I am moving.

Not physically, though. I will be starting JustinColeman.com anew with help from the fine folks at Tumblr.com.

This makes a lot of sense for the blog, as I can easily update it and share cool content with you guys. Unfortuantely, all of my old posts will go by the wayside, but its OK. I kind of want to get a fresh start to things anyways.
Bye WordPress!

I will be back, I promise.

I know it has been forever, but things are super busy for me and for Mixng right now.

A few updates:

• I did end up buying my first Mac. I got a 24-inch 2.8 GHZ, 2 GB of RAM, 320GB HDD for my birthday on May 28th.
• Mixng is about to begin its Alpha phase. Unfortunately we are keeping it super closed until the Private Beta.
• I have some cool ideas for this blog, so be on the lookout.

Again, I apologize for the irregularity of my posts. I promise it will get better.

My baby

My baby

Originally uploaded by JustinColeman

Major Social Network in Hot Water

So the other day, I got a message from a friend of mine, saying that one of the major social networks had been committing felonies all across the country. At first, I was obviously skeptic, but once I had heard the clip from the investigator I was a believer. The investigator, Rombom, said that the company had been traveling the country, stealing user information from other company’s servers. In addition to this theft, they were coaxing companies to build back doors into their software. At one point, an employee of the company even pretended to be a Federal agent to pressure the company.

This is about as sleazy and low ball as you can get. If it is one of the big 3, then it has to be either Facebook, MySpace, or Bebo. I think the twisted part of me hopes it is Facebook, only because it would be interesting to see how the $15 billion company would handle such a monstrous scandal. Who do I think it is? MySpace. Why? Because they are losing the battle with Facebook. They could try to get an upper hand on the competition by having unauthorized access to user data. This data could be used for anything from user-specific targeted advertising, new marketing techniques, and even to spam potential users. The thing I don’t truly understand is why they would risk getting caught. Is the net gain going to outweigh the huge losses they are going to take? Is the embarrassment going to be bearable knowing that you made ‘X’ dollars off of the data you stole?

I know business is cutthroat, but you can definitely take it too far. Every company should have someone who acts as a voice of reason. Especially these days when major companies are run by people my age, you need an adult in the mix to tell you when your idea is ridiculous. Obviously Facebook, MySpace, or Bebo are lacking in this department. It’s a shame, and it is probably going to set Internet trust back about 5 years. People were just starting to feel ’slightly comfortable’ sharing somewhat private data online, now we (Internet businesses) are going to have to spend extra time reassuring users and bulking up privacy security to never before seen levels. Joy.

When the name of the company is revealed, I believe it will not be either Facebook or MySpace. People, including myself, want to see a giant fall, but the world often does not work this way.  It will be Bebo, because they are the small dog in the pack. They probably want to get a bigger chunk of the market share and they probably (even though they just sold for $850 million) aren’t pulling in a lot of revenue. That last point is probably true for all social networks though, but that is an entirely different topic for a different day.

So what happens when this company is outed this summer? According to Rombom, we can expect indictments and criminal charges. Whatever company it is, they are shaking in their boots right about now. It’s a shame that the felt the need to do this, and one can only hope they get what they deserve, but learn a valuable lesson.

Here is the audio if you want to hear it for yourself (skip to around the 45:30 if you only want to hear the news).

Rombom Breaks Major News