DIGITAL LIFE | ONLINE ACTIVISM NEEDS SOMETHING MORE

"A Facebook group that started off with the name “Stop the injustices in Palestine” saw a large number of people join initially. The group’s name then changed to “Stop the media bias against Israel”, but very few noticed. Group member Zubair Mahomed, however, did and was shocked at the fact that no one else had.

Mahomed made himself the administrator of the Facebook group and changed the name again to the absurd, “Lemon trees are our salvation”, to see who noticed.

Less than a handful of members noticed this change."

Erhahaha! Nuff said, eh?

More from Larry Kramer... couldn't resist.

"In a world where buyers and sellers are getting maxed and middlemen are getting squeezed, the distribution model of television starts to fall apart.� The people who still make money are those who own the content no matter how it’s distributed.

The future is ownership of the content.� So, the media companies which concentrate on good content will do well.� It’s going to be painful as their business models change, but they will change and survive because people will still want good content.

On the other hand, if good content starts to disappear because people refuse to pay for it, then people will step up and pay because at the end of the day they want it.� We just have to give them easy ways to pay."

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That's a refreshing, glass-half-full way of looking at it, which is cool. We have to believe that high quality, truly useful information will always trade at a premium, right? Right?!

How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time

NYTimes.com
By STEVE LOHR

In a class project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that received some attention last year, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree analyzed more than 4,000 Facebook profiles of students, including links to friends who said they were gay. The pair was able to predict, with 78 percent accuracy, whether a profile belonged to a gay male.

Even more unnerving to privacy advocates is the work of two researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. In a paper published last year, Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross reported that they could accurately predict the full, nine-digit Social Security numbers for 8.5 percent of the people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003 — nearly five million individuals.

But Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies social networks, is skeptical that rules will have much impact. His advice: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.”

My sentiments exactly!

Reuters adds social media rules to its handbook

Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Blog

Includes guidelines on how/when to use social media as a "trusted source", and what rules will govern professional journalists Tweeting, posting into blogs etc.

10 phrases that can change your career - Downloads - TechRepublic

10 phrases that can change your career - TechRepublic

By Steve Tobak

1: "You may be right, but here's how I see it…"

2: "Tell me what's working and what's not working."

3: "What do you think we should be doing differently?"

4: "Give it to me straight; no BS."

5: "Please don't tell me what __ thinks; I'd like to know what you think."

6: "What does your gut tell you?"

7: "How can I help you?"

8: "That may be true, but look at it this way… "

9: "Don't worry; I've got plenty of time."

10: "How would you do it?"

Socialism Versus Capitalism

Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

Bai Di grew up in socialist China (before capitalism was brought back after Mao’s death in 1976) and participated in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). She is a coeditor of the book Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era and is the director of Chinese and Asian Studies at Drew University. Revolution correspondent Li Onesto interviewed Bai Di in February of 2009.

Li Onesto: What did the Cultural Revolution accomplish and what did it mean to grow up in a socialist society?

Bai Di: I always had a purpose. That was what education was about. And we didn’t have to worry about the financial crises that capitalism will always have periodically. We never had that much – two sets of clothes – but we never felt we should have more. You don’t have that kind of crazy desire for everything, like the need to go shopping all the time. I feel that capitalism is very good at creating a void in people’s psyches. It will teach you that the only way to feel okay is to want more. It is so consuming. When I grew up, I did not put much time at all in material stuff. So we had energy to do other things for the greater good. We studied all kinds of subjects, and we thought our presence was very much a part of the future. Yes, we were very future oriented and our focus was also wider than only China. It was about the whole of humankind. It is what inspired us. That’s what I feel education has to be about.

Facebook on Track for $1 Billion Revenue This Year

Facebook on Track for $1 Billion Revenue This Year: "Facebook on Track for $1 Billion Revenue This Year
Written by Jolie O'Dell / March 2, 2010 1:13 PM

According to figures released today by the singularly focused blog Inside Facebook, the ubiquitous social network made upwards of $700 million in 2009 and is expected to reach a phenomenal $1 billion in revenues in 2010.

Year over year, Facebook's revenues have typically doubled, from $150 million in 2007 to around $300 million in 2008 and so on.

The breakdown of revenue streams is fascinating, showing the extent to which well-targeted ads based on massive amounts of user data still drives how we monetize the Web."