Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's hyperbolic CEO, has been telling anyone who will listen that the "sudden convergence of cloud, social and mobile spheres" is forcing - and allowing - companies to connect with customers in new ways, and to listen with an intensity never before possible.

I'm sure the benefits of social business are dramatic and undeniable, but am I alone in being totally creeped out at what seems to be an obvious invastion of privacy? I don't know about you, but I'm just not ready for companies - even companies I choose to do business with - to closely follow everything I do and say. Even if other humans aren't involved.

Do You Want To Be Connected To A Machine?

At a recent executive event in San Francisco, Benioff entertained customers and journalists wtih a video featuring Beth Comstock, GE's high-profile CMO, claiming her "core belief" is that "business is social." But she didn't just mean people communicating with people, she also meant people communicating with machines. 

The big question for GE, Comstock said, is "how do we connect our customers/employees to our machines?" GE's goal is to combine data from customers and data from its machines - connecting machines to social networks is very big.

The video demonstrated how GE was connecting jet engines to social networks to alert mechanics of their diagnostic status. "If you're in business," Comstock said, "you need social because it will get you closer to your customer… Feedback - that's a marketers dream."

Sounds great, right?

The Menace Of An Internet-Enabled Toothbrush

But consider Benioff's example of the Internet of Things driving social business. He cited Philips' Internet-connected toothbrush that records the time and duration of brushing. With one of these babies, when you go to the dentist and he asks, "have you been brushing" and you answer "yeah," the conversation doesn't end there, Benioff said. The dentist could reply "Let's have a look" and see exactly how much brushing you actually did.

That thought terrifies me. While such a scenario might indeed help keep my teeth from falling out, it's also profoundly creepy and invasive. After all, what if my dental insurance provider got hold of the data, and decided it wouldn't pay to fill that cavity because I didn't brush long enough?

As Benioff correctly noted, the "biggest part is trust." "With all that data about you out on the network, it gets down to another level of trust with the vendors you choose to let be a part of your life."

I trust my doctor with a large amount of intensely personal information - augmented by pretty specific laws and industry practices. For some reason, I'm less comfortable giving my dentist the same degree of trust. Philips and Salesforce? Absolutely not!

How Much Should Your Shirt Salesman Know About You?

Another participant at the event, male-apparel retailer Trunk Club, is also leveraging user information to help "guys that just dont like to shop" said COO Rob Chesney. Trunk Club's goal is to make "it really easy for you to look great" by not just tracking what he's already bought, but whatever other information may be available online. When a customer contacts Trunk Club, "we pull up this guy and find out what is he all about. We see all his social media info. "It's the future of service-oriented retail."

Not for me.

Chesney noted that having this kind of info could help Trunk Club sell higher end clothing to a customer who just got a promotion - an event it might learn of Facebook. That might not be so bad, but what is the company going to do if the customer gets laid off? Offer condolences and try to sell them cheap t-shirts? Awkward to say the least.

Social.com: Salesforce's Facebook & Twitter Tools

Salesforce also pitched its new Social.com tools, designed to help other companies operate this way. Salesforce rolled out the ability to run Facebook campaigns that target users based on what they've posted and linked to on their own Facebook pages.

On Twitter, the idea is start "buying in the moment" - spreading promoted tweets even as the larger Twitter conversation is trending. The promoted tweet shows up any time someone tweets with a relevant hashtag.

To make that work, of course, you've got to be monitoring all the time. "You can't be relevant if you're not listening," explained Facebook's Fergus Gluster (yes, that's his real name).

Jonathan Nelson, CEO of ad agency Omnicom Digital, said that these innovations are a key step toward closing the loop linking real-time advertising to real-time buying. The key, he said, is delviering "the right message for the right person at the right time."

Ironically, in a small panel discussion for journalists, Nelson noted that the "suppression of advertising" when it's not appropriate is "more than half the battle."

That's a key part of reducing the creep factor. 

Finally, just so you know, I'm not alone in worrying about these issues. Another panelist, Altimeter Group's Susan Etlinger, admitted that "as a consumer, I don't particularly want to be targeted." The key, Etlinger said, is to build a relationship over time and "be relevant when the consumer needs us, not when we need them." 

That's a step in the right direction. But if companies they really care about not being creepy, they'll learn to respond quickly and effectively when asked, and otherwise stay out of my face.

Photos - except for the toothbrush - by Fredric Paul for ReadWrite

The White House tapped Twitter legal director Nicole Wong as its first chief privacy officer, CNET reported. Wong, a Silicon Valley legal veteran, had only been at Twitter about six months; she was previously at Google for eight years.

It's not entirely clear what the White House chief privacy officer will do. Cabinet-level CPOs are generally tasked with ensuring that their departments follow federal rules for the handling of personal information (see, for instance, these authority and responsibilities of the Homeland Security CPO). It's fairly likely that the White House CPO would do likewise for the Obama administration, and might also serve as a presidential advisor on privacy-related federal regulations and legislation.

At Google, Wong managed a team of lawyers that reviewed products before launch and combed over everything from removal requests to copyright issues, earning her the nickname "The Decider." Her appointment is striking because, as CNET's Declan McCullagh put it, Wong is "a Silicon Valley lawyer who has been immersed in technology issues" and not a member of the Washington establishment.

Fullscreen, a media company founded in 2011 and built entirely on YouTube, announced Friday afternoon the first Google Glass YouTube app, letting users seamlessly upload video directly to the service. The app is called BEAM and it also gives users the option to share the URL via Twitter with the automatic #throughglass hashtag. 

Prior to Fullscreen's app, Glass users were restricted to sharing video through their Google+ accounts. Check out Fullscreen's video below:

And here is the company's step-by-step breakdown of how to broaden Glass' video-sharing reach:

Twitter's Vine could be the killer app for Google Glass. They (should) go together like strawberries and chocolate.

Yes, Google Glass needs a killer app. Beyond the breathless hype by white guys in Silicon Valley, what exactly is the mass market supposed to do with Google Glass? The most talked-about Glass uses, like augmented reality and instant data presentation, don't have obvious appeal outside of the early adopter community. 

(See also 10 Compelling Ways People Plan To Use Google Glass.)

Vine on Glass, however, could be something almost everyone could get into. Vine on Glass would let all your followers - and potentially the whole world - see what you see, almost as soon as you see it, in an easily digestible form. While you could do much of this with a smartphone, when you see something you want to record, you need to pull out your phone and power up the video camera. Not so with Glass, which promises an almost frictionless experience. If you are wearing Glass, you could Vine, effortlessly.  

This has never been possible before. 

Making The Vine-On-Glass Match

The six-second limit on Vine videos also means that Glass wearers don't need to constantly stream everything they see, allowing Glass users to maintain full control and ownership over what they record, and what they share. Six seconds is long enough to capture the moment - the feel of an event or experience - in a way that is powerful, easy to record and share, but not so long that viewers get bored or creeped out. And Vine videos don't require the kind of editing and composition skills that it takes to make watchable longer form movies.

I suspect both Twitter and Google are already working on a partnership - though neither responded to my request for comment. Venture capitalist John Doerr has hinted that Twitter is already working on a Twitter - Glass app. First stop tweet, next stop picture, then... Vine: Hands-free, real-time, short videos, shot instantly with Glass, distributed instantly to the world via Twitter. And the companies are hardly strangers: Google used Twitter to help choose who would be first to own Glass with its #ifihadglass promotion.

Sure, Google would rather users share their videos on Google+. But Twitter has proven that no one does real-time sharing better, and the short, bursty Vine format combines the best of Twitter and Glass. 

How Would It Work?

Admittedly, there are some issues with creating Vine videos on Glass. Do you move your head? Stand still? How many taps to initiate recording and/or uploading? Based on the latest Project Glass "how to" video, however, even those minor barriers appear to be falling. 

Vine On Glass Use Cases

Unless and until we actually get Vine on Glass, we won't know how the combo would be used. But here are some likely scenarios:

• Ask your followers if the awesome shoes you are trying on are right for you.
• Impress followers with your amazing view of the San Francisco skyline - or just tease them with what you see in real, physical space.
• Show them how the guy three persons ahead of you in line is being a total jerk.
• Let them cry with you as you hold your newborn for the first time, or coo with you when you take your new puppy home - all while your hands remain completely free and in the moment. 
• You witness a traffic accident and immediately report all details, including video and audio of the aftermath. 
• POV video from sports events - as a spectator or even a participant.

The Vines embedded below offer more examples of Vines that would work even better if they had been recorded with Google Glass instead of an iPhone:

One false tweet from a hacked Associated Press Twitter account wiped $200 billion off the stock market, but most tweets don't move markets one way or another. In fact, there appears to be little rhyme or reason for Twitter's effect on individual stocks.

Take Google. While its stock has been on a six-month tear, growing 19% in that period, its "social stock" has been anything but over the same timeframe:

Source: MarketIQ analysis of Google-related tweets.

Or what about Cisco? Stock is up 19% over the last six months too, while Twitter reflects 82% bearish sentiment. Apple? Stock is down 33% in the last six months, while Twitter sentiment remains neutral.

Granted, some stocks like Microsoft accurately reflect their Twitter sentiment: Microsoft is up 23% in the last six months, with 71% of tweets cheering the company on. And while Red Hat jumped in the last six months, it has settled into roughly the same position it held in November 2012. Social sentiment? Neutral.

In other words, while it may be wise to consult a financial advisor when investing in stocks, consulting your 500 million Twitter friends? Not so much.

Not everyone, or every hedge fund, agrees. Derwent Capital has spent two years analyzing a subset of tweets to gauge sentiment around a stock. That lasted all of a month, but allegedly because it was so impressive (returning 1.86% in that month) that the Derwent team in 2012 decided to build a trading platform around the idea. It's unclear how well that went since its website... no longer exists. Hardly a sign of blistering success.

Which is not to suggest that Twitter isn't a good way to get a finger on the pulse of social sentiment. It is. I use it daily in my work, and find it a great predictor of sentiment around various brands I follow. But it's unclear, at best, that such sentiment translates into winning stock picks. Now if there were a way to segment out of the general Twitter noise the tweets of those that matter most to discerning a company's chances?

That just might work.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

At one time, Twitter's most familiar icon wasn't its perky little bluebird. It was the Fail Whale, the image that Twitter displayed when the service was down or disrupted. 

The Tale Of The Whale

The Whale was the work of artist Yiying Lu, whose now-iconic image was picked up by Twitter in 2007 to jokingly commemorate the site's accumulated days of outages. Since then, the image of a whale borne aloft by several tiny birds has  inspired its own Twitter fan club and Facebook page, along with an online repository of dozens of illustrations.

But now that Twitter's online performance has dramatically improved, there's a new Twitter icon that you probably will never see: the Success Loch Ness.

On the evening of April 8, following the Shorty Awards, Lu and other employees from Twitter were hanging out at The Pony Bar in New York City, when Tom Spano, the events coordinator at Twitter, asked Lu, "Since Twitter’s now became more and more stable, there’s less chance for folks to see your image. How about something opposite from the Fail Whale? Success Whale?"

The proposal was shouted down, Lu describes on her blog, because it didn't rhyme. Instead, Lee Semel, the founder of the Shorty Awards, suggested the Success Loch Ness - named after the infamous Loch Ness Monster, often called Nessie. And the rest, as Lu suggests, is history.

Twitter Gets Its Act Together

Go back far enough in Pingdom's logs of Twitter's uptime, and you'll find what could be the nadir for the site: an abysmal 92% uptime in March 2007, equivalent to being down more than two days in that month alone - just after Twitter hit the big time at South by SouthWest (SXSW). For the next few months, Twitter's uptime averaged about 98% - better, but still not great. In Dec. 2007, Twitter moved to a new data center, which helped significantly. Twitter still suffered occasional outages during the next few years, including slowdowns when Michael Jackson died in 2009, a denial-of-service attack that same year and more slowdowns during the 2010 World Cup.

But over time, Twitter slowly improved its performance to the point where the service now reports stellar uptime results. In seven out of the last twelve months, for example, Pingdom credited Twitter with a perfect 100% uptime.

All that has put Twitter in a celebratory mood.

Here's Twitter's Tom Spano holding both the original Fail Whale and the new Success Loch Ness:

The launching of the "Success Loch Ness", taking over from the "Fail Whale" vine.co/v/btLajquBZg0

— Jason Seed (@jasoncseed) April 12, 2013

Birth of the #SuccessLochNess, Vined, with Musika! vine.co/v/bUOzVuvwQlM

— Yiying Lu (@YiyingLu) April 18, 2013

Too Bad "Success Loch Ness" Doesn't Make Any Sense

It's great that Twitter has been able to move beyond the Fail Whale, but while its replacement may be far more positive, the new creature has its own grammatical, style and content issues. Loch Ness is a lake, after all. The Loch Ness Monster, if it exists, lives in the lake. More to the point, Success Loch Ness just doesn't trip off the tongue with quite the same ease. 

Image courtesy of Yiying Lu.

Twitter put months of speculation to rest this morning when it launched its own music-focused service for iOS and the Web. Twitter #Music is a standalone app for discovering, following and listening to artists that draws its intelligence from Twitter's own user activity data. At first glance, it's a win for artists, but the value it adds for fans remains to be seen. 

First and foremost, Twitter #Music is undoubtedly good for Twitter. The app takes something that is hugely popular among consumers — music — and intimately ties it to its own service. It also integrates with Spotify and Rdio so tracks can be streamed in their entirety from within Twitter #Music. That feature, the company is betting, will keep listeners glued to the app, where much of what they do is tied to Twitter's core functionality: tweeting songs and following artists. 

Putting Artists Front and Center 

For artists, the potential advantages here are huge. At every turn, Twitter #Music encourages you to follow bands and musicians, which of course can lead to longterm engagement and even sales. Whether they're already trending or Twitter thinks you might like them (based on your existing follows), this app puts artists and their Twitter handles front-and-center, never missing an opportunity to stick a "follow" button in front of the user. 

Twitter #Music also lets users buy tracks directly from iTunes, which is a major plus for artists who still aren't making all that much money from those Spotify and Rdio streams. 

If widely adopted, Twitter #Music could become a potent source of exposure for up-and-coming musicians. And while there a million services that promise to enable music discovery, seldom do they directly make money for artists. 

We Are Hunted, R.I.P.

Twitter #Music is built on top of the guts of We Are Hunted, a service that ranked the popularity of online music so effectively that some people wondered whether it could replace Billboard. Twitter gobbled it up to build this, and you can tell. Twitter #Music's design is strongly reminiscent of We Are Hunted's, even if Twitter appear to have gutted much of the service's original functionality. 

We Are Hunted's flagship feature was its Emerging Music chart, which analyzed a wide range of data signals to determine what music was most popular online. Twitter #Music appears to replace that more complex algorithm with something that more heavily favors Twitter's own data. That's not surprising, but it makes for a less thorough analysis and for music fans, a less useful experience. 

In the process of launching this new product, Twitter also appears to have gutted some of We Are Hunted's core recommendation technology in favor of a more Twitter-centric approach. Whereas We Are Hunted used a complex array of data to associate artist to one another, Twitter #Music appears to be relying heavily (if not exclusively) on data about the relationship between artists on the service, such as who follows who.  When I look at The Flaming Lips on Twitter's new service, it recommends Taylor Swift. Really? 

Do We Need This? 

With We Are Hunted effectively neutered and Twitter entering the digital music space with a big splash, the big question remains: How useful is this new app for users? 

It depends. Let's consider Twitter #Music's key selling points: You can discover music that's popular on Twitter, get new music recommendations and listen to it all within the app. Those are all useful things, although to varying degrees. 

The music-listening part is only really worthwhile to those of us who pay for premium Spotify or Rdio accounts. Otherwise, we're left with a mere iTunes snippet and the option to buy the whole track. And if you do have Rdio or Spotify, you're going to continue to use those services' apps for the majority of your listening. Listening to music isn't the main draw of Twitter #Music, just a very nice touch. 

The most compelling aspect of the app is Twitter's data about artists, songs and the social relationships between them. If you can get over the fact that We Are Hunted pulled in much more data and was thus much more interesting, this is useful, especially if you happen to be active on Twitter.

Where Twitter-Based Music Discovery Fails

But just being a voracious tweeter isn't enough. As many users have pointed out, the "Me" and "Suggested" tabs of the app are of limited value if you don't follow a lot of musicians on Twitter. Indeed, using Twitter follows as a barometer for one's music taste is a curious choice. Sometimes musicians have worthwhile Twitter accounts, sometimes not.

Either way, most people probably don't follow all the artists they like. Unlike the Facebook "like", the Twitter "follow" is not an explicit statement saying "I enjoy listening to this band." Instead, it's saying, "I think this band, whose music I happen to enjoy, might have interesting things to say, so I'm listening."

Of course, if you're not following a lot of artists, that's something Twitter #Music is explicitly designed to change. But out of the box, this is a real handicap for some users.

It's also worth mentioning that at launch, Twitter #Music only appears to acknowledge verified artist accounts, at least as far as the "Me" tab is concerned. When I click on my own profile, it shows eight bands that I follow. There are certainly more artists that I follow, but they're less well-known and thus have no official designation from Twitter. As a result, they are presumably not factored into my recommendations. 

Personally, I'm not all that interested in what music is generally popular on Twitter. You mean to tell me that lots of people are listening to Psy, P!nk and Maroon 5? No kidding! The "Emerging" tab is a bit more interesting, as this is where a hidden gem or two is bound to surface. 

The other tabs are more personalized, and thus likely to be more relevant to users. It's not clear exactly what kind of data is fueling he "Suggested" tab, but it does a reasonably decent job of recommending artists. Many of its suggestions are spot-on. Some are questionable. It's not terrible, but it could be better. I've tested a lot of services that utilize music recommendation engines.

For my money, algorithms like the ones behind Pandora, Last.fm and the Echo Nest do a much better job of making music suggestions than this app does. Twitter #Music is also competing against beloved and impressive music recommendation apps like Shuffler.fm and Hype Machine. 

On the whole, Twitter #Music is a decent app. If you like music enough to subscribe to a streaming service and are interested in finding new music, this is a pretty good, social-fueled way to do it. If your tastes are more particular and nuanced, tools with more complex algorithms and granular data points are likely to be more useful to you. Either way, it's worth taking it for a spin.

Two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon have killed 2 and injured more than 100, with reports constantly changing as new updates flood in.

As is now par for the course, news of the disaster broke first on Twitter, and the microblogging service remains an unparalleled source of breaking news and first-hand accounts — not to mention media criticism of news outlets that jumped ahead of the facts in their reporting.

The presumed attack has since been documented in thousands upon thousands of user generated images and videos  spread across the Web through social media channels. (Among other things, this Vine video appears to show one of the first explosions.) Spencer Ackerman over at Wired.com called it a "live-tweeted disaster."

Boston-area and federal authorities have also embraced Twitter to get out public-safety messages — for instance, asking people to stay away from the affected area and not to congregate in large groups. Police have also requested video from spectators: 

BostonPolice looking for video of the finish line #tweetfromthebeat via @cherylfiandaca

— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 15, 2013

(Atlantic Wire's Alexis Madrigal looks into how investigators might analyze contributed video.)

The Boston Globe received a video of the finish line during the initial explosion, embedded below. This video doesn't contain any graphic images of injured individuals, but it does feature the explosions, the onset of immediate panic in the crowd and police and marathon volunteers rushing to assist victims.

Google has also just launched a person-finder web tool to help those trying to reach friends and family members.

Of course, any disaster aftermath has to feature its share of incomplete, misleading or just plain wrong reports. (It may take days to figure out which category some news reports fall into.) For instance, at 4:55pm, the Associated Press reported that officials had shut down cell service in Boston to prevent any further explosions:

Cellphone service shut down in Boston to prevent remote detonations of explosives, official says: apne.ws/ZwBMKb -CC

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 15, 2013

Only, that is, to walk back the story about 45 minutes later:

Phone companies say cell service still operating in Boston after explosions: apne.ws/ZwFgMx -CC

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 15, 2013

Similarly, early reports that a third bombing took place at the JFK Memorial Library are apparently false. The library's official Twitter feed reports that the incident was a fire that started in the mechanical room, and that all staff and visitors are accounted for and safe.

Investigators are investigating. Any tie to Boston Marathon explosions is pure speculation. More information as we receive it.

— JFK Library (@JFKLibrary) April 15, 2013

Is Twitter moving on to bigger and better things? Maybe louder, more musical ventures? That's what it sounds like as the seven-year-old San Francisco micro blogging site confirmed Thursday that sometime last year it had acquired We Are Hunted, a music discovery service. 

Welcome to Twitter! “@wearehunted: We want to share some news with you. We Are Hunted has joined Twitter. wearehunted.com”

— Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) April 11, 2013

Social music is a huge space,  with social music apps bringing like-minded listeners together and exposing them to new music. This process is known as music discovery. Spotify is one such discovery service, with a freemium streaming music library valued in the $3 billion range. Rhapsody and Pandora are other major players in streaming music and discovery.

In the pure discovery realm, Shazam has become the go-to app to find out just what song is playing whenever you hear a track for which you just have to know the title. There's countless others, with the mobile market becoming a fast-evolving sector for engagement between musicians, brands and listeners. It's a new way to gain loyalty from fans and online exposure for artists. 

Twitter's purchase, We Are Hunted, tracks popular songs on social media, which means Twitter is likely prepping its own music app. This morning All Things D wrote that Twitter Music could launch as early as today, or by this weekend - timed to match the opening of the Coachella music festival. The new service would recommend users music based on who they follow on Twitter.

Ramping up that likely possibility, a landing page aptly titled Music.Twitter.com has gone live to help facilitate the process and get users to sign in to authorize the new music-trending app.

It's still early morning, but expect Twitter to reveal its sing-songy plan later today, or this weekend at the latest. Now it looks like Twitter is stepping into the same arena. Are your ears burning yet? 

Image courtesy of Twitter.

I know Roger Ebert like most of you. I know him from his many film review shows, from his numerous and well-written movie reviews syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and his many appearances on late-night talk shows. It was through Twitter, however, where I felt most close to him.

Now that Ebert has died, should I unfollow him? Should you? Is there a protocol for this?

Roger Ebert wrote over 30,000 tweets and had over 800,000 followers. I was one of them. I'm not sure what to do now. I'm also not sure if Twitter knows what to do in this situation.

True, one of its press representatives did respond to my queries with a link that explains how relatives or estate representatives can request deactivation — i.e., deletion — of an account following its owner's death. Twitter will not, however, grant anyone access to the account of someone who's passed away.

Still, what becomes of Ebert's tweets now that he's dead? What of the fact that at least one person, Jim Emerson, editor of Ebert's blog site, has access to the account — and has tweeted on it twice since Ebert's death? (Albeit apparently at Ebert's request.) Should Ebert's wife, or Emerson, or anyone else keep tweeting on Ebert's "verified" account? Wouldn't that be weird? 

A Powerful Voice On Twitter

Ebert's tweets touched on movies, obviously, but also politics, the environment, music, gun control, climate change and much more. He came to Twitter reluctantly before happily embracing the new medium. In a 2010 column for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert wrote:

I vowed I would never become a Twit. Now I have Tweeted nearly 10,000 Tweets. I said Twitter represented the end of civilization. It now represents a part of the civilization I live in. I said it was impossible to think of great writing in terms of 140 characters. I have been humbled by a mother of three in New Delhi. I said I feared I would become addicted. I was correct.

He quickly became one of the more popular, respected voices on Twitter. In the same essay, Ebert also provided his thoughts on how to tweet effectively:

My rules for Twittering are few: I tweet in basic English. I avoid abbreviations and ChatSpell. I go for complete sentences. I try to make my links worth a click. I am not above snark, no matter what I may have written in the past. I tweet my interests, including science and politics, as well as the movies. I try to keep links to stuff on my own site down to around 5 or 10%. I try to think twice before posting.

He also shared his views on what Twitter meant to him:

When you think about it, Twitter is something like a casual conversation among friends over dinner: Jokes, gossip, idle chatter, despair, philosophy, snark, outrage, news bulletins, mourning the dead, passing the time, remembering favorite lines, revealing yourself.

Ebert revealed himself in life, on Twitter. Will those tweets soon go away? Given Ebert's popularity on Twitter and his general celebrity, will Twitter see fit to honor him somehow?

I have long been a fan of Ebert's work. I loved Siskel & Ebert, even when he and Gene Siskel were reviewing awful movies. I know Ebert wrote the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which I've watched. I know he wrote many books, launched a popular movie festival and had a highly trafficked blogsite. I know he worked with Microsoft on Cinemania, an interactive movie guide on CD-ROMs.

Nonetheless, I believe I know him best, know him most fully — as a person — from Twitter. Now that he's dead, it seems not merely unseemly to unfollow him. More... unnecessarily sad.

Bury Me With My Tweet On

In 2009, Facebook announced a "memorialize" feature, in large part so that users would not be auto-reminded to "reconnect" with a person on Facebook that had since died.

We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized.

(See also: Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook?)

To verify the person's death, Facebook requires friends or family to complete a form that contains a link to the person's obituary or other information confirming the death. Twitter doesn't offer anything similar, although as noted above, the service does allow relatives or estate representatives to request that accounts of the deceased be deleted. 

Perhaps it shouldn't. Perhaps the account should remain available, though in a state of suspended digital animation. If Twitter is a conversation, as Ebert himself suggested, even the person's death can't make past conversations disappear.

Though this still does not answer the question, which may be unanswerable, of whether or not I should unfollow someone that is now dead. Particularly when that someone mattered to me, even if solely via digital channels.

Ebert never hid the fact that late in life, salivary cancer stripped him of his vocal chords, his jaw and his voice, and that he had to rely on a computer to speak and write. Here is his TED talk, "Remaking My Voice," from April 2011.

Roger Ebert never replied to any of my tweets to him, nor ever favorited a tweet of mine. Now he never will. There could come a time when I decide to cull through my Twitter followers and delete Ebert's account. I am glad, however, that Twitter was there to bring Ebert closer to me.

I hope Twitter honors him in some appropriate manner. I also hope that Ebert's many 140-character tweets continue to live  forever. 

Image of Roger Ebert and wife courtesy of Shutterstock

When Twitter started, it was just a service where you could post status messages on the Web via text message. It would soon take on a life of its own. Developers saw the value that Twitter could bring and started developing apps, clients and revenue models. Twitter, without really meaning to, had become a platform. 

That platform, as Twitter generally saw it, was a threat to Twitter itself. In the past several years, Twitter has restricted access to its APIs, cut off some developer shops entirely and consolidated control of the platform to its own headquarters. The developer community was outraged.

Twitter may have had a method to its madness. Yesterday, Twitter gave birth to “Cards” – a way for developers and media to connect their apps, media, products, photos, videos and galleries to Tweets. Cards is kind of a reverse method for Twitter to re-open its platform to developers and media. Consider it Twitter’s way of giving back to the developers it once spurned.

What Are Twitter Cards?

Twitter is getting meta. Metadata, that is. 

Essentially, Cards is all about metadata. If you are unfamiliar with the term, metadata is data that describes other kinds of data. For instance, where did a Tweet come from (an app, publication, button)? What location did it come from and what time of day? What kind of media is attached to it? Twitter has long kept track of this data and allowed developers to use some of it. Most users on Twitter have little idea that one Tweet can generate more than a dozen different data points.

Twitter is now taking some of that data and making it forward facing to the public. Developers can access this data by choosing the type of Card they want (there are six kinds), inserting the proper meta tags and validating the content through Twitter. By doing that, Cards will be able to connect straight from Twitter to a variety of media, including apps. Or products. Twitter calls this process of “deep linking.”

What does that mean though? “Twitter now directly links to my app?” Really, it means exactly what it says. 

Twitter card as seen on Twitter.com

Let’s take the example of mobile social network Path. I, the user, post a picture to Path and tweet it from the Path app for Android or iOS. You, my follower, see that photo and open the tweet from on the Web, mobile Web, iOS or Android. 

Since Path has set up Cards, on the bottom of you the tweet you will see “Get the Path app.” Click on that and Twitter will send you straight to Path on your device. If you don’t have Path installed, you will be directed to sign up for the service.

Click the link, you are sent to Path on the Web. Same would work for Path mobile app.

For web sites, it is similar. Say I post one of my articles to Twitter (which I do, often). The Card will give a preview of my article and on the bottom it will say “View on ReadWrite.” That button will take you to the ReadWrite web site on whatever device you are using. We do not have a dedicated app for Android or iOS anymore, but if we did we could direct you there, too.

There are six kinds of Cards that you can now create. Per Twitter’s own description:

• Summary Card: Default card, including a title, description, thumbnail and Twitter account attribution
• Photo Card: A Tweet sized photo card
• Gallery Card: A Tweet card geared toward highlighting a collection of photos
• App Card: A Tweet card for providing a profile of an application
• Player Card: A Tweet sized video/audio/media player card
• Product Card: A Tweet card to better represent product content

What Is New?

The concept of Cards is not actually new at Twitter. Showing the preview of photos, articles and web sites from a link has been available since the middle of 2012. What is new are the expansion of the types of cards as well as the update to the Android, iOS and mobile web apps.

This is where it gets interesting.

Twitter has created the capability to send users all over the Internet. We are not just talking about links anymore. We are talking native apps, mobile web sites, or various types of media that can either stand alone or live within those apps. Twitter has basically just created a platform that can act as a directional compass for the Internet. One word for that is “platform.”

Platform is a very developer-centric term. When it comes to the Web and mobile apps, it more or less means “something that can be built on top of.” For Twitter, Cards has another type of connotation for its users:

Portal.

Portal 2.0

Portal has become something of a nasty word on the Web over the past several years. When we think portal, we think of the old AOL homepage or Yahoo or even iGoogle (which Google will kill on Nov. 1, 2013). Twitter Cards are like Portal 2.0, in a similar manner that Facebook has become. Portal 2.0 is inherently social and does not just send you to other Web content the way the original portals did. Portal 2.0 can send you a variety of types of media, like the app or the product page. 

For instance, an enterprising company could use Cards to link to a product, like a pair of sunglasses. You could then purchase those new sunglasses from the site. Twitter could even be the arbiter of the transaction by using your account as authentication, tied to a credit card or other payment service. 

So, Cards as an example of Portal 2.0 are social, mobile, directional, built as a platform and, perhaps, transactional.

Well, that didn't take long. Two months after its launch, the social video-sharing app Vine has received its first copyright takedown notices. The complaints were sent by NPG, the record label owned by Prince, whose music appeared in a few six-second videos on Vine. 

This is absurd. Uploading an entire Prince album to YouTube is one thing. But six disjointed seconds in smartphone camera quality? Something tells me four clips of that nature aren't going to eat into Prince's album sales. 

Prince, who three years ago declared the Internet to be "completely over," is known as a stalwart, sometimes overzealous defender of his intellectual property online. In fact, it was the use of a Prince song in a YouTube video that led to Lenz v. Universal, an often-cited 2008 court decision dealing with copyright and fair use.

In that case, the court ruled in favor of Stephanie Lenz, whose video of her baby dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy" was the target of a copyright infringement claim by Universal Music. Lenz argued that video constituted fair use and the court agreed that Universal didn't adequately weigh the fair use principle when issuing takedown notices, something it has a reputation for doing rather aggressively. 

Let's (Not) Go Crazy 

Whether or not six seconds of a Prince song in a user-generated video constitutes fair use is something for a court to decide. If it's not, though — if uploading a crappy, six-second video that contains someone's song turns out to be illegal — we have to ask ourselves some pretty fundamental questions about copyright and what it's for. 

Of course, that there's a need to rethink copyright in the 21st century is hardly breaking news. The original framework doesn't work that well for anybody, as has been evident for at least a decade. Last month, the U.S. Copyright Office itself called for a dramatic overhaul of copyright law, with Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante saying "it is time for a new law." 

Whatever replaces the current copyright framework will need to balance the rights and financial interests of creators with the fact that we have a completely new way of creating and sharing culture and media than we did a few decades ago. That will mean changes in how creative works are distributed and monetized, sure, but it also opens up a whole universe of new cultural possibilities, which shouldn't be squashed without a very good justification.

To say that things have changed since Prince recorded "Let's Go Crazy" in 1984 is an understatement. When you consider how dramatically (and mostly for the better) the Internet has changed how we live, work and yes, create and experience culture, the idea of waging an all-out war against tiny pieces of content like this seems, well, kind of crazy. 

Find some buried treasure, fly in a glass-bottomed jet or mock the Caped Crusader… these are among the many ways you can be fooled thus far on this April Fools' Day, 2013.

The media and technology sectors have been busy already this morning, coming up with some new and clever ways to pull the wool over our eyes on the one day of the year when all the stops are pulled out to deliver the laughs. Of course, some gags are funnier than others, but we'll let you decide in this morning roundup of the funny and the lame.

Google: Class Clown Or Else

If you're judging on sheer number of pranks, then hands down the Mountain View search engine company takes the prize in 2013.

Apparently, when Marissa Mayer took her stop-screwing-around-and-get-some-work-done attitude with her when she went to Yahoo, her former co-workers took that as a sign to cut loose and let their funny flags fly, launching no less than nine goofs.

Gee, if only they could put this much effort into Google Reader.

• YouTube Closing. Millions of videos later, YouTube reveals that the whole thing was actually one big contest for finding the world's best video. Now that the contest is over, Best Video nominees will be previewed in a 12-hour cycle for the next two years.
• 'Dem Naughty Gmail Blues. In a feat of massive re-engineering, the team at Gmail has provided users with an all-blue interface. Watch the stirring marketing video and hey, just remember, Gmail itself was once thought to be an April Fool's joke. If it ever goes the way of Google Reader, it still could be.
• Avast Ye, Scurvy Dogs! The Google Maps team has discovered the lost treasure maps of Captain William Kidd, and is asking users to help decode the symbology from the find. No word if this will actually reward patient humorologists with booty.
• Make Your House Look Fabulous! If you're tired of the way your home looks on Google Street View, the Google Australia team is happy to help. Their new Simple Complete House Makeover Internet Conversion Kit (SCHMICK) will let you redecorate your home on Street View at no charge.
• Smelling Is Believing. Those Street View cars were apparently hoovering more than just stray wi-fi data… they were also recording the smells of the world for Google's new Google Nose service (in Beta, natch). The new service appears all day on the Google nav bars, in case you want to sniff it out. (Yeah, I went there.)
• Analyze This. Google Analytics, long the authoritative source for finding out who's coming to your site, has upped its game with accuracy, enabling real-time tracking from visitors from the International Space Station.
• Emotions Are Logical. Google + gets a real plus in the new +Emotion service that lets you tag photos with unambiguous emoticons. You know, in case the actual expressions on people's faces weren't clear enough.
• Google Fiber Everywhere. Yeah, I'll come clean: I want this one to be oh, so, true. Because moving to Kansas is not optimal.
• The Source Of The Funny. Ah, now we get to the source of Google's overabundance of the funny this year: the Google Levity Algorithm, a new feature for Google Apps that enhances documents and interactive communications based on 50 years of comedy material from Second City.

Badda-Bing, Badda-What?

Not to be outdone, Microsoft tried to bring the funny to its Bing search service. Instead of quantity, the jokemeisters at Microsoft (I mean, come on, Vista wasn't funny?) went for quality.

Reports of a Google-themed Bing search home page led me instead displayed a clever little Easter Island-themed page. Cute, but I was looking forward to the dig on Google. With a little work, you can get it: type "google" in the Bing search bar to hit the jackpot.

Sy Wht?

Twitter is finally figuring out new ways to generate revenue, it seems. Their new Twttr service will enable users to use Twttr consonant-free free of charge. If you want vowels, all you need to pay is an extra $5/month.

Here's the thing: I'm not sure, given the average depth of tweets, that anyone will ntce, er, notice.

What? Is Your Favourite Colour?

You can't have April Fool's Day without some wacky British humour. With their extra letters and aversion to the letter "z," British spelling alone makes anything funnier.

• All News All The Time. The Guardian has announced an innovative new tool to enhance the average person's day: Guardian Googles. These new tools will push through left-wing content to you every waking moment, and censor out any temptations to read that naughty Daily Telegraph.
• Whee! Liked the looks of that cool Shard building you saw on Doctor Who this weekend? Well, HuffPo UK has revealed plans to build a giant 244.3-meter (801 feet, 6 inches for us Americans) spiral slide around the London edifice (and yes, this would be my number-two on the wish-it-were-real list).
• Plane With A View. Richard Branson himself has announced the coming of glass-bottomed planes for Virgin airlines, launching to coincide with the airline's new service to Scotland.

From Around the Web

There's a lot of April Fools humor to be found across the Internets today, beyond just the usual suspects. Here's a quick list:

• Avast Ye! Part II. The Pirate Bay, recognizing that some were angered by a recent "decision" to locate its servers in North Korea, has announced that it will instead be moving "the greatest fuckin nation in the entire world," the United States of America. Sarcasm ahoy!
• Nokia Pushes The Popcorn Button. Undeterred by its recent struggles in the mobile phone sector, Nokia is launching a new product line: microwave ovens. Bright yellow and apparently Windows Phone-themed. Yeah, that'll work.
• Introducing Kindle Zero. Marketing guru Seth Godin scoops us all with his big reveal of the new free-of-charge Kindle Zero, Amazon's latest e-reader. Not only will the device be free, by Amazon will pay you to read challenging books, too.
• The Writing On The Wall. Wolfram|Alpha, makers of the world's most confusing search engine, is releasing its own new product, the Handwritten Knowledge Engine. I'll let you know if I think this is funny, once I figure out how to use the real W|A tools.
• North Korea, Land o' Laughs. Not sure of the source, but supposedly the Democratic People's Republic Of Korea "unveils for betterment of world new game Draw Kim Jong-Un." Check out the trailer on YouTube, because in the DPRK, fun is mandatory.
• Because Messing With Batman Is Always A Good Idea. As a comic geek, this is probably my personal favorite. ThinkGeek's annual prank product are these Batman-themed family window stickers. You know, the ones that advertise on the highway the procreation rate of the family in that minivan in front of you. Only in this case, the stickers are a little more sad.

Spotted another April Fool's gag? Post it in the comments below and share!

Image courtesy of Google.

Unless you've ever seen your Twitter feed fill up with the same avatar spouting one annoying opinion after another, you may not have ever known the uncontrollable urge to unfollow. And if not, then count yourself lucky. Obnoxious tweeters may be less common than those self-righteous Facebook friends, but they're always there, just waiting to suck the joy out of your feed.

No other industry is home to as many of these stereotypical egotists than the very one that helped create and nurture the platform in the first place. That's why Sivan Cohen from Conduit compiled this clever infographic categorizing the major classes of obnoxious tech industry tweeters.

Do you recognize any famous names in the tech industry here? The humblebragger? The know-it-all developer? Are you guilty of any of these behaviors yourself? Let us know in comments. 

Happy birthday, Twitter! In just seven years, you've evolved from a fringe service dubbed "twttr" to a mainstream phenomenon with more than 500 million registered users and 340 million daily tweets. 

But the Internet is fickle. Will the microblogging service still be around another seven years from now? To make it to 2020, Twitter is going to have to surmount some mighty big challenges.

Ready, Set... Go

Here they are in a nutshell. Sound off on what you consider Twitter's biggest challenges in our poll to the right or in comments:

1. Facebook: Competition from the Zuckerberg brand is huge. Instagram, now part of Facebook, is another giant rival. Both services have copied — and are continuing to copy — Twitter features like the news feed and hashtags. Twitter only stays one step ahead if it keeps rolling out new innovations that its competitors can't own. It's done well so far, but one big slip-up to cause irreparable damage.
2. Stagnation and spam: Detractors say Twitter has already peaked. These same folks are also quick to point out that many of its "registered users" — and, as a result, many followers of real users — are actually bots. It's hard to determine just how many users are actually active, but bots are already a problem for Twitter's business model, since no advertiser wants to pay to reach fake accounts. More insidious forms of advertiser spam surely lie in Twitter's future.
3. Weak Ad Platform. When it comes to making money online, many businesses prefer to funnel dollars to Facebook's fan pages over Twitter's promoted and sponsored tweets. It can be hard to significantly monetize on Twitter, and advertisers can have a hard time tracking their return on investment there. Twitter is great for engaging, solving customer service issues and even funneling traffic to a website. But direct selling often turns users off. And the advertising model has yet to be cracked here.

Photo via Shutterstock

From natural disasters and national tragedies to elections and award shows, no event goes untweeted these days.

For better or worse, we've come to consider Twitter an accurate reflection of opinion at large, a global zeitgeist bubbling up through real-time micro-musings. But according to a new report from the Pew Research Center, Twitter might be a sample more than 500 million accounts strong - but that doesn't make it reflective of public opinion beyond the Twittersphere.

Tweets Vs. Reality

The most cut-and-dried case that Twitter isn't the a perfect litmus test for popular opinion came during President Obama's reelection last November. While 77% of the tweets issued about the election night outcome were positive, the popular vote (still contested at the time) and post-election polling painted a much more divided - and more accurate - picture.

Interestingly, Twitter can also err on the conservative side. During Obama's 2012 State of the Union speech, Twitter lit up with negative commentary. The speech was much better received by the public at large, where 42% of those polled had a positive reaction to the speech and only 27% reported a negative reaction. Analyses of tweets from the event found the exact opposite trend, with 40% of the conversation capturing a negative reaction - only 21% of tweets analyzed cast the event in a positive light.

A Flawed Sample

When pulling numbers out of Twitter - how many people raved about Jennifer Lawrence's Oscars dress or disagreed with Obama's handling of the budget cuts, for instance - we have to be careful to remember that aggregated Twitter data only measures what people are thinking, saying or doing on Twitter. 

Twitter is a very different beast than Facebook - one that only 13% of adults report having used at all, compared to an earlier Pew study showing that 67% of Americans who use the internet are Facebook users. While those stats aren't directly comparable, Facebook's unrivaled user numbers make it clear that Twitter isn't as broad or deep a sample of the population. 

The key here is that Twitter is a platform for very intentional expressions, and tweets are mapped onto the events its users are already invested. Given the way its users hop on and off of the site, a sample of its users is shifting wildly at any given time. During a major NFL event, Twitter is on fire with football fans, while an iPhone launch captures the sentiment of the early adopter tech set.

Naturally, for those among us who live and breathe tweets, Twitter seems like a realtime cross-section of everyone's thoughts about, well, everything. But as common sense and the Pew report make clear, Twitter is an imperfect zeitgeist at best.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

The Twitter client end times are nigh. Well, to be fair, they've been nigh for a while now - so I guess now the end times are here.

In a blog post today, Twitter announced that it would formally discontinue support for TweetDeck's trio of non-web apps, TweetDeck for iPhone, Android and AIR. The clients will be pulled from their app stores in early May, so you can expect considerable wonkiness thereafter.

Twitter, The Control Freak

The death of the TweetDeck trifecta marks a formal end to the heyday of third-party Twitter clients. Last year, as Twitter began to tighten its guidelines, the company effectively wrestled developers into a choke-hold.

Along the way, many great clients and apps folded, deeming it too risky to pour themselves into projects that could be felled by Twitter at a moment's notice. The three clients that Twitter will no longer support are all powered by its old API v1, which the company already announced plans to retire.

Power Users Left In The Cold 

What are we left with? Well, acccording to its blog, Twitter will rally around the "modern, web-based version of TweetDeck - namely TweetDeck for web and TweetDeck the Chrome app. TweetDeck's native Mac and PC clients will also live on, though Twitter will focus its efforts on the other versions. None of these option are atrocious in their own right, but it's slim pickings for power users these days.

Many self-proclaimed power users remain loyal to the AIR version of TweetDeck, in spite of its quirks. The AIR-powered client retains the flavor of the original app, before Twitter began to splice TweetDeck's DNA into a less feature-rich client meant for more casual users.

Twitter Is A Platform, Not An App

Twitter's plan to evolve beyond a platform and into a suite of apps has been building momentum for years. Twitter acquired TweetDeck back in 2011 and casual Twitter client Tweetie before that, in 2010.

Still, the vestigial remains of half-abandoned clients are just as much of a mess than ever - and the fact that Twitter is keeping the TweetDeck branding isn't helping. At its essence, Twitter is still more of a platform than it is an app. But as its development strangehold tightens, the ample customization of a thriving ecosystem will soon be the stuff of archived tweets.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

In the past few weeks, I have written two stories about the menace the Internet represents, particularly in view of the hacking attacks almost certainly perpetrated by the Chinese Red Army. In particular, my contention that we need to develop a next generation Internet that's more secure and, preferably, walled in, drew a lot of heated commentary.

Here are just a few of the choicest ones:

• This is unmitigated isolationist idiocy.
• Seriously... is this a spoof article?
• This post should not appear in readwriteweb.

(See World War III Is Already Here - And We're Losing and Cyberwar Imperative: We Need A Next-Generation Internet.)

Hacking As Retaliation?

That's great, and maybe there really isn't any problem here. But the fact is that about 10 days after the first story ran - I got hacked.

A coincidence? I think not.

Or maybe it was my own doing, astutely observed one reader: "I asked for it." Now where have I heard that blame game before?

So what happened? Someone hacked my email password and sent thousands for spam messages using my account. I knew something was wrong when I suddenly was inundated with "Mail delivery failed" subject lines. My Twitter account was hacked, too, but that could just be Twitter's lax security measures.

Of course, there's no way to tell if the dirty deed was done by the Chinese, or even whether it was in retaliation for the articles. But the timing certainly seems suspect.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama ranked hackers and cyber attacks among the greatest economic and national U.S. security threats. The President's response was to issue an executive order calling for more sharing of cyber-attack and threat information between private and public sectors. Naturally, civil libertarians object to this executive order due to potential invasions of privacy.

Solution: Fix the Internet Itself

A far more practical idea comes form New England Complex Systems Institute, which is set to publish a report next week that agrees with my stated principles. The NECSI report blames the problem on the Internet itself, and says that the only solution is to redesign it.

"The current design of the Internet is inherently insecure," says NECSI President and co-author Yaneer Bar-Yam in a press release. "Any node can be attacked from any other node, requiring the entire network to be fortified against all possible attacks, an unrealistic goal," adds Bar-Yam.

That would require redesigning the Internet's architecture itself. The report proposes substantial changes to routers in charge of switching data packets between network nodes.

"Collective security-preventing attacks would require that the routers of the Internet themselves would need to have protocols that allow refusal of transmission based upon content or extrinsic information such as point of origin," according to the study's authors.

The study, Principles of Security: Human, Cyber and Biological, was developed at the request of a long-term military planning group, the Strategic Studies Group, which reports to the Chief of Naval Operations. The report is being released for the first time to the public next week.

As for me, I'm glad to see that other people are thinking about realistic solutions to make our Internet less vulnerable to attacks of all kinds.

Image of alleged Chinese hackers compound courtesy of Reuters.

The other day, all of my memories were erased. Well, that's how you'd describe it in the marketing parlance of Memolane, an excellent social history timeline service that shut down late last week. Just a few weeks prior, the always-useful crime stats and community updates from Everyblock stopped flowing into my Google Reader. What the hell, Internet?

As the Web matures, the possibility that our favorite services might suddenly and unexpectedly shut down always looms in the background. It may be unlikely, but it's something to bear in mind as we spend more of digital lives in the cloud: This data isn't ours. We're handing it to some company that's storing it on their servers. If we're really lucky, they'll let us click an "export" button at some point and take it with us.

This isn't an entirely new phenomenon. Remember LaLa? The online music service was nearing Rdio-caliber levels of awesomeness before Apple bought it and shut it down. Since Larry Page took over as CEO, Google has been routinely cleaning house and closing less popular services while making the remaining ones more Google Plus-y.

Then you have the thankfully rare scenario that some  unsuspecting Megaupload users were caught in last year when the feds shut down Kim Dotcom's cyberlocker. More recently, Yahoo acquired Pinterest clone Snip.it and subsequently slammed the doors shut. To be fair, that site was nowhere near as popular as Delicious, the social bookmarking service that narrowly escaped the swing of Yahoo's downsizing hatchet in 2011.

Expect More Startup Roadkill

Don't be surprised if this sort of thing happens more frequently as the Web gets older. Startups will either fail or get acquired, and the giants will keep fine-tuning their products as their business priorities shift.

In many cases, few will mourn these shutdowns. Nobody wept when the curtain rang down on Google Wave (although some of us are still bitter about the loss of Google Reader's sharing button).

But in some instances – see Everyblock – services with a substantial community can disappear overnight. When this sort of thing happens, it hopefully won't always be as thoughtlessly bungled as NBC's shutdown of Everyblock was. But happen it will.  

Memolane, We Hardly Knew Ye

Memolane was not a hugely popular service, but I loved it. The premise was simple: You plugged in your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare and SoundCloud accounts (among many others) and it built a nice-looking timeline of your social media updates and content, going all the way back to whenever you first started using Facebook or Flickr. Mine went back seven years, so it was pretty interesting to scroll through.

You could also plug in any RSS feed, so I kept an archive of my ReadWrite stories alongside my photos, check-ins, tweets and other social content. If you live online like I do, your Memolane timeline would be pretty thoroughly detailed. 

My grandmother died in 1997. It was just a few months before Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the domain google.com. If I wanted to find out more about my grandmother's life, I'd have to dig into old boxes or ask my mother. I can't Google her. My grandchildren, on the other hand, will have as richly detailed a history as you can possibly imagine, right down to individual haircuts (thanks, Foursquare). Kids graduating high school this May will have an even more thorough digital biography awaiting future generations. 

Tools like Memolane allow us to start aggregating all the content and updates we're sprinkling across the Web, pulling them into a thorough and chronological timeline. Nobody cared about my Memolane but me. And even I didn't look at it regularly. It was just interesting to go back every once and awhile and reminisce about things that were happening in my life four years ago.

I could imagine my grandchildren one day scrolling through my Memolane timeline, wondering what life was like before Internet-connected neural implants and laser-shooting eyeballs. 

Memolane felt very personal. So when it shut down, it was a little weird. LaLa, Everyblock and other public services were one thing, but this was my history. I don't even get an export button? Apparently not. 

Fortunately, all Memolane was doing was aggregating content from other sources, all of which are still live. So I can at least partially recreate the experience on another service like TimeHop or Rememble. Easy enough. 

Still, these recent shutdowns offer yet another sobering reminder of something we already knew: It's not our Web, even when it feels like it is. So have fun and share as much as you please. But try not to get too attached.

Lead photo by Chris Gilson

What better way to celebrate the week hackers ran rampant than with another security breach? Zendesk, a company that offers IT support tools and customer service software, announced on Thursday that it had been hacked. In a blog post, CEO Mikkel Svane stated, "We've become aware that a hacker accessed out system this week," though he did not say by which method or for how long.

What separates this attack from the malicious malware that infected machines at Facebook and Apple is that these hackers managed to compromise a healthy amount of Zendesk's stored user data, putting users of three of the company's big clients - Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest - at risk for phishing and other attacks.

"Our ongoing investigation indicates that the hacker had access to the support information that three of our customers store on our system," wrote Svane, adding, "We believe that the hacker downloaded email addresses of users who contacted those three customers for support, as well as support email subject lines."

Svane did not specifically cite Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest, but support emails sent out from the companies informing users of the attack confirms that user data could have been compromised indirectly. While usernames and passwords were not compromised, the threat of individualized attacks aimed at gaining access to accounts and stealing personal information does exist.

Tumblr, for example, sent out emails stating the following: 

"The subject lines of your emails to Tumblr Support may have included the address of your blog which could potentially allow your blog to be unwillingly associated with your email address."

It went on to advise users to review any emails received from support, abuse, dmca, legal, enquiries or lawenforcement with a @tumblr.com tagged on the end. The fear is that hackers, equipped with people's email addresses and the issues they raised with specific departments at a service like Tumblr, could then phish users with a masked version of that same address.

Tumblr's support email ended with a warning along those very lines: "Tumblr will never ask you for your password by email. Emails are easy to fake, and you should be suspicious of unexpected emails you receive."

While it's not exactly comforting to know that you should be suspicious of any and all "unexpected emails," companies like Twitter are taking measures to ensure that the tools are in place to help flag these attacks if they do occur.

In a public announcement yesterday, Twitter said that it has been utilizing DMARC authenticaion technology  to help lessen the risk of users giving away personal information. Using established authentication protocols, DMARC gives email providers a way to block email from forged domains. "While this protocol is young, it has already gained a significant traction in the email community with all four major email providers - AOL, Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail - already on board…" the post reads.

While its good to know that Twitter is addressing the hacker threat alongside its fellow social network giants, all these measures are merely reactionary moves following widespread breaches. The Zendesk hack makes it abundantly clear that we need more proactive security measures that include third-parties to keep these attacks from wreaking havoc. Until then, the hackers will keep succeeding, and users will pay the price.