Yes, Bad People Use Facebook Too

Tue, Nov 10th 2009 7:58am

Filed Under:
aggregators, earned links, earned media, journalism, mark cuban, passed links, rupert murdoch

Companies:
facebook, google, news corp., twitter

41 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Is Murdoch's Move Against Google Really About Twitter And Facebook?

from the no,-not-even-close dept

I'm a big believer in the idea that "earned media" or "earned links" are increasingly important online. That's the idea that growing numbers of people are relying on news links that are being passed to them via friends on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. It's about recognizing that more and more often news stories "find people" rather than the other way around. That is, people are increasingly getting links from friends, acquaintances and colleagues, rather than going searching for the news. And those "earned" links or "passed links" are quite valuable because friends are more likely to trust and pay attention to what is personally sent to them, rather than what's just on the front page of a news site.

However, even given all of that, I'm not sure I buy Mark Cuban's explanation for Rupert Murdoch and his plan to stop Google from indexing his sites. Cuban says that it's all about this recognition that such earned links are becoming so important these days, and Murdoch realizes that links from Twitter and Facebook are growing in value, whereas links from Google have little value. To be honest, I'd be surprised if Murdoch had thought through it that carefully, but more to the point, I'm not sure I believe the full premise. Yes, those links are valuable, but they need to start somewhere, and one of the ways they start is from news junkies using aggregators like Google News to find the news and start passing them around. Blocking that starting process makes little sense. On top of that, even when I'm passed a link, I'll often use Google News or other sites to dig deeper. Taking News Corp. sites out of the picture doesn't help at all. And, finally, while I keep hearing about sites getting so much more traffic from such passed links these days, I can say with authority that on Techdirt, they're still a tiny fraction of the traffic we get from Google.

So, yes, directly passed links from friends or colleagues are valuable and important, but it's a part of a wider ecosystem of news sharing that Google News and other aggregators are most certainly a large part of. Saying that blocking Google News makes sense because of things like Twitter and Facebook ignores how Google News plays into those links even being on Twitter and Facebook.

Fri, Oct 30th 2009 6:48am

Filed Under:
sanford wallace, spam, spamford

Companies:
facebook

49 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Sanford Wallace Loses Again; Owes Facebook $711 Million

from the good-luck-collecting dept

Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, of course, was the original "spam king" back in the 1990s. Despite his claim to have reformed at one point, he apparently has been spamming various social networks and advertising spyware. Back in 2004, the FTC investigated him and fined him $4 million. Last year, MySpace won a $234 million judgment against him. Wallace responded by disappearing. At one point, even his lawyer couldn't find him. Earlier this year, when Facebook sued him for spamming their users as well, it seemed unlikely that he would bother to respond. Surprising pretty much everyone, he showed up in court, though claimed he was totally bankrupt. Either way, Facebook has just been awarded a $711 million judgment against him. Facebook, of course, will never see a dime of that money. But, the real question is what else can be done to stop Wallace. He's been spamming for well over a decade at this point, and despite multiple multi-million dollar judgments against him, he hasn't stopped. What else can be done?

Too Much Free Time

Wed, Oct 14th 2009 10:38am

Filed Under:
fugitive, social networks

Companies:
facebook

28 Comments | Leave a Comment..

If You're A Fugitive, You Probably Shouldn't Update Your Facebook Status With Location... Or Friend A Fed

from the some-suggestions dept

No one ever said criminals were particularly intelligent. With all the stories we've seen of various people revealing things they shouldn't on social networking systems, you knew that stories like this one were going to become more common. Apparently a fugitive on the run for bank fraud not only updated his Facebook status with his whereabouts (a resort in Cancun, Mexico), but also "friended" a former Justice Department official, who helped hand over the fugitive's info to officials who tracked down and arrested the guy.

Predictions

Mon, Oct 5th 2009 9:22pm

Filed Under:
creative destruction, geocities, shut down

Companies:
facebook, myspace, twitter, yahoo

28 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Creative Web Destruction: Sites Go Away

from the remember-that dept

As we await the official shutdown of Geocities at the end of the month, Ivor Tossell is reminding everyone that today's internet hotspot -- Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. -- may be completely gone in a decade's time. And, while it's good that sites come and go as the next big thing comes along, it does raise questions for those who are relying on these sites as some sort of archive of a life lived online. It's a good reminder of the importance of either being able to back up certain information -- or control it directly yourself.

Too Much Free Time

Mon, Oct 5th 2009 1:22pm

Filed Under:
jack thompson, report abuse

Companies:
facebook

35 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Rather Than Suing, Jack Thompson Apparently Should Have Just Clicked The 'Report Abuse' Button

from the total-morons dept

We recently reported on anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson's lawsuit against Facebook, which suggested an unfamiliarity with Section 230 safe harbors. But, it gets worse. The website GamePolitics, who is listed in Thompson's lawsuit as being a key player in "orchestrating" libel attacks on Thompson, spoke to Thompson about the lawsuit, and in the course of the phone call, the GamePolitics reporter, Andrew Eisen, noted that every Facebook Group had a little link that allowed anyone to report the group for abuse, with a promise of action in 24 hours. He asked Thompson if he had clicked the link, to which Thompson called him a "total moron." Eisen, though, is apparently craftier than Thompson took him for, and clicked the link on one of the groups that Thompson was complaining about. What happened? Less than a day later? That group is gone from Facebook. Aren't there rules in filing lawsuits where you're supposed to take actions to mitigate the harm? In the meantime, it looks like Thompson owes Eisen and GamePolitics at least a thank you...

Wed, Sep 30th 2009 3:33pm

Filed Under:
jack thompson, lawsuits, pro se, section 230

Companies:
facebook

24 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Even After Being Disbarred, Jack Thompson Can File Misguided Mistargeted Lawsuits

from the good-luck,-Jack dept

Ah, Jack Thompson. The lawyer who made a name for himself years ago by trying to misdirect the blame for pretty much any violent action by any teenager by claiming that it was "the video games' fault" has since been disbarred, and last we heard was getting scolded by Utah state politicians -- the one state where politicians were still putting up with his unsubstantiated claims. And, of course, through it all he continues to claim that everyone is out to get him -- with various video game blogs being a favorite target.

Of course, even though he's been disbarred, it doesn't mean he can't continue filing misguided lawsuits on a pro se basis -- and that's what he's done now. Eric Goldman alerts us to the news that Jack Thompson is now suing Facebook because some people on Facebook have said some mean stuff about him. Now, there's no doubt that some people online have said incredibly mean and hateful things about Jack, and may have made statements that are potentially threatening. But, apparently, while filing all of these lawsuits and getting disbarred, Jack Thompson never bothered to read Section 230 of the CDA, which protects the service provider (such as, say, Facebook) from the actions of its users. Details, apparently, are not Thompson's strong suit:

There's a bit in there where he suggests that there's some massive organized campaign against him, rather than just a bunch of random people having fun with him, because they appear to think he's a bit out to lunch.

Fri, Sep 25th 2009 3:19pm

Filed Under:
defamation, social networks, sucks sites, trademark

Companies:
facebook

6 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Sucks Site Lawsuits Move To Include Facebook As Well

from the really? dept

We've covered how it's a dumb idea for companies to sue so-called "sucks sites," (sites that complain about a company). First, plaintiffs in such lawsuits almost never win. The trademark claims almost always fail. No one is confusing the sucks site with the company they complain about. Second, just bringing such a lawsuit tends to call significantly more attention to the complaints against the company (the ever popular "Streisand Effect"). And yet... they still keep on coming. The latest one has a bit of a twist, though. Rather than suing the owner of a website, the organization is suing the guy who set up a complaint group on Facebook. Other than that, though, the scenarios are basically the same. In this case, a beauty school student set up a Facebook group to complain about things happening at the school, and the school sued for both the use of the logo (trademark infringement) and on claims that many of the posts to the group were defamatory.

The trademark claim hopefully gets tossed aside quickly. No one's going to confuse the group for being a part of the school, and it's difficult to see how they'll make a claim that the use was "in commerce." The defamation claim really depends on what was said... but if it was said by other students, then it's difficult to see how the student who started the group can be held liable for them. Besides, some courts at least have noted that online forums are the equivalent of a bunch of friends talking over drinks, and the speech should naturally be taken less seriously. One hopes that the judge in this case recognizes the nature of basic online conversations as well.

Fri, Sep 25th 2009 3:59am

Filed Under:
patents, social networks

Companies:
facebook, whoglue

15 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Facebook Sued Over Patent On Distributing Personal Info On A Network

from the no,-really dept

As you probably know by now, as a company gets bigger and more successful it means that they will certainly be sued for patent infringement. This isn't because they somehow "took" or "copied" someone else's ideas. But because there are so many ridiculous and overly broad patents out there that some jealous patent holder will seek to make some easy money with a lawsuit against a much more successful company. Facebook is already facing a few such lawsuits, including one where it's been ordered to reveal its entire source code.

The latest such lawsuit involves a tiny company, WhoGlue, who holds a patent 7,246,164 on "Distributed personal relationship information management system and methods." And, of course, WhoGlue has decided that Facebook infringes and needs to pay up. There are all sorts of problems with this kind of lawsuit. You have a patent on an obvious concept, that Facebook clearly developed independently (as have many others). And now Facebook will need to go spend on a legal defense. What a waste of resources.

Once again, we see that those who can't compete, sue.

Wed, Sep 9th 2009 11:41pm

Filed Under:
patents, source code

Companies:
facebook, leader technology

37 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Facebook Ordered (Again) To Turn Over Source Code

from the this-still-makes-no-sense dept

Last year, we wrote about an odd patent lawsuit brought against Facebook by a company called Leader Technology. What was odd was that Facebook didn't seem like an obvious target for the patent (7,139,761) about associating a piece of data with multiple categories (and, actually why the idea that associating a piece of data with multiple categories should be patentable is another of life's mysteries). We actually thought it was more of a publicity stunt by Leader Technologies, rather than a serious lawsuit. But, we were surprised last month when a judge actually ordered Facebook to turn over its source code as a part of the lawsuit. This didn't make much sense to us. The source code really should only matter if it was a copyright infringement suit, not a patent one. Besides, why should Facebook turn over all of its source code over such a minor issue of associating a piece of data with multiple categories. At the very least, it should just be whatever part of the code that Leader believes is infringing.

Facebook objected to the ruling, but Ravish lets us know that the judge has denied Facebook and once again demanded the company hand over its entire source code. Even though Leader will only be able to view the source code under the watchful eye of Facebook representatives, it still seems quite extreme that a judge would require that Facebook reveal its entire source code to a company that is a competitor.

Thu, Aug 27th 2009 8:42am

Filed Under:
crowdsourcing, patents, prior art, translations

Companies:
facebook

18 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Facebook Wants To Own Idea Of Crowdsourced Translations

from the some-prior-art? dept

Apparently Facebook is trying to patent the idea of crowdsourced translations of its service. The actual patent application was filed in December of 2008, but the real priority date (I believe) is December of 2007 (when I think the company filed a provisional patent).

This one caught my attention for a few reasons -- with a major one being that way back in March of 2006, some friends of mine were working on a startup called Gabbly, which did online chat, and they had amazing success with crowdsourcing translations. Now, the Facebook patent is a little more advanced, because beyond just asking people to translate, it includes a voting mechanism. But, still, the evolution of crowdsourced translations shows the total silliness of even trying to throw patents in the middle. Almost immediately after Gabbly started doing crowdsourced translations, another online chat provider, Meebo, did the same. Gabbly used a forum. Meebo tried a wiki. Others picked up on the idea and did slightly different variations, and everyone kept innovating, and no one felt the need to own the concept of crowdsourced translations or to prohibit others from doing it.

But now, suddenly, there needs to be a patent on the concept?

I'm confused how anyone could think this meets the criteria of "promoting the progress." After all, plenty of others had figured out how to do crowdsourced translations earlier, and each one improved on the process a bit as they went. It's pretty obvious that including little voting mechanisms is an obvious next step (they were already popular on sites like Digg). So what benefit does the patent provider here other than to slow down innovation? It's difficult to believe that this "innovation" would not have occurred but for the patent system -- or even that it would have taken longer to happen but for the patent system.

Hopefully, the USPTO quickly dumps this, but just the fact that Facebook and its lawyers felt this was worth patenting shows you something about the ridiculous state of the patent system today.

Wed, Aug 19th 2009 12:52am

Filed Under:
lawsuits, privacy, social networks

Companies:
facebook

41 Comments | Leave a Comment..

New Lawsuit Against Facebook From People Who Just Don't Like Facebook

from the what's-your-cause-of-action? dept

Another day, another bizarre lawsuit. Eric Goldman points us to a lawsuit against Facebook that is best summarized as "we don't like Facebook, and we're sure it's doing something bad." It involves a few different plaintiffs who all have very different complaints, combined with some weird claims about Facebook violating their privacy, and that it's really a data mining company in disguise. But, of course, there's an easy way to avoid any such issue. It's called not using Facebook. The lawsuit also seems to rely on the fact that lots of people don't like the terms of service that Facebook has used, but not liking the terms don't necessarily make them against the law. There's also a poorly explained copyright claim -- but it's so unclear that I can't tell if the complaint is that Facebook is violating copyrights by showing the photos that one of the plaintiffs themselves uploaded (which would be flat out ridiculous), or that the issue is other users uploading photos (which would be pre-empted by the DMCA's safe harbors). The whole thing seems like a group of people suing Facebook for the hell of it and hoping to get some cash out of it.

Failures

Mon, Aug 10th 2009 6:52pm

Filed Under:
cyberattack, cyxymu, streisand effect

Companies:
facebook, twitter

13 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Cyberattack That Brought Down Twitter & Facebook Only Highlighted The Guy It Hoped To Silence

from the whoops dept

Ajit Jaokar alerts us to the fact that last week's "cyberattack" seems to have given a much greater voice to a guy the attacks were designed to silence. If you haven't been paying attention, late last week, there were huge denial of service attacks on Twitter and Facebook, which knocked out both sites for a period of time. Apparently, the attacks were an attempt to silence an economics professor in the republic of Georgia, who online has gone by the name cyxymu. Jaokar noticed that cyxymu had very few followers on his Twitter account, but since the news has come out that he was the target of the attack, thousands of new followers have started paying attention to him. So whoever ran the attacks (cyxymu blames the KGB), which sought to first discredit cyxymu and then take him offline, seems to have only done the opposite. They've suddenly given him the world's attention.

Mon, Aug 3rd 2009 8:44am

Filed Under:
patents, source code

Companies:
facebook, leader technologies

27 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Judge Orders Facebook To Reveal Source Code In Patent Dispute

from the that-seems-extreme dept

Another day, another ridiculous situation brought on by patents. Back in November, we wrote about how a company almost no one had ever heard of, called Leader Technologies (name not descriptive of the company) had sued Facebook for patent infringement over Patent 7,139,761 on associating a piece of data with multiple categories. As broad and obvious as that appears to be, it struck us that the whole lawsuit appeared to be a publicity stunt by this no-name company. Yet, for a publicity stunt, things may be getting troublesome. A magistrate judge has ordered Facebook to turn over its source code to the other company. Now, whatever you think of proprietary source code vs. open source, it doesn't seem right that a service like Facebook, which does a lot of different things with its service, should be required to turn over its entire source code to some tiny company with an overly broad patent. It sounds like Facebook is fighting this, as it should. I could understand (maybe) such an order if there were a charge of copyright infringement and direct copying of source code -- but a patent infringement claim shouldn't need source code.

Too Much Free Time

Wed, Jul 29th 2009 8:15am

Filed Under:
trademark

Companies:
facebook

10 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Filing A Trademark Notice Against Yourself

from the strategies-of-new-media dept

Not so long ago, Facebook launched the ability to secure your own "name" as a part of your URL, but it was done in an awkward way where you wouldn't be allowed to change it and there were some rules involved in whether or not certain "fan pages" could actually get their name. Over the last few weeks, I've heard a few stories of people who had to plead their case at friends at Facebook to do something as simple as get to use a name they had been associated with for ages. However, ChurchHatesTucker points us to an amusing situation for the guy who runs the site TrendHunter.com. Apparently, because he didn't have enough "fans" on his fan pages, he couldn't register the name for the account. But he didn't want anyone else taking it... so he used his personal account to grab the "TrendHunter" name. Problem solved? Not quite. Because Facebook, in its infinite wisdom, does not allow you to transfer names you control. So what did he do? Well, he realized the only way to get the name was to file a trademark dispute with Facebook -- and so he did. Yes, he basically filed a trademark claim against himself in order to convince Facebook to transfer the name he registered over to the proper account.

Predictions

Tue, Jul 28th 2009 9:19pm

Filed Under:
charging, daniel lyons, social networks

Companies:
facebook, twitter

46 Comments | Leave a Comment..

What Would Happen If Social Networking Sites Charged

from the a-thought-experiment dept

JohnForDummies alerts us to a suggestion from Dan Lyons over at Newsweek, saying that sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube should just start charging for their basic service. He brushes off those who think it's a bad idea as "the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley today is that everything on the Internet must be free." Except, that's not true. No one (NO ONE) is saying "everything on the internet must be free." This is just a silly strawman put forth by folks with little understanding of the business models people are actually discussing. Lyons also fails in recognizing that his "example" isn't even a very good one. He talks about PalTalk, who has built a business by offering premium features at a fee. That's the typical "freemium" model, but that's not what he then suggests for Facebook and Twitter, who he says should just start charging. Amazingly, he suggests that Facebook would only lose 50% of its users if it started charging (in fact, he seems to suggest that this is a conservative estimate: "Even if half of Facebook's members were to leave rather than pay...")

Well, there's a problem with both Lyons' math and his crystal ball. In cases where companies have gone from free to charging, the numbers I've seen (and, yes, it does range slightly, depending on the service) the rate of uptake is usually somewhere between 0 and 1% at best. Even if we grant Facebook some credit as being a "necessity" for students, I'd be shocked if they could get 5% of people to pay up to use the service -- and they'd find that number dwindle really fast. With only 5% of people using the service, it certainly becomes a lot less useful. Rather than communicating with all your friends, you can now only communicate with the 5% who ponied up. Or, you jump ship to someone else that doesn't charge.

And that's the real issue. The second that Facebook even hinted at charging users for basic service is the second users would start moving en masse to another (very, very happy competitors would be quick to offer themselves as an alternative). I recognize that it was still back in the days when Dan Lyons hated social media and thought social networking and blogs were evil, but he might want to familiarize himself with the history of Friendster. For a while, there were all sorts of rumors that Friendster was about to start charging, and MySpace kicked off a very well coordinated "grassroots" rumor campaign about how Friendster was about to charge, and everyone should switch to MySpace before Friendster put up a paywall.

In other words, not only will a lot less than 50% of people sign up for a pure fee-based Facebook, but everyone will move elsewhere, making that the place to be (for free). That's not to say that Facebook couldn't come up with some additional offerings of value that it could charge for, but the idea of charging for the basic service is really short-sighted and easily debunked if you think through it.

Tue, Jul 28th 2009 7:30am

Filed Under:
passwords, social networks, students, teachers

Companies:
facebook

100 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Student Files Lawsuit After Teacher Demands Facebook Password, Logs Into Account & Distributes Private Messages

from the wow dept

Remember the story recently about how Bozeman, Montana was asking all applicants for city jobs to hand over their social networking passwords so city officials could log into their accounts? After some widespread complaints, the city smartly backed down, but apparently they're not the only ones demanding passwords. CitMediaLaw points us to a lawsuit filed in Mississippi, concerning a high school student who turned over her Facebook password at the demand of a teacher at the school. The teacher proceeded to log into her account, read her private messages and then send them around to others at the school, causing a lot of problems for the girl.

Apparently, the teacher had originally demanded usernames and passwords to Facebook from a bunch of students to see if they were doing anything illegal (drugs, drinking, etc.), which is already pretty questionable from a privacy standpoint (and violates Facebooks' terms of service). But to then use the contents of private communication to publicly humiliate the girl and punish her for her private messages seems to go way beyond what is both right and legal. Other students at the school had quickly deleted their Facebook profiles when the teacher demanded their passwords, but this girl chose not to, but certainly never expected what followed. It's amazing that any teacher would think that they have a right to demand access to private social networking accounts and then to make use of the content of private messages in that manner.

Fri, Jul 10th 2009 3:20pm

Filed Under:
copyright, data, ownership, scraping

Companies:
facebook, power

10 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Power.com Says Facebook Can't Block Access To User Data

from the seems-like-a-tough-claim dept

Earlier this year, we had trouble understanding Facebook's reasoning for suing Power.com, a site that tried to aggregate a variety of social network sites into a single interface (something that seems rather useful). However, Facebook insisted that it violated its copyright, and in a slightly troubling ruling in the case, the judge seemed to find that any scraping could be copyright infringement, even if the scraping was just to get at non-infringing content. The court's argument was that in order to get at the non-infringing content, you first have to scrape the infringing content too.

Now the case is getting odder, as Power.com has countersued Facebook, claiming that Facebook is "unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS)." Of course, if that's true, I'm not sure if Power.com has the standing to make that claim. Wouldn't that be an issue for the user to raise themselves? Besides, I don't think there's any rule that even if a site lets you retain the copyright on content that it needs to make it easy to access. So now we have lawsuits coming from both sides that don't make much sense. The two sites should just learn to play nicely with each other.

News You Could Do Without

Thu, Jul 9th 2009 1:42am

Filed Under:
earned links, passed links, referral payments, social networking

Companies:
amazon, facebook, twitter

9 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Why Doesn't Amazon Allow Referrals On Passed Links?

from the keep-up-with-the-times dept

A few months ago, we were talking about the growing value of "passed links" or "earned links." These are links that to things that others passed on to you, via email or social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. As more people have been using these services, the value of such links have grown as traffic generators. And yet, some have just realized that Amazon doesn't reward affiliates for using such links. It's not difficult to understand how this came about, but it certainly seems like the type of thing that the company should reconsider. Basically, Amazon's original affiliate program was so that you could send people to Amazon from your own site. In order to become an affiliate your site had to be approved. But if you're just passing around links, then that has little or nothing to do with your site, and thus Amazon doesn't pay such referral fees. I would imagine that Amazon is also quite worried about potential fraud.

But given the growing popularity of things like Twitter and Facebook, it seems like Amazon might want to reconsider this policy, and recognize that if someone promotes a book via these services, they're equally as deserving of the affiliate referral fee than if they had simply posted the link on their own site.

(Mis)Uses of Technology

Tue, Jun 23rd 2009 11:56am

Filed Under:
bad information, iran, neda soltani, photos, protests

Companies:
facebook