Startup Talk: Facebook Clarifies Rules on What It Bans and Why

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FACEBOOK CLARIFIES RULES ON WHAT IT BANS AND WHY
Facebook has nearly 1.4 billion worldwide users and is the closest thing on the planet to a universal communications channel. Earlier this week, the social media giant clarified its community standards to give its users more guidance about what types of posts are not allowed on the service. The New York Times reports:

Facebook walks a delicate line when it tries to ban violent or offensive content without suppressing the free sharing of information that it says it wants to encourage. Its audience is vast, with a huge variance in age, cultural values and laws across the globe. Yet despite its published guidelines, the reasoning behind Facebook’s decisions to block or allow content are often opaque and inconsistent.

What is the company changing in terms of its policies? Read more here, including examples of the difficulty Facebook faces in allowing for individual freedom, while protecting against offensive material.

WSJ: WHAT ANNOYS YOU MOST ABOUT TECHNOLOGY?
The readers of The Wall Street Journal weighed in on their biggest complaints about computers, mobile devices, apps, customer support and more in Wednesday’s Personal Technology section of the venerable daily business newspaper.

TB&P’s Business Editor Wesley Brown, a WSJ subscriber and devotee, says his greatest complaint concerning modern technology is the automated systems that have taken human interaction out of the customer service experience. Brown’s complaint was not among those in the WSJ’s Technology section on Wednesday, but you can read other Journal readers’ biggest tech annoyances here.

MICROLENDER ACCION CHANGES NAME TO LIFTFUND
In an effort to more aptly describe its services, microlender Accion has changed its name to LiftFund. The 20-year old non-profit, which located in Arkansas in 2011, said the name is more reflective of the group’s mission and the clients it helps. Read more here.

SXSW: THE MEERKAT BUBBLE?
Emily Reeves, director of digital innovation and insight planning for advertising powerhouse Stone Ward, reports on the hottest app at the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin this week. Here’s her report on the Meerkat app:

Meerkat is a live video streaming app that uses Twitter as its distribution channel. Live streaming video is not a new technology: Google Hangouts, UStream and others have been around now for a while. The problem up until this point has been the quality and consistency of the video and the technology to watch the video.

Reeves has been providing updates from SXSW all week long. Read more of this report here and access all of her previous posts at TalkBusiness.net/Tech.