FriendsReunited, At a Price

  Before Facebook, we had to find our friends on FriendsReunited, a very successful UK site that achieved critical mass but had one flaw: users had to pay to communicate with each other. It only struck me now that there’s something a little unethical about that. Take, for example, what just happened to me: someone… Read More »

Hi, I’m Sheila from Phishers ‘R’ Us

It amuses me that banks talk about security but rarely apply it in a consistent enough way to save people like you and me from getting scammed. Take what just happened to me this morning: My bank rings me up (the number is a private number so doesn’t show up on my screen, but that… Read More »

When Old Media Buys a Community

MSNBC, owned by MSN and NBC, has bought Newsvine, a sort of citizen journalism, blogging and news-sharing site. But who stands to lose from the deal, and what does it tell us about the equity of Web 2.0? One commenter on the page that announces the news hits the nail firmly on the head: In… Read More »

The Real, Sad Lesson of Burma 2007

Reuters I fear another myth is in the offing: that Burma’s brief uprising last month was a tipping point in citizen journalism. Take this from Seth Mydans’ (an excellent journalist, by the way; I’m just choosing his piece because it’s in front of me) article in today’s IHT: “For those of us who study the… Read More »

Web 2.0 Ain’t About the Technology

Scoble makes some good points in a blog posting about why Microsoft, and more specifically his old boss Steve Ballmer, doesn’t get Web 2.0. I don’t agree with everything Robert says, but he has an understanding of this era of the web born of living and working in its eye the past seven years: “There… Read More »