readers may be aware, there is a small matter of the World Cup in South Africa at the moment. No doubt by now you are inspired by the undoubted current and future (all we have to do is beat France 4-0*....) success of our national team (Bafana Bafana - The Boys! The Boys!) to find their inner South African.

So, here are 10 points that you should memorise so that people will think you are the "Real Thing"

1. Flat Vowels (or Vaals, as we would pronounce it). No self respecting South African will ever use more than one vowel sound to join two consonants, no matter how many letters the word has. And of course if we can dispense with the vowel altogether, even better. So, Yu paak yor cah in the grudge.

2. Rrrrolll Yourrrr Rrrs - you know that Arrrrrr pirate sound you make once a year - well we do it everrry time that a worrrd has an rrr.

3. The glottal acceleration - many of the African languages have clicks etc, we don't use 'em in SA English, but do pronounce some words starting with vowels as if your breath was a sprinter coming out the blocks.

4. Yes is always "Ja" pronounced "Yah", except when its "Yebo".

5. No South African does things "in a minute", or "presently". Everything is done "just now". And we mean everything, except of course the things we will do "now now".

6. In SA to say you could "murder a Bagel" will bring understanding nods - Bagel is the word for a particularly irritating species, the male equivalent of the Jewish Princess, except being Jewish is totally optional. The female equivalent is a Kugel.

7. Being the "Rainbow Nation" there are naturally terms of endearment that the races use for one another - as an interesting experiment you could try randomly calling various fans of the beautiful game "kaffirs", "Klonkies", "goffels", "rockspiders", "rooineks" and see whose face lights up in delight at the realisation that you are "tuning them grief" and thus an opportunity to give you a "snotklap" (look it up) has arisen

8. For going to the Soccer (we call it soccer, not football) matches.....

9 .....ensure you have your Makaraba (hard hat festooned with all the symbols of fandom), take your Vuvuzela (very noisy trumpet), tank up on Dop (booze) before the match and yell Laduma! when your team scores and Eish! (with glottal accelleration) when they hit the post 5 minutes before the end of a 1-1 game.

10. Conversation in the game (when you are not blowing your vuvuzela) can be started with your neighbour by using the all time favourites:

- "The Referee is Blind" translates roughly as "Daai Fokkin Blinne Referee".
- "That gentleman is playacting for a foul" is (roughly) "Fokkin Moffie/Moegoe/Mompara/Mompie"
- "By jove - the referee has handed the South African goalkeeper a red card for an accidental collision, thereby ensuring they lose the game" is untranslateable on family blogs like this....

As to the necessary technology content, SA emains an enigma lght years ahead in many sevices - easpecially mobile ones - yet basics like broadband access and wifi are a rarity

*Sadly France were only beaten by 2-1 by The Boys and Uruguay failed to do the gentlemanly thing and score 4-0 vs Mexico to put Bafana Bafana through. Still, thinking about Bafana Bafana stats - win, draw, loss vs the 9th, 13th and 12th best teams in world is not bad when you're ranked 83rd! And if that fokkin blinne referee hadn't given the red card.....

So, today Israeli Commandos boarded a ship running a blockade into Gaza in international waters and managed to shoot a bunch of the crew who attacked them with chairs and bits of metal. Now this episode raises some fascinating issues - legality of blockade running vs storming a ship in international waters, whether soldiers are the best guys for this sort of thing, the advisability of shooting civilians when the media is watching (remember Sharpeville?), never mind the bigger issues of what is required to run Gaza as a viable state.

So, I was quite curious about what the Social Media scene would do in reaction to these events - to wit, what colour would who paint their avatars? (if previous events are any guide). This one promised to be interesting as its not quite a simple good guys/bad guys story.

On Memeorandum the issues seem to be resolving into two camps throwing stones from their respective high grounds..... but political wonks are known to be that way, and the rational middle ground is always sparsely populated in social media. And so it has proved here - it was only the "quality" Main Stream Media that seemed to make any vague pretence at dispassionate analysis.

Would the Tech crowd would be more sanguine?

No, this time on Techmeme the major obsession seemed to be whether #flotilla (the Twitterstream covering the event) was censored or not when it dropped off the Twitter trending radar*. (The comments resemble memeorandum's stone throwing though.)

This blog aims to be pretty much apolitical, but re social media responses, bear in mind that many pundits believe Social Media is both the New Media and the best way to Government 2.0. May just be me, but I don't think that this episode so far has been a great advert of its capabilities - not exactly wisdom of the crowds at its finest.

To me the big debate is what is required to run something like Gaza as a viable state (or not), and everything follows on from that.

(But while we are getting all social meta, to me the most interesting lesson social media wise was the Israeli Defence force chose to put videos of the event on their website first, rather than waiting for the world's media to distribute it.)

*By the way that's not a criticism of the article, its a critique of the audience......

Queues started down Regent Street outside the Apple store from yesterday afternoon for today's launch.....FT:

....The lengthy queue outside - elongated perhaps by Apple’s policy of allowing buyers in only one at a time - attracted attention from passers by. Not everyone was as excited as those who emerged grinning from the store, one besuited chap calling the people lined up “saddos” while another lady was baffled when she found out what all the fuss was about: “I thought it was something important,” she gasped.

........

Many of the people I spoke to in the line seemed unaware that branches of Currys and PC World were also selling the iPad just a few minutes’ walk away, with no queue. Their face crumpled in anguish as they balanced leaving a queue to which they had already dedicated up to two hours of their morning....

And by tomorrow you'll be able to walk into the Apple store and get one too no doubt.....

Google's Sergey Brin at a press conference, as reported by Search Engine Land

At a press briefing at the Google I/O developers conference today, Google cofounder Sergey Brin didn’t mince words about his company’s accidental collection of wifi data. “We screwed up,” he said.

He was asked about the incident, where last week Google admitted it accidentally gathered data from private wifi networks around the world over the past three years.

“We screwed up, and I’m not making excuses about it,” Brin said.

He went on to say that while Google did have internal contols in place, the mistake “obviously” meant more needed to be done, and that more tools would be put in place.

“Trust is very important to us, and we’re going to do everything we can to preserve it,” he said.

"Accidentally" gathering data for 3 years? These are not dumb people, one assumes that after a few weeks it was clear what was happening and they could have decided to stop. Or even not have had WiFi sniffers in the cars in the first place. Or turned them off so they didn't pull data off people's WiFi. Or told people when they knew and immediately deleted that data. Thats's the sort of thing a "don't be Evil" company would do, you'd of thought.

No, we have to wait 3 years before the news comes out, by accident, it is initially denied, and then only when the various regulatory agencies get involved do they promise to delete it. I think that should be prevented, as I'd be fascinated to see what they were up to.