Jeff Jarvis's Blog, page 61

Google's German screw-up

Since some have asked — from media and Twitter — here's my take on Google collecting too much data via its Street View car — not just wi-fi addresses but "payload data" that went over those networks:

Google fucked up.

It's pretty much as simple as that. And their screw-up sure doesn't help me when German media come to me asking how I can defend the Google they love to hate. I got a bunch of conspiracy-laden questions from a German reporter this morning: Google says it was a mistake and the...

Future of news

I taped this show months ago and didn't even know when it aired on PBS. It's a not-bad discussion of the future of news with me, Steve Coll of the New America Foundation (ex of the Washington Post) and John Sturm of the Newspaper Association of America:

BTW, When I taped the show, I was not told that it was backed by the George W. Bush Institute. Didn't affect the show, so far as I can see, but it would have been nice to know.

Editing your customers

"Almost everything you see in Twitter today was invented by our users," its creator, Jack Dorsey, said in this video (found via his investor, Fred Wilson). RT, #, @, & $ were conventions created by users that were then—sometimes reluctantly—embraced by Twitter, to Twitter's benefit. Dorsey said it is the role of a company to edit its users.

Edit. His word. I'm ashamed that I haven't been using it in this context, being an editor myself and writing about the need for companies to collaborate w...

If Facebook were smart…

If Facebook were smart and open and meant what it said about the benefits of publicness and transparency that it now expects of the rest of us, then:

* Today's company all-hands meeting about privacy would be public.

* It would find the Apple-elegant way to express its privacy policy rather than its current Talmudic tangle, something like: "Everything you put into Facebook is shared with your friends but in each case you may limit who sees it or choose to share it with the public. That is...

Finally, good news for Google

James Fallows writes an important cover story for The Atlantic on how Google wants to help save the news. It doesn't break a single new nugget of news. It's the piece's attitude that makes it must reading for everyone in the news business, in the U.S. and even moreso in Europe.

Google is not the enemy. But don't take my word for it if you don't want to. Take Fallows'.

Fallows, who has been admirably forward-thinking and curious in his coverage of technology and media (see his test of Bing v...

Confusing *a* public with *the* public

I think Facebook's problem lately with its disliked like button (and Google's problem with the start of Buzz) is that they confuse the notion of the public sphere—that is, all of us—with the idea of making a public—that is, the small societies we create on Facebook or join on Twitter. Private v. public is not a binary decision; there is a vast middle inbetween that is about the control of our own publics. Allow me to explain….

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Flickr: taberandrew

I've been trying to understand the vitriol I've ...

USAA is a social fool

I love stories of kneejerk (emphasis on the second syllable) lawyers mucking with a company's image and relationships with their stupid cease-and-desist letters. Here's a good one.

My sonorously named friend Rikki Tahta, founder of Covestor, invested in a company called Amplicate sent me an email about such a letter. (Disclosure: I invested in the former company, gave advice to the latter, and am a customer of the company I'm about to mention, USAA).

Amplicate gathers mentions about...

Facebook's identity opportunity – or somebody's

Facebook has the chance to turn a problem — negative publicity about its latest privacy shifts and confusion about how to control them — into a business opportunity: It could become the protector of your identity instead of a threat to it. That's a service we need.

Imagine if Facebook started a new and independent arm to take your side in any question about identity and privacy on Facebook — the ID equivalent of Google's Data Liberation Front. This group's job would be to simplify all the...

@sternshow: digital farts

Yesterday's Stern show appearance came because on This Week in Google, we'd made fun of Howard Stern for using Lotus Notes still and Howard's geek guru, Jeff Schick of IBM, rose up in protest and invited me in to see how the show uses it.

Start with Stern technology: Schick said they they digitize everything — every show, every bit of audio, every press clipping, even everything sent into the show. They scan all the fan mail. They scan dildoes. This adds up to 100 terabytes of data. That's...

@sternshow: penises

I finally get into Howard Stern's studio for the first time and what do we talk about? What else? Small penises. How appropriate.

I was headed in yesterday morning to talk about Lotus Notes vs. Google with Howard's tech guru, IBM's Jeff Schick, and get a tour of the studio and its operation. Then Howard invited us in, on the air. We talked geek stuff for a few minutes (more on that later) when Howard asked what I was up to next. I came prepared. I said I was working on a possible book about p...