Twitter Hacker Breaks Law and Blogs Just Abet

I’m absolutely not a legal scholar but once again I am struck by a certain weird lack of ethics especially among a number of major blogs including Mashable, Download Squad and scores of others.

In short, somebody hacked into a number of Twitter-owned accounts and made off with a zip file containing everything from internal emails to floor plans.  While nothing so far looks terribly damning it is strange that so many bloggers seem to have no qualms republishing the stolen documents.

In court, if evidence is acquired in an illegal manner it is no longer able to admitted as evidence.  Now, there was no question that the screencaps being published were stolen and there was really no way, until confirmed by Ev Williams at Twitter, that the documents were even legit.

Any way you cut it, there is something clearly unsavory and unethical about published stolen documents.  It might not be illegal but it doesn’t feel right.

Dresdon Doll’s Amanda Palmer Makes Almost $20k Via Twitter

Go to this link and read an amazing email written by Amanda Palmer of the band Dresdon Dolls in which she explains how, over the course of three weeks she was able to gross almost $20,000 using Twitter.

In contrast, she also points out that she has made exactly $0.00 for selling over 30,000 solo albums this year.

A sample:

WEBCAST AUCTION, $6000

a few nights after that, i blogged and twittered, announcing a “webcast auction” from my apartment.
it went from 6 pm – 9 pm, my assitant beth sat at my side and kept her eyes on incoming bids and twitter feed.
while we hocked weird goods, i sang songs and answered questions from fans. we wore kimonos and drank wine. it was a blast.

people on twitter who were tuned in re-tweeted to other fans. the word spread that it was a fun place to be and watch.
we had, at peak, about 2000 people watching the webcast.

The biggest take-home lesson for musicians is that Amanda made none of this money by selling albums but she played a ton of music and increased her fan base while having fun and making money.

Now that’s rock ‘n roll.

Gawker Exposes Megan Fox’s Flower-Giver on Facebook

Last week, a very popular photograph circulated of Megan Fox appearantly ignoring a sweet chubby kid trying to give her a flower:

Kodak then announced that it was offering $5000 to anyone who could identify the boy in the photo.

Earlier today, Gawker recieved an email from a young woman claiming to not only know the identity of the young boy but said she was his friend on Facebook.  Eager to confirm this tip, Gawker tried looking up his page but it was set to private.  So, what did Gawker do?

Since the young lad’s Facebook profile was set to private and can only be viewed by his “friends,” we asked Kim to send us some screengrabs of his Facebook page as proof, and she obliged. As you can see from the gallery below, which includes a pic of our boy with one of those little Jonas freaks, it looks as though we may have found the victim of Megan Fox’s smoldering disdain, an 11 year-old Brit named Harvii.

Yup, they posted the whole thing online.  His whole private collection of photos.  All of it.

Now, this is certainly not the first time someone has had their private social media profile published for all the world to see but it is troubling when a major blog, trying to make at least some stab at legitimacy, does it.  We all know that nothing on the web is private but does that mean we should all just disregard anyone’s effort  to even attempt a modicum of privacy.  It’s not like this kid is a legitimate star who’s just asking for attention.

I’d be curious to hear from any lawyers out there if publishing screengrabs of a private Facebook page is in any way a criminal offense.

The Notificator Beat Twitter by Over 70 Years

BoingBoing points out a great story from the archives of Modern Mechanix magazine, a description of a device known as the Notificator:

The user walks up on a small platform in front of the machine, writes a brief message on a continuous strip of paper and drops a coin in the slot. The inscription moves up behind a glass panel where it remains in public view for at least two hours so that the person for whom it is intended may have sufficient time to observe the note at the appointed place. The machine is similar in appearance to a candy-vending device.   LINK

It seems one of these devices was actual put into service in London in 1935 and according to a lengthier description of the device, it looks like it was in service until sometime in 1938.

Sadly, it looks like none of the original paper rolls survived.  That would have been a priceless archive of information about the daily lives of Londoners in the 1930’s.  Actually, it would probably look a lot like my Twitter stream, and thus prove worthless from an historial perspective.

If nothing else, the existence of the Notificator, which is really just a fancy bulletin board, proves that humans have always had the desire to broadcast even their simplest needs into the public ether.

Olivia Munn, Bing-Shilling and the Future of Twitter

I just saw the above tweet in my feed and couldn’t help wondering if this was the unfortunate future of Twitter.

As you may or may not know, Olivia Munn is the sexy and charming co-host of G4’s flagship program “Attack of the Show.”  I really enjoy AOTS and Olivia Munn is a big reason for the show’s relative success.

Usually, her Twitter-feed seems to be a fun mix of personal stuff and pitching ATOS/G4.

The above tweet, though, looks like plain old advertising.  It isn’t fair, I guess, to assume that Olivia is being compensated in some way for this heavily pro-Bing tweet, but it certainly looks that way.

While there is plenty of shilling happening on Twitter, it will be very sad if top tweeters start taking money to tweet “ads” without any mention of this compensation.

Could ID Theft Sink MySpace

There was an interesting piece on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning about the growing problem of teens stealing each other’s pictures and identities.

Some dishonest users steal images of pretty girls to attract romantic attention. Others grab the photo of someone they dislike to create a fake derogatory profile that makes that person look bad. But for some teens, it’s actually a badge of honor.

While the teen reporter offered a nice range of kids’ responses to this problem, including watermarking pictures or creating supplemental videos, her own experience seemed very telling.

After being hacked herself and having to go through a whole process of reclaiming her identity with MySpace she decided it just wasn’t worth extreme tactics necessary to protect herself on MySpace and so she has cancelled her account.

Now, I am not sure if the same problems exist for Facebook but this could be a very bad sign for MySpace which has relied on it’s younger demographic to keep it relevant in the social media arena.

If a site can’t provide teens with a safe way to post and share content it will likely find itself quickly abandoned.

Ashton Hits 1,000,000 Twitter Followers. So, What?

This has clearly been Twitter’s biggest week ever. First Ashton Kutcher, one of the first celebs to take Twitter seriously, challenged CNN to a race to 1,000,000 followers and won.  Then, today, he joined Ev Williams (founder of Twitter) on Oprah, where the big O herself sent her first tweet (in unfortunate Kanye West-style all-caps).

There are plenty of notions to draw out of the rise of Twitter.  It’s still far too soon to know whether this is a massive boom/bust fad or something that is here to stay but I found Pete Cashmore’s comment on Mashable to be the most intriguing:

For now, Twitter needs mainstream media more than mainstream media needs Twitter. But Ashton has an audience of 1 million at his fingertips: how much longer will the talent need its mainstream middleman?

I’ve been wondering along these lines for a while, really pre-Twitter.  With the internet, the doors of distribution have been thrown wide and anyone with a connection can, in theory, reach a worldwide audience via words, sound and video.  Why does someone like Ashton Kutcher really need NBC or Time Warner Cable when they can reach their fans directly and deliver to them solid content?

LINK

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• CNN, Ashton, Twitter … Oh My (mashable.com)
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Adidas Shows Studios How It’s Done

Adidas has created adidas.tv as a central site for all of it’s growing video endeavors.  While the site has yet to officially launch and it is far too soon to tell if this will be a strong marketing play for Adidas, one thing is certain, they are taking the modern, and in my opinion, correct approach when it comes to distribution:

Adidas.TV content will be available for syndication. What’s more, visitors can transport video in an Adidas-branded player — whether to a blog or 25 social networking sites the unit integrates with. The player includes a logo at the bottom and links back to Adidas.TV. Users can also create their own Adidas.TV widget that receives frequent content updates.

“The point is less about getting people to the site,” said Stein. “It’s more about getting the content to the people.”

Now if only the Studios would take a similar approach the whole issue of piracy would wither and die a natural death.

LINK

I Love Scene Kid LOVE

Quick thanks to Tilzy.tv for turning me onto “Scene Kid LOVE” a dead-on satire of the Facebook generation with a brilliant combination of love and snark.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VORIXLfq9Ws&hl=en&fs=1]

This series is racking up an impressive 300,000+ views/episode and holds those numbers steady over time.  The writing and acting is fantastic and reminds me in some ways of the UK’s “Absolutely Fabulous” but I can’t say they are actually similar.

Anyhow, it is a fantastic example of speaking to your audience and not trying to reach the lowest-common-denominator.  This is where webseries really shine. (see: The Guild)