Mediaboss Marketing

Facebook may have garnered 1.3 billion users since its inception a decade or so ago, but today there's an upstart contender that has set its sights on much of that same social networking world.

"Simple, beautiful and ad-free" is Ello's tagline, and the new social network is gaining considerable attention. Though it's still in invitation-only beta, it was reportedly gaining more than 30,000 new users per hour as of late last week.

"Your social network is owned by advertisers," reads Ello's manifesto. "Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that's bought and sold."

Aiming to offer an alternative, the site says it believes "that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership. We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate -- but a place to connect, create and celebrate life."

In fact, Ello doesn't consider networks like Facebook as competition "because they aren't really social networks," Ello spokesperson Rachel Fukaya told the E-Commerce Times. "They're advertising platforms."

Ello, on the other hand, "is a social network -- that's all we do," Fukaya said.

As for monetization, "Ello is still a business -- sort of like the app store, the main features of Ello will always be free," she explained.

To keep the site afloat, "for a very small amount of money we are going to sell special features that certain users may want to add to their account," Fukaya said. "We have thousands of people writing in requesting features they would be willing to pay for."

In the big picture, "we're proving that there's a different way to make money than selling ads, and can save the Internet from becoming one giant billboard," Ello's Fukaya concluded. "There's a better way, and we're building it."

Ello reportedly endured a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack early this week and lived to tell the tale.

Link:
Can Ello Convince Facebook Fans to Say Farewell?

San Francisco, Sep 30 (EFE).- Social networking giant Facebook has unveiled a new platform in which it provides its users' data to advertisers so that they can place their ads more effectively on third party sites.

The platform Atlas will gather data from Facebook and use it on external websites. This means that if a user clicks "Like" on the social networking site of sports shoes, ads of similar products may appear on other websites.

The data collected through Facebook is drawn from a history of the tastes and interests of each user, allowing advertisers to better identify their potential buyers.

Facebook, that bought Atlas from Microsoft last year for a sum of $100 million, finally launched it on Monday after a complete design overhaul.

Until now, Facebook was selling advertising space on the social network and using cookies to track the tastes of the users as they surfed the internet so that they could be shown ads according to their preferences.

This new method is designed, in principle, to improve the effectiveness of the advertising as cookies are often inaccurate and don't track well on mobile devices, something that Atlas will do through Facebook.

This new venture is Facebook's attempt to close the gap with its main competitor in online advertising, Google, which continues to lead by a wide margin.

In the second quarter, Google notched up earnings of $14.36 billion from advertising against Facebook's $2.68 billion, which is nearly five times less. EFE

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More:
Facebook Sells User Data for Atlas Ads

Back in August, the Third Circuit handed down an unpublished opinion in United States v. Gomez (August 8, 2014), that appears to have rejected the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment, at least in the context of telephone metadata. I havent seen any coverage of the decision elsewhere, so I thought I would blog it.

In Gomez, the government obtained a pen register order to monitor the metadata for Gomezs telephone calls for about 5 weeks. Gomez argued that under the Jones concurrences, the prolonged surveillance was sufficient to constitute a Fourth Amendment search. The Third Circuit disagreed in an opinion by Judge Smith joined by Judges Vanaskie and Schwartz:

Gomez first argues that the DEAs prolonged warrantless use of a pen register and trap and trace device violated his privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment. We agree with the District Court that this argument is foreclosed by Smith [v. Maryland]. Gomez provided a third party in this case, Sprint with all the data that the DEA obtained through the use of the pen register and trap and trace device. In so doing, Gomez abandoned his privacy interest in this data because he assumed the risk that the information would be divulged to police. Smith, 442 U.S. at 745, 99 S.Ct. 2577. Although Justice Sotomayor has urged the Court to reconsider Smiths holding that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties, United States v. Jones, U.S. , 132 S.Ct. 945, 957, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012) (Sotomayor, J., concurring), we remain bound by Smith until a majority of the Court endorses this view.

The Third Circuit then adds the following explanatory footnote:

In the proceedings below, Gomez conceded that his position was contrary to Smith, but cited Justice Sotomayors concurrence in Jones for the proposition that Smith is antiquated and must be reconsidered. J.A. 60. Gomez presents a different argument on appeal. Instead of urging us to overrule Smiths third party doctrine, Gomez contends that this doctrine has already been cabined by five Justices of the Supreme Courta number he reaches by combining Justice Sotomayors and Justice Alitos concurrences in Jones. Appellants Br. 27, 31. As Gomez did not raise this argument before the District Court, it is waived. Holk v. Snapple Beverage Corp., 575 F.3d 329, 336 (3d Cir.2009).

In any event, we reject Gomezs contention that the concurrences in Jones cabined Smith. Justice Alitos concurrence did not explicitly seek to limit Smith, and indeed relied heavily on the fact that drivers of automobiles do not expect third parties to possess detailed, long-term data regarding their location. Jones, 132 S.Ct. at 964 (Alito, J., concurring). By contrast, cell phone users do expect service providers to possess detailed, long-term data regarding the numbers they dial because this information is necessarily conveyed in the course of connecting a call. Smith, 442 U.S. at 743, 99 S.Ct. 2577. By disclosing this data, cell phone users, unlike drivers of automobiles, assume[ ] the risk that a third party will convey it to law enforcement. Id. at 744, 99 S.Ct. 2577. Therefore, we are not persuaded that the two concurrences in Jones have limited Smith to short-term call monitoring.

Off the top of my head, I think this is the first federal court of appeals opinion to directly address the important question of whether the mosaic theory modifies Smith v. Maryland. The opinion was not published and is therefore non-precedential. But given that this is likely to be an important issue when the D.C. Circuit reviews Klayman v. Obama on November 4th, I thought the Third Circuits opinion was worth noting.

Orin Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 2001. He teaches and writes in the area of criminal procedure and computer crime law.

Read the original post:
Volokh Conspiracy: Third Circuit on the mosaic theory and Smith v. Maryland

Israeli Intelligence Whistleblowers Expose Israel #39;s NSA Scandal (1/2)
James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory, discusses the 43 refuseniks in Israel #39;s Unit 8200 (NSA equivalent) who object to spying on ordinary Palestinians...

By: VisionLiberty

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Israeli Intelligence Whistleblowers Expose Israel's NSA Scandal (1/2) - Video

Episode 58 CO Tax Hike; NSA Code in Android clip26

By: HUONG 07

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Episode 58 CO Tax Hike; NSA Code in Android clip26 - Video