The Social Facebook Fiasco! by Oliver Marks

December 15th, 2009
The Social Facebook Fiasco
Posted by Oliver Marks @ 10:57 pm

A huge blocker to understanding business value and usage of modern 2.0 technologies is the Facebook fiasco.
The 800 pound/350 million accounts gorilla in the ’social’ space confuses the heck out of most of the planet. The latest attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: your personal information wants to be free. By default, according to Facebook- so they can make a buck off it.
Facebook is inexorably moving towards monetizing your social graph. This makes their product an open content management system - one that allows anyone online to rummage through your personal relationships, photos and musings and essentially an alternate internet. This is basically in the face of services like Twitter who are more focused on differentiation of your consciously living your life in the open and maintaining privacy elsewhere online… using services like Facebook (as it was before the latest change of terms).
Importantly, the effect of these Facebook fiascos are a confused business audience, some of whom would like to see an ‘enterprise Facebook’ in their corporate environment…if they could get a handle on Facebook’s ever mutating terms of service. Nothing gives corporate IT security folks ulcers quicker than company intellectual property living online in environments that are a keystroke away from being available to the planet.
The fact that enterprise 2.0 vendors are generally very security conscious and arguably more aware of the importance of IP protection than many other areas of IT is undermined by Facebook’s cavalier attitude to their free service customer’s online artifacts. The assumption in some business circles is that business ’social software’ is even flakier than Facebook, with no locks on the doors.
The whole ’social’ online world is rife with marketing oriented behavior where the Faustian bargain is you use ‘free’ services but accept that your every move online is being tracked and exploited, and that when you have anything valuable worth ’sharing’ it will be sold by that service.
Julia Angwin did a decent job of writing up ‘How Facebook Is Making Friending Obsolete‘ in the Wall Street Journal:
Just as Facebook turned friends into a commodity, it has likewise gathered our personal data – our updates, our baby photos, our endless chirping birthday notes— and readied it to be bundled and sold.
So I give up. Rather than fighting to keep my Facebook profile private, I plan to open it up to the public – removing the fiction of intimacy and friendship.
But I will also remove the vestiges of my private life from Facebook and make sure I never post anything that I wouldn’t want my parents, employer, next-door neighbor or future employer to see. You’d be smart to do the same.
Dan Gilmor shows you how to delete your Facebook and reconstitute it, still with your username but in a new blander version suitable for sharing with an impersonal world here.
The personal privacy fiasco opens up a real business opportunity for new personal services like Blackbox Republic, who are essentially dedicated to respecting your online privacy. It’s not free but it makes sure your personal life details aren’t either.
Since Facebook have managed to make their 650,000 strong developer ecosphere hate them by closing and constraining channels I have to wonder how long it will be before the next ’social network’ product takes the world by storm.
Meanwhile we have to deal with the effect of Facebook on the enterprise. People not paying much attention to what they perceive as a teenage space mean business analytics aligned with 2.0 collaborative technologies are still somehow pigeonholed in with ’social media’ marketing, Twitter hustlers and Facebook being promiscuous with your data.
Separately Andrew McAfee, the MIT professor, author of ‘Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges‘ is careful to differentiate the word ‘Social’ and term ‘Enterprise 2.0′ on his blog, which prompted some interesting comments from interested parties.
My definition is narrow, corporate, and managerial, and I’m glad to have it labeled as such. I think it’s both prudent and responsible to be circumspect about one’s claims, and I think it’s neither to assert that the old rules of society, culture, or business no longer apply because of the appearance of a network, some software that sits of top of it, and a large number of (primarily younger) people who like using it. As I wrote a little while back, Enterprise 2.0 is not THAT big a deal.
But whether or not it’s a big deal, it’s not going to be ANY deal until ESSPs (’emergent social software platforms’) and their attendant practices make their way inside organizations. And the point I was trying to make in my talk, and the one I still believe, is that keying the message / sales pitch / marketing / education effort around the word ’social’ is a bad idea.
The debate about what to call using modern collaborative techniques leveraging 2.0 web technologies isn’t terribly important, as Andy stresses - it’s all about getting focused on the business value for your organization in context.
Using the word social in this context comes with an enormous amount of baggage in all sorts of areas as well as the Facebook confusion outlined above. Intranets, extranets and collaboration environments are typically given internal names such as Booz Allen’s ‘Hello‘ system which won Stowe Boyd and I’s ‘Open Enterprise 2009‘ award this May at the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference, the CIA have an internal ‘Intellipedia’ and so on.
I can’t help thinking that like Facebook, the ‘Social Business/Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 etc ecospheres are doing a good job obfuscating value to a potential audience already reeling from the recession. Clarity and consistency are important to everyone, whether as individual or business users.
2010 will see much greater 2.0 thinking business maturity and understanding of value, but I have a feeling the personal, consumer and marketing spaces will undergo significant disruption and change.
Mark Zuckerberg & Chris Cox image embedded here from the Facebook album: “Streams, Ties & Mustaches” by Caitlin O’Farrell

Dell debuts Vostro V13, 0.65-in. thick ULV business laptop; $450
Posted by Andrew Nusca @ 8:36 am

14 TalkBacks

Dell on Tuesday announced the worldwide availability of the Vostro V13business laptop, a 0.65-inch thick system that starts at $450.
Thanks to the laptop’s ultra-low-voltage processor, the 13.3-inch Vostro V13 weighs just 3.5 lbs. It’s sheathed in brushed aluminum and has reinforced zinc hinges that are “ready for rough handing.”
[Image Gallery: Dell Vostro V13 business laptop]
Inside, you’ll find either a 1.2GHz Intel Celeron, 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo or 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo processor with integrated X4500MHD graphics. Ports include Ethernet, eSATA, USB, an SD card slot and an ExpressCard slot.
Here’s a video about the Vostro V13 from Dell:
The Vostro V13 is available now on Dell.com in Singapore. It will be available soon to customers in the United States, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Germany, China, India, France, Brazil and Japan later this week.
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

The Boat of Hazrat Nooh Al-e-Salam & The Movie 2012 Dooms Day!

Movie 2012: Based on the boat of Hazrat Nooh Al-e-Salam. When the world was destroyed. As per the orders of Allah, Prophet Hazrat Nooh Al-e-Salam Built a boat to keep a pair of everything from the earth. At the end the only thing remains in the world was that boat and stuff and humans were in there.

The Movie 2012 has the same concept. They keep the animals, humans and the stuff in the Big-Ship for the future and after the disaster that Big-Ship remains.

you can watch the movie by follow this link 2012 2009

The Great Sacrifice

The last Islamic Month Zil-Hajj has been started. In this sacred month Muslims perform Hajj and on 10th of this month they slaughter an animal (it can be Cow, Sheep, Camel). This month is remembered as a great Sacrifice of Prophet Hazrat Ibrahim (a.s) and his beloved son Hazrat Ismail (a.s). We all know the details of this history.
We, the Muslims think that if we act according to these great Prophets sacrifice we can fulfil all the requirements and duties which Allah urge to us. The real meaning of this Great Sacrifice has been forgotton. The true sense and soul of this act is learning of giving our precious thing. Whatever we like most, we love more than anything if someone needs we just give it to him and we just handover for any good cause.
It does not mean that we slaughter high priced animals and show off our money. We should do this with our clean heart and consider the true and real sense of this duty then we can arrive towards the blessings of Allah.

Believe in God

Whenever you feel sad yourself, you get worried and you are forced to think that there is nothing can be changed, immediately you think about Allah. He is just around you, looking at you, listening to you. Whatever you want to say anybody you just say to him. Believe in Allah and trust him firmly that there is no one accept Allah who loves you most.You see that your all problems have been vanished. If you have faith in Allah you can live a fearless life whether you are facing hard time or easy you just go through. So do it truly you can find yourself always happy and with someone who is Almighty Allah.

Half Life!

Half Life Compendium

Are You Independent

14 August is about to come. Everybody is feeling happy,trying to celebrate it excelently.
Thinking about the day there are many questions pricking me.
Did you think you blong to a free and independent country? If you think so, you can celebrate your so called Independence day, otherwise you sit calmly and think seriously what you are and what you should be?
We got Pakistan because we are Muslim and we want to live in a separate Homeland where we have rights to follow our islamic rules and regulations as Islam urge us but today is there Islam and Islamic followers?
Now think and answer me.
A country where people have no right to elect sincere person who serve the country not rule over them and make them slave.
A country where people are committing suicide due to Poverty, Injustice and Inflation.
A country where a 3 years old baby girl was murdered, burned and raped.
A country which was created on the bases of Islam, today people are killing eachother by suicide bomb blast in the name of Allah.
A country where a person goes out of his home he doesn't know whether he get back safely or not.Iam not being able to see any solid reason to celebrate Independence Day.
Oh Gog I beg your mercy, forgive us. How disgraceful it is that we are Muslim and living in a Muslim State and we are treating and being treated like enemies.
Having all that worse circumstances is there any senseble person can celebrate Independence Day?
Only congratulating eachother, waving Flags and singing national songs are not the symbol of Independent Nation but this term contains very vast meaning.We need a positive consideration on ourselves.
A Real "Judjement day" is far from us but we have to take every day as our Judjement Day.
We need to get free from all external and internal Emperor.Make better ourselves.
Please do believe that every single can make a difference in a Nation's Life.