Trusting Google and Facebook with Privacy
While in Australia last week, I spoke with Phil Dobbie from the Twisted Wire blog on ZDNet.com.au about privacy in the era of Google and Facebook. Here’s is the podcast Phil produced from our discussion.
Those quoted in the podcase include:
Stilgherrian, a ZDNet Australia blogger who quit Facebook last week
Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pac director of 360 Digital Influence, the social media arm of Ogilvy
Alistair MacGibbon, former director of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre, these days running the Surete Group.
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Bahasa Indonesia: Now Facebook’s 5th largest language
Bahasa Indonesian is now the 5th largest language on Facebook. Tiny compared to English and Spanish, but the only Asia-Pacific country to make the top 10, according to Inside Facebook.
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David Kirkpatrick: The Facebook Effect
I recently met up with David Kirkpatrick to discuss his upcoming book on Facebook. In the below video, he identified three things you might not know about Facebook:
1- Identity. Facebook doesn’t want to be a website, but the identity infrastructure of the Internet. In time, Facebook has the potential to pose a threat to the governments in terms of identification documents. Imagine one day printing out your Facebook ID instead of using a passport.
2- Mark Zuckerberg controls everything about Facebook. As a direct reflection of Zuckerberg’s beliefs, Facebook is constantly trying to push the boundaries for privacy online. Zuckerberg generally believes that people’s perception of privacy will change over time.
3- Monetization. The lack of an actual business model has had people questioning whether Facebook really is a business – or just a phenomenon. The answer is found in Facebook’s corporate strategy, which is more concerned with improvements and growth than monetization. Once they are large enough, however, there will be many, many ways of monetizing the platform.
More insights into the phenomenon of Facebook can be found in David’s book “The Facebook Effect” that comes out in June.
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Facebook Repeatedly Deleting Hong Kong Opposition Groups
Today’s South China Morning Post reports how Hong Kong’s political opposition has faced repeated deletion of their Facebook groups.
Read the article here (behind paywall), but some key points raised:
A Facebook group with 84,298 members formed to oppose the pro-establishment DAB was deleted
Kelvin Sit Tak-O, who runs a discussion group that opposes the pro-establishment party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), said his group’s Facebook page was shut down without notice on Thursday. The group had 84,298 members and was aiming for 100,000.
How were they deleted?
The closures could have been triggered by opponents flagging the group as “abusive” with Facebook administrators, Mr. Sit speculated. A spokesperson for Facebook was not immediately available for comment.
This is not the first time it has happened to Hong Kong opposition groups
Controversial Facebook groups were closed in 2008 in the run-up to the Olympic torch relay passing through Hong Kong, as Beijing grew especially sensitive to issues such as Tibetan self-determination. Christina Chan Hau-man, a student protester who waved a Tibetan flag during the torch relay and used Facebook to rally support, had her account closed days before the event. At the time, she said she was told her page had been closed because of “persistent misuse of the site”.
Ironically, this comes as Hong Kong government is pushing to engage citizens online, with a 3-hour online forum taking place today.
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Facebook for Business (Training Deck)
The deck was put together by my colleague Brian Giesen for our training session done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Asia and GoToWebinar on Facebook for Business. It was a fun training with a very lively Q&A session that took questions off the Webinar and Twitter. Thanks for all who joined!
Below and from this link is a video of the full event (including the Q&A)
Oct 7th Facebook for Business from 360 Digital Influence on Vimeo.
First in a series of free online Webinars on Social Media presented in partnership by The Wall Street Journal Asia, GoToWebinar and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Join our next event! Next session announced on our blog: www.asiadigitalmap.com or email thomas.crampton@ogilvy.com
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Can Asia Flip Facebook’s Business Model?
As this chart shows, the sale of digital items rapidly overtook advertising as the major source of revenue for the Japanese social network GREE (same is true of other social networks in Japan and China).
For those unfamiliar, digital items sold can be anything from a gift for a friend to a pimped-up avatar. Benjamin Joffe has done some interesting studies of the topic.
Will Asia export this business model to Facebook?
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...
