Is Facebook becoming the new Bebo?

09.04.2010
Once it was pretty clear. Bebo was for the teens. Facebook was for the 20 or 30 somethings and LinkedIn was for the professional types. But now seems Facebook has inherited many of the teen-related problems that dogged Bebo in its heyday.

The news of the demise of Bebo this week shocked many. AOL acquired Bebo for US$850m only two years ago but revealed that it would require a "significant investment" to stop the once-unstoppable social networking behemoth from folding.

As Bebo demises, Facebook is continuing to grow and grow, with some 400m users around the world. In tandem with this growth comes Facebook’s growth as a publishing and advertising giant. With the growth of social gaming on the site, social game firms like Zynga, publishers of the FarmVille game, are already US$300m a year revenue players as players spend money on discretionary items to boost their game play.

Only five years ago Bebo was the new thing. Every teenager had a Bebo account and 11-year-olds who didn’t qualify for the 12-year-old age limit would go to extraordinary efforts to pass the gatekeepers. With its popularity came the age-old problems of bullying, stalking, racism and the spectre of suicide.

The world post-Bebo

This throws up a host of new questions, particularly what’s going to happen to the data that would have graced Bebo accounts in years past. That picture you or your friends posted when you passed out at a party five years ago that was a blast at the time but clearly does not reflect the suited and booted job applicant today? Or what about pictures girls have taken in their glad rags on a night out attempting a Christina Aguilera pose that could wind their way onto porn sites or ads for sexy singles?

It seems, though, that ahead of the expected closure of Bebo many teens have already started the migration to Facebook to keep connected. With the migration no doubt comes all the issues that dogged Bebo in the past. Is Facebook prepared?

Facebook has already been at the centre of cases around paedophile rings, murder and lately the senior police officer in the UK responsible for child protection online Jim Gamble who leads the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, has warned that officers have seen a significant increase in complaints from parents and children reporting alleged paedophiles, bullies and hackers who are exploiting the site.

Gamble said that Facebook, who has insisted it has a secure internal system, has failed to report a single alleged paedophile to police. He also hit out at Facebook’s refusal to embed a panic button to each user’s profile page, which he claimed would deter paedophiles and protect children.

He said 252 Facebook complaints were made to police in the UK in the past three months – quadruple the number of complaints last year.

Strange currencies

Aside from the sinister aspects of stalking and bullying, a new issue has arisen that Facebook must also come to grips with as it becomes more and more of an e-commerce player in terms of currency and gaming.

It emerged in the last 24 hours that a 12-year-old boy spent nearly stg£300 of his own savings to purchase FarmVille’s virtual currency before using his mother’s credit card to add another stg£600 worth of expenses, buying everything from virtual tractors to virtual food. More than 80m people around the world play FarmVille and vie to become virtual farmers in the hope of generating virtual revenues from crops they can sell online.

Facebook/Zynga have declined to refund the money and the credit card company said it will only return the money to the mother if she’s prepared to brand her son a thief.

As Facebook sees a rich harvest of virtual currency and advertising materialise as it becomes the new social networking network of choice for younger members, it will need to get serious about checks and balances to avoid the problems that dogged Bebo in its early days. Remember, all it takes is a few bad apples ...

By John Kennedy

Photo: Former Bebo members flocking to Facebook are potentially moving with them issues encountered on Bebo, such as stalking and bullying

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15799/

Putting up barriers to a free and open internet

The Irish Times - Friday, April 16, 2010

The Government has been having high-level discussions on introducing internet blocking, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

THE GOVERNMENT has had extensive private discussions on introducing internet blocking – barring access to websites or domains – according to material obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

The approach is used by some internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile network operators to block access to child pornography. But increasingly, governments and law enforcement agencies are pushing for much broader use, ranging from blocking filesharing sites to trying to tackle cybercrime and terrorism.

Critics say internet blocking creates many problems with little real effect on illegal activity. For example, internet users and businesses have complained about the side-effects of domain blocking, where barring access to domains can shut down hundreds of personal and business websites as well as e-mail addresses associated with them.

The exact nature of the Government discussions cannot be determined as many of the requests for key documents were refused by the Department of Justice. However, the ongoing high level of discussion on the subject is indicated in the detailed description of each refused item in the list of materials returned by the department.

The FOI request, made by privacy advocate Digital Rights Ireland and seen by The Irish Times, contains eight pages of listed documents. One refused item details a June 2009 meeting between the department and Vodafone on the “introduction of internet filtering in Ireland”. Another is an e-mail from mobile operator 3 listing filter technologies it is using.

Another refused item details minutes of a meeting between the Office for Internet Safety and the Garda “re proposed introduction of blocking technology”. Discussions on the international use of blocking and on proposed European legislation were also refused.

Possible interest in the wider use of such technologies is indicated by a refused document in which an e-mail and note on blocking child pornography sites was forwarded to the official in the Department of Justice in charge of casino gaming regulation.

Proponents of internet blocking argue that it removes offensive and illegal material from the internet and can make it more difficult for child pornographers and their customers to operate.

But critics say it is a blunt instrument that does little to combat pornography or other activities, while causing headaches for networks and ISPs. It can also cause inconvenience and costly disruptions to service for innocent companies and individuals if their websites, internet access and e-mail get cut off.

Paul Durrant of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of Ireland says blocking brings cost burdens for service providers and is not particularly effective. He also says it often means many legitimate websites are barred.

Often, website operators are not informed that their site is on a blacklist and may be unaware that millions are denied access to it.

ISPs also object to taking on the role of policing illegal filesharing. Internationally, ISPs claim they are under increasing pressure from copyright holders and law enforcement agencies to bring in blocking software to do this. “It gets very difficult to judge what is illegal and this kind of blocking would be problematic to implement,” says Durrant. “The Government really needs to put clear laws in place if it wants to do this.”

Durrant adds that blocking “stifles a free and open internet” – a concern for national and international “smart-economy” businesses – and could affect inward investment and the ability of Irish businesses to operate effectively.

Existing evidence indicates that blocking is a clumsy approach and amounts to censorship, says TJ McIntyre, a barrister, UCD law lecturer and chairman of Digital Rights Ireland. He is concerned about the indications from his FOI request that blocking could be brought in on a national level.

McIntyre has written a paper arguing that increasing pressure on network providers and ISPs to act as third-party “gatekeepers”, often in a “voluntary” fashion, allows for unaccountable control of internet users and usage.

“Blocking involves censorship taken on no legal basis. There is no judge, no jury and no right to be heard if you are blocked,” says McIntyre. “The chances are it also will be used in unaccountable ways by unaccountable organisations.”

He adds: “If you want to stop people accessing certain material, the thing to do is to legislate for that.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/0416/1224268442542.html

Googling, goggling

The Irish Times - Saturday, March 27, 2010

A US survey has suggested that internet browsing is not reducing people’s TV viewing – they’re just doing them both at once. But is simultaneous media consumption good for sanity? KEVIN COURTNEY finds out

I’M WATCHING Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience on BBC2 while trawling through YouTube in search of the Lady GaGa video everyone’s talking about. The Gotan Project’s new album is streaming on my laptop and Donal Dineen is playing a new Efterklang tune on the radio. The Guardian’s media supplement lies open on the table to my left, and the Word is propped up on my right. Behind me, the baby monitor relays the tiniest sounds made by my sleeping infant, and my mobile chirrups with a cacophony of tweets.

I’m getting a headache – is there a universal off switch? Can I get off this technological treadmill? When a sexy new medium arrives on the scene, most people assume it’s going to knock the previous one out. The Kindle will spark a mass book-burning, and MP3s will send vinyl into meltdown. And the web will consign that goggle box to a dusty corner.

But a survey this week suggests that, just because something is new and bright and shiny, doesn’t mean people will ditch the old model. They’ll simply move it slightly to one side to make room for the new arrival. The survey by Neilsen, the company that tracks TV viewing in the US, has found that more Americans are watching TV while surfing the web – far from signalling closedown for traditional TV, the internet is emerging as a complementary activity.

According to Neilsen, during the last quarter of 2009, simultaneous web/TV usage went up by 35 per cent, with nearly 60 per cent of TV viewers happy to surf the net while watching their favourite TV show. “The initial fear was that internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalise traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different,” says Matt O’Grady of Nielsen.

One of my favourite movie scenes when I was a teenager was from The Man Who Fell To Earth , the bit where Bowie the alien is watching a bank’s 15 TV sets, all tuned to different channels. As a typical bloke who can’t concentrate on more than one thing, I was in awe of this multi-tasker from space.

But does using multiple media at the same time really mark us out as highly evolved? It seems the more tech stuff we get, the farther our attention spans seem to regress – we can’t even hold a real-life conversation without constantly checking our mobile phones. Within five minutes, I’ve lost track of what’s happening on the TV. And I seem to have stumbled down some disused back-road of the information superhighway, where everything looks like Geocities, circa 1995.

Another problem with simultaneous web/TV viewing is that I need glasses to look at my computer, but not to watch the TV. So I’m clicking with one hand, channel-hopping with the other, and trying to flick my specs with my elbow. Good thing my phone is on hands-free, ’cos I haven’t got any hands free. The Bubble comes on the TV. It’s a quiz show in which contestants are shut away from all news for a week. Where do I sign up?

If I thought using various media simultaneously was a juggling act, try adding an inquisitive toddler into the mix. But then, inspiration hits. I put a Bob the Builder DVD on the telly, log on to the Bob the Builder website, pull up a Bob the Builder ringtone on the mobile phone, open up a Bob the Builder comic, and leave the whole multimedia-tasking thing to the real expert.

Pint, anyone?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0327/1224267157113.html

Corporate desktops no longer physical but virtual - HP

14.04.2010
The end of the corporate desktop as a physical entity is nigh, warns the world’s largest computing company HP, pointing to desktop virtualisation as a trend encouraging it to rethink its client computing architecture.

HP today introduced its client infrastructure portfolio to redesign client computing environments to simplify management, increase security and enhance the user experience.

It said that today’s workers have a diverse range of computing requirements across devices, applications, mobility and performance needs. As such, technology teams are challenged to deliver services efficiently and cost-effectively across this heterogeneous environment.

The future of 'corporate desktop'

According to an independent report from Forrester Research Inc: “Beginning in 2010 but flourishing over the long term, the ‘corporate desktop’ will no longer be a physical machine but a virtual image that users will access from whatever device is most convenient at that time in that particular location.

“Users will be able to complete all of their activities (work and personal) from the same device without security compromises.”

HP said that with PC refreshes and operating system migrations on the horizon, the time has never been better to strategically rethink client architecture design.

The new HP Client Infrastructure Services portfolio strategy focuses on end-user segmentation and takes a life-cycle approach to change, and advises a hybrid design model that includes a mix of new and traditional PCs, virtual desktops, application virtualisation and more.

New HP Client Strategy Services take a business value approach to client architecture strategy and planning to accelerate the transformation and ensure a business case with return on investment.

HP Client Migration Services speed the move to new operating systems and ensure a smooth transition with minimal disruption. New services include:

· End-user Segmentation – Ensures every user receives an enriched, interactive and personalised experience. HP identifies candidates for traditional vs virtual desktops by analysing end-user segments across type, usage scenarios, applications and performance requirements.

· Application Rationalisation – Simplifies management and reduces costs across the application portfolio; resolves compatibility issues and finds opportunities for virtual desktop infrastructure and application streaming.

· Integrated Client Management – Speeds deployment and reduces time spent on ongoing management by automating the migration to virtual or traditional clients along with the refresh of devices and software updates.

Feedback on HP

“HP’s knowledge and practical experience helped us smoothly transition to Windows 7 to meet our goal of maximum user functionality managed with a minimum of resources,” said Wim Vanhoof, manager of Information and Communication Infrastructure at De Persgroep, a leading media company in Belgium.

“The new virtual application streaming environment enables employees to be more productive and ensures that future acquisitions can be readily integrated within the desktop architecture.”

HP Client Virtualisation Services help clients realise the benefits of virtualisation faster with expert services targeting client, storage and server technologies from HP, VMware, Citrix and Microsoft.

Updates to the solution portfolio include the HP ProLiant WS460c G6 Workstation Blade, which is a dedicated remote client that provides the performance and scalability for high-end 3D visualisation projects demanded by manufacturing and oil and gas industries. New graphics capabilities combined with enhanced memory per blade enhance the user experience.

HP has revealed new thin client technologies, including HP TeemTalk 7.2, where desktop clients gain more productivity with “one-click” screen navigation and multiregional offices seamlessly support Chinese-language communication to more than two serial devices.

HP Device Manager (HPDM) provides accelerated implementation and upgrades through silent installation, automation and backup and recovery, saving administrators significant time to rollout and configure large deployments for remote locations and remote console access. The network also offers flexibility to identify new thin clients for easy management.

By John Kennedy

Photo: Physical desktops may be no more, what with the emergence of desktop virtualisation

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15863/

Google and Bing roll out new Twitter search features

14.04.2010
Both Google and Microsoft’s Bing have added new features to the Twitter feeds included in their search-engine results.

While Google has gone for a visual timeline that allows people to track certain times inside a constantly updating stream of tweets that appear in the search results, Bing has introduced real-time tweets in its search results - something Google has previously incorporated.

What is interesting about Google's timeline is that you can zoom to any point in time and 'replay' what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter.

The Twitter graph for the topic or keyword you have searched has a slider that can be moved about to a particular time, say, when the news first broke or when conversation about it peaked. Moving the slider to a certain point will display tweets from this moment in time below the graph.

The replay feature is rolling out now in the English language initially and the first phase of its release will allow you to explore tweets going back to 11 February 2010, and soon with the ability to go to the very first tweet on 21 March 2006.

This will please old-school Twitter users who have found that they cannot go back to Twitter archives through Twitter's own homepage.

By Marie Boran

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15865/

Twitter hits 105m users – reveals @anywhere biz tool

15.04.2010
Twitter now has in excess of 105m users and is adding 300,000 new users a day, the company said as it outlined new business initiatives. The company says it is now focusing on generating cash.

Twitter drew 180m monthly unique visitors to its site in March.

Co-founder Biz Stone says the company is not focusing on an IPO plan at present but is keen to bring various advertising and business services to fruition.

The company in recent days launched its advertising service, which has signed up five advertisers so far. Last week, the company launched a Twitter app for iPhone.

Among the new services being launched is Twitter Journalism, a collection of tips and how-tos from Craig Kanalley, traffic and trends editor at Huffington Post and creator of Breaking Tweets.

Archived tweets at US Library of Congress

The company has also decided to donate all tweets that it considers worthy of preservation to the US Library of Congress. It said that 55m tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply.

“Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world — from historic elections to devastating disasters. It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research,” the company said.

Significantly for the business world, Twitter has unveiled an @anywhere service. The idea is that web users will be able to engage with existing Twitter features from all of their favourite sites. “Today, we're happy to announce this service is live and ready for anyone who wants to build a little Twitter into their online experience.

“Our friends at Foursquare call @anywhere ‘aggressively simple.’ Other partners like Amazon are excited that customers can ‘conveniently follow suggested Twitter accounts without ever leaving’ the shopping experience. Bing implements the new tools so users can ‘seamlessly interact with Twitter.’ The Huffington Post already went all-out and built a Twitter edition and the WSJ.com told us they hope @anywhere ‘will help us connect readers with the broader story.’

“Citysearch says that @anywhere ‘will help our users get a complete real-time snapshot of a merchant and, when they'd like, engage that merchant via Twitter directly from our site’. And, in the UK, the Guardian is using @anywhere to innovatively connect readers with those running for public office.

“Now, from within our pages you can ask questions of your prospective parliamentary candidates and of our journalists,” the Guardian said. “This is a clear indication of how we're trying to lower barriers between our audience and those who hold power or seek to hold office, and between our readers and our journalists.”

The full list of sites who have been working on @anywhere implementations pre-public launch include AdAge, Amazon, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, Disqus, eBay, Foursquare, Gawker, Google, Gowalla, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Hunch, Mashable, Meebo, MSNBC.com, the New York Times, Salesforce.com, WSJ.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.

By John Kennedy

Photo: Twitter drew 180m monthly unique visitors to its site last month

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15867/

Google Docs incorporates Wave elements

14.04.2010
The Google Docs productivity suite has received a significant overhaul with the document editor getting real-time editing collaborating over the web, as well as sidebar chat.

Instead of the previous version of Google Docs, where collaborative contributions had a slight delay before they appeared in full on the other person's screen, there is now the ability to see character-by-character changes in real-time, much like the Google Wave experience.

The sidebar chat now makes it possible to instant message while collaborating - something that was already present on the Google spreadsheets application.

There is also improved document formatting: import/export fidelity has been improved, there's a revamped comment system, and now there are real margins and tab stops and improved image layout within documents.

"These improvements have been highly requested, but previously impossible to create with the older documents editor on older browsers," said Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager with Google Docs.

The spreadsheet editor has also been tweaked to run faster, load faster and scroll seamlessly, plus brand new features include a formula bar for cell editing, auto complete, drag and drop columns, and simpler navigation between sheets.

The drawing editor is now also collaborative so flow charts, designs, diagrams and other business graphics can be co-created in real-time.

By Marie Boran

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15851/

Is Facebook becoming the new Bebo?

09.04.2010
Once it was pretty clear. Bebo was for the teens. Facebook was for the 20 or 30 somethings and LinkedIn was for the professional types. But now seems Facebook has inherited many of the teen-related problems that dogged Bebo in its heyday.

The news of the demise of Bebo this week shocked many. AOL acquired Bebo for US$850m only two years ago but revealed that it would require a "significant investment" to stop the once-unstoppable social networking behemoth from folding.

As Bebo demises, Facebook is continuing to grow and grow, with some 400m users around the world. In tandem with this growth comes Facebook’s growth as a publishing and advertising giant. With the growth of social gaming on the site, social game firms like Zynga, publishers of the Farmville game, are already US$300m a year revenue players as players spend money on discretionary items to boost their game-play.

Only five years ago Bebo was the new thing. Every teenager had a Bebo account and 11 year-olds who didn’t qualify for the 12 year-old age limit would go to extraordinary efforts to pass the gatekeepers. With its popularity came the age old problems of bullying, stalking, racism and the spectre of suicide.

The world post-Bebo

This throws up a host of new questions, particularly what’s going to happen to the data that would have graced Bebo accounts in years past. That picture you or your friends posted when you passed out at a party five years ago that was a blast at the time but clearly does not reflect the suited and booted job applicant today? Or what about pictures girls have taken in their glad rags on a night out attempting a Christina Aguilera pose that could wind their way onto porn sites or ads for sexy singles?

It seems though that ahead of the expected closure of Bebo many teens have already started the migration to Facebook to keep connected. With the migration no doubt comes all the issues that dogged Bebo in the past. Is Facebook prepared?

Facebook has already been at the centre of cases around paedophile rings, murder and lately the senior policeman in the UK responsible for child protection online Jim Gamble who leads the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, has warned that officers have seen a significant increase in complaints from parents and children reporting alleged paedophiles, bullies and hackers who are exploiting the site.

Gamble said that Facebook, who have insisted they have a secure internal system, have failed to report a single alledged paedophile to police. He also hit out at Facebook’s refusal to embed a panic button to each user’s profile page, which he claimed would deter paedophiles and protect children.

He said that a total of 252 Facebook complaints were made to police in the UK in the past three months – quadruple the number of complaints last year.

Strange currencies

Aside from the sinister aspects of stalking and bullying, a new issue has arisen that Facebook must also come to grips with as it becomes more and more of an e-commerce player in terms of currency and gaming.

It emerged in the last 24 hours that a 12 year-old boy spent nearly stg£300 of his own savings to purchase Farmville’s virtual currency before using his mother’s credit card to add another stg£600 worth of expenses buying everything from virtual tractors to virtual food. More than 80m people around the world play Farmville and vie to become virtual farmers in the hope of generating virtual revenues from crops they can sell online.

Facebook/Zynga have declined to refund the money and the credit card company said it will only return the money to the mother if she’s prepared to brand her son a thief.

As Facebook sees a rich harvest of virtual currency and advertising materialise as it becomes the new social networking network of choice for younger members, it will need to get serious about checks and balances to avoid the problems that dogged Bebo in its early days. Remember, all it takes is a few bad apples ....

By John Kennedy

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15799/

WHY YOUR B2B CEO SHOULD BE USING YOUTUBE

By Karlie Justus Mon, Apr 5, 2010

Google “CEOs and YouTube” and almost every result will center around some type of crisis. From Domino’s and KFC to Mattel and Motrin, most companies take a reactive approach to incorporating their CEOs onto their YouTube channels. Accordingly, most receive flak for the unnatural, delayed and – in some cases – unapologetic approaches to each situation.

While every organization must be ready to successfully react to crisis situations, any B2B PR pro worth his or her well-worn AP Style Book will agree on the importance of proactive messaging opportunities for the C-level suite. Traditionally, this has been achieved by drafting talking points, pitching CEO bios to trade reporters and securing keynote speaking opportunities in hopes of spreading the word about the B2B company, its products and its key messages.

Increasingly, social media has opened up new outlets for management to monitor and participate in consumer and media relations. CEOs using Twitter have received the most attention when it comes to social media for the C-level set, but what about YouTube?

If your B2B company is utilizing YouTube (and it should be), here are some reasons your CEO should be a regular contributor:

1. Addtional Media Training

While a B2B CEO’s main job isn’t media relations, he or she will come into contact with journalists (and bloggers) as a primary company spokesperson. The key to interacting under pressure with media is practice. However, mock interviews at a biannual media relations refresher held by the PR staff aren’t enough.

By becoming a regular part of the company YouTube channel, B2B CEOs will gain additional exposure to what works and what doesn’t work on camera, and how things like eye contact, nervous ticks and natural speech patterns can distract viewers from key messages. While a company YouTube video will probably be scripted and provide room for retakes and edits, additional face time in front of a camera will help prepare top management for “real” interviews with reporters and ease the canned and stilted feeling that often comes across in executive interviews.

2. Thought Leader

By joining the small ranks of B2B CEOs proactively using YouTube, your CEO will automatically become a thought leader in the social space. Beyond that, a regular YouTube feature can also help to showcase the expertise that carried your CEO to his or her top spot in the first place. Film shorts spots that allow him or her to talk about why your company is using social media; hit on two or three industry news items and have your CEO offer his or her opinions; or touch on new products or services and the value they will bring to customers.

3. Thinking Outside the Suit

For customers, potential customers, media and even internal employees, top management of B2B organizations can often seem elusive, elite and out of touch. A regular video post can go a long way to develop these relationships, especially when you consider that many of these people may never actually lay eyes on these busy men and women.

Consider a monthly Q&A with questions submitted from company stakeholders; a location-specific feature that discusses the different cities and events he or she has traveled to on business; or, depending on the manager’s comfort level, a simple “Catching up with…” spot that lets him or her give a quick update on the company, his or her job and even personal interests.

4. Crisis Credibility

Last week, Jeff wrote a post on the importance of a B2B social media crisis plan, and included a point about executive video responses to the situation. When a crisis does hit, a B2B CEO who has been participating on his or her company’s YouTube channel all along with have more credibility with online stakeholders, as well as more experience in talking with – instead of to – his or her company’s online followers.

How is your B2B company utilizing your top management on your organization’s YouTube channel?

http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/04/b2b-ceo-youtube/

How Toyota Helped Digg Itself Out of Trouble

In a fast-changing crisis, the carmaker needed a PR platform where it could listen and interact with consumers

April 5, 2010

- Noreen O'Leary

In late January, Toyota watched the hundreds of stories about its recall situation flow through Digg and saw the passionate comments and conversations triggered by those stories. Toyota was already an advertiser on the user-voted news aggregator, but execs at the company concluded that ads weren’t going to be enough. In a fast-changing crisis, the carmaker needed a PR platform where it could listen and interact with consumers.

So Toyota did something unusual: It offered up Toyota Motor Sales USA president Jim Lentz for its Digg Dialogg interview series, the first time a corporate executive has been featured in a grab-bag of newsmakers ranging from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Sacha Baron Cohen in the guise of movie alter-ego Bruno.

Turns out the Feb. 8 live-stream interview with Lentz was more popular than any of the Dialogg interviews to date, generating more than 1 million views in the first five days alone.

Toyota executed a big ad buy around the effort and a Digg microsite that aggregates Toyota stories on Digg in one place. The Lentz interview was a separate, unpaid Digg “editorial” project. “The recall situation we faced in this new landscape was one brands had not really seen before. We were in unchartered territory,” said Doug Frisbie, national social media and marketing integration manager at Toyota Motor Sales, who describes Digg as an ongoing strategic partner. “This allowed us to take a much more conversational approach, which for a big brand is difficult to do. Social media allows brands to become more humanized.”

Did it work? As proof of sorts, Frisbie pointed to the carmaker’s stunning March sales results. To be sure, unprecedented incentives and discounted leasing boosted Toyota in March when sales rose 41 percent over the year-earlier month.

But for J.D. Power and Associates, the link between the social media outreach and the sales boost is far from proven. Lentz’s Digg interview was not a major topic on the Web in the days before and after the event with “little to no online buzz after the event took place,” said J.D. Power rep Syvetril Perryman, citing the company’s Web Intelligence data.

Even though that data shows negative sentiment climbed again last week, Perryman noted that the spike in chatter around Toyota that hit a fever pitch in late January has subsided, a phenomenon she attributed more to fatigue than social media-based crisis PR efforts. “In more recent weeks, the volume has reduced significantly, suggesting that the consumer is beginning to move on to other, more current topics and focusing less on Toyota’s situation,” she said.

Complicating the matter, Lentz had also been featured on mainstream media outlets like NBC’s Today, ABC and NPR, and Toyota was, of course, running a national advertising campaign attempting to win back consumers’ trust. With Digg, however, Lentz was asked the unedited top 10 questions voted by Diggers from the more than 1,400 submitted over a three-day period.

“Toyota wanted to be very transparent and talk to a wide audience about what they were doing about the recall,” said Chas Edwards, chief revenue officer at Digg. “Digg’s 40 million subscribers provided enough outreach but not in a canned situation where Toyota’s PR and marketing teams shaped the conversation.”

Surprisingly enough, the citizen journalists showed a preference for softball questions. (A Digg rep said there was no intervention on Digg’s or Toyota’s part.) Only four of the top 10 queries actually dealt with the recall or safety issues; the others addressed things like gas-free cars or design aesthetics. (With 289 diggs, the No. 1 question to Lentz was “What do you drive?”)

Brendan Hodgson, svp, digital, public and corporate affairs at Hill & Knowlton, who was not involved with the Toyota Digg initiative, said the questions show a disconnect between the media’s goals and the public’s curiosity. “I’m a former journalist, and we used to say, ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ to sell newspapers and attract eyeballs,” Hodgson said. “Now we have witness to voices that are unfiltered by traditional media, and the context in which they see these things is not according to the business objectives of media.”

That unfiltered access is a two-way street, though. Edwards said other advertisers also want to do Dialoggs, but they’re not necessarily newsworthy. “It would be a situation where the product is actually a news event in and of itself,” Edwards explained. “But we have to be very careful. Some brands are trying to force the news cycle in a way we can’t because the Digg Dialogg can’t be shaped by advertiser spending.”

Conversely, what happens as Digg continues to feature stories, negative or positive, about a marketing partner like Toyota? “The church and state separation is much easier for us than The New York Times,” Edwards said. “We’ve built a curation algorithm piece of computer code that goes through the 25,000 stories submitted to Digg every day. We allow any content, commercial or editorial, good or bad. The Digg community grades content whether it’s relevant.”

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3ib6c66237fa7a658d12a6460bd9fb752e?pn=2

Crystal Swing and the viral web

08.04.2010

I’m not going to lie to you: showband-era music gives me the creeps. I dislike the cheese: the pseudo-American crooning, the tacky outfits and the incongruity of a form of music that tries to marry the appeal of swinging jazz bands of the Fifties with rural Ireland several years after big bands have fallen out of fashion in the first place.

So why do we as a nation currently love (or love to hate) Crystal Swing? There are many answers to that, but the first lies in their online discovery and its viral nature: two teenage kids and their mother put up an amateur video of their showband tune He Drinks Tequila on YouTube. It gets hammered with hits.

^{A swingin' web success}

Out of nowhere, the internet has turned this family into a pop sensation. Like Susan Boyle of Britain's Got Talent fame this 'zero to hero' treatment didn't just stop at national radio or breakfast TV but reached across the Atlantic with the result that comedian turned-

TV-presenter Ellen DeGeneres publicises them on her prime-time chat show. Eircom was also savvy enough to spot this opportunity and had Crystal Swing perform at the announcement of its next-generation network last week, with chief executive Paul O'Donovan joining them on stage for the Hucklebuck.

The internet has changed our habits forever and we have gone far past consuming content to become active contributors. I'm not just talking about people who are brave enough to dust off the keyboard and dress up their cat (if you haven't seen 'Keyboard Cat' on

YouTube, go see it now) but the volume of people who view this and give home produced entertainment and cleverly mashed-up content a voice. We are shaping our own destiny - we, the public, can make or break anyone by the click of a mouse.

^{YouTube - one of the driving forces of the viral web}

You may remember the cover from Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2006. It wasn't Bono, Bill Gates, Bush or Brandt as it had been in the past. It was you. A mirrored sticker inside the YouTube frame had us staring at our own reflection. Thanks to the accessibility of video-hosting site YouTube, the internet enabled us all to become stars in our own right.

What becomes global on the internet is paradoxically spread in a localised manner: something a friend or colleague finds interesting is spread through word of mouth rather than the dogma of the traditional media. This is such a huge part of the web experience that there are several genres, a notable one of which is the 'lip-dub' viral, where people sing along to popular songs.

This was used to great effect when the dance hit Dragostea Din Tei was adopted by vodka company 42Below as a marketing tool. It originally went viral when Gary Brolsma created an amateur video for the song with nothing more than a basic webcam. Known

as the Numa Numa Dance, it has been viewed more than 35 million times on YouTube alone.

What does the viral web mean to business? It's an inclusive way of drawing in the customer and harnessing the power of the social web. The advertiser no longer dictates the message but rather relies on the power of the herd to spread the message that appeals most to them.

By Marie Boran

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15781/

Bebo to be shut down or sold off by AOL

07.04.2010

The once mighty internet company AOL is looking at either shutting down or selling off social networking site Bebo.

AOL acquired Bebo for US$850m only two years ago but made its plans for the future of the social networking site after an internal email to employees from its startup acquisition and investment unit, AOL Ventures, it would require a "significant investment" to stop it from folding.

The email said: "Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space. AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking."

Bebo, once the top social networking site in Ireland and the UK, has been slipping in popularity in the past few years as rival Facebook has grown rapidly. Meanwhile, the site never really took off in the US and its 5.8 million users in February 2009 has already dropped to 5.1 million a year later while Facebook has a user base of 210 million.

By Marie Boran

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15771/

Internet giants call for new privacy rules for digital age

31.03.2010

A consortium of the who’s who in cyberspace – including Google, Microsoft and eBay – are calling for new privacy protections for the digital age and in particular want the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) 1986 rewritten to reflect new realities.

The call will put to the test a promise US President Barack Obama made two years ago that he would strengthen privacy protections for the digital age.

In a blog this morning, Google senior counsel in charge of Law Enforcement and Information Security Richard Salgado pointed out that a lot has changed since 1986 when a gallon of gas cost 86 cents. “Gas is now measured in dollars and Taylor Swift (born in 1989) won album of the year.

“All the while, technology has moved at record pace. But ECPA has stayed the same.

“Originally designed to protect us from unwarranted government intrusion while ensuring that law enforcement had the tools necessary to protect public safety, it was written long before most people had heard of email, cellphones or the ‘cloud’ — the term used for programs helping people store personal data like photos and documents online. As a result, ECPA has become outdated,” Salgado said.

Google has joined a consortium of key players in the internet space and civil rights bodies including eBay, AOL, AT&T, Intel, Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Salesforce.com to found Digital Due Process to provide privacy protection to new and emerging technologies.

Salgado said that Digital Due Process wants to do four key things:

· Better protect your data stored online: The (US) government must first get a search warrant before obtaining any private communications or documents stored online;

· Better protect your location privacy: The government must first get a search warrant before it can track the location of your cellphone or other mobile communications device;

· Better protect against monitoring of when and with whom you communicate: The government must demonstrate to a court that the data it seeks is relevant and material to a criminal investigation before monitoring when and with whom you communicate using email, instant messaging, text messaging, the telephone, etc.; and

· Better protect against bulk data requests: The government must demonstrate to a court that the information it seeks is needed for a criminal investigation before it can obtain data about an entire class of users.

“(The year) 1986 was a good year, but it’s time our laws catch up with how we live our lives today,” Salgado said.

By John Kennedy

Photo: Digital Due Process online

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15722/

How Ireland can help reshape the future of cloud computing

01.04.2010
The sky’s the limit if this country becomes a force in the tech world’s biggest revolution yet.

Last week, as I took my seat among 80 software developers at the Mansion House, it reinforced my opinion that the internet is doing away with traditional routes to market.

The developers attending the Samsung Developer Day were being invited to develop apps for an immediate marketplace of more than two million phones worldwide. It was like an exporter’s beachhead had just opened up in Dublin City.

Internet cloud rolls in

This is about the cloud, the internet cloud, and it’s unfolding before our very eyes. Already, more than 400 established Irish software companies are developing software on Microsoft’s Azure platform, it’s ‘Windows for the Cloud’, which will be hosted at the $500m data centre Microsoft opened in Dublin last autumn.

Dublin, with its 25-plus data centres and who’s who list of global internet companies, is one of the cornerstones of the internet economy. Cork too, with enablers like VMWare and internet-gaming companies such as Big Fish and Activision Blizzard, is an emerging force. Most of the business processes for Apple’s online empire, for example, are managed in Cork City.

However, a whitepaper published by the Irish Internet Association (IIA) last week revealed that few Irish businesses or public bodies see the cloud-computing opportunity as a way of saving money and being more productive.

The barriers, the IIA report says, to every business in Ireland being able to access the cloud opportunity are obvious: lack of understanding and a lack of quality, ubiquitous broadband. Failure to get this right could mean Irish firms, in sore need of a revival, may miss out on productivity opportunities.

The IIA document also points out that 43pc of Irish IT managers and some 85pc of finance managers are unclear of what cloud computing actually is.

Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) Galway operation facility, which began life 40 years ago as part of Digital Equipment Corporation, is spearheading a cloud-based recall service that traces and removes harmful food products from the global supply chain in partnership with GS1.

“The development of IT has followed a significant evolutionary pathway,” explains Dr Chris Coughlan, who heads up HP’s Galway operation. “It has evolved from mainframe computers to mini-computers to PCs to programming languages and techniques, and from bureau services to networking to internet to worldwide web and, more recently, to the social networking of Web 2.0.

“The analogy is that the cloud is ‘the big mainframe in the sky’, where the mainframe has been replaced by large data centres, which can be located anywhere in the world, while the dumb terminal has been replaced by a multiplicity of access devices such as laptops, netbooks, PDAs and even mobile phones,” says Coughlan.

About Vordel

But what’s holding Irish businesses back? Cloud computing’s promise can be seen in the example of Dublin security software company Vordel, which is working with Dell to manufacture cloud-security products and is also on the verge of an alliance with Amazon.com to create cloud- security services for businesses.

Vordel has, in the past year, added 32 customers to its growing enterprise client base, including finance firms such as EBS, Allianz and BNP Paribas; government customers such as the US Federal Government and the EU Council; and telecoms providers such as Telefónica and Telecom Italia.

Vordel emerged as an idea amongst a group of Eircom.net workers in the Nineties. Mark O’Neill, one of the original founders, is chief technical officer. He says that, for 51pc of CIOs, security is the biggest challenge when it comes to cloud adoption.

“People are worried about their data intermingling with other people’s data and they are particularly concerned that many cloud providers won’t provide a service level agreement (SLA).”

Gerry Power of cloud computing firm Sysco, and chair of the IIA Cloud Computing Working Group, says the key is taking the confusion out of what cloud computing actually means.

“Ultimately, what we’re talking about is the commoditisation of IT. For SMEs, deploying cloud computing is a compelling argument because they don’t have the legacy of the large enterprise IT infrastructure large companies have. The cloud is a massive engine SMEs can tap into. At present, SMEs are wondering how secure their data or email is. The cloud will be far superior to what they have.”

Number of firms in the Microsoft BizSpark programme

To date, in excess of 400 companies have joined the Microsoft BizSpark programme, which brings them into a development ecosystem of 30,000 firms worldwide and strategically positions them to capitalise on Microsoft’s Azure platform.

Conor O’Riordan is CEO of TradeFacilitate, a firm dedicated to reducing the costs associated with dated and inefficient paper-based international trade transactions and increasing the trade competitiveness of buyers and sellers globally. O’Riordan says membership of BizSpark provides a calling card and a level of assurance when trading in regions like Africa.

The programme, he says, has equipped TradeFacilitate, which works with the EU and the UN, to be knowledgeable enough to win business with major governments.

“If we hadn’t been in BizSpark, we couldn’t have met the technical deadlines set by the EU. It’s been a huge learning curve.”

Ian Lucey of Lucey Technology says BizSpark helped his secure-payments company to accelerate growth.

“We’ve estimated that being part of the programme has saved us €292,000 over three years. We’ve used the tools to create development packs and the licensing to go into production. We would have had to raise another €200,000 to put the infrastructure in place.”

According to Microsoft Ireland’s managing director, Paul Rellis, selling software via the internet cloud is an unparallelled opportunity for Irish software companies because geography no longer matters.

“The one thing that’s coming out, and the Innovation Taskforce didn’t grasp this, is the whole cloud computing opportunity. The power of the internet is really all about giving the consumer IT services on demand, when you want and whatever device you want. As a country, we’re not really set up to take advantage of that yet.”

But to fully tap into the cloud opportunity, Ireland needs to first resolve its broadband problems.

As Rellis says: “We definitely need to put the broadband discussion back up at the top of the list as a country. It’s a big investment decision – there’s so much business there for telcos, mobile providers and software companies and for the public sector to gain from.”

By John Kennedy

Photo: The cloud economy is a blue-sky opportunity for Ireland’s multinational and indigenous software industries, say, from left, Microsoft Ireland’sPaul Rellis and Vordel’s Mark O’Neill (inset) and (walking) Cliff Reeves, global head of Emerging Business, Microsoft; InishTech’s Aidan Gallagher;Conor O’Riordan of TradeFacilitate and Ian Lucey of Lucey Technology

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15730/

Dublin rapidly becoming the ‘internet capital of Europe’

01.04.2010
Now the location of choice for international headquarters of companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, eBay and Gala Networks, Dublin is on its way to becoming the internet capital of Europe.

However, warns IDA chief executive Barry O’Leary, the country must move to ensure it has the high-speed communications infrastructure to support investments outside the capital because further flagship announcements are expected for elsewhere in the country.

Hundreds of new jobs for Dublin

In just one week, Dublin received welcome jobs news in the form of more than 400 new internet jobs for the city.

eBay, which already employs more than 1,600 people at its Blanchardstown site together with PayPal, its online payment system, revealed plans to create 150 new permanent positions in customer service, personal account management and process enhancement.

This was followed by news of 200 new jobs from IBM at its first-ever IBM Smarter Cities Technology Centre, which aims to revolutionise how cities provide services such as water and transport. This project will have internet technology at its core.

It then emerged that social networking service LinkedIn is setting up its international headquarters in Dublin. The jobs are expected to include a variety of business and technology roles, including positions in sales, marketing, finance and customer service. The company says it will manage its international expansion from Dublin, working with teams in London and the Netherlands.

Word of companies' expansions

These internet-based investments come hot on the heels of announcements in recent months by Japanese internet gaming giant Gala Networks, which is expanding with 103 new jobs. It has been rumoured that social gaming firm Zynga, which has become a US$300m a year player on the back of games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, is mulling a move to Dublin.

In October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he is planning to expand the 1,500-strong Google operations in Dublin. Meanwhile, Facebook, which came to Ireland with the objective of creating 60 positions, is now recruiting 140 jobs.

Cork, too, is undergoing an internet storm. The city, which has been host to Apple Computer since the Eighties, is generating hundreds of internet-based jobs. Security software player McAfee is establishing a 120-person tech support operation in Cork and the world’s No 1 games company, Activision Blizzard, has hired 740 people in the last several months in Cork.

Big Fish, which employs 350 people, is to create the 100 jobs at its Mahon facility in Cork.

“There is no doubt about it, we have the leading brands and are adding to it with visibility on other big names coming down the track,” O’Leary explained.

“We have these companies in concentrated areas. The challenge for us is to continually identify young companies whose growth is accelerating and get them to Ireland.”

O’Leary said that IDA executives are concentrating on places like Mountain View where companies such as Google are headquartered to identify fast-growth companies.

“Our guys are in tune at a very early stage with how these companies are developing.”

Broadband outside cities, too

On the subject of broadband, O’Leary said it was vital the country concentrates on making high-speed broadband available ubiquitously and not just in built-up cities.

“It’s all about next-generation networks and this impacts not only companies in the internet space but other industries too. The reality is many executives who work for these firms will want to work remotely.

“Suffice to say that if we are attracting these high-calibre technology companies, we have to have the technology sophistication to cater for their people. There’s a shift occurring in the economy – if we are to provide services globally it’s going to be over the internet,” O’Leary said.

By John Kennedy

^{Photo by Conor McCabe}

^{http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15726/}