Ian Paul

Jul 16, 2009 8:52 am

Will Twitter take legal action against Web sites that publish the company’s confidential documents, which were leaked by a hacker? Although the microblog isn’t coming right out and saying it, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams published a blog post yesterday suggesting legal action was a possibility.

In a post entitled, “Twitter, Even More Open Than We Wanted,” Williams said: “We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter…and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents. We’re not sure yet exactly what the implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but when we learn more and are able to share more, we will.”

Williams also pointed out that while the publication of these documents could be embarrassing for the company, they aren’t particularly revelatory about Twitter’s future plans. But Williams also wrote that publishing the purloined documents could “jeopardize relationships with Twitter’s ongoing and potential partners.”

The confidential documents Williams refers to were obtained by a French hacker named Hacker Croll. The hacker reportedly obtained the data by gaining unauthorized access to a Twitter employee’s personal e-mail account, and then using information in the e-mail account to access company documents stored on the Google Apps service. Williams said Twitter does not fault Google’s security for the break-in, and will continue to use Google Apps.

Twitter Frenzy

While many news outlets and blogs are publishing accounts of the ongoing document theft, TechCrunch is the only high-traffic blog that has, to my knowledge, received the confidential documents and made the decision to publish them. If Twitter does decide to take legal action for publishing the documents, it seems likely TechCrunch could be a target of those proceedings.

TechCrunch has come under criticism for its decision to publish some of these documents, which the blog considers to be of significant news value. TechCrunch co-founder Michael Arrington said the blog disagrees with the notion the information was “stolen” and therefore should not be published. He argued that his site posts confidential information “almost every day” that has been “leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company,” so why should Twitter’s confidential information be any different?

Lawyers, Lawyers , and More Lawyers

It’s not surprising that Twitter would want to vigorously protect its intellectual property and other confidential information by considering legal action. But what is strange is a statement by TechCrunch that the blog has been working with Twitter lawyers to negotiate publication of these documents. I have no idea what those discussions might entail, but it’s hard to imagine Twitter’s legal counsel giving the green light to the publication of any documents in light of Williams’ blog post. However, the negotiations may be working, since TechCrunch has so far published just two pieces of information: pitch documents for a reality TV show called Final Tweet, and a redacted version of a document detailing Twitter’s financial projections.

Where’s the beef?

Instead of an avalanche of information, very little has been revealed from the supposedly 310 documents TechCrunch has in its possession. Blogger Robert Scoble on FriendFeed posted a discussion thread with the idea that TechCrunch could be taking a cautious approach to publication in order to avoid damaging its relationship with Twitter and sources close to the company.

The benefit Scoble discusses is the amount of Web traffic TechCrunch has received from being on Twitter’s suggested user list — the SUL is a list of 100 follow-worthy accounts Twitter recommends to users new to the service. “TechCrunch is on Twitter’s Suggested User List,” Scoble wrote. “They have been gifted about 880,000 followers by being on that list, AKA “SUL”. That’s worth a lot of money.”

The problem with Scoble’s idea is that it flies in the face of the basic journalistic ethic not to let the influence of advertising — paid or otherwise — sway your news coverage. In addition to TechCrunch, Twitter’s SUL includes personalities and news feeds from major media organizations including ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, and Time magazine. The TechCrunch Twitter feed has close to 1 million followers, and as of this writing is still on Twitter’s SUL.

With the ongoing controversy over what has been unfortunately dubbed ‘#Twittergate‘ (was there ever any doubt this would happen?), Google has published a blog post about security measures it takes to secure your Google account.

Violent ethnic unrest in Xinjiang, China may be the next stop in the “Twitter Revolution.”

The power of social networking and new media to change the world was evident in Iran last month and is proving to be a force in the ethnic turmoil in Xinjiang, China, as well. Intended for users to keep track of what their friends or favorite celebrities are doing minute by minute, Twitter has become the social network of political change.

In an attempt to quell the chaos and prevent rioters from organizing in the Xinjiang province, China has cut off mobile phone service and attempted to block Internet access.

Chinese versions of YouTube and Twitter (Youku and Fanfou) had text messages and video scrubbed from their sites.

But some gruesome images posted to Twitter got out, including several shots showing dead bodies, apparently of ethnic Chinese men and women, lying in the streets.

According to Reuters, a Fanfou search for posts with the key word Urumqi turned up zero results while Twitter, which is hosted overseas, yielded hundreds of comments in Chinese and English.

Last month’s protests against the results of the presidential election in Iran was referred to as the “Twitter Revolution,” as the opposition relied heavily on Twitter and YouTube to get the message out to the world. Neda Soltan, a woman killed while attending a demonstration in Tehran by state militia, became a martyr after a graphic video of her death was posted on YouTube.

Like China, the Iranian government uses Internet filtering and has shut down several key bloggers who were providing riveting coverage of last month’s protests. The U.S. State Department even got involved, asking Twitter at one point to delay a scheduled software update to protect Iranians who were using the service.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/07/06/2009-07-06_aaweraweraweraraew.html#ixzz0KlNbnYLF&C

In what could have been a sequel to one of his own smash television shows, Ashton Kutcher played celebrity-geek this week as he launched an irreverent gossip website for girls.

Katalyst Media partners Kutcher and Jason Goldberg made a pilgrimage from Hollywood to debut the Blah Girls at a TechCrunch50 gathering of promising technology startup firms in northern California.

The interactive online cartoon program launched at www.blahgirls.com features three young female characters that dish the dirt on celebrities and pop culture in unabashed girl talk.

An online social networking component of the program aimed at teenage girls lets viewers chime in with comments and exchange emails with Blah Girls whose responses are personalized with artificial intelligence software.

“There are plenty of gossip sites, but ours is an original take written from the perspective of the teenage girl,” Kutcher told AFP in an interview at TechCrunch50.

“It is not potshots at famous people. It is humor that takes on the notion of fandom. I think girls will appreciate these characters are reacting and talking back to them.”

Kutcher and Goldberg say their first online endeavor stems from their success reaching teenage audiences with television programs such as “Punk’d” and “Beauty and the Geek.”

“It feels like a natural extension, but a very different avenue,” Goldberg said of setting out with Kutcher on what they hope will be the first of a series of increasingly interactive online shows.

Katalyst is tuned into the teenage demographics and companies interested in reaching that segment of the market. Kutcher and Goldberg came to TechCrunch50 to connect with people adept at the latest Internet technologies.

“We know our weaknesses,” Kutcher said as he gestured toward technology startups demonstrating slick new offerings in a cavernous San Francisco Design Center.

“We are the babies here. We are surrounded by people that know more about this business than what we know.”

Sponsors of the three-day startup confab include technology giants Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, MySpace and Norton from Symantec.

Startups vying to be crowned hottest offering at the event bore names such as Tweegee, Yammer, Twingz, Grokit, and Akoha.

BriteClick showed off a tool that lets people search the Internet without ever leaving a desired web page. For example, someone reading a news story could learn more about terms by simply highlighting them in the article.

“It understands the website you are on and what you are trying to do,” said Dan Lee of BriteClick.

“It gives you more information in less time.”

Startup Qik, which lets people easily stream live video from mobile telephones to social networking web pages or other websites, was among those that caught Kutcher’s interest.

Snap Page displayed tools that would let typical people create professional looking websites.

And MobNotes showed off a network that lets people keep track of where they and friends have been and are going at any given moment of the day using the Internet and mobile device messaging.

“New technology spills out of conferences like this,” Kutcher said. “I’m a bit of a geek about it. Learning keeps you from getting old.”

Last week we had the Byron review, today we have Ofcom research on children and social networking and on Friday the Home Office will publish what it calls “Good Practice Guidance for the Providers of Social Networking and Other User Interactive Services”. The overall impression coming from British regulators and ministers is that the government is preparing to crack the whip over the issue of safety for child users of Bebo, MySpace and Facebook.

But that impression is false. Why? Because the government knows it has little or no power to make the social networks change the way they do business. After all, none of the big players are based in Britain. What it can do is make the mood music change so that it is difficult for the networks to ignore the message that they need to clean up their act.

We can do it. We can mesh our technologies and our cultures. And we’ll keep the Yahoo name alive.

Those may be the highlights of a letter sent Friday to Microsoft employees by Kevin Johnson, president of the company’s platform and services division, addressing his company’s offer to acquire Yahoo. The letter, the first missive to employees to come to light since Steve Ballmer, the chief executive, wrote to them on Feb. 1, has no new information on the fate of the proposed merger.

But Mr. Johnson addressed several challenges that the companies will face if they indeed end up merging — challenges that have been noted by the press and analysts in recent weeks. “Both companies share a passion for great engineering, creativity, and development of services and technologies that truly can change the world,” Mr. Johnson wrote. In other words, the Yahoo and Microsoft cultures are not that different. But, Mr. Johnson added, it may take time to fully integrate them: “Some aspects of the two cultures will naturally merge quickly and some will remain unique in the near-term and merge more slowly over time.”

Mr. Johnson also said that one of the significant integration challenges facing the companies, their different technology infrastructures, was not insurmountable. Microsoft has already acquired companies based on open-source technologies, he said, and it hasn’t always felt a need to migrate those companies to Microsoft technology. “We would work closely with Yahoo! engineers to make pragmatic platform and integration methodology decisions as appropriate, prioritizing above all how those decisions would impact customers,” he said.

Mr. Johnson also said that Microsoft would retain Yahoo’s brand and its large presence in Silicon Valley. And he seemed to suggest that mass layoffs would not be on the agenda. “While some overlap is expected in any combination of this size, we should remember that Microsoft is a growth company that has hired over 20,000 people since 2005, and we would look to place talented employees throughout the company as a whole,” he said.

It might be reading too much into this, but Mr. Johnson seemed to be slightly more cautious than his boss, Mr. Ballmer. In his Feb. 1 letter, Mr. Ballmer said flatly that leaders from Yahoo and Microsoft “will work together closely on the integration process.” Much of Mr. Johnson’s message appeared to be predicated by an important caveat: “If and when Yahoo! agrees to proceed with the proposed transaction…”