Recovery.gov: Falls Short on Transparency Front

After passing the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, the White House launched Recovery.gov, its "centerpiece effort" to carry out the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act out with "transparency and accountability." The site is now home to details about where all the money is going, stocked with numbers, charts, and timelines.

But before we shout out "Three Cheers for Transparency!" let's turn a skeptical eye.

President Obama's made some hefty promises where government transparency and Web use is concerned, but so far it seems these may have limited merit.

For starters, a promise made by Obama said the administration will make legislation available to the American people for five days prior to the president's signing it. Great idea, but, alas, not this ginormous bill, which was far too urgent to be made public in advance. The promise, after all, only includes "non-emergency legislation" -- a rather evasive phrase which suggests the only legislation we'll be seeing in advance will be about naming bridges.

Well, it's only our money -- like, all of it -- and the money of our children and the foreseeable generations of this country being spent. We can let this one slide without seeing it first. I mean, considering Congress didn't even get the opportunity to read it, why should we?

OK, fine. So he didn't have the chance to publish details of the 400-page bill for the American people in advance. He was sort of trying to rescue the country, and at least, they're available now, right? It's true we can credit Obama for being the first president to go even this far in sharing critical legislation with the American people via the Web, albeit after the fact -- but let's have a quick golf clap and move on, because some other things already seem awry with Recovery.gov.

As reported yesterday by CNET, for example, Recovery.gov had been blatantly blocking requests by search engines. CNET reports the site's robots.txt file read as follows:

# Deny all search bots, web spiders User-agent: * Disallow: /

(Read: Transparency... if you can find it!)

Three hours after the CNET story was published, however, the robots.txt file was removed, making the site open to search engine requests. It's unclear whether the change in code was a direct result of the CNET story, and no one at WhiteHouse.gov responded to request for comment as of press time to clarify.

Further, if it's transparency we're looking for, Recovery.gov is lacking in serious detail. As an example, the image below, which presents a colorful breakdown of where all the money is going, designates one $81 billion bubble to "Protecting the vulnerable," and one $8 billion bubble to "Other" -- with no further explanation.
Image Credit: Recovery.gov

Is this really transparency, or is it just a distraction, a bone for the lowly citizens to chew on while the elected officials run off with the pork?

Admittedly, this is an early view of the site, which will, it claims, be updated over the coming months with more information. So, sure, let's give President Obama credit for his online efforts. But let's also treat Recovery.gov like everything else we read and see on the Web, fully aware it's only part of the story and skeptical of hidden agendas.
? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Google Cries 'Antitrust' Over Internet Explorer

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has officially become the third browser vendor -- siding with Mozilla and Opera -- to join a European Union antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and its Internet Explorer browser. The case asserts that Microsoft is killing competition by tying its browser to its Windows operating system. According to Microsoft, the EU is threatening the company with "a significant fine."

A blog written by Sundar Pichai, a vice president for product management at Google, explains Google's concern over the lack of competition in the browser market:

"Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users. This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft's dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers."

That's right. Yet again, Google is complaining that Microsoft is stifling competition.

It sounds like, perhaps, some introductions are in order: Pot, this is Kettle; Kettle, meet Pot. Now. Could you two possibly stop suing each other?

This isn't the first time Google and Microsoft have engaged in battle -- legal, gladiatorial, and otherwise.

Google, as we well know, lobbied against Microsoft's attempt at acquiring Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) last year, calling it a threat to competition in an area it dominates.

Microsoft, too, lobbied against Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and its attempt at an ad partnership with Yahoo -- which subsequently fell through.

Now Google is getting on board to complain that Microsoft holds too much market share, a stance that just sounds ever-so hypocritical in light of Google's stranglehold on search and advertising. In fact, back in April 2008, when you were first born, Internet Evolution readers voted Google the greatest Internet monopoly, with Microsoft coming in a distant second.

Further, while it is the case that Microsoft does tie its browser to its software package, it's also true that its share of the browser market has fallen from 80 percent to 68 percent over the past two years, suggesting that competition is working, and that this might be an inopportune moment to cry "antitrust."

In an interview with Internet Evolution earlier this year, Internet Explorer platform architect Chris Wilson suggested that the "Browser War" of yesteryear was, essentially, history.

"In the first round it was somewhat understandable why some people considered it a browser war: There were two clear competitors and one of them wanted to win," said Wilson. "I don't think of it that way anymore because we actually work together a lot better than we did in the past."

Turns out it might be time to buff up the old armor, yet again.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Web 2.0 Transparency Not So Clear

If we were choosing a new Web 2.0 buzzword for 2008/2009, I might consider going with "transparency" -- as it's one to have rolled off the tongues of many a tech-savvy type, and gotten them in trouble all the same.

This is the whole point or goal of Web 2.0: To create transparency across all areas of business, government, finance, education, relationships, and so on. This is why we now have tools like Twitter, which allow us to tell everyone "What we're doing" all day long; and Facebook, where all elements of our relationships with ourselves and others are exposed in the form of short snippets, regrettable photos, and documented stances on politics, religion, petcare...

This obsession with transparency is why so many businesses are feeling compelled, if not forced, into deploying Enterprise 2.0 tools, to increase transparency both within the company and externally, with consumers. More transparency means more feedback from employees, consumers, and constituents, which means a better world for all, right?

In theory, sure, sounds great. But so far, the system is broken, for a couple reasons.

For starters, "transparency" is not really a goal for all those who claim it. All businesses, for example, might want the illusion of transparency, to make themselves look upstanding in comparison to competitors. But to achieve true transparency would likely be problematic, particularly when trying to run a business (or a government).

Take Google, for example. Here's a company that prides itself on openness and transparency, and which gets truckloads of credit for it. Yet its own blog, the Official Google Blog, ranked the sixth most popular blog in the world by Technorati, is closed off to public comments. You can email Google with feedback, but there is no way to post comments on the blog itself, which, in effect, goes against the grain of transparency, openness, and the blogosphere itself.

But Google isn't stupid. It's likely well aware that welcoming true "transparency" would set itself up for unwanted public criticism and feedback. Embodying the illusion of openness is far more productive for the company than is inviting user feedback, and actually meaning it.

Facebook may just be learning this lesson now, the hard way. As reported yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg invited users to provide feedback on two new governing documents for the site, further promising that if there were many complaints about the changes to the text, those changes would be put up for a user vote. Zuckerberg presented this change as in the interests of transparency and making the world a better place (seriously, he said that), but not an hour after the documents went live, Facebook users were flooding the message boards with complaints.

Now Zuckerberg will either have to defy his users yet again by taking back his promise for a vote, or he'll have to open up his site's Terms of Service to vote by users, letting them decide how their data is used -- an unprecedented and very dangerous step for a company whose sole hope of making any money relies on free use of that data.

Should we really, as Web users, expect to be able to rewrite a Website's TOS, transforming the way it runs its business? Probably not. But we'll chime in when asked, which is why asking may have been Facebook's third largest mistake this month.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Readers: Websites Aren't Responsbile for Regulating Content

In a recent blog, ThinkerNetter Andrew Keen brought to light a trial in Italy where Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) execs are being charged for letting a video of a boy with Down Syndrome getting physically abused appear online. While the accused are faced with prospective jail time, we're faced with the question of whether technology companies, like Google, are responsible for the content that appears on their sites.

"Google can't have it both ways," writes Keen in his blog. "It can't make money on the content, but take no responsibility for this content when it flouts the law. For better or worse, Google is a media company that should, like all other media companies, have responsibility for the content posted on its site."

That's one way to look at it, but we received a bit of a different perspective when putting the question to our readers.

Answering a poll question, "Should tech companies, such as Google/Yahoo, be responsible/liable for user-generated content on their sites -- including content that's objectionable, illegal, or dangerous?" here's how nearly 300 readers responded:

Taking the majority, 52 percent of our readers believe "it's not [the company's] job to regulate content." In contrast, 37 percent believe it is -- and an additional 11 percent said just thinking about it gave them some slight brain pain. (Our apologies, by the way...)

When making the argument to hold a technology company -- whose sites are built primarily of user-generated content -- accountable for what appears there, a few technical issues come into play.

For starters, as some of our readers pointed out on the boards, the laws vary from country to country, distorting the rules a bit when deciding what to take down or term illegal.

Further, many insist it's up to the users of the site to flag offensive content and to take the heat for whatever they post. This sounds fair but isn't always possible when anonymity rights are upheld, giving Internet users the freedom to say and write whatever they want beneath a cloak of invisibility. But a Maryland court recently ruled in favor of Internet anonymity, saying Websites being charged for defamation don't have to give up user identity.

So who, then, are we to hold accountable for unsavory, offensive, or illegal online content? We can't always blame the users because they're invisible and, in some cases, protected by law. We can't blame the technology companies if it isn't their job to regulate their sites.

While some hail Internet anonymity and Freedom of Post as the driving forces behind the open Web, they may also be inhibiting its success and growth.

But for behemoths like Google, is it really fair to call "Not It" when coming under fire for questionable content, while happily raking in the associated ad revenues? Fifty-two percent of our readers believe so, which is why we won't see this debate disappear for some time.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Public Votes to Write the Bills

Welcome to the era of Government 2.0!

This era, conceived by the joining of a series of tubes with politicians and interested constituents, includes a few noteworthy things, all alleged to produce "transparency" and citizen involvement: There's the latest craze of PolitiTweets (just coined it... hands off). There are the ever-static Facebook Fan pages; the YouTube version of C-SPAN; and sites like Recovery.gov.

All of these tools (not at all mere distractions) purport to bring the public together with politicians for the sake of ultimate democracy. The politicos are up front with all of their dealings (sometimes in a convenient 140 characters or less). We're communicating. They're listening. Someone get me something fuzzy to hug, because I'm feeling excited.

But we want more, don't we? We don't just want to cheer our lawmakers on from the sidelines of Facebook and Twitter. We want to live in their suits and move their arms around, too. And now, because of the Internet, we can. Hoorah.

A few organizations, including The Sunlight Foundation, exist in hopes of helping society reach a point where citizens are using the Internet to get involved in government, not simply through passive support, but through active commenting and editing of legislation.

And it looks as if this idea has some support: A poll last week on Internet Evolution, taken by nearly 250 respondents, asking "Do you think legislation should be subjected to 'crowdsourcing' online before it is introduced or voted on in Congress?" showed that 62 percent of our readers believe the public "should get to preview/edit legislation." Twenty-seven percent disagree, and 11 percent don't care.
A few years ago such a poll question may have sounded like a real stretch... like, "Do you think women should use the Internet to carry their unborn babies to avoid the extra weight gain?" While that one may need some time to reach fruition, the idea of letting citizens help write the Laws o' the Land via the Web is becoming something of a reality. Or, at least, a reality to a somewhat delusional few.

In theory it sounds like a great idea. Let citizens help make the critical decisions that govern their lives, taking some of our power out of the lobbyists' hands? Great!

Of course, scratch a bit, and we uncover serious problems.

First off, putting aside the $7 billion allocated for broadband in the stimulus package, many Americans are still disadvantaged by the digital divide. As a result, they aren't always connected, nor are they necessarily among the Internet literati. So automatically this e-legislation thing leaves a portion of the country in the dark and out of the process.

Then there's the simple fact that we're not legislators. Or as j0el puts it on the message boards, "Frankly, unless one is prepared to really understand the proposals it is an abuse to just read the title and then vote."

As Greg Elin, chief evangelist at The Sunlight Foundation, stated last week, we are not quite ready for this to become a reality. In the meantime, interested parties should take advantage of sites like Thomas.gov, which publishes legislative information from the Library of Congress, and OpenCongress.org, which allows citizens to track and discuss bills.

Whether we get to a point past side conversations on the Web remains to be seen -- but before we get too excited, there's plenty to address before we risk making the legislative process worse.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution
Channel: Consumer Internet, Personalization & privacy, Web 2.0
Tags: Blogs, Social Networking, Wikis

MySpace Losing Market Share, Money, Hope

MySpace and Facebook are often pitted against each other as fierce competitors, with MySpace taking the grandfather role in the social-networking space -- older and nearer to death, that is. But the two sites got off to different starts, with MySpace looking toward profitability from the beginning and Facebook still confused about what this "profitability" thing is, anyway.

Yet, despite being owned by News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) (or as a result of this) and an ad agreement with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), MySpace has been flirting with its own irrelevance from a user standpoint for some time, and there's reason to suspect the writing is on the wall for the once-popular leader in the social-networking space.

To be sure, while it's No. 2 globally, MySpace still has the most market share in the United States. But data from Hitwise released this week portrays a bleak outlook. While year-over-year visits to Facebook grew 149 percent in the U.S. as of February '09, visits to MySpace decreased 28 percent.

Further, in another sign that success may not be imminent for the site, MySpace lost three of its execs in February -- Amit Kapur, chief operating officer; Jim Benedetto, senior vice president of engineering; and Steve Pearman, senior vice president of product strategy -- who jumped ship to join a startup.

Nevertheless, MySpace has a new focus these days: its year-old music platform, which will soon allow users to purchase band merchandise and concert tickets. This platform is intended as another source of revenue for the site.

But at this point is its music platform enough to save MySpace?

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe seems to think so. Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in November, DeWolfe even suggested MySpace Music could become a true competitor to Apple's iTunes because of its emphasis on community (everyone still loves this, yes?), and particularly if it releases a device of its own.

And in a recent interview with BusinessWeek, DeWolfe emphasized that the site's focus with this platform will be on profitability, as it has been from the beginning. "I don't know Facebook's profitability... but if I could have 300 million people using MySpace or be profitable, I would take profitability," he told the BusinessWeek reporter.

While its focus has been on profitability, it certainly hasn't mastered the art of monetizing social networks. And market rumors claim that Google may not renew its ad deal in 2010 due to underperformance of its search ads -- a deal which reportedly represents a third of MySpace's revenue, or around $300 million per year.

Weeding through the spin, with Facebook leading worldwide and quickly capturing U.S. market share, and Apple in firm control of digital music, MySpace may see its relevance in the space dwindle, becoming less attractive to advertisers. And with DeWolfe's contract up this year, perhaps a restructuring on the corporate masthead as well.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

IE Wins Three (3!) MIN's Best of the Web Awards!

We realize you were impressed before when we were just regular old "Internet Evolution," but now that we are award-winning Internet Evolution, you must be simply floored.

That's right. Today Internet Evolution was the proud recipient of three (yes, that's 3!) "Best of the Web" awards from min, including the awards for Digital Team of the Year, Best B2B Video Show, and Best B2B Community/Social Network.

Joining some other minor names in the consumer and business-to-business digital publishing space, like Sports Illustrated, Cond? Nast, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Scholastic Inc., and Time Inc., Internet Evolution's staff came together for an awards breakfast of eggs, coffee, and crusty croissants in New York City honoring nominees and winners for outstanding digital initiatives over the course of the past year.

Along with Cond? Nast, Internet Evolution took home the award for the Digital Team of the Year (i.e., the BIG one) for -- per min's verbiage -- "creativity, resourcefulness, mastery of digital media, and success in the past year executing digital goals."

To catch a glimpse of the tech-savvy and dangerously attractive Digital Team of the Year -- including Stephen Saunders, founder of Internet Evolution; Chris Williams, Web development manager; Warren Hultquist, director, Web operations; Ken Surabian, design director; Kevin Cramer, copy chief; Amy Averbook, director, corporate marketing; Terry Sweeney, editor in chief; Mary Jander, ThinkerNet editor; and myself, Nicole Ferraro, site editor -- check out our far-out photo below. (But please resist the urge to ask us to send you an autographed copy, because that is just so Web 1.0.)

Grabbing further accolades, Internet Evolution also won the Best of the Web Awards for Best B2B Video Show, honoring the Web Wide World video documentaries; as well as -- and of utmost importance -- the award for Best Community/Social Network, honoring you!

Taking a bit of a serious note here, because of you, our readers, and your consistent engagement with each other, the ThinkerNet bloggers, and the staff, Internet Evolution is truly the first successful B2B social network. You have proved that such a community can work and can work really, gob-smackingly well. We thank you completely for making the idea of Internet Evolution a reality by keeping up your end of the conversation and always challenging us and each other with new ideas about the future of the Internet. These awards are yours as much as they are ours.

Congratulations and thanks again to the whole Internet Evolution team, to our sponsor, IBM -- and especially to our readers who have made all of our successes possible.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Facebook Needs to Check That Facelift

Hey Facebook, remember all of that boasting and babbling you were doing about "caring what your users think," urging them to contribute to the fundamental Facebook dialogue? Well now is your chance to put your lack of money where your mouth is.

A third-party poll asking users to vote on Facebook's recent redesign has gotten quite a bit of attention, attracting nearly a million votes, with only 6 percent of the voters saying they like the new redesign.

The comments section of the poll provides the type of valuable feedback typical to the likes of Facebook users:

* Boo! It sucks. Bring back the old layout.
* lame dont get it lame
* I HATE IT, I HATE IT. H A T E ! ..... H A T E ! ...... H A T E !

And so on.

Admittedly, Facebook claims 175 million users worldwide, so this measly million represents a half of a percent of the overall Facebook voice. But the poll is being distributed by word of mouth (or, in this case, finger), and replies are still coming in by the second.

Considering its newfound appreciation for democracy, transparency, and user happiness, should Facebook take these poll results into consideration? Or, alternatively, should it launch a poll of its own?

According to Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin, the site isn't planning to launch a poll, nor will it be making any site design decisions based on the results of the third-party poll.

But it has been keeping an eye on the results. "We can't totally ignore it, because obviously if people are feeling compelled to respond to a third-party poll like that it's definitely on their mind," said Chin on a call with Internet Evolution.

While not working with the creators of the poll, who are unaffiliated with Facebook, it is instead asking for user comments on the redesign through a feedback section of its site tour.

"We have a whole team going through those and sort of analyzing them and deciding what are the biggest pain points for people and how we can improve the home page going forward," she says. Chin wouldn't say specifically yet what changes Facebook plans to make based on user feedback but expects to be able to in a few days.

As VentureBeat points out, it's typical of the vocal minority on Facebook to rise up against any and all changes. The addition of News Feeds caused a similar uproar, as did the site redesign just prior to this latest one. Typically, everyone settles down and some end up actually liking the changes in the end. Fine.

But part of what people really like -- or liked -- about Facebook is its clean interface and the ease of navigation. The more Facebook redesigns its site, the less focus it seems to put on those critical elements, and the less apparent it is that users' voices are heard or considered.

And it's all the more reason that you should join our Facebook group to oust Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from power! So far, as per true Facebook activist fashion, we're 17 people quietly sitting in a group on Facebook getting nothing done. Join us!

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution
Channel: Consumer Internet, Personalization & privacy, Web 2.0

Steve Ballmer Talks Search, Yahoo, Apple

NEW YORK -- Media Summit -- At a keynote session today, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer affirmed that the surface has barely been scratched in search technology and that the winner remains to be seen.

"Most innovation is still to come in search," Ballmer told BusinessWeek's editor in chief, Steve Adler, in the auditorium of the McGraw-Hill building in New York City. "Whether we manage to benefit or Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) does or something else happens, we have to see."

Perhaps dismissing Google's success in the space over the last 10 years, Ballmer remarked that advances have been fairly minimal.

"Search hasn't changed much in the last 10 years," he said. "The look of the page hasn't changed significantly; natural language technologies haven't been employed to capture user intent. We look and say, 'Hmm, there's a whole lot of usage, a good business model.' There's a lot of innovation yet to come."

Hmm... Owning only 10 percent of the search market, though, how exactly Microsoft intends to muscle its way into this space is still unclear.

"The table stakes are a lot bigger than maybe we knew before we got into it. We're making a large investment. On top of that, you've got to innovate. We've done a very good job of going from nowhere to having a very good product. But we still have a lot of work to do, no question."

Market rumors have Microsoft working on a new search engine, "Kumo" -- a name Ballmer affected to be unfamiliar with -- either as a rebranding of Live Search or as a break from it. But Ballmer was quiet on the details.

"We can expect something here in the next few months," he said. "How do you differentiate user experience, task orientation, help people find what they're looking for more quickly? How do you really ascertain user intent? Those kinds of things we're keying on as design philosophy."

Of course, there's still the looming purple elephant in the room, better known as Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), whose search business Ballmer is still coveting.

"It's not about Yahoo's technology. It's really about getting the pooled volume, because you actually can improve the product faster if you have more users. The more users you have, the more advertisers you have, the more relevant you can make the ads."

Many assumed a deal would be easier for Ballmer once Carol Bartz came in as Yahoo's new CEO. But the two have only spoken briefly, and Ballmer expects she'll call when she's ready.

"Carol arrived in January. I had a discussion with her to say we want to chat. I'm sure when it's appropriate we'll have a chance to sit down and talk."

(Cough. Perhaps she's just not that into you?)

Other than search, said Ballmer, Microsoft is currently working on Windows 7; Windows Mobile 6.5; cloud computing; and products like the Zune, Microsoft's portable MP3 player, which Ballmer says the company will keep going with, despite the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPod's dominance of that market.

Perhaps prodded by the half-a-handful of people in the audience who sheepishly admitted to having a Zune in lieu of an iPod, Ballmer made his animosity toward Apple quite clear, affirming that no one in his family ("I don't, my sons don't, my wife doesn't...") owns any Apple products. Startling, that.

Nor does he think people will be as eager to purchase Apple computers during the recession.

"Paying $500 more to get a logo on it?" he sneered. "I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person."

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Nicole Ferraro Facebook Responds to Redesign Feedback Written by Nicole Ferraro 3/25/2009 4 comments no ratings * Rate It * Save It DISCUSS Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Email This Responding to vehement, snarky, and often illegible feedback from its user community about its redesign, Facebook has responded in a blog, detailing how it intends to mend fences, and restating its purported dedication to listening to user feedback. Facebook developer Christoper Cox outlines what Facebook claims are the "top four things we've been hearing from all of you about the changes" -- including the need to add more control and relevance to the update stream; the desire for more "Highlights," or the new sidebar demonstrating what your friends are up to; and the ability to find things more easily -- a critical request, as the new Facebook, many think, is nearly impossible to navigate. Cox also notes that many users have requested a return to the old version of Facebook, but that the new version's purpose is to "present the right balance between what's happening right now and what's interesting over a longer period of time." And the site will continue to work hard "to make this stream more valuable, and also to build out the richness and relevance of the Highlights section." Some of the upcoming changes Cox notes, without citing specific rollout dates, seem positive; some seem unnecessary; and others could quite possibly make things much more annoying. Examples: Live updating: We will be adding the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page. [Uh. Three cheers for championing crippling laziness?] Photo tags: In order to surface more photos you might like to see, we'll be adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream. [Wow. More clutter. Just what we needed. Thanks.] More choices for applications: We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream. [Great for us... perhaps not so great for your business model, but, hey, who cares about that!?] Above all, this response fits nicely into Facebook's latest attempt to reposition itself as a company that cares, perhaps too deeply, about what its users think. In related news, Facebook has hired a public policy director -- Timothy D. Sparapani, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union -- who will join the team next month and help (they hope) quiet some of the ongoing complaints over infringements on user privacy. As Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin told Internet Evolution last week, rather than weighing in on the Facebook Redesign poll application recently making headlines, the best way for irate users to submit feedback is via a feedback link included in the site's homepage tour. This point is reiterated in Cox's blog -- sort of an indirect suggestion that, much like the other passive activities you engage in on Facebook (by the way... joined our group yet?), responding to a third-party poll will get you nowhere. ? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution Channel: Consumer Internet, Personalization & privacy, Web 2.0 Tags: Blogs, Social Networking DISCUSS Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Email This Comments Current display: newest comments first display in chronological order cbrown Re: *Another* user revolt? cbrown IQ Crew Thursday March 26, 2009 5:54:37 PM no ratings * Rate It * Save It "A redesign of Facebook from time to time is perhaps a way to renew Facebook and give users a feeling it's not too "outdated" as long as they don't overdo it at once." ebay knows how to do this! At first glance, you would think eBay's site has changed very little over the years, but if you were to compare today's site side-by-side with a screenshot from a few years ago, it would look quite different...yet still familiar. Start your Own Board Messages List | Post a Message | Reply viboons Re: *Another* user revolt? viboons Researcher Thursday March 26, 2009 4:16:53 PM no ratings * Rate It * Save It It's quite normal that people would react (or over-react) to the site everytime Facebook makes major changes. But after a while, few would still remember what an old Facebook page used to look like. A redesign of Facebook from time to time is perhaps a way to renew Facebook and give users a feeling it's not too "outdated" as long as they don't overdo it at once. Start your Own Board Messages List | Post a Message | Reply Nicole Ferraro Re: *Another* user revolt? Nicole Ferraro IQ Crew Thursday March 26, 2009 4:10:07 PM no ratings * Rate It * Save It I agree. Facebook can bill itself as democratic all it wants, but the fact is if it actually cared about what its users thought, it would maybe ask them beforehand. If it's going to do what it wants and stick with it, that's one thing. Go for it. You're in charge. But if they're going to make changes, only to then ask what the users think, and thennn go back and fix their mistakes... ugh. Waste of time to say the least. I don't think they know what they're doing at all. Start your Own Board Messages List | Post a Message | Reply cbrown *Another* user revolt? cbrown IQ Crew Thursday March 26, 2009 11:47:46 AM no ratings * Rate It * Save It I've come to the conclusion that Facebook's business planning tool is a weathervane. For a company that's all about user participation, user-generated content and feedback, they have an astonishing lack of understanding of their audience. This latest revolt, like all the others, could have easily been predicted and prevented. Start your Own Board Messages List | Post a Message | Reply The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of Techweb. The blogs and comments are the opinions only of the writers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.

Responding to vehement, snarky, and often illegible feedback from its user community about its redesign, Facebook has responded in a blog, detailing how it intends to mend fences, and restating its purported dedication to listening to user feedback.

Facebook developer Christoper Cox outlines what Facebook claims are the "top four things we've been hearing from all of you about the changes" -- including the need to add more control and relevance to the update stream; the desire for more "Highlights," or the new sidebar demonstrating what your friends are up to; and the ability to find things more easily -- a critical request, as the new Facebook, many think, is nearly impossible to navigate.

Cox also notes that many users have requested a return to the old version of Facebook, but that the new version's purpose is to "present the right balance between what's happening right now and what's interesting over a longer period of time." And the site will continue to work hard "to make this stream more valuable, and also to build out the richness and relevance of the Highlights section."

Some of the upcoming changes Cox notes, without citing specific rollout dates, seem positive; some seem unnecessary; and others could quite possibly make things much more annoying. Examples:

Live updating: We will be adding the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page. [Uh. Three cheers for championing crippling laziness?]

Photo tags: In order to surface more photos you might like to see, we'll be adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream. [Wow. More clutter. Just what we needed. Thanks.]

More choices for applications: We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream. [Great for us... perhaps not so great for your business model, but, hey, who cares about that!?]

Above all, this response fits nicely into Facebook's latest attempt to reposition itself as a company that cares, perhaps too deeply, about what its users think. In related news, Facebook has hired a public policy director -- Timothy D. Sparapani, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union -- who will join the team next month and help (they hope) quiet some of the ongoing complaints over infringements on user privacy.

As Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin told Internet Evolution last week, rather than weighing in on the Facebook Redesign poll application recently making headlines, the best way for irate users to submit feedback is via a feedback link included in the site's homepage tour. This point is reiterated in Cox's blog -- sort of an indirect suggestion that, much like the other passive activities you engage in on Facebook (by the way... joined our group yet?), responding to a third-party poll will get you nowhere.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Ask the President... If He Lets You

We've come a long way from the YouTube debates. The primary season debates allowing regular shmoes like you, me, and snowmen to send in questions for the candidates via video -- while deserving of a quick golf clap -- are often scorned by proponents of open government for involving a middleman, CNN, which weasled its way into the process, controlling which questions were asked.

Those debates are now acknowledged as a start, a tiny crack in the glass wall separating real people from the politicos. But there are greater plans in place for using the Web to bring people's questions closer to the president.

Launched last week by open-source project communityCounts, and backed by a coalition including The Nation, The Washington Times, and Personal Democracy Forum, a new site called Ask the President hopes to help citizens get their questions to President Obama during press conferences.

Using GNU-based open-source technology, the communityCounts platform allows users to post questions on the site and/or submit links to content that exists elsewhere (e.g., YouTube). Site visitors can then vote questions up or down. While users can submit as many questions as they like, the system allows only one vote per question from each IP address.

Ask the President also deploys sharing features, such as the option to post your question to Twitter or Facebook; or to embed it in a blog, letting Web users vote directly from various sites.

Ideally, questions considered "most popular" (based on the net votes and the site's population) will be brought to a press conference by a "credentialed journalist" selected by the coalition. That journalist will then select one of the most popular questions to ask based on what is being, and has already been, covered at the conference.

But like all other well intentioned, third-party online initiatives, this process only works if the barriers to entry come down.

In this case, the greatest barrier would be President Obama, who has to agree to letting new voices into prime-time press conferences in the East Room and, further, per the site's wishlist, pledge to take one citizen question at each press confab. Such a pledge would fit in nicely with Obama's purported dedication to open government, but as yet it's unclear whether he or his communications minions would allow such tomfoolery.

Further, this process requires participation from a "critical mass," says David Colarusso, founder of communityCounts, rather than just a niche crowd of Web-goers. Since its launch last week, the site has registered 28,712 votes from 2,489 voters.

"Crowds are only wise under very specific circumstances," says Colarusso. "One of the things we try to be very conscious about is to try to get voices from the left, right, and in between... mostly because what it means is extremes can cancel each other out."

Regardless of how much success we achieve by harnessing Web 2.0 to bring citizens face-to-face (sort of) with their elected officials, however, there is still the glaringly hairy problem that this whole Government 2.0 movement leaves out the chunk of the country still disconnected. Rather than an inclusive process, then, it becomes yet another way to give a voice to those with the means to have it heard.

According to Colarusso, however, such a gripe has little merit.

"I always find this a really bizarre argument because when a politician goes to a town hall like Obama did last Thursday people don't get outraged that only so many people can fit into a town hall," he says. "If anything, this is a town hall that includes a great many more people."

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Dealing With Print's Death

It's always tough to lose a loved one, even when the death signifies the end of suffering, as it will with the death of the struggling print industry.

Whether or not you believe the harrowing headlines that foretell print's death, the signs of its downward spiral are readily evident. Take the recent shutdown of the print version of Seattle Post Intelligencer, for example. Pair that with the regularly scheduled headlines (online and, ironically, in print) about other papers filing for bankruptcy, layoffs at The New York Times, and it's clear P-I is just a first of many major newspapers to take the plunge.

We hear a lot of the same arguments where print and its death are concerned: One medium doesn't necessarily need to kill another! But I like the way it makes my fingers dirty! (No?) For some wishful thinkers, myself included, the hope has been that the Web and print can coexist happily, but sometimes the numbers just don't add up.

Who killed print (Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe again, was it?), and do you care? A poll last week on Internet Evolution, taken by over 400 respondents, suggests you do.

Answering the question "Which statement best describes your attitude" about the reports of the print industry's impending death, 42 percent of IE readers called it a "tragedy when a city doesn't have two competitive daily newspapers," and another 42 percent don't mind losing print "if we can maintain journalistic integrity on the Web." (HA! Oh, wait, you were serious...?)

With nearly 85 percent of our readers either distressed over the idea of not having competing newspapers or concerned about maintaining journalistic integrity online, it's clear that we're making this shift toward digital publishing with light footsteps.

But as we find ourselves lamenting print's death, longing for better days, wishing it had only been better prepared for the digital age, with some like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even asking for help from the government, others say there was nothing that could have been done to protect print.

In a recent blog post, Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, puts it rather succinctly:

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know "If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?" To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

Further, says Shirky, to think otherwise -- to demand to hear "that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it" -- is to ignore the fact that we're living through a "revolution" and to ask to be "lied to."

"It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves -- the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public -- has stopped being a problem," he writes.

Are we better off casting print and its "walled-garden" approach aside completely, moving to an age of Internet-publishing-only where "competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed"?

Is it time to just accept that clinging to the idea of the costly printing press is simply absurd in the digital age?

Our readers don't seem so sure. But, according to Shirky, that doesn't much matter.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Follow the VC Money, or What's Left of It

Times are tough out there across the globe, and the turmoil certainly doesn't stop short of the startup sector, which, reports say, will be hit especially hard by this hot financial crisis everyone's hootin' and hollerin' about in 2009.

If a survey by the National Venture Capital Association is any indication, VC funding in 2009 is projected to be 10 percent lower than it was in 2008, which, on its own, was not a good year, investment wise, with funding falling 21 percent from 2007. Dow Jones Venture Source further cites IT investing in the fourth quarter of 2008 as "the slowest since 1998."

Silicon Valley, despite its interesting array of widgets, social nets, and flip flops, certainly felt the heat of the crisis during the last quarter of 2008, seeing VC funding drop 26 percent from the previous quarter, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Oh, and forget you ever even learned the term "IPO." (Go ahead and retire that one when you're filing away "free market" and "credit.")

This news, on top of the fact that the phrase "online business model" still remains a bit of an enigma, doesn't exactly spell "good times" for budding entrepreneurs, or struggling startups, for the year ahead.

But a new Internet Evolution BIG (GIANT!) report suggests things aren't all bad, as VC funding hasn't disappeared altogether. It's still there (if you can finnnnd it!).

The report examines various industries that are still catching the eye of investors, including mobility; advertising and marketing; social networking; and "other 'odds and ends' of Internet software," citing some specific startups that have each managed to get their hands on at least $10 million during these times of economic turmoil, crisis, and overall badness.

But despite the silver lining (you'll see it... just rub your eyes and squint a little), report co-author Chris Poley suggests that, much like everyone else, the most today's Internet startups can realistically hope for is survival.

Recovery.gov Gains Features, Loses Traffic

Way back in February, we analyzed Recovery.gov, a new government Website that bills itself as "the main vehicle to provide each and every citizen with the ability to monitor the progress of the recovery." (The economic recovery, that is.)

At first glance, we were critical of the site and of President Obama for not following through on his promise to post legislation there for five days prior to signing it; as well as the incredible lack of detail within Recovery.gov's graphics and charts -- one which attributed $8 billion of taxpayer money to a category called "Other." While those criticisms still stand, there have been some notable changes and features added to Recovery.gov that are worth a second look, including the addition of State Progress and Resources and Agency Progress and Resources.

The State Progress and Resources page, for example, provides links to individual state recovery sites, which explain how much funding each state has received and how they're spending funds from the stimulus bill. (North Dakota, South Dakota, and South Carolina are the only states that still do not have recovery sites.)

Taking a look at New York's recovery site (recovery.ny.gov), visitors are able to drill down into New York's share of the bailout (approximately $24.6 billion) in areas including infrastructure/energy, health and human services, education, and public safety, noting how much funding is being devoted to projects in each. The same essentially goes for the rest of the map, with some states, like Washington, adding maps of counties receiving funding.

Yet while data intensive, the state sites are hardly interactive, providing few links and only the means for one-way communication.

For example, rather than using a Web 2.0-esque forum like StimulusWatch.org, a third-party site where people can propose and vote on candidate projects for funding, the individual state sites use a static contact form for submitting proposals (yawn... how very Arpanet...). Rather than providing citizens the opportunity to interact with one another about projects receiving funding in their area via a discussion board or comment section, they are arranged in a black-and-white bulleted list. Snore. Thanks, Microsoft Word.

Apart from the state sites, another addition to Recovery.gov, Agency Progress and Resources, provides links to 29 agency recovery sites with information on funding received by the agencies, "major actions" taken so far, and actions planned for the future.

The Department of Energy site, for example (www.energy.gov/recovery), allows visitors to drill down to read announcements and weekly reports on spending.

Similarly, the Department of Commerce site (www.commerce.gov/recovery) provides links to weekly reports in the form of Excel spreadsheets.

While these sites provide basic data to help citizens understand where the money has gone, they don't do much in the way of fostering communication, which is, essentially, the whole point of Web 2.0. The lack of interactivity on the state and agency sites is reflected on Recovery.gov as well, whose promise of interactive charts and graphs has remained, as yet, largely unrealized.

Further, despite the additions to Recovery.gov, it appears the American people aren't all that enthused. Data from Alexa shows that the site's traffic spiked for a while in February and has since significantly dropped off:

Could it be that the site isn't living up to its expectations where data and interactivity are concerned? Is there not enough data available yet to intrigue the masses? Or is the connected portion of America just not all that interested in delving into the details of its lost tax dollars?

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

O'Reilly: Our Little Web Is Growing Up

SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Expo -- At a keynote session this afternoon, Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, said that the Web is like a little baby: As it gets older, it gets smarter.

Five years into this crazy little thing called the Web 2.0 conference (co-produced by O'Reilly and TechWeb), O'Reilly asked his audience to ponder whether the Web has gotten any smarter -- or if it's more like those idiot babies that just drool and soil their pants (he may have articulated this differently...).

"A newborn baby sees and hears but can't make sense of all sensations," said O'Reilly. "If we think of the Web as a newborn baby, we have to ask, is the Web getting any smarter?"

To that, O'Reilly replied that the answer was "Def Not" and then we all went home.

Kidding. April Fool's. Ha.

Anyway... to analyze the question, O'Reilly first referenced the history of search, pointing to an early search engine page in March 1994 which crawled "all of 5,900 sites" -- 2,000 of which were using HTTP.

"This is a stage when the search engine stuck everything in its mouth and said 'What is this thing?'" said O'Reilly (another baby reference). "In 1998, when Google was launched, Google was indexing 25 million pages," he said, adding that this was evidence of the baby becoming more devious complex, extracting meaning from pages by studying link structure of the Web.

Really hammering away at the baby analogy, O'Reilly then described Google's iPhone application which uses speech recognition and location sensors to deliver, say, the nearest pizza place, as the onset of "hand-eye coordination."

"The baby we built with technology is growing up, starting to go to work, and getting beyond the world which is just for fun."

(Interestingly omitted from the analogy was the way both the Web and babies demand obscene amounts of attention and rarely ever produce any ROI -- also an uncanny similarity. But I digress...)

From here on out, said O'Reilly, moving from the baby topic to the recession, we need to learn to use this Web-baby thing to solve the world's problems and develop more from less (because we're all poor now).

"The whole basis of our economy is more will be spent, things will be bigger and cost more, the economy will grow. Yet in technology we have this wonderful power of less where we get more for the same amount. We need to start thinking, how do we apply Moore's Law to the world's great problems?" said O'Reilly.

One example of applying the "less is more" strategy, he said, is a site called PatientsLikeMe, a social network for people with life-altering illnesses which also acts as a clinical trial and post-clinical trial, allowing people to report on the success of their treatments.

"Something that costs a drug company tens of millions of dollars is being done by people themselves. That's part of the power we have to take techniques we've developed on the consumer Internet and start to apply them to big, hard problems," he said.

"We in the Web community know this wonderful flowering of innovation is something we've created together," said O'Reilly. "I want you all to take that as your mission to continue to create, invent, and make value for this challenged world of ours."

And don't forget to burp your Web after meals.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Top Challenges to Government 2.0

When President Obama took office in January, he brought with him the promise of transparency. Translated in the digital age, this means the ability for citizens to gain easy access to federal information online, and to communicate with their nation's leaders in ways unprecedented.

The president and his tech-savvy minions have caught some flak for not quite upholding that promise. But the problems the government faces when trying to effectively use the Web are daunting and go far past simply getting the guy in office who might be interested in leveraging the technology.

Speaking at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Andrew McLaughlin, head of global public policy and government affairs at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), detailed some of these problems. McLaughlin spent three months in Washington as a member of the Obama/Biden transition team and described his experience as "the story of a Bay Area nerd who goes to Washington and encounters some rather surprising obstacles."

Terms of Service: Unlike the rest of us, the government actually reads the TOS agreements on the various consumer sites of the Web-o-sphere. In fact, not reading these "line by line" (unlike those spending bills in Congress) could result in some real trouble. For example, McLaughlin pointed out that the feds can't agree to indemnity clauses that most sites have in their terms saying that the user is liable for damages. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran into trouble here when trying to use Second Life for rehabilitation purposes, because Linden Lab assigns "unlimited liability" to the end user.

Apart from indemnity clauses, TOSs often publish legal jurisdiction which says that the contract will be governed by a particular state's laws. "The federal government is not subject to state law. It's only subject to federal law," says McLaughlin. "For these reasons even just signing up for free online service is harder than you might think."

Federal Law: That whole United States Code thing can tend to get in the way for our elected officials trying to get hip with the Web 2.0 squares. McLaughlin pointed to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which states that the disabled must have access to and use of federal information comparable to that available to the non-disabled. In that sense, asks McLaughlin, "Can the government sign a contract with a Web service that is not Section 508-compliant?"

Management Statutes: While the idea of making all records electronic seems like an easy solution to various problems, for the federal government it's painstaking. McLaughlin pointed to the Presidential Records Act which requires all documentary records and materials to be kept. "This requires that everything be kept in paper," he says. "No lie -- government Web masters have to sit and print snapshots of their Websites on a regular basis. Do a blog post, gotta print it. It becomes a real headache when you have a Website that takes comments."

Endorsements: There's an understanding that the president is not to endorse any commercial services. Therefore, when the president embeds a YouTube video on his site, is he endorsing YouTube? This seems silly when considering YouTube as a media outlet, like, say The New York Times. But the White House Counsel takes this issue seriously.

Apart from overcoming these obstacles by revising federal laws and regulations -- no mean feat -- in order to achieve any real change, says McLaughlin, it all comes down to culture.

"I thought we could wipe away this stuff on Day 1 with an executive order or two. That's not the case. The way we're going to get a better government is to change the culture, and that's hard to do. It's a laborious process."

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Top Challenges to Government 2.0

When President Obama took office in January, he brought with him the promise of transparency. Translated in the digital age, this means the ability for citizens to gain easy access to federal information online, and to communicate with their nation's leaders in ways unprecedented.

The president and his tech-savvy minions have caught some flak for not quite upholding that promise. But the problems the government faces when trying to effectively use the Web are daunting and go far past simply getting the guy in office who might be interested in leveraging the technology.

Speaking at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Andrew McLaughlin, head of global public policy and government affairs at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), detailed some of these problems. McLaughlin spent three months in Washington as a member of the Obama/Biden transition team and described his experience as "the story of a Bay Area nerd who goes to Washington and encounters some rather surprising obstacles."

Terms of Service: Unlike the rest of us, the government actually reads the TOS agreements on the various consumer sites of the Web-o-sphere. In fact, not reading these "line by line" (unlike those spending bills in Congress) could result in some real trouble. For example, McLaughlin pointed out that the feds can't agree to indemnity clauses that most sites have in their terms saying that the user is liable for damages. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran into trouble here when trying to use Second Life for rehabilitation purposes, because Linden Lab assigns "unlimited liability" to the end user.

Apart from indemnity clauses, TOSs often publish legal jurisdiction which says that the contract will be governed by a particular state's laws. "The federal government is not subject to state law. It's only subject to federal law," says McLaughlin. "For these reasons even just signing up for free online service is harder than you might think."

Federal Law: That whole United States Code thing can tend to get in the way for our elected officials trying to get hip with the Web 2.0 squares. McLaughlin pointed to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which states that the disabled must have access to and use of federal information comparable to that available to the non-disabled. In that sense, asks McLaughlin, "Can the government sign a contract with a Web service that is not Section 508-compliant?"

Management Statutes: While the idea of making all records electronic seems like an easy solution to various problems, for the federal government it's painstaking. McLaughlin pointed to the Presidential Records Act which requires all documentary records and materials to be kept. "This requires that everything be kept in paper," he says. "No lie -- government Web masters have to sit and print snapshots of their Websites on a regular basis. Do a blog post, gotta print it. It becomes a real headache when you have a Website that takes comments."

Endorsements: There's an understanding that the president is not to endorse any commercial services. Therefore, when the president embeds a YouTube video on his site, is he endorsing YouTube? This seems silly when considering YouTube as a media outlet, like, say The New York Times. But the White House Counsel takes this issue seriously.

Apart from overcoming these obstacles by revising federal laws and regulations -- no mean feat -- in order to achieve any real change, says McLaughlin, it all comes down to culture.

"I thought we could wipe away this stuff on Day 1 with an executive order or two. That's not the case. The way we're going to get a better government is to change the culture, and that's hard to do. It's a laborious process."

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution
Channel: Digital content & entertainment, Enterprise IT, Personalization & privacy, Security, Web 2.0

Your Brand vs. the Internet

A couple of incidents this week demonstrated the power of the Internet's viral nature to damage or destroy otherwise well established brands. And fast.

The two incidents of note here are the Amazon.com brouhaha, commonly known to Twitter hipsters as "#amazonfail," and a YouTube video posted by two Domino's Pizza employees, which led to them both being charged as felons and issued a blow to the Domino's name.

The Amazon issue, whereby Amazon.com was called out as homophobic for removing sales ranks on gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and trans-gender books, was detailed in a blog earlier this week by ThinkerNetter Rob Salkowitz. Domino's digital downfall occurred when employees posted a video on YouTube (since removed) depicting their unsanitary food prep skills. As one employee stuck cheese up his nose and spread it on sandwiches, the other employee narrated, saying "Now that's how we roll at Domino's."

In both cases, the companies were forced to respond to the Webwide backlash and try to preseve their brands' reputation. But did it work? Once apparent shame or failure is broadcast -- and documented -- on the Internet, can a brand really recover?

The two companies took different measures in responding to their crises. Amazon waited a full day before issuing a statement via email late Monday, saying that the error had affected 57,310 books in various categories.

The company was criticized for not being hip to the times and responding in real-time on Twitter. Instead, Amazon waited until it could formulate a somewhat valid explanation for the error, and distributed that explanation in a closed setting (email), rather than straight to the public.

A Domino's exec, on the other hand, created a Twitter account to discuss the issue and posted a statement via YouTube. The New York Times also reports that one of the ex-employees in the video sent Domino's an email saying, "It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!! [...] I AM SOO SORRY!"

Nevertheless, Domino's, too, waited to respond to the video, hoping the controversy would quiet.

Perhaps both companies should have responded more quickly. In an age where information is more emotionally charged and traveling ever faster, it doesn't seem beneficial to sit back and hope it will go away. But it's unclear whether a quicker response would have had an impact on the fired-up Web users.

In a blog post this week, Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, who championed some of the Amazon Twitter backlash, wrote that what he'd said of Amazon was wrong. But he suggested that people would still hold onto their Amazon grievances despite the fact that the thing they were mad about (Amazon's purposely removing ranks on homosexual content) didn't happen:

We're used to the future turning out differently than we expected; it happens all the time. When the past turns out differently, though, it can get really upsetting, and because people don't like that kind of upset, we're at risk of believing false things rather than revising our sense of what actually happened.

In the end, it may not matter whether Amazon was not to blame for its egregious error, or if the Domino's video was merely a high-larious prank. It may just come down to our ability to rant about something, and stick it to corporate overlords who no longer have control over the message. Whether that message is true or not may be irrelevant with Web users at the helm. It's just more fun that way, despite the cost.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

'Normal People' Face Grave Threats Online

SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Expo -- "The Internet cannot be safely used by normal people."

That was the message delivered by Alex Stamos, co-founder at iSEC Partners, yesterday in a session on cybersecurity.

Acknowledging his status as "a paranoid," Stamos made some unsettling statements about the current and future state of cybersecurity, which is today being challenged with new, sophisticated attacks.

Stamos stressed that most Web users shouldn't be trusted to make transactions online.

"We're past the point where I can recommend my mom use the Internet," says Stamos. "It's not possible to transact on a day-to-day basis with the level of trust you have in doing it in the physical world... Most people are not prepared to make technological decisions necessary to use the Internet."

"This is a bad problem," says Stamos. "People haven't realized yet. There's a lot of e-commerce going on, and online banking. There will be a reckoning when people realize they're not qualified to use the Internet safely."

Apart from e-commerce and banking, Stamos says that users are given way too much decision power when it comes to protecting their networks.

"It's time for us to stop asking users to make decisions they're not qualified to make," says Stamos. " 'Want to trust this SSL certificate?' There's absolutely no way 99 percent of people on this planet are qualified to make that decision.

"It's time for us to get past giving people choices. Choices are done... Software should work securely. If it's not, it should stop. Stop letting people do dumb things."

Further, despite the overall air of excitement surrounding social media here at the Web 2.0 Expo, Stamos says the new technology is making us much more vulnerable and setting users up for disaster.

"Social networks are ruining two-factor authentication," he says, suggesting that all of the questions banking sites use for authentication can likely be answered by checking someone's Facebook page.

" 'Where did you go on your honeymoon?' Hmm... Go to Facebook, pull the photos, and guess. The idea this is real secure authentication by banks is ridiculous. We're going to see some interesting ideas when it turns out that 500 to 600 people have access to data."

As cyber-attacks become more sophisticated, and users remain unqualified to handle them, Stamos believes, law enforcement and the security industry aren't doing nearly enough to help.

"We've had 20 years of people being security experts," says Stamos. "Things are even worse than they were."

Part of the problem, he says, is that people in the security industry who do valuable work aren't being rewarded.

"People are not getting rewarded for doing positive things. When people do come up with solutions they immediately go get a VC and sell the product for $500,000 to enterprises only. Lots of solutions out there are not affordable or usable by most people."

Further, he says, software engineers are not taking advantage of the education available to help them do their jobs better, nor are they being forced to learn, with most entry-level software engineers not getting trained in security for the first few years on the job.

"The basic knowledge for building more secure systems is out there. If you choose to be an educated developer you have the ability to do things right." Nevertheless, "technological innovations to make software better are starting to drop off.

"Software engineering still sucks. It's not really engineering," says Stamos. "If bridges were engineered like software we'd all be dead."

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Stop the Madness: The Web Is Not Changing Leadership

With the birth of social media, enterprise social networking, micro-blogging, and all things Web Two-Dot-Ugh came this crazy idea that we were somehow "flattening the hierarchy" and recreating leadership.

This theory was abundant at the Web 2.0 Expo last week in San Francisco, where Web lovers of all stripes came to talk about the way the Web is changing our idea of the world and, particularly, who runs it.

"Technology was very important, and now I think it's swinging toward humanity," said John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in a talk entitled "Open Source Administration."

"That's why social media is so meaningful today. We want to be human again. It's a wonderful problem to have."

Maeda went on to describe the way he runs his (pardon me, not his, "everyone's!") university, which he considers a "social media campus" as exemplified by the screens placed across campus where students and faculty can post images or text for free -- and download any of the shots as screensavers.

He also has a blog and invites students to participate. Tuesday is "Anonymous Day," when students can post comments on the blog without revealing their name. "I found it's no longer my blog. It's the community's blog," Maeda gushed.

"With this kind of mechanism we're able to erode the idea of leadership in the 20th century. You all represent this new thing. This weirdness where suddenly you can talk to anybody now -- one of my VP's sons just Friended me on Facebook. It's strange but all possible!"

What's stranger, still, is that anyone buys into this hogwash.

I can't think of how many times I've heard vendor pitches suggesting that their social media products are "flattening the hierarchy" in the enterprise. Don't also forget that Web 2.0 is changing leadership, not just in the office, but in America. You know Barack Obama? Yeah, he's my Facebook Friend and, thereby, not the boss of me.

Has everyone gone mad?

OK. Sure. Things are a little different now. I've now been granted this unprecedented right to Poke my boss on Facebook. I can possibly even be a part of a conversation with our CEO on Twitter, or on our internal wiki. But does this really "erode the idea of leadership"?

Maybe there's a new accountability factor. Maybe it humanizes people in a way, connecting tech-savvy execs with the staff they would otherwise not come to know. And maybe that's a good thing.

But none of this changes who the leaders are or that they're in charge. When our execs sign off Twitter and retire to those boardrooms to determine who is next to get axed, we're still on the outside, in our cubes, disconnected. Online and off, the hierarchy remains intact.

All things considered, then, does the Web really "change" leadership, or does it just give it a friendlier guise?

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Google VP Talks Mobile, Sidesteps Twitter Speculation

SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Expo -- Taking the stage today with Tim O?Reilly, Google?s vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra emphasized the world's move to mobile, calling mobile "the most personal of all personal computers."

"If you think back just as recently as a few years ago, if you wanted to get an app on a phone you had to get it through the OEM, maybe your carrier locked down the phone, maybe it was so complicated you couldn?t figure it out," said Gundotra. "All those barriers have started to fall. Leadership from people like Apple made it incredibly simple to install apps."

Gundotra called forth a poignant moment in his life that helped him realize the importance of mobile and his destiny at Google. When prompted with a question he didn't know the answer to, his four-year-old daughter asked him "Where?s your phone?"

"In her brief four years of life watching her dad she assumed anytime you didn't know the answer to a question you brought out your phone and Googled the question," he said. "To her the phone was the ultimate answering machine." (Sniff!)

But the future is about more than simply Googling for an answer.

"In five years these devices will do amazing things with the camera -- recognize objects, friends," said Gundotra. "We?ll start to get to a point where devices become our agents, our friends, will understand our calendars, will support us with advice, will take notes for us..."

Will clip our toenails, bathe us, carry out our hit jobs... wait, what?

Gundotra placed particular emphasis on the importance of using open Web standards in the mobile space. "The Internet is controlled by none of us, so it belongs to all of us. In the end if you can?t reach consensus, no one adopts the standard. No one controls the Internet."

"But you want to try," quipped conference host and noted japester Tim O?Reilly.

When it came time in the Q&A to use Google Moderator, O?Reilly?s preferred method for getting questions from the audience, the question pool was quite shallow -- registering 19 votes on 7 questions (including three from me) from 11 people -- as were some of the answers.

Taking the first question (from yours truly) O?Reilly asked Gundotra the question on everyone's lips "Is Google buying Twitter?"

"I?m a big fan of Twitter and, yes, scaling would help there. But we don?t as a policy comment on rumor or speculation," he quasi-replied. (Read: We?re open? except when we?re not. LOL!)

"But it?s not a rumor anymore..." O?Reilly persisted.

"I'm friends with Michael [Arrington] and Kara [Swisher] and I?m enjoying their conversation but have no comment," said Gundotra.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Web 2.0 Expo Ditches Twitter for Google

SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Expo -- The new hot thing to do at tech conferences, despite the oft-scarce WiFi access, is gather questions and comments from the audience using the Web.

At the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday, ignoring the row of lonely microphones lining the keynote ballroom, Tim O'Reilly used Twitter to generate questions in advance of his interview with Steven Elop, president of the Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s Business Division. Tweeters with questions for Elop posted them online, adding the "hashtag" #w2e.

I've typically seen conferences use Twitter, so I was surprised this morning to read this Tweet from O'Reilly: "Live audience questions via twitter worked pretty well w @selop at #w2e yesterday, but we're trying Google Moderator today for @EllnMllr."

Immediately I wondered "Why?" and thought of all the angles I could take here on O'Reilly's newfound Twitter scorn (Tim O'Reilly Replaced by Twitter-Hating Doppelganger!), but he quickly followed up with: "Advantage of Google Moderator is voting up questions. Someone should build an app like this for twitter, or G should add to Moderator."

A valid point about the switch to Moderator: Using Twitter to generate questions doesn't really work if you're trying to do a crowdsourcing thing. For that, something like Google Moderator, where attendees can vote questions up or down, works better. (Although it didn't generate too much interest: The tool registered 314 votes on 22 questions from 36 people, with the most popular question generating a total of 11 positive votes.)

But this brings up one of the most interesting problems with Twitter: Without the effort of the community around it to make more of it, it's a pretty basic, if not nearly functionless, tool.

O'Reilly pointed out yesterday in his keynote that Twitter is a great example of the "power of less," calling it an "incredibly simple application that has led to all kinds of innovation as people rushed in to do the kinds of things Twitter themselves had not done."

In an interview over the summer, Twitter's lead API Alex Payne confirmed that the site had certainly been used in ways it wasn't intended or expected. The other day he said he's still amazed at the industry's obsession with making more of Twitter. "It's a weird industry around it. What's been really strange lately is a number of big companies that have their own products that have been working on Twitter side projects," said Payne. "That just wows me."

But it's also a wonder what we actually want Twitter to be and whether it can handle it. As Payne told us the other day, third-party applications demanding too much of its servers are largely responsible for its downtime. O'Reilly's distress that Twitter wasn't able to perform a function it was never intended to do sort of begs the question: Is it really Twitter everyone really loves? Or is it the fact that Twitter is so purposeless on its own that it can virtually be anything that makes it appealing?

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Most Readers Not Jumping on Google Voice

If you asked the Google-snuggling news media and bloggers who they thought would migrate to Google's new voice service, judging from their coverage, their answer would probably be, "Everyone, Duh!"

But a poll last week on Internet Evolution suggests otherwise.

According to our highly-unscientific, yet colorful, statistics, nearly 70 percent of our readers are not jumping on the Google bandwagon, with 40 percent taking a "wait and see" approach to the service, and 28 percent saying they wouldn't use Google Voice at all. Ever.

Also of note is that more than half of our poll respondents appear to be split on opposite sides of the spectrum, with the aforementioned 28 percent shunning the service entirely, and a separate 26 percent saying they're absolutely on board.

This split is also emphasized in message board comments where Internet Evolution readers have provided varied opinions about Google's jump into voice services.

"The sooner we can switch all calls to voice mail and re-route voice mail to e-mail the better," says a seemingly pleased Mike Acker.

"With all the emphasis [on unified communications] in the enterprise, Google Voice is a logical move and, for Google, a smart one," writes sbondy.

"Google belongs in the voice comm. business about as much as AT&T belongs in the Web Search game," suggests J DAmbrosio.

"One butt... too many chairs," says a succinct Mashka of Google's ubiquity.

Nevertheless, with 40 percent of our readers curious about Voice but more likely to wait until it actually takes off, we can speculate that plenty of people have seen the high and low points of Google's other beta projects, which simply could not sustain the hype.

And rightfully so: A Wall Street Journal reporter testing the service recently wrote that the voicemail-to-text feature, one of the most hyped attributes, translated only about 75 percent of the words accurately, with most of her messages confusing in text. (She writes that "Hey Courtney, it's Monique" read "Hey Connie, it's Bernie." She's splitting hairs there, I think.)

On the other hand, perhaps our poll takers are less concerned about Google's capability in Voice and just agree more with ThinkerNetter David Silversmith, who says, "I want a choice that says 'Yes. I trust Google implicitly with my voice communications as much as I trust my current vendors.' "

And we can all agree that kind of implicit trust is just plain bad for you.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

The End of the Web 2.0 Free-for-All

The latest moves by the Associated Press toward putting a stranglehold on its content online, making it unavailable to other online publications who aren't paying for it, signals the impending end to the free-for-all that's defined Web 2.0.

The backstory is that for months the AP -- a cooperative with more than 1,400 U.S. newspaper members -- has griped that its content is unfairly used online. The first publicized incident occurred in June when the AP sent the Drudge Retort a cease-and-desist letter for excerpting and linking to its content. The debate was heightened this week when in a statement and at its annual meeting the AP affirmed that it will pursue legal action against online publications that use its material without paying for it or at least sharing revenue.

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories," said Dean Singleton, AP chairman, in a statement. "We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore."

The AP's issue is with publications that excerpt and link to its content, and with search engines, like Google News, which aggregate news stories that may be using the AP's content without paying for it.

And while we know it's hard to take seriously anyone who quotes Network in an annual statement, there's good reason for concern.

Over the last few days there's been much back and forth contesting the AP's argument, with Google saying its search engine is good for news organizations, The New York Times questioning whether Yahoo is more of a friend to AP than Google is, and experts like ThinkerNetter Scott Hilton exploring the legal issues.

But regardless of the finger-pointing, the underlying theme is clear: AP does not want to share its content with those who aren't paying for it, and that changes things drastically.

The news organization is taking a lot of heat for not playing by the rules of the digital age, but it certainly isn't alone. YouTube has been dealing with similar anger from the large networks who, oddly enough, don't want their content stolen and uploaded on its site. Despite our collective delusion, the content of the world does not belong to everyone, and, yes, the people who pay for it do mind when you're making money on it and they aren't. Crazy, we know.

AP's harsh tactics and legal threats are out of step with how the Internet works, which is why this is such a big deal. Most organizations operate under the pretense that excerpting and linking back to content is fair game on the Web.

But, despite our cries, the facts are clear: If organizations like the AP take a stand against this whole free-for-all, where what's mine is yours and what's yours is ours, it will signal the end of Web 2.0.

We can stomp our feet as we like and call the AP out of touch, but we can't shun them completely and think the Web can otherwise survive. Without content from the big guys -- the news organizations, the networks -- the Web as we've come to know it does not exist. The large organizations operate as separate entities, and the underdogs who've been making some form of money off of them have to figure out how to stand on their own or share the little revenue they have for access.

When the people providing the content wake up to that fact, as the AP has, and start to pull it out from under the rest of us, that's when reality will settle in for those whose livelihood and business model rely on its availability.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution
Channel: Digital content & entertainment, Web 2.0
Tags: Blogs, Google, RSS, Search ...

YouTube: Google's Not-So-Little Money Pit

Putting aside the fun of having one's logo associated with hours of mind-numbing online entertainment, what exactly is the point of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s continued support of YouTube Inc. ?

The more we analyze these companies, the more it's apparent their relationship is mutually unsuccessful. Despite Google's power over search and advertising, YouTube has yet to see meaningful revenues; and for its support of YouTube, Google is losing up to $1.65 million per day.

Those are the numbers derived by ThinkerNet contributor David Silversmith in a blog today on Internet Evolution. Using data from Google, Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. , Credit Suisse , and comScore Inc. , Silversmith found that Google is spending up to $2,064,054 a day, or $753 million annualized, to support YouTube's traffic. This is alarming, considering YouTube's revenue projections fall somewhere between $90 million and $240 million, according to analyst estimates. In that sense, Google is spending $1 to $2 on each YouTube visitor.

(Check out Silversmith's blog here: Google Losing up to $1.65M a Day on YouTube.)

Some of our readers and staffers have been discussing this on the message boards today, providing their version of what exactly this means for Google and the future of YouTube. While some suggest that this is just another example of Google failure outside the search and advertising space, others insist the YouTube model is strategic and that a real revenue plan will eventually come.

Regardless of how firm your faith in Google is, one thing is clear: When you watch a YouTube video, it is costing Google money. The more popular YouTube gets, the more money Google will lose. Somehow I don't think that's how a successful business is supposed to work.

Apart from making a dramatic shift in how YouTube works -- i.e., charging users to upload/watch videos -- Google's hopes of turning a profit on the site seem bleak.

So it might, in theory, be time for Google to rid itself of YouTube, a company it paid $1.65 billion for in 2006 -- but how? At this point, YouTube has proven to be something of a mess, acquiring one lawsuit after another, unprofitable partnerships, failed attempts at advertising, and the burden of paying for and supporting every wannabe Internet star's maniacal rants set to video. What company could afford to acquire YouTube's mess, and why would it want to?

As we dig ourselves deeper into this Web two-dot-hole, defined by building an audience without worrying about the revenue factor, it's becoming apparent -- all over again -- that this just doesn't work. If it did work, then YouTube wouldn't be currently backpedaling, seeking out network partnerships, ? la Hulu LLC , which had its revenue model from the start.

Does YouTube offer value to its users? Absolutely. But is that value enough to make it a sustainable, profitable business? Sadly, the numbers speak for themselves.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution
Channel: Consumer Internet, Digital content & entertainment, Web 2.0
Tags: Blogs, Google, Video

New Models for YouTube as Google Revenues Decline

News of a decline in Google's revenues, new partnerships for YouTube, and the prospect of subscriptions for premium video content all point to the heavy burden the profitless, money-sucking YouTube has injected into Google's balance sheet.

While Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s first quarter '09 revenues rose 6.2 percent to $5.51 billion from $5.19 billion a year ago, they declined 3 percent from the fourth quarter of '08, marking Google's first revenue decline in consecutive quarters since the company went public.

Internet Evolution reported earlier this week that Google is losing up to $1.65 million per day on YouTube, effectively paying for each visitor that comes to the site. With its first decline in revenues in five years, and pressure from video competitors like premium content site Hulu LLC , Google is feeling the combined effects of the economy and its very expensive, not at all profitable pet, YouTube Inc. (Thanks to Mashka for the metaphor!)

And recent news from both Google and YouTube suggests they sense the urgency as well.

Yesterday YouTube said it has rolled out a Hulu-like channel for full-length content -- television shows and movies -- through a deal with some Hollywood studios, including Sony, Lions Gate, and MGM, to share advertising revenues. The site will run in-stream ads against full-length content.

Further, in an interview with The New York Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said his firm may, in the future, ask users to pay for other premium content (not necessarily the content on that channel) via subscriptions or micropayments.

But it's questionable how well this will actually work. At this point, YouTube's new content channel has an odd array of shows and movies to choose from, including The Addams Family, I Dream of Jeannie, and Married With Children. (I'm not exactly hearing "cha-ching" here...)

A subscription model could work, but Schmidt said the site would only charge a fee for some premium content, and would exclude all user-generated content (UGC). Surely no one would pay to watch kitty clip puppy's toenails, but without UGC, analysts estimate that monetizable content on YouTube makes up only 3 to 10 percent of its database.

It's unclear whether there is a profitable model for YouTube. And as the site shifts its focus to premium content, the You that made YouTube so popular in the first place may just get lost in the mix.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Seeking More User Data, Google Targets Egomaniacs

Obsessed with yourself, much? Ever curious about what the online masses have to say about you? Google is well aware of your egomania and, with a new product release called Google Me, is using it against you.

Before we get into details, let's take a moment to acknowledge that most, if not all of us, have Googled ourselves. I admit it. I regularly scan the Web to find out who is mad at me and how I'm ranking in comparison to other Nicole Ferraros out there.

People search hasn't been a strong point for Google. Self-obsessed Web users are always complaining that their search results may portray them unfavorably and/or turn up the wrong person with the same name. Rude!

Google Me offers the chance to change that by giving people the opportunity to determine what others find when they search for them... sort of.

I say "sort of" for a couple of reasons. First off, in order to beef up one's Google presence, Google is asking people to create Google Profiles. A Google Profile is essentially a spot where Web users can list some information about themselves and links to their other online presences. (See mine here.)

Google's new push for people to create Profiles is being seen as an attempt for Google to steal thunder from sites like LinkedIn, where people typically go to search for basic information: job titles, contact information, etc.

Further, once you create that Profile, a search for your name will place the Profile at the bottom of the page, not the top. So the searcher will be privy to a string of other search results before even getting to your Profile with your desired information. (Defeating the purpose much?)

That is... of course... if your Profile actually shows up. Google will only display four Profiles for one name on the main page. If you have a common name, like... Bob Smith, you will have to compete with all the other Googleable Bob Smiths out there for the top four slots. And how do you do that? Why, by giving Google more data, of course!

Yes, that's the catch: The more data you provide in your Profile, the more likely it is to show up. And that's why the name of this game is Evil.

Here's what else is irritating: A Google Profile is a Web page and therefore has a URL. Rather than giving users the opportunity to create their own URL names, users either are stuck with a loooong string of numbers or a "vanity URL" -- better known as their personal Gmail address.

We can stop short and bow down at Google for giving us the tools to bolster our Web presence... or we can dig a little deeper and recognize the sneakery here. In order to boost that presence, you need a Google Profile. In order to make that Profile visible, you need to provide more information about yourself.

In the end it's up to the user to decide whether shining up their Web presence is worth forking over more data to Google. My cynical guess is that most interested users will consider that an acceptable tradeoff. I'd love to be proven wrong.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

Survey Uncovers Apathy for Facebook Governance

In an attempt to appease its critics by feigning democracy, Facebook gave users a week to vote on a set of governing documents for the site. The results are in and... survey says... no one actually cares all that much about Facebook's Terms of Service.

About a week ago, in keeping a promise to give users the opportunity to help govern the site, Facebook put two sets of its terms up for a vote: the September 2008 version, and a revised set of terms based on user feedback.

The voting closed yesterday, and, after all was said and done, the Facebook terms were voted on by a whopping 0.32 percent of the Facebook population, or 600,000 users. (Facebook claims a population of over 200 million.) Out of that barely half of a percentage who voted, 74.4 percent cast their vote for the revised set of terms.

According to the rules originally proposed by Facebook, the site was not going to abide by the vote unless at least 30 percent of its user base bothered to participate. "Facebook has an international user base, and we didn't want a vocal minority to be driving any decisions," Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt told Internet Evolution in March of the decision to require 30 percent.

Well it looks like that's exactly what is happening. Going against its own word, Facebook is respecting the vote of the 0.3 percent who weighed in and considering throwing out the 30 percent rule.

According to a Facebook blog:

We'd hoped to have a bigger turnout for this inaugural vote, but it is important to keep in mind that this vote was a first for users just like it was a first for Facebook. We are hopeful that there will be greater participation in future votes. In the meantime, we're going to consider lowering the 30-percent threshold that the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities establishes for a user vote to be binding.

Ugh. Facebook. Can we say missed opportunity?

Facebook has every right to govern its site however it wants. From a business standpoint, requiring 30 percent of its users to vote was smart, as it set Facebook up for an opportunity to take power back from its whiny users once they proved to be apathetic.

Instead, rather than sticking to its guns, Facebook has backtracked on the 30 percent requirement. Perhaps this was an attempt to avoid further media backlash, which would have surely pinned Facebook as evil for not catering to the 600,000 users who bothered to participate.

But maybe it's time Facebook stops pandering to its every critic and focuses on building a business.

Apart from shining light on Facebook's weakness, this whole experiment just proves how little the majority of Web users actually care about activism. We're all very good at complaining, pointing fingers, going stark raving mad in 140 characters or less. But when it comes down to actually doing something, well, we just can't be bothered.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution

What an Open Stream API Means for Facebook

Lovers of the open Web rejoiced yesterday when Facebook rolled out its Open Stream API, giving developers the opportunity to create third-party applications that tap into the Facebook "activity stream" of user updates. But whether this is just another step into the abyss for Facebook remains to be seen.

Thanks to the Open Stream API, Facebook users will be able to use third-party clients to access and post Facebook updates -- including new photos, videos, pertinent changes to one's status, etc. -- all without ever having to go to Facebook.com.

Opening up its activity stream is another move by Facebook that mimics the look and feel of its younger, hipper cousin, Twitter Inc. , whose API has been open from day one, leading to innumerable third-party clients for mobile (TwitterBerry), desktop (TweetDeck), and niche (StockTwits) interests. One analysis shows that 55 percent of Twitter's traffic comes from third-party applications.

Twitter application TweetDeck recently updated its client to include Facebook status updates, allowing TweetDeck users to stay abreast of short, mundane updates from their Facebook Friends alongside those same sorts of brain burps from their Twitter Followers. But now, with the Open Stream API, developers will be able to take the process a step further, allowing Facebook users to also update their Facebook accounts from the comfort of an external application. (Woo! Stop me now before I get too excited!)

Third-party applications for Twitter have largely contributed to its newfound growth and popularity -- but they've also contributed to its regular downtime. While Facebook doesn't appear to have the scalability problems Twitter has, Facebook's still struggling with monetization.

For a company that's looking for a business model that works, deflecting traffic from its home page -- where advertisers buy retail space -- seems counter-intuitive. Attracting fewer eyeballs could be detrimental to both Facebook and to the advertisers that invest time and money in marketing to an audience that may not be there anymore.

This shift could make for a bad experience for users as well. As Facebook diverts attention away from its homepage, it may have to compensate by figuring out new revenue models, such as in-stream advertisements.

Some have tossed around the idea of in-stream ads for Twitter as well, but Twitter adamantly opposes the idea, thinking ads detrimental to the user experience and potentially ineffective.

Twitter's Alex Payne told Internet Evolution this month that simply committing to the "tried and true" advertising model on Twitter, which is sure to upset users, doesn't seem like the right move, particularly considering the lack of success other social media sites are having in that vein. "We have five to 10 things we could do," he said. "We just don't want to alienate our users."

In an editor's blog yesterday, we discussed the potential for the free Web 2.0 model to survive and thrive in the future. As the Web opens up, with highly trafficked sites like Facebook diverting eyeballs away from their home pages, the monetization problem is only bound to get more complicated. It may not be long before we see Facebook and others recognize the need to explore revenue models beyond advertising in order to survive.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution