Anyhow, a recent news story came across my consciousness. I don’t recall which one, precisely – let’s say it was the balloon boy thing. Now, I have a decently established methodology for learning about what’s been going on, at least things that I care about. Generally, I don’t care about the balloon boy thing. General news falls pretty low in my process, I’ll admit, but I noticed the balloon boy thing, and one thing about it stood out. Almost everything of ‘general news’ that I’ve noticed lately I didn’t notice from the internet news services, or twitter, or my RSS feeds, or the paper on the tube.

So what do Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, recent US football scores, the balloon boy, the old guy on the Tube, and other general news stories have in common?

Facebook. People talking about these stories on this bizarre misanthropy of a social networking site, one that doesn’t quite seem to know what it’s purpose is. And I’m not an avid Facebooker, nor do I track down history streams (whatever they’re called?) when I don’t log in for a couple days.  Yet I still noticed all of these via my friend’s ramblings on Facebook.

So – I end up with heavily filtered, likely inaccurate pictures of what’s going on of general import. Once or twice was understandable… but lately its been a trend. Are we creating a method of social news distribution that is more focused on inaccuracy than accuracy? Sure, we can see what people care about – but people are going to come to rely on this, something the opposite of journalistic distribution.

Opinions?

*On the subject of Twitter – yes, I could learn of things like this from twitter, but for whatever reason I find twitter tends to carry more professionally relevant information. I can think of a couple reasons out of hand, but that’s not the point of this post.

So Facebook has joined Myspace and Twitter in enabling personalized web-addresses, with half a million addresses grabbed within minutes of the scheme going live. According to the Sunday Times www.facebook.com/princecharles went to a guy in Hawaii. Surprise, surprise, the cyber-squatters have moved in. Girls Aloud, Rolls-Royce, Waitrose, Morrisons and thousands more celebrity and company names have all gone to hijackers.

No doubt these cyber-squatters think they can sell back the addresses to legitimate owners wanting to reclaim their own names. These fast-acting squatters think they’re so clever with their extortion racket (because that’s what it is). What they don’t realize is that they are about to lose out big time. The world has moved on since cybersquatting was profitable in the early days of the internet. Numerous missives from WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) have ruled that such actions are in breach of intellectual property rights (IPR). If you use Marks & Spencer’s name to attract visitors to your site, then their lawyers will take you down – not for extortion, but for breach of IPR, which is much easier to prove.

The extortionists think they are cleverly playing the Deep Pockets game – believing large organizations will pay up to retrieve their names. There’s no point in stealing from poor people. But Deep Pockets can also operate in reverse – they can afford to defend themselves.

What is more, companies and celebrities are being helped by new sharks on the block. Now there are groups of lawyers who specialize in going after IPR infringers on behalf of these companies. It’s an open and shut case, and they have the resources to bankrupt the squatters. If your name isn’t Harrod then mere ownership of www.facebook.com/harrods is a slam dunk for the opposition – who with malice aforethought will grind you into the dirt.

Of course Facebook could stop all this nonsense. They reserve the right to close accounts. If they made it a condition that names cannot be transferred for payment, then any evidence of a demand for money could lead to closedown.

All the while the sharks are circling. My advice to cyber-squatters is to give up these addresses immediately. I already smell blood on the water.

There were stupid virtual gifts, offers of a virtual knighthood, adverts for stuff I wouldn’t want in a million years, tedious facile applications and surveys (do I really care what proportion of the brain-dead prefer Pepsi to Coke?) I’ve been shown lists of favourite books, and what passes for music: bands with daft names like Flatulent Freddie and the Snot Nosed Psychopaths droning some tuneless ditty.

Personally, I use Facebook as a private personal network. During the odd break I like to find out how ex-students are getting on with their lives. I’m looking for the odd short message telling me of how their lives/careers are progressing – the odd photo of their families or on vacation is fun. It’s perfectly OK to ask me for a reference (although strangely they seem only come in LinkedIn, not Facebook!) I am not interested in friends of friends; one degree of separation is as far as I want to travel. One aspect of social networks that is often forgotten is exclusivity. Far from inviting everybody in, many network members want to keep everyone else out – and why not?

Yet most of what I see are lists of superficial facts, invites to parties (where they play the junk music), adolescent ‘I hate Manchester United’ jibes shared with the world, and facile comments about ‘what I’m feeling now!’ The scale of garbage postings seems to be increasing exponentially. Don’t people realise that this drivel is being read by HR departments – postings say far more about you than your CV ever does.

How do we filter out this overload? It seems we’ve lost track of what the network is for. If we’re not careful we’ll throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’m already seeing a sharp rise in postings like ‘X is withdrawing from Facebook until further notice.’ This is only to be expected when social networks become a nuisance.