An Instagram user has filed a potential class-action lawsuit against the company for announcing new terms of service. California resident Lucy Funes alleges in a complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco that the Facebook-owned company is "taking its customers' property rights" with the new terms. Among other changes, the new terms limit users' ability to bring future lawsuits against Instagram. Funes says the only way for users to reject Instagram's new conditions is by canceling their accounts -- which means they allegedly "forfeit all right to retrieve the property" they had uploaded. "In short," she alleges, "Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us.'" Funes argues that Instagram's new terms amount to a breach of its contract with users. She is seeking an injunction banning it from following through with its proposed changes. A Facebook spokesperson said the company believes the lawsuit is without merit, and that it intends to fight it vigorously. Last week, Instagram sparked a user revolt by posting new terms of service that appeared to give the company the right to license users' photos to advertisers. But several days later, company co-founder Kevin Systrom backtracked. He said in a Dec. 20 blog post that the company has no plans to roll out any new ad products that would require it to license users' photos. On that date, the company also posted new terms of service -- for the second time that week. Those terms will take effect on Jan. 19. While the updated terms no longer include the controversial language about licensing photos to advertisers, they still differ in some ways from the original user agreement. For instance, users must now agree that most types of disputes will be resolved in arbitration, and they waive their right to bring class-action complaints. Those types of arbitration clauses have become more common since last year, when the Supreme Court upheld AT&T's mandatory arbitration provision. In recent months, Microsoft, Netflix, eBay and Paypal have revised their terms of service to provide that consumers have no right to bring class-actions. The new terms also cap certain kinds of damages at $100. That shift could be significant because a California law that gives people the right to control the commercial use of their names and images provides for damages of $750. Parent company Facebook recently agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of violating that law with the Sponsored Stories program, which told users which of their friends liked particular advertisers. Should Instagram draw on users' names or photos of themselves in Sponsored Stories ads in the future, the new terms could limit its potential liability. The high-profile case is drawing headlines this week, but legal experts say the lawsuit doesn't appear likely to succeed. "This is a crazy lawsuit," Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman says in an email to Online Media Daily. Goldman points out two significant hurdles. First, the case is premature because the terms haven't gone into effect yet. Second, Funes could have a hard time showing that she's been injured by the new conditions. But without some sort of harm, Funes lacks "standing" to proceed in federal court. Lawyer Venkat Balasubramani adds in a blog post that users can always "exercise self-help and leave the network before the new terms apply." He calls the case "a classic example of lawsuits against social networks gone completely amok."
An Instagram user has filed a potential class-action lawsuit against the company for announcing new terms of service. California resident Lucy Funes alleges in a complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco that the Facebook-owned company is "taking its customers' property rights" with the new terms. Among other changes, the new terms limit users' ability to bring future lawsuits against Instagram. Funes says the only way for users to reject Instagram's new conditions is by canceling their accounts -- which means they allegedly "forfeit all right to retrieve the property" they had uploaded. "In short," she alleges, "Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us.'" Funes argues that Instagram's new terms amount to a breach of its contract with users. She is seeking an injunction banning it from following through with its proposed changes. A Facebook spokesperson said the company believes the lawsuit is without merit, and that it intends to fight it vigorously. Last week, Instagram sparked a user revolt by posting new terms of service that appeared to give the company the right to license users' photos to advertisers. But several days later, company co-founder Kevin Systrom backtracked. He said in a Dec. 20 blog post that the company has no plans to roll out any new ad products that would require it to license users' photos. On that date, the company also posted new terms of service -- for the second time that week. Those terms will take effect on Jan. 19. While the updated terms no longer include the controversial language about licensing photos to advertisers, they still differ in some ways from the original user agreement. For instance, users must now agree that most types of disputes will be resolved in arbitration, and they waive their right to bring class-action complaints. Those types of arbitration clauses have become more common since last year, when the Supreme Court upheld AT&T's mandatory arbitration provision. In recent months, Microsoft, Netflix, eBay and Paypal have revised their terms of service to provide that consumers have no right to bring class-actions. The new terms also cap certain kinds of damages at $100. That shift could be significant because a California law that gives people the right to control the commercial use of their names and images provides for damages of $750. Parent company Facebook recently agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of violating that law with the Sponsored Stories program, which told users which of their friends liked particular advertisers. Should Instagram draw on users' names or photos of themselves in Sponsored Stories ads in the future, the new terms could limit its potential liability. The high-profile case is drawing headlines this week, but legal experts say the lawsuit doesn't appear likely to succeed. "This is a crazy lawsuit," Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman says in an email to Online Media Daily. Goldman points out two significant hurdles. First, the case is premature because the terms haven't gone into effect yet. Second, Funes could have a hard time showing that she's been injured by the new conditions. But without some sort of harm, Funes lacks "standing" to proceed in federal court. Lawyer Venkat Balasubramani adds in a blog post that users can always "exercise self-help and leave the network before the new terms apply." He calls the case "a classic example of lawsuits against social networks gone completely amok."
I’m sure it has something to do with whatever propelled me to delete my Facebook account recently, but I can’t help but envision two distinct futures we’re headed toward: one where shared health outcomes data are used to change the behavior of the masses for empowerment against disease progression; and another where massive amounts of social white noise is packaged for the handy glow of an iPhone to stupefy the masses with cat videos. They’re both shared data systems, yet one utilizes shared intelligence to empower, and the other? Well, it has a similar effect to opium (I’m guessing). Empowerment through collective health intelligence According to the National Institutes of Health, evidence-based medical practice has five components: defining a clinically relevant question, searching for the best evidence, appraising the quality of the evidence, applying the evidence to clinical practice, and evaluating the process. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) integrates the research evidence, clinician's expertise, and patient's preferences to guide clinical decision making. Most effective social platforms rally around a challenge or a question that begs a collective solution. Open-source software development, arguably the first effective large-scale social engagement project, is a case in point. And importantly, these systems evolve and add value over time as the data set of experience and outcomes grows. I like to think of its ultimate potential in terms of enabling the best of both the clinical and the experiential framework in medicine where one starts with a set of clinical findings and integrates personal experience with patient typing, preference, and outcomes. This is a naturally occurring process in the practice of medicine, regardless of EBM databases—but what digitization does is it enables collective intelligence, where each individual decision maker is able to see the actions and consequences of others. Using social features on clinical trials management and EBM I believe the greatest impact of social engagement platforms in healthcare will not be in marketing but in clinical trials and evidence-based medicine–oriented programs. And these areas are ripe for innovation. There is a growing need to drive down costs, provide tighter management, lower risks of poor outcomes such as discontinuation, etc, and share best practices across participating clinics. There are tremendous benefits in using social engagement to drive down discontinuation rates through effective and proactive management of side effects, and for setting up a transparent environment for participants, investigators, and risk-assessment teams. And it also helps that since it’s a non-promotional environment, U.S. Food and Drug Administration oversight is focused on the clinical structure of the trial rather than how it is managed from a systems perspective. There is also the huge opportunity that is implicit in the promise of a unified electronic health records system across the country (which seems utopian right now, but will come to pass)—and that is visibility into the clinical decisions and outcomes of all patients across the country. And while that will capture physician-reported outcomes, there is another huge opportunity: capturing patient-reported quality of life impact and other nonclinical measures, such as geography, lifestyle, diet, psychosocial outlook, etc, thereby leading to a nonclinical data set of lifestyle and psychosocial markers. Recently, findings were presented in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry that showed a high degree of correlation between the feeling of loneliness and dementia. In many chronic diseases, the link between marital status and adherence is widely observed. These are actionable insights that can affect health outcomes and social engagement tools can amplify them, if not help develop solutions that drive positive outcomes. Rethinking social engagement: evolving from social platforms to embedded social features If one were to play a word association game with social media, the first word uttered by most would be Facebook. While Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and healthcare's Sermo, Quantia, and Within3 are what come to mind, these platforms have a high degree of white noise. But the real value of these platforms lies in impacting new behavior changes in how users interact with information. Increasingly, especially among digital natives, there is a low read-to-rate ratio—which means that for every click, the number of times they’re clicking to read something is about the same as the number of times they’re participating or disseminating content by sending to a friend, rating thumbs up or down, or commenting. Development of new electronic management of clinical trials is in its infancy and yet offers powerful opportunities to build in social features that enable collectively filtered best practices for side effect management, patient-reported lifestyle triggers, and nonclinical inputs that correlate with outcomes. These could set up opportunities to shape not just how phase 3 and 4 clinical trials are conducted but how healthcare support systems could be customized to adapt to lifestyle implications, and drive traditionally nonclinically relevant behaviors that improve the probability of successful outcomes. There’s also no reason these features wouldn’t be enabled to link out to general social platforms. After all, if the ‘I Voted’ widget presented to 61 million people on Facebook user feeds could drive 280,000 more people to vote, then imagine what similar approaches to continuation rates on clinical trials could do.
When Virgin Galactic launched in 2004, I think we all knew that the future of luxury travel would look very different than we ever could have anticipated. Coincidentally, that was the same year Facebook launched, and, between the two, luxury travel will never be the same. It is evolving rapidly, and the trends for 2013 look … well, different, for sure. With regard to the evolution, much of that can be attributed to a changing audience. Boomers, as they reach retirement, are spending less, and younger affluents are starting to enter the market. Forbes, in its luxury travel trends article back in August, observed that younger affluents were a trend worth noting. Not only are older Gen X-ers, ages 40-55, spending more on high-end travel, but younger Gen X and even Gen Y adults are spending more on travel, often with their young children. What’s interesting about this younger market is that they are the same market that consumes the lion’s share of social media, and social sharing seems to be driving their vacation choices. A recent article in The Telegraph makes it clear that affluent travel is less about luxe and more about the cool pics you can post to Instagram. Adventure and storytelling travel are growing in popularity. A UK company has launched tours led by political experts that take tourists step by step through tours of war-torn countries including North Korea, Georgia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland. Political Tours describes itself as “a revolutionary concept for travelers passionate about politics and current affairs.” Based on their site’s testimonials, it is satisfying a passionate, highly intellectual niche. Upcoming tours include “Mandela’s Dream” and “Mladic's Legacy - A tour of Bosnia and Serbia.” Experiential travel is also growing in popularity, according to the Telegraph. Babylonstoren, an 18th-century manor house and farm in South Africa is a far cry from the Ritz-Carlton. Guests here are invited to pick their own produce, or help with harvesting and pruning on the manor’s 8+ acres. Granted, the landscape is nothing short of breathtaking, and there is a spa on the premises. (If you can pick your own grapes at the vineyard and be paid in wine, I’m in!) For those young families, “fit-cations” are making a splash. The two former rugby players behind Super Skills Travel offer rugby and cricket master classes in Sardinia, as well as ski holidays in the French Alps. All are geared toward families who are looking for unique vacation experiences. Similarly, stateside, we’re seeing new trends in fitness-based vacations geared towards younger adults and families: Snow-shoeing packages in Colorado, snowboarding in Utah, stand-up rowing workshops in sunny destinations like Las Vegas, and more value-added ski trips geared towards families, as well. Another trend, according to Forbes, is River Cruising. This has long been popular with older tourists, who like to see the Rhine, the Rhone, and the blue Danube, but now it’s catching on with younger crowds, as well. In response to the new audience, tour companies like Ama Waterways are equipping their boats with wireless routers and -- for the active traveler -- bike racks. Still popular from last year are the roads less traveled: Photos and check-ins from destinations like Tasmania, Cambodia and Vietnam will all continue to make newsfeeds in 2013. Expect to see a few shared photos from new hotspot Bhutan, as well. Trends aside, there are still plenty of travelers who like a little luxe in their luxury. So, while Virgin Galactic may be booking seats, there’s still plenty of demand for Paris, Ibiza, Nice and even Palm Desert. And I hope to prove firsthand that the Côte D’Azur looks even better on Instagram.
The relentless re-viewings of Nickelodeon’s favorite underwater sponge-brain and massive Olympics viewership helped the SpongeBob Squarepants series and NBC come in first in social TV activity for a single show and a network, respectively, in 2012. According to metrics service Trendrr in a new blog post, SpongeBob was the subject of over 21.7 million social interactions across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Viggle during the year. The next-most-buzzed show was Fox’s "The X Factor" (16.6 million) and then NBC’s "The Voice" (11/1 million). "Pretty Little Liars" (ABC Family, 104 million) and "The Bad Girls Club" (Oxygen, 9.4 million) rounded out the top five for the year. Among networks, NBC was far and away the beneficiary of the most social TV activity, with close to 150 million total social actions, according to an extended Trendrr report at AdAge.com. NBC's activity was about twice that of nearest contender ABC. But according to Trendrr, ABC would narrowly edge out NBC if Olympics and other special programming activity were removed from the equation. Fox was close behind ABC with more than 70 million total mentions, but CBS trailed at under 60 million for the year. While reality programming has the strongest reputation as a driver of social TV activity, overall sports was responsible for 31% of the actions Trendrr measured this year, followed by reality TV (17%), drama (11%), and comedy (5%). The iPhone was also far and away the most-used smartphone for social TV interactions (52%) trailed by Android (30%) and BlackBerry (18%). It would be interesting to get more detailed metrics about the timing of social interactions relative to the live airings of shows. One of the problems that continue to burden the second-screen experience is the basic problem of watching and interacting at the same time. The genres that dominate social TV -- sports and reality programming -- give users the most white space to fill on a second screen without missing much on the first. Drama, by its nature, engages through immersion, tension, etc. It would be interesting to see when and in what forms interactions take place on the second screen for the more immersive genres like drama and comedy compared to sports and reality. It is interesting that SpongeBob is such a second-screen winner. Here is a series that fans re-view endlessly, and so their attention to the first screen is not wholly necessary. One of the smartest second-screen experiences I have seen, Disney’s iPad accompaniment to its Bambi Blu-ray release, understood the importance of synchronizing the second screen against -- not with -- the first. During the heart-wrenching sequence in which Bambi’s mother gets shot, the stream of second-screen accompaniments slowed to a crawl. The app acknowledged where the viewer’s attention likely would and should be. I wonder if this type of more precise and intelligent synchronization of the multi-screen experience is the next step for programmers.