youtube, copyrights, & music sucking life.

my brother had mentioned to me that YouTube was slowly taking down videos of copyrighted content, and it was a discussion topic over dinner a ways back as to how they were tracking the videos. well, now it's at an outright record high, as YouTube is no longer giving removal notifications to users. this time, the videos are just soundless.

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this is indicative of a number of concerns. sure, legally, it makes sense. kinda. but only in this atmosphere where i feel like the RIAA is scarier than Big Brother. the music folks are on everybody's minds wanting to save a failing revenue stream, so they're cutting off other avenues of listening--like YouTube. i don't know why film isn't also up in arms, legally speaking--oh right, their revenue doesn't suck.

ANYWAY.

sure, mash-up culture will find another way to thrive, it always does. but i'm looking at you, YouTube: do you really want it to? the community there is great and could you really live without your favourite parodies and ridiculousness that circulates through the intertubes? it's not like the users are making anything off this, most of 'em, anyway.

SO. all YouTube is doing is alienating the user without directly contributing to the aching revenue stream of the music industry. it's a roundabout solution. that is, i don't see there being a huge correlation between increase in music sales and decrease of information available on YouTube. all you wind up with is more pissed off people.

RWW suggests: "It would make a lot more sense for the music industry to provide a blanket license to YouTube so that users could use copyrighted sounds tracks on their homemade videos, while the record labels (or the artists) could get a share of the advertising revenue."

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i leave you with one of my brother's old AMVs. i asked which one he would prefer me to post, but he never txted me back, the little bastard ;) so i'm showing the one with most views. say goodbye to anime mashup videos forEVER! [full disclosure: i love my brother more than i love pretty much everything else ever.] [edit: he made me take down Third Eye Blind in favour of Rise Against.]

more facebook suckage. users? what?

FACEBOOK WAKE UP.

you are no longer about the end user.
it's becoming more and more evident as you slight your users.
and your users LOVE you. and your users want to HELP you.
but you are making it increasingly difficult.
yet another reason why: opening the gate to the walled garden.*
*i will address this further a little ways down. feel free to scroll to the star.

since yesterday alone, when the threat appeared, 120,974 more people joined the petition against the new facebook layout. and now there are even more groups. i was going to link to all of them, but there are too many. i'm over 20 groups, with thousands of members apiece, and i'm only at page 5 of the group search. my favourites thus far are "i miss the old me" and "i hate the [...] stalker layout."

you are clearly making it easier for advertisers to utilize facebook in the new layout. i also get that you're trying to "grow with your users" as the college age kids enter the job market--and that's cool, sort of. it's sleek, more organized, and trying to be more relevant. no argument there. the redesign was not a bad idea. i just feel like more PR could have been done surrounding users' concerns other than a blog post or two. users are feeling slighted in favour of The Business.

i already briefly talked about why i'm not keen on the redesign, but the other part is something ReadWriteWeb points out: "as Facebook becomes less of a place for them to hang out and more of a tool for networking in the business sense of the word, the cleaner design and additional controls make sense." Facebook isn't about business. it's about fun. did we lose that somewhere between when it started as a college networking site and now when it's trying to become LinkedIn?

because that's what marketers are interested in.
[and sure, that rocks for 'us' professionals, but if you USE Facebook, this is just lame.]

*and now Google is being allowed to search and index parts of Facebook. namely groups, discussions, wall posts, and events--you know, sites of interaction. i'm sure my alma mater will LOVE knowing when the next big kegger is going down--if they hadn't sorted it out by trolling the book already. not to mention if you ever wanted to NOT be a part of that ridiculous group you joined in high school, TOO BAD. you're internet-linked to it for life. CONGRATS!

WHERE ARE MY NEW PRIVACY FEATURES TO MATCH!?
you seem to be selling me a whole lot more than you're helping me. that's dangerous for you.

[sidenote: i already realize Google owns more of my life than anyone else short of the government; that's my choice using blogger, gmail, etc. i may not have a lot to lose through this index, but i'm betting a lot of the kids who use it will in the future unless everyone above shifts prerogatives about what the internet is and means to incoming generations. on principle i am against it.]

the socialcash monstrosity. cashify baby.

right on the heels of Facebook's leap forward (previous post, ability to vote up/down on advertisements users see) is this monstrosity called SocialCash.

"What that means, is that users are given the option to earn stuff in return for completing offers -- like applying for credit cards, getting information about vacation rentals, receiving free trials of magazines, or finding out their credit score. The offers subsidize the reward (like, say, an iPod Touch or an XBox 360) and the developer gets a cut."

so wait, wait--let me get this right.
i click stupid advertisements, fill them out and pretend to like them, and instead of paying me, you give me branded products. yeah, cos that sounds revolutionary. or like a banner ad in and of itself: "click me and a win a free ipod!" yeah thanx no.

i don't want to sign up for credit cards, give out information to third parties via banner ads, or learn more about vacation rentals i won't use, just so i can have a chance at an ipod. no value there. this won't work.

when i said users should be involved with their advertisements, i said in the ads selection. "paying me off" taking time to do shit i don't want to do for stuff i don't want when i could be playing with facebook apps (talking beneath me, here, but you get the idea) is not my idea of a good time.

the only reason socialvibe works with perks is because a) i don't have to DO anything -- the badge stays on my page. b) the information i share is with socialvibe only, or may be shared with my sponsor/charity of choice. c) i go into it knowing that i'm not doing it for the perks, i'm doing it for charity, so if i don't get a $20 gift certificate, i'm not going to be cranky.

but if i fill out hundreds of stupid banner ads or pop up offers or what have you and don't see anything for it--except for lots of credit card bills well then i'm still going to have to go with a HELL NO. this is not RELEVANT. REMEMBER to be relevant when dealing with a teen market! you are not important to them unless you're doing something they already want to do. newsflash: they don't already want to fill out for vacation rental deals. they're sixteen.

"The Gratis concept works for two reasons: 1. people love free stuff, and 2. in order to get the stuff, users must invite a certain number of users who also complete the program (the number varies based on the value of the reward). So the customer pool grows virally and exponentially."

...stop calling it viral. it makes you look bad. < /peeve >

"Clearly, the viral spread didn't work"--anyone else find that sentence funny twofold?

a triumph: advertising and facebook

check this out, courtesy of readwriteweb. seems facebook has quietly enabled users to vote up or down on advertisements they see, according to relevancy, redundancy, and felicity.

sure, it's not quite what i'd like to see, but it's a helluvalot better than nothing at all. kudos, and thank you, facebook.

zappos rocks. facebook scares kittens.

i can't say it better than Marshall Kirkpatrick, who reports on Facebook's message censorship. good comments going on there, too. censorship makes Riots very, very cranky. you don't want a cranky Riot, let alone multiple cranky Riots. you really don't need to know me in my plural state. anyway. i only recently started getting heavy into Facebook again after a year or two of App Intimidation, but the Flair app has assuaged me. this might send me running yet again.

in other news, Zappos is still bloody brilliant and is paying their employees $1000 to quit after one week. you're jealous you didn't think of it first. it's okay: you can still do it. something about imitation and flattery, right? i'm still trying to figure out why, if i'm so in love with how zappos runs things, i've still not been able to find a pair of shoes on that site worthy of ordering... i do want to support. i'm trying?

and lastly, it seems i've also become a connoisseur of the lolcat, and so, compliments of @ckieff, i give you Cats For Obama dot com.