Facebook Invitation Draws Thousands, and a Melee, to Dutch Town

September 22, 2012, 12:47 pm

By CARA BUCKLEY

A sleepy Dutch community was still recovering on Saturday from the aftermath of a sweet sixteen party whose invitation, for no clear reason, went viral, spawning a YouTube video, drawing impromptu partygoers by the thousands as well as riot police, and causing the young celebrant and her family to flee town.

Fires were set, a car was burned, shops were vandalized, six people were hurt and some 34 arrested, according to the BBC and the Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation.

“She posted the invitation on Facebook and sent it to friends, who then sent it to other friends and soon it spread like wildfire across the Internet,” a spokeswoman for the Groningen police, Melanie Zwama, told Agence France Presse, according to the BBC.

Haren, a town of 19,000 about 110 miles northeast of Amsterdam, had been girding for trouble all week after the youngster's Facebook party invitation, which had not been set to be private, ended up going out to a reported 30,000 people. Popular deejays endorsed the event, a Twitter account was born, and T-shirts were printed, sold and sported by some who descended on the town.

“Scum ran amok in our town,” said the town's mayor, Rob Bats, according to Britain's Channel 4.

A week and a half ago, a video posted on YouTube christened the event Project X Haren, an apparent reference to the film Project X, where three high schoolers' party gets madly out of control. Although the event was cancelled and officials pleaded for revelers not to come, some 3,000 did anyway, according to the BBC.

By Saturday, another Facebook page went up, Project Clean-X Haren, that by mid-afternoon had garner ed nearly 27,000 likes.

Other Project X parties emulating the film were thrown earlier this year in Houston, where one reveler was fatally shot, and in Miramar, Fla., where youngsters broke into a foreclosed come and caused $19,000 in damage, according to ABC News.

  A video on YouTube is said to show riot police trying to contain partygoers in Haren, The Netherlands.

Don\'t Count Samsung Electronics Out

By many measures, Samsung Electronics should be on the ropes. Last month, it lost an important patent battle with its rival after a jury in the United States ruled that Samsung had illegally copied aspects of Apple's groundbreaking . Apple introduced its newest model, the iPhone 5, to enthusiastic reviews and a worldwide consumer frenzy, with customers lining up to buy the new model days before it arrived in stores on Friday. This week, Apple shares hit a record high and cracked the $700 threshold.

So why is Samsung not only holding its own, but thriving?

Even as the Apple juggernaut has rolled over Research in Motion, which makes BlackBerry handsets, and Nokia, Samsung reported record earnings for its latest quarter, which ended June 30. Its handset profits, fueled by the introduction of its high-end Galaxy S III model in May, leapt 75 percent over the previous year. Samsung's stock has gained over 65 percent in the last year and was trading this week on the Korea Exchange at more than 1.3 million won, also close to a record.

Samsung can't claim the intense media coverage, the passionate fan base or the cult of personality that grew up around Steve Jobs. But the giant South Korean manufacturer has built an impressive lead in global mobile phone sales. The research firm IDC reported that Samsung had 24.1 percent of the global handset market compared with Apple's 6.4 percent at the end of the last quarter. Samsung also had a commanding lead in the lucrative smartphone market: 32.6 percent compared with Apple's 16.9 percent, although the gap is likely to narrow because of the iPhone 5's introduction.

By contrast, Nokia's share of the smartphone market withered to 6.6 percent and Research in Motion, whose BlackBerry devices once accounted for nearly 20 percent of global smartphone sales, was no longer ranked among the top five producers.

These results didn't come as a complete surprise to me. As I reported a little over a year ago, after testing the latest handsets from Apple, Samsung and RIM, I ended up buying the Samsung Charge, a decision that surprised me, since I thought I wanted the same iPhone 4 all my cool friends had. The BlackBerry was sadly lacking, and the iPhone was a strong contender. What won me over was Samsung's large screen. Despite my large hands, I could type on the virtual keyboard with a fair degree of accuracy. (Try correcting typos when you're frantically searching for information on a Web browser or entering passwords.) Photos also looked better, and Samsung's 4G was faster, although I often found myself stuck in a 3G backwater. And it still fit in my pocket.

I can't say my subsequent experience has been flawless. At one point the Charge stopped functioning, a failure that stumped the technicians at a Verizon service center. But they replaced the phone at no charge to me, and thanks to Google, all my contact information was backed up and easily migrated to the new device. Since then, I've been comfortably embedded in a seamless world of e-mail, maps, directions, search and Web browsing even while continuing to use other Apple products.

But the competitive landscape has changed in just a year, with Samsung's introduction of the Galaxy S III and now Apple's release of the iPhone 5. My Charge already seems obsolete. Apple appears to have addressed all the issues that bothered me about the iPhone 4: the screen is bigger (though still not as big as the Charge's or the Galaxy's) and it offers 4G. It's also lighter and, in my view, looks better than my Charge. But Samsung is so confident that its Galaxy S III holds up favorably to the iPhone 5 that it started an aggressive national advertising campaign with a head-to-head comparison between the two handsets, highlighting a list of features the iPhone lacks. And Samsung said it has a more sophisticated Galaxy handset waiting in the wings that will offer an even bigger screen.

Several experts and analysts I spoke to this week said that Samsung was a formidable competitor that had moved ahead of Apple in some aspects. Samsung “has come out with really attractive phones,” Toni Sacconaghi, senior technology analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said. “They have large screens, great display, faster processors than Apple. Apple hasn't been at the front edge of hardware design for a couple of years.”

Tero Kuittinen, an analyst at the mobile communications consulting firm Alekstra, agreed. “The iPhone has remained pretty much static now for three generations,” he said. “The first iPhone was a revelation, in a class of its own.” With Apple holding on to the same interface for five years, “you can still claim the interface is better, but the difference has been shrinking every year,” he said. “On display, you can argue Samsung has taken the lead. Maybe you can slam Samsung for being an imitator, but when they imitate, they do it right.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 21, 2012

An earlier version of this column included a quotation from an analyst misstating how long Apple has retained its iPhone interface. It has been five years, not seven.

Facebook Can ID Faces, but Using Them Grows Tricky

SAN FRANCISCO - on Friday confronted a new obstacle over what to do with one of its most vital assets - pictures.

The company promised European regulators that it would forgo using facial recognition software and delete the data used to identify Facebook users by their pictures.

The decision could have wide repercussions on how facial recognition technology - a particularly sensitive technological advance - is used globally as surveillance cameras are increasingly installed in public spaces.

“This is a big deal,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in online privacy.

“The development of these tools in the private sector directly affects civil liberties,” he explained. “The ultimate application is going to be - can we apply these patterns in video surveillance to automatically identify people for security purposes and maybe for marketing purposes as well?”

The agreement comes as Facebook is under pressure from Wall Street to profit from its vast trove of data, including pictures, and also from regulators worldwide over the use of personal information.

The decision in Europe applies to the “tag suggestion,” a Facebook feature that deploys a sophisticated facial recognition tool to automatically match pictures with names. When a Facebook user uploads a photo of friends, the “tag suggestion” feature can automatically pull up the names of the individuals in the image.

The facial recognition software was developed by an Israeli company, Face.com, which Facebook acquired for an undisclosed price in June.

The company quietly and temporarily pulled the plug on “tag suggestion” for all Facebook users several months ago. The company said on Friday it was to “make improvements to the tool's efficiency” and did not say how soon it would be restored. However, the company promised European regulators on Friday that it would reinstate the feature on the Continent only after getting their approval.

Facebook declined to say under what circumstances the “tag suggestions” would be back online in the United States or elsewhere.

Facebook's promise to the European regulators is part of an investigation into whether the company's data collection practices comply with European privacy rules. It was made with regulators in Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters.

“We will continue to work together to ensure we remain compliant with European data protection law,” Facebook said in a statement.

Europe is an important market for the company, as it struggles to prove its worth on Wall Street. About one in four Facebook users logs in from Europe. According to the company's earnings figures, Europe accounts for just under a third of its advertising revenue.

Pictures have always been vital to Facebook. Pictures are what drew users to Facebook in its earliest days, and pictures are what continue to keep people coming back. Facebook users upload 300 million images a day. The company's acquisition of Instagram, the photo-sharing site, eliminated its biggest rival in this area.

Photo tagging is important for Facebook in the sense that it allows the social network to better analyze with whom its users interact in the real world.

In addition to scrutiny from European regulators, Facebook has also come under fire from consumer protection groups and lawmakers in the United States over its use of facial recognition technology. At a hearing on Capitol Hill last July, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, described Facebook as the “world's largest privately held database of face prints - without the explicit consent of its users.”

On Friday, Mr. Franken said in an e-mail statement that he hoped Facebook would offer a way for American users to opt in to its photographic database.

“I believe that we have a fundamental right to privacy, and that means people should have the ability to choose whether or not they'll be enrolled in a commercial facial recognition database,” he said. “I encourage Facebook to provide the same privacy protections to its American users as it does its foreign ones.”

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over Facebook's use of automatic tagging. The complaint is pending. The commission has a consent order with Facebook that subjects the company to audits over its privacy policies for the next 20 years.

Personal data is Facebook's crown jewel, but how to use it artfully and profitably is arguably its biggest challenge. Facebook has access to a tremendous amount of information about its one billion users, including the photos they upload every day. Marketers have pushed for greater access to that data, so as to tailor the right message to the right customer. Consumers and lawmakers have resisted, to different degrees in different countries around the world.

“They are pushing the edges of what privacy rules may allow, just as an aggressive driver might with parking rules,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst with the Pivotal Research Group, a research firm in New York. “You don't know you've broken a law until someone says you've broken a law.”

Several independent application developers are experimenting with how to use facial recognition technology in the real world, and have sought to use pictures on Facebook to build products of their own.

For example, one company in Atlanta is developing an application to allow Facebook users to be identified by cameras installed in stores and restaurants. The company, Redpepper, said in a blog post that users would have to authorize the application to pull their most recent tagged photographs. The company said its “custom-developed cameras then simply use this existing data to identify you in the real world,” including by offering special discounts and deals.

Shots Fired in \'Gangnam Style\' Dance Contest in Bangkok

September 21, 2012, 11:25 pm

By PATRICK MCGEEHAN

Pop music stars have long posed as gangsters. Now gang members are emulating the music video phenomenon “Gangnam Style.”

In central Bangkok early Friday morning, members of rival teenage gangs fired off at least 50 bullets after a dance showdown boiled over, according to The Bangkok Post. During a night of drinking and partying, members of two gangs confronted each other with moves that mimicked those of PSY, a Korean performer whose song “Gangnam Style” has become a worldwide sensation on YouTube, the police and witnesses told the newspaper.

As our colleague Su Hyun Lee reported this week, the craze has even penetrated the bubble over North Korea, where apparatchiks used it to poke fu n at a South Korean presidential candidate.

An investigator told The Post that a quarrel broke out as the competition grew more intense. One of the groups left the nightclub and returned with weapons.

The gunfire appeared to have been more posturing; the police said that several cars were hit but no people were injured.

“Gangnam Style” refers to the customs of a fashionable district of Seoul.