‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ Banned in France

Mentions of the names of some of the worlds most popular social networking websites, Facebook and Twitter, are now officially banned in France according to the The Guardian.

French officials reportedly banned broadcasters from mentioning the companies names due to the fact that it was considered to be breaking the 1992 citations that banned subliminal advertising. The Superior Audiovisual Council considered the mentions of Twitter and Facebook to be an example of “clandestine advertising.”

One prominent French blogger and creator of the popular social networking application company Seesmic, Loic Le Meur, went to his Twitter page to rant about the ban. “French regulation forbids TV networks to say Facebook or Twitter? My country is screwed,” Meur said.

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The Superior Audiovisual Council released the news of the ban late last month saying that those in the media industry may only address those two specific social networking sites by name if it is specifically part of a news story.

“Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are other social networks that are struggling for recognition,” said CSA spokesperson, Christine Kelly according to The Guardian.  ”This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s box. Other social networks will complain to us, saying ‘Why not us?’”

According to the CSA, the ban came about because of the continuous requests from radio stations asking listeners to follow their social networking sites.

Kelly said the CSA was shocked by the outpouring of complaints.

But according to CBC News, the decision for the ban came weeks after French political officials, including President Nicolas Sarkozy, discussed the future of regulating the Internet with the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

Article source: http://www.longislandpress.com/2011/06/07/facebook-and-twitter-banned-in-france/

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Which Celebrity Twitter Meanie Is Having a Change of Heart?

Birthdate:

• or cancel

Article source: http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b246015_which_celebrity_twitter_meanie_having.html

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Social Media: One More Land Mine for Politicians

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER And DAVID FERRY

With the push of a button, Rep. Anthony Weiner broadcast a lewd photograph over the microblogging service Twitter last month and launched a public relations crisis.

The New York Democrat’s blunder came from the Twitter equivalent of clicking Reply All on an email. Mr. Weiner, whom Time.com named as one of “10 Politicians to Follow” on Twitter, has said he was trying to send a Twitter “direct message,” with a link to the racy image, to only one other user. But he used the wrong coding for the message, which included his and a Seattle student’s Twitter account names, plus a link to the photo. That caused it to be sent to tens of thousands of his Twitter followers. Despite his efforts to delete it, it was quickly archived and retweeted.

Thus did Mr. Weiner join a growing list of politicians, celebrities and companies that have discovered the power online social media have to build an audience—and enable embarrassing goofs.

Social network Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google Inc.’s YouTube have become standard tools for politicians.

In May, Newt Gingrich used Facebook and Twitter to announce his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

During the blizzard of December 2010, Newark Mayor Cory Booker took to Twitter to help snowed-in constituents, showing up at one home with diapers after a woman tweeted that she had run out.

Yet, with surprising regularity, people in the spotlight also seem to forget how quickly comments on social media services can spread.

An army of social media consultants has sprung up to remind them. “With the Internet, there is a false sense of security,” said Susan Etlinger, an analyst with the consulting firm Altimeter Group, which helps companies set social media strategies. “People still think and behave as though they are communicating one-to-one, when in fact digital communication is a very volatile and sharable thing.”

In 2008, a photo showed up on Facebook of Jon Favreau, a speechwriter for President-elect Barack Obama, showing Mr. Favreau groping a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton. (He apologized to Mrs. Clinton.)

Ken Goldstein, the worldwide media liability expert at Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, says that companies and high profile people alike should think before the tweet. Companies and organizations that tweet should “emulate a newspaper operation,” he said—meaning there should be the equivalent of an editorial structure, where messages and photos are vetted before being sent.

Sometimes, social media amplify bad decisions. In August 2010, the Twitter account for Joe Miller, who was running for Senate in Alaska, essentially compared his opponent, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, to a prostitute.

“What’s the difference between selling out your party’s values and the world’s oldest profession?” said the message under Mr. Miller’s Twitter address.

Mr. Miller said the tweet was sent by a staffer who was temporarily manning his account, adding that the remark reflected “poor judgment” by the unidentified staffer, whom he “relieved of his duties.”

Last year, Sarah Palin tweeted “refudiate,” which wasn’t a proper English word but has since been added to some dictionaries.

Even mundane comments can look like “oversharing” when taken out of context. In May, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) was chastised online for tweeting “Tired of looking and feeling fat. Maybe talking about it publicly will keep me on track as I try to be more disciplined. Off to the gym.”

McCaskill spokesman Trevor Kincaid said that Twitter has nonetheless been a great asset for the senator. “She views it as a mechanism to cut through the filter and communicate directly with people in Missouri,” he said, because “you’re not getting one side of the discussion or another side of the discussion—you’re getting the entire discussion.”

—Geoffrey A. Fowler

and David Ferry

Article source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304906004576371821086375068.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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Anthony Weiner Facebook Chats: Lisa Weiss Conversations Revealed: Report

A female Las Vegas blackjack dealer has released to RadarOnline.com what appear to be Facebook chats she exchanged with embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). The messages, which came to light on Tuesday, are sexual in their nature and surface on the heels of the congressman’s admission that he engaged in “inappropriate” conservations online with six women in recent years.

At a press conference on Monday, he said, “I have never met any of these women or had physical relations with them at any time.”

RadarOnline.com relays the following conversation said to have taken place on Facebook between the congressman (bold text) and Weiss on September 28 of last year.

whoa. Super intense dream bout u just now. Woke me up.

that is fu**ing awesome! don’t know i you are still up…but we really need to discuss this further! that’s the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in a while!

damn! you either went back to sleep or to work saving the world..you see why i need your number when you leave me such good messages?

nope, not sweet. crazy dirty

i know…..i want all the dirty details!

Baby, u have to post some fresh pictures.

According to the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Further information gleaned from her Facebook page and Twitter account, where she goes by @liberallisa, indicated Weiss is a native of Milwaukee who studied at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and was in the class of 1991.

According to Radaronline, Weiss said she once worked as a Democratic campaign worker. A spokesman for the Nevada Democratic Party said today there is no record that she was a volunteer.

Weiss reportedly wrote in one message to Weiner: “i love that u r sooo hot and such a liberal.”

Another woman who corresponded with Weiner has also come forward, writing a post on Andrew Breitbart’s site BigGovernment.com and giving interviews to ABC News and Fox News.

Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old single mother from Texas, says that she exchanged dozens of sexually charged photos, emails, and Facebook messages with Weiner over the course of a month.

It began innocently enough, she says. “On April 20, I clicked on his Facebook page that I ‘liked’ a video of Rep. Weiner addressing a gathering of construction workers in Washington, DC,” she wrote on Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com site, where the photos of Weiner shirtless first appeared Monday, prompting Weiner’s confession.

Meanwhile, the social media controversy has prompted top Republicans to call for Weiner’s resignation. And for the most part, Democrats aren’t coming to the New York lawmaker’s defense.

Click here to read the messages in full relayed by RadarOnline.com.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/07/anthony-weiner-facebook-chats_n_872783.html

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Facebook Turns On Facial Recognition, Prompting Concern

Security firm Sophos on Tuesday expressed concern that Facebook’s facial-recognition technology had been turned on by default. The social-networking site acknowledged that it should have been more communicative about the service’s roll-out, but did not announce plans to make it opt-in.

“Now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings as many Facebook users are reporting that the site has enabled the option in the last few days without giving users any notice,” Sophos’ Graham Cluley wrote in a blog post.

Back in December, Facebook announced plans for facial-recognition technology intended to make it easier for people to tag photos of friends. Facebook said it would examine newly uploaded photos and compare them to other photos in which you or your friends are tagged in order to make tagging suggestions.

When it was announced, Facebook said it would test the service and listen to feedback before a full rollout. “We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them,” a Facebook spokesman said in a Tuesday statement.

Facebook is “rather creepily … pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you,” Cluley wrote. “Remember, Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags. Instead the onus is on you to untag yourself in any photo a friend has tagged you in. After the fact.”

Facebook, however, said the tool is simply intended to help users speed up a process that is “done more than 100 million times a day.” Tag suggestions are made only when people upload photos and it only suggests friends.

“Tag Suggestions are now available in most countries and we’ll post further updates to our blog over time,” the Facebook spokesman said.

If you don’t want facial recognition turned on, go to your Facebook account’s privacy settings, click on “Customize settings,” go to “Things others share” and find the option for “Suggest photos of me to friends.” To see if it’s enabled, click “Edit Settings” and the box should either say “enabled” or “disabled.”

In April, Cluley published an open letter to Facebook that outlined three fundamental steps Facebook needed to take to better protect its users. That included a request for a “privacy by default” setting.

“Unfortunately, once again, Facebook seems to be sharing personal information by default,” Cluley wrote today. “The onus should not be on Facebook users having to “opt-out” of the facial recognition feature, but instead on users having to ‘opt-in.’”

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386555,00.asp

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Microsoft, Facebook Support AT&T/T-Mobile; Google Remains Silent

Wireless giant ATT has friends in high places — and not just on Capitol Hill.

Several major technology companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, Facebook and Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry line of devices, have thrown their weight behind ATT’s proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile. So have two of the most powerful venture capital firms in the country: Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sequoia Partners.

The tech companies and VC firms expressed their support of the deal, which is being scrutinized by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department, in letters filed with the FCC late Monday, The New York Times reported.

Their support constitutes a powerful endorsement from some of the heaviest hitters in Silicon Valley, and is no doubt warmly received by ATT public policy chief Jim Cicconi, who last week characterized support for the merger as, “perhaps the broadest, deepest range of public-interest support ever filed at the FCC in support of any transaction.”

Support for the merger is not unanimous in Silicon Valley, however. In fact, one extremely important Valley company is remaining conspicuously silent on the deal: Google. A spokesperson for the web search titan confirmed Tuesday that the company has not taken a position on the merger, but declined to comment further. Tech giant Apple, which did not return a request for comment, is also staying mum on the deal.

Critics of the merger, most notably Sprint, the number three wireless company, argue that reducing the number of nationwide mobile providers from four to three would concentrate too much market power in the hands of ATT and Verizon, which would control 80 percent of the market. The companies could use this market power to raise prices for consumers or muscle out smaller competitors, especially regional carriers.

Allowing the merger to proceed, critics say, would result in a return to a “1980’s-style” duopoly that would stifle innovation and competition in the wireless market.

For its part, ATT says that it needs to absorb T-Mobile in order to expand its network capacity and provide better service for its customers. The wild success of the Apple’s iPhone, which was only available on ATT for four years until this past January, caused service issues ATT customers are all-to-familiar with.

There is a general consensus that the proliferation of smartphones and explosion of data services will put increasing pressure on the nation’s spectrum capacity. (Wireless spectrum refers to the radio frequencies used for mobile networks, Wi-Fi, and even over-the-air television.) Some observers have suggested that any solution should include a national regulatory approach, from “incentive auctions,” (which would require Congressional approval), to re-allocating existing spectrum from over-the-air TV broadcasts.

Then there’s the issue of spectrum efficiency. Testifying before Congress last month, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that ATT’s spectrum troubles were of its own making.

“If ATT invested a fraction of the $39 billion T-Mobile purchase price in its own network, it could alleviate its alleged capacity concerns, upgrade its network and deploy advanced wireless technologies, without harming wireless competition,” Hesse said.

In their letter backing the the deal, Microsoft, Facebook, and RIM echoed ATT’s “capacity constraints” rationale for the T-Mobile purchase. “Many policy-related efforts will not be able to quickly address near-term capacity needs,” the tech giants wrote. “The F.C.C. must seriously weigh the benefits of this merger and approve it.”

Given what’s a stake — no less than the future of the U.S. wireless market — it’s understandable that the tech giants would want to weigh in on ATT’s bid for T-Mobile. After all, many of the firms partner with ATT, including Microsoft which supplies its Windows mobile operating system for many of the company’s devices.

So why is Google staying silent? A spokesperson declined to comment beyond confirming that the company is taking no position now, but it’s not hard to imagine why Google would feel that staying out of this fight is in its best interest.

For one thing, thanks to its dominant search market position, Google is in the anti-trust cross-hairs on both sides of the Atlantic. If Google were to take a position on this deal — either for or against — it would naturally attract scrutiny of its own formidable market power.

For another, Google has traditionally sparred with ATT over a variety of issues, most notably the Google Voice web-calling application. It’s highly unlikely that Google would support a deal that would strengthen a company that has been a thorn in its side over the years. On the other hand, if Google were to publicly oppose the deal, it would invite a withering response from ATT and its allies. This is one battle, then, that Google may have decided to simply sit out.

When it comes to the ATT/T-Mobile deal, at least, Google appears to be following an axiom often attributed to American author and philosopher Napoleon Hill: “Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.”

Microsoft et al Letter Backing ATT-T-Mobile Deal

Image: John Abell/Wired.com

See Also:

Article source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/microsoft-facebook-att/

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Tradition trumps Twitter at Iowa Writers’ Workshop

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Inside the 154-year-old Victorian home that houses the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, you won’t see many Amazon Kindles. Twitter is viewed as a potentially disastrous distraction. And you can even anger an instructor for mentioning Google in your writing.

At a time when so much has changed in the publishing industry, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious creative writing program embraces tradition. And why not? For more than seven decades, the nation’s best young fiction writers and poets have escaped from life to spend two years in Iowa City writing, reading, hearing criticism of their work and meeting lifelong trusted readers. And that formula continues to have success helping top-notch writers develop their craft.

The program, which has helped train everyone from Flannery O’Connor to Michael Cunningham and T.C. Boyle, remains a powerhouse in American literature as it turns 75 this week. To mark the milestone, hundreds of alumni are coming back to campus in what amounts to an all-star gathering of writers who have breathed the air in Iowa City and that of its once-smoky bars.

Even in a town where it is not uncommon to bump into award-winning writers at the grocery store, the reunion is creating tremendous buzz. Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award recipients and MacArthur Foundation “geniuses” will be among the hundreds of workshop alums in attendance. One of the program’s star faculty members, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Marilynne Robinson, is kicking off the events on Thursday with a public speech about the workshop.

Cunningham, who wrote “The Hours,” will speak with other authors at a public event Saturday. Boyle, 2010 Pulitzer fiction winner Paul Harding, author Denis Johnson and dozens more will participate in smaller panel events Friday and Saturday addressing topics such as, “what makes literature immortal?” and “the writer as outsider.”

“It will be great to see all these legends of the program,” Arna Hemenway, 23, who just completed his first year in the workshop, says during a break from working on a novel in a library filled with thousands of books written by alums. Hemenway says he feels a bond with those who have gone through before him: “You’re toiling under the same sort of magical, strange, impossible thing.”

Those returning will find a program quite similar to the one they knew. Admission remains extremely competitive: The workshop received 1,600 applications last year for just 25 fiction writing and 25 poetry slots. Students take literature seminars from award-winning authors and poets who comprise the faculty. In workshops, they take turns handing in stories and poems to be intensely critiqued by classmates and instructors.

Students continue writing and discussing the word at all hours of the day in some of the same bookstores, bars and coffee shops that have long populated this college town. Even the quirky, decades-old tradition of having fiction writers play the poets in a softball game at the end of the spring semester continues (and a similar game is scheduled for Sunday).

“I would say that in some ways our program hasn’t changed,” says Lan Samantha Chang, the author who has directed the program since 2006. “It’s true that we’ve gone from way back when, when people would stand up and read their stories out loud to an auditorium to share their work, to mimeographs to photocopies, but basically the emphasis on writing remains the same here. The focus on writing, apart from the industry and apart from whatever kinds of media are used to carry away the product of what we do here, remains.”

Chang says her role as director is like “being a caretaker of the program” and making sure its best parts are preserved.

At the same time, the program has changed in many ways. Chang, the first woman and Asian-American to lead the program, shattered its image as an old boy’s club after succeeding the late Frank Conroy. The Workshop’s accommodations are much nicer than in the past: The Dey House has been renovated to connect to a library that includes 3,500 books written by alums, and students now meet in conference rooms with splendid views of the woods along the Iowa River.

Chang is praised for raising more money for financial aid so students aren’t competing — as much as in the sometimes cut-throat past — over limited funding.

Eric Simonoff, co-head of the book department at the WME talent agency, applauds the Iowa workshop. His agency represents four of the six Iowa grads The New Yorker listed in last year’s compilation of the best 20 writers under 40.

“I think it still has a very significant contribution to make to American letters,” he says, noting that because of good funding, those accepted into the program receive scholarships to cover their tuition.

Chang, who spends every January and February pouring over boxes and boxes of manuscripts, says she has also worked to enhance the diversity of the types of writers who are admitted.

Benjamin Nugent, who recently graduated from the program and already has a deal to get his first novel published next year, recalls that he was accepted in 2009 after sending in a manuscript of a comedy about fraternity brothers who accidentally turned their mascot into a demon that sexually assaults them.

“I don’t think that’s what they were writing at Iowa 75 years ago,” says Nugent, who wrote, “American Nerd: The Story of My People,” before he was admitted. “I think it is a different place.”

At the same time, Nugent says he’ll hand-write the first drafts of his stories or even use a typewriter. Like most of his classmates, he does not own an e-reader and prefers paper books. He says he was scolded by a tradition-minded instructor when he turned in his first workshop story for writing about a character that used Google. And although he is as quick-witted as they come, Nugent does not use Twitter.

“Lack of distraction is so important when you are writing a novel that using Twitter seems like putting my head on a guillotine,” he says. Nonetheless, a university spokesman, Winston Barclay, says he expects “a steady stream of blogs and tweets” to come from writers at reunion events.

There is also the distraction of the business side of writing. Agents and editors routinely come to meet with students and get samples of their work. Hemenway says he and other students know they have to engage industry representatives, “but no one likes doing that.”

Simonoff says Iowa’s administration has long been conflicted toward the publishing industry, trying to give students access without taking their focus away from learning their craft.

“And I think that’s right,” he said. “It’s useful to know that at one point one will have to market oneself, but I don’t think the time to do that is when you are in an MFA program.”

Joe Fassler, a 27-year-old recent graduate, says he often writes at an old, dark bar called the Deadwood — a popular haunt during the 1960s workshop days of writer Raymond Carver — to avoid the distraction of a fast Internet connection. In an interview in one of its booths, Fassler says he is inspired to write fiction as an alternative to the constant drumbeat of traditional and social media.

“The reason it’s modern and the reason it’s so radical now is it’s such a slow-burning, heavy-attention medium that really demands someone who is mentally present and not just giving you superficial attention. I really love that aspect of it,” Fassler says. “I want to convince people that, in this world of beeps and tweets, spending meditative time with an analog paper book is a worthy pursuit. I want to write so well that I can convince others of that.”

At this week’s reunion, he plans to set up a room where alumni can record their memories about the program.

“I wonder to what extent things have changed over time, or has it been kind of a timeless experience?” he says. “From the time of Flannery O’Connor to today, how has writing changed? How has publishing changed? How has Iowa City changed? I hope I get some insight into those questions.”

Article source: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Tradition-trumps-Twitter-at-Iowa-Writers-Workshop-1413085.php

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Saying “Facebook” or “Twitter” in French

It’s always tempting to find something deviously anti-American in the actions of the French, but this case seems more like a misapplication of a judicious restriction—even if that restriction strikes most readers on this side of the Atlantic as an unnecessary restriction on free discourse. Take the wide range of Apple products on the market, for example. Bill Gates, and most anyone who works outside the walls of Cupertino, must cringe every time news reporters and announcers substitute iPhone for smart-phone or iPad for tablet in stories that have nothing to do with the specifics of the brand. There are hundreds of devices available to consumers, and even if right now it looks as though one day everyone may own an Apple product, we are certainly not there yet. Providing guidelines for consumer-product identification keeps the always looming marketplace at bay, even if only slightly.

This gets to a larger issue in the language, and to the case of “proprietary eponyms,” words that move from corporate brands to general nouns (and even verbs) thanks to their ubiquity. Frisbee, astroturf, tabloid, dumpster—all started as specific brands before becoming plain-old lowercase members of the language. Since its launch, the iPad has edged in that direction, largely because it beat most everyone to the market (iPod is even more ubiquitous). But use of the word “iPad” to mean “tablet PC” has not crossed over entirely yet, perhaps because it’s not just a device but an operating system that comes with proprietary software, the iTunes store, etc. It will be interesting to check back in a couple of years.

It is certainly striking when CNN reports a story about the business doings of Twitter, and then later in the hour shows live updates on its Twitter feed. A potential conflict of interest is rarely so patently on display. Yet this is just the latest example of the competing needs of editorial and advertising, a balance that has been managed and mismanaged long before the advent of social media. At this point, however, Facebook and Twitter are different from Apple—that’s why the law seems misapplied. These brand names don’t stand in for more generic terms. You wouldn’t say, for example, that you saw someone’s profile update on Facebook when you had actually used a different service, such as MySpace. And a French media outlet wouldn’t bother to create a MySpace page, which would reach a small audience, when they could devote attention to Facebook, and reach millions more viewers. Similarly, Twitter currently offers the only platform far-reaching enough to allow sports stars to retire online, actors to make bad jokes that cost them their jobs, or reporters to speak directly to their audience. Why should that radio or television station be prevented from promoting its content in the places that it exists online? Sending one’s audience out wandering in the woods of the Web—”look for us on whatever social-media site you prefer to use, we might be there”—has never been good for the bottom line, or for the news media’s other business of informing the public.

Article source: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/06/saying-facebook-or-twitter-in-french-1.html

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Should Rep. Anthony Weiner Resign Over Twitter Photo Scandal?

Well, he did it.

After days of denials, Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner stood up at a Monday afternoon press conference to admit the whole story with blunt honesty: the accidental tweet, the panic and embarrassment, the lie. He recognized his stupidity and apologized to his wife and others affected—including conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, who posted the private photos of Weiner on the website biggovernment.com, and who had been accused of a right-wing hacker conspiracy.

Though most everyone knows by now that anything emailed or posted online (even with privacy settings) can always surface later to cause mayhem—especially for public office holders—Weiner apparently thought he’d get away with it. He was dumb to conduct sexy Internet relationships, and he knows it. He admitted as much in what came across as a supremely sincere apology.

Though Weiner is sorry, does his offense mean he should resign?

“We do not need an investigation to know he lied and acted inappropriately,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus Tuesday morning in a statement. “We need a resignation.”

But in Weiner’s Monday press conference, he made it clear he had no plans to step down. “I didn’t violate the Constitution,” he said. “Did I violate my oath? I don’t think so. But people are entitled to their viewpoint.” Weiner said he believes he always used his personal Blackberry and computer to conduct the relationships, rather than government property. He also said he would work hard to win back the trust of his constituents, who will have the chance to decide his future in 2012.

U.S. News blogger Peter Roff, a conservative, thinks Weiner’s sincere apology should be the end of the scandal. “His candor, in my judgment, while overdue, is nonetheless refreshing,” he writes, doling out unusual grace to a Democrat. “Weiner’s statement is a model of contrition, and he should, in a sense, be applauded for it.”

But left-leaning U.S. News blogger Jamie Stiehm thinks Weiner should have been more embarrassed than he was. “A married Democratic congressman from New York shamed himself by sending out sexually suggestive photos to women he met on the Internet but never in person. But he’s not ashamed enough to resign,” she writes. “Very nice.”

What do you think? Should Rep. Anthony Weiner Resign Over Twitter Photo Scandal? Take the poll and post your thoughts below.

Previously: Should John Edwards have been indicted for his affair coverup?

Article source: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/06/07/should-rep-anthony-weiner-resign-over-twitter-photo-scandal.html

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Taking a Vacation From Facebook

To his Facebook a student once swore
I’ll update my status no more.
The time that I waste’s
Better spent face-to-face.
For the rest, face-in-book, I’ll explore.

My 18-year-old son called me with some remarkable news the other day, inspiring the limerick above.

He had shut down his Facebook account. This came as a surprise to me because he enjoyed Facebook and spent a lot of time on it.

He’s a first-year student at Auckland University in New Zealand. He told me he often began many of his study sessions by logging on to Facebook to check his account. The quick check would often last at least a half-hour. He said he couldn’t afford to waste the time.

I was impressed.

First, the maturity to self-regulate was a logical, strategic move given that he wants to do well at school and finds the work demanding.

Second, Facebook is his major platform for interaction with friends. For middle-aged me, the social networking site is more of a billboard where I can publish links to my writing. For him, it was a way to connect, tease, commiserate and have fun with people he knew. It seemed like he was making a sacrifice.

I asked him about it.

He would lose touch with some people, he said. But many he could still text. Or, imagine it, even connect the old-fashioned way, face-to-face. He’d also found that his “friends” list had grown bigger than he needed anyway. Just before closing his Facebook account, he’d done a “cull” of his friends, he told me. From 240 to 140.

His friends reacted to his Facebook deactivation with surprise. “Where did you go?” was the most common comment he told me — as if he had left town. In fact, he had disappeared. From a certain — and very common — cyber reality anyway. But his student friends, when he saw them in person, did not criticize his actions. Just the opposite. Once friends discovered he’d dropped Facebook because he felt he spent too much time on it, many of them said: “I should do that, too.”

This all made sense to me. Facebook is a rare part of the human experience which affords you the chance to declare friendship with someone you have never met and whom you may not even know. Losing such “friends” can’t be too hard. (Have you ever been tagged or poked by a Facebook “friend” and struggled to recognize them or even place them in some sort of context? I have.)

I am proud of my son — and it has nothing to do with whether he is on or off Facebook. He’s honest, caring, athletic, musical and loves to dance. He’s good at computer games. He follows the Lakers avidly, can dunk in pickup games and also thinks about the ultimate meaning of life.

And he used to use Facebook often. Ironically, Facebook was a great way for me to stay in touch with him between phone calls. (We are separated by a common ocean, the Pacific.)

But he had the gumption to unfriend the Big Friend-making machine and detach on-line from his peer group.

Or at least that was the situation until a couple weeks ago. Then, suddenly, he was back on Facebook — commenting, posting links and photos, wisecracking with his mates. He dramatic exit from Facebook turned into a vacation.

I asked him why — using a Facebook message of course.

He messaged back saying it was “just real handy to talk to people about stuff when you couldn’t actually meet up with them … like now or whenever you get this today.”

That made sense to me, too. Of course, there’s email and all the other ways to connect, but Facebook allows you to connect or just be available to lots of your friends at once, no matter where you are.

Yes, I suppose that sounds a bit like a commercial. But it’s not really. I’m not a big Facebook fan myself. And my son was proving an inspiration for a second time around the subject.

First, he’d taught me that it’s possible to leave Facebook. Then he taught me, it’s possible to come back.

The Facebook vacation. I saw the headline: “Steven is no longer active on Facebook. And he may never be again. That’s up to him.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t resist following in my son’s footsteps and an hour after this blog goes live — and I post it on my Facebook page — I will deactivate my Facebook account. ( I love the irony.) According to my son, all you have to do is go to the account section — on the top right — and then down to account settings and then to deactivate.

My son is back on the ‘Book, but for me it’s goodbye. For now at least. I’m looking forward to my vacation.

Do others out there on the web have similar stories? How are you coping with the time-eating computer virus that Facebook can bring? Have you taken a vacation from Facebook? Use the comments area below and let me know your experience.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-crandell/unfriending-facebook_b_851052.html

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