Another Failed Harvard Social Network Takes 'Legal Action' Against Facebook

from the if-connectu-could-do-it... dept

Even before ConnectU came along claiming that Mark Zuckerberg somehow "stole" the idea and the code for Facebook from them, there was another Harvard alum, Aaron Greenspan, who had been claiming something similar about how Zuckerberg took the idea from a project Greenspan set up called houseSYSTEM. When Greenspan's story (after years of him pushing it) finally got some mainstream press last year, we pointed out how ridiculous the whole story was. Facebook was hardly the first social network out there -- and ConnectU and houseSYSTEM were clearly built off the ideas of those that had come before them as well. It seemed like both cases involved folks who had failed to actually execute and build something that people liked, and were taking it out on Zuckerberg (who did successfully build something that people wanted to use) in hopes of either fame or money or both.

Of course, once Facebook settled the case with ConnectU earlier this month, it was only a matter of time until Greenspan realized that he might be missing out as well. So, as you might expect, Greenspan has decided to "take legal action" against Facebook, though at this point it's merely limited to trying to get Facebook's trademark on the name revoked (claiming that houseSYSTEM used the name, and that it's widely used and generic). He may actually be right that the term is generic, but it seems more than likely that this lawsuit is just trying to drum up some attention and potentially money from Facebook.

It will come as no surprise, of course, that Greenspan is really using this lawsuit to promote his "book" which has a huge section accusing Zuckerberg of getting the idea from Greenspan. Greenspan's been promoting the book for ages, with plenty of excerpts available online. The press release Greenspan put out claims that his "publisher" (which is apparently also owned by Greenspan) was denied the ability to promote the book because it had "Facebook" in the title. Of course, he provides no details about who denied him the right to advertise, and it seems odd that anyone would prevent titles with the name "Facebook" from appearing, as such a book, by itself, probably is not a violation of Facebook's trademark. Does anyone else want to claim that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook? Apparently, it's good for business.

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When The Best You Can Do Is Get Fake Facebook Fans, You Know You Have A PR Problem

from the get-some-help-please dept

Ticketmaster is widely considered one of the more hated companies in America, so it made a few people scratch their heads when they saw that Ticketmaster was near the top of the list in terms of the number of "fans" it had on Facebook. Valleywag points to an enterprising blogger who checked out who those fans were and noticed that many, many of the fans appear to be entirely fake creations. They have no picture, no other friends and they're only fans of Ticketmaster. In other words, it looks like Ticketmaster is "stuffing the ballot box" in order to look more popular than it actually is. That's pretty sad. Of course, as people in the comments note, it's not so much that Ticketmaster created the fake fans themselves: they simply offered a promotion to give any "fans" five free iTunes downloads. So it looks like a bunch of folks set up fake Facebook profiles just to get those five free downloads -- and Ticketmaster gets to "pretend" it has all these fans. Except, of course, now it just looks like a serious loser that has to pay for "fans" and gets a bunch of fake fans for its troubles.

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Judge Says Being A Facebook Friend Isn't Like Real Friendship

from the glad-we-cleared-that-up dept

Turns out that your Facebook friends aren't necessarily real friends... under the law (at least in the UK). A UK judge has ruled that requesting to be a Facebook friend isn't the same as trying to become someone's real friend, which apparently matters in terms of harassment. The case concerned a woman who accused her ex-boyfriend of harassing her by requesting to be her friend on Facebook, but the judge apparently felt that since most people use Facebook and other social networks more as a list of acquaintances, it's hardly harassment to request to "friend" an ex.

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Moroccan Man Pardoned For Fake Facebook Profile

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Last month, a Moroccan man was sentenced to three years in jail just because he set up a fake profile of a Moroccan prince in Facebook. These sorts of fake profiles are quite common, and it didn't appear that the profile did anything defamatory. However, the guy was still charged with identity fraud. That seems extreme. If the Moroccan royal family was upset about the profile, why not just ask Facebook to take it down? If the fake profile was defamatory, sue the guy for defamation. Charging him with identity fraud and giving him three years in jail was clearly overkill. The international response to this event apparently caught the attention of the royal family, and the king has pardoned the guy in question, releasing him from jail after just a few weeks. However, the fact that he had to go to jail at all still is worrisome.

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Is An Online Study Group Cheating?

from the once-it's-on-facebook,-it-must-be dept

Vincent Clement writes in to let us know that that a student at Ryerson University in Toronto is facing expulsion for setting up an online study group for his chemistry class using Facebook. The school is saying it wasn't so much a study group as it was a place for 146 students to cheat and share answers (though, it's only blaming the student who ran the group). Students at the university are reasonably up in arms over the matter, as they don't see how it's any different than a traditional study group. Of course, the whole thing seems a little bit silly. As we discussed almost exactly a year ago, people working together to collaborate is an important skill in the real world, and what some people consider "cheating" these days seems a lot like the type of collaboration that kids are quite used to doing online, and which should serve them well later in life.

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Are Facebook Applications A Privacy Disaster In The Making?

from the promiscuous-sharing dept

I've become steadily less enthralled with Facebook applications as I've become more familiar with them. In theory, a platform strategy is a great idea -- indeed, few tech companies have been really successful without building platforms that other companies can leverage to dramatically increase the value of the whole ecosystem. But not every platform strategy will necessarily be a success. And often, the crucial thing that separates a successful platform strategy from an unsuccessful one is the ability to design a good interface between the core technology and the add-on functionality. If the interface is too limited, other companies won't be able to do anything with the platform. Conversely, if the interface is too expansive, it can allow the entire platform to descend into a chaotic mess, as shoddy add-on products can undermine the reputation of the entire ecosystem. It appears that Facebook's application platform is in danger of falling into the latter trap.

Chris Soghoian has a great post arguing that Facebook's permissive policies regarding application access to user data poses a serious threat to user privacy that could seriously damage Facebook's reputation. Soghoian says that applications are given access not just to all of a given user's information (much of which is unnecessary for the application to perform its functions) but also to a lot of information about a user's friends, many of whom will not have consented to have their information shared with random third-party applications. There's is a page buried deep in the Facebook preferences that allows users to disable your friends' applications from accessing this information about you, but the information is shared by default, and the page isn't going to win any awards for clarity. The situation poses a serious problem for Facebook. On the one hand, it has an obligation to preserve their users' privacy. On the other hand, it desperately wants to enhance the functionality of the Facebook platform and prove that it's more than a toy for college kids. An overly-restrictive privacy policy could make it impossible for anyone to develop the killer app Facebook craves. I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line, but I think Soghoian is right that the current system has too few safeguards against the misues of private information by third-party applications.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Hasbro Sues Scrabulous For Being Too Scrabble-ish

from the triple-word-score dept

It was only a matter of time before super-popular office productivity killer, Scrabulous, was sued by Hasbro for infringing upon the Scrabble trademark. A shutdown notice was sent two weeks ago, although, as of right now, Scrabulous is still operational (hurry up and finish up your games). Founded in 2006 as a standalone website by two Indian brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, Scrabulous' growth accelerated significantly when it launched as an application for Facebook. As the 9th most popular application on Facebook, Scrabulous boasts over 2.3 million active users with over 500,000 of them active daily. While Hasbro does indeed have a strong legal case against the Agarwalla brothers, they are missing out on a key opportunity by pursuing this litigious route. Although Hasbro recently licensed the digital rights of its games to EA, no online version of Scrabble exists right now. So, by shutting down Scrabulous, Hasbro would be angering 2.3 million of Scrabble's biggest fans. Instead, why not hammer out a compromise and turn this into a win-win-win situation? Unfortunately, most likely, history will repeat itself, as this is not the first time Hasbro has chosen this route -- in 2005, they shut down popular online Scrabble site, e-scrabble.

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