The country is buzzing with the rumors, and some pretty impressive media, suggesting that Sarah Palin's youngest child is not really her daughter - but granddaughter.

It wouldn't be surprising - and the facts of the matter are quite interesting:
- Palin is quite active and doesn't 'show' any signs or typical cautious behavior/mannerisms of pregnancy even 6weeks before delivery.
- She allegedly flew from Texas to Seattle to Alaska while in labor (after her water broke), to give birth at home. Aside from being dangerous to fly late in stage, it would be insane and wholly irresponsible to fly during labor.
- Her daughter was removed from school for several months due to a prolonged case of mono.

Considering Palin is extremely anti-choice and, despite being a women herself ,she a fierce opponent of women's and reproductive rights. For someone who is so staunchly anti-abortion, she sure acted a whole lot like she was trying to intentionally miscarry.

Looking at the larger context of all these videos and pictures and timelines , there is an extremely compelling thesis.

In fact, the evidence is so compelling , that the most popular of 'images' floating around right , one that really irks me , becomes redundant and useless.

The image in question is a family portrait from the Alaska State website that is captioned with ( and often visibly circles/overlays) her 16yr old daughter Bristol - the alleged mother of the baby - posting the question "is that baby fat?" "is she showing".

Give me a break - this is a 16 year old girl who is not a public figure, and at the age where she has enough body image issues of her own. Whether or not she's pregnant, does she need the entire country looking at photos of her and wondering "Does she need to work out, or is she pregnant?"

Aside from the use of this photo being tasteless and tacky - imagine how awful she's gonna feel if she isn't the mother and 1/4 of America is comparing her body to that of a pregnant woman. This isn't a public figure, its a teenage girl. There might be a libel issue there - but more importantly there's one of basic responsibility and judgement.

There's enough 'information' and 'circumstance' regarding this issue to raise serious questions about Palin based on her own actions and photos/videos. Referencing a photo of a teenage girl and commenting on her physical looks is as sad as it is abhorrent.

The USPTO denied Google a Trademark on OpenSocial today with their final office action.

I was quite surprised -- in reading the latest Office Action, the USPTO examiners clearly knew a lot about the Social Media industry , Open Source and technology by their extensive use of highly relevant examples. Usually you see that sort of research from an 'expert' lawyer in the field -- making me think that they either got recruited by the USPTO from somewhere, or they're looking to bolt to a fancy firm.

Google still has the ability to file an appeal, but I doubt they will -- its a very clear case of "no, you may not trademark that!" as illustrated by the USPTO examiner.

Should they appeal, FindMeOn will be quick to file our opposition -- which echos the "no, you may not trademark that!" sentiment of the USPTO, as well as highlighting the fact that they decided to release products similar to and overlapping FindMeOn's Open Source and patent-pending technologies, under a name confusingly similar to what we had been using publicly for well over a year before them and have common-law trademark claims to (Open Social Network and OpenSN ).

To read the entirety of the USPTO office action, refer to the August 20th document here: http://tmportal.uspto.gov/external/portal/tow?SRCH=Y&isSubmitted=true&details=&SELECT=US+Serial+No&TEXT=77320655

In case you're wondering -- we found out minutes after the decision was mailed because it's a public document. Ever since Google released OpenSocial we've been keeping tabs on the USPTO's trademark and application systems, to see if the mark would be approved for publication (so that we can oppose it). Once a mark is approved for publication, there's a short window to oppose it. We check 3 times a week, and it just-so-happened to be timed 15 minutes after this last mailing!

Key points:

• Social networks position themselves as new addressbooks
• Social networks decide their own Terms and Conditions of use. That is OK.
• Exiting users not given the ability to remove shared content from site. Not OK.
• Remaining users left with holes in addressbook. Not OK.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and various other Social Media properties have been fighting hard to monopolize user's online time and become their de-facto addressbooks and ways to share photos. While these applications have proven to be a great tool for consumers, current practices and policies by the parent corporations have determined a 'reliance' on social networks a danger.

It's time for consumers and corporations to rethink their use of social media.

Recently an industry colleague, Stephanie Frasco, had her account disabled by Facebook. I'm not going to comment on why it happened or what triggered it - it is up to Facebook to set their Terms of Service and make judgements on user activity, and I respect that.

What troubles me is the manner in which her account was disabled - and the ramifactions of it on online communities.

When Stephanie's account was disabled, she lost her data ( or at least any sort of access to it ). This didn't just mean that she couldn't message friends through Facebook or play a third-rate Scrabulous clone called 'Scrabble' -- it meant that Stephanie could no longer access the phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses of her friends through the network. It also meant that she lost the ability to access the photos she posted online - or the ones friends had tagged her with. When her account was disabled it wasnt limited to 'read only', she wasn't given a window or ability to download her content, she was simply disappeared... silently, quickly, without a blink of an eye.

Seasoned industry people will laugh "Well that girl was stupid -- she should have had a non-Facebook listing of all her contacts people." Seasoned industry people are smart like that - they don't rely on Facebook or other websites to exclusively handle contact info... but social media properties are actively promoting themselves to the 100million plus non-industry users as their new online homes -- and their new online addressbooks, to overtake their default pen&paper, computer and even cellphone versions.

What troubles me even more about Stephanie's case, is that not only did she lose access to Facebook... but I lost access to her.

Contact Info on Social Networks is like a double edged sword: information is rarely entered by a user into their own addressbook, instead someone else's information is incorporated into their social graph. This results in an addressbook that is always 'up to date' -- but offers out-of-sync details when a user abandons an account or loses entries when a user deletes their profile.

People often ask the question "Who owns the Social Graph?" I recently wrote an 8,000 word primer / whitepaper on the legal and technical aspects of the subject, along with best-practice recommendations on ToS and Data Portability for FindMeOn's corporate clients. ( It will be public soon folks! It's getting a final review right now ). One of the largest hurdles to Social Graph portability that we discuss is access and sharing in relation to copyright and contract law ( i.e. what can be shared and under what conditions )

In the Frasco/Facebook case, those questions weren't raised to my satisfaction. Facebook simply stated "We own your social graph".

Except Facebook didn't tell Stephanie that... they told it to me.

When Facebook disabled Stephanie's account, they didn't just keep her from logging in to their walled garden -- they removed her from *my* Social Graph.

I no longer have her updates , postings, content that she shared... with all of Facebook or even with me. Facebook was nice enough to keep her imprint in my inbox and messages, although with an 'empty' link and profile photo. ( which, incidentally, is one of FindMeOn's recommendations for account closings ). However, she's not in my addressbook - I can't click her info and send her an offline email, I can't see her in my friendlist, I can't use Facebook as way to interact with her outside of Facebook.

What Facebook should have done, was to freeze her account as is. Within the constraints of the Privacy Policy / Terms-Of-Service , Facebook should have kept as much of her information active and available as possible -- not as a service to Stephanie, but as a service to the 100+ users that incorporated her into their social graphs. At the least, Facebook users should have been sent an email stating "Person X in your addressbook has left Facebook. You have X days to copy/transcribe information that they made visible to you."

Instead, what Facebook did was say "We own your addressbook. We own your Social Graph".

I say "Not anymore".

It is absurd and overly arrogant that Facebook has decided to say who can and can't be in *my* addressbook. Not only am I limited to having an addressbook of people that 'want' to join Facebook's walled garden, but now I learn that addressbook may be shortened as they prune network membership to their desires.

I'm glad that I keep my contact info off Facebook and up-to-date manually -- and I pity people who do not.

I used to think Facebook was neat -- but now I STRONGLY question it's utility. What good is a tool that lets you manage contacts/relations, when it dictates which contacts/relations you're allowed ?