This past weekend I had an opportunity to attend my first ever BarCamp in Chattanooga (check out Its a New Experience… BarCamp Chattanooga!). I promised a recap and so without further ado…

By most reports there were about 75 attendees at BarCampChatt Saturday July 25th with folks coming from Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The event took place on the campus of Chattanooga State Community College (a wonderful venue by the way!). There were five meeting rooms setup with a variety of topics and speakers. One of the cool things about a BarCamp is its agile, self-defined nature. Speakers sign-up to present of whatever topic they want in the morning and the schedule is posted, even updated, throughout the day. The final schedule for BarCampChatt 2009 will give you a pretty good idea of the wide variety of topics covered.

So which ones did I go to? How interesting that you should ask…
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Just about everyone expects the folks over at Facebook to open up most or all of the user-contributed data to developers tomorrow! Its far short of “breaking news” but it does have some pretty big implications for the way us social media folks live and work.

First, what exactly does it mean that Facebook is exposing their user-contributed data to developers? Well, mainly it means that there is about to be an explosion of apps that interface with and make use of Facebook data, not the least of which will be the messaging available on “The Wall.”

Marketing folks, especially Internet marketers, have been salivating over the thought of having unfettered access to Facebook user data. Just think, not only do I know who you are and what you like and where you live and etc, etc… but I know it about all your friends too! AWESOME!

So, is this going to be another backlash like the Facebook terms of use update a few weeks back? I’m not really sure, I kinda think the terms of use update was aimed at making this possible. I think that the real power of this new avenue into Facebook user-contributed data will manifest itself outside Facebook. Kinda the same way the impact of AOL email manifested itself outside of AOL. Yeah, they made it available and easy to use for the masses, but that just opened the door to a whole new world of possibilities.

I think the AOL example is important for Facebook in another way too. Yes, AOL did really well for a while and made TRUCK LOADS of money, and now look at them. They got way too happy with themselves and worked their way right out of a job. Could the same thing happen with Facebook? Maybe, the scary thing is we don’t even know what we don’t know yet!

Look for mergers too… or at least some way to mash up all your feeds that’s better than anything we have today. I’m a HUGE fan of TweetDeck, in fact its open right now as it is almost all the time. Now that I can send and receive Facebook updates in TweetDeck, I don’t got to Facebook nearly as often…and I can’t tell you the last time I was on the Twitter site. Add to that FriendFeed and all the numerous knock-offs and you simply have too many status update like feeds to keep up with. Something has to give.

Anyway, look for lots of news out about Facebook tomorrow, April 27th and if you’re a Facebook fanatic, watch closely!

There are a couple of news stories out this week that have caught my attention and actually managed to raise my ire just a bit. In my opinion, it just goes to show that double standards exist everywhere… ESPECIALLY when money is involved.

I was reading Tweeting for Twouble by Patricio Robles over at eConsultancy. It recaps a couple of stories from the past week including a very interesting one out of Arkansas about a juror who sent out a couple of updates via Twitter about the case he was hearing. Included in those not infamous Tweets:

So, Johnathan, what did you do today? Oh, nothing really. I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money!

and the real killer…

Oh, and nobody buy Stoam. It’s bad mojo, and they’ll probably cease to exist, now that their wallet is $12M lighter

In that case the defendant lost and was ordered to pay $12 million dollars. He is now appealing that verdict based on a claim of juror misconduct regarding the Tweets…and he’ll probably get it. Then both sides have to pay their lawyers to do this all over again.

As interesting as that is…

…that’s not what caught my attention in the story. It was, in fact, a comment by Robles toward the end. What was said? I’m glad you asked!

Obviously this isn’t Twitter’s fault; Twitter is just a tool.

Really? This isn’t Twitter’s fault? Why not?

If I remember correctly, Napster was just a tool that helped users find other users that had files they were interested in. Yes, it was used most often for sharing music files BUT SO WHAT! The point is the files were never in the posession of Napster, in fact the file exchange actually happened via a peer-to-peer connection between the two users. And yet Napster was found to be “liable for contributory infringement of the plaintiff’s copyright; and … for vicarious infringement of the plaintiff’s copyright¹.” Twitter actually stores the messages and THEN forwards them. Beyond the title of the file being shared, Napster didn’t know anything about the content of the file while Twitter stores and indexes the content of the updates it sends out.

I’ve made a similar argument before that Napster was really no different that Xerox and JVC (with the VCR) yet neither of them were shut down for enabling anonymous users to violate the copyright of original producers. Why not? If Napster can be found guilty of “vicarious infringement of the plaintiff’s copyright” how is it that Xerox and every other copier company cannot? (hint: better lawyers maybe?)

Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter and I don’t think they’ve done anything wrong in the cited case. I just want to point out the obvious double standard that has been applied. And now that there is money on the line over this case, and others, will someone start looking at Twitter the same way they looked at Napster?

¹A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1013, 1020 (9th Cir. 2001)