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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Survey: Americans Don’t Like Being Hunted Online by Marketers

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A new survey that should surprise only the people behind the Beacon debacle shows that a majority of Americans of all ages don’t like being tracked online by advertisers.

In related stating-the-obvious news, Americans also find Jon and Kate Gosselin super-annoying.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

BoomTown’s Top 10 List of Fact-Challenged Revelations That Should Be in the Facebook Tell-All Book

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How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of the work of “fact”-ion–titled “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”–which is set to come out July 14, along with a movie later.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck, but here’s my own list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair facts that should be in the book.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Facebook’s Privacy Chief (And California Attorney General Candidate) Chris Kelly Speaks!

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BoomTown tried to get Chris Kelly to give up more during an onstage interview I did with the Facebook chief privacy officer last night at the third “Tech Policy Summit” and was only moderately successful in the endeavor.

Oh he is a smoothie all right, as a lawyer and now as a wannabe politician.

Kelly–who is still working at the social-networking site, where his job is to make sure consumer data, privacy, the children and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation are all safe and sound–is also running for the job of California’s attorney general.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Liveblogging the Facebook Our-ToS-Is-Your-ToS Press Conference

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BoomTown is impatiently cooling heels waiting for a press conference to begin about “new steps Facebook is taking to improve user understanding and ownership of the Facebook terms of service and, more generally, the policies of the Facebook service.”

The Yahoo reorg finally announced this morning is positively thrilling in comparison! It’s like being at the Constitutional Convention, except for geeks.

But we’re liveblogging it anyway!

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

BoomTown Decodes the Zuckerberg Terms of Service My-Bad Memo (Now With 10 Percent More “So Very Sorrys!”)

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Under cover of darkness last night, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the social-networking site’s blog that it would “return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

Oh, this is just too good to resist. Therefore, BoomTown shall not tarry in our ongoing job of busting the chops of the young Facebook leader, whose minions have actually–and I am not joking here–given him the nickname: The Wizard.

Well, the Wizard obviously had to pull back the curtain last night and show some serious mea culpa to the people, before they got out the pitchforks.

Here’s a translation of Zuckerberg’s message.

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Monday, February 16, 2009

“You Have Zero Privacy Anyway. Get Over It”–That Goes Double on Social Networks

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When Sun Microsystems Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement about online privacy online in 1999, there was a horrified hubbub at the time that he had the audacity to say such a thing.

You know, that he actually uttered such a terrible thing as the truth.

What a shock then that everyone is now in yet another tizzy about Facebook changes to its Terms of Service, which pretty much state the obvious again by noting that Facebook archives info you posted, even if you quit the service.

As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Entire D6 Interview With Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg (2 of 4)

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The social-networking site has had quite a year as the hottest and most hyped on the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, Zuckerberg talks even more about sharing information, explains why he wants to stay CEO, discusses mistakes like Beacon and successes like Facebook’s open platform, and defends widgets. Meanwhile, Sandberg talks about why she came to Facebook from Google, compares widget popularity to Elvis fans and talks about where ad spending is going online (think virtual ice cream cones).

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Monday, January 14, 2008

Facebook: The Entire ‘60 Minutes’ Segment

For those who missed it, here is the entire video of the piece CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired on Facebook last night, helmed by veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl.
It is not exactly the big wet kiss I was expecting the hot social-networking company would get, but it was also definitely not an ouch-that-hurts piece that could have [...]

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Friday, January 11, 2008

Facebook’s 60 Minutes of Fame?

CBS’s “60 Minutes” will air its Facebook piece on Sunday, and BoomTown is curious to see what take the iconic new magazine show will have on the hot and hyped social network and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg.
In clips it has released, Zuckerberg tells veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl that its stalkerish ad product Beacon–a half-baked ad [...]

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Thursday, January 3, 2008

Free the Scoble 5,000!!

It is easy to make light of the constant swirl of twittery online activity that surrounds well-known blogger Robert Scoble.
But Facebook’s disabling of his account yesterday–because he was apparently using a script to access and pull data from his own profile there to move it to other social graphs of his choice–is not going to [...]

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

What Could Facebook’s Beacon Have Been (and Still Be)?

Just because it is the holiday season and BoomTown is feeling all holly and jolly and merry, it doesn’t mean we’re going to back down on the fiasco that was, is and will always be Facebook’s Beacon.

In fact, we’re hopping mad all over again after a talk we had last week with a very smart [...]

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Thursday, December 6, 2007

Mark ‘Sorry’ Zuckerberg’s Beacon Memo: BoomTown Decodes It, So You Don’t Have To!

Yesterday, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a major mea culpa blog post about the controversy around its Beacon ad product, which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your profile’s news feed.

As usual, BoomTown asked for the obligatory on-the-record interview with Zuckerberg, but he still has not invited us over to get social at his social networking HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. So while we’re waiting by the phone, we need to get busy.

Thus, we continue our thankless quest to decode all memos from Internet moguls (BoomTown speaks fluent Web 2.0 double talk).

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Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Love–and Being a CEO–Means Always Having to Say You’re Sorry

So, Mark Zuckerberg apologized.
Yes, he took too long to do it. Yes, he was dumb to release a product, Beacon, without thinking through the potential privacy implications. Yes, it was a big black eye for the Facebook founder.
But good for him.
While some are arguing that no one but the press and privacy advocates cared [...]

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Tuesday, December 4, 2007

And the Zuckerberg-Bashing Begins…

As inevitable as air, Silicon Valley likes to build them up and then tear them down.
Thus, the bell now tolls for Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg.
We at BoomTown have been consistent and persistent in voicing our various worries about the young entrepreneur, from one of our very first posts, questioning (we think fairly) the [...]

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Saturday, December 1, 2007

A Well-Deserved Court Loss for Facebook

It should come as no surprise, of course, given it was essentially a legal temper tantrum on the part of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
But a judge in Massachusetts wisely denied an inane request by the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking start-up to take down confidential court documents that 02138 magazine had made available for downloading on [...]

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About Kara

Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference.

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Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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