We started with yesterday’s big story — Ariel Waldman’s harrassment allegations on Twitter. Ariel has said that there is a persistent pattern of harrassment from one user that has emerged — anonymously. Twitter has said that it’s not their job to censor. We compare Twitter’s response to Facebook’s choice to censor user messages in the name of Spam Prevention, and Google’s apparent refusal to remove Al Qaeda videos from Youtube.
Our take – Twitter is sticking their heads in the sand. A choice not to moderate a media company, or an online community, is a choice to embrace anarchy, and subsequently lawsuits.
We also had a couple of other quick wrap stories:
Lee Dryburgh’s proposal to host a 1 day mini-eComm in the fall. The idea is that it would be a deep dive on one topic. There was an appetite to attend, and some concrete ideas on how to make it a great event.
Gamestop’s decision to dump the Zune. They used some waffley words about how it didn’t fit their retail mix to justify this. We agreed that it was more symptomatic of the fact that Microsoft is getting smoked in the music player market by Apple, and that Gamespot really isn’t the right venue to sell a music player anyway.
Perhaps the most interesting commentary was around Microsoft Live Search Cashback. Now that the story is out, and people have had time to digest it and a chance to play with it a bit, some are finding it pretty compelling. Rich Tehrani gave a good defence of Microsoft, and pointed out that strategically this might be their best hope to beat Google.
On the call: Jeb Brilliant, James Body, Nick Desbarats, Andy Abramson, Dameon Welch-Abernathy, Jeanette Fisher, Dave Brown, Greg Manto, Ian Hood, Neal Saferstein, Rich Tehrani, Phil Wolff, Jayman Dalal, Jonathan Jensen and Mike Pruyn.
Enjoy the podcast. And to my American friends, enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
