Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Google Maps hopes to improve virtual neighborhoods, so does just launched EveryBlock, thanks in part to Craigslist. 

Craigslist, though, is VERY particular about bulk access to its treasure trove of user listings posted with abandon daily, just ask classifieds aggregator Oodle!

I was therefore surprised to see yesterday that EveryBlock launched proudly offering the latest “Missed Connections” and “Lost and Found” for the three cities it covers at present, “thanks” to Craigslist.

EveryBlock creator Adrian Holovaty hails as a competive advantage that EveryBlock has “forged relationships with governments” to make available civic information that “has never been posted online.” I noted yesterday, though, that the “fun from across the Web” lisitngs that EveryBlock also (re)posts ARE already available online, readily, such as Craigslist “Missed Connections” and “Lost and Found” for Chicago, NYC and San Francisco, the three EveryBlock founding cities.

I asked Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster last June about why the site restricts classifieds aggregators, such as Oodle, and classifieds mashup players, such as Listpic, from accessing Craigslist classifieds ads postings. SEE  Craigslist Q & A: Classifieds Community NO ‘Walled Garden’:

We have received vanishingly few requests from craigslist users that we open the site to companies that want to capitalize on the craigslist community–in fact it’s been quite the contrary, we generally receive complaints from users when sites create derivative services based on craigslist, particularly commercial ones.

SO, what about EveryBlock’s derivative serviced based, in part, on Craigslist, and commercialized via Google AdSense? To date, EveryBlock is redistributing 660 Craigslist user postings.

I asked EveryBlock how the site is physically obtaining the Craigslist listings. Holovaty told me:

We’re using Craigslist’s publicly available RSS feeds, pretty much every page has an RSS link.

YES, but there are Craigslist restrictions on how such publicly available Craigslist RSS feeds may be used, such as:

We offer RSS feeds so that our users can embed a little piece of craigslist into their personal blog or home page, or watch the best-of postings come rolling into their desktop news aggregator. Look for the RSS symbol at the bottom of each of our listings pages. craigslist RSS feeds are for your personal use only, and are not available for commercial use without first obtaining a license from craigslist.

Craigslist warns about “access to its RSS service” in its Terms Of Use:

craigslist offers various parts of the Service in RSS format so that users can embed individual feeds into a personal website or blog, or view postings through third party software news aggregators.  craigslist permits you to display, excerpt from, and link to the RSS feeds on your personal website or personal web blog, provided that your use of the RSS feed is for personal, non-commercial purposes only…you do not redistribute the RSS feed, and your use does not overburden craigslist’s systems. craigslist reserves all rights in the content of the RSS feeds and may terminate any RSS feed at any time.

SO, Will Craigslist terminate EveryBlock’s RSS feed at any time?

ALSO: Craigslist Q & A: Craig Newmark Philanthropy Matches Google’s Page and Brin and  EveryBlock: Why Hard Civic News TRUMPS Web 2.0 Anonymous ‘Fun’ and Craigslist vs. EveryBlock? UC Berkeley New Media Case Study and Craigslist PR: Same OLD Media?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

In the immortal words of Ronald Reagan: There you go again!

At last May’s Personal Democracy Forum in New York City I heard Eli Pariser, Executive Director, MoveOn.org Political Action, call out MySpace Senior Vice President for Public Affairs, Jeff Berman, for alleged misdeeds of the News Corp. Web property.

“Rupert Murdoch shouldn’t be deciding” what we can or can not do, he asserted. Pariser was on an incredulous mission to ensure that we “own our own communities,” even if they happen to be hosted–at no charge–within News Corp.’s corporate-owned community.

Now, MoveOn is aiming its purported “civic action” wrath at private corporation, membership optional Facebook.

What did MySpace have to say to MoveOn’s Pariser?

“MySpace IS a democratic platform, but even democracies have rules,” Berman asserted. In other words, Terms of Service exist to regulate the terms under which MySpace offers its no-fee services to its 175 million friends.

I pointed out to Pariser that Rupert Murdoch CAN decide what does or does not happen at his MySpace, because it IS his Space!

I asked Pariser if instead of calling upon a multi-billion dollar corporation to deliver its free services to non-paying users in a manner more consistent with his objectives, if it wouldn’t be more pragmatic to spur people to not rely on hosting of their content at free-to-the-consumer social networking sites, but to perhaps pay for hosting so that they continue to own and control their work.

Pariser qualified that while he was not saying that MySpace is doing anything wrong, in a legal sense, it would be in the best interest of MySpace to walk the talk, the social networking “democratic” banter, that is.

Perhaps it is time to turn the harsh “civic action” spotlight on MoveOn’s own banter. After all, MoveOn.org Civic Action is a 501(c)(4) organization which claims it is focused on “nonpartisan education and advocacy on important national issues.” MoveOn.org Political Action is a federal political committee, helping members elect candidates who “reflect our values through a variety of activities aimed at influencing the outcome of the next election.”

How in the corporate funded, no need to join, social networking world is a policing of Facebook’s ad system aligned with MoveOn’s public political and civic agenda.

“PS,” MoveOn solicits in its Facebook petition:

Can you support the people-powered campaign today? We can run campaigns advocating for responsible Internet policies because of the support of people like you. A donation of $10, $20, or more goes a long way.

MoveOn’s anti-Facebook campaign funding solicitation, however, is an anti-corporate one, not a political or civic one:

If we don’t fight back now, other web sites will follow Facebook’s misguided policy as they attempt to appeal to corporate advertisers.

SO? Facebook is a private corporation, just as MySpace is. Accordingly, both are entitled under U.S. laws to operate their businesses in any manner they see fit, as long as they comply with U.S. laws.

Just as MoveOn did not allege any MySpace legal wrong doing, none is alleged regarding Facebook.

It is MoveOn, in fact, that ought to held accountable for the integrity of its own operation of 501(c)(4) endeavors. MySpace and Facebook chastising does not apper to be consistent with the mission MoveOn is obligated to pursue.

Moreover, if MoveOn really was concerned about U.S. citizens’ privacy, it would call for all to cease willingly abdicating their personal lives to Facebook, MySpace…rather than using Facebook itself for PR stunts!

PLUS:  MoveOn’s Facebook Crusade: eBay, IAC, CBS, NYTimes Get Beacon Privacy Pass

MORE:  YES! Facebook IS Scarier Than Google! 

ALSO: PayPerPost Warns U.S. Congress of Google Monopoly: Barack Obama to the Rescue? and Google: U.S. Taxpayers To Finance GOOG Riches and Microsoft Office Gets BIG Sales Boost in Live Documents

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

YAY? The world now knows what goes on in Facebook, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg unleashing his vaunted “Application Directory” to the Google spiders:

SUPER POKE Why just poke when you can pinch, hug, tickle, pwn or even throw sheep?

FLUFF FRIENDS Adopt a cute friend for your Facebook profile that your friends can pet and feed. 20 pets to choose from, Everybody could use a little cuteness.

WHAT’S YOUR STRIPPER NAME? Find out with this fun application.

DAILY BABE Get a daily BABE on your profile, updated every day with high-res pics.

HOW SEXY IS YOUR NAME CALCULATOR Type in your name and you get the score.

FOOD FIGHT Buy food from our cafeteria, then throw it all at your friends.

College game on then? NOT AT LINKEDIN, at least! Dan Nye, LinkedIn CEO has assured ”we’re not going to have people sending electronic hamburgers to each other.”

Nevertheless, Facebook faithfull insist that the Zuckerberg online party zone is causing an impending “extinction” of the online professional networking destination, LinkedIn! Despite the LinkedIn “death” wishes of ardent Facebook fans, however, LinkedIn is staying the lucrative, high-end professional networking course, while Facebook continues on its merry poking ways.

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the closing panel of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development’s Tech 2007 Conference, along with Don Dodge, Microsoft, and Eric Auchard, Reuters, in the heart of Research Triangle, North Carolina. Following the conference, I experienced my first State Fair, in Raleigh. SEE CED Tech 2007: 30 Cool Startups, But NO Facebook Apps

The state fair evokes Facebook.

On Friday, October 12, my husband and I were two of the 57,798 fair goers that accepted the Commissioner of Agriculture’s invitation to have some “seriously twisted fun.” Why twisted? In honor of fair sponsor Subway’s “Seriously Twisted Sub.” 

While the official goal of the ten-day extravaganza is to celebrate the agricultural heritage of the great state of North Carolina, the fair is above all an exercise in all-you-can-stand fried food and roller coasters. Despite the state’s impressive lineup of livestock exhibits, authentic tobacco stringing, a real-life blacksmith, a working corn meal mill, a steam-powered log cutter…the Raleigh press was keen on heralding the “Great American Midway” for 100 “thrilling” rides promising “screams and laughter” thanks to ”heart -pounding, jaw-dropping, three-shriek, edge-of-your-seat excitement” aka “seriously twisted fun” thanks, above all, to a never ending supply of fried concotions of every known variety.

Mark Zuckerberg offers the Web its own frivolous and fattening State Fair experience, in the guise of F8 applications. As I underscored last weekend though, Facebook Frenzy? Not So MySpace AND LinkedIn Fast.

Just as a State Fair’s juvenile entertainment can be fun for a few short days at a time, the Facebook college party time will also be short lived. State Chambers of Commerce live on, however, as the Web’s networked version may as well, LinkedIn.

PLUS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Reid Hoffman On How LinkedIn Beats Facebook for Business

ALSO: AdWords is Safe! Facebook Flyers NO Google Killer

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Engadget’s Paul Miller is thankful he will ”finally be able to step into a station without going through Internet withdrawals”

THIS Metro Card toting New Yorker, however, says BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!

In 2006, the average weekday subway ridership was 4.9 million, according to MTA NYC transit.

YAY! 5 million people “sharing” the important stuff, loud and clear, such as “I’M IN THE SUBWAY”: Exactly, along with 4,899,999 other people! SO BE QUIET!

ARE YOU TOO WIRED? Here are seven sure signs:

YOU PUT A BLUETOOTH HEADSET IN YOUR MOTORCYCLE HELMET

Now motorcyclists too can benefit from wireless handsfree communication… opening a whole new realm for cellular use.

YOUR CELLPHONE IS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT BATHROOM ACCESSORY

LetsTalk’s 2006 survey of adults with cellphones found that 38 percent believe it acceptable to use a cellphone in the bathroom.

YOU PREFER YOUR CELLPHONE OVER TOM CRUISE

National Association of Theater Owners ‘have to block rude behavior’ to encourage customers to come back who have stayed home to avoid the aggravation of mobile distractions.

YOU BELIEVE YOUR RIGHT TO A CELLPHONE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN A RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL

Cell phones and pagers are not allowed in the courtrooms or in the jury room during deliberations. All cell phones and pagers will be required to be checked with the jury bailiffs or the Court Administrator’s office.

YOU BELIEVE YOUR RIGHT TO YAK IN PUBLIC IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PUBLIC SAFETY

Even using a cell phone in Chicago’s First National Bank’s lobby may result in the person being asked to leave the premises…there have been holdups in which bandits were on the phone with lookouts outside while committing bank robberies.

YOU LIVEBLOGG A HOSPITAL PROCEDURE

I’m going to be liveblogging during the birth of our second child… This is just a post to get started. We leave for the hospital soon.

YOU INTERRUPT SEX TO ANSWER YOUR CELLPHONE

As a society we will continue to grapple with the question: Which takes precedence: an incoming cellphone call, or live action activity?

In the Big Apple, incoming trains may soon be spurring massive cell phone rage!

ALSO: Mint.com: Can Arrington and Calacanis Really Set Web 2.0 Trends? and Web 3.0: From AOL to TechCrunch, NYC Takes Center Stage

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

There you go again, Google: Flashing around your spare pocket change. This time, you are pretending that by dangling $20 million dollars you will get the credit for landing a robot rover on the moon before 2013.

Doable? NO! Just the latest “eye-catching publicity stunt” for Mountain View.

Fly Me to the Moon? It was my wedding song!

I danced with my newly minted husband to the uplifitng romantic classic fifteen years ago, when we said our “I dos” at the top of the original 1964 World’s Fair “Top of the Fair” building in Flushing Meadows, New York.

Despite being inspired by Bart Howard’s exhortations to “play among the stars,” we were never able to “see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.”

Will Google change all that? NO!

The latest Googley attempt at shock and awe is to inspire other rocket scientists to go to the moon with a $20 million prize as the carrot.

Google Lunar X Prize? If Google “loves space” so much and thinks space exploration is so “cool,” why doesn’t it go to the moon itself!

Google teases the world with the unused power of its cash kitty, first with a threatened multi-billion dollar wireless spectrum bid, now with a flashy, but not meaningful, Moon race prize.

Google is soliciting the way a virgin might taunt an aroused prosepctive partner.

Google: $4.6 billion Google Phone Wireless Cheapskate I said of Google’s spectrum auction games.

BUT, why doesn’t Google put its real money where its wireless mouth is? After all, why doesn’t Google just get in it to win it? Google need not be held back by an arbitrary $4.6 billion “cheapskate” bid. Google is well versed in how bid up your own price auctions work!

Google now says “great things can happen when you reach for the stars.” So, reach for the stars, Google: MAKE IT HAPPEN YOURSELF!

Stop playing around and acting like the perpetual bluffer at a high-stakes poker table.

PUT YOUR OWN ROCKET SCIENTISTS TO GOOD USE, ERIC: BRING US THE MOON, SPONSORED BY GOOGLE!

PS: The man that swept me off my feet is Lyle Seltzer AND I am still dancing with him, 15 years later. SO the most important, and down to earth, part of “Fly Me to the Moon” came true for us:

In other words please be true,
In other words I love you.

ALSO: Google Privacy Hoax: Battelle and Sullivan Duped and Google Global Power Grab: Aussie Politicians in Tow

ALSO: CNET Rains on Yahoo and TechCrunch 40 Parades

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Reid Hoffman On How LinkedIn Beats Facebook for Business I presented earlier this morning, recounting my conversation with Reid Hoffman yesterday juxtaposing the formal business development tool that is the LinkedIn he founded with Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook college party site turned blogger social media sharing tool.

I asked Hoffman to comment on Jeff Pulver’s Business Week “confession” of leaving LinkedIn behind for the “virtual fraternity” he has declared Facebook to be; Bloggers don’t get the LinkedIn business use case, Hoffman explained to me.

In comparing the professional, executive utility that is LinkedIn, to the social bonding application that is Facebook, Hoffman indicated the majority of page views that transpire at Facebook are for photo sharing.

Is Jeff Pulver fueling the Facebook photo party? So it seems from the virtual birthday party celebration he threw at his blog Wednesday.

What in the world is going on? All of Pulvers’ Facebook “friends” are wishing him a happy birthday, sort of.

Pulver explains: “A social media birthday present was given to me Monday night in Tel Aviv from Alex Sirota, Maya Lotan and Zvika Netter who gave a poster with all of my Facebook friends. Seems like they have the makings of a cool Facebook application.”

A cool “for business” Facebook app? Not quite.

OK, lets not begrudge Jeff his Facebook birthday fun. Pulver doesn’t seem to need any excuse though, to carry on Facebook style any old day of the week.

Every day is Facebook party time for Jeff!:

One of my morning Facebook habits is to catch up on my pokes. Generally speaking this means to poke-back at the people who poked me during the night but sometimes I may aslo want to quickly say hi to someone without sending them a mesage that is why I might be the one who pokes first.

NOW we see why Pulver needs several hours daily to keep up with his Facebook chores.

Ah! The fine art of business networking via Facebook poking! Is it covered in corporate handbooks?

The GeekCon crew may believe so. Pulver recounts how he was touched (in more ways then one!) by the “Jeff Pulver Poke-a-Matic” custom built for him for manual poking pleasure. Not to be deprvied of authentic poking nirvana, a “Poke-A-Pulver-Day” Facebook group was also created.

Now I get Facebook groups!