This is good news for all of us—the entire base of internet users—because let’s be honest, no one reads the Terms of Service (its okay, you can admit it). We are all too preoccupied with whatever link we clicked on, file we downloaded, or game we are playing to actually pause and read that legal mumbo jumbo. And even if we did take the time to read the Terms of Service, chances are most of the non-lawyer population (and even some of the lawyers too) wouldn’t understand what it said anyway. Even the presiding Judge James Ware recognized this, saying, “[i]n the modern context, in which millions of average internet users access websites every day without ever reading, much less understanding, those websites’ terms of use, this is far from an easy or straightforward question.”

Facebook claimed that by using Power’s tool, users were accessing the social networking site “without permission,” which is a criminal violation under the California Penal Code Section 502(c) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Section 502 prohibits access to computers or information that the user has no permission to access, and the CFAA is the federal permutation of the same principle. The law makes it a crime when someone “knowingly accesses and without permission takes, copies, or makes use of any data from a computer, computer system, or computer network, or takes or copies any supporting documentation, whether existing or residing internal or external to a computer system, or computer network.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was instrumental in swaying the decision with their amicus brief which was relied upon heavily by Judge James Ware. They argued that turning any violation of a website’s terms of use into a crime would give websites unlimited power to decide what conduct is criminal, leaving millions of internet users vulnerable to prosecution for common everyday activities online.

But Facebook’s terms of service are no doubt routinely violated by a large number of users. Things like, “You will keep your contact information accurate and up-to-date,” and “You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook” are extremely difficult to abide by 100% of the time. If you move, for instance, and don’t update your address on your profile right away you have already violated both of these terms. Another term states, “You will not share your password …[or] let anyone else access your account.” What about the celebrity or politician who delegates their password to employees to maintain their page? To make these things criminal would not only result in 500 million potential arrests, but it would also stifle creativity and the free flow of information on the open web.

There is a caveat in this decision, however; the court also found that it might be a violation of California’s computer crime law to bypass technical or code-based barriers intended to restrict access to or uses of a website. Facebook has argued that Power broke the law by circumventing their effort to block the Power browser’s IP address, which was designed specifically to keep users from accessing their Facebook accounts through the Power system. While a mere violation of the Terms of Service is not criminal, the court decided, intentionally bypassing code-based barriers set up in order to enforce the Terms of Service might be considered criminal under Section 502. Think of it this way: if I ask you not to step onto my property, and you do, you are wrong but not in a criminal way. But if I build a fence, and ask you not to step onto my property and you climb the fence, now we have a problem.

As these issues continue to play themselves out in other courts it will be interesting to see what happens. The EFF tracks Terms of Service changes for lots of popular websites here for anyone who wants to make sure they are in full compliance.

The new profile is shown below, and is definitely reminiscent of Facebook.  They’ve taken a lot of the ideas, like the stream, the “people you may know” and the status update box and made them all prominent features of the site.  There’s no doubt that this is a cleaner, easier to navigate interface, but is that just because it looks similar to our social network of choice, Facebook?  There doesn’t seem to be much on here that takes a step beyond Facebook, and when MySpace is in a defensive position and losing traffic as they are, they need to be doing more than just coming up to par with their aggressive competitor.

In terms of pure aesthetics, I will say that I enjoy the boxed style of the new layout.  Each area seems very distinct and easy to understand, and the fonts, colors and titles are actually more appealing than Facebook to me.  The toolbar at the top that contains all of my navigation options is also well implemented, and I have yet to worry about how to find what I’m looking for.  Check it out for yourself at MySpace.com and let us know what you think.  Will this be enough to regain MySpace’s former glory?

Above is the chart demonstrating how since the middle of 2008, Facebook has been absolutely rocketing in page views while MySpace has been dropping steadily.  What was once a close race is now a categorical differential.  Will MySpace be able to pick up the pace?

Emphasizing their focus on increasing the online visibility of local businesses, Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial remarks that, “These next 25 cities are just the tip of the iceberg.  We are committed to becoming the pre-eminent way for local businesses and consumers to interact. We will not rest until we’ve truly created a new way for local commerce to occur.”

LivingSocial uses its website, Facebook, Twitter, iPhone app, and newsletter to announce new daily deals for each city every morning. These deals are available for 24 hours, and anyone who is interested can make a purchase. LivingSocial also uses a referral service to organically grow its business, offering users a free deal if they refer three participating members.

In neck-and-neck competition with Groupon, LivingSocial is aggressively expanding to make its mark in the popular group buying coupon provider market. Since its founding in July 2009, LivingSocial has increased its user base to over 85 million businesses and coupon buyers. and appears to orient its business strategy towards organic growth rather than acquiring other services like Groupon’s recent purchase of MyCityDeal.

I had been tinkering around with web video for a few years, creating, posting and promoting my own videos when my brother, Social Times founder Nick O’Neill, asked me if I’d like to start writing about web video on the Social Times blog.  I am so glad I agreed—for the last few months, since I began writing for Social Times, I have become completely immersed in the world of web video and I love it.  My goal here at Social Times is to get to know the online video industry as completely as possible, including the most popular viral videos, the key companies and people, the breaking news, and what it takes to make great web video content.  Of course, I’ll be sharing all my findings with you and please feel free to give me feedback.  Let me know if there is something you’d like to read more of, or if there’s an exciting story that you think I should cover.  On a side note, I’ll also be covering news, start-ups and events in the social media-sphere in Israel, as I am based in Tel Aviv.

Aside from writing at Social Times I also make web videos.  Last year, I created a series of ‘This Week In Facebook’ news videos for AllFacebook.com, as well as a video about Facebook privacy, and I have worked on a number of videos for Social Times as well.  Check out my reel below, and again, feel free to send me any suggestions for improvement or ideas for videos that you think would be a good fit for Social Times.  Thanks for reading!

One of the most interesting points that Singh made at the press conference was that in tests the skip rates varied tremendously based upon the quality of the pre-roll ads.  Singh said that viewers were far more likely to watch good advertisements in their entirety and skip over the rubbish.  This is likely to encourage advertisers to invest more of their time, energy and money into producing compelling, creative ad content.

Singh made the announcement at a Google press conference yesterday, shortly after Hulu announced the launch of their new Hulu Plus service.  YouTube is following Hulu with the idea of skippable ads and, while they have no concrete plans for adding a paid subscription service to the site at the moment they may follow Hulu with that in the future.  Vice president of global media and platforms for Google, Henrique de Castro, said at the press conference that YouTube eventually will “cover the entire spectrum between subscriptions and advertising.”

It will be interesting to see if skippable ads will lead to more compelling YouTube advertising.  Who knows, maybe ads will get good enough that users will hardly want to use the skip feature at all!  What do you think of YouTube’s plans to implement skippable ads on their site?

Create Lots Of Content

If you really want to get noticed on YouTube then one of the best ways is to create lots of content.  YouTube tells its partners, “The more content, the more related video clicks, the bigger the reach.”  Additionally, the more videos that you have on different topics, the more searches your videos will come up in.

Think about it this way: If you have a single video on YouTube, let’s say it is about an orangutan playing the flute, your video will only show up in very specific searches (i.e. orangutan, flute, monkeys).  However, if you have other videos about Chihuahuas, ducks, zebras and koalas then your videos will show up in a much larger variety of search results.  People watching your koala video may even decide to see what else you’ve uploaded and share your Frisbee orangutan video with their friends!

Optimize Your Metadata

When it comes time to write your video title, description and tags don’t rush it.  You should spend some time thinking about how you can maximize the SEO of this metadata as well ensure that your title and description will be attractive to potential viewers.  YouTube provides a few tips for how to optimize this information.

Title

The title is incredibly important.  You want to create a title that is not only catchy, but also describes what your video is by using highly relevant and searched for words.  If you need help coming up with keywords, you can use the YouTube Keyword Tool to get keyword ideas.

Description

In your description you should focus on detailed and precise accounts of what your video is about.  Include information about places, people and background.  You should also account for common misspellings and capitalizations and different languages and use synonyms for words and ideas that are frequently said in different ways.  You want to ensure that your video can be found by people no matter how they search, so try to think of all the possible ways people may look for content on the topic of your video.

Tags

When writing tags in YouTube, account for related topics, places, people, brands and commonly misspelled words and typos.  Again, you can use the YouTube Keyword Tool if you need help coming up with tag ideas.

Utilize Your Social Networks

Don’t rely on YouTube searches alone when it comes to people discovering your content.  Share your videos on your social networks—Twitter, Facebook, Digg and more.  Email bloggers who write blogs on topics related to your video and send them a link.  The more coverage that you can get outside of YouTube the better!

Take Advantage of Annotations

Annotations are one of the most useful YouTube features.  With annotations, you can create notes and links within your videos.  Ask viewers questions, provide links to direct your viewers to other videos that you have created, link to your subscription page and more.  Sure, it may take a few extra minutes of your time to add annotations to your video, but the results are definitely worth it.

Ask Your Viewers To Subscribe

When you upload a new video, add an annotation or a note in the description asking your viewers to subscribe if they like your clip.  When a user subscribes to your videos they are more likely to come back and watch more of your videos in the future, share videos with their friends and become a loyal fan.  Note that not all viewers will subscribe simply because you are asking, but there are a lot of people who will subscribe because you are asking when they may not have thought of doing so otherwise.

Respond To Feedback

On YouTube, viewers like to feel like they are involved.  They like to feel like they are getting to know the power users that they have come to know and love over months of watching their clips.  One of the best ways to strengthen the relationship between yourself and your viewers is by responding to their feedback.  Read the comments on your clips.  Are people making suggestions?  Asking you why you did a certain thing?  Respond to these people.  You can also ask your viewers questions to get them involved in your creation process.  By responding to their feedback you are not only making them feel involved, but also improving the quality of your videos by giving the viewers what they want.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of the Bulletin

YouTube recently launched a new social bulletin feature, which allows content creators to post links and communicate with subscribers.  When you post a new bulletin it will appear on the homepage of all of your subscribers.  Each time you post a new video, post a bulletin.  Of course, if you don’t have any subscribers this won’t help you.  However, even if you have no or few subscribers, start posting bulletins to get in the habit.  Once your subscriber base grows you’ll start to see the effects.

Create Playlists

YouTube suggests creating playlists “to group your content by themes and which take users automatically to your next videos.”  This is especially helpful once you have a lot of videos on your channel, as it helps your viewers to sift through and find the videos about the subjects they are most interested in.  Additionally, it will keep viewers on your channel for longer as they will be directed from one video to the next.

Choose The Best Thumbnail

After you upload your video to YouTube you will have a choice of which thumbnail you want to appear before your viewers click to play your video.  This is also the thumbnail that will appear in the search results.  Choose the option that is the most attention grabbing.  Unfortunately, only YouTube partners have the ability to create custom thumbnails and from time to time you may not have any amazing thumbnails to choose from.  However, do your best to choose the best option available.

Create Captions and Subtitles

You want your video to be available to as many viewers as possible.  If you add captions to your videos, not only will hearing impaired viewers be able to watch them, but people who speak different languages will be able to use YouTube’s automatic translation feature to translate your videos into their native language so that they can watch too!

By following these ten simple tips you can greatly increase your discoverability on YouTube.  Have you used any of these methods?  What has the result been?

Scaling social analytics isn’t rocket science but it does require the proper use of technology. Facebook’s latest move to ease the policy around storing data is fueling entrepreneurial activity in the social space. Companies like Mailana help others understand their twitter trends through a visual means. Jodee Rich of PeopleBrowsr discussed how their company provides sentimental data analysis that lets brands understand how consumers feel about them.

With millions of messages taking place through SMS, Twitter and Facebook, storing this massive amount of data can be tricky and services are popping up to help users scale their social analytics. Data will now accessible whenever you want as it shifts to the cloud. The cloud is now transforming into a meta-data cloud which will hold implications for developers in the future for processes such as finding correlations.

The last issue touched upon was storing data. Storage costs have been declining over the past few years and developers can further lower their operating costs by outsourcing monitoring and management. Judee cited an example of one of their operations which led them to India and eventually to the Phillipines where they paid $6/hr for most personnel.

We’ll have more information about

Below is a schedule of the talks that we’ll see today, please click the links for more information and check out the official site.

9:30 am
Scaling Social Analytics

With the dramatic increase in data accessible through public APIs on sites like Twitter and Facebook, developers are swimming in a sea of personal data. This data is being used by marketers and research labs to learn new information about consumer and human behavior. Organizing this information in a way that’s educational is challenging in itself but scaling this information is even more challenging. Learn from some of the leading data analytics individuals to hear what technical strategies they are implementing and how they are choosing to make sense of this information.

How To Get Sued By Facebook

PETE WARDEN
Founder
Mailana Inc.

How the Meta Cloud is Changing Development

JODEE RICH
CEO
PeopleBrowsr

From Small Datasets to Scale: Planning for the Evolution of Data

POORNIMA VIJAYASHANKER
Founder and CEO
BizeeBee.com

10:30 am
Optimizing the Monetization Funnel

Building slick new tools is great but there isn’t much value in a product that doesn’t make money. There are numerous business models that developers are using, but what strategies have been most effective? We will talk with those individuals responsible for monetization at some of the top companies to discuss what reaction they’re receiving from customers and what is working most effectively for them.

Optimizing Offer Networks

IAN SWANSON
Co-founder and CEO
Sometrics

Streamlining Ops and Maximizing Revenue from Ad Network

JON PHENIX
Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Nexage

Turn on the Firehose: Make Your Funnel Scale

JOHN SMART
Chief Architect
Zoosk

Monetization Game Mechanics

JIA SHEN
CTO and Founder
Rock You

11:30 am
Morning break

11:50 am
Case Study Zynga – Scaling From 100 to 100 Million Users

One of Zynga’s top engineers and architects will speak about how they scaled some of the largest games on the internet. What specific strategies were implemented and what has the company learned in the process of building the largest social games to date?

LUKE RAJLICH
Architect Engineer
Farmville

12:20 pm
Break

1:30 pm
The Death of Relational Databases

With the rising popularity of non-relational databases like Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, and Amazon SimpleDB, are relational databases doomed?  Companies like Facebook and other large product development teams are using Hadoop or simply sharding indefinitely, what’s the best strategy for storing information on the social web? When does it make the most sense to use each type of database and what are some innovative solutions being used by the biggest social web companies today?

ARIN SARKISSIAN
Core Infrastructure Team Lead
digg.com

2:00 pm
The Challenges of Continuous Deployment

The new challenges of Continuous Deployment are scaling.  Making the transition to Continuous Deployment is difficult and requires process and cultural efforts to succeed.  In this session, Brett will will describe the process IMVU used to make this transition as well as current scaling issues and IMVU’s approach to solving them.

BRETT DURRETT
VP of Engineering and Operations
IMVU

2:30 pm
Social Meets Mobile

While social platforms present significant opportunities to developers, much of the action is now taking place on mobile devices.  We’ll speak to some of the largest mobile app developers who’ve built integrated social experiences to find out what they’re currently focused on and where they think the social/mobile space is headed. How important are location-aware features and what’s the best way to implement them?  We’ll also learn about how these companies are driving new users and generating revenue on the iPhone as well as other platforms like Android.

Five Tips on Porting our Social App to the iPhone

LEAH CULVER
Co-Founder/Lead Developer
Pownce

How to Integrate Location Services into your Application

MIKE MALONE
Infrastructure Engineer
SimpleGeo

Bumping to Drive Distribution

JAKE MINTZ
co-founder
Bump Technologies

SOMRAT NIYOGI (moderator)
CEO/Founder
Bazaar Labs

Lessons Learned from Building Free to Play Mobile Social Apps

JASON OBERFEST
VP Social Applications
blog.ngmoco.com

3:30 pm
Afternoon break

3:30 – 3:50 pm
Monetization of Applications through Talk2Me Social Video Ads

Sponsored by

According to Mobile Marketer, "Video advertising has proved it can move products and heighten brand awareness in measurable ways, so it will be an integral part of the mobile medium going forward, according to industry experts." Talk2Me Social Video ads provides 4-5 times better monetization than traditional banner ads and provides brands a unique avenue to connect with users socially through Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc. through Mobile devices.

SRIKANTH KAKANI
Founder
Vdopia

4:00 pm
App Engagement Dynamics

The first hurdle after dreaming up a great idea for an application is to get new users to download or install your application.  Once you have users, it’s important to fine tune the experience to maximize engagement and goal conversion.  We will speak to some of the leading metrics gurus in the social web space to find out what developers should be optimizing for and effective ways measure it.

IMMAD AKHUND
CEO and co-founder
Heyzap.com
SUHAIL DOSHI
founder
Mixpanel, Inc.
MANU REKHI
GM Games & Developer Platform
myspace.com
JEFFREY TSENG
co-founder
kontagent.com

First things first, this analysis wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t pay homage to EA Mobile and their fantastic work with Scrabble iPad.  The game allows players to play a game of Scrabble and use their own iPhone as their personal view of their letter stack.  A video shows how this works below, and it’s a treat.

As you can see in the game, these games are designed such that the iPads are talking to each other, and the iPhones are talking to the iPads as well.  It’s really a fantastic, easy to pick up and play experience, and that’s what prompted our analysis.  The idea of just whipping out your own device to play games against others on a propped up iPad is something that would be easily accessible to players (especially as the iPhones continue to gain traction and market share).

Imagine playing a game like Contra, Castle Crashers or Alien Hominid, where your iPad had the full game experience and your iPhone was just displaying an NES style controller.  That’d mean you could easily sit back and play, and you could have four players join in like an arcade.  Or think about a racing game, where each player is racing on their own device but the iPad is showing the overall map, allowing players to predict and more.  Imagine that some of the power ups can be triggered through the iPhone, but then to use them the player has to make a swipe on the iPad.  Think about a Mario Kart game, where you can trigger a small wave of water across the track, so players need to keep their eye on the world map to make their move.

This may be difficult on a small screen, you may be thinking, and you’re right.  Ideally, the iPad would have some sort of ability to export it’s image to a larger screen, especially as we get more web enabled TVs, but that’s for another post, and another entry in the Imagine series.

The Playstation Home service was partly a response to XBox Live’s introduction of Avatars and Microsoft’s Wii system.  As is usual for Sony, they brought the service to a new level by not only allowing users to have Avatars, but allowing them to play in a virtual world and interact with one another.  The network constantly has a large population of users playing games, attending and organizing special events, watching videos, listening to music, meeting new friends, and launching into games together.

One of the most interesting elements of Playstation Home is how big brands provide content within the virtual world.  Brands like Activision, Electronic Arts, Capcom Entertainment, NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., THQ and UBISOFT continue to offer mini-games and virtual ‘public spaces’ that allow players to hang out and chat within branded environments.  The launch of their new MMO, as well, brings the Home platform almost into the realm of a social network with an app store.  Users get to choose their experience or just use the tool for networking.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the makers are looking closely at Facebook for inspiration.

With the launch of Sodium One, PlayStation Home’s first massively multiplayer online (MMO) game space, in December 2009, PlayStation Home further evolved into a true social gaming platform, complete with both snack-size mini games and extended gaming experiences to share with both existing friends and new friends met within PlayStation Home. Today, PlayStation Home offers gamers more than 100 ready to play games, 50 discreet public and private spaces to experience, and over 5000 virtual items to collect, with new store fronts available from LucasArts, Lockwood, Loot, Activision and Disney. Additionally, more than 400 comm