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Facebook, Relationships And “Catfish”: It’s Complicated

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 09/06/2010 - 02:50

If ever a trailer did not depict what a movie is actually about it’s this trailer for Universal Pictures’ “Catfish”, a movie about Facebook the subject matter of which could not be further from that other movie about Facebook. I’d like to use this sentence to say “Spoiler Alert” about fifteen times because the next couple paragraphs are going to be full of them.

If you hate spoilers do yourself a favor and stop reading now. That said, the following exposition shouldn’t prevent you from seeing the movie, I’ve seen it twice and enjoyed both times.

“Catfish” is a movie about Nev Schulman, a 24-year-old New York photographer and his relationship with eight year old Abby Pierce and her 19-year-old sister Megan Faccio whom he meets on Facebook in 2007. I’m sure all of you can see this coming, but Megan isn’t who she claims to be and neither is Abby. Nev and Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and the viewer get taken for a wild and well-documented ride, especially for the last 40 minutes of the movie.

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Overblog and Wikio Just Married. Pregnant with a European Google News for Blogs.

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 09/06/2010 - 04:32
A trusted source has confirmed that French-blogging platform, Overblog, will soon be part of the Wikio family. Rumor has it that the growing Luxembourg-based news portal is apparently trying to develop European Google News for blogs. For anyone who isn't familiar with Wikio, all you really have to know is that it's a news portal founded by Pierre Chappaz in 2005 after his previous company, Kelkoo, was acquired by Yahoo in 2004 for some 475 million euros. For acquisitions à la Française, that's not too shabby.


Facebook, Relationships And “Catfish”: It’s Complicated

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 09/06/2010 - 02:57

If ever a trailer did not depict what a movie is about its this trailer for Universal Pictures “Catfish”, a movie about Facebook whose subject matter could not be further from that of other movie about Facebook. I’d like to take this sentence to say “Spoiler Alert” about fifteen times because the next couple paragraphs are going to be full of them — If you hate spoilers do yourself a favor and stop reading. That said, the following exposition shouldn’t prevent you from seeing the movie, I’ve seen it twice and enjoyed both times.

“Catfish” is a movie about Nev Shulman, a 24-year- old New York photographer and his relationship with Abby Pierce, an eight-year-old girl and her 19-year-old sister Megan whom he meets on Facebook in 2007. I’m sure all of you can see this coming, but Megan isn’t who she claims to be. Nev and Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and the viewer get taken for a wild and well documented ride, especially for the last 40 minutes of the movie.

Is Android Only Surging Because Apple Is Letting It?

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 09/05/2010 - 22:05

This weekend, I’ve been catching up on some reading. One post that was of particular interest to me was David Beach’s article from last week about developing for Android. Beach, who is a product manager at eBay Mobile and a co-founder of 12seconds, basically says that the experience sucks for a number of reasons (all of which Google can fix, but will take quite a bit of work and time). But one quote in particular stuck out to me:

Android has succeeded despite Google. In fact it’s safe to say that Android is successful for one primary reason. The iPhone is only available on AT&T. If the iPhone was on Verizon a year ago. Android would be no where near as popular.

Obviously, Beach isn’t the first person to bring this idea up. But he brings it up in a way that he’s able to back-up his feelings from a developers’ perspective, while at the same time roping in what isn’t ideal from a consumer perspective about Android as well.

This is going to sound like flame bait, and everyone knows that I love the iPhone — but I have to agree with Beach. I’ve used no less than six Android phones for extended periods of time over the past couple of years. I really am trying to like them. But I just can’t.

As It Moves Away From The Wikis, Wetpaint Launches TV News And Entertainment Site

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 09/05/2010 - 23:55

Online publishing company Wetpaint has been undergoing a strategic shift in its business model over the past year. Wetpaint began as a simple wiki/social publishing tool but then started to build entertainment sites for big brands, including MSN. And the heavily funded startup succumbed to layoffs last July and December. But today, Wetpaint is taking the company in a new direction: original content. The startup is launching Wetpaint Entertainment; a TV news site that covers news and gossip from over 15 major TV shows, such as Glee, Grey’s Anatomy, and Gossip Girl.

Each show has a dedicated online channel (the site is launching with 15 channels), and will compile the most popular photos, videos, fashion gossip, and headlines to provide one place for all the information about fans’ favorite shows.

Wetpaint’s founder and CEO Ben Elowitz says that each show will have roughly 20 posts of information per day and will include a live updating news feed on the homepage. Roughly 30 percent of the content on the site will be written and curated by Wetpaint editors while the 70 percent of content will be sourced from other sites. However, Elowitz says that editors won’t simply repost another site’s news with a link; Wetpaint will add its own editorial spin to repurposed content.

Rollover Minutes: How Adam Penenberg Has Legitimised New, New, New Journalism. Again.

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 09/05/2010 - 23:50

Adam Penenberg. If you call yourself an online journalist, and yet that name doesn’t immediately prompt a nod of recognition – a smile, even – then it’s time to close your laptop and bow your head in shame. Or at least head over to Netflix.

It was Adam Penenberg who, back in 1998, first forced traditional journalists to sit up and take online reporting seriously. And he did so with a double whammy: scooping them on a big story – a scandal that went to the heart of one of America’s journalistic institutions – while also exposing a rising star of print journalism as a hack and a liar.

The lying hack was New Republic wunderkind Stephen Glass and the story of how Penenberg – then a reporter for ‘Forbes Digital Tool’ (now sadly swallowed by the execrable Forbes.com) – exposed Glass’ fabricated reporting was subsequently made into a movie. (Penenberg was portrayed in the movie by Steve Zahn while Glass was played by Hayden Christensen. Weirdly, Jonathan Chait was played by Chloë Sevigny.)

Penenberg, then, is one of the founding fathers of digital journalism. His expose – ‘Lies, damn lies and fiction’ – sent a clear message to print journalists: “digital journalism is more than just an underpaid, under-skilled subset of real reporting. We web guys are breaking stories and – FEAR US – we’re fact checking your sorry asses.”

Stealth Mode Watch: Another Nail In The Coffin Of ‘Stealth’

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 23:51


Stealth Mode Watch, a searchable data spider of often very revealing SEC form D filings, is the brain child of Denis Papathanasiou, who came up with the idea while researching funding options (a.k.a spying) for his ebooks startup Fifobooks, “I was just using it to keep tabs on specific investors and other competitors in the ebook space, but I mentioned it to a few people, and they were interested enough to want to use it themselves.”

Papathanasiou then added a public API and launched it in beta under its own domain. Right now the site allows a simple search mode which shows results for the past four weeks and then an extended API mode which allows results past that date as well as filtering parameters like “people,”"companies” and “places” (Humans beware: The data is delivered in XML files).

Papathanasiou says he got the idea from First Round Capital Managing Director Josh Kopelman’s “The Death of Stealth Mode,” which warned startups of the perils of filing series D forms.

The Real Social Network: Your Mobile Contacts

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 21:26

The term “social network” is of course synonymous with online networks like Facebook. But think about what you’re actual social life is like for a second. Are you really closest to the people whose items you “like” the most on Facebook? What about the people you @reply or retweet on Twitter? The people you reblog the most on Tumblr? If you’re anything like me, probably not. Instead, the best indicator of who I actually interact with socially the most in real life are the calls I make and the texts I send — it’s all mobile interaction.

I’ve written before that I think location is the bridge between social networks and actual social life. But why do we even need that bridge? Why are so many startups content to build on top of the Facebook or Twitter social graph, when a lot of them can access your actual social graph in your mobile contact book? We’re seeing more and more apps go “mobile first, web second” these days, and that’s likely to increase going forward. This means that they start as services on mobile devices. So again I ask, why not just get to your actual social graph through your contacts there?

Kanye West Loves Twitter, And We Love Twitter For Kanye West’s Tweets

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 11:27

You’ll forgive me for sneaking in some pop culture in the mix because it’s Saturday and all, right? Rapper Kanye West is having a bit of a moment on Twitter the past few hours, apologizing for the Taylor Swift incident from last year when he stormed the stage during the artist’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain that Beyonce should have won the Best Female Video award instead.

But not just that. He’s also making it crystal clear, as others have before him admittedly, that Twitter has changed the way celebrities interact with their fans and anyone who’s interested in what they have to say really. And slamming mainstream media in the process.

So reading about four pages of tweets by West, there are some interesting gems to be found in there besides his apologies to Swift and his complaints about the massive backlash he’s received since then, receiving death threats and getting booed off stage and so on.

This blog reposted the long rant (easier to read).

Here’s part of his rant against mainstream media, and his love for Twitter:

Man I love Twitter… I’ve always been at the mercy of the press but no more… The media tried to demonize me

She deserves the apology more than anyone. Thank you Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly

and

These aren’t regular tweets… this is stream of consciousness … I want you guys to know and feel where my head is at…

Blogging And Mass Psychomanipulation

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 09/05/2010 - 05:58

If I ever write another book it will probably be about one of three topics. The first is the truth about how the press and journalism really works – the sausage making – to show just how much of a beautiful, subjective and chaotic mess it all is. The second idea is to talk about how perfect blogging is, with its constant feedback loop, as a training ground for mass psychology and manipulation. The third idea I’m keeping to myself for now, but it’s more startup focused.

It’s the second one that’s been on my mind lately. Mostly because it’s become pretty clear to me that any blogger worth her salt could start, say, an extremely successful militant religious cult.

Any blogger will tell you how frustrating the early days are. Getting someone, anyone, to link to you. Your first comment! etc. And as your audience grows you are introduced to the first rule of anonymous human behavior – it’s dark and brutal, and reminds me how thin the veil of civilized behavior really is. If there is something nasty that can be said, someone will say it. Over and over.

A big part of blogging is simply keeping the peace. You set rules on whether or not you’ll allow anonymous commenting, or commenting at all. You decide if/how to moderate comments. You decide if/how to respond to opposing arguments and (more often) personal attacks. And you, involuntarily for the most part, evolve your writing in response to the feedback loop. Those are the days of innocence, simple joys and simple sadnesses.