Erick Schonfeld over at TechCrunch today is reporting that Russian investor Finam has backed social media firm Badoo to the tune of $30m and 10% controlling share of the company. For those of you who don’t Badoo is a social network where people can pay to be popular. Most of the networks 12.7 million users come from Europe and Latin America.

This news comes in conjunction with MySpace launching a Russian version last week. As more and more social networks begin to cross international lines will how we group our social patterns will become very telling? I am also interested in seeing the geo/ethnic deployment of many of these social networks.

I mention ethnic deployments because I find it interesting that most new media social networks build their user base on traditional pre-existing social networks. When I lived in Mexico all my Mexican friends were on Hi5. When I attended college all my friends were on Facebook and when I got my first job everyone hounded me until I joined Linkedin. Heck, all my old Navy buds and I in a ‘Navy only‘ social network.

As social networks become more entrenched in our everyday lives will we see them segment into more standardized forms of social groupings? Will we someday say, ‘oh… your in that social network?’ Will we begin to group people by social network even when we are off line, ‘hi my name is Anthony and I am member of…’

Do any of you out there think that our online social persona will be a mandatory modifier of our psychical social persona?

I was reading a post on Coranate written by Kevin Anderson where Kevin waxes poetically about social media breaking down the barriers of the Fourth Estate by creating community. For those of you who don’t know the ‘Fourth Estate’ is how journalist see themselves in relation to the government.

I think Kevin hit the nail on the head when he instantly begins associating journalist with selling ad space. Something the public doesn’t know is that media doesn’t make money from subscriptions, it makes the bulk of its revenue through ads.

This means, news stories are just vehicles used to sell ad space. Regardless if a story is newsworthy or not, if the story will not sell papers (i.e. ads) the story will not run. I think consumers of the media have begun to recognize this and that is the real reason they have started turning away from the media.

Kevin insinuates the reason blogging is such a viable news source for so many is because it connects with its readers. This is true, readers of blogs have a direct connection with the people writing. Being someone who has traveled to the Press Club more than a few times I have to agree that bloggers are much easier to talk to than journalists.

I think bloggers take the connection one step further than Kevin discusses. People tend to read bloggers who cover things they are interested in. People also tend to read a blogger that shares a common opinion . Social media allows readers, listeners, what ever to consume media that reinforces their values.

I could be wrong with this, maybe bloggers offer news that is a complete juxtaposition to traditional media, but I can say from personal experiences that I read news that shares my views and most of my friends do the same. What do you think?

I would like to know your opinion on the idea that bloggers and social media are breaking down the barriers of the fourth estate. Do you think they offer new channels or are they segmenting the media even more? Can social media save traditional media or will it be the nail in the coffin? Let me know.

Darren Waters over a th BBC’s dot.life has presented an interesting article about a potentially revolutionary application called Seesmic. The creator of this software, Loic LeMeur, believes the future of online video is not the standard Youtube/Google Video type model, based on broadcasting, to more narrow casting style.

The model, for lack of a better term is very Twitter like in theory. The long and short of it is this: you send a video to friends on your list, and they reply, I am no rocket scientist but this is a video conversation with no intended target. The pipe dream is that multiple conversations will be built off of a single thread or question.

I like the idea, but I see it having two major flaws, video and anonymity. One of the things I love about twitter is going mobile, tweeting from my phone creates some of the best conversations. To be honest if I am in front of a computer I might as well use some chat client that is much more efficient than twitter.

Video is still not the greatest thing from mobiles. Sure my Q can handle streaming and receiving video, most mobile phones are still sub-par when it comes to receiving streaming video from an online source. Most phones can receive ‘clips’ but the take a bit download and are cumbersome to manage.

The other problem I see might arise is the question of anonymity. People like to blog and chat because there is a certain level of security based on the fact that you hide behind a keyboard. Sure, some people out there like to post video blogs, and have video chats with strangers in other countries, but the bulk of us techo geeks like to hide behind our keyboards.

I could be a complete 180 off on this one. Let me know what you think. Do you think the Seesmic service will take off?

Over a year ago I began spending a lot of time focusing on the OpenID standard. I went so far as to say that 2007 would be the year of OpenID. Within a month of my article the buzz had died down and there appeared to be no support behind the movement. Large companies including AOL sent out press releases stating their support of the standard which simply meant that you could use their site as your OpenID provider. Nobody wanted to accept OpenID as a way to login.

Today big news came out from Yahoo who announced their support of OpenID as a format for logging in. This is a big win for the movement supporters. This is a huge first step toward the organization of identity on the web. OpenID provides users with a single login that works across multiple unaffiliated websites. With the recent announcement that Facebook and other social networks have joined the data portability work group, the buzz has been increasing.

As Caroline McCarthy points out, one major downfall of the OpenID standard is that it does not provide a “central repository for identity management.” That’s a major issue and as such OpenID is just a first step toward a web in which identity is effectively managed and portable. It appears as though 2008 may turn out to be the year that web identity gets pushed to the forefront. This is a huge step in the right direction and Yahoo deserves the recognition. Do you think we’ll begin to see portable identities in 2008?

Stefanie Olsen over at Cnet has covered a topic near and dear to my heart. She recently posted an article on a program called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEED).

“We’re not talking about pulling the red phone out of the bottom drawer here,” said Rasmussen, a former adviser to U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, referring to Twitter and Facebook. “We’re talking about using ubiquitous, free software that is repurposed when necessary to fit into a humanitarian need.”

This ’simple’ quote gives the entire scope of what InSTEED is trying to cover. I used to work at the Pentagon so I can translate that ‘govermentese’ for you.

What Mr. Rasmussen is saying is this: the private sector has come up with a pretty good idea and the government is going to adopt those tools as needed.

InSTEED is the brain child of Dr. Larry Brilliant. His goal is to create open source solutions that can help people and agencies communicate in the event of an emergency.

Olsen’s article gives the example of combining Twitter’s multi-channel bot framework with Google Earth’s geo-tagging service to create an emergency communication tool that can work in less than stellar reception areas.

The application of these services as an ad hoc emergency network is nothing short of brilliant (pardon the pun). Twitter is the perfect tool for cross platform communication, signaling phones, emails, Facebook pages, and a myriad of other networks.

Combining all this information in a Facebook style network will allow humanitarian agencies to reach thousands of people who could provide information and services.

I have been racking my brain all morning thinking about social tools that can be used to help create a humanitarian network. Do any of you out there have any ideas? Let me know.

Tonight there will be a panel at George Washington University on entrepreneurship. The panel includes Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital (previously interviewed), Jon Jackson of Mobile Posse, Andrew Ryan of ARC Solutions and Thom Wallace of emPivot. Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs is streaming the event live. The event should start streaming below momentarily:

Earlier this week I wrote on AllFacebook about a piece by Tom Hodgkinson that ultimately accused Facebook of spreading capitalist ideology throughout the world. In writing the piece I began to wonder about the implications of Facebook and privacy. Soon after completing the piece I found an article about the U.S. drafting a plan to allow the government to access any email or web search taking place. Then today Programmable Web published a piece about USASpending.gov’s inherent lack of privacy within their API.

All of these article bring to light the issue of privacy on the web and where the line is drawn. Ultimately, to suggest that there is a clear line on privacy would be ridiculous. It may be better to examine each issue on a case by case basis. Unfortunately I do not have the time to do so and will instead generalize about the topic. If we were to debate the issue in public I would be sure to come more prepared than I am currently in writing this article. Then again I don’t have much of a stance and instead find myself asking a lot of questions.

Is there privacy on the web? There have been reports of large scale surveillance by the government via various communication channels … primarily via telephones. While the telephone companies won’t comment on the issue, the goal of the NSA is to amass as much communication as possible and it appears that it will soon extend to the web.

One of the primary problems with these policies is that it is elected and appointed officials that make privacy decisions for the entire country. While this is the point of a representative democracy, I’m not quite sure that I like the result. In social media, we choose to publish tons of information about ourselves via Twitter and Facebook. There are plenty of things that we prefer to keep private including emails with people that we communicate with on a daily basis.

Will privacy ultimately be decided by the government? What standards have the people set in regards to privacy? Should there be a coalition of people that set forth a general standard on privacy that “the people” support? I don’t have the answers to all these questions but given the rapid growth in technology and the government’s responsibility to make privacy decisions for us, I think there should be some sort of standard set forth by the general public. What do you think?

I’m not sure if I’m late to the game on this one. It appears that Twitter has now adopted the TinyURL as a method for shortening all URLs posted to their site. I went to go post a link to my new posting on AllFacebook and it was automatically shortened by Twitter. This is something that many users have been calling for including Jeremiah Owyang who has made a twitter the other day asking if this should become a default for the system.

It looks like Twitter was listening because now long URLs are automatically shortened. I’m a little confused though because seconds before I posted my tweet, another user posted a full URL to another site and it wasn’t automatically converted. Have you noticed anything similar? It appears to have just been turned on because there are a number of other users who have full URLs appearing.

This only took place from within the Twitter website. When I use the Twhirl application that I previously reviewed, I end up shortening the url via snurl.org. Am I going crazy here? Also, why am I spending so much time Twittering?

Update
In testing my theory, not all URLs are shortened. They must surpass a certain length. Let me know if you figure out the magical url length that is automatically shortened.

Last week I wrote a post that sparked on allfacebook that sparked an interest in many of our readers. The post focused on three high school students who created a profile of one of their professors and listed him as a pedophile. I had insinuated that the real reason the students had not received a harsh punishment was because the teacher had made himself a public figure.

My claim was based on the fact that the teacher had posted profile information about himself and a picture on the school’s website. Since the students had used this information to create a fake profile and therefore proving defamation would have been incredibly difficult; because the teacher had entered the public debate through his own accord.

I had received several emails from people informing me that “I was wrong” and “you are an idiot.” While I never claim to be the smartest man alive, I am pretty sure I am not an idiot (my mother tells me so). Most of the complaints came from people who voluntarily created a Facebook profile or comment on blogs regularly. The teachers professional profile is one off from a Facebook profile, but the principle is the same.

The idea behind what makes a public figure in the United States is constantly contested. Everyone agrees celebrities and politicians are instant public figures, and there are involuntary public figures (people involved in crimes, sensational actions or anything that has instant public appeal), but what turns a private citizen to a public figures is still up in the air.

Say I post on twitter all day, I do, and someone takes a tweet of mine and posts it on the internet. The moment that tweet leaves my phone or desktop I no longer have possession of it. I have freely let my opinion and voice enter the public debate and I have very limited rights to ‘take it back’ if someone repost my tweet. The same holds true with photos I post.

It is possible to prove defamation even if I am a public figure, but to be honest I do not have the finical resources or the time to do so. Many of you out there voiced concern wondering if information you put out made you a public figure. According to the law it does, according to good reason it doesn’t, this is the balancing act that our legal system handles every day.

Don’t confuse debate with a conversation or something formal you see on T.V. A debate can be one man’s ranting about anything as long as he puts it in the public light. The question of who is a public figure is growing larger and larger every day. As more and more people post private information about themselves on line, more and more people enter the public light.

I know many of you out there have an opinion on this subject and I would love to hear it. I am certain I will receive hate mail for this post, but I think it is a debate that should take place. Let me know what you think as long as you aren’t afraid of entering a public debate.

Brad Stone of the New York Times has posted an entire piece on the new gaming network launched by Mark Pincus. Pincus, who previously launched Support.com and Tribe.net, it taking a shot at a new company, the Zynga Game Network. The new company is completely dedicated to developing game applications for social networks. Does this sound familiar? If you’ve watched any of my video interviews it should.

In my interview with Shervin Pishevar last month, Shervin discussed the new venture by Webs.com called the Social Gaming Network. The new company focuses on the exact same thing that the Zynga Game Network focuses on. These aren’t the only two companies focused on social gaming. Buddy Media, the creator of Acebucks for Facebook, has focused heavily on integrating their Acebucks product into games within social networks.

As companies pop-up that are catered to social networks it illuminates the great demand for social games. There have been social games for a while. Yahoo Games was one of the first sites to integrate chat with games and now social network games can provide rich profile data making the game more effective for connecting with other players. Virtual worlds also fit into the social category, enabling players to build fantasy lives with other players.

I won’t list out all of the social gaming resources but add on XBox Live and the network for Playstation 3 users and you begin to realize that gaming is increasingly about connecting with other people not just beating your score. This is a transformation from the original games such as Pac Man or even pinball which were not as much of a social activity aside from the onlooking friend who would try to either beat your score or brag about your inability to match their skill level.

As gaming evolves it is pretty obvious that the most important features have become the ability to interact with other players. Humans want to connect and games are now one of the primary ways to do that. Do you prefer to play highly involved video games or do you prefer the simpler games provided via social networks and other gaming sites on the web? Do you even have time to play games?