Geek. Pirate. Mom

Since was originally posted, there have been developments from the story. I’ve marked the updates down at the bottom.

Not that long ago, Facebook acquired Instagram. They integrated it into Facebook, and the internet rejoiced.

Well, today Instagram began informing users about their updated Terms of Service- mostly to bring them more into line with Facebook’s own ToS.

I’ve blogged about Facebook’s ToS and Privacy settings before, and one of Facebook’s more controversial features was the roll out of their social ads- which take activities that you make (liking pages, comments, etc) to advertise a service. It didn’t take long before they allowed you to opt-out of it.

Why am I mentioning FB’s social ads?

“Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.”

That’s part of the Instagram ToS. Essentially, they’re rolling out ads, and will be using your photos, data and even the metadata from your photos. And you don’t get any compensation.

Not only will there be ads, but Instagram notes that they probably won’t even be clearly marked as ads. And as of right now, there is no way to opt out from any of this.

This next part of the ToS is even more important:

Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, except that you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service as described in the Service’s Privacy Policy, available here: http://instagram.com/legal/privacy/.

That’s right. By having your photos on Instagram, you’re agreeing to let them use your photos royalty-free. You can adjust who sees some of your data, but they can use your data how they want.

Wil Wheaton weighed in with how these changes might affect celebrities. I’d already been thinking about the artists I knew who used Instagram to share works in progress, but Wil’s perspective hits a lot of the same issues I saw.

The changes to Instagram’s ToS goes into affect January 16, 2013.

As of right now I’m still on Instagram, but will be deleting my account before then. So for the next couple weeks I’m going to be trying out different camera apps (some with social features, some with just sharing capabilities) to see if there are other alternatives out there that might work.

If you have an Instagram alternative that you like, comment on this post! I can only review Android apps, so keep that in mind. (I’m going to try to find ones that have apps for both iPhone and Android)

Update: 12/18 1:45 pm It would seem that Instagram noticed the backlash on the internet. Mashable reports that they will be having some discussions about the Terms of Service.

Of course, who knows what that means.

Update 2: 12/13 6:45 pm Instagram blogged about the backlash, admitting they weren’t very clear in the way they wrote it (actually, they said that we just misinterpreted it because legal jargon is so tough). Ads will be coming to Instagram, but they won’t be selling your photos to be used in ads. And they’ve already removed the verbage that made it seem as though they were going to use your pictures and name in ads- very similar to Facebook’s social ads.

While I completely understand that Instagram needs to make money, this “admission” feels more like them simply trying to cover their asses. Because frankly, it isn’t that hard to say that they’re going to roll out ads and allow brands to show that you’ve liked pictures of theirs.

(Of course, they didn’t address the bit where they said they wouldn’t divulge which posts were ads at all- which frankly is a disappointment.)

Update 3: 12/20 6:45pm Instagram released another statement, one that’s less snarky than the first. They’ll be rolling back to the original ToS so far as the advertising section is concerned, and will be holding off on the advertising until they can explain fully how it will impact users.

If you’re on Twitter with a fairly geeky network, you’ve probably heard people moaning about their Klout scores changing.

Klout is a site that gauges your influence over various social networks, and today they unveiled a new algorithm. For people with high scores, it wasn’t uncommon for them to drop as many as 20 points.

Why? Well, their algorithm is a secret, but from what they’ve hinted at- it was unfairly giving weight to elements it shouldn’t have. The only frustration I have is that when Klout discussed these changes, they’ve said they’re being more transparent, at the same time they haven’t actually said much of anything.

Blizzard is a good example of how to change things without giving too much away. When they roll out a patch and alter skill trees for a game class, they say that they noticed the class was overpowered because of this skill and so they’ve altered it. It tells you what the problem was, but doesn’t tell you how to play the altered class. It’s up to you to figure it out. There’s no reason that Klout couldn’t say, “We noticed that it was raising your score if you were just linked to a lot of networks, even if you don’t do anything on them.” That doesn’t tell you how to raise your score now, other than putting in some work on other social networks.

Realistically, a high Klout score shouldn’t be your goal. Focus on building an active network of like-minded people, RT posts that are relevant to you and you’ll get some real clout.

In one of my last Wired Mom posts, I talked about Twitter, and my rules for using it. I thought I’d add one more thing to think about here.

Be extremely careful about using unusual characters in posts. I follow a writer that uses characters (ASCII, not the literary kind) to plug his books. The posts include the title, his name and a link to his website (which unfortunately looks like something designed in 1995 on Geocities), which has links to the various places you can buy the book. If you’re viewing it through Twitter.com, you can see the characters just fine- and the title looks properly epic.

On the other hand, if you’re viewing it on your phone or through another program- usually all I see is a row of boxes. I suppose what I’m saying is that you should be extremely careful about what sort of tweets you use them in.

Awhile back, Dylan Meconis started telling a story using Twitter (archived here at Dame Jetsam). She posted the musings of a woman shipwrecked. Then other people joined in as characters and the story continued. But a good part of it used upside down characters.

However, there’s a big difference. These were story tweets, and meant to be viewed in a web browser. The author I mentioned is trying to sell a book. Books which can be read on any device now. Why would I click on a link to buy a book if I can’t even read the title in the Tweet?

If you’re promoting your own work, you already know that you have to think like an ad executive. Part of that isn’t just finding a way to break away from the pack to be noticed, it’s making sure that your efforts work as widely as possible. If you’re selling ebooks, you want to make sure that your efforts can be seen on any mobile device- they might be intrigued, read your pitch and click on the links you’ve provided to download your book right away. On the other hand, if you’ve muddled the pitch, it’s far more likely that they’ll just scroll by.

Have anything to say- agree, disagree? I love conversations.

This post has been a long time coming. Okay, a couple of weeks. Not that long ago, Facebook unleashed a giant update to their site a couple days before announcing their new profile- the Timeline.

With most large sites, when they’re about to roll out a big update, they let you know. Remember “New Twitter”? Twitter had a link at the top of the page asking if you wanted to try it. They also talked about the changes on their blog. Whenever Gmail rolls out new features, it’s the same deal- links at the top of the page and in depth explanations on the blog, usually with videos to help explain the features.

Facebook tells you that they’ve added one feature, while neglecting to tell you that they’ve completely redone the back end of the site.

This update was no different. It added the Ticker, a constantly scrolling mini-Feed in the upper right of the corner, which had already appeared as a Game Ticker when playing games in Facebook. It added subscriptions, which allows people to follow you (or you to follow people) like you can on Twitter or Google+, no mutual relationship involved. But more importantly, it completely shifts the way that your privacy is handled.

Subscriptions. I actually like this- it allows people have one account (as opposed to a Facebook Page & personal account) and simply decide what’s put out their by using the “Public” privacy setting, and using lists to control who sees the rest. Not only that, but you can decide what sort of posts you like to see from your friends. Say you have a friend who plays FarmVille all day long, and you just want to see when she posts pictures of her kids? You can turn off the subscription to her game posts- or decide you just want to see “important posts.” Or, say you have a person you only added for game posts, you can say that you don’t want to see anything but their game posts.

There are a few ways to play around with your subscriptions. You can go to your friend’s profile page and in the upper right corner, you can adjust what you subscribe to by hovering over the subscribe button. Or you can hover over a friend’s profile picture in your news feed and up will pop a screen with the subscription button (you can also unfriend people this way as well). The last way is to scroll down to the bottom of the facebook page. You’ll see a bar that has two links. One to load more updates and on the right to “Edit Options”, which is what you want to click on. A window will pop up with a list of your friends, and there’ll be another link for “Manage Subscriptions”. This will show an entire page of your friends, so that you can just scroll down and adjust what you see. The first thumbnail in this paragraph will take you to a screenshot of where to find the Edit Options and Manage Subscriptions. The second thumbnail will show you an overview of the subscriptions page itself.

I have two problems with how subscriptions were rolled out. First, Facebook decided that you want to see “Most Updates” from your friends, instead of “All Updates.” So if you want to see everything, you’re going to have to change that. But the bigger problem is that they don’t have a way to change your subscriptions globally. Meaning, if you want to see “All Updates” – you’re going to have to change it friend by friend.

Privacy. There has been a huge shift in privacy with this New Facebook. Instead of you being able to control precisely who sees what, a lot of the privacy settings are now in your friends’ hands. My default status post privacy setting is “Friends Only”. Say you comment on a status of mine. Facebook will broadcast that you’ve commented on that post within our mutual circle of friends. Now, say it’s a post that I’ve set to “Public.” It will broadcast to all of your friends both in their news feed and ticker that you commented on a post of mine. There is no way for you to opt-out of this yourself. You either have to ask your friends to turn off “Comments and Likes” from their subscriptions options, ask them to stop posting with the Public setting, or only post comments on posts that you’re comfortable with the whole world possibly knowing what you said.

The Game Ticker. This went live about a month ago, and is actually sort of helpful. You can see when your friends are playing, and when they’re likely to help out by sending you things. But at the same time, if you’re playing while at work, you’re also broadcasting to the world that you aren’t actually working. Or that you’re playing Fluffy Princess Monkey Ninjas (I just made that up, but feel free to use it for a game).

Unfortunately, Facebook didn’t make it easy to opt-out of this either, but there is a way. While you’re in a game, you’ll see posts pop up on the right. Hover over the post that says that you’re playing whatever game it is. It’ll expand it, just the way the big ticker works. From there you can mouse over the upper right of the window and click on the little arrow button. A drop down will appear. Click on “Don’t Publish is playing ‘Game Name’ posts”. And voila! All of those posts will be gone. (The thumbnail here shows you what I mean)

Of course, you’ll have to do it game by game. But at least you can hide them.

Facebook, I expect changes. I don’t care about changes, as I expect them regularly- but if you’re going to dump a major change on your users, make sure that you keep something the same. The privacy controls are completely different, in addition to the changes that were made. And make it so that you have detailed walkthroughs so that users can actually see how to handle what they’re doing. While I don’t want to help you too much, you’re letting your users get information on how to use your product from tech bloggers. You roll out product changes, expecting the power users to figure it out (which they do), but alienate your base of users by not warning them or explaining what you’ve done.

To the users out there, if you’re unhappy with the shift in privacy and want to try something else- there’s always Google Plus. It’s in open beta now (you won’t need an invite), and all you’ll need is a gmail address/google log in.

As a final note, I hate blogging about Facebook. It takes FOREVER to hide all the names and user pictures. So I hope you enjoyed my Gaussian blurring and pixelating.

One would think this was a post I might have written in advance. When Steve Jobs stepped down at Apple, to me it seemed like there was only one reason that he would- and that was that he was dying. But no.

I’ve been pretty open about not understanding the hype behind Apple products. At the end of the day, they’re just computers and just phones. I myself have a MacBook, and it’s not a magic machine of productivity. I looked at iPhones when buying my own smartphone- and at this point, it isn’t ahead of the game.

But the reason that Apple is so lauded as being innovative is because Jobs cultivated that brand. He was one of those rare individuals who could combine dreaming and execution- the last person I can think of at this level of game changer was Walt Disney (who didn’t just make movies and theme parks- he pushed innovation, between his multi-plane camera for animation to the animatronics that were developed because he had a need for them).

Jobs was smart. He took the MP3 player, something that had sort of started to appear on the market, but with a lot of buttons and weight and produced something that was streamlined and intuitive to use. It was his focus on intuitive use that is what set Apple apart.

He made the iPod ubiquitous. He introduced the online music store and made it seem normal to buy your music online instead of in a store. And he turned a product announcement into a three ring circus, turning their new products into something you had to have.

Then he turned his attention to the smartphone, which had existed prior to the iPhone. But there was a level of style and yes, intuitive feel to it that changed things. Ditto for the iPad- tablets were on the horizon, but he adapted it into something a bit more special.

Sometimes it seems as though the biggest dreamers wind up burning through their life energy just a little faster than others- but Jobs even found a greater drive when he learned he had cancer.

While I didn’t always agree with the hype, I am saddened by the loss of a man who saw the world as what it could possibly be and tried to create the technology to get us there. It’s easy to shrug and say that he was a stranger and therefore his death shouldn’t impact us. But he was a man who stood for what a lot of us wished to be- he was a man who didn’t let being forced out of Apple in the early days stop him. He gave Pixar the push they needed to become a major player, and came back to Apple to guide it into the empire it is now. He didn’t let the past stop him- he let it drive him forward.

As a creator, it’s this quote that summarizes why he touched my life:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – from Steve Jobs’ 2005 Commencement Speech at Stanford.

Do what makes you happy. Follow your gut, and don’t let someone tell you you can’t.

We won’t all be Steve Jobs. But who cares, if you’re doing what you love?

I know, I’m not an expert on Twitter. I don’t have a zillion followers. But I do use Twitter regularly, and follow a wide variety of people- friends, companies, celebrities.

After almost 5 years on Twitter (I know, I can’t believe it), I’ve set up these rules for myself that I use as a little bit of a guideline for who I follow.

1. Don’t be shy! I know, this probably seems as funny advice coming from someone with social anxiety issues. But Twitter really only works if you want to engage people on a personal scale. A big pet peeve of mine is when individuals and brands just post messages and don’t seem to reply to people. Think of Twitter in real life terms. Would you want to hang out with someone who only talked about themselves and never actually talked to you?

2. Use DMs sparingly. Direct Messages are a great way to take conversations private. They’re necessary to share more personal information like emails or phone numbers. But a lot of users overdo it.

I don’t want to get a thank you DM for following you. You might think it’s being polite, but I see it as impersonal because you likely have a plugin auto-tweeting it for you. But that isn’t as bad as the next one.

I don’t want to get DM ads. Plug your site/product in your stream, not my Inbox. A lot of Twitter users have it set up so that they get emails or texts when they’re DM’d because they think of them as being more important. Do you like getting ads in your email or text messages? I didn’t think so. I got one this week from a gentleman plugging the application he’s created… “because I’m a tech savvy mom.” There was absolutely nothing to make this something he couldn’t have just @replied to me with. I could understand if there was a coupon code. But it was an out and out ad, and I unfollowed him immediately.

3. Don’t follow everyone who follows you. This is where I probably veer from everyone else, but I follow people I want to engage. A lot of people will follow you because they want you to use their service or visit their business- but followers are just a number. To me, if I see someone that follows everyone who follows them- it seems like they’re just on Twitter to get an ego boost. I would much rather have a smaller circle that I really interact with than follow a ton of people who probably don’t care much about me.

I know, there are some great clients out there that allow you to follow a lot of people using lists… but make sure it’s something you can handle if that magic client bites the dust.

4. Don’t beg. Nothing weirds me out more than the people who tweet celebrities and beg them to follow them. Guess what, if you want a celeb to follow you, begging them repeatedly to follow your account is probably just going to get you blocked. (I also stay away from people who beg celebrities to follow them)

5. Be yourself. I’m not going to pretend I’m anything other than I am. I’m a lot of things, so I’m all over the place. I’ve read a lot of people that say that isn’t the way to build your personal brand… but screw it. It’s me. I’m a geek, I only sort of game (My favorite game will always be Ocarina of Time), I have two kids, I cook, I cheat on my gluten-free diet. I’m not going to limit myself to talking about just one of them to be “more successful.” After all, I’m on Twitter to have fun.

6. Obey Wheaton’s Law. If you don’t know Wil Wheaton’s (@wilw) law, it’s simple. Don’t be a dick. It’s a good rule to have anywhere, not just the internet.

So those are my rules, Internet. I tend to try to follow people that seem to feel the same way I do. I take chances on following people I don’t know personally, and try to interact with them. I care less about the quantity of followers I have, but the quality of the ones I do.

Think I’m crazy for my rules, have a couple you’d like to add? Let me know in the comments!

Okay, I guess this Wired Mom is a thing now. Awhile back I thought I’d write a tech blog from the POV of a mom, but I just couldn’t populate a blog full time. So… I guess I’ll just do these posts as they come up and make a category so that you can weed through my tech posts quickly if that’s what you’re looking for.

What is in a name? Since the internet began, people had to figure out what name they were going to be known as. What AOL address they had, chat handles, etc. Some people used their real names from the start, while others preferred pseudonyms to hide behind. I had both. I actually was able to get my initials+drake on AOL, and had a screenname that I used for posting around. I was 10thIndian, as I loved reading Agatha Christie. That lasted until I found Livejournal and started to post using Wingedkiare, or variants of that s/n. That’s also when whitneyd surfaced.

Then came Facebook, which asks users to use your real name to connect. Though there are a lot of people who don’t. One of my “gaming friends” is named Lily Evans. Last week she had another Harry Potter related name. It’s just how it is. Where Facebook asked you to use your name, Google Plus insists. Plenty of users found themselves locked out of Google Plus because they weren’t using their legal name on the service.

Admittedly, I do not use my legal name. I write under my maiden name because that’s the name I first started to write as. Also, my parents gave me a perfect stage name, so why not use it? It gives my husband and children a little bit of extra anonymity, which I like.

I do see the downside of using legal names. It makes it easy to stalk someone, when we’re all using real names on the internet. Blizzard (the gaming company best known for World of Warcraft) tried to make their boards use real names, and the players became extremely upset. Female gamers, who had been harassed by male players (yes, it happens, see: this site which collects gamer reactions to female gamers across various platforms. NSFW) complained, and after a Blizzard moderator posted using their real name, people dug up any and all information about him that they could. Blizzard decided to make it an opt-in program, rather than mandatory.

Not only that, but it blurs the way we can separate our online personas from our real lives. Once upon a time, I had a job in advertising and was writing fanfiction (some of it a bit racy) at the same time. Did I really want our clients to be able to find that out about me just by Googling? No.

Some say it’s as simple as not using the service, which is true in a casual way. But if you’re a writer, artist or musician- why should you be barred from using a service simply because you prefer people to know you under a certain name? Are they going to Jay-Z go by Shawn Corey Carter?

I do understand that Google wants to keep there from being 400 people pretending to be Justin Beiber, or from saying that they’re the Coke Polar Bear Cub… but why force people to stop using a name that they’ve already branded themselves as on the internet? What if I’d written that tech blog, and you knew me as The Wired Mom? Why force me to call myself Whitney Drake when nobody would knew me as that?

I really enjoy using Google+. I’ve met a lot of wonderful writers, artists and musicians. I can’t imagine how many more I’d get to meet if Google would relax their name policy.

Probably the best (and geekiest) way to explain Google+’s naming policy from Ryan Estrada. Click to view it full size.

First, there’s a repost going around Facebook that’s sort of overstating a new feature. Secondly, Twitter got a bit of a revamp- let’s call it New New Twitter (Which I guess would make it the Ramona of Twitter versions). But let’s go over Facebook first.

ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS of your contacts are now on facebook! go to the top right of the screen, click on ACCOUNT, click on EDIT FRIENDS, left side of screen and click CONTACTS. you will see ALL PHONE NUMBERS FROM YOUR CELL PHONE (FB friends or not) have been published. TO REMOVE, go to the right column below Phonebook Contacts, and click on “this page.” please repost this on your status, so your friends can remove their numbers and thus prevent abuse if they do not want them published. -The copy/paste I’ve been seeing all day.

When you use Facebook’s app on your mobile, it’ll ask if you want to sync your contacts with Facebook. If you decided to do this, all the contacts from your phone will show up in Facebook. That way, when you get phone calls from FB friends, you’ll see their profile pics. And when your future contacts sign up for FB, it’ll let you suggest you add them.

This information is not viewable to the world. The page that you see with the numbers is only visible to you. If you want to opt-out, go to your FB app and turn off the sync feature. Then, follow the directions in the message and your phone’s contacts will no longer be listed.

You’ll still be able to see anyone who put their cell phone number in FB and shared it with you. If you’d prefer that nobody see your phone number, from the Accounts drop down menu, click on Privacy Preferences, click on customize settings, and if you scroll all the way down, it’ll let you select who can see your phone number. This applies to your profile and to who can see it from the Contacts list. It keeps pulling it from my mobile app, so I set it to be visible to “Only Me”. Voila. I even had TheBoy verify it for me.

The other news story of the day is that New Twitter got an upgrade to New New Twitter. Remember how you used to have a tab for @mentions and another to browse through Retweets (you could see all RT’s, posts of yours that were RT’d and RT’s by others)? No more. Now the @username tab has absolutely anything that has to do with you. Yes, it is now the most narcissistic (yet utterly useless) tab you’ll find. In it, you can see a stream of every @mention, who followed you, and who retweeted or favorited your tweets.

I will say that the new @username tab has a lot of good information- but there’s no way to refine it. I liked being able to see a list of what tweets of mine were retweeted, as well as all my @mentions & @replies together. Twitter, if you see this, a drop down would be nice.

There’s also the activity tab. Want to see who the people you follow, retweet and favorite? Now you can spy on them. I use this phrase intentionally, because it’s more than a little creepy. Do you really think that Wil Wheaton wants everyone to see someone he follows? No. Hopefully there’s an opt out for that that doesn’t make you make your entire profile private. (Yes, I know I can just see who they follow by clicking on their profile… but then that means I have to want to spy, not just have it handed to me by Twitter)

Obviously, I’m not entirely happy with these changes. I don’t mind the @mememe tab as I’m calling it. I just wish there was a way to refine it so that I can see what I’m looking for right now, not everything.

Your thoughts? I don’t mind changes to websites- but the lack of refinement and spying factor of the Activity tab make the Twitter changes a bit odd to me.

Update 8/11: I logged in this morning to find that I no longer have New New Twitter with my account. Obviously, I can’t say what’s going on with it- if maybe they’re testing it through different accounts. But at least I can find what I’m looking for quickly. Phew!

Update 11/8: New Twitter is back. And the @username tab now has a button you can check to only show mentions.

Yes, I am The Wired Mom. Not just because of my addiction to caffeine, but because I don’t seem to go anywhere without my phone or my laptop. Need I remind everyone of my birthday weekend, where TheBoy and I rejoiced because they had free wifi at our hotel?

Anyways, I use Twitter. I joined it 4 years ago, though admittedly, it took awhile before I was using it daily. I see it as an easy way to share thoughts on my mind that wouldn’t fill out a blog post and to share links I find useful.

At some point in time, you get to the point where you have a lot of people you follow. I’m hovering around 190 right now, and it’s everyone- from friends and family, to bloggers I like, artists I enjoy, writers, geek celebs, news agencies, chefs and food trucks. And I like following them all.

Keeping up with everyone through Twitter’s website would be difficult. I’ve come to rely on TweetDeck, which is a third party client that lets you tweet and see your Twitter stream divided up by your lists. You get context all of a sudden, and it makes keeping up so much easier.

However, Twitter doesn’t like these third party apps. On Friday, Twitter sent a note to developers that included this quote from Ryan Sarver (their director of platform), “Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.”

I love you Twitter, I really do. But it’s statements like this that make me cringe. I have a long dislike of companies that decide that ultimately they know what’s best for you.

I have no options with Facebook. I can post statuses through other clients, but for the most part it’s hard to really interact with people unless you visit its website. With third party apps for Twitter, I can customize my experience so that I’m getting the most out of Twitter and easily keep up with everyone. It’s the beauty of Twitter having such a simple information stream. It’s infinitely tweakable.

I think most people fell in love with that, too. I understand that as a company, Twitter wants to make a profit off its own apps, but unless they find ways to offer some of the features that these third party clients offer- they mind wind up alienating companies and people with much larger fanbases.

So there you have it Twitter. Either find a way to accommodate the features that the 10% who don’t use your own apps want… or just embrace it and focus on making Twitter a great experience. After all, a 90% adoption rate is pretty darn good.