Facebook who’s IPO is said to being filed this week, takes nearly 1/3 of all US display ads according to new data. The social network is gearing up for their public launch which, if the IPO is filed soon, we could see that happening just a few months from now with a summer launch very likely.

No matter how you use the site, we’re all in the same boat: We see ads. Lots of ads. Being that there’s almost 1 Billion users, that’s a lot of eyeballs and potentially, a lot of clicks. The revenue made from displaying these ads is in the Billions and only expected to go up and up from there.

Via Los Angeles Times:

“With the filing for its initial public offering expected any day now, Facebook Inc. is extending its lead in online display advertising, which makes up the bulk of its revenue. The social networking giant’s share of the U.S. online display advertising market grew to nearly 28% for 2011, up from 21% a year earlier, according to research firm ComScore Inc.”

“Facebook has stayed ahead of Yahoo Inc., which has 11% of the display ad market — and far ahead of Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.,  each of which has less than 5%, according to ComScore.”

This is also the first time since 2009 that the social network surpassed Yahoo in terms of US display ads. With that said, they’re quickly on their way to 1 Billion users. That’s going to be a huge milestone, the largest of any social network or even site in the history of the Internet, and that’s only going to contribute to the growth of their ad platform.

Do you ever click on any Facebook ads?

Facebook Takes Nearly 1/3 Of All US Display Ads is a post from: The Inquisitr

Twitter who has over 200 Million users, 50 Million of which log in daily, has quite a few celebrities. With many celebrities who have Millions of followers, the money that can be made from advertising is very enticing.

Now, advertising on the social network is nothing new. There’s services that allow anyone to sign up and send out tweets that make them a flat fee or so much per click. Celebrities on the other hand, thanks to Ad.ly, can make a pretty nice fee from advertising products or services.

New York Magazine shared some details about how much certain celebrities make from advertising and even more details can be read in their latest issue.

Via New York Magazine:

Twitter Celebrities Can Make Upwards Of $50,000 Advertising is a post from: The Inquisitr

Facebook has been working on getting their new profile design, Timeline, rolled out to all users. The company ran into some problems after a company, Timelines.com, claimed that the social network infringed on their trademark back in September.

That lawsuit set the public launch back by several months and now, very soon, Timeline will be rolled out to all users. For those wanting to go back to the old version, well, unfortunately you can’t. One of the topics brought up is privacy as people can easily navigate through your profile and see everything you’ve ever posted.

Of course, as with anything you post, say you only shared it with friends, someone not a friend, couldn’t see it.

Via The Washington Post:

“Facebook’s new Timeline format may not be that popular with its users, according to a poll by the security firm Sophos. A nonscientific poll of more than 4,000 Facebook users found that about half of those surveyed say that they are “worried” by Facebook’s new Timeline format. More than 30 percent said that they didn’t “know why I’m still on Facebook.”

“These users say that they’re spooked by the social network’s new, mandatory format change, which displays all the information they’ve ever shared on Facebook in a scrapbook-like format.”

Privacy concerns continue to heat up with the World’s largest social network. One of the biggest mistakes they’ve made in the past and continue to do in some aspects, is don’t let people know of changes ahead of time. This time they have and have given users plenty of time to know about the new profile design, but many aren’t liking it.

Of course, you’ll always have people that don’t like change so there’s that.

Do you like the new Facebook Timeline? Should they allow users to keep the old profile design if they choose?

Facebook Users Not Happy Over Timeline, New Profile Design is a post from: The Inquisitr

Twitter has recently come under fire after announcing that they will now be censoring tweets on a country-by-country basis if required by law. With censorship still on many people’s minds, this has raised many suspicions and caused users to voice their opinions.

Now, the reality is that the social network wants to branch out into more and more countries Worldwide. Other governments are serious about censoring certain information and in order for them to be better accepted, they need to provide the ability to censor information if authorities require it.

People find this to be a violation of freedom of speech and, well, they’re protesting.

Via Los Angeles Times:

“Twitter faced a growing backlash on Friday, less than a day after it announced that it can now block specific tweets from being published in specific countries that legally require such censorship. On Friday, a day after the country-specific plan was announced, #TwitterBlackout and#TwitterCensored were trending topics on the hugely popular social network.”

“In the case of #TwitterBlackout, thousands of users from around the world threatened to boycott using the service on Jan. 28, with the hactivist group Anonymous among those calling on tweeters to skip the site for a day. The group Reporters Without Borders issued a letter on its website to Twitter’s executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, asking him to “reverse a policy that violates freedom of expression.”

We’ll see what happens over the weekend there’s sure to be details on how many participated in the boycott.

How do you feel about Twitter censoring information?

Twitter Users Threatening To Boycott After Censorship News is a post from: The Inquisitr

Facebook is said to be filing their IPO as early as next week according to a new report. The social network has been gearing up for it’s inevitable IPO this year that is expected to raise up to $10 Billion and put a valuation of up to $100 Billion on the almost 8 year old service.

With how things have been going and with them nearing almost 1 Billion users, the time is right. Revenue is pouring in from their ad platform and hundreds of Millions of people are using the site on a daily basis. In fact, they were said to have generated over $4 Billion in revenue just last year.

Once they do go public, they’ll have to start disclosing that kind of information.

Via The Wall Street Journal:

“Facebook Inc. could file papers for an initial public offering as early as next week and is currently looking at a deal that would value the social network between $75 billion to $100 billion, said people familiar with the matter.”

“The Internet giant is close to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter for its IPO, these people said, giving the investment bank one of Wall Street’s most coveted assignments. It would mark a setback for rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”

With a lot of money invested into the social network, a lot of people are soon enough going to make a lot of money. Even the state of California is expected to rake in hundreds of Millions of dollars thanks to capital gains taxes. The time is right and 2012 is definitely the year for them to go public.

How often would you say you use Facebook on a daily basis?

Facebook Filing IPO As Early As Next Week is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google Earth was recently updated to version 6.2 and included in the new update is integration with Google+. The social network is growing at a rapid rate and Google is integrating the site with more and more of it’s products.

One of the biggest integrations was in search which caused a lot of people to question the change and even caused the FTC to add it to their probe of the company. Anyways, the new version allows for very easy sharing to your circles on Google+ and letting people see where you’ve traveled to, of course virtually.

Via eWeek:

“Google continued its wholesale integration of Google+ with its existing applications, launching Google Earth 6.2 with the capability to let users share their virtual images with their contacts on the social network. Google Earth 6.2 includes the option to let users share a screenshot of their current Google Earth image, as well as images of places they’ve already “virtually traveled” with contacts in their Circles.”

“To share images of cities, oceans and other location to Google+ followers, users must sign into their Google Account in the upper right hand corner of Google Earth and click the Share option.”

The company has recently been quite the topic of conversation lately. On one side, over 90 Million people are using their social network with 60 percent being active daily and having a great experience. On the other side, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are concerned, while they won’t say it, that Google will cut into their market share by further integrating Google+ into all of its products and services.

Do you use Google Earth?

Google Earth Integrates Google+ is a post from: The Inquisitr

Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have been a bit upset over Google’s recent changes to their social search product. If you’re not familiar with the changes, basically it integrates Google Plus results into your normal, every day search.

Now, users can turn off the function, but you still get results from their social network such as people to circle and that kind of thing. It seems that Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace, have actually teamed up and created ‘Focus on the User’ which, using a bookmarklet, integrates Facebook and Twitter into the results.

Via eWeek:

“The output of Focus on the User is the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet, which taps Google’s own ranking of its organic search results to determine what social content should appear in Google+ results–such as results from Facebook, Twitter and other sources–instead of just the Google+ posts, photos and brand pages that currently surface in Search, plus your world.”

“The tool only accesses data already indexed and ranked in Google.com (via Google’s rich snippets tool), challenging Google’s assertion that it required a deal with Facebook, Twitter and others to use their data in Search, plus your world. “

It’ll be interesting to see how Google takes this and what they will have to say in return. Frankly, it does bring some nice added functionality to the changes in search. Thing is though, Twitter decided to not renew their deal with the tech giant, and Facebook didn’t want anything to do with social search in the first place.

Don’t be evil? You can check out focus on the user here.

Do you think the social networks have a point here?

Social Networks Take On Google With ‘Focus On The User’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

It feels some days that the only reason we use the Web any more is to do nothing but share mundane crap with people who probably couldn’t care less. Oh I am sure there are some gems passed around but one has to wonder just where are we sharing all this crap, and with whom.

Well this is an answer that the folks at Plasick Media and Voltier Media look to answer with an infographic that has gotten shared around the web today, which in itself is more than a little funny if you think about it.

What is interesting is so much the numbers when it comes to the amount of sharing being done but rather how little so called popular social network services are being used. For example 47% of accounts on Twitter are not active or that on 50% of Facebook users log in on a daily basis.

Anyway here’s the infographic for you to peruse.

via Bit Rebels

Sharing is all the rage but where are we sharing all that info? [Infographic] is a post from: The Inquisitr

News of Facebook’s IPO has been floating around for the last year. At one of the largest IPO’s in tech history, they along with investors, stand to make a pretty penny. Also to profit from the IPO is none other than the state of California.

How exactly? Considering that Facebook is headquartered in the state in Palo Alto, the state will make hundreds of Millions of dollars from investors and employees through capital gains taxes. With a $9.2 Billion deficit, it’s sure to be welcomed by the Treasury department.

Via Yahoo News:

“An initial public offering from the Silicon Valley social networking giant is the most anticipated, with the legislative analyst saying the company could issue $10 billion worth of stock. California taxes the capital gains from stock sales.”

“In the coming months, the state’s revenue forecast will need to be adjusted somewhat to account for the possibility of hundreds of millions of dollars of additional revenues related to the Facebook IPO,” Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor wrote in the analysis of Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal, released Wednesday.”

Facebook stands to do well with their IPO and something that is planned to happen before the second half of this year. Nearing 1 Billion users, the social network is at their peak with revenue estimated at reaching over $4 Billion in 2011, now is the time to go public.

Turning into a public versus private company could spell some potential issues however. Being public, you’re required to disclose a slew of different details, details that Facebook has always been extremely secretive about. Let’s just hope there’s no more privacy snafus hiding around.

California To Profit From Facebook IPO is a post from: The Inquisitr

Who would have thought. I mean if you hang around any of the hot social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or even Google+ you’d think that they are being used by nothing but U.S. males with nothing better to do in their lives than .. well … be social.

It turns out that this might not be the case if a recent report released by comScore is any indication. The fact is that by their numbers are any indication the U.S. usage of social networks is nowhere near what we might think; not even ion the top ten of the countries that were scored. What is even funnier for me is that Canada, my home country, ranks higher than the U.S.

In fact is you want to know who the biggest user of social networks are you’d have to look to the tiny country of Israel as it seems that they are the world’s biggest social networking addicts by a very large margin.

When ranked by the number of hours spent succumbing to the lure of social networking by region, Latin America is at the top of the pile, followed by Europe, North America, with Asia Pacific coming in at the bottom.

As for the gender angle – it seems that women in every region use social networks a lot more than the men with the Asia Pacific region showing the smallest difference.

So the next time someone rags on you for spending too much time on Twitter or Facebook just tell them you are trying to do your bit for national pride and to leave you alone.

via Geekosystem

The US isn’t all that hot for social networking but the women do it more than men is a post from: The Inquisitr

You know there might be something to this whole social media thing; or at least that’s what New York’s police department seems to think.

Don’t think that they are going to get all buddy buddy with you on Twitter or Facebook though because this new social media strategy from the NYPD is all about catching those evil kids who don’t know enough to keep their mouths shut when on Twitter or Facebook.

The purpose of the new unit is mine the social networks for youths ( I so want to be able to say that with the voice of Joe Pesci) who for the lack of any real intelligence decide to brag about their wrong-doing.

Newly named Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor, one of the department’s online and gang gurus, has been put in charge of the new juvenile justice unit. He and his staff will mine social media, looking for info about troublesome house parties, gang showdowns and other potential mayhem, sources said.

via New York Daily News

And apparently high on their list is to keep track of all those crime inducing rave parties.

New York Police Department to get down with this new fangled social media thing is a post from: The Inquisitr

Social media is often trotted out as a negative influence on teens that rely heavily on Facebook, Twitter, and similar mediums to interact with their peers freely.

Predators, bullying and lack of empathy are often cited as consequences of heavy use of services like Facebook, but is there any truth to the idea that teenagers who engage in this sort of interaction risk negative psychological consequences to the activity? The answer to that questions seems to indicate a mixed bag of results that indicate teens could benefit in some ways, but risk negative outcomes in others.

A 2009 study showed teens who relied on Facebook and similar sites for entertainment and social outlets missed more school and suffered more anxiety and stomachaches. In 2011, another study linked Facebook use with dissipated focus and lower grades in middle and high school students. Perhaps most worryingly, an ongoing study of more than 700 teens has shown a correlation between “narcissism, anxiety, and bipolar disorder” and heavy use of the social media.

WebMD spoke to experts about the results of studies on Facebook and teens, and found that while the activities had some inherent risks, psychologists cited benefits to teen use of the services as well- perhaps surprisingly, including a higher instance of real-world empathy. David Carlson, PhD, an Oklahoma City psychologist, explained:

“I see a lot of kids reaching out to friends, showing a lot of caring, online. And that translates to offline,” he says.

Another positive: “Facebook help teens to express who they are,” Rosen says.

Two more studies showed that teens often just use the services in lieu of other technologies, such as a cell phone, and another found teens on Facebook could use the site to engage in interaction for which they might normally be too shy.

Does your teen use Facebook heavily? Do you think the impact of Facebook on teens is more negative or positive?

Facebook and Teens: Depressive, Narcissistic Consequences? is a post from: The Inquisitr

In an interview with Russia Today, Assange specifically stated he did not think the services were created to spy on citizens, rather that sites like Facebook were exceedingly good at compiling information for intelligence agencies. In part, Assange said:

“Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies, and building this database for them… Now, is the case that Facebook is run by U.S. intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that U.S. intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them,” he said.

Assange also discussed the content of the Wikileaks cables that have already been released, saying that the information so far has been of little consequence:

“We only released secret, classified, confidential material. We didn’t have any top secret cables. The really embarrassing stuff, the really serious stuff wasn’t in our collection to release. But it is still out there.”

Assange assailed an ineffectual media for not covering corrupt governments thoroughly, and questioned their usefulness overall:

“It really is my opinion that the media, in general, are so bad, we have to question whether the world would be better off without them altogether.”

You can watch Assange’s interview in its entirety over at Mashable.

Assange critiques Facebook “spy machine” in interview is a post from: The Inquisitr

For your next PowerPoint, you’re welcome.

[epicponyz]

[Pic] Social media explained by function of individual site is a post from: The Inquisitr

How would you like it if your boss listened in on your private, off-hours phone conversations or peeked into your bedroom as you engaged in whatever it is you do in there, I ain’t judging? Is the below scenario very much different, all things considered?

Facebook is a bit of an information sieve, dripping images and details about you onto the world wide web whether friends-locked or not, but the one on one and direct stuff is generally still considered a private, mostly unleakable thing. Like the messages you might send a friend with similar medical concerns or a child as unruly as yours. Or the totally legal, above board but perhaps embarrassingly intimate flirting in which you might engage. Permissible and understandable pursuits all, but would you like your current or future employer sifting through your private Facebook interactions? Is there any question that users are entitled to keep their private information private, especially being as information only accessible with a password to the account is not generally broadcasted across the internet unless the account is breached?

Not for the first time, an employer is demanding job candidates and current employees turn over their Facebook login information so superiors can skim through the personal details of their accounts, including private transmissions with friends, significant others and spouses. Yes, you read that right- employers are beginning to feel entitled to violate not only your privacy, but that of the people who cannot consent and are exposed merely by merit of associating with folks whose bosses have such designs. So if you were considering sharing your innermost deep, dark secrets with someone employed by or contemplating employment with the Maryland Department of Corrections, you may want to rethink that decision. Imagine being in the shoes of corrections officer Robert Collins, required to turn over his login during a re-certification interview and sit there while his supervisor scrolled through his Facebook page. One wonders if it’s frowned upon to change your password shortly thereafter, or if any forewarning precedes the practice at all.

Thankfully, the ACLU is stepping up and trying to arrest this practice in its infancy. Nationwide outcry occurred when the city of Bozeman, Montana attempted to pull the same shenanigans on employees, but the town eventually backed down and stopped trying to intrude on workers’ private, online interactions. An online petition over at the ACLU’s website points out that such egregious privacy violations are illegal under the Federal Stored Communications Act, but the scary part is that it hasn’t stopped two state agencies from attempting access the info.

Would you turn over your Facebook password to your boss or a potential employer? Do you think this request will become more common in hiring and spying on employees?

[ACLU via AllFacebook]

ACLU objects to Maryland DOC request for employee Facebook logins is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’re sworn to uphold the law or hope to be, should you have to bend over and allow hiring directors to sift through your personal communications and base personnel decisions on that content?

If a recent piece in USA Today is correct, then yes, yes you should. It’s not the first time this hiring practice has been alleged, (the city in question rapidly backed away from the practice once word got out) but it is just as shocking and upsetting each time we hear about it. One factor the USA Today piece doesn’t seem to acknowledge is the very easily made distinction between publicly made statements- whether to a friends-only list on Facebook or Twitter- and privately made ones, such as a text message or Facebook private message. If the allegation that hiring departments are demanding applicants’ personal login information is accurate, it’s a troubling one.

Would you allow a recruiter to read your love letters? Listen in on a conversation with your spouse or significant other? How is requesting carte blanche to read private Facebook messages- a functionality available with your login, as you know- any different? But USA Today says that’s the case in certain jurisdictions:

In Massachusetts, Malden Police Chief Jim Holland, whose agency has requested electronic message logs, said a recruit’s text messages revealed past threats of suicide, resulting in disqualification.

In New Jersey, Middletown Police Chief Robert Oches said a candidate was disqualified for posting racy photographs of himself with scantily clad women.

At the Florida conference, Crawford narrated a video full of officers’ inappropriate Facebook postings, from sexually explicit photographs to racially charged commentary. All of it, he said, argues for better background checks for incoming recruits.

A recent opinion published by the New York State Bar Association seems to set a reasonable boundary for information gleaned via social networking. The organization’s ethics committee approved using the networks for mining data, but disapproved of rifling around in users’ locked data, as well as “friending” individuals for the sole purpose of gathering incriminating information about them.

USA Today didn’t cite any specific instances of the request of Facebook passwords as a barrier to employment, but it seems more and more people are having difficulty understanding that just because a message is transmitted electronically, it doesn’t mean you should only send it if you’d be comfortable “seeing it in the newspaper.” This smug and grossly offensive idea is bandied around every time this practice comes under scrutiny, and it demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of technology and modern communications. Should you never have sex because an unscrupulous partner could surreptitiously photograph or film it and distribute the footage? Should you never visit the doctor because someone could find out and tell people you might be sick? Privately shared private information is just that… private. With the number of couples who meet over the internet nowadays or, for that matter, have spouses or significant others deployed for long periods, is there not a reasonable expectation of privacy in your one on one Facebook message box, for starters?

Have you ever had an employer or potential employer invade your privacy in such a manner? Did you relent to the request? Should hiring agencies be forbidden from engaging in such practices?

[Image]

Law enforcement recruits asked to hand over Facebook passwords, text messages is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you planned to start a website with a domain name ending in “book,” Facebook might be all up in your grill about that.

A tiny little start-up aimed at teachers- a demographic notoriously terrified of Facebook- hasn’t even launched yet, but “Teachbook” managed to draw the legal ire of the social networking giant. Tech blogs have taken a dim view of the move, widely viewed as arrogant and unnecessary, given the lack of threat Teachbook poses to Facebook.

TG Daily posted some of the comments in legal documents from the case, where Facebook contends stuff ending in “book” is “”highly distinctive in the context of online communities and networking websites,” and the blog adds:

Facebook’s highly arrogant claim continues to say, “If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix BOOK could become a generic term for ‘online community/networking services’ or ‘social networking services.”

Teachbook was all doe-eyed about the claim, which admittedly is clearly a Facebook reference:

“We’ve been sitting here scratching our heads for the last couple of days,” said the new site’s director Greg Shrader. “We’re trying to understand how Facebook, a multibillion-dollar company, feels this small enterprise in Chicago is any type of threat.”

I’m sure we’re not alone in pointing out that this is probably the best thing that could have happened to Teachbook in this phase of their launch. Hopefully a judge will rule in their favor, but either way, the PR generated couldn’t hurt. Also worth pointing out is that “facebook,” in case you weren’t familiar, is a college yearbook related term that far predated the advent of social networking and tagged photos.

Facebook sues teensy ‘Teachbook,’ seeks to own ‘book’ suffix on whole entire internet is a post from: The Inquisitr

Wow, this will surely be getting the blogosphere in an uproar as the news spread but apparently Digg, and possibly other social networks, has been targeted by a large group of influential conservative members in an effort to censor liberal oriented stories.

According to a post on Alternet.org this group through the use of multiple accounts, deliberate attempts to get liberals or progressives banned, has been in operation for over a year and one of the conservative bury brigades as they are called claim they are able to bury 90% of targeted posts, and usually within 1 to 3 hours.

A group of nearly one hundred conservatives have banded together on a Yahoo Group called Digg Patriots (DP), and a companion site at coRanks to issue bury orders and discuss strategies to censor Digg and other social media websites. DP was founded on 21 May 2009. Since then, over 40,000 posts have been logged at a steady rate of around 3000-4000 per month. The “Patriots” Network on coRank is a tool to submit Diggs to a group list as opposed to sending an e-mail every time. It also has some tools that make submitting to the list as easy as clicking on a bookmark. The DP membership includes the following Digg users (among others):

The Alternet.org post also contains a list of the names of Digg members involved with the Digg Patriots group. It seems, according to the Alternet.org post that hate is a prime motivator for these groups.

There are a few differences of opinion within DP, although for the most part, they are extremely similar in perspective. They hate Obama. They hate progressives. They hate the UN, diplomacy, and peace/disarmament efforts. They hate reforms of health care, Wall St., and immigration. They hate science, in fact many are creationists, and some even blog about it. They hate the secular nature of our nation. They hate environmental protection, requiring polluters to be responsible for their own cleanup, and especially hate climate efforts. They hate unions and any attempt to level the playing field to give all Americans economic opportunities. They hate the government, except the military-industrial complex. They hate abortion rights. They hate public schools and really hate higher education. They hate anyone in the media except far right personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin. They hate anyone who doesn’t think Obama is a secret islamist and/or marxist who was born in Kenya. They just love to hate.

Granted some will suggest that Alternet.org isn’t without its biases either but it will still be interesting to see how Digg responds to this investigation.

Investigation reveals massive conservative censoring of Digg is a post from: The Inquisitr

I have always maintained that people are fooling themselves if they think social networks will always keep their promise to protect your personal and generated data. At some point, whether for collateral or as demographic information to be used by advertisers and marketers.

With the constant buying and selling of all these web start-up that exist only to gather this kind of information it is inevitable that your data will end up being controlled by companies that you know nothing about. In most cases the only value of all these companies is that data – your data.

What is really bothersome is that some of this data being bought and sold is information that could cause real damage to the very people who had offered up that very personal and sensitive information. Information that they believe that would be safe because the company said so.

A perfect example of this situation and potentially profound repercussions come via a post on ReadWriteWeb by Curt Hopkins. The post is about a now defunct gay teen magazine and website XY.com and how they have been forced by the bankruptcy court to sell the site’s user list as well as all the private user data that goes with those accounts.

Curt is exactly right when he writes

The selling off of private information, gathered under the supposition of privacy, is bad enough. Even worse if you’re forced into it. And positively untenable when the information is connected to kids who are dealing with a dawning sexual reality that in some instances is even more fraught than what straight kids go through.

That something like this can happen is morally reprehensible but it comes as no surprise. When only collateral a company has to offset debts incurred by a company; that for the most part is virtual, is people’s private information as well as any activity that they may generated this type of thing will happen more an more.

No amount of reassurance will convince me otherwise and incidents like this should set off warning flags all over the place. It should also make every single person using these social networks to think twice about what they do and say on social networks – any social network.

image courtesy of ReadWriteWeb

The joke of social network privacy is a post from: The Inquisitr

Yesterday my good friend Louis Gray penned one of his best blog posts in some time. It is a very concise and clear look at the whole data portability issue that is a hot topic among the digerati of social media and social networks.

Equally important are some of the very interesting comments made on his post as they typify why people don’t understand the popularity of services like Twitter and Facebook; and why true data portability as Louis envisions is the last thing these services want.

Louis is absolutely correct when he writes

We don’t live in a data democracy. Every day, we give over more of our data to people we don’t know, whose motives we may not fully understand, and the possibility of our getting it back is very slim. Unlike in a democracy, we don’t get to vote in the leaders of companies who build the programs and sites that harness and manipulate our data. We don’t get to set term limits on CEOs or throw the bums out of corporate offices if our data is used in ways that are unsavory. And just like our tax dollars, we keep creating more and don’t always know where our data is going to end up.

The reason we don’t have, nor will we ever have, true data portability when it comes to services like Facebook is that these services are run by corporations, corporations that need to make money. In order for any corporation to make money, and keep their investors or shareholders happy, they need to have an edge that their competitors don’t have.

When it comes to social networks there is only one edge – constantly refreshed user data. It is that data, and that data alone that makes the company worth anything. Without that data constantly being refreshed none of these social networks have anything of value to offer other companies. One only has to look the the roadside of the Web and the litter of companies that failed to catch on.

It wasn’t that they failed to catch on with companies but rather they failed to keep the attention of the life blood of their business – the user. Without an active user base every single social style business will fail at some point. I’m not talking about the early adopter or web savvy tech oriented crowd either but rather the crowd that has made Facebook the behemoth that it is.

This is where the whole disconnect over why social networks exist, what makes them insanely popular; or not, and why data portability is a temporary loss leader. Just look at the comments made on Louis’ post to see why I say this in the responses to the comment I made. First someone called ‘I Dont’ writes

@Steven: The profitability comes from its users. If I chose to only participate in open projects as outlined above, and protest against anything that doesn’t abide to these principles, they will have to change it.

Then that is followed with a comment from Bruce Wayne

@SteveHodson….Portable data does not mean that there is no profitability ….In fact data portability can mean a move to equitable distribution of profit to members/data owners….Maybe we move to a point were the entire data harvesting process is transparent enough that a members must give specific consent to any entity that wants access to their data…and the member has the option of charging for this access…

Both of these comments are fairly indicative of the whole conversation around social networks and data portability and as a result one of the main points people aren’t getting.

Social Media and more importantly social networks were not created to ultimately benefit the users. Both these things came about because some very smart people saw the value of user generated content and then figured out a way to lump it under a recognizable brand name. Then everything was done to A) give them a reason to keep coming back and B) get them to share as much as possible in order to make that content marketable, one way or another.

What social networks and Social Media wasn’t created for was the early adopters and web savvy techie crowds. The insanely popular networks suffer through their periods of needing those two crowds in order to promote the services but at some point they all become more of a headache than anything else.

Social networks and Social Media were created for the 99% of the people that the early adopters and web savvy techies look down their noses at. Two perfect examples of this are Friendfeed and Google Buzz both of which have a very passionate following but is it a totally different following than what Facebook has.

Think not?

Then ask yourself this question – how popular would Facebook be if it didn’t have totally mindless social games or really pointless quizzes. Facebook has the needs of the mainstream down pat because the mainstream typically doesn’t care about silly things like privacy or advertising; and they definitely don’t give a rat’s ass about data portability. After all why should they since the chances of them becoming involved with another social network the way they are committed to Facebook is next to nil, hence the total lack of concern about data portability.

The mainstream is the fodder for the money machine that Facebook is becoming which means they have to do everything they can to get more people sharing more crap. It isn’t interested in mudding the waters, or endangering their profits, by doing more than they have to in order to appease a very small minority.

You see this is the main point – the early adopters and web savvy tech bunch are under the illusion that services like Facebook were created for them and as a result desperately need them. In fact the opposite is true – Facebook wasn’t built for that rarified groups of people nor does it care if you leave or stay.

You see Zuckerberg had the perfect teaching ground to learn what the mainstream wants – the university dorm. He didn’t start Facebook to make people like Robert Scoble, or Dave Winer, or even me and you. No, he started because he realized that people like to do mindless shit without any real concern for the consequences. He started it because he realized that he could make money, lots and lots of money, from people like that.

Facebook isn’t about idealism, or freedom, or being able to take your data with you like a spoiled kid taking his bat and ball home. Facebook is about making money and with 500 million users (and still growing) I’d say Zuckerberg has it figured out pretty well.

Let’s get a grip on reality when it comes to Social Networks and Data Portability is a post from: The Inquisitr