Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

My mother was telling me on the phone how she found pictures of me using Google. I asked her for more detail and came across pictures I didn’t particularly like. They’re stored on someone else’s flickr page, so I was unable to do anything to stop others from finding them. The same can be said for almost every Web site - the content is controlled by the author (not necessarily the owner). As soon as someone uploads a picture of you to the Web, it automatically becomes discoverable.

However, if someone uploads of a picture to their Facebook profile and tags you in it, at least you get the option to remove the tag, rendering it impossible for people to search specifically for you. In fact, you can set your preferences to block people from searching for pictures with you in them.

Facebook gets a lot of bad press because of its lack of privacy preferences and because it makes it easier for people to display their life in a digital format for the world to see. The fact is, it has always been possible - it just hasn’t been easy for everyone.

Doesn’t this mean that Facebook is in fact, more supportive of your privacy, helping you to control what’s uploaded by others?

Feel free to connect with me on Facebook.

Was watching The Fixer tonight and loved this clip.

I’ve decided to blog more often about the things I discuss on Twitter. I’ll continue to use Twitter in the same way I do now, but I feel that I’m not communicating enough with most of my social network.

What’s my social network?

In short, it’s you and the other people with whom I’m connected. We are connected by the very fact that you’re interested in what I have to say. By the same token, I’m interested in what you have to say, hence why I converse with everyone who’s kind enough to spend time to leave a comment.

My social network is made up of people. Within that network I have multiple communities, each community representing something unique. The three blogs I author for example, represent entirely different communities, each with some overlap.

• Personal blog = entrepreneurial stuff, connecting, networking, social media…
• Segala blog = trust on the Web, standards, search, semantic web…
• BIMA blog = mainly Industry, creativity…
• Twitter = all of the above

You’ll notice that Twitter represents all of my communities. But it only represents a very small percentage of each one and hence, a small percentage of my social network. That’s because only a small handful of each community is represented by the early adopters in each one.

As I said, I won’t stop twittering. It’s a fantastic way to get to know more people whilst strengthening relationships. Twitter is also the world’s most comprehensive news feed and periodic replacement for a search engine when searching for stuff such as contact details or recommendations.

Think about it for a minute, do you sometimes Twitter messages that warrant a blog post? Does laziness encourage you to opt for the more accessible Twitter?

The most interesting conversation to come out of SXSW for me was Sarah Lacy’s unfortunate interview with Mark Zuckerberg. Paul Carr (by the way, welcome to Twitter Paul!) captured the moment succinctly

Sarah Lacy (SL): “Thank you - thank you all so much. Now let’s hear it for this guy - Mark Zuckerberg everyone! So, I wanna start by asking - as I did in my book - why do you think Facebook… which I use like all the time - is so great?”

Mark Zuckerberg (MZ): “Well…”

SL: “What I mean is - what is it about Facebook that has attracted not just me but millions of other people like me to sign up?”

MZ: “Terrorism.”

SL: “I totally agree. Can you say more?”

MZ: “Sure…”

SL: “Can you believe this guy? Wow - I mean his answers are so short - seriously I think he’s the biggest loser I’ve ever interviewed. Hey Mark, can I tell the story about the first time I allowed you to be interviewed?”

MZ: “Sure… I guess.”

SL: “Ok, so, like, I’m interviewing Mark - and we’ve been talking for like twenty hours and Mark was like ‘I need to pee’ and I was like ‘that’s so interesting and sexy’, tell me more and he’s like ‘no I really need to pee’ and I’m like talking about my book and like the next thing I know he’s peed all over the floor and it’s like so cute and hilarious.”

MZ: “Thanks for sharing that.”

(Audience break into spontaneous standing ovation, in awe at Zuckerberg’s razor sharp retort. Fat guy at the front screams and faints. Twitter crashes.)

SL: “Ok, so getting back to Facebook, I wanna ask you about privacy and Facebook Beacon.”

MZ: “Ok, well, let me say that Beacon isn’t something we’re really focussed on as a company right now - I mean it’s like not something I’ve even really heard of. What people don’t understand is that it was developed by our platform team and not our advertising team - so really it’s not advertising at all. I mean, in the Lebanon, kids are actually using it to interact with Coca Cola which - and this is unbelievable - makes them realise what they’re missing by not being in America and that’s why there will never be another nine eleven. But we’re not the only company delivering world peace through invasive advertising, we’re just one of the people in the space. We want to focus on building the platform for world peace and let others build on that.”

SL: “Ok, stop talking now. Jeez! It seems to me anyway, that Beacon is not really the issue. In fact, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. The big issue is the news feed, what can you say about that?”

MZ: “Well, it’s just something we’re not really focussed on having to explain right now.”

SL: “Ok, that’s fine. Now - last night you told me you were gay and like to fuck squirrels - can I tell that story?”

MZ: “Er…”

SL: “Ok, well, I guess I should have let you make that announcement, gosh darn I’m so ditzy (giggles). So what’s it like to be rich and to have journalists, like, really want to sleep with you?”

MZ: “It’s just not something I’m focussed on right now.”

SL: “How about if I do this?”

(Lacey begins to fellate Zuckerberg but, remarkably, is able to keep talking….)

SL: “Well, sure, that makes it so much easier.”

(Three rows of fat guys at the front of the room orgasm as one at the incredible comedic timing of Mark ‘Bill Hicks’ Zuckerberg as Lacey switches position for a reach around.)

SL: “Ok, well, that’s all we have time for - if you want to know more about how awesome - but dorky - this rich guy is, I guess you’ll all have to read my book. It also has the story about how I famously poured water into Serge Brin’s laptop on my show at Yahoo.com. That was sooo funny. And when I hyped Kevin Rose on the front cover of Business Week and then sold a book to Penguin on the back of it about overhyped web 2.0 companies. Don’t worry, Mark, I’ll give you a discount. And I’ll even throw in a copy for your girlfriend. What’s her name?”

MZ: “Uh…”

SL: “Ok, great! Well thank you very much Mark - it’s been a really insightful conversation on one point five billion levels. And, to the audience, I just wanna say thank you both for staying.”

Session ends.

Paul’s original post from which I stole all of his content can be found here. Please subscribe to his blog. He’s hilarious!

As a result of the poor interview, Mark called for a second interview which Jemima Kiss articulates very well.

To his credit. Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that a lot of people were frustrated by the wasted opportunity of yesterday’s keynote interview with Sarah Lacy. He did the interview on the condition that she was the interviewer, so whose to blame there?

In the rather more tropical surroundings of a safari-themed bar, Zuckerberg announces that he thought he’d drop by “because yesterday’s keynote just wasn’t enough fun”. That media training has really been paying off.

“One of the big pieces of feedback from yesterday was that people didn’t get a chance to ask enough questions. People were more interesting in product development and technical questions - I’m really interested in those issues like scalability but we thought we’d open up for another 20-30 minutes today.”

So in the midst of the developer garage, what did his home crowd really want to know?

Data portability is a big issue. Zuckerberg said that he wouldn’t necessarily commit to signing up to the same open standards as the other big social networks. “Beacon is a first iteration of that approach to help people share information. We are philosophically aligned with this openness and efficiency in the community but, at the same time, we don’t know what other people are doing and whether our policties are aligned.”

Robert Scoble got kicked off the site (albeit for just one day) because he appeared to be scraping data, rather than ’sharing it’.

Balancing the advantges of data portability with people’s privacy concerns is tricky: “We think sharing information is good, which is why we started this whole platform thing. But these are some of the questions that need to be worked out.”

Music: Is music a focus for the site? Not especially. The site didn’t predict how causal games like Scrabulous would take off (Zuckerberg plays it with this grandparents, aw). The great thing about having a platform is we don’t need to be editorial.

“We don’t need to say what will be the right applications because the market will sort that out for us, and the people that build the great products and applicatiosns will be able to build the great companies.”

It’s a very clever business model, because it lets the users determine the trends and leaves all the R&D to external companies. Nice.

Spam: Facebook will be cutting down on application spam, as he said yesterday: applications will be encouraged to focus on the level of proper engagement they have with their users rather than the number of installs, and the more popular apps will be able to send more invites.

China: He also said that he doesn’t look at time spent on the site as an important metric: Zuckerberg thinks that, like Google, the site should make communication more efficient and help people do what they need to do.

Facebook is looking at the issues of moving the business into China, said a very confident and relaxed Zuckerberg. He’s very open about it forom the start: “Making sure that people’s private information is private is a really important thing for us to do,” he said, explaining that there are only really two options in China; either have the government censor your site and impair the performance of traffic to it inside the country if it doesn’t like you, or have servers inside the country which will be shut down if you don’t follow their policies.

“There are ways to position these things make decisions and set them up to create minimal exposure,” he said. Now that China is on the verge of overtaking the US as the world’s biggest internet market, this strategy is increasingly important.

And has it been a strain for you, Mark, being under such scrutiny because of the success of Facebook? He’s now the world’s youngest billionaire, according to Forbes.

“That’s an interesting topic for a develop garage! I have a small group of really good friends and going through this whole experience of building the company has often been a strain but has helped build interesting friendships.”

Jemima’s original post from which I mercilessly stole her content can be found here. Jemima is also one of the few bloggers that I’m subscribed to, so make sure you’re tuned in. She has her finger well placed on the UK digital pulse.

I’m not sure I like either of Mark’s two options to expand into China. I don’t like the idea of filtering content on behalf of the government, full stop. But what’s the alternative?

Also, check out Rebecca Caroe‘s post on the BIMA blog about panel put together to discuss online advertising for newbies.

According to Marie Boran

John Collins said: a lot of speculation at the moment about an irish iphone release. i have the story but am sworn to secrecy.

It is O2 in my opinion. I’ve been meaning to write a post about the iPhone to explain why you shouldn’t bother unlocking it for a network operator that doesn’t support EDGE. The iPhone is absolutely fantastic for lots of reasons that I’ll go into later in another post. The browser is

Don’t bother with the iPhone if it means browsing on a network that doesn’t support EDGE. It’s not just dreadfully slow, it doesn’t actually work most of the time.

So, with that in mind, O2 Ireland is the only choice for Apple. O2 Ireland (as far as I know) is the only operator in Ireland to support EDGE.

I noticed Damien Mulley blogged about this just before I put finger to keyboard and his argument is more compelling.