Tag Archive: privacy

Evaluating the Risks in Facebook’s IPO: Would You Invest?

Facebook is forthcoming about the challenges of mobile: No revenue currently generated from mobile advertising; unclear how much mobile use could be monetized; failure to solve this puzzle combined with a dramatic shift toward mobile usage could be a serious problem; and they don’t control the iOS and Android platforms. Frankly, if there were one thing that persuaded me not to invest in FB at current valuations, this would be it.

“AirB&E” and Crisis Management for Consumer Web Startups

Mashable screen shot - Airbnb on Ransackgate: "We Screwed Up And We're Sorry"

Much has been written about the cooperative nature of Valley culture, and Airbnb itself was an outgrowth of the idealistic “couch surfing” movement. As with any online community, well-meaning early adopters arrive first, and if all goes well, a culture of respect evolves that keeps behavior within relatively civilized boundaries. The trouble comes when a site becomes wildly successful, going from 1,000 closed beta members to 1,000,000 users. As it grows, any service will come to resemble a diverse cross-section of the general population, with the full range of human misconduct represented.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010 – Thought Leaders Ponder the “Battelle” for the Network Economy

Web 2.0 Summit 2010 Live Stream

This week, industry leaders, pundits, journalists and assorted hangers-on are gathering in San Francisco for the annual Web 2.0 Summit, one of the online industry’s most influential events. John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly moderate conversations with a long list of Web luminaries, including Eric Schmidt, Carol Bartz, Marc Benioff, Reed Hastings, Peter Chernin, Tony Hsieh, Evan Williams, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus, Ron Conway, John Doerr, and Fred Wilson.

If You Build It, They Will Abuse It

MySpace Traffic Growth - Hitwise

As a completely made-up statistic, assume that 0.01% of users are sociopaths or predators who cause serious damage to the community and its other members. With 10,000 users, that’s one guy. With a million, it’s a hundred people. With 100 million registered users — the scale at MySpace when I left — it’s ten thousand. That kind of math illustrates why every major consumer Internet company has an abuse team that serves as the first line of defense against all kinds of ugliness.

The Crying of Bin 38: Valley Insiders, Anonymous Quorans, and a Vast Angel-Wing Conspiracy

Bin 38

My particular interest in Angelgate relates to the role of anonymity in social media, its facilitation of information flow in a way never seen before, and the fragility — under some circumstances — of that anonymity. Allowing users to log in via Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth or Google Apps makes it easier than ever to unmask anonymous posters when a site owner is required to comply with a subpoena or search warrant.

Martindale-Hubbell Connects Lawyers, and… More Lawyers

Martindale-Hubbell is a legendary name in legal circles, synonymous with legal directories dating back more than 140 years.  Long before the Internet existed, a ritual among junior associates at law firms was to pull the weighty leatherbound tome off the shelf, find opposing counsel’s M-H profile and hand out copies to everyone on the deal…