Kuwait to try two over Twitter posts: official

Kuwait will put on trial two citizens for criticizing Gulf Arab ruling families on social media site Twitter, a security official said on Monday.

Nasser Abul, a Kuwaiti Shi'ite Muslim, was arrested for posting criticisms of the Sunni Muslim ruling families in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and Lawrence al-Rashidi posted defamatory comments of Kuwait's emir, he said.

He said both would remain in detention for two more weeks before a hearing is scheduled, where they will likely face charges of harming the Gulf Arab state's interests and defaming the country's ruler after being arrested earlier in June.

Democracy activists have used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to debate, organize and share information in Bahrain, where the kingdom's Sunni rulers crushed a protest movement in March led mostly by the country's Shi'ite majority.

Bahrain called in troops from Sunni-led neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enforce its crackdown. OPEC member Kuwait, which has a Shi'ite minority, sent naval forces.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/27/us-kuwait-twitter-idUSTRE75Q1UH20110627

Facebook denies losing users

Facebook has denied that it is losing customers, saying it is "pleased" with growth.

Figures from Faceboook monitoring site Inside Facebook suggested that during May, Facebook lost six million users in the US and 100,000 in the UK.

But the social network, which does not usually comment on third party statistics, questioned how it arrived at this figure.

Other net measurement firms said they had seen growth over the same period.

"From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook," the firm said in a statement.

"We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day," it added.

The figures from Inside Facebook claimed that 1.5 million Canadian users left the social network in May.

But overall it showed that Facebook was growing, to a total of 687 million users worldwide with many new customers coming from countries such as India, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Its figures on customer leakage do not appear to tally with those from net measurement firm comScore.

It told the BBC it had seen a 21% growth for US users on Facebook during May, while the UK gained 368,000 new recruits between February and May.

According to comScore, the average amount of time spent on the site was also up, from 21 minutes per day in December 2009 to 25 minutes per day by December 2010.

Measurement firm Nielsen said its figures also showed growth.

"There are months when figures dip but I'd be very cautious on calling a trend based on two months," said Nielsen spokesman Neil Beston.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13760244

Facebook Party Gets Out Of Control After German Girl Forgets Privacy Setting

A German girl who forgot to set her birthday party as a private Facebook event greeted 1,500 guests and about 100 police officers on Friday.


BERLIN -- Better check your Facebook settings before posting a party invitation online.

A teenage girl in Germany who forgot to mark her birthday invitation as private on Facebook fled her own party when more than 1,500 guests showed up and around 100 police officers, some on horses, were needed to keep the crowd under control.

Eleven people were temporarily detained, one police officer was injured, dozens of girls wearing flip-flops cut their feet on broken glass and firefighters had to extinguish two small fires at the 16th birthday party in Hamburg, police spokesman Mirko Streiber said Sunday.

The birthday girl, identified only as Thessa, went into hiding, Streiber said, but "nonetheless the party was a hit."

Thessa had initially only wanted to ask some friends over to her home in Hamburg-Bramfeld when she posted her invitation on Facebook, but mistakenly she published it so that everyone on Facebook could see it.

The invitation quickly went viral, and some 15,000 people confirmed online they would come to the party – without even knowing the girl, weekly paper Bild am Sonntag reported.

When Thessa's parents found out, they made their daughter cancel the party, informed police and hired a private security service to protect their home on Friday night.

Despite public announcements in Hamburg that the party had been canceled, some 1,500 teenagers and young adults showed up on the street in front of Thessa's home, Streiber told The Associated Press.

"We had cordoned off the house, some 100 police were on the ground, four of them on horses – but that did not keep the kids from celebrating," Streiber said.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/05/facebook-party-out-of-control_n_871473.html

Twitter faces legal action by footballer over privacy

A footballer has launched legal action against Twitter after a number of the microblogging site's users purported to reveal the name of the player who allegedly had an affair with model Imogen Thomas.

The footballer's legal team began the legal action at the high court in London on Wednesday, in what is thought to be the first action against the US social media firm and its users.

The lawsuit lists the defendants as "Twitter Inc and persons unknown". The latter are described as those "responsible for the publication of information on the Twitter accounts" in the court document, according to reports.

Earlier this month, an unknown person or individuals published the names of various people who had allegedly taken out gagging orders to conceal sexual indiscretions on a Twitter account. The account rapidly attracted more than 100,000 followers.

Twitter declined to comment.

The lord chief justice, Lord Judge, on Friday said Twitter and its users were totally out of control when it comes to privacy injunctions and court orders.

Although there was no mention of Twitter in Lord Neuberger's long-awaited report on superinjunctions, published on Friday, Lord Judge said readers placed greater trust in the contents of traditional media than in those "who peddle lies" on websites.

Twitter and other social networks were accused of making "an ass of the law" by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and politicians after a number of celebrities with injunctions were allegedly exposed online.

The socialite Jemima Khan was among those claimed on Twitter to have obtained an injunction. Khan described rumours, which had suggested falsely she had obtained a gagging order to prevent publication of "intimate photos" of herself and Jeremy Clarkson, as a "bloody nightmare".

Twitter has said that it "strive[s] not to remove tweets on the basis of their content", but that it would remove "illegal tweets and spam".

Mark Stephens, a senior media lawyer at Finers Stephens Innocent, said the lawsuit had little hope of succeeding.

"This is not only scraping the bottom of the barrel, this is beneath the barrel. This [injunction] information is already available on servers outside of this jurisdiction and on website outside this jurisdiction," he said.

"You would have to be a moron in a hurry to suggest to this footballer that he throw good money and publicly excoriate himself yet further."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/20/twitter-sued-by-footballer-over-privacy

Winklevoss twins aim Zuckerberg case at Supreme Court

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the square-jawed Ivy League twins who were dope-slapped by mean li'l Zucky in the movie The Social Network – oh, and allegedly in real life, as well – have announced that they will take their lawsuit against Zuckerberg to the US Supreme Court.

The Reg's stateside readers must surely feel all warm 'n' fuzzy, knowing that their tax dollars will subsidize the adjudication of whether Cam and Ty were short-sheeted when they accepted a $65m pittance to drop their original suit against Zuckerberg and Facebook.

That settlement, by the way, consisted of a mere $20m in cash and $45m in Facebook shares – which according to some reports are now worth anywhere from $150m to $200m

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/17/winklevoss_twins_to_take_case_to_scotus/

Australian police attribute man's death to internet photo trend

A growing internet photo trend is to blame for the death of a 20-year-old Australian man, police in Queensland said Sunday, warning other fans of the dangers surrounding "planking."

The activity has been growing in popularity in Australia as more and more people post photos of themselves "planking" -- or lying prone in various odd or humorous locations -- on various social media sites. A Facebook page called "Planking Australia" has garnered nearly 90,000 "likes" and has inspired similar pages such as "Planking Ireland" and "Planking Norway."

"This morning we have seen a young man take this activity a step further and attempt to plank on a balcony," Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett of the Queensland Police said Sunday. "Unfortunately he has tragically fallen to his death. Police fear that as planking gains popularity there may be more injuries and potentially further deaths."

The danger, according to police, is followers of the trend are trying to "outdo" each other by taking bigger risks on where they try to "plank."

"The potential disaster increases as more and more risks are taken to get the ultimate photo," a statement issued by the Queensland police said.

Acton Beale, 20, died when he lost his footing and fell from the balcony of a high-rise building while attempting to "plank," the country's public broadcaster, ABC, reported.

Last week, a man caught photographing himself face down on top of a Queensland police car was arrested and charged with trespassing on police property, police said, warning that others will be charged "if they attempt the activity in areas that constitute trespass or in dangerous locations."

The trend appears to have been started in 2009 on Facebook as the "Lying Down Game" before reappearing in recent months as "planking."

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http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/15/australia.planking.death/?hpt=T2

Facebook Could Block Content To Enter China

If Facebook is to gain entry into China and other countries, a representative of the social networking site thinks his company could wind up blocking certain content because it allows "too much, maybe, free speech" for some governments to handle.

"Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others," Facebook lobbyist Adam Conner told The Wall Street Journal Wednesday. "We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we're allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven't experienced it before."

Facebook is currently banned in China. Earlier this month, a reported deal on a joint social-networking Web site between Facebook and Chinese search engine company Baidu apparently fell through when the site was taken down by Chinese authorities.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's eagerness to gain access to China's 420 million Internet users is such that he recently claimed he's learning the language.

"It's kind of a personal challenge this year, I'm taking about an hour a day and I'm learning Chinese," Zuckerberg told an audience during a recent appearance at Stanford University. "I'm trying to understand the language, the culture, the mind set—it's just such an important part of the world. How can you connect the whole world if you leave out a billion people?"

Zuckerberg visited China last year with his girlfriend, Priscilla Chan.

The Chinese government is increasingly concerned about Western social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter given their effectiveness as organizing tools used by protesters in the wave of popular uprisings that have swept across parts of the Middle East in recent months, according to the Journal.

Like Facebook, Twitter is also banned in China.

Conner's comments came ahead of President Barack Obama's town hall meeting on the economy at Facebook's Silicon headquarters scheduled for later on Wednesday.

Obama's former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had reportedly been in talks with Facebook to take over the company's communications strategy, but those "have fallen apart," the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

Read More

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383878,00.asp

Facebook twins appeal settlement ruling

The Winklevoss twins want more money.

San Francisco - The twins who claim that Marc Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook lodged an appeal Monday against a court ruling enforcing the terms of their 65-million-dollar settlement with the social networking billionaire.

Lawyers for the Winklevoss brothers, who were portrayed heavily in the movie The Social Network, asked the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to hear their case with a full 11-judge panel, after the court's three-judge panel ruled last week that the original settlement should stand.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss had claimed that Zuckerberg lied about the value of Facebook when they reached the 2008 settlement over their claims that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them while all were students at Harvard University. Their shares are now worth more than 160 million dollars.

Judge Alex Kozinski ruled last week that the brothers had no right to renegotiate that settlement.

'The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace,' Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the three-judge panel. 'At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.'

But their lawyer, Jerome Falk Jr, insisted that the decision was flawed.

'Courts have wisely refused to enforce a settlement obtained by fraudulent means,' he claimed in the new petition. 'The panel's decision shut the courthouse door to a solid claim that Facebook obtained this settlement by committing securities fraud. Our petition asks the full Ninth Circuit to reopen that door.'

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http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/business/news/article_1633835.php/Facebook-twins-appeal-settlement-ruling

Mark Zuckerberg Doll Goes On Sale

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now an action figure, and you can own one with a "Like" or "Poke" sign for $69.90 including tax.

The "Mark Zuckerberg doll," as some are calling it, has gone on sale at MICGadget.com. It's not actually identified as Mark Zuckerberg though, but instead "Poking Inventor Action Figure."

The move not to officially call the doll Mark Zuckerberg - although it clearly is him, complete with his trademark hoody and jeans -, is likely due to Apple killing the "Steve Jobs" doll that M.I.C. Gadget tried to sell last year.

So what do you think? Will you get one?

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/09/mark-zuckerberg-doll-goes_n_833850.html

Suicide girl’s dad slams web sickos

Natasha MacBryde, 15: Died under the wheels of a train

THE devastated dad of a bullied public schoolgirl who killed herself blasted internet ghouls yesterday.

Natasha MacBryde, 15, died after being hit by a train.

But just a week after the tragedy a sick hoaxer posted vile comments on a Facebook tribute page - and branded her "a whore".

A internet user, calling herself Pro Fesser, posted a picture of Natasha with a banner saying: "I committed suicide for the Lulz" (amusement).

Another poster wrote: "Natasha wasn't bullied, she was just a whore", while one declared: "I caught the train to heaven LOL."

A macabre video entitled Tasha The Tank Engine was removed from YouTube after her brother James complained to the website.

Natasha was killed near her home in Upton Warren, Bromsgrove, Worcs, on Valentine's Day.

Yesterday her dad Andrew, 47, demanded Facebook and other social networking sites do more to combat sick messages.

He said: "I am disgusted at these comments made by some seriously sick individuals. I am shocked that Facebook don't monitor these sites more closely."

A pal said: "It isn't enough that Tasha is dead, these evil bullies can't leave her in peace."

Facebook has removed the comments and disabled Pro Fesser's profile.

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http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3427677/Suicide-girl-Natasha-MacBrydes-dad-slams-web-sickos.html

Google Starts Using Twitter in Search Results

As an update to its Social Search announced yesterday, Google is returning links garnered from Twitter in its search results.

It works something like this: If a friend tweets a link to an article and you search for a related topic, Google “may show that link in your results with a clear annotation”, product management director Mike Cassidy wrote in a blog post.

Social Search results will also be mixed throughout Google’s PageRank results, so users will start seeing more recommended links from friends.

“Relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships,” Cassidy wrote. “Today we’re taking another step forward—enabling you to get even more information from the people that matter to you.”

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http://www.designtaxi.com/news/34074/Google-Starts-Using-Twitter-in-Search-Results/?page=2

WikiLeaks, free speech and Twitter come together in Va. court case

An odd confluence of important issues came together in a federal courtroom in Alexandria on Tuesday: the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, free speech and social networking.

It all stemmed from the government's attempts to get personal information from the Twitter accounts of three people linked to the WikiLeaks probe. Their lawyers argued that the data - screen names, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, credit card and bank account information, and Internet protocol addresses - are protected by the First Amendment. Prosecutors said the request is a routine part of their criminal probe.

It was the opening salvo in what experts expect to be a long and difficult investigation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others suspected of disclosing thousands of classified documents on the anti-secrecy Web site.

Tuesday's arguments went to the heart of a larger debate about WikiLeaks - whether the posting of the documents was free speech or a violation of national security. They also provided a high-profile test of outdated rules about what data the government can seize in the new world of social networking.

In the courtroom, John Keker, a lawyer representing one of the Twitter clients, said the users' data would give the government a map of people tied to WikiLeaks and essentially halt free speech online. He noted how social networking sites have been used in Egypt and Tunisia, where citizens have pushed for government changes, and suggested that such a broad request by the U.S. government in this case would put a stop to that.

John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor not associated with the case, said the government is using 18th-century arguments with 21st-century technology.

"These are not new arguments, but they're being used in a really interesting and important way that has a twist to them in light of social media," he said.

New details of probe

Until now, there has been little public evidence of the government's criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, a probe Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced in late November.

Information began to come out last week after U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan granted a motion from the three Twitter clients to unseal some filings in the case. Tuesday's hearing was the first public debate in the criminal investigation of Assange and others.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/15/AR2011021506483.html

Tweets are not private, rules watchdog in landmark case

A civil servant who claimed invasion of privacy when her Twitter messages were reprinted in newspapers has had her complaint rejected by the press regulator.

Sarah Baskerville, a Department for Transport manager, last year published a series of tweets critical of the coalition's cuts, attacking Downing Street "spin" and telling her 700 followers that the leader of a training course she attended was "mental". The comments were published in the Daily Mail and The Independent on Sunday in November. Ms Baskerville said this information was only meant to be seen by her followers. Deciding in the newspapers' favour today, the PCC said the fact that tweets are publicly accessible on the web was key.

"It was quite clear that the potential audience for the information was actually much larger than the 700 people who followed the complainant directly, not least because any message could easily be retweeted to a wider audience," the regulator said. The decision also took into account civil service rules on political impartiality, which the newspapers said justified highlighting Ms Baskerville's views.

"The commission is increasingly being asked to make judgments about what can legitimately be described as private information," said PCC director Stephen Abell.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tweets-are-not-private-rules-watchdog-in-landmark-case-2208724.html

Google gives uprising a voice

SAN FRANCISCO - Even before his first day on the job at Google, Ujjwal Singh was trying to figure out how to combine his passion for the spoken word with the company's technological prowess to help Egyptians bypass government efforts to muzzle the massive protests there.

Singh, 38, helped start an online service that lets fans share voice messages with the likes of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

Google bought the startup Jan. 25, and a team leader trying to figure a way around Egypt's recent Internet blackout asked Singh for help before he reported to work.

A weekend of brainstorming and programming later, Speak2Tweet was born — a service that lets people call a phone number and leave a message, then posts a link to the message to Twitter.

It allowed Egyptians to communicate even as the regime of President Hosni Mubarak cut Internet and cellphone services for days, trying to squelch protests in the streets of Cairo demanding an end to his three decades of authoritarian rule.

By the time Singh started his job Monday, his service already was part of the uprising.

"He designed, built and launched his first product before he started at Google, which is now our all-time record," said Steve Crossan, a Google product manager.

Almost 2,900 spoken tweets had been posted as of Friday afternoon on the Twitter account@speak2tweet.

The alternative method of tweeting has turned into a forum for longer-form expression because the voice recordings aren't confined to Twitter's 140-character limit.

The service has been used to express outrage, indignation, fear, exhilaration and pleas for help in the fight to oust Mubarak.

"This corrupt regime must be eliminated," said one of the translated tweets on AliveInEgypt. Another said: "For all our Arab brothers, for all the men in Tahrir Square. Please help us, stand with us, if you abandon us we will die."

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http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/feb/05/PT2NEWSO5-google-gives-uprising-a-voice/

Zuckerberg's Facebook page hacked

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's fan page was hacked Tuesday -- a high-profile breach on a site that constantly faces scrutiny about its handling of its members' private data.

The message that appeared on Zuckerberg's page under his name read: "Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011″

The message received more than 1,800 "likes" before it was removed from the page. Facebook's representatives have not returned calls seeking comment.

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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/sns-cnn-zuckerberg-facebook-page-hacked,0,4370718.story

Facebook overtakes Google as most-visited in 2010

Facebook Inc.'s social networking site passed Google Inc.'s main site and Yahoo Inc.'s e-mail site as the most visited site on the Web in the U.S. in 2010.

Experian Hitwise published a report that said Facebook was the destination of 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010. Google.com (Nasdaq: GOOG), which was ranked No. 1 the year before, was No. 2 this year with 7.19 percent of visits, followed by last year's No. 2, Yahoo Mail (Nasdaq: YHOO), with 3.52 percent of visits.

Google's YouTube video site moved up from No. 5 in 2009 to No. 3 this year with 2.65 percent of visits.

When you combine sites owned by companies, Google remained on top with 9.85 percent of all U.S. visits. Facebook's combined sites accounted for 8.93 percent, and Yahoo properties accounted for 8.12 percent.

Experian Hitwise estimated that the top 10 websites accounted for 33 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, up by 12 percent versus 2009.

The report also said that for the second year in a row, Facebook was the most-searched-for term on the Web in the U.S.


Read more:

http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/news/2011/01/02/facebook-overtakes-google-in-2010-visits.html

Skype outage hits users worldwide

Millions can't make calls, or are dropped in mid-conversation, because of a network connection failure — the second major disruption in service this year.

Millions of Skype Internet phone users worldwide couldn't make calls — or were dropped in mid-conversation — because of a network connection failure that began about 9 a.m. Wednesday PST.

It marked the second time this year that the popular, low-cost calling service was hit with a major outage, and this one was more widespread than the two-day disruption in 2007.

"For a communications system this large to go down, it's almost unheard of," said Charles S. Golvin, a Forrester Research analyst. "Usually when phone lines are disrupted, the blackout is confined to a specific geographical area. This is worldwide."

Indeed. In the past, there have been network outages to auction site EBay and social networks Facebook and Twitter, but the impact wasn't as great, Golvin said.

"With those sort of disruptions, people have alternatives or they can wait it out," he said. "But with something like this — and you need to communicate with someone — it's far more significant."

Skype tried to reach its customers through its official blog and messages on the micro-blogging service Twitter.

"Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype — we're investigating, and we're sorry for the disruption to your conversations," Skype said on its Twitter account. "Our engineers and site operations team are working non-stop to get things back to normal — thanks for your continued patience."

In a blog post, Skype said it first noticed a problem when the number of people on the website dropped off. It "wasn't typical or expected, so we began to investigate," it said.

"Skype isn't a network like a conventional phone or IM network — instead, it relies on millions of individual connections between computers and phones to keep things up and running," the post said. "Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline."

The Luxembourg company said that engineers were working to get the system running and that it "may take a few hours."

But the outage in many areas lasted into the night.

Skype apologized, and said some features, such as group video calling, "may take longer to return to normal."

Read More

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-skype-20101223,0,2778742.story

Facebook Scam: 'See Who Has Viewed Your Profile'

Curious to see who views your Facebook profile page?

You're out of luck. Status updates, Facebook groups, and pages claiming to let users see who has viewed their Facebook profile pages are scams, often linking users to ad-filled sites.

In recent days, for instance, you may have seen your Facebook friends speaking in bizarrely adolescent chatroom vernacular:

"OMG OMG OMG... I cant believe this actually works! Now you really can see who viewed your profile! on [LINK]."

"If you're tempted to click on the link, you're taken to a webpage that encourages you to go a little deeper and permit an application to have access to your Facebook profile," wrote Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, in a blog post.

According to Sophos, over 60,000 people clicked into the claim in a few hours.

But as Facebook noted in July, there is no way anyone can see who has viewed their profile, and no way others can create such a function.

"We're working hard to block and remove websites, Pages, and applications that claim to do this. If you see one, don't be fooled, and report it to us immediately," the company wrote on its security page.

Clicking into these links usually directs people to ad-filled pages. Others might promise to exchange a profile-viewing feature if a user can generate enough likes and linkshares.

"If you've been hit by a scam like this, remove references to it from your newsfeed, and revoke the right of rogue applications to access your profile via Account/ Privacy Settings/ Applications and Websites," Cluley suggests.

Read More

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373574,00.asp

Government agencies navigate the promises and pitfalls of social media

As law enforcement, transportation agencies and other departments rush to interact with the public through Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, guidelines for using social media have been slow to follow.

When the Orange County Sheriff's Department launched its blog three years ago, the first entry hinted at the department's motivation for venturing into social media.

"The Media's Rush to Judgment," penned by then-Sheriff Michael S. Carona, who was in the midst of a corruption scandal, addressed public perceptions surrounding a police shooting and an inmate's death at a county jail.

With his blog, Carona had made an end-run around the print and electronic media that he felt had sabotaged his career, overlooked the good things his department had done and overreacted to events such as the beating death of an accused sex offender at Theo Lacy jail.

But the ex-sheriff's blog also pointed toward the pitfalls and problems in social media that have left cities and counties across California scrambling.

Fearing liability from posted comments, Redondo Beach put the city's Facebook page on hold in August. Yolo County in Northern California adopted a social media policy in April, and San Francisco abandoned its effort to archive posts on its Facebook page.

"Everybody sees the benefit and there's an early rush and then you begin seeing the problems that come up," said Redondo Beach City Atty. Michael Webb. "Law by its very nature progresses much slower than technology … we need to let the law catch up with the technology."

In a National Assn. of Counties survey of member counties, 41% said they used Twitter and 36% said they had a Facebook page. Yet almost 80% said they had no social media policies. But that may be changing.

In Orange County, where Carona's reign ended with an indictment and the jail beating resulted in a damning grand jury report, officials have adopted a social media policy that discourages hyperlinking, warns against attacking specific groups and asks each department to name a social media coordinator.

The policy, one of the few adopted by a county in California, also directs each department to weigh the use of social media and says it should be a "risk-based decision" that takes into account goals, legal perils, technical capabilities and potential benefits.

What the policy doesn't do is regulate content or distinguish between opinion and fact.

Just a few years ago, municipalities were rushing to get into social media — the talk at conferences was often about which city had started tweeting or joined Facebook. But now, some are beginning to take a more measured look.

In February, California unveiled a Social Media Standard directing that only authorized state employees can use departments' official accounts and that some features, such as instant messaging, should be disabled.

When Orange County began looking into a policy last year, the chief executive's technology office asked other California counties whether they had policies. The overwhelming response was: " 'We don't, but we'd like to see yours when you're finished,' " said Orange County spokesman Howard Sutter.

Just as e-mails can be subject to California's Public Records Act, Facebook status updates, tweets and blog posts can be too, as Orange County's policy repeatedly reminds users.

Webb, Redondo Beach's city attorney, pointed to how San Francisco struggled with this issue — the county began archiving all Facebook posts and comments before finding it prohibitively expensive.

At a League of California Cities conference earlier this year, two presentations illustrated the conflict: one was on the benefits of Facebook, and the other was a blunt reminder that the site falls under the Public Records Act.

Webb had expected that during the conference the league might issue a request to Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown for direction on using social media. That didn't happen, he said, and now cities and counties may have to figure things out on their own.

Like other public information officers around the state, Ted Nguyen of the Orange County Transportation Authority uses Twitter to send out practical, ready-to-use information — in his case, details on bus and Metrolink delays, road detours and freeway construction projects.

Nguyen also spends some of his time giving out information about social media. Several times a day, he is contacted by government agencies from across the country with questions like: Do you need permission to tweet someone's photo?

"I think there's obviously a fear factor, they don't necessarily want to be the first one out the gate," he said. "There is this effort to help each other."

Read More

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-social-media-20101129,0,6793833.story

Zuckerberg: We don't have the answers yet

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answers questions at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a benign portrait of his company in a talk this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit, countering both the concerns about how it handles users' personal information as well as its increasing power to muscle out other companies in an apparent quest to dominate the Web.

"I'm not sure we're 100 percent right on this," Zuckerberg said of Facebook's recent spat with Google in which the latter forbade Facebook users from importing their Gmail contact information because Facebook doesn't let them do the reverse. "The correct answer isn't completely obvious. I'm not sure that we're completely right, but I think it's not completely black and white."

He also returned to a common Zuckerberg talking point: that no matter how much Facebook shows up in the press and how many hundreds of millions of people are using the social network, that business-wise it is still extremely young. When interviewer John Battelle said that at six years old, Facebook is about the same age that Google was when it built its groundbreaking AdSense product, and he wondered if Facebook might do the same with a sweeping, Internet-wide social advertising system, Zuckerberg replied, "I think it's earlier-stage than Google (was)...We're getting started with ads and I think that's ramping up well."

He also obliquely defended Facebook's strategy of expanding through the acquisition small start-ups, like Hot Potato and Drop.io, and potentially snuffing out others by building products that immediately compete with smaller companies through the infusion of Facebook's massive scale--like rehashes of the News Feed that looked quite a bit like Twitter, and more recently Facebook Places, which replicates much of the functionality of Foursquare. On Tuesday alone, news broke that Facebook had made strategic "hires" through the acquisition of some intellectual property from Zenbe (first reported by CNET) and Walletin, which brought former Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka on board.

(Facebook made failed attempts to acquire both Twitter and Foursquare.)

Zuckerberg said that the development of products like Places fits into its strategy of providing a platform on which other companies can build, and not an attempt to snuff out start-ups. "Groups, location, (and) messages are really core parts and either distribution channels, or what we view as foundational building blocks of the social graph," he explained.

Imperfection and a willingness to change and evolve are two things that Zuckerberg frequently brings up in public appearances, applied both to Facebook as a company and to himself as a CEO.

"I've made so many mistakes in running the company so far. Basically, any mistake that you can think of I've made or will make in the next few years," Zuckerberg said. "If you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes."

Zuckerberg is still only 26. The rhetoric of being young, fallible, and subject to constant change won't always work for Facebook--or for the CEO himself.


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