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The Atlantic reported on the Google’s “‘Big Tent’ Conference on internet privacy”where Eric Schmidt made a speech about new innovations in Facial Recognition. The Atlantic reports “the ‘surprising accuracy’ of new facial recognition technology “very concerning,” Schmidt said it was ‘unlikely’ that Google would develop a database with the ability to recognize people’s faces. ‘Some company is going to cross that line,’ he added”. Then the Atlantic went on to report that even though the chairman of Google is denouncing the use of facial recognition, Google has filed for two patent in the past year having to do with it’s “facial recognition search system”

Rumor is Facebook is also working on a similar program no patents are yet filed, but there are serious movement into the technology of facial recognition. There might be a reconsideration on the behalf of Google’s part but as Schmidt said some company is going “to cross the line” whether it be Facebook or any other tech corp it has the potential to create a lot of invasion on the people’s privacy.

No longer will you have to be tagged on Facebook by your friends to see what photos you’ve been in, Facebook will be able to do that for you and your friends. Your future employer able to find all those pictures you tried to hide, facial recognition leads to this and it’s being developed.

The Atlantic Article

No, it’s not coming, not anytime soon, not even just a Dislike Button, but people want it, if you type in the Dislike Button in the Facebook Search Bar and you get an endless amount of groups requesting it with a numerous amount of Likes, but why no Dislike Button. It’s the only TRUE way to find out if we really need one.

There are alternatives, like the Meh Button app that The Atlantic report on, and can be downloaded but it is not readily available on the Facebook website. So why no dislike an article on thenextweb.com sums it up perfectly:

“here’s why Zucker and [Company] will never approve a dislike button: people simply can’t be trusted to use a dislike button sensibly.

Social media is all about building networks, being accepted, being ‘liked’, sharing information…positive things. A dislike button goes against all of that and would only promote bad karma and negativity. Anti-social media, in other words.

But over and above Facebook’s desire to keep connecting people in a positive fashion, there’s the issue of revenue. Money, as we all know, talks. All those company pages and sponsored ads bring a lot of cash to Facebook, and giving 500 million people free reign to openly dislike something which has cost a company x amount to promote doesn’t make good business sense for Facebook.”

TheNextWeb.com article mentions people not being trusted to keeping the facade of perfect networking up on Facebook. Your opinion is not needed.

Meh Button App available at: http://www.pubnub.com/blog/facebook-meh-button

The Atlantic Article available at: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2010/08/facebook-should-add-a-meh-button/19179/

The Complete The Next Web Article at : http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/10/10/facebook-dislike-button-why-it-will-never-happen/

Written Yesterday (May 19, 2011)

This morning I spent reading day missing out on one of the best investments in my short stock trading life. The only stock to watch today was LNKD, better known as LinkedIn the social professional networking, it went to market today for the first time and just blow up. It’s IPO was at $45 and by 11:45 it was also at $123, it hit it’s peak at that point, it made traders all over the world very happy. Not only did this company make a lot of money today but it sets the stage for the more powerful social media website IPOs like Groupon, Twitter and the most powerful of all social media websites, Facebook.

During todays crazy amount of trading, I kept visiting StockTwits.com for what traders were saying on the $LNKD page, when one comment posted said “to the young traders this is what 1999 felt like”. The comment was a reference to 1999’s Dot Com Bubble, where the internet was creating the biggest money makers Wall Street has ever seen and LNKD is only the beginning of the IPO madness for this year, but this time it’s not about Pets.com, it involves social media websites that makes real money. In 1999 company’s were rushing to the IPO in order make some cash, but today its a more refined version of 1999, 1999 2.0. These companys are not setting up to be a quick flip but are on there way to be very established tech companies like Google, Amazon and Ebay.  Here come the almighty Dot Com IPOs lets just hope they don’t disappoint.

Google’s IPO coverage  (2007 Article)

LNKD IPO Coverage

I was listening to NPR and during a break in the show one of the Advertisements was for a company that took care of the reputation you have online, the company was Reputation, so I pulled over and Googled it.

There it was, Reputation.com,  a website that in basic terms is in the business of providing protection to your good name online.  They say “[t]he growth of the Internet has made managing your online reputation online a necessity” and they will do it for a premium.  The company provides all kinds of online protection from keeping bad press of you away from the top of search engine results, such as bad reviews on blogs and review sites. They also keeping your personal information off numerous websites. Anything that can keep your information away from spammers, identity theives, or “bad” information from future employers, investors, colleagues, etc.  Reputation is there to help you with.

There is not much specifics on what type of websites of what websites they keep your information off, but they’re prices to provide their entry level of services varies from about 4 dollars a month all the way to $700 a month. If your rep has been really destroyed by the internet they have custom plans that go into deeper protection for executives and businesses, but require a call for details.

The Internet brings the age of never forgetting, but Reputation.com is trying to make it harder to remember. My guess is that they will not be the only one’s providing this service in a few years. With information that can’t be deleted on websites like Facebook it leaves room for people to buy back that information or get it off there databases.