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In the West, the concept of the 'read/write Web' is a relatively easy one to get behind. Everybody can contribute content to the Web ('write'), as well as read it - it's a very democratic notion and a big reason why I named this blog ReadWriteWeb back in 2003. However in countries where democracy doesn't prevail, the read/write Web is often subject to censorship rules. In fact, ReadWriteWeb China was taken off the Web - as one part of the closure of community translation service Yeeyan - for about a month starting early December 2009. In preparation for an upcoming event in New York City with Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei - in which I'm a participant, along with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey - we look into the censorship issues and closure risks facing Web publishers in China. Sponsor The Global Times recently published a special report about censorship in China . It is an illuminating analysis of a number of publishers who have been censored or who self-censor themselves in order to survive. Join us for live streaming from the Paley Center in New York City , on March 15, for a conversation between Chinese digital activist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and RWW founder Richard MacManus. The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. According to Wikipedia , Internet censorship in China is "conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations." In particular China looks to censor political or social content. In mid-2009 a number of prominent Western social networking sites were blocked in China, including Facebook and Twitter . Western media speculated that the bans were put in place to prevent activists from using social networks to organize themselves - which happened in Iran in June of 2009, when Iranian election protesters used Twitter to call attention to their cause. Self-censorship Inside China, self-censorship is practiced by many web publishers in order to prevent trouble. "Self-censorship is the rule of survival that prevents popular websites from being shut down," said veteran web developer Zoe Wang in The Global Times. However, self-censorship is difficult to do in practice - because it's not regulated by a single authority and so there are a lack of clear rules on what to censor. Web publishers in China are never sure what could get their site shut down. On sites driven by user-generated content, publishers routinely censor political content. But while this may appease the government, it risks upsetting the core users. The Global Times article outlines what's happening on Douban , a popular social network in China with 33 million registered users. Censorship has recently tightened on Douban content, including photos, poetry and book reviews. Site Closures, Including RWW China The Golbal Times points to three recent examples of sites closed down by authorities: Fanfou, Yeeyan and Blogbus. The latter two were recovered in January. These site closures directly affected our own company, as Yeeyan is our syndication partner for ReadWriteWeb China. Yeeyan is a community translation website (our initial review 3 years ago ), which publishes some well-known Western news sites such as Guardian, The Guardian, Time Magazine, the New York Times and of course ReadWriteWeb. In early December, Yeeyan was forced to shut down its site - including ReadWriteWeb China. At the time of the closure, the following message was posted to the Yeeyan homepage by the Yeeyan team: "Due to our errors in handling some of the articles on the website, we went against the relevant regulations; therefore Yeeyan has to temporarily shut off its server, and adjust the relevant content." Ethan Zuckerman from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School concluded that "at least one of the authorities that control the Chinese internet - which include the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology - found the prospect of frequent, high-quality translation of US and European media [from Yeeyan] threatening." Yeeyan was back on the air in January (using .org instead of .com) and I'm certainly very pleased to see that ReadWriteWeb China is back as a result. Free the read/write Web! There's no shortage of rhetoric from the West about why China should cease censorship of the Web. Indeed Google made a brave move earlier this year by threatening to pull out of China if its continued to be pressured into censoring its search results. While there has been no resolution in the Google-China case as yet, at least the issue is being highlighted and challenged by companies of Google's stature in 2010. We hope that ReadWriteWeb's participation in the March 15 event at the Paley Center in New York City, where I will be discussing these and other issues alongside prominent Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei and Twitter's Jack Dorsey, helps encourage China to set the read/write Web free. Bookmark our special Weiwei webpage to track the latest buzz about the March 15 event and view a video about Ai Weiwei's art and digital activism. Discuss
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Censorship in China: How ReadWriteWeb China Was Closed Down For a Month
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A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools. At first glance, this may seem significant. But a closer look shows that Fortune 100 companies are showing interest but nothing to prove that social media tools are gaining significant corporate acceptance. Here's a copy of the full report and an accompanying power point presentation . But it is early in the game and these are results show that social media tools are making credible gains. Sponsor The services of choice? No surprise: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blog platforms. Twitter is number one, followed by Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs. The study found that 65 percent of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook fan page, 50 percent have a YouTube channel, and one-third (33 percent) have corporate blogs. Only 20 percent of the major international companies are utilizing all four platforms to engage with stakeholders. The fact that the Fortune 100 do not leverage multiple tools is a sign of how consumer-based social media tools are not fully understood or leveraged for maximum benefit. It's also evident of just how much of an opportunity big companies have in using the social Web if they use it to its full extent. Companies that extend to multiple media networks still have a chance to get ahead of competitors. The frequency of posts illustrates that companies are posting but not nearly as often as they could. Let's take a quick look at some of the findings for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs: Twitter The report says that Deutsche Telekom uses Twitter for announcements while Volkswagen uses it to RT and Home Depot for customer service. Conclusion? Fortune 100 companies are still searching for the best way to use Twitter. But just posting announcements seems pretty sterile. From the white paper: "Leaders of the pack on the Fortune Global 100 are Sony's SonyPlayStation with well over 115,000 followers and SonyPictures who is followed by almost 50,000 people and following over 6,000 Twitterers themselves." Burson-Marsteller also states that Fortune 100 companies are supporting multiple accounts. This is perhaps most encouraging: customer engagement is beginning to be more widespread across product groups. Facebook Facebook shows some of the most promise. Most of the Fortune 100 companies have tens of thousands of users. Perhaps the strongest sing of acceptance is in the number of corporate product groups that use Facebook. Companies like Sony have multiple fan pages. YouTube YouTube is used mostly by U.S. companies. Entertainment, electronics and auto companies are the most likely to have YouTube channels. Viewership shows promise. Consumers want to see product videos. Connecting YouTube with Twitter, Facebook and a blog can make for a potent combination if all are updated on a regular basis. Blogs Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation. "Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts." The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog? Conclusion Corporate America is using the social Web. It's apparent that companies have waded a bit deeper into the water but the opportunities are clear. The companies that embrace multiple mediums and keep up with a consistent volume of updates will be the big winners, no matter if they are a Fortune 100 or a Fortune 1,000 company. Discuss
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Are The Fortune 100 Now Beginning To Embrace Social Media Tools?
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Geolocation is quickly emerging as a big new platform to build all kinds of cool services on top of. While there's a whole lot of potential - there's also growing concern about the privacy implications of this flush of data about where we are. Thus it's timely that a committee of the US House of Representatives is holding a hearing next week to investigate the issues between commercial use of location data and consumer privacy. Below you'll find information about that hearing and five other top stories from the past 24 hours around the web on geolocation, selected with assistance from OneSpot . Speaking of location, watch this space for forthcoming announcements about ReadWriteWeb research reports and events focused on location as a platform. Sponsor "It seems that over the years whenever LBS [location based system] technology makes advances into the consumer space the topic of privacy and security creeps up - and for good reason," writes Glenn Letham of GISuser . Letham first spotted next week's hearing titled Joint Hearing On "The Collection And Use Of Location Information For Commercial Purposes . (He describes his relationship with the hearing in comments below.) It is scheduled for next Wednesday at 10 AM EST. We've requested the list of hearing witnesses from the committee and will update this post when we find out who will be speaking. Best Practices Already Being Hashed Out One likely suspect is Loopt , a very popular location based social network that transmits passive location data to a user's chosen network of friends and allows them to push selected location updates out into public networks like Facebook and Twitter. Loopt CEO Sam Altman says he doesn't know if anyone from his company is speaking at the hearing but that Loopt team members have testified before Congress about user privacy before and found it quite productive. Brian R. Knapp, Chief Privacy Officer and General Counsel at Loopt, says he's been helping people from some other companies prepare for the hearing next week. Altman says Loopt keeps a close eye out for abuse cases and has instituted warning systems like algorithmic monitoring of user behavior, SMS messages to make sure users know they are tracking their location and postal mail sent to the homes of children who sign in. Altman says Loopt participated extensively in the writing of the CTIA best practices document for user location data . Does Altman think the location based economy needs some regulation? "I come up on the Libertarian side of government regulation," he told us, "but it's bad for everyone if someone is playing fast and loose with location data and something bad happens. Regulation may be too strong a word but we need some understanding industry-wide about how to respect privacy and keep people safe." While many location apps are based on explicit "check-ins" by users and others ask users to opt-in to allowing a service to know their location so that location-features may be leveraged, Altman believes that ongoing, passive location tracking will become more common in the future. "When passive location becomes mainstream," he told us, "and I think it will because there are so many upsides, over the next 6 months it's going to become more important that everyone do it the right way." Location as a platform and the privacy challenges therein are going to be hot topics this year. Stick with ReadWriteWeb for ongoing coverage. In other location news today... MWC: Smaato Eyes Geo-Ad Markets Outside US GPS BUSINESS NEWS "Activity in the location-based advertising market is growing rapidly and not just in North America. That's according to Ramy Yared, managing director of adsmobi, the newly-established media buying arm of mobile advertising firm Smaato...A recent report from JP Morgan's analyst Imran Kahn forecast that mobile advertising is set to grow 45% to USD3.8 billion in 2010." TomTom posts solid Q4 results GPS BUSINESS NEWS "TomTom today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2009. During the fourth quarter 2009 the revenue of the Dutch company was €533 million, up one percent against the previous year...TomTom also gave guidance for 2010: 'We expect broadly flat revenue and earnings per share in 2010 compared with 2009', adding that 'we made our assumptions bearing in mind that free turn-by-turn navigation on some smartphone platforms will be available in our major markets.'" Ski gloves now record your GPS coordinates GPS Obsessed "Austria's Zanier have announced a ski glove model with integrated GPS. Dubbed the X-Plore.XGX, the gloves help you follow a route or get back to your car along with recording important ski-related info such as altitude, speed and distance." ESRI Announces Relationship with Amazon Web Services GIS and Science "As part of its commitment to support cloud computing, ESRI is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to join the growing community of AWS Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) building services and solutions in the cloud computing environment." Waze Partners with Intermap: European Bbasemap + Mobile Community GPS BUSINESS NEWS "Geospatial content provider Intermap and user-generated maps and real-time traffic start-up Waze have entered into an agreement where Intermap will supply its European road basemap to Waze and Waze will provide Intermap with live data, consisting of anonymous GPS points - latitude, longitude, and height measurements - sourced from its user's community. " Intermap provides geometric datasets and focuses on topography. Discuss
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Location Data and Privacy Subject of Congressional Hearing Next Week: Today's Top Stories on Geolocation
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