When interviewer Darren Franich asked Diesel what he attributes his large Facebook following to, he responded, “Did you ever see the movie Social Network? Do you remember what they said the reason was to make Facebook?”

To which Franich replied, “To meet girls?”

“YOU GOT IT!” said Diesel. “And when they made the movie, nobody had a million fans. They were promoting it, like, ‘We came up with a new way for people to check marital status.’ That’s not what Facebook was. That’s not why Facebook would be successful. No one gives a s— about people’s marital status. That’s as dated as MySpace! What Facebook didn’t realize is something very big was about to happen, and that was — for the first time in history, and it’s kind of a fluke they didn’t see this coming — when I jumped on that page in April 2009, I started talking to people. In the realest ways. Imagine if you could’ve been a Facebook friend to Marlon Brando, or whoever your role models are. Imagine, if you were able to Facebook Elvis, and talk to him, and hear from him without the Hollywood of it all. That was the Fast & Furious experience.”

Diesel said when he started his page, the only person who had a million fans was Barack Obama. It was the first quarter of 2009, just after the President’s inauguration.

“Facebook used to ask me to come up to their office to explain what the f— I was doing, and why I had so many fans. What was unique was: I never let anyone do a post, I never let anyone post for me in the last four years. My audience knows me so well on the page that if my producing partner’s in the room when I post, they’ll know somebody was around me. That’s kind of cool, that’s how sophisticated they are. Facebook really owes me billions of dollars. But whatever.”

It’s certainly worth noting, as indicated in the interview, that Diesel was laughing when he said that.

In 2013, Vin Diesel is still having fun with Facebook fans. For Valentine’s Day, he covered Rihanna’s “Stay” as a gift to them.

41 million people currently like Vin Diesel on Facebook. 35 million like Obama.

In the EW interview, Diesel talks about much more than Facebook (including Fast & Furious, Riddick and and Hannibal the Conqueror).

Millennials, defined as those aged 18-34, were found to be more willing to allow companies track them or access their personal information compared to those 35 and older. Millennials were also found to be more receptive to the idea of targeted advertising, and were much more active on social media. All of this, though, is predicated on receiving some benefit for the lack of privacy.

“Millennials think differently when it comes to online privacy,” said Elaine Coleman, managing director of media and emerging technologies for Bovitz, the research firm that conducted the survey in conjunction with USC. “It’s not that they don’t care about it – rather they perceive social media as an exchange or an economy of ideas, where sharing involves participating in smart ways.”

Though the social benefit of most social media is clear, even more tangible benefits still don’t seem to entice those over 35 as much as they do Millennials. One question, for example, asked whether a survey respondent would reveal their location to a company in exchange for coupons to nearby businesses. 56% of Millennials would share their location, but only 42% of older respondents said they would.

“Online privacy is dead – Millennials understand that, while older users have not adapted,” said Jeffrey Cole, director of the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. “Millennials recognize that giving up some of their privacy online can provide benefits to them. This demonstrates a major shift in online behavior – there’s no going back.”

(Infographic courtesy the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future)

(via BGR)

Tumblr has finally given iOS users the ability to share posts via Facebook and Twitter – something that other Tumblr users have been able to do for a while now.

For those who wish to browse Tumblr outside the official app, they’ve also added Pocket and Instapaper support to the iOS app. The new app also features a new email template which lets users easily view messages in either the Tumblr app or their mail client.

Smaller updates include scrolling animated GIFs and a new photo-disposal gesture. Here’s te full list of updates:

• Share posts via Twitter, Facebook, and more
• Save stuff for later using Instapaper and Pocket
• Email an entire post with our beautiful new template
• Fling a photo up or down to close it!
• GIFs animate while you scroll*
• Following list is now alphabetized and searchable

This update comes just a couple of days after Tumblr launched their first-ever in-feed mobile ads for both iOS and Android. Users will now see as many as four ads a day from the likes of Pepsi, GE, and Warner Bros.

And they also just launched their first-ever Window Phone app.

You can grab the updated app from the App Store today..

56-year-old Laura Culver was sentenced on January 30th to 96 months in jail for producing child pornography. Back in 2001 and 2002, Culver collaborated with a man named Edgardo Sensi to film an 8-year-old girl engaged in various sexual acts. Pretty disgusting stuff. So, an 8-year prison sentence is not unreasonable, right?

Well no, but in this specific case the sentence is being thrown out. An appeals court has ruled that the judge’s actions during sentencing demand that the sentence be vacated and reworked.

While explaining Culver’s sentence, U.S. District Judge Warren W. Eginton reportedly went on some sort of unrelated Facebook-bashing tangent where he ended up blaming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for “hurting a lot of people.”

The records are sealed, but the appeals court, in its decision, paints a pretty clear picture of what the judge was ranting about.

In justifying its decision to impose a sentence of eight years instead of six, the district court referenced “Facebook, and things like it, and society has changed.” … The court speculated that the proliferation of Facebook would facilitate an increase in child pornography cases. The court said it hoped Mark Zuckerberg (who founded Facebook) was “enjoying all his money because…he’s going to hurt a lot of people….”

But Facebook had nothing to do with Culver’s case. In fact, the internet itself didn’t even play a factor in it.

The government argues that the district court was merely concerned about the extent to which various new technologies may facilitate child pornography, rather than Facebook specifically. In that sense, Facebook was a reference to the internet, using synecdoche. But the government does not explain (because it cannot) the role of new technology in this case. Culver did not use the internet to commit her crime, and it should not have played a predominant role in her sentencing.

The appeals court makes a point to say that the ruling in no way suggests that the 8-year sentence for Culver’s crimes is “substantively unreasonable.” In fact, it’s actually well under the recommended guidelines for such a crime.

“Still, that discretion should be exercised without the influence of procedural error.”

What a truly terrible, and odd case.

[via Techdirt]

In a Facebook post, Hastings announced that Netflix users have streamed 4 billion hour in the past 3 months. Of course, he would probably argue that this type of tidbit isn’t really material information anyway – but it’s nearly identical to the post that got him in trouble with the SEC last December.

Hastings posted that Netflix users were now streaming 1 billion hours of content per month, and that ruffled the SEC’s feathers. They claimed that it violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, as the bit of info didn’t come in an official filing or press release. Hastings hit back, saying that 1.) it wasn’t really material and 2.) Facebook does count as a network for disclosure.

The SEC eventually cleared Hastings of all wrongdoing in the incident, and updated their rules to allow for social media as a dispersion channel for investor info – so long as the company alerts investors beforehand that they will be using the social media channels.

And on Wednesday, Netflix revealed that they would be doing just that in a regulatory filing.

“The information we post on social media could be deemed to be material information…In light of the SEC’s guidance, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in our company to review the information we post on the U.S. social media,” said Netflix.

It looks like this is the future of social media disclosure. Here’s Netflix CEO Reed Hastings informing his 264,000 followers on Facebook that Netflix users have streamed over 4 billion hours of content in the last three months. It turns out to be only part of a post that references House of Cards and the upcoming Hemlock Grove. Oh, and it’s not even a status update, really. It’s additional comment on a link that he posted.

Reed Hastings1 hour ago

House of Cards fav quote: “look at the bigger picture.” Over the last three months, you all watched over 4 billion hours on Netflix. Next up, some real monsters from Eli Roth…

Netflix series Hemlock Grove: 'People want their horror horrific,' says Eli Roth

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On Wednesday, Netflix told investors via a regulatory filing that it plans to disclose material investor information via social media channels.

This includes Twitter, Facebook, and its own blogs. It specifically mentioned CEO Redd Hastings’ Facebook page as a source of possible disclosure, fitting since the whole controversy surrounding the SEC and social media disclosures began with Hastings.

Last week, the SEC concluded a report into the Facebook activities of Reed Hastings. Back in December of 2012, Hastings ran afoul of the SEC when he posted information to his Facebook page that the SEC deemed material. What he said was that Netflix had just topped 1 billion hours of streaming per month.

The SEC claimed that the Facebook post violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, as the material information didn’t appear in an official filing or a press release or some other form of traditional notification channel. Hastings hit back with a two-pronged approach. First, he didn’t think the post constituted “material” investor info. And second, and more importantly, social media is a proper channel for any sort of disclosures – especially his own page which sports over 260,000 followers, many of which are journalists.

The SEC eventually cleared Hastings of any wrongdoing and took the opportunity to update their own policies regarding social media disclosures. The new rules say that it’s fine, as long as the company makes it known to investors beforehand that they will be using the social accounts for such purposes.

Netflix, in its filing, makes that clear:

“The information we post on social media could be deemed to be material information…In light of the SEC’s guidance, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in our company to review the information we post on the U.S. social media.”

[Wall Street Journal (paywall)]

The data comes from Piper Jaffray’s 25th bi-annual “Taking Stock with Teens” survey that looks at everything from online shopping and fashion, to tech, social, and gaming.

The survey looked at which social networks are the “most important” for teens. It found that Facebook still holds the top spot – but barely. And it’s been declining over the past year.

Facebook is the most important social network for 33% of the teens surveyed, which is down 9% from 42% back in the Fall of 2012 (the last time this survey was published).

Twitter, on the other hand, saw an increase from 27% to 30% in teens claiming it as the most important social site in their lives. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook but has stayed independent, grew in popularity from 12% to 17%.

Watch out Facebook, Twitter is nearly as important to teens as you.

The only other significant change in social media loyalty among teens in the past few months is in the “other” category. Piper Jaffray notes that the top 5 “write-in” picks for most important social media service were Wanelo, Snapchat, 4chan, Kik, and Twitter’s just-launched six-second video app Vine.

Another interesting find from Piper Jaffray’s survey: Teens still love their iPhones. Nearly half (48%) of those surveyed said that they already own an iPhone (up from 40% in the Fall) and 62% said that they plan on buying the iPhone as their next device. Compare that with Android, which had 23% of teens expressing future desire.

[Image via toodlepip, Flickr]

But it’s not just criminals who can be bozos online. Those on the other side of the law can also find themselves in hot water over social media posts.

That’s why NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly was forced to issue a new, three-page internal order outlining new guidelines for cops and how they behave on the internet. The NY Daily News obtained a copy of the order, which bars police officers from “disclosing or alluding to their status as member of the department” on the internet.

Another thing that officers are no longer allowed to do: post photos of themselves in uniform, unless it’s a photo of an official event.

Officers in violation of the new rules may be subject to disciplinary actions – even termination.

According to the Daily News’ report, here are some of the recent events that led to the need for such a decree:

Capt. Jeffrey Schiff, commanding officer of the 76th Precinct in Brooklyn, recently left the department vulnerable to litigation by tweeting the names and mug shots of paroled convicts.

Last August, 17 cops were disciplined for posting racist and offensive comments on a Facebook page called “No More West Indian Day Detail.” About 150 comments were posted — some calling revelers “savages” and “animals.” Investigators found that about 20 of the people who posted matched the names of NYPD officers.

A recent story from Pennsylvania shows just how easy it is to be forced out of the police force due to a social media post. A Confluence police chief was forced to resign after a somewhat racy but ultimately innocuous photo emerged on Facebook. The photo featured the chief posing with a woman who was holding multiple firearms. The woman turned out to be his wife, but the damage was already done.

Everyone, including the police, has to be careful about what they post online. Once it’s public on Facebook or Twitter, it’s virtually impossible to take back.

[Photo via NYPD, Facebook]

Klout for Business is a set of tools including Klout Perks and audience insights to help businesses get influencers to share stuff about their brands.

“Initially, Klout for Business will give businesses a complimentary set of analytics with pointed insights into how and where influencers are engaging with their brands in social media,” says Klout’s Matthew Thomson. “Businesses will be able to look at an easy-to-read dashboard that tells you, at-a-glance, whether you are engaging your influencers on the networks where they are most actively exerting their influence and on which Klout Score ranges you could stand to amp up your efforts. Most importantly, Klout can tell you which topics your audience influences others on, helping you maximize your content efforts to drive consideration for your brand.”

“Klout reaches over 70% of today’s digital influencers and attracts new users every day,” he says. “Klout for Business will continue to develop into a portal where we intend to help brands and agencies streamline their understanding, management and engagement with this important segment of the digital population. Our goal is to help brands and influencers build relationships that transcend the current advertiser-consumer dynamic.”

You can check out the product here.

Should Google kill Google Reader? Will you miss it? Let us know what you think or if you care in the comments.

So here I am back to work. Immediately, I’ve already been using Google Reader like all day. The truth is, I was already using it every day while I wasn’t working as well. That’s because it’s one of the things on the Internet that I use the most. So, you can imagine, I’m not incredibly happy about the news. I mean, I don’t agree with Hitler on many things, but I think he has this one spot on.

A little over a month ago, Google Reader users were experiencing some usability issues with the product, and Google didn’t seem to care much about fixing it quickly. Little did we know at the time that this was a foreshadowing of what was to come.

On Wednesday, Google broke the news to the world. They did so in one of their regular “spring cleaning” announcements. By now, I’m used to these announcements. Usually, they’re about products that I’ve used little or not at all. Occasionally, they included something I used but could live without (like Picnik). Never before have the announcements involved something that I relied upon on a day to day basis.

This is all Google had to say about it in the announcement:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.

Was it only 2005? I can hardly remember living without Google Reader.

There was a separate post on the Google Reader blog. This was the first post to the blog since October 2011, which announced some Google+ integration. Perhaps that should have been taken as another clue. On the blog, Google software engineer Alan Green wrote:

We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.

There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.

Usage is declining. I guess that’s not entirely unexpected, given the rise of social media. For the average person, I can see where it wouldn’t be incredibly hard to get by without Google Reader, even if they are accustomed to using it on a regular basis. For people who write for the web, however (which is still a pretty large number of people), there really isn’t another tool out there that does the job as well as Google Reader. At least not yet. Others see the situation as it is, and are working on alternatives, and or promoting their existing alternatives.

There are petitions pushing for the saving of Reader. This one at Change.org has over 100,000 supporters. There are others at Change.org and elsewhere. This one at KeepGoogleReader.com has over 31,000 itself.

The Twitterverse (one of many possible places Google will be pushing users with the killing of Reader) is full of complaints. Twitter, by the way, probably has a lot more to gain from this move than Google+, and many believe that Google’s move is really about Google+. It’s no secret that Google has been pushing to get people using its social network to consume and share content, and clearly, this is where Google’s efforts on this front are focused.

This week, former Google Reader product manager Brian Shih spoke about Google’s move on Quora. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say about it:

It turns out they decided to kill it anyway in 2010, even though most of the engineers opted against joining G+. Ironically, I think the reason Google always wanted to pull the Reader team off to build these other social products was that the Reader team actually understood social (and tried a lot of experiments over the years that informed the larger social features at the company)[1]. Reader’s social features also evolved very organically in response to users, instead of being designed top-down like some of Google’s other efforts[2].

I suspect that it survived for some time after being put into maintenance because they believed it could still be a useful source of content into G+. Reader users were always voracious consumers of content, and many of them filtered and shared a great deal of it.

But after switching the sharing features over to G+ (the so called “share-pocalypse”) along with the redesigned UI, my guess is that usage just started to fall – particularly around sharing. I know that my sharing basically stopped completely once the redesign happened [3]. Though Google did ultimately fix a lot of the UI issues, the sharing (and therefore content going into G+) would never recover.

So with dwindling usefulness to G+, (likely) dwindling or flattening usage due to being in maintenance, and Google’s big drive to focus in the last couple of years, what choice was there but to kill the product?

So, if you want to get your data out of Reader from Google Takeout, you can do so here. You have until July 1. In the meantime, us Google Reader die hards will have to hope Google takes note of these petitions and reconsiders (which is probably unlikely, if we’re being honest), and/or start exploring the alternatives. Lots of people have already compiled lists, including tools like: Feedly, Netvibes, The Old Reader, Bloglovin’, NewsBlur, FlipBoard, Pulse (which LinkedIn is apparently buying), Zite. Oh yeah, and then there’s Google Currents (at least for now), and of course, there’s not even a web version.

Nothing I’ve used so far has been able to match Google Reader in functionality entirely, for my personal purposes. Some are better than others, and I won’t promote any one tool here, mostly because I’ve not settled on one myself. You can be sure that we’ll see more players enter the market in the time leading up to July 1, so the best alternative might not even exist yet. One intriguing possibility is an offering for Digg, who has already come out and said it’s working on one that will mimic Google Reader. That sounds promising. I’d love to see an identical clone, even if it has Digg’s logo instead of Google. This could be Digg’s ticket back to Internet relevance.

Some services, which relied heavily upon Google Reader are just shutting down – namely FeedDemon. Founder Nick Bradbury wrote about the end of the service in a blog post, which he says was hard for him to write. He says:

FeedDemon relies on Google Reader for synchronization, and there’s no decent alternative (and even if there were, it’s doubtful I’d have time to integrate with it, at least not without trading time away from my family – which I won’t do).

That was the nail in the coffin for me. I hate to say goodbye to FeedDemon after a decade of working on it, but it’s time to say goodbye. When Google Reader shuts down on July 1, FeedDemon will also disappear.

Some see the whole thing as a good opportunity for Google rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo to step up to the plate, and fill a void that Google is leaving behind.

Some (including Hitler) have wondered what has happened to Google’s old stance about the open web – something that Google Reader and RSS both cater to. Google has historically been all about this, but doing away with Reader and pushing toward Google+ doesn’t seem to be a move in the same direction. That may or may not make sense from a corporate standpoint, but it’s certainly worth noting. As TechEye points out, Google’s move should make Internet censorship-heavy Iran happy, as many Iranians apparently use reader to get around some of the censorship.

What About Your Web Traffic?

Okay, I think the point has been made about how much this whole thing sucks for users. But there is another side of the coin, for which the outlook isn’t all that rosy either. As RSS feeds are still the primary way a lot of people get their news, that means Google’s move away from Reader has the potential to impact traffic to the sites to which users are subscribed.

Hard core Google Reader users have racked up numerous feeds over the years. You have to wonder how many of the users, regardless of what alternative they transition to, will take all of their feed subscriptions with them. How many sites will lose subscribers over the whole thing. Some users will no doubt elect to just use social media instead of RSS. Will these people bother to subscribe to the Twitter, Facebook or Google+ feeds for all of the sites they were subscribed to? And even if they do, will these sites be pushing out every article to these channels the way they do through RSS?

That brings up another interesting point. Will this move clutter up social media feeds, and lead to a lot more content being pushed from publications through social media channels? A site that only pushed a few articles per day to its Facebook followers may find itself posting every article. Then, of course, there’s another layer to that issue: how many Facebook users are looking at all of the posts from the pages they follow?

Luckily, Facebook is in the process of rolling out changes that at least let users see all of the posts from the pages they follow if they choose to do so. Before, they were filtering that, so there was no guarantee all of a page’s followers even had the opportunity to see a post. Even still, the Facebook functionality is hardly an RSS clone.

According to BuzzFeed, Google Reader is a much larger source of web traffic than Google+ to the network of sites it tracked. Here’s what their chart looks like:

Death Of RSS?

The question of whether or not RSS is dead or dying has been around for years. Naturally, it has resurfaced in light of Google’s news. Is it dead? Clearly not, given the amount of outcry we’re seeing over the death of Google Reader, and the rush for alternatives from other companies. There is demand. It may not be a huge percentage of Internet users, but those that demand it are serious about it and loyal to the format. It’s become as fundamental to the web experience as search and email for some of us. It’s not dead.

Is it dying? That’s not as easy of a question to answer. I want to say no, but Google turning its back on it is not a good sign. Part of me wonders, as I’m exploring alternative means for consuming RSS feeds, if it’s just a lost cause, and I should really be exploring different strategies for news consumption altogether (and don’t get me wrong, RSS is not my only news consumption habit). I don’t think I’m willing to accept the demise of RSS just yet though. If we all do that, then we truly are killing it. To my knowledge, there really isn’t a means of consuming news that is as comprehensive as RSS anyway – at least not one that meets my needs.

Obviously I’ve made no attempt to hide how I feel about Google Reader’s demise, but there are some out there who think it might actually be a good thing. Some journalists have already abandoned RSS. Tech blogger Robert Scoble, once a faithful user, wrote about why he stopped using Google Reader all the way back in 2009. He had some valid points about flaws with Reader back then that still hold true today, but I don’t think many of us would say that Reader is flawless. Sure, there are things that Google could have improved upon, and you can’t rely solely on Reader if you don’t want to miss anything. For many of us, however, it’s just a major piece of the puzzle.

All of this aside, by shutting down Reader, Google is driving people out of its universe, by driving them to alternatives. I find this move baffling, as in many cases, it will no doubt drive users to Google’s competitors. Considering all of the moves Google has made to keep users on Google properties, keeping Google Reader around seems like a no-brainer. Some of us spend a whole lot of time on that Google property. Possibly even more than any other Google property.

While Google Reader may live to July 1, the app is already gone from the Google Play store.

Is Google wise to kill off Reader? Will you miss it? What will you use instead? Is this the beginning of the end of RSS? Share your thoughts in the comments.

lead image via: http://nooooooooooooooo.com/