Today is Nelson Mandela’s 94th birthday. A video by Prezence Digital asks the complicated question: ”Would our nation’s father have spent 27 years in prison if he had access to the same technology, social media platforms, instant sharing apps, and global monitoring tools as we do today?”
That’s a tough question to answer in a geo-political sense. What’s not tough to answer though is how powerful an add this is for technology. [via devour]
Twitter is currently experiencing the push and pull of being a platform versus being a business. To be a business, to make money, they have to circle the wagons, reign in the use of its API, and be more like Facebook. Unfortunately, that’s counter to everything that makes Twitter great. It’s going to be fascinating to watch Twitter’s development over the next year. Fingers crossed they don’t muck it up.
The Verge reports that major changes are coming in the next few months which will move Twitter from “an open platform popular among independent developers towards a walled garden more akin to Facebook.”
Man, this weekend absolutely blew up on the news that Facebook had poached a bunch of Apple engineers to further develop their plans for a mobile phone platform.
Also, strong rumors are now swirling they could acquire the Opera browser for $1 billion. Opera’s desktop market share isn’t that huge, but on the mobile side it’s quite a popular browser and something Facebook would need to offer as part of their mobile OS.
The reason for launching a mobile platform/OS is that Zuckerberg believes the social network can’t thrive in a mobile-dominated world if it’s just an app on iOS or Android. The question becomes twofold: do we really need a Facebook phone? And what could Facebook bring to the table that iOS or Android doesn’t already?
Facebook launched a camera app on Thursday for the iPhone, which is similar but different from Instagram. The new app lets you take photos, add filters to them, and share them on Facebook.
So it sounds like Instagram and you may be asking, well, isn’t this the reason Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion? Yes, it was. But that deal hasn’t closed yet and probably won’t for some time. The new Facebook Camera app was developed in house by the Facebook photo team.
Get it here.
In case you didn’t hear, Facebook has an IPO today. In other news, this “Thank You Facebook” video is surely the best thing about today.
Pipe is a German company and they are about to release a peer-to-peer file sharing app within Facebook. Users can send files up to 1GB in size to another friend.
Facebook is most importantly the friends list Pipe needs to get started. The team made a “tactical decision” to build on the enormous, pre-established network Facebook has created so users don’t have to sign up for yet another service. Hossell points out that most people also naturally gravitate towards services where you’re communicating with credible identities. Using Pipe, you’re not only transferring a file to somebody you’re friends with, but you’re transferring the file to somebody who’s currently online. Sharing files asynchronously using apps like YouSendIt has its benefits, but there are a few big drawbacks most people haven’t thought about. First, there’s a risk that the sharing link you’ve sent somebody gets misplaced and used by strangers. Additionally, managing files you’ve uploaded to the cloud can be a pain since there are generally size limits on uploads and account storage capacities. Lastly, these apps typically throttle upload and download speeds since you are using their servers.
This could be a potential nightmare for IT and business. Great for consumers, but holy hell.
“Is there a way to do this without making it painfully apparent to him that he’s being diluted to 10%?” — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a letter to his attorney on cutting out co-founder Eduardo Saverin from the company.
Business Insider got their hands on a letter written by a 20-year-old Zuckerberg and while it might make him appear less sympathetic, it’s clear that even at a young age he was not to be trifled with.
Speaking of secrets and sharing, the great irony of Facebook is that it’s brought more people together than any other technology but simultaneously makes us more lonely.
What Facebook has revealed about human nature—and this is not a minor revelation—is that a connection is not the same thing as a bond, and that instant and total connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity. Solitude used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention. But now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are. Facebook denies us a pleasure whose profundity we had underestimated: the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect.
Popular photo app and social network Instagram has been acquired by Facebook for approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares. Wow. Wow. Wow. This is staggering news.
The Boston Phoenix has a lengthy cover story on the murder investigation of “Craigslist Killer’ Philip Markoff. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds like it’ll be a great read. It includes some interesting side information about what happens when police subpoena Facebook to give up what it has on you, as relayed by The Atlantic Wire:
As part of their story, The Phoenix obtained numerous police files via a Freedom of Information Act request and discovered that the caselog included a subpoena issued to Facebook for Markoff’s profile information and Facebook’s response. In addition to the technical information like login and IP data, Facebook provided Boston police with text printouts of Markoff’s wall posts (both his wall and any conversations he had on other users’ walls), as well as paper copies of the photos he posted and photos posted by other people that he was tagged in. It was basically a full accounting of all of Markoff’s activity on the site.
Perhaps most worrying for people who aren’t currently under a police investigation is that it also included a full list of the user IDs and full names of everyone the target was friends with. That means if police subpeona the profiled a criminal and you’re “friends” with them, you’re now permanently connected to them. Does this mean you could consorting online with a known felon?
It doesn’t seem as if this particular investigation expanded to anyone beyond the main suspect, but it wouldn’t take much imagination for police to use that list to start asking Facebook for more profiles, if only to widen the dragnet.
Nothing you put online is private or secured, no matter how much you may believe it to be.
Since we started working on Digg in June of this year (if you’re asking yourself “wtf?” you can catch up here), we have been...
