Privacy is an Illusion

I found this interesting little piece of information in the New York Times late last week about the fact that Facebook's new ad platform could violate out of date state privacy laws. New York State statute states that "any person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained" can sue for damages.

This is interesting considering Facebook is planning on launching Social Ads by having friends recommend products and services to one another. Of course, they could get around all of this by simply adjusting their terms of service.

Thoughts on SocialAds

Facebook announced yesterday that it will start a new stealthy art of advertising called SocialAds. The point of the platform will allow its 50 million members to become the new advocates for high profile brands such as Verizon, Blockbuster, and other mainstream brands.

The new platform allows these companies to do the following:

- Build profiles around their brand - nothing new here, this has been going on for a few years at MySpace, and was even in beta testing mode at Facebook with its Sponsored groups function.

- Insights will allow advertisers a more in-depth look at how their consumers and target markets behave online. Because Facebook collects such a comprehensive amount of data when a user registers for its site, this information will be extremely valuable to advertisers, more-so than on other social networking sites, where a buying a banner ad would be a shot in the dark. Advertisers will now be able to target not only to traditional demographics, but will be able to go as far as to where a user graduated from, what Facebook applications they are using and who their friends are. All of this, of course, will no doubt raise privacy concerns from industry watchdog groups.

- Beacon is the most interesting part of the platform because it allows users to tell their friends when they visit and purchase on a partners website. Imagine for a moment that you just bought Gucci Sunglasses off of eBay. That transaction will now show up in your news feed on Facebook. Taking this a step further, let's assume that you and your friends are planning a quick trip to Cabo for Spring Break and you want to let them know where you received a great deal. If the airline you purchased your tickets from is a partner of Facebook, that purchase will show up in your news feed.

What Facebook is doing has the potential to revolutionize the industry. If done correctly, they could do for social networking what Google did when they launched AdWords. This new platform is bound to have a dramatic effect not only in online advertising, but advertising across all spectrums.

Facebook Fun

Just in case you've been living in a cave for the past couple of weeks, the big story that everyone is talking about is Microsoft's recent investment into hot social networking start-up, Facebook. First and foremost this has many implications to both Microsoft and Facebook. Microsoft is in essence mortgaging its future placing a big bet on the fact that FB is going to be the next big thing. Facebook, on the other hand, is hoping that Microsoft can show them the ropes on how to become a successful media company (if you think FB is anything but a media company, you're sorely mistaken).

What was interesting over the last couple of weeks is the fact that there were several players who were all trying to buy Microsoft's piece of the pie. Google was perhaps the biggest and most relevant among them and surprisingly lost. Why they lost has yet to unfold. Although in the end it may be pretty smart of FB to have said no to Google, Google sure would have had a lot more to offer them as far as experience and online advertising brainshare.

What's certain now is the gloves are off between the two companies. Today, Google announced that they have established a partnership with several companies to set-up a social networking platform that will be common across the board. While this probably won't make FB co-founder Mark Zuckerberg forget that he's a new billionaire (on paper), it will surely make things more interesting in the weeks and months to come.

Rambling Reading

- The Sox made it into their second World Series in 3 years yesterday by defeating the Cleveland Indians.

- Don't mess with Bill Maher - he'll kick you out, dammit!

- Apple knows how to sell more than a few iPods and computers.

- Good luck getting World Series tickets.

...And We're Back!

After a longer than anticipated hiatus, we'll be blogging on a more regular basis again (though the exact timeframe is TBD). In any case, it's been a great 6+ months off. Looking forward to bringing you even more fun from around the Web.

Rambling Reading

Before we get into this edition of Rambling Reading, you may have noticed that this blog has been somewhat dormant this month. Well, the reasons are many, but the goal for the next little while will be to post 3 or 4 times a week, as circumstances allow. On to this week's great Web reads:

-I think Shakespeare said it best when he said "Parting is such sweet sorrow." Little did he know that that quote would be applicable to a once hot entertainer and her now shit-holed career.

-The headline that Newsweek uses "Raiders of the Lost Tomb" definitely applies in this case.

-We can't defeat terror, but we know how to disable your garage door opener.

-Bobby, this is what Humpin' Around will get you (That is, humpin' and not paying your child support).

-Manny's still being Manny, kind of.

MyBay

It was announced last week that eBay was trying to hook-up with MySpace on MySpace. eBay is hoping to tap the 50 Million plus MySpace users by allowing them to transact on MySpace via eBay.

This is an interesting move for eBay, primarily because most of MySpace's customer base contains people in the 18-24 demographic (which, btw, is great idea to gain buyers, not so great to gain sellers).

What's in it for MySpace? Good question. Sure, eBay has 180 Million customers that it can introduce social networking too, but let's face it, MySpace is just a big 'hook-up' platform and how many 40 year old soccer moms want to use a site that's geared towards kids in their 20's.

This is just a preliminary deal, and it's unclear if it will actually be consummated, however, if it does go through, I don't see it being a boon for either company. eBay will surely use MySpace as an advertising mechanism, but once they saturate it, what's left?

WikiLobbying

I thought that this recent clip from Stephen Colbert was quite amusing - especially given the wonderful world of Web 2.0:

Valleywag: Money Buys Happier Sex

From the 'Wag:

Men with a net worth of more than $30m, tech entrepreneurs among them, claiming that their wealth had brought "better sex" -- defined as more frequent sex with more partners. The survey, by Prince & Associates and reported by Robert Frank, showed wealthy women were even more libidinous.

Auctionbytes: eBay to Introduce Feedback 2.0

In my opinion, I'm not sure eBay's going to be able to pull this one off - just relieving the headache that the current eBay feedback system causes all involved (including the eBay employees who have to put up with the bitching from various people wanting feedback removed) is a project in and of itself. Allowing buyers to rate sellers in everything from communication to shipping is a nightmare waiting to happen.

From Auctionbytes:

eBay users can now view sample screenshots of eBay's recently announced "Feedback 2.0" system on the eBay UK website. The new system will allow buyers to rate transactions on item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping & handling charges. In late February, eBay will pilot Feedback 2.0 on eBay.co.uk, eBay.ie and in Australia, Belgium, France, India, Italy and Poland. If all goes well, eBay will launch the new system globally in late spring or early summer.

eBay UK announced the forthcoming system to users on Monday on its Announcement Board, with links to screenshots and details. Once buyers leave a rating of positive, negative or neutral along with a comment, they will have the chance to rate sellers on the following four questions:

• How accurate was the item description?
• How satisfied were you with the seller's communication?
• How quickly did the seller deliver the item?
• How reasonable were the postage and packaging charges?

Buyers can give sellers up to five stars on each of the rating criteria. For instance, five stars on the first question indicates the seller's item description was "very accurate," while two stars on the last question indicates the postage and packaging charges were "unreasonable." eBay will include a thumbnail image of the item underneath the auction title to make it easier for the buyer to remember the item.

On the Feedback Profile page, called Member Profile page under the original feedback rating system, eBay has added a new module that provides the average of each Detailed Sellers Rating left by buyers for the seller in the past 12 months. A seller must have at least 10 Detailed Seller Ratings to have an average displayed. In addition to the average, eBay displays the total number of ratings left for each Detailed Seller Rating in the past 12 months.

Rambling Reading

As usual, the following are some random articles of stuff that I've found interesting on the series of tubes known as the internets:

- Now you don't have an excuse for drinking alone.

- "I promise judge, I was alert the whole time."

- Paris Hilton admits she did it, kind of (no, not that).

- Cutting up your mom only gets you six months in New York. I understand he was under undue influence, but still, this is your mother.

- Don't leave home without your passport. Pretty soon, it will be required to go anywhere (I'm sure it's buried in the Patriot Act somewhere).

- $335,000 for 77 square feet, sign me up!

iPhone on SNL

Below is a short clip from SNL this past weekend. Is this the new way of marketing your product? Granted, in and of itself, the iPhone was bound to be pretty popular, but to have your product parodied on a show like SNL with its initial reach on Saturday night, and then to have it played over and over again on sites like YouTube...Steve Jobs must be sitting somewhere lighting his cigars with $100 dollar bills.

Quick Thoughts from the NFL Playoffs

Great weekend of Playoff football over the weekend. The Most interesting games by far were the Bears game and the Chargers game. Congratulations to all the winners.

I couldn't believe the hit Reggie Bush took in the Eagles game - unbelievable! Here's the YouTube clip:

2006 in Review

At this time last year, I made some predictions about what I thought would happen during the new year. Let's rehash that blog and see what happened, and what didn't happen:

• Iran's Nuclear Facilities are removed. Didn't happen, yet. Iran's president keeps toeing the line as to how far he can go with regard to developing nukes. My guess now is nothing will happen until Iran actually tests a weapon.
• The US begins a systematic withdrawal from Iraq. Uhm, not even close to happening. I suppose the holiday egg-nog was still having its way with me when I wrote this. The fact of the matter is we're actually considering sending more troops into Iraq.
• Hillary Clinton announces her run for the presidency. This didn't happen, yet. However, Hillary's by far the leading democratic candidate in a hypothetical race.
  
• Bush announces a strategic plan for a Plastinian State. I'm just making sure you're still reading. Ha, ha, this one still cracks me up.
  
• Abortion part deux takes place in front of the Supreme Court. Well, this didn't happen because of a couple factors: a) the issue was killed (probably a bad choice of words, I digress) in South Dakota, which was the alleyway for the Court to re-try the issue, and b) the GOP had their asses handed to them in October (which was un-forseen at this point in time).
• Osama Bin Laden will be captured or killed. Another year on the run means more time for him to plan the next big one. OBL successfully threw the dogs off his tracks for another year. However, his buddy in Iraq was not so lucky.
  
• The stock market has another so-so year. Not sure what happened here, but I was completely off. The market had a fantastic year, with the Dow soaring past the 12,000 mark.
  
• The Red Sox have a horrible year. I wasn't totally off on this one. I guess it depends on how one defines the word 'horrible'. The Sox were close throughout the year but tanked in August and ended up missing the playoffs for the first time in five years.
• Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey will get divorced. Ha! I was right on this one! Nick and Jess signed the dotted line and ended their three year marriage. Also noteworthy regarding this one is that Nick could already be back in the saddle again.

Next time, 2007 predictions!