Twitter and Facebook

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From this week’s Economist.

The services differ in two important respects. The first is the nature of the relationships that underlie them. On Facebook, users can communicate directly only if one of them has agreed to be a “friend” of the other. On Twitter, people can sign up to follow any public tweets they like. The service, which boasts Ashton Kutcher (4.3m followers) and Oprah Winfrey (3m) among its most popular users, is in essence a broadcasting system that lets users transmit short bursts of information to lots of strangers as well as to their pals. Facebook, for its part, is more of an intimate, continuing conversation between friends.

This difference is revealed in research conducted by Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, a professor at Harvard Business School, and one of his MBA students, Bill Heil. They surveyed just over 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 and found that more than half of them tweeted less than once every 74 days. They also discovered that the most prolific 10% of twitterers accounted for 90% of all tweets. On other online social networks the most active users typically produce just 30% of all content. Another survey published in June by Sysomos, a research firm that had analysed 11.5m Twitter accounts, found that one in five people that were signed up to the service had never posted anything.

Another big difference between Twitter and Facebook is in the kind of content that gets sent over their networks. Facebook allows people to exchange videos, photos and other material, whereas Twitter is part-blog, part e-mail. “There’s a real difference here between the power of multimedia and the power of text,” says Dom Sagolla, the author of a book about the art of twittering.

I’m ashamed to confess that I’ve never heard of Ashton Kutcher. Perhaps I’m just having a Retired Colonel moment.

Got a pad?

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I know, I should be ashamed of myself. But the iPad mania was beginning to get irritating. And this is a hoot (or an hoot, as purists might say).

Open University goes over to Google Apps

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Just noticed this announcement.

Open University students will have greater opportunities to collaborate and communicate with each other thanks to a new agreement between the OU and Google.

The University will be deploying Google Apps for Education to run alongside other learning systems, with services that include: email, instant messaging, contact management, calendar, space for shared documents, and online document creation. There is the potential for more services to be added in the future.

These additional services are being provided to students to enable them to network and collaborate more effectively with each other. The default email provision for students will be with Google, but existing preferred email options will be maintained.

The OU (disclosure: where I have my day job, though I’m on sabbatical at the moment) is a very big and influential outfit in these areas. This is quite a coup for Google. (And I had absolutely nothing to do with it.)

Photographers protest against police stop and search

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From the Guardian.

Thousands of photographers have staged a mass protest against the ‘malicious’ use of anti-terrorism laws to stop them taking pictures in public places.

Trafalgar Square in central London was lit up by flash bulbs as part of the demonstration against photographers being unfairly targeted by police after taking photos. They are usually questioned under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows officers to stop and search without the need for ‘suspicion’ within designated areas in the UK.

More than 2,000 professional and amateur photographers took part in the protest organised by the group I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist!, many carrying placards bearing its name.

Onlookers were handed stop and search cards by organisers outlining their rights.

Freelance photographer and Guardian contributor Marc Vallee, who helped organise the protest with appeals on Twitter and Facebook, said he was “delighted” by the turnout.

“It’s quite obvious that professional photographers across the country are being searched because they are photographers not because they are suspicious,” he said.

“It’s a common-law right to take pictures in public places and we are here to show that.”

So is this it?

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From VentureBeat.

We’ll know for sure tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the New York Times thinks that old media are seeing the device as a time machine that will enable them to unravel the nightmare of the Web:

With the widely anticipated introduction of a tablet computer at an event here on Wednesday morning, Apple may be giving the media industry a kind of time machine — a chance to undo mistakes of the past.

Almost all media companies have run aground in the Internet Age as they gave away their print and video content on the Web and watched paying customers drift away as a result.

People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to read news, books and other material, but also a way for companies to charge for all that content. By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.

This opportunity, however, comes with a sizable catch: Steven P. Jobs.

‘Larry and Sergey’ to offload 10m Google shares

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From The Register.

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each plan to sell 5 million shares of their common stock in the company over the next five years.

According to an SEC filing, this is part of their respective “long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity.”

Larry and Sergey – as the filing actually refers to them – currently hold 57.7 million shares of Class B Google common stock. That represents roughly 59 per cent of the voting power of the company’s outstanding capital stock.

After selling 10 million shares, their voting power would drop to 49 per cent. But when you toss in the stock held by CEO Eric Schmidt, the Google holy trinity – who have vowed to work together until 2024 – will still control the majority of the company's voting shares.

I like that phrase “long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity”. Wonder if it’d work with my bank manager. He might, of course, ask what “assets” I possessed that might require “diversification”.

Just checked the Google share price. It’s currently $550.01. That makes 5 million shares worth, now,… let me see, $2.75 billion.

Google and China: from drama to crisis in one easy step

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This morning’s Observer column.

ONE USEFUL spin-off from the developing story of Google’s difficulties with the Chinese communist regime is that it may finally spur the west to discard the rose-tinted spectacles through which it has chosen to view China in the past decade – and not before time.

The west’s response to China’s rapid industrialisation was determined by a recipe blending three parts greed with one part naivety. The greed was understandable: the stupendous rate of Chinese economic growth triggered a desperate desire for a slice of the action. Everywhere, whether in companies or universities, one found a palpable determination to “get into China”. In the political world, we saw western governments scramble to out-do one another in fawning upon visiting Chinese potentates.

Still, greed is part of human nature; we have to make a living, and often behave reprehensibly while doing so. What was less forgivable about the west’s approach was the implicit naivety. It was a product of wishful thinking brought about by market triumphalism, the belief that, in the end, it is impossible to have a capitalist economy without also having liberal political institutions…

FOOTNOTES:

  • Full text of Hilary Clinton’s speech on Internet Freedom is here. And Clay Shirky has done a useful abridged version.
  • Microsoft, of course, has no problems with Chinese censorship. Indeed Steve Ballmer thinks the Google view is nuts, at least according to this report:

    At a conference in Houston on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke critically of Google’s recent decision to stop censoring its search results in China. Paraphrasing some of Ballmer’s statements, Forbes says Ballmer called it an “irrational business decision” on Google’s part.

    Ballmer suggested that Google’s decision to no longer filter out internet searches objectionable to the Chinese government was an irrational business decision. After all, Ballmer said, the U.S. imports oil from Saudi Arabia despite the censorship that goes on in that country.

    “The U.S. is the most extreme when it comes to free speech,” said Ballmer, noting however that even the U.S. bans child pornography, while France bans internet access to Nazi imagery.

    Forbes says Ballmer made the statements during the Q&A session after a speech to oil company executives. Ballmer also said that Bing will comply with requests to censor its search results “if the Chinese government gives us proper legal notice.”

  • Perry Anderson has a terrific piece about Sinomania in the current issue of the London Review of Books.

    • The National Security State

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    When I opened this morning’s Guardian I had a fleeting thought that it must be April 1st. But it isn’t. This crazed stampede into ubiquitous surveillance is really scary. The big question now is whether a Tory administration would pull back from this precipice. I’m not holding my breath.

    And the lead contractor, BAE Systems, is the company that Tony Blair decided should not be prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office on ‘national security’ grounds.