Blogs | Social Signal

As I write this, Irene Weiser from Stop Family Violence is on stage at NetSquared, telling t

One of our favourite collaborators, Courtney Miller of Floatleft, is the Drupal theming genius behind a cool (and cool-looking) new site that just launched.

We wish we'd been able to make it to DrupalCamp Toronto, but client business kept us planted firmly on this side of the continent.

Still, we were able to attend in spirit: by reading Khalid's (and others') terrific blog coverage of the event, and by oohing and aahing over his photo of the T-shirt. The DrupalCamp logo is brilliant.

(What's that, you say? You see the Social Signal logo on the back of the T-shirt? Why, yes – we are proud sponsors of DrupalCamp Toronto!)

Now, if there are any of those T-shirts left over, I suppose receiving a few of them might take the sting out of having had to miss the camp itself...

Things are changing at The Tyee, a Vancouver-based news and commentary site. Home to some of the best alternative coverage of issues and ideas in Canada, The Tyee's discussion threads were also becoming home to something a lot less welcome: vicious grudge matches among a handful of participants.

Readers were growing used to seeing interminable bouts of tit-for-tat insults, and would-be commenters were losing their appetite for taking jumping into the fray. It wasn't affecting every thread, but politicial discussions in particular had become dominated by a few angry belligerents.

I mentioned a few weeks ago how thrilled we were that Vancity's ChangeEverything.ca received an Official Honoree nod from the Webbys.

Now the final results are in. And we're delighted to salute friends and colleagues for their recent smashing success at the Webbys:

• Nothing but Nets, created by Communicopia for the UN Foundation, won the People's Voice award in the charitable organization category. NbN raises funds to buy mosquito bed nets for people in Africa – and protect them from malaria, a leading killer of children on the continent. (Just ten bucks buys a net; have you bought yours yet?)
• Truthdig, built by Hop Studios for Zuade, won both the juried and people's voice awards for best political blog. It's a web magazine offering news and commentary on underreported political issues and current affairs.
  
• Save the Internet's Independence Day video, directed by Matt Thompson, won the People's Voice award for best public service video. We first met Matt at Web of Change in 2005, and he's an absolute genius – it's nice to see that recognized.
  

The New York Times has called the Webby's the "Oscars of the Internet". That means two things:

• One, the awards dinner could be your only chance to ever see the above folks in a tuxedo or evening gown.
• And two, they've achieved something really, really special. Congratulations to them.

Making friends in the real world can be hard. You need to overcome issues of trust, intimacy, vulnerability and, sometimes, conflicting loyalties. But the payoff matches the effort: a good friend is invaluable.

An ominous warning has been popping up from several of my friends on Facebook, suggesting the social networking site is suddenly selling your personal information. (It's been showing up as a "note", a blog-like feature the site offers.) Sounds serious – but it bears several hallmarks of a now-thankfully-dying breed of hoax email, especially the lack of any proof of the allegation, and that little viral bit at the end.

Here's the text of the note:

Apparently Facebook has started SELLING user information (surprise, surprise!) to third parties. They call it the "Facebook Development Platform."

To restrict use of your information, do the following:

1. Click "Privacy" on top right.

2. Under the "Facebook Platform" section click "Edit Settings".

3. Scroll down to the bottom and UNCHECK ALL of the items under facebook platform.

Most creepy is the inclusion of photographs!
(Do your friends a favor and repost this as your own note.)

Now, you still may want to follow those steps. But all it appears that you're doing is preventing members of your networks from accessing that information using external applications; it's nothing they can't already see using the site.

I asked Facebook if they could shed any more light on this. Here's what Facebook's director of corporate communications, Brandee Barker, told me (and kudos to them for getting back to me on the same day):

Yes, this message circulating on Facebook is false, thanks for checking. Facebook is not selling user information to anyone. In fact, Facebook Platform makes other applications — that users choose — an easy extension of their Facebook experience. Users log in to those applications the same way they do on Facebook through the safe, secure Facebook login page. Only a user’s friends and people in a user’s network can see his or her information, and everything is subject to the same privacy controls. Applications built on Facebook Platform are not allowed to store or collect user data, and again, Facebook certainly isn’t selling user information to anyone.

A cursory search hasn't turned up any previous Facebook hoaxes, so this could be a first. (Update: Way too cursory; there've been a few – see one recent example here – but I still haven't found anything viral.) Whether this was a deliberate attempt to sabotage Facebook's extension into the world of open APIs and third-party apps, or just a misguided bit of paranoia on someone's part, it points to the vulnerability of a new (or new-ish) medium to this kind of hoax.

Just as it took years for email users to look skeptically on modem-tax chain letters and the like, Facebook members will have to start adding a dose of scrutiny to the messages they receive on the site, as a flood of new, not always benevolent, users arrives.

Three things:

We currently track prospects and clients with a delicately balanced combination of such tools as Google spreadsheets, Remember the Milk, an internal wiki, smart Mail.app mailboxes and an aging but still spry fox terrier. (She benchmarks surprisingly well on her good days.)

But like any growing enterprise, commercial or social, we've passed the point where that kind of chewing-gum-and-coat-hanger contraption can hold together reliably. Now we're looking for a capital-S Solution... one that's capital-R Robust and capital-C cost capital-E effective.

Our search has zeroed in on three tools: 800-kilo-gorilla Salesforce, Google-based upstart Etelos, and open-source heartthrob CiviCRM. Each has their advantages and drawbacks, costs and benefits, dimples and warts... and we're getting a pretty good handle on those.

But there's only so much a spec sheet (or even a demo account) can tell you. What we don't have yet – and here's where you come in – is the inside scoop. So we're turning to our community and asking you to dish. Are you already using one of these tools -- or another CRM solution we should consider? Do you love it or hate it, and why?

We're particularly interested in hearing from other small businesses, dev/tech types, and Mac users.

Please tell your story in the comment area below, and you'll earn our eternal gratitude. (We'd offer an iPod Nano for the best one, but we know that you can't be bought for such paltry trinkets.)