Facebook Rolls Back Privacy Changes …

It looks like Facebook will finally put the decisions about privacy settings in their users’ hands ...

Facebook Bows to Pressure Over Privacy

Under Pressure, Facebook Rolls Back Privacy Changes

Zuckerberg said the new privacy settings, which will show up in users’ accounts over the next couple of weeks, would make it easier for users to understand how much of their personal information was publicly accessible. “The settings have gotten complex, and it has become hard for people to use them effectively,” he said.

“Facebook's rapid response to privacy concerns may just have saved the world's fastest-growing internet brand from long-term damage. The company, which has undergone a month of withering criticism, today introduced a simplified new dashboard to control privacy settings, rolling back some of the changes made last month that confused users, concerned privacy advocates and drew the attention of Congress.“ It looks like things are moving in right direction, and I hope this really means that Facebook will stop misleading users with incomprehensible and tricky privacy settings.

Google TV: TV meets web, web meets TV

In my previous post I was writing about dilemma around overlaps of traditional and social media content and I concluded that new technologies will change the way people watch TV. Recently Google present interactive platform, Google TV, which combines TV and Web. Is this already one of technological innovation that will drastically change the way we watch TV?

It was estimated that around 4 billion people across the world watch TV, but today there is an increasing amount of our entertainment experiences that is coming from our phones and computers, mainly because they have access to the web. But on other hand these devices still lack some features and high-quality viewing experience that the TV offers. Google combined the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience.

They have presented it on their Official Blog:
“Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more. Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. “
Google TV will be available in the USA in autumn this year and elsewhere around the world in 2011.

But, will Google TV really make a technological renaissance that would change our TV-viewing experience forever, as predicted by some industry analysts? Ellen Dudar says Google is repeating failures of Microsoft TV, Apple TV and Yahoo TV. She argues that for a new product to attain widespread consumer adoption, it must be 10 times better than the current way, readily accessible and cost competitive.

She says Google TV will be another ITV failure because of
• Complexity -> consumers must add yet another box to what is already a complicated setup. Had Google asked internet surfers to purchase a separate appliance to sit next to their computer, their search business would've failed miserably.
• Cost -> to make Google TV work, consumers must purchase the Logitech box (rumored to be north of $400) or a new Android HD TV. This is in addition to what they pay for cable and satellite television since Google TV does not deliver television programming.
• Consumer behavior-> Consumer research indicates viewers want much more from their TVs, but not open surfing of the web. They want features that enhance programming and deliver convenience.
• Confused advertising -> Google wants a slice of the $70 billion advertising pie, while Google can deliver new ads in their overlays; they have nothing to do with making linear television spots more targeted and interactive. In fact, Google TV encourages even greater audience fragmentation that undermines television content and advertising models.
• Competition -> By the time Google makes its service available, 25 million cable homes will have interactive features at no additional cost and effort.

Although viewing experience that combines TV and the freedom and power of the Internet sounds appealing, I agree with Ellen Dudar, consumers want their TV to do more, but only if it's easy, relevant to the viewing experience and provides real consumer benefits. Will be Google TV able to fulfill all these requirements?

Good Old Television ...

Nowadays we are constantly listening how social media are changing and shaping the world around us and what a dramatic improvements in communication, connectivity and socializing they enabled. Yes, all this is true, but not long ago I read an interesting article, “In Praise of the Original Social Media: Good Ol' Television”, where author, Simon Dumenco, point out an interesting dilemma, “people often use “new” social media to talk about what is/was on TV”.

“For all the buzz and obsession about social media, old media still rules our lives. And of all the old media, TV maintains the tightest grip on our collective consciousness. Pay attention to what is really being talked about en masse on Twitter (and Facebook and elsewhere in the social- media sphere) and chances are pretty good it relates to what is on TV at the moment somewhere in the world, or what was on TV last night”.

He argues that people want to watch TV together, not only with their friends and families in their homes, but with the culture at large. TV remains not only passive medium, but one that people want to consume socially.

“We want to experience what lots of other people are experiencing and TV still delivers that mass, simultaneous experience better and more economically than anything else. There’s something deeply, beautifully human about people using newfangled social media to share their awe about great moments on good old-fashioned TV.”

To some extent I have to agree with his statements. I checked a little bit on Twitter and Facebook, and there are quite a lot of comments, link and groups that relates to what is/was on TV. But I am not sure if TV world in social media sphere really dominate over online world. In my opinion contents of social media depends on what age group and which social medium we are watching. Younger generations are definitely moving away from TV and instead on relying on TV for mass, simultaneous experience, they are using other online, digital sources. For other age groups, social media allows them to watch TV and interact on a “global” level with people watching the same show. As one of comments put it nicely, "social media are like the community TV room in the old-school college dorms. And it is for people who are old enough to know what is meant when we say that".

Project for Excellence in Journalism made an interesting survey about how blogs and social media agendas relate and differ from the traditional press. They confirmed assumption that relationship between traditional media and social media content differs according to a medium.

“While social media players espouse a different agenda than the mainstream media, blogs still heavily rely on the traditional press for their information. More than 99% of the stories linked to in blogs came from legacy outlets such as newspapers and broadcast networks. Twitter, by contrast, was less tied to traditional media. Here half (50%) of the links were to legacy outlets; 40% went to web-only news sources such as Mashable and CNET. The remaining 10% went to wire stories or non-news sources on the Web.”

Although new technologies are increasingly steering us away from traditional media, TV is definitely not going to vanish in the foreseeable future, but the way next generations will watch TV will differ drastically from what we know today.

SmartBrief: "Save your time and keep you smart"

In previous post I wrote about an interview with Merritt Colaizzi, publisher of SmartBrief, a media company that aggregates content in more than 150 daily business publications covering 23 industries. She pointed out the growing importance of filtering and aggregation of the content, as a result of information saturation in today’s world.

I was curious how SmartBrief newsletters look like and how useful they are, so I sign up for daily briefing on the business of social media. Although these newsletters are intended for businesspeople, I think they are very interesting and instructive also for students in this area.

SmartBrief on social media delivers news, insights and information about new and established social networks, user-generated content, blogging, wikis, media sharing, and more. Their editors hand-pick the most relevant and important news from all over, summarize it and link to the original sources. They also enable their readers to have a discussion about what they read; there is SmartBlog on Social Media, where e-newsletter readers share ideas. Subscriptions are free of charge, offered in partnership with more than 100 leading trade associations, professional societies, non-profits and corporations.

In my opinion this is a good way to follow what is happening in certain area and I recommend to check it out -->

http://www.smartbrief.com
http://www.smartbrief.com/socialmedia

How social media is changing publishing?

Social media has changed the world of publishing a lot and it is continue to change it every day. Few days ago I watch an interesting interview with Merritt Colaizzi, publisher of SmartBrief, a media company that aggregates content in more than 150 daily business publications covering 23 industries. She presents few most important trends about publishing industry related to social media.

sme_mc_022310 from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

The most important trend she points out is that people are reporting breaking news through social media and their reports are sometimes really edgy stuff that can not be seen in media. There is more and more audience participating in the actual production of what they are publishing every day. And there is so much information out there and every day new sources are proliferating, but we have the same amount of time to absorb that information, so there is more and more important the filtering and aggregation of the content. The survey among readers of Smart Brief publications showed that most important things of coming to readers in 2010 are mobile applications, content aggregation and filtering. Smart Brief adjusted their publishing model to these trends. They present few top stories from different areas in their publications and because there is important that conversations are going around the news, they enable their readers to have a discussion on different streams. They are also moving to aggregating the most important user comments and finding other ways to integrate reader input and develop their community further. That is why Merritt predicts audiences will get even more involved in the creation of the content they consume in the future. In my opinion this kind of publishing model will get more and more attention because engagement is becoming a key feature in media landscape.