• Gavin O'Malley, Oct 25, 2010, 11:53 AM
  • Taking the 'Rap' For Facebook's Privacy Woes The Wall Street Journal et al Forget Facebook's disregard for privacy -- at least for now. The Wall Street Journal, which has run several stories questioning the social net's privacy policies -- has moved on to online tracking company RapLeaf. And it's not the only one.

    Why the focus on RapLeaf rather than countless other tracking services? Because, along with tracking consumers' voter-registration records, shopping histories, social-networking activities and real estate records, among other information, RapLeaf records their full names and email addresses.

    "Most trackers either can't or won't keep the ultimate piece of personal information--your name," reports The Journal. What's more, "The industry often cites this layer of anonymity as a reason online tracking shouldn't be considered intrusive."

    And while RapLeaf claims it doesn't disclose consumers' names to clients for online advertising, just possessing real names means the company can build what The Journal calls "extraordinarily intimate databases on people."

    GigaOm's Om Malik calls RapLeaf "the real culprit" behind the recent uproar over privacy and Facebook.

    Specifically, "Rapleaf says it doesn't transmit personally identifiable data for online advertising, but the WSJ found that is not the case," Malik notes. "Rapleaf shared a unique Facebook ID to at least 12 companies and a unique MySpace ID number to six companies. Any sharing was accidental, the company said."

    Yet, "A number of privacy experts said they believe Rapleaf is being disingenuous," CNNMoney.com reported late last week. "They noted that the company links users' names and e-mail addresses to many social networking profiles ... and sells that information to third-parties."

    Under the headline, "The Creepy Company Compiling a File on Your Online Activity--Using Your Real Name," Gawker writes: "It's not easy to avoid being tracked online, for better or worse--and it may only be a matter of time before your name being part of your file becomes standard practice in the industry."

    Whether that scenario comes to pass, or whether RapLeaf -- which has survived negative press in the past -- will fold under media pressure remains to be seen. Just in the last week, however, the company has toned down the degree to which it segments consumers -- for now.

    Read the whole story...
  • Ozzie To Microsoft: Look Beyond The PC Ozzie.net If Microsoft wants to stick around for much longer, it had better start preparing for a "post-PC" world. That's according Ray Ozzie, the software giant's soon-to-be-ex chief software architect. Regarding Microsoft's unnamed competition, Ozzie writes in a memo: "Their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences, in the seamless fusion of hardware & software & services, and in social networking & myriad new forms of internet-centric social interaction."

    Microsoft, therefore, needs to prepare for a "post-PC world," dominated by "cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and ... appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services." The solution? Just a few "killer apps & services," along with a handful of "killer devices." For the record, Ozzie isn't leaving Microsoft immediately, as he will being working on "the broader area of entertainment" for the company for an undetermined period of time. Read the whole story...
  • Facebook Investor Mail.ru Files IPO Bloomberg As many expected, Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group has filed an for an initial public offering in London, Bloomberg reports. Who cares? Well, for one, it's seeking as much as $876 million, and it presently holds strategic investments in some top U.S. Web companies, including Facebook, Zynga and Groupon.

    Formerly named Digital Sky Technologies, Mail.ru includes the Russian email and gaming website Mail.ru, the ICQ instant-messaging system it acquired from AOL, social networking site Odnoklassniki.ru, and stakes in Russian networking site VKontakte.ru and payment-terminal system Qiwi. Now, the company plans to sell 3 million new shares while existing shareholders including the company's founders will sell the rest, according to a term sheet for the sale obtained by Bloomberg. Of particular note, one Russian investment banker tells Bloomberg: "It's the only way to get exposure to Facebook so it might attract a broad range of investors," regarding Mail.ru. "This is a sector which is not available on the market which means the placement will probably be at a premium to western firms like Google and Yahoo." Read the whole story...
  • For Google, Is There Such Thing As Too Creepy? All Things D Digital Daily is working on an authoritative compendium of "Unsettling Quotations From Powerful CEOs." No, it actually just compiled some really "creepy" statements from Google CEO Eric Schmidt regarding privacy and Google's grander ambitions.

    Said Schmidt in one instance: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Regarding Google, Schmidt asserted: "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about." Meanwhile, what Google is really up to, said Schmidt, is "building an augmented version of humanity, building computers to help humans do the things they don't do well better." Yep, that's pretty creepy. Though it appears as though Schmidt has yet to exhaust his creepy capacity, and is now moving into the realm of threats and bullying. On CNN's "Parker Spitzer" program last week - which is pretty creepy itself -- Schmidt said that people who don't like Google's Street View cars taking pictures of their homes and businesses "can just move." Read the whole story...
  • Report: Digg Publisher Jumps Ship BoomTown Digg publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Chas Edwards is heading for the exit, reports BoomTown, citing sources. His next stop? Pixazza, a photo tagging site for advertising, according to BoomTown. Edwards joined the social news site in May of last year from ad network Federated Media. Though "amicable," BoomTown says the departure is further evidence that Digg is "undergoing some turmoil."

    Digg recently appointed Matt Williams as its new CEO. "He quickly apologized for the bungled relaunch of the news aggregator and has promised to fix its problems," notes BoomTown. Still, some analysts insist that the five-year-old news aggregator is past its prime, having failed to innovate fast enough to keep up with rival services. To date, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Pixazza has raised about $18 million in funding from Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital, Shasta Ventures, as well as angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb. Read the whole story...
  • Condé Hands Style.com To Fairchild WWD.com Condé Nast on Monday said its popular Style.com property was now part of Fairchild Fashion Group, effective immediately. Fairchild chief executive Gina Sanders tells Woman's Wear Daily (part of Fairchild itself) that she proposed the repositioning of Style.com away from Condé Nast Digital a few months ago, "and that there was a real 'a-ha moment' among company executives when it was first discussed."

    According to Sanders: "It started as an idea and I built out a business plan and discussed it with [Condé Nast ceo] Chuck Townsend and it seemed like a great opportunity ... It simply made great sense." Per the deal, the editorial team at Style.com will now report to Fairchild editorial director Peter Kaplan. "This is a huge deal for us," said the onetime editor-in-chief of The New York Observer. Read the whole story...