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Two important legal decisions were made this week that could have significant impact on technology startups. On Tuesday, Fred Wilson argues in a post on his blog today that perhaps it is time to reframe the terms of the debate, moving away from the phrase "net neutrality" and instead to argue on behalf of "internet freedom." He writes "Internet Freedom is about sustaining the era of permissionless innovation that has characterized the first fifteen years of the commercial Internet in this country and brought us thousands of new big profitable companies, millions of jobs, and a vast array of new services and devices that have changed our lives and made them better." As courts, legislatures, and agencies try to create policies around digital technologies, how will new startups be effected? Discuss
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New Legal Decisions Will Impact Net Neutrality and Startups
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According to the latest data from analytics firm Hitwise, Ask managed to grow an astonishing 21% last month (from 2.84% to 3.44%), while Microsoft's Bing actually lost 1%. After a long period of slow but steady decline, the total number of U.S. searches on Yahoo grew about 3% last month, while Google lost about 1% and fell under 70%. Alternative search engines only accounted for 1.93% of all U.S. searches. Sponsor Verticals Even though Bing lost some ground in the overall search market, it did quite well in the verticals it already specializes in. Year-over-Year, the percentage of upstream traffic from Bing to automotive, health, shopping and travel sites grew more than 100%. Month-to-month, Bing also saw double-digit growth according to Hitwise. Google, of course, remains the most important source of traffic for these verticals and it's worth noting that even though Bing's important is growing, it only delivers between 2 and 4% of the upstream traffic for these key industries. To some degree, though, Bing isn't really interested in delivering this traffic to outside sources and would rather serve its customers by giving them answers right on its own site. Discuss
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Search Engines in March: Ask Continues to Grow - Bing and Google Lose 1%
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When people talk about managing communities in this new online world, one name is mentioned more often and with more respect than any other: Heather Champ of Flickr . Today Champ announced that after nearly 5 years and more than 4 billion photos uploaded, she is leaving Flickr to start a community management consultancy called Fertile Medium . Flickr went from a Canadian social gaming company in 2004 to a photo sharing service to a Yahoo! acquisition in 2005. 3 years ago next month, Yahoo! shut down its giant Yahoo! Photos service and moved everyone over to Flickr instead. Sponsor Champ put her work in perspective on a blog post that included the following: "How do you take a community the size of small town to the size of a nation? How do you grow a site that began in one region and make it truly global by adding languages and localizing in what's now 25 countries? How do you apply a content filtering system to a living site to ensure that members can be respectful of one another but still share the greatest variety of content? These are some of the big hairy challenges." Just as most of Yahoo! has, Flickr has seen budget challenges as well. A substantial number of the Flickr team members were laid off one year ago this month . Facebook has long been larger and now sees almost an entire Flickr's-worth of photos (3 billion) uploaded to that social network every month. As Facebook pushes its users more and more public with their content, it would be well served by paying attention to what Champ did at Flickr. The succinct and oft-learned from community guidelines at Flickr are among the work that Champ says she has been most proud of. Those challenges were experienced at Flickr in some of the earliest days of what's now called "social media" and Champ helped forge best practices that have served as a foundation for communities all over the web ever since. Photo by Beth Kanter. Discuss
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Flickr's Community Manager Says Goodbye
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Have you become the Mayor of Buttita Plaza Pawn on Foursquare? Or the Archbishop of Myung Dong Tofu Cabin, or the...Deputy Sheriff of the Twilight Bowl? Yay for you! Meanwhile, bloggers in Morocco and Vietnam have become the Governor of Prison and the Water Commissioner of the Interrogation Room. Feel bad? I'm not going to tell you you shouldn't. All this technology we use and write about and enthuse on has higher stakes than we think. Here are some of them. Sponsor Moroccan blogger Abdellatif Ouaiss arrested. Ouaiss was arrested Sunday for "an article published in his English-language blog in which he criticized the ten-year rule of King Mohammed VI" according to Rihab Alhoria . Vietnamese human rights lawyer and blogger Le Thi Cong Nhan rearrested. In the middle of March, only three days after Le Thi Cong Nhan was released from prison after a three year sentence, she was arrested again. "Police took her to a Hanoi police station for allegedly violating the terms of the supplementary sentence of three years of house arrest that she is now supposed to serve," according to From The Old , which has more information. Germany blocks content country-wide, imitates China and Iran. Germany, according to the OpenNetInitiative , has instituted "block lists." What starts with porn ends with you shutting the hell up. (What was that thing about the lessons of history? Ah, whatever. Let's dance! Ganz toll! ) Google gets hacked in China . Intermittent hacking and other mysterious interference slows, and in some places, blocks Google. Google stammered in response. More from ReadWriteWeb . Yahoo gets hacked. In China. Over a dozen Yahoo email accounts belonging to foreign journalists, activists and analysts in China were hacked. Effectively, the email accounts were shut down. More from ReadWriteWeb . Still. Iranian blogger Hessam Firouzi 's still in prison. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer is still in prison. Omid Reza Mir Sayafi (murdered March 18, 2009) is still dead. Top photo by Adrian Van Leen End photo by FreeKareem.org The author was a co-founder of the March 18 Movement. Discuss
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This Week in Online Tyranny
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Associated Press initially reported that three foreign journalists and one analyst have seen their email accounts hacked into today. The New York Times subsequently reported that there were "at least a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China," including the author Andrew Jacobs. AP: "They were greeted with messages saying, 'We've detected an issue with your account' and were told to contact Yahoo, they said Tuesday. Yahoo technicians told one of the four that his account had been hacked and restored his access, but it was not clear if the other instances were related." Sponsor Jacobs reported that "hackers altered (his) e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address." Among those affected were Clifford Coonan of Variety magazine and Kathleen McLaughlin, a freelancer. Agence France Presse reported that Yahoo! was avoiding directly addressing the hacks, saying only that it "condemns all cyberattacks regardless of origin or purpose." Yahoo! was roundly condemned for hurriedly turning over user information on reporter Shi Tao to the Chinese security forces in 2005. Their actions resulted in a long prison term for Shi for sharing Chinese media coverage policy with foreign sources. The late U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos called CEO Jerry Yang a "moral pygmy" for his collusion and subsequent slippery excuse-making. Earlier today, intermittent blocking of Google was reported in the country. China has the most sophisticated and widespread online censorship regime in the world, dovetailing social measures, criminal statutes and electronic measures. Additionally, some believe that government-sponsored, or at least encouraged, hackers have been behind multiple attacks on the properties of foreign companies, like the one that occasioned Google's surprising announcement of its intended withdrawal from China in January. Discuss
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Yahoo Hacked in China: Journalists, Others Affected
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