Confusion

5 Basic Things to Consider Before Moving Your Startup to the Cloud —

Although by no means a new technology, cloud computing retains the buzz as one of the latest innovative - and potentially transformative - elements of the industry. But there remains quite a bit of confusion about what exactly is meant by cloud computing, often making the question of whether or not your startup should be in the cloud difficult to answer.

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Should you move (or launch) your startup into the cloud? Proponents of cloud computing will likely tell you unequivocally "yes." more entrenched IT forces may respond with an unequivocal "no."

Cloud Computing: Quick Definitions

There are three main categories of cloud computing.

Software as a Service (Saas): the most common use of the cloud, SaaS is also known as "software on demand." rather than downloading and running software locally, customers access the software via the Internet.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): As the name suggests, PaaS involves the delivery of a computer platform, with the ability to develop and deploy websites and services via the Internet.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): IaaS provides all the basic computing building blocks, but is the most complex choice. This does allow you build your platform and your services.

Five Things to Consider Before Moving to the Cloud

1. Your Needs: Just as you would have to assess your computing needs out of the cloud, moving to the cloud requires some planning. Do you need a provider that offers a lot of flexibility? What are your performance and availability expectations? Will you need additional support and services?

2. Your Budget Although you will save money by avoiding hardware investment, hosting for the cloud is not necessarily cheaper. As the cloud treats computing like a utility, you are billed as such: depending on your usage.

3. Scalability and Flexibility Although cloud computing makes scaling easier, the ability to launch new, larger servers (or shrink to smaller instances)

4. Security Security may be one of the main arguments naysayers make against the cloud, with fears that co-location in the cloud is more of a threat than co-located hardware in the server room.

5. Backup Nothing is foolproof, and simply because you're in the cloud does not mean you should forgo backups.

Despite the promise that cloud computing holds, you shouldn't go into the decision naively (just as, hopefully, you wouldn't make the same decision to buy a bunch of hardware without thorough research).

Alex Iskold, founder and CEO of GetGlue and contributing writer here at rww has a good slideshare on his experiences with the cloud.

For ongoing and more in-depth cloud coverage, check out ReadWriteWeb's cloud computing channel, ReadWriteCloud.

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The ability to multitask got a lot of press when iPhone 4.0 OS was first announced. But less attention was given to some of the more subtle things this will allow, such as always-on location for third-party apps. This feature could actually make a service like Google Latitude useful on the device. So it’s coming, right? Maybe.

I asked Google senior product manager Steve Lee (who is in charge of Latitude) whether Google would build a native app for the iPhone now that it includes background location. “From the start, we’ve made Latitude available across platforms. Supporting iPhone with a great Latitude user experience is extremely important to us, and we’re evaluating the best way to deliver that on iPhone OS 4.0 now, so we don’t have anything to announce just yet,” Lee answer (emphasis his).

Latitude has been available for the iPhone since July of last year — but it is only available as an HTML5 app, not a native app. This makes it pretty useless since you would have to have your web browser open to this page at all times for Latitude to work the web it should — which is all the time. So why didn’t Google release it as a native app? Well, the obvious answer would be that there wasn’t the ability to update location in the background on the iPhone previously, so it didn’t really matter if it was a native app or a web app. But actually it’s more complicated than that.

Back in July, Google actually noted why it was doing Latitude as a web app vs. a native app:

We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.

At the time, that sounded a little odd to me. After all, there are plenty of other apps that use maps. I wondered if it really meant that Apple was planning on baking this feature into their own Maps app on the iPhone (which was built with the help of Google). But looking back now, it’s likely much more complicated. This was right before it was revealed that Apple rejected the Google Voice app on the grounds that it would confuse iPhone users, or access information on the phone, or something.

The Latitude situation was just the first shot in what is now a full-fledged war between the two companies.

Long story short, even if Google wants to build a native Latitude app for the iPhone (as they said they did before), Apple may or may not allow it.

Let’s hope they do. Because with the new Location History features, and APIs, it could be awesome. And it could push passive location into the spotlight.

If you’re using Twitter’s Search API via the api.twitter.com sub-domain, you have a week to switch to search.twitter.com, according to a post from Twitter’s Taylor Singletary. The endpoint being removed has not been officially supported by Twitter, though other supported calls use the same sub-domain.

Singletary writes:

The only endpoint you should be using for search operations in the Twitter
API today is http://search.twitter.com — it doesn’t require user
authentication or OAuth — simply identify yourself with a user-agent that
is unique to your application.

It’s important to note that Twitter is not taking away any functionality from its API. It is merely making clear what could be potentially confusing to developers. Twitter’s main API for authenticated commands, such as fetching timeline data and creating new tweets, will continue to be operational on api.twitter.com. The change only affects developers using the search API from the unsupported sub-domain. The confusion could have come when Twitter moved to a versioned API, because the search API is not versioned.

Singletary also had some good developer tips for making the best use of the Search API:

Many users of the Search API are better served by using the Streaming API.
If you use the search API to track the tweets of specific users, hashtags,
or simple keyword queries, it is highly recommended that you use the
Streaming API instead.

You shouldn’t issue the same request to the search API more frequently than
once every 20 seconds — if you issue the same query more frequently than
that, you’re in danger of getting blacklisted. In addition, if you find
yourself repeating the same query frequently, be sure and make use of the
since_id parameter on subsequent requests — without it, you put undue
stress on the search infrastructure and will also be in danger of
blacklisting.

The Search API is bound to put significant stress on Twitter’s servers. That’s likely the biggest reason for having search on its own sub-domain. Engineers are able to have search servers tuned to its specific needs, without needing to support the authenticated calls.

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The easy comments on shared items feature is a GREAT addition to reader. If you're a buzz user, this will make life a lot better.

Springtime is a great opportunity to clean up, take care of loose ends, and generally spruce things up. Since we still have a few weeks of spring left, the Reader team is taking this opportunity to clean things up a bit.

Simplifying comments

Ever since we launched support for comments on shared items, one of the most frequent points of confusion has been "who can comment on my shared items?" (or rather, "why can't I comment on my friends' shared items?"). Up until now, someone had to be in a designated sharing group to be able to comment on a post, even if you were sharing publicly. To make things a lot simpler, we've made it so that if you can see a shared item, you can comment on it.

For those of you who are sharing publicly, the next time you log in to Reader you'll get a choice between continuing to share publicly and allowing anyone to comment on your shared items, or switching to protected sharing:

Nothing will change for users who already had their shared items protected, since visibility and commenting for their shared items was already consistent. Keep in mind that you can always update who can view and comment on your shared items on the sharing settings page.

Phasing out support for older browsers

Reader is joining Docs (and many other sites) in removing support for older browsers, notably Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1.0 and 2.0, Safari 2.0 and 3.0, and Chrome 1.0, 2.0. and 3.0. Reader is a cutting edge web application, and this will allow us to spend our time improving Reader instead of fixing issues with antiquated browsers. Starting on June 1, users of older browsers will begin to see a notification encouraging them to upgrade to any of Reader’s supported browsers.

Discontinuing offline access via Gears

We launched offline support three years ago, but only a minority of Reader users actively use it today. Because supporting offline access requires a large ongoing engineering effort, and because Gears itself is being surpassed by HTML5, we've decided to remove offline support in Reader starting on June 1.

Of course, we know that offline access is important to some of you, and with the wide range of third party clients that sync with Google Reader, you don’t need to give it up. Depending on your operating system, we recommend taking a look at:

• NetNewsWire (Mac OS X)
• FeedDemon (Windows)
• Liferea (Linux)

Each of these alternatives will sync your subscriptions and read state with Reader, and continue to provide offline access to your feeds. For more information, please see our help center.

We realize that removing features and support is not easy, but with this spring cleaning done, we've laid the groundwork for more Reader improvements down the line. We apologize for any inconvenience, and if you have any questions please head over to our forum, or message us on Twitter.

Yammer has decided that they are going to go down the old Basecamp path, and force people who work with different companies to have separate logins:

via email

Dear Stowe,

We want to make you aware of a change to Yammer that will have an impact on you. You currently have more than one email address registered to your Yammer account. We've decided to move to a one-email-per-account model. This means that we will soon remove secondary email address(es) from your account.

Why are we doing this?

As Yammer evaluates its plans for future product features, we've realized that allowing users to have more than one email address linked to their account could result in potential problems. For example, admins from different networks might seek to apply conflicting settings to an account which is in both networks. There could also be confusion between work and personal Yammer accounts. We believe that cleanly separating Yammer accounts based on one email address per account is the best way to avoid these problems from occurring in the future.

How does this affect you?

• We will create a separate Yammer account for each of the following company email addresses that you have: stowe@js-kit.com and stowe@ninety10group.com
• When you want to switch between these Yammer accounts you must first log out and then log in with one of your other email addresses.
• Your same password will be securely copied to each of your new accounts.
• Soon, our desktop and iPhone applications will allow you to be logged into more than one account at the same time. Just register each account on the application and you will be able to toggle between accounts.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact help@yammer.com

We appreciate your patience, and apologize for any inconvenience that this change causes you.

 

Thanks for using Yammer,

The Yammer Team

 

This is a particularly bad move. First of all, it will lead to the same Federation of Work problems that I wrote about years ago vis-a-vis Basecamp:

Basecamp and The Federation Of Work

I have run up against what I think is a basic flaw in the Basecamp model.

Many times in the past few months, I have started a project up with a group, or groups, who like me are already using Basecamp. The problem that arises: Whose Basecamp implementation to use?

I would, of course, rather manage projects that I am involved with in my own Basecamp instance, while the others have the same perspective. But what happens, quickly, is that I have a bunch of memberships in other Basecamp projects, which do not collate into a coherent single view.

What's missing is a fundamental insight: the federation of work.

Basecamp lacks the notion of federating project work. While I can invite my pal, Greg Narain, to join a project I am running, Basecamp is only willing to consider Greg as another individual, not as the owner of his own Basecamp instance. As a result, Greg must login to my instance to participate, and the status of the project does not show up on his dashboard.

The solution? 37 Signals should rework their participation model to reflect their new-found success: there are thousands of Basecamp users out there, and more of us will be running into this limitation. More important, perhaps, is that a federated model more accurately reflects the nature of the world. I am involved in a dozen or so projects, and I would like to have a single, coherent view of what's going on across the board, as do all over my partners-in-crime.

Certainly, a single company still needs to be the administrator for each Basecamp project, but that doesn't mean that we need to login at ten different instances everyday.

Basecamp should look at the federation model of Jabber and other successful bottom-up, federated tools. Within Jabber, I can login to my local server, and IM with any other trusted server in the world. The servers simply have to establish a trust relationship. In the Basecamp world, I should be able to invite Greg to participate in a project, and when he agrees, he should be able to simply point at his own Basecamp instance, rather than having to create a brand new, easily forgotten login.

At any rate, Jason and company are well-known for rejecting new features, but this is more than that, this is a fundamental need that should have been forseen from the start. And, in a way, it's just another indicator of the success that the product enjoys.

When I wrote that in March 2006 it led to an argument with Jason Fried of 37signals, who basically said I was an edge case. I pointed out that success would lead to more of this sort of use -- individuals working with many project groups in many companies. I said he would have to fix this falw, and years later they hacked an afterthought onto Basecamp to make it easier to switch accounts.

Yammer is headed down the sam cul-de-sac. This is a bad move, and one that irks me personally since I sketched out a vision of federated businesses collaborating through Yammer a year ago to the CEO, David Sachs. Obviously, I didn't make the case persuasively enough.

Consider this idea. Imagine tens of thousands of companies that are managing work using a service like Yammer. Imagine if a company, AdjectiveNoun, could post a request for proposal, and distribute that to all companies and individuals that are following the company. Responses to the RFP could be directed to a defined context in AdjectiveNoun's Yammer implementation, and would be streamed to AdjectiveNoun staff.

I think this is a breakthrough idea, and the first company to do this well will explode.

But you can't get there without a federated model of work, and a global namespace. So Yammer is going to ultimately unjigger this mess they are creating. Probably not until some upstart comes along to upset things.

Maybe I'll see one this week at Techcrunch Disrupt, who knows?

Twitter said today that it will no longer allow third-party ads to be injected into users’ Twitter timelines. The ban is particularly interesting given it’s almost exactly what the company’s own recently announced advertising platform, Promoted Tweets, does — insert paid and relevant tweets into timelines (as well as search results pages). Fresh off the heels of developer anger and confusion over Twitter’s unexpected efforts to launch and acquire mobile clients last months, the news was carefully laid out in a long blog post by Twitter COO Dick Costolo.

To be clear, Twitter will continue to allow developers to display ads around user timelines. And further, many developers already don’t include ads within streams, knowing that Twitter monetization is a touchy and evolving topic, even if the company had not previously formally clarified its stance. Costolo said he expected today’s API terms of service changes to negatively impact “a few” companies. One seeming target: Ad.ly, which bills itself as “an in-stream advertising platform that matches top-tier Twitter publishers with top-tier brands.”

Costolo explained in the blog post that Twitter’s decision hinges on the concept of near-term vs. long-term monetization opportunities (he used some variation of those terms at least nine times). Costolo said Twitter wants to protect user value and the health of its platform, while “Third party ad networks may be optimized for near-term monetization at the expense of innovating or creating the best user experience.”

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, meanwhile, are displayed “in a manner that preserves the integrity and relevance of the timeline,” Costolo said.

Twitter shares half of the revenue collected for Promoted Tweets with developers who display them. Costolo justified that share by saying Twitter pays for maintaining its network, fighting spam, scaling the service, supporting users and paying its staff of 200 (and growing). He said there continue to be opportunities to build on top of Twitter, including “third-party monetization engines,” as well as metadata around tweets, vertical clients, and analytics.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Social Advertising Models Go Back to the Future

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Nearly two years after I said those calling themselves social media experts are going to be as antiquated as those who once called themselves Webmasters, I continue to see confusion at corporate levels on how to engage in social media, and how to make this new world fit as part of their overall strategy. As I have seen in my work with Paladin Advisors Group, there remains a gulf between traditional firms doing traditional things and those who are grasping the new opportunities in social media, devising a strategy and doing the right things at the right times in the right places.

In a quick video, a companion to that from April (The Start of the Connected Decade: Now What?), I once again team up with Ecademy chairman Thomas Power and talk about how I think social media is going to become more integrated in traditional marketing, and that the mystery will fade away. Thomas also expresses a valid point - that those making the most money are often the most disconnected from their customers. He says that should change - and soon.

Privacy online seems to be at the top of everyone’s mind these days. Facebook, Google, and Blippy have all had high-profile privacy lapses in recent weeks — the problem seems to be getting worse, rather than better. Today, Google is starting a new project in an attempt to show their commitment to security — they’re adding SSL encryption to Google.com itself.

Now, to be clear, this isn’t on by default. To use this beta product, you have to visit https://google.com — the “s” is the key there, that’s how you know it’s secure. When you do this, both your search terms and search results will be encrypted as they travel across networks. This makes it much harder for third-parties to intercept them.

Google says it’s not rolling this feature out by default for a couple reasons. First, they don’t want there to be any confusion among Google Search users which parts are secure and which aren’t. This SSL search isn’t yet available for image searches or Maps searches, for example, so even if you do a search on this new site for those items, you’ll be taken to an insecure page of results.

The second reason Google isn’t rolling this out everywhere is that it does hamper the speed of search a bit. Since all this data must be encrypted, it’s delivered to you more slowly. I’ve been testing it out a bit just now, and the lag is barely noticeable, but this is Google — speed is everything.

Google is also fast to note that this does not mean they’re giving up on collecting your search data for these searches. This is simply about encrypting the searches. “Searching over SSL doesn’t reduce the data sent to Google — it only hides that data from third parties who seek it,” they write.

Google has long offered SSL support in Gmail, where the transfer of secure data is obviously seen as more important. In fact, Google made it the standard for Gmail recently — shortly after the pull-out of China, where hacking of email accounts supposedly took place.

Google Wave got a lot of tech press when it was first announced and techies lined up to try and get an early beta invite (myself included) hoping I think to get in on the ground floor of what many hoped would be the next Gmail success. In the time that followed the excitement over what Wave could bring to the table as some new transformative web technology began to fade.

Well at today’s I/O conference Google announced that it was taking the beta tag off of the service and that Wave would be available to anyone with a Google account. One has to wonder though if this new status for Wave will make any difference to the confusion as to what exactly the service is, or will it only become more confusing as more people try it out.

The thing is that for all the really interesting technology behind Wave the service is incredibly hard to describe to people. After all how do you describe something that is a mixture of an instant messenger, email, social network, and collaboration tool to people who think that Facebook is the Web.

During its time as an invite only beta Wave has found some traction as a collaboration tool with people like Chris Brogan singing its praises but from my experience with it has been less than stellar. Don’t get me wrong I still think that the concept is really interesting and full of potential, I just don’t think that Wave is something that will gain any real traction amongst regular Web users.

As it is, even amongst the more admittedly tech oriented contacts in my Wave address book, you can see the biggest problem facing Wave – no-one is using it (a small green dot will appear on their profile avatar is they are using Wave).

How Facebook's Community Pages are diluting brands. —

It seem that many of us are so focused on our own presences in social networks that there is little talk about what we expect from our friends, fans and followers (FFFs). My own company has been hyper-focused, however, on our clients’ FFFs, particularly “fans” on Facebook.

With the sudden change on Facebook from becoming a “fan” of a page to “liking” a page, there is some confusion as to the inherent value of “likers” versus “fans.” We’ve been watching closely to see if the act of “liking” is less powerful or important than “fanning.” So far, most users aren’t behaving differently. We haven’t seen an upswing in “likes” due to the terminology change nor have we seen any diminishing in “fan” participation.

But what are the qualities and activities of  the “fans” or “likers” on Facebook that we’re tracking? And what is providing real value for our clients?

Qualities of Good Fans/Likers

Here is a list of some of the most important qualities of fans of a brand’s Facebook Page. Some of these also translate to other social networks, including Twitter.

1. Attention. When someone “likes” a Facebook Page, they are usually expressing their affinity for a product, brand, organization, individual or whatever or whomever is represented on the Page. But do they pay attention? In my mind, attention is, at its most basic, watching out for or noticing the status updates from brands in one’s newsfeed.
2. Participation. Taking attention to the next level, a good fan responds to your status updates. They not only noticed but felt compelled to react in some way, usually with a “like” on the update or (better yet) with a comment.
3. Interaction. Taking attention and participation even further, a good fan not only responds to your updates but comments on other fans’ comments.
4. Leadership. There are some fans who rise to the top as organic leaders of the community that forms on a Facebook Page, most commonly on its Wall, but sometimes within Discussions. These are fans to watch closely and to consider rewarding over time.
5. Loyalty. Once a fan is attentive, participates, interacts and start to take the lead in conversations, you are witnessing a powerful form of loyalty to your brand. They are going beyond simply being interested in the goods or services you are offering, but are willing to spend time and energy in the social space you’ve created to align themselves with you. Wow!
6. Evangelism. Once you move past simple attention, your fans can easily become evangelists for your brand. What are you doing (in a transparent, generous and respectful manner) every step of the way to encourage this behavior? It is so easy to “share” what you like on Facebook. What are you doing that is worthy of sharing?

The Birth of the Social Media Superfan

In trying to encapsulate the power of the “good fan on Facebook,” I began talking with my clients about the concept of Superfan. This term is familiar in sports. The Superfan is the person who paints their body or displays fandom in some other outrageous way at sporting events.

The Social Media Superfan is the individual who is fully engaged with your brand via your social networks, most often on one network in particular, but in some cases across many of them.

For one of our clients, we were actually able to trace a number of Superfans all the way back to an event we helped to manage in November of last year. We handled social media for the event and our tweets were seen by one woman in particular, who then showed up at the physical event at a department store. The client was there with a Flip camera and videotaped the woman talking about how she heard about the event on Twitter.

Fast forward to our work months later to identify Superfans. We found that this same woman had recently entered one of the contests we announced via Facebook…and won! She was also one of over several dozen women who participated literally daily on our client’s Facebook Page. Not only did she pay attention, participate and interact, but she was a leader of the community. She visited the page every single day just to say hello to the brand, to us (the social media team behind the brand’s page — we are very transparent about who we are and what we are doing), and the rest of the community.

We were floored to discover the power of these Superfans and their influence over others, to not only “like” our client’s Facebook Page but also to evangelize the product and to get others to buy it (in this case, perfume).

So what did we do? Acknowledged them and rewarded them. This was an unexpected move in their minds — and even just the personal acknowledgment of their presence and loyalty sent them over the moon. The fact that they were then going to receive a “thank you” gift in the mail was far beyond their wildest dreams. This was truly a win/win for everyone.

What are you doing to identify your Superfans? And what are you doing to reward them?

stockxchng image by mzacha

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Social Media in the Enterprise

This simple yet confounding model was named the Illusion of the Year by the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan. Watch the clip, allowing yourself the thrill of confusion before seeing how it works 25 seconds in. More »



Math - Japan - Research - Organizations - Asia

A Brief History of Markup — Hot off the presses! In his brand new, brief book for people who make websites, HTML5 For Web Designers, Jeremy Keith cuts through the confusion surrounding the web's new markup language and presents what every accessibility- and standards-focused web designer and developer needs to know about it—from semantics to strategy. Not only is HTML5 For Web Designers a great, fast read, it is also our first A Book Apart publication. To celebrate, A List Apart proudly presents all of "Chapter One: A Brief History of Markup." Enjoy!

Ben Ward: ‘Understand the Web’ —

Ben Ward:

Perceptions of the web is changing. People are advocating that we treat the web like another application framework. An open, cross-platform, multi-device rival to Flash and Cocoa and everything else. I’m all for making the web richer, and exposing new functionality, but I value what makes the web weblike much, much more.

Brilliant essay. Must-read.

Facebook has the chance to turn a problem — negative publicity about its latest privacy shifts and confusion about how to control them — into a business opportunity: It could become the protector of your identity instead of a threat to it. That’s a service we need.

Imagine if Facebook started a new and independent arm to take your side in any question about identity and privacy on Facebook — the ID equivalent of Google’s Data Liberation Front. This group’s job would be to simplify all the obfuscation that is confusing every Facebook user I know about how and where their data will be used and shared: create simple tools with simple rules and explanations and execute our wishes for us. That alone would help Facebook’s relationship with us today. If Facebook wants us to trust our identities to Facebook, then it better take that mission seriously.

Now imagine that Facebook does such a good job of that — turning its rumbling PR problem into a new asset — that we ask it to bring this service elsewhere on the web, helping us determine and decide what’s shared about me on the internet: what I share about me, what others share about me, what others can see of me, and how I can manage that.

I see a new identity dashboard over the web that lets me see how I’m seen and then adjust and publish as I choose — not just shutting down (which is what happens when people get overwhelmed with privacy control issues — even Leo Laporte is doing that) but also deciding what we want to make public (because I argue there is value in publicness).

Mind you, I am not publishing all the things that add up to me through Facebook, nor will I ever. I publish my identity every day all over the web; that is what Facebook should help me manage. Identity is distributed. So, as I argued here, I should control this on my own but I need help managing it. Current tools — ClaimID and such — are as difficult to use as Facebook’s privacy control and are ineffective.

There’s also a service waiting to happen to verify identity. Twitter does that for celebs; why not for all of us?

Facebook could do all this. Because it already has the tightest link to our identities online, it should do this. I’d argue it should do this to turn its relationship with us and our identities on its axis: rather than being accused of exploiting our identities, it should regain our trust — and value — by becoming our best protector, our ID agent.

Google could also do that. This might be a way for it to leapfrog Facebook in the identity and social front: help us organize not the world’s information but our information. The Google profile page becomes not something that lives on Google but something Google enables us to manage.

Even the Post Office could do this. Way back when, it proposed becoming an identity verification service. I know from my little bit of work with folks in the area that the USPS is certainly looking for new ways to bring value (read: new reasons to exist).

Startups could do this. As I tell my entrepreneurial students, whenever you see a problem, look for the opportunity in it. In all the yammering and schwitzing about Facebook and privacy and identity, it’s easy to see a big need and opportunity. Facebook should see it; others can, too.

Phase one of Facebook’s strategy for world domination: complete. Facebook has announced that over 50,000 websites have integrated Facebook’s new social plugins in just one week. The plugins are a core component of the company’s new Open Graph initiative.

Last week, Facebook launched the Open Graph API and social plugins during its F8 conference in San Francisco. The complex protocol and API create a more personalized web browsing experience, all through Facebook. Social plugins in particular allow users to interact with other websites (for example, “liking” them) without even logging in. This has been a point of contention, confusion, and even government scrutiny.

None of those issues have stopped the rapid growth of Facebook’s Open Graph, though. Last Wednesday, Facebook launched with 75 partners. Now there are over 50,000 websites on board — that’s nearly 300 websites adding Facebook social plugins per hour. Clearly Facebook’s 425+ million users have enticed website owners to jump on the Open Graph bandwagon.

Social plugins are just the first step in Facebook’s ambitious plan to become the central nexus of the web. With this kind of adoption success, it’s tough to find any scenario where Facebook doesn’t take over the web.

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Tags: facebook, facebook open graph, Facebook social plugins, Open Graph, open graph api, social plugins

Twitter, DMCA Take-downs & the Prior Restraint of First Amendment Speech —

Last week, the big news in DMCA takedowns was the sweeping removal of Hitler parody videos. Earlier this year, it was Google suddenly wiping out six separate music blogs. Today, it's the removal of a tweet.

While this might not seem like a big deal on the surface, it leads to some much bigger questions about free speech, what content should fall under a proper DMCA take-down and whether or not the DMCA is a legal method of applying censorship by any content owner.

Sponsor

Here's the story as told by TechDirt:

The story involves a music blogger named JP, who runs the appropriately named JP's blog. Not surprisingly, JP also has a Twitter account, where he mostly seems to post links to his blog posts. One such post was about the leak of the new album by The National. That post includes a link to Amazon where people can purchase the new album... and also a link to a download of one song (in MP3 format) from the album.

According to JP's blog post on the subject, Twitter sent him a message last Thursday "in response to a DMCA take-down notice". The email, he writes, read as follows:

jp917, Apr 22 03:10 pm (PDT): Hello, The following material has been removed from your account in response to a DMCA take-down notice: Tweet: http://twitter.com/jp917/statuses/12499491144 - New Post: Leaked: The National - High Violet http://jpsblog.net/2010/04/20/leaked-the-national-high-violet/

JP denies posting any link to the leaked album in his tweeted blog post, saying that he will not bother filing a counterclaim to the take-down. He also links to an article in Plagiarism Today from a year ago that alleges that Twitter's handling of DMCA take-downs and counterclaims is problematic and that "there is clearly an organization issue here and that's leading to confusion."

While last weeks' take-downs of parody videos may have been "overbroad take-downs of legal content", as the Electronic Frontier Foundation asserted, this sort take-down may go an extra step, beyond constitutionally protected First Amendment speech. With the YouTube take-downs, at least there was copyrighted content present, although it may have been used according to the law in the end. In this case, according to JP, there was neither pirated content nor a link to any DMCA-violating content.

While TechDirt argues that "specifically, nothing in the tweet itself is infringing -- which means that the DMCA take-down for the tweet is bogus, and a violation of the DMCA itself", we spoke with David Sohn, senior policy council with the Center for Democracy & Technology, who said that the question might not be so cut and dry. Section 5.12D of the DMCA relates to cases involving "information location tools" and "links".

"One possibility here is that Twitter has gotten a take-down notice that might not stand up as a totally valid take-down notice," said Sohn.

On Sohn's advice, we asked Wendy Seltzer, founder of ChillingEffects.org, what this all meant and she explained that the burden of proof lies with the person creating the content and not the platform. All the platform, in this case Twitter, needs to know is that the complaint me be valid and that, by removing the offending content, they cover themselves legally in the eyes of the DMCA. Whether or not section 5.12 D of the DMCA actually applies doesn't really matter.

The introduction to her recent paper, "Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright's Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment" (.pdf), speaks clearly to the problem we saw when first reading this story:

Each week, more blog posts are redacted, more videos deleted, and more web pages removed from Internet search results based on private claims of copyright infringement. Under the "safe harbors" of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Internet service providers are encouraged to respond to copyright complaints with content takedowns, assuring their immunity from liability while diminishing the rights of their subscribers and users. Paradoxically, the law's shield for service providers becomes a sword against the public who depend upon these providers as platforms for speech.

The problem with the current format of the DMCA, especially in the case of something like a communication platform such as Twitter, is that a DMCA take-down notice becomes an extremely effective means of silencing information for a legally mandated period of 10 days. In essence, it provides those who wish to silence a voice a quick and legal means of enacting what is called a "prior restraint", something clearly prohibited in First Amendment law.

"When non-infringing speech is taken down, not only does its poster lose an opportunity to reach an audience, the public loses the benefit of hearing that lawful speech in the marketplace of ideas," writes Seltzer in the paper.

Twitter offered this response:

"Twitter regularly receives DMCA takedown notices. We strive to balance the interests of our users and copyright holders by reviewing each notice. After determining whether the notice is compliant with the law, we also consider other factors such as whether the notice is abusive to our users, or fails to take fair use into consideration. You can read more about our DMCA process here: http://help.twitter.com/entries/15795-copyright-and-dmca-policy

"We are always working to improve our transparency. Users are notified immediately when content has been removed from their account. In this situation, we responded to a request to remove a Tweet containing a link to download content from an unreleased album. After reexamining our decision, we believe this was the correct first step. If the affected user believes we have made a mistake or that the notice is in error, the appropriate thing for the user to do is file a counter-claim.

"We believe that the reasoning of the DMCA claim and its origin should be transparent to both the affected user and other interested parties. We are working on further steps to improve access to this information."

So, our next logical question here is: Since this post includes the email from Twitter, which includes that original link to a blog post that supposedly linked to infringing content, can it too be removed according to the guidelines of the DMCA?

Discuss

One important note for developers, publishers, and marketers from yesterday’s announcements at f8 is that Facebook has officially retired the “Connect” brand. The name and the service officially launched at the last f8 in 2008, and the term was used to collectively describe the company’s off-Facebook.com Platform services.

Why the name retirement? Facebook basically says the term was confusing people into thinking the data and privacy models for Facebook apps was substantially different when implemented on Facebook.com canvas pages versus third party websites.

Another reason for the change was likely that Facebook Connect was so multi-tiered in its implementation options, from the very simple to the complex, that it was too hard to explain as any one product to most publishers and brands.

So, it took the opportunity yesterday, simultaneous with the launch of many relatively easy-to-implement website plugins/widgets, to officially retire the Connect branding. In fact, FBML and FQL are now relegated to the “Advanced APIs” section of Facebook’s new developer site. For example, according to Facebook,

We don’t recommend FBML for new developers. If you aren’t already using FBML, you should instead implement your application within an iframe, using the JavaScript SDK and social plugins for client-side integration with Facebook services.

Now, Facebook just has a bunch of different plugins, APIs, and SDKs . The new developer site pushes visitors to the simplest options as much as possible, including getting started guides for websites, apps on Facebook.com, and mobile apps.

While there’s still a variety of different Platform products out there (see below), Facebook’s Platform product marketing team is hoping the removal of the “Connect” brand will make it easier to communicate the value proposition of the Facebook Platform to potential partners without getting so caught up in explaining the difference between apps on Facebook and the rest of the web, and what exactly “Connect” means.

For reference, here’s the current set of Facebook’s API and SDK products for developers:

Core APIs

• Graph API
• Social plugins

Facebook SDKs

• JavaScript SDK
• PHP SDK
• Python SDK
• iPhone SDK
• Android SDK (unofficial)

Advanced APIs

• Facebook Query Language (FQL)
• Facebook Markup Language (FBML)
• Old REST API

It’s been a busy day at F8, Facebook’s third developer conference, and there is much to talk about. To stem the confusion, we have compiled a list of the top, most important announcements that have come so far.

To be sure, this was a developer event. Facebook has thrown open the gates to most of the roadblocks that were annoying developers. Happy developers are busy developers, and Facebook knows it.

The four areas that we are going to focus on are the Open Graph protocol, new Social Plugins, Search, and OAuth 2.0. Hit the jump and let’s get into it.

Open Graph Protocol/Permissions

There is data outside of Facebook that the company wants to be brought in and made relevant inside of the Facebook platform. Enter the Open Graph protocol, Facebook’s way to say, in the common tongue ”all your graph are belong to Zuck.”

The product combines graphs, be they music graphs from Pandora or what have you, into the Facebook wider social graph. You can think of it has a “knit-up” with Facebook for other websites that are not Facebook affiliated.

In short, all of your external graphs are to be combined into the single “open graph,” which will be useable on Facebook itself.

Two other short hits, Facebook is revamping the amount of time that developers can store data that they received from Facebook. There was a previous 24 hour limit, Facebook is doing away with it like yesterday’s news. Keep the data as long as you need. Developers literally cheered.

Finally, giving permission to a third-party applications will become a one-click action, meaning that applications can get more data more quickly, and then keep it. Privacy concerns from users aside, this is the developers’ dream.

Social Plugins

Not to be outdone by Twitter and their @Anywhere platform, Facebook will be rolling out new plugins to spread the Facebook love all across the internet. The Open Graph is all about bringing information into Facebook, these plugins do the opposite.

In the words of Bret Taylor, of FriendFeed fame, “Social plugins are a way you can provide an instantly personal experience with one line of HTML.” Does that sound familiar?

Among the new plugins are a tool to import an activity feed into a website, to show what a user’s friends have done on that specific website, and recommendations. The best plugin announced is a new Like button, that Facebook expects to veritably take over the internet, and give Facebook a direct look into which websites are hot, which are not, and what impact they have on Facebook.

Search

Continuing with the developer theme, Facebook is opening to doors on the data vault and letting people look in at everything not marked private.

Developers will be able to search all data that is public, and with the new rules on storage, they will be able to keep it for more than a day. This is going to make Facebook applications both deeper, and wider. To refrain, Facebook wants happy developers.

Of course, given the hundreds of millions of Facebook users, the data sets we are discussing are nearly infinite. The sky is the limit.

OAuth 2.0

Facebook will adopt the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard, in partnership with Yahoo and Twitter. While the average user will hardly notice the change, having Facebook comply to more normal, open standards is a boon for developers looking for easy to port and replicate code.

Facebook has never been a quick company to jump on standards, this is a big step. Even more, the company partnered with Twitter? More evidence it seems that Facebook has to now view Twitter as a company to be reckoned with.

Wrap-Up

Facebook has been hard at work with legions of employees, and it shows. The releases today are going to go a long way to making Facebook the social destination over the next few years, not that it ever ceased to be.

Facebook gets it, data wants to be open, wants to move around, and by giving developers the tools they want, they will shock you with what they come up.

What is next? Aside from Facebook crossing 500 million users in the new future, who wants to bet that they hit one billion before next years F8?

Original title and link for this post: Facebook: What They Announced At F8

Another Cloud Computing Acronym To Drive You Bonkers —

Scanning the news the other day and what do we see but a reminder of the many acronyms in the cloud computing world. Again, it's a vendor with a made up name. This time it's Verizon with an update to its "Computing as a Service" or CaaS for short.

Acronyms abound in the cloud computing world - perhaps more than any other technology in play today. They are emerging at a rapid clip. It's understandable as cloud computing is so new and there are so many ways for it to be applied. But it's also frustrating.

Sponsor

Verizon's service looks solid. But the name creates more confusion. Get this: Verizon also offers "Everything as a Service." That takes the cake, or should we say... muffin!

It makes the whole concept of cloud computing a bit confusing as you try to understand what really is available. It becomes an issue of "what is it now?"

This week's other imaginative term - Virtualization as a Service - from Salesforce.com and VmWare. It's the center issue for our Weekly Poll: What does Virtualization as a Service Really Mean?

Dave Geada, vice president of marketing at StrataScale, had this to say about what it means:

I think [new names are] a lot of unwarranted marketing hype (and that means something coming from a marketer). Knowing very little about the announcement, I would guess that the two are partnering in order to provide a platform where Force.com partners can deploy integrated solutions to a VMware enabled Salesforce cloud. In essence these providers would have a one-stop-shop for delivering their solutions to market instead of having to rely on an assortment of hosting partners to deploy their solutions.

A joint platform initiative like the one I just described would also benefit enterprises who could host their own customized VM appliances on this cloud and easily integrate them with their Salesforce implementations and Force.com applications. In doing so VMware would be able to access a segment of the market where it's been having some difficulties (i.e. SMB ISVs) and Salesforce would benefit from providing a more comprehensive solution to their partner ecosystem.

If I'm right about this (and I reserve the right to be wrong), isn't that a much more compelling story than the mumbo-jumbo we're dealing with now? Cloud providers should demonstrate some more restraint in throwing the "cloud" label around and turn the conversation back around to the value that their providing to customers and partners. And high profile providers like Salesforce and VMware should be setting the example.

We expect these ancronyms will filter out over time. Or perhaps VaaS and CaaS will stand the test of time. It's just too early to tell.

Until then, how about a muffin?

Discuss

Twitter to Rival Ad Players: Tread Carefully [MediaMemo] —

Twitter has started showing ads to its users. But it’s not the only one doing that — there are a host of startups trying to insert ads into the Twitter stream, and more on the way.

So here’s a question: Will Twitter force publishers and app developers to use its ad platform exclusively?

No, says COO Dick Costolo.

In theory, he says, it would be possible for someone like TweetDeck or Seesmic to use Twitter’s “Sponsored Tweets” offering along with something like TweetUp, which will also place ads, in the form of Tweets, into user’s streams.

After all, conventional Web publishers can use Google’s AdSense (GOOG) products and competing ad networks. Why shouldn’t the same thing work for Twitter?

But Costolo also has a warning for anyone who does sell ads in the streams: Tread very, very carefully. Here’s an excerpt from an interview I conducted with him this afternoon.

Clients can use our system and other ad systems at the same time. The distinction I would make, or the caveat I would add to that [is that]  we are going to probably prohibit pieces, insertions into the timeline that cause user confusion.

So for example, if someone creates an ad that looks like a Tweet in the timeline, but isn’t a Tweet — such that if you click on the retweet button, you go to a landing page, instead of retweeting the Tweet –  that’s something [that] causes user confusion, it harms the overall value of the platform, and we’re going to prohibit that.

That “user confusion” theme is a favorite at Twitter — it’s the same argument that CEO Ev Williams used to explain the company’s thinking behind its purchase of Tweetie last week.

Still, the Twitter ad platforms that I’m familiar with — Ad.ly, 140Proof, TweetUp, etc — all seem to comply with Costolo’s restrictions: All of them turn Tweets into ads, but the Tweet still functions as a Tweet. But he definitely seems to have something or someone on his mind here.

And when he goes on to explain what he doesn’t have a problem with — ad platforms that don’t sell in the stream at all — he seems to be sending a clear message: If you don’t want to worry about platform conflict, the best way to do that would be to not do what we do.

There are pieces of the puzzle that we’re going to prohibit if we feel they harm the overall value of the platform. And that’s one example.

What I’m absolutely fine with… is a client that’s got a banner ad at the top, that’s segregated from the timeline. And that banner ad is sold by a third party, and those people decide not to participate in the Promoted Tweets platform. I don’t have a problem with that and we encourage that.

So make of that what you will. You can see our entire conversation below — Costolo also makes a brief version of the pitch he’s going to deliver to developers tomorrow at the Chirp conference, and he and I go back and forth about Twitter’s intention to show ads outside of search results.