Facebook Launches Verified Accounts and Pseudonyms

Facebook Verified Accounts LogoFacebook, a service built on real names and real identities, will tomorrow start allowing prominent public figures to verify their accounts and then opt to display a preferred nickname instead of their birth name. Those with verified accounts will gain more prominent placement in Facebook’s “People To Subscribe To” suggestions.

Verified accounts are not a departure from Facebook’s policy that users sign up with their real name, as birth names will still be shown on a user’s profile About page. Instead it’s a way to ensure people don’t subscribe to the public updates of impostors. It will also arm Facebook for its battle with Twitter to control the interest graph.

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Surprise! Location App Highlight Actually Creates Serendipity

highlightdavison2212The big promise of location-based mobile apps is that they can help you find something great in real life without you meaning to look for it. But that hasn’t usually been my experience. Instead, whether because of the friction of having to check in, the lack of adoption by friends outside of tech, or whatever else, I simply forget to use them.

That has changed with Highlight, a new passive location app for iOS that shows you when Facebook users with friends and interests in common are nearby. Since it launched last week, I’ve gotten in touch with an old friend/source who’s now at a big new company, discovered a couple previous acquaintances who happen to live or work near me, and got the heads up about a fellow blogger creeping behind me at work. My experience is more or less on track with what founder Paul Davison is hearing from other users so far.

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Google Stockpiles Data Ammo Through Privacy Merge, Guns To Win Relevancy War

golden-bullets-ammo-shortageData is ammunition in the war for information relevancy. And Larry Page, the prototypical war-time CEO, has just told everyone to empty their ammo packs so Google can build one big bomb with the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” and “Apple” chalked on the side.

The privacy policy change announced today rolls more than 70 separate policies into a single one,  and will let the company combine any piece of data it has about you into a single profile. The point is, in the company’s own words, to help it tailor any of its service to who you are, what you do — and to any friends you have.

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Do Blogs Need Comment Reels? Yes, and Here’s How

Gag The TrollsCommenting on blogs is broken. But what we need is a solution, not an abandonment of the concept. The question comes up every few months, but new social commenting technology means there are better answers now than ever before. Over the last day MG Siegler, MacStories, and mobile developer Mike Gemell have all written about choosing the nuclear option and turning off comments entirely on their sites. Their key reasons for doing so seem to be:

1. Comment reels are full of trolls, bile, and spam links
2. There’s no way for popular sites to keep up with comments on old posts
3. Comment reels give random people too much visibility and distract from primary content

Here are my proposed solutions to these problems.

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The Internet Is People

peopleThere’s always been a tension on the Internet between humans and algorithms. In the early days, Yahoo was a human-curated index, remember? But humans couldn’t keep up, and the algorithms took over. Today, the human factor is rising in importance once again with Facebook, Twitter, and countless mobile applications like Instagram. Everything is social. The tension today is between social and search—humans versus computers. Except that it isn’t so simple.

The Internet is not just billions of linked pages, databases, and (increasingly) mobile apps. The Internet is people. It’s you and me.

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Facebook Started Saturating The US Market In 2011

NASA_earth_lights_usaMost third party web measurement firms have provided a steady drumbeat of positive growth news for Facebook over the years, as the company has gained tens of millions of users in the US and around the world. But now the social network appears to be reaching market saturation among internet users in some of its early key markets, with one firm showing nearly 75% of all US internet users on the site.

Instead of raw user growth, the numbers to watch going forward will be around engagement.

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Exclusive: Groupon Acquires Stealth Silicon Valley Startup Campfire Labs

grouponGroupon has continued its (talent) acquisition spree with the recent purchase of a hot Silicon Valley startup before they even launched – and with extremely little fanfare.

We’ve learned that Campfire Labs, which was founded by ex-Googler Sakina Arsiwala (previously Head of International at YouTube) and her husband, social search technology expert Naveen Koorakula (previously at search companies like Inktomi, Yahoo and Picch), was quietly bought by Groupon.

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For Google+, User Count Is A Journey Not A Race

Google User Count JourneyThat’s a good thing because Google+ missed the starting gun. And its “invite only” launch strategy saw all its disconnect users flailing independently. But in the long run that might not matter much, because Google+ doesn’t need a critical mass or tons of engagement. It needs signups so it can get its identity layer under users of its other products. That way it can turn everyone’s searches, mapping, email, and more into fuel for its ad targeting engine.

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