The Internet is a treasure trove of the bizarre and comical content and this is no more evident than in the form of memes. Memes, while certainly funny and generally cute, have a power that many of us had not yet thought about until ROFLCon earlier this month: free speech.

After taking a week to reflect on the show at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – attendees included many of the  faces from popular web videos, such as “bed intruder” Antoine Dodson, or My Drunk Kitchen’s Hannah Hart – one of the biggest takeaways I had was from a panel called “Global Lulzes,” which considered the international use of memes and social media, particularly in countries of political and socioeconomic unrest.

In the U.S., memes have been used for years to criticize society and politics in a way that is humorous and powerful, making statements against or for a particular stigma or leader. (Note, if you do not know what a meme is I suggest reading this). In lieu of the 2012 election, memes have been generated showing distaste for both the Republican presidential runner Mitt Romney and President Obama.

Consider:

In this country, such obvious jests on behalf of government officials are legal and welcomed as part of our First Amendment rights. In other countries, however, this isn’t the case, and as a result, political activism is taking refuge in the unassuming world of memes.

In Syria, for example, it is illegal to make fun of the president. As a result, many Syrians have had to self-censor the comments they post online, but Internet memes have been popping up since the beginning of the revolution in that country to showcase the public’s dissatisfaction with the regime.

Satire has been used for centuries to express displeasure with a political system. In today’s world, it is easier to reach the masses not with the printed word, but with an easy to alter and share image. The “it belongs to everyone” nature of memes enables anyone to take a picture and make it their own with just a few words.

I can’t help but wonder, however, how long it is before such statements are silenced. We are already noticing such actions with Facebook and Twitter posts, for instance, the Marine who was recently discharged after he criticized Obama on Facebook. And a judge in Virginia deemed that a Facebook “Like” does not constitute free speech, adding that employers can fire employees based on these interests. By clicking the “Like” button, though, are you not saying that you are in favor of what that page represents, whether brand or politician?

The main saving grace of memes, it seems, is the anonymity with which they are created and the simple objects that can be turned into a meme, such as, say, a duck. This keeps them off censorship’s radar, and keeps the individuals who make them fairly unattached to the content. For now, though, memes are and will continue to be a wonderfully funny and powerful tool in the protection of free speech.

- Brittney (@bntrim)

We wince only because Facebook and big companies before it have consistently proven their wonderful ability to run the companies they buy into the ground or shut them down and integrate the technologies into their own platforms.

But should we expect the same this go-’round?

This acquisition is the most notable one in the world of social media since Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, and YouTube is still around much like it was before the acquisition: independent and potentially even better than before, just part of the Google family of products.

We’d hope (and it would seem) that the Facebook-Instagram deal mirrors that of Google-YouTube. According to the post on Zuckerberg’s page, the company understands that it can destroy Instagram if it’s not careful:

“…we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.”

So, to that end, some thoughts on what could become of both sides:

- Instagram isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Facebook is well aware that it has the ability and power to stupidly ruin a good thing, and it doesn’t want to do that. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom reiterates this message, too.

- Facebook users will probably get Instagram filters and better editing features at some point, so prepare to see more pictures of your friend’s kids, only with various filters and blurry parts.

- This could mean the first real domino in Facebook rolling out tags for photos, giving the standardization of tagging huge legs for the future.

- You have to wonder if the Instagram “Heart” will become a Facebook “Thumbs up.”

- Facebook is already the No. 1 photo upload site on the Internet, and this purchase will only strengthen its position there over rivals such as Google+. This could potentially hurt Twitter, too, though Instagram allows for sharing on that site and will continue to do so. Too early to tell.

- It could also mean a death blow to Flickr, which, while popular with photographers, you hear less and less of over time. It’s just not as social and doesn’t have the traffic or mobile friendliness. (And there are other services besides Flickr, as well.)

- It’s likely any real significant development from this won’t be visible for a year or more, but you may see some early tweaks to image sharing on both sides in the first six months.

More than likely, the most notable change to Instagram will be for the founders themselves, who are joining Facebook under terms of the deal: After two years out on their own, they now have bosses.

Tell us the basics: Who are you, what’s your company’s name and how long have you been at this company?

My name is Dean Browell and I’m with Feedback – I’m one of the three partners who founded the company in 2009. We have offices here in Richmond as well as London.

We notice you have a PhD — that probably makes you different from a lot of other social media experts. What field is your degree in, and what led you to Feedback?

My PhD is in education, specifically looking at how different generations interact online. My research background is in ethnography, and we apply those research principles and a philosophy of listening to audiences and industries first before barreling into social media. Our insights and way of thinking end up helping way more than just social strategies.

Who are Feedback’s clients — actual brands or the marketing and public relations organizations that serve those brands?

Both, actually. We founded Feedback to work with brands and agencies of all types to help add intelligence and firepower to their audience engagement. For agencies we help provide helpful research that informs creative, public relations and more. Our research also helps train and augment what they offer in terms of social services. And we also work for a number of large brands directly, often interfacing with the firms they employ.  We’ve worked with everyone from The Martin Agency here in town to Camelbak in California, and we’re members of Worldwide Partners, Inc. – an international network of independently owned ad agencies.

Read the full interview here:
http://workitrichmond.com/people/dean-browell/

Windows 8 will give users a new core interface and design standards by including the Metro interface, a design spec initially deployed to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 system,  to its main screen. Instead of icons sitting on a desktop, applications purchased through Microsoft’s upcoming online store as well as some system-level programs will appear in an easily arrangeable array of tiles. It’s very reminiscent of the manner in which organization is done on a device like the iPad.

Windows 8 is a rather daunting advancement for PC users, and even to a reasonably experiences Windows 7 user, there might be a bit too much experimenting required for a firm grasp on the operating system is apparent. Tablet users might enjoy the gestures that Microsoft have developed for the system software, but there are no hints to what these operations are right out of the box, per se.

Ultimately, the interface has been redesigned for information efficiency, rethought for the always-connected nature of the PC, and reorganized to simplify common tasks using the software. When this modernized vision of Windows is combined with how app development has evolved, a significant new battleground emerges: the Windows 8 Start menu.

Seeing the Start menu in action makes the design decisions of the Metro interface clear: information is the new icon. A nice-looking sprite that represents a program does nothing but identify itself. Windows 8 allows for the entire tile space to be used to not only identify an application, but quickly convey a summary of relevant information.

Comparatively, a standard Apple motif allows for icons to have overlays with pretty universal numerical indicators which simply note how many notifications the app have for the user to review.

With its focus on displaying information, requests can be made to services like Facebook to get updates on the latest news in your feed directly on the tile itself, serving to alert the user that something has changed and needs the user’s attention–a call to action that entices the user to check his social responsibilities to respond to a message or notification on the service.

Social networking apps, in particular, might have to fight to do some heavy fighting and innovating to succeed with staying on the first page of the Start menu. Simply pulling details to publish on the tile from a timeline or a news feed might be standard fare, in the new Windows environment.

The operating system seems to be, at heart, designed for some manner of tablet deployment. Menus and toolbars in integral applications such as Internet Explorer and Mail applications are hidden in the top and bottom edges of the screen, requiring a swipe from the edge gesture to activate. Otherwise, a user might not know they were there.

For all of this, Windows 8 still has a ways to go, and many more improvements will be made to the system as time edges closer to its intended release date, most likely calendar Q3 2012.

- Brad Carr

Even as recently as this weekend Techcrunch reported that Pinterest has over 10.4 million registered users, 9 million monthly Facebook-connected users, and 2 million daily Facebook users. (It is important to keep in mind that some of these stats are still speculation or determined through number of Likes on Facebook so are not true active user stats, yet.)

Okay, so we know that Pinterest is popular. But the question is, just how groundbreaking will it be? Dean Browell, PhD and EVP at Feedback, tackles that question in the UK’s MyCustomer.com:

Brandweiner writes, “With Pinterest’s more personalised approach for brands – particularly retailers – and growing popularity, how does the network fare against Facebook and could we have finally found a social platform to knock it off its perch?

Dean Browell from Feedback doesn’t think so. “There’s no way Pinterest will kill Facebook – it just isn’t the same network so can’t replace it,” he concludes. “But it can influence it. I think Pinterest will become and stay popular, in the vein of Tumblr with the possibilities of Twitter.”

So there you have it. It doesn’t look like the interest with Pinterest is going to wane anytime soon. My interest, however, is now more focused on how its success is going to influence the leading social networks.

-Anna (@alucas9)

Feedback’s Dean Browell offers a short study of sorts on U.K. social media site The Wall into we go about crafting our online identities for various audiences. He writes the following on Facebook’s new and slightly freaky Timeline feature:

Facebook’s Timeline changes things a bit. The 7-day grace period Facebook gave users to trim, prune and add to their Timeline speaks volumes to the impact it has on us as a representation of our online identities. For many, it was a complete shock to see Facebook had bothered to keep all of the data they have been posting for years and neatly displayed it as a scrolling scrapbook for them.

The sins of several years ago lined up with the very thing you posted yesterday, the errant ex appearing again for the first time since the breakup. As Facebook accurately described it, it was truly a digital scrapbook of our limited lives as they pertain to Facebook. It combines the realtime and the oldtime. It makes us a sum of our parts. Of course we can shift and delete and highlight to create a carefully crafted identity on Timeline as well, but it made us stop and consider.

Read more of Dean’s high points on how we are perceived on different social networks over at The Wall.

Perhaps [initial users] thought they were being helpful, but I suspect most of the reasoning behind “Seat 23A” or “This Tollbooth” had to do with boredom or a surreptitious motive to become mayor of something (anything) and therefore accumulate points. The problem was, the lowest level of engagement in Foursquare is supposed to be the check-in, not the creation of locations. By creating instead of interacting they were diluting the major concept. And worse yet, they were creating a mess for anyone else looking in, trying to check in.

Landing in any major airport in 2010 and trying to check into Foursquare meant scrolling past all of this Foursqualor in order to find the actual airport. Check-ins to dozens of seats, gates, regular commuter flights at even the smallest airport crowded the screen. With airport names sometimes invoking some local politician or patron saint of flying, mere searches would not always help. Later, Foursquare would appropriately weight these major hubs so they appeared towards the top of the list when you were nearby. But for a while a casual Foursquare user could be forgiven for just getting fed up with the chaff, the atmosphere of waste, the annoying litter of the fake-or-worse locations.

In London, however, this issue seems to be worse as the general population interested in potentially using Foursquare is far more diverse. In the U.S., you were dealing with a savvy first-mover who didn’t mind (and potentially relished) the clean-up and pruning while the general public gave Foursquare a chance after many of the corrections had been made. In the U.K., a cross-demographic shift to social with these tools in place would mean newcomers could be turned off immediately by the digital litter and abandon Foursquare altogether. For Foursquare to take hold in the U.K. will require a base of superusers who can make changes to locations easily, reporting, policing and editing venues as needed. More at the link.

Feedback’s own Dean Browell gets inked over at Fourth Source, a new digital media marketing pub geared toward the U.K. market. He writes:

B2B marketers cannot afford to pretend their audiences aren’t affected by social media in some way. As they watch their sales arms utilize email, messaging from the road and using a variety of tools to track and interact with clients, we know that even internally some element of social and digital communication would happen through top salespeople’s own instincts and savvy for relationship building. Moreover, as B2C becomes more heavily laden with social validation elements such as reviews and ratings, so does B2B begin to reflect that environment, if even in a private way. Consider the often-robust private message boards (sometimes present in LinkedIn Groups) for various industries where members dish on contractors, suppliers and more. When you take the time to look, you may see that your particular industry congregates in some very specific places online and it may not be Twitter, but rather some other channel. Repeat this regularly to ensure you’re not simply following trends or unnecessarily satisfied with inaction.

More here.

I went to my first of two CES’s six years ago as a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, covering the half dozen or so companies and handful of sales reps from Virginia that were attending. I’d spot the sales guys by scouring nametags as they’d pass by.

“Hey, you from Richmond?” I’d ask.

“Yeah.”

“Quote for the paper?”

“What the —- are you doing here?”

Your first CES is difficult to enjoy because it’s so overwhelming. Multiple halls, each the size of a standard city’s entire convention center, house thousands of exhibitors and play host to tens of thousands of industry people. Lots of the booths give out branded mini-moisturizers, tissues and lip balm to help combat the dry air. Single “booths” are the size of McMansions and filled with gadgets – some conceptual, others that will go on sale and be outdated in six months. I recall being told by a reporter who’d been before to plan ahead. Get booth numbers, map out a schedule, drink lots of water. I chose instead to wing it, and found myself doubling-back throughout the week and destroying the soles on a well-made pair of shoes. That first year I remember delaying booking a hotel room and had to stay at a Howard Johnson’s outside of the main Strip area. I imagined horrible, horrible things had happened at that room before my arrival. I recall being close to tears at one point attempting to submit my stories by the deadline, which, thanks to time zones, was three hours ahead in Richmond.

I did  a little better the second year – including booking a sweet room – but still not great.

As technology changes every few months, so too does how the show is covered in the media. While blogs were of course popular in 2006 and 2007, when I was there, the updates coming out of CES weren’t as constant (annoying?) as they are today thanks to the prevalence of social media. Print deadlines are less important because you’re writing for the web. The deadline is unending.

In my mind, though, almost more than anything, CES stands today as a time to remind people that Apple is not the only company in the world that makes gadgets, nor is it the only company in the world that makes good gadgets.* Apple doesn’t attend CES.

I recall being in the press room at CES in January 2007 when Apple announced the first iPhone. Slick timing on the company’s part: distract the industry. We were all huddled in that press room reading about the iPhone on blogs and watching news reports on TV as a world of ridiculous technology sat outside our door, waiting to be touched and looked at and reported upon. Yet the announcement instantly killed the vibe of CES and overshadowed everything for the remainder of the trade show. Reporters in the press room called their editors to determine how to handle CES coverage with the iPhone news. Which story led? The answer, that day, was iPhone. Hundred-inch televisions, the newest gaming consoles, the hottest stereo systems and the bikini-clad women showing them off were no match for a tiny three-in-one touchscreen device that would go on to disrupt entire industries.

But Apple doesn’t make TVs (yet), and not everyone uses Macs. People still pick up game controllers, and enjoy flip-style phones, and buy technology products from many other reputable and innovative brands. And all of it is on display at CES. Here are a few trends and products to that I’ve been watching come out of this year’s convention:

Ultrabooks. Super thin, fast, and not a lot of bells and whistles.

Skinny TVs. Slim, more natural colors, richer blacks, thin, thin, and definitely not thick.

Kinect on Windows. “I’m thrilled to announce that Kinect is coming to Windows on February 1,” Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said.

Health and Fitness. A host of upstart companies want to serve a helping of vegetables to those consumers in the form of health-and-fitness gadgets.

Oh, and that * symbol a few paragraphs up: for every one really awesome thing at CES, there are at least two completely lame things that will never, ever be bought or used by anyone. Though I probably still thought they were cool.

-Jeff (@jephkelley)

Twitter Topics:

Numerous current events were discussed on Twitter this year, some of which even broke on there first (such as the Osama bin Laden announcement). Here are the news items that topped the Twitter trending list:

1. Japan earthquake and tsunami
2. Royal Wedding
3. Libyan conflict
4. May 21^st/Oct. 21^st Rapture
5. Death of  bin Laden
6. Egyptian protests
7. Venezuelan protests
8. Brazilian politics
9. Gabrielle Giffords shooting
10. England riots

See Twitter’s year in review here.

IPO Mania:

This was the year of IPO buzz. Social media companies that went public in 2011:

• LinkedIn
• Zynga
• Pandora
• Groupon

Speculations circulate that the IPO trend will continue in 2012 with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Top Tech Stories:

CNN selected their top picks for tech stories in 2011. Here are their 10:

1. The death of Steve Jobs
2. Social media’s role as a tool for protesters
3. Hackers
4. Tablet market gets dozens of new entrants
5. Facebook and partners add ‘frictionless’ sharing
6. Patent wars
7. Google+
8. Apple becomes the most valuable company in the world
9. IBM’s Watson beats human champs on ‘Jeopardy!’
10. Spotify and Facebook take on digital music

Click here to read the full article.

The 2011 Social Media Timeline:

Social Media Today put together a timeline that makes it easy to recap social media accomplishments throughout the year:

What’s next?

Tech Guru’s share their opinions on what they think the online future holds:

Next year – from CNN:

1. Touch computing
2. Social gestures
3. NFC and mobile payments
4. Beyond the iPad
5. TV Everywhere
6. Voice control
7. Spatial gestures
8. Second-screen experiences
9. Flexible screens
10. HTML5

In 5 years – from IBM (Covered by techworldnews):

1. Personal energy
2. The end of the password
3. Mind reading
4. The end of the digital divide
5. The end of junk mail

2011 has been an innovative year and 2012 looks as if it won’t disappoint. Happy New Year!

-Anna (@alucas9)