Ajax Girl

There’s been another round of “Facebook is bad because they use our data” postings this weekend. The general argument is that Facebook should provide users the ability to opt-out of data sharing, both at a friends level and with advertisers. MoveOn.org is even leading a campaign complete with a petition calling on Facebook to provide privacy as the default setting with users presumably being able to opt-in to data sharing.

The best commentary so far has come from Tony Hung who notes rightly that the vast majority of people do not, and will not care what Facebook does with their data.

But why single out Facebook now, and not other companies? or is it that everyone seems to have forgotten the level, scope and depth of data retention one company continues to maintain on a sizable portion of the planet? That company of course being Google. Facebook’s data retention is insignificant in size to Google’s, and although the way Facebook is using that data may be raising eyebrows now, Google remains far, far more powerful in terms of what it knows about us.

I’ve long since given up caring and have submitted myself to the Google borg as have many others. Google’s argument about competition sits just as well with data: there are always alternatives so users are not forced to use their services. The same goes for Facebook; if users don’t like Facebook’s current privacy and data practices they can always take their social networking time elsewhere.

What do you think? Should we be more vocal on privacy and data usage on Facebook, or do you just not have enough time to care? Let us know in the comments, and fill in our poll below.

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Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/190476823/

I couldn’t not post this. The Singapore Media Development Authority made this video to sex up the Singapore tech scene a little. I’d say they definitely succeeded - there’s nothing as cool as middle aged men in suits rapping. Dan, dude, you’ve got to get on this immediately and make it go viral.

I would have paid good money to have done a cameo in this video.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/190422557/

Amazon’s Alexa traffic reporting service has little credibility left among people who follow traffic trends. Most analytics services, like Comscore, don’t measure small sites well, but they tend to get it right for the larger sites. Alexa seems to get everything wrong, no matter how large or small the site.

Example: In August Alexa said that YouTube passed Google itself in total page views. They were wrong, but their data continues to perpetuate this alternate reality.

Now, another embarrassing error. Alexa says that Facebook, on a steady growth curve for the last two years, now has a larger audience than MySpace. This isn’t as ridiculous as the YouTube/Google error, but it’s still way off. Comscore says that worldwide MySpace uniques are 109 million/month, whereas Facebook is at 86 million. Compete.com, which measures traffic using similar techniques as Alexa, stills says that MySpace is larger than Facebook.

Thanks for the tip Mark.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/190401765/

In 2006 PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy emailed to ask if we’d take their ads on TechCrunch. We said no and that was the end of it. Yesterday I heard from Ted again on the subject of advertising. His company, which has been renamed IZEA, wants to advertise their new RealRank service on TechCrunch.

For anyone unfamiliar with PayPerPost/IZEA and our position on them, it comes down to this: We think the core product is deeply flawed and we’ve said so many, many times. Over time the company has made policy changes that have mitigated some of the biggest issues we and others have with them. For example, they now require disclosure of paid posts, although we take issue with some of the language and the placement of the disclosure.

They are the blogging world’s pariah and are fairly routinely trashed for, as I put it, polluting the blogosphere. For more on our posts on them, see their Crunchbase profile. Here’s our first post on PayPerPost, which is representative of most of our coverage. If you have a spare couple of hours (and you’re tired of watching my sweet dancing moves), you can read all of our coverage of the company here.

Anyway, the company now has other products which we have no particular issue with (example), and RealRank, a new way to rank participating blogs since Google has basically kicked them out of the Internet, is one of them.

We’ve asked Ted if he minds us asking our readers what they think about taking advertising from IZEA on TechCrunch, and he’s agreed. So the question is, do we accept advertising from IZEA for RealRank? The poll is below. If you say it’s a bad idea, we won’t accept it (and Ted says he wouldn’t want to do it anyway since it wouldn’t be received well). If you say yes, we’ll take it.

Two quick additional points. First, yes I know that simply writing this post is a way of promoting PayPerPost. But we’re not linking to them here, and I’m pretty sure Ted isn’t super pleased with all the links to the negative posts we’ve written. Second, it should go without saying that even if we accept their advertising, it isn’t going to affect our editorial coverage of the company. In fact, I may go more negative just to prove we’re neutral, if that makes sense.

What’s your opinion? The poll will remain open for around 24 hours, and we’ll update with the final vote. If you’re wondering how I’m voting on this - well, the very first vote is a “no.” :-/

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/190159707/