Liberté, Egalité, Bureaucracy

French Bureaucracy.  Those words should strike fear into the hearts of everyone.  For a country whose motto translates into “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, the byzantine stretch of absurd regulations in France often makes one wonder if the ghost of Kafka is laughing or crying.  

So it really comes as no surprise to hear that the French government in its infinite wisdom recently decreed that hosts of television and radio programs must refrain from uttering the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” on the air. Imagine if that happened in the US.  CNN might as well shut down, as currently every third sentence is a request to “Join the conversation”.  Who knows, maybe they would have to go back to actually reporting the news rather than everyone’s reaction to it.  Hmmm… But I digress. 

What was surprising was the reaction to the decree in France, or should I say, the non-reaction.  Some newspapers published straightforward reports of the government action, some French bloggers questioned the decision, but overall the reaction was “meh” combined with the classic French shrug. 

Now there were reasons given, having to do with egalité.  The CSA (France’s Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, the equivalent to the FCC) maintained that any on-air mention of a program’s Facebook page or Twitter feed constitutes “clandestine advertising” for these social networks because they are commercial operations. In a word, French television and radio programs cannot be seen to be promoting Facebook and Twitter as commercial brands. There are outlets available other than Twitter and Facebook.  To allow the preference of the the two largest players in the room  would “be a distortion of competition”.  If the government allows Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box — other social networks will complain saying, “why not us?”.

However, as pointed out by French blogger Benoit Raphael, Facebook and Twitter are now “public spaces” of communication with a global reach. And it is because of that reality TV and radio stations use the two extensively to connect to their audience.  Too bad, according to the bureaucrats.  No mention of Twitter or Facebook unless it is a direct story about the companies.

Of course, one may point out that la paperasserie is still motivated by an institutionalized hostility towards Anglo-Saxon domination, but that would be rude.

Google’s Crop Circles

Real or not?  That seems to be the question concerning Google “Circles”.  On Sunday, Read Write Web’s Marshall Kirkpatrick published a story that Google was readying their own social network, called Circles.  Google would show it to the world at the ACLU party at SXSW, a well known gathering in Austin, Texas.  As this was what people call “a big thing”, bloggers started jumping all over the news, with Tim O’Reilly, the well-known technology pundit, seemingly confirming the existence of Circles by tweeting “I’ve seen google circles, and it looks awesome.”

Only one problem.  Like the proverbial crop circles are likely not made by aliens, Google’s Circles likely does not exist, at least in the format that people thought.  Google rebutted claims by saying: “We’re not launching any products at SXSW.”  Google’s Chris Messina, who had been pegged as one of the leaders of Circles, said in an interview that he “didn’t know what [the story] was talking about.”

O’Reilly ammended his original “seen it” statement.

“It’s not a product, per se, and it’s not a new social network. Just some research-y thinking about how you could better manage social data. Exactly what Chris said. I got fooled by the RWW story into thinking that they’d turned it into something they were going to announce. There’s no story here. Just some labs stuff.”

But you’ve seen that, right?

It makes sense for Google to research social networking and how to use the nuances of contacts and the like.  But usually when something as big as Google launching a social network is in the works, then there have been leaks well ahead of time.  The reason for this is because these days, you need to have developers on your side, so somewhere along the way news would be sort of out there before the big reveal. 

I’m not saying that it couldn’t happen eventually – Marshall has been right more than he has been wrong. but at the moment, the niche seems to be where Google is researching, rather than the whole market. All you aliens out there can breathe a sigh of relief.

Twitter, Facebook Providing Emergency Services – Again

Twitter and Facebook. The two sites have been there for people in Iran, Egypt, Haiti, Chile and now Japan. The two social networks are being used extensively in Japan, as cell phone networks are jammed due to the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded and subsequent Tsunami.

Carriers were limiting voice calls on congested networks, with NTT DoCoMo restricting up to 80 percent of voice calls, especially in Tokyo and in northeast Japan. Service throughout the rest of the country remains patchy at best. Twitter, Facebook, and Japanese social-media site Mixi were helping fill the communication gap though, as online networks held firm. However, Internet service was on-again, off-again in Tokyo. There are reports of people lining up at the few public pay phones, which are programmed to take priority over networks during and after an earthquake. 

But this points out how any country can be overwhelmed by an emergency. In the DC area on 9/11/2001, the cell system overloaded and collapsed under the sheer volume of calls. However, some people found the following workarounds:

• calls to dedicated “#” or “*” numbers went through unhindered.
• most cell to landline calls were being made to local numbers, so long distance lines were open. People called friends in other states who then relayed the information to loved ones in the area.
• cell to cell calls just would not go through. However, they would drop into voice mail. So people also communicated that way.

Connections are being restored, but it will be some time before the complete picture of the disaster can be assessed and we can lear lessons for the next time. Until then, than you Twitter and facebook.  You have proved your usefullness once again.

Charlie and the Twitter Factory

In case you didn’t know, Charlie Sheen joined Twitter a couple of days ago, and had over a million followers within 24 hours, the fastest so far.  He’s right up there with Conan and Kanye West for going zero to one million in twenty four hours.  Pretty heady stuff.

But the real story is that Charlie, unlike you, me and grandma, could be making money off his tweet stream. Not a million per tweet, but money that the rest of us would see as a pretty comfy side gig.  You see, Charlie Sheen is a member of the Ad.ly network, According to their own description,

“Ad.ly runs celebrity endorsements in social media. We help brands connect with consumers via the most influential celebrities, athletes and artists on Facebook, Twitter and more.

Ad.ly is pioneering the celebrity endorsement market in digital media, tapping the $50 billion global spend on endorsements as well as the $35 billion global spend in digital advertising.

In just 15 months, we have run 20,000 endorsements for 150 top brands.”

While Sheen hasn’t started hawking mirrors and razor blades via Ad.ly yet, if he did, he could pick up between $1000-$20000 per endorsement.  More celebrity endorsements are in tweet streams, currently making up about 30 percent of current ads.  Nice work if you can get it.  In the mean time, Sheen has been tweeting out images of brands, giving free advertising to Pepsi’s Naked Juice and Direct TV. I’m not sure if either company really wants Sheen to be endorsing their products, but these days, even bad publicity is good publicity.

So what does a guy do in this case?  When his tweets are of this variety…

“Just got asked to do the Nancy Grace show… I’d rather go on a long trip with Chuck Lorre in a ‘75 Pacer…”

All I can say is, “Bring it”.

A Fifty-One Foot Ladder

Janet Napolitano once claimed about a proposed fifty foot wall between the US and Mexico, “"You show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That’s the way the border works."

But this entry is not about borders, per se.  But the analogy applies.  Today, there has been protests in Egypt, following along the lines of the protests that brought down the Tunisian government not more than two weeks ago. The protestors are using Twitter, Twitpic, YouTube and Facebook to broadcast images and videos of what has been happening.  There were allegations that the government had shut off all access to Twitter earlier, but that has been called into question.  Unlike the protest in Iran, where the government cut off outside access, most of the government censorship in Egypt has apparently been half hearted. 

Which leads me to my point.  Even though the Iranian government tried to shut off information access, information about the protests did get out to the rest of the world.  No matter how high you build the fence, someone will get a taller ladder.  Information will get out and these days, information will get out quickly. 

History-All a Twitter

In one hundred yeas or so, when the next Ken Burns, or clone decides to document this era from the average person’s perspective, it should not be difficult to do.  Today, the Library of Congress announce that it will begin to house all of the public tweets that have ever been tweeted.  Even at only 140 characters per tweet, that’s a lot of information to be housed.  Since Twitter began, billions of tweets have been created. Today, fifty-five million tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply. A tiny percentage of accounts are protected but most of these tweets are created with the intent that they will be publicly available.

Why is this important?  Even though Twitter has not been around for all that long, there are events that have happened-and tweeters have been there.  Take this past summer when Iranian dissidents took to the streets.  Twitter was one of the major ways the rest of the world received information as to what was going on.  Same with the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.  In many ways, Twitter has become the front line for unfolding information-certainly a historian’s goldmine when it comes to describing the same event from multiple points of view. 

As ReadWriteWeb points out, there are still a lot of questions that remain to be answered. It’s not yet clear, for example, if friend and connection data will also be included in the database, or if the Library is planning on implementing a new interface for users to search all archived tweets.  Those details aside, there will be a six month waiting period before Twitter receives the message you tweet today, so before you tweet about dinner, remember, you’re tweeting about history now, so make it good.  Generations are relying on it.

WordPress Tags: Twitter, Library of Congress, History

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