Facebook, other websites ‘keeping deleted photos’

Link: news.bbc.co.uk

The Trouble with Twitter: Quitters

Make no mistake: Twitter is a phenomenon that can’t be ignored. It has more than 7M users, a 1382% YoY growth rate, and 41.7% of its users are in the demographic sweet spot: 35 to 49 years old..

Auto-tuning the news, one story at a time

What happens when the music industry’s dirty little secret is used on the news? Hilarity, that’s what.
The Auto-Tune is the music industry’s audio version of Photoshop. It’s allegedly been used to fix the off-key singing of Britney Spears, Reba McEntire, Faith Hill and was used to create the yodel-esque effect in Cher’s 1998 hit Believe. It’s apparently so commonplace in the profession, that Seattle band Death Cab for Cutie appeared on the 51st Grammy Awards wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of the technology.

It was created by Andy Hildebrand, an 18 year oil industry veteran who specialized in the signal processing used to map the Earth to determine where the crude was. Apparently it corrects crude voices, too. After taking some music courses, he focused his audio tuning expertise on the recording industry.
Antares Audio Technologies offers Auto-Tune in both a plug-in for various professional audio editing software packages and as a stand-alone rack-mounted unit for use in live performances, Britney.
Well, my wife wears makeup. Is that evil?
– Andy Hildebrand, when asked if his Auto-Tune software was “evil.”
Not everyone agrees that it’s that simple.

Josh Sullivan, The 21st Century Hobo

Today’s kids would call him a couch surfer. My Dad’s generation would have called him a wander. And my grandfather would have called him a hobo.

Facebook’s About Face, and why Digital Democracy Stinks

After unleashing a firestorm of anger from the blogging community about Facebook’s quiet attempt to change its Terms of Service that retroactively makes them the owner of all the photos, videos and other personal content you upload to the social networking site, the company has done an about face.
From blog.facebook.com:
Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now.
Creator Mark Zuckerberg promises the next version will be a complete rewrite, and in plain English to “clarify” the terms of service.
In the meantime, Zuckerberg has created a new group titled Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for his 175,000,000,000 members to provide their input on what that “Bill” should contain.
This is brilliant, if as nothing more than a PR move. But the reality is, “democratizing” a website is a really, really bad idea. I’ve got lots of experience in this area to justify my opinion: as the SysOp (aka “Administrator”) for five separate online communities back before the Internet was a household term (ie 1987), I participated in and managed such digital democracies. They don’t work. First, the crazies come out of the woodwork. The signal-to-noise ratio plummets, and those that truly care about shaping a “bill of rights” get squelched and ultimately go back to “lurking” as part of the silent majority. Some outright leave the online community. This is a prime example:

See? The Request from Facebook for feedback has 14 posts by 12 people. Breastfeeding is not obscene has 2,227 by 176 members.
And once that digital democracy ball gets rolling, heaven help the administrators who have to make tough decisions about things like canceling accounts, adding features to the site, or appeasing advertisers. Every single move is suddenly open for debate, and nothing gets done.
Here’s my high-priced advice to Facebook: Write a TOS that doesn’t make your users’ content your own, and leave it at that. Zuckerberg should have come to me sooner — he’s already opened the pandora’s box.
Source: Update on Terms, blog.facebook.com
See previous article: Facebook how owns your content, HAINSWORTH.COM

Facebook Now Owns Your Content

UPDATE! See: Facebook’s About Face, and why Digital Democracy Stinks
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is saying, “trust me” after the insanely popular social networking site quietly changed its terms of service.

Everything the site’s 175,000,000 users upload, from personal photos to videos and everything in between, is now property of Facebook. They can do whatever they want with it — from sublicense your baby’s birth photos to Pampers to that video of you drunk to Smirnoff.
In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.
NBC Los Angeles reports Blog Queen Perez Hilton is calling for a Facebook boycott.
If there’s anything that will bring down Facebook, it’s this. 30 Somethings are already bored with the site, its membership is in decline, and there always seems to be a huge legal fight over who actually owns it.
Zuckerberg turned down $1B from Yahoo to buy the site, months after Viacom offered $750M. The value of FB is declining in this recession — who knows if Zuckerberg may revisit these bids before the site is worth less than the Evil Corporations perceive. What if some Evil Corporation takes over and Mark “Trust Me” Zuckerberg is ousted? Can you trust Corporate America to respect your personal correspondence, photos and videos?