In the face of this ineffectiveness, people have taken charge themselves to cause change. However rather than running out in the streets to vent their fury, they have taken to social media to be, arguably, more effective than the institutions. As with all newspapers advertising is a big earner. Advertisers have to take a view sometimes to dissociate themselves from a wayward personality or company. Tiger Woods saw some of his sponsors (Gillette and Accenture) pull the plug when the public found out about his indiscretions. Twitter campaigners on phone hacking understood this. So on Wednesday when the Guardian released the story that Milly Dowler’s phone was allegedly hacked and messages from her phone deleted, a firestorm of public fury broke out on Facebook and Twitter. A Melissa Harrison started to tweet the names of the advertisers on the News of The World (NoTW). This started a swarm of re-tweets and initiatives by other tweeters adopting a similar approach. One tweeter set up a way to automate the process of tweeting messages to the NoTW advertisers. Another tweeter set up a site with a downloadable spreadsheet with the details of the executives of the advertisers. According to the BBC this site has had over ’40,000 views in 24 hours’.

What impact has it had? Ford, O2, Shop Direct, Boots pulled out of NoTW and yesterday James Murdoch announced that the NoTW was to close. Of course some of these companies would have been aware of the scandal in the press and may have reached this conclusion separately. For James Murdoch maybe it was better to close NoTW to avoid the phone hacking ‘cancer’ spreading to News International.

Nonetheless, the power of social media has undeniably shown itself to be a force to reckon with. The Arab spring has shown us its role in the cause of overthrowing tyrants; now we see it used in a less radical but effective way in the cause of political and industry lobbying.

It was possibly too late for the News of the World already. Perhaps nothing they could have done would have made a difference. But if anything could have made a difference it would surely have been to deflect further criticism and outrage by immediately admitting their wrongdoing and apologising. The power of simple transparency and honesty should not be underestimated.

In terms of relationships,  Twitter is essentially a forum for meeting others.  You have to take that virtual meeting off line if you want to begin to create a real relationship.  As they say on Twitter you need to meet IRL (in real life).

Tweet Up

A Tweet up is a great opportunity to meet other tweeps IRL so is well worth making the effort to attend if it doesn’t clash with your other engagements.

The Lex 2011 Tweetup, organised by Brian Inkster (@BrianInkster) and Linda Cheung (@LindaCheungUK), was popular – perhaps the only complaint I have about it would be that there wasn’t enough time to meet all the Twegals that attended!

That is why I volunteered to host the next one, along with Steve Williams (@motoringlawyer).

Steve organised a poll to find out where the next meet should be held.  We found there was popular demand for a June event in London, closely followed by a June event in the North.

So that’s how it’s come about that I am hosting the Tweet up on June 7th in London.  If you haven’t yet given your RSPV on Twtvite here is a link to the Twegals Tweetup

And, look out for more news from Steve on the North Tweet up.

What to Expect

If you want a flavour of what to expect, Brian Inkster’s piece points towards write ups of the Lex 2011 Tweetup by a number of attendees, and includes a host of comments as to what people did and didn’t like.

Reading the comments, I decided it would be impossible to please everyone.  So I’ve gone with what was practicable to achieve, given the constraints of a busy life and limited time in which to organise and chase people.

I had hosted an event at the Yorkshire Grey a few years ago, so decided it would be a good venue.  Unfortunately, things have changed because the management wanted a £500 deposit to hold the function room.  This would be repayable once the pub achieved £500 in food and drink sales.

I provisionally booked the room and set up a donation facility so those attending could donate.  I quickly decided against this when only 2 people donated and it was clear we would not have anywhere near the required deposit by the deadline the pub had given.  So, I let the room go, hoping no-one would book it for a Tuesday night.  Also I remembered the bar area downstairs was a good size.

In the meantime, I emailed a few businesses I happen to know are interested in the legal market to see if they were interested in sponsoring the Tweet up.  I didn’t follow up on these because someone else booked the function room in the meantime.

So when you turn up on the night, expect to buy your own food and drink.  The pub is generally very quiet on a Tuesday evening, and hopefully we should have most of the room to ourselves .

I will be writing a post script afterwards, and if you have comments or suggestions before or after the Tweet up do please leave them here.

Benefits of attending

A Tweet up is a great time saver because you can meet lots of tweeps in one go.

If the people you meet are tweeps you’ve already come across on Twitter all the better, but if not a Tweet up presents opportunities for discovering new tweeps you may want to follow in future.

When you’re not restricted to 140 character conversations, and get to meet face to face you are more likely to identify who you want to spend more time with, perhaps over coffee or lunch.  For any of us who are time starved this is a real boon.

Apparently, they want to detect terrorists and extremists overseas.  One way they intend to do this is by creating different online identities and manipulating social media sites and blog posts. The service being developed will allow one person to keep track of up to 10 separate identities at once.

Military procured documents showed that this new software would “enable an operator to exercise a number of different online personas from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophistication adversaries”.  The “personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world”

The software manages to achieve this by generating fake IP addresses not linked with the US military, but instead seemingly coming from any desired part of the world.

The US document assures that this software is not designed for use on US audiences and therefore the software would not be used for English interventions. However, there have been concerns surrounding the creation of this software and the negative implications it might have. Web experts have seen this move as being similar to China’s attempts to control and restrict speech online. Other than purely keeping an eye out for potential terrorist activities, there are fears the software may also be used to spread pro-American propaganda and to smooth over opinions and reports that conflict with their own objectives. There is also a worry that if the US military can create false profiles, so might other government and companies as well.

UK Law

It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene the law in the UK.  Some say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that a “person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person’s prejudice”.  However, this would only be if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered “prejudice” as a result.

Why the development was created

This development has been created as part of a program called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV).  It was first created as psychological warfare against online Al-Quaeda figures. The commander of Centcom described the operation as an attempt to “counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard”.

Gen Mattis said “OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda”.

This new approach to spying on terrorists demonstrates the US Government’s anxiety over Social Media being used by terrorists as a tool for recruitment and the program is considered vital for counter-terrorism. The anxiety over the use of Facebook increased when it emerged that people planning attacks on the US had communicated with al-Qaeda figures in Yemen and Pakistan. Following this and the organization of various Revolutionary activities online, social media sites seem to be a relevant place to monitor.

So, even under not extraordinary circumstances, in connection with a piece of online content, there are 6 possible points of contact: the author, their ISP, the domain registrant, the host, the administrator or webmaster, or the website owner.  Nevertheless, actually locating the relevant contact details is not always straightforward.  Websites will not necessarily identify any of these parties, and so sometimes it is necessary to carry out research.

Just as the name and addresses of applicants for trade mark protection are recorded on a publicly available database, the details of domain name registrants are held on publicly accessible WHOIS databases.  For example, you can view the WHOIS records for google.com here.  These records allow interested parties to contact registrants if, for example, they have trouble accessing the website, notice errors, or perhaps have a business proposal related to advertising or the purchase of the domain name. WHOIS records will typically list details for a technical contact – generally your webmaster, an administrative contact – who is the person authorised to deal with issues like renewal of the domain, and the registrant, or ‘owner’ of the domain name.

However, these records also provide a invaluable resource for less scrupulous marketers, who might use the information to send out bulk SPAM email. Therefore many domain name owners choose to use cloaking services, which hide their contact details by replacing them with those of the cloaking service provider.

There are also some circumstances where the identity or location of a web host might be important, for example, where a web site includes defamatory material which a visitor would like to see removed, and although the information may not be readily available, there are some free  tools available to help.

When researching the identity or location of a web host you will need the IP address of the relevant website – this can be obtained here.  It is often possible to identify the hosting provider, or even the operator of the website itself, by querying the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).  Each RIR covers a different geographical region, and they can be searched using the links below:

www.ripe.net/perl/whois [Europe]

www.apnic.net/search [Asia-Pacific]

www.arin.net/whois [America, Africa]

Results of searching using the above tools might include the identity of the web host from whose servers the website you are searching is served, or, for larger companies, the identity of the website operator themselves.  For larger businesses, or companies that comply with legislation requiring disclosure of their contact details, identifying contact details for a website operator is not a difficult task.  However the tools listed above can be very useful when carrying out research on smaller sites, or for details which are not as readily accessible.

Once again social media seems to have a huge impact on social developments.  In an earlier blog on our own site, I addressed how social media helped to organize and transform the student protests against the rise in University fees.  Now the discussion is around the true role of social media in the Egyptian revolution.

Role of social media

There has been divided opinion over the role that social media has played in the Egyptian revolution. Some people like Malcolm Gladwell of the New Yorker, claim it played little or no role at all, while others refer to it as the “Twitter Revolution”. Whilst it may be a little extreme to call it the “Twitter revolution”, it is generally accepted that social media definitely did play a role in the planning and organizing of this revolution even if it did not actually trigger it.

Many of those involved in the protest were young and technologically knowledgeable. They used social media sites to share information and organise activities. As information can be shared in real time to reach much larger audiences, it makes it easier to mobilize resources. Similarly, many believe that social media was a facilitator, rather than the trigger behind the Tunisian revolution.

In respect of Egypt, the government certainly acknowledged the role of social media by quickly blocking social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. This is not the first instance where social media sites have been censored from within a country. During the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election citizens’ access to Facebook was cut off, and after the election Twitter was used to help organize protests.

The purpose in blocking off access to these sites is to prevent the communication that enables more protests to be organised. In response to this Twitter posted on its own account @TwitterGlobalPR that “we believe that the open exchange of info and views benefits societies and helps governments better connect with their people”.

Social media useful business’s tool

Twitter’s comments highlight a vital point, namely that social media is a modern and useful way to connect people around the world.  There is much to learn from these political uses to which social media has been put, for businesses trying to reach their customers.

As Don Tapscott states, “[social media] will be what we want it to be, and in Egypt young people wanted it to be a tool to bring down a tyrant”

Social media is a powerful tool and with the right management it can have a positive impact for businesses.

So, businesses should not underestimate this new ability to communicate with their audience and market. Gap’s disastrous logo redesign exercise last year shows what can happen in this new interactive environment. The change proposed by Gap to their logo “prompted a public protest, with more than 2,000 comments on Facebook criticizing the decision to ditch the well-known logo”. As a result Gap went back to its former logo. Something like this would have been unheard of pre Web 2.0.

Here are some good examples of businesses engaging with their customers through social media. They include start up restaurants in San Francisco, who now rely on their online followers for custom, and retailers such as Levis who are investing more in building up their social media presence.

In particular social media has become a powerful tool for organising protests and broadcasting responses to government policies. Discussing the student protests with my daughter who is currently in year 2 at University, I thought it would be useful for us to write about the protests which took place in the last few months of 2010 as they were noticeably affected by social media. Messages were spread to a wider audience and in particular, the voices of the public were spread rather than purely the voices of authority, or of news reporters.

Students were able to defend the accusations that the violence and abuse was wholly on the student’s side by uploading images or footage of scenes that showed otherwise, for example the footage of Jody McIntyre being dragged by the police out of his wheelchair.

The general public now have the power to report news. Many of the descriptions, images and clips that provoked the strongest response over the protests were reported on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr before being picked up by mainstream media.

The impact of social media was not limited to the way the student protests were reported, but also influenced the way in which students were able to organise themselves. Protests on multiple dates were arranged, making the protest the biggest seen since the 1970s.

Anti-social Media

However, some negative repercussions could be seen as attributable to the use of social media. Arguably, social media contributed to some extent to the transformation of the nature of the protest from one that was intended to be purely peaceful, to one that spiralled into violence. Anarchists determined to cause violence and destruction were also able to more easily mobilise themselves through social media. Twitter was used to advertise locations where there was a weaker police presence.  For example, KhurmArshad Tweeted: “Dear Students Please proceed to Liberal Democrats, 4 Cowley Street, after Milbank Tower. Show them who’s boss.” On top of this it has been estimated that up to 30 different organisations worked to organise the student protests, making it difficult to ensure that everyone acted in the peaceful manner originally intended.

The huge impact social media can have on these events stems from the speed at which it allows messages to spread. Word of mouth is far slower – in that one person might be able to communicate their idea to about 10 people, whereas blogs and social media allow messages to be communicated to 100s of people in one go.

Implications for Businesses

The scale of reach that these platforms offer can be used in a variety of ways. As explained in this post, social media has given the public a tool for protest, and this tool must not be ignored by businesses.

Companies have also found themselves the target of social media campaigns. For example Nestle was in March last year attacked as part of online protests over their use of palm oil, which has been linked to deforestation in Indonesia. Numerous complaints were made on their Facebook page, as part of  a lengthy, and at times venomous, protest.

Similarly, Gap’s new logo recently came under attack online, causing them to revert to their original design despite having spent large amounts on the revision. It might be argued that social media has given the voiceless a voice. Whether or not this is true, it is clear that businesses need to be aware of the power of social media, and try to harness it for the good of their brand.

The Internet has become a significant part of everyday life, and continues to grow at a blistering pace.  As a result of this growth, critical changes to the way Internet communications work will become essential over the next couple of years.  The reason for this is that the scheme by which connections are identified over the web, their IP address, is fast becoming outdated.  The system used by the vast majority of web users today, IP version 4, uses addresses like this:

• 192.168.0.1

All IPv4 addresses are in this form, and the theoretical number available for use based on the range 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 is around 4 billion.  It is estimated that this entire address space will be used up by the end ot 2012.

To address this issue, a new address scheme has been developed, IPv6.  Whilst the old system dating back to the 70′s was able to accommodate the Internet then, it is far from suitable in a society where just a single person might be connected to the net through their iPhone, home computer, work computer, games console and eBook reader.  In contrast, IPv6 (under which addresses look like this: 2001:0DB8:AC10:FE01:0000:0000:0000) should be sufficient for at least the immediate future, allowing (theoretically) as it does for 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses…

The managing director of Ripe NCC, which allocates IP addresses in Europe, said of the approaching crisis “Ten years ago we said it would happen far in the future, now we are all running around with iPhones, we’re in that future.”

IPv4 addresses are being allocated at a rate of knots, and urgency is mounting for people to switch to the new version.  Vint Cerf, one of the ‘fathers of the Internet’ explains that “[the switch] has to happen or the Internet will stop growing, or will not be growable.”  Businesses are dragging their feet, and Cerf is resolute that “the business community needs to understand that this is an infrastructure they are relying on and it needs to change for them to continue to grow and to rely on it”.

It is worrying that even the most tech-savvy companies will not necessarily find it an easy transition.  Google took 3 years to make the change, and for those businesses that lag behind, there is a chance that parts of the Internet will become inaccessible.

As Cerf highlights, this is just one of a series of major changes that are set to shape the next iteration of the mechanics which underly the Internet: “The biggest set of changes in the history of the internet are happening today.  The change in the address space, the change in domain name languages, the introduction of digital signatures in the domain name system, the introduction of end-to-end cryptography in accessing internet-based services.  This is a huge change in the net.”

Pictures put up on Facebook of drunken nights out and stupid behavior could seem fun and games, but sometimes this could make the difference between getting hired or fired.  Everything is public and searchable, and could potentially affect your career.  The easiest way for companies to find out about their employees is online; therefore monitoring your reputation online is extremely important.

Social Photos on Facebook could affect your Professional chances

Now that Facebook has grown into a site with about 250 million active users, it is less easy to keep things private. Even with the option of changing privacy settings so that you can control who sees what on your profile, Facebook still claims the right to grant them “a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook”.

Facebook is known for making frequent changes to the site, so you can’t be sure that something that is currently private will not become public.  Kathy Gill, a Professor of Digital Media and Communication from University of Washington said, “I think it is wise to ask yourself before posting, how would I feel if my mother saw this? Or, how would I feel if I saw this in the local or college newspaper?”.

So, given that Facebook is used for both social and professional purposes, many statuses or photos put up for social reasons could affect your professional chances.

Loss of job offers are all too common

Van Allen, a man who runs a recruiting agency for hospitals and clinics is an example of an employer who has been put off hiring someone because of what has been found on their Facebook page. When looking into the online profile of a young female candidate with a promising resume for a physician’s job, he found numerous pictures of her topless.  This put Allen off hiring her: “Hospitals want doctors with great skills to provide great services to communities,” Allen said. “They also don’t want patients to say to each other, ‘Heard about Dr. Jones? You’ve got to see those pictures.’”

This is just one example of how activities recorded by social networking sites can effect the chances of being hired by certain companies. A study conducted by Harries Interactive for CareerBuilder.com found that 35% of employers decided against offering a job to a candidate because of content found on a social networking site – the most popular site which employer’s check being Facebook.  Provocative photos, evidence of drink and drug use are among the top factors that would dissuade companies from hiring someone.

Being fired due to comments made on social networking sites

There are a number of incidents where people were fired due to comments made on social networking sites as well. Zach Good, a columnist from Penn State’s Daily Collegian was fired after students protested about comments opposing a campus cancer fundraiser.

Connor Riley, a 22 year-old lost his job offer at Cisco following his Tweet saying: ”Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work”.

So, great precautions should be taken about what gets posted on social networking sites, Even if you think a certain photo might be harmless fun, a potential employer could see it as a warning sign against hiring you.  Your online profile is the best way for employers to see what kind of a person they are thinking of hiring.

So whether we are in business, or individuals engaging in social media, we all need to bear in mind what our online profile says about us.

Reuters recently became the latest site to prohibit anonymous comment, although how effective the new posting rules are remains to be seen, as there is seeminlgy nothing to stop someone registering an account using a false name.  The anonymous nature of the internet presents a whole host of problems to sites which rely on user generated content, especially where the volume of material submitted is so great that effective moderation isn’t practical.  By letting users upload videos without verifying their identity, Youtube has provided a platform that is regularly used to distribute pirated content; many message boards are plastered with abusive, hateful comments from anonymous posters; and anonymity is more than likely a factor contributing to ‘low quality’ discussion and information online.

However, the anonymous nature of the net has also been leveraged by Wikileaks to encourage the submission of sensitive information; it is arguable that the absence of repercussions leads to greater honesty online; and there are many cases where anonymity is necessary.  In defence of online anonymity Andrew Alexander of the Washington Post writes:

For every noxious comment, many more are astute and stimulating. Anonymity provides necessary protection for serious commenters whose jobs or personal circumstances preclude identifying themselves. And even belligerent anonymous comments often reflect genuine passion that should be heard.

Reuters are far from alone in their efforts to curb anonymous posting – Amazon encourages people to use their real names, verified by cardholder details, when writing reviews because they believe that material attributed this way will be of higher quality: since an author willing to sign his or her real-world name on a piece of content is essentially saying “With my real-world identity, I stand by what I have written here.”

Blizzard, the publisher of the blockbuster game Starcraft 2 released earlier this year, now requires users to post under their real names in community forums:

Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before.

In light of potential liability for libellous comment appearing on their pages, website operators have more to worry about than the quality of user generated content, and while anonymity online is not going away any time soon, we may be witnessing the beginning of a trend towards accountability for otherwise anonymous posters.

Who are your ‘friends’?

No longer is it easy to protect your privacy; instead Facebook is encouraging you to broadcast as much of your personal information as possible to a network of your ‘friends’.  Although Facebook privacy settings enable you to control who sees what information, and the general idea is that only those on your friends list can see this information, the nature of ‘friends’ on social media and on Facebook is much different to friends in real life.

On Facebook a friend could be anyone from your best friend to an acquaintance you only just met. For the majority of people on Facebook, their friend list does not just include people they know well and can trust. Introducing Facebook Places encourages people to share their current locations meaning that everyone on your friend network can see where you are.

Location sharing

Location sharing is not a new phenomenon.  Websites such as Google, Foursquare, Gowalla and Shopkick also offer services letting people share their locations.  Companies such as Gap and Starbucks even offered free vouchers to those who checked in their location as being in their stores. However, only 4% of people in the US used these services, 80% of whom were men and 70% between 19 and 35.

Location sharing has still not hit the mainstream.  However with Facebook now introducing these services, given its 500 million users it could bring location sharing to the masses.

Privacy issues

Location sharing has huge privacy concerns. Letting Facebook know where you are could enable stalkers to reach you more easily, and it lets people know when your house is unoccupied.

Facebook stalking is a term used by younger generations, as Facebook enables people to look at what others are up to and to look through their photos. Now with location sharing, the term ‘Facebook Stalking’ could literally mean just that – physical stalking.

Implied Consent

On top of this, the privacy settings which come with the Places app imply that you consent to its features.  So Facebook has gone ahead and assumed your consent to something before you have had a chance to decide for yourself whether you want to opt in.

One feature of Facebook Places, which assumes implied consent, is the ‘people here now’ one. The standard settings automatically give your location whereabouts to not only your friends, but complete strangers who also happen to be in around the same place as you.  Also, as mentioned earlier friends can check you in places on Facebook. This is probably fairly harmless provided you trust your friends, but given the nature of friends on Facebook this might not be the case.

Opting Out

It is fairly simple to opt out of these two features.  However, in this information overloaded society people might not find out something is happening for months on end. They may not notice that they have been giving their consent to Facebook Places, and so they might not be aware that there was any need to opt out of anything.

Should Facebook really be implying consent without letting members know what the implications of this is? How accurate is it for Facebook to announce that “no location information is associated with a person unless he or she explicitly chooses to become part of location sharing. No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission.”

Conclusion

Once again, with the introduction of Places, Facebook finds itself the subject of widespread debate in relation to privacy concerns.

Really, when it comes to sharing personal information, Facebook’s respect for privacy will best be demonstrated if it  lets people opt-in, rather than them having to opt-out. This way no one could accidentally share information with the Facebook network without realizing it.