Yesterday's Association of Online Publishers' forum on communities and social nets (see this morning's very lengthy report on the speakers from CNET and Yahoo) strayed into managing those communities, blogging and trolls. I asked Yahoo's regional vice president Steven Taylor how he would have handled the Saddam hanging fracas on Toby Harnden's Telegraph blog.
Harnden blogged about pre-writing a piece on Saddam's execution, and several readers were furious to discover that the paper would do that. It's standard practice in newspaper world, though online we have the luxury if immediacy. Harnden had included details like a bag over Saddam's head which he actually refused. The original entry was copied by Colin Berry on Dreams and Daemons.
But the blogged was pulled for "legal reasons" by the Telegraph when the comments became too ferocious. Was it wrong to pull the blog?
"It's the worst thing you can do," said Taylor. "The debate will emerge somewhere else - it's just a very bad policy."
Yahoo allows its employees to blog and be critical of their own company. Taylor said online publishers have to engage with people and manage these communities properly, as long as contributions are critical rather than abusive.
"Most of us most of the time are sensible, and the community will start reacting to itself."
By allowing everyone to wade in, the range of different voices usually balances the debate and produces a well-rounded discussion.
"They feel that the more authoritative your brand, the more careful you have to be about the dialogue that takes place. It's easier at Yahoo because our job is to facilitate discussion."
• Engadget's massive Apple traffic
Engadget is more than a little chuffed with the 10m page views it knocked up during International Apple Hysteria Day last week. On TechCrunch, Mike Arrington said that with those kind of figures, it's hard to deny that blogs are pulling mainstream audiences:
"Just about everyone that cares knew exactly what was being announced at MacWorld just moments after it was said, and they got the news from Engadget or another blog. Pictures and video were available real time as well. By the time television and newspapers got to the story, the really interested readers were already on to the next thing."
• Sony Ericsson profits shoot up
Cameras and digital music helped Sony Ericsson's profits to triple to €447 in the last quarter of 2006, according to the WSJ. That's despite going against the industry trend of pricing handsets lower. I won't mention Apple.
• MySpace to introduce spyware for parents
WSJ reports today that MySpace is looking to introduce a form of notification software for parents in response to various concerns about the safety of the social net site.
The new "Zephyr" software will allow parents to spy on their kids to find out the name, age and location they give in their MySpace profile, although not the actual contents of emails or messages. I doubt that will be much consolation to its young users though and I'd imagine that would just drive more kids to use Facebook, Bebo or any other site instead.
This move is in response to pressure from US authorities, some of who are threatening legal action if the site doesn't raise the age limit from 14 to 16. The research I've seen seems to confirm that most people, kids included, use social nets to communicate with existing friends much more than they do for finding new friends, but the concern persists because "dozens" of teens have been molested or murdered by people they met on MySpace.
