Also: YouTube's anti-piracy plans | Twitter's investment round | AOL UK announces betting partnership | Death on MySpace
Adding more fuel to the anti-Facebook fire, Om Malik says we've all been far too sloppy in allowing too many people to become part of our networks. Facebook email is filled with as much junk as regular email and it is just taking too much time to maintain your account, he says.
This is of the back of a Telegraph piece yesterday on city firms banning Facebook (even for professional networking?!) and the revelation, if that's the word, by entrepreneur and Mahalo daddy Jason Calacanis that he has declared Facebook bankruptcy.
"The best way to ensure Facebook fidelity is by taking a look at the names and numbers in your mobile phone," says Malik.
"We are not using the privacy settings of Facebook, and are too polite to say no to invitations from people who want to friend us. No wonder, the social environment is starting to resemble a crowded nightclub. (You go to clubs to be seen, not talk.)
"However, if you treat Facebook more like a dinner gathering, inviting only the closest friends and family, it can be a rather efficient way of staying in touch."
He adds that in trying to become the new web platform and inviting all those bells and whistles applications, Facebook has forgtten that what makes the site great is the ability to create a fun, controlled and easy to use environment. (Giga Om)
YouTube's anti-piracy plans
YouTube is still brewing its anti-piracy technology and could roll out a video fingerprinting tool by September, according to the New York Times. The technology is reportedly as advanced as that used by the FBI (surely that's a different kind of fingerprinting?!) and basically creates a digital fingerprint for video that will identify and block any unauthorised uploads. During the proceedings in the Google versus Viacom case, a lawyer said Google was working "very intensely" with content companies on the technology, but Viacom said it would take around 12 months to establish the extent of copyright infringement in the $1bn case. (New York Times)
Twitter's investment round
Twitter, which has been described as a micro-blogging service, scored what we assume must be several million dollars in investment from venture firm Union Square that will be used to "grow our resources and focus on the important tasks ahead", according to co-founder Jack Dorsey on the Twitter blog.
Fred Wilson from Union Square has a detailed post on the thinking behind this support, deflecting the observations that it is a business with no business model, as yet. Anyone who uses it will know only too well that it is extremely addictive, but that has to be good news for mobile companies who must be making a nice sum from text bundles.
"Twitter provides a platform for banter that blogging doesn't and it's available in so many places via IM, mobile text messaging, or the web that it induces a different sort of behavior. Twitter encourages people to adapt and invent behavior to suit their needs," writes Wilson, succinctly.
These are very early days for what he describes as "asynchronous communications", but the feeling is that we're waiting to see what Twitter becomes when it grows up.
"After Facebook, I think Twitter is the most interesting API that people are building to these days. Here is one person's list of the top 10 Twitter apps and here is the fan-created wiki with even more. The breadth of activity in the Twitter ecosystem is astounding. Open systems that support emergent behavior are way more likely to become platforms and we are excited by the possibilities of new consumer facing web platforms."
Not to be outdone, rival service Pownce had a feature in the New York Times yesterday, in which we learnt that Leah Culver was one of the original programmers (her of the laser-etched laptop) and Kevin Rose - who also founded bookmarking site Digg - was also a college drop out. Is that a must-have CV blip for dotcomers?
Pownce has gone the way of the invite-only launch; some of those invites were selling for $10 on eBay, so if I had a business brain I could've made a few bob. But I can't get too excited about Pownce yet because although the functionality is better, there is no phone support and that's really the critical thing for me.
AOL UK announces betting partnership
AOL UK is introducing betting services in a partnership with Jaxx, the UK subsidiary of Fluxx. The site hopes to pull in new advertisers through the deal which will introduce sports betting tools and related editorial. The UK online betting market is seen as underdeveloped compared to the offline market, and this partnership is based on a similar deal between AOL and Jaxx in Germany. The two are also planning more local versions in Europe.
Death on MySpace
Someone is collecting links to the MySpace profiles of dead people. The count on MyDeathSpace stands at 2,700 to date, mostly young people who died through accidents or murder. Another peculiar corner of internet culture. (AP)
