Fans

A new study says 99% of US Online Retailers are planning to have Facebook Fan Pages, and 91% are planning to have Twitter accounts. Theoretically this is to both build a fan base and keep in touch with their customers about upcoming products and sales.

I've always seen the attempt to build "fans" around a retail outlet rather disingenuous. Consumers generally shop at one retailer or another because of low prices and convenience. I imagine there is generally no one who are actual fans of retailers, outside of Sharper Image/Brookstone gadget enthusiasts. I'm sure this massive move to online representation will separate retailers along those two lines: those who see this as a real opportunity to give their customers the information they need, and those who use this to attempt building an imaginary retailer fan base.

Facebook, Twitter, Internet Gossip

I've been thinking a lot lately about slander, and particularly the pettiness to which it sinks in the political and entertainment arenas. We're barraged by "breaking news" about divorces, infidelity, drug use, slip-ups, or even just a bad photo. Minutiae that are blown up to operatic proportions and evidence of why we can no longer put our trust in this or that person.

At the same time, we are a generation living through changes in the definition of privacy. Most of us are aware that our Tweets and Facebook posts are publicly available, and most of what we do online can be found one way or another. There are the stories of people losing jobs over Facebook and blog content, and reports that organizations now thoroughly research prospective employees' online presence.

I wonder what's going to happen in ten to fifteen years when the majority of our celebrities and politicians have been raised in this culture. I'd like to think we will become desensitized to this brand of "news", but I'm not sure. How will it change our definitions of privacy and our expectations of behavior when the people we look up to and choose to lead us have every past mistake documented for our scrutiny? How will the news media adapt to such a readily available source of gossip? Will we become more forgiving as a culture?

Google Captchas

Google has been on another round of purchases lately. They've snapped up the popular identity verification service reCAPTCHA, and there are rumors that they're looking to acquire the Brightcove video service as well.

Both are interesting moves. Google's reason for their acquisition of reCAPTCHA was not neccessarily as a security service, but apparently the software uses advanced scanning to take those words from old newspapers and books and make them readable to the services' computers. This is an effort to increase the viability of their Google Books project. Acquiring Brightcove is an interesting parallel to their acquisition of YouTube in 2006. The video service is popular among major news sites and this could shore up Google's dominance of online video.

There's a lot of promise here for these companies to expand their business. Google's proven record of acquiring companies and letting them continue to do what they do best has paid off. I'm excited to see these services helping Google's own projects as well.

Chrome +1

Google Chrome is one year old today. It's been a year of the fastest, slickest browser around which apparently hasn't gained the Google-like popularity the search engine enjoys.

I use both Firefox and Chrome myself. Firefox is the traditional, loyal browser that I prefer for it's enormously varied plugins and addons. I like being able to tweak my web browsing experience and finding new addons that do things I didn't even know I needed. Chrome, on the other hand, I use for quick simple tasks like checking out a YouTube video link or checking my Gmail. I enjoy it's lightweight nature and the separate-processes-per-tab. It's set as the default browser on my system, even though it's not my main browser, so I can use it to quickly view links. Even though I enjoy features of both, they occupy separate needs on my system.

I don't think Google Chrome will become my main browser in the near feature, but that could change. I'd like to see them open up the plugin API to the public. I'm sure if they did the diligent, and Google-loyal, programming community would produce some very awesome plugins for the browser. I'd like to see them support themes as well, which I understand is coming in the next version of Chrome. While the default look is clean when I'm browsing late at night I like something a bit easier on the eyes.

While the 2.84% market share Chrome currently enjoys in no way reflects Google's dominance in other web-related arenas there's still hope for the browser. Google has proven time after time that they have the innovation and the strength to completely change the way we view the web. I have confidence they'll make something revolutionary out of Chrome yet.

Digital Selves

There are a number of services online that make an "e-penis" list of the things I've listened to, read, played, or watched. I religiously update both my Shelfari and MyAnimeList accounts, and Last.fm takes care of itself as does Steam. I'm trying to find a comparable site to keep my movie reviews and ratings, and I was using Flixster on Facebook until I logged into the application with my actual Flixster account and it deleted the year and a half of ratings and reviews I had made while not technically "logged in." Great feature. IMDb is likely the place to go, and Mashable put out a list of 10 top social networking sites for movie lovers.

I'm both curious and squeamish about exploring what makes these kinds of sites so addictive. Squeamish because I'm afraid all I can point to is they help me feel like I've done something "productive" with activities that might not otherwise be considered "productive". Sure, I just logged two hours in Team Fortress 2 and grabbed a handful of achievements, or I finished three more episodes of Nodame Cantabile, but I could have been spending that time studying Japanese. I can't help but come to this conclusion because I also tend not to be very social on these sites. Sure I've got real life friends on Shelfari and Steam, and I keep an eye on their updates, but I'm mostly content to see myself chip away at the massive list of films I haven't seen or books I haven't read.

Is there inherent value in having these lists? Beyond justifying how I spend my time and sometimes not being able to remember all the media I've consumed.

Fascinating Developments in Freedom

Two major stories broke today: China has indefinitely postponed their Green Dam Censorship Software initiative, and coverage of the Iran Election on Twitter has exceeded 2 million Tweets.

It's cliche to say that current technology is changing the way we interact at a basic level but this is evidence that it really is. These are political movements in traditionally repressive countries that were fueled by technology. In the case of Green Dam, traditionally apathetic youth were galvanized to protest when their technology was being tampered with. Without the massive coverage on Twitter we would have very little knowledge of the size and extent of protests in Iran, and no knowledge of the protests from the average people involved.

We've seen for years how technology evolves too quickly to be squashed by the powers that be (the U.S. music industry), and we're seeing that same power applied to the political sphere. It's exciting to see technology improving lives in such positive ways and becoming a tool for political change in the world.