Gender Questions, The New FM Challenge and The Cost of Friendship

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Monday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of August 26, 2013


My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

The Cost of Friendship                                                                                           

The other day Mrs. Phlipside was grumbling that she might have to unfriend someone on Facebook.  Seemed the person in question was spending a lot of time exercising their potty mouth on their feed and it was getting my lady down.  I know that I’ve downgraded several folks and dropped a couple more because they’ve had a negative effect on my enjoyment of Facebook.  Just like real life, sometimes you grow away from certain friends.  It’s not that big a deal.

At least I didn’t think so.  Turns out I might be wrong.  And that may mean all of us need to take a much closer look at who shows up on our Friends list.  How would you feel about some of those friends if you discovered they were keeping you from getting a loan or taking out a mortgage?

Turns out that some lending institutions are now reviewing the social media of folks who are applying for loans.  The idea is that if you have friends who discuss their debt problems you may be a greater debt risk.  At it’s simplest it’s a “birds of a feather flock together” concept.  

One U.S. company called Movenbank is working on a system where your interest rate might be related to your levels of friends or followers on sites like Twitter, LinkeIn and Facebook.  Other lenders are already using things like your payment record at Amazon, Ebay and Paypal right along side your credit score from the major credit ratings companies.

How you feeling about all your Facebook friends now?

Here’s the reality.  I have several friends or family members who have had financial problems, even gone through bankruptcy.  Being a decent human being I don’t walk away from them just because they’ve had financial problems.  And their financial problems don’t have ANY impact on how I pay my bills.  So I find this concept pretty idiotic.  And even for someone who likes social media I find the idea that my online “influence” is somehow an indicator of my creditworthiness as quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve heard this year.

Tell me its a minor consideration way down the list and maybe I’d shrug it off.  But if you still aren’t sure you want to make the loan by the time you’re looking at how many Facebook friends they have let me make it easy for you.

Just say no.  Facebook should be for jokes, silly videos and cat photos.

The New FM Challenge                                                                                          

Sometimes a topic just keepings bumping into you.  Everywhere you turn, there it is.  The first couple times I thought it was unusual but since I assumed the topic was as dead as the Dodo bird I didn’t pay much attention.  Then it showed up again.  And again.

It started with MP3 players.  Two completely different ones at very different points on the cost spectrum.  Interesting but not compelling.  Then I came across an article talking about how it’s the next addition to cellphones from the folks at Sprint.  Then when MY new cellphone arrived (NOT from Sprint) it had it too!  So I guess I need to take note.

What’s this new addition?  Climbing back out of the scrap heap of history it’s...an FM tuner chip.

A little research shows that it’s not a brand new thing.  The difference is that with the addition of a large wireless provider making a commitment to making it a standard part of their product line suddenly local radio has a toe in the new media door.

I’ve heard plenty of people poo-poo this saying that there are plenty of apps that allow you to access all kinds of radio from all over the country, even all over the world.  Trust me when I say that I’ve listened to some great radio stations from Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, New York and more.  But on a morning when the snow is falling steadily and I’m trying to figure out how that’s going to affect my drive into work or home at the end of the day I want LOCAL radio.

Here’s the chance for local radio to get on the playing field of the technology that the majority of adult consumers are now carrying.  The question is what are they going to do about it?

The new environment has a lot more competition than before and competition that doesn’t play by the same rules.  But they are in the game.  I spend a lot of time talking about the challenge in a paradigm shift.  Radio is getting what they’ve been asking for, the core of the business, access.  If they think they can just keep cranking out the same bland corporate tripe against this competition it will all have been for nought.

They can either open the door in front of them or they can just curl up next to the Dodo bird.

Gender Questions                                                                                                                

He.  She.  Him.  Her.

Seems like pretty simple concepts to most of us I’d wager.  But in the past week the modern complexity around those concepts has leapt to the forefront of discussion in the media.

If you have been following the news you have heard the story of Army Private Bradley Manning.  He was convicted of illegally publishing secret military communications.  That’s the easy part of the story.  Manning has announced that he believes he is actually a woman trapped in a man’s body and has asked that he be referred to from now on as “Chelsea”.

You may or may not have any sympathy for this part of the story but trust me it creates an enormous issue for the media covering the story.  How do you refer to Private Manning?  Which personal pronoun do you use?  The New York Times has chosen to try and sidestep the issue by simply saying “Private Manning”.  The problem is that this is in variance with their stated policy to refer to people in the news by their preferred gender.  National Public Radio has made an even more unfortunate choice by announcing that until such time as gender reassignment surgery is completed they will continue to refer to “Bradley” and “he”.  That decision simply makes them sound judgmental and insensitive.

For activists in this area the answer is simple.  Just do it.  People should be referred to by the label and personal pronoun of their choice.  That sounds simple until you realize some people are making up their own.  The media has a legitimate concern about clarity.  We need to understand who and what is being talked about.  Suddenly talking about Chelsea instead of Bradley is going to lose some folks in the shuffle.

This discussion is brand new for a lot of people.  It’s also a subject that will be a struggle to comprehend for many people.  I’ve had a couple of these discussions over the last few years with people who were willing to walk me through some new concepts and I STILL don’t think I’ve got it down.

The best thing for the media to do right now is lead the way.  Take us through the concepts.  Help us understand what is trying to be said and why.  Shine a light and help us to understand what we see there.

In the end I believe that will bring us most successfully through the changes coming in those very simple concepts.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Facebook Creeper, Google Books, Turning Out the Lights

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of November 19, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Turning Out the Lights                                                                                                                 

There’s an old saying that what goes around comes around.  Also that there’s nothing new under the sun.  A lot of folks in the digital media world want to believe otherwise.  And yet reality just keeps jumping up and biting them in the butt.  For all the nearly religious chanting that it’s a whole new world with new rules blah, blah blah in the end some things never change.  For example in the end if you want to play in the big leagues of the media there’s a simple gold standard for success.  You either make money or you don’t.  If you’re not competing in that arena then you’re a really talented amateur.  Now really talented amateurs can do a lot of really cool things.  But you’re not playing in the big leagues.

Of course the down side of playing with the big boys is that they’re relatively unforgiving.  They don’t try to be nice, they don’t cut you any slack and they’re not going to give you a break.  A year ago YouTube decided it wanted to play with the big boys.  They knew they needed to move away from just being the host of endless Gangnam Style and laughing baby videos.  The big leagues required original high quality content so they created “channels”.  These were folks that received at least some financial support from YouTube to create that kind of must see video content.  A year later and YouTube has taken a long look at those channels.

Well that makes one of us.

As it turns out most of us have paid zero attention to the majority of the channels.  So in the very near future most of those channels will face some cold hard reality.  YouTube will be pulling the plug on 60% of the channels.  The reason is simple economics.  YouTube dropped as much as five million dollars per channel and over half of them didn’t turn enough of a profit.  The channels that showed some potential will continue to have the support of the video media giant.  The others will be left to their own devices AND expected to continue to work on paying back the original investment.

It’s a brave new world out there on the digital frontier.  Some people have managed to forget just how tough the frontier has always been.

Google Books                                                                                                          

You may not have noticed but the folks at Google have been working on digitizing the world.  All forms of data, all forms of information and everything in print.  This includes books.  And that has created a little bit of problem.  You see there are folks out there who actually kind of own the publishing rights to some of those books.  Turns out they’re not really happy with having their property offered up for free by Google.  So in that great American tradition they’re settling it in court.

The good news is that it seems like they have actually come to an agreement.  At the center of the disagreement is Google’s Library Project, which they describe as “An enhanced card catalog of the world’s books”.  What they were doing was scanning books from public libraries, making the books searchable and offering snippets of them online.  That resulted in groups representing both the publishers and the authors bringing suit.  This settlement covers the publishers only.  Google maintains this is all covered under the concept of “Fair Use”.  The courts have yet to rule on that issue.

Now the deal would seem to be a win-win-win for Google, the publishers and readers like you and me.  Google is one step closer to moving forward with the project.  The publishers get the right to exclude a title from the project if they so choose.  And the rest of us get a better way of finding books online.  Financial terms, if any, have not been disclosed.

I will note that the publishers did get one thing they may not want.  They get a free digital copy of every book in their list.  I’ve looked at a fair number of those Google scanned books and a lot of them are a mess.  Seems like maybe some of the scans put more emphasis on quantity rather than quality.
Given that these legal shenanigans date back to 2005 getting some kind of settlement done is a good thing.  Even the publishers acknowledge that there will be a growing influence of e-books in the years to come and having a digital card catalog works to their advantage.

Getting it done right is just as important.

Facebook Creeper

I have to admit I was a little cranky when I heard about this next item.  A little cranky and a little creeped out.  You see I just discovered that someone has created a page about my relationship with the Lady in My Life.  For those of you new to the world of the Phlipside that’s my long standing nickname for my wife.  We’ve been together for over 30 years.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t upset to discover that someone has been collecting photos of the two of us, scanning our personal social media postings and amassing them all on a web page.  A web page I knew nothing about and for which they did hot have the permission of me or my wife.  That’s pretty creepy.

Now the bad news.  You probably have one too.  If you’re on Facebook and are listed as being in a relationship then Facebook has probably created a page about you and your significant other.  Did a chill just run up and down your spine?  Check it out at www dot facebook dot com front slash us.

The pages are called Friendship Pages and they’re actually not new.  The social media giant introduced them two years ago with a certain amount of fanfare but they promptly slipped off of most people’s radar pretty quickly.  Let’s face it Facebook is constantly changing things, adding features and generally running amok.

What I find creepy, that is creepy beyond the fact that Facebook is doing this at all, is that it happens without my permission or knowledge and the fact that there’s basically nothing I can do about it.  You can not make the page go away.  You can not opt out.  The best you can do is crank up your privacy levels nice and high to limit what the creeper page can post about you.  That, of course, is the best defense against any online creeper out there.
My question is simple.  Why do I need to protect myself against Facebook?  In what possible alternate universe did the brain trust at Facebook decide that turning itself into the world’s biggest creeper was a good idea?  Unfortunately this is symptomatic of the overall attitude within the Kingdom of Zuckerberg.  An attitude that they know better than we do how to run our lives online and control our information.

Now they’ve decided they know what I want said about the most significant relationship in my life.  And that makes Facebook a creeper.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

The New You, Winter Storm Names and Facebook Study Madness

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of October 15, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

 The New You                                                                                                          

I have talked here before about the ridiculous and antiquated system of demographics used by many media and advertising folks.  The times when we’ve talked about the classic 25-54 age group as a family reunion rather than a rational group for analyzing media use.  Or pretty much anything else for that matter.

So I was interested when I saw that NBC News Digital is trying to do something about it.  The problem of course is that while it’s easy to point out that demographic emperor is in his birthday suit what are you supposed to do in its place?  It may be bad but it’s better than nothing.  Well maybe not any more.  The folks at the Digital News Peacock are approaching the audience based on how they access the news.  I love simple concepts.  Their research says that news consumers come in four flavors.  The “Always Ons” who are constantly plugged in, the “Reporters” you know these guys, they’re the ones who are constantly saying “Hey, did you hear?”.  Then we have the “Skimmers” which is self explanatory I think and finally the “Veterans” who rely on traditional media for their news.  Otherwise known as “Old People”.

It’s a simple system designed to replace what had originally been intended as a temporary measuring stick back in the ‘60s.

The reality is that this is probably just a stopping off place as we begin to try and figure out how to measure the audience in our new media environment.  It would be great if we knew that this was a mature, stable media consuming environment.  Any even cursory examination of the last decade shows that it’s just not true.  By the early 1960’s TV had settled into a stable  system that was going to be around for a while.  The digital media environment doesn’t stay the same for more than a year or two at this point.  So figuring out how users will interact with that media is going to be just as fluid a situation.

At the same time I have to admit that it is nice to be viewed as a person based on what I do in my life rather than just being a number in an age group.  I mean have you seen some of the things people my age do?

Winter Storm Names                                                                                              

Do the following names mean anything to you?  Ike, Andrew, Irene, Agnes and Katrina.  That last one will probably tip you to what we’re talking about.  Those are the names given to some of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit the United States.  Most of us are so accustomed to having storms named that we may not realize that it’s a relatively new tradition.  The devastating category four hurricane that hammered Galveston Texas in 1900, a storm that remains to this day the deadliest natural disaster in our nation’s history, is known simply as the the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.  It was in 1953 that the National Weather Service began naming them with women’s names in alphabetical order.  Men’s names were added in 1978.

The names exist for two reasons.  First to help track the storms easily in the records and to help folks in the world have a handle on the storms as they approach.  It’s a distinctive if every so slightly silly practice.

But now the Weather Channel has announced that it will begin naming winter storms.  And with that we may have slipped into major silliness.  Why the Weather Channel?  Well because while there is a National Hurricane Center there isn’t one for winter storms.

The problem I see is that there is a very simple formula for naming Hurricanes.  Once they reach sustained wind speeds 39 miles an hour they are declared a tropical storm and given a name.  When they hit 74 miles an hour they’re a hurricane.  Easy.

But The Weather Channel has laid out the most complicated standards to determine if a winter storm gets a name you can imagine.  First it can only happen three days before the storm hits a metropolitan area.  Then things like snowfall, wind and temperature will be factored in.  Finally the day of the week and the time the storm arrives will also have an effect.  So presumably a big storm that hits the Great Plains on a weekend day won’t get named.  I guess.  On top of that the list of names for the first storms are just silly.  Athena, Brutus, Caesar plus names like Rocky and Zeus.

As we well know around here winter storms are a pain in the butt.  They’re dangerous and unpredictable.  And naming them isn’t going to make that any easier at all.

There’s nothing silly about a blizzard.

Facebook Study Madness

There’s nothing quite as much fun as hearing the media lose its collective mind over the latest study on...whatever.  Somewhere along the line it seems like we have lost the gene that allows to take a step back and consider the issues with even the tiniest bit of rationality.

I have no doubt that we are going to spend a lot of time in the very near future listening to people lose their marbles over a new study that says Facebook makes you fat and rude.

Yeah, really.

The study is coming from folks at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh.  The basic concept is easy.  Facebook with it’s constant system of “Likes” and “Friends” raises the self image of users while decreasing their self control.  As a result they are more likely to get into arguments, more likely to be aggressive in their interaction with one another.  At the same time that impulsive reaction to life can lead to poor decisions in what Facebook users eat and even in how they spend their money.  Because of that the study indicates that Facebook users can be overweight, resort to binge eating and carry higher levels of debt.  Even more depressing is that the study said the effect can come after as little as five minutes of cruising Facebook.  FIVE MINUTES!

I can already hear every parent out there who is looking for some reason, ANY reason to limit the amount of time that their kids spend on Facebook.  It’s the mother lode!!!!

Except it’s really not.  You see there was another study from the University of Salford in England that showed using Facebook resulted in feelings of inferiority.  Looking at everything that is going on in their friends lives made them feel like they were failures.  

The reality is that both of these studies describe only portions of the reaction that many Facebook users have.  Most of us manage to hang out with our friends, share photos and even have discussions without losing our minds, gaining tons of weight or sinking deep into depression or credit card debt.

In other words we can use Facebook and still stay rational.

We ought to take the same attitude about the latest batch of studies.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

View From the Phlipside Radio - Annoying Facebook

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

I swear there are days when I’m positive that Facebook must have tucked away in its corporate structure somewhere a “Department of Annoying Our Users”.  Even as I have been critical of Facebook users who want to complain about everything that the world’s leading social network does it must be said that it’s not as if Facebook doesn’t give people plenty of reason to complain.

For example just recently Facebook announced that they were discontinuing the process that allows users to link content directly from non-Facebook locations.  Now original content created by Facebook users is called “organic” content in the language of the social network.  So if I wanted to link my blog to my Facebook page I used to be able to do it.  Which was great when I posted things like the scripts for these programs.  It was a very efficient and convenient.  And apparently that’s not what Facebook wants.  To be fair I have to note that the function didn’t always work real well.  But it brought original content to the network.  I can still do it but it’s less efficient and decidedly less convenient.

Add to that that they have also announced the addition of sponsored stories on the annoying news ticker function over on the right hand side of your page.  Sponsored stories.  You know.  Advertising.  I’m not sure how this is going to work.  To be honest I no longer even notice the ticker.  It’s filled with useless stuff that I don’t care about so I ignore it.  So the reality is that Facebook added as silly, pointless function to our online world, that no one seems to really want.  And now they are “improving” it by adding advertising.  Which nobody wants.  While at the same time they’ve decided to make the process more complicated and less efficient for creators of original content who foolishly are  not interested in doing everything originally on Facebook itself.

Now if that isn’t sure evidence of a “Department of Annoying Our Users” I don’t know what is.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

View From the Phlipside Radio - Facebook Hysteria

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

This is going to sound a little rough but I can’t come up with any other way to say it.  I am astounded by the hysteria that accompanies every announced change with Facebook.  A couple weeks ago I posted an e-card on my profile that reads “I am appalled that the free service that I am in no way obligated to use keeps making changes that mildly inconvenience me”.  My advice for everyone is when Facebook changes - relax, suck it up and move on.  I mean really, is it worth the level of angst that shows up every single time?  

Some of the changes are stupid I give you that much.  This new ticker thing on the right hand side strikes me as pointless and annoying.  Fortunately it’s easily ignored.  And I have to admit that Facebook’s head honcho Mark Zuckerberg shows every sign of major geekdom when he starts rhapsodizing about the future.  The Z man sees our entire world kind of being organized through his beloved Facebook.  I think this is probably a sure sign that Mark needs to step away from the computer more often.  As much as he hated the movie “The Social Network” he really does sound just like the rather pitiful movie version of himself at the very end of the movie.  Sitting alone in a conference room hitting refresh to see if someone accepts his friend request.  Sad really.

So let’s take a look at the next idea that is headed our way and see if we can’t limit the hyperventilation a little bit.  There’s a new look for your profile page coming and it’s a big change.  The new concept is called the Timeline and I’ve already been trying it out for the last week or so.  Here are my thoughts.

For a purely aesthetic point of view I like it.  The old Facebook profile was spartan and a bit dull.  This one gives you the chance to use your own cover photo and make it more your own.  You get two columns of stories, the ones you post and the ones that Facebook has identified as important.  Yeah, that second part doesn’t thrill me but it’s based on what I do on Facebook anyway so it’ll be interesting to see how they tweak it.  The reality is that not much changes about how you use Facebook.  You’ll be able to post even more nonsensical, pointless trivia about your life if you so desire.  And people will be able to find all your old embarrassing moments more easily (time to do some editing for some folks).

The end result is that within six months it will seem perfectly normal to you just like all the changes before.  And if you really hate it that much you can always go to Google+.

So spare us all the hysteria.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

View From the Phlipside - Facebook E-mail

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

If there is one thing that the world wide web seems to be really, REALLY good at doing it’s coming up with products and/or services that don’t seem to have any reason for existing.  Most recently we saw Google launch then kill the service called Wave.  Wave was designed to create some kind of super sharing work space where you could bring together all kinds communications in the same place for some glorious cause.  The problem became that most of us couldn’t find a reason to use it.  So Google pulled the plug.

For me the latest in the “So What Do I Do With This?” derby has to be Facebook’s e-mail service that isn’t an e-mail service.  Yes, you get a Facebook e-mail account but it’s not really e-mail Mark Zuckerberg assures us.  It’s MORE.  I’ll grant him that but I’m still trying to figure out - more what?

Once again the idea is to bring all kinds of things all together in one nice big pile.  You’ll get your Facebook messages, e-mails, texts and chat sessions all in one place.  Plus you’ll get histories of all your conversations stored by person so now you can track everything you’ve ever said.  And the system will give priority to your Facebook friends (and their friends) and consign everyone else to a separate file.

The idea is that this will make your life simpler bycreating a single messaging system.  What I see as I look at this is anything but.  My email is clogged enough with various items, newsletters and other stuff I need to keep an eye on as it is.  I don’t want my Facebook messages mixed in with the important stuff .  I am sure it will shock Mr. Zuckerberg to discover I place a significantly lower importance to Facebook in my life.  I don’t want my texts in here at all since they are almost always time sensitive, I get them, I respond and I never want to look at most of them again.  Instead they will now be even more dead wood to be cleared away.

Oh and the Facebook e-mail function won’t have all the functions of a REAL e-mail service so it’s not even going to eliminate accounts for me.

So here we go once again.  A fabulous new service for which there really doesn’t appear to be any need.  As if my life isn’t complicated enough already.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

View From the Phlipside - Facebook's Bad Week

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

Last week was an interesting week for the folks at Facebook.  It’s not often even the leader in social media gets quite this much attention.  And I’m quite certain they’re not accustomed to getting this much NEGATIVE attention.

First off we have the debut of the long awaited Facebook move “The Social Network” at the New York Film festival.  The early reviews are very positive, unless you’re Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.  Zuckerberg isn’t shown in a flattering light in the movie.  To counteract that vision of him he just happened to choose last week to make a 100 million dollar donation to the Newark, New Jersey school district.  The company maintains the timing was coincidental.  Let me assure you that I don’t believe in coincidence quite that large.

But things kept going badly for Facebook.  Last week marked the biggest service glitch in four years for the social media site.  Those of us who spend a fair amount of time there (I was in fact challenged just this past week by a friend who asked how I managed to post “so often”) were extremely annoyed to go several hours without access twice last week.  Reactions ranged from annoyance to some borderline “It’s the end of the world” type stuff.  The fact that it happened on an otherwise slow news day did nothing to help.

Which brings me to the last little bit of piling on.  Last week Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten announced that Facebook was “useless” and, this is my favorite part,  it is “an ocean of banalities shared among persons with lives so empty they echo.”   That’s you and me he’s talking about there Sparky.

Some folks are comparing Facebook to the Model T Ford on the innovation scale.  Some people become apoplectic at the very thought.  I don’t know why Mark Zuckerberg and who ever else invented Facebook.  Maybe it was to make the world a better place or maybe it was to meet girls.  I understand both rationales.  The invention sometimes outstrips the inventor.  Henry Ford moved the world into a new direction.  One that he soon discovered he couldn’t control.  Facebook is taking us into a new place, to a new way of sharing and connecting.  Maybe it’s a way for us to deal with lives that echo a bit too much.  Or help us to understand the emptiness.  Either way it will have provided us with a service.  And that’s not a bad thing.

So here’s hoping next week is a little nicer for the current king of social media.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Media Contracts

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

Ah the wonderful world of contracts.  It’s easy to forget sometimes that all this media we enjoy - communications, entertainment, video, audio, cell phone, internet, books and more would not exist as we know them if there weren’t contracts signed somewhere.  Every time you agree to a User’s agreement you are making a contract.  If I’m honest I will admit that I never even bother to read them.  For the average person clicking on an End User Licensing Agreement that usually not a big deal.  But contracts still ARE a big deal and two of them hit the news in the past month.

First we have the case of a local man, western New Yorker Paul Ceglia of Wellsville, claims to have a contract that would give him 84% ownership of Facebook.  That would probably be a pretty cool thing to possess.  There are questions surrounding this story, like why he waited 7 years to try and enforce the contract.  Did he not know that the whole Facebook thing had taken off?  I find a couple things curious.  First Facebook’s reaction is that the claim is ridiculous followed by the statement that the statute of limitations has run out at the six year mark.  If it’s really ridiculous why worry about the statute of limitations?  Makes me wonder, it does.  The other is how Ceglia can claim ownership of Facebook when his contract appears to pre-date the invention of the website by almost a year.

The other contract is one between William Paul Young, the author of the best selling Christian novel “The Shack”, his original partners at Windblown Media and the unfortunate mainstream publisher Hachette Book Group.  The original contract was one of those simple, just between friends in case this thing actually ever sells kind of a deal.  12 million copies later suddenly we’re talking real money and as per usual it’s making people crazy.  The only folks I feel sorry for in this are the publishers at Hachette Books.  All they want to do is pay someone the royalty money in peace.

Every attorney out there is shaking their head sadly at all this.  As much as we like to bash the lawyers they know that these problems could have been solved right from the git go.  Instead people pretend that contracts are no big deal.  84% of Facebook?  12 million copies sold?  I think I’ll start reading those agreements a little more closely from now on.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Facebook and Politics

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

Well it has finally happened.  After all the struggles and the fiascos and the growth and the controversy Facebook has finally made the big time.  Now you may have thought that Facebook as the dominant social medium in the age of social media had already made the big time.  Sure they are the biggest fish in that particular pond but in the larger scheme of things social media is still pretty much just a puddle.  No now Facebook finds itself right in the center of the biggest puddle that you can possibly splash in.  Facebook is now a political football and even has their first attack ad of their very own.

While the privacy issues debate has made lots of headlines it was still pretty much the territory just of Facebook users and media commentators like me.  Not any more.  A political ad in the California Attorney General’s Democratic primary race has made Facebook and it’s privacy policies the issue.  Democratic candidate for the AG’s office Kamala Harris began running an ad last week that took her opponent Chris Kelly to task for the most recent privacy policy fiasco.  That may sound ridiculous till you discover that prior to running for public office Kelly was in fact Facebook’s chief privacy officer.  The ad claims, in the typical sinister political voice over, that “Chris Kelly released your private information”.    Allowing for the typical political over simplification of the whole issue (Facebook didn’t release anyone’s information so much as they just made the information more available as the default setting.  While I certainly object - and have reset all my privacy settings - no more information about me is out there than I’ve chosen to make available anyway.) what really amazes me about this is that Ms. Harris thinks this is an important issue on the minds of voters in the Golden State.  It also ignores the facts that Kelly went on sabbatical from his job back in August prior to the development of the controversial policy.

But the race in California for the Democratic slot in the Attorney General’s election is close.  Only about five percentage points separate the two.  So who knows maybe your thoughts on people knowing about your Farmville status might just make the difference in your vote.  And maybe this country is in a whole lot more trouble than I thought.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

They are WRONG!!!

The folks at How Many of Me say there is only one Jay Phillippi in the United States.  They are wrong.  There's at least one other and he's a Facebook friend of mine.  I am very insulted on his behalf.

Well of course they forgot HIM.  Surely you don't think they overlooked ME?!?!?!?!

HowManyOfMe.com

There is person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Hmmm, is it a sign?

I made a commitment to myself NOT to check in on Facebook during my time at Holy Cross.  I have been closing the window that opens on my start up pages automatically.  It just dawned on me that the Facebook tab has been reading "This Page Cannot Be Found" all week.  Somebody's been helping me out! 

With humble thanks.

View From the Phlipside - The Poodle vs Glenn Beck

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate 'em and I always have an opinion. Call this The View From the Phlipside.

I'm not sure where to even begin with this next story. It involves Facebook, Fox News talking head Glenn Beck and a poodle in a tin foil hat. Do you begin to see my difficulty here? Here are the basics in case you haven't heard about it already.

Among the many, many, many ways to waste your life on Facebook there are fan pages. These are pretty much exactly what they sound like. Pages dedicated to the breathless swooning by fans of actors, singers, bands, what have you. But recently there has been a blizzard of fan pages dedicated to concepts like "Can this onion ring get more fans than Justin Bieber", "Can Ryan Miller get more fans than Sidney Crosby?". And of course the "Can This Poodle in a Tin Foil Hat Get More Fans Than Glenn Beck?". Then you try and attract more people to sign on as fans of your page than the other guy.

Sounds pretty harmless right? Rather insane in a "Don't you have anything better to do with your time" kind of way but harmless. Yet somehow Facebook has decided that Bob the Wonder Poodle, that's the canine in question, is an offense...to something. The original page is the brainchild of one Dale Blank who is still rather surprised about the fuss. Facebook has put a "publish block" on the site meaning that no new members can join and the page can't promote itself on site. The social media giant claims that he has violated some obscure part of the guidelines for pages. Obscure because Facebook still hasn't managed to produce any kind of clear explanation of the rationale behind the block. Actually they're starting to resemble a certain southern tier congressman because their story keeps changing every time they tell it. Blank thinks that it may simply be that the site grew so fast that it triggered a security check to make sure it wasn't a hate site. He's quick to note that he doesn't much care about Glenn Beck one way or the other he was just a convenient target in a campaign to promote rational thought. There are lots of these sites out there. It didn't take me long to find two that use President Obama as their punching bag. The goat versus Obama site has been blocked but the squirrel versus the President hasn't. Likewise the Onion ring versus Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper site is still open.

So what then to make of all this? I've looked at the sites and I don't see hate speech. I don't see great political satire either. As a First Amendment issue this is...interesting. I mean come on wouldn't you love to see the Supreme Court looking at Bob the Wonder Poodle plus assorted vegetables versus Facebook? Do some people have way too much time on their hands? Check. Does Facebook need to stop being such a prissy little snot about this? Check.

Call that The View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010