The Associated Press reported this afternoon that its reporters were able to use an undisclosed method to access private photos on Facebook, including some from Paris Hilton at the Emmys and others from Facebook founding CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vacation in November of 2005. (They did not publish any of those photos, but Paris uses Facebook for real - confirmed!)
If that was Zuckerberg's last trip outside of work, he'd better not schedule more any time soon. Privacy controls have been the defining feature of Facebook's past success and are central to the company's plans for the future. Update: Some readers here and on Twitter are telling us that it's a simple URL edit that has exposed these photos for months, much like was the case with MySpace in January. It does appear that that particular method of accessing these photos no longer works.
Backlash is probably too harsh a word, but as the buzz around lifestreaming continues to build, some people are starting to question where it fits into their daily lives. Last week, we wondered whether sites like FriendFeed solved the problem of information overload, or merely brought attention to it. Keeping track of all that activity is starting to feel like watching code in The Matrix, and this week, others are starting to feel the same way.
According to a new report just released by Convio, Edge Research, and Sea Change Strategies, an out-dated approach to online fundraising may be costing charities as much as $100 billion. Because few large donations are made via the web, some charities feel that large donors are not active online, but the results of the study, which surveyed 3,000 donors from 23 major non-profit organizations, challenges that notion. The so-called "wired wealthy" are indeed active online, says the report, and very generous.
Even as it faces a long list of other problems, LindenLabs announced today that it will begin enforcing its copyright against unauthorized use in 90 days. An official post on the SecondLife blog introduced a new website called the SecondLife Brand Center.
"The Brand Center," Catherine Linden writes for the company, "explains how Residents can promote their own brands, products and activities in the Second Life world and use appropriate logos to enhance their message." That's a remarkably positive way to describe what's mostly a list of thou-shalt-nots, combined with an ugly new logo that users are allowed to put on their stuff.
Earlier this month, EMC released their findings regarding the digital universe in a publication entitled "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe." Some of the research focused on mind-blowing figures - like the 281 billion GB size of the digital universe or the predicted size of the digital universe by 2011, nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes). However, what really peaked our interest was information provided on your "Digital Shadow," that is, all the digital information generated about an average person on a daily basis.
There was a lot of chatter over the weekend about folk punk rocker Billy Bragg's New York Times editorial where he argues that music artists who uploaded material to social network Bebo were entitled to a cut of the site's $850 million sale price. Because bebo owes much of its success to becoming an indy music hub, that seems reasonable, right? Bragg says this is a case of artists’ rights. Certainly, artists deserve to be compensated for their work, but if you willfully put it online for free, can you really lay claim to revenue later that was never part of the argreement?
Groundbreaking social network LiveJournal is no longer allowing new users to sign up for Basic level accounts, which traded a pared-down feature set for an ad and cost free user profile.
SUP, the Russian company that recently acquired LiveJournal, angered a substantial number of its users last week by instituting the policy before discussing it publicly and going against the advice of at least two members of the company's new high profile advisory committee.
Cloud database app, Blist, has recently added some new features to their online tool, including a social network built around Blist users and the databases they create, as well as features that make the online database application even easier to use than before, like the ability to import CSV data or share databases with friends.
Recently people have been comparing lifestreaming services FriendFeed and Socialthing!, trying to determine which one will win or whether they even compete. For example, see ReadWriteWeb's post FriendFeed vs SocialThing!. I signed up for FriendFeed when it first came out and more recently I was lucky enough to get a private beta invite for Socialthing! as well. I sat down with Socialthing! founder and CEO Matt Galligan, to get a little insight into the differences and similarities between the two products.
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