Codemasters, the leading British developer and publisher of world-class video games, announced that Reliance Big Entertainment Ltd. (RBEL), a part of India's Reliance ADA group, has agreed to acquire a 50 per cent shareholding in the company, alongside existing investor, Balderton Capital, the leading European venture capital firm that first invested in Codemasters in 2005.
RBEL's gaming division, Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd. will oversee the Codemasters investment.
Zapak is the largest gaming company in India, with interests in online casual games, massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) publishing, India's largest chain of gaming cafes and physical distribution of gaming software. Zapak also controls Jump Games, an award winning international mobile game development and publishing company with global distribution across Asia, Europe, North America, and South America.
Rohit Sharma, CEO of Zapak, said: "We are excited to partner with Codemasters and believe it's very strong technology, development and distribution presence will complement our global gaming portfolio. Additionally, Zapak's global strength in mobile gaming will enhance Codemasters' ability to fully leverage its attractive franchises such as its racing and cricket games."
Codemasters has major franchises in cricket games (The Ashes), racing games (Formula 1, Dirt2 and Race Driver Grid), performance games (Dance Factory) and military simulations (Operation Flashpoint 2) and annual revenues in excess of US$ 150 Million.
Rod Cousens, chief executive of Codemasters, said: "The opportunities arising from this partnership are truly exciting. This is great news for our development and publishing teams. Reliance and Zapak have immense resources and will help us realize the full potential of our game coding and online excellence across so many platforms, and especially in the world's fastest growing markets. The future of Codemasters has never looked brighter. It's a whole new game!"
Tim Bunting, Balderton Partner, said: "We are delighted to welcome Reliance as our partner in Codemasters and gratified by the confidence in Codemasters that Reliance's initiative represents."
About Codemasters:
Codemasters (www.codemaster.com), the award winning games developer and publisher, has a 21 year heritage in the UK and annual revenues in excess of US$ 150 Million. It has major franchises in cricket games (The Ashes), racing games (Formula 1, Dirt2 and Race Driver Grid), performance games (Dance Factory) and military simulations (Operation Flashpoint 2).
Codemasters is widely acclaimed for its proprietary “new generation” game engine and the coding skills of its multiple UK and Malaysian development teams as well as its effective social network marketing strategies and the Codemasters Online Game team.
Headquartered in Warwickshire, UK, the company maintains European operations in Germany, France, Spain, and Benelux and, in 2006, established its US operations in California.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment distributes Codemasters titles throughout the US. Across the group, Codemasters employs over 450 people. In January 2006, Chris Deering, the former President of Sony Europe, Consumer Electronics Division, and Chairman and CEO Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, was appointed non-executive Chairman. Rod Cousens joined the company as CEO in 2005.
You can read the complete article at http://www.zapak.com/news/zapak-codemasters.php
Monday, April 5, 2010
Friday, June 19, 2009
Keeping a True Identity Becomes a Battle Online
Since Facebook started giving out customized Web addresses like facebook.com/yourname last Friday, some 9.5 million people have rushed to grab their top choice.
On Twitter, public fights have broken out over so-called impostor accounts, like those that should probably be in the hands of Kanye West or Bank of America.
And somewhere out there on the Web, another new service or social network is on the rise, threatening to start yet another online land grab.
Celebrities, companies and even regular people can be excused for feeling a bit of déjà vu. Staking out and protecting their names and trademarks on the Internet has become a seemingly never-ending battle. With the rise of social networks, registering a simple Web address like pepsi.com or mileycyrus .com is no longer enough to plant one’s flag firmly in the virtual terra firma.
When domain names first became hot properties in the ’90s, it was mostly companies that worried about claiming the right addresses. But in this more narcissistic Internet era, people who were once happily anonymous view themselves as online minicelebrities with their own brands to promote.
Those whose names are not unique may run into problems in trying to manage those brands. Chris Hardwick, a stand-up comedian and host on the tech-focused cable network G4, had no trouble registering chrishardwick.com a few years ago and securing the appropriate Gmail address. But he missed out on claiming his name on MySpace to a Chris Hardwick in Ohio. Last weekend, Mr. Hardwick got home from a performance too late to get his address of choice on Facebook; he said a high school student in England appeared to have grabbed it.
“It’s like a Wild West town full of Chris Hardwicks with their hands on their mouses getting ready to draw on each other,” he said.
To some, the rules of this new game are frustratingly hazy. Facebook has invited trademark holders and celebrities who find their names are taken to fill out a complaint form on the site. It says it will resolve disputes on a case-by-case basis. While Facebook’s social network has room for many people with the same name, the new vanity addresses are being distributed on a first-come-first-served basis.
Twitter has begun verifying the identities of well-known users, giving them a badge on their pages that serves to confirm that they are who they say they are. But it has revealed little about how that process works. A Twitter spokeswoman, Jenna Sampson, said the program was a small-scale test at this point.
Tony LaRussa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, recently sued Twitter, saying it did not do enough to prevent someone from tweeting under his name. Twitter has called the lawsuit “frivolous” and says the network shuts down accounts used by known impersonators.
Another problem is that no one knows whether any of this online terrain has any lasting value — only that accounts on sites like Twitter and Facebook tend to show up at the top of the list when people search the Web. So many people are plunging in — including so-called cybersquatters who hope to profit, financially or otherwise, from Web addresses and accounts.
Larry Winget, the author of four popular books on personal finance, has been quick over the years to get control of his name on the Web and on sites like MySpace. But last weekend, a professed fan beat him to facebook.com/larrywinget and then said he would turn it over in exchange for a face-to-face dinner.
“It’s this constant effort, this sprint, to stay ahead of the technology,” Mr. Winget said. “You’ve got to hire a person just to stay on top of it.”
Companies are feeling just as much anxiety over the online name game. RCN, a cable and telephone service based in Herndon, Va., submitted a request last week to Facebook to secure facebook.com/rcn. But then Facebook said companies would need to have more than 1,000 fans on their pages to be eligible for the custom address program. RCN’s recently created page had 527 fans as of Wednesday.
RCN executives say they are frustrated with Facebook’s rules and are worried that they could lose what they suspect could be valuable real estate. Possible competitors for the address include people and organizations with those initials, along with the dreaded squatters.
“This is a new world that we are having to step into in order to protect our brand, and they did not give us a huge window of time to prepare for it,” said Ashlie Ellison, a Web producer for RCN.
Social media sites give companies new ways to promote their brands, said Howard H. Weller, a trademark lawyer at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp in New York. But he added that “these are all new avenues for abuse, and it’s more resources trademark owners need to devote to policing and enforcement.”
The Facebook Web addresses in particular could be worth nothing — Facebook has said they will not be transferable, although users could quietly hand over the passwords to their accounts.
But digital squatters are still trying, creating potential headaches for companies. For example, Dell grabbed facebook.com/dell, but Jeremy Fancher, a student at Washington University in St. Louis, registered facebook.com/dellcomputer and plans to try to sell it. A Dell spokesman declined to comment.
“I think it would be sort of funny if another computer company buys it,” Mr. Fancher said. “It all illustrates how murky the water is when signing up for these accounts.”
[the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/technology/internet/18name.html]
On Twitter, public fights have broken out over so-called impostor accounts, like those that should probably be in the hands of Kanye West or Bank of America.
And somewhere out there on the Web, another new service or social network is on the rise, threatening to start yet another online land grab.
Celebrities, companies and even regular people can be excused for feeling a bit of déjà vu. Staking out and protecting their names and trademarks on the Internet has become a seemingly never-ending battle. With the rise of social networks, registering a simple Web address like pepsi.com or mileycyrus .com is no longer enough to plant one’s flag firmly in the virtual terra firma.
When domain names first became hot properties in the ’90s, it was mostly companies that worried about claiming the right addresses. But in this more narcissistic Internet era, people who were once happily anonymous view themselves as online minicelebrities with their own brands to promote.
Those whose names are not unique may run into problems in trying to manage those brands. Chris Hardwick, a stand-up comedian and host on the tech-focused cable network G4, had no trouble registering chrishardwick.com a few years ago and securing the appropriate Gmail address. But he missed out on claiming his name on MySpace to a Chris Hardwick in Ohio. Last weekend, Mr. Hardwick got home from a performance too late to get his address of choice on Facebook; he said a high school student in England appeared to have grabbed it.
“It’s like a Wild West town full of Chris Hardwicks with their hands on their mouses getting ready to draw on each other,” he said.
To some, the rules of this new game are frustratingly hazy. Facebook has invited trademark holders and celebrities who find their names are taken to fill out a complaint form on the site. It says it will resolve disputes on a case-by-case basis. While Facebook’s social network has room for many people with the same name, the new vanity addresses are being distributed on a first-come-first-served basis.
Twitter has begun verifying the identities of well-known users, giving them a badge on their pages that serves to confirm that they are who they say they are. But it has revealed little about how that process works. A Twitter spokeswoman, Jenna Sampson, said the program was a small-scale test at this point.
Tony LaRussa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, recently sued Twitter, saying it did not do enough to prevent someone from tweeting under his name. Twitter has called the lawsuit “frivolous” and says the network shuts down accounts used by known impersonators.
Another problem is that no one knows whether any of this online terrain has any lasting value — only that accounts on sites like Twitter and Facebook tend to show up at the top of the list when people search the Web. So many people are plunging in — including so-called cybersquatters who hope to profit, financially or otherwise, from Web addresses and accounts.
Larry Winget, the author of four popular books on personal finance, has been quick over the years to get control of his name on the Web and on sites like MySpace. But last weekend, a professed fan beat him to facebook.com/larrywinget and then said he would turn it over in exchange for a face-to-face dinner.
“It’s this constant effort, this sprint, to stay ahead of the technology,” Mr. Winget said. “You’ve got to hire a person just to stay on top of it.”
Companies are feeling just as much anxiety over the online name game. RCN, a cable and telephone service based in Herndon, Va., submitted a request last week to Facebook to secure facebook.com/rcn. But then Facebook said companies would need to have more than 1,000 fans on their pages to be eligible for the custom address program. RCN’s recently created page had 527 fans as of Wednesday.
RCN executives say they are frustrated with Facebook’s rules and are worried that they could lose what they suspect could be valuable real estate. Possible competitors for the address include people and organizations with those initials, along with the dreaded squatters.
“This is a new world that we are having to step into in order to protect our brand, and they did not give us a huge window of time to prepare for it,” said Ashlie Ellison, a Web producer for RCN.
Social media sites give companies new ways to promote their brands, said Howard H. Weller, a trademark lawyer at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp in New York. But he added that “these are all new avenues for abuse, and it’s more resources trademark owners need to devote to policing and enforcement.”
The Facebook Web addresses in particular could be worth nothing — Facebook has said they will not be transferable, although users could quietly hand over the passwords to their accounts.
But digital squatters are still trying, creating potential headaches for companies. For example, Dell grabbed facebook.com/dell, but Jeremy Fancher, a student at Washington University in St. Louis, registered facebook.com/dellcomputer and plans to try to sell it. A Dell spokesman declined to comment.
“I think it would be sort of funny if another computer company buys it,” Mr. Fancher said. “It all illustrates how murky the water is when signing up for these accounts.”
[the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/technology/internet/18name.html]
Microsoft Says New Google Tool Interferes With Outlook Software
Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. clashed Wednesday, as the two giants traded barbs over a new Google software offering.
Microsoft said Google's new Apps Sync software disables the search capabilities of Microsoft's popular Outlook email program.
Google acknowledged an issue with its software, which it released last week. But Google disputed the severity of the problem, and said it is working to improve its software.
Apps Sync, which is aimed at businesses, allows users to merge data between Google's email and calendar service and Outlook.
The dispute illustrates the potential for tension between the two giants as Google seeks to encroach on the software turf of Microsoft while Microsoft attacks Google's search business.
In a post on a company blog, Microsoft's Outlook product manager, Dev Balasubramanian, said Apps Sync includes a "serious bug/flaw" that disables Outlook's ability to search data like emails and contacts.
Google product manager Chris Vander Mey said in a blog post that Apps Sync disables Windows Desktop Search, a separate piece of software, because it doesn't work properly with Google's software.
A Google spokesman said users can still use the search function within Outlook to search their emails and contacts.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124526980217124483.html]
Microsoft said Google's new Apps Sync software disables the search capabilities of Microsoft's popular Outlook email program.
Google acknowledged an issue with its software, which it released last week. But Google disputed the severity of the problem, and said it is working to improve its software.
Apps Sync, which is aimed at businesses, allows users to merge data between Google's email and calendar service and Outlook.
The dispute illustrates the potential for tension between the two giants as Google seeks to encroach on the software turf of Microsoft while Microsoft attacks Google's search business.
In a post on a company blog, Microsoft's Outlook product manager, Dev Balasubramanian, said Apps Sync includes a "serious bug/flaw" that disables Outlook's ability to search data like emails and contacts.
Google product manager Chris Vander Mey said in a blog post that Apps Sync disables Windows Desktop Search, a separate piece of software, because it doesn't work properly with Google's software.
A Google spokesman said users can still use the search function within Outlook to search their emails and contacts.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124526980217124483.html]
Google Searches for Ways to Keep Big Ideas at Home
Google Inc. is revamping how it develops and prioritizes new products, giving employees a pipeline to the company's top brass amid worries about losing its best people and promising ideas to start-ups.
The Mountain View, Calif., company famously lets its engineers spend one day a week on projects that aren't part of their jobs. But Google has lacked a formal process for senior executives to review those efforts, and some ideas have languished. Others have slipped away when employees left the company.
"We were concerned that some of the biggest ideas were getting squashed," said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in an interview.
Google can no longer afford to let promising ideas fall by the wayside. The Internet search giant's once-torrid growth has slowed. At the same time, it faces fresh competition from Microsoft Corp.'s new search engine, Bing, and start-ups such as Twitter Inc., which was founded by former Google employees.
In response, Google has recently started internal "innovation reviews," formal meetings where executives present product ideas bubbling up through their divisions to Mr. Schmidt, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and other top executives.
Employees at their desks inside Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., shown in March 2008.
The meetings are designed to "force management to focus" on promising ideas at an early stage, Mr. Schmidt said.
The efforts have been behind several services that Google has recently unveiled, including software that allows companies to use Microsoft's Outlook email and calendar software while storing their data with Google. Microsoft said Wednesday the Google software interferes with an Outlook search function; Google disputed the severity of the problem, but said it is working to improve its software.
Another project, an imaging product that is based on facial-recognition software developed inside Google, is expected to be released this summer.
Google has also begun to give a few engineers broad leeway to start big projects of their choosing, Mr. Schmidt said. One result of this effort: Google Wave, a collaboration tool that the company previewed last month.
The moves are a shift for Google. Previously, its early-stage projects weren't systematically vetted by top executives. Employees with a new idea would lobby their bosses for resources and time. Once approved, a project could linger or die without getting much attention from senior management.
Google needs new products to jumpstart its growth. While it remains a juggernaut with one-third of all U.S. advertising dollars spent online, its year-over-year revenue growth has slowed from 56% in 2007 to 31% in 2008 and was just 6% in the first quarter of this year.
What's more, employees continue to leave Google as it evolves into a mature company with 20,000 workers. "Most product managers evaluate [whether to stay] every six months," said Chris Vander Mey, a senior Google product manager who worked on the Microsoft Office integration.
While praising how Google has supported small projects like his own, he said he still expects to leave the company over time to explore other interests.
Google has taken cracks in the past at the retention problem. In March, it repriced millions of employee stock options whose value had been wiped out as Google's share price has fallen over the past two years. The company has also begun testing a mathematical formula to try to predict which employees are most likely to leave, based on factors like employee reviews.
David Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor who studies technology and e-commerce companies, said prioritizing is important for Google. While Google has launched hordes of new experiments, "in the absence of focus and promotion" few have turned into blockbusters, he said.
In the case of Google Wave, the company singled out Lars Rasmussen and Jens Rasmussen to test its approach to developing ideas.
The brothers, who are based in Australia, had been working on Google Maps. On the side, they were also thinking about creating a new communication system to replace email.
Messrs. Schmidt, Page and Brin were intrigued and gave the engineers a long leash. "We said go do something really interesting and take as many resources as you need," Mr. Schmidt said. They gave the Rasmussens dozens of employees, he added, substantially more people than most early-stage projects.
To allow the duo to stick to their vision for the product, the top executives kept Wave secret from the rest of the company. Wave wasn't opened up to broader employee feedback until later in the development cycle.
Lars Rasmussen said the conditions freed his team from concerns such as fighting for engineers and removed pressure to integrate with other Google products. "We knew we had to do something different," he said.
While Google has high hopes for Wave, which combines communications like email and messaging through a new service that updates in real-time, some are skeptical. Search analyst Danny Sullivan said he was "underwhelmed" by Wave and sees the service as a feature rather than a whole new way to share information. The service is scheduled to be released to the public later this year.
Other current and former Google employees see Wave as an exception. Sean Knapp, a former Google engineer, left the company in 2007 and started Ooyala Inc., a start-up that distributes and manages advertising around online video.
Mr. Knapp said Google managers offered him the chance to start the project within the company, but he declined. He worried he wouldn't feel the same pressure to succeed. "If you're really aggressive, you want that sink or swim environment," he said.
Mr. Schmidt said it is "a fact of life" that some Google employees will ultimately choose the risk and reward of a start-up. But he added the company tries to make it possible to be "part of a start-up within Google."
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124528387214225641.html]
The Mountain View, Calif., company famously lets its engineers spend one day a week on projects that aren't part of their jobs. But Google has lacked a formal process for senior executives to review those efforts, and some ideas have languished. Others have slipped away when employees left the company.
"We were concerned that some of the biggest ideas were getting squashed," said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in an interview.
Google can no longer afford to let promising ideas fall by the wayside. The Internet search giant's once-torrid growth has slowed. At the same time, it faces fresh competition from Microsoft Corp.'s new search engine, Bing, and start-ups such as Twitter Inc., which was founded by former Google employees.
In response, Google has recently started internal "innovation reviews," formal meetings where executives present product ideas bubbling up through their divisions to Mr. Schmidt, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and other top executives.
Employees at their desks inside Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., shown in March 2008.
The meetings are designed to "force management to focus" on promising ideas at an early stage, Mr. Schmidt said.
The efforts have been behind several services that Google has recently unveiled, including software that allows companies to use Microsoft's Outlook email and calendar software while storing their data with Google. Microsoft said Wednesday the Google software interferes with an Outlook search function; Google disputed the severity of the problem, but said it is working to improve its software.
Another project, an imaging product that is based on facial-recognition software developed inside Google, is expected to be released this summer.
Google has also begun to give a few engineers broad leeway to start big projects of their choosing, Mr. Schmidt said. One result of this effort: Google Wave, a collaboration tool that the company previewed last month.
The moves are a shift for Google. Previously, its early-stage projects weren't systematically vetted by top executives. Employees with a new idea would lobby their bosses for resources and time. Once approved, a project could linger or die without getting much attention from senior management.
Google needs new products to jumpstart its growth. While it remains a juggernaut with one-third of all U.S. advertising dollars spent online, its year-over-year revenue growth has slowed from 56% in 2007 to 31% in 2008 and was just 6% in the first quarter of this year.
What's more, employees continue to leave Google as it evolves into a mature company with 20,000 workers. "Most product managers evaluate [whether to stay] every six months," said Chris Vander Mey, a senior Google product manager who worked on the Microsoft Office integration.
While praising how Google has supported small projects like his own, he said he still expects to leave the company over time to explore other interests.
Google has taken cracks in the past at the retention problem. In March, it repriced millions of employee stock options whose value had been wiped out as Google's share price has fallen over the past two years. The company has also begun testing a mathematical formula to try to predict which employees are most likely to leave, based on factors like employee reviews.
David Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor who studies technology and e-commerce companies, said prioritizing is important for Google. While Google has launched hordes of new experiments, "in the absence of focus and promotion" few have turned into blockbusters, he said.
In the case of Google Wave, the company singled out Lars Rasmussen and Jens Rasmussen to test its approach to developing ideas.
The brothers, who are based in Australia, had been working on Google Maps. On the side, they were also thinking about creating a new communication system to replace email.
Messrs. Schmidt, Page and Brin were intrigued and gave the engineers a long leash. "We said go do something really interesting and take as many resources as you need," Mr. Schmidt said. They gave the Rasmussens dozens of employees, he added, substantially more people than most early-stage projects.
To allow the duo to stick to their vision for the product, the top executives kept Wave secret from the rest of the company. Wave wasn't opened up to broader employee feedback until later in the development cycle.
Lars Rasmussen said the conditions freed his team from concerns such as fighting for engineers and removed pressure to integrate with other Google products. "We knew we had to do something different," he said.
While Google has high hopes for Wave, which combines communications like email and messaging through a new service that updates in real-time, some are skeptical. Search analyst Danny Sullivan said he was "underwhelmed" by Wave and sees the service as a feature rather than a whole new way to share information. The service is scheduled to be released to the public later this year.
Other current and former Google employees see Wave as an exception. Sean Knapp, a former Google engineer, left the company in 2007 and started Ooyala Inc., a start-up that distributes and manages advertising around online video.
Mr. Knapp said Google managers offered him the chance to start the project within the company, but he declined. He worried he wouldn't feel the same pressure to succeed. "If you're really aggressive, you want that sink or swim environment," he said.
Mr. Schmidt said it is "a fact of life" that some Google employees will ultimately choose the risk and reward of a start-up. But he added the company tries to make it possible to be "part of a start-up within Google."
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124528387214225641.html]
Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the Movement
The U.S. State Department doesn't usually take an interest in the maintenance schedules of dotcom start-ups. But over the weekend, officials there reached out to Twitter and asked them to delay a network upgrade that was scheduled for Monday night. The reason? To protect the interests of Iranians using the service to protest the presidential election that took place on June 12. Twitter moved the upgrade to 2 p.m. P.T. Tuesday afternoon — or 1:30 a.m. Tehran time. (Read "The Iran Election: Twitter's Big Moment.")
When Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone founded Twitter in 2006, they were probably worried about things like making money and protecting people's privacy and drunk college kids breaking up with one another in 140 characters or less. What they weren't worried about was being suppressed by the Iranian government. But in the networked, surreally flattened world of social media, those things aren't as far apart as they used to be — and what began as a toy for online flirtation is suddenly being put to much more serious uses. After the election in Iran, cries of protest from supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi arose in all possible media, but the loudest cries were heard in a medium that didn't even exist the last time Iran had an election. (See pictures of Iran's presidential election and its turbulent aftermath.)
So what exactly makes Twitter the medium of the moment? It's free, highly mobile, very personal and very quick. It's also built to spread, and fast. Twitterers like to append notes called hashtags — #theylooklikethis — to their tweets, so that they can be grouped and searched for by topic; especially interesting or urgent tweets tend to get picked up and retransmitted by other Twitterers, a practice known as retweeting, or just RT. And Twitter is promiscuous by nature: tweets go out over two networks, the Internet and SMS, the network that cell phones use for text messages, and they can be received and read on practically anything with a screen and a network connection. (Read about how Twitter is changing the way we live.)
This makes Twitter practically ideal for a mass protest movement, both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control. The same might be true of e-mail and Facebook, but those media aren't public. They don't broadcast, as Twitter does. On June 13, when protests started to escalate, and the Iranian government moved to suppress dissent both on- and off-line, the Twitterverse exploded with tweets from people who weren't having it, both in English and in Farsi. While the front pages of Iranian newspapers were full of blank space where censors had whited-out news stories, Twitter was delivering information from street level, in real time:
Woman says ppl knocking on her door 2 AM saying they were intelligence agents, took her daughter
Ashora platoons now moving from valiasr toward National Tv staion. mousavi's supporters are already there. my father is out there!
we hear 1dead in shiraz, livefire used in other cities RT
As is so often the case in the media world, Twitter's strengths are also its weaknesses. The vast body of information about current events in Iran that circulates on Twitter is chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable. It's impossible to authenticate sources. It's also not clear who exactly is using Twitter within Iran, especially in English. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the bulk of tweets are coming from "hyphenated" Iranians not actually in the country who are getting the word out to Western observers, rather than from the protesters themselves, who favor other, less public media. This is, after all, a country where the government once debated the death penalty for dissident bloggers. (See pictures of daily life in Iran.)
Twitter isn't a magic bullet against dictators. As tempting as it is to think of the service as a purely anarchic weapon of the masses, too distributed to be stoppable, it is theoretically feasible for a government to shut it down, according to James Cowie, CTO of Renesys, a company that collects data on the status of the Internet in real time. While Iran has a rich and diverse Internet culture, data traffic into and out of Iran passes through a very small number of channels. It's technically relatively trivial for the state to take control of those choke points and block IP addresses delivering tweets through them. The SMS network is even more centralized and structured than the Internet, and hence even easier to censor.
But there are counter-countermeasures to this kind of censorship. Sympathetic observers outside Iran have set up "proxies," servers that relay Twitter content into Iran through network addresses that haven't been blocked yet. When the Iranian authorities discover such a proxy, they block it too. It's an arms race crossed with whack-a-mole. Protesters are also organizing denial-of-service attacks against government websites — coordinated efforts to shut down their servers by flooding them with traffic.
Rumors of the Iranian authorities' tampering with Twitter traffic are rampant. But very little hard data is available, and so far it's not clear that they've throttled Twitter completely. Why not is a matter of great speculation. It's quite possible that the government finds Twitter useful as a way of monitoring protesters, gathering data on them and even tracking them down. There are also signs that the Iranian government may be infiltrating the Twitter network itself, manipulating it to its own advantage. This tweet went out over the network earlier today, and was itself retweeted more than 200 times:
DO NOT RT anything U read from "NEW" tweeters, gvmt spreading misinfo
Twitter didn't start the protests in Iran, nor did it make them possible. But there's no question that it has emboldened the protesters, reinforced their conviction that they are not alone and engaged populations outside Iran in an emotional, immediate way that was never possible before. President Ahmadinejad — who happened to visit Russia on Tuesday — now finds himself in a court of world opinion where even Khrushchev never had to stand trial. Totalitarian governments rule by brute force, and because they control the consensus worldview of those they rule. Tyranny, in other words, is a monologue. But as long as Twitter is up and running, there's no such thing.
[the article was originally published at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html]
When Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone founded Twitter in 2006, they were probably worried about things like making money and protecting people's privacy and drunk college kids breaking up with one another in 140 characters or less. What they weren't worried about was being suppressed by the Iranian government. But in the networked, surreally flattened world of social media, those things aren't as far apart as they used to be — and what began as a toy for online flirtation is suddenly being put to much more serious uses. After the election in Iran, cries of protest from supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi arose in all possible media, but the loudest cries were heard in a medium that didn't even exist the last time Iran had an election. (See pictures of Iran's presidential election and its turbulent aftermath.)
So what exactly makes Twitter the medium of the moment? It's free, highly mobile, very personal and very quick. It's also built to spread, and fast. Twitterers like to append notes called hashtags — #theylooklikethis — to their tweets, so that they can be grouped and searched for by topic; especially interesting or urgent tweets tend to get picked up and retransmitted by other Twitterers, a practice known as retweeting, or just RT. And Twitter is promiscuous by nature: tweets go out over two networks, the Internet and SMS, the network that cell phones use for text messages, and they can be received and read on practically anything with a screen and a network connection. (Read about how Twitter is changing the way we live.)
This makes Twitter practically ideal for a mass protest movement, both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control. The same might be true of e-mail and Facebook, but those media aren't public. They don't broadcast, as Twitter does. On June 13, when protests started to escalate, and the Iranian government moved to suppress dissent both on- and off-line, the Twitterverse exploded with tweets from people who weren't having it, both in English and in Farsi. While the front pages of Iranian newspapers were full of blank space where censors had whited-out news stories, Twitter was delivering information from street level, in real time:
Woman says ppl knocking on her door 2 AM saying they were intelligence agents, took her daughter
Ashora platoons now moving from valiasr toward National Tv staion. mousavi's supporters are already there. my father is out there!
we hear 1dead in shiraz, livefire used in other cities RT
As is so often the case in the media world, Twitter's strengths are also its weaknesses. The vast body of information about current events in Iran that circulates on Twitter is chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable. It's impossible to authenticate sources. It's also not clear who exactly is using Twitter within Iran, especially in English. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the bulk of tweets are coming from "hyphenated" Iranians not actually in the country who are getting the word out to Western observers, rather than from the protesters themselves, who favor other, less public media. This is, after all, a country where the government once debated the death penalty for dissident bloggers. (See pictures of daily life in Iran.)
Twitter isn't a magic bullet against dictators. As tempting as it is to think of the service as a purely anarchic weapon of the masses, too distributed to be stoppable, it is theoretically feasible for a government to shut it down, according to James Cowie, CTO of Renesys, a company that collects data on the status of the Internet in real time. While Iran has a rich and diverse Internet culture, data traffic into and out of Iran passes through a very small number of channels. It's technically relatively trivial for the state to take control of those choke points and block IP addresses delivering tweets through them. The SMS network is even more centralized and structured than the Internet, and hence even easier to censor.
But there are counter-countermeasures to this kind of censorship. Sympathetic observers outside Iran have set up "proxies," servers that relay Twitter content into Iran through network addresses that haven't been blocked yet. When the Iranian authorities discover such a proxy, they block it too. It's an arms race crossed with whack-a-mole. Protesters are also organizing denial-of-service attacks against government websites — coordinated efforts to shut down their servers by flooding them with traffic.
Rumors of the Iranian authorities' tampering with Twitter traffic are rampant. But very little hard data is available, and so far it's not clear that they've throttled Twitter completely. Why not is a matter of great speculation. It's quite possible that the government finds Twitter useful as a way of monitoring protesters, gathering data on them and even tracking them down. There are also signs that the Iranian government may be infiltrating the Twitter network itself, manipulating it to its own advantage. This tweet went out over the network earlier today, and was itself retweeted more than 200 times:
DO NOT RT anything U read from "NEW" tweeters, gvmt spreading misinfo
Twitter didn't start the protests in Iran, nor did it make them possible. But there's no question that it has emboldened the protesters, reinforced their conviction that they are not alone and engaged populations outside Iran in an emotional, immediate way that was never possible before. President Ahmadinejad — who happened to visit Russia on Tuesday — now finds himself in a court of world opinion where even Khrushchev never had to stand trial. Totalitarian governments rule by brute force, and because they control the consensus worldview of those they rule. Tyranny, in other words, is a monologue. But as long as Twitter is up and running, there's no such thing.
[the article was originally published at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html]
Ruling on NightJack author Richard Horton kills blogger anonymity
Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled yesterday.
In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of the NightJack blog. The officer, Richard Horton, 45, a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary, had sought an injunction to stop The Times from revealing his name.
In April Mr Horton was awarded the Orwell Prize for political writing, but the judges were unaware that he was using information about cases, some involving sex offences against children, that could be traced back to genuine prosecutions.
His blog, which gave a behind-the-scenes insight into frontline policing, included strong views on social and political issues.
The officer also criticised and ridiculed “a number of senior politicians” and advised members of the public under police investigation to “complain about every officer . . . show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it”.
Some of the blog’s best-read sections, which on occasion attracted half a million readers a week, were anecdotes about cases on which Mr Horton had worked. The people and places were made anonymous and details changed, but they could still be traced back to real prosecutions.
In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr Horton had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”.
The judge also said that even if the blogger could have claimed he had a right to anonymity, the judge would have ruled against him on public interest grounds.
The police officer, the judge said, had argued that he should not be exposed because it could put him at risk of disciplinary action for breaching regulations. But Mr Justice Eady criticised that argument as “unattractive to say the least”.
He added: “I do not accept that it is part of the court’s function to protect police officers who are, or think they may be, acting in breach of police discipline regulations from coming to the attention of their superiors.”
He added: “It would seem to be quite legitimate for the public to be told who it was who was choosing to make, in some instances quite serious criticisms of police activities and, if it be the case, that frequent infringements of police discipline regulations were taking place.”
The action arose after Patrick Foster, a Times journalist, identified the NightJack blogger “by a process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information on the internet,” the judge said.
Hugh Tomlinson, QC, for Mr Horton, had argued that “thousands of regular bloggers . . . would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them”. Mr Tomlinson said that Mr Horton wished to remain anonymous and had taken steps to preserve his anonymity.
But Mr Justice Eady said that the mere fact that the blogger wanted to remain anonymous did not mean that he had a “reasonable expectation” of doing so or that The Times was under an enforceable obligation to him to maintain that anonymity.
Antony White, QC, for The Times, argued that there was a public interest in non-compliance by a police officer with his obligations under the statutory code governing police behaviour and also with general public law duty on police officers not to reveal information obtained in the course of a police investigation other than for performing his public duties.
Lancashire Constabulary said: “He has been spoken to regarding his professional behaviour and, in line with disciplinary procedures, has been issued with a written warning.”
[the article was originally published at http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6509677.ece]
In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of the NightJack blog. The officer, Richard Horton, 45, a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary, had sought an injunction to stop The Times from revealing his name.
In April Mr Horton was awarded the Orwell Prize for political writing, but the judges were unaware that he was using information about cases, some involving sex offences against children, that could be traced back to genuine prosecutions.
His blog, which gave a behind-the-scenes insight into frontline policing, included strong views on social and political issues.
The officer also criticised and ridiculed “a number of senior politicians” and advised members of the public under police investigation to “complain about every officer . . . show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it”.
Some of the blog’s best-read sections, which on occasion attracted half a million readers a week, were anecdotes about cases on which Mr Horton had worked. The people and places were made anonymous and details changed, but they could still be traced back to real prosecutions.
In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr Horton had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”.
The judge also said that even if the blogger could have claimed he had a right to anonymity, the judge would have ruled against him on public interest grounds.
The police officer, the judge said, had argued that he should not be exposed because it could put him at risk of disciplinary action for breaching regulations. But Mr Justice Eady criticised that argument as “unattractive to say the least”.
He added: “I do not accept that it is part of the court’s function to protect police officers who are, or think they may be, acting in breach of police discipline regulations from coming to the attention of their superiors.”
He added: “It would seem to be quite legitimate for the public to be told who it was who was choosing to make, in some instances quite serious criticisms of police activities and, if it be the case, that frequent infringements of police discipline regulations were taking place.”
The action arose after Patrick Foster, a Times journalist, identified the NightJack blogger “by a process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information on the internet,” the judge said.
Hugh Tomlinson, QC, for Mr Horton, had argued that “thousands of regular bloggers . . . would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them”. Mr Tomlinson said that Mr Horton wished to remain anonymous and had taken steps to preserve his anonymity.
But Mr Justice Eady said that the mere fact that the blogger wanted to remain anonymous did not mean that he had a “reasonable expectation” of doing so or that The Times was under an enforceable obligation to him to maintain that anonymity.
Antony White, QC, for The Times, argued that there was a public interest in non-compliance by a police officer with his obligations under the statutory code governing police behaviour and also with general public law duty on police officers not to reveal information obtained in the course of a police investigation other than for performing his public duties.
Lancashire Constabulary said: “He has been spoken to regarding his professional behaviour and, in line with disciplinary procedures, has been issued with a written warning.”
[the article was originally published at http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6509677.ece]
How MySpace fell off the pace
MySpace is looking to do an about-face.
The once-red-hot social networking site acquired three years ago by septuagenarian mogul Rupert Murdoch, which landed him on the cover of Wired magazine and won News Corp. praise for embracing the Internet ahead of its old-media rivals, has cooled considerably.
New statistics released this week show MySpace has been surpassed by rival Facebook in the U.S. market, where it once dominated, and ad revenue for the site is projected to decline.
Signaling the depth of its problems, MySpace on Tuesday said it was laying off 420 people -- nearly one out of every three employees -- as part of an aggressive restructuring that seeks to make the company smaller and more agile. The action follows a management shake-up in April, in which MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe was replaced as chief executive by Facebook's former chief operating officer, Owen Van Natta.
"Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," Van Natta said in a statement. "I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace."
Van Natta's comments underscore just how troubled Murdoch's big Internet gamble has become in the rapidly changing world of social media. Highly touted initiatives, such as MySpace Music, failed to live up to expectations, even as the site's developers constantly play catch-up to the technological innovations of others.
"MySpace ended up not being the leader that it wanted to be in the social-networking realm, on the tech front, on the ad front -- and now on the usage front," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with researcher eMarketer.
The perceived missteps are numerous. Some observers say it clung too long to a "portal strategy," in which it sought to amass an audience around entertainment content. By contrast, Facebook maintained its focus on features that enhance the social-networking experience, such as the "News Feed" that matches the immediacy of Twitter's staccato updates.
"The speed with which a company like Facebook is able to innovate and keep things fresh is the key to survival in this space," said Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, a research firm specializing in social networking. "There are new things like Twitter that come along. What does Facebook do? It does Twitter . . . and it does it better."
MySpace's miscalculations have cost it ground in its competition against Facebook.
Online audience measurement firm ComScore reported MySpace attracted 70.25 million users in May -- a loss of 3.4 million people from the same period a year earlier. Meanwhile, Facebook nearly doubled the number of users over the same period and overtook MySpace in the U.S., with 70.28 million users.
Still, as Microsoft Research ethnographer Danah Boyd points out, with 70 million users, MySpace has hardly disappeared. "They are still as large as they were a year ago. And a year ago we were in awe of their size."
As the number of MySpace users declines, so does advertising revenue. EMarketer projects that U.S. revenue will fall 15% to $495 million in 2009 from $585 million last year.
Although News Corp. doesn't break out financial details for MySpace, revenue for the media giant's Fox Interactive Media division was down 11% in the most recent quarter from a year earlier, reflecting a double-digit drop in advertising. FIM also includes IGN Entertainment and the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, although contributions from those businesses are modest compared with those from MySpace.
Murdoch tried to reassure investors about MySpace's direction during the company's earnings call last month, declaring that the management changes at MySpace "will help it regain its momentum."
That task may be harder than it looks. The history of social networks suggests that these sites have the fleeting popularity of a trendy nightclub. The site that's recognized as the birthplace of online communities, the Well, gave way to the more broadly available America Online, which was eclipsed by Friendster -- which itself became passe.
"Each of these services supplants the one before. It takes the golden ring and everyone loves that, and they forget about the last one," said Roger L. Kay, president of research firm Endpoint Technologies Associates. "MySpace made sense at a particular date, that might have been 2003. At that moment, it was the place to be. . . . Now, they have to do some major spade work on the quality of the site if they want to maintain the eyeballs."
[the article was oroginally published at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-myspace17-2009jun17,0,6726077.story]
The once-red-hot social networking site acquired three years ago by septuagenarian mogul Rupert Murdoch, which landed him on the cover of Wired magazine and won News Corp. praise for embracing the Internet ahead of its old-media rivals, has cooled considerably.
New statistics released this week show MySpace has been surpassed by rival Facebook in the U.S. market, where it once dominated, and ad revenue for the site is projected to decline.
Signaling the depth of its problems, MySpace on Tuesday said it was laying off 420 people -- nearly one out of every three employees -- as part of an aggressive restructuring that seeks to make the company smaller and more agile. The action follows a management shake-up in April, in which MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe was replaced as chief executive by Facebook's former chief operating officer, Owen Van Natta.
"Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," Van Natta said in a statement. "I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace."
Van Natta's comments underscore just how troubled Murdoch's big Internet gamble has become in the rapidly changing world of social media. Highly touted initiatives, such as MySpace Music, failed to live up to expectations, even as the site's developers constantly play catch-up to the technological innovations of others.
"MySpace ended up not being the leader that it wanted to be in the social-networking realm, on the tech front, on the ad front -- and now on the usage front," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with researcher eMarketer.
The perceived missteps are numerous. Some observers say it clung too long to a "portal strategy," in which it sought to amass an audience around entertainment content. By contrast, Facebook maintained its focus on features that enhance the social-networking experience, such as the "News Feed" that matches the immediacy of Twitter's staccato updates.
"The speed with which a company like Facebook is able to innovate and keep things fresh is the key to survival in this space," said Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, a research firm specializing in social networking. "There are new things like Twitter that come along. What does Facebook do? It does Twitter . . . and it does it better."
MySpace's miscalculations have cost it ground in its competition against Facebook.
Online audience measurement firm ComScore reported MySpace attracted 70.25 million users in May -- a loss of 3.4 million people from the same period a year earlier. Meanwhile, Facebook nearly doubled the number of users over the same period and overtook MySpace in the U.S., with 70.28 million users.
Still, as Microsoft Research ethnographer Danah Boyd points out, with 70 million users, MySpace has hardly disappeared. "They are still as large as they were a year ago. And a year ago we were in awe of their size."
As the number of MySpace users declines, so does advertising revenue. EMarketer projects that U.S. revenue will fall 15% to $495 million in 2009 from $585 million last year.
Although News Corp. doesn't break out financial details for MySpace, revenue for the media giant's Fox Interactive Media division was down 11% in the most recent quarter from a year earlier, reflecting a double-digit drop in advertising. FIM also includes IGN Entertainment and the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, although contributions from those businesses are modest compared with those from MySpace.
Murdoch tried to reassure investors about MySpace's direction during the company's earnings call last month, declaring that the management changes at MySpace "will help it regain its momentum."
That task may be harder than it looks. The history of social networks suggests that these sites have the fleeting popularity of a trendy nightclub. The site that's recognized as the birthplace of online communities, the Well, gave way to the more broadly available America Online, which was eclipsed by Friendster -- which itself became passe.
"Each of these services supplants the one before. It takes the golden ring and everyone loves that, and they forget about the last one," said Roger L. Kay, president of research firm Endpoint Technologies Associates. "MySpace made sense at a particular date, that might have been 2003. At that moment, it was the place to be. . . . Now, they have to do some major spade work on the quality of the site if they want to maintain the eyeballs."
[the article was oroginally published at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-myspace17-2009jun17,0,6726077.story]
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