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Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are ‘Suspicious.’ – Forbes
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Facebook, Social Media, WTF on August 7, 2012
Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are ‘Suspicious.’
The term “Crackberry” seems silly today — and not just because consumers OD’ed on Blackberry and moved on to iDealers. The term arose in an earlier “aughts” time when Blackberry dominated the smartphone market and lawyers and execs were nearly the only ones who had them, due to their need to be able to respond to email immediately. Things have changed. Now we all need to be able to respond to email immediately. And to tweet. And to instantly share our photos onFacebook. We’re all addicted to technology now, and not just to the Blackberry. We’re “addicted” to our iPhones, and Facebook, and Twitter, and Android, and Pinterest, and iPads, and Word with Friends, and fill-in-the-blank-with-your-digital-dope-of-choice.
The sudden and dramatic advent of social-media-enabling technologies into our lives seems to be causing some mid-digital-life crises. Not only has Silicon Valley developed a guilty conscience about addicting us to screens, we the users are starting to question how technology is changing us: making us fat, making us unhealthy, making us depressed, making us lonely, making us narcissistic, and making us waste time worrying about whether it’s making us fat, unhealthy, depressed, narcissistic and/or lonely. That’s leading some users to consider abandoning the whole enterprise. My colleague Haydn Shaughnessy gave up his smartphone last year. Now, inspired by the example of former Facebooker Katherine Losse, he’s considering giving up Facebook.
I am writing with some words of caution. I used to say that “if you’re not on Facebook, it’s possible you don’t actually exist.” I think it’s time to update that, courtesy of Slashdot: Facebook abstainers will be labeled suspicious.
Slashdot flagged a German news story in which an expert noted that mass murderers Anders Breivik and James Holmes both lacked much of a social media presence, leading to the conclusion, in Slashdot’s phrasing, that “not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer.”
That’s a tad extreme, but I’m seeing the suggestion more and more often that a missing Facebook account raises red flags. After a woman found out via Facebook that a man who’d ‘poked’ her in real life had a long term girlfriend, she turned to digital manners advice givers Farhad Manjoo and Emily Yoffe of Slate to ask whether she should tell the girlfriend. They said she should and then went on a digression about transparent romances in the age of Facebook:
Farhad: I think we’ve mentioned it before that if you are going out with someone and they don’t have a Facebook profile, you should be suspicious.
Emily: Wait a minute. You may have mentioned that.
Farhad: I think I’ve recommended that. You know why, though? Imagine if this guy didn’t have a Facebook profile. That’s why. You should be suspicious of someone who is not making your relationship known publicly on a site like Facebook. I’m going to go on record with that.
Emily: I’m fine with people not having a Facebook page if they don’t want one. However, I think you’re right. If you’re of a certain age and you meet someone who you are about to go to bed with, and that person doesn’t have a Facebook page, you may be getting a false name. It could be some kind of red flag.
It’s not just love seekers who worry about what the lack of a Facebook account means. Anecdotally, I’ve heard both job seekers and employers wonder aloud about what it means if a job candidate doesn’t have a Facebook account. Does it mean they deactivated it because it was full of red flags? Are they hiding something?
The idea that a Facebook resister is a potential mass murderer, flaky employee, and/or person who struggles with fidelity is obviously flawed. There are people who choose not to be Facebookers for myriad non-psychopathic reasons: because they find it too addictive, or because they hold their privacy dear, or because they don’t actually want to know what their old high school buddies are up to. My own boyfriend isn’t on Facebook and I don’t hold it against him (too much).
But it does seem that increasingly, it’s expected that everyone is on Facebook in some capacity, and that a negative assumption is starting to arise about those who reject the Big Blue Giant’s siren call. Continuing to navigate life without having this digital form of identification may be like trying to get into a bar without a driver’s license.
Case in point: Katherine Losse, the ex-Facebook employee that quit the company and the social network after cashing in her stock options, and who inspired my colleague to consider UnFacebooking, couldn’t stay off Facebook for long. She wound up opening a new account.
“You can’t get away from it. It’s everything. It’s everywhere,” she told the Washington Post. “The moment we’re in now is about trying to deal with all this technology rather than rejecting it, because obviously we can’t reject it entirely.”
Well, you can, but it might lead to your being rejected down the line too.
Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are ‘Suspicious.’ – Forbes.
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New law will make sex offenders list their conviction statuses on Facebook, Twitter | VentureBeat
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Big Brother, Law, Legal, Legislation, Social Media, Society on June 22, 2012
New law will make sex offenders list their conviction statuses on Facebook, Twitter
June 21, 2012
Sex crimes may soon be a lot harder to keep secret for social network users in Louisiana.
A new law, which goes into effect August 1, will require that sex offenders clearly state their criminal status on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, CNN reports.
In addition to their criminal status, the law also requires sex offenders and child predators to include the location and description of their crimes, as well as their physical characteristics and addresses.
Sex offender registration laws are nothing new, as many states already require sex offenders to publicly list their locations. These can then be accessed on online databases, many of which also feature detailed map information. The new law, however, takes these measures a step further.
Facebook, however, already bars convicted sex offenders from using the service. ”You will not use Facebook if you are a convicted sex offender,” reads the company’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If Facebook learns that a user is a convicted sex offender, it will disable the user’s account and remove all data associated with it.
There’s no equivalent clause in the Terms of Service for Twitter and Pinterest, though.
So what’s the point of the new law? Louisiana state representative Jeff Thompson says the measure offers a new tool for prosecutors. ”I don’t want to leave in the hands of social network or Facebook administrators, ‘Gee, I hope someone is telling the truth,’” he told CNN.
Sex offenders found violating the law could face imprisonment of up to 10 years, along with a fine of up to $1,000. A second offense could result in a maximum of 20 years in jail and a $3,000 fine.
The law is a follow-up to a failed Louisiana measure that sought to completely prevent convicted sex offenders from using the Internet. That law was shot down by a federal court for being too broad, not to mention a civil rights violation, according to American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana
New law will make sex offenders list their conviction statuses on Facebook, Twitter | VentureBeat.
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The Creep of Social Media Raises Big Questions – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Social Media on June 20, 2012
The Creep of Social Media Raises Big Questions
JUNE 20, 2012
Sherry Turkle is the author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.” She is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé professor of the social studies of science and technology at M.I.T.
Social media won’t get less attractive the longer they exist. But we will learn how to use them more wisely. Right now, we’re smitten and look away from problems; we behave like young lovers who are afraid that too much talking will spoil the romance. As we grow into a more mature relationship, we’ll find time to talk. I see at least three necessary conversations.
We grew up with social media and tend to think of them as all grown up. But in fact, we are in early days.
First, both in our personal and work lives, social media make it easy for us to hide from each other, even as we are constantly connected to each other. We’d rather text than talk, we’d rather post online than meet face-to-face. But online, we end up performing for each other, putting forth the self we want to be. With friends, we share what is easy to share. At work, we don’t like to archive false starts and missteps. So in many cases, we make it harder to learn from each other and mentor each other.
Hiding from each other has some costs for grownups. For children, those costs multiply. Recently, we have been presented with the suggestion that Facebook may be offered to children under 13. But on social media, children don’t learn negotiation skills, how to read a face, how to put themselves in the place of another, how to apologize and, most striking, the difference between an apology and saying you’re sorry. As more mature consumers of social media, we’ll want to talk about all of this.
Second, social media increase the volume and velocity of connections to a point where communicating in anything but online postings seems almost impossible. We demand immediate answers and are willing to ask simple questions to get them. We come to measure success by e-mails answered, connections made, posts responded to. We become transactional and reactive. This is not good for productivity or creativity. We’ll want to talk about this.
And finally, we will ask two other questions of social media, now becoming increasingly urgent: What is democracy without privacy? What is intimacy without privacy? We grew up with social media and so we tend to think of them as all grown up. But in fact, we are in early days. There is plenty of time to change how we build and use these media. We are not going to turn away from them. But we will better align social media to our human purposes, and they will have helped us clarify what these are.
The Creep of Social Media Raises Big Questions – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.
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The next consumerization revolution: Your personal data | Consumerization Of It – InfoWorld
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Privacy, Security, Social, Society on June 16, 2012
JUNE 15, 2012
The next consumerization revolution: Your personal data
Privacy groups want to lock away your personal data. A better option is to let you sell it for what it’s really worth
By Galen Gruman | InfoWorld
When Facebook’s much-vaunted IPO fell flat a couple weeks ago, conventional wisdom said the dot-commers’ belief that almost any online business can make billions through advertising was not a realistic business model after all. Advertising fees online trail those of other media, and multiple studies show that when people are engaged in social networks, they tune out ads precisely because they are so focused on their interactions.
The conventional wisdom is right, but not complete. I believe that in the next two or three years, an even more fundamental assumption about these businesses will be turned on its head. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google Drive, or Pinterest, the truth is the product is you — all that data about you used to target ads and sales pitches. It’s hardly a new business model — it’s how trade publications have made their money for decades — but in the online world all that information is easily stolen, traded, and spread. Yes, I’m talking about the issue of Internet privacy, though Silicon Valley remains tone-deaf to the topic.
You’re giving away what’s valuable about you
Right now, users give away valuable information about themselves. Sometimes they get something of real value in return, but most online businesses give away worthless “value” dressed up using gamification techniques. Klout, I’m looking at you.
As we see more data breaches and grosser levels of disrespect for user privacy, I suspect the public will start to realize they’re being had. And as they’ve learned they can do in other venues, they’ll take charge.
The pieces are out there to create a data brokerage that pays you
I fully expect to see services pop up that act as personal-data brokers, giving users a cut of the money made from their personal information — the data users explicitly choose to share, not what is gathered about them sneakily. Again, this business model has long existed, but not in a way that allows individuals to participate in the proceeds.
Companies such as Amazon.com and Rakuten (better known by its LinkShare brand) already have similar businesses based on giving users a cut of sales from their product referrals. The tracking and payment platforms are in place, as are the reach and trust in Amazon’s case. A company such as R.R. Donnelley, which handles about half the junk mail (postal and online) in the United States and microtargets it based on your available data, would be a natural in this business as well, though it would need to create a brand from cloth.
Apple’s forthcoming Passbook service in iOS 6 could also be a foundation for your personal data portfolio — imagine if Apple lets you use your iCloud or iTunes ID as a universal ID, tied into your payments and Passbook accounts. Apple’s track record of empowering users over their personal data is better than most, and it has the reach to be a common ID/data vault, especially given how much personal data you already entrust to it via iTunes and iCloud.
Users are already choosing Facebook as a central ID across websites (never mind that Facebook is a terrible steward of your data). That could easily become not just an ID but a personal information vault that Facebook also sells — without paying you or even worrying about what you want shared. There’s also of course OpenID. Many of the pieces are in place, just scattered.
The telecom carriers are interested in such a role as well, though they’ve focused mainly on back-end services to enable secured digital identities. They keep looking for ways to get into new markets and have dallied with payment systems, app stores, and other services for years, though I wouldn’t trust any of them to be an honest broker.
As you can tell, I don’t see the personal privacy issue the same way the advocacy groups do. The information is out there and will stay out there — the very act of digitization means the data is easily shared, manipulated, and used. That genie can’t return to the bottle as the privacy groups demand.
Instead, I see the issue as a business proposition. If the data has value — and we know it does — its creators (you and me) should be paid for it. And if we take over the selling of our data, all those companies using it now have to respect us and abide by our standards. Currently, we’re a free resource to mine whether we like it or not; we’re the Indians trading trinkets to the Dutch for Manhattan. That didn’t work out well for the Indians, did it?
I’m all for bartering personal information for valuable services — heck, that’s how InfoWorld makes the money to pay me and the rest of the team — but too much of that “value” proffered has no value. As users opened up the corporate technology tool chest with BYOD, they too will open up the business of making money from their own data. The companies buying it will also be more likely to safeguard it, because we won’t sell to those that don’t; if they let it get loose through sloppiness, they essentially end up subsidizing their competitors. The free market can be our friend in protecting our personal information.
To help that day come sooner, assess the sites you’ve signed up for and unsubscribe from those whose value is tiny. Remember, they’re making hundreds of dollars or more a year from your information. If you’re not getting that much value back, cut them off. That way, you use economic pressure to steer the market in a better direction. It worked with the major banks’ attempts to gouge debit card fees from all of us to recoup the losses they created. It can work again.
The next consumerization revolution: Your personal data | Consumerization Of It – InfoWorld.
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More Start-Ups Join the $1 Billion Club of Valuations – WSJ.com
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Perspective, Wall Street on May 18, 2012
May 17, 2012
The $1 Billion Club Gets Crowded
Pinterest Is Latest Start-Up Hitting Rich Valuation; Venture Activity Rivals Dot-Com Boom Days
By PUI-WING TAM
The coveted club of Silicon Valley start-ups worth a billion dollars is quickly losing its exclusivity.
At least 20 closely held U.S. companies backed by venture capital are now valued at $1 billion or more, including the latest inductee, Pinterest. The online scrapbooking start-up, which launched in 2009, this week raised $100 million in capital at a $1.5 billion valuation despite having little revenue and no profits.
Today’s membership exceeds even that during the frothy days of the late 1990s dot-com bubble, when 18 such start-ups scored a $1 billion-or-higher price tag, according to an analysis by Dow Jones VentureSource.
Most of the valuation frenzy has unfolded only recently. Since the beginning of last year, 15 start-ups have landed 10-figure valuations. Only two weeks ago, note-taking app maker Evernote Corp. hit the milestone. “We weren’t chasing valuation but we had offers for significantly above $1 billion,” said Phil Libin, Evernote’s chief executive.
The billion-dollar list now excludes Facebook Inc., FB +6.03% which on Friday is set to become a publicly traded company, valued at north of $100 billion. But it does include a large share of high-flying Web players such as file-sharing company Dropbox Inc. and room-rental provider Airbnb Inc., as well as a few lesser-known start-ups such as e-commerce platform company Rearden Commerce Inc. and business software maker Workday Inc.
“Everyone thinks they’re in Lake Wobegon,” said Venky Ganesan, a venture capitalist at Globespan Capital Partners, referring to the Garrison Keillor novel about the fictional town “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” In Silicon Valley these days, “everyone thinks they’re smarter than the average” in making some of these big start-up bets, he said.
Betting Big in the Boom Era
Of the private U.S. companies valued by venture capitalists at $1 billion or more from 1999 to 2000, only a handful still exist.
Akamai Technologies – Publicly traded
@Home – Merged with Excite in 1999, then went bankrupt in 2001
Cereva Networks – Closed in 2002
Chorum Technologies – Went out of business
Corvis – Bought by Broadwing for $91 million in 2003
CoSine Communications – Trades on the Pink Sheets
eToys – Went bankrupt in 2001
Foundries Holdings – Went out of business
Internet Brands Inc. – Taken private in a $640 million buyout in 2010
IPG Photonics – Publicly traded
ONI Systems – Acquired by Ciena in 2002 for $900 million in stock.
Procket Networks – Sold assets to Cisco Systems for $89 million in 2004
StorageNetworks – Liquidated in 2003
Tellium – Acquired by Zhone Technologies in 2003
Tellme Networks – Bought by Microsoft for $800 million in 2007
TradeOut.com – Went out of business
Webvan – Went out of business
Zhone Technologies – Publicly traded
The valuation frenzy is being driven by investors’ desires to find the next big hit a la Facebook, and a belief that this time it’s different with the new generation of Web companies. Many of the start-ups are experiencing strong growth—generally with users and sometimes also with their revenue—and are benefiting from a confluence of tech trends such as social media and mobile technologies that give these companies huge audiences.
In his own venture firm’s analysis of the billion-dollar club, Mr. Ganesan said the pipeline of 20 or so closely held companies is almost equal to the number of publicly traded Internet companies with market capitalizations of more than $1 billion, which he counts at 23.
“Can we really double the number of Internet companies that have over a $1 billion market cap?” Mr. Ganesan asks. “That feels statistically hard.”
The swelling number of billion-dollar club start-ups shows how frothy and murky private-company valuations have become. While public market valuations are typically a function of a consensus between many buyers, in private-company financings it takes only one deep-pocketed investor who is willing to pay up to set the price.
In Pinterest’s case, investors had virtually no revenue to base their valuation on, but they were enamored with the site’s surging user-growth rates. Pinterest reached 20 million unique visitors to its site last month, up from around 1 million in July 2011, according to comScore Inc., which has called it one of the fastest-growing standalone sites it has tracked.
Last month, mobile photo-sharing app maker Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. Instagram has no revenue but only 18 months since its launch its user base grew to about 30 million people.
Many of today’s billion-dollar club members do differ from their dot-com brethren in that they generate revenue, and spend far less cash than Web companies a decade ago. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, for example, has said the San Francisco company is profitable even though a minority of its users pay fees to store large amounts of files.
How many of these billion-dollar companies will ultimately lead to big profits, however, is unclear. In the dot-com bubble, many billion-dollar companies —such as online grocer Webvan and online toy seller eToys—famously flamed out.
More recently, social games maker Zynga Inc. ZNGA -12.64% was valued at around $14 billion in private-market transactions before it went public last December at around a $9 billion valuation. It now has a market capitalization of about $6 billion.
But if any of these start-ups turn out to be the next Facebook, which is set to produce some of the biggest-ever returns for venture capitalists, any losses on other start-up bets will be quickly papered over. Venture capital firm Accel Partners, which took a chance on Facebook in 2005 with a $12.7 million bet, now holds a stake valued at $7.7 billion.
One effect of so many billion-dollar club members is that it drives up start-up prices everywhere. Earlier this week, Quora Inc., a question-and-answer site started by two of Facebook’s earliest employees, raised a new financing valuing it at $400 million, up from around $86 million two years ago, said people familiar with the matter.
The problem is, everyone looks at a $1 billion financing “and says that’s the price for their company,” said Gary Little, a venture capitalist at Morgenthaler Ventures, which invested $8 million in Evernote in 2009. “In heady times, it does raise valuations across the board.”
“We all worry about this,” added David York, CEO of Top Tier Capital Partners, a San Francisco firm that invests in venture-capital funds. “Some of [these bets] are working so it’s hard to completely throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s on the one hand, on the other hand.”
Entrepreneurs say taking a $1 billion valuation is just good business because it builds up a war chest of cash.
Evernote’s Mr. Libin, who has presided over the company as its user base has jumped to more than 30 million from six million in January 2011, said his start-up’s financing round earlier this month was the start of the firm’s IPO planning.
“As CEO of Evernote, I don’t care whether there’s a bubble or not,” he said. “What we want is to make sure we’re isolated from market forces and bubble dynamics and that we’ve got the resources to get through it.”
More Start-Ups Join the $1 Billion Club of Valuations – WSJ.com.
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