Recently in Social Networking Category

Last weekend, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch had some trouble with his cable just as a New York Times article featuring him hit the front page. So, after a ton of frustration, he Twittered about it. What he didn't expect was that his "tweet" would lead to a phone call, and a resolution. He wrote about it here.

Law Professor (and blogger) Eugene Volokh wrote yesterday about another housing discrimination court case in California, Fair Housing Council v. Roommates.com. 

Here, the part of the profile that is alleged to offend the 

Fair Housing Act and state housing discrimination laws--the 

information about sex, family status and sexual orientation-- 

is provided by subscribers in response to Roommate's ques- 

tions, which they cannot refuse to answer if they want to use 

defendant's services. By requiring subscribers to provide the 

information as a condition of accessing its service, and by 

providing a limited set of pre-populated answers, Roommate 

becomes much more than a passive transmitter of information 

provided by others; it becomes the developer, at least in part, 

of that information.

This is troubling. Any social networking site is going to have options that channel people towards one another. Isn't that the point? I understand the point of the Fair Housing Act, but what bothers me is that the Court says that a site becomes a developer of information by collecting a pre-defined set of answers. 

Our dissenting colleague takes a much narrower view of 

what it means to "develop" information online, and concludes 

that Roommate does not develop the information because 

"[a]ll Roommate does is to provide a form with options for 

standardized answers." Dissent at 3487. But Roommate does 

much more than provide options. To begin with, it asks dis- 

criminatory questions that even the dissent grudgingly admits 

are not entitled to CDA immunity. Dissent at 3480 n.5. The 

FHA makes it unlawful to ask certain discriminatory ques- 

tions for a very good reason: Unlawful questions solicit (a.k.a. 

"develop") unlawful answers. Not only does Roommate ask 

these questions, Roommate makes answering the discrimina- 

tory questions a condition of doing business. This is no differ- 

ent from a real estate broker in real life saying, "Tell me 

whether you're Jewish or you can find yourself another bro- 

ker." When a business enterprise extracts such information 

from potential customers as a condition of accepting them as 

clients, it is no stretch to say that the enterprise is responsible, 

at least in part, for developing that information. For the dis- 

sent to claim that the information in such circumstances is 

"created solely by" the customer, and that the business has not 

helped in the least to develop it, Dissent at 3487-88, strains 

both credulity and English.

This may be true, but it still raises a question: how do you connect people without allowing them to figure out who they are trying to connect with? This goes far beyond the question of housing. The Court even holds that Roommate.com's search function violates the law because it allows people to express discriminatory intent, and screens results so you...find what you're looking for. 

[9] Similarly, Roommate is not entitled to CDA immunity 

for the operation of its search system, which filters listings, or 

of its email notification system, which directs emails to sub- 

scribers according to discriminatory criteria.21 Roommate 

designed its search system so it would steer users based on the 

preferences and personal characteristics that Roommate itself 

forces subscribers to disclose. If Roommate has no immunity 

for asking the discriminatory questions, as we concluded 

above, see pp. 3455-57 supra, it can certainly have no immu- 

nity for using the answers to the unlawful questions to limit 

who has access to housing. 

For example, a subscriber who self-identifies as a "Gay 

male" will not receive email notifications of new housing 

opportunities supplied by owners who limit the universe of 

acceptable tenants to "Straight male(s)," "Straight female(s)" 

and "Lesbian(s)." Similarly, subscribers with children will not 

be notified of new listings where the owner specifies "no chil- 

dren." Councils charge that limiting the information a sub- 

scriber can access based on that subscriber's protected status 

violates the Fair Housing Act and state housing discrimination 

laws. It is, Councils allege, no different from a real estate bro- 

ker saying to a client: "Sorry, sir, but I can't show you any 

listings on this block because you are [gay/female/black/a par- 

ent]." If such screening is prohibited when practiced in person 

or by telephone, we see no reason why Congress would have 

wanted to make it lawful to profit from it online.

 

Roommate's search function is similarly designed to steer 

users based on discriminatory criteria. Roommate's search 

engine thus differs materially from generic search engines 

such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search, in that Room- 

mate designed its system to use allegedly unlawful criteria so 

as to limit the results of each search, and to force users to par- 

ticipate in its discriminatory process. In other words, Councils 

allege that Roommate's search is designed to make it more 

difficult or impossible for individuals with certain protected 

characteristics to find housing--something the law prohibits. 

By contrast, ordinary search engines do not use unlawful 

criteria to limit the scope of searches conducted on them, nor 

are they designed to achieve illegal ends--as Roommate's 

search function is alleged to do here. Therefore, such search 

engines play no part in the "development" of any unlawful 

searches. See 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(3). 

Do any other technically-minded people find this to be insane parsing? I'm not going to go into the rest of the opinion, but I'll ask this question: does this go too far? Shouldn't the liability for violation of the law rest with the individual violating it? 

The AP says it's true.

MIDLOTHIAN, Va. (AP) -- On a screen at the front of a classroom, Gene Fishel flashed an online social-networking profile of "hotlilflgirl," which said she was 15, enjoys being around boys and wants to meet new people.

The next image revealed the real "hotlilflgirl" -- a mug shot of a 31-year-old man who was convicted of sexually abusing 11 children he met online and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

"Not little, not fly and not a girl," said Fishel, a Virginia assistant attorney general. He warned his audience about the dangers of sharing personal information on the Internet and agreeing to meet Web acquaintances in person.

Fishel's presentation at James River High School recently was one of many being held this school year in the state, the first to mandate that public schools offer Internet safety classes for all grade levels.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea (it's a great idea) but can we do without the scaremongering? Sean Aune at Mashable sums it up, but I've got reservations. He says:

The Virginia program is attempting to safeguard the children by educating the students as well as the parents. To the children, they are trying to explain never to meet anyone you meet solely online, as well as trying to remember that anything you post today could come back to haunt you years from now when applying to a university or a job. For the parents, they are trying to explain that they should install filtering software as well keeping computers in common areas of the home so they can monitor their child's activities while online.

So, they're telling kids that anyone on the 'net will hurt them if they don't meet them online, even if it's via a social network based around their own community or interests (user groups, meetups, etc)?  I can understand the whole "audit trail" thing but I think the focus should be on how to be a responsible contributor, not a fearful lurker. Parents keeping an eye on the little ones is never a bad idea.

While I've never been a major fan of the concept of "school as parent" in teaching children what they should really be learning at home, this is one time where it is quite possible the school would know more than a parent. Nonetheless, as the oldest member of the Mashable staff, I am happy to say that education officials are at least trying to school parents on the need to pay greater attention to their technological responsibilities when it comes to their children. The most effective defense will generally be for parents to get involved in their child's activities, whether they be online or off.

I'm sorry, but you missed a point that this effort is being (at least in this case) led by a law enforcement official, an Attorney General. NOT a trained teacher. 

If education officials want to teach online safety and responsibility (the two go hand in hand, I think) than TEACHERS need to be trained. This isn't a law enforcement problem.

Further, can't schools train teachers to point out the bad by emphasizing the positive applications of social networking and related technologies? If the message is fear, it will fail. Weapons grade fail.  

Lawyers should be in courts, not classrooms.

As a native Washingtonian, I know the value of a good business card exchange. It's almost a ritual here, as well as at most conferences and networking events I attend.

I don't know if I'm behind the times, but after my "conference hell month" I've got about 400 business cards I still need to scan and some to reply to. I should buy a scanner.

However, some of them I'm putting at the bottom of the pile:

1. If you handed me a "moocard," one of those tiny little calling cards sold using your flickr photos, you've immediately gone to to the bottom of the pile. Why? They're not real cards. They're not useful to me. They don't tell me enough about you for me to remember you, and they all look pretty much alike.

2. If you hand me a double-sided, glossy business card with no white space, you lose points. Why? Part of the beauty of business cards, is that with a pen, I can write things on them, like how, when, or where I met you, if we have a mutual friend, or anything else that would make me pick your card out of the stack and possibly do something important. When you have shiny, dark colored cards, I can't write on them. You remove a valuable avenue for making your cards a tool, not just something to gawk at. It may look cool, but it's useless to me as a networking facilitator.

3. Cutesy cards with company-related graphics and logos are ok. Double-sided cards are ok. However, if you must go that far, please, please, please, please have at least one side with some space that I could write on. I cannot stress this enough. When I get home at the end of the day, or even when I make a card exchange (an art in and of itself) I write things down, like the date or event, so I can better mentally sort through who you are, especially at somewhere like SXSW where I came away with 250 cards in 4 days. If you want to be remembered, make it easy. Plus, someone might want to write a note to themselve that they really, really want to do business with you. Make sure there is a place for them to write.

4. It's ok to be creative, but remember that your card is a tool for helping people remember you, and leaves a lasting impression of how "serious" you are. A quick look at my stack reveals that the vast majority of people who would be considered "important" or that I made a point of getting back to first had uncluttered, easy to read cards with ample writing space, communicated the basic information (name, title contact info) and were generally devoid of clutter, gloss, or garish color schemes. If you had these things, they had better be enough to make me remember you.

5. If you're going to be creative, be really, really creative. Check out the SXSW Card Collective for examples of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the creative (in a good way).

 

FYI, Here's mine:

 

Robert Scoble's is awesome, and has enough white space to still be useful. Best of both worlds.

 

Back to tech/politics later. I hear there's an Energy bill around.

London's Times Online reports on a creepy Facebook app called SNIFF, which tracks your location upon request of...anyone, once you opt-in. 

Husbands who are not where they are supposed to be could soon be in danger of being "sniffed" out by a mobile phone service that gives suspicious partners an electronic map showing the location of their spouse.

The Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (Sniff) is a new application, accessed via Facebook or mobile phone, which could bring an end to frantic "Where r u?" text messages.

The service, popular in Scandinavia, promises to provide users with a detailed map of their friends' locations, any time and anywhere. However, there are fears that Sniff could be abused by employers to remove the last vestiges of privacy from staff.

Useful Networks, the American company behind Sniff, promised that only consumers who gave their permission could be electronically tracked by the service, which operates across all mobile carriers. The company plans to charge users about 75p for each location "sniff", with the results for mobile customers sent by return SMS. But "sniffing" could become addictive.

Let's contrast this to Loopt, shall we? Loopt allows you to turn the service off and even spoof your location. This is totally the opposite. Once you're in, you're in. Oh, yeah. They're going to charge you per use! 

It will be the first Facebook application to apply premium charges to customers' mobile bills. The heaviest users in Sweden are wireless-connected members of the social networking site, who have integrated the application into their personal profile page.

Shel Israel, who has a far larger of number of Twitter followers, friends, etc, than I do, has a rather straightforward Twitter following policy which he has posted on his blog, Global Neighbourhoods.

• If I do not know who you are, or what you look like, or where you are coming from I will not follow you.
• With very few exceptions, I will not follow brands, candidates, causes or company names. I wish to talk with humans, not brand icons, neither surveys nor bots. If you are a real person & you are passionate about your work, then I embrace you. If you are a Direct Marketer using Twitter to push you brand into my forehead, I will block you.
• Even if you are a real person, I may not follow you. I need to see that you are talking either about topics or people I care about.
• If you disagree with me, do it under your own name and I will respect you. If you personally insult me, I will block you. If you are consistently unpleasant or just boring, I will unfollow or block you.
• With extremely rare exception, I will not follow anonymous Tweeters.

I'll give him props. This is possibly the most brilliant articulation of a philosophy which, as a longtime Internet user, I have adhered to for as long as I have been online (which has been almost half of my life). Despite the warnings from doomsayers to "never give out personal information online," I have always posted under either my real name, my initials (see my Twitter username), or with some kind of link back to my real identity (Andrew Feinberg), location (whether it has been Washington, DC, Madison, WI or Philadelphia, PA) and other information allowing people to know who is behind whatever is being written. 

1. When I write or participate in an online community, I know that my words can be linked back to me. This is not self-censorship, but self-respect. I have enough respect for my name (or as Gary Vaynerchuk would say, my legacy) that I am willing to stand by my words and opinions. One of my main questions for social networking privacy or PR reps is how to deal with the "audit trail" you leave behind as you participate on communities or discussions. I think the middle ground that I can agree with many of them on is that honesty is the best policy, and that anonymity should be used when needed. The default should be to stand by your name.
2. I am easy to find and I have a reputation to protect. I make it a point to respect people because I never know when someone will want something from me, want to help me, or want me to help them. By putting my name and identity on the line, I allow myself to be more helpful since if someone likes what I do, they can ask me to help them. Case in point: last week, the guys at Mashable wanted some help covering TPS. Although it didn't work out in the end, they were able to get a hold of me because my identity is no secret.

Yesterday, Verizon Wireless (which I'll be referring to as VZW, as per usual) announced that it will begin offering Loopt service to its customers for $4 per month.  This is a huge, huge, huge announcement for Loopt because this is only the second distinct carrier to offer their product.  Loopt was originally (and is still predominantly) offered by Boost mobile.  Yes, it is now available to Sprint's CDMA users, but Boost is the iDEN prepaid network which is owned by Sprint.  Also, VZW has a lot more subscribers than Sprint and Boost combined (Sprint is at about 53.8 million subscribers, Boost about 4 million and VZW at about 65.7 million).

For anyone who doesn't know what Loopt is (if this is you I should probably also say "Welcome to Capitol Valley!"), it is a location-based service (LBS) that allows you to use your mobile phone to share your location with your friends.  I'm pretty sure you've seen the ads with the very round people asking each other "Where you at?"  That's Loopt.  Some other guy wrote about them too.

Some people bring up the privacy issue, but Loopt is 100% opt in.  It can be purchased directly from your handset, but it (and most services that you can subscribe to via the handset) would be almost impossible to sign up by accident.  It's a really cool service that's been really well marketed and implemented.  Also, Andrew interviewed their chief privacy officer, Brian Knapp.  The fact that they have a chief privacy officer and that they send him apparently everywhere shows an amazing self-awareness of the fact that a lot of people could look at them as a privacy cluster-fudge.

That self-awareness coupled with a great product is why Loopt is now offered by both major CDMA carriers and available to over 100 million subscribers.

Not too shabby for a three-year-old.





Here is VZW's press release.

Here's "some other guy"'s article.  Actually, it's CongressDaily's Andrew Noyes.

And here is our Andrew's interview with Brian Knapp.

I'm in a fantastic panel on using Social Media for policy, both corporate communications and for public policy issues and transparency. Panelists (from R-L when I get the picture up, my setup is balking because I'm so deep in a metal building) are: