Clint Watson writes in  Facebook Like Button Count Inaccuracies:

The Facebook “like” buttons you see embedded on websites incorrectly report the number of “people” who “like” something. Specifically, the button can inflate the displayed count of people.  While this is fine when all you want to do is track some general level of “engagement” with a particular item, it was not accurate for the use I needed – counting each “like” as a vote in our BoldBrush Online painting competition.

What I needed is a way to get the number of actual people who “like” something.  And there is a way to retreive that information from Facebook, but it is often a different number from what is shown on the “like” button itself.

If you are a geek – here’s the bottom line of this post:

If you’re using the Facebook “Like” Button Social Plugin and you need an accurate count of the actual number of people who have clicked the “like” button, you can’t rely on the number reported by the button itself.  You need to retrieve your URL’s “fan count” number via Facebook’s Open Graph API.

Hat tip to Zach Seward for bringing this to my attention.

Got accessibility? Mobile-friendly sites also help disabled users

It was sparked by a new Pew report on problems that people with disabilities have with accessing the net. I found a couple of interesting twists.

1st: US DOJ has proposed new ADA regs for web sites, including “public accommodations” (hm, could include news sites?)

2nd: Making a site mobile-friendly goes a long way toward making it more accessible.

This subject is near and dear to my heart since one of my best friends, who is mostly blind, has faced significant struggles in getting access to services, information, education, and opportunities online and elsewhere. That has definitely hurt not only his quality of life, but his health. And he’s fairly tech-savvy! This is a problem that needs to be solved, and going mobile-friendly is one main way to start.

But now I have an even bigger gripe about Facebook: How it compromises your privacy via its application programming interface (API).

For example, I sort my Facebook friends into groups so I can selectively view and share Facebook content. I use Facebook notes to create private blog posts to share with people who are interested in my personal updates. That’s where I posted several updates on my progress with recovering from knee surgery and other recent events in my life.

When I post those notes, I specifically designate that they will only be shared with my “close friends & family” group of Facebook friends.

Then yesterday I saw this tweet from the Center for Innovation in College Media:

“RT @alexdc: Your private Facebook info is made public to friends through apps you do NOT use. Change settings here http://bit.ly/1y1gSN“

I checked that link, which (after you log in to Facebook) takes you to the Applications section of your Facebook account’s privacy settings. I was appalled to see that, by default, most kinds of Facebook content were checked off to be shared with my friends through Facebook applications that I do not use. This included Notes, Relationship Status, and almost everything else.

I unchecked almost everything. I’m a fairly public person and am not paranoid about privacy. But this really annoyed me, because it appears that even if I designate some content to be shared only with a select group of friends, Facebook will still share it via apps with all of my friends.

…Which just goes to show: If you REALLY want or need to keep something private, don’t ever post it online. Anywhere. Because most of the time you can’t really control how it will get discovered or shared. Especially on Facebook.

George Kelly often calls Facebook a “walled garden of FAIL,” and I agree. Every developer I know complains about the shoddy design, coding, and security of Facebook. Just because it’s hugely popular doesn’t mean it doesn’t have big problems. I think it’s fine to use — just don’t rely on it or trust it too much.

Now, I’m not 100% certain that Facebook was inappropriately sharing my content via its API. Deepquest posted some technical background on this issue. I’m not a programmer, and I understand only a little bit about SQL. But he indicates the bad programming problem isn’t just about Facebook, but app developers:

“The major problem is that Facebook doesn’t control the apps and some code is really bad.”

For all I understand at this point, the Facebook API may indeed honor to your designations of friend groups when releasing your information via apps. I’d love for a developer to clarify this issue.

The problem as I see it is that the applications privacy settings page appears to indicate no awareness of friend group designations.

That sort of mixed message on privacy and sharing isn’t just annoying or confusing. It could actually put some people at risk. I don’t think it’s fair or reasonable to expect the millions of non-tech-savvy Facebook users to parse this issue out for themselves.

I don’t pretend to have the answers here, and some of what I’ve written may not be correct. I’d appreciation clarification of this issue in the comments below. Thanks.

I’m doing this as a pilot test for a new professional service I’d like to start offering: Great live event coverage.

In my experience, most online event coverage isn’t so great. A few folks will be tweeting or blogging in several places, some hashtags will be used, but it’s all rather confusing and inconsistent to follow. Also, a lot of people tend to tweet items like “Jane Doe is speaking at this session now.” Uh-huh… AND….?

Liveblogging/tweeting has turned out to be a real strength of mine — I’m good at it, and I enjoy it. I’ve also had the good fortune to collect a sizable Twitter following among folks whose interests in media, business, and other fields overlap with mine — and who enjoy my particular blend of reporting, analysis, and attitude. (Or at least I guess they do, because every time I do live event coverage my Twitter posse swells noticeably and those folks tend to stick around afterward.)

I do a lot of live event coverage via Twitter and CoverItLive. For instance, earlier this month for my client the Reynolds Journalism Institute I liveblogged/tweeted J-Lab’s Fund My Media Startup workshop at the 2009 Online News Association conference.

So, being a longtime entrepreneur always on the lookout for new opportunities, I’m looking for ways to offer live event coverage as a service for my clients. Today’s event is an experiment on this front.

I want to figure out how this service could work in a way that would appeal to my Twitter posse, maintain my integrity and independence, and provide value to clients who’d pay for it.

Here are some of the issues I’m wrestling with, that I’d welcome your thoughts on…

QUALITY AND RELEVANCE

I wouldn’t accept just any live-coverage gig. It has to be a good fit for my interests, and those of my Twitter followers. So I’d be concentrating on events in areas such as:

• Media and journalism
• Energy
• Environment
• Government transparency and civic engagement/action
• Key media technologies (mobile, mapping, databases, collaboration, etc.)
• Social trends/dynamics (including race, gender, sexuality)
• Offbeat entertainment (science fiction, indy arts & music, strange festivals, zombies, etc.)

INDEPENDENCE

I’m a lousy lapdog. I don’t generally go out of my way to be rude or snarky — especially when someone has invited me to their event and given me a platform. But I do have attitude, a sense of humor, and I say what I think. I must always feel free in my event coverage to disagree, question, criticize, or challenge.

The people who hire me to cover their events need to understand that at some point I will say something they won’t be 100% comfortable with. I am not their mouthpiece. I am providing a service of visibility and engagement. That’s always going to be a bit uncomfortable. In fact, that’s the point.

So, hiring me is not like hiring a PR agency to make you look good. It’s more like issuing a press pass — but knowing that there will be consistent coverage throughout the event. I’ll also work to make sure the online audience gets represented in the live event, by posing questions and comments on their behalf.

TRANSPARENCY

Here’s the background on today’s gig, so you know what the terms of this coverage are.

Doyle Albee, president of Metzger Associates (a PR/communications firm based in Boulder, CO) has hired me to cover this event. I chose to do this because:

1. Doyle is a cool guy and a friend of mine from Boulder. He appreciates my perspective, even though we regularly disagree. He likes how I cover events and wants me to just do what I do — which includes allowing me to question or critize what happens at the event, if I see fit to do so.
2. Dave Taylor, another longtime Boulder friend of mine, is co-leading the event. Doyle and Dave are both great presenters, and I learn much from observing them.
3. The lineup of speakers looks pretty good.
4. This isn’t a mob scene. While I like covering events, major mob scenes like South by Southwest tend to put me on sensory/info overload pretty quickly, and leave me quaking in a fetal position. I prefer covering events for small-to-medium groups where I can get a real sense of what participants think, how peoples’ thinking evolves, and which takeaways are most meaningful.
5. It’s not summertime. Vegas summers slay me. Today is a pleasant, cool early autumn day, more my style.

Full disclosure: Metzger has paid my expenses and waived my fee to participate in this event. I did not ask for a fee for this coverage since I’m fine-tuning this service offer. However, for future live event coverage with this or other clients I will get paid a professional rate for the service.

I decided to not ask for a fee for this event because I want to engage my Twitter posse in a discussion about how I can do event coverage as a professional (fee-based) service in a way that works well for my Twitter followers. That is, I didn’t want to start selling this service before talking to my tweeps about how I can make this work for them.

My liveblog is appearing on Metzger’s site, and I’ll be cross-tweeting to Metzger’s own Twitter account. So while I might occasionally have something to critize, since they’re opening up their platforms for me to use I’ll be civil. Unless something truly egregious happens — and in that case, I’ll still be civil, but I’ll say what I mean.

Anyway, that’s the general plan. What are your thoughts, opinions, questions, criticisms? Please comment below, or tweet me @agahran, or e-mail me.

Again, this is an experiment. I’m not expecting everyone to be happy, or everything to run smoothly. But I do expect to learn a lot. Let me know what you think.

The apparent crack epidemic sweeping the executive suites of media organizations across the U.S. has claimed another victim.

Mark Cuban loves the news business. Over the years he’s done and said some smart things in media. But on his blog a few days ago, he took a big ol’ nose dive straight into the shallow end of the pool.

In his Aug. 8 post, My Advice to Fox & MySpace on Selling Content – Yes You Can, Cuban exhorted news sites to start blocking access to links to their content coming from aggregators. So, for instance, someone might encounter a Newser summary of a USA Today story — but if USA Today blocked inbound links from Newser, someone who wanted to learn more from the full story would click the link and go nowhere.

Here’s the key point for news orgs to grasp: The audience would NOT view Newser as the problem there. Newser has already provided value with the story summary — and they were trying to provide the audience with even more value through a direct link to the full story.

Instead, the news organization would be spoiling its own reputation by presenting itself as an obstacle. The blocked aggregator link in effect says “We don’t want your attention unless you come to us our way, even though we’re not providing the kind of easy summary through aggregators that obviously meets your needs and attracts your interest.”

To which the audience would more likely respond, “Yeah, screw you too. I’ll take my eyeballs elsewhere, thanks.”

Not exactly good for the news business.

The sad and scary thing about Cuban’s post is that a lot of news execs will probably listen to Cuban right now, and maybe even follow his advice, because they’re scared and he’s playing to their fears, prejudices, and weaknesses. It’ll be sad to watch.

Perhaps the one bright spot in this mess is that it may be technically simple to get around aggregator link blocking…

Matt Nelson commented shortly after Cuban’s post hit the web:

“The day after the news providers start blocking aggregators is the day a browser plugin is published to hide or spoof the referring site. I would bet that the next major release of Firefox and Chrome would then incorporate it by default, with IE avoiding it until the loss of market forced them to relent.”

I’m not a web developer, but I just had a quick chat with a web developer I know. He confirmed that there are multiple technical options to get around blocked links — from browser plugins to proxy servers. This kind of subversion might reduce the significant harm news orgs would be inflicting upon themselves by blocking aggregator links.

But more likely, the more news orgs put obstacles between people and their news, the more likely it is that more open competitors will win out. As commenter Rob Levin noted:

“Why is this any different from free vs. paid radio? There is a fundamental disconnect in trying to make a business out of something where the product is not scarce.”

Michael Wolff, founder of Newser (a popular news aggregator that Cuban singled out for attack) published a pointed retort to Cuban. Wolff made an excellent point about giving today’s audience what they want, rather than trying to force them to surmount various obstacles just to get the kind of news that news organizations think they should want:

“People who go to aggregator sites don’t really click through to the original story. But he misses the profound and game-changing aspect of that fact: They don’t want to read the original story. Habits have changed on the Internet, where information comes faster and from many more sources. Hence, news needs to be short and it needs to be aggregated, which is precisely what brand-specific news sites lack: News from diverse outlets that can be consumed quickly. Here’s the rub: People don’t want news (there’s too much of that), they want aggregation (ie, efficiency and ease), which there isn’t enough of. Oh, yes, and free.”

I don’t agree with Wolff that “people don’t want news” — I think they do, as long as it’s relevant and (increasingly) efficient. That means providing summaries, and being available through aggregators.

As I noted earlier today (see Washington Post: Go Gawker Yourself), news organizations probably have more to gain by creating their own summaries and aggregators than by railing against the people who spotted this opportunity first. Or, if they’re just not up to that challenge, they could actively partner with aggregators, bloggers, and entertaining “newsmockers” like Gawker and The Daily Show to make the relationship more mutually beneficial.

Sigh…  If only staging a mass intervention for this crack epidemic would work. As Molly Ivins wrote in 2006:

“I don’t so much mind that newspapers are dying — it’s watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.”

But at least not everyone’s on the pipe. If you want to see a genuine bright spot, read this Aug. 4 commentary by Reuters president Chris Ahearne: Why I believe in the Link Economy. He wrote:

“I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting. …Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party lines.

“…Our news ecosystem is evolving and learning how it can be open, diverse, inclusive and effective. With all the new tools and capabilities we should be entering a new golden age of journalism — call it journalism 3.0.”

If you like what Ahearne had to say (or if you don’t) be sure to tell him on Twitter.

As an avid iPhone user, I love my apps! I use several of them daily, including Omnifocus, GroceryZen, Twittelator Pro, Google Mobile, iBART, and Google Maps.

Apps are not enough, however. First of all, some online services I use (like Gruvr or My511, nudge nudge) don’t yet offer iPhone apps. (This is especially annoying if they also don’t default to mobile-friendly site layout upon mobile access, grumble…)

But also, several very cool and useful online services are meant to play nice with the rest of the web.

For instance, I get value from my preferred social bookmarking service Delicious because I can use it to bookmark, tag, and comment on any page I happen to be browsing. And on Twitter I often tweet links to pages I find online. For these services, I want their functionality integrated with my iPhone’s Safari browser (since you can’t run two apps at once on the iPhone, and since the iPhone also doesn’t yet allow cut and past, grumble…)

That’s when Javascript-based iPhone Safari bookmarklets can come in handy…

Lifeclever explains in 17 powerful bookmarklets for your iPhone that: “Bookmarklets are little pieces of Javascript code that can be saved as ordinary bookmarks in your web browser. They enhance your browsing experience by giving you super-instant access to useful tools and special functionality.”

Since I’m an utterly compulsive user of Twitter and Delicious, I’ve installed a couple of bookmarklets in my iPhone’s browser to allow me to integrate my mobile web surfing with those services pretty easily.

My preferred Twitter iPhone app is Twittelator Pro (which costs $4.99 and just this week debuted a very, very slick and handy 2.0 update). It used to frustrate me that if I found a cool page in my iPhone browser, I couldn’t easily tweet it because of the lack of iPhone cut-and-paste. But recently I installed the Twittelator iPhone bookmarklet in mobile Safari.

This bookmarklet solves that problem perfectly for me. Here’s an example of how I used this bookmarklet on my iPhone to create this link tweet.

link-tweet

I posted this link tweet today from my iPhone. This didn't used to be easy

Here’s how I made it happen:

1. I opened the article page in mobile Safari. Then I clicked the bookmarks icon.

mobile-safari

2. I selected the Post with Twittelator bookmark, which I’ve saved in Safari on my iPhone:

3. Twittelator then launches and puts the full URL into a new tweet.

create-tweet

4. I add some explanatory text for that link. But when I do that, I end up with a tweet that’s 30 characters too long. No worries. I hit “send,” and…

add-text1

5. Twittelator allows me to shorten the link. When I do that…

shorten-link

6. My tweet now has 39 characters to spare. Perfect for posting! I click “send” again, and it posts to Twitter.

ok-to-go

THE BAD NEWS IS…

The process of saving a working Javascript bookmarklet into mobile Safari on the iPhone is a bit clunky. In this case, I first had to navigate in mobile Safari to the Twittelator iPhone bookmarklet page and follow the lengthy instructions there. Basically you have to save that page as a bookmark, and then go back and edit that bookmark to delete everything before the javascript:window.location=%27twit://%27+window.location part of the URL. Once you do that, the bookmarklet executes the steps to post to Twitter (rather than just bring up the explanatory page about the bookmarklet).

This gymnastic routine currently is the norm for implementing a useful bookmarklet into mobile Safari. Yes, it’s clunky. But it only has to be done once per bookmarklet, and then you have the functionality. I think that, for now, that’s an acceptable tradeoff.

I hope that in the future that Apple will make this process less cumbersome — or even better, start allowing cut and past in the iPhone OS so I don’t even need the bookmarklet to make the two apps work together.

But for now, this is a big help.

Oh, and: Here’s the post to Delicious iphone bookmarklet. Just install and edit it the same way. The drawback is that the form for entering information about your bookmark is not mobile-optimized — but if you flip your iPhone sideways for a horizontal display, it’s easier to use.