Police: Why we reacted to Facebook pic of boy with rifle
Authorities
in New Jersey say a heightened sensitivity to guns necessitated they go
with child protection workers to the home of a man who posted a
Facebook photo of his gun-toting 11-year-old.
The Facebook photo that started it all.
(Credit:
Shawn Moore/Facebook)
Many in the last 24 hours have reacted with feeling (and the occasional thoughtfulness) to the visit paid by police to the New Jersey home of Shawn Moore.
Should you have been hospitalized after accidentally impaling yourself on a deer antler at your local gun club recently, here's the back story: Moore posted a picture to Facebook of his 11-year-old son, Josh, clutching (very properly) a .22-caliber rifle that looked like a little more than a .22-caliber rifle.
It was his birthday present.
As is ever more often the case these days, someone saw it, was perturbed by it and contacted the police.
Moore, in an appearance on Fox News, explained that he stood his ground, even though the police allegedly wanted to go into his safe to check all his guns.
More Technically Incorrect
The police explained that it was their job to visit the house to accompany members of child protection services.
The tip they had received reportedly said that a boy might have had access to guns and ammunition, according to the Associated Press.
It does seem odd, however, that the police allegedly demanded entry into Moore's house without a warrant. This seems especially odd, given that Moore claims that several of the officers actually knew him from his local gun club.
Did they think that because they knew him, he would be more malleable?
The Carneys Point authorities, meanwhile say they behaved correctly -- "At no time did the police attempt to unlawfully search this residence" -- and dressed in appropriate evening attire: "The police officers were not dressed in SWAT gear, they were dressed in their Class B uniforms with their body armor in a outer cover as they do every evening."
And the authorities confirmed that Shawn Moore would face no charges, according to the AP.
However, one thing for him to ponder might be who among his alleged Facebook friends might have made the initial call to police.
There is little point in trusting people. Even if you're the one with the gun.
Chris
Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major
corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent,
sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world.
Was Former Astronaut Mark Kelly’s AR-15-style Buy A Cheap Trick
Astronaut Mark Kelly and NRA VP & CEO Wayne LaPierre Battle at U.S. Senate Hearing over Gun Control
Credits:
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Legitimate gun owners and supporters of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment have good reason to be outraged by Mark Kelly’s publicity trick to further gun control efforts in America. According to published Fox News reports, the former astronaut and husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a shooting victim 2 years ago in Tucson, Arizona purchased an AR-15-style rifle and a 45.-caliber handgun.
This comes on the heels of his highly publicized efforts in both Congress as well as in Colorado to assault the U.S. Constitutional rights of legal gun owners to own weapons. In fact, his comments which he posted on Facebook, according to published reports seem disingenuous, when he states that people could easily buy similar guns at gun shows or over the internet without background checks.
The fact is, Kelly did actually do exactly what other law-abiding citizens in Arizona or any other state in the union have done beforehand. The Diamondback Police Supply gun shop where he reportedly purchased the weapons from, followed state law and had him undergo the mandatory background check.
Well, surprise, surprise he passed without any hiccups. So what was his point?Many supporters of gun rights have weighed in on his open display of reactionary theater, by correctly pointing out that his entire stunt accomplished was to bring attention to his and his wife’s newly formed gun control organization named, Americans for Responsible Solutions.
It appears that the organization’s leader, Kelly, was actually seeking to create irresponsible reactions from fellow gun control sympathizers who would somehow rise up in hysteria and join up or gin up more donations to his national gun control cause.
What Kelly does not seem to want to accept, is that as tragic and woefully unfortunate the mass shooting of his wife and others on that horrendous day in the Tucson area shopping center, it was not performed by law abiding citizens going on a rampage.
Her attempted assassination was due to largely in part to relaxed mental health laws dealing with mentally unbalanced and severely disturbed individuals that the mental health system in Arizona and other states have not be responsible for.
Kelly, instead resorted to the quick, the easy, and the attention-headline grabbing techniques which are assured to raise the ire of mainstream media liberal heads. The goal of course is to place greater pressure on states like Colorado, which are caught up in a monumental gun control pitched battle in their democrat controlled state legislature.
It is truly quite unfortunate, that a man who has given such admirable service to this nation, could be given to publicity stunts that actually undermine the very protections he served to uphold.
So where again is the news value in his attempt? The owner of the gun shop actually had to hold onto the weapon for the required 20 days, to ascertain if the weapon had actually been used in a crime. Again, where is the news and where is the imagined harm?
Nothing, you might say. And that would be absolutely correct, because Kelly’s point is a red herring. There is no news made if Kelly, were an ordinary citizen who decided to follow the laws of Tucson, and the state of Arizona and legally purchase weapons. But it becomes news by name association.
Well, here is a bit of news that protectors of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment rights can pass onto former astronaut Mark Kelly. Cheap parlor tricks will not destroy or impede the ability to Americans to exercise their right to bear arms.Instead, Kelly should focus his and his organization’s attention on the real problem and that is to make certain that states and localities actually enforce the laws on the books and prosecute criminal offenders in cities like Chicago, which owns the nation’s highest murder rate.
If Americans for Responsible Solutions wants a real solution then start your efforts in Chicago. Help the parents and the innocents being assaulted in Chicago and get Obama’s former chief-of-staff, Mayor Rahm Emanuel to stop attacking gun rights and punish criminals who use guns to murder in that city.
Now that would be a real responsible solution all Americans could support!
___________________________
Copyright © 2013 Kevin Fobbs. Subscribe above to receive email updates whenever Kevin Fobbs publishes on Examiner.com.
How to customize your Facebook page for free
Give
Facebook a near-complete makeover by using the free Social Fixer add-on
for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and other browsers not named Internet
Explorer.
The free Social Fixer browser add-on provides a wealth of customization options for your Facebook account.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNET)
You can add your name to the waiting list for the new-look News Feed, but you don't have to wait to enliven your Facebook page's appearance.
While the company provides only a handful of options for tweaking the look of your Facebook profile, Matt Kruse's free Social Fixer browser add-on (formerly named Better Facebook) takes Facebook customization to a new level. Social Fixer lets you update the social network's interface with a tabbed news feed, feed filters, image previews, and many other options.
Facebook's built-in customization features
There's a boring sameness about Facebook profiles. Pretty much all you can do is add profile and cover photos, change what appears on your timeline, and tweak the contents of your news feed. The Facebook Help Center provides instructions for adding a profile picture and cover photo; adding, hiding, and deleting items on your About page; and customizing the content of your news feed.
There's also information in the Help Center that describes customizing the appearance of a Facebook Page. According to Facebook's Managing a Page section, Pages can be created only by people who are "the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity or band."
Not being an official representative of anything or anyone in particular, I'll have to leave the Facebook Page crafting to someone else, alas.
Give Facebook some personality with Social Fixer
Just because Facebook hasn't placed much emphasis on customization to date doesn't mean we're stuck with the layout and options the company offers. The Social Fixer browser add-on spiffs up your Facebook account with such features as news-feed tabs, feed filters that let you direct specific items to one of your tabs, image previews, and themes.
Social Fixer works with Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, and other browsers, but not with Internet Explorer. I tested the Chrome version of the add-on. The first screen of the program's seven-step setup wizard lets you choose the recommended settings or a "minimalist" approach that turns off most of the add-on's features by default.
The option to place application and game posts in separate tabs on your news feed is selected automatically on the setup wizard's second screen. The third lets you customize the chat list by removing the chat sidebar and replacing it with the old pop-up chat list. You can also show all online friends on the chat list (this option is selected by default), or use a compact chat list that does away with thumbnail images.
During setup the Social Fixer browser add-on lets you select one of three options for viewing Facebook's chat list.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNET)
The next setup option lets you view the full-size version of images when you hover over their thumbnails in any post or profile. The photo-preview setting is selected by default. One pet peeve of many Facebook users is addressed by the next Social Fixer option, which puts you on a new line when you press Enter while writing a comment rather than the Enter key posting the comment. Note that this option is deselected by default.
The setup wizard's last option lets you add a link to the Social Fixer news feed to Facebook's left pane.
Filter your feed, see which friends are online
After Social Fixer is installed, you'll notice tabs on your profile and news feed labeled Mark All Read, Show Hidden Posts, Mute All, Reload, and Undo. Social Fixer also reverts to showing the most recent posts on top, although a drop-down menu option allows you to switch back to having top stories appear first.
Click More under the main tabs to display the number of posts processed, hidden, filtered, moved to a tab, or reordered. Also displayed are the number of duplicate posts and the number of times the Older Posts option has been clicked.
Social Fixer adds buttons to the top of your
profile and news feed that let you alter your view and see your recent
post activity.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNET)
Click the wrench icon that Social Fixer adds to the top of the Facebook window and choose Edit Social Fixer Options to view dozens of check boxes, text boxes, and lists for altering the Facebook interface. In the Popular category are options for hiding Trending Articles and Trending Videos, automatically moving posts from Applications (games) to a separate tab (selected by default), and changing the default font size for posts and comments.
Social Fixer's many options let you change the
font size of posts and comments, move application posts to a separate
tab, and otherwise customize your Facebook feeds.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNET)
Social Fixer lets you view only new comments to old posts, see who has unfriended you, and apply one of a handful of themes or paste in a link to a third-party theme, although some third-party themes may not display properly. When I tested the program, not all the themes that ship with the app worked when I applied them in Chrome. You can also select a custom color scheme from a color palette.
It took no time at all to get used to Facebook with Social Fixer's many useful customizations. The hard part was switching back to the standard Facebook appearance in browsers that don't have the add-on installed. Hard as I try, I can't think of a down side to using the program.
Of course, a big question is whether Social Fixer will work with the new Facebook interface now being rolled out gradually. I'm hoping Mr. Kruse will figure out a way to let Facebook users revert to the old Facebook look if doing so is required for Social Fixer to work correctly.
Don't Miss
How to
Send YouTube videos to Xbox from iPhone
A recent update to Google's YouTube
app for iOS allows you to send videos from the app to compatible
devices such as an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or any number of smart TVs.
In this example, Donald Bell shows you how to set up this connection
between an iPhone 5 and an Xbox 360.
Image via CrunchBase
The position has been vacant since former Friendfeed founder Brett Taylor, who became CTO after Facebook acquired his startup, left last year.
Schroepfer has overseen a number of technology projects at the social networking giant, including its extensive technology infrastructure.
“Mike Schroepfer’s new designation as Facebook’s CTO reflects the unique and important role he plays across the company,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
Schroepfer was previously vice president of engineering at Mozilla Corporation, where is was a key person in the development of the Firefox web browser.
He was also previously chief technology officer for Sun Microsystems’ data center automation division and was founder at CenterRun, which was acquired by Sun.
Is Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg really the new face of feminism?
She
has caused a furore on both sides of the Atlantic with her
controversial new book and Lean In project designed to empower women.
But has her message any real relevance to the lives of most working
women?
Email
Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last year. Photograph: Jean-Christophe Bott/AP
Sheryl Sandberg,
43, chief operating officer of Facebook, is also the first and only
woman to sit on its board. She has held senior positions at Google, the
US Treasury and the World Bank. She graduated from Harvard with
accolades, earns millions of dollars, is wife to David, who does his 50%
share of domestic duties, and mother of two children, aged five and
seven, who apparently rarely see her but that's OK, because a therapist
said so. She is clearly smart, so it's a mystery how Sandberg is so
short on common sense and has fallen for the oldest trick in the book.
In Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,
Sandberg shows very little awareness of herself or the ridiculous
nature of the system that she so doggedly and determinedly embraces. Her
book should carry a toxic warning.
Sandberg's book has generated controversy in the US. Critics such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, the academic and former high flyer in the Obama administration who wrote an excoriating article in the Atlantic last year about why she couldn't "have it all" (as if anyone on this planet does), says Sandberg is too rich to pontificate to ordinary women. Wealth isn't Sandberg's problem. She says she has always seen herself as leading a social movement. She has set up a not-for-profit Lean In foundation for women to link up in "Lean In circles" and follow her instructions in the cause of self-advancement. Joining a union might prove infinitely more fun and, for women, has the greater potential for a change that benefits not just themselves but their sons and daughters and grandchildren too.
Sandberg, according to Time magazine, is on "a mission to reboot feminism". No she isn't. What she is is a handmaiden of a process that, since the 1960s, has been intent on customising feminism and turning it into a servant of the marketplace. Hence women's alleged advancement is now marked by pole dancing, Botox and anti-ageing cream for the under-30s, all packaged as "liberation-lite"; feminism with the nerve extracted. More than 40 years ago, when a handful of us decided to set up a women's liberation group in Northampton and were unable to agree on exactly how we would storm the ramparts of male oppression and under what banner (socialist-feminist? Marxist-feminist? Separatist-feminist required the sacrifice of a couple of spouses, so that was ruled out early), what we did agree upon is that feminism, for all its contradictions and confusions, is not about "adding in" women's rights. Instead, it has the modest aim of transforming society for the sake of women and men.
Sandberg, in contrast, is interested in telling women to pull themselves together or they'll never join the alpha males' club and the 1% – except as arm candy. It's a message some may want to hear, but it's conservative and neoliberal and doesn't even pass as feminist. "Lean in" is a clunky, self-conscious phrase. It puts you off balance, not least because by the time you reach the lengthy acknowledgments at the end of the book and discover that Sheryl has a "writing partner", Nell Scovell, it has already become plain that Sandberg is not a woman who understands what it means to stand shoulder to shoulder with her sisters or even to share a byline.
Sandberg's thesis is simple. She acknowledges there are difficulties in society. She illustrates this by a brief run-through of some of the numerous areas in the US, replicated in the UK, in which the women who make up half the population in both countries are next to invisible in every corner of public life. They are often employed on shockingly low pay, working a double shift taking on all domestic duties too. However, the bulk of Sandberg's book does not focus on the problems for women, but the problem of women.
In generalisations sufficient to fill the Grand Canyon, according to Sandberg, women lack confidence, don't speak up enough, refuse to sit "at the table" (with the big boys) and don't even demand that their partners do their fair share. "[Women] are pulling back when they ought to be leaning in." They even avoid some careers in preparation for the day they may have children. The key to success, as defined by Sandberg, is not to change or even challenge the system, but to mimic those who have gone before, ie men. She quotes a 2012 McKinsey survey showing that while 36% of male employees aspire to be top executives, that desire applies to only 18% of women. All will be well, according to Sandberg, if individual women only learn "to raise their hands", "toot their own horn", "think personally … substitute we for I", "fake it till you feel it" and become pushy in the workplace just like (some) men.
What Sandberg advocates is that "we can reignite the revolution by internalising the revolution". Yes, that old red herring.
Well, internalising the revolution is very popular with those in power. It's self-blame by any other name. What internalising does is deaden the collective muscle that, throughout history, has proved to be the only genuine igniter of change. Women live in fear, Sandberg writes, not of others but of not being liked, receiving negative attention and the threat of failure. Of course, some women face these fears, and some women don't (and others are too busy fighting to survive), but what would help is a system that works with the grain of their lives, not against it.
What would help is an acceleration in the time when women become a critical mass throughout organisations, not just at the bottom. What would make a real difference is when "women's issues" are recognised as issues that concern both men and women since they are most often rooted in the needs of children.
Sandberg also has another locus for social change. "This revolution will happen one family at a time," she writes. Bunkum. The personal is political and that's a good place to start but the past 40 years indicate that women and men, collectively campaigning for affordable, high-quality childcare, a living wage, flexible working, parental and part-time workers' rights, have done more for the family than any prolonged discussion among couples as to whose turn it is to scrub the bath.
Lean In is a manual of depoliticisation that reduces important issues, such as how to work and play and rear families as decent, self-respecting, mutually supportive human beings, to a set of personal problems that a bit more gumption will overcome. Or not. Sandberg is nothing if not contradictory. First, she advocates "drawing a line" and going home at 5.30pm, then announces she is available to Facebook 24/7 and rises to attend to her emails at 5am. What level of crankiness exists in the Sandberg home?
Lean In purports to be about some bright new dawn with Amazonian alpha females doing it better than the boys. On the contrary, its ethos is desperately old-fashioned. Time magazine bills Sandberg as "co-pilot of the biggest network of humans that the world has ever seen". That's scary. Facebook has more than one billion members, more than half of whom are female. Of course, she's good at what she does and she gets things done. In 2007, Facebook had 50 million users and $150m in revenue. Recently, it reported revenue of $1.59bn in its first quarter alone, in spite of sluggish results last year. Yet its famed "cutting edge" is really quite blunt.
If Sandberg had read Future Work by Alison Maitland and Peter Thomson, for instance, she would see numerous examples of how productivity goes up once technology and flexibility and trust in employees are successfully combined so that people can work from home in hours that suit them – even part-time! – and still climb the ladder.
Maitland and Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, in Why Women Mean Business, demonstrate how women's varied traits and characteristics have themselves a value to businesses without mutation into mini-males.
Professor Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe has researched assiduously for years the different styles of leadership that women successfully bring to organisations. And then there are Susan Cain's arguments in Quiet about the power of the introvert and how, counter to Sandberg's view, the less pushy male (Obama?) and female have a great deal to offer too. The key is surely learning how to bring out the best in people, not focusing on how unlike me (the male boss) they are.
Cordelia Fine, in A Mind of Its Own, explains how the brain has a multitude of strategies to keep our egos plump and self-satisfied. Sandberg's ego is exceedingly plump. The book is full of little strokes, such as mentioning that her family gets a lift in the private jet of eBay's chief executive and how wonderfully well her 20-minute TED talk was received. But then again, she's only doing what she spends 240 pages advocating. The woman is very definitely leaning in. But as far as her values are concerned, she's leaning into a void.
"Sandberg is seeking not just to raise consciousness, but to forge a social movement. She wants her Lean In circles – all-women spaces to be supported by corporate workplaces – to teach women negotiation, public speaking, and other skills, all merged with upbeat collective support.
"This seemingly trivial approach is actually a solid recipe for success. I co-founded a similar program called the Woodhull Institute; by teaching these skill sets, and adding mutual support in an all-female space, our alumnae – whether from barrios or Ivy League universities – quickly and dramatically outpaced their peers." Naomi Wolf, author
"The book itself comes as a pleasant surprise. Sandberg's voice is modest, humorous, warm and enthusiastic. ... She's like someone who's just taken Women's Studies 101 and wants to share it with her friends." Katha Pollitt, poet and critic
"She has a grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots reigniting the women's revolution — Betty Friedan for the digital age. She wants women to stop limiting and sabotaging themselves. Sandberg may mean well … But she doesn't understand the difference between a social movement and a social network marketing campaign.
"People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down. Sandberg has co-opted the vocabulary and romance of a social movement not to sell a cause, but herself." Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist and author
Sandberg's book has generated controversy in the US. Critics such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, the academic and former high flyer in the Obama administration who wrote an excoriating article in the Atlantic last year about why she couldn't "have it all" (as if anyone on this planet does), says Sandberg is too rich to pontificate to ordinary women. Wealth isn't Sandberg's problem. She says she has always seen herself as leading a social movement. She has set up a not-for-profit Lean In foundation for women to link up in "Lean In circles" and follow her instructions in the cause of self-advancement. Joining a union might prove infinitely more fun and, for women, has the greater potential for a change that benefits not just themselves but their sons and daughters and grandchildren too.
Sandberg, according to Time magazine, is on "a mission to reboot feminism". No she isn't. What she is is a handmaiden of a process that, since the 1960s, has been intent on customising feminism and turning it into a servant of the marketplace. Hence women's alleged advancement is now marked by pole dancing, Botox and anti-ageing cream for the under-30s, all packaged as "liberation-lite"; feminism with the nerve extracted. More than 40 years ago, when a handful of us decided to set up a women's liberation group in Northampton and were unable to agree on exactly how we would storm the ramparts of male oppression and under what banner (socialist-feminist? Marxist-feminist? Separatist-feminist required the sacrifice of a couple of spouses, so that was ruled out early), what we did agree upon is that feminism, for all its contradictions and confusions, is not about "adding in" women's rights. Instead, it has the modest aim of transforming society for the sake of women and men.
Sandberg, in contrast, is interested in telling women to pull themselves together or they'll never join the alpha males' club and the 1% – except as arm candy. It's a message some may want to hear, but it's conservative and neoliberal and doesn't even pass as feminist. "Lean in" is a clunky, self-conscious phrase. It puts you off balance, not least because by the time you reach the lengthy acknowledgments at the end of the book and discover that Sheryl has a "writing partner", Nell Scovell, it has already become plain that Sandberg is not a woman who understands what it means to stand shoulder to shoulder with her sisters or even to share a byline.
Sandberg's thesis is simple. She acknowledges there are difficulties in society. She illustrates this by a brief run-through of some of the numerous areas in the US, replicated in the UK, in which the women who make up half the population in both countries are next to invisible in every corner of public life. They are often employed on shockingly low pay, working a double shift taking on all domestic duties too. However, the bulk of Sandberg's book does not focus on the problems for women, but the problem of women.
In generalisations sufficient to fill the Grand Canyon, according to Sandberg, women lack confidence, don't speak up enough, refuse to sit "at the table" (with the big boys) and don't even demand that their partners do their fair share. "[Women] are pulling back when they ought to be leaning in." They even avoid some careers in preparation for the day they may have children. The key to success, as defined by Sandberg, is not to change or even challenge the system, but to mimic those who have gone before, ie men. She quotes a 2012 McKinsey survey showing that while 36% of male employees aspire to be top executives, that desire applies to only 18% of women. All will be well, according to Sandberg, if individual women only learn "to raise their hands", "toot their own horn", "think personally … substitute we for I", "fake it till you feel it" and become pushy in the workplace just like (some) men.
What Sandberg advocates is that "we can reignite the revolution by internalising the revolution". Yes, that old red herring.
Well, internalising the revolution is very popular with those in power. It's self-blame by any other name. What internalising does is deaden the collective muscle that, throughout history, has proved to be the only genuine igniter of change. Women live in fear, Sandberg writes, not of others but of not being liked, receiving negative attention and the threat of failure. Of course, some women face these fears, and some women don't (and others are too busy fighting to survive), but what would help is a system that works with the grain of their lives, not against it.
What would help is an acceleration in the time when women become a critical mass throughout organisations, not just at the bottom. What would make a real difference is when "women's issues" are recognised as issues that concern both men and women since they are most often rooted in the needs of children.
Sandberg also has another locus for social change. "This revolution will happen one family at a time," she writes. Bunkum. The personal is political and that's a good place to start but the past 40 years indicate that women and men, collectively campaigning for affordable, high-quality childcare, a living wage, flexible working, parental and part-time workers' rights, have done more for the family than any prolonged discussion among couples as to whose turn it is to scrub the bath.
Lean In is a manual of depoliticisation that reduces important issues, such as how to work and play and rear families as decent, self-respecting, mutually supportive human beings, to a set of personal problems that a bit more gumption will overcome. Or not. Sandberg is nothing if not contradictory. First, she advocates "drawing a line" and going home at 5.30pm, then announces she is available to Facebook 24/7 and rises to attend to her emails at 5am. What level of crankiness exists in the Sandberg home?
Lean In purports to be about some bright new dawn with Amazonian alpha females doing it better than the boys. On the contrary, its ethos is desperately old-fashioned. Time magazine bills Sandberg as "co-pilot of the biggest network of humans that the world has ever seen". That's scary. Facebook has more than one billion members, more than half of whom are female. Of course, she's good at what she does and she gets things done. In 2007, Facebook had 50 million users and $150m in revenue. Recently, it reported revenue of $1.59bn in its first quarter alone, in spite of sluggish results last year. Yet its famed "cutting edge" is really quite blunt.
If Sandberg had read Future Work by Alison Maitland and Peter Thomson, for instance, she would see numerous examples of how productivity goes up once technology and flexibility and trust in employees are successfully combined so that people can work from home in hours that suit them – even part-time! – and still climb the ladder.
Maitland and Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, in Why Women Mean Business, demonstrate how women's varied traits and characteristics have themselves a value to businesses without mutation into mini-males.
Professor Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe has researched assiduously for years the different styles of leadership that women successfully bring to organisations. And then there are Susan Cain's arguments in Quiet about the power of the introvert and how, counter to Sandberg's view, the less pushy male (Obama?) and female have a great deal to offer too. The key is surely learning how to bring out the best in people, not focusing on how unlike me (the male boss) they are.
Cordelia Fine, in A Mind of Its Own, explains how the brain has a multitude of strategies to keep our egos plump and self-satisfied. Sandberg's ego is exceedingly plump. The book is full of little strokes, such as mentioning that her family gets a lift in the private jet of eBay's chief executive and how wonderfully well her 20-minute TED talk was received. But then again, she's only doing what she spends 240 pages advocating. The woman is very definitely leaning in. But as far as her values are concerned, she's leaning into a void.
What other says: US reaction to Sandberg's book
"The view that Sandberg is too rich and powerful to advise working women is shortsighted; it assumes that any sort of success is antithetical to feminism. The truth is, feminism could use a powerful ally. Here's a nationally known woman calling herself a feminist, writing what will be a wildly popular book with feminist ideas, encouraging other women to be feminists. And we're worried she has too much influence? That she's too … ambitious?" Jessica Valenti, founder, feminist blog Feministing"Sandberg is seeking not just to raise consciousness, but to forge a social movement. She wants her Lean In circles – all-women spaces to be supported by corporate workplaces – to teach women negotiation, public speaking, and other skills, all merged with upbeat collective support.
"This seemingly trivial approach is actually a solid recipe for success. I co-founded a similar program called the Woodhull Institute; by teaching these skill sets, and adding mutual support in an all-female space, our alumnae – whether from barrios or Ivy League universities – quickly and dramatically outpaced their peers." Naomi Wolf, author
"The book itself comes as a pleasant surprise. Sandberg's voice is modest, humorous, warm and enthusiastic. ... She's like someone who's just taken Women's Studies 101 and wants to share it with her friends." Katha Pollitt, poet and critic
"She has a grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots reigniting the women's revolution — Betty Friedan for the digital age. She wants women to stop limiting and sabotaging themselves. Sandberg may mean well … But she doesn't understand the difference between a social movement and a social network marketing campaign.
"People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down. Sandberg has co-opted the vocabulary and romance of a social movement not to sell a cause, but herself." Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist and author
With Graph Search, It’s Facebook vs. Facebook
- 03.15.13
- 2:30 PM
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired 
It might be for technology scalability and resource reasons, but it’s also good psychology. A slow and steady rollout gives Facebook time to preserve its feel of a digital living room (or neighborhood bar), a place where we can safely hang out with our friends. It also gives users time to figure out and get comfortable with where their information ends up as it is indexed and made searchable.
Because a steady supply of current preferences and intent is absolutely critical to the success of Graph Search. Yet this supply of social information on Facebook could slow as the very demand for it grows.
And it’s in this tenuous balance of Facebook vs. Facebook — not between Google and Facebook or LinkedIn and Facebook or Twitter and Facebook — that the success of Graph Search and its impact on the company will be determined.
The Promise of Graph Search
The trouble with the dominant models of search today is that there’s a tradeoff between reach and relevance.We can exploit the reach of Google or Bing, but then we have to work hard sifting through the results to find what’s really relevant to us. Or, we can poll our social and professional networks, because homophily makes our friends reliable relevance filters, familiarity and trust legitimizes the information we get from them, and we’ve engineered our networks for the right mix of knowledge. But then we’re limited in how efficiently we can retrieve this information when we need it.
The real promise of Graph Search is in breaking this tradeoff: It combines the relevance of social information filters with the reach of modern index-and-query search technology.
Facebook promises to put information that’s been filtered, curated, and customized by friends and colleagues at our fingertips. This information isn’t all explicitly articulated; it’s broader and deeper than the mere textual content of user profiles: It’s contextual, and it’s personal. Like knowing about the existence and quality of a restaurant because our foodie friend checked-in there, or getting a colleague’s opinion about a hotel stayed at in 2009 from a casually shared wall post, or discovering what’s really fun to do in Paris as revealed through last year’s smile-filled Instagram feed.
Such knowledge is hardly stale and shallow. Add in the data trails linked to user accounts from over 40 million Facebook Connect sites, and Facebook has a veritable treasure trove.
The Perils of Graph Search
Mining and indexing its online graph allows Facebook to disrupt the current social search model, propagated from the physical world, of polling our networks for information — through status updates like “Heading to Prague, anyone have suggestions on things to do there?”
This isn’t a generic privacy debate.
Information is the single most important economic input — the only “raw
material” — of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Pinterest.
But here’s the rub: By moving from “poll” to “retrieve”, Facebook
makes accidental or unintended information sharing far more likely.We lose our “anonymity from obscurity” because our posts and social information are no longer for our friends or just for today — but forever available, perhaps even to strangers, especially if we haven’t wrapped our heads around the nuances of constantly evolving privacy settings.
And while these costs and risks to users grow, the benefits from sharing information don’t really change. So the social sharing that generates the supply of information gets throttled gradually as the very demand for this information grows. Unable to assess the risks of sharing, we might simply stop doing so.
This isn’t a generic privacy debate. Information is the single most important economic input — the only “raw material” — of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Pinterest. A reliable and valid stream of intent and preferences is the lifeblood of such internet economy firms. It makes them die or thrive.
What’s the point of trying to “maximize searcher happiness” if it ends up minimizing the inflow of what the users came to search for in the first place?
So what should we do about this? We need to care, because we could really benefit from something like Graph Search — its value to users is incontrovertible, and nothing else (yet) breaks the historical tradeoff of information retrieval.
Here’s one easy place to start. Facebook should allow users to retroactively choose access permission settings for every piece of their information, enabling them to specify its precise reach [Note: see correction below]. Sure, many users won’t take advantage — it’s a cumbersome process unless automated — but at least it signals that we, the people, are valued information suppliers and that we can more explicitly define the terms of our implicit information contract.
Without these limits, we might instead shift towards posting only content we feel is safe for a broad audience — no different than what’s on TripAdvisor or Amazon reviews. It would just create another digital town square — not a digital living room — tragically devoid of those little slivers of our everyday lives that represent who we are and make Facebook so unique.
Giving users complete control over their pasts might be the only way that Facebook continues to see — and mine — their futures.
Correction: Soon after this article posted, Facebook pointed out that its “Activity Log” gives users action-by-action control over the reach of their posted content. I missed this feature, which goes a long way towards clarifying my concerns over the privacy aspects of Graph Search. However, there is still no individualized control over who can see what a user has “liked” or over comments the user has made to another user’s post – the audience of the post is inherited. Allowing a user to control whether a “like” is visible to just the poster or the entire audience of the original post would be a good next step since otherwise Graph Search allows people we don’t know to discover what we like and comment on.
Tags: disruptions & shifts, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, privacy, social networking, the internet economy, then & now, Twitter
Townhall Columnists Larry Elder
Women in Corporate America: Is this 2013 or 1953?
Is this 2013 or 1953?
In her new book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead," Sandberg writes that "while women continue to outpace men in educational achievement," women over the last 10 years have "ceased making real progress" in the top ranks of "corporate America."
That's quite an assertion -- especially since it isn't true.
Is it not the case that almost 60 percent of college students are women, and that females earn the majority of doctorates and master's degrees? Is it not true that in most large U.S. cities, single, childless women in their 20s now out-earn young men?
What about the fact that 40 percent of working wives out-earn their spouses -- up more than 50 percent from just 20 years ago? But for the media's infatuation with then-Sen. Barack Obama, and their resultant failure to properly vet him, Hillary Rodham would have become America's 44th president. She remains a frontrunner to become the 45th.
True, more men than women choose to go into the higher-paying fields of science, technology, engineering and math. But is "gender discrimination" -- rather than deliberate choice -- preventing women from pursuing those fields?
Let's examine Sandberg's assertion that she's seen no "real progress" in 10 years, and that the numbers of female board members, CEOs and executive officers have "stagnated."
Catalyst, a feminist nonprofit devoted to women in business, issues an annual report on the state of women in Fortune 500 companies. In 2002, women held 7.9 percent of executive officer positions in Fortune 500 companies. Ten years later, in 2012, women comprised 14.3 percent of executive officer positions. In 2002, America had six female CEOs in the Fortune 500. By 2012, there were 21 CEOs. The 2002 Catalyst report found females comprised 12.4 percent of those on the Fortune 500 boards of directors. In 2012, women held 16.6 percent of board seats. This is an increase of 34 percent. Not bad for lack of "real progress."
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USA Today: Reports Teacher charged with propositioning student on Facebook
GREENBACK, Tenn. (AP) — A teacher in eastern Tennessee has been charged with solicitation of aggravated statutory rape and solicitation of sexual exploitation of a minor after police say she sent inappropriate messages to a student over Facebook.
Blount County Sheriff James Lee Berrong and Loudon County Sheriff Tim Guider say 37-year-old Angela Gaye Masingo of Lenoir City used a male student at another high school to deliver messages to the intended student over the social networking site.
The sheriff's say Masingo, who taught at a school in Greenback, was being held at the Blount County Detention Center on bonds totaling $80,000 pending a hearing in Blount County General Sessions Court at 9 a.m. March 15th.
The latest issue of TIME features an interview with Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and an exclusive excerpt from her new book, 'Lean In.'
Read more here: http://ti.me/16aYs9n
Sheryl Sandberg’s first employees, according to her family, were her siblings David and Michelle. “Initially, as a 1-year-old and 3-year-old, we were worthless and weak,” they said in a toast at her wedding. But by elementary school the person who is currently the chief operating officer of Facebook, and arguably one of the most powerful women in America, had whipped them into shape, teaching them to follow her around the house and shout “Right!” after each of her orations. Was this a game? Sort of. “To the best of our knowledge Sheryl never actually played as a child,” they said. “[She] really just organized other children’s play.”
Sandberg tells these stories about herself early in her first book, a memoir–slash–”sort of feminist manifesto” in which she enjoins women to pursue their careers with more rigor, to engage more energetically in the corporate cook-off, to Lean In—as the book is titled—to the opportunities and challenges of becoming a boss. She says she had misgivings about sharing these family fables because they make her seem bossy, a term she takes issue with. “I notice bossy is applied almost always to little girls,” says Sandberg over lunch (she ordered a Wagyu hot dog with no bun and no relish). “It’s just not used for men.”
In person, Sandberg does not give the impression that she’s bossy. She gives the impression that she was born 43, that she was delivered preloaded with the capacity and will to order people around but also the capacity and will to ensure that they thrive. Now that she is really 43, she has so perfected these skills that merely helping run a $66 billion tech company is not quite enough of a challenge. So Sandberg has taken on a new mission: to change the balance of power. That quest and her plan of attack have brought out the broadsides.
(MORE: TIME’s Complete Coverage on Sheryl Sandberg)
It would be un-Sandbergian to write a book and just leave it at that. Her campaign comes with LeanIn.org, a nonprofit foundation with corporate partnerships, online seminars and guidelines for establishing support groups. It’s probably not an overstatement to say Sandberg is embarking on the most ambitious mission to reboot feminism and reframe discussions of gender since the launch of Ms. magazine in 1971.
The thing is, she’s in a pretty good position to pull it off. She’s the co-pilot of the biggest network of humans the world has ever seen: Facebook’s roughly 1 billion members, most of whom are female, at least in the U.S. She’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And she has an undeniable record of knowing how to get things done. Her résumé, with its by-the-book stints at Harvard Business School, McKinsey and the Treasury Department, does not reek of revolutionary, but in the lineage of key feminist figures, she may well turn out to be pivotal. “In a sense it’s almost like Betty Friedan 50 years ago,” says author and historian Stephanie Coontz. “She’s talking to a particular audience, but they really need this message.”
(MORE: Sandberg Exclusive Excerpt: ‘Why I Want Women to Lean In’)
Confidence Woman
March 07, 2013
Why, almost exactly 44 years after Lorena Weeks became the first woman to use the Civil Rights Act to win the right to be promoted, at Southern Bell, are we still arguing about women and success? Only flat-earthers and small boys don’t believe that women can lead huge Western democracies (thanks, Margaret Thatcher), head companies (thanks, Indra Nooyi), play exciting sports (thanks, Billie Jean King), rise to the rank of four-star general (thanks, Ann Dunwoody), change the world, trade cattle futures and be funny (thanks for all three, Hillary Clinton).
But women’s journey to the top is having an altitude problem. Young female executives begin on the same career staircase as men, but it’s almost as if the stairs change direction, Hogwarts-like, and take them somewhere else. For three decades, more women than men have graduated from college, but that academic dominance has not led to corresponding business or political success. There are currently only 17 heads of state out of 195 who do not have a Y chromosome. Women hold about 20% of all seats in parliaments globally. Slightly more than 4% of Fortune 500 companies are headed by women, and women hold 17% of board seats. Worse, these numbers aren’t changing very fast. Ten years ago, 14% of board seats were held by women. A decade has passed, and women have gotten a few inches farther into the boardroom. “Women are not making it to the top of any profession in the world,” says Sandberg. “But when I say the blunt truth is that men run the world, people say, ‘Really?’ That, to me, is the problem.”
Few people disagree that somewhere on the climb between the graduation podium and the C-suite, women are getting lost. The contentious issue is what—or who—is keeping them down. Fingers are pointed in every direction: the U.S. has primitive maternity-leave laws on par with those of Papua New Guinea—a country that still has actual cannibals. Women are hitting their childbearing deadlines around the time future executives are being winnowed out from regular management. Turnover at corporate boards, which are heavily male-dominated, is very slow; most have a mandatory retirement age of 72. American companies structure their workers’ days around the expectation that someone else is handling the home front. Men have welcomed women into the workplace, but housework, cooking and child-rearing duties are still borne largely by women.
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Key Rates
- Mortgage
- Home Equity
- Savings
- Auto
- Credit Cards
See today's average mortgage rates across the country.
Rates may include points.
| Type | Today | 1 mo |
|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 3.56% | 3.61% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 2.86% | 2.93% |
| 10-Year Fixed | 2.93% | 3.04% |
| 5/1-Year ARM | 2.73% | 2.83% |
| 30-Year Fixed Refi | 3.63% | 3.57% |
| 15-Year Fixed Refi | 2.95% | 2.91% |
| 5/1 ARM Refi | 2.86% | 2.76% |
| 30-Year Fixed Jumbo | 4.04% | 4.15% |
Source: Bankrate.com
See More Key Rate DataRead
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UPDATE 2-Facebook buys Microsoft ad technology platform
* Technology should help Facebook show effectiveness of ads
* Aids Facebook battle with Google for online display ads
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Thursday it had agreed to buy advertising technology from Microsoft Corp that measures the effectiveness of ads on its website, which should help in its fight with Google Inc for online advertising revenue.
Under the long-rumored transaction, Facebook will purchase the Atlas Advertiser Suite, an ad management and measurement platform that Microsoft took on with its $6.3 billion acquisition of digital ad agency aQuantive in 2007. Facebook did not say how much it paid for the technology.
Unable to make it work for its own purposes, Microsoft wrote off $6.2 billion of the aQuantive deal's value last year.
Facebook has long been dogged by doubts about the effectiveness of its ads and was embarrassed just days before its initial public offering in May when General Motors Co declared it was pulling the plug on all paid advertising on Facebook's network.
Since then, Facebook has introduced a number of tools and partnerships to prove to marketers that advertising on its social network delivers enough bang for the buck.
Brian Boland, Facebook's director of monetization product marketing, said the purchase of Atlas was not a step toward creating a much wider ad network beyond the Facebook site, but analysts believe that is Facebook's ultimate goal.
"Although the statement announcing the deal focused on Atlas' measurement tools rather than its ad targeting technology, we expect that Atlas will soon be using Facebook's data to target sponsorships, in-stream ads, and other rich ad formats across the entire web, and that's big news," said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott.
"The question now is how quickly and successfully Facebook can integrate its data with Atlas' tools, and whether they can avoid a privacy backlash as they do so. History suggests they'll struggle on both counts," he said.
Google leads the $15 billion U.S. market for online display ads with 15.4 percent share, according to researcher eMarketer, followed by Facebook with 14.4 percent.
Facebook buys Microsoft ad technology platform
SAN FRANCISCO |
(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Thursday it had agreed to buy advertising technology from Microsoft Corp that measures the effectiveness of ads on its website, which should help in its fight with Google Inc for online advertising revenue.Under the long-rumored transaction, Facebook will purchase the Atlas Advertiser Suite, an ad management and measurement platform that Microsoft took on with its $6.3 billion acquisition of digital ad agency aQuantive in 2007. Facebook did not say how much it paid for the technology.
Unable to make it work for its own purposes, Microsoft wrote off $6.2 billion of the aQuantive deal's value last year.
Facebook has long been dogged by doubts about the effectiveness of its ads and was embarrassed just days before its initial public offering in May when General Motors Co declared it was pulling the plug on all paid advertising on Facebook's network.
Since then, Facebook has introduced a number of tools and partnerships to prove to marketers that advertising on its social network delivers enough bang for the buck.
Brian Boland, Facebook's director of monetization product marketing, said the purchase of Atlas was not a step toward creating a much wider ad network beyond the Facebook site, but analysts believe that is Facebook's ultimate goal.
"Although the statement announcing the deal focused on Atlas' measurement tools rather than its ad targeting technology, we expect that Atlas will soon be using Facebook's data to target sponsorships, in-stream ads, and other rich ad formats across the entire web, and that's big news," said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott.
"The question now is how quickly and successfully Facebook can integrate its data with Atlas' tools, and whether they can avoid a privacy backlash as they do so. History suggests they'll struggle on both counts," he said.
Google leads the $15 billion U.S. market for online display ads with 15.4 percent share, according to researcher eMarketer, followed by Facebook with 14.4 percent.
(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Bill Rigby; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Tim Dobbyn)
Don't miss it
Facebook CFO calls Instagram a 'formidable competitor'
David Ebersman's statements about Instagram paint the photo app as both friend and foe.
Even as Facebook's property, Instagram, now with more than 100 million active users, could still pose a threat to the social network's business. "One of the services that is, I think, a quite formidable competitor is Instagram," David Ebersman, Facebook chief financial officer, told a crowd of investors today at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference.
The striking statement, made in direct response to a question about whether competitors are siphoning attention away from the social network, speaks volumes about Instagram's status as a powerful photo social network all its own.
The comment, particularly when coupled with previous disclosures, also suggests that the photo app is stealing away member attention from Facebook with no payoff. Facebook may own Instagram, but it's not profiting when members choose to use the ad-free app in favor of its ad-laden Web site or mobile applications.
In early February, Facebook confessed that some people -- teens in particular -- are indeed shifting their attention away from its own apps to competitors' services.
"We believe that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook," the company admitted in its 10-K annual report. "For example, we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram."
Now, we have two pieces of evidence that depict Instagram as a cannibal. Instagram is, quite literally, eating Facebook's young. And Ebersman, when asked specifically about how Instagram users are migrating over to Facebook, also admitted that the social network doesn't yet know how the applications relate to each other.
The problem is an important one for the company to solve -- and quickly. Facebook is maxing out its ability to show growth in the new user department, which means Wall Street will need to see an increase in time spent with the site to measure its health. For its part, Facebook believes that its ability to algorithmically sort the News Feed and pluck out content people will find most interesting is core to keeping its members engaged, Ebersman said.
The striking statement, made in direct response to a question about whether competitors are siphoning attention away from the social network, speaks volumes about Instagram's status as a powerful photo social network all its own.
The comment, particularly when coupled with previous disclosures, also suggests that the photo app is stealing away member attention from Facebook with no payoff. Facebook may own Instagram, but it's not profiting when members choose to use the ad-free app in favor of its ad-laden Web site or mobile applications.
In early February, Facebook confessed that some people -- teens in particular -- are indeed shifting their attention away from its own apps to competitors' services.
"We believe that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook," the company admitted in its 10-K annual report. "For example, we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram."
Now, we have two pieces of evidence that depict Instagram as a cannibal. Instagram is, quite literally, eating Facebook's young. And Ebersman, when asked specifically about how Instagram users are migrating over to Facebook, also admitted that the social network doesn't yet know how the applications relate to each other.
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SEATTLE — A 19-year-old registered sex offender has been arrested in Federal Way for allegedly trying to groom young boys on Facebook.Authorities said the mother of a 13-year-old boy noticed an older person writing to her son on Facebook and discovered he was a registered sex offender.
Police said that person was Leland Alexander James, 19, who was convicted of child molestation in 2008 when he would have been 16.
After a police investigation of his alleged comments on Facebook, James was arrested. He faces two counts of communication with a minor for immoral purposes. He is being held on $100,000 bail; his arraignment is scheduled for March 7.
Police said the suspect wrote to the 13-year-old boy, “I just added u cause u were cute honestly.”
“That is not looking for a friend; that is the beginning of a grooming process,” said cyber security expert Linda Criddle.
The mom Googled the suspicious man on the screen and discovered he was a registered sex offender. But she didn’t stop there; she did a little more digging and found out that three of her son’s friends were mutual friends with the man on Facebook.
She alerted the kids’ parents, police and their schools.
Police said all three of those kids were contacted via Facebook by the defendant. Most of the kids were 13.
In one case, police say, a 14-year-old high school boy on Facebook agreed to meet the suspect at a park, but the suspect never showed up.
The defendant’s family was upset and did not want to talk on camera but did say the 19-year-old is being mislabeled as a sex offender.
Criddle says this case should be a wake-up call for all parents. She says many 13- and 14-year-olds are too young to be on social networking sites like Facebook.
“The most important is having the conversation, not that you are against using Facebook but that they have the skills to use the service, that they know to look out for creep behavior,” Criddle said.
Here are some other tips.
Parents should set up social networking accounts such as Facebook with their children and know their passwords.
Be sure settings are on “privacy” so only friends and family can see it and limit photos and personal information on the profile page.
Parents should tell their kids never to talk to strangers online.
Read more: http://q13fox.com/2013/02/28/19-year-old-sex-offender-accused-of-trying-to-groom-boys-on-facebook/#ixzz2MGesnuFs
Jennifer Van Grove reports on social media for CNET. She previously worked for VentureBeat, Mashable, and NBC San Diego.
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Face-Lift at Facebook, to Keep Its Users Engaged
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 6, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook
plans to announce on Thursday a substantial redesign of its News Feed —
a makeover aimed at both keeping users glued to the social network and
luring more advertising dollars.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Many Facebook users have taken a sabbatical from the site, sometimes because of boredom.
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Company executives have broadly said they want to make the News Feed,
the first page every user sees upon logging in, more relevant.
In an earnings call with Wall Street analysts in January, the company’s
founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, offered some hints of what
a reimagined News Feed might look like: bigger photos, more videos and
“more engaging ads.”
“Advertisers want really rich things like big pictures or videos, and we
haven’t provided those things historically,” Mr. Zuckerberg said at the
time.
Facebook declined to comment on the redesign, which is scheduled to be
announced at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. But the adjustments
will reflect the tricky balance Facebook faces now that it is a public
company: to keep drawing users to the site while not alienating them
with more finely targeted advertisements, which is Facebook’s chief
source of revenue.
The pressures are acute, given Facebook’s still anemic performance on
Wall Street. It came out of the box last May with an extraordinarily
high valuation of $38 a share, which slumped to half last fall, and has
remained for the most part under $30.
“They have to walk a fine line between the user’s needs and advertiser’s
needs,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst with IDC. The user, he went on,
could use “better, more intelligent filtering,” while the advertiser
needs “smarter, more flexible advertising formats.”
Facebook’s challenge is all the more important considering some warning signs of boredom.
Earlier this year came worrying news that 61 percent of users had taken a
sabbatical from the social network, sometimes for months at a time;
boredom was one of the reasons cited in the survey by the Pew Research Center. Even worse, 20 percent had deactivated their account entirely.
Advertisers have for years wanted to find new ways to show targeted ads
to Facebook users, based on the vast data that the social network has
about them. But Facebook has at times run into problems with new
advertising products.
For example, last year, just before it filed for its public offering, it
began to show advertisements in the News Feed, largely in the form of the controversial Sponsored Stories, where one user’s “like” for a brand was deployed to market that brand to a user’s Facebook “friends.”
Last fall, again in an effort to drum up new revenue, Facebook offered
brands and individual users a way to pay Facebook to promote a
particular post on the News Feed. Those who did not pay could expect an
average post to reach about a third of their Facebook friends, according
to the company’s own analysis.
That immediately drew criticism, including from Mark Cuban, a
technology investor and owner of the Mavericks basketball team, who
wrote in an angry post on his blog (http://blogmaverick.com/) last fall that Facebook had made it too expensive for a brand like the Mavericks to reach its fans.
This week, responding to fresh criticism, Facebook said it did not “artificially suppress” content to feature paid posts.
The social networking giant has tweaked its News Feed over the years.
Since 2009, Facebook has filtered what every user sees on the News Feed,
based on the wisdom of its proprietary algorithm, called Edge Rank,
which determines which posts a particular user is likely to find most
interesting.
In 2010, it allowed users to chronologically filter the contents of the
scrolling feed. The next year, it introduced a separate right-hand-side
ticker — Twitter-esque, some said — of everything that every “friend”
and brand page had posted.
At the heart of Facebook’s business is to hold the attention of its one
billion users worldwide. That means keeping them entertained and on the
site as frequently as possible.
It seems to be losing this battle somewhat with its youngest users.
Teenagers are increasingly turning to other services, including
Instagram, which Facebook now owns, so much so that David A. Ebersman,
the company’s chief financial officer, said last week in a conference
sponsored by Morgan Stanley that Facebook considered the photo-sharing
site a competitor.
Instagram is not its only worry. Americans are increasingly turning to
Pinterest to share shopping desires with their friends; Tumblr is a
popular forum for self-expression, and Twitter continues to grow as a
platform for news and entertainment.
Many people may no longer know all their “friends” on Facebook, which
makes it difficult for the company to stuff the News Feed with posts
that users will find relevant. Then there are ads.
“The bigger opportunity for Facebook is in cracking the relevance nut,”
said Travis Katz, founder of an online travel service, Gogobot, that is
integrated with Facebook.
“The noise-to-signal ratio in the feed has increased dramatically,” he
added, “to the point where I often miss stories that were important to
me.”
At the Morgan Stanley conference, Mr. Ebersman said the company’s
filtering algorithms get “smarter” the more a Facebook user clicks on
what is displayed on the News Feed.
“So of all the information we are able to show you on Facebook, we are
trying algorithmically to pick out which pieces of content to put at the
top of your News Feed because we think you will find them most
engaging.”
Get 50% Off The New York Times & Free All Digital Access.Facebook launches News Feed redesign
Facebook's redesigned News Feed. / CNET/Josh Lowensohn #FakeNews
Are you ready? Facebook is changing
again. This time the company is focused on clearing the clutter and
creating a "personalized newspaper."
Facebook unveiled a redesign of its News Feed on Thursday. The social network hosted a press event at its Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters.
"News feed is one of the most important services that we build," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and added that the company wants to give everyone in the world a copy of the best newspaper in the world: a personalized newspaper.
Zuckerberg says the type of stories told through photos as opposed to words is very different. Facebook's new design will have big images, content-specific feeds and mobile consistency.
Facebook product design manager Julie Zhou says the company is concerned about clutter. In the new design, Zhou says the company wants attachments and articles to shine.
The new design will give posts like places and third-party apps more prominence and bigger images. Video will also get a new look. Now, people tagged in a video will have a thumbnail appear on the left side.
Facebook is introducing a variety of ways to look at the News Feed that lets users choose how they experience their feeds. The new feeds include: "All Friends," "Photos," Music" and "Following." The company says it will start rolling out the changes on the Web on Thursday. Mobile apps will start to see changes in the next few weeks.
Facebook users have a long history of resisting changes made by the social network and there has been chatter of a phenomenon called "Facebook fatigue," in which users of the social network are becoming bored.
A recent report from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project found that some 61 percent of Facebook users had taken a hiatus of at least several weeks for a myriad of reasons.
Facebook maintains that its user engagement remains strong and reports over 1 billion monthly active users. Citing independent analyst reports, the social network says that Facebook's app is the most downloaded mobile app in the United States.
Gartner analyst Brian Blau is not surprised that Facebook is revamping its look again and points out that the social network's main news feed had not undergone an overhaul in about three years.
"To be fair, Facebook continually adjusts the contents of the new feed, but they haven't really revamped its user interface or layout during this time," Blau told CBS News via email.
Blau thinks the changes will be positive for Facebook in the long run.
"If history is any indication, these changes will help Facebook over time as their goal would be to improve the user experience, and the site changes Facebook has made in the past have for the most part improved the service for both users and businesses," Blau said.
Facebook recently introduced a new feature called "Graph Search," which is a robust search engine that will run inside of the social network. Its last major change was the introduction to Timeline on Sept. 22, 2011. Although Facebook promised a quick rollout, it has yet to force all users to switch to the new look.
Facebook was launched in February 2004 from Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard University. The social network reports over 1 billion monthly active users as of December 2012.
© 2013 CBS Interactive Inc. Facebook unveiled a redesign of its News Feed on Thursday. The social network hosted a press event at its Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters.
"News feed is one of the most important services that we build," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and added that the company wants to give everyone in the world a copy of the best newspaper in the world: a personalized newspaper.
Zuckerberg says the type of stories told through photos as opposed to words is very different. Facebook's new design will have big images, content-specific feeds and mobile consistency.
Facebook product design manager Julie Zhou says the company is concerned about clutter. In the new design, Zhou says the company wants attachments and articles to shine.
The new design will give posts like places and third-party apps more prominence and bigger images. Video will also get a new look. Now, people tagged in a video will have a thumbnail appear on the left side.
Facebook is introducing a variety of ways to look at the News Feed that lets users choose how they experience their feeds. The new feeds include: "All Friends," "Photos," Music" and "Following." The company says it will start rolling out the changes on the Web on Thursday. Mobile apps will start to see changes in the next few weeks.
Facebook users have a long history of resisting changes made by the social network and there has been chatter of a phenomenon called "Facebook fatigue," in which users of the social network are becoming bored.
A recent report from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project found that some 61 percent of Facebook users had taken a hiatus of at least several weeks for a myriad of reasons.
Facebook maintains that its user engagement remains strong and reports over 1 billion monthly active users. Citing independent analyst reports, the social network says that Facebook's app is the most downloaded mobile app in the United States.
Gartner analyst Brian Blau is not surprised that Facebook is revamping its look again and points out that the social network's main news feed had not undergone an overhaul in about three years.
"To be fair, Facebook continually adjusts the contents of the new feed, but they haven't really revamped its user interface or layout during this time," Blau told CBS News via email.
Blau thinks the changes will be positive for Facebook in the long run.
"If history is any indication, these changes will help Facebook over time as their goal would be to improve the user experience, and the site changes Facebook has made in the past have for the most part improved the service for both users and businesses," Blau said.
Facebook recently introduced a new feature called "Graph Search," which is a robust search engine that will run inside of the social network. Its last major change was the introduction to Timeline on Sept. 22, 2011. Although Facebook promised a quick rollout, it has yet to force all users to switch to the new look.
Facebook was launched in February 2004 from Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard University. The social network reports over 1 billion monthly active users as of December 2012.
This on CBS News Report
Using a dataset of more than 58,000 Facebook users in the USA collected between 2007 and 2012, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom were able to accurately predict certain qualities and traits, such as race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views using Facebook Likes alone.
The Likes include photos, friends' status updates, Facebook pages of products, sports, musicians, books, restaurants or popular websites.
"Likes represent a very generic class of digital records, similar to Web search queries, Web browsing histories, and credit card purchases," says the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The participants gave researchers access to their Facebook pages and they completed a variety of online tests, including personality and IQ. Their Likes were fed into algorithms and researchers created statistical models that were able to predict the personal details using Facebook Likes alone. Results were corroborated with information from the Facebook profiles and personality tests.
"Each person, on average, liked 170 things," says psychologist Michal Kosinski, the study's lead author. "Some liked only one thing and there were people who liked thousands of things. We removed those. We looked at people who liked between one and 700 different things."
Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, calls it a "landmark study" because it illustrates "how things are no longer ephemeral." He has been studying Facebook behavior since 2006, and has seen this new study.
"You 'Like' something. You leave a comment on somebody's wall. They are now recorded in a way that machines can calibrate and measure them with great accuracy," he says. "Together, they add up to substantially more information from which you can make quite reasonably accurate predictions."
Fred Wolens, a Facebook spokesman at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., says the predictions are "hardly surprising."
"No matter the vehicle for information — a bumper sticker, yard sign, logos on clothing, or other data found online — it has already been proven that it is possible for social scientists to draw conclusions about personal attributes based on these characteristics," he says.
Rebecca Lieb, a digital media analyst at the Altimeter Group, a consulting firm in New York City, agrees.
"Advertising and marketing focus on this, but it's important not to isolate this as only an online issue or a social network issue," she says. "Data is being collected at every stage of our lives. If you're using a credit card, you're opening yourself up to as much data collection as if you're using Facebook or searching online and getting cookies collected in your browser."
The study found the highest accuracy for ethnic origin and gender, with African Americans and Caucasians correctly classified in 95% of cases. Males and females were correctly classified in 93% of cases; Christians and Muslims in 82% of cases. Sexual orientation was easier to distinguish among males (88%) than females (75%).
The study notes that Likes that are the "best predictors of high intelligence include 'Thunderstorms,' The Colbert Report, 'Science" and 'Curly Fries.' Low intelligence was indicated by liking (Facebook pages for) 'Sephora,' 'I Love Being A Mom,' 'Harley Davidson' and 'Lady Antebellum.' " Researchers gave no further explanation of these findings.
The study also suggests that the findings may have "negative implications for personal privacy."
David Jacobs, consumer privacy counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center in Washington, that focuses on civil liberties and privacy, says this study aligns with others involving predictions based on social networking information.
"This is not unique to Facebook and is not even unique to social networking in general," Jacobs says. "It's one of the implications of Big Data and in this case Big Data in a social networking context. Lots of information makes for certain inferences and sensitive predictions."
"It's the current state of the digital world," adds Kosinski.
When we look at all of these facts tied in together, we find that a
strong case could be made regarding Facebook's seeming soft-attack on
Conservatives, Libertarians and Republicans--and even certain Christians
as details continue to emerge. The reports that we have informally
received from various members do seem to indicate an ideological
persecution of certain members who actively engage in supporting their
various causes which are of a Conservative nature.
We can further confirm a number of deep-rooted ties to the Obama Administration and Facebook company officials, noting that Zuckerberg indicates himself only as an Independent and an Atheist while being an outspoken opponent of privacy issues--which puts him squarely in the camp opposing Constitutional Conservative principles.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we could find essentially no
ties whatsoever which would indicate any Facebook affinity or
connection whatsoever with those of the Right-Wing--beyond one tiny donation by one Facebook official to Republican Carly Fiorina of HP fame.
Ultimately, we must each be our own judge of what is happening between Facebook and the Conservatives who utilize the site, but the question we, both at Conservative Refocus and Uncoverage.net initially put forth, has certainly been strengthened by the available information uncovered through our research. The other ironic fact is simply that what we may be seeing in these ideological deletions could be the recognition by Facebook of the fact that Conservatives are using these same powerful social networking tools to meaningfully connect, organize and interact across the country in much the same way as the Obama Facebook members successfully used for the President to gain power and eventually win the Presidency.
Obama's Facebook being used by Conservatives in a Saul Alinsky-like turnabout? This would be yet another observed case of "live by the sword, die by the sword" ideological retribution would it not?
A simple word of caution. Please remember: Every time you sign onto Facebook, your IP address is logged along with your exact location. So imagine, if you will, what might be next for Conservatives and dissidents who oppose those in power while using a social network with designs that could be plotting against its own Users behind the scenes.
- See more at: http://www.conservativerefocus.com/index.php/2010/09/05/facebook-s-persecution-of-conservatives-examining-evidence-of-bias-1?blog=14#sthash.pf6e7qzM.dpuf
Around the Web
Facebook As ( SuckFace ) Hash Tag #FacebookSucks
Facebook 'Likes' reveal more about you than you think
Using a dataset of more than 58,000 U.S. Facebook users, University of Cambridge researchers predicted race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views using Likes alone.
If you "Like" lots of people, places and things on Facebook, you may get rewarded with discounts and special offers. But new research out today shows that these public Likes reveal more about you than you may think.Using a dataset of more than 58,000 Facebook users in the USA collected between 2007 and 2012, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom were able to accurately predict certain qualities and traits, such as race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views using Facebook Likes alone.
The Likes include photos, friends' status updates, Facebook pages of products, sports, musicians, books, restaurants or popular websites.
"Likes represent a very generic class of digital records, similar to Web search queries, Web browsing histories, and credit card purchases," says the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The participants gave researchers access to their Facebook pages and they completed a variety of online tests, including personality and IQ. Their Likes were fed into algorithms and researchers created statistical models that were able to predict the personal details using Facebook Likes alone. Results were corroborated with information from the Facebook profiles and personality tests.
"Each person, on average, liked 170 things," says psychologist Michal Kosinski, the study's lead author. "Some liked only one thing and there were people who liked thousands of things. We removed those. We looked at people who liked between one and 700 different things."
Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, calls it a "landmark study" because it illustrates "how things are no longer ephemeral." He has been studying Facebook behavior since 2006, and has seen this new study.
"You 'Like' something. You leave a comment on somebody's wall. They are now recorded in a way that machines can calibrate and measure them with great accuracy," he says. "Together, they add up to substantially more information from which you can make quite reasonably accurate predictions."
Fred Wolens, a Facebook spokesman at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., says the predictions are "hardly surprising."
"No matter the vehicle for information — a bumper sticker, yard sign, logos on clothing, or other data found online — it has already been proven that it is possible for social scientists to draw conclusions about personal attributes based on these characteristics," he says.
Rebecca Lieb, a digital media analyst at the Altimeter Group, a consulting firm in New York City, agrees.
"Advertising and marketing focus on this, but it's important not to isolate this as only an online issue or a social network issue," she says. "Data is being collected at every stage of our lives. If you're using a credit card, you're opening yourself up to as much data collection as if you're using Facebook or searching online and getting cookies collected in your browser."
The study found the highest accuracy for ethnic origin and gender, with African Americans and Caucasians correctly classified in 95% of cases. Males and females were correctly classified in 93% of cases; Christians and Muslims in 82% of cases. Sexual orientation was easier to distinguish among males (88%) than females (75%).
The study notes that Likes that are the "best predictors of high intelligence include 'Thunderstorms,' The Colbert Report, 'Science" and 'Curly Fries.' Low intelligence was indicated by liking (Facebook pages for) 'Sephora,' 'I Love Being A Mom,' 'Harley Davidson' and 'Lady Antebellum.' " Researchers gave no further explanation of these findings.
The study also suggests that the findings may have "negative implications for personal privacy."
David Jacobs, consumer privacy counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center in Washington, that focuses on civil liberties and privacy, says this study aligns with others involving predictions based on social networking information.
"This is not unique to Facebook and is not even unique to social networking in general," Jacobs says. "It's one of the implications of Big Data and in this case Big Data in a social networking context. Lots of information makes for certain inferences and sensitive predictions."
"It's the current state of the digital world," adds Kosinski.
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Content and Programming Copyright 2014 By Patcnews The Patriot Conservative News Tea Party Network © LLC UCC 1-308.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE All copyrights reserved By Patcnews The Patriot Conservative News Tea Party Network Copyright 2014 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein
are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced,
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Finally,
and perhaps most importantly, we could find essentially no ties
whatsoever which would indicate any Facebook affinity or connection
whatsoever with those of the Right-Wing--beyond one tiny donation by one Facebook official to Republican Carly Fiorina of HP fame.
Ultimately, we must each be our own judge of what is happening between Facebook and the Conservatives who utilize the site, but the question we, both at Conservative Refocus and Uncoverage.net initially put forth, has certainly been strengthened by the available information uncovered through our research. The other ironic fact is simply that what we may be seeing in these ideological deletions could be the recognition by Facebook of the fact that Conservatives are using these same powerful social networking tools to meaningfully connect, organize and interact across the country in much the same way as the Obama Facebook members successfully used for the President to gain power and eventually win the Presidency.
Obama's Facebook being used by Conservatives in a Saul Alinsky-like turnabout? This would be yet another observed case of "live by the sword, die by the sword" ideological retribution would it not?
A simple word of caution. Please remember: Every time you sign onto Facebook, your IP address is logged along with your exact location. So imagine, if you will, what might be next for Conservatives and dissidents who oppose those in power while using a social network with designs that could be plotting against its own Users behind the scenes.
- See more at: http://www.conservativerefocus.com/index.php/2010/09/05/facebook-s-persecution-of-conservatives-examining-evidence-of-bias-1?blog=14#sthash.pf6e7qzM.dpuf
Ultimately, we must each be our own judge of what is happening between Facebook and the Conservatives who utilize the site, but the question we, both at Conservative Refocus and Uncoverage.net initially put forth, has certainly been strengthened by the available information uncovered through our research. The other ironic fact is simply that what we may be seeing in these ideological deletions could be the recognition by Facebook of the fact that Conservatives are using these same powerful social networking tools to meaningfully connect, organize and interact across the country in much the same way as the Obama Facebook members successfully used for the President to gain power and eventually win the Presidency.
Obama's Facebook being used by Conservatives in a Saul Alinsky-like turnabout? This would be yet another observed case of "live by the sword, die by the sword" ideological retribution would it not?
A simple word of caution. Please remember: Every time you sign onto Facebook, your IP address is logged along with your exact location. So imagine, if you will, what might be next for Conservatives and dissidents who oppose those in power while using a social network with designs that could be plotting against its own Users behind the scenes.
- See more at: http://www.conservativerefocus.com/index.php/2010/09/05/facebook-s-persecution-of-conservatives-examining-evidence-of-bias-1?blog=14#sthash.pf6e7qzM.dpuf
We can further confirm a number of deep-rooted ties to the Obama Administration and Facebook company officials, noting that Zuckerberg indicates himself only as an Independent and an Atheist while being an outspoken opponent of privacy issues--which puts him squarely in the camp opposing Constitutional Conservative principles.
Ultimately, we must each be our own judge of what is happening between Facebook and the Conservatives who utilize the site, but the question we, both at Conservative Refocus and Uncoverage.net initially put forth, has certainly been strengthened by the available information uncovered through our research. The other ironic fact is simply that what we may be seeing in these ideological deletions could be the recognition by Facebook of the fact that Conservatives are using these same powerful social networking tools to meaningfully connect, organize and interact across the country in much the same way as the Obama Facebook members successfully used for the President to gain power and eventually win the Presidency.
Obama's Facebook being used by Conservatives in a Saul Alinsky-like turnabout? This would be yet another observed case of "live by the sword, die by the sword" ideological retribution would it not?
A simple word of caution. Please remember: Every time you sign onto Facebook, your IP address is logged along with your exact location. So imagine, if you will, what might be next for Conservatives and dissidents who oppose those in power while using a social network with designs that could be plotting against its own Users behind the scenes.
- See more at: http://www.conservativerefocus.com/index.php/2010/09/05/facebook-s-persecution-of-conservatives-examining-evidence-of-bias-1?blog=14#sthash.pf6e7qzM.dpuf