Anthony De Rosa

Google has had a series of embarrassing flops when it comes to new products. Google Wave was too complicated and didn’t solve a problem anyone had. Google Buzz never caught on with enough people to become useful. Now, they’ve set their sights directly on Facebook with Google+ and after spending a little less than a day with it, I have to admit I am intrigued.

There are a couple of things that make Google+ compelling. The first is that despite the fact it’s still in limited beta, with many folks begging for invites from friends, it feels active and alive. When you log in, it appears like the early days of Facebook, before they piled on app after app and feature after feature.

Being the new thing is an advantage, because you can focus on the features that people really want. Google+ focuses on a feed of updates, similar to the Facebook Wall, and forces people to place their contacts into “Circles” which is similar to Facebook’s “Groups” that seems to be utilized only by a small audience.

Circles allow you to focus on the things a subset of your contacts are interested in, helping to separate the signal from the noise. This is the biggest problem with not only Facebook but with Twitter as well. Power users on Twitter use “Lists” and this makes the experience of Twitter much better, especially for people who depend on Twitter for information and news.

For those who use social media to consume news, there’s a Google+ feature called “Sparks” that allows you to track Google News sources for any keyword you want and the stream can be accessed within the same space you’re following friend updates.

The largest image hosting website today is Facebook, and with apps like Instagram trying to hone in on their turf, they’re keen to get into the mobile photo sharing game as well. What really kicked up Facebook’s image hosting was picture tagging. Where Facebook has started to fall apart is the presentation of the images, which is a bit wonky. Google+ doesn’t have critical mass with image tagging yet, but they’ve got the same functionality built in, along with a much sleeker, simpler way of presenting images in a nice neat grid format. For either Google or Facebook to remain fresh, though, they’ll need to come up with their own version of what Instagram has done to capture the photo sharing zeitgeist.

The final major feature is Hangout, which lets you have a spontaneous video chat with multiple people in any particular Circle. This is something unique that Facebook doesn’t currently offer and could likely be a big draw for teenagers to socialize with friends. It could potentially be a competitor to Skype and even to WebEx if they allowed screen sharing. Tie it to Google Docs and now you have a really powerful collaboration tool.

Another important component that Google is pushing in order to separate themselves from Facebook is their “data liberation” which allows you to pack up and take your data away from Google+ should you decide to leave the service. They even made a somewhat tongue-in-cheek video to tout it, as seen here:

Privacy has always been one of the pet peeves of Facebook, and how difficult they make it to leave and take your stuff with you. Google was wise to make this a major feature of Google+.

The true test of Google+, though, will be to see if it survives given all the other digital distractions already available. Will it be the shiny new tool that becomes a fast fading fad or will it draw us away from our existing social networks of Facebook and Twitter?

Editor’s note: This article spurred quite a bit of discussion on Twitter. If you’d like to join the conversation, use the hashtag #smnets. Carl V. Lewis storified some of the discussion that took place.

Bill Keller has spent the last eight years as executive editor of the New York Times. He recently announced he will step down from his post in September and hand it over to Jill Abramson, who will become the first female executive editor in the history of the paper. I asked Bill about his transition and some of the controversy around his statements regarding aggregation and Twitter.

You’ve been doing more writing as of late. Do you miss having the time to devote your energies to that entirely?

I spent the first 25 years of my working life swearing I’d never give up reporting for editing. But while it took some doing — Joe Lelyveld says it took him two years — to talk me into trying it, I’ve found it hugely rewarding. Sure, I’ve missed reporting and writing, and I’ve had some reminders along the way of how much I missed them.

I had a two-year involuntary break from editing in 2001-2003, my blissful exile, which I spent writing an op-ed column and pieces for the Times magazine. In 2009 I was on one of those hang-out-with-the-correspondents missions in Iran when all hell broke loose and I reenlisted as a notebook warrior. It was thrilling. But stepping down as executive editor is not about missing writing, except in the sense that I suppose it’s easier to give up a great job if you have something else you want to do.

Stepping down is about wanting to hand over the newsroom when it’s in good shape, when it’s on a journalistic roll and feels financially more secure, when there’s a strong bench to take over, and while I’m still enjoying it, before I burn out or wear out my welcome.

You clarified your position on social media in response to what Nick Bilton wrote. What is the biggest misconception people have about your view of social media?

I think there’s a misconception that I’m opposed to social media. Some of it comes from people who haven’t paid close attention to what I’ve said on the subject, and some of it, I think, comes from people who know better but who have made a reputation for themselves by being digital evangelists and cyber-puritans, who treat any hint of skepticism as heresy.

My view of social media is that it is a set of tools, not a religion. Twitter and Facebook are brilliant tools, the journalistic uses of which are still being plumbed. They are great for disseminating interesting material. They are useful for gathering information, including from places that are inaccessible. They provide a kind of serendipity, a sense of discovery, that some people thought would be lost as print periodicals declined.

At the Times, we embrace social media, we use it, we experiment with it. We have a staff dedicated to figuring out new ways to make the best journalistic use of it. We have staff seminars on social media. I encourage reporters to look at Twitter and Facebook and to figure out if there’s a way these services can be helpful to them. Like many tools, Twitter will fit some people’s toolkits more naturally than others, and will be used more skillfully and creatively by some people than others.

None of this should be a revelation to anyone who has paid attention, but Twitter is not always a friend of paying attention. I’m pretty sure that a fair number of the people who joined the buzz about my column, and a more-than-fair share of those who retweeted it, didn’t actually take the time to read it. Which kind of confirms my point about Twitter not being a great medium for serious discussion.

The point of my column was that most technological progress comes at a price, and it’s okay to consider the price along with the progress. For some people, Facebook is a way to engage more openly with the world. But there’s an opportunity cost. The time you spend keeping up with your 200 Facebook friends is time you are not getting to know someone really well in person. Twitter is all the wonderful things I said above and then some, but Twitter is mostly reductionist. It does not lend itself to deep, rich conversation, with context and persuasion. It CAN be a stimulus to serious discussion, but that is not the nature of the tool, which is reach rather than depth.

In case you’re wondering, by the way, I do not believe that Twitter literally makes people stupid. If you read the column, you know that I posted a hashtag — #twittermakesyoustupid — followed, please note, by the word “discuss.” The point was to throw out a subject for discussion, and see how the medium dealt with it, which was pretty much the way I expected. (A hashtag is a topic, not an argument. ) I think Twitter can encourage distraction, superficiality, short attention spans, bumper-sticker-level discourse. It can make you SOUND stupid. But, no, I don’t think it makes you stupid.

People go to the Times for great original reporting, but increasingly people also want to be able to go somewhere that synthesizes all the news around different subjects. Personally, I think Huffington Post tries to do this but is very disorganized and difficult to follow. More of a marketing mousetrap than an actual news service. I get the sense you don’t believe in aggregation but if done properly and presented in a clear and ethical way, would you encourage the Times to do more of it?

Ah, aggregation. You apparently missed this. In our newsroom, I’ve been an enthusiastic promoter of aggregation. I think readers come to us not just for our original reporting, but for our judgment. So they want to know not just what we’re reporting, but what we’re reading and watching, and they want us linked to sources that back up our reporting or enlarge on it. My caveats are a) aggregation is not a substitute for original reporting. If you don’t have original reporting, you’re aggregating smoke. And b) a business model built on excerpting or rewriting other people’s work at length in order to keep the traffic and reward for yourself is stealing.

You don’t seem to engage much on Twitter, I was the only non-New York Times staffer you ever replied to in over two years over Twitter. I happen to think one of the most useful things about Twitter is how you can interact with people, especially those who read the New York Times. What has prevented you from doing so and would you consider doing more of it in the future?

I follow Twitter and pay attention to it, but I rarely Tweet because I have a rather large platform here, called The New York Times. If I run across something interesting, or have a thought that might merit reporting, my instinct is to send it to an editor or reporter, in hopes it grows into a story — not to share it first with a Twitter universe that includes most of our competitors. (Or I might save it for a column of my own.) I’m sure I could do a better job of responding to Tweets about the Times, but that takes time, and mine is usually fully booked.

What would you like to do as you transition out of your current role, what are you excited about devoting more time to in the future?

I look forward to surprising you, and to being surprised.

What is the most difficult challenge you’ve faced as Executive Editor of the New York Times?

We’ve had a multi-course menu of challenges. How do you choose? Maintaining and expanding our journalistic ambitions (and sustaining morale)  through all the recessionary pressure and Doomsday talk? Defending and explaining our decisions to publish articles based on classified documents? Trying to uphold high standards of fairness as the public debate grew more polarized? Coping with crises in the field — reporters kidnapped, arrested, injured and killed for doing their jobs?

We — and I do mean we — had enough challenges to fill a crisis management handbook. I suppose if I had to pick one challenge we met with lasting impact, it would be our successful adaptation to the digital world. Over the past six years or so the newsroom has forged an integrated, Web-savvy newsroom that wins prizes for innovation and quality online without sacrificing the depth of reporting and reflection people demand of the Times.

We also had a hand in retooling the company’s business model to create a digital subscription system that shows great promise. A lot of people made this happen, starting with a publisher who was alert early on to promise of the Web and the danger of complacency, and including a successor who has immersed herself in digital strategy. But I’m proud that The New York Times newsroom became a thriving digital venture on my watch.

On the surface, the story of a newspaper company during an age of digital revolution does not seem like the best candidate for a gripping drama. In the hands of Andrew Rossi and through the eyes of David Carr, Brian Stelter, Bruce Headlam, and Tim Arango there lies something akin to The Social Network for the news business, a movie uniquely capturing this moment in time.

There’s a scene midway through Page One when David Carr goes to meet the guys who run Vice, a brash and unvarnished multimedia content company that CNN just partnered with in an effort to court a younger demographic. “I don’t do corporate portraiture,” Carr tells them as they attempt to give him their pitch. Vice co-founder Shane Smith tries to make a case for why Vice is doing the job that the New York Times failed to do. “Everyone talked to me about cannibalism! That’s fucking crazy! So the actual — our audience goes, “That’s fucking insane, like, that’s nuts!” And the New York Times, meanwhile, is writing about surfing, and I’m sitting there going like, “You know what? I’m not going to talk about surfing, I’m going to talk about cannibalism, because that fucks me up.” Carr interrupts Smith for a history lesson “Just a sec, time out. Before you ever went there, we’ve had reporters there reporting on genocide after genocide. Just because you put on a fucking safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do. So continue.”

That moment sort of crystallizes the two worlds that Carr and the Times now live in. Countless outlets like Vice and others were born in an age where virtually anyone can cobble together a place on the media landscape, but often with little regard for those who came before them. Some are outright contemptuous of the Times and newspapers in general, as a few attendees at SXSW, the annual Austin gathering of digerati expressed by a show of hands that they would not miss the Times if it ceased to exist.

Others, like Markos Moulitsas, are annoyed by the perceived authority that the Times has, citing Judy Miller’s blind acceptance of WMDs in the lead up to the war in Iraq as essentially being a stenographer for the Bush administration. The movie pulls no punches when it comes to the fiscal crisis at the Times and also the confidence crisis some had in their ability to provide the news, following the failings of Miller and Jayson Blair.

The fallout following their scandals coincides with the Times beginning to find its legs again, with the help of digital natives like Brian Stelter. Carr and Stelter come from different generations but they’re both digital hybrids — one adapted to the present who has became even more influential because of it; the other absorbed by the wisdom of the past who has became a force to be reckoned with.

Page One weaves together the day to day machinations of hunting down a story; misdeeds at the Tribune company being a particularly compelling one. Carr coaxes the truth out of sources in a vibrant and unexpectedly exciting way. Drama drips from the clouds of uncertainty during an uneasy moment in the paper’s history. A moment, the film admits, that seems like it has always existed. The numbers are more stark and the challengers more formidable than in previous eras where network news and radio grew as alternatives sources for information. Disruption has always been the norm, but the digital age brought the institution to a point where it was forced to stare into the abyss, consider its mortality and find a way to save its own life.

The movie does not have all the answers — we are all still trying to figure them out ourselves. It does, however, give pause to those who think the Times is replaceable.

There is much that we have gained in the last decade or so with the  invention of Twitter and Facebook. These platforms, along with the web itself, have given us a tremendous ability to publish and transmit information far faster and wider than ever before, but those who think we can simply replace the DNA that exists within the walls of The New York Times building are simply ignorant of what role it has played and will continue to play for years to come.

The publication has not always been perfect, as a collection of mortals will often fail to be, but the film displays an institution that tells stories that still have wide impact on our lives with an influence that still reigns above many of their digital counterparts. This story is their own. It is a story well told, that left me rooting for it to continue to be told for years to come.

The biggest takeaway from today’s Apple announcements at their annual worldwide developers conference was how many companies they’ve just disrupted.

Hey Blackberry, you know that your BBM that many find to be the sole reason they stick by your side instead of bolting for a shiny new iPhone. Say hello to iMessage. Start a conversation on your iPhone and continue it on your iPad. If you still want to talk to your friends tied to their Blackberries, there’s always What’s App.

So Dropbox, you’ve been one of the most useful apps I’ve come across in quite some time. My files auto-synced in the cloud, I barely have to think about it. I move effortlessly from one machine to another and my stuff is right there, a click away. Welp, I’ve got some bad news for you. iCloud. 5 gigs of storage and get this, it’s free. Well, unless you’ve got some non-iTunes music you wanna sync. That’s gonna set you back $25 a year. Cmon, that’s a fraction of the money you’ve stolen from artists and those poor multi-millionaire music executives (if any of them still exist anymore.)

What else? Instapaper, a brilliant app by former lead developer for Tumblr, Marco Arment was just replaced by a feature in Apple’s Safari browser, called “Reading List” which stores what you’re browsing for offline reading later, and syncs it across both your iOS devices and your Mac. Poor guy. His reaction on Twitter was priceless.

If Larry David is a social assassin, what does this make Steve Jobs?

Some companies were disrupted in a positive way. Today was Twitter’s lucky day. Apple just built in Twitter integration at the base level of iOS5. Enter your Twitter credentials in your iOS device settings and you’re set. No need to log into Twitter again for most of the apps you regularly use.  Shoot something with your iPhone or iPad camera? Bam, send it to Twitter. Tired of having to keep logging into Twitter on  Safari? No longer. Same goes for YouTube,  Maps, and your contacts.

Remember all those times you had to fumble with the lock on your iPhone to shoot a photo? No more, you’ll be able to have a one click shortcut on the lock screen to get right to shooting. If you hate using the on screen button to shoot images as much as I do, you’re in luck. You can make the volume button a camera shutter.

The news and magazine business even got a little disrupted, with a new feature called Newsstand, which will be a place for all your newspapers and magazines. Don’t really see the value-add here, since you already download them in the app store. Better organization and background downloading seem to be the benefit.

You know how Android phones have these really cool notification pages that tell you all sorts of things like how your stocks are doing, what the weather this weekend will be, who just emailed you, and what your significant other just posted to their Facebook wall? It’s finally come to your iPhone and iPad. Customize it for what you want to see. Much more useful and informative than that boring screen-saver you’ve been staring at.

That covers your iOS devices, but what did Apple present for the Mac? Lion is the new OS, and it’s only going to be available as an Apple App Store download for $30. A lot of what is coming here morphs it closer to an iPad experience. Full screen apps, all sorts of gesture based features like swipe to change apps or go back and forth between webpages. Mission control lets you manage your documents like you’re grabbing them and moving them around physically.

The most blatantly iPad-esque feature is Launchpad which literally looks like the way your apps are presented in grid format on your iPad, but on a Mac. Apple’s newest mouse supports gestures but you’re going to get a lot more out of this if you’re using a trackpad or laptop. Even the mouse is getting disrupted. No-one is safe.

Perhaps the most life-altering feature here is Resume, which has two parts: auto-save and versions. This is something that is long overdue for the entire software industry. The OS will automatically save where you are in any app in short increments, so if you happen to lose power or just boneheadedly close your app while working on it, you’ll get back the documents and everything else exactly how you left it. If you want to go back to where you were at some point in time, Versions has you covered.

So in summation: Blackberry, Dropbox, Instapaper, GroupMe, and heck even AT&T and Verizon took a bit of a beating today from Apple. Twitter comes out on top. Unfortunately for Anthony Weiner, there was no “one more thing” in the form of a Time Machine.

Anthony Weiner is about as uncensored online as he is offline. But is he really bold enough to post a photo of himself sans pants over a Twitter account?

I’m less interested in the politics of the matter than the technical evidence that could show whether the congressman sent the photo himself or if it was sent by someone else. Over the weekend, I posted my analysis on the authenticity of the photo behind the scandal. Weiner’s friend and former “freeloading” roommate, Jon Stewart, used my post from the other day on The Daily Show to illustrate some of the methods for how the congressman could have had his account hacked. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Every photo tells a story

Within just about every digital photo, there are clues left behind called “metadata” that identify the make and model of the camera used, the time the photo was taken and sometimes even the location the photo was taken at. I ran one of the earlier photos that Anthony Weiner had taken through several tools (here is one you can try yourself) that look at the “exif data” within the photo. Here was the result from this photo:

This tells us that the congressman usually shoots his Twitter images with a Blackberry 9650, with a pretty high resolution of 2,048 x 1,536. I then compared this data to the lewd image he was alleged to have sent to a young woman over Twitter.

Here’s the data I found for that image:

Notice a lot of the data that appeared in the earlier photos is missing in the scandalous photo that has Weiner in hot water. There is no make or model listed, and the dimensions of the photo are much smaller. This could indicate a few things. The data could have been stripped at some point because it was uploaded to yfrog or through some other service; it could have been taken by a camera, uploaded to a computer and then uploaded to yfrog; or it simply could have been edited with any photo application. There are applications that will allow you to go in and modify the metadata for a photo.

A special thanks goes to Joe Brooks who was able to get one of the few people who happened to view the larger version of the image before Weiner deleted it. Brooks walked this person through the process of finding the image on his computer, where it was cached. If you want to view the image, be aware it’s a large photo of a man in his underpants and click here.

It is important to note that 18 days prior to the incident, this person, named Dan Wolfe or @patriotusa76 on Twitter, mentioned a rumor he had heard many days before the image was sent that stated Weiner would be involved in a sex photo scandal soon:

Seems like a pretty odd coincidence, no? I’m not going to try and make heads or tails on this — I’ll lleave that for the lawyers — but it is something that should be investigated.

Others have done excellent jobs at looking at other aspects of how the congressman could or could not have been hacked. Philip Bump used to work for Adobe and is something of an expert when it comes to Photoshop. He looks at how the image could have been manipulated. Grace Lidia Suarez, a criminal defense lawyer, figured out how you could upload a yfrog image with nothing but an email address. A hacker wouldn’t even need Weiner’s twitter account details to make it appear the image was sent from his account.

The technical evidence is not conclusive but seems to lean in Weiner’s favor. Although his public comments seem to be undermining what evidence he has that helps him, which is what I told The Today Show this morning. He told Luke Russert of NBC News, Wolf Blitzer of CNN, and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC (who mentioned my exif post on her program last night) that he cannot say “with certitude” that that is not him in the photo. Weiner’s exact quote was “It certainly doesn’t look familiar to me, but I don’t want to say with certitude to you something that I don’t know to be the certain truth.” What exactly does he mean by that? Why couldn’t he just say yes or no? Instead, Weiner answered the question by pointing to some type of photo manipulation.

This leaves open the possibility that a photo of Weiner in some state of undress exists somewhere and someone was able to gain possession of it, either by hacking his computer or having it sent to them from Weiner or from someone he had sent it to previously.

If the congressman can’t say without a shadow of a doubt that the photo is of him, it leaves the case wide open.