Zynga closes UK office, closes games and axes 5% of staff | The Wall Blog

We have already seen stocks in social networking firms quickly decline this year and last night more of the bubble burst as social gaming firm Zynga announced, timed to coincide with the launch of the iPad Mini, that it was cutting 5% of its 3,200 workforce.

The cuts will include the closures of its operations in the UK and Japan although no word on how many are affected by these cuts.

Along with the job cuts Zynga plans to dispose of 13 older games and reduce its investment in the game The Ville.

via Zynga closes UK office, closes games and axes 5% of staff | The Wall Blog.

Teenagers warned: stuff you upload online may re-appear elsewhere online

Separately, young people have been warned they might lose control over images and videos once they are uploaded online.A study by the Internet Watch Foundation IWF found that 88 per cent of self-generated, sexually explicit online images and videos of young people are lifted from their original location and uploaded onto other websites.IWF analysts encountered more than 12,000 such images and videos spread over 68 websites. In many cases, parasitic pornographic websites are lifting photos and videos uploaded by teenagers onto social-networking sites. ®

via Four in ten Brits have had to change all their passwords to foil crooks • The Register.

The Telegraph: Promoting homophobia?

I thought I’d go for a tabloid style headline today in the style of Milo Yiannopoulos from the Telegraph.

On August 5th Milo feels that social networking is all good. “Social networking? A lot of fun.” he says.

This all changes once Milo encounters Grindr an iPhone application aimed at Gay and Bi-sexual men and by August 25th social networking had become creepy and dangerous. Well that’s not entirely true. Gay social networking had become creepy and dangerous, presumably in Milo’s world facebook is still a lot of fun. The homophobic undertones of this are shocking. Thankfully Milo hadn’t bothered to check to see if there were other iPhone applications targeting the same audience or he would have encountered Scruff, Bandana, Maleforce, Recon and Gaydar to name a few. If he’d chosen not to focus on a group because of their sexuality he might even have looked at applications like skout, aloha or WhosHere.

“Gay social networks remain controversial, with many – even, and perhaps especially, gay people” states Milo in the article. Sadly there is no data to back up this comment. I’m not sure who thinks gay social networking is controversial but no-one I have spoken to has ever though of it as anything other than a natural evolution of such networks to target increasingly niche markets. If you have social networks targeting pet owners surely networks targeting sexual preferences isn’t such a leap? Plus lets not forget that social networks don’t replace real life. They are an extension to it helping people make new friends, stay in touch with existing friends and manage long distance relationships.

It’s also quite disturbing how much personal comment is presented in what is meant to be a technology article on The Telegraph. I could understand to some extent if this piece was comment. It’s not though is it? It’s presented as a technology article so I was expecting some information on number of users or some graphs about increase of usage. Maybe from the smart phone angle and how they are changing social networks by including location information? Nope none of that though, it’s purely a piece written in the style of some of the worst tabloids. Maybe Milo has missed his calling? The News of the World are always looking for sensationalist ‘journalists’. That other tabloid journalistic mainstay of an undisclosed source, a friend/pal, a person close to the subject is rolled out with “According to one iPhone owner, who preferred to remain anonymous”.

I have to say though that we are lucky to live in a world now where it’s not often you read an article which includes the phrase “lonely and single middle-aged homosexuals” – of course it would have been better to have included other cliches such as sad and self-loathing.

Oh and one other point Milo. If you have to trawl back to 2000 and go to a US federal agency to find anyone else to back up your stance on how awful a UK based website is you are probably not up to date. Oh wait you didn’t do that though probably you went to Wikipedia I’ll guess and even they have asked for citation of this as the CDC website doesn’t have any mention of this research.

Also it’s worth pointing out that hese days many charities use social networks to reach the gay and bi-sexual audience and promote awareness of everything from HIV and AIDS to homophobia and cyber bullying.

Social vs Professional

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t want everyone I know to know everyone else that I know.
It’s like when you split up from someone and you suddenly lose a group of friends because they were better friends with your now ex partner.
Imagine this in the online world. It would be a nightmare. You have a spat with someone in the office and all of a sudden everyone in your social network is also affected or vice versa.

I use LinkedIn for my professional network and it works well. I use Facebook, Friendster, Thingbox and AIMPages and any number of others for social networking. Essentially whenever I get an invite I join one and when I see one I want to test or evaluate I join it and invite my friends. What I tend not to do is invite the same group of people to all of them.

There are some people with whom I get on with really well on my social networks that I would never put in my professional network the results would be far too unpredictable. Likewise there are people on my professional network I would never invite onto Facebook.

Anyway back to the point. LinkedIn is considering opening their platform to developers if you believe techcrunch and others, or likely will create an app for facebook. I’m struggling to see the market. I know in an ideal world everything would be interoperable but in the real world I think it would cause more problems than it would solve.

Now of course some software manufacturers have entered the fray. Notably IBM’s Lotus Connections which has a delicious style social bookmarking element, a blogging element – despite most companies looking at ways of reigning in the blogosphere rather than promoting it- and profiles.

Social Network Sites

So Facebook is the new MySpace which was the new Friendster which was the new Tribe etc etc.
I was chatting with Davo and he quite rightly said something Anna and I have been banging on about for years. By the time you get to grips with the new site and make your profile nice and complete with pictures and information all your mates have messed off to the new next best thing. Now I’ll admit I’m fickle and am usually one of the first to get bored and move on but it brings me back to the idea of FOAF or at least something similar. I think what’s needed is a social networking site mashup where you can pull in bits from all your other profiles.
Of course the bigger problem with social networking sites is the fact that on-line unlike off-line anyone can be your friend and can see who your other friends are. Off-line we tend to keep our social groups separate we all do it to some degree but on-line you can’t. So my work colleagues can see my drinking buddies which is not necessarily a good thing!