June 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Facebook: What's originality got to do with it?
Pity the innovators -- always hounded by the jealous hordes who clamor for a sliver of their success. And so it goes with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, though exactly who's the innovator in this scenario is a matter of some debate.
Zuckerberg is being sued by identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (distant descendants of Rip Van Winklevoss) and Divya Narendra, co-founders of also-ran social network ConnectU. In late 2003 the Winklevoss/Narendra trio hired the 19-year-old to do some coding for their nascent network, then called Harvard Connection. They say they never received a line of code from Zuckerberg; coincidentally, in early 2004 plucky Zucky launched his own Harvard-centric social network, which he later expanded to other campuses and then the world. Now Facebook allows you to throw sheep and otherwise annoy millions of your closest personal friends, making Zuckerberg a paper billionaire, while ConnectU languishes in obscurity.
ConnectU thought that smelled fishier than a three-day-old mackerel, so they sued Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their source code.
Here's the sticky part. Last February, ConnectU's founders reached a settlement with Facebook. But after a Cyber PI discovered a trail of instant messages possibly relating to the case on Zuckerberg's laptop, they had second thoughts. (Apparently, neither the PI nor ConnectU actually know what the IMs say, only that they exist.) Now a judge is deciding whether ConnectU's founders can back out of the deal, presumably so they can cut a juicier stake from the Facebook cash cow when the site goes public.
If the charges are true, this wouldn't be Zuckerberg's first taste of -- how should I put it -- expanding on someone else's idea. While an undergrad at Harvard, Zuckerberg created a knock-off of the popular Hot or Not web site called Facemash.com. It used photos taken from Harvard's online student directory (which was called -- wait for it -- the facebook) and let other students rate their relative attractiveness or lack thereof. Facemash lasted less than a day before being pulled by college administrators, who very nearly expelled the Z-man for illegally accessing photos stored on the school's computers.
Shortly thereafter he was hired by the Winklevosses, who were apparently caught napping when lucky Zucky quit a few months later and launched Facebook.
It seems especially fitting that this case is in news now, given that Zuckerberg is The Next Bill Gates (spoiled, brilliant, arrogant, and whiter than the inside of an Oreo). Because Billy G. was not a guy to let a multi-billion-dollar franchise slip out of his hands just because someone else had the idea first. Remember when Microsoft got sued by Apple for "stealing" the Macintosh graphical user interface? It took five years for that case to settle. Of course, the Mac owed more than a bit of its technological inspiration to the Xerox Alto. Likewise, Borland was sued by Lotus for "stealing" the 123 interface for its Quattro spreadsheet, despite the fact that Lotus 123 owed much of its look and feel to VisiCalc.
Fact is, ideas are stolen every day, and it's almost never the Joes or Janes with the original concept who end up cashing in. It's the execution of the idea that counts. And despite a few stumbles -- like violating its users' privacy -- Facebook has been executed rather brilliantly.
If a judge or jury decide ConnectU can back out of its agreement (or was fraudulently induced to settle) and Zucky doesn't own the code he wrote, that will make the ConnectU folks much richer, but it's unlikely to do much harm to Facebook. There are simply too many friends to be annoyed and too many sheep to be thrown.
Got any brilliant ideas? Post them below or email me: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. If any of them make a billion dollars I'll be sure to send a few bucks your way.... maybe.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on June 25, 2008 03:21 AM
May 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Turns out Twitter's not so 'tweet'
Bad news for Twitter. The original micro-blogging service (now available in brief, mega-terse, and vowel-free versions) has been accused of aiding and abetting bad behavior on the Web. I am shocked, shocked I tell you.
In case you've never used Twitter, here's a quick primer. Twitter is a service that lets you keep a running account of every inane thing you do or think. What makes a Twitter account different from 98 percent of the world's blogs is that you can only post 140 characters at a time (called a “tweet”). Imagine “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” written entirely in SMS text messages on your cell phone. That's Twitter. And if that sounds ridiculous to you, well, join the club.
Inexplicably, Twitter (and similar services like Pownce) are insanely popular. Unless you have at least 3000 strangers following your every tweet, you are simply not hip. (For example, Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody has a popular Twitter account – and boy is she a potty mouth.) So Twitter has proven an excellent tool for self promotion, driving blog traffic, passing notes in class, and complaining about Sarah Lacy's interview of Mark Zuckerberg at last March's SXSW conference.
But all is not well in Twitterville. It turns out Twitter is also a fine tool for stalking and harassing other Twitterati. Ariel Waldman, creator of the Shake Well Before Use blog and a social media consultant, has come forward with complaints that some malicious Twitterer has been stalking and harassing her for months, calling her things even I am too embarrassed to say out loud. She wants him (or her) booted off the site, but Twitter's executives politely declined, saying the person in question did not violate Twitter's Terms of Service. Needless to say that didn't go over too well with Waldman or other Twitterati.
Interestingly, shortly after the Waldman story hit the blogosphere Twitter had a database crash due to too much traffic. A note on the Twitter blog states:
Around 11 am in San Francisco, our main database db006, crashed because of too many connections. We have to put the service into an unscheduled maintenance mode to recover. Folks will see degraded service for the next few hours.
Do they mean degraded service, or degrading service? It's so hard to tell. Twitter's version of what happened is somewhat different -- and snippy in its defensiveness -- but it still doesn't clarify what Twitter does and doesn't allow to happen on the service.
There is good news for Twitter, however. According to Om Malik's GigaOM blog, the startup has just received another $15 million in VC money. Unfortunately it's only allowed to spend $140 of it at a time.
Do you think the whole micro-blogging phenomenon is the next great wave in communications tools or a silly fad that will dry up and blow away in a year? Post your thoughts below or email me - cringe (at) infoword (dot) com. But please, try to keep your answers brief.
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Posted by Robert X. Cringely on May 26, 2008 07:55 AM
April 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Oops, you just spilled Quechup on your pants
Just when you thought it was safe to re-enter the online dating pool (actually it's never safe) comes news from Cringester E. T. about social network Quechup putting spam sandwiches back on the menu. It seems that all of a sudden she's getting messages from other Quechup users who want to meet her. To hook up with them, however, she must sign up for a 'premium' Quechup membership at $6 to $30 per month.
Regular readers (at least, those who didn't unsubscribe after my April Fools "resignation" last week) might recall a minor kerfuffle last September when Quechup was accused of sending spam by accessing its subscriber's email address books to send "invites." (Quechup VP Glenn Fine hotly denied the accusations.) E. T. smells a similar rat here. She writes:
I don't think these are emails from genuine members, however the emails they are sending me aren't the usual sleaze you'd expect from some nut job, looks like someone on their team is sending them out specifically to get people to join. They are from recently divorced, caring company directors looking sexy in their wetsuits and "nice swedish girl" looking all friendly with her dog (and I don't mean in a gratuitous way, I mean in an Andrex puppy ad kind of way!)....I'm not saying I'm not hot at all, but I have little details on there about myself, no pics, but I do say I like men or women, so they seem to be targeting me with one woman and a couple of guys, with profiles that seem slightly too contrived.
Once I finished hyperventilating, I checked the test Quechup account I set up last fall. Sure enough, there were two messages from the Nice Swedish Girl with her Nice Swedish Dog. The first message was virtually identical to the ones E. T. received, and the second one urged me to sign up for a premium membership in order to read it.
Thanks but I'm not that desperate, and neither is Apache. (Though the dog is definitely cute.) Blogger Neil Infield reports a similar experience here.
I sent a note to Fine asking what's up. It's possible that this is the work of some rogue Quechup affiliate who gets a commission for sign ups, or a sophisticated phishing scam. Or it could simply be more sleazy tactics in the world of Web 2.0 marketing. At any rate, if I learn anything more I'll update this item.
Have Nicegirls been spamming you too? Post your stories below or drop me a note: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. Cool swag awaits top tipsters.
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Posted by Robert X. Cringely on April 7, 2008 09:34 AM
December 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Has Facebook jumped the shark?
Or maybe, like the late great Evel Knievel, it tried to jump the Snake River Canyon but suffered an equipment failure halfway over. Either way, I'm over Facebook.
Oh sure, it was fun for a while -- throwing bovine creatures at friends, writing on their walls, keeping up with every damned thing they did or thought every damned day, week after week, month after month.
I'm not the only old coot who's had his fill of Facebook. Mike Cassidy posted a funny essay on the San Jose Merc's site last week in which he said responding to Facebook requests from people he barely knew makes him feel like a sucker (if he says yes) or an a*****e (when he says no). I felt his pain so much that I immediately sent him a friend request -- which he accepted. (Sucker!)
Meanwhile, the Beacon privacy kerfuffle has turned into something deeper and possibly more sinister than first imagined. It's bad enough that Facebook's "social advertising" service revealed people's purchases to their friends without them really being aware of what was happening. According to security researchers at Computer Associates, Facebook is collecting shopping information even when users are logged out of their system and have opted out of sharing their purchases -- violating Facebook's own rules for the app.
Assuming the report is accurate, there are only two ways to interpret it, and neither is good. One is that Facebook is collecting this information and not telling anyone. The other is they're collecting this information and aren't even aware of it -- in other words, Beacon is broken.
So either they're evil, and can't be trusted. Or they're inept, and can't be trusted.
After CA published a report of its findings, Facebook put out the following statement:
When a Facebook user takes a Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically. If a Facebook user clicks "No, thanks" on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the participating site to Facebook. In those cases, Facebook does not associate the information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well.
If this response sounds familiar, that's because it's essentially what every site or service says after it's been caught with its fingers in the data cookie jar -- Alexa, Real Networks, DoubleClick, take your pick. "We collect the data but throw it out -- scout's honor."
It all comes down to the same thing: Trust us. But having already screwed the pooch once over Beacon, I think Facebook's Trust Fund is pretty much depleted.
Ironically, Evel's last major stunt was an attempt to jump over a shark tank, which ended in tragedy. Beacon is not on the same scale -- nobody's going to die or lose an eye over an online advertising service. But this could mark the beginning of the end for Facebook's wild ride.
Got hot tips or tales of social networks turned evil? Share them below or email me here. Top tipsters qualify for cool swag.
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Posted by Robert X. Cringely on December 3, 2007 06:31 AM
November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The great social networking swindle of 2007
Sorry Bridget, Claire, Monica, and Shannon. Thanks but no thanks, Dixie, Lola, Shana and Zara. The same goes for Aimee, Willie, Lolita, Cassandra and the three dozen other "people" who sent me bogus MySpace friend requests in the past 24 hours.
MySpace spam isn't new, but over the last two days something has gone seriously wrong with its junk mail filters. I've been buttered in script-kiddie affiliate spam, and I bet I'm not alone. (Here's a riddle: What does it say about your site's security when you can get gamed by somebody stupid enough to send the same 'friend' invitation 40+ times to each person?)
This is the kind of stuff that happens when your entire business philosophy can be summed up in three words -- 'get big quick' -- with no thought to what happens next. When you get big, so do your problems. And if you haven't put stuff in place to catch them early, you never will.
So I find last week's news that MySpace is bringing the chips and dips to Google's OpenSocial party a little chilling. I'm all for open standards and cross-platform compatibility. It would be nice to connect my button-down business colleagues on Linked In with my hang-loose pals on Friendster, even if it's only to throw a sheep at them.
But do not be fooled by the 'open' rhetoric. Pay no attention to the nice man in the Google polo shirt. This isn't about freedom, this is about data. Social networks are really just rich deep pools of personal information, and everybody wants to cast out a hook and reel you in. Marketers are salivating at the chance to sell you something based on that silly profile you filled out in a drunken haze one night on Bebo.com. If they can get at it simply by having you complete a stupid movie quiz or play a silly game, so much the better.
The problem: If they can get at this data, what's to stop the next dumb-as-a-fence-post affiliate spammer from doing the same? Nothing more than a few bland assurances that "we take your privacy very seriously" and "the security of your personal information is our top priority." We know how well those policies work in the real world.
New York Times columnist Randall Stosser sums up Google's motto as "Social Will Be Everywhere." Yes, and so is influenza. But every time somebody halfway round the world sneezes, I don't want to catch a cold.
If Google and the social networks of the world really want to do something useful, open, and cross platform, how about fixing the security problem first, then move on to the sheep tossing? Otherwise, social networks will quickly become just another social disease.
Got more dark thoughts on social nets? Illuminate us below or email me here. Top tipsters qualify for spam-free swag.
Think you've got the right stuff to pass our tech quizzes? They're not as easy as they look:
• The InfoWorld News Quiz
• Test Your Geek IQ
• Test Your Network Security IQ
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on November 5, 2007 07:51 AM
September 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
My last blog post (Quechup.com -- online dating gone spammy) hit a nerve with the company's VP Glenn Fine, who fired off a email accusing me of 'cut and paste journalism' and threatening to call in his legal beagles.
What blogger could resist this kind of bait? But rather than muddy up the last entry with corrections, I'm posting a new one here, detailing Mr. Fine's concerns and my responses to them. Here's the first one:
1. we have never used the words "share address book" it has always been check an address book for who is on Quechup.
[My response: True. Quechup.com does not use those words. But the difference between 'sharing addresses' with a site and allowing it to invite everyone inside your address book is pretty thin, IMHO.]
2. "But instead of presenting you with a list of friends, Quechup sends an invite from you to everyone in your book" - this is not correct and has never been correct. Quechup has always presented a list of friends who are on Quechup.
[ My response: True again. Quechup does present a list of friends; it also sends invites to everyone else who's not on the service. Though to be fair, when I signed up for the service it did not send invites to any of the addresses I shared with it. Whether that was intentional or just a glitch only Mr. Fine can say.]
3. "which of your 10,000 close personal friends is also trolling for dates on Quechup" (aside from the fact that it should be "friends ARE also" not "is") you completely misrepresent Quechup as a singles/dating site, Quechup has friends networks, blogs, online games, video posts - all things commonly found on social networking sites and rarely, if ever in my experience, found on a singles/dating site.
[My response: I cop to the grammatical error. (Bad Cringe, no donut.) But if Quechup isn't primarily about hooking up with dates, I'm Britney Spears. (Oops, I did it again.)]
4. "Since the outcry, Quechup has modified its 'viral' techniques somewhat. The 'Who do you know on Quechup?' page now warns you that "by inviting contacts you confirm you have consent from them to send an invitation," - This is completely inaccurate. Quechup's page has, since 2005 when the feature was introduced, stated the section you have quoted, furthermore it has also ALWAYS stated that invites would be sent...
[My response: I have to go with Fine on this one. I don't know what the site looked like in 2005. And yes, it does tell users what it's about to do, but it's not entirely obvious. If it were obvious, fewer people would be upset about this.]
Fine also says "We have recently changed how our system works and the wording" but doesn't say how. Maybe that will become more clear when Quechup releases its official statement.
As always, I regret any errors (especially the grammatical ones). Apologies to Cringesters for devoting yet more space to this less-than-brand-name company; I'll return to bashing Apple and Microsoft later this week.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on September 10, 2007 11:45 AM
September 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Quechup.com -- online dating gone spammy
UPDATE: This item has been amended and corrected. Please see this post for the sordid details. - rxc
Frequent Cringe contributor D. F. draws our attention this morning to the curious saga of Quechup.com, a dating/social network based in the U.K. Pronounced 'ketchup', the site calls itself "The 'Sauce' For Meeting People - Socialise, Make Friends, Date."
Aside from the silly tagline, Quechup has drawn the ire of hundreds of lonely bloggers by surreptitiously squeezing email addresses out of them.
When you sign up for the site it prompts you to share your address book so you can find out which of your 10,000 close personal friends is also trolling for dates on Quechup. But instead of presenting you with a list of friends, Quechup sends an invite from you to everyone in your book -- making you look like a nasty purveyor of pork.
Since the outcry, Quechup has modified its 'viral' techniques somewhat. The 'Who do you know on Quechup?' page now warns you that "by inviting contacts you confirm you have consent from them to send an invitation," which isn't exactly the same as saying "We're about to ransack your email address book like frat boys after a kegger," but is better than nothing.
Glenn Finch, VP of parent company iDate Corp., won't say more on the record, though an official statement from them is pending. Moral of this story? Shopping for dating services is a lot like shopping for dates; if somebody looks, sounds, or acts like a creep, chances are they probably are one -- regardless of how much they swear they've changed. Quechup just doesn't cut the mustard.
Sent hot tips or cool condiments to me here, or post them below. Top tipsters will receive some tasty swag in return.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on September 10, 2007 05:29 AM
August 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Bad news, Facebook fans. It turns out the Internet is full of spammers, scammers, and naughty naughty men. Who knew?
Three months after opening its APIs to the world and inviting developers to build applications for the surging social network, Facebook has decided to close those doors just a wee bit.
The reason? App developers are using spam tactics and viral marketing to the point of influenza –- making many Facebookers sorry they installed the things in the first place.
Take the “Likeness” application, developed by somebody named Peter Louis. This silly little applet lets you take a quiz to find out how much you are like/unlike your friends and/or celebrities. (You and Britney both love getting trashed on Cosmos? You must be soul mates.) Stupid and harmless, right?
But like most FB apps, you can't install Likeness without sharing your basic profile information. And once you do, it nags you to invite all your friends to join the party and install the developer's other apps.
Here's what one Facebooker has to say about Likeness:
This thing SUCKS. Everytime I deselect my all my friends because I do NOT want to spam everyone every 5 minutes, it won't tell me my results. It simply errors out. Of course, every time I include just one friend to spam it doesn't error out. Convenient. I am not doing any more of these.
Here's another:
Hey "Peter," quit making your apps function by being dependent on each other, you're turning into a major douche here.....There is no excuse for this behavior, and it calls into question the motives behind the creation of these applications.....Is this just a huge Data-Mining exercise?
And a third:
Please ... don't send me emails about a friend wanting to see how alike we are. Apps should only email users if they've added the app, otherwise you're just viral spam. I'm blocking your app because of this.
That's the trouble with random third-party developers. You invite them in for tea, and a few weeks later you discover that the fine silver is missing and your daughter's knocked up.
Facebook has also changed how it measures an app's popularity. Instead of merely ticking off how many people downloaded the thing, FB now counts the number of active users it has. So, though millions have downloaded Likeness, only some 444K suckers still play with it.
Exactly how the new, slightly less open Facebook will play out remains to be seen. Neil Day, CEO of MediaMaster (which has a Facebook music app that doesn't abuse the rules), says it's all good:
I think this is the right move for Facebook. It helps users find valuable apps, and limits obnoxious behavior on the part of their app developers. I think it will benefit people who are developing valuable apps, but it will make it much more difficult to rack up huge user counts through spamming and trickery.
In an entry on Facebook's official blog, senior platform manager Dave Morin writes:
...we hope to shift the balance more in favor of good apps, which we think in the long term is good for everyone. Users will get better applications, and users will be able to put more trust into applications, thus spurring further adoption.... and we will continue to block applications which behave badly and ... to iterate on our automated spam detection tools.
All of these are welcome changes. The question is, why didn't they think of them before? Are the Facebook folk really that naïve?
Is your face on Facebook? Tell me why or why not below, or send me the scoop directly. Top tipsters will qualify for free swag (and no, I won't insist on inviting all your friends as well).
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on August 29, 2007 05:42 AM
