To celebrate Pi Day on March 14th (3.14), we're giving away a cool Pi Day T Shirt from ThinkGeek. To win our Pi Day Contest, we want to know your vision for Quantum Computing.

The possibilities are exciting. Many people, including RWW's Mobile guru, Dan Rowinski, believe it may be the innovation that changes human history the most in our lifetimes, assuming of course that we're around when it moves beyond current research. Will we live long enough to see it's promise realized?

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Quantum computing will replace binary in processing transaction in a device. So, instead of 1 and 0, any value can be computed turning computing power from a limited set into exponential and powerful engine that can do things that would take days now in a matter of seconds.

Quantum Possibilities

The computer you use now is limited to binary processing, a transistor is either on or off. Quantum computing is not constrained in this way. Data can be represented in multiple states, bringing the possibilities of fantastical computing power, though for now, the hardware is still a limitation.

To win our Pi Day Contest, we want to know your vision for Quantum Computing. Will it replace existing computers? Will it be used side by side with binary computers, perhaps used only for specialized tasks? Will it be used for quantum teleportation, without the risk a Jeff Goldblum nightmare scenario?

What's Your Vision for Quantum Computing?

Answer better than everyone else and you may find yourself decked out in a fancy Pi T-shirt, holding a $25 gift certificate from ThinkGeek (our partners in quantum crime).

Let us know your vision for Quantum Computing in the comments on this post. We look forward to being schooled by your answers!

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In response to growing concern over comments Rush Limbaugh made last week, Netflix says they never purposefully advertised on his show. Sencha released Touch 2, which allows developers to write Android and iOS apps from either a Windows PC or a Mac. Alicia Eler wonders if passive social sharing is killing the internet. This and more in today's Daily Wrap.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

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Reports Raise Questions About Who Has Access To Your Facebook Profile

Rush Limbaugh's controversial statements about college student, Sandra Fluke, are have created a significant PR firestorm for companies that run ads on his show. Netflix users have clamored for a response from Netflix PR, but they have chosen not to address these concerns in their own channels, as of this writing. They did tell ReadWriteWeb's Joe Brockmeier that they have not knowingly purchased advertising on Limbaugh's show, but that they do advertise on radio and two of their spots accidentally ran on the show.

The community response on the story made it clear that without a public response, they will lose some users.

From the ReadWriteWeb community:

Peg Keller -- People started emailing and tweeting Netflix on Friday and Saturday and there was NO denial or any acknowledgment. John Deere it took about 15 minutes, E-Harmony the same. Netflix had their head up their a** for 4 days while the rest of the advertisers targeted at least attempted to look into what was going on.

Dan Lake -- I've already cancelled my Netflix account as of this morning. They have until my paid time runs out in a week to change my mind. Their commercials are playing during Rush's show and that is not in question. They can come out on Twitter or their Facebook page or however they choose to denounce this scumbag.

More Must Read Stories:

Sencha Touch 2 Allows Developers to Code iOS Apps With Windows PCs

Mobile HTML5 developer framework Sencha wants to be more than just a tool to develop hybrid mobile applications. The company's roadmap for 2012 is to become an end-to-end solution for designing, developing and deploying HTML5 applications and is taking its first steps toward that goal today by releasing Sencha Touch 2 out of beta. Sencha Touch 2 gives developers a better user interface for developing HTML5 that will give consumers a more robust user experience. (more)

How Social Networks are Killing the Internet

Share this on Facebook! Tweet this to your followers! Pin it to Pinterest! Submit the link to StumbleUpon and drive tons of traffic to your site! Digg it and hopefully more eyeballs will see it (and then it will end up on Facebook through the Digg Social Reader). Isn't it great? You can cross your fingers and hope that the entire social Web sees something you like if you share it to all of your social networks. After all, we are what we share. (more)

Despite Ban, Facebook Finds A Way To Grow In China

People in China may be barred from accessing Facebook, but that hasn't stopped them from making software for the 845-million member social network.

The partnerships with Chinese software developers allow Facebook to find ways to show investors in its upcoming initial public offering growth and expansion in China, even though the Chinese government has banned access to the site since 2009. The Chinese game developers could also be a strong source of revenue growth for the recent addition of advertisements to Facebook's mobile site. (more)

Google Play: Movies, Books, Music & Apps from Google

Google just took the wrapper off a new service called Google Play. It's a single cloud-based media store for apps, songs, books and movies that streams between Android devices and the desktop. The Android Market and Google Music have been rolled into it. There's lots of free streaming content available, and you can pay for the rest with Google Wallet. It's rolling out globally starting today, but not all content is available everywhere. (more)

Sabu the Betrayer: Hacker Tweets Outrage While Conspiring With FBI

There is a code upheld by members of Sicilian mobsters called omerta. It is considered a code of honor, of value, of principal. It is the "code of silence" that means that members do not give evidence to authorities or rivals about the activities of the organization. When an organization is brought down by police there is a good chance that there was a snitch involved. Omerta was broken. (more)

Google Slashes Storage Prices: Still no GDrive

Google announced today that it's dropping its pricing on Google Cloud Storage and its integration with several enterprise storage offerings. Google's updated pricing scheme puts it roughly in line with Amazon's S3, but what else does Google have to offer except a new pricing scheme?

I spoke to Google's product manager for Cloud Storage, Navneet Joneja on Monday about the pricing change and how Google stands out in storage. (more)

AppMobi Accelerates Android HTML5 Performance With new directCanvas SDK

A lot has been made over the last couple of days of how Android renders HTML5 a lot slower than iOS. This comes as a revelation to absolutely no one. HTML5 development studio appMobi thinks it has a fix. At the Game Developers Conference today appMobi announced the availability of its directCanvas SDK for Android that promises refresh rates up to 10 times faster. (more)

How P.R. Pros Keep Their High-Profile Clients Out Of Trouble On Twitter

Seconds after one of Jai Manselle's NBA clients accidentally tweeted out classified information about negotiations to end last fall's lockout it was already too late to delete the 140-character message.

"It was immediately reblogged, screenshot, retweeted and disseminated heavily," said Manselle, a public relations specialist whose firm represents clients ranging from the American Red Cross to Sean Combs. (more)

Verizon: External Security Threats Skyrocketed in 2011

The conventional wisdom has been that industrialized hacking organizations have become particularly successful with social engineering - coaxing employees into doing something stupid that unlocks their networks' security. Analysts at the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week spoke of increasing incidents of telephone calls - actual human beings from call centers, pretending to be "Windows Security" or some other service, offering to help employees eradicate a non-existent virus from their systems and asking for their passwords outright. (more)

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The offsite moderators for Facebook may have user information that might make some Facebook users uneasy. This and more in today's Daily Wrap.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

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Reports Raise Questions About Who Has Access To Your Facebook Profile

Some Facebook moderation is performed by an external vendors. The employees of these vendors may have more information on Facebook users than some people expect. Beyond the flagged content, the moderators can see, in some cases, the user's name and other identifying information.

From the ReadWriteWeb community:

jdavid_net -- the problem is if facebook truly is a social utility, then, it becomes part of the infrastructure of human inter relationships.

Nick Stamoulis -- It's doubtful that the average Facebook user thoroughly understands Facebook's privacy policies. Most probably haven't even bothered to read it. Facebook is a "free" service, and it's obvious that you are giving up something to use it. Really, it's pretty simple. If in doubt, don't share something on Facebook.

More Must Read Stories:

How Technology Changes Our Relationships

Ah, the Internet. The once magnificent and glorious tool has transformed from being a fast-paced information highway to that place where we all admit, rather begrudgingly, that we spend too much time on. Alone. We love the immediate answers, the idea of relying on Google as one aspect of our "external brain". We crave instant gratification. We make important decisions (such as impulse buys) without a second thought. We are turning into Internet speed fiends, and we are doing it alone. (more)

Google Gets Into the Airline Ticket Business

Just in case it wasn't clear Google is going into the business of selling airline tickets. It's starting small with Cape Air, an independent New England-based regional airline. (more)

The Best SLA Ever

You no doubt are somewhat cynical about service level agreements (SLAs), those little-reviewed documents that promise the level of service from your hosting provider. Little-read that is, until something goes awry. Enter SingleHop, a Chicago-based provider that is trying to make a name for itself by actually delivering a solid "Bill of Rights" for customers and promising to pay when they don't meet their SLA. It is an interesting idea. (more)

Now You Can Pin Quotes to Pinterest

Pinterest is the new home to images from around the Web. Artists, interior designers, fashionistas and excited brides-to-be are using Pinterest to organize and curate their aesthetic. Among the photos of vintage duffle bags and cheese plates, word-only images have begun to pop up. Toronto-based developer Adam Rotman saw the opportunity and jumped on it. His new site, PinAQuote.com, offers users a way to grab text they see somewhere on the Web and turn it into a sharable image for Pinterest. Drag the PinAQuote bookmarklet into your bookmarks bar, which works well in Firefox or Chrome. (more)

How Spam and the Cloud Can Save the Future of Email

Email is dead, according to some high profile figures.

Meanwhile, email use continues to grow steadily, and by some estimates nearly 80% of all business data can be found in email. Yet, even many of email's greatest fans believe that after nearly 40 years of evolution, email has pretty much settled into its final form. I think they're wrong - we have only seen the beginning of what email can do. (more)

Experts Weigh In On What Facebook Premium Means For Users, Advertisers

The premium advertising platform Facebook launched last week, which includes an increased emphasis on mobile, is getting mixed reviews from industry professionals.

"Bottom-line- this is gonna fail because People don't want to recommend an ad," said Natalie L. Petouhoff, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "They want to recommend a product, service or company that they have had an amazing experience with. (Or they want to share great content.) That expression of joy, surprise, wonderment... is a natural thing that people share with each other." (more)

Betting on the Future, Washington Post Hires Slashdot Founder

To say that journalism has changed in the last few years is putting it mildly. Those that watch the news industry and have a concern for its future are all too the familiar with the statistics. Dramatic drops in print advertising revenue are followed by layoffs, pay cuts and even the occasional closure of an institution that have informed the public for generations. Meanwhile, an entirely new digital news ecosystem is slowly emerging on the Web and mobile platforms, even if not everybody has figured out the best way to monetize it yet. (more)

Can Big Data Replace Domain Expertise?

One of the recurring themes last week at the O'Reilly Strata Conference in Santa Clara was the idea that skill with machine learning and analytics could trump domain expertise in getting results.

The argument goes something like this: Given the right data set, a data scientist with no domain expertise can out-perform experts that have been working in the field for decades. For example, providing weather insurance or marketing strategy. (more)

The Benefits and Pitfalls of ESPN's new Developer Center

What do you do when you have a treasure trove of valuable data that developers would love to get their hands on? Release an API and let them create applications for you. That is precisely what sports network ESPN did today by announcing its Developer Center replete with multiple APIs for programmers. Developers can tap into ESPN's reservoir of data on athletes, teams, media, stats and research to create sports apps with rich data for fans across the world. (more)

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Shapeways held a contest to see what designers thought Siri might look like. This and more in today's Daily Wrap.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

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What Siri Would Look Like If It Were a Person

A contest to imagine what Siri's physical form might look like yielded some interesting results. The winner, Omniscent Siri, by SaGa Design, looks half alien, half human. To learn more about the contest and the winner, check out What Siri Would Look Like If It Were a Person.

More Must Read Stories:

Camera Awesome: An iPhone App That Instagram and Apple Could Learn From

The fact that smartphones have made a huge mark on photography is no breaking news. The company that was once most synonymous with taking photographs is now in bankruptcy, while the most frequently-used camera on Flickr isn't one of Nikon or Canon's DSLRs, but the iPhone 4. (more)

What Kind of Software Company Should You Work For?

I met Peter Griess last night and heard him talk about his career. Even though he still has plenty of years ahead of him, he has already worked for NetApp, Yahoo, and now Facebook. He was part of a nine-person startup that worked on some interesting social email apps that eventually got acquired by Yahoo. Along his career he has seen very different kinds of cultures in these various software engineering departments, and as I was listening to his talk, I thought about the many software companies that I have covered over the years.

I would break them down into three different kinds of cultures (the names are my own construct)... (more)

Exposé Details Facebook's Growing Pains

Fortune magazine released an exposé of Facebook that portrays Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg as a leader who promoted friends over qualified Facebook employees and may have been too focused on "extracurricular" activities as the public face of the soon-to-be public social network. (more)

AT&T Clarifies Data Throttling Policy but Still Faces User Backlash

When it comes to data throttling, there is no way that U.S. mobile carriers can win the war of public opinion. That goes double for AT&T and its PR fiasco over the last couple of weeks over its throttling of unlimited data plans. A California man won an $850 settlement in the Simi Valley small claims court, opening the door for thousands of similar court cases to be brought about the country. Several petitions on Change.org have been started to challenge the throttling policy, including one from Yonker's New York yoga instructor Jane Foody that has about 11,400 signatures since it was launched. (more)

8 Things to Think About Before You Make Your Next Product Pitch

St. Louis became the 22nd city to have a branch of the Founders Institute today. The operation helps entrepreneurs in a very structured four-month paid mentoring program. It involves intensive coaching and has resulted in more than 700 startups, with over 40% of them receiving funding. We have written about FI before here. (more)

News.me for iPhone Makes Friends the Editors of Twitter & Facebook

News.me launched its free iPhone app this morning, which introduces Facebook integration, a saved offline reading list that syncs with the iPad app and Instapaper, and new, simple social dynamics of its own. It digests the links shared by Twitter and Facebook contacts, checks Bit.ly for their popularity, and presents a list of the top news stories in a clean, readable environment. (more)

Pew: 53% of U.S. Cellphone Owners now Have Smartphones

Over half of U.S. cellphone owners now own smartphones, according to new data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. 53% of U.S. cellphone owners are now of the smart variety and 46% of American's overall own a smartphone. This is a significant inflection point in the mobile revolution, marking a significant trend in how the average interacts with information. (more)

Chinese Internet Users to Obama: "Hello Mr. President"

China's Internet censorship regime, known as the Great Firewall, can appear monolithic. A few days ago, however, that wall was breached. Chinese citizens rode a glitch and jumped onto the momentarily unencumbered information super highway, according to reports from CNET. Where did Chinese Internet users head? Straight to President Obama's Google+ page. (more)

Strata: Mixing the Social Data Cocktail

Everyone knows you can learn a lot by trawling data coming from social media services like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. But sometimes the data will surprise you. For instance, you'd expect to be able to glean product feedback from Facebook's public feed, but did you know that shoplifters tend to brag about it in social media? (more)

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Dan Frommer tells you the only five things that matter at Mobile World Congress. This and more in today's Daily Wrap.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

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The Only 5 Things That Matter at Mobile World Congress

Beyond the distractions of tons of people, hundreds of booths and great panels, Dan Frommer reminds us that there are five things that we can't miss at this year's Mobile World Congress. One of those is that the show itself is amazing, but beyond that, there are some significant lessons to learn about Google, Apple, Samsung and telecoms. Read "The Only 5 Things That Matter at Mobile World Congress" to stay up to date on this year's upcoming mobile trends.

From our readers:

rawryree - That's the sad part. Until WebOS and Tizen get their act together, even the open source realm is pretty much monopolized by Android, allowing mediocrity to reign. The only reason Android is flourishing right now is that it's the only alternative to Apple.

(Yeah, there's Windows Phone 7, but it's not going Open Source any time soon so they're relegated to the third-party status like BlackBerry OS.)

More Must Read Stories:

Company Reactions to Facebook Timeline for Brands

This morning Facebook launched Timeline For Brands, which will give brand pages the same look, feel and functionality as the personal page Timelines the social network has been rolling out since September. (more)

FBI Searches Social Media for Insider Trading

The FBI launched Perfect Hedge Investigations, an effort to root out insider trading that includes monitoring of social networks.

The emphasis on social media and online communications platforms like Skype accents how complex law enforcement is becoming in the connected era: a simple phone tap or document subpoena is no longer enough to catch Gordon Gecko-like figures in an age where people have dozens of options for sending information to associates. (more)

WordPress For Musicians: CASH Music Wants to Open Source the Industry

We hear a lot about how dramatically the music industry is changing. And indeed, there are plenty of positive trends amidst the disruption. Music creation is easier than ever. So is music discovery. Streaming services offer a new model for the consumption of music on any device, in any location. Whether from within a startup or at Music Hack Day, developers are building new things everyday that will help shape the future of music. (more)

Marketing Your App: Find Market Weaknesses and Exploit Them

There are more smartphones in the hands of consumers than ever. The natural consequence of smartphone penetration is that more users are downloading more apps. It comes down to simple economic theory: as volume increases the cost of acquiring loyal users goes down. (more)

Art of Entrepreneurship: Who to Listen to and Why

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of customer development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. It's understanding who to listen to and why. (more)

How to Enhance Your Community Using Twitter, a New O'Reilly Book

Are you seemingly stuck with trying to suss out what to do with Twitter? Don't know how to get started? Does 140 characters seem daunting? Then you might want to take a look at a new O'Reilly book called Tweetsmart. (more)

Strata 2012: 3 Essential Skills of a Data Driven CEO

At the Strata Jumpstart session on Tuesday, Diego Saenz of Data Driven CEO made the case for three skills that are must haves for CEOs to become "data driven."

Much of Saenz's talk focused on one specific data-driven CEO: Robert McDonald of Procter and Gamble (P&G). (more)

RSA 2012: Former McAfee CTO Demonstrates Remote Access Exploits on WebKit

The company is called CrowdStrike (not "CloudStrike"), and most folks attending the NSA session featuring the company Wednesday morning had never heard of it. That wasn't why they were there. The man behind CrowdStrike is George Kurtz, the former chief technology officer of McAfee, and the man widely credited with bringing that company into the realm of seriousness. (more)

Why Video Games Are Good for Your Kids

In addition to understanding the many real concerns that today's parents have with video games, it's also worth considering the benefits and positive aspects that contemporary interactive entertainment choices provide. (more)

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Variety abounds in the streaming music game. Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm, Rdio, Slacker, MOG, Turntable... You really have your pick in streaming services.

As yet, Apple has stayed out of the fray. As we look towards the upcoming Apple event, we wonder if that will change? Do you expect Apple to become a player in the streaming music market?

Will Apple Enter the Streaming Music Game?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

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Dave Copeland shares his tips for using Facebook productively and professionally. This and more in today's Daily Wrap.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

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How To Pimp Your Facebook Habits

Most of us use Facebook, but do we use it as effectively as we'd like? As a follow up to a recent post that showed you how to pimp your LinkedIn profile, Dave Copeland shares his suggestions for getting the most out of Facebook.

From our readers:

Dagmar Schneitz - Some of this article I agree with, some of it I don't. I've always wanted to wish birthdays more creatively, so I could use that. As far as being unfriended, I'd like to know who would. But I wouldn't do anything or take any revenge against them. If they unfriend me, they unfriend me.

Helder José - The purpose of contacting people who unfriended you on Facebook is not to exert revenge on them. The purpose is to find out what you did that prompted the unfriend action, and if you did something wrong then apologize and correct. The text makes this point pretty clear. More Must Read Stories:

What Google+ Should Have Been: Bing's Linked Pages

Bing launched Bing+ last week, it just skipped all the unnecessary stuff. (It's not really called Bing+.) There's a new feature called Linked Pages that allows Bing users (U.S. only, for now) to connect their various websites and profiles to their Bing identities, using Facebook for authentication. You can also link your Facebook friends to their pages. (more)

Everything Pinterest and Tumblr Users Need To Know About Copyright Law

It's hard to write a story or post about Pinterest and copyright law without at least one reader leaving a comment along the lines of "What about Tumblr?" (more)

Apple to Answer Neil Young's Wishes With High-Fidelity iTunes Audio

Earlier this month, Neil Young made headlines with a biting critique of the state of digital music. In particular, it's the audio quality that bugs Young. Even the highest quality MP3's contain only a fraction of the audio data found in the original master recordings, and industry veterans like Young are concerned that the digital revolution is degrading quality in favor of convenience. (more)

The Pirate Bay Switches from Torrents to Untraceable Magnet Links

The Pirate Bay will no longer link to .torrent files. It will use better technology instead. "Today marks the end of an era," the Pirate Bay blog says. "Sort of." The famed torrent site will now use magnet links. Magnet links don't break as easily, and they're more bandwidth-efficient for people who mirror the linked files.

Oh yeah, and unless a government is willing to shut down a whole Web page using out-and-out censorship tactics, magnet links can't be stopped. (more)

Brightcove Wants to Be Your End-to-End HTML5 Mobile Development Platform

Brightcove does not want you to think of it as a video hosting company. From the beginning, that was never the plan. Yet, Brightcove rode its cloud video-hosting platform to an initial public offering last week,with the company valued at about $392 million. Brightcove considers itself a "cloud content services" company and wants to be the go-to resource for publishers storing and delivering media from the cloud. (more)

Circl.es: Facebook-Connected Online Dating That Isn't Creepy

Most 21st century humanoids have probably either at one point tried online dating or dissed online dating. Or both.

We have reached a new point in history, at which we either do not feel like we can meet people in real life, or we are too encumbered by technology, or we are too awkward, or all of the above. As such, we turn to a virtual place where people mingle: The Internet. And as always, the Internet provides a solution. (more)

Samsung: One Tablet Closer to Irrelevance

Samsung has a history of its executives contradicting themselves. Especially when it comes to tablet sales. In January 2011, Samsung reported on its earnings call that its tablet sales were "quite small." A minor controversy erupted when the company said that statement was an error in the call's transcription. Samsung backtracked and said that tablet sales were "quite smooth." (more)

How to Stay Safe on Pinterest

Pinterest. It's a free for all, the perfect place to find visually stimulating images and then perform fast, repining actions. Populate your online bulletin board (a.k.a. pinboard) with the inner visions of your mind. Just don't forget that you're probably frictionlessly sharing with Pinterest some of the same information you're already posting to Facebook and Twitter. (more)

Apple's Next Privacy Scandal: Apps That Steal Your Photos

It's only been a few weeks since the last major iOS privacy scandal. In case you were getting bored, a new, somewhat related controversy just started brewing thanks to reporting by Nick Bilton at The New York Times. This one comes three weeks after Path apologized for a privacy loophole that allowed developers to access users' entire address book without their knowledge.

Not only can iOS apps access and upload one's address book, but they can apparently do the same with the photo library on any iOS device, according to the Times. (more)

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As we move closer to the Facebook IPO, we're hearing that people are less averse to removing weak Facebook connections and we're also seeing Facebook try new things like Movies on Facebook.

While the Facebook growth story is fantastic, our writers worry about the value proposition due to the risks of 85% of Facebook revenue being related to advertising. Regardless, the Facebook IPO could be the biggest tech IPO in history, so we wondered if our readers were busy preparing to invest.

Would you invest in Facebook?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

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According to the London Sunday Times, Facebook admitted to reading the text messages of users who had downloaded their smartphone app. This and more in today's Daily Wrap.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

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The decision to censor material because it is dangerous or highly offensive is a difficult one, but it's not uncommon. Community managers are faced with situations like this often, and while the decision is subjective, it's never taken lightly. We weigh many things as we consider to remove content, but mostly we look to see if it violates community standards or guidelines. The grey areas are spelled out in the site's abuse grid.

Abuse grids and community guidelines are living documents. Since the Web is changing on a daily basis, these documents will be updated often, referencing new types of abuse or speaking to new issues that may need addressing. Not everyone needs a dedicated community manager, but every company needs to take responsibility for their online community.

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Abuse: Clean It Up

The free exchange of information on the Internet is important, and most community managers understand and encourage this. We encourage open discussion but still must remove abuse when we see it.

By removing abuse, you create a safe environment and doing so, you encourage creativity and give confidence to new members with something important to say. Cleaning your site of abuse actually encourages free discussion. Community members who have to trudge through a site filled with personal attacks and sock puppets that run rampant can't even express a coherent thought.

We strive to create an environment conducive to free discussion but free of bear traps.

Defining Abuse

The definition of abuse is really determined by your community guidelines. Those guidelines are your external Dos and Don'ts for your community. Internally, you'll enforce those guidelines with the Abuse Grid. The Abuse Grid for your site is an internal document, and it covers every possible abuse situation you'll encounter. A leaked document purporting to be part of the Facebook community toolkit surfaced last week.

Community guidelines are focused on preventing abuse, so they are typically positive in nature. They are also vague, with more attention focused on encouraging good behavior, in hopes that most people will read them and happily comply. Abuse grids are focused on dealing with abuse, so they are typically negative in nature. They are written in an "if this, then that" format, with clear rules that define racism, sexism, homophobia, pornography, spam and more, according to your site's definitions. They also take a user through a number of disciplinary measures, strikes, eventually resulting in removal of posting privileges.

Censorship for Safety's Sake

But, as the Web grows and changes, people use it for more types of engagement each day. As our communities change, so must our guidelines. In some cases that means redefining abuse. Recently, Tumblr began to censor self-harm blogs and instituted a program to bolster healthy self image in response to thinspiration blogs. Reddit removed sexual content that featured minors, including the /r/jailbait subreddit. In conjunction with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Facebook is now sending a link to an online counselor if an individual is deemed distressed based on Facebook postings.

Increasingly, disturbing phenomena are being addressed, despite worries that it will lead to a less free environment. While I'm not saying you can't post insanity to the world via the Web, I am saying you can't do it on my site.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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