Wall Street Journal

Does the Internet Make Us Smarter or Dumber? Yes. —

Is the internet making us smarter or dumber? The Wall Street Journal put together a couple of provocative essays this weekend looking at that question: one from Nick Carr, whose most recent book The Shallows argues that the internet is making us less attentive and in general less intelligent (Wired has an excerpt here), and the other from Clay Shirky, whose latest book Cognitive Surplus argues that the internet is on balance a good thing for both individuals and society. So who wins this debate? Arguably only the reader, who might find something worthwhile in both viewpoints. Certainly neither one wins by a landslide — primarily because both of them are right.

To be fair, Carr’s essay is the most pointed, in that he refers to scientific studies that show the brains of multitasking internet users change as a result of their behavior, and says that these changes are making them less intelligent (at least according to some definitions of that word). Among other things, they are described as being weaker in “higher-order cognitive processes” such as “mindfulness, reflection, critical thinking and imagination” (just how someone measures a quality like mindfulness or reflection isn’t clear). The scattered and shallow thinking of internet users is contrasted with the virtues of book reading, because Carr’s says the written page “promotes contemplativeness.”

Shirky’s piece has less obvious research in it, and more of an impressionistic take on what digital media is doing to us as a society. His main point is that a tool like the internet — just like its closest relative in terms of disruption, the Gutenberg printing press — brings with it both the good and the bad, and the two can’t necessarily be untangled from each other. The increased freedom to create that the internet brings with it, he says “means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible.” In other words, Shirky argues that we will become smarter as a society, if not individually.

But Carr’s conclusion isn’t just that the internet is making us stupid — in an interview with The Atlantic, he says that while there may be benefits to the new digital age of media consumption, it will make us “less interesting,” presumably because we won’t be having as many contemplative moments. This reminded me of my friend Paul Kedrosky’s recent essay at The Edge about the benefits of the internet on his thinking process. In it, he argued that while he was concerned about the impact of the internet on his ability to “think big, deep thoughts,” he had come to the conclusion that it was on balance a positive thing, because of the way it allowed for more “collisions and connections” between ideas — some of which inevitably led to new ideas.

The democratization of connections, collisions and therefore thinking is historically unprecedented. We are the first generation to have the information equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider for ideas. And if that doesn’t change the way you think, nothing will.

Anyone who has spent much time on the internet — especially using tools such as Twitter or any other social-media outlet — can probably sympathize with Carr’s comments about how has felt himself becoming more distracted by ephemeral things, more stressed, less deep. And the idea that multitasking is inherently impossible is also an attractive one. But are these things making us dumber, or are they simply challenging us to become smarter in new ways? I would argue they are doing both: to the extent that we want to use them to become more intelligent, they are doing that; but the very same tools can just as easily be used to become dumber and less informed, just as television can, or the telephone, or any other technology, including books.

So is the internet making us smarter or dumber? I would say the correct answer is yes. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user rstrawser

A new service called Yahoo Pulse will one-up Google Buzz by offering privacy tools and integration with Facebook news feeds on the Yahoo home page, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Pulse site will behave a bit like Threadsy or the desktop app TweetDeck, aggregating real-time updates from your Facebook news feed alongside other social networks.

Yahoo has been trying for months to make itself the ultimate starting page for Internet users; you can already view your Facebook and Twitter feeds using Yahoo’s “Quick View” feature, but Yahoo Pulse will provide an improved, tabbed interface and offer new kinds of integrations in Yahoo and Yahoo Mail.

Notably, Yahoo Pulse will have a privacy menu that will apply to multiple services. That feature will be an important draw for some users, given that Facebook has dealt with a big privacy backlash in recent weeks. Don’t expect it to add completely new privacy features to your Facebook account, though.

The privacy angle is also pertinent when you consider that Google — Yahoo’s chief rival — made some major privacy errors that greatly hindered the launch of Google Buzz, a very similar service. Those faux pas and the lack of Facebook integration prevented Buzz from becoming a killer application. Pulse is Yahoo’s answer to Buzz; maybe it learned from its rival’s mistakes.

The specifics of the new interface and integrations have not yet been revealed, but it’s all expected to launch within a few days. We’re curious to hear what kinds of integrations with Facebook Yahoo users would like to see, so let us know in the comments.

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Tags: facebook, flickr, google buzz, privacy, social media, social networking, Yahoo, yahoo pulse

Facebook: Advertisers Have Quadrupled Since 2009 —

Amid all the furor over Facebook’s handling of privacy following the launch of its Open Graph protocol at the F8 developer conference — a storm of controversy that resulted in an op-ed piece by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the Washington Post and the rollout of some new privacy controls — it’s easy to forget that the social network is still growing rapidly. And not just in terms of the number of users, which has likely crossed the half-billion mark by now and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon, but as a business as well. Facebook told Bloomberg today that the number of advertisers it is working with on its platform has quadrupled since the start of last year, and that it doubled its advertising staff last year.

Mike Murphy, vice president of global sales, told the wire service that the company is “very well positioned as people come out of this current economic situation” and has become “absolutely core to marketing campaigns.” Facebook is definitely becoming a substantial force in the world of online display advertising — according to traffic measurement firm comScore, the network became the largest publisher of display ads in the United States earlier this year, passing former market leader Yahoo.

Facebook hosted over 176 billion display ads in the U.S. in the first quarter of this year, comScore said, up from just 70 billion a year earlier. The latest figure gives the social network more than 16 percent of the market. The actual value of those ads in terms of revenue is an open question, however, since industry analysts say ads on social networking sites tend to be priced lower than those on regular web pages (according to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook had $500 million in revenue last year, with the bulk of that from advertising). Facebook has had an ad partnership with Microsoft since 2006, which was expanded in 2007 when the software company acquired a 1.6 percent stake in the social network for $240 million.

Google came sixth in the latest comScore rankings — behind MySpace and AOL — with just 26 billion ads and a 2.4 percent share, but of course it also controls the majority of the global market for search-related keyword advertising. The comScore numbers also include only those display ads that are served on a company’s own domain. Yahoo and Microsoft run advertising networks that display ads through a variety of partners, and Google is building one as well, called AdX. The search company also reportedly just acquired a small ad-buying platform called Invite Media for $70 million, which makes it easy for ad buyers to work with multiple ad networks and exchanges.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Facebook vs. Open: The Fight For the Soul of the Web

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Franco Bouly

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Top Chinese official calls for improved worker conditions in response to Foxconn deaths — The highest ranking official in the Guangdong province of China has called for improved conditions for workers in light of the recent slew of suicides at Hon Hai Precision Manufacturing, also known as Foxconn. Wang Yang, the provincial party secretary in the province where the suicides have taken place, said that the government must work together with the company to "take effective measures to prevent similar tragedies from happening again," While it's still not clear what is causing the deaths, Wang called for measures such as increasing sports and leisure activities for the workers, and improving communication between worker and employer. "Labor unions in private firms should be improved to facilitate better working conditions and more harmonious relations between workers and employers," he said, speaking at a conference in Shenzhen on Saturday, just about one day after Foxconn announced it would increase wages of workers up to 20 percent.

Top Chinese official calls for improved worker conditions in response to Foxconn deaths originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPad Goes International —

On Friday, Apple debuted their iPad tablet in nine countries. Apple already pushed back international sales a month with the explanation that the demand in the U.S. was too great to go international at that time.

May 28th saw the iPad on sale in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Sponsor

About a month ago, Apple had sold half a million devices and said inventory would not tolerate opening to foreign markets as soon as they had planned. Inventory is still an issue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"Analysts estimate that Apple will sell about 1.7 million iPads in the April-to-June quarter and five million for the year world-wide."

Analysts also anticipate that about a third of Apple's sales will be U.S.-based and the rest shared with the remaining global market.

With over a million iPads sold, it has been described as "the fastest consumer product growth to the $1 billion revenue mark in history."

Discuss

By Don Clark and Justin Scheck, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal

In the high-stakes race to catch Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) hit iPad, the Android operating system that Google Inc. (GOOG) popularized in cellphones is emerging as an early front-runner.

Tablet-style computers—a moribund hardware category until the iPad started generating buzz earlier this year—are expected to be a big topic at next week’s Computex trade show, a major forum for product announcements by manufacturers of personal computers.

Acer Inc. and Dell Inc. (DELL) unveiled plans for tablet-style machines in advance of the Taipei event, and other companies, such as Asustek Computer Inc., are expected to provide details on similar devices. Makers of semiconductors and other components are also scrambling for a position in the market.

But when it comes to tablets, operating systems and applications may become even more important differentiators—just as software became a huge advantage for Apple with the iPhone.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The Wall Street Journal reported that violent crime is down in the big cities in the U.S., saying this breaks the pattern between economic downturns and an increase in crime. Supposedly this is because policing has advanced, not because human nature has changed. I do not believe the article is plausible.

If Chicago is any indication, it is much more likely the statistics are being doctored and that the public is being lied to in a profound way. Many cities and states are strapped for cash and the public doesn't want to hear that crime is up while police budgets are being cut.

Chicago wasn't mentioned in the article, but violent crime is way up, and the police force has been cut. I believe this increased violence is related to the economy, and it is not mere crime, it is civil unrest. The city of Chicago is being wrecked, and tourist attractions like Navy Pier are unsafe and lack police support.

Last Summer Was Bad, This Summer Will Be Much Worse

Last summer gang violence ruled the night at Leland and Sheridan, a neighborhood in the process of gentrifying.

In the upscale Lincoln Park area, just a little further south of this unrest, men alone at night were accosted by groups of three to six men and severely beaten, robbed, and hospitalized. Seven muggings occurred in a five-day period from July 30 to August 4, 2009.

This kind of activity was unusual for these areas of Chicago until last summer.

Current Escalating Violent Crime and Chicago's Prime Lakefront Areas

Shootings are way up in Chicago, and ordinary citizens -- along with shorthanded police -- are angry. Chicago has a gun ban, yet on Wednesday, May 19, Thomas Wortham IV, a Chicago police officer and Iraq War veteran, was shot when four gang members attempted to steal the new motorcycle the officer had brought to show his father, a retired police officer. Shots were fired, and his father saw the skirmish, ran for his gun, and managed to get off a few rounds. Two gang members were shot while two sped away dragging his fallen son's body some distance in the process.

Nine people were shot on Sunday night (May 24), and Chicago is currently in the grips of a massive crime wave that has overwhelmed our under funded police force.

Gangland violence and shootings now occur up and down Chicago's lakefront. An anonymous Chicago policeman reports what most of the mainstream media fails to report at secondcitycop.blogspot.com. The comments under the section titled "Lakefront Problems" are particularly illuminating.

I don't believe that Chicago is alone in having a recession-related escalating crime problem. High unemployment combined with under-funded shorthanded police forces make for a toxic brew. No matter how "advanced" the police force, men cannot outrun bullets.

During a recession, the police force requires a larger budget, not budget cuts. Since the money has been spent, I suspect the public will be fed cooked statistics instead of being given the facts.

Janet Tavakoli's book on the causes of the global financial meltdown and how to fix it is Dear Mr. Buffett: What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles from Wall Street.

Microsoft is reorganizing its Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) and when it’s finished the two people that have largely defined it for the past few years will be gone. EDD group president Robbie Bach and J Allard, the group’s senior VP of Design and Development, are leaving those positions and Microsoft (MSFT) as well. Bach is said to be retiring; Allard — who’s been on sabbatical recently — is simply moving on, though he’ll remain an advisor to the company.

Interestingly, Microsoft isn’t replacing Bach. Instead the company is splitting his responisbilities between Senior VPs Andy Lees and Don Mattrick, who will oversee the company’s gaming and mobile businesses, respectively. Mattrick and Lees will report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer who is evidently taking on more of a role in Microsoft’s consumer devices efforts, which — with the exception of the Xbox 360 — have stumbled in recent years.

News of the shake-up was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The full text of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s memo announcing the moves below, further details to follow:

From: Steve Ballmer
To: Microsoft – All Employees
Subject: Executive Leadership Transitions

After almost 22 years with the company, Robbie Bach has decided to retire from Microsoft. I have worked with Robbie during his entire tenure at Microsoft, and count him as both a friend and a great business partner and leader. Robbie has always had great timing, and is going out on a high note — this has been a phenomenal year for E&D overall, and with the coming launches of both Windows Phone 7 and “Project Natal,” the rest of the year looks stupendous as well. While we are announcing Robbie’s retirement today, he will remain here through the fall, ensuring we have a smooth transition.

Concurrent with Robbie’s retirement, I am making several organization changes to ensure we have the right leaders in the right positions as we set ourselves up for the next big wave of products and services. Effective July 1, Don Mattrick, who leads our interactive entertainment business, and Andy Lees, who leads our mobile communications business, will report directly to me. Don and Andy have built out strong leadership teams and product pipelines, and are well-positioned for the years ahead.

Independent of Robbie’s decision, J Allard (currently serving as senior vice president of Design and Development for E&D), will also be leaving Microsoft. Given his ongoing passion and commitment to Microsoft, he will remain as an advisor to me, helping incubation efforts, looking at design and UI, and providing a cross-company perspective on these and similar topics. With J’s change in role, corporate vice president David Treadwell will join IEB to lead the core technology organization, reporting to Don. David has a great set of accomplishments at Microsoft, most recently working on the Windows Live Platform Services team. Over the next several months, Robbie and I will work together to finalize reporting and structure for the rest of his org.

Now that Office 2010 has been launched to business customers, Antoine Leblond, senior vice president in the Office Productivity Applications Group, will take a new role as senior vice president for the Windows Web Services team. This team brings together the integral Windows services that today deliver updates, solutions, community and depth information for the Windows consumer. Kurt DelBene, senior vice president in the Office Business Productivity Group, will take on all of the engineering responsibilities for the Office business.

Transitions are always hard. Robbie has been an instrumental part of so many key moments in Microsoft history — from the evolution of Office to the decision to create the first Xbox to pushing the company hard in entertainment overall. J as well has had a great impact in the market and on our culture, providing leadership in design, and in creating a passionate and involved Xbox community, and earlier being at the center of our work seizing the importance of the Web for the company. But most important, both have been great team builders with a strong record of attracting, coaching and growing talent. As a result, their teams are primed to continue to step up and deliver great products, great services and great results for the company. Don has led the Interactive Entertainment Business since July 2007, where he’s significantly grown our entertainment footprint as well as our profitability. He can count as successes the evolution of Xbox Live, the launch of blockbusters like “Halo 3” and the much-anticipated “Project Natal.” Previously, Don was president of Electronic Arts Worldwide Studios. Andy has led the Mobile Communications Business since February, 2008, and has been instrumental in reinvigorating our mobility efforts, bringing in new business and development talent and overseeing the creation of both KIN and Windows Phone 7.

As we finalize and ship so many of our key products (“Project Natal,” Windows Phone 7, Office 2010, Windows Live Wave 4 and others) it is a natural time for us to look ahead and make sure we have the right talent in the right roles to fuel our next set of offerings. I am confident that the changes above will set us up well for the months and years ahead.

I want to close by thanking Robbie for the incalculable contributions he has made to Microsoft over the years. He will be greatly missed when he retires this fall, and I am glad that I’ll have the opportunity to continue working closely with him between now and then. And as J makes a similar transition, I look forward to working with him in a new way.

Steve

Forbes Acquires Freelance News Startup True/Slant —

Just a couple of days after PaidContent ran a story about freelance news site True/Slant reportedly being in M&A talks, Forbes Media announced today that it has agreed “in principle” to buy the company.

True/Slant founder and CEO Lewis Dvorkin will be joining Forbes to lead all editorial areas at Forbes as Chief Product Officer effective June 1.

It isn’t much of a surprise for Forbes specifically to make that move. Dvorkin has after all been consulting with Forbes in April. Also, he was Executive Editor of the Forbes magazine from December 1996 to April 2000.

He was previously Page One Editor of The Wall Street Journal, a Senior Editor at Newsweek, and an editor at The New York Times. He’s also former Senior Vice President, Programming at AOL.

Furthermore, Forbes invested in True/Slant back in August 2008 together with Fuse Capital (the company raised a total of $3 million).

The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

Word is circulating that before the weekend Slingshot Labs fired all its employees and drew the shades on the windows. The incubator for technologies that could be implemented into MySpace is now kaput.

Earlier this year rumor was out that perhaps Slingshot’s days were numbered. TechCrunch ran a story opposing the information, claiming that as one of Slingshot Lab’s projects (SocialPlan) was acquired by MySpace, the project had legs. Any word on employees being let go were mere merely employees being move from Slingshot to MySpace proper.

While that last bit may have been true, the larger thrust of the original ValleyWag story was true; Slingshot was in serious trouble. Now it seems that that trouble was terminal, the entire operation now resting six feet below.

The question becomes why the project was allowed to live on if it has been in the sights of shutdown for so long. There had been a lingering project and shield of protection that had kept Slingshot on a respirator, but  both failed.  When ex-MySpace CEO DeWolfe was pushed out, Slingshot entered decline.

Without a main cheerleader, it lost its sheen of executive privilege and untouchability. However a serious project to build a LinkedIn competitor for the Wall Street Journal was in the works, and for some time was enough to float the lab. That project parashies with Slingshot.

It’s all over for Slingshot, and with stagnant traffic and little innovation at MySpace it is hard to wonder if the future of the latter will follow the past of the former.

Image Credit.

Movies could be available as a VOD rental before DVD, Blu-ray -- for $20 to $30 each — The MPAA has often stated its desire to offer movies through video on-demand ahead of their release on DVD or Blu-ray -- provided the analog hole was closed -- and now that it has been, the Wall Street Journal reports Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. are considering a pitch from Time Warner Cable to do just that. The price for cutting the usual four month wait for home viewing to just 30 days? As much as $20 to $30 for a rental. Sony's already tried experimenting with a higher price point on early delivery of Hancock and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to BRAVIA HDTV owners, but at least they threw in a free Blu-ray copy with the former. So far the studios have only agreed that their current release strategy needs some sort of change, but unless they add some sweeteners we don't see this one shifting us from our current rental/purchase habits.

Movies could be available as a VOD rental before DVD, Blu-ray -- for $20 to $30 each originally appeared on Engadget HD on Mon, 24 May 2010 14:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On Friday I had an interesting conversation with Skygrid CEO, Kevin Pomplun. Who is he? He has one of the most popular apps on the iPad and it brings me the news. It’s the news app I reach for now before the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

Why are streams disrupting other news aggregation systems? Watch the video and find out.

AT&T back to screwing its customers fulltime —

So, we all know that Apple will be releasing the next version of the iPhone sometime this summer which usually means that a whole bunch of people are going to want to upgrade when that happens. The unfortunate part of that deal is that they end up having to pay some sort of early termination fee for their existing iPhone. Now as much as that sucks and really speaks badly of AT&T it seemed to be a price people were willing to pay.

Well that may change – drastically.

Word is, via the Wall Street Journal, that AT&T is going to jack up the price you will have to pay for that early termination (ETF) to an almost ridiculous price.

AT&T Inc. (T) plans to raise the fee it charges customers trying to get out of their smartphone wireless contracts early, a move that comes amid expectations that the carrier will lose exclusivity on the iPhone over the next year.

The Dallas telecommunications provider will raise its early termination fees to $325 from $175 on contracts signed for smartphones, as well as cellular-connected netbooks. But for contracts on feature or messaging phones, AT&T will drop the fee by $25 to $150. The changes, which don’t apply to current customers, take effect for new and renewing customers on June 1.

Victor Godinez at the Dallas Morning News Technology Blog has gotten confirmation from AT&T on this.

UPDATE: I just spoke with AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel, and he confirmed the numbers in the Journal report.

“The idea is, and we think that it’s fair approach, that if you spend less on a device, your early termination fee should be less,” he said. “If you spend more, your early termination fee should be more.”

He said the decision to implement the higher fee was unrelated to the iPhone or any other single phone.

I wonder if anyone truly believe that crap.

AT&T to Nearly Double ‘Early Termination Fee’ for Smartphone Contracts —

You stay classy, AT&T.

WSJ: Facebook, MySpace & Others Share Identifying User Data With Advertisers —

A report in the Wall Street Journal this evening reveals that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and a number of other popular social sites are passing along data that advertisers could potentially use to identify users who click their ads. The article is focused on Facebook in particular, which appears to have been passing along the most data of the aforementioned sites and has also been embroiled in a major privacy controversy.

The Journal article doesn’t get into too much technical detail, but it sounds like Facebook and the others are failing to scrub ‘referring’ URLs that are always passed along whenever a user clicks a link. This is actually normal behavior — typically when you click a link on a website, the site you’re being directed to will get to see where you came from. The issue is that these social sites include some identifying information as part of their URLs; when you visit a friend’s Facebook profile, the resulting URL might include both your friend’s username and your Facebook ID, which could be used to associate you with the ads you’re clicking on.

That said, the Journal reports that the ad companies it contacted had not used the data:

Several large advertising companies identified by the Journal as receiving the data, including Google Inc.’s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.’s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social-networking sites, and said they haven’t made use of it.

However, the article doesn’t say that all ad networks that placed ads on Facebook were ignoring the data. We’ve reached out to Facebook to ask if it’s possible that smaller networks could have leveraged it.

The WSJ article notes that the discovery was pointed out back in August by researchers from AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but that the issue has persisted until this morning (Facebook and MySpace have now “rewritten some of the offending computer code”).

Image via alancleaver

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on what could be a major scandal brewing for Facebook, MySpace and other social networks: despite assurances to the contrary, the sites have apparently been sending personal and identifiable information about users to their advertisers without consent.

Large advertising companies including Google’s DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media were identified as having received information including usernames or ID numbers that could be traced back to individual profiles as users clicked on ads. The data could potentially be used to look up personal information about the user, including real name, age, occupation, location, and anything else made public on the profile. Both of the aforementioned companies denied being aware of the “extra” data they were receiving and claim they have not made use of it.

The WSJ goes on to report that since raising questions about the practice with Facebook and MySpace, both companies have since rewritten at least some of the code that allowed transmission of identifiable data. Beyond those two companies, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg made the list of sites identified as sending identifiable information back to advertisers when a user clicked on individual ads.

The Journal found that Facebook went farther than most in sharing identifiable data, by sending the username of the person clicking the ad as well as the username of the profile they were viewing at the time. This news could hardly come at a worse time for Facebook, a company that currently faces a privacy backlash potent enough to make the cover of Time Magazine this month.

Outside of Facebook, the other companies named in the article maintain the data they send to advertisers contains the user ID of the profile a user is visiting when they click on an ad, and not the user ID of the visitor themselves. Both Google and Yahoo made strong statements refuting the idea that they would ever make use of any such personally identifiable data. Yahoo VP of global policy Anne Toth said of the allegations, “We prohibit clients from sending personally identifiable information to us. We have told them. ‘We don’t want it. You shouldn’t be sending it to us. If it happens to be there, we are not looking for it.’”

What do you think: is this another privacy-related stain on Facebook as well as other social networks, or much ado about nothing?

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Reviews: Digg, Facebook, Hi5, MySpace, Twitter, Xanga

Tags: advertising, digg, facebook, facebook privacy, Google, hi5, LiveJournal, MARKETING, myspace, privacy, xanga, Yahoo

The privacy issues that have been hounding Facebook may be coming to a head. A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the Facebook, along with MySpace, Digg, and a handful of other social-networking sites, have been sharing users' personal data with advertisers without users' knowledge or consent.

The data shared includes names, user IDs, and other information sufficient to enable ad companies such as the Google-owned DoubleClick to identify distinct user profiles. Some of the sites in question, including MySpace and Facebook, stopped sharing the data after the Journal asked them about it. The surreptitious data sharing was first noticed (PDF) by researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs in August 2009, who brought it up with the sites in question. It wasn't until WSJ contacted them that changes were made.

Not surprisingly, Facebook appears to have gone farther than the other sites when it comes to sharing data. When Facebook's users clicked on ads appearing on a profile page, the site would at times provide data such as the username behind the click, as well as the user whose profile page from which the click came. "If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are," Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman told the Journal. Advertisers contacted by the paper said that they were unaware of the additional data and did not make use of it.

Facebook has tweaked its privacy policy throughout its history, with the most recent moves to open up more user information to the public drawing heavy criticism and FTC complaints. Users have also had a tough time navigating the site's often-Byzantine privacy controls, which has led to a trickle of user defections. With these latest revelations about Facebook ignoring industry standards, not to mention its own privacy policies, that trickle may turn into a torrent.

Read the comments on this post

Facebook and MySpace are Giving Away Your Information to Advertisers —

Facebook and MySpace are Giving Away Your Information to Advertisers is a post from Chris Pirillo

Tsk, tsk. Did we honestly not see this coming? The Wall Street Journal has uncovered proof that both sites – along with several other popular social networking venues – have been giving away a hell of a lot of information about you to both Yahoo and Google… despite promising that they do not. Both Google’s DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media were identified as being recipients of these little goldmines of information in the form of usernames. That information can lead advertisers to find out your location, your real name, your age and even your occupation. Both companies, of course, deny knowing about (or using) this “extra” information.

All around the Internet, it’s normal for advertisers to receive the address of a page where a user clicked on an ad. However, they normally learn nothing more about the user than an unintelligible string of letters and numbers that are non-traceable. With social networking sites, those addresses themselves usually include the usernames which can direct advertisers right to a profile page chock full of personal information. Along with Facebook and MySpace, there were several other sites found to be participating in this lovely practice: LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg are also sending the username or ID number of the page being visited. Even Twitter was found to pass web addresses with usernames of a profile being visited on their site. For most of these sites, the data identified the profile being viewed, but didn’t always show the person who clicked the ad or link. Facebook went further than the others, as usual: in most cases, they signaled which username was doing the clicking along with the name of the person or page being viewed.

The big question of the day is whether or not these sites knew that this type of information was being sent. They, undoubtedly, are going to deny that they had any clue at all. If that is true, though, then I say they need better developers. Any code monkey worth having would have known how to interpret the code they had written, and what it was doing at any given moment.

• How Private is Facebook?
• Search Your Public Facebook Updates
• How to Protect Your Privacy Online
• Facebook and Privacy: Will the Twain Never Meet?
• Facebook Serves Up Unwanted Apps
• Leave Your Privacy at the Door
• Social Media Questions and Answers
• Fact or Context: The Ocean That is the Internet
• Facebook Bug Delivers Mail to the Wrong People
• MySpace Tom is Not Your Friend

7 Ways Journalists Can Use Foursquare —

Shane Snow is an entrepreneur in New York City and founder of Scordit.com. He is also a graduate student at Columbia University’s Journalism School. This post was co-authored by Vadim Lavrusik, who most recently worked on social media at The New York Times and is also a digital media graduate student at Columbia University’s Journalism School.

Tech-savvy journalists usually go where the crowds are, and were quick to jump on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. As Foursquare climbs toward critical mass, with over one million users, 40 million checkins, and counting, it’s also becoming a hot new tool for the digital journalist.

Last week, for example, a single checkin on Foursquare by The Wall Street Journal pushed notifications to approximately 2,600 phones during the Times Square evacuation scare. Clearly, Foursquare can no longer be considered just a game.

With all the recent hype, journalists and media companies are itching to find their own ways to use location-sharing apps to bolster their trade. You can get started with the following seven tips, then share your own ideas in the comments.

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1. Finding Targeted Contacts

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Foursquare pegs real people to real places. It provides a simple way for journalists to overcome common problems like “I need to interview a customer who frequents this business,” and helps them find contact information for such people. Visit a venue’s page on Foursquare.com, and you’ll see who the mayor is (the user who has checked in the most in past months), and who else has recently been there. A friend request — or some good old fashioned Internet snooping — can yield contact information in a snap.

Additionally, when you check in at a venue on Foursquare, you can see who else is there at that moment. Blogger Paul Bradshaw recently wrote about serendipitously finding a contact via checkin:

“David Nikel, a political candidate in Birmingham, ‘checked in’ at Birmingham New Street train station 5 minutes after I had. Although I hadn’t ’shared’ my check in via Twitter, because Nikel did, his automatically generated tweet said that I was there too. This alerted me and led to us meeting.”

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2. Breaking News

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As we’ve mentioned, The Wall Street Journal illustrated during the Times Square bomb scare how instant notifications to people’s phones via Foursquare can be an effective way to deliver breaking news. Simply “shout” while checking into a location, and your followers will receive your memo, almost like an SMS. While we don’t yet know of a way to filter shout recipients by location (all of your friends get them rather than just those who are close), this type of feature will likely surface on Foursquare and similar apps in the future.

How many followers were actually in Times Square and diverted from harm’s way by the Journal’s checkin? Probably not very many. But the incident illustrates the potential Foursquare has for passing along urgent news updates as the service grows.

Zach Seward, The Wall Street Journal outreach editor, said that Foursquare works particularly well for breaking news that is specific to a location. After initially partnering with Foursquare on its local New York badges and tips, the organization was looking to further explore the breaking news potential.

“Foursquare, of course, is all about your location, so we thought it could work really well for news that’s important to people in the vicinity, but less important to people who aren’t close to the action,” Seward said. He makes the point that it wouldn’t work as well for, say, coverage of a presidential election.

So what did the Journal decide was the best way to notify its followers on Foursquare? Seward said they had initially considered breaking news in the form of a tip, but ultimately decided it would be more effective notifying them through a checkin.

A user has to be your “friend” in order to see your shouts, meaning he’ll have to authorize you to see his whereabouts before you can send him updates. Clearing that privacy hurdle might be a challenge for journalistic organizations, but once they do, the app can be very useful for news delivery.

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3. Sourcing Information From Tips

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Location-based tips left by users at particular venues may not be a huge source of information, but they can provide extra insight into businesses and individuals you’re trying to learn about. Gleaning as much as you can from every scrap is the name of the reporting game, after all.

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4. Learning About People You’re Profiling

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Foursquare can be fantastic source of reporting material when doing profiles of people. You can learn a lot about a person based on the places he or she frequents, and the things he or she says when only “close friends” are able to hear.

If you can get your profile subjects to agree to “friending” you on Foursquare, it’s easy to monitor their activity and get a clear picture of their habits. And every Foursquare checkin is essentially an invite for friends to join up somewhere, which makes dropping in and observing profile subjects and their pals in their natural habitats a piece of cake. Call it “opt-in stalking.”

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5. Discovering and Monitoring Trends

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Foursquare allows you to see the activity of popular nearby venues in real-time. While the trending venues are often predictably high-traffic destinations (say, New York Penn Station), journalists can monitor trends in their local areas to see if irregular or newsworthy patterns emerge.

For example, if there are suddenly many people checking in to a restaurant that was never popular before, a reporter might learn that it’s because the place reopened after renovations. That might be a newsworthy lead to follow.

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6. Publishing and Distributing Content

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News organizations, like The New York Times, that have jumped into partnerships with Foursquare are using location tips to link to content. Frequently, this takes the form of dining tips connected to restaurant reviews. Followers can click on a link to get more information about the restaurant.

Individual journalists can provide similar value by offering their expertise in tips and linking to content that they have produced for more information.

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7. Crowdsourcing News and Rewarding Readers with Badges

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“Badges” seems to be the default answer people give when discussing Foursquare for businesses. Despite the cliche, badges are a psychological incentive that have been proven to work, and journalists can take advantage of them.

One idea is to reward users for contributing to crowdsourcing projects. For example, offer readers badges when they send in news updates surrounding local events or locations. You could even develop a system that rewards different levels of contribution (contributor, freelancer, reporter, senior correspondent, etc.). This could be a fantastic way to get readers involved in news gathering, keep them engaged, and reinforce positive feelings about your brand.

The Wall Street Journal, once again at the forefront of Foursquare experimentation, recently launched a badge campaign that rewards readers for checking into places the Journal has recently written about. We’ll see in time how well it encourages user engagement with the brand.

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Conclusion

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Foursquare can be a fantastic tool for journalists, but it isn’t the only location-based social network that news organizations can leverage for sourcing and reporting. Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, Where, Hot Potato, and several others are absolutely worth monitoring as well.

It should also be noted that as early as late May, Facebook will introduce a new feature which will allow users to tag their location in their status. With Facebook’s huge existing user base, this will be a big development in the location space, and something journalists should definitely have an eye on.

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For more mobile coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

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More journalism resources from Mashable:

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- How Mobile Technology is Affecting Local News Coverage
- How Twitter’s New Media Blog Aims To Teach By Example
- How Journalists are Using Social Media for Real Results
- The Future Newsroom: Lean, Open and Social Media-Savvy
- 5 Essential Tools for the Mobile Journalist

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jgroup

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Reviews: Brightkite, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Internet, LinkedIn, Twitter, iStockphoto, news

Tags: brightkite, crowdsourcing, facebook, foursquare, gowalla, journalism, List, Lists, location, location-based, Mobile 2.0, reporting, social media, twitter, wall street journal

Verizon Wireless is in talks to share its spectrum with rural wireless carriers, according to the Wall Street Journal, which yesterday published an interview with Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam. The carrier head also told the WSJ about the company’s planned Android tablet, so who knows what other Verizon news will trickle out as a result of the chat. I’m hoping for business models for the coming fourth-generation LTE network.

But back to the spectrum sharing. It’s not clear what the details of the spectrum sharing will consist of, but it looks like Verizon is hoping rural carriers will lease the Verizon spectrum and then Verizon or the rural carrier would build out towers in the rural footprint. In exchange, rural carriers get to offer roaming on Verizon’s LTE network across the country.

These deals could allow Verizon to build out its nationwide LTE network quickly (perhaps in some of the smaller towns that Clearwire (clwr) is hitting with its own WiMAX-based 4G network). It may also help meet the goals of the National Broadband Plan, which relies heavily on wireless for broadband competition in rural areas.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d): Everybody Hertz: The Looming Spectrum Crisis

Buy, Buy, Baby: Tech Firms Snap up Startups for Growth —

Technology companies over the last few years cut costs to the point that they now have cash surpluses — which they haven’t been shy about spending to acquire venture-backed startups. The Wall Street Journal has picked up on this trend with a story this morning that cites data from Venture Source showing that 15 startups were acquired in the last week alone, and another 14 have gone public in the last year.

The ability for larger firms to go public may be driving some of the acquisitions of more mature startups, as any acquirer that can buy before an initial public offering has a less complicated deal on its hands — although the threat of an IPO can also drive up the price. But smaller, younger companies are getting offers as well because tech firms — after almost two years of cutting costs — have both the cash and an interest in sparking growth.

However, as the New York Times notes, this deal activity isn’t widespread — and may be short-lived. VCs are still smarting from all the dogs they invested in over the last few years.

Large tech firms are buying technology in markets that are growing, which makes it a great time to be a solid cloud computing startup, for example. A focus on clouds, especially managing clouds in ways enterprise customers (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d) might want has led to several acquisitions so far this year on the part of big tech vendors like IBM, VMware and CA, all of which are looking to add new functionality in order to broaden their business. Hear more on these companies’ acquisitions strategies at our Structure 2010 conference June 23 and 24.

Back on earth, collaboration and social media buys are occurring with smaller companies like Success Factors picking up CubeTree, which made a Yammer-like company collaboration platform, for up to $50 million. Other deals include several buys by Google as it moves into mobile and seeks to bring in more engineers and entrepreneurs. The excitement around mobile computing is leading to other deals as well, with Motorola reportedly purchasing an OS maker and PocketGear buying Handago.

Obviously the hope is that the free-spending tech buyers continue shelling out for an advantage on cloud computing, mobile and social/collaboration startups, allowing VCs to exit their investments and post better returns. That way everyone wins. Big companies get to buy their way into growing markets while entrepreneurs get a payday and venture firms continue to justify their existence and keep the virtuous cycle of tech investment going.

Location, location, etc: What does the WSJ’s Foursquare check-in say about the future of location in news? —

It was the Foursquare check-in heard ’round the world. Or, at least, ’round the future-of-news Twitterverse. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal checked in to the platform’s Times Square venue with some breaking news:

The headline that screenshot-taker dpstyles appended to the image is correct: the real-time, geo-targeted news update was, really, a pretty amazing use of the Foursquare platform.

It wasn’t the first time that the Journal, via its Greater New York section, has leveraged Foursquare’s location-based infrastructure for news delivery purposes. The outlet has done more with Foursquare than the much-discussed implementation of its branded badges; it has also been making regular use of the Tips function of Foursquare, which allows users to send short, location based updates — including links — to their followers. The posts range from the food-recommendation stuff that’s a common component of Tips (“@Tournesol: The distinctively French brunches here feature croques madames and monsieurs and steak frites. After dining, check out the Manhattan skyline in Gantry State Park”) to more serious, newsy fare:

@ The middle of the Hudson River: Remember the Miracle on the Hudson? Well, investigators aren’t saying that Captain “Sully” shouldn’t have landed in the river, but he probably didn’t need to. [Link])

@ George Washington Bridge: Police were told to stop and search would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi’s car in Sept. 2009 as he drove up to the bridge — but waved him across without finding two pounds of explosives hidden inside. [Link]

@ Old Homestead Steakhouse: Kobe beef, one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes, was pulled from the menu after Japanese cows tested positive for foot-and-mouth disease. [Link]

The general idea is, essentially, curation by way of location: geo-targeting, news dissemination edition. “You get these tips because you’re nearby,” Zach Seward, the WSJ’s outreach editor (and, of course, the late, great Lab-er) told me. “So at least in theory, that’s when you’re most interested in knowing about them.”

The Journal’s use of the check-in feature for a breaking-news story, however, suggests a shift in the platform/content relationship implied in the info-pegged-to-places structure. “Times Square evacuated” is a legitimate news item, of course, in most any context; but it’s particularly legitimate to people who happen to be in Times Square at the moment the news breaks. The Journal’s check-in acknowledged and then leveraged that fact — and, in that, changed the value proposition of location in the context of news delivery. In its previous tips, the location had been pretty much incidental to the information — a clever excuse, basically, to share a piece of news about a particular place (see, again: “The middle of the Hudson river“). In the Times Square check-in, though, the information shared was vitally connected to the physical space it referred to. Location wasn’t merely a conduit for information; it was the information. Proximity’s previously weak tie to content became a strong one.

In other words, as Seward explains of the Times Square check-in: “If you’re following the Journal, and you’re in New York, you’re going to see this at the top of your timeline on your Foursquare app. And if you’re not in New York, you’re not going to see it — or you’re not going to see it at the top. And that makes perfect sense.” Because, again: “That idea that you want to be informed about what’s around you is the fundamental principle that Foursquare is operating on.”

Whether Foursquare itself is an effective venue for a news outlet’s realization of that principle is a different issue. There are certainly advantages to Foursquare for location-aware news — its built-in user base, for one. Its curatorial power, for another. (“One really specific way in which it’s ideal,” Seward says, “is that the whole platform is designed around only telling you what’s in your vicinity.” It focuses, myopically and straightforwardly, on the near — filtering out the far.) For users, then, Foursquare-as-news-platform suggests a river whose width is narrow, whose content is familiar — and whose current is as such readily navigable.

And for news organizations, it offers a relatively organic approach to the problem of content presentation. “Generally, whether it’s in print or online, or any platform for a news organization, you have one opportunity to decide how important a story is — and give it a huge, assassinations-sized banner headline, or a small little bullet, or whatever in between,” Seward points out. “But with local news in particular, the relevancy, and the importance, varies widely, often based on where you are, and/or where you live.” A location-based infrastructure for news delivery provides, among other things, “an opportunity to make that adjustment.”

Which is not to say that Foursquare itself is ideal for those purposes. The Journal’s use of tips and, now, check-ins, Seward says, “is a bit of a hack of a system that wasn’t created for brands.” The Journal is still, according to Foursquare, located in Times Square — via a check-in clarifying that Friday’s bomb scare had been a false alarm — and until the outlet’s editors decide that there’s another story worth checking in to, it will remain that way. “Because that’s just how Foursquare works.”

There’s also the “how Foursquare works” in the more ephemeral sense. Whether you’re a badge-laden multi-mayor or find the platform to be an unholy union of the mobile web and Troop Beverly Hills, Foursquare has defined its identity, at least in its early existence, by a feature that has been both its key limitation and its key asset: the purity of its socialness. Foursquare is fun. It’s peer-to-peer. Even more importantly, it’s pal-to-pal.

The Journal’s presence on Foursquare — and, further, its leveraging of the platform for purposes of news dissemination and (oof!) branded information — adds some tension to that freewheeling spirit. (As Adam Clark Estes, The Huffington Post’s citizen journalism editor, put it: “Does @WSJ sending news alerts via @foursquare clog the utility/fun? Or challenge Twitter?”) News content, almost by inertia, has a way of infiltrating nearly every major social media platform; there’s an is nothing sacred? aspect to the criticisms of outlets’ imposition of themselves on the board-game-writ-real that is Foursquare.

That’s something Seward is well aware of. “Perhaps more than Twitter, people use Foursquare in a really personal way,” he says. “They limit who they’re following to people they actually know, and they’re expecting to see their friends there.” So it might well be jarring to find a news organization’s tips and check-ins mixed into a timeline with the personal ones. (Then again, he points out, users “can choose or not choose to have those updates pushed to them.” So that mixture, like the updates themselves, is an opt-in scenario.) And then there’s the issue of a check-in suggesting a reporter’s physical presence on the scene of a news story: How should news outlets navigate that implication? They’re “good questions,” Seward says — even as he downplays the check-in’s significance in the greater scheme of things. (“Foursquare just announced that it now has over 40 million check-ins,” Seward notes, making the Times Square update “just one of 40 million check-ins in its history.”) Still, one little check-in can suggest a lot. Location-based news — its potential and its pitfalls — is something that the Journal and, now, other outlets will likely continue to grapple with as they find their own place in the new media landscape.

Facebook Showed More Ads Than Yahoo or Microsoft in Q1 —

While Facebook is not making the most money of any of its competitors from advertising, new comScore numbers indicate that it has become the largest display advertiser on the Web. The Wall Street Journal writes that the data, which is scheduled to be released later this week, "are the latests to show Facebook closing the gap with more established Internet-ad giants".

Sponsor

According to comScore's CMO Linda Abraham, the jump in display advertising on Facebook could be a result of the site's redesign, which allowed more advertisements to be squeezed in on each page. Abraham also speculated that the takeover of advertising from Microsoft didn't seem to be a primary factor.

As we argued when Facebook took over Microsoft's share of onsite advertising, this all seems to be part of Facebook's larger advertising strategy. Not two weeks after giving Microsoft the boot, Facebook began accepting PayPal, making advertising for its 400 million users a much simpler reality. The company's press release on its relationship with PayPal directly spoke to this goal, saying that "the option to pay with PayPal makes it even easier for advertisers, particularly small international companies, to run campaigns on Facebook".

These efforts appear to have paid off, as Facebook has delivered 176.3 billion display ads in the first quarter of 2010, pulling well ahead of Yahoo's 131.6 billion banner ads and Microsoft's 60.2 billion ads. As the Journal points out, however, the revenue from these ads falls far behind Yahoo and Microsoft. Facebook earned $500 million in 2009 and is expected to earn more than $1 billion in 2010, while Yahoo earned $6.5 billion in 2009, mostly from advertising revenue.

Facebook is still growing, however, and we can only wonder what advertising moves the company has in store regarding its controversial Open Graph. Already, it must be making some interesting deals, such as its "Instant Personalization" connections with Yelp, Pandora and CNN. While display advertising may be an easy way to compare Facebook with giants like Yahoo and Microsoft, it might be only a fraction of what Facebook has in store for us.

Discuss

During the first quarter of 2010, Facebook served up more banner ads than any other website, according to new data from comScore published in The Wall Street Journal.

In total, the social networking site displayed 176.3 billion ads during the period, for an average of better than 50 billion ads each month. That total represents 16.2% of the total number of banner ads served across the entire Web, and places the site ahead of the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft — the latter by nearly triple.

Of course, Facebook isn’t quite monetizing on the level of those Internet giants just yet, with recent estimates placing the company’s 2010 revenue at around $1 billion (Yahoo is expected to do nearly $5 billion in revenue this year).

Their monetization strategy expands beyond banner ads though, exemplified by the recent launch of a virtual currency – Facebook Credits – that sees the company takes a 30% cut from game developers with apps on the social network. Some see this eventually morphing into a PayPal competitor.

For now though, the company has established a larger footprint than anyone else when it comes to showing display ads, another impressive milestone as Facebook continues its march to becoming the most trafficked site in the world (it currently sits at number three).

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Tags: facebook