Not a big truck

Oh man, I think the recent bugs at Facebook are all part of their rolling out of a shit-ton of contextual updates. Small additions that increase usability while increasing required bandwidth are good? Eh?

Virb is dead. Long live Virb! The social networking site that I fell in love with way back when is official closing—kind of. It’s no longer going to be a sexy alternative to MySpace. It’s no longer going to be a decent alternative to Tumblr and Posterous. Instead of being a mish-mash of not-so-complete social networking functions (including a short-lived Last.fm alternative), Virb will crack it’s cocoon in July and emerge as a Square Space competitor?

Details are a bit sparse right now, but that is exactly how it seems. Except, I don’t see any mention of a native blogging feature. So, it’s going to be an easy way to make/maintain staticy web pages? Yeah, the themes they’ve been spotlighting are quite sexy. And they seem to be internally excited about what they’re making. I can’t help but feel, however, that Virb could have built up into a great community for artists.

The new site looks like a fantastic tool to create a resume or portfolio site. But, it’s not going to be free anymore. And, they aren’t offering an easy way to save any content from the old service. Apparently there will be some tight integration with Tumblr, but I’m not sure why Virb is going to be better than Tumblr + Premium Theme + Tumblr’s Pages Feature.

I want them to prove my hesitations wrong.

(via PATH)

According to wired.com, federal lawmaker’s latest attempt to invade our internet privacy is in the name of curbing child pornography. The “SAFETY Act” would basically require all everyone to keep logs of internet activity for individuals for two years.

“While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” said Sen. John Cornyn, (R-Texas), who introduced the Senate version.

Perhaps I’ve read a few too many dystopian novels, but this measure seems far too 1984 to by justified by Senator Conrnyn’s explanation. It seems, as the blog also points out, that it would be much more likely for the data obtained to benefit the RIAA and MPAA. Even if you do happen to be the model citizen who would never engage in piracy (I know I am…), none of us should want our rights to be further infringed in the name of some unlikely cause.

Read the full article here.

This has not been a good week for internet rights and privacy. First, the infamous but fortunately revoked changes to Facebook’s TOS, then Tumblr deleted five “anonyblogger” accounts that had been used to insult other users, leaving many users concerned about censorship on the platform. The latest cause for concern is a rumor regarding Last.fm possibly providing user details to the RIAA that would reveal which individuals had listened to unreleased tracks.

That leaked U2 album is causing all sorts of trouble. The unreleased album, which is due out on March 3, found its way onto BitTorrent and was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. That, apparently, sent music industry lawyers over at the Recording Industry Association of America into a fit. As a result, word is going around that the RIAA asked social music service Last.fm for data about its user’s listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. And Last.fm, which is owned by CBS, actually handed the data over to the RIAA. According to a tip we received:

I heard from an irate friend who works at CBS that last.fm recently provided the RIAA with a giant dump of user data to track down people who are scrobbling unreleased tracks. As word spread numerous employees at last.fm were up in arms because the data collected (a) can be used to identify individuals and (b) will likely be shared with 3rd parties that have relationships with the RIAA.

Supposedly, the operations team which handed over the data in the first place weren’t told the true purpose for the transfer or who was getting the data until after the fact, and only when they had to help with some corrupted data. It sounds like it was more of a corporate decision. I’ve contacted both CBS and the RIAA. Most of the Last.fm team is in London, where the weekend has already started. For now Last.fm says: “To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA.” (The RIAA declined to comment).

Setting aside what actually happened to the data, and assuming this rumor is true, why would the RIAA target Last.fm? It wasn’t streaming the U2 album, and it is not an illegal download service. But Last.fm has millions of users who are heavy music consumers, and many of them download Last.fm’s Scrobbler software which keeps track of every single song you listen to on your computer, no matter which music player you use. In other words, it captures tracks played from illegal BitTorrent downloads just as easily as from iTunes.

Last.fm members knowingly share what they are listening to with the rest of the Last.fm community, and in return receive social recommendations of music they might like. That is the whole point of the service. And Last.fm’s privacy policy does clearly state:

. . . your record collection (including your skipping history) may be viewed by all other users of Last.fm (who may include other organisations or representatives of other organisations who have registered as Last.fm users) and that they may easily associate this information with your Last.fm username.

But most probably never even considered it a possibility that individually identifiable information about their listening habits (legal, illegal, or otherwise) could be handed over to an organization known for taking consumers to court for file-sharing. What makes this even more egregious is that it appears to be absent any legal precedent (such as a pending lawsuit) for which Last.fm could at least hide behind as an excuse.

Incidents like this highlight how the social Web can sometimes bite back if you are not careful. It also raises the issue of who owns all of this data about you and what they can do with it. (The same issue that caused Facebook to backtrack on recent changes to its data policy). Unfortunately, it’s come down to this: you really shouldn’t share any data on the Web you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing in a court of law.

(Please contact us at tips [at] techcrunch if you have more information about this).

This is largely viewed to be an untrue rumor at the moment, but it is a disconcerting possibility.

This may sound like a joke, but it’s not: researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have found that too much Facebook usage can leave you more prone to anxiety and depression…that is, if you’re a teenage girl. In a study, a group of 13-year old girls were evaluated by psychology professor Dr. Joanne Davila and her colleague, Lisa Starr. A year later, the researchers followed up with the girls, testing them for depressive symptoms.

Wait, what? Using Facebook makes you depressed? How am I not dead by my own hands right now? I mean I know that the ads can leave you feeling lonely with the massive attack on your singleness; but, I’ve never been gotten down by Facebook.

[via Read Write Web]

Scott Merrill has a great new post on CruchGear about early adoption and “Alpha Geeks.” He inspects why and how most people don’t really care about most sites. It’s well worth the read and his in-depth analysis/example of Google’s Grand Central is spot on.

Here’s an excerpt:

There are a dizzying number of cool new services, applications, and gadgets available to citizens of the world today. New stuff is coming out all the time and it can be hard for us Internet experts to keep up, let alone average human beings. For example, my dad — no Internet slouch — had no idea what Hulu was. How is he expected to care about the difference between Twitter or identi.ca?

I take a generally pessimistic view of new sites, assuming that I’ll either not like them, or they won’t stick around long enough for me to appreciate them. I have a few friends who are compulsive signer-uppers, gladly agreeing to the Terms of Service for any new site that comes along. One of these guys does it specifically so he can claim his preferred username, lest some other Internet a-hole tarnish his good handle. Another friend signs up for stuff with the expectation that he’ll actually use the service being offered. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t.

How many of us fall into one of these same patterns? I’m rather saddened to notify you that I probably have an account on well over 100 social networks/tools. Yeah… I’m on/was on Plurk, Jaiku (RIP), Twitter, Identi.ca and Pownce (RIP). I loved them all yet I only update Twitter now.

[via  CrunchGear]

Everyone loves Twitter. And the biggest political users of twitter so far have been members of the GOP in Congress. But, is it OK to Twitter comments while in a “private” meeting with President Obama? I think that it’s great and I want to see more of it.

“Audiences usually treat presidents to a round of polite applause, but when President Obama addressed House Republicans on Tuesday, they started Twittering,” according to The Hill.

“While Obama implored Republicans behind closed doors to consider supporting his economic stimulus bill, GOP thumbs worked overtime, tapping updates onto the microblogging website for thousands to read.”

[via Political Wire]

So, the internet is for porn. Apparently, according to certain cable companies, the Super Bowl is also for porn! Yeah, apparently after one big score, the viewing audience was treated to another. Links and more info after the jump. (more…)

A new way to blog about things.

Almost everyone has a blog. And almost everyone goes weeks or months at a time where they post nothing on their personal blog out of sheer lack of ideas. That’s where Plinky comes into play.

Plinky is a simple concept: A question is posted each day for you and answer and then publish (with rather nice formatting) via whatever means you choose. They support Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, Twitter and just about every other free/not-so-free content publishing platform out there. Here’s an example post from Plinky on my Tumblr.