Yesterday's Diane Rehm Show featured a conversation between Sherry Turkle (previously), Stephen Marche (previously) and Zeynep Tufekci. Tufekci has been critical of Turkle's and Marche's assertions that social media is making us lonely. A lively Twitter conversation and critique ensued.
posted by DiscourseMarker on May 15, 2012 - 26 comments

"Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no." - Not long after saddling it's own iOS client with some unpopular new "features" Twitter is saying no to the development of new competing clients. Existing clients such as Twitterific and Echofon should be unaffected.
posted by Artw on Mar 12, 2011 - 42 comments

It's sometimes argued that people use the internet as an "echo chamber" to reinforce their own views. Scientific American magazine blog editor Bora Zivkovic argues that the web breaks echo chambers in a way unlike offline communities and traditional media.
posted by mccarty.tim on Mar 6, 2011 - 33 comments

The Wall Street Journal's What They Know blog is charged with determining what information marketers are capable of learning about internet users through tracking technology. This weekend, they took aim at Facebook, after their investigation discovered that many popular apps on the social-networking site, including those by Zynga, have been transmitting identifying information in the form of User ID's to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, even if a user has enabled strict privacy settings. Additional analysis. Response post on Facebook's Developer Blog. Forbes' blogger Kashmir Hill asks if the WSJ is overreacting, and Techcrunch notes that the severity and risks of UID transferral are still being debated.
posted by zarq on Oct 18, 2010 - 56 comments

Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. Earlier this summer, Golnaz Esfandiari examined the "Twitter Devolution" in Iran*. Anne Applebaum commented on the Twitter revolution that wasn't in Moldova last spring. [more inside]
posted by availablelight on Sep 27, 2010 - 46 comments

UK adoption agencies are reporting "huge numbers of calls from 'deeply distressed' adoptive parents whose children have been contacted" through Facebook and other social networking sites, in violation of the traditional, confidential reunion process between birth parents and their offspring who have been placed with other families. Full report from Channel 4. [more inside]
posted by zarq on May 23, 2010 - 45 comments

A worrisome set of posts from Princeton University's 'Freedom to Tinker" Blog:
In many situations, it may be far easier to unmask apparently anonymous online speakers than they, I, or many others in the policy community have appreciated. Today, I'll tell a story that helps explain what I mean. Second post: what BoingBoing knows about John Doe. Third, and most concerning post: The traceability of an online anonymous comment. Related post: a well researched review of the privacy concerns around the roll-out of, and push-back against, Google Buzz.
posted by Rumple on Feb 18, 2010 - 41 comments

Reddit founders Kn0thing and Spez have left the building. The social media juggernaut's founders Alexis (Kn0thing) and Steve (Spez) have declined to renew their contracts, prompting much discussion and speculation on reddit itself, and the incubator that helped it start up, Ycombinator.
posted by khafra on Oct 27, 2009 - 28 comments

Google began inviting volunteers to a public preview test of their new Wave web-based collaborative email and document communications platform yesterday, which enables users to "communicate and work together in real time." Initial reviews this past May seemed positive. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by zarq on Oct 1, 2009 - 75 comments

Newsfilter: 30,000 customers in the San Francisco area lost power today at about 1:50pm PDT, in a series of power failures which knocked out a major datacenter hub: 365 Main. The hub controls servers for many social media sites, including Technorati, Netflix, Yelp, Craigslist and all Six Apart properties, including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox. (6A's twitter stream has updates.) More here and here. Amusingly enough, 365 Main tempted fate and released a press release today patting themselves on the back for "two years of 100-percent uptime".
posted by zarq on Jul 24, 2007 - 82 comments