I’m so f*cking tired of looking at splash screens (whether Adobe’s, Microsoft’s, or anybody else’s). A splash screen basically tells me, in very clear-cut terms, that my time is worth nothing whatsoever.

I also hate splash screens, and waiting times, as I normally get thrown between programs a lot. So Kas Thomas excellent point makes me think of this great story.

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After I heard that they were actively trying to earn money while being in beta—something usually not done until you’ve reached X amount of users (you know this already)—I thought: This, I need to see.

I’ll just assume you’ve all seen Pinterest and continue with my point: Is it really only a virtual pinboard?

The picture will be clearer when you start comparing it to the reigning champion of web findings collections—namely, Tumblr.

If you disregard themes, which are one of the breadwinner of Tumblr—the other being the paid directory—you start to see some similarities.

You’ve probably already gathered that I’m talking about Repin, Like and Comment. Basically the same type of social functions you have on Tumblr.

The obvious advantage is that Pinterest is way simpler than a tumblr blog, from a user’s point of view. It does not come with the baggage of a “blog” and is clearly more focused on calling itself a pinboard, catering to the “moodboard audience”. It’s focused on curation and the one-for-all layout allows the content to be the center pieces.

So, What could this mean for Tumblr?

There’s no way to tell for sure. But if we use Google Trends to look at both the website traffic and the searches you can clearly see Pinterest skyrocketing towards the same heights as Tumblr. (Not to neglect the fact that Tumblr is also growing.)

Since the only external output of Pinterest seems to be Facebook integration and RSS, and Tumblr removed their RSS import in June 2011; I can only conclude that they, for now, are competing for the same type of clients—with different selling points: Simplicity versus customization, boards contra categories, and affiliate-links against paid themes/directory.

Seeing how Pinterest already have implemented a model on making money on their platform this early on, it might lend them the upper hand in becoming the “standard” in collecting web findings quicker than Tumblr ever did.

Combine that with Subprint’s post about the extremely valuable data that Pinterest holds and I wouldn’t be surprised if they overthrow Tumblr, not only in users but also in revenue.

The case I am making is that of how Twitter’s “open-endedness” might be the sanest way of tackling the cruxes of online privacy. If we begin with a bit of background, I recently linked to the excellent post The Social Graph is Neither, by Maciej Ceglowski on the Pinboard Blog.

In that post he talks about the labeling problem of social relationships in a computer environment, and how they don’t take into account how these relationsships develop, or degrade, over time – unless you manage them.

He writes:

Google, for example, uses XFN as part of their Social Graph API. This defines a set of about twenty allowed relationships. (Facebook has a much more austere set: close_friends, acquaintances, restricted, and the weaselly user_created).

But these common relationships turn out to be kind of slippery. To use XFN as my example, how do I decide if my cubicle mate is a friend, acquaintance or just a contact? And if I call him my friend, should I interpret that in the northern California sense, or in in some kind of universal sense of friendship?

Danah Boyd goes on to answer the question “Question: How much should people care about privacy?” with great insight, writing:

Social media has prompted a radical shift. We’ve moved from a world that is “private-by-default, public-through-effort” to one that is “public-by-default, private-with-effort.” Most of our conversations in a face-to-face setting are too mundane for anyone to bother recording and publicizing. They stay relatively private simply because there’s no need or desire to make them public.

So we have these two specific things. The problem of labeling social relationships, and the problem of being public-by-default, private-with-effort. Combined they create a situation where you need to meta-manage your relationship with a person, and by doing so you are publicly declaring what and how your relationship is. The former does, as Ceglowski writes, not degrade with time, and once set you need to actively meta-manage that relationship again, if it transgresses into another type of relationship—as real world relationships often do.

These two things become a connection where the content between to persons is connected through the previously set personal connection, and registered, archived and fully accessible for the foreseeable future.

I, for one, have discovered old conversations in my Facebook timeline I’ve had with people I now don’t have any contact with anymore (which is a shame) because the relationship transgressed into a deteriorated state. This could be considered being just fine, since it applies to all (that has an account on facebook) just the same. Though it’s really not fine—as all of that data, sometimes private information, is actually being used to define me as a advertising target group.

Meaning that not only does Facebook/Google+ associate my own content, interests and behavior as part of my identity, but also what type of relationship I have with my particular “friends”, their content, interests and behaviors and how that relationships might reflect on me (as I am probably more likely to be influenced by an intimate relationship rather than an acquaintance).

This relationship model has apparently spawned its own risk reduction strategies. Danah Boyd writes, on this topic:

Mikalah uses Facebook but when she goes to log out, she deactivates her Facebook account. She knows that this doesn’t delete the account – that’s the point. She knows that when she logs back in, she’ll be able to reactivate the account and have all of her friend connections back. But when she’s not logged in, no one can post messages on her wall or send her messages privately or browse her content.

This is a very sane strategy if one wants to control the content associated with oneself. But it’s clearly insane that you have to resort to this type of actions in order to control your online presence.

This is the point where I present the exception that proves the rule. That exception is spelled Twitter. Specifically: their lack of relationship labels. You just follow or get followed (you know this already).

Not only does the lack of relationship labels circumvent the problems associated with it, the lack of a consolidated identity allows Twitter users to act through a persona. Something that we usually do in real life as well, according to context.

A persona allows you to make mistakes. A fixed/consolidated identity does not. Whatever you do and say as your fixed identity is equally fixed to your actual person, regardless of the context of the situation—whether that is a drunk status update, a joke, or a poorly constructed comment.

These two features of Twitter, or rather lack thereof, is why Twitter is “doing identity right”, as Chris Poole states in his Web Summit 2.0 Talk. However, the latest update to the official Twitter client enforces the real name field to be shown next to the tweets, instead of the Twitter handle. On the plus side, they don’t have a name policy like certain other networks do.

Now, I am not the right person to judge how this has affected Twitter’s success or not, but what I want to point out with this is that their model is on the better side of how you should handle digital identity. But it seems to be right, if one were to follow the thoughts of Clay Shirky on the matter.

Although, even with a persona, a mistake could haunt you, as one should always remember the difference between a fleeting conversation and the fixedness of text in a digital environment.

Breaking CAPTCHA with automated humans
Troy Hunter

So CAPTCHA prevents all this, right? Only humans can break the code and complete these signup processes, right? But what if we could automate the humans; I mean what if we could take CAPTCHAs and solve them at such a rate that these registration processes could be easily automated? Well it turns out you can and it will only cost you a couple of bucks.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles, as I have.

• Lockdown
  Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

  And, if you think of protocols and websites as features of the network, then saying “fix the Internet so that it doesn’t run BitTorrent”, or “fix the Internet so that thepiratebay.org no longer resolves,” sounds a lot like “change the sound of busy signals,” […]

• How did molecular machines evolve?
  John Timmer, Ars Technica

  If a molecular machine requires so many precisely positioned parts to function, how could it possibly evolve? That question has been part of a populist attack on evolution but, contrary to its proponents, scientists have a number of ideas about the evolution of this machinery.

• A Spellchecker Used to Be a Major Feat of Software Engineering
  James Hague

  Here’s the situation: it’s 1984, and you’re assigned to write the spellchecker for a new MS-DOS word processor. Some users, but not many, will have 640K of memory in their PCs. You need to support systems with as little as 256K. That a quarter megabyte to contain the word processor, the document being edited, and the memory needed by the operating system. Oh, and the spellchecker.

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I’d guess that Instagram could have charged a few bucks for their app from the start, made us their customers, budgeted carefully, and avoided VC funding and advertising. But they chose the free-now-ads-later model, and it appears to be working very well.

Ah, the free-now-ads-later model. Also usually known as the starting signal for users finding the next thing that’s “free now”. It will be quite interesting to see if that happens to Instagram, as it has to many others.

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Internet Access Is Not a Human Right
Vinton G. Cerf, NY Times, Op-Ed

[T]echnology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.

CV Dazzle
Adam Harvey

CV Dazzle™ is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs.

Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet
Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb

But never forget that you’re Google’s product, not its customer. Why does Google want to facilitate long, riveting conversations on Google+ (with only one permalink, so the search results don’t get confusing)? Exactly. For the same reason blogs allow comments, despite the outrageous overhead of fighting spam. Traffic and search engine optimization.

• Markup.io – Draw on any website
• Buffer – Split your postings throughout the day
• Memecached – Real-time meme generator
• Scrollfriends – The Facebook feed reimagined

• Gamification sucks
  Brent Simmons

  “Gamification” is a word and concept invented by idiocrats who confuse humane with manipulative.

• Gamification is bullshit
  Ian Bogost

  This rhetorical power derives from the “-ification” rather than from the “game”. -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it’s usually bullshit. Just add points.

• Pirate, colonist, slave
  N/A, The Economist

  ONE cold morning in 1591 an English sailor found himself shivering on Ilhabella, now an island of yacht clubs and well-appointed weekend houses that is to Brazil what Martha’s Vineyard is to America. He had been left for dead—again—the fourth or fifth time Fate had deserted him in his short career as a pirate.

• The Dangerous Effects of Reading
  David Tate

  In our personal lives we tend to optimize for one of two things: input or output. Reading or writing. Consuming or creating. The environment we live in – the prevailing culture – by default is optimized for consumption.