Happy morning SXTexas State readers. The countdown continues to SXSWi, with only 22 days left until geekdom takes over Austin, Texas. Hopefully, the weather will be of equally nice in March and not hotter, which unfortunately we aren’t betting on. The Central Texas area is looking at high of 80 degress today. While we sweat it out down south, here’s a snapshot of this morning’s SXSWi-related tech news:
Speaking of sweating things out, it looks like the social networking universe, namely that of Facebook, went awry to the point that they decided to revert to their old terms of service. The first thing I saw this morning as I logged into Facebook was a message regarding the Terms of Use. In a blog post by Mark Zuckerberg, he talks about the feedback he received not only from users, but experts as well, on the terms of service. The social networking site still plans to update the terms, but this time it plans to take input from users through a Facebook group titled Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. Apparently, the changes may have arisen not just from frustrated users, but the possiblity of formal FCC complaint. [PC World: Facebook Privacy Changes Spark Federal Complaint]
- Twitter continues to be in the news with their recently announced plans to sell analytic services to business using the microblogging site. Heck, if even old media like Forbes is talking about how it could potentially work, maybe Twitter is onto something. It seems even Forbes columnist Mike Schaffner is interested in it as a tool for himself. Using Twitter for business will be another highlight at SXSWi. Ricardo Guerrero of Dell and Morgan Johnston of Jet Blue Airways will host a panel on that very topic March 15.
- Finally, it looks like Hulu.com and TV.com are friends no more. NBC has decided to remove its content from the CBS-owned TV.com and stick to its own site, likely because it want to keep users on Hulu. As long as I can keep watching 30 Rock and The Office somewhere on the Internet, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Speaking of which, BJ Novak of The Office will be on a panel called Comedy on Television and the Web during South By. Maybe we can ask if there is a difference. [CNET: Hulu Pulls Content from TV.com]