The stories I'm sharing this weekend all speak to the value of thinking about consequences -- both intended and unintended.
"Free" as a tool sounds great, how does it sound when it's a business model?
Who's the watchdog for information freely circulating online and how does lack of filters impact your business?
How and when can police search social networks?
"Free" Platforms, Online Truth Filters, and Who Owns Your Tweets
The three stories that caught my eye this week are:
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Dalton Caldwell says Fred Wilson is wrong about free. The post in response to a post used to be the way we handled conversations across blogs and communities in the early days. Caldwell unpacks and addresses the issue:
However this “platform” word starts to get very troubling when talking about business models.
Building on top of a platform is a foundational risk, and if your platform decided one day that it doesn’t like what you are doing, or likes what you are doing so much they want to compete with you, it’s Very Bad.
Your platform partner can easily damage your quality of service, or simply shut you down. If that happens, your business is dead. Web2.0 built a lot of really cool, shiny things, but the foundational aspects of them are built on what I am arguing is a flawed premise.
He is not simply criticizing, he's actually proposing we can do better by doing it.
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Crisis pro Gerald Baron unpacks how Shell is facing a sophisticated and planned social media attack and what that might mean for your business. It's a unique experience, I can attest to that (having been through it):
[...] to have organizations who hate you, with major brand names of their own like Greenpeace, set out in an organized fashion to ridicule you, embarrass you and generally make life difficult–all using the remarkable power of social media.
Combining communication savvy, social media, some real budgets and a conviction of their moral rectitude, this kind of attack should cause shivers of concern among all major organizations.
[...] The very crowd that touts the ultimate value of disclosure, transparency, honesty and openness also loves this kind of dishonesty, deception, and lack of transparency of those behind it–all because they share a hatred against the target/victim.
Complete with cognitive dissonance. Baron links to a post on truth filters on the Internet in the comments.
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Mike Isaac at All Things Digital writes about Twitter's continued legal fight in Occupy Wall Street protester trial.
The case holds larger implications for Twitter in terms of potential future litigation.
The court originally found that Harris “lacked the legal standing” to challenge the request for Twitter information on his own behalf.
But if Twitter users on the whole can’t defend themselves against subpoenas for information, that responsibility is on Twitter.
One to watch because of the long-term implications for the role Twitter will play in defending its users in the future.
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Are we working to create the world we want to live in?
Have a great weekend everyone.
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Valeria is an experienced listener. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. To book her for a speaking engagement click here.
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