Experimenting with Facebook

Great article in the Atlantic about how social scientists are using Facebook to conduct experiments on a HUGE scale.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/did-facebook-give-democrats-the-upper-hand/264937/?google_editors_picks=true

Zynga misses big on earnings

Zynga, maker of games such as Farmville, is down BIG after reporting a $22 million loss. How could this widely successful social gaming company possibly lose money? These games are huge cash cows, they don't require massive servers, complex development etc. In fact the company had nearly $1.2 billion in revenues last year. So what happened? One trip to their Wikipedia page is very telling:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga

At the company's headquarters in SoMa:

employees enjoy perks such as free gourmet meals, access to an in-house nutritionist, personal training, and insurance coverage for pets. Zynga headquarters features a coffee shop, gaming arcade, gym, basketball court, and wellness center

...the building is only 7 stories tall - are there actually any offices in there??

Mad Men Is So Good / Monogamy and Cheating

I'm pretty sure that somewhere someone on the internet has made a relatively intelligible argument supporting almost any viewpoint. Not saying this blog post is one of them but it kind of gave me that impression. Given that I just finished Mad Men Season 4 I think this article fits nicely with the theme of my night. Its titled "Is Cheating a Rational Choice?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-anderson-phd/cheating_b_1528890.html

More awesomeness from Google

I just spent the last half hour browsing through the new Google Art Project:

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Time to get back to work.

Facebook is trying to trademark the word 'book'

Apparently they've already got 'face'.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/facebook-asserts-trademark-on-word-book-in-new-user-agreement.ars

I shouldn't have bought all those car bombs and bmx bikes on my ski trip

Interesting op-ed in the NYT last weekend titled "Facebook Is Using You" about the potential dangers of our increasingly data driven world. More and more our purchases, Google searches and Facebook statuses impact not only the ads we see, but our ability to qualify a loan or get insurance. This data is really powerful which makes the potential for abuse high. If "they" can predict what we're going to do, how far are we from a big brother type of society? Although I don't necessarily agree with the author's "social implications" we do need to find some balance between privacy and the unrestrained use of data. One guy described in this article had his credit limit cut because "other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repaying history with American Express." Next time I'll be sure to pay for my guns, booze and strippers in cash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/facebook-is-using-you.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Writing to Congress

For a long time I rarely voted and I certainly never wrote to my Congressmen. I figured, what's the point? Each member of Congress serves so many people that my individual opinion surely won't matter. But a couple of years ago I realized that's a really stupid opinion. Looking around the world today and back through history we are so lucky to live in a (reasonably) functional democracy. But if we take it for granted we will lose it. Perhaps not to communists and tyrants but to greedy corporations or war-mongering politicians. There are plenty of people who stand to gain a lot by encroaching on democracy. Now I see the only way to overcome their lobbyists and super-PACs is to be part of an engaged electorate. They may have the money but we're the ones who vote for our leaders and we're the ones who can vote them out. So in the meantime we need to remind our elected officials that they serve their constituents not their campaign donors.

[Shameless plug] I just wrote to my Congressmen to vote against SOPA, I encourage you to do the same.

https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173

SOPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act has a lot of people up in arms. This bill will allow courts to issue injunctions against companies whose websites could potentially be used to facilitate piracy (regardless of what anti-piracy measures they're taking.) That includes many companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Paypal. If the bill passes these companies will almost immediately be forced to shut down by court order. In fact the situation is so dire that these companies are planning to shut down their websites for a day:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/111543-google-amazon-facebook-and-twitter-considering-nuclear-option-to-protest-sopa

And if anyone needs more reason to oppose this bill, the biggest supporters are the RIAA and the MPAA. I think that says it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Groupon Bubble

Funny how economics works, someone comes up with a great idea makes a lot of money, everyone copies that great idea, all of a sudden the original idea is no longer profitable. There are red flags all over groupon, a constantly shrinking IPO, old investors bailing as new ones come in, questionable accounting practices and big payouts of the executives. This does not sound like a company on firm financial footing. One line from this article in particular stuck out - "[Groupon is part of] an industry that is turning into the digital equivalent of junk mail."

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-21/tech/30305419_1_groupon-s-ipo-ipo-boutique-daily-deals

Google - really cool or really scary?

Interesting line from an article I just read about Google:

"We are not Google’s customers, we are its product. We – our fancies, fetishes, predilections and preferences – are what Google sells to advertisers."

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n19/daniel-soar/it-knows

Its incredible how much data Google must have on me and everyone really. They know everything I've searched for online, everything I've looked at on my phone, all my email, they have maps of the entire world (with pictures!) and all the location based data they're collecting from my phone. On top of that they're working on getting access to every book in the world, building self driving cars and who knows what else - recording every conversation across the globe? Their business isn't search, its data. Maybe they'll even figure out how to automate the process of analyzing the data... in that case I should look into a new career. I wonder if Google is hiring...

h.t. MR

Disney.xxx

Remember when whitehouse.com was a porn site? It must have been at least 10 years ago, I remember doing research for a social studies paper in 8th grade and stumbling upon it by accident - I wonder how many others did too. Now there's a new .xxx domain coming out in the next couple of months, are we going to see a whitehouse.xxx site? The company which is running this domain is asking for $100-300 per year per url from companies to prevent someone from buying trademarked sites like disney.xxx. I'm not sure how legal it is for them to do this but something feels wrong about it:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/4/as-porns-pre-eminent-domain-xxx-to-mark-spot/?page=1&google_editors_picks=true&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=RSS_Feed