… In which I over-react and threaten to quit all Google products.

Posted by Mark on Jul 29, 2011 in /socnets | 0 comments

[This is a direct c+p from an email I just sent to Google. This letter was written to the “profiles support team” who have decided that I cannot use their service if I want to go by the name Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins. FWIW, since many people ask, I entered it into the service FN: Mark “Rizzn” LN: Hopkins. –mrh]

Dear Neil of the Google Profiles Support Team,

First of all, I think you folks are retarded if you believe I want to use your social network after this. My usage of this name predates the formation of your company. My personal domain name was registered around the same time Google.com was. For you to come in and tell me what my name is – true audacity, and I’m outraged.

For you to look at all the sites and references I gave you and tell me that not a single one of them is reputable (Mashable? #theCube? Gmail? SiliconANGLE? Archive.org? None of these are reputable in your eyes?), that is infuriating beyond belief, and demonstrates either unimaginable ignorance or gargantuan hubris. Either one causes me to lose a great deal of respect for your organization.

I can understand that you’re trying to mitigate certain unsavory elements in the nascent Google+ environment. You’re trying to prevent anonymity because you don’t want to create the next 4chat. You’re trying to stop brands from invading because you don’t want the next Myspace or Twitter. You’re attempting to mitigate impersonation because you want people to feel secure in their identities.

That’s great for you. It’s your social network, and you can run it how you like, and I won’t attempt to debate philosophy, nor will I delve deeply into how badly you’re failing in your mission (since my account has been suspended, no less than six brands have "circled" me on +).

But what you’re messing with is my identity. Since I’ve been online (and I’m counting BBS years here), I’ve been Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins. Before I was out of middle school, I received mail in that name. There are more people in the world who call me by my nickname than by my birth name. For me to divorce my identity from my nickname actually mitigates the level of familiarity people will have with who I am on your service.

Let me be clear – I’ve been a lifelong Google evangelist. I’ve known a lot of people in your organization. My entire digital life relies on your continued existence. Hell, I’m even a paying customer for your storage services.

I’m willing to throw that all away, because you’ve taken such a cavalier attitude towards suspending my account. There was no warning, and even though I provided dozens of sources supporting my own identity (including a photo ID), you’ve determined that you know better than I do who I am.

If you don’t see how that’s insulting to me, you’re not human, and frankly, I don’t want to know you.

Incidentally, I’ve been one of your most ardent defenders when people make the allegation that "Google doesn’t get social." Yeah. That’s right out the window.

Here’s what I want:

• Before I initiate the appeals process, I want to know if you can delete my account without negatively affecting data I have stored in Picasa and Google Reader.
• Since my account was suspended, I’m no longer able to share posts or interact on Picasa. If my account is deleted, will I still be able to use these services?
• If the answer is that you can’t shut down my Google+ account without destroying or harming access to other Google services (Buzz, Picasa, Reader), then I will begrudgingly keep my profile for now with my now edited legally given birthname.
• If the answer is that you can decouple Buzz, Picasa, and Reader from any Google+ account, then please do so immediately and/or point me to how to do it myself.
• You can feel free to reach out to me once you get a better and well thought out policy regarding names, and I might consider re-joining the fold. Truth be told, though, is that you guys aren’t the only game in town when it comes to commodity-priced cloud and virtualized services. I’m going to be looking at "the other guys" pretty closely, and probably leaving, so you should probably act fast if you give a crap at all.

Honestly, you probably don’t care at all. I’m probably talking to a bot (which is why I’m cross-posting this to my blog), so, in conclusion (and tl;dr), you guys suck at customer service, your naming rules are fscking stupid, answer my bulletpointed questions so I know how badly you’re going to screw me on getting my data out of your service, and I’m probably going to over-react and quite Google altogether over this.

—

/mark "rizzn" hopkins
rizzn.com

editor-in-chief for the siliconANGLE network 
siliconANGLE.com

903-253-0143
skype:madshow

"Social science meets computer science."

My real-time email load (and ways to get faster response time).

My profiles:
Contact me: rizzn.dourden madshow markalexanderhopkins yim_stinks

#tw: I’ve got word back from Google+ review team. They’ve determined that my name can no longer be Rizzn. No, I’m not soliciting new name ideas.

Follow @rizzn Reply Retweet 14:41 Jul-29

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Signature powered by WiseStamp

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Google Profiles Support <profiles-support@google.com> wrote:

Hi,
Thank you for contacting us with regard to our review of the name you are
trying to use in your Google Profile. After review of your appeal, we have
determined that the name you want to use violates our Community Standards.
Please avoid the use of any unusual characters. For example, numbers,
symbols, or obscure punctuation might not be allowed.
You can review our name guidelines at
http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271
If you edit your name to comply with our policies in the future, please
respond to this email so that we can re-review your profile.
Sincerely,
Neil
The Google Profiles Support Team

New Media Pioneer Don Lemon accepts a Reddit “IAmA” invite.

Posted by Mark on Jul 28, 2011 in /socnets | 0 comments

The Daily Dot reports today that CNN anchor Don Lemon is headed for internet fame after accepting a Reddit “IAmA” invitation (hot on the heels of being featured on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.

The spur of the newfound popularity comes from a comedic but most likely accurate observation by Stewart that Don Lemon “doesn’t much care for CNN,” or at least some of the goofy stories they force him to cover as anchor of CNN Newsroom Weekend.

As the Dot notes, Lemon would be “the first national news anchor to grace the IAmA stage,” but Lemon is no stranger to new media. We at SiliconANGLE first ran into Lemon at Blog World Expo in 2009. It was there that filmmakers Marc Ostrick and Michael Sean Wright found him mingling with the rank and file at the seminal New Media conference (first appearance, below, at 1:46).

“Don is interesting in that he sees no difference between the tools that everyone has and the tools that CNN have at their disposal,” said Wright this morning.

I was impressed by the depth of his geekery, as were his peers. Hugh Hewitt, a longtime Heritage Media personality who most consider to be an early adopter of New Media tactics, praised Lemon highly while also making sure to clarify that CNN clearly tries to piggy-back on Don Lemon’s early adopter status.

In Lemon’s second segment in Wright and Ostrick’s feature on that year’s Blog World Expo showed a propensity for the anchor to open up very easily to interviewers. If Lemon is as candid with Reddit as he was with us, this could be quite an interesting encounter.

A Follow-Up on Josh Harris and His Next Three Ring Circus…

Posted by Mark on Jul 26, 2011 in /blog | 0 comments

You’re already saying “OK, we get it, you don’t like Josh Harris.”

One thing you can say about Josh Harris that’s positive, though, is that he almost always evokes great press pieces, in the form of personal profiles and business profiles, or even documentaries.

But then again, a soccer streaker will always make the six o’clock news, right?

At any rate, Courtney Boyd Myers wrote an excellent piece over at TheNextWeb about Josh’s new startup (which I profiled a week or so ago here). Very well written, and a nice primer for anyone unfamiliar with Josh.

Also, I think, it glosses over some of the more glaringly negative aspects of his history (or at the very least fails to provide perspective and analysis on his current venture based on his past failures).

Still, definitely worth reading. It’s long, but you won’t regret spending the time on it.

Brain Drain at Millennial Media? As If. [Churnalism]

Posted by Mark on Jul 18, 2011 in /blog | 0 comments

Techcrunch’s Robin Wauters today wrote up a press release from mobile ad company InMobi talking about a new hire at the company. That in and of itself isn’t news, normally. That Techcrunch wouldn’t do research on a press release and write up as news what was written there isn’t news normally either.

What is news is that Techcrunch’s piece was framed in a way that was completely incorrect and potentially damaging to rival mobile ad network Millennial Media when even a cursory glance at the subject of the post’s LinkedIn profile would disprove the storyline the PR company was pitching.

From Robin’s post at Techcrunch:

Headline: InMobi Now Reaches 83 Million U.S. Consumers, Steals Millennial Media Exec

In its most high-profile hire, InMobi has tapped Peter Bassett, former SVP of Sales at one of its main rivals, Millennial Media, as its newly appointed Head of Sales for North America. Also joining InMobi from Millennial Media is David Smith, who will be heading up InMobi’s East Coast Sales.

Our own Saroj Kar and John Furrier earlier today were the first to make the catch on the story. Peter Bassett, according to his LinkedIn profile, hasn’t worked for Millennial Media since 2009 (and other sources we’ve spoken to say his actual leave date was in 2008).

I don’t know Peter, nor do I have any reason to doubt his credentials, but it’s obvious from his own record of work that he spent several months unemployed in between gigs at Millennial and the next job he held, Glam Media, and then several more months unemployed between his gig as VP of Platform Sales for Glam and Head of Sales for InMobi.

From the titles and employ dates alone, I glean at least two things: his career moves are lateral at best, and he’s not the hot commodity InMobi is making him out to be. He isn’t being scalped from the competition, as InMobi’s PR is inferring. He’s being picked up from the open market.

There’s nothing shameful in that for Peter, particularly in this economy. I, myself, have made many lateral shifts in my career history. Others may judge me for this, but I have pride in my work the companies I choose to work for.

What is shameful is Techcrunch’s lack of research on this PR puff piece, and the public relations company itself misrepresenting the facts.

Churnalism is absolutely nothing new.

Tom Foremski has written extensively here and at his blog Silicon Valley Watcher about the “bullying grip” of Techcrunch and the general pundit reliance on press releases. The problem is so bad in the new media reporting that he found and profiled a startup dedicated solely to finding instances of “churnalism,” where news content is essentially published “as is directly from PR firms and organizations.”

With simple color coded text — and it could be done in a subtle way — it would be easy for a reader to tell at a glance the origins of a specific news story and any relationships with the publisher. There would be no need to go to Churnalism.com, or elsewhere, to analyze the content of a story.

A color coded publishing format would show that information instantly. But publishers are unlikely to agree to such a scheme, probably for fear that it would show their readers how little original content is being produced. The mediasphere would be awash in red text.

Churnalism is geared towards British press, but if it analyzed the content of Techcrunch, it would indicate that 100% of Robin’s post was gleaned from the press release (no exaggeration; compare for yourself. Press Release, Robin’s Post on Techcrunch). It doesn’t even appear that a phone conversation with the PR agent occurred, let alone a Google or LinkedIn search to verify the data in the post (such as start and end dates, or independent reports that would refute InMobi’s claim of being the largest independent mobile ad network).

We contacted InMobi’s press team to get more specifics on the other executives mentioned in the press release, including David Smith. As of the time of this post, InMobi “would not release record of prior employment.” David Smith’s LinkedIn profile does show that he left Millennial directly for InMobi, but not recently (way back in February).

Press Agent Jill Ivey of IF Communications, the agent representing InMobi for this story, promised to “let us know” the specifics of David Smith “as soon as InMobi gets back to them.”

We contacted Millennial Media for comment, but they declined to comment. I probably wouldn’t comment on the PR antics of a competing mobile firm either, if it were me.

So is this a story about mobile or a story about journalism?

A little bit of both.

Here’s the bottom line: InMobi’s press releases are always chock full of hyperbole. MobileBeat published a story this morning hyping up questionable statistics about InMobi and the smartphone market in general, saying that ad requests for iOS top Android in Europe, which if true would fly in the face of almost all other analysis, including that of independent research firms like Nielsen (let alone other competitors in the mobile space).

Today’s very obvious PR snafu fail highlights the failure of tech punditry in highly technical niches, but it calls into question a lot of the reports and press that is sourced to InMobi. Clearly their press team have no compunctions about bending the truth, and the mobile pundits at even the largest blogs have no sense of the space to even know when the wool is being pulled over their eyes, even if they had the inclination to do more than re-write a press release.

But Churnalism is an industry-wide problem; what this really highlights is the need for InMobi to manufacture momentum. For months they’ve been parroting many of the same claims that Millennial Media made in years past (claims which, in contrast to InMobi, were verified by independent third party metrics organizations).

Now InMobi goes more overt with the momentum manufacturing and actually calls out Millennial in their press releases, falsely implying brain drain at their competitor.

Anything InMobi claims in the press from now on (up to and including details on their metrics and hiring practices) should be called into question and verified independently by self-respecting reporters (“churnalists” can, of course, keep hitting the “copy” and “paste” buttons).

Why Call Out InMobi and Techcrunch?

Editorial process and innovation is something we care about at SiliconANGLE. Our contributor Tom Foremski has done lots of fantastic work exploring the boundaries of New Media, and we ourselves pride our innovations like #theCube and realtime tech journalism.

Are we perfect? No, like any other journalistic outfit consisting of humans, we make mistakes. Newer writers getting accustomed to our narrow niches will occasionally mistake one company’s initiative for another as they wade through the buzzword bingo that most press releases consist of. Occasionally we’ll publish a story where we report, say, $23 million in venture capital was invested as opposed to $32 million.

Certainly these types of stories will have their consequences, but the type of errors we have created processes to prevent are the types of errors you see common at other organizations: the errors that come as a result of pageview journalism.

Pageview journalism rewards authors (monetarily) for sensationalism. In Robin’s post, he not only mentioned the brain drain, but highlighted it in the headline because it implies conflict (and conflict generates attention and pageviews). Because mobile ad monetization is a somewhat dry topic and probably not his area of expertise, he didn’t bother to research it. Because Robin is a great writer capable of making dry topics interesting, he was assigned the story.

Conversely, at SiliconANGLE, we don’t monetize by the pageview (for an explanation on how we and others like us do monetize, read my prior posts on the topic or watch this video). Our writers have little incentive to embellish the facts or outrightly ignore them like other organizations do. Our loyalty is to the truth, our audience, and our editorial worldviews.

It’s through this method we mitigate the damage to brands (and their customers) we talk about in our blog and broadcasts, and our growth curve shows that there is a growing respect for our model of coverage.

Update: From Jill Ivey at IF Communications: “David was in fact hired directly from Millennial earlier this year.  Peter, on the other hand, worked at Glam Media between Millennial and InMobi, as the VP of Platform Sales and the COO for Sportgenic.  His CV is here.”

[Disclosure: Millennial Media is a sponsor of the SiliconANGLE network, where I am Editor-In-Chief. Millennial Media did not sponsor this post, nor did they contribute to the information in this post in any way. –mrh]

Monkeys, Sentience and Copyright

Posted by Mark on Jul 13, 2011 in /blog | 5 comments

Either the bar for sentience has gotten extremely low (and given my cynical view on the human condition, something entirely believable), or Caters News Agency is engaging in some monkey business.

Caters News Agency is issuing a takedown notice to Mike over at Techdirt on some pictures that they imply they own the copyright to. The also readily admit, however, that a human didn’t take the photos – a monkey took them.

Did the monkey assign the copyright to Caters? If so, how much did the monkey get paid?

Inquiring minds want to know. For the full story, see here and here.

Have I Griped Here About Turntable.FM yet? [Get Off My Lawn]

Posted by Mark on Jul 12, 2011 in /socnets | 3 comments

Look, don’t get me wrong. I love music. I love streaming radio. I had a variety talk/music streaming radio show for many years, and worked at some of the finest internet streaming radio institutions with my SiliconANGLE co-worker Art Lindsey and many other folks I still hang out with online.

But this Turntable.FM thing? I’m not loving it. At all.

I’ve said this many places online, but I apparently haven’t said here on my blog yet: I loved Turntable.FM when it was invented 12 years ago, and it was called Shoutcast.

Yes, Shoutcast later was bought by AOL-Time Warner (now just “Aol.”). Yes, they totally let the product languish in obscurity. That still doesn’t change the fact that hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people used the product then (and now), and it had the ability to be social through the use of chat, server interaction, and plain ol’ talking to the DJ.

In essence, people were doing on their own with Shoutcast a decade ago what Turntable rolled out a month or so ago.

Yet this hasn’t stopped The Next Web, for instance, from naming Turntable the “most exciting social service of the year.” It also hasn’t stopped what is essentially a glorified streaming radio service from seeking a mind-boggling $5-10 million in venture funding after only landing a measly 300,000 users.

“How can you be such a dick about this, Rizzn?” I hear you asking. “Have you noticed? This thing has a freakin’ awesome button! What can be better than that?”

You got me there. Shoutcast didn’t have an awesome button. Instead, it had (through the use of popular DJing tool SAM2) the ability to totally automate and script a clockwheel and play songs based on popularity. Also, a nice perk of using Shoutcast as opposed to Turntable’s implementation: you can actually hear music you assemble into a playlist, regardless of how many people are listening.

Turntable.fm is an unoriginal idea that was eclipsed almost a decade ago by other more social (and less locked in) technologies.

Shoutcast, in case you didn’t know, consumes mostly MP3s, and outputs an MP3 stream (amongst other formats). That means any device that has a connection to the Internet and a media player can play the output. You don’t need a smartphone, you don’t need a desktop, and you don’t need a tablet. In many cases, a simple WiFi enable MP3 player or a feature phone will suffice.

It doesn’t have an Awesome button in all implementations, but it’s less restricted and more accessible.

You know what I think it is? I think it’s that I’m getting older and I remember stuff that’s happened before most of the social media professionals and pundits these days weren’t even alive for. The person in question on the Twitter exchange pictured above doesn’t have that excuse (he’s apparently older than me, according to his Facebook page), but most of the youngsters blogging for high profile tech blogs were barely aware of the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground when I started in tech professionally.

Martin Bryant, for instance, was the author of The Next Web post that lauded Turntable so loudly. He’s a great writer (as are most of the authors at that blog), but he was born in 1991 (again, according to his Facebook page). That means he was eight years old when Shoutcast was first released.

What he sees as “the coolest ideas since folders were invented for email clients,” I see as a stripped down and feature-poor version of something I played with extensively a decade ago. Perhaps that makes me a geezer, old fashioned, and automatically wrong, but all I’ll say to that is to kindly to get the hell off my lawn, and turn that garbage music with the Awesome button down before I call the cops.

Regarding the New EMC CEO, Whomever it May Be

Posted by Mark on Jul 8, 2011 in /blog | 0 comments

I think it’s particularly exciting that there’s a strong possibility that the next CEO is one of the friends we’ve made doing #theCube.

More info on this here in my post on SiliconANGLE.