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This Week in Lumps
#19 [25/09 - 01/10]

· Facebook. It’s a pain in the arse for managers and bosses up and down the country, who are convinced that their employees are wasting precious hours poking friends and playing scrabble. However it’s not all bad news for the social networking site: It’s currently at the centre of financial speculation, which, if it comes to fruition could value the three year old company founded by a Harvard dropout at a staggering £5 billion ($10billion).

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story that Microsoft is poised to buy a 5% stake in the firm for between $300m and $500m. This news would make Mark Zuckerberg one of the youngest wealthiest men in the US. This figure, although looking reasonably expensive, makes the $1.6 billion Google paid for then twenty-month-old YouTube last November seem tiny. Speaking of Google, these talks could lead to a showdown between the two companies, as Google are also keen to invest in Facebook, after the limited success of Orkut, which only hit big in South America. As far as Facebook and Microsoft go, the two are no strangers to each other at present: Microsoft is the exclusive provider of banner advertising and sponsored links on the site. As noted in the online article by the Guardian:

An investment would be a sign of the Seattle-based software company’s keenness to strengthen its position on the internet – an area in which it is still considered to be relatively weak.

This is just the latest rumours regarding the world’s biggest tech companies, and their attempts to corner the social networking world. As noted in Week 5, Myspace was valued at $12 billion earlier this year, as Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp was tempted to sell to Yahoo. The deal was described as tentative and nothing has since become of the rumours.

Facebook’s beginnings is currently the subject of a legal battle: Three Harvard classmates of Mr Zuckerberg have sued him in a Boston court, claiming that he stole the idea – which he insists he came up with in a college dorm – from them. Despite this minor blip, the company expects to make a profit of $30m this year. The current stats and figures show that around forty-two million people are using Facebook to set up personal web pages and communicate with each other. This figure seems huge, but is dwarfed by the two hundred million profiles currently found on Myspace. According to the Telegraph however, Facebook has recently overtaken Myspace in the UK. Telegraph journalist Frances Wilson recently joined the Facebook masses, and detailed her beginnings for all to see:

“On Facebook, friendship is not something earned through loyalty, trust, mutual sympathy, long-term endurance or a shared bad experience. It is the result of clicking a key. When you first become a member, the ‘friend finder’ trawls through your email contacts picking out the names of those who are also members and inviting them to become your Facebook friends. This all happens in a nanosecond and before you have time to think through the consequences of such a commitment and bolt in the opposite direction, you can find yourself in a select little world with your tax accountant, the secretary at the workplace you left four years ago, any number of failed relationships, and a bunch of people you wouldn’t recognise in a line-up.”

The article, which although full of naive, amateurish quirks about the site, is in some parts an amusing and worthwhile read, and can be found here. It’s best suited for those new to the Facebook world, rather than those already familiar with it. However it does grasp upon the Friends aspect of social networking sites, something I will feature in a few weeks time.

~

· Arguably the worlds finest alt-rock band Radiohead have announced details and on their next studio album, titled ‘In Rainbows’, the cost of which will be judged by fans themselves. The band’s 7th studio release is due out in digital form next Wednesday (10th) while a special £40 “discbox”, which will includes two CDs, two records, plus artwork and booklets is due to be released in December. A ‘traditional’ format release of the record is also scheduled for early 2008. Posting on Radiohead’s official site Jonny Greenwood’s message simply says:

“Hello everyone.
Well, the new album is finished, and it’s coming out in 10 days;
We’ve called it In Rainbows.
Love from us all.
Jonny”

Given the band is no longer under contract with a label, they are free to distribute their own music how they best see fit. By cutting out the middle man (iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc.), they can charge fans much less to enjoy their music. They’ve never made their music available on iTunes, and it now appears they never will. So far, this obscure method of selling an album is proving a winner, for me at least; they’re really sticking their heads out with this: It’s the “enormous stink bomb in the industry” Thom mentioned last year. Therefore, I would file this idea under the ‘very very clever’ file. The rate at which the news has spread has caused the site to wither under the attention, and some fans have experienced trouble ordering it, hindered somewhat by the undeniable popularity of the band themselves. Lets be honest, this wouldn’t work for an unsigned, unheard of band, who would be new to everyone’s ears, and would probably sell ten albums at a total of £7. However, take Radiohead: a group who have received amazing critical acclaim for their previous albums, a band who have sold millions on both sides of the Atlantic, becoming one of the very few UK acts to achieve this. Fans of the band will know they can expect a good (if not amazing) record, and will be willing to pay a decent amount (read as: anything about £5) for this download, knowing this band are sending a big ‘fuck you’ to big-wig record bosses, the RIAA, and every band who have messed about with their fans over the last decade, in one go. Maybe you could even pay nothing now, and download it, then if you enjoy what you hear, go back and pay £10 or so for it.

Whether you’re a Radiohead fan or not, you have to admit this is a good marketing setup, and even if it falls flat on its face, they have the £40 discbox full of goodies, and then an official release early next year, so any loss of money will be made up for. I seriously doubt that scenario will happen though. This could (or even should) be the future of music downloads.

Tracklisting and further infomation is up on Green Plastic, the best Radiohead fansite, as well as the official album site, and the main site. As much as I’d love to be able to, I can’t really talk you into putting some money towards it, after all, it’s up to you.

“No really, it’s up to you.”

~

· It was all much simpler in the Victorian era; we would sit down in our study, write a letter to some fair headed wench, roll it up and seal it with some wax, and get a guy with a horse to deliver it. If the wench wanted to reply, she would do the same procedure, and the conversation would go on for days. Leap forward into the 20th century, and you would see we have learnt to widdle that down to real-time, instant responses, email, fax and telephones, especially mobiles, with texts. However, with the growth of technology and communication comes a new level of carelessness and confusion: the ‘text slip’.

I don’t know anyone who has been able to avoid this modern-day mishap; it gives you that awful gut-wrenching feeling in your stomach as you try to ‘fix’ what you have caused, or, as is often the case, trying to work out ways of explaining yourself, or thinking up lies and fibs to make your cock-up seem faultless.

Let me paint the picture. You’re meeting up with an old partner; it’s a boyfriend or girlfriend you haven’t seen in a few years, and the cold winters haven’t been kind to them. They look older and fatter, and you start to question what you ever saw in them in the first place. Same old haircut, and same old idiosyncrasies you once thought were cute, now just make you throw up a little bit of that acidy bile in your mouth. It isn’t long into the evening when you start to realise who bored you really are, and during the thoughtless nods to his or her rambles, you start to think of excuses of getting home earlier than planned. The ex goes for a toilet break, and in a moment of ingenious clarity, you decide to text your mate, who’s bound to come up with a solution. Your message reads:

“Help, I’m stuck with [name] and I’m bored as hell. He/She is dull, fat and grey. Save me?”

You click send. This is the exact moment where it happens: it’s a split second feeling of guilt, or a sharp intake of breath with regret, and embarrassment. You’ve sent it to the ex, you stupid, stupid fool. How in the Hell do you get out of this one? It isn’t long before they come back, and the rest of the evening is a blur of anti-social remorse, and lots of drink to numb the pain.

Maybe you can take some positive points from knowing that you’re certainly not alone. At least it didn’t cost you your job, like it did for Benedetta Pinelli, former editor of GMTV’s LK Today. She accidentally sent GMTV host Lorraine Kelly a text message that she had written to her husband, saying how much she hated her. Pinelli realised what she had done, and resigned moments later. Then there’s the former Aussie cricketer Shane Warne, whose embarrassed face was all over the papers last week after news that he had text his girlfriend and inadvertently sent it to his former wife. Not as bad you may think, but Warne had spent over six months trying to woo her back, and that he blew it with that text. His ex wife then went and sold her story to an Australian magazine. Or worst of the worst, you could be Ann Greenfield, a 34-year-old teacher who sent a message to a marijuana dealer requesting some drugs. However, she accidentally misdialed by one digit, and sent the text to an off-duty policeman. The officer replied to the text and arranged to meet Greenfield. When she turned up, she was charged with conspiracy to traffic in controlled substances within 1,000ft of a school, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

This relatively new way of making a tit of yourself is known as a slip, according to psychologists. The method of typing and sending texts has become so easy and quick that you can do it without concentrating, and so your mind wanders. You can sometimes send it to the person who’s on your mind, rather than the person the text is meant for.

You may be trying to make excuses after you’ve realised what you’ve done; after all, it’s such an easy thing to do, but don’t kid yourself, this is karma biting back for being nasty and two faced in the first place. One simple bit of advice I can offer is something that I read in the Bloggers Code of Conduct (a rough guide on how to act and how not to act on blogs) that can be altered for this topic, and it simply reads: Don’t say anything in texts that you wouldn’t say in person.

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: a Russian woman gave birth to a 17.5lbs baby boy, Hilary Benn is turning the lights out by 2012, Belgian care homes are providing prostitutes for disabled residents, No more smoking while driving, and Google Street View is coming to London, as is Diggnation.

just time to sum up this week with this headline: Woman Runs Over Own Legs at McDonald’s Drive-thru. Enough said, really.
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