Facebook reinstates tech blogger, but debate goes on
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Facebook reinstated blogger Robert Scoble after he agreed not to use automated scripts to download data from the site.
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I&#8217;m playing the devil&#8217;s advocate here, so keep that in mind in case I end up trampling all over anything you hold dear :) Google has taken a lot of flak on a lot of issues in the past few years - it&#8217;s a price an industry leader invariably has to pay.  Apart from Blogger spam [...]
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Blogs have shifted the balance of information online, argue experts, and they are here to stay.
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I don't know what Bebo is, I guess it's a social network, they say it's #3 in the USA, #1 in the UK, but they just did something that's pretty likely to work, if it's technically possible. They're cloning Facebook so that their service will run Facebook apps. What this means, if they can pull it off, is that they won't have to fight to get support from developers. That's a big deal. Google could have done this with OpenSocial. Watching the panel assembled by Marc Canter at LeWeb3, I was reminded of every tech conference I've been to for almost 30 years. Some big company sitting in the center, and lots of smaller ones sucking up to them, not daring to say what's obvious, that the big company is only interested in limiting the growth of an upstart (not present on stage of course). That's where the Fear comes in Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. We don't say anything because we're too scared to. Even the outspoken Marc Canter, who's smart and has been around this block many times, doesn't dare say what's obvious.  Now Bebo decides to get in lockstep with Facebook, not Google. Of course! Facebook has the juice. But this is a dangerous place to be if Facebook doesn't want them there, and being a big company, they probably don't. The only value of having clones to FB is that it negates the threat from Google. Sometimes having clones is a good thing, but usually the clones take over the market. Witness MSIE and Netscape, and then Firefox. Compaq et al and IBM. dBASE and Fox. It's possible to depose an installed leader if it's possible to clone them. As a user and developer, I'd like to see FB be open to cloning. If I were a FB shareholder I'm not so sure. One constituency that's sure to like the existence of clones are Facebook developers. Without choice in platform vendors, they have nowhere to go when the sole vendor decides to take over their market. With a viable alternative, unless FB is incredibly aggressive and builds its competitive features so they can run on competitive platforms, at least developers will have a place to run their apps when FB encroaches. Platforms are a game, like Risk, with rules and strategies. Google did not play the game wisely with OpenSocial. I chalk this up to inexperience on the part of the strategists. So far Facebook has been doing what's needed to keep its dominant position. Bebo deciding to clone the Facebook API ratifies that position, it's a gutsy move, but the best one available to them, and to other would-be Facebook competitors. PS: The news is slow to reach Europe. Facebook said yesterday that they support what Bebo is doing. Very enthusiastically. That should be the end of OpenSocial.
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A word game that has proved hugely popular with Facebook members could soon disappear.
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Facebook's application platform could be the next battleground in the privacy wars. Will Facebook fold and finally respect user privacy?
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Facebook.com, the No. 2 U.S.  social network site that is quickly expanding beyond its  college student base, has been met with a sudden privacy  backlash by users after it made design changes this week.
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Facebook terminated the account of conservative blogger Jon Swift because he uses a pseudonym, not a real name. But after pressure from A-list bloggers, the social network reconsidered and reinstated Swift's account.
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Ignore Diogenes, he's just trolling Stob 'What if,' said a friend down the pub the other day, when the conversation was circling uneasily for take off at that tricky third round mark, 'what if those old Greek philosophers - you know, the ones that used to sit around all day gassing - what if they had had the benefit of modern social website software, like Facebook? Would it have made a difference to Western civilisation?'â¦
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Tech-support alumni around the Web continue to raise eyebrows and questions about the tale of the tech-support call that came a decade too late, but blogger "BIC" revealed further details about the incident by way of bolstering his claim.
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Facebook is now taking steps to prevent some third-party applications from engaging in "inappropriate actions".
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By Fred Reed, The Washington Times  Feb. 17--TROOPS' BLOGS UNDER SCRUTINY: Once again, technology has outrun  the laws we use to regulate it. Consider the Pentagon's current automated  surveillance of troops' blogs.
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Regular columnist Bill Thompson takes a look at the future of social networking sites.
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If you've got a blog and a job, beware. The two sometimes don't go together, as many ex-workers are finding out. By Rachel Metz.
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Blog: TechCrunch reports that a lot of rumors are spreading about it, but it's still unsubstantiated.
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There are dozens of Weblogs that seemingly anyone who is anybody in the technology industry reads regularly. Lisa Hsu's blog isn't one of them.
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Do you believe that? I was working on a longer article about the Digg.com bans, because ReveNews.com, a blogger News site with over 20 Bloggers was banned from digg.com because of one authors action. Multiple attempts were made to get the site unbanned without success. I needed a screenshot that shows the message that the URL [...]