Dude...

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Dude...I love these spots. I get bored with Bud's reliance on the idiot male bachelor who can only crack jokes and ogle fake cheerleaders or whatever. Finally, a man in his element, doing as we do, saying everything without really saying much at all. Bud had to eventually make a spot for the Arrested Development viewer, and here it is. Makes me smile and rewind, every time.

And it brings up something that's been on my mind of late. Is the internet an engagement medium? An interactive medium? Or are all mediums that, but the internet just forced us to put up or shut up? I'm not sure that a medium can be any either of those things, but the applications of that medium are what makes it interactive or engaging. The problem with television isn't the fact that it's on tv, it's the people who put the stuff on there who got lazy, greedy and boring. Why blame Sony or shitty Time Warner for that? Trust me, they have enough problems.

Tune In Saturdays: Ghosthustler

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GhIt's hard to get tired of good local DFW music as of late. As you may have noticed around here, my good local band cup overfloweth. Yes, overfloweth. Denton, TX boys Ghosthustler actually broke on the national scene before playing a single show. After a few blogs and college radio stations picked up the song Parking Lot Nights (mp3) with the support of an awesome music video, their star has been rising quickly. Any fan of Nintendo and the 80's will fall in love with the video directed by Peter Ohs, host of fantastic music blog, the Anchor Center. They might remind you of another ghostly TX band and tune in alumni, Ghostland Observatory.

From the Dallas Observer:

"Ghosthustler is a band from Denton. The oldest member, Grey St. Germain Gideon, is 24; the youngest, Alan Palomo, is 19. Shane English and Noah Jackson round out the young crew. They met when Palomo, who is what you might call the Primary Ghosthustler, matriculated last year at the University of North Texas as a radio-television-video-film major. Ghosthustler does not have a publicist, a Web site, a label or even a record. What they do have is attitude, luck, the Internet, one hell of a video and one hell of a song. From all this they have garnered more buzz than a bee hightailing it to the pollen. And the story around Ghosthustler is more than just about a good song. It's about the culmination of a number of pop traditions, and how the future of music—via software, Internet communication and, oddly, looking to the past—is now."

Ghosthustler - Busy Busy Busy (mp3)
Ghosthustler - Parking Lot Nights (video)

Dear Google

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BloggerDon't be evil? How about you try to just not be a dick first?

Apparently, it's more important that they make me comment using my blogger account than for me to be able to link back to the blog platform I actually use (typepad). At least they've done all that work on blogger to make me want to come back since they bought it (wait, no they didn't) and it's easy to switch (wait, no it's not).

So the new google mantra, "We may not be evil, but we reserve the right to be assholes."

and yes, that would be legendary blogger Tim Jackson's comment area. I encourage you all to bug him to bug google.

The Zuckerberg Response

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ZuckerbergIt's just hard to be mad at the guy when he writes something like this. This is CEO 2.0, a real person who says he's sorry without blaming anyone else. Nicely done. You can read it on his facebook blog here.

"About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I'd like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn't get in people's way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn't on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.

But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn't have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends. It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I'm not proud of the way we've handled this situation and I know we can do better.

Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don't want to use it.

This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we've heard about from you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Mark"

The Moveon Hypocricy Moment: The Facebook Opt Out

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MoveonheaderWhile I'm clearly left leaning in most cases, MoveOn.org drives me crazy because they turn a reasoned argument into a caricature of itself. It's idealistic positioning without regard for reason in much the same way as the NRA's stance on assault weapons and just about anyone who is against stem cell testing. (How's that for a jaded statement?)

That said, I was pleased to see ClickZ call out MoveOn for its blatant hypocrisy over the Facebook privacy controversy...

One of the key privacy issues for MoveOn, according to the petition group page, is the fact that Facebook's new 'Beacon' ad format automatically shares information about a user's activity gathered on third-party sites.

The text in the group description, presumably written by MoveOn, states, "Facebook says its users can 'opt out' of having their private purchases reported to all their friends. But that option is easily missed."

It continues; "The obvious solution is to switch to an 'opt in' policy, like most other applications on Facebook."

I couldn't agree more! However, an interesting comment on the group wall was pointed out to me yesterday. A member has posted the following:

"Well, I tried to write this yesterday but it looks like it was removed. I'd love to sign a petition, but I am not going to sign something that will automatically subscribe me to moveon.com emails. Sorry."

I took a look at the petition on the MoveOn.org site earlier today. The privacy policy is outlined at the bottom of the page and reads; "MoveOn will send you updates on this and other important campaigns by email. If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from our email list, you may do so."

Sure does sound like an opt out policy, now doesn't it. I'd love to hear their excuse. Thanks to Ryan for the catch.

Tune In Saturdays: Eccentric Soul

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NumeroOver the past couple weeks, I've gotten a total education on what early Miami soul was truly like. I'll groove to some Motown, but this full on ass-shakin' album of unreleased and largely unknown tracks from the late 60's is truly genius. Not so glitzy, not so cliche, just down and dirty, gritty soul. Grab these two albums from Numero, Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label, and the even better addendum, Eccentric Soul: The Outskirts of Deep City.

From Dusty Groove America:

An essential chapter of Miami soul -- even if most of the work is appearing here for the first time ever! The set is a magnificent companion to Numero's Deep City collection of pre-TK Miami soul -- but it's put together in such a way that it's almost a beautiful introduction to the south Florida sound on its own -- served up in a batch of rare, unreleased tracks! The music is every bit as wonderful as you'd expect -- Miami soul recorded at a time before cliches had started to hit that scene -- and when the best artists down south were strongly resonating ideas from Memphis and Muscle Shoals with other elements borrowed from northern groups both funky and mellow.

The Rollers -  Knocking on the Wrong Door (mp3)
Frank Williams & the Rocketeers - Show Me What You Got (mp3)
Lynn Williams - Don't Be Surprised (mp3)

Numero. Buy. Buy from other music.

a hat tip to Gorilla vs. Bear for the find.

UPDATE*
Here's a video of Band of Horses covering Am I a Good Man (mp3) by Them Two (on the deep city label).

Facebook "Relents." No One Surprised.

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Beacon21If you've read my post from yesterday, you'll see that I'm calling bullshit on facebook. In my opinion, they're using the privacy issue to leave room for compromise with the ultimate intent of keeping the program in the way they originally intended still intact. And I'm more sure than ever now that one day later the new Beacon has already been rolled out. Either they're the fastest coders on the planet, or the expectation of change was already there, and the work had already been done. The latter makes much more sense.

So Beacon lets you opt out for good (but only on a case by case basis, which still sort of sucks, but is on par with how they handle application notifications), and removes the automatic feed posting of partner purchases by requiring an opt in to post. While it's probably not all the way there, I still think it's a useful program. I like to know where my friends are shopping because it makes it easier for me to find new places. It's that simple. More granular control of the program will be helpful and productive, but I think facebook is probably just taking the baby steps toward what the future of the web will look like anyway.

And honestly, I'd rather those steps be taken by facebook rather than Microsoft, or GE, or the US Government, or whatever. For some reason, facebook's independence makes me feel a little more comfortable with the process.

(and yes, I know microsoft now owns a part of facebook, but I don't think it's enough to consider them the major decision maker. more like an influential bystander)

Mack's got an interesting take on the myspacing of facebook. Although these days it's seems to be just as much the facebooking of myspace.

The Facebook Bait: Using Privacy to Accomplish Goals

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Facebookprivacy565Is the new Facebook Beacon platform just a PR move to let them get away with more?

There aren't real problems with the bulk of the program. For both advertisers and the consumers they're marketing to, it makes a ton of sense to use shared data to increase relevant advertising messages in a non-obtrusive way. Everybody wins there. But this shit where companies can add online purchases to your facebook feed without giving you the ability to opt out completely beforehand, and only 20 seconds to opt out after the purchase, is ridiculous. And Facebook knows it. Zuckerberg is his customer base, trust me he gets it.

Just like he got it when they rolled out the feed in the first place. With obvious opt out and privacy issues. And not surprisingly, facebook eventually got what it wanted with the feeds, while the marketplace was quieted because they complained and felt as though they were still heard. The compromise was established. Users can opt out but facebook got the platform it needed to advance its own advertising interests.

And here's round two. Users will be pissed. I'll get emails from MoveOn.org. And the benevolent facebook will add the additional privacy features that they expected in the first place. Advertisers win and the users feel heard.

Friggin brilliant. It's a good platform for everybody anyway (assuming the control stays where we all know it should). Them some smart dudes.

You may have also noted that MySpace rolled out its own feed this week, also. We've got to realize that people put information on their page when they don't mind if other people see it. What's important is that users retain control of the data. Calacanis has more.