Web Hosting News – The news that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is extending its’ remit to cover the online realm has been broadly welcomed by the Cloud Industry Forum.
It means that online marketing and ads will, from 1 March 2011, be subject to the same strict advertising [...]
Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up its 160 million existing iTunes users.
No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping.
Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. I think it could have tremendous impact on social sharing and commerce.
From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we see, music we listen to and books we are reading. These are accepted social norms. In fact, many relationships are made on the basis of collective love of a movie and many friendships have started with mixed tapes.
It makes perfect sense for a music service to be social. I’m not alone: The popularity YouTube, the fast-growing MOG and the sadly defunct iLike and Imeem show that people gravitate towards music as a common, collective experience. A recommendation from friends on Last.fm often resulted in me buying many-a-few music tracks. My friends who listened to Thievery Corporation turned me on to The Broadway Project and Chris Joss, which I ended up buying on the iTunes store or via Amazon’s MP3 store.
This click-and-go-somewhere-to-download model of affiliate links can never match a unified experience. Amazon, for example, encourages bloggers and others to link to things they like and then get a piece of the action. This separates social from commerce and treats them as two discrete activities. On the post-Facebook Internet, I don’t think anyone can afford to keep these two actions distinct.
Ping, from what little I saw during Steve Jobs’ demo, allows a similar level of social interaction. It can tell me who my friends think are cool and the top 10 favorites of people in my social graph. Some of my friends are famous deejays. Others just have eclectic musical tastes. They can collectively sift through over 10 million songs and help with the discovery of music. This social-powered discovery is part of the biggest theme of our times: serendipity. About two years ago, when I wrote about serendipity, I said:
The problem is that there’s too much data coming online too quickly, and the traditional method of search that involves first finding and then consuming the information is not going to work for much longer. There just won’t be enough time for us to do that and still have a life. It’s a problem, and therefore solving it is an opportunity — a very big opportunity.
My belief has only been affirmed by growth in the amount of data available. With 12 million songs and 250,000 apps, the best way for Apple to enhance the iTunes store – aka its shopping experience — is through the use of social. Back in 2007, I argued that social networking was merely a feature that had to be embedded into applications to enhance their value. Apple has done a great job of that, but it’s also gone one step further, not only by adding a social networking layer to iTunes, but by meshing it with its commerce engine, the iTunes Store. And it’s made this experience available on both the desktop and its devices.
Apple received much of this social capability with the acquisition of Lala, an online music service, which as a standalone company used sharing of social objects to drive folks towards paid music downloads. Now Apple is only closing the loop by further sharing what users bought. I wouldn’t be least bit surprised if sales of music on the iTunes store rocket upwards, thanks to social discovery.
Amazon, which recently started experimenting with Facebook Connect, has similar ideas, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. On Amazon, I’m reduced to reading reviews from absolute strangers for music. I have a handful of friends who have impeccable taste in non-fiction business books, are all members of Amazon, and they already use email to share new book suggestions with me.
What if they too could share their likes and dislikes via a social layer inside Amazon.com? Or what if I could follow my favorite authors and get updates on their books? Much like Apple, Amazon owns book-based social service, Shelfari, and should find ways to embed the social layer inside of all Amazon products and connect its tens of millions of users.
Like Apple, Amazon too has a lot more data about its customers and their behaviors and could create a compelling discovery experience. I believe with tens of thousands of products in its store, the retail giant needs to figure out ways to surface content and other offerings smartly.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
After extracting a deal from Research In Motion that appears to give state authorities the ability to monitor messages sent over the company’s BlackBerry network — similar to a deal that RIM agreed to with the government of Saudi Arabia — the Indian government has suggested that it may go after both Google and Skype in an attempt to get similar kinds of security concessions.
India’s threat means that this is no longer just about Research In Motion and its specific network or security controls; it’s about gaining widespread and potentially unlimited access to a whole range of cloud-based services. In other words, it means that our growing use of the “cloud” — whether it’s web-based email or web-based voice calls such as those recently launched by Google, or mobile email and data from companies such as Research In Motion — is colliding headlong with the demands of foreign governments to control those services and applications, or at least their demands to monitor them whenever they wish.
It’s not just India and Saudi Arabia making these kinds of moves either. Lebanon, Algeria, Indonesia and several other countries are said to be watching closely what’s been going on with RIM, with an eye towards pursuing similar deals with the company, and with other web and mobile service providers. There have also been unconfirmed reports that RIM has already handed over some form of monitoring ability to the federal authorities in both Russia and China, although it’s not clear what level of access those governments have received. If India goes after Google and Skype for access to its email, instant messaging or other communications, China and plenty of other countries are almost certain to demand the same kinds of access.
India has focused on targeting Skype because of the government’s belief that terrorists and other anti-government forces routinely use the VoIP service as a way of communicating without having their phones tapped — something that could also be a risk with the new voice services that Google has launched. According to reports from Bloomberg and other news sources, the government wants both Google and Skype to set up servers in that country that can be monitored by security agencies, or to provide a means for tracking voice and instant messaging data.
The U.S. government has the authority to subpoena content from the BlackBerry network, but it doesn’t have explicit decryption boxes running on RIM servers inside corporate premises, which is what it sounds like India and Saudi Arabia want: to be able to simply turn on their eavesdropping devices and collect whatever they wish. Will India or Saudi Arabia or China abide by the same rules as the U.S., and provide full legal justification for doing this if and when it happens? Perhaps. Or they might just conveniently forget about such niceties (although the U.S. sometimes goes outside the legal boundaries as well).
Either way, your data could be at risk. If you send messages over the BlackBerry network, use Skype to call overseas, or send email or use the new voice-calling options from Google, theoretically what you say could be monitored by a foreign government, if India gets its way. There’s no reason to believe that these efforts are going to stop with India, or with just RIM or Skype or even Google; Amazon, Facebook and others could be the next to face such government demands for access to their servers and the information stored there. Living our lives in the cloud is appealing in many ways, but how much freedom do we have to give up in order to do so?
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): As Cloud Computing Goes International, Whose Laws Matter?
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users AndyRob and Chrissy575
Space enthusiasts who follow information coming out of NASA with excitment should download the free NASA HD app for the iPad right now. This app aggregates all of the happenings at NASA with a gorgeous interface that is tailored for touch operation on the iPad.
Freelance work is on the rise, according to a new survey by Elance — a service that helps freelancers connect with employers for part-time employment — and more workers are choosing to live the life of a freelancer, as opposed to finding themselves in the position while looking for a “real” job. The Elance report, which will be released in full next week, found that 70 percent of freelancers surveyed are happier working independently than when they were full-time employees, and more than 60 percent said they would prefer to remain a freelancer rather than take a full-time job. Over 60 percent also said their income has increased in the last year.
According to the Elance report, the economic downturn is no longer the primary force driving professionals to start a freelance career. Less than 5 percent of those surveyed said they were working as a freelancer until they could find a full-time job, and less than 25 percent said they became freelancers after a layoff. Over half of those who responded to the survey said they began freelancing to be their own boss and work on projects they loved, and almost 80 percent of respondents said the ability to have control over their own work schedule was their favorite part of working independently.
The typical online freelancer is between 25 and 54 years of age, Elance says, and is more likely to be female and educated. About 80 percent of freelancers surveyed by the company have a professional degree or designation of some kind, while just 4 percent have only a high-school diploma. About half of those who took part in the survey (which sampled more than 700 freelancers who have connected with employers through Elance) said freelancing was their sole means of income, while about 30 percent said they do part-time work online in addition to other full-time or part-time employment.
Related posts from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Career Opportunities in the New Net
