Sharing Behind-The-Scenes Photos For A Movie On Twitter: Good Marketing Or Criminal Behavior?

from the take-your-pick dept

Remember how Summit Entertainment was pushing for criminal charges against someone who shared some on-set photos of the latest Twilight installment via Twitter? We still can't figure out how this makes any sense at all. How would sharing some on-set photos hurt the production at all. I can only see how it would help.

Thankfully, not everyone in the film business is quite so clueless. Ross Pruden points us to a story from filmmaker Lucas McNelly, who's apparently spending a year volunteering on various indie films and documenting the process. The post highlights how the current film he's working on, called Fat Kid Rules the World, had a somewhat mystery crew member tweeting a bunch of photos from the set under the name TheiPhotographr. The photos are pretty impressive. Here are just two, but the link above has many more (as does the Twitter account, obviously).

Now, if you're Summit Entertainment, apparently, this is something that you seek to put people in jail over. However, in this case, it's something that's celebrated. McNelly talks about trying to figure out who's actually taking the photos, before realizing it's likely to be Key Grip Patrick Barcroft. But, rather than worry about this, McNelly thinks it's something to be celebrated. Actually, it goes beyond that. It's a way to connect with more fans, build a better audience... and build a better film crew for future projects:

I think this is the future of production. Instead of being a rarity, people like Patrick are going to be the norm. You'll have a crew full of people sharing photos and thoughts from your production. They'll all bring their own built-in audiences along with them and it'll be the production's job to maximize that contribution. Some productions will clamp down and try to control it in the same way that corporations try and get their employees to toe a line, but the smart ones will give them free reign. Sure, they'll give parameters like "don't reveal the killer", but it won't be much more than that. And the productions will be better for it. They'll have an easier time of finding their audiences because the audience will come from the processes that get the film made in the first place.

Plus, they'll draw better crews.

Unless you put them in jail.

Filed Under: connecting with fans, movies, social media

Guy Accused Of Being Part Of Anonymous Banned By Court From Using His Real Name Online

from the say-what-now? dept

Ah, the bizarre legal results of confused courts and confused laws. Four of the people arrested in the UK and accused of being a part of the not-actually-a-group Anonymous last week won a small part of a court battle. Prosecutors apparently had asked the court to bar the four from using Twitter or other social networking and chat services, such as TinyChat, arguing that "Anonymous as a group continues to be active." The court decided that it would not issue such a complete ban, though it had already blocked them from using IRC. Instead, it said that they could continue to use social networking and chat programs... but not use their existing online personas. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that one of the people in question used his real first name as his online persona previously:

Peter David-Gibson, aged 20 from Hartlepool, who went by the online nickname “Peter”

Yes, you read that right. A guy accused of being Anonymous, but who used his real name online, can now no longer use his real name... because he may have been a part of Anonymous. That makes sense.

Filed Under: anonymous, arrests, real names, social media, uk

As New 'Digital First' CEO Takes Over At Media News, First Course Of Business Was Dropping Righthaven

from the a-good-first-impression dept

In the newspaper business, one of the few brightspots that we've seen has been the efforts of the Journal Register, which, under CEO John Paton, took a strong "digital first" position, and showed that they meant it by embracing some really great moves that bucked industry trends. So it was great to see that rumors from a few weeks ago that Paton was going to head up the larger newspaper chain MediaNews came true.

Even better? It appears that one of Paton's first acts of business was to end Media News' deal with Righthaven. In true "digital first," mode, Paton made this clear in a tweet to Dan Gillmor:

Media News has already terminated their relationship with RightsHaven.

In a later interview, Paton said doing a deal with Righthaven was a "dumb idea from the start."

This is quite a shift for Media News, which was previously run by Dean Singleton (who also was chair of the Associated Press), who was a big fan of "cracking down" on the internet. He was the one who brought in Righthaven, and was a huge proponent of putting up paywalls, because he thought it added more value to newspapers. Paton, who has spoken out against paywalls in the past, has said that he's not yet up-to-speed on Media News's paywalls to know what to do about them, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the company reverse course soon enough.

Filed Under: john paton, journalism, rules, social media
Companies: journal register, media news, righthaven

Wait, America-Hating Foreigners Will Be Influenced By How Many Twitter Followers A US Diplomat Has?

from the is-this-the-washington-post-or-the-onion? dept

We've discussed a few times in the past the absolute ridiculousness of services like "Klout" that try to assign a "number" to influence based on random things like how many Twitter followers you have or how often you tweet. Of course, the actual research on this stuff (you know, not by some random company trying to make people and companies think they're important) says that this kind of stuff is all hogwash, and you can't really predict who will "influence" others on certain things. In most cases, who influences you on what is driven more by the close circle of people you know and trust, not someone with a lot of Twitter followers.

But Klout continues to spread its own silly marketing message... and the press apparently just loves it. But, you would think that the Washington Post, of all publications, wouldn't publish an (unintentionally?) hilarious puff piece by Brian Fung suggesting that something like Klout could influence how US diplomats interface with America-hating foreigners. Honestly, the story reads like something straight out of The Onion, taking a faux serious tone about how much diplomats can learn from their Klout score. It opens by talking about just how hated the US is abroad:

America’s reputation abroad has reached a new low. In the Middle East, America is even less popular now than when President George W. Bush occupied the White House. Washington’s image has suffered the most in Turkey, plummeting from a high of 52 percent in 2000 to a dismal 10 percent in 2011. In Asia this past week, Vice President Joe Biden tried to build bridges with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s presumptive successor, but the visit was clouded by doubts about the U.S. deficit.

But have no fear, US diplomats. If you just embrace your Klout score, the Middle East will be eating out of your hands in no time flat.

Klout, which Time magazine included in a list of the year’s 50 best Web sites on August 16, gives its users a score based on how influential they are across a range of social networks. Contributing to the social savviness readout is a wealth of information about users’ most engaged followers and the topics they respond to best.

It’s not hard to see how diplomats can turn this data to their advantage. In an environment that often rewards targeted communication over indiscriminate broadcasting, diplomats have an interest in finding out who their followers are and what they like. Posting content that influencers will spread themselves can maximize the State Department’s impact via network effects while economizing effort. And by learning about their audience, diplomats will be able to tailor their engagement strategy and make course corrections, just as commercial brands do in the private sector.

If not The Onion, at best this reads as a weak press release from Klout itself. The article doesn't quote anyone. It doesn't attempt to explore whether or not Klout's rankings actually mean anything. It just assumes that they do. I'm happy that diplomats are using social media, and I hope they learn to use it well. But relying on Klout to figure out how they should move forward doesn't seem like a particularly fruitful strategy.

Filed Under: diplomats, social media
Companies: klout

Can't Stop Social Media-Driven UK Riots? Go After Social Media-Driven Water Gun Fights

from the that'll-teach-'em dept

As UK politicians and law enforcement still argue over things like blocking access to social media or shutting down Blackberry Messenger during times of riots and/or protests, it seems that some UK police know when to just jump right in. They've arrested and charged a guy for daring to organize a water gun fight using Blackberry messenger and Facebook. We're not making this up, though we wish we were:

The 20-year-old from Colchester was arrested on Friday after Essex police discovered the alleged plans circulating on the BlackBerry Messenger service and Facebook.

The unnamed man has been charged with "encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence" under the 2007 Serious Crime Act, police said.

He was arrested with another 20-year-old man the day the water fight was allegedly due to take place, and has been bailed to appear before Colchester magistrates on 1 September.

It's a "serious crime" to organize a water gun fight? Is there no right to bear supersoakers?

Filed Under: london, riots, social media, uk, water guns

The Phrase 'Reasonable Compromise' Should Not Be Part Of Any 'Free Speech' Discussion

from the congress-shall-make-no-law dept

Pretty stunning to see L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of the WSJ (and now a columnist) make the argument that shutting down social media is fine and dandy, if governments say that it's to stop bad stuff (as defined by those governments). Specifically, he defends UK politicians calling for blocks on social media in response to the London riots. Crovitz's reasoning isn't just weak, it's full of bizarre logical fallacies.

But all uses of technology are not equally virtuous. Enthusiasm for technology should not lead to a moral and political relativism that confuses crime with free speech and the British police with authoritarian governments.

No one has claimed that the two are the same. The point, which seems to sail way, way, way over Crovitz' head, is that the ability to block communications in one case quite easily leads to it being used in the other. Bizarrely, Crovitz then defends the highly questionable BART cell service shutdown in response to the threat of protesters, by saying it's fine because "the world did not end."

And the world did not end when police did indeed temporarily shut down social media. This happened last week in San Francisco, Calif., one of America's most liberal cities.

Last I checked, the Constitution of the United States says, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." It does not say, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech... but it can if the world won't end from doing so." From there, Crovitz just gets weird:

Permitting peaceful protests while stopping violence seems like a reasonable compromise.

Let's be clear: when discussing the First Amendment, the phrase "reasonable compromise" generally means someone taking away your rights. The problem, which Crovitz can't seem to get his head around, is that you can't set up a system that properly determines what speech is allowed and what speech is violence-inducing. People who trample on the First Amendment assume, falsely, that it's easy to tell one form of speech from another. If someone is committing violence, arrest them for committing violence. Don't take away their free speech rights.

From there, Crovitz insists that China's free speech trampling is different. Why? Because it is! Don't you see? The problem is that it's very much in the eye of the beholder. China continues to insist that its trampling of free speech is a "reasonable compromise" because it keeps "bad stuff" away from the people. How do you determine where that line is? Crovitz pretends its easy. Our founding fathers knew that it was not, which is why they specifically wanted to make sure that "dangerous speech" was allowed.

Then Crovitz jumps into obnoxious false dichotomy territory:

Robert Andrews, a reporter for the paidcontent:UK website, asked Twitter users whether they would prefer to keep the service available so they could chat about the television music competition "The X Factor" or let the service be closed temporarily "so that fellow citizens like shopkeepers need not be assaulted, have their property and premises pilfered and trashed, and so that they need not live in fear."

Though it was an admittedly unscientific survey, Mr. Andrews nevertheless reports that every Twitter respondent opted for "The X Factor." He concludes: "So addicted are we to our electronic connections, we simply cannot bear to be parted, for even an hour or two, in the name of public safety while London burns."

Or perhaps the people responding to Andrews recognized the ridiculousness of the question, and knew damn well, that social media is used for a hell of a lot more than discussing some TV show... and that allowing communications platforms to be shut down, because the government and Crovitz think "bad stuff" might happen, is a path to censorship. It's not that people are "addicted to electronic communications." It's that people believe in their rights to free speech. Taking away social media wouldn't stop London from burning, but it might harm some pretty core principles of democracy and the ability to speak your mind.

Techno-utopians would like to believe that digital technology is always a force for good, but technology can also accelerate evil. As Thomas Hobbes would say, without the enforcement of rules for ordered liberty, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," both in the real world and online.

And since we're doing a grand tour of logical fallacies, Crovitz closes with a claim that is simply unsubstantiated because it's false. I've never heard the folks normally associated with "techno-utopianism" ever claim that digital technology is always a force for good. In fact, I've almost always heard them claim that technology itself is neutral and can be used for both good and bad. If anything, people tend to note that it can help amplify both good and bad uses. But the point that they make is that you can't somehow cherry pick the "good" stuff to allow and the "bad" stuff to ban, because that always fails in the long run. It always leads to greater than "reasonable" censorship and always leads to important critical speech being stifled. Crovitz may have no problem with trampling on the rights of others. I, on the other hand, have serious problems with it -- and with the WSJ advocating what appears to be flat out censorship.

Filed Under: compromise, free speech, l. gordon crovitz, riots, social media

Some Old Guy Can't Come Up With Any New Ideas; So He Says There Are No New Ideas & It's Twitter's Fault

from the is-this-crap-worth-publishing? dept

Quite a week for the luddites out there. First we get Rob Levine's silly screed about the internet killing off a bunch of industries that are actually thriving. And now we have the NY Times publishing absolute tripe from Neal Gabler, bizarrely and ridiculously claiming that the age of "big ideas" is over, and it's all the fault of Twitter and Facebook. It's incredible that the NY Times would publish such absolute garbage. Nowhere does Gabler actually support his thesis.

It's yet another example of "back in the old days" mythological thinking, where someone, who only remembers the "highlights" of a bygone era, is upset that there's a lot of other stuff going on in the modern era as well. Gabler points to a bunch of "big thinkers" from the past -- Einstein, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Betty Friedan and others. And then insists that no one like that is showing up today -- or if they are, they're being ignored. This is, plainly speaking, ridiculous. He points to Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt as "big thinkers" of today who are mostly ignored. Really?!? All three are pretty widely known, and I'd bet are pretty much equally known in the world as his initial list at similar points in their life and career. Gabler just seems to have an arbitrary standard of how well known certain "big thinkers" are.

The real crux of Gabler's argument appears to be that we're all doing too much of that tweeting and stuff, such that we no longer have time to think. And his scientific evidence to back this up is... oh look, absolutely nothing.

It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed. Of course, one could argue that these sites are no different than conversation was for previous generations, and that conversation seldom generated big ideas either, and one would be right.

BUT the analogy isn’t perfect. For one thing, social networking sites are the primary form of communication among young people, and they are supplanting print, which is where ideas have typically gestated. For another, social networking sites engender habits of mind that are inimical to the kind of deliberate discourse that gives rise to ideas. Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show. While social networking may enlarge one’s circle and even introduce one to strangers, this is not the same thing as enlarging one’s intellectual universe. Indeed, the gab of social networking tends to shrink one’s universe to oneself and one’s friends, while thoughts organized in words, whether online or on the page, enlarge one’s focus.

Can't there just be a rule? If you ever trash Twitter because someone tweets about eating a sandwich for lunch, we all just agree that person is too clueless to listen to any more? That tired old line has been used so often and the only thing it shows is one's ignorance of Twitter.

But more to the point, Gabler is reminiscing about a world that never existed. "Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show." And in what world did millions of people sit around and discuss theories, hypotheses and grand arguments? Sure there are some places where some people did that, and they still do. In fact, those "theories, hypotheses and grand arguments" appear to happen much more frequently, in much more detail and with a wider audience online these days. I often find out about them via the smart people I follow on Twitter.

And while social media may not have enlarged Gabler's intellectual universe, it has massively enlarged mine. Thanks to Twitter specifically, I've been able to meet tons of fascinatingly smart people I never would have met otherwise. Sure, not all of it is brilliant talk, but Gabler seems to make the same fundamental error that so many "back in my day" people make: which is to assume that because a tool can be used for random conversation that somehow cancels out intelligent conversation. I can talk about the sandwich I ate for lunch and I can discuss big intellectually stimulating ideas.

But Gabler seems to have this view that because some people discuss stuff he finds beneath him, they can't possibly also be discussing important stuff. He also seems to ignore that back in his mythical "good old days" people discussed equally as ridiculous things:

The collection itself is exhausting: what each of our friends is doing at that particular moment and then the next moment and the next one; who Jennifer Aniston is dating right now; which video is going viral on YouTube this hour; what Princess Letizia or Kate Middleton is wearing that day. In effect, we are living within the nimbus of an informational Gresham’s law in which trivial information pushes out significant information, but it is also an ideational Gresham’s law in which information, trivial or not, pushes out ideas.

If Gabler thinks that there wasn't similar gossip and banal discussions back when he wasn't an old man screaming at kids on his lawn, he apparently wasn't paying very close attention to what the people around him were discussing. There are plenty of "big ideas" out there, contrary to Gabler's claim, but the only really stupid one I've seen lately is this one... from Gabler. With that I'm going back to reading some more interesting and thought provoking ideas... which I most likely found on Twitter.

Filed Under: communication, ideas, neal gabler, people, social media

Activity Is Not Influence

from the tweet-this! dept

I recently wrote about my concerns with the rise of services that try to measure "social media influence" by giving it a number. I had a few concerns about this, including the fact that trying to put a number of something that is not quantifiable inevitably leads to problems, but also in that this would lead people to change how they use certain tools. I don't use Twitter for the sake of "influence," but as a communications vehicle. Yet, that harms my "scores" on these services and gives me incentive to do things that I'm not interested in doing.

It appears I'm not the only one concerned about this. Jeff Nolan points us to a writeup by Mack Collier, in which he express similar concerns, specifically noting that these services measure activity, which is different than influence -- and, in fact, can be antithetical to influence. He notes this because one of these services, Klout, told him his "score" was dropping, and the way to increase it was to tweet more things:

Essentially, Klout and Empire Avenue are measuring your level of social media activity, not your level of online influence.

Simply sharing more content and engaging with my network isn’t going to make me more influential over them. In fact if it’s not the type of content and engagement that they are looking for, my influence over them will fall, not rise as I become more active.

And yet, because these sites and their made up numbers declare that they're measuring "influence" lots of people just believe them. It's really unfortunate, and it's going to lead to people changing their behavior in ways that don't increase influence at all, but decrease it.

Filed Under: activity, influence, social media

Interviewing Paulo Coelho About Books, Social Media And 'Free'

from the have-any-questions? dept

I've written a bunch of times about Paulo Coelho and how he's completely embraced social media, new business models and the economics of digital and infinite goods to increase his already considerable level of success. So, I'm thrilled to announce that I'll have the pleasure of interviewing Paulo at BookExpo America in NYC on May 25th at 2pm, where we'll be discussing his various experiments, how he's using social media, and how others can take advantage of social media and use "free" to their advantage, rather than fear it. We'll also even have some time to discuss his latest work (honestly, what good is interviewing someone like Paulo Coelho if we don't also talk about some of his writing!). In the meantime, though, I'm interested in any suggestions folks have for questions for Coelho in this particular forum.

Filed Under: copyright, free, infringement, paulo coelho, pirates, social media, writing

Labor Board Continues To Warn Companies Not To Fire People Based On Tweets

from the protected-activity dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how the National Labor Relations Board (the NLRB) had noted that a post on Facebook complaining about a boss represented "protected concerted activity" under the NLRA and thus you couldn't be fired for that. Many people in our comments simply insisted this wasn't true. However, the NLRB appears to be continuing to make this point. Thomas O'Toole draws our attention to a report on a number of recent NLRB statements and activities that again make it clear that it won't look kindly on firings over people speaking out on social networks about their workplace.

• Protected Concerted Activity: In a discipline case, the Board will take a very broad view when deciding whether the employee’s social media activities constituted “protected concerted activity” under the NLRA. The Regional Director’s handout states, “It doesn’t take much to establish the concerted nature of the discussion, so long as it involved or touched upon a term or condition of employment,” and “anything short of physically threatening activity will likely be protected.”
• Recent Cases: The NLRB continues to be active in the area. The handout provides four examples of recently filed complaints, or threatened complaints, involving social media in addition to the case against AMR. These cases show just how broadly the Board construes “protected concerted activity.” They involved, according to the handout, negative comments about a supervisor posted on Facebook, a posted cartoon video about a dispute between two departments, a Facebook discussion about the employer’s withholding of taxes, and a Facebook discussion about the employer’s decision to fill an open position with an outside, rather than an inside, applicant.

So it appears, yet again, that the NLRB is taking an extremely broad view on what constitutes protected activity on social networks. While I understand where the NLRB is coming from, it does seem that this viewpoint is excessive. It may be (and likely is) silly for most companies to fire an employee for venting about their job on Facebook or Twitter, but should it really be illegal? I recognize all too well how much effort went into making sure that employees had the ability to be protected for "concerted activity." The idea was to stop companies from firing people for gathering together to stand up for their rights. But should that really extend to situations involving people bitching about their bosses? Again, it might not be smart for companies to fire people who do that... but should it be against the law?

Filed Under: nlra, nlrb, protected concerted activity, social media
Companies: facebook, twitter