Following February’s slew of complaints regarding Facebook’s Terms of Use amendment, founder Mark Zuckerberg launched an “Open Governance” model and wrote, “If [Facebook] were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world.” Today Facebook redrafted its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and while users / citizens have until August 18th to comment, we can’t help thinking the system is a bogus democracy.

Sponsor

After a week of acquiring Friendfeed and launching a real time search engine, the blue nation appears to be growing at an alarming rate. In order to address the growth and new promotional ecosystem, notable changes to the Bill of Rights incorporate bans on citizen marketing abuse. Facebook hopes to stop spammers from overrunning the site and as pointed out by Inside Facebook, prohibit companies like Magpie, Twittad and Sponsored Tweets from starting profile sponsoring programs. Other marketing-related points included the phrases, “You will not engage in unlawful multi-level marketing, such as a pyramid scheme” and “You will not offer any contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes (“promotion”) on Facebook without our prior written consent.”

As citizens of this vast country, it’s nice that we can smite the spammers and illegal pyramid schemers that plague our great nation. And then I remember, this isn’t ACTUALLY a country. It’s a company. If it were really a nation, we would know where we’re supposed to offer our comments pre-August 18th and each of the “Rights” would have been spelled out separately as amendments to a pre-existing document. In fact, by now all of this info should have arrived in our mailboxes as a poorly designed pamphlet full of cheesy stock photography.

While Facebook’s “Open Governance” redraft is an admirable attempt to encourage crowd sourced decision-making, it lacks the feedback mechanism to make it a success. Critics will argue that this is intentional, but it feels more like the system (or lack thereof) was rushed to the public after the TOS uproar in February. While this amendment to the Facebook Bill of Rights is a fairly tame one, consider joining the Bill of Rights group for future updates and leaving a comment. At this rate, if Facebook acquires anymore companies or services, you might find your entire online identity living in one social networking landscape. It’s not like the administration is going to change, let’s just hope a loud majority can usher in a better system.

Photo credit: David Drexler

Discuss

The rest is here: 
De-Mock-cracy In Action: Facebook’s Open Governance

Analyst firm Gartner has just released its latest Hype Cycle white paper, detailing some of the biggest trends in technology this year. According to the report, cloud computing, e-books and Internet TV are at the "Peak of Inflated Expectations," while this year’s biggest hit Twitter is said to have "tipped over the peak" and is just about to enter the infamous "Trough of Disillusionment." Social software suites and other microblogging services are likewise starting their downward trend. Interestingly, web 2.0 is deemed to be nearly past the Trough and entering the "Slope of Enlightenment."

Sponsor

One of our current topics of interest, RFID, is stuck right at the bottom of the Trough of Disillusionment. But another RWW hot topic, Augmented Reality, is on the rise.

Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV and RFID are all labeled "transformational" by Gartner, meaning that they are predicted to have a big impact on the market. Microblogging is only ranked "moderate," so Gartner doesn’t think that Twitter is a very meaningful technology.

We can’t help but feel that Gartner may be underestimating the impact of microblogging. It remarks that services like Twitter enable "new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to assimilate exchanges." Microblogging is rated as having a "moderate" impact on business, however Gartner does not analyze the over-arching trend of Real-time web that microblogging exemplifies. They do make a good point that "channel pollution" is a current issue with these services, however this is where the ecosystem of search and filtering products – around Twitter especially – are proving their worth. See also our post earlier today about the new distributed forms of microblogging that may rise to take Twitter’s place over time.

Gartner states that Cloud computing is "changing the way the IT industry looks at user and vendor relationships." It points to vendors such as Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft and salesforce.com.

Regarding eBooks, Gartner has a bob each way: "This technology is potentially revolutionary if the issues that have suppressed adoption are addressed." It lists Amazon.com, Fujitsu, Plastic Logic and Sony as sample vendors.

Gartner’s conclusion about RFID is similar to our own – that it’s moving slowly. Gartner notes that "the number of leading retailers working with it [RFID] did not grow greatly through 2008 and will not grow significantly during the next two years."

On Web 2.0, Gartner archly notes that "the Web 2.0 hype has peaked as constituencies vie for the next generation of the Web." However it also puts Web 2.0 in the "early mainstream" and is bullish on its future. Note: we reviewed the latest attempt at the next buzzword, Web squared, last week.

Overall, this report is an interesting high level view of the state of technology. It’s quite business focused though, so Gartner perhaps overlooks some of the more exciting new consumer Web trends that we’ve been writing about this year on ReadWriteWeb: real-time Web, Internet of Things, mobile web, to name a few.

Discuss

Read the original post: 
Gartner Hype Cycle 2009: Web 2.0 Trending Up, Twitter Down