Social Media

Angry users say they will ditch Instagram over policy changes granting the service the rights to use their photos. Of course, what people say they will do in the heat of the moment isn't necessarily what they eventually do, especially when extra effort is required -- in this case, recovering images from the service. Still, among respondents to a BetaNews poll, the number planning to keep Instagram is statistically zero (5 votes). Forty percent will stop using or cancel the service. However, a much larger number, 60 percent, already aren't users.

The Instagram backlash is nothing but fierce, for terms like these: "Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service". The photo-sharer later claimed misunderstanding and poor wording, but you tell me what's unclear here.

By now most of us have read or heard that Instagram (now part of Facebook) proposes a change to its terms of service to allow the company to use your pictures and mine in any fashion it chooses, including selling the pics to third parties. So if you don’t want your baby pictures to risk being used in a beer ad, we’re told, you should close your Instagram account by January 15th. One pundit called this move Instagram committing suicide, but I think something else is going on.

Can’t you just see the meeting at Facebook in which this idea was first presented? ”It’s a whole new revenue stream!” some staffer no doubt howled. “If our users are oblivious or stupid enough to let us get away with it, that is. Maybe we can sneak it through over Christmas”. We’ll see shortly, won’t we?

Instagram sure knows how to feed the frenzy. Shortly after the photo-sharing social network revised the rights policy, interpreted by many people as a sign of major changes regarding handling of user content and ownership, the company issued a response to the numerous complaints, blaming legal speak for the misunderstanding.

"Many users are confused and upset", so Instagram's co-founder, Kevin Systrom, took it upon himself, on behalf of the Facebook-owned social network, to inform concerned Instagrammers that everyone got it wrong. Systrom states: "Legal documents are easy to misinterpret", which basically implies that the problem is with reading the rights policy in the appropriate manner and not with the rights policy in itself. That's not overly reassuring, however, considering that what is basically a major change in philosophy can be so easily subject to interpretation.

I joined Facebook on Sept. 30, 2006 -- that's four days after opening to the public. The service promised so much, and I was excited by this compelling competitor to MySpace, which let customization run amok. But within short time, my interested declined; over the years I've come to loathe Facebook, which user interface is among the worst ever, as the site increasingly clutters with distracting elements. MySpace is now clean by comparison. Far worse: Privacy settings too often change, and what's different is often lost, even if temporarily, in the grotesque layout.

Overnight, Instagram, which Facebook now owns, announced radical rights policy changes starting in mid-January. The photo-sharing service grants itself a perpetual license to use and to sell your content. No permission required. That's one policy change too many for me. On December 9, I posted to Google+ my intentions to give up Facebook on the last day of the month. I thought more to empty the account of friends, information and content but not cancel -- for sentimental reason of having joined so much earlier than most everyone else. My intentions changed. I'm done with Facebook on December 31. I'd cancel today, but want intimates -- family and close friends -- to have forewarning.

If you're planning to Instagram lots of photos this holiday, think again. They might be in next year's commercial marketing -- your embarrassing candid plastered on billboards everywhere -- and you have no real say about it. Big companies use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to keep you from sharing stuff. Instragram takes away such recourse for you, overnight announcing one of the biggest rights policy changes of the contextual cloud computing era. The photo-sharing site claims the right to sell your content, offering you absolutely no compensation for the privilege.

The change is snakey sneaky: "Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service", but "Instagram Content is protected by copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret and other laws, and, as between you and Instagram, Instagram owns and retains all rights in the Instagram Content and the Service". You give up your rights to ownership simply by using the service, which gives you nothing.

I'll be honest, if I'm ever faced with an emergency such as my house catching alight, my first thought won't be to tweet about it. Neither will I be sending emails or texting anyone. I’ll be phoning the emergency services and speaking to someone. At least that way I’ll know the message has got through. But times change, and maybe using social media will soon become another accepted way to alert the authorities to non-life threatening situations.

The London Fire Brigade currently warns users not to rely on social media when reporting emergencies, as it doesn’t monitor its Twitter feed round the clock. However, that could soon change as the service is looking into new, smartphone-friendly ways for the public to communicate with it.

The micro-blogging site appears to be making good on its promise to allow users to download all of their tweets -- from day one -- in a single archive. Although there’s been no official announcement yet, there have been numerous sightings of the feature which is reportedly being rolled out to a very small percentage of users.

To check if you have the option, go to Settings and look for a ‘Your Twitter archive’ section at the bottom of the page. If it’s there, clicking the ‘Request your archive’ button will set the wheels in motion, and you’ll be emailed a link when your zip is ready to download. Extract the HTML file to view your tweets in calendar format, with the years on the right and the tweets on the left.

If you're a heavy Google user, every day is like Christmas -- well, in 2012. Not a day goes by that the company doesn't release something new. Updates are relentless, with products in continual states of improvement. Today's touted 18 24 Google+ enhancements are examples. Editor's note: Hours after we posted, Google changed the number from 18 to 24. The approach is philosophical and corporate cultural and defies traditional software development cycles Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others adopted long ago. The relentless releases is for stuff Google mostly gives away for free. Now why is that?

Years ago, I wrote several seething stories about perpetual Google betas (Gmail was 5 years, right?) and Microsoft somewhat mimicking the approach. (I can't find the stories this morning. If you can, please link in comments.) The search giant's work was never done, while competitors rolled major enhancements together made available all at once on long lead cycles (Hey, three years separate Windows 7 and 8 launches). Microsoft chooses the big blockbuster movie approach, which predicates a work largely done -- a story completely told. Google is the serialist, telling an ongoing story in a quick succession of releases. Which works better? You tell me.

The trend for tech companies in the past few days has been to, well, release lists of trends for the past year. Today Facebook joins Google, Twitter, Yahoo and others in releasing its list of the most talked about stories of 2012. Let's face it though, these lists rarely vary no matter if it's a search engine or a social media website. What people search for most tends to also be what they are talking about the most.

Still, Facebook is one of the biggest influencers on the web right now. Consequently the data the company releases carries some weight.

It’s hard to imagine a more keenly anticipated tweet than the first one scheduled to be sent today -- 12/12/12 -- by his holiness Pope Benedict XVI. Shortly after news broke that the Pope had signed up to the micro-blogging site, Twitter users flocked to follow his account, @pontifex and speculation began to grow about what he might say.

Since the Vatican asked for questions of faith to be sent to #askpontifex it was generally assumed his first tweet might address a particular weighty matter of faith. But showing that the 85-year totally gets Twitter, the first message he sent was anything but momentous: "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

On Tuesday, Twitter released a recap of the most important moments shared by users in less than 140 characters throughout the year. Titled "2012 Year On Twitter", it provides an insight into what matters most to users of the social network: from top tweets filled with meaning, to trends and new significant members, such as the Pope.

"Four more years" is what United States President Barack Obama tweeted after he was recently reelected. The three famous words received almost 300,000 favorites and more than 816,000 retweets since November 7, claiming the top spot in the 2012 Golden Tweets. It should be noted, however, that the social network exaggerated slightly when it comes to the number of favorites, which is less than the 300,000+ it claimed. Sure, the president will get there shortly, but why rush it?

Just days after Instagram said it would no longer allow the micro-blogging site to display its photos, Twitter has responded by giving users the ability to apply colored filters to pictures they upload.

There are eight Aviary-powered filters to choose from -- Vignette, Black & White, Warm, Cool, Vintage, Cinematic, Happy, and Gritty. A grid view shows how each of the filters will affect your image, and you can tap any of the choices and then scroll left or right to view the alternatives.

If you want to know what people are talking about on Twitter, you just need to check what’s trending. Twitter automatically generates Trends using an algorithm to identify topics that are breaking, and from today the site is adding 100 new cities from around the world to its regional options, including 12 in the United Kingdom.

The new UK cities are Belfast, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Portsmouth and Sheffield (Birmingham, Glasgow, London, and Manchester have been available for a while). Other new global locations include Istanbul, Turkey; Frankfurt, Germany; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Incheon, South Korea.

On Thursday, Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra announced the launch of Google+ Communities, a new feature which allows users to join and create interest groups on Google's social network.

Google+ Communities rolls out today and in typical social networking fashion, it will allow both private and public membership options. Users will be able to plan events, start hangouts and share Web content with fellow community members. Categories have been implemented to improve navigability and searchability.

At face value, Podio is a very tough product to describe. Parent company, Citrix, describes it as an "online work platform", which tends to be fairly accurate, but is a definite understatement. Podio has the social likeness of Google+ or Facebook, but don't think Yammer here (Podio politely offers sociability -- it doesn't force it down your throat.) Podio leverages a powerful cloud-based CRM platform that is highly customizable, a la Salesforce. Yet it also happens to integrate useful tabular functionality and spreadsheet importing/exporting to and from Excel. So what the heck exactly is Podio?

After one month of living personally and professionally on Podio, one thing I can say is I know what it isn't. It's not a platform for those looking for a simple cookie cutter solution to a single problem. The product is targeted towards companies small and large willing to invest a little time to get a lot in return. That return, more specifically, is functionality and flexibility. Podio tosses out the "800 pound gorilla" approach to software and instead offers a different perspective: you build it, and they will come.