Two years ago, ethnographer danah boyd had the blogosphere abuzz with her look at class-based divisions between teens on MySpace and Facebook . The esteemed Microsoft researcher found that Facebook's collegiate origins encouraged a group of slightly more educated mainstream community members. Meanwhile, MySpace encouraged self-expression and the organizing of subcultures. boyd's

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Race Shapes Teen Facebook and MySpace Adoption, says danah boyd

Thanks to the recent proliferation of do-it-yourself iPhone app services, the next big thing in Apple's App Store might just be vanity apps. Take, for example, Appsfire's Ouriel Ohayon, who just announced the launch of his own iPhone app. Ohayon used Odiogo Apps to create this personalized app. Odiogo , which mostly focuses on providing text-to-speech services for news sites and blogs, allows users to add RSS feeds, Twitter updates and photos from Flickr to its apps. Sponsor Odiogo's apps also feature the company's text-to-speech services, offline access and advertising support. For now, though, potential users still have to contact the company's sales department to get their own apps and the price of these customized apps isn't clear. More Clutter or a Great Opportunity? As the barrier of entry for creating customized iPhone apps continues to fall, chances are that we will see more and more vanity apps in the App Store. On the one hand, this could clutter the store with relatively useless apps. On the other hand, it could also provide a new source of income for independent bloggers who could use the apps to sell more advertising inventory or even charge a small fee for the app itself. Even bloggers with a small fanbase could reap the benefits of having their own iPhone apps. The question, however, is if users are actually interested in installing a single-purpose iPhone app that only gives them access to the content of one blogger. In the end, these apps are less flexible than a good mobile RSS reader. Apps like this probably make more sense for large multi-author blogs that publish a lot of content every day. On the other hand, the idea of being able to point their friends to their iPhone apps will surely prove to be irresistible for many people. Discuss

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Vanity Apps: The Next Big Thing For the iPhone?

There isn't a mass exodus from Facebook over the privacy settings, but it is responding with messages like this sent to users to assuage their fears: "Worried about search engines? Your information is safe. There have been misleading rumors about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true..." Several thoughtful Web 2.0 users have blogged about their decision in the last week to leave Facebook and two different "suicide" sites exist. Sponsor This guest post was written by Kaliya Hamlin, also known as Identity Woman , who has been working on cultivating open standards for user-centric identity since 2004. She co-founded, co-produces and facilitates the Internet Identity Workshop , the primary venue for collaboration on identity standards amongst large Internet portals, large enterprise IT companies and small innovators. This thoughtful post written by Nick Barron , who is based in the Washington D.C. area, talks about meeting Facebook in college and falling in love and understanding this new form of communication in social networks would be transformative for people and business. He believed, "at the end of the day, that Facebook was here for you and me. It was our social network, and while technically being a large company, it was a company of people just like us who wanted a more advanced way of building and maintaining relationships. "I feel there are no good alternatives for me, except going along with whatever scraps of privacy Facebook is graciously willing to hand me from their table... Facebook has me by the balls. They have you, too, and they know it . They know you have too many friends and family, photos and videos, games and other applications on Facebook for you to leave now. And where would you go? Where would I go?... I am not committed to Facebook anymore. I am looking for a way out, while still being able to do my job. Can a social media pro leave Facebook? We may soon find out." Others are more blunt: "Simply put, I don't trust my information being on Facebook anymore. I have deleted the Facebook app from my iPhone and I will shut down the page in about a week." I'm Leaving Facebook by Steve Scherer. "I am not a privacy hawk, nor a fear-monger, nor a neo-luddite; in fact, those of you who know me well know that I am a technology enthusiast and a generally a booster of any technology related solutions that could potentially make our lives easier. In this instance I'm morally and intellectually opposed to Facebook's cavalier attitude with what amounts to, for some of us, data that relates to a significant portion of our (online) lives. See also: Why Facebook Changed Its Privacy Policies A visit to the privacy settings pages and FAQs reveals a great many soothing platitudes. While these may fulfil their legal obligations it is ultimately disingenuous for Facebook to suggest that anyone actually reads any of these when in reality the vast majority of users likely accept the default "Everyone" setting. " "Why I'm Hitting the "Delete" Key on Facebook" by Narain Jashanmal. Early adopter and tech journalist Dan Gilmor is among those who have committed "suicide." He started a new account with his old Facebook URL and checked out the new default privacy settings that he describes as "un-private." He highlights the conflict as, "What's in the corporate interest, however, doesn't necessarily match what's in my interest, or yours." If you want to commit "Facebook suicide" you have two options. One is Seppukoo.com, which likens the act of killing your digital self to: Discover what's after your Facebook life. We assist your virtual suicide. You are more then your virtual identity. Pass away and leave your ID behind. Seppukwho? Testimonials and Frinds. Discover who has committed seppukoo. Impress your friends, disconnect yourself. Join the world wide suicidal network. The site was created by Les Liens Invisibles , which creates playful 2.0-style media artworks. Two people make up this imaginary art group, Clemente Pestelli and Gionatan Quintini. You can see Gionatan's RIP memorial on the site ; it highlights friends that have joined him in the Facebook afterlife along with those still left. The process works like this: 1) you give the site your login credentials, 2) you create last works and a skin for your customized memorial page, 3) you enjoy your Sepppukoo - the platform will send all your friends your last words and customize your memorial page - and 4) you get a score - every friend you convince to Seuppukoo will increase your score on the site. This version of Facebook suicide is not permanent - you can just login to Facebook. Sepppukoo does have a cease and desist from Facebook , although dated Dec. 16. One of the main points is that they "collect Facebook's users' content or information using automated means such as scripts or scrapers without Facebook's permission" The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine offers "suicide" for Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin. It highlights its time saving nature taking just under one hour vs. over nine hours to go through the process manually with 1,000 Facebook friends. The tool lets you watch your "virtual suicide" as it happens. They have 134 people they say have committed suicide using their tools. You can see the list along with their last words and how many friends they lost. You can see a video by Moddr_ of it in action. "Liberate your newbie friends with a Web2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web 2.0 alterego." He say in the video, "my interent life is dying and my real life is starting," and closes with" Get your life back - sign-out forever" Their FAQs are great. If I start killing my 2.0-self, can I stop the process? No! If I start killing my 2.0-self, can YOU stop the process? No! What shall I do after I've killed myself with the Web 2.0 suicide machine? Try calling some friends, talk a walk in a park or buy a bottle of wine and start enjoying your real life again. Some Social Suiciders reported that their life has improved by an approximate average of 25%. Don't worry, if you feel empty right after you committed suicide. This is a normal reaction which will slowly fade away within the first 24-72 hours. Why do we think the Web 2.0 suicide machine is not unethical? Everyone should have the right to disconnect. Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom. Users are entraped in a high resolution panoptic prison without walls, accessible from anywhere in the world. Whatever you think about the bleak humor of a Facebook "suicide, those who've left - or are thinking about leaving - are talking about their decision in terms of freedom. "I made the decision yesterday to ditch Facebook. Their privacy options are too intrusive. Glad twitter isn't like that." @ReetaLuthra "I actually feel more wholesome after leaving Facebook. I didn't expect that." @sansian "I think it's the feeling of loss of control that I don't like, that something is set in such a way that I can't reset it myself, and thus info is getting out/posted online/is otherwise being used in such a way that I don't want. I'll have to think about it... I'm just tempted to take what seems to be the path of least resistance and just ditch Facebook entirely. I'll have to think about it... " Considering Leaving Facebook We even found a Muslim perspective ( translation ) on the virtues of leaving the virtual world for the real world. This recently popped up: Facebook is hiring for its Advertising Privacy Counsel to work on a "cross-section of fascinating legal issues". I am wondering if maybe they should have done more hiring before they changed privacy policies, which may have broken the law and and has lead the Electronic Privacy Information Center to file a complaint with the FTC . Face book photo by Massimo Barbieri . Discuss

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Fed Up With Facebook Privacy Issues? Here's How To End It All

If you're like many of us, you're home for the holidays. Rather than complaining about the springs in the pullout couch or watching endless television reruns, consider rediscovering your hometown. Featured on today's Noticings is a location-based game similar to Foursquare that forces you to discover new gems in your old haunts. Sponsor Each day Flickr users upload 3 geotagged photographs with the tag "noticings". From here they receive points for game-related activities including finding misspelled signs, being the first to tag a photo in a particular neighborhood or for noticing something everyday for a week. Users upload photos via the $3 Noticings iPhone application or through Flickr's regular desktop, web and iPhone tools. Just imagine the possibilities of capturing your hometown. Document the visual parfait of the abandoned fish cannery, drink in the chaos of the strip mall parking lot, and of course, don't forget to snap the fine public art displayed in your local pub latrine. This service is a great way to keep you sane in your hometown while literally putting it on the map for its unique features. ReadWriteStart's Chris Cameron recently profiled Stalqer - a service that maps your friends based on their geotagged Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare status updates. In a similar vein, Noticings leverages an existing service to create a completely new experience. Coupled with augmented reality mobile applications, location-based services like Noticings and Stalqer have done much to get geeks out of their homes into the real world. To join Noticings, check out the game rules at http://noticin.gs/rules . Discuss

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Noticings: Foursquare for Photographers

With the rapid growth of services like Foursquare , Gowalla and Brightkite , location-based mobile social networks seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but they're only fun and useful if your friends are using it, too. Each time that I've tried one of these services, I find myself trying to convince my friends to use it so that I can have meaningful contacts to keep track of. Some of them don't have the right phone, or are worried about blasting out their GPS coordinates to the world. Sponsor Stalqer , available as a free iPhone app since earlier this month, has solved this problem by connecting to your Facebook , Twitter and Foursquare accounts and providing a map of your friends based on information it gathers from those services, even if they don't use Stalqer. If your friend uses a geo-tagged Tweet, or if they check in on Foursquare, Stalqer knows where they are. Stalqer can even pull your friends' location from their Facebook profiles if they publicly display that information, but in most cases this is limited to the city level. You can also view your friends' locations in a list, or even in an augmented reality view by turning the phone on its side while in the map view, but Stalqer's killer feature is its workaround of a pesky iPhone limitation.

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Stalqer: Aggregated, (Almost) Live Location Data on the iPhone

The Twitterati have spoken! Throughout 2009, a few tech topics got so much attention that they managed to make Twitter's trends. Google Wave was one of the most notable of these, obviously, but what were the other subjects of such interest to Twitter-using geeks? Twitter has just released a list of the top 10 technology-related trending topics of the year; here's what tweeps have been talking about. Sponsor 1. Google Wave The most-talked-about app of the year - on Twitter and likely in many other circles, was Google Wave. As invitations rolled out in waves, each initiate was given a limited number of invites to pass on to friends and colleagues. This left the twittersphere clamoring for Wave invites and drove the keyword into Twitter's general trending topics on multiple occasions. If Wave did nothing else right, they certainly mastered the art of the viral marketing campaign. 2. Snow Leopard Apple fanboys (and girls) the world around rejoiced when the newest Mac operating system was released this year. Snow Leopard was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in June 2008, which meant that Mac geeks had been waiting to buy their copies for more than a year by the time the OS hit shelves in August of this year. 3. Tweetdeck This Twitter app became wildly successful this year and made tech headlines for its Facebook and LinkedIn integration, its iPhone app (a strong competitor to challenge Tweetie 2), its themed interfaces, and more. 4. Windows 7 The longsuffering Windows users among us had long been suffering when Windows 7 was released this year. Better, smarter, faster and less buggy, the OS promised to be the answer to our prayers and a reason to hold our heads up in front of Mac users. Windows also had an interesting marketing campaign that kept their OS on the tips of tongues - and the top of trends - for several months running. 5. CES The Consumer Electronics Show, held each year in Las Vegas, is a gadget geek's version of the AVN Awards, also held each year in Las Vegas. Coincidence? Most definitely. 6. Palm Pre Several years ago, geeks fell in love with the Treo. Then Palm devices kind of fell off the face of the earth and out of public favor until this year, when the company released the tiny touchscreen device known as the Pre. The first iteration of the device hasn't yet become overwhelmingly popular, but the Pre definitely has its fans. 7. Google Latitude In 2005, location-based app Dodgeball was bought by Google. The Dodgeball creators went on to make Foursquare, and this year, Google replaced Dodgeball with Latitude, which very simply shows you where your friends are on Google Maps. Latitude could be the basis for more tricky applications in the future, but location tech in general can be a difficult technology to master. 8. #E3 Another yearly holy-grail-of-its-industry conference, E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is held in Los Angeles. This con is where gamer geeks die and go to heaven. 9. #amazonfail Amazon suffered public criticism this year when certain gay and lesbian books were removed from sales rankings for containing adult content. The trouble was, most of the titles in question weren't "adult" in nature at all, leading media and the general public to the conclusion that Amazon execs were deeply and terribly homophobic. In the end, it turned out that a single Amazon employee in France set a Boolean flag on adult content from False to True, taking out 57,000 books in his wake. Whoopsie! 10. Macworld And finally, there was MacWorld. Steve Jobs was unable to make the event, and Apple announced that the 2009 con would be the last year the company would participate in the show. The company announced a few modest treats, including new versions of iLife and iWork, as well as a 17-inch MacBook. Apple further announced that music sold on iTunes would be DRM-free. And that's it for Twitter's top trends! Do you think the right topics got the most attention? What do you think would have been trend #11? Let us know your thoughts in the comments! Discuss

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Twitter's Top 10 Tech Trends of 2009

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Facebook's Privacy Move Violates Contract With Users