Category Archives: Marketing

Facebook: snitchgate!

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A story about Facebook went around twitter last night that provoked quite a reaction in privacy advocates like me: Facebook, it seems, is experimenting with getting people to ‘snitch’ on any of their friends who don’t use their real names. Take a look at this:

via Facebook: snitchgate! « Paul Bernal’s Blog.

People in my field have known about this for a long time – it’s been the cause of a few ‘high profile’ events such as when Salman Rushdie had his account suspended because they didn’t believe that he was who he said he was – but few people had taken it very seriously for anyone other than the famous. Everyone knows ‘fake’ names and ‘fake’ accounts – my sister’s dog has a Facebook account – so few believed that Facebook was going to bother enforcing it, except for obvious trolls and so forth. Now, however, that appears to be changing.

Future Software Will Look Like Facebook

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“I think all software is going to look like Facebook,” he said. “Everyone is going to have to rewrite to have a feed-based platform.” If people can collaborate on tagging a photo, he added, they could easily do the same with a product or business problem.

Salesforce’s software, of course, integrates many of the social-networking tropes that Facebook and Twitter helped establish, including profiles and real-time collaboration.

via Salesforce CEO Benioff: Future Software Will Look Like Facebook.

In addition to Salesforce Touch, Salesforce is using the conference to push new initiatives such as its Marketing Cloud, which allows companies to manage their presence across social channels; Work.com, a cloud-based performance-management platform for Human Resources divisions; Chatter Communities for Partners, which lets companies create multiple private communities; and Data.com Social Key, which combines social data such as Tweets with “traditional” business information such as phone numbers.

Study urges CIOs to choose open source first

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The study includes a checklist for customers making the transition. It advises CIOs, for example, not to separate current support teams from new development teams, “or you’ll be consigning your business as usual team to the scrap heap,” Norton said.

via Study urges CIOs to choose open source first – Software – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au.

“In many respects, the public cloud is an immature business. Business processes will eventually catch up with the technology, but they are not there yet.

“I would expect you would make greater cost savings by using open source internally without using a cloud-based solution.”

It’s Official: The Era of the Personal Computer Is Over.

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As of this year, personal computers no longer consume the majority of the world’s memory chip supply.

via It’s Official: The Era of the Personal Computer Is Over. – Arik Hesseldahl – News – AllThingsD.

During that period, PCs accounted for the consumption of 49 percent of DRAM produced around the world, down from 50.2 percent in the first quarter of the year. The share of these chips going into PCs — both desktop and notebooks — has been hovering at or near 55 percent since early 2008, IHS says.

Voicemail usage plunging

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In data prepared for USA Today, Vonage, an Internet phone company, says the number of voice-mail messages left on user accounts was down 8 percent in July from a year ago.

Checking voice mail seems to be an even a bigger chore than leaving a voice message. Retrieved voicemail fell 14 percent among Vonage users in the same period.

via Voicemail usage plunging – Chicago Sun-Times.

App.net’s crowdfunders: Taken for a ride?

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App.net currently embodies a hierarchical vision, where a single top-level provider delivers the infrastructure everyone shares. This is quite unlike StatusNet, which embodies a federated vision of social data networking. If you want to run your own private instance of StatusNet you can — it’s open source, after all. Then if you want to join up with the rest of the planet, you can federate with other instances, creating a meshed data bus with many connection pathways. By contrast, App.net appears to want to maintain a commercial control point on the market it hopes to create.

via App.net’s crowdfunders: Taken for a ride? | Open Source Software – InfoWorld.

So what does App.net have going for it? A proof-of-concept Twitter clone, for sure. A torrent of great ideas, certainly. And $500,000 that’s been given as a gift? Definitely. But its main asset is 10,000 people who want an open infrastructure for digital CB enough to risk $50 to see if it works out. That initial user base is worth at least as much as the money and will be a hard taskmaster.

And then there’s this.

BYOD makes employees work extra 20 hours unpaid

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Many employees are working up to 20 additional hours per week unpaid as a result of bring your own device (BYOD) policies adopted by their firms.

via BYOD makes employees work extra 20 hours unpaid – ComputerworldUK.com.

Skype was the most popular video communications technology, with 70 percent of mobile workers using it as their first preference, and 36 percent used a Cisco platform. This was followed by 29 percent who preferred to use Apple’s FaceTime, and 13 percent chose Google’s Gmail video chat.

Apple owns US smartphone market while Samsung dominates worldwide

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Smartphone market share numbers for the second quarter of 2012 reveal that occasional bitter rivals Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the market, while competitors fight over the leftovers. Market research firm IDC shows Samsung holding a 30 percent share worldwide, while Apple trails with 17 percent. But NPD’s recent data paints a different picture domestically, with Apple garnering 31 percent of the US smartphone market share, and Samsung holding 24 percent.

via Apple owns US smartphone market while Samsung dominates worldwide | Ars Technica.

Inside the real economy behind fake Twitter accounts

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Fake Twitter accounts need some information — an image to use as an avatar, perhaps some bio content, maybe even some tweets. For merchants that need to create an inventory of 20,000 accounts quickly, this simply cannot be done manually

via Inside the real economy behind fake Twitter accounts.

By now, though, even this process has been open sourced. First-page results on a Google search for “program to make fake twitter accounts” return this forum on Freelancer.com, titled “Software create fake twitter users jobs.” There, several development projects are posted for bidding that request a program that grabs information from Twitter users’ accounts.