Category Archives: Media

Twitter is tracking you on the web by Dustin Curtis

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Twitter have just announced a new ‘tailored suggestions’ system that is raising some privacy concerns about tracking of web usage via Tweet buttons in a similar vein to the Facebook Like button furore a while back. Presumably the solution is to not log in to Twitter using your browser – perhaps not a problem as most people seem to use their phones anyway. Mac users can also create a custom browser app using Fluid to isolate Twitter cookies from normal browsing, which is what I do with Facebook.

In a blog post today announcing Twitter’s new tailored suggestions system is something that has left me shocked: an overt admission by Twitter that it is transparently tracking your movements around the web. Othman Laraki, on the Twitter blog:

These tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem. We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies — including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube — do when they’re integrated into websites. By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days.

Basically, every time you visit a site that has a follow button, a “tweet this” button, or a hovercard, Twitter is recording your behavior. It is transparently watching your movements and storing them somewhere for later use. Right now, that data will make better suggestions for accounts you might want to follow. But what other things can it be used for? The privacy implications of such behavior by a company so large are sweeping and absolute.

via Twitter is tracking you on the web by Dustin Curtis.

The Twitter news map of Britain | News | guardian.co.uk

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In the week when it was announced that more people in the UK use Twitter than buy daily newspapers, The Guardian has produced a map showing the regional distribution of clicks on the major UK news websites via Bitly.

This doesn’t show all traffic to these websites, nor any other URL-shortener, but is interesting nonetheless. For example, The Independent appears wildly popular in Cornwall, The Mail in the North, The Express in Scotland and The Guardian in the South-East.

The Twitter news map of Britain | News | guardian.co.uk.

GM to end display ads on Facebook – Boing Boing

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Ouch – this is not good news for Facebook, and badly timed.

The Wall Street Journal reports that General Motors will soon stop advertising on Facebook “after the auto maker’s executives determined their paid ads had little impact on consumers’ car purchases.” GM will, however, engage in Facebook’s “pages” that allow marketers to display promotional content at no cost. The news comes just days before Facebook’s planned IPO.

via GM to end display ads on Facebook – Boing Boing.

Pirates Beware: DVD Anti-Piracy Warning Now Twice as Fierce | Threat Level | Wired.com

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This Wired article looks at the additional anti-piracy warnings that are to appear on US DVDs. Like DRM, this is an attempt at preventing piracy that affects legitimate customers but not pirates. DVDs will now be twice as annoying before you get to watch the film you’ve paid for, unless you have a pirate version which will load immediately.

Hollywood and the federal government have partnered to create updated and even more annoying anti-piracy warnings that will be included in new home-release DVDs and Blu-ray discs beginning this week, the government said Tuesday.

The new warnings now have three scary logos intended to deter those who might violate copyright law by making a back-up copy, ripping a movie to a tablet-friendly file, uploading it to a peer-to-peer network or make illegal copies to send to military service members in Iraq.

via Pirates Beware: DVD Anti-Piracy Warning Now Twice as Fierce | Threat Level | Wired.com.

BBC News – Facebook tests ‘pay to promote post’ tool

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The BBC are reporting that Facebook is experimenting with charging users to make their posts more visible on the site. It will be interesting to see if this rolls out to other countries (currently only in NZ) and if this allows someone to pay to show their post on your feed if you have already hidden them.

In A2 media we’ve had a lot of discussions about how Facebook needs to find new ways of generating revenue as mobile use is increasing and ads are not featured on their apps. So much for the message on their logon page, “it’s free and always will be”.

“We’re going to see a lot more ideas like this where they are testing out different ways to try to make money,” said Ian Maude, internet analyst at Enders Analysis.

Both Facebook’s imminent stock market flotation and a recent slowdown in revenue growth were helping to concentrate its attention on ways to make money, he said.

“In the last few years their overall revenue has grown much more quickly than their audience,” he said. However, he said, that rapid growth had slowed in the last six months and had perhaps prompted it to experiment.

via BBC News – Facebook tests ‘pay to promote post’ tool.

The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record | TorrentFreak

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This article provides some good analysis of why a massively-downloaded CAM copy of The Avengers didn’t stop the film from having the biggest opening weekend of all time.

A week before its premiere in US movie theaters, a camcorded version of The Avengers appeared online.

Immediately thousands of fans jumped on the release and according to figures collated by TorrentFreak, in the days that followed it was downloaded half a million times. While this may very well be a record for a “CAM” movie, it failed to exceed the download numbers of several other movies that were available in higher quality.

Record or not, the movie’s distributer Disney must have been terrified by this early release. However, this weekend the suits at the studio were able to breathe a sign of relief, or rather, start popping open the Champagne.

With more than $200 million in box office revenue, The Avengers had the most successful first weekend in movie history. It broke the record set by Harry Potter last year by more than $30 million, despite the “massive” piracy.

via The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record | TorrentFreak.

Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years – Forbes

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This Forbes article is an interesting continuation of yesterday’s post about the death of Web 2.0

We think of Google and Facebook as Web gorillas.  They’ll be around forever. Yet, with the rate that the tech world is moving these days, there are good reasons to think both might be gone completely in 5 – 8 years.  Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone.  And there’s some academic theory to back up that view, along with casual observations from recent history

And…

Social companies born since 2010 have a very different view of the world. These companies – and Instagram is the most topical example at the moment – view the mobile smartphone as the primary (and oftentimes exclusive) platform for their application. They don’t even think of launching via a web site. They assume, over time, people will use their mobile applications almost entirely instead of websites.

We will never have Web 3.0, because the Web’s dead.

Web 1.0 and 2.0 companies still seem unsure how to adapt to this new paradigm. Facebook is the triumphant winner of social companies. It will go public in a few weeks and probably hit $140 billion in market capitalization. Yet, it loses money in mobile and has rather simple iPhone and iPad versions of its desktop experience. It is just trying to figure out how to make money on the web – as it only had $3.7 billion in revenues in 2011 and its revenues actually decelerated in Q1 of this year relative to Q4 of last year. It has no idea how it will make money in mobile.

via Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years – Forbes.

Web 2.0 Is Over, All Hail the Age of Mobile | PandoDaily

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This article on the rise of mobile internet use and the impact on Web 2.0 institutions is important reading for A2 media students:

When they look back at this era, Internet historians will mark Facebook’s Instagram acquisition as the symbolic moment when the Great Shift was confirmed. Significantly, it also came soon after Steve Jobs’ death. The device that Jobs created had, within the space of five years, allowed a 551-day-old company with 14 employees to become worth $1 billion.

On April 9, 2012, Web 2.0 lost its mantle as the most important Internet paradigm. We are now starting the Age of Mobile. Google and Facebook’s Internet dominance is no longer guaranteed. They face a threat from below and an army of smartphone-touting masses that sees little distinction between the piece of hardware in their hands and the Internet world it opens up.

The momentum has been shifting for a while, but now the trend is emphatic. People now spend more time in mobile apps than they do online. There are more than 500 million Android and iOS devices on the market, and giant countries like China and Indonesia are only just getting started in their smartphone and tablet push. Global mobile 3G subscribers are growing at over 35 percent, year on year, and there’s a lot more room to move – there are 5.6 billion mobile subscribers on our fair planet. Even in developing countries, cheap smartphones will soon rush into the market. And who here doesn’t think tablet sales are going to go gangbusters pretty much everywhere?

This is a new phenomenon. Steve Jobs brought the first iPhone into the world in 2007. Android soon followed. The iPad is only two years old. Google, on the other hand, has been around for 14 years. Facebook: eight. They’re veritable geriatrics. And that’s why they’re behind on mobile.

They know this much themselves, and they’re worried. Just look at Facebook’s S-1 filing. After noting that it has more than 425 million users who accessed the social network via mobile in December 2011, Facebook noted [my emphasis]:

We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected.

In his latest earnings call, meanwhile, Larry Page was bullish on mobile, even as Google revealed that the average price of its bread-and-butter cost-per-click ads dropped by 12 percent year on year.

It’s clear: The centre of gravity is shifting. Google and Facebook especially will have to do more to adapt to the new reality.

via Web 2.0 Is Over, All Hail the Age of Mobile | PandoDaily.

Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling – LA Weekly

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This is a lengthy but fascinating article on how film studios are pushing hard to abandon 35mm film and move to digital projection only, and some of the potential risks this is entails. Great resource for anyone looking at this topic for a case study:

Today, the driving force isn’t so much a single movie as it is the studios’ bottom line — they no longer want to pay to physically print and ship movies. It costs about $1,500 to print one copy of a movie on 35 mm film and ship it to theaters in its heavy metal canister. Multiply that by 4,000 copies — one for each movie on each screen in each multiplex around the country — and the numbers start to get ugly. By comparison, putting out a digital copy costs a mere $150.

via Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling – Page 1 – Film+TV – Los Angeles – LA Weekly.