This article titled “How Twitter is bringing footballers back to the fans” was written by Barney Ronay, for The Observer on Sunday 1st May 2011 04.37 Asia/Calcutta

As the third decade of football’s digitally driven global boom approaches there are a great many things that look, if not broken beyond repair, then at least in need of a vigorous reconditioning. The breakdown of the relationship between fans and players was one of the tragedies of the atomised modern game. But against all expectations it has been Twitter – the most laconic, celebrity-driven and, for many, gallopingly inane of the social networking media – that has begun to hurl the odd significant grappling hook across the divide.

Twitter and football: at first it looked like a fling, perhaps even a slightly troubled affair. Finally, and with a notable upsurge in the past few weeks, it seems to have become a permanent splicing together. Initially Twitter had promised to become a mere numerical phenomenon: the towering worldwide followings racked up by the likes of Shaquille O’Neal (3.7 million followers) seemed to stand simply as a testament to the magnetism of sporting celebrity. In the Premier League Twitter is perhaps becoming something else. There is increasingly a sense of rawness to the interaction between players, fans and media. In the most carefully insulated of major sports, Twitter seems to be altering subtly the established dynamic. It is not perhaps yet a tipping point to rank alongside the great staging points in the ascent of the modern superstar footballer, but Twitter is doing one thing: giving players a voice again, unmuzzled by the marketing structures of the plc club. Even crammed into 140 grammatically promiscuous characters, suddenly footballers look a little more likable, a little less remote.

There will continue to be casualties. When Arsène Wenger was asked on Thursday if he objected to his Arsenal players using Twitter he stopped some way short of an endorsement. “It can be very good and very bad. If it can be a positive image of the club [that's OK], it also can be bad,” Wenger said, dismissing the idea that he may make a virtual appearance himself with a wry smile.

Perhaps he had in mind the experience of the Manchester United midfielder Darron Gibson. Introduced to Twitter on Monday morning, by midday Gibson had 12,000 followers. Half an hour later he shut down his account for good, stung by the spume of venom from both his own club’s supporters (”team do all hard work keeping possession then u hit row Z every fuckin time!!”) and those of Northern Ireland, whose advances he turned down in favour of the Republic. On Thursday Danny Gabbidon became the latest player to be charged by the FA over a Tweet aimed at his own side’s fans after defeat by Bolton (specifically: “U know what, fuck the lot of you, u will never get another tweet from me again, you just don’t get it do you. Bye bye”).

The Notts County manager, Martin Allen, is another recent high-profile football Twitter casualty. “I just had to stop,” Allen says. “Twitter was fine while I was working in the media and marketing my company X Factor football, but when I left Barnet [two weeks ago] things moved to another level. I got Tweets saying ‘I hope you get CANCER’ and ‘Who wants to come to the party when Martin Allen dies’. I started off really open on Twitter. I’d always follow people back. I had 10,000 followers and I used to enjoy it. But there was just no point putting myself through that.”

So far, so football. But there have been successes too. Aside from his fine form on the pitch, Wayne Rooney’s most significant stride towards reputation-rehabilitation may prove to have been his decision to open a Twitter account. A week later he has close to 320,000 followers and has come across well: relaxed, surprisingly wry, and refreshingly distinct from the angry, smudged, alienated figure glimpsed from afar. This has also been a positive for United, for whom a healing of the distance between Rooney and the club’s fans will be a further balm on the agitation of early season.

“Greater contact with the public can be a good thing if you’re not being perceived in the right way,” says Max Clifford, PR guru to the stars. “Wayne Rooney’s the proof of that. If I was doing public relations for Manchester United I would be delighted he was showing himself to be different to the way he’s perceived. This is his best way to show what he’s really like.

“Twitter makes players more up to speed with what people are saying. They can respond to that instantly. It also gives them freedom to respond to stories in the newspapers. It’s almost impossible to get a tabloid to print an apology or a retraction for a story that’s a load of rubbish. Because of the vast amounts of people using Twitter players can now respond straight away, and if they’re clever even name the journalist responsible.”

Clifford points to Rio Ferdinand as an example of how to master the medium. “Rio Ferdinand is older, more mature and he’s looking to his own future career. He understands the importance of popularity as a marketing tool.”

And what a ferociously territorial marketing tool it is. In the most recent all-comer Twitter-rankings O’Neal continues to top the tree in sport. Behind him Kaká is the highest-ranked footballer at No32 in the world with 3.5 million followers. Ronaldo is at No56 with 2.5 million (more than Bill Gates and Stephen Fry; a little fewer than Soulja Boy and Ricky Martin). Scrolling down past Fearne Cotton (No177, gaining fast on the Dalai Lama) you meet Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Diego Forlán and finally get to the Premier League’s top dog, Ferdinand, steady on 849,000 and No462 in the world, just below Kelly Osbourne. Cesc Fábregas is his next closest Premier League challenger, followed by Jack Wilshere with 460,000 followers, just ahead of Sesame Street.

Glimpsed in the context of this rampaging global celebrity nexus, the clubs’ desire to take charge of the public utterances of their star players starts to look, not just doomed to fail, but also a little outmoded. Naturally, most have now introduced a Twitter protocol for players. “Our policy is we allow payers to use Twitter with common sense,” says Wendy Taylor, Newcastle United’s head of media. “There are subjects we ask them not to tweet about. Team news and injury news should be confidential. Also we ask them not to make negative comments about players, managers, officials, or the FA.” Newcastle have already been stung this way: in January José Enrique revealed that he would miss the following day’s game against Tottenham with injury: to the exasperation of Alan Pardew, who had intended to keep his team a secret.

There has been a widespread perception that Twitter is entirely a media phenomenon; that it is the media, talking mainly to themselves, that harbour the most excitement about this new source of snippets from the table. But Twitter is about a little more than simply sourcing stories; it may even make them a little more interesting to read. The most high-profile media-football exchange to date was the impromptu Twitter interview conducted by the Daily Mirror sports writer Oliver Holt with Michael Owen after Owen had played for Manchester United at Newcastle. After a forthright exchange of views player and writer seemed to agree on one thing: the relationship between newspapers and footballers is deadlocked in a cycle of mistrust and animosity.

There is much to dislike about the current set-up for interacting with footballers: the sponsorial nudges, the time limits, the shared foraging for scraps. It is hard to decide who the real loser is in this communally erected corporate boredom, although it is hard to disagree with Owen’s conclusion that “the people who suffer are fans”. By the same token, it is football supporters who stand to gain most from Twitter – which has already begun to prick the skin of the sealed media bubble and allow some unconditioned air to flood in.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest the younger generation of Twitter-smart fans do not share the sense of alienation from players felt by many of the older Premier League-era supporters. Why would they when the intimate personal thoughts of half the Arsenal first team are available unfiltered and fed directly to their screen? Twitter may be an irritation for some. It may be, by turns, mundane, groupie-ish and infused with sudden swirling weather fronts of venom. But if it can continue to give the players back to the fans, even just a little bit, it will surely have achieved something significant.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Google and Facebook face new privacy code” was written by Josh Halliday, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 3rd November 2010 16.26 Asia/Calcutta

Individuals would be able to get redress against internet companies such as Google or Facebook if they feel they have invaded their privacy, under a code of internet conduct being proposed by the culture minister, Ed Vaizey.

The code would be an updated and more concise version of the code for privacy online (PDF) which is used by the Information Commissioner’s Office, whom Vaizey is understood to be meeting today to push his proposal.

Vaizey, the Conservative MP for Wantage and Didcot, last week likened this prospective mediation service to the Press Complaints Commission, which works to resolve complaints by members of the public about information published in the UK press.

“One wants at least to attempt to give consumers some opportunity to have a dialogue with internet companies, as they would be able to do if a newspaper had inadvertently published that information,” he said. “There is huge scope for self-regulation.”

Vaizey is understood to be meeting with the UK information commissioner (ICO) today to suggest a refreshed code of conduct to be signed up to by internet businesses such as Google and Facebook.

The minister wants businesses to sign up to an updated and more concise version of the ICO’s code of conduct, and then display that in a prominent place on their home page with a link to the code. It has been described by one well-placed observer as “the first step towards a proper internet bill of rights”.

During a parliamentary debate on privacy and the internet last week, Vaizey said that “more well-known and legitimate websites” should be made to sign-up to the code, saying later that both Google and Facebook would be required to discuss opportunities for redress for aggrieved citizens.

“Critical momentum could be built up if more well-known and legitimate websites signed up to the code, made that plain on their home pages and allowed consumers to see what that code states,” he said.

Privacy and the internet has been accelerated to the forefront of public debate across the world this year following a number of significant and large-scale breaches. Facebook, which signed up its 500 millionth user worldwide earlier this year, worried users – and the European commission’s data protection working party – with its rollback of privacy provisions. Google, meanwhile, continues to face unprecedented class actions and investigations around the world into its “mistaken” collection of personal data from personal Wi-Fi connections by Street View cars.

Vaizey will also write to internet service providers and internet companies to propose a new mediation service, which would give people who feel their privacy has been breached another means of redress.

Facebook said of the proposals: “Facebook is an industry leader in giving people the best tools to protect their privacy. We look forward to hearing more about Mr Vaizey’s plans and continuing to work with both him and the ICO.” Google declined to comment.

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “We are keen to explore ideas for how we can work together with industry to improve the customer experience around complaints and problems with service as well as other online issues, including a mediation service.

“Ed Vaizey will write to internet service providers and other key players to set up a meeting to explore various options.”

The ICO, widely thought to have insufficient power to enforce punishments against companies found to have breached privacy laws, will be given new capacity to protect citizens in line with new European Union privacy directives. The directive states that, among other things, the UK should establish a regulator to make sure the interception of users’ communication is within the boundaries of the law.

The European commission is in the process of taking the UK government to court for breaching EU laws on internet privacy over complaints about the Phorm activity-tracking web system and its failure to change the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and the Data protection Act (DPA), the latter of which empowers the ICO.

In April, the ICO was given the power to issue monetary penalty notices to companies it rules have committed “serious breaches” of the Data Protection Act. Rob Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, said last week that the ICO was prevented from taking stronger action against Google after its Street View cars collected sensitive Wi-Fi data because the Data Protection Act at the time limited its powers.

Halfon yesterday tabled around 50 written questions to the Ministry of Justice about the ICO, including a number on the office’s investigation into the Google Wi-Fi data.

The ICO ruled in July that Google had not breached data protection laws, but has subsequently said it will re-examine the data, following revelations uncovered by investigations from privacy commissioners in other countries. Last month Google admitted that the data harvested when its Street View cars mapped some locations was more sensitive than previously thought, in some cases obtaining full emails and passwords.

In a statement released on Monday, the ICO said: “Whilst we continue to work with our other international counterparts on this issue we will not be panicked into a knee jerk response to an alarmist agenda.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

If you are an entrepreneur and looking for ways to start and promote your own business then you should consider the power of social media. As an aspiring entrepreneur you have to make an effort to network, connect, collaborate, and share knowledge with talented and like minded people.

Below is a list of some very popular social networking sites for entrepreneurs and businessess:

Linkedin

Linkedin is an established name in the field of professional networking. Members use Linkedin to create professional profiles, connect with like minded people, collaborate with potential business partners, connect with service providers, recruit new talent and much more.

Link: http://www.Linkedin.com

Konnects

Konnects powers online newspaper communities. Our social media platform for magazines and newspapers is intended to bring growth and engagement to your organization’s website. Our Software as a Service (SaaS) platform is designed to be integrated into any website easily. The Konnects Community Platform includes social networking, commenting, registration tools, user-generated content, advertising and community analytics for online newspapers and publications. A successful community is much more than just deploying a social appliation. Our solutions team is available throughout the entire community deployment process to assist in multiple areas from strategic planning, launching the platform and goal tracking.

Link: http://www.konnects.com/

Sprouter (Red Wire Nation)

Connect with other innovators to network, share ideas and collaborate. Solicit real-time feedback and benefit from previous discussions.Discover relevant events in your local area and post your own.

Link: http://sprouter.com/

Ryze

Ryze helps people make connections and grow their networks. You can network to grow your business, build your career and life, find a job and make sales. Or just keep in touch with friends. Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to other members. They can also join special Networks related to their industry, interests or location. More than 1,000 organizations host Networks on Ryze to help their members interact with each other and grow their organizations.

Link: http://ryze.com/

Biznik

Biznik is an award winning networking site for entrepreneurs where they can connect both online and in person. Biznik is for people who want to set up real businesses, not for those looking for a new job.

Link: http://biznik.com

Partner Up

PartnerUp is an online networking community that entrepreneurs and small business owners use to find the expertise and resources they need to start and grow a business. Members can connect with potential partners, advisers, and business resources.

PartnerUp also builds online communities for companies that target small business customers. SCORE Association – a nonprofit association of more than 11,000 counselors dedicated to advising entrepreneurs about growing successful small businesses – has their own community built and powered by PartnerUp that
connects to PartnerUp’s community of more than 100,000 members.

Link: http://www.partnerup.com/

eFactor

eFactor is a business networking site where entrepreneurs get to make contacts, find investors, attend special events and market their products or services. eFactor has members from different industries and Countries.

Link: http://www.efactor.com/

Cofoundr

Cofoundr is a private social network where entrepreneurs can find partners, form teams, and look for investors. The service requires you to have a vaild work or university email id.

Link: http://www.cofoundr.com

Start up Nation

Start up Nation is a business networking site for Entrepreneurs to connect and exchange information with like minded people. The site also offers advice, tips, articles on how to start and run your own business. Features include blogs, forums, podcasts and on demand seminars.

Link: http://www.startupnation.com

Fast Pitch

Fast Pitch is a social networking site for business professionals. Members create their business profiles and interact with other members in real time. Members market their business with the help of blogs, press releases, emails and announcements.

Link: http://www.fastpitchnetworking.com

Go Big Network

The Go BIG Network is an on-line marketplace that connects the startup and small business community. The company allows startup companies, funding sources, advisors, and service providers to post requests for help on-line and have those requests routed to other members of the Network who can help them.

Link: http://www.gobignetwork.com

The Funded

TheFunded.com is an online community of entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. In addition, TheFunded.com allows entrepreneurs to view and share term sheets, to assist one another finding good investors, and to discuss the many facets of operating a business.

Link: http://www.thefunded.com

Perfect Business

Perfect Business is one of the fastest growing networks for entrepreneurs. Perfect business helps entrepreneurs to connect with potential partners, investors, board members, advisors and other entrepreneurs. Features include: the business plan builder, ask an expert service, video center, pitch center
and the investor center.

Link: http://www.perfectbusiness.com

Open Coffee Club

The OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow.
This is an attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors (and anyone else who fancies coming along) in a totally informal setting.

Link: http://opencoffee.ning.com/

What is a Blog Network?

A blog network is a group of independent bloggers who have joined together under a particular name/banner for different purposes the most common being to grow a back link. It is also referred to as a blog farm. There are different types of blog networks all designed for a specific purpose. There are blog networks that are commercial in nature and others that are primarily about social networking and promoting blogs. Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc are considered to be two of the most famous and long running blog networks.

1 | My Opera

My Opera is the support community for the Opera web browser. More than 4,500+ new members join per day, and the site has more than 3.5 million members. In addition to being a support site for the Opera browser, My Opera is a social networking site, featured with blogs, photo albums, and more

One can do following things by joining this community:

Blogging

– Easy to use and fully customizable blogs

Photo sharing

– Share your photos online

Friends

– Keep up with friends, Facebook & Twitter integration

Opera

– Access to Opera Link and Opera Unite

It’s free

– Membership is completely free

Link: http://my.opera.com/community

2 | MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog is a social network for the blogger community that is based in part on interactions facilitated by a popular web widget that many members install on their blog. Bloggers sign up for free accounts on MyBlogLog and can initiate a blog community for one or more blogs they author. Other registered members can subscribe to these communities, effectively bookmarking them for future reading and sharing them with their own contacts.

Bloggers can then display widgets on their sites which show MyBlogLog online community members who have recently visited their page. These widgets also contain links to visiting members’ community pages, and are one way in which users connect with one another. All members can see certain basic information about how many people visit their blog, what links they clicked and where they come from. Members may also view more extensive information about traffic on their site for a monthly fee.

Link: http://www.mybloglog.com

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. By June 2008, Technorati indexes 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.The name Technorati is a blend of the words technology and literati, which invokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism.

Technorati uses and contributes to open source software. Technorati has an active software developer community, many of them from open-source culture. Sifry is a major open-source advocate, and was a founder of LinuxCare and later of Wi-Fi access point software developer Sputnik. Technorati includes a public
developer’s wiki, where developers and contributors collaborate, also various open APIs.

Link: http://www.technorati.com

4 | Blog Catalog

Blog Catalog is the premiere social blog directory on the internet. Whether you’re looking to promote your own blog, find blogs on various topics, or connect with other bloggers this site is for you.

You can submit your Blog by going to the Submit A Blog page. Once your blog has been submitted, it will be reviewed by a member of the BlogCatalog Team. Generally the process takes no longer than 24 hours. However, depending upon the circumstances it can take up to 48 hours.

Link: http://www.blogcatalog.com

5 | LiveJournal

LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community. LiveJournal’s differences from other blogging sites include its WELL-like features of a self-contained community and some social networking features similar to other social networking sites.

Link: http://www.livejournal.com

Social networking and business networking websites are springing up on a daily basis at the moment, here at DigitalPercept we are compiling a list of the best social networking websites and the best business networking websites we have found. We are also offering the webmasters of networking sites to add their
information to DigitalPercept. If you would like to add your networking site please Contact us ensuring you mention DigitalPercept Social Networking in the subject line.

These are the DigitalPercept’s choice of Top 10 Social Networking websites of year 2010.

1 | twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict
delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Link: http://www.twitter.com

MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, US, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media, owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors. MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30% of its workforce in June 2009; the company does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006, in the Netherlands.

Link: http://www.myspace.com

Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. The website’s name stems from the colloquial name of books given at the start of the academic year by university administrations with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better.

Link: http://www.facebook.com

Bebo is a popular social networking site which connects you to everyone and everything you care about.It is your life online — a social experience that helps you discover what’s going on with your world and helps the world discover what’s going on with you. Bebo combines community, self-expression and entertainment, enabling you to consume, create, discover, curate and share digital content in entirely new ways. Bebo has sites all across the globe — US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India and the Netherlands.

Link: http://www.bebo.com/

5 | friendster

Friendster is a privately owned social networking website.Its headquarters are in Sydney, Australia. The service allows users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website is also used for dating and discovering new events, bands, and hobbies. Users may share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via their profile and their network.

Link: http://www.friendster.com/

6 | Hi5

Hi5 is a social networking website. As of January 2009, Hi5 claims to have over 60 million active members.In Hi5, users create an online profile in order to show information such as interests, age and hometown and upload user pictures where users can post comments. Hi5 also allows the user to create personal photo albums and set up a music player in the profile. Users can also send friend requests via e-mail to other users. When a person receives a friend request, he may accept or decline it, or block the user altogether. If the user accepts another user as a friend, the two will be connected directly or in the 1st degree. The user will then appear on the person’s friend list and vice-versa.

Link: http://www.Hi5.com/

Orkut is a free-access social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.

Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil.In fact, as of May 2009, 49.83% of Orkut’s users are from Brazil, followed by India with 17.51%.

Link: http://www.orkut.com

Zorpia was founded in 2003 with a goal of bringing people together from all over the world and allowing them to share their ideas and interests. Since then the Zorpia Team has worked ceaselessly to reach people’s heart and provide the best features in order to maximize our users’ satisfaction. Our primary features are photo album, online journal, social networking, customized homepage, comment system and discussion forum.

Link: http://www.Zorpia.com

Netlog (formerly known as Facebox and Bingbox) is a Belgian social networking website specifically targeted at the European youth demographic.The site was founded in July 2003 in Ghent, Belgium, by Lorenz Bogaert and Toon Coppens, and as of December 2009 has 59 million registered users across 25 languages.On Netlog, members can create their own web page, extend their social network, publish their music playlists, share videos, post blogs and join groups.

Link: http://www.Netlog.com

Propeller is a social news portal, meaning that it is programmed by you – the audience. Our members post links to stories from all over the Web. Many of these stories originate from the websites of traditional media, including newspapers and magazines. But you will also find many stories that seldom pop up in the mainstream. Perhaps it does take a village – or at least a large community of news-hungry citizens – to nudge certain stories into the limelight.

Link: http://www.propeller.com