• The oversharing economy. An Uber driver in Albuquerque, New Mexico had his driver account for the company cancelled because of what Uber called “hateful statements regarding Uber through Social Media.” Turns out that he had posted a tweet linking to an article about robberies of Uber drivers, and had included the following observation: “Driving for Uber, not much safer than driving a taxi.” The driver, Christopher Ortiz, said he was just sharing a story that was going around. Uber quickly agreed that he had done no real harm and reinstated him with an apology, calling the original decision “an error.” After all, Ortiz had a high rating from customers (4.8 out of a possible 5), and Uber’s own position is that drivers associated with the company are independent contractors, not company employees.
  • What’s not to like? Copyblogger, a highly successful social media and online marketing company, has decided to ditch its Facebook presence – even though it had 38,000 fans for its Facebook page. After a good deal of thought, the company concluded that “Copyblogger’s presence on Facebook has not been beneficial for the brand or its audience.” In a detailed essay, brand marketing consultant Erika Napoletano, whom Copyblogger had brought in for the purpose of improving its Facebook presence, explained the perhaps surprising decision. One of the main reasons: the 38,000 fans didn’t really interact with the page. “The page had an overwhelming number of junk fans. These are accounts with little to no personal status update activity that just go around “Liking” Facebook pages. They’re essentially accounts tied to “click farms”—ones paid pennies for every Facebook page they Like,” Napoletano wrote. For this reason and several others, Copyblogger decided that, going forward, it would be “on the Web, just not on Facebook.”