“Copy and share. All knowledge to everyone. If the laws of technology enable it, we should not limit the reach with legalities.”

The so-called Church of Kopimism has established organizations in several countries including Russia, Denmark, France, Canada, India, Rumania, Italy, New Zealand, Japan and the Unites States. But Norway is not one of them.

In Norway, the  debate about the legality of file sharing ran hot and heavy in 2009 around the time when the operators of the Swedish file sharing site the Pirate Bay were convicted in Swedish courts and sentenced to a year in prison. The Pirate Bay decision is a landmark case because it doesn’t go after the people who use the service, but the service itself, which potentially facilitates file sharing of copyrighted material.

As an answer to the problem, Pirate Bay invented a service that scrambles the IP address of its’ users.

When users are anonymous, there is less need to go after the services that provide pirated content. The problem in Norway, so far, has been that the Internet providers are unwilling to police their customers unless there is a formal warrant or court order to look into the activity of specific subscribers. In Denmark, at least a couple of law suits have forced some of the Internet providers to block their user’s access to services such as Pirate Bay.

Unfortunately, the discussions in the U.S. around SOPA and PIPA haven’t gained much traction or generated much publicity in Norway. I believe that’s partly because Norwegian journalists, politicians and Internet users really don’t understand what’s at stake. The way I understand the suggested legislation, it would be so broad that it could easily violate basic rights of users and potentially censor otherwise legal Internet activity. It potentially stifles creativity and innovation and potentially threaten startups and blogs.

The proposed legislation also fails to deal with the fact that some third-party commercial services would have to monitor all subscriber traffic continuously to catch potentially illegal activity. That’s seriously 1984-ish. Plus, in the absence of “Fair Use” provisions, what would happen to legally shared content between consenting parties? The filtering systems, which could be third-party services paid for by the ISPs theoretically, would be liable for copyright violations if filtering strategies didn’t work all of the time.  It’s unclear if any current technology could effectively distinguish between legitimate and illegal file sharing. Given the army of motivated online pirates working collectively to undermine content restrictions, how much would an ISP have to invest in time, money, research and development costs to keep up?  What government agencies or courts would be enlisted to adjudicate what is and what isn’t legal?

While Kopimism might seem quirky or eccentric to our friends across the Atantic, the Swedes might be taking the real issues behind SOPA/PIPA and giving them more in-depth and enlightened thought.

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A video of highlights from the conversation with MCDM students and a complete transcript are available on the KCTS 9 website.

According to Sreenivasan, who is a proponent of the growing “slow news” movement, “The value of breaking news is going down faster than you can post it.”

Sreenivasan’s basic message is that there is no point in trying to compete with the wire services on breaking a story. It is more important to be accurate than first. “Do people remember who broke the story first? Hardly. But they will remember if you get it wrong,” Sreenivasan pointed out.

Emphasizing an anyscreen/anytime approach Sreenivasan says: “70 to 85 percent of my job is to move NewsHour to news consumers who don’t come to the six o´clock news show.” Noting that he doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel or create channels, he continues “The challenge is to use the tech tools to distribute the news content to where the audience is already. With Tivo we have gotten used to watching the content at different times than when it airs. Now we are getting used to getting the content where we want it. The challenge is to create a story that is when and where you want it to be and still (be) relevant.”

“iPad, iPhone, TV, online… Share content – so much of the YouTube content that PBS produces is embedded in shared content”, Sreenivasan says.  The NewsHour also increases the value of slow news in the digital world by building widgets and storify versions of the news.

For instance, during the Gulf oil spill in 2010, PBS built a web site widget where users could plug in their guess of how much oil was gushed into the ocean each hour. Later that fall, when full body scans were introduced a various American airports, they built a widget that tracked added wait times at TSA checkpoints for 52 airport. All of this was done with almost no overhead budget.

“I don’t care where you see my content. But I want to get my content to where you are already,” Sreenivasan says.

Sreenivasan argues that one of the most important tasks of journalists working in professional media is to help people cut through the clutter. “Sending a link is lazy. There is value in blog posts that save time, that summarize long reads and help me not (to) have to read it.”

It’s interesting to note that Sreenivasan’s argument is the opposite of the theory Clay Shirky espoused in his landmark 2008 book “Here Comes Everybody.” According to Shirky, with the Internet and social media, everyone is able to publish and market their content at anytime and on any screen. Shirky identifies the old rule of publishing as “filter then publish,” and the new practice is “publish, then filter.”

Sreenivasan believes that people are increasingly unwilling to do the filtering. There is so much news and so many updates, and much of it ends up not being worth the time. A new rule of journalism, Sreenivasan says, is show your work – take the time to verify and confirm the facts, interpret it and make it relevant. Show them how you’ve done the job for them, and added value to the report.

According to Sreenivasan, “We don’t think enough about how we consume the media. We need to be informed about the ingredients,” noting that this is yet another case for slow news and that the “slow news movement” is growing.

Going even further, Sreenivasan says, “There is a large and growing population of smart people who are fed up with what is presented as news today. Commercial networks disenfranchise the audiences the advertisers want to reach.”

Sreenivasan mentions NPR journalist Andy Carvin as the epitome of a crowdsourcing Twitter journalist. Carvin´s Twitter feed is literally a sea of hashtags asking for confirmation of news, independent sources of news, verification of events and so on. For some, this is obviously a worthwhile project, but for Sreenivasan, the constant stream of news items pending verification and interpretation is leading to frustration.

In Sreenivasan’s opinion, Tweets that contain links to useful content rule, while tweets that just lead to chatter make users frustrated. “If I read a blog that isn’t worth anything, I feel like you wasted my time,” Sreenivasan said, noting that wasting time – even if it is only 45 seconds – is almost the biggest no-no of the new media world.

With so many sources, so many channels and so much information out there, people have come to expect that what you lead them to, will be worth their time. That is particularly true for professional journalists, who are there to interpret the news landscape and help people make sense of the information. That is also one of the most valuable assets journalists have over citizen reporters, Sreenivasan argues.

According to Sreenivasan,“You can always make more money, but you can’t earn more time.” The new technology has made almost professional grade tools available to everyone and significantly lowered the barrier of entry for anyone to publish their content. In theory, this makes everyone a reporter, everyone a journalist and everyone a publisher. “But that doesn’t mean that all submitted content adds to the news story,” Sreenivasan says.

“News should be of value to you,” he explains, noting that some networks are already experimenting with letting users submit their stories right from their iPad screens for without pay. But Sreenivasan cautions people to stop and think about their actions for a second. “Facebook and Twitter makes it so easy for us to share and upload, but the cost is that you lose the ownership of that intellectual property once it lives on their servers,” he said.

Harkening back to a sentiment that long defined the news industry, Sreenivasan concludes, “The value of the work we do is the basis for journalism.”

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What’s the big deal about letting young children onto Facebook? Isn’t it just natural for these digital natives to connect with their friends and share information and updates with each other online?

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg thinks it’s a great idea to let kids into the online community. In an interview following the Consumer Report, Zuckerberg said to Fortune Magazine that it would be a great “educational experience” for kids to be on Facebook.

“My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age,” Zuckerberg said in the interview with Fortune Magazine, adding that he’d like to see if he can change the federal rules over time. Child advocacy groups are less excited about minors on Facebook.

Personally, I suspect letting kids get on Facebook would be great mostly for Zuckerberg’s bottom line. With my background as a sports journalist, the issue reminds me of athletes doping. In cycling, for example, it’s the team owners that benefit the most from doping, not the athletes. After all, the athletes eventually risk ruining their health and their future earning potential.

Similarly, with Facebook, it’s the owners that benefit the most. The kids run the risk of damaging their self-esteem through cyber bullying, not having “enough” friends, or not being “friended” by the cool kids. Child advocates also worry about young internet users not recognizing the long-term impacts that online behavior might have on their reputations. The internet never forgets: pictures showing underage drinking and illegal drug use, or lies, rumors and innuendo aren’t easily wiped clean from an individual’s reputation.

There are good reasons for making doping illegal in sports and not all of them have to do with fairness. There are good reasons for banning young kids on Facebook and not all of that has to do with wasted time.

Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us (CC)

The State of the Union

According to the Los Angeles Times, Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor testified before the Senate Commerce Committee and admitted that Facebook doesn’t spend a lot of time tracking the age of its users. In fact, they have only 100 employees tracking the activity of 600 million users. Facebook shuts down accounts if they find that users are younger than 13 but they often rely on other users to report underage account holders.

According to the Huffington Post, Facebook is currently being sued for failing to get parental permission before using minors’ personal information in its social ads.

Furthermore, Facebook is frequently under scrutiny for not having a good handle on protecting personal information. There have been frequent leaks of private information to third-party applications, where personal information on millions of users has been released and is not covered by Facebook’s terms of service.

And then there are the issues of predation, adult content, identity theft, economic scams and computer viruses.

Facebook is Forever

Maile Martinez, a program manager at Reel Grrls, a non-profit in Seattle that teaches media literacy and digital film making to girls age 9 to 19, is more concerned about what kids do online, and the kinds of personal data that they share online, than the potential for adult content and adults preying on kids though Facebook.

“We’re more concerned about cyber bullying. When we were kids, we would make prank phone calls. That was rude. Now, kids can post something that’s untrue about someone on their wall, and that’s much worse. The one being bullied can’t be sure how long the post has been up there and how many have seen it before it’s taken down,” Martinez says, pointing out that even deleted posts are traceable.

“Children and young teens don’t have a sense of the memory of Facebook. They don’t realize that their profiles can be searchable and content is traceable pretty much forever. Maybe in 10 years, they feel differently about what they would put out there,” she says.

Stressfully connected

Martinez worries that Facebook and the perceived need to be constantly connected, constantly in the loop of what everyone is doing, adds more stress to kids who are already under a lot of pressure from friends, school and other obligations.

“It’s a constant noise. Kids are stressed out in general, and this adds another layer of stress that is so constant. Kids tell us that feel like they always have to have their phones with them and be connected to know if there is any drama going on that involves them. Maybe someone posted a picture of them that was ugly. Maybe someone updated their status to ‘in a relationship’ when it was someone they were sort of interested in. It’s just stressful,” Martinez says.

Blurring lines between marketing and content

Martinez also worried about the amount of marketing and advertising that kids are exposed to on Facebook and online in general.

“Younger teens and elementary school kids really don’t understand when they are being marketed to,” she says, pointing out that the internet increasingly weaves ads into the rest of what you are seeing, which makes it harder to sort from other content.

“Say you follow Justin Bieber on Twitter and he writes a lot about a product he is using, then you think that since you like Justin Bieber, you’ll want to have that product. Kids have a harder time interpreting when people are pushing a product,” she says.

Kids Don’t Need to be on Facebook

Ingrid Butler, an MCDM student and mother of two young girls in Seattle, also sees perils for tweens on facebook. She points out that what gets uploaded on the Internet can remain there indefinitely, and travel far beyond the circles for which it was intended.

“There are so many reasons that kids DO NOT need to be on Facebook that I don’t know where to begin. I think it’s great that today’s kids are comfortable with computers and surfing the internet but it’s not as ‘cool’ as one may think. There are a lot of dangers our there such as predators, adult content and worst of all…bullies,” Butler says.

“My 12-year-old daughter is not on Facebook or anything else because I understand the dangers and have expressed them to her. She has experienced a good helping of the bullying this year and we are both so grateful that she did not have an account. A couple of weeks ago she said, ‘I’m so glad I’m not on Facebook.’ That statement means a lot to me, because that means she heard what I was saying to her and she understands the consequences of playing with fire,” Butler explains.

Butler produced a video about the impacts of bullying on her daughter for her Multimedia Storytelling class this quarter

Click here to view the embedded video.

She says she sees several issues with parents allowing their kids to lie about their age in order to set up Facebook accounts.

“When parents decide to help their kids trick the system, what does that say to the child? That lets them know it’s ok to tell a lie and I don’t agree with that parenting practice at all,” she concludes.

Taking a Stand

Martinez is happy to see that many parents are taking a personal interest in what their kids do online, and moderating what they can be engaged in.

“I recently heard some news about the Obama family where a reporter asked if the Obama girls were on Facebook, and Michelle Obama said that ‘no, they do not need to be on Facebook.’ I love it when our First Family makes such a positive statement,” Martinez concludes.

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According to the former Moveon.org chief, web services like Facebook, Google and Yahoo! News aim to personalize content and maximize the likelihood of the user clicking on sponsored displayed links. On KUOW’s The Conversation with Ross Reynolds, Pariser talked about what troubles him about these practices.  His main concern is that the practice of steering viewers to specific content is not transparent. This is what Pariser calls the “The Filter Bubble,” which he fears can increase polarization and limit engagement across ideological lines. While convenient for individual users, this is not always in the best interest of the public as a whole. As he explained in the New York Times editorial on May 23, 2011, Pariser sees this filtering of news and information as a direct threat to democracy because it limits exposure to content with differing viewpoints and increases content that already jives with users’ typical behavior and preferences.

Follow the Money

According to Pariser, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, once told colleagues that “a squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” At Facebook, “relevance” is the sole criterion that determines what users see.

“Focusing on the most personally relevant news — the squirrel — is a great business strategy. But it leaves us staring at our front yard instead of reading about suffering, genocide and revolution,”  said Pariser, adding that “there is no algorithmic equivalent to journalistic ethics.”

“Reading a lot of Facebook news is not really that satisfying of an experience,” Pariser claims in comparing the Facebook news feed to that of a traditional news organization like the New York Times. Pariser is sounding an alarm and summoning the warnings of Postman, Huxley and Orwell’s Big Brother as allies.

“We spend a lot of time watching cat videos. We’re amusing ourselves to death and quite happy about that,” Pariser said on Tuesday.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Return of journalistic ethics?

This is where the journalistic sense of ethics comes in–a standard that has been refined over he last century. These are the standards that consumer’s expect from traditional newspaper organizations such as The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.  According to Pariser consumers don’t necessarily expect the same standards from purely online sources like Yahoo! News. This journalistic ethic and desire to serve the public interest through careful editorial filtering returns a blend of news we want to read (stuff that sells copies) and news the editors think we should read (things we probably won’t seek out ourselves but that makes us choke on our morning coffee).

“The newspaper industry has principles that go directly against profit in terms of what ends up on the front page,” Pariser said.

Pariser explained that the way a site like Gawker uses metrics is very different than the way the New York Times does.

“Gawker is hungry to feed the algorithm and the filter bubble. They have ‘The Big Board’ in their newsroom that tracks each blog post and how many hits it gets. There is a great deal of competition in the newsroom to produce the blog posts that get up on the ‘Big Board.’ In the New York Times’ newsroom, you never know how many hits your blog post gets,” Pariser said to the studio audience at KUOW 94.1. He said that the New York Times let their editorial judgment guides their decisions on stories not what they think will generate the most clicks or sell the most copies.

“At the New York Times, they’re proud to present a mix of what people need to know and what people need to see, not just what will sell the most copies if we put it on the front page,” he said.

Optimist

Pariser is not convinced that Facebook, Google or other major players in the internet ecosystem are acting in the public’s best interest–nor should we expect them to. At the end of the day they are corporations that answer to their shareholders and boards of directors. However, Pariser does recognize that the Internet could move closer to the ideal everyone once envisioned–with more information and content helping bring awareness to issues that need attention and thereby contributing to facilitating solutions. According to Pariser, “In a sort of a best case scenario, the Internet would bring us closer together,” noting that the industry has a ways to go and should be willing to build on its journalistic heritage by re-adopting the practices that have been guiding journalism for decades.

“The best values of 20^th century news reporting–some stuff they want and some stuff they need–would get integrated into the algorithm and that we can adjust the filters and the algorithms become more transparent,” Pariser explained. “But the consumers don’t demand changes.”

Eli Pariser

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, Eli Pariser founded a website calling for multilateral fight against terrorism. That website merged with MoveOn.org later in 2001. He became the organization’s executive director in 2004 and remained in that position until 2008 when he transitioned into the president of organization’s board.

Pariser’s book “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You” was released in May, 2011. His blog TheFilterBubble.com features a collection of his own and other blog posts on the topic and related content, as well as links to his TED talk and 10 Ways to Pop Your Filter Bubble.

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With every seemingly insurmountable online/mobile/content challenge that has emerged over the last two decades, smart entrepreneurs have recognized a corresponding opportunity. Google? Google emerged out of a need to sift through and evaluate the deluge of internet content developed during Web 1.0.

AppStoreHQ homepage

In mobile applications this is where market research, filtering technology and social networking come in. Instead of an anonymous algorithm, researchers are turning to your social networks for inspiration–finding out what works from people in your network that you trust. It seems like a natural and healthy progression. In an age when consumers are increasingly leery of advertising and have many channels to turn to in avoiding commercials, these consumers are also increasingly connected to each other.

This is the third article in a series exploring social network trends in online commerce and how some Seattle companies are navigating the landscape.

Part of the social commerce challenge is nicely summed up by Scott Blanksteen of the AppStore HQ, a Seattle startup founded in 2009 with the purpose of helping users find the right mobile apps for their needs in the increasingly overcrowded app market.

“How do you cut through the noise? While there might be a couple of thousand Sudoku apps, and most of them are even free, you don’t want to download 400 or 500 just to find the right Sudoku,” he says, and points out that a lot of the traditional star reviews are useless.

“They literally pay people in China to write five-star reviews. And the one-star reviews? Those are from your competitors,” Blanksteen says.

AppStoreHQ CEO Scott Blanksteen

Enter AppStore HQ.  AppStore HQ tracks about 500 blogs and web sites focusing on apps to identify the good, the bad and the ugly of the app world. The reviews make the service different from a search engine. Additionally, by tapping into registered users’ activities, AppStore HQ can help users find apps they might like based on their online habits and their friends’ preferences.

“We combine what people are blogging about and talking about on social media with the filtering technology to give you personalized recommendations based on which apps you have liked and which you have disliked and come up with some suggestions for apps you might like,” Blanksteen says.

Finding Nemo

While AppStore HQ has figured out how to find the best apps and how to match those to their users, they are still trying to make it easier for users to find AppStore HQ–and that isn’t as easy as it might seem–even when it is your business to have people find the content that you want them to find.

One avenue are traditional search engines where AppStore HQ will show up in a search for apps. Once users are on the site, they can share the site with their friends or tweet about it, which AppStore HQ encourages.

“We don’t spend money on advertising, so we try to make sure we are findable on search engines. We definitely use social media marketing and play with Twitter so people are aware of us on Twitter,” Blanksteen says.

AppStore HQ also has its own Android app that can be downloaded and then shared via social media.

“We are partly relying on search engines and partly on viral referral,” Blanksteen says, explaining that the specific avenue users take to arrive at AppStore HQ partly depends on how experienced they are with using smart devices.

“At first, many use the iTunes store, the Android Market or the Windows Marketplace. Then they often start asking friends instead of searching, and friends share what they like,” Blanksteen says.

Currently, AppStore HQ does not collect any demographic information on their users, but Blanksteen’s experience and gut feeling is that the ways they find apps and use apps depend both on age and experience. Where younger and more experienced users typically find apps by peer-to-peer marketing, older and less experienced users more often turn to traditional search–either online or in the device marketplace.

Making money

“We don’t collect any demographic information right now, but I would love to. That would help us customize the site and target audiences,” Blanksteen says, noting that one of the major challenges right now is evaluating and implementing features they would like to add to the site.

Application reviews on AppStoreHQ.

It is all a matter of money. Registering with AppStore HQ is free for users, but the company charges developers in a way that is akin to the way search engines charge customers for showing up in search queries as sponsored results. AppStore HQ has a network of more than 100,000 registered developers, and also charge companies that want to connect with developers to advertise on the site. AppStore HQ also allows developers to showcase their apps by running promos on the AppStore HQ site.

“Developers of premium apps, those that cost money, want people to try them, but why would users pay when there are so many that are free? Developers can make those apps appear ‘free’ without changing the cost by using limited time coupons, free use for the first 500 who sign up, a coupon of the day that is free for 12 hours and so on. Developers pay to use that platform with us,” Blanksteen explains.

Is there a magic formula? Probably not, but when it comes to search and mobile applications, there is certainly room for good ideas and strategies. No one strategy will fit the needs of all application developers.  One thing is certain: Marketers are leaning more and more on our networks and investigating ways that these networks can be harnessed for their power of persuasion.

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Increasingly, If we are looking for something, we will shop around, consult user reviews and ask friends for advice. More and more these conversations are happening online and marketers are angling to be a part of these discussions. This is the second article in a series exploring social network trends in online commerce and how some Northwest companies are navigating and even changing the new landscape.

The ancient method of people making recommendations to each other for products and services using word of mouth is suddenly the hottest advertising strategy on the Internet. Facebook and other social media networks are giant marketing tools. But so far, most consumers have lacked a way to buy products or services without leaving the site. For the founders of aptly named DIY Media in Seattle, this conundrum seemed like a great business opportunity.

The problem with peer recommendations is that, in order for consumers to act on recommendations, they have to search for the recommended product.   This almost always means that a potential customer has to leave the site where they heard the recommendation.  In what marketers call the “conversion funnel” that is one barrier for a potential costumer to complete a purchase.  In the rare case that a customer does find something they want to buy on a social network site, then they are invariably redirected to a new site to complete the transaction, which is another opportunity for the customer to jump out of the funnel.

“Facebook is like a giant shopping mall with no stores,” says Jim Lively, one of the DIY Media founders.

According to Lively, the DIY Media business strategy is to make any digital content online for any digital medium available. DYI Media targets those who are downloading digital content for their Kindles, Sony e-readers and Nooks.  They are also targeting people online as well through games and music sharing.

In January 2011, the Seattle startup launched a portable storefront – a virtual ice cream truck for digital content.

Click here to view the embedded video.

DYI Media started with music, out of the founders’ frustration with iTunes and the iTunes music store. For starters, iTunes has about 70 percent of the market, Lively says, pointing out that Apple no longer control that large of a market share in terms of devices. Furthermore, once consumers arrive at iTunes, they are bombarded with so much content that a lot of users never purchased what they came for.

“You want to buy it where you find it. With our portable storefront, your friend can put a link to the item there right in front of you,” Lively says, “You click on it to pull up the content, click on the songs you like and there is a tally on the side that reflects the changes you make – you add a song the total price goes up, you take away a song and the price goes down,”

Finally, the links can be shared. This is the social element that is a key part of DIY Media’s business model.

“If you share it with your 500 friends, it shows up in your update stream. If you post it on your friend’s wall, it is also visible to their 500 friends. By the time it’s been shared three times, 64 million people have seen it. That’s the power of Facebook,” Lively points out–and the power of word-of-mouth.  The most reliable and tested marketing strategy we know of, and it is literally under each of our noses.

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E-commerce grows up. Social is the new currency.  Established companies adapt to a new reality, and new companies have surfaced in the wake of social media – entirely to capitalize on social network marketing.

This is the first article in a series exploring social network trends in online commerce and how some Seattle companies are navigating the landscape.

It is interesting to note that some of the most successful new technologies don’t actually invent anything new: peer-to-peer advertising is in fact the oldest variety around. It precedes any mass medium. New technologies, however, make peer-to-peer recommendations more efficient, faster and with a broader footprint than the cave-man version.

According to Kathy Savitt, CEO of Seattle based Lockerz, 73 percent of “Generation Z,”–those born after 1992–purchase products based on recommendations from friends. Lockerz is a member-based web community that rewards users for listening to music, watching videos, answering questions and sharing photos. They base their whole business model on peer-to-peer social networking and “word of mouth” marketing strategies.

“Our mission is to be the homepage for men and women age 13 to 30,” Savitt says, explaining that with Lockerz, users combine a social network and curation with commerce to recommend stuff they like.

According to Savitt, the Lockerz community has grown to more than 18 million members since it was launched in the beginning of 2010. With the acquisition of Plixi, the Twitter photo sharing service in January, Lockerz now has 31 million users.

The company’s business model is to reward people for being passionate, Savitt says. Members earn points or “PTZ,” as they are called on the site, for listening to music, watching videos, answering daily questions and recommending their favorite products to their friends.  Friends can help friends earn points by clicking on their friends’ content–all in hope of having the favor returned and earning more points for themselves. There are also additional PTZ available for sharing content outside the Lockerz network by inviting friends from Facebook, publishing Lockerz activities to outside social networks or uploading pictures from the Lockerz profile to Twitter. The PTZ can be used for discounts on products from retailers in the Lockerz network, or as currency in Lockerz auctions where users can win prizes they bid on.

Savitt explains that part of Lockerz’ business model is to build consumer loyalty and create a value for the partners that participate in the merchant program.

Similar practices by junk food and cereal manufacturers have been frowned upon when marketed to kids. In an article in The New York Times (April 20, 2011) Matt Richtel details how kids perceive the online activities sponsored by the junk food and sugary cereal manufacturers as games.  One concern about these sorts of campaigns is that, in reality young people are being used as pawns in marketing campaigns designed to hook’em young and develop brand loyalty.

“Critics argue that such tactics blur the line between marketing and entertainment, while the companies contend that they have clearly labeled their sites as advertising,” Ritchel says in a post on the NYT Bits blog April 21, 2011.

Along the same lines, Lockerz’ young members are marketing agents for brands in the Lockerz network– rewarded for advertising to their friends. It’s kinda like a huge Tupperware party online. There is nothing new under the sun, indeed.

photo courtesy Geekwire.com

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Will every other tablet – Android or other – just become a “me too” product in a world defined by Apple?

Israel Pasos, CEO of Yatapp, the maker of the publishing app Pressleaf for iPad and Android tablets, doesn’t think so.

“The Android tablets will eat up iPad’s market share eventually, because the Android OS is more open, and people have more choices in price and products,” Pasos says.

On the other hand, Pasos points out that developing apps for the Android devices is harder and more time consuming  for developers.

“The Android market is very fragmented, and from a developer’s standpoint it’s easier to develop for the iPad,” Pasos says, explaining that developing an app for the Motorola Xoom tablet is completely different than for the Samsung Galaxy, even though they both run on the Android OS.

Google has addressed some of those issues with the Android 3.0 – Honeycomb – which is developed specifically for the tablet format, and as it improves, the Android tablets will gain market share, Pasos says.

“For developers, the Apple framework is very well done. It’s very structured. Apple enabled small developers to reach a huge market with the App Store – the ‘Angry Birds’ game is a good example,” Pasos says, noting that he sees a trend where developers first make an iPad app, then an Android version and wait to see what catches on.

Israel Pasos of Yatapp, the maker of Pressleaf, a publishing platform for the tablet format, thinks Android will pass iPad eventually. Consumers like choices, he says. (Photo: Inge Scheve)

Some analysts predict that by 2012, the Android will catch up to the iPad, each owning about 40 percent of the total market. Others predict that it will take until 2015 before the non-iPads close the gap. But most analysts agree that the Android devices will catch up and dig into Apple’s market share, just as they did with the smartphones. The first iPhone was launched in 2007. The first Android phone was launched in the fall of 2008. By August, 2010, Android had eclipsed the iPhone for the global market share.

Part of the reason why Android is able to catch up, analysts say, is that there are over 100 different smartphones from different manufacturers in several price brackets that come with the Android OS. Apple has one smartphone. Consumers like choices. The same appears to be true with the tablets. Just this year, there will be half a dozen different makes and models to choose from. Apple has one tablet.

Bloomberg News reports that Android tablets increased its share of the tablet in the fourth quarter of 2010 and was responsible for 22 percent of the global tablet shipment in that quarter, with Apple iPad accounting for 75 percent in the fourth quarter. Apple shipped 7.3 million devices in the fourth quarter, an increase of 74 percent from the previous quarter. Android devices shipped 2.1 million tablets in the fourth quarter, up from 100,000 in the third quarter. The research firm ISuppli estimates that 57 million tablets will be sold in 2011, and 171 million in 2014.

The non-iPad tablets have some obvious advantages to the iPad, including USB ports, slots for memory cards and the ability to run Flash (used by many web sites but not supported by the iPad, not even the upgraded iPad2 that just launched), to mention a few.

New challengers include the Motorola Xoom, launched on February 24 and featuring the new Android 3.0 Honeycomb technology, and the Samsung Galaxy, which came on the market in November as the first of the Android tablets. Last week, three more Android tablets quietly hit the market: the Acer Iconia Tab A500 at $450, the LG G Slate at $530/$430, and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer at $399. Prices are dropping, and several are 4G capable. HP will launch its Touchpad this summer, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a 10” tablet that’s slimmer and lighter than the iPad 2, and was just made available in Portugal on April 26. It is scheduled to launch in the US on June 8. Sony has announced two tablets to launch in the second half of 2011. There will be competition for iPad.

While the Samsung Galaxy shipped more than two million devices globally between the launch in November 2010 and January, Deutsche Bank estimated that the Motorola Xoom only sold about 100,000 tablets since the launch in February and so far has come in short of manufacturer’s expectation.  Maybe it’s the price – most of the Android tablets are more expensive than the iPad – but that is rapidly changing with some Android tablets even costing less than the iPad for the wi-fi versions. Maybe it’s the fact that Apple’s App Store is so nicely laid out and easy to shop, while the Android marketplace still is more anarchistic in appearance. Maybe it’s that there are currently so many more apps for the iPad compared to Android, and especially the Honeycomb versions. Or maybe it’s just that the start of the Android avalanche is slow. Time will show. But the snowball is already running.

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