I’m a fan of the fun collections of ideas, images and concepts that find their way onto personal Tumblr accounts, often driven by crowdsourcing contributions.

Recently a handful of ideas have come to mind that I wish were actively being created by someone. I’d happily contribute.

1. Ridiculous local TV lower thirds — As depicted above, the foolishness of TV news is often good for absurd, accidentally ironic or just downright idiotic messages and descriptions in text on news casts.
2. Vanity license plates — A few efforts have started and stumbled, but a collection of great vanity license plates is too good to be missed. This is probably one I’m most suited to start myself, considering I’ve exchanged picture messages of these with my family for years.
3. Fat men eating ice cream cones — Next time you’re downtheshore or at a vacation spot, you’ll find them. And it will make you smile.

Moderating a panel on web security, as being aired yesterday on CSPAN 2 Book TV.

The Founding Fathers would have loved and leveraged social media but been fearful of its future implications on privacy and speech issues, said a host of experts at an event on the impact of new communications patterns.

Earlier this month, I moderated a panel on the subject at the National Constitution Center featuring Jennifer Preston, a social media reporter from the New York Times, Kashmir Hill, a web law reporter from Forbes and Lori Andrews, the author of a related book which served as regular fodder for the discussion, which appeared on CSPAN 2, Book TV.

Find background and audio of the entire program on the NCC blog here. Watch the entire hour-long panel discussion on CSPAN here.

Thanks to Stefan Frank for organizing the event and including me. Below, I have a three-minute clip of the final question of the night, in which, after spending the evening speaking about the perils of social media, each panelist reminds us of the power and benefit.

Some takeaways:

• A herculean battle is being balanced between the speech and communication power of the social web against privacy and security concerns.
• There is a gray area between private company and utility — when does presence on a social network become so part of social life that there should be greater scrutiny over privacy than any other service?
• I created this document and circulated it with my fellow panelists before the event.

The groundwork of privacy, anonymity and free speech is being set now with evolving jurisprudence and legislation surrounding the concept of social networking.

That is the overarching theme, as I read it, in I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did:  Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, a new book from Lori Andrews, law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Ahead of moderating a panel at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia featuring the author and two other esteemed panelists, I read an advanced copy of book.

Details of Thursday night’s event here.

It’s a book worth reading, dense with stories and examples of the gray line of privacy and the constitutionality of the social web. Below, I share some of my favorites bits.

• The Internet is in need of a Social Network Constitution, a concept Andrews builds toward throughout the book, finally sharing a more detailed concept.
  
• “Reasonable expectation of privacy” is the key phrase that turned a case in which Charles Katz was arrested for illegal betting when a public phone was tapped. Regardless of whether the event takes place in the house or not, personal details cannot be leveraged if there is a sensible reason for an individual to expect privacy and a court of law has not given authority to override that due to probable cause of illegal activity. [p. 52]
• Online privacy and speech concerns have not be regularly upheld by courts as they have in the past analog world. Andrews argues that a lack of understanding of the fast-changing landscape has caused poor recognition of similarities between, say, the 1988 Bork Supreme Court justice nominee video rental list disclosure to social network attributes being used against individuals in hiring processes. [p. 57]
• If we are simply early in these technologies, we still need to move quickly in establishing rights, because while it has been less than a decade since Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, social norms are changing rapidly. [p. 57]
• “Facebook describes itself as a ‘social utility,’” which is important to convey the frustration with the defense of eroding privacy being that those who don’t like it can go elsewhere. [p. 58]
• Internet Service Providers have the only real internet kill switch, and because Egypt has only five and Libya has only one, it is easier to control the internet in those countries. For comparison, there are as many as 4,000 in the United States, though the top five account for half of the U.S. market. American legislation has sought to create a mechanism to turn off internet access in an act of national security. [p. 63]
• Right to anonymity and Freedom of Speech at the heart of these issues, like the dark story of William Francis Melchert-Dinkel who, posing as a female online, allegedly encouraged a Canadian girl to kill herself, which she did. [p. 93]
• Are social networks publishers or communities?, which is important because they are being treated as the latter, in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which suggests in serving as a pass-through of information, the content cannot be blamed on the site. Examples like wide-ranging message board AutoAdmit, which was co-founded by a Penn law student, have faced legal action because of a lack of moderation. [p. 105]
• Passive publishers rights, like craigslist, earn a right of protection only by setting up reasonable efforts to reduce liability, so Roommates.com was liable for discrimination because by having a drop-down option for users to choose ‘No Minorities’ in roommate choice, it was encouraging illegal, discriminatory behavior. [p. 108]
• Lower Merion webcam controversy showed lack of legislation protecting technology-driven privacy, supplemented by the 2010 case of a Rutgers student who used video conferencing software to spy on his gay roommate. [p. 116]
• ‘You have zero privacy anyway, get over it,” said Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, a sentiment Andrews questions with the above mentioned examples. [p. 117]
• Context may matter a lot in the placement of public information but perhaps not in court, which is made clear when personal information from a 17-year-old’s MySpace page were placed as a sexually-suggestive post on craigslist. However the 40-year-old woman charged with doing that act was found not-guilty in 2011 for cyber-harassment because the information was already publicly available. [p. 118]
• 81 percent of divorce attorneys have used an increase in evidence from social networks, including 66 percent using Facebook. [p. 138]
• An unsettling lack of due process is used in sharing changes in privacy from social networks, including a host of examples from changes in Facebook and efforts by Google+ to sell on privacy. [p. 175]

I’m moderating a panel on privacy, security and democracy concerns surrounding the social web at the National Constitution Center in Old City, Philadelphia next Thursday.

You should come. More details here. It costs $10 for non-members.

Check the archived chat here.

Below check out the Storify, I put together highlighting some of the more interesting responses to the series of questions put out by the facilitator. As host, I was meant to drive conversation, outreach and use any expertise I had on the subject.

Below the Storify, I put the answers to the Lightning Round questions for me below in HTML. The lightning round kicked off the night, which ran from 8pm to about 9:30pm, and introduced me to the dozens of participants, who were from around the country.

My answers to the Lightning Round that kicked off the night:

1. In a tweet, describe your organization, companies: @wjchat Co-founder of content strategy shop @technicallyM and our flagship, a popular local technology news site @technicallyPHL #wjchat
2. What is the first step to go from reporter to journalism entrepreneur? @wjchat Desperation? A community in need of help coming together, lotsa time and desire to steal and implement every good idea you find #wjchat
3. What tip would you give someone starting up his/her own news org? @wjchat Pick a niche you care about, spend no money on tech to start and plan for funding that doesn’t rhyme with “schmadvertising” #wjchat
4. What have you learned now, that you wish you knew when you first launched? @wjchat Business 101 like profit per staff hour and admin basics like payroll, invoicing #wjchat
5. What is success for you? How do you know you’ve reached it? @wjchat Sustainability. When we bring on a full-time editor with something of a freelance budget and cover tech in Philly, then @technicallyPHL has won #wjchat
6. Are you profitable? @wjchat Yup. No outside investment and three full-time staffers, we pay ourselves $40k, a meaningful salary for young journalist. Revenue (1) events, (2) foundation projects (3) consulting #wjchat
7. Divide up your time: Reporter vs. businessman vs. Web developer vs. designer. Well, across the three of us @technicallyPHL 30 percent reporter, 40 percent business, 20 percent web dev, 10 percent deisgn #wjchat
8. What’s been the lowest point in this venture? What’s been the highest? Low=selling ads out of mice-ridden apt in 09, High=hosting big @PhillyTechWeek last April w/ impact, community & revenue #wjchat

I tried out the Tweroid service. [Updated: I also tried the service for @TechnicallyPHL]

The value proposition is to sign in, wait an hour or so, get an assessment of when your followers are most active online. The ask might be to then starting tweeting at those times to have the biggest impact.

So, according to this, for maximum audience, I should be tweeting at noon and in the 4pm hour on weekdays

I’m left wondering if that’s the value of social media — directing your gaze to the biggest crowd, or if it should be more spontaneously. As metrics can continue to deploy

1. Signing off initials — If you have multiple people using your organization’s account, sign off with initials for transparency, personal connection and ease.
2. Do create regular content — Part of my schtick is having a lunchtime regular feature, like Noontime Number for Technically Philly and Running News at Noon for Back on My Feet. It’s something followers come to expect and helps you be sure to fill content.
3. Do take the RSS feed from your blog and then do a second (or third) tweet later for ifferent audience — It helps feed the beast, but also means your next tweet will hit for a new audience. Note, though, that some feel Twitter should be all engagement, so sending an RSS feed is somewhat looked down on. Still, I think as long as an RSS feed doesn’t dominate your Twitter conversation, it’s an added value.
4. Do tweet your content more than once — Yes, as a follow up to the item above, keep in mind that Twitter users tend to focus in at different times, from the morning to lunch to the evening or something like it, so by tweeting a story a few times (without getting spammy), you have a better chance of hitting an interested party.
5. Do use CoTweet to manage multiple accounts with multiple user — the former central Pennsylvania startup has a lot of good features for archiving messages, assigning followup and forward posting tweets.
6. Instead of just responding, RT a meaningful message — When you reply to someone, RT her message and add your own when space allows. This gets other people into the conversation. If no one is interested, then take it to DM or email.
7. Do more often have a call to action — (usually a link) but don’t be afraid to offer meaning in words. It’s a push media, so what are you pushing? Don’t take that to mean you should always be pushing your stuff, but conversation, engagement, sharing, linking, etc. are all good calls to action.
8. Do be able to share a specific point in those 140 characters — So, ‘Man speaks at classroom’ is a whole lot less effective than ‘this is how we can make homework suck less, man says,’ which can inspire conversation or thought or response or, even better, a click.
9. Tweet strong quotes or (even better) hard numbers – I’ve always found pushing clear information and statistics travels better than something less actionable or more vague.
10. Break quick news on Twitter — When you’re reporting on something, feed good, interesting, independent content on Twitter. When possible, sure, having a link of yours can help you capture the clicks, but ultimately, you’re trying to create an audience and you do that with content, so Twitter needs its own material.

Facebook pushes traffic and helps build an online community.

We’re over that. Joining Facebook and learning lessons from it is in the distant past. It’s time to have that next conversation.

I’m interested in moving to the next step, creating more compelling Facebook pages that keep people coming back, attract more eyeballs, develop brands, help create communication and, of course, help push eyeballs.

I’ve been moving through some conversations, trying to pull out the best lessons. I’m not behind anything compelling yet, but I’d love to do something fun with NEast Philly’s incredibly active Facebook page.

Some worthy reading below:

• Data lessons on journalists using Facebook
• So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop! –
• 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page –
• Is Your Target Audience On Twitter, Facebook, Or LinkedIn? — Because you should only focus energies where it makes sense. This has been a focus of a NEast Philly BarCamp presentation.
• 5 Easy Steps To A Great Facebook Fan Page — Biggest take aways: You have to vary the types of content and be willing to strike up debate yourself. That means effort, but it will grow awareness and use. That’s a big first step.
• How To Build A Customized Facebook Page For Your Business –
• Facebook pages wih static FBML application
• Wiki on FBML development Facebook static FBML problems and solutions
  
• How to customize Facebook fan page with Facebook static FBML application
• A Facebook Page is probably what you want, but compare them with Facebook groups and get more about that fight with Mashable here.
• Want an RSS feed of a Facebook group? There’s a Yahoo Pipes mock up for that.

1. Have less spam.
2. Move faster.
3. Take younger users.

The basic philosophy of one of those early web pioneers, Gary Vaynerchuk, was the subject of his buzzy, well-selling book ‘Crush It’ back in 2009. I’ve only gotten to it now that the second in his famed 10-book deal is coming out.

The book does two very basic things: (1) outlines Gary’s general philosophy that the Internet offers an opportunity for anyone to make money off her passion and (2) gives very simple, early steps for doing so.

Here are my take aways from reading the book:

• First, of course, I agree with much of his perspective and love his attitude, though, in building a business around news that now supports three people full-time, I read his chapter on journalism business with some degree of skepticism. 
• In being supportive, Gary may be offering some false hope — By looking at the two objectives this book hits (his passion and very basic steps to start following the same path) I’d picture his audience are those somewhat new to the web. His spirit — which is a noble one — is about persistence, but I don’t believe hard work wins out all the time. Businesses succeed with hard work, passion, and skill, of course, but personality, luck and timing play a big part, too, I believe, and I think Gary’s success has quite a bit to do with personality, luck and timing. I wonder how much of the audience building some of his readers have are, indeed, his other readers and how much is real business momentum.
• Gary’s impact is for big brands first, but his book is sold to little brands — Part of that is marketing from Harper Collins, of course, but I’m always a little skeptical of the ‘you can do anything you put your mind to’ mantra, as there are real audience building challenges some small brands and individuals will have, as noted above.

That said, sure, we all love Gary’s spirit, energy and direction. The book can be a fun, quick read, but there isn’t serious meat here. That may be for a future book. Below are some of the pieces I liked most:

• We’re all in the customer service era with the advent of the social web and the tools that will continue to connect and offer some semblance of transparency.
• In December 2008, he spent $7,500 on free wine shipping codes through a billboard, direct mail, radio and he also tweeted out the same offer. The billboard brought in 170 orders, the radio did 240 and direct mail did more than 300. He says tweeting brought him 1,700 orders in 48 hours. [p. 60]
• Best business tweet of all time: “What can we do for you?” …This is something similar to what we’ve done with our readers, and I like the logic. [p. 72]
• “If you contact me to complain a year after starting a business, you’re not listening.” — It takes much longer, he explains. [p. 90]
• “Some entrepreneurs are really into creating the next big thing. Not me. I’m ab out identifying the next big thing and jumping all over it.” [p. 124]
• “Five business ideas I won’t get to — they’re yours” [p. 139]

Aside from the simple basics that he shares, I think his philosophy can be garnered with a video presentation of his like this.