Editor's note: The following guest post was written by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, founder and CEO of WatchMojo.

When Congress updated copyright laws and passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, it ushered an era of investment, innovation and job creation.  In the decade since, companies like Google, YouTube and Twitter have emerged thanks to the Act, but in the process, they have disrupted the business models and revenue streams of traditional media companies (TMCs).  Today, the TMCs are trying to fast-track a couple of bills in the House and Congress to reverse all of that.

Through their lobbyists in Washington, D.C., media companies are trying to rewrite the DMCA through two new bills.  The content industry’s lobbyists have forged ahead without any input from the technology industry, the one in the Senate is called Protect IP and the one in the House is called E-Parasites.  The E-Parasite law would kill the safe harbors of the DMCA and allow traditional media companies to attack emerging technology companies by cutting off their ability to transact and collect revenue, sort of what happened to Wikileaks, if you will.  This would scare VCs from investing in such tech firms, which in turn would destroy job creation.

The technology industry is understandably alarmed by its implications, which include automatic blacklists for any site issued a takedown notice by copyright holders that would extend to payment providers and even search engines.   What is going on and how exactly did we get here?

What is the DMCA and what are the Safe Harbors?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) updated copyright laws when Congress passed it in 1998 by providing four safe harbors including legal protection from copyright-infringing “information residing on systems or networks at the direction of users.” The DMCA set up an important balance that gave online service providers freedom from liability if they pulled down content upon notification.

In doing so, the DMCA basically allowed user-generated sites to grow and prosper by sheltering them from unfair demands and excessive litigation by traditional media companies (TMCs) when a user did upload infringing content.

Why are Media Companies Unhappy with the DMCA

The DMCA put the burden of identify infringing content on the TMCs, whereby for example NBC Universal had to notify YouTube that someone had uploaded a clip of Lazy Sunday and ask them to take it down.  So long as YouTube removed the video in question then no one got hurt, though some argue that this chain of events has in fact hurt TMCs.

Why are Media Companies Going Nuclear With Pre-Emptive Strike

A cynic would argue that TMCs are essentially applying the same strategy as tech firms just through different channels.  In other words, when venture capitalists fund entrepreneurs to write code which is intended to "disrupt stodgy old industries" (to quote from Sean Parker's LinkedIn profile), no one objects when traditional content companies are not asked for their "input."

Obviously it’s not quite the same: the bills would affect an entire industry (if not the entire economy) for the next generation of Internet startups whereas when a VC invests in a company it is a more limited act, even if that startup has the potential to "change the world" the way Napster or YouTube did.

Furthermore, the fact that emerging companies disrupt TMCs is evolution and a manifestation of the survival of the fittest.  While some will argue that TMCs are relying on lawyers, whereas tech firms compete in the marketplace, the truth is that many tech firms buy time by hiding behind the DMCA, further frustrating the TMCs.

The other reason why TMCs are being "proactive" is that it takes a lot of resources to chase down infringers, both through takedown notices and then through subsequent litigation.  In some cases, the most brass-knuckle approach is being replaced by carrots.  But when you consider that Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube was "too little too late", maybe the TMCs are pursuing this kind of pre-emptive, draconian first strike strategy to make the tech firms they are targeting more willing to play ball.

Indeed, now that the TMCs are showing their willingness to go nuclear, they hope that VCs and tech firms may become more inclined to engage TMCs on their terms.

Impact of Bills on Startups, Job Creation

Investor Fred Wilson is drawing attention to the two new bills, arguing that "these bills were written by the content industry without any input from the technology industry. And they are trying to fast track them through congress and into law without any negotiation with the technology industry.”  He adds, "the last negotiation produced an excellent compromise that has stood the test of time and allowed important new services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to be created and become large companies and massive job creators."

He's right.  No one doubts that these bills would spell the end of the Internet as we know it.  It's also likely that the jobs created by tech firms over the past two decades far outweigh the jobs lost at TMCs.

But it's fair to say that had the TMCs not gone ballistic, then perhaps the tech firms and the VCs who back them would not have cared so much about renewing the dialog and listening to the TMC’s wish list.  Case in point, Mr. Wilson extends the olive branch in his post: "If another negotiation is in order to amend the DMCA, then let’s have it."

There's a saying that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission; that sums up some of the thinking of tech firms over the years.  It could now be argued that the TMCs are not asking for permission to try to rewrite the law and will hope that their pre-emptive strike will allow them to ask for forgiveness when the dust settles.

Both sides are driven by greed and fear, but if the TMCs get their wish and blow the DMCA away, then the uncertainty around the corner might come back and haunt them.  The technology industry will adapt if it needs to, and who knows what that will mean for the media industry.  After all, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

Photo credit: Flickr/James Vaughan

With over 100K weekly downloads coming in just from China, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom had a lot to say during his TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing talk, tackling head-on the issue of how to approach social in China’s unique market as well as what exactly to do about the multitudes of clones.

We chatted with Systrom after his talk backstage, and found out a little bit more about where the company sees themselves in the future. Instagram is currently focused on the Asia, with its second biggest market being Japan. And Systrom isn’t afraid of the clones, “There might be 10 clones here, [but] there is also 20 clones from the United States right? You know, being copied is something that I think that every successful company will go through. Our biggest defensible asset really is our community, and I think that’s the thing that you’re not going to find on any of these replicas.”

The hardest part about adjusting to China for most Internet companies is that social networks like Facebook and Twitter are censored, leaving apps like the social-heavy Instagram to reckon with Chinese equivalents Weibo and Renren. “It’s a matter of resources and time,” Systrom said, “And I think that we’re really excited, actually, in the near future to add support for a bunch of Japanese social networks, Chinese social networks, Korean social networks. Because it’s really clear that the top five social networks that we list today in the app aren’t necessarily the top five in other countries.”

When asked if accumulating these resources involved Instagram raising another round of funding (as currently rumored across the Valley), Systrom said that the six-person company was focused on “staying as lean as possible.” “It’s not really a priority right now to raise more money,” he told me, “When I think the company starts scaling both on the people front and even more the network front then I think there will be an opportunity to raise more money for the company, but it really doesn’t make sense right now.”

Systrom also hinted that Instagram Video was (somewhere) on the horizon, “Video makes sense to do. I will say it’s a very interesting area. We really want to go after something bigger than filtered photos. Our job and our vision is to allow you to tell the story of your life, and whatever tools that may be for video, we’ll end up making them. I’m not sure if that includes filters for video or not, but we’ll definitely consider it.”

Last week at Disrupt Beijing, Sarah Lacy interviewed Skype co-founder and Atomico investor Niklas Zennstrom. (You can watch the full fireside chat in the video above.) Zennstrom was a pioneer in building a series of startups on peer-to-peer technology (Skype, Kazaaa, Joost), but towards the end of the interview he says, “Peer to peer is not disruptive today.”  Sometimes it makes sense to use it, sometimes it doesn’t.  Many networks are hybrid.  But what was originally a competitive advantage and a way to get around bandwidth bottlenecks is no longer so crucial.  Zennstrom learned that with Joost when broadband costs plummeted and made it more economical to just stream videos directly to users.

The other reason Joost failed was because “the incumbents did a fantastic job” of competing with Hulu.  Joost never could get the best content for its third-party network.

Skype was always big in China, and he explains how Skype cracked the market.  He also talks about how the venture business needs to change on a global basis.  ”The market has changed from an investor’s market to an entrepreneur’s market,” he says, recalling back when he was pitching Skype to VCs and nobody really getting it, especially in Europe.  ”What needs to change is that traditional venture capital investors are very local,” he says, “but the tech industry is  a global industry today.  You tend to see companies become global leaders or regional losers.”  It is very binary.

In a little over two years of existence, the smartphone game Angry Birds is now a household name. A lesson in horizontal brand extension, Rovio “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka wore an Angry Birds sweater and carried around a bouquet of Angry Birds mylar ballons, on not just one, but all days of the TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing conference.

He is in China because the sprawling country is Rovio’s second biggest and fastest growing market, and Vesterbacka is attacking it full force; opening an office in Shanghai and Angry Birds retail stores in the country shortly. The game itself has had over 50 million downloads in China, and Vesterbacka hopes to hit 100 million by the end of the year. “We want to be the leading Chinese entertainment brand,” he says.

Vesterbacka describes Angry Birds as the “most copied” brand in China and plans on dealing with the piracy by making better copies than the pirates; “It would be even worse if nobody copied us, because it would me that nobody cares about the brand.”

Vesterbacka has extended that brand to stuffed animals, cookbooks and even a movie! “If you have a popular loved brand it will take physical form, ” he explains, “In our case books are happening as well. We’re doing animation … we’re making movies.”

Not surprisingly, Vesterbacka views Walt Disney as a role model, ” If Walt Disney was alive today, he would be making games for the iPhone … We’re just using the tools of the trade [available] today to build a brand. Back in the day you had animation and you had black and white cartoons.” Nowadays you have iOS.

So is Vesterbacka too ambitious? “Mickey Mouse is a tiny little mouse but a huge pop culture icon.” Enough said.

The “Virgin” king Sir Richard Branson teams up with Bulova for a special limited edition watch. 46mm wide and done in titanium, the watch features a GMT hand and world time function.

May the high-end watch world’s fascination with digital mechanical watches never end. The newest drool-worthy mechanical creation is a watch with the simple name of 2LMX. It features a highly complex mechanical movement with a vertical tourbillon, and the time told in 24 hour format on a series of revolving drums.

Created with the help of a watchmaker/mathematician the new Zenith Captain Winsor Annual Calendar Chronograph watch offers a slew of useful features at a glance. It also has a smooth classic look that offers a timeless feel – appropriate for most any man.

We are excited about this March LA.B AM1 40 Automatic watch giveaway. The AM1 40 is inspired by the look and feel of classic American muscle cars and has a modern, yet totally retro feel.

Orient has offered well-priced mechanical watches made in Japan for a long while. Japan in general is probably the best source for good mechanical watches that won’t break the bank. Reviewed here is Orient’s newer M-Force Diver watch.

If you check Facebook today for real-time updates in its Ticker feed, you may find yourself staring at ads instead. Some Facebook users are now seeing a redesigned version of the home page that places ad units at the top of the right sidebar. Ticker, Events, and birthdays have been moved down beneath these ads. Similarly, some now see ads relocated above the Timeline profile’s navigation column in the right sidebar. Those in the test with windows wide enough for Ticker to be snapped to the far right see ads above everything else in the sidebar.

By making ads more prominent on some of the most frequently browsed parts of the sites, users may be more likely to click through or at least see them. If Facebook rolls out this redesign to the entire user base it could significantly increase the value of the site’s premium home page and profile ad inventory. Alternatively, by dynamically rearranging the home page and profile sidebar, Facebook could consistently trick users into looking at ads where they were expecting to see the Ticker or navigation column. Either way, the changes could allow it to charge advertisers more and increase revenues.

Facebook rarely places its bottom line above the interest of the user experience but here it has done so quite literally. The whole point of the Ticker was to allow users to consume real-time updates without having to switch to a separate “Most Recent” tab of the news feed. By burying Ticker below ads, users are less likely to notice a friend asking for someone to go to dinner with or a conversation developing around a posted link. They’re also less likely to notice they have Events or friends with birthdays that day.

On Timeline, the redesign makes more sense. By lowering the Timeline navigation column, it sits closer to the feed of updates that actually moves when users click to view content from last month or last year. Cleverly, if users do scroll down the Timeline such that the ads would be obscured, the ads suddenly reappear beneath the navigator and begin to float so they stay visible.

Only a limited set of users are currently seeing these redesigns, so they could disappear as quickly as they showed up. However, the fact that Facebook is even testing them indicates it may be loosening up in terms of the real estate it’s willing to give advertisers. Classically, Facebook has taken a long term approach to monetization, making ads as unobtrusive as possible to keep users addicted to the site. With the company expecting to IPO in 2012 though, it might be interested in juicing its ad revenues to court investors even if it slightly degrades usability.

The backlash was inevitable.

Siri has had a bit of an image problem this past week. Just like all technology propelled by the tailwinds of hype, it hit the inevitable wall of tech punditry. This magically turned the stream of largely positive stories into a river of negative stories under the guise of things like: “the voice of reason” or the “wake up call”. It’s the oldest trick in the book and it never fails to generate massive pageview energy. It happens 100 percent of the time. But it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture.

First of all, the downtime issue is a total red herring. Yes, Siri has been wonky on and off for the past few days. God forbid that a service explicitly labeled as “beta” behave like a service still in beta. I understand that this is a bit of a tough concept to understand since companies like Google leave software in beta for the better part of a decade, thus castrating the term. But look no further than how rarely Apple actually labels something as “beta”. They basically never do it. They only do it when they expect a service to be less than spectacular 100 percent of the time.

That’s why stories demanding an explanation for Siri’s downtime are comical. Siri is behaving exactly as Apple has said that it would. Perhaps their only mistake was using the “beta” tag, which again, apparently means nothing anymore. And running a commercial touting the beta feature may not have been the best play right now either.

The more interesting angle of the backlash goes after what Siri is and what Siri is not. A few days ago, Jordan wrote a post entitled “Siri, Why Are You So Underwhelming?” In it, she brings up a few key points that I think are reflective of some frustrations many are having in this post-hype phase. While the broader notion is a bit silly: No, Siri cannot be a full replacement for a human assistant — nor do you have to pay Siri tens of thousands of dollars a year, provide it with health insurance, etc. Some of the smaller points definitely ring true. Siri can’t add contacts. Siri can’t open apps. Siri can’t play TV shows. Etc. But there’s a keyword missing in each of these:

Yet.

Again, see: beta. All of that is coming, I have no doubt.

The key is when Jordan also complains that she can often type faster than Siri can think. That’s undoubtedly true. But the thinking here has to extend beyond the present and your own self. It reminds me a bit of the people who used to say that they needed a physical keyboard on their phone. And that Apple would eventually have to add one to the iPhone. It was a certainty. BlackBerry FTW.

Now all of those people seem to happily be using iPhones (or Android phones) without physical keyboards without problems. BlackBerry? Yeah…

What Siri represents is an extension of computing by utilizing something that (most) everyone has: voice. It’s the same thing with the touchscreens on the iPhone and iPad. They also utilize something that (most) everyone has: fingers. “If you see a stylus, they blew it,” Steve Jobs once famously said. And he was right. Why create something to distance yourself from the machine? In the past, these crutches were needed. We’re getting to the point where they aren’t anymore. Forget the mouse and keyboards, it’s touch and voice.

Everyone is amazed now when they see children interact with the iPad in such a natural way. And they’re even more amazed when they see a child with a physical magazine and it’s extremely foreign to them. The same thing will one day be true with Siri (or any comparable voice technology). What’s easier, teaching a child to type on a keyboard or letting them speak to a computer? There’s a reason why basically every science fiction author in the last century envisioned a future in which we speak to our computers. And there’s a reason why every major technology company has been working on speech technology for the past few decades. It’s a natural thing to do. And it makes sense that eventually it becomes a computing norm. Again, just like touch.

But we’re not there yet. And that’s why we’re seeing some of this backlash. Is Siri perfect? Of course not. It’s probably 1 percent of where it should be if we’re to use it as a regular computing input. But I’m always amazed when people seem to completely discount the fact that the technology will get better over time — and quickly.

But maybe it’s hard to blame them. Again, these are the people who wanted iPhones with physical keyboards. We want what we know. We don’t know voice as a primary method of computing. It’s awkward. It’s foreign. But it won’t be forever. And it especially won’t be for children who grow up learning to speak to computers. Our hesitance to speak to our machines will seem awkward to them.

Does that mean speech replaces text input entirely? Of course not. There are some times where typing is better — when you’re in a noisy room, for example. Or in a place you need to be quiet. Or if you’re saying something private. But there’s also a reason why humans don’t stand with one another and quietly pass notes back and forth.

My point is simply that you should take the Siri backlash with a grain of salt. We’ve seen such backlashes before, we’ll see it again. Everything is “stupid” and “useless” until it’s everywhere.

[image: CBS]

By any measure Drew Houston and his Dropbox team are having a hugely successful run. In Houston’s final Founder Stories episode with TechCrunch editor, Erick Schonfeld, Houston says he plans to maintain this momentum by focusing on mobile, and just about everything else.

Houston says Dropbox has secured a new agreement with HTC, where it “is going to be baked into tens-of-millions of [Android] phones” and like Facebook, Dropbox plans to stamp its product on everything. “In 18-months you are going to see little Dropbox buttons everywhere.”

But will Dropbox’s strategy be strong enough to fend off popular sites like Instagram and Twitter, which also store digital content submitted by large user communities? Or put more bluntly “five years from now, will I even need Dropbox?” asks Schonfeld.

Houston believes the answer to both questions is yes.

“We can help you get stuff out of each of those little silos or little boxes and put them all in one place so that all that content can be more useful to you and we can help you share it and we can help you see it on your iPad or see it on your TV.”

We’ll see how it all plays out.

Until then, make sure to watch episodes I, II and III of Schonfeld’s interview with Houston.

Past episodes of Founder Stories featuring Eric Ries, Julia Hartz and Christopher Poole are here.

Of course not. And yet, as a key cause and effect of globalization, the Internet does play an important role in enabling the conditions that produce today's 27 million slaves around the world. But it's also the vehicle with which we can fight this slavery. That's the opinion, at least, of Justin Dillon, the CEO of Slavery Footprint, a State Department funded organization launched at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative, which is focused on exposing and fighting contemporary slavery.

The Internet, indeed, is now becoming an essential tool for not only fighting slavery but also raising our awareness about how prevalent it is in many of the products that we consume. As Dillon explained when he came into our TechCrunchTV studio, Slavery Footprint has released an Android and iPhone mobile app which will enable us to find out how much slavery is contained in products that we buy.

Dillon reminded me, for example, that it takes an average of 3.2 forced laborers to produce the average smartphone. Doesn't that seem like an awfully high price to pay for being connected?

Happy anniversary to me: I’ve now been writing this here weekly column for exactly one year. In that time I have opined, prescribed, and predicted many things. And now, as part of my one-man crusade for greater opinion-journalism accountability, I’m going to take a moment to go back and look at what I got right … and where I went horribly, hilariously wrong.

With luck this will be an annual event. I mean, assuming Erick doesn’t take a look at this track record and decide to can me on the spot.

(cracks knuckles)

OK, then: without any further ado, and leaving out posts too recent to be judged or those that didn’t contain forward-looking statements, let’s see what I said over the last 52 weeks, and why…

November:

• My very first post was How RIM’s PlayBook Could Have Succeeded, six months before RIM even released it. Fortunately for me, I was dead right: it was an unmitigated flop, at least in part for the reasons I cited.
• In Dear Foursquare, Gowalla: Please Let’s Stop Pretending This Is Fun, I suggested they stop making check-ins a game and just offer users coupons instead. Foursquare has increasingly done just that; Gowalla has actually pivoted to become a travel guide.
• Pretty good so far! But then I predicted the death of Bump. Boy, did I get that one wrong. Mostly because I wildly overestimated how fast widespread NFC adoption would occur. (And the lack of NFC in the iPhone 4S has probably pushed it back by another year.) But as I wrote in that post, I actually really like Bump; so if I was going to be wrong about anything, I’m glad it was this.
• I then asked Can Anything Stop The Facebook Juggernaut? Short answer: no. Facebook has become to the social web what Microsoft is to the desktop: mindbogglingly gargantuan, relentlessly mediocre, and almost inescapable, I wrote, and so far I’ve been right.

December:

• In Here Comes The Wetware, I predicted the rise of thought-controlled computing. Hasn’t happened yet, but that was more of a long-term call anyway.
• Then I plaintively asked Google eBooks: Is That All There Is? and, indeed, so far Google’s eBookstore is nothing special and has had virtually no effect on the publishing world.
• I called a bubble in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad App World. Is it? Maybe. But the fight for good talent has gotten even fiercer since. My most important prediction there is a long-term one; that even if this is a bubble, the subsequent boom as the smartphone revolution hits the developing world will ultimately dwarf it. We’ll see.
• In The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be, I predicted that Android would conquer the developing world, and that tech there will start to evolve faster than it does here, thanks to their blank-slate advantage. Seems I was dead right about that first one; jury’s out on the second.

January:

• Can Google Get Its Mojo Back? was my second-most-viewed piece ever. At the time, the suggestion that Google had grown seriously troubled was controversial. But Google’s own subsequent actions prove that they recognized they had a big problem, and they acted decisively: changed CEOs, reshuffled the executive ranks, launched their new Panda search algorithm to fight SEO spammers, closed swathes and swathes of stagnating projects, and reoriented much of what was left around Google+.
• In When The Drones Come Marching In, and again in Droning On Towards A Date With Destiny?, I predicted that autonomous UAVs in the hands of criminals and terrorists were going to become a major problem. Well, that’s already begun, and it’s only going to get worse.

February:

• In The End Of History, Part II, I took on Malcolm Gladwell and claimed that social media were, in fact, a really big deal in the Arab Spring and the like. It’s a view that more and more people seem to support these days.
• In Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why? I suggested that while StackExchange’s expansion strategy was good, their tactics were flawed. I stand by that.
• In Burning Chrome I lauded Google for their canny strategy of slowly and iteratively replacing the operating system with the browser. I’m happy to stand by that too.

March:

• I returned to poor RIM with RIM Finally Sees The Light. Unfortunately, It's An Onrushing Train – Or Is It? in which I suggested that maybe they would do something really subversive and disruptive, and fork Android. Got that one dead wrong … but that is exactly what Amazon did, for the Kindle Fire, which is already a success beyond PlayBook’s wildest revised dreams. Oh, RIM. You never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
• Then an embarrassment: I wrote The Walled Garden Has Won, in which I argue that Android is really just as controlled a platform as the iPhone, only to issue a subsequent mea culpa because I got a crucial fact wrong.
• In How The Mainstream Media Is Failing Us With Its Nuclear Hysteria, I took the stance that the Fukushima disaster and associated nuclear terror was horrendously misreported and exploited by the world’s mainstream media, considering that nobody died there and it was part of a disaster that killed 20,000 people. The jury will be out on this one for a generation, but it’s worth noting that all the predictions of imminent doom turned out to be wrong.

April:

• I took on Facebook again with Facebook Comments Epitomizes Everything I Hate About Facebook. In subsequent releases, they added almost all of the features I demanded; you don’t get a much better vote of confidence than that. Thanks, Facebook!

May:

• My most-viewed piece, by far: Why The New Guy Can't Code. It’s fair to say that many people agree that most technical interviews are deeply flawed. Some startups, eg Gild, are trying to disrupt this problem. I wish them the best.
• In When Dinosaurs Ruled The Books, I lambasted the traditional publishing industry and called for the Netflix-ization of books. Just this week, that finally started to happen, thanks to Amazon.
• I wrote about Bitcoin twice, in Make.Money.Slow: The Bitcoin Experiment and Is The World Crazy For Bitcoin, Or Has The Bitcoin World Gone Crazy? I supported the long-term importance of distributed virtual currencies, but was skeptical about Bitcoin itself. Events (so far) seem to have proved me right re the latter: we’ll see about the former.

June:

• I went travelling through East Africa and North India and wrote a bunch of pieces from the road, including This Is Where The Magic Happens. No predictions there; it was straight reportage, not opinion; I’m just mentioning it here because I’m particularly proud of it.

July:

• I wrote about encroaching surveillance states in: Intelligence Agencies Keep Getting Dumber and (in August) Welcome to the Panopticon. Sadly, I don’t yet seem to be wrong.
• When Google Plus launched, I took a couple of swings in the Nymwars with Google Plus Has A Problem. Fear Not: I Have A Solution and “For Those Who Don’t Want To Believe”. Google has since about-faced and publicly committed to supporting pseudonyms. We’ll see whether they use my proposed solution. I’ve since said I Believe In Google Plus (though please don’t confuse “believe in” with “use”.) We’ll know this time next year whether I’m deluded.

September:

• Finally, my most negatively received post, by some distance, was The Tragic Triumph Of The MBAs. I’ll concede that it was a broad-brush piece, and I could have conveyed my nuanced point with more precision. But I stand by its central thrust. I think business types are often unaware of, or at best underestimate, the profound suspicion and mistrust in which they are frequently — or even generally – held by techies, and they would do well to consider why that is.

Hmm. All things considered, I seem to have mostly done rather well this year. Put down that axe, Erick! Looks like I might just stick around.

The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — returned to the Social Wars with renewed vigor courtesy of two weeks of material. These issues included the Klout algorithm crisis, more fun with iOS 5 push notifications, the incredible shrinking Google+ numbers, and @scobleizer’s fabulous Verb Wall aka Spotify Motel where data goes into Facebook and never comes out.

Personally, I’m not too worried about Facebook leaving money on the table, or how Netflix suddenly validated a ton of value with their supposed social mistake. Instead I see an ever-expanding set of social services creating new opportunities for sharing realtime hints about what we will find interesting and valuable just in time. Oh, and Twitter just keeps on rocking. Now back to my movie, @Mention Matinee with nobody you have heard of yet.

@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks