The call for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, however, is a positive sign for people who care about privacy and innovation.  While the FCC is notorious for seeking to employ powers it does not statutorily possess, the FTC has a long record of judicious use of its power.  Regulation of some sort is inevitable in the privacy arena.  Best it be a one-stop shop at the FTC.

Facebook is also probably telling the truth when it says that has not stored or used this information.

The fact remains, what can be done, will be done.  The current privacy paradigm is simply not sustainable.

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is justifiably upset by a Google bomb that links searches for his name to something too disgusting to repeat here.  In demanding that Google take it down, however, Santorum does not seem to understand that all the responsibility—and liability—rests with the webmaster, not the search engine—in a law that passed when he was a member of the Senate.  (Anybody out there know how Senator Santorum voted on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?)

Santorum, however, does strike at a point.

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” he said.  In fact, something was ‘up there’ about First Lady Michelle Obama, a truly offensive image.  Google did act against one site carrying that image, citing malware concerns, and placed an ad explaining its stance.  Technology companies will need to remain utterly consistent in how they apply these rules—and clear to the public how they operate.  Politicians need to understand the need to play by the rules they themselves have passed.

To learn more about the impact of Section 230 on Google bombs, check out my book, Digital Assassination.

More videos after the break.

Check out our YouTube channel for future video releases.

Following DC were:

2. Atlanta

3. Denver

4. Minneapolis

5. Seattle

While some may have thought Seattle – often considered the Internet technology capital – would have earned the top slot, experts conclude that politics played an important role in the ranking.  No, Washington didn’t lobby for the title; but, Twitter is being used increasingly as a political tool, for advocacy and in GOTV efforts during election cycles.

Part of the research also included analysis of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Researchers collected the number of people making use of these social media tools per capita in each state’s most populated cities.

Bartlett Cleland, Director of the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation wrote this week about how countries like Venezuela are reassured by the FCC’s recent regulations, which they can now use to justify greater controls over their own communications systems.

Just days before the FCC made its ruling, the Venezuelan Parliament changed its laws in order to give President Hugo Chavez the power to regulate Internet content by implementing heavy regulations on Venezuelan-based service providers.  Specifically the country’s ISPs are now required to block broad categories of material that, for instance, “fosters unrest among the citizenship or disturb[s] public order,” and “refuses to recognize the government’s authority.”

In other words, the Venezuelan government has found a way of regulating all content. As Cleland concludes, “Venezuela needed little provocation for its continued oppression, especially from the U.S.” Nevertheless, Chavez can relax “knowing that the U.S. has joined Venezuela in the company of governments who regulate the Internet.”

Just a few years ago, sociologists were warning that the Internet was diminishing social interaction (and social capital). Now, 500 million friends later, Facebook (and myriad other social networking sites) has turned that around. In the process, it has changed the way we communicate. When is the last time you spent an evening watching television without catching a few commercials that mention the companies’ Facebook page? If you’re in the communications business, how often are the communications products you produce  used on a Facebook page?

For anyone trying to communicate a message, Facebook (and its predecessors and challengers) has changed not just the rules of the game, but the playing field. It has contributed to one of the biggest changes brought by the Internet: Turning public communications into a two-dimensional field, transforming passive audiences into participating networks. The Internet has presented twin challenges and opportunities: How to use it as a communictions tool, rich in potential with large, segmented markets — and how to use it as a listening tool. How people feel — about everything, it seems — is out there, like low-hanging fruit ready to be plucked. The question of course is how to harness that information, and analyze and present it in a way that will be helpful to those seeking to communicate a message. We’re learning more about each other, or at least getting more raw data about each other, and Facebook is a big part of that. 

Zuckerberg is the second-youngest  person in Time magazine history to get the annual designation. The youngest was Charles Lindbergh. There are a lot of differences between these two pioneers, but one thing in common. They both made the world a smaller place.

At least that’s how writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher portray the creator of Facebook in the new movie The Social Network.  The movie is framed by two parallel lawsuits filed against Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg. And flashbacks to life at Harvard and in Silicon Valley offer both moving and cynical views of how a young college sophomore changed so rapidly and consequentially the way the world communicates.

In an odd twist of fate, Zuckerberg’s inability – or unwillingness – to connect on a social level serves as his motivation to create the largest social network in the world: Facebook. As he explains in the opening scene of the movie, however, winning the social contest is everything when all your peers also scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT.

And ultimately it’s through the triumph of Facebook that Zuckerberg achieves some social standing – because in the world of computer programming, both his intellectual prowess and his contempt for social norms and niceties become an advantage.  In the end, his awkwardness, his obsession with fitting in, and his creatively strategic mind, allow Zuckerberg to dissect the social game and create the ultimate social networking system.

While Facebook appears to have been a stunningly quick success, the movie reminds us it didn’t just happen. It was born of brains, passion, creativity, a lot of hard work, and even a healthy dose of social dysfunction.

And for those of us interested in communications, the film about the story behind Facebook, is a must-see movie.

According to a report in Politico, the best way to communicate your message is to connect it to t(w)eener heartthrob Justin Bieber.  “Just last week,” Politico reports, “rumors spread that Bieber’s fan base was so active on Twitter that the microblogging website has servers dedicated just to him.”

Lesson: if you want to make your political message heard, you need to do a little (Justin Bieber) name-dropping.

That’s what a saavy new college spin-off of the Center for American Progress – Campus Progress – decided to do by launching a video ad, “asking you to vote for celebrities who can’t, celebrities like Jutin Bieber.”  While most of Bieber’s fans are too young to vote, too, the idea is that viewers will watch the ad and encourage parents, relatives and older friends to get to the polls.

Sometimes shameless name-dropping has a purpose.

According to a study completed by the Pew Research Center in August, only 42 percent of Americans consider a TV set to be a necessity – down ten points from last year.  Similarly the landline telephone is moving toward extinction. Only 62 percent of Americans view it as an essential appliance.  And, not surprisingly, 46 percent of respondents in the 18-29-year old range see a landline as a daily necessity of life.

It’s not that Americans are tuning out or going off the grid. Far from it. Rather, Americans are trading in traditional – 20th century – forms of communication for greater portability and instant gratification. More and more Americans choose to watch their favorite TV shows and movies, for instance, on their computers or cell phone – anytime, anywhere.

Similarly we’ve grown accustomed to making plans and checking in with friends and family on the go, through email, cell phones, and social networking sites like Facebook. Pew confirmed this shift in behavior in an even more recent survey, in which they examined Adults, Cell phones, and Texting.

Texting by adults, Pew found, has increased significantly in just the past nine months. While in September 2009, 65 percent of adults claimed to send and receive texts that number jumped to 72 percent in May 2010. And teens (ages 12-17) send and receive, on average, five times the number of texts per day than adults.

Communicating is hard to do; but you have to start by using the right tools.