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Earlier today, Digg introduced a new system to avoid the problem of two versions of the same story making it to the Digg homepage.

Digg explains the technical solution in-depth on their blog, but we’d simply like to know this: if this system is so great, how did two stories about the new Digg duplicate detection make it to the Digg homepage, one on top of the other nonetheless, as you can see in the screenshot below:

There’s a fairly good chance some mischievous Diggers did this on purpose, but nonetheless, it could go in the dictionary under the definition of “irony.”

Reviews: Digg

Tags: digg

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Facebook is hosting a webcast for press tomorrow about “upcoming privacy changes” to the site: the announcement will likely outline Facebook’s transition toward becoming more public – some might say more Twitter-like.

We already know change is on the way: last week Facebook announced that they’re beta testing a publishing feature (with a limited number of profiles) by which your Facebook status updates can optionally be made public. In short: you’ll be able to use Facebook just like Twitter, and broadcast public updates to the world.

We also wrote about another interesting find last week: a new setting in Facebook that lets you receive an email when someone becomes a “fan” of your Facebook profile – not a friend, but actually someone who follows your personal Facebook page without you reciprocating. And a new Facebook Search is in testing too, allowing you to search updates from friends or all public publishers.

Facebook, then, is moving to a model of public updates and Twitter-like followers. The question becomes: can Facebook, which built its brand on “real names” and true friendships, also become the leader in public sharing and updates?

The MySpace Era

The tactic is certainly in contrast to Facebook’s early years: the network went beyond MySpace and its various clones by emphasizing real relationships and extreme privacy.

Your Facebook profile was a representation of your real-life social graph, and when users tired of amassing thousands of fake MySpace friends and adding “bling” to their profiles, they flocked to Facebook’s cleaner, more controlled environment with a smaller number of high-value relationships.

Facebook even limited networks of friends to 5000 people to prevent this high-volume friend adding, which threatened to devalue the meaning of a Facebook friend. The strategy served them well; MySpace became a ghost town.

Then Twitter happened…

…and suddenly the press was in love with openness again, with our newfound ability to mine the public consciousness through Twitter search, with a new era in which there was more value to be had in sharing information than in keeping it private.

Facebook’s gated community was a lot less useful when penning a news story about the Iranian elections, or the Hudson Plane Crash, or the public reaction to Michael Jackson’s death. Less useful, too, for conscientious brands looking for customer feedback. And less valuable for finding a new, spontaneous connection with that random Twitter user who happens to discuss the same topics as you.

Twitter’s public updates – and more specifically, the mining of these updates through Twitter Search – provided a more complete database of the public consciousness than ever before, a source of untold insights.

So what do you do when you’re all about privacy, and your upstart competitor is doing the complete opposite? By making a complete about-face, Facebook would lose the faith of its 200 million+ users who value the privacy of the site most of all: it’s what the core userbase was sold on from the start.

So Facebook is trying to find a middle road whereby privacy is maintained and public sharing is an optional extra. Over time, they surely hope, the number of Facebook “public” users will exceed the total number of Twitter users. At that point, Facebook would be a more valuable resource; it would become the larger hivemind.

Who will win the race is anybody’s guess: Twitter has a singular focus and the right DNA. It has a culture of public sharing that was present from the start. Facebook has scale on its side, and would only need to convert some of its users to public sharing to maintain its lead.

It’s a race that will define social networking for months and possibly years to come. And tomorrow Facebook will likely twannounce its next step.

Reviews: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter

Tags: facebook, myspace, twitter

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Today, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB has announced it has acquired The Pirate Bay website for 60 million SEK, which is roughly the equivalent of $7.8 million USD.

This was almost immediately confirmed by The Pirate Bay. Although the title of their post is entitled “TPB might change owner,” from the text of the post it is obvious that the site has indeed been sold.

Two facts strike the eye: the incredibly small amount for which The Pirate Bay was sold, compared to its huge popularity and worldwide influence, and the fact that the site which has always been perceived as independent and quite controversial, was sold at all. The second fact explains the latter: yes, The Pirate Bay is one of the top 100 visited websites in the world, but it (and its owners) is also encumbered by the recent loss of a very important lawsuit.

The Pirate Bay definitely has a lot of value beyond its controversial core business, the torrent tracker. The team behind it have launched several noteworthy projects, and their words and actions are highly influential, which has recently been proved by Sweden’s Pirate Party’s entrance into the European Parliament, largely indebted to the attention it received after The Pirate Bay’s owners lost the lawsuit.

Normally, one would think that this sale is just some quick scraping for cash while they still have something to sell. The Pirate Bay founders are trying to convince us otherwise. From their blog post:

“The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry – be happy!”

This might very well be true, but the bigger problem is: what will happen to The Pirate Bay now that it has a new owner? The founders claim “nothing,” but I remain skeptical.

“If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And – you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us.“

Compare this to the statement from Global Gaming Factory CEO Hans Pandeya:

“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality”

It is obvious that this is an end of an era: The Pirate Bay will change; the only question is whether its independent spirit and influence – which were always more important than the torrent tracker itself – will live on, or perish.

Read the full press release from Global Gaming Factory X AB here.

Tags: global gaming factory, the pirate bay, torrent

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Drew Olanoff, the Twitter user who started the #blamedrewscancer campaign after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma earlier this year, made a successful proposal of marriage to his girlfriend Sarah Cooley on Twitter today (here’s her “yes”). We later confirmed the story with Drew over IM. Of course, he “blamed Drew’s cancer” for the proposal, as the Tweets below attest.

#blamedrewscancer is a Twitter movement that aims to raise money for charity by adding the hashtag to your Tweets, as the site explains:

Blame Drew’s Cancer for anything you want by tweeting with the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer and it’ll come here. When Drew beats cancer we hope to have sponsors that will donate a dollar for every participant to our brand new partner, LIVESTRONG.

Congratulations to Drew and Sarah on their engagement.

See also: The 10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates, wherein we note three successful marriage proposals on Twitter.

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: drew olanoff, twitter

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Only a few hours into its general release, Mozilla’s Firefox 3.5 is already approaching one million downloads. As of 1:22ET, Firefox 3.5 had been downloaded 741,417 times. How do we know this? Because Mozilla has launched a real-time tracker, where you can see exactly how many times the browser has been downloaded.

Additionally, you can also see how many downloads there have been by country, the current number of downloads per second, and how download activity is trending. So far, the new browser has been downloaded the most by users in the US, Germany, France, and the UK.

While that is a huge start, it seems unlikely that the launch will match that of Firefox 3.0, which saw 8 million downloads in its first 24 hours. That’s not surprising given all of the hype for 3.0, but nonetheless shows the huge enthusiasm that Firefox fanatics still have for the browser.

Reviews: Firefox

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In what may be some of the worst cell phone etiquette ever recorded, President Obama had a speech interrupted by a reporter’s ringtone yesterday.

The moment, video captured and spreading quickly on YouTube, happened during a White House speech about gay rights. The ringtone, which is difficult to hear in the video itself, apparently featured something resembling the Aflac quacking duck sound you hear in the insurance company’s commercials.

After being interrupted, Obama jokes “Whose duck back there?” and asks the White House press corps “Where do you guys get these ringtones by the way?” Here’s the video:

At least the President has a sense of humor about it. As for the reporter whose phone rang, seriously … use vibrate!

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: cell phone etiquette, president obama, video

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A couple of days ago, a group of organizations – trade groups, American, European and Japanese chambers of commerce, and the U.S. National Association of Manufacturers – had protested against the Chinese plan to include web filtering software, Green Dam Youth Escort, on every PC sold in China.

It was an unprecedented move, but as we predicted, it didn’t bring any immediate results, as the big companies already started caving in. The first one to do so seems to be Sony, which already started to comply with Chinese demands, including the software with at least some of its PCs sold in China.

This info does not come directly from Sony, but from a document that came with a new Sony Vaio computer shipped in China. A Chinese blogger posted an image of the document on TwitPic, and it was translated by Rebecca MacKinnon, Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre.

According to this document, Sony took the easiest route, merely providing the Green Dam program on the hard drive, listing its location in this document, along with a number of disclaimers, such as:

“Sony cannot guarantee the authenticity, legality, or compatibility of the software’s content, function, service or any other feature.”

“Sony assumes no responsibility whatsoever for any kinds of loss or harm incurred by the user as a result of use of Green Dam. Sole responsibility lies with the software’s maker.”

The document also says that Green Dam doesn’t support a 64-bit operating system, and will therefore not be shipped with PCs that come with a 64-bit OS. Once again, this shows the sloppiness of Chinese censors and the haste with which this measure was undertaken. Requiring all manufacturers to ship a program with all their PCs, but not providing a 64-bit version of the program? I wonder what kind of security holes it contains.

In any case, it seems our initial assessment was right: no matter what anyone does, no matter how crazy this entire Green Dam initiative is, in the end the big PC manufacturers will have to find a way to comply. Hopefully, if the way Sony handled it is any indication, the program will not come preinstalled, and buyers will at least have a choice whether they want to install it or not.

Reviews: Twitpic

Tags: censorship, china, Green Dam, sony

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Ah, Twitter. It’s impossible to get away from it; it seems that everyone stopped whatever they were doing B.T. (before Twitter) and switched to doing cool stuff for and around the service, and this includes data visualizations. In the past, we’ve profiled unique Twitter-related visualizations, but now we’re after sheer beauty. And that’s exactly what we’ve found; here are six gorgeous Twitter visualizations.

Know of a beautiful Twitter visualization? Let us know in the comments!

1. Social Collider

Although it’s a bit too slow for everyday usage and functions better as pure eye candy, Social Collider is actually quite an interesting tool. It tracks conversations based on users or topics on Twitter in the following way: if a tweet didn’t start a conversation, it just connects vertically to the next tweet. If it did, it connects to the next conversation horizontally. Depending on the user or topic you choose, it can be a visual treat or complete information overload (try “Mashable” for an example of that).

2. Just Landed

Just Landed is a beautiful geo-visualization of tweets containing the words “Just landed in…”. It finds the tweets containing the phrase, checks for the location they’ve landed in, and the location they were sent from, and shows all this on a 3D map of the world. For more information check out the author’s blog, blprnt.org.

3. Twistori

In its exploration of Twitter, Twistori goes back to basics: to what we love, hate, believe, think, feel and wish. It takes tweets containing those words and turns them into a beautiful stream of (mostly) positive Twitter thoughts. Feeling down or depressed? Tune into Twistori, turn on the “I Love” stream and you’ll feel better in no time.

4. Twitt3D

Twitt3D would have been much better looking if it weren’t for the shabby overall page design, but it’s still a very interesting visual tool. It lets you follow your tweets in 3D; after entering your Twitter username and password, you can use the arrow keys to navigate and the space bar to quickly change perspectives. Twitt3D’s usefulness is pretty much zero, but those still pining for the never-realized Gibsonesque 3D cyberspace will love it.

5. Goodnight Sweet Tweets

This sweet and simple visualization was built with Processing. It parses Twitter for tweets containing the strings “zzz” or “zzzz” and then animates them with some vector-based graphics. It’s nothing more than a visual gimmick, but it’s definitely a nice addition to the already visually impressive website.

6. Minsh

Ok, Minsh perhaps has some way to go before it gets truly beautiful, as this underwater 3D world based on Twitter could benefit from some more polished graphics, but the potential is there. Unfortunately, at this time you cannot sign up for Minsh as it’s not accepting new users before the new (alpha) version is released, but you can see what it’s about in the video.

Honorable mention – TweetWheel

Unfortunately, TweetWheel no longer exists (its domain, tweetwheel.com is now just a parked domain with a bunch of ads). However, it was one of the most beautiful Twitter visualizations out there, and Twitter app directory Twitdom still has an image of the tool in action.

More visualization resources from Mashable:

- 6 Unique Twitter Visualizations

- 7 Beautiful Data Visualizations (With Videos)

- 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools

Reviews: Mashable, Twitter

Tags: twitter, visualizations

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Web-based image editor

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Back in March, when former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu left the company, The Wall Street Journal reported that the social network was looking for someone with “public company experience.”

Today, Facebook has certainly found its man. The company has hired David Ebersman, who is the former CFO of Genentech. That company – a biotechnology giant – was acquired by Roche for $46.8 billion earlier this year.

In a statement, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:

“We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates. We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook.”

Interestingly, Yu’s experience seems a lot more relevant to Facebook, (and the “lacks public company experience” thing wasn’t completely accurate, as he was a SVP in Finance at Yahoo and CFO of YouTube pre-Google) than Ebersman’s, at least from a product perspective. But, when talking finance, it would seem Ebersman’s experience of running finances as the CFO of a multi-billion dollar, publicly traded company is more what Zuckerberg and Co. were looking for.

And thus, it wouldn’t seem like a quantum leap to conclude that the WSJ’s earlier report is dead on, and Facebook is eyeing going public at some point in the not-too-distant future, with a key piece of the puzzle now filled.

Reviews: Facebook, Google, YouTube

Tags: facebook, ipo

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