Month: May 2010

Google Buys BumpTop

Bumptop is a freeform desktop application that break out of the usual ways you might expect an operating system to behave. Rather than your standard windows and icons setup, you have something that behaves a lot more similar to a desktop in real life. The difference here is that you get advanced tools that make interacting with and organizing your stuff much easier. Its unclear at this point exactly why Google bought Bumptop. Maybe we will see some fancy new functionality on an upcoming Android release. As far as the Bumptop software in it’s current form, you have to download it by the end of today, May 7th, or you may not have another chance to play with it.

via TNW

Apple Has Sold Over 1 Million iPads

Just 28 days after it’s introduction on April 3rd, Apple has already sold 1 million iPads. This is as of May 3rd. I’m still not sure all the hype surrounding the iPad was worth it, but the things are selling like hotcakes and are causing ripples in the tech community as companies scramble to make sure their products are supported.

via Apple.com

Ning Will Stay Free for Educators

Millions of users were outraged when Ning recently announced that it would no longer be free. You can’t really be mad at them as they are actually making the majority of their revenue and even generating most of their traffic from the users that actually pay. Shortly after the announcement, while many searched for alternatives, a petition went up pushing for Ning to keep the service free for educators and their students. 1100 people signed it and it looks like Ning was listening. For everyone else, premium plans are as low as $2.95/month or $20/year, so all is not totally lost.

via NYT

Google Redesigns for the Spring

This isn’t something that happens very often. Google has made slight changes to their search results page, adding a sidebar that gives you quick access to features that help refine your searches. Not a major change for you average site, but Google keeps things so sparse that this is close to a complete redesign.

Today’s metamorphosis responds to the increasing richness of the web and the increasing power of search — revealing search tools on the left and updating the visual look and feel throughout.

details at the Google Blog

FCC Makes Moves on Net Neutrality

After losing a case against Comcast regarding it’s practices towards net neutrality, the FCC has not given up. They still plan to push a new agenda regarding regulations for broadband companies. The question is what that agenda will be and how it will affect consumers and ISP’s. The FCC didn’t fail with Comcast because nobody wants regulations, they just picked the wrong way to go about it. This is why they’ve come up with a new way.

details at Engadget

Facebook will soon launch location-enabled status updates. I think we’ve all known this was coming, but will it really matter? Facebook has the largest and most popular social network, but I don’t think that automatically means they will overtake services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Weren’t people saying Yelp was going to kill Foursquare when they enabled checkins?

As early as this month, the social-networking site will give users the ability to post their location within a status update. McDonald’s, through digital agency Tribal DDB, Chicago, is building an app with Facebook would allow users to check in at one of its restaurants and have a featured product appear in the post, such as an Angus Quarter Pounder, say executives close to the deal.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t really been itching to be able to attach ads to my location check-ins. This is social media, so the focus should be on Me, not some message being pushed by the establishment I’m at. If they want to get a piece of the location action, I’m gonna need them to get their own account. On the other hand, if I’m getting compensated with free stuff or cash, maybe me and Micky D’s could work something out.

Facebook says they don’t usually monetize any new feature immediately, so the check-in ads may not be showing up any time soon, if at all. It will also be interesting to see how, exactly, Facebook chooses to implement check-ins. Google and Twitter are both probably tracking your location and including it with your updates right now, but you wouldn’t know by the methods they’re using. It’s more of a passive system and, well, there are no badges (don’t act like you don’t like badges).

Privacy is also an issue here. There are people that I have friended on Facebook that I may not want to share my physical location with. That’s not what I joined Facebook for. This could end up being yet another change that current Facebook users do not want or won’t understand.

Are you ready to share your location using Facebook?

Twitter’s Anywhere platform allows you to turn any website into a Twitter application. All basic functionality that you would find in a Twitter client is supported. It appeals to your average user who just wants a fancy follow button, to more advanced business and technical users. This will be a quick walk-through on how, exactly, you can get started with @Anywhere with minimal technical knowledge.

Set Up a Twitter Application

This isn’t as hard as it sounds. Visit the Twitter @Anywhere Dev site and click the Start Using It Now button. This will take you to the application setup screen. Don’t get tied up in the details here. You know your site’s name and URL. That is all you need. Be sure to choose Read & Write access for your new application.

Once you’ve created your application, copy the API key to your clip board. You will need it for the next step.

Paste The Relevant Code

You knew this was coming. The first code snippet goes in the header of your page, before the </head> tag (this is usually the case for most external Javascript you use). It should look something like this:

<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/anywhere.js?id=YOUR_API_KEY&v=1" type="text/javascript"></script>

Just be sure to replace the YOUR_API_KEY part with your actual API key from the first step.

Activating @Anywhere Features

This part can get a little technical, but is still just a cut and paste job if you keep things simple. You activate specific @Anywhere features calling the corresponding methods within your Javascript code. The features currently available are:

• Auto-linkification of Twitter usernames – automatically link @usernames to their Twitter profiles.
• Hovercards – show a small preview of a user’s Twitter profile when you hover their username.
• Follow buttons – allow one-click following of a specified user. No need for them to leave your website to follow you or anyone else you would like.
• Tweetbox – allow your visitors to easily send a tweet from your website, optionally specifying default content for them to tweet. Very useful if you use your imagination.
• User login and signup – some activities of @anywhere require the visitor to connect their Twitter account to your site. Stuff like Following and tweeting, for instance. You don’t have to include a separate login button, though.

At the very least, you probably want a follow button so that your visitors can easily connect with you on Twitter. Hovercards are also useful in allowing visitors to take action on users and it implies the auto-linkify feature. To enable hovercards, place the following code in the footer of your site before the </body> tag.

<script type="text/javascript"> twttr.anywhere(function (T) { T.hovercards(); }); </script>

Adding a follow button is a two step process as you will need to create a place for the button to go, and then include the code to actually draw the button. So, first we create a <span> element on our page with a specific id, which we will refer to in a moment. You might place this in your blog’s sidebar, for instance.

<span id="follow-blackweb20"></span>

Next, place the following Javascript code before the </body> tag of your page. In this case, we are creating a follow button for the Twitter user @blackweb20 and we are telling the @anywhere API to put the button in the page element with an id of “follow-blackweb20.”

<script type="text/javascript"> twttr.anywhere(function (T) { T('#follow-blackweb20').followButton("blackweb20"); }); </script>

Your pages can include multiple anywhere blocks to keep your features separate.

That’s It

There are multiple @Anywhere plugins for WordPress. I can’t vouch for any of them yet, but give them a shot and let me know which you like. If you are very wary about editing your template, these will probably be your best bet. Of course, if you want to get a little advanced, feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have any problems.

Also, for those more technically inclined or with creative minds, what uses can you think of for @anywhere?

Scribd, the popular online document sharing site, has decided that it doesn’t see Flash in it’s future. According to co-founder Jared Friedman, “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.”

Chalk this up as another loss for Adobe, who is currently facing major criticisms from Apple and others regarding it’s Flash product. The hottest new mobile gadget, the iPad, does not support Flash at all. There are no plans for it to support Flash. Steve Jobs has taken time out to write lengthy rants about Flash. Other companies and brands are moving to support HTML5 alongside Flash, many just so that their stuff works on the iPad.

Scribd is taking a major step here in dropping years of Flash development to embrace a technology that’s not even the standard yet. I think they will reap great benefits in the long run, though. Porting away from Flash to HTML5 means that their books will be readable on the iPad as well as a host of other mobile devices. You will no longer need to download or purchase ebooks from some proprietary online store as they will be available via Scribd in a simple format. You will be able to share them across your social networks and view them from just about any browser just like any other standard webpage.

The change just seems to make sense. A document isn’t so complicated that it should require so much overhead. When you think about it, it makes no sense that we often have to view documents inside a little flash box. Friedman plans to take our documents out of these little boxes and hand us the content. He has been working on this in secret for the past six months and believes that 97 percent of browsers will be able to view the new Scribd books. We have mostly heard about video as it relates to HTML5, but this part of the standard is new. Documents rely on features of HTML5 that are older and more widely supported.

Scridb will convert about 200,000 of it’s most popular documents tomorrow. The rest are soon to follow.

via Scribd CTO: “We Are Scrapping Flash And Betting The Company On HTML5

According to WSJ, the federal government will use ancient rules designed for phone networks to regulate broadband lines. This is only the beginning of a huge battle, putting broadband Internet providers and phone companies against Silicon Valley and the consumer.

Net neutrality sounds like such a boring topic, but it’s very important to so many different groups of people that it bears paying attention to. The basic principle is whether high-speed Internet providers can treat some traffic different than other traffic or whether they must take a completely neutral stance and treat everything the same. Other issues include regulations on broadband rates, which could affect what companies are able to charge you. Digging even deeper are regulations on the actual broadband lines and how that would affect a provider’s ability to do business.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowskih is the man behind the decision to push forward with this net neutrality initiative. He wants all traffic treated equally, with no specific traffic being slowed or blocked. Just last month, Comcast won a federal appeals court ruling against the FCC. While this threw into question whether the FCC even has the authority to enforce net neutrality, the ruling simply stated that they went about it the wrong way.

While there are strong opinions on both sides, what it boils down to is specifics. At this point, we don’t know exactly how the FCC will go about implementing net neutrality. Some say that such a plan could affect under served and underrepresented individuals like minorities and lower-income households, indirectly denying them access to the Internet. Others argue the exact opposite, saying that net neutrality will increase availability of broadband access to those same groups. It’s hard to know who to trust.

President Barrack Obama vowed to support some type of net neutrality and accepted donations from Silicon Valley. Bill Clinton says, “The question is how heavy a hand will the regulatory touch be. We don’t know yet, so the devil is in the details. The network operators have to be able to treat some traffic on the Internet different than other traffic—most people agree that web video is different than an email to grandma. You have to discriminate in some fashion.”

Telecom companies say regulations on pricing could scare away their share-holders. They are afraid that they might be forced to open up their broadband lines to competitors and that regulations could impeded their ability to keep up with the growing expansion and demand for broadband access.

There are many variables to consider here, but I think the most important outcome is how these changes will affect minority communities. It will be interesting to see exactly how the plan is layed out.

Everyone’s favorite Internet calling service Skype will be conducting a public beta test for a new group video chat function. This will allow up to five people participate in a video call at the same time. While this isn’t something that’s never been done before, it will definitely be awesome to have and was actually one of the most requested features from current Skype users.

There are a few services out there that do group video chat, but having the Skype brand attached would make this one more credible. There is also the huge, worldwide user base that works to make this new addition more attractive.

Video chat will be launching next week and will be free for the moment, giving existing users a chance to get attached to it. According general manager of Skype’s consumer business segment, Neil Stevens, this will only be temporary. Video chat, along with a few other features to be released in the coming months, will become a premium feature and will only available to paid users.

Skype will also be updating it’s existing subscription plans. They currently focus mostly on calls to land lines, but this will be changed to include options for contacting cellular phones. While it’s cheaper for Skype to route the calls to land lines, it appears that users might be willing to pay to connect to cell phones as well. These new subscription plans should provide more options for users, which is always a plus. Look forward to being able to call cell phones and land lines in over 170 countries.

Skype was sold by eBay for $2 billion late last year, purchased by an investors group which included it’s original founders. This may be only the first of many interesting changes Skype may go through as it falls back into the hands of it’s creators. While it has stayed in the forefront for Internet calls, Skype hasn’t really delved into a lot of the latest things we see going on with video and telephony, and I’m definitely curious to know what they have up their sleeves.

Do you Skype? Would group calls change the way you do business?

A new Facebook security hole makes it simple for your friends to read your instant messages, your instant messaging history, see your messages and friend requests. This isn’t even hard to do for the average person. There is no special technical knowledge needed. As a matter of fact, users may already be exploiting this bug to stalk you on the hush. Ever wondered why that certain someone has a knack for knowing things about you that they shouldn’t? Maybe Facebook snitched. In just a few clicks, you can get a good look at your friends’ personal information.

• Login to Facebook and click the Account tab on the top right
• Choose Privacy Settings from the drop-down
• Go to Personal Information and Posts
• Click Preview My Profile on the right

Now, you should be looking at a preview of your profile as other users see it. Here is where all the magic happens. Pick a victim real quick (I chose little brother, but feel free to be creative) and type their name into the “Preview how your profile appears to another person” box. The page will update and you should be able to access the person’s chat information on the bottom right. You should also see their pending friend requests, messages, and notifications on the top left.

I tried this out and it work. Very freaky stuff. I suspect that Facebook has started working on the problem immediately because, as of this writing, the hole behaves erratically and Facebook chat is down for maintenance. Even still, for a company that is advocating throwing privacy an caution to the wind and pushing everyone to become more public, they’re not doing a very good job of instilling confidence in their user base.

Even as one of the minority who is kind of on Facebook’s side as far as seeing the benefits of becoming more public and sharing more online, a bug which lets people accept and deny my friend requests and view my chat history turns my stomach. Just as in the real world, if you see one bug, there are probably a few more where it came from. I hope that this pushes Facebook to take a good long look at their code because I’m pretty sure many privacy advocates are hard at work trying to break it. This is especially true given their recent changes in stance.

via eu.TechCrunch.com

UPDATE: Facebook just recently sent this statement to TechCrunch EU regarding the security hole, acknowledging that they fixed the problem and also patting themselves on the back a little.

“For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users’ chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the “preview my profile” feature of Facebook privacy settings. When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function. We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests which is now complete. Chat will be turned back on across the site shortly. We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented.”

There are a lot of black people on Twitter. The numbers, taken from the annual report on Twitter by Edison Research, don’t lie. While black people make up about 12% of the general population, they account for 25% of the population of users on Twitter. I always felt like this was true in my day to day use of Twitter and trending topics, but now I have confirmation. The question is why is such a large percentage of the Twitter population African American? There are a few conclusions that can be drawn here based on similar research.

The mobile arena is blowing up and blacks and Hispanics are at the forefront of this growth. 55% of Americans connect to the Internet wirelessly and, out of that 55%, 59% are Black/Non-Hispanic. Black people and other minority groups are just generally more likely to access the Internet via some type of mobile device. Taking that into consideration, Twitter is just about the most mobile-friendly social networking application out there.

Even if you don’t have a data plan, you can still use Twitter via SMS. I know many black households that may not have a computer or may not have broadband Internet access, but they definitely have cell phones in the home. Mobile devices solve the general problem of phone communications as well as providing basic Internet access to social media and business applications.

Another major factor is how quickly black celebrities have taken to Twitter as compared to white celebs. You have people like Ashton Kutcher going hard and promoting the service, but it seems there are many more black celebrities with active Twitter accounts. This includes musicians, athletes, actors, and organizations. It probably doesn’t hurt that Obama himself, the first black president of the US, popularized the service during and after his successful campaign.

According to this same report, Twitter is most popular among the 25 to 34 year old crowd. The median age for blacks or African Americans is about 31 while the median age for whites is about 40 according to the 2006 census. This means that blacks are younger on average and also mostly fall directly in the middle of the group that has the most interest in Twitter.

One last point is that Twitter users tend to be not only more educated, but more wealthy. On a related note, higher income African Americans are the fastest growing segment of web users. You have educated and wealthy black people getting online in droves. Even lower income blacks, while they may not have broadband at home, are still able to access Twitter on their mobile devices. At the same time, most of these people are right in the sweet spot for people being interested in Twitter and many of the celebs they follow are already on the service asking them to join.

I know many have seen this and have some strong opinions on the subject, so I encourage you to share them here. What reasons can you think of as to why so many black people are on Twitter? What are they doing with it?

via SFGate

Hip-Hop Word Count sounds like a pretty simple application. It counts the number of words in hip-hop songs or something, right? Wrong. On the surface, it may seem like HHWC performs a simple task, but it goes way deeper than that. If you have ever wanted to perform serious analysis on the music you listen to or compare it to the music you avoid, this is probably your best bet for getting the job done.

“The Hip-Hop Word Count (HHWC) is a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 50,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day. The database is the heart of an online analysis tool that generates textual and quantified reports on searched phrases, syntax, memes and socio-political ideas.”

What we have here is a database that describes the technical details of most of your favorite hip-hop songs. This data can then be used to not only figure out interesting things about the songs themselves, but to describe the culture behind the music. How can analyzing lyrics teach us about our culture? The analysis tool is able to discern the education level needed to understand each song. In addition, it rates the artistic sophistication of the piece by looking at how metaphors, similes, cultural references, alliteration, and other techniques are used.

To get a better understanding of how this works, let’s compare “Microphone Fiend” by Rakim to “I Get Money” by 50 Cent. According to Hip-Hop Word Count analysis, Rakim gets a score of 16 while 50 comes away with a 7. Rakim, using words like “hypochondriac,” is on a University Degree education level, and a reading level of “Atlantic Monthly.” 50’s money word is “millionaire,” is at a Junior High education level, and a reading level of “True Confessions.”

Hip-Hop Word Count has been on the hush for a while now and is currently in private beta. It looks like it will appeal to extremely technical types as well as people just looking for interesting hip-hop comparisons. The searches in HHWC database are done using Apache’s Lucene, which allows for some pretty advanced queries. It is the brain child of Tahir Hemphill, who currently operates the creative enterprise Staple Crops. Also, if you love hip-hop, spreadsheets, and dealing with data, Tahir is looking for an intern to help with the project.

Threadsy, probably the only truly integrated communications web application, launches a public beta of the service today. Threadsy is the ultimate tool for pulling yourself together. It integrates Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail into a clean and simple interface that helps you stay on top of what’s going on.

Since it was first launched in private beta last year, Threadsy has continued to improve at every step of the way. They have improved the interface and added features to make your communications manageable. One of my problems with the service last year was that it asked for usernames and passwords. That has been corrected as Threadsy now supports OAuth, Facebook connect, and Gmail’s new authentication method.

Threadsy sets itself apart from other services by providing two-way interaction between multiple services. You can reply, favorite, and dm on Twitter. You can Like, dislike, comment, etc. on Facebook updates. Gmail integration provides you most of the features available in Gmail itself. If you don’t use Gmail or have alternate email accounts Threadsy also supports Yahoo!, Hotmail, MobileMe, AOL Mail, and generic IMAP accounts.

For most users, Threadsy is probably all you need to simplify your social media and communications. Any message sent directly to you shows up on the left side of the screen so that you can process it. This includes your Twitter DM’s, emails, and Facebook messages. On the right side, you will see a smaller column showing tweets from those you follow on Twitter and status updates from Facebook. Threadsy also takes care of your instant messaging needs with Meebo integration. This lets you IM your friends on Facebook, Myspace, AIM, and Google Talk.

I like Threadsy, but there are still a couple of things I’d like to see them do. Primarily, Twitter lists would be a great addition. For power users of Twitter, you may become frustrated with the Threadsy interface because tweets and everything are only given one column. You can’t really fit much in there and you may miss a lot. Adding support for Twitter lists would be a welcome addition. A simple dropdown of all your Twitter lists in the Stream column would work, just as you can access all of your Gmail labels from the left side.

Have you tried Threadsy? Are you going to try it? Let us know what you think!

via TC

Earlier today on Twitter, @IAmDiddy announced the completion of the trailer for the “most positive inspirational BLOG in THE WORLD.” Anyone who ever pays attention to tweets from Diddy is well aware of his excessively positive attitude and “LET’S GO!!!” demeanor. In addition to saying things in ALL CAPS on a regular basis and conveying urgency and excitement, he also tends to tweet positive and inspirational messages to his followers. If you combine this with the fact that he is fascinated with creating viral videos and garnering attention online, you might even wonder what took him so long to launch DiddyBlog.com.

The site is still in preview mode, so the only thing you see when you visit is the full screen trailer which includes commentary from Will Smith, George Clooney (as his character in The Men Who Stare at Goats), and Diddy himself. The overall message regards destiny and choice. Smith talks about the “redemptive power” of making a choice rather than simply letting things happen to you. The Clooney quote says “Your life is like a river, and if you’re aiming for a goal that isn’t your destiny, you’re always going to be swimming against the current.” Diddy talks about making mistakes sometimes, but always having the will to get up and keep going.

Overall, the trailer is telling you to get up, get out, and get something. This is probably one of the most important messages to inspire and motivate anyone. Most of us don’t fail because we are inadequate or ill equipped, it’s simply because we don’t try in the first place. Don’t let the river carry you.

Diddy has already been doing video blogs on on his PTWITTYTV channel, but most are not anything like this. They range from him streaming live from the studio, to random videos of his artists, to him talking seriously about Haiti. I’m wondering exactly what type of content we can expect to see on this new site. Will it be serious all the time, will it incorporate some of his personality and shenanigans, or will it be a mixture of both. Check out the trailer below and tell us what you think.

A few days ago, we talked briefly about Global Grind’s content scraping practices. As you may know, Global Ground is like Digg for the hip-hop community. They cover hip-hop stories, celebrity gossip, entertainment, and more. This is a pretty broad selection of content, so many bloggers were shocked to find that Global Grind had basically cut and pasted their hard work and posted it on their own site. They even went so far as to allow these competing pieces to be submitted to Google News. Any blogger would take it pretty hard if their content was scraped by any site, let alone Global Grind, which has ties into the exclusive Google News network, a PageRank of 5, and millions in funding. GG wasn’t even providing a simple link back to the original source article.

A major point that Patrick O’Keefe makes is the double standard between Global Grind and Digg. If Digg had never killed the Digg Bar and just started snatching bloggers’ content, there would probably be rioting in the streets or at least in the blogosphere. As far as GG goes, they are probably getting away with it because the audience is different. They’re not as tech savvy as a whole. In addition, many of the bloggers affected may not have a clue about how to keep track of their own content for the same reason.

It seems that Patrick’s contact with Global Grind has yielded some positive changes that better align with what we should be seeing within the blogging community. They also seem to be committed to making changes in the near future to cooperate with the community rather than simply dominate it. They have killed the top frame bar that they were using. Digg recently made a similar move as Kevin Rose took the wheel.

Most importantly, full text scraping has been turned off. Content excerpts for submitted stories now have a content limit. You can still submit the full text of a story via the manual form, but this is supposed to become human-edited to avoid further incidents. Content that has already been copied to GG will me reformatted so that the full content is not displayed. Links to the original sources of the articles are more prominent but, more importantly, actually exist as a rule.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this plays out. Most sites would receive a huge backlash for scraping content, even if it was not intentional. I doubt that Global Grind will see any such downturn in traffic or popularity. On the plus side, this may be the beginning of a closer relationship between Global Grind and the community at large.

Using a combination of “cyber sleuthing, old-school gumshoe reporting and persistent stalking,” the folks at Wired were able to verify the identity of the guy that found the prototype iPhone at a bar an eventually sold it to Gizmodo. Not only is it a decent case study on how to find those who do not wish to be found, but it also highlights the fact that you really can’t hide from anyone these days. Once you start sharing your identity online and connecting with others, you have already failed at fading into the background when the stuff hits the fan.

The first stop in locating one Brian Hogan, the infamous iphone finder, was Facebook. As the iPhone story broke on Gizmodo, an intern at Wired happened to be paying attention to relevant sources on Facebook and noticed a comment by Hogan that seemed suspicious. They took a screenshot for later as the single word comment wasn’t enough to make a move at the time.

About a week after the Gizmodo story broke, Hogan had deleted his Facebook account and attempted to disappear from the Internet. This was a signal to Wired that he was probably involved and should be investigated. As they say, a hit dog will holler. Wired was already aware that the iphone finder had been identified by police, but his identity was kept secret.

Referring back to the Facebook screenshot, Wired figured out that several of the other users commenting on the Gizmodo story along with Hogan happened to have attended Santa Barbara City College. They friended about 25 of these potential connections to Hogan. Working on the assumption that Hogan had also attended this college and that he had subsequently moved to Redwood City where the phone was found, Wired.com’s Kevin Poulsen searched a people-finder website. He found a Brian J. Hogan who just so happened to live a mile away from Gourmet Haus Staudt, the bar where the phone was found.

A visit to the address combined with a couple of semi-lucky Google searches and the excessive friending on Facebook eventually led to Wired being contacted by Hogan’s lawyer. This was the confirmation they needed, but they still squeezed the lawyer for as much information as they could before publishing. Moral of the story is, you can’t hide from a tenacious journalist who knows how to use Google and social media.

We’ve covered Posterous here on multiple occasions simply because it’s an awesome blogging service. Setting up your new blog is as simple as sending an email. It’s simple to set up, simple to maintain, and free without being overburdened with ads. Just recently, however, one user noticed something fishy going on. Posterous was converting links to affiliate links without any prior notification or consent. This particular user was able to see what was going on because of a minor glitch on how the affiliate links were being generated.

What’s really going on is that Posterous has partnered with a service called VigLink. What VigLink does is to convert outgoing links into affiliate links on the fly. So, as the visitor clicks a link in your post, some fancy Javascript code intercepts the click and adds an affiliate code. What this would do is help to generate revenue for Posterous, which is a good thing. Rather than sticking a bunch of banner ads all over the place or using some type of invasive monetization strategy that would interfere with the user experience, Posterous has chosen to try a relatively benign strategy that most users and visitors won’t even notice.

The primary issue here is that Posterous did not notify users of the potential changes (they have only been testing the feature so far). Full disclosure and transparency have become pretty standard, so this being accidentally discovered by a user looks kind of shady. Posterous cofounder Sachin Agarwal has since posted an apology regarding the matter. The integration with VigLink actually began in December of 2009 on an experimental basis. There are also a few points to note:

1. Links in Posterous posts are not edited in any way
2. VigLink Javascript intercepts clicks and adds an affiliate code when possible, but affiliate codes are not stripped or altered if they already exist
3. Copying links is unchanged
4. Publishers can opt-out specific links my including a rel=”noskim” attribute with an option coming to omit entire pages
5. There is no breaking of the web, redirecting, or other trickery that might have an adverse effect on your page rankings with Google. VigLink is backed by Google Ventures, after all. (VigLink statement)

Some users are upset that Posterous would do something without notification, or that Posterous is monetizing using affiliate links, or even that Posterous is changing anything period. The bottom line is that Posterous isn’t doing anything all that serious here except to neglect notifying users of what they were doing and potentially tenting their perception of transparency.

via TC