The online marketplace Craigslist surprised everyone when it pulled the plug on its “adult services” listings a few days ago.

For months the site has been in the crosshairs of attorneys general and advocacy groups for operating what has been derided as a virtual bazaar for pimps and human traffickers exploiting women and children.

Last year the San Francisco-based company removed its “erotic services” section and replaced it with a fee-based adult category in response to pressure from 40 state attorneys general.

Now it has removed all of its adult content in an effort to pacify its critics.

It also adopted a policy of manually screening every advert, and in just over a year rejected some 700,000 for failing to meet its standards.

The firm’s chief executive Jim Buckmaster has never swayed from the company’s reasons for hosting these adverts.

In a May blog post, Mr Buckmaster wrote:

“[W]e are convinced Craigslist is a vital part of the solution to this age old scourge. We’ve been told as much by experts on the front lines of this fight, many of whom we have met with in person, and many of whom have shared very helpful suggestions that we have incorporated in our approach.
 
“Even politicians looking to make their careers at the expense of Craigslist’s good name grudgingly admit (when pressed) that we have made huge strides.”

Danah Boyd, a researcher at Microsoft and also a victim of abuse wrote in the Huffington Post that the belief that Craigslist is operating like a digital pimp and should be prosecuted is “faulty logic”.

“The problem with this logic is that it fails to account for three important differences: 1) most ISPs have a fundamental business – if not moral – interest in helping protect people; 2) the visibility of illicit activities online makes it much easier to get at, and help, those who are being victimized; and 3) a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement than for criminals. In short, Craigslist is not a pimp, but a public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen.”

Craigslist has long maintained that its standards exceeded those set by the rest of the industry, including the back pages of newspapers where “erotic” adverts are commonplace and even on eBay which has endured some unwanted attention for the listings on its Spanish subsidiary LOQUO.

Now the company’s decision to pull the ads here in the US, and replace the section with the word “censored” has everyone double-guessing the reasons behind the move.

In truth no-one really knows because Craigslist is a company that does not rush to the nearest TV studio to press its case. Even now, given the months of controversy and intense criticism, the executives at Craigslist have kept their own counsel.

But as they stay mum, everyone else is filling the vacuum – from supporters of the change to detractors and from those that applauded Craigslist’s stand in the first place to those that derided it.

Depending on what side of the fence you stand in this debate, the basic consensus is that the company took this action as a protest over first amendment rights, it had had enough of the criticism and haranguing, it wavered under pressure from attorneys general and fear of expensive lawsuits and/or it wanted to protect its bottom line.

According to the Advanced Interactive Media Group, Craigslist’s “adult services” section accounts for 30% of the site’s estimated $122m 2010 revenue.

The Wall Street Journal maintained that lawsuits were not the issue here. Geoffrey A Fowler wrote:

“In a number of legal challenges, Craigslist and other sites including Yelp have shielded themselves against lawsuits involving content by citing the Communications Decency Act. That federal law has been interpreted to provide sites with blanket immunity for content created by users.”

One young woman who had in the past sold her body for sex using the then “erotic services” section of the site has lambasted the company’s founder Craig Newmark for its move. Melissa Petro in the Huffington Post wrote:

“I hope to never again make the choice to trade sex for cash even as I risk my current job and social standing to speak out for an individuals’ right to do so. The simple fact is that people do have sex for money – many different kinds of people for many different reasons, people as varied as those looking to buy concert tickets, sell a collectible or adopt a pet – and these people will continue to.
 
“Whether the choice to do so is being dignified and protected with its own forum or whether what was once that safe space remains appropriately labelled ‘censored’, that choice, without a court order one way or another, remains up to Newmark.”

Ryan Radia of the Technology Liberation Front said the repercussions are clear:

“Criminals will simply migrate to even shadier websites, further hindering efforts by law enforcement to put child sex traffickers behind bars.
 
“It’s 2010, and nearly 5 billion devices worldwide are now connected to the internet – a freely accessible, unfiltered, unauthenticated worldwide network. As long as such a network exists, it’s all but inevitable that it will have a seedy underbelly. Law enforcement officials should investigate sex crimes against children committed using the internet and aggressively prosecute suspected child sex traffickers. Trying to intimidate interactive websites like Craigslist, however, is the wrong approach.”

Craigslist has in the past asserted that by not having a special area for these adverts to be posted means they will migrate to other parts of the site. That is exactly what seems to be happening.

A cursory glance in the casual encounters section has adverts from a people asking “let’s have fun in your van” to “looking for erotic fun and adventure”.

Whatever the real reasons for the censorship decision, others are now looking to write the next chapter of this tale.

The Rebecca Project and the Polaris Project, two organisations that have campaigned against sex trafficking of women and children, wants Craigslist to go further and “censor” adverts on its international sites.

“While this is a first good step in the US, there are still more than 250 other Craigslist ‘erotic’ pages around the world where children and young women are still being sold for sex through Craiglist,” said the groups.

They along with other anti-sex trafficking bodies will hold a press conference later today on the issue.

So do you think Craigslist was right to censor the adult services section or do you think it should be re-instated?

A poll on the news blog Mashable showed a majority in favour of not censoring the adverts.

Even the comedian Conan O’Brien has weighed in on the matter and declared on his Twitter feed that “Craigslist has shut down their adult services section. Looks like the ‘used futon for sale’ ads are about to get a lot more interesting.”

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The public advocacy group Consumer Watchdog is no lover of Google.

It has in fact been a constant thorn in the search giant’s side and has set up a special Google website to log and monitor what it sees as its misdeeds as the firm tracks and collects data on us through our search history and browsing habits.

Now Consumer Watchdog has taken it to a whole new level with giant adverts playing on the JumboTron in New York’s Times Square. See them here.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is portrayed as a “perverter of privacy” in the guise of an ice cream man. The animated video shows a caricature of Schmidt giving out free treats to children while at the same time spying on them and collecting information on them.

Consumer Watchdog’s president Jaimie Court said the aim of the adverts was to “make the public aware of how out of touch Schmidt and Google are when it comes to our privacy rights. Google knows more about us than most government agencies.”

“Google’s motto is ‘don’t be evil’ and the way Eric Schmidt has been talking lately proves he has not been living up to that standard.”

Specifically Mr Court is referring to Mr Schmidt’s recent comments about privacy and online behaviour.

“Schmidt is out of control,” said Mr Court.

“When questioned about privacy, he has said, ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.’ Recently, he suggested children could change their names when they got older if they wanted to escape what was embarrassing and public in their online lives.”

As well as deriding Google and its CEO in this 540ft video screen in one of America’s most populous squares, Consumer Watchdog has a serious message about online privacy in general. It wants Congress to implement a “do not track me” list that prevents Google and any other internet company from tracking users’ every move online.

The list would work just like the “do not call list” which has been pretty successful at stopping those annoying marketing phone calls you get just as you are about to sit down for dinner/put the baby in the bath/read the toddler a book/or enjoy a sip of wine.

Google has taken quite a bit of heat lately over privacy. Its own admission that its Street View cars had mistakenly collected snippets of information leaking from unprotected networks in people’s homes resulted in criticism from privacy advocates around the world.

Google’s foray into social networking with its product Buzz also lead to unwanted headlines about a cavalier attitude towards privacy.

But as the Wall Street Journal points out, Consumer Watchdog is not above reproach. The group claimed that the Street view cars could have collected national security information from members of Congress but the Journal pointed out that it made the “allegations after sitting outside the homes of the members itself and sniffing for unsecured traffic”.

Google’s response to the advert is sanguine.

“We like ice cream as much as anyone, but we like privacy even more,” Google said in response to the BBC.

“That’s why we provide tools for users to control their privacy online, like Google Dashboard, Ads Preference Manager, Chrome incognito mode and ‘off the record’ Gmail chat.”

The California-based internet Titan said that information about its privacy tools can be found online at google.com/privacy.

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The battle for the living room has been heating up for a while; now that Apple has reloaded its weapons, the fight just got more interesting.

In the past, Apple co-founder and chief exec Steve Jobs has been a little dismissive of Apple TV, referring to it as a “hobby”. He made light of that at Apple’s autumn event in San Francisco, then moved to elevate the product and stuck a hard-to-beat $99 (£64) price tag on it.

Apple TV will also stream shows for 99 cents (64p), as well as a collection of HD movies for $4.99 (£3.24).

“Apple wants the living room and they are not ceding this market to anyone,” says Michael Gartenberg, partner with research firm Altimeter Group:

“They need to change that consumer behaviour for TV watching, which is a 50-year-old activity that hasn’t really changed. With Apple TV, they are looking to change it, evolve it and get the price point so it becomes more of an impulse purchase. And with their marketing and retail muscle, they have a good shot at driving this forward.”

Mr Jobs also acknowledged that to date Apple TV has been a bit of a flop. OK, he didn’t quite say that: but he did say that it had “never been a huge hit”.

He added that the company had learned many lessons including the fact that people want Hollywood movies and TV shows and professional content. What they don’t want, he said, is “Amateur Hour” – which is clearly a swipe at Google and YouTube.

Google laid bare its plans for the so-called third screen back in May by announcing an internet-focused TV in partnership with Sony, Intel, Dish Network and Logitech. The Sony-made sets are due to go on sale in the autumn.

In July, YouTube unveiled a product called Leanback which is in beta. It is aimed at creating a single channel that puts the user front and centre by streaming videos constantly while trying to learn what he or she likes so that it can customise the offering.

On the day that Apple held its launch, Amazon threw its hat into the ring with the news in the Wall Street Journal that it is working on a new subscription service that would deliver TV shows and movies over the internet.

And Sony did likewise at the IFA technology fair in Berlin with an offering that is set to challenge iTunes.

Content is always king in this kind of conflict; while Apple has only signed up ABC and Fox in terms of studios, Mr Jobs said he is confident others will soon follow.

“We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board pretty fast with us,” he told attendees.

Analyst Mike McGuire of research firm Gartner says that, based on Apple’s past performances, such an assertion is hard to disagree with:

“What I have been telling people is go back to the very first press release for the iTunes store in April of 2003. It is kind of quaint because they started with 500,000 tracks which wasn’t representative of the entire catalogue of all the major labels.
 
“It won’t happen with Apple TV overnight, but it will shift and I really think the studios won’t have a choice but to start playing with this.”

His colleague Van Baker isn’t so sure Apple TV will be victorious, but he grants that, for consumers, the price is compelling.

“I think it stays a hobby for a while but it is going to be a much bigger hobby because, let’s face it, $99 beats $299 hands-down – and if the other networks come around, I absolutely agree it moves beyond being a hobby.”

So as web companies elbow their way in to control entertainment in the living room, what does this mean for the traditional players?

BK Yoon, Samsung’s president of visual display business unit, didn’t seem too disconcerted by the increased competition when I spoke to him earlier in the week:

“We are in the transitional period where we are witnessing a shift in the TV paradigm and I do believe we are at a starting point of seeing companies try to control the living room.”

While Samsung may be the leader in TV sales, it is betting that smart connected TVs and 3DTV will be the next big thing: a two-pronged attack. But this week at its first-ever TV developers’ conference in the US, Mr Yoon put the emphasis on persuading developers to develop apps for this nascent marketplace.

“When we talk about TV, it is something that the consumer perceives they just watch – but when we look at the smartphone, it is a much more personalised experience.
 
“The TV usually sits in the living room and it is for the whole family. So it is a very different environment, but when it is about 2012, I think we will see a much bigger change in attitude towards smart TVs.”

Mr Yoon said he recognises that apps have been crucial to the growth of the smartphone market and he believes the same will be true for his company’s smart-TV proposition.

Samsung is currently offering 87 apps in the US from the likes of Blockbuster, Hulu, Cinema Now and Amazon. The company has also developed a TV app with ESPN to give richer content like player statistics during a sports game. It is also working with Dreamworks on an app that will debut next month to show 3D movie trailers and full-length features.

Samsung’s aim is to have a stock of around 200 apps by the end of the year: a long way from Apple’s App Store of 250,000. Co-founder Steve Wozniak said he likes both approaches:

“I was at Samsung’s event and I am close to them for different reasons. They build it right into the TV, so there is the convenience factor – one less step. So I wouldn’t rule out smart TVs.
 
“But remember stereos, where you could by all-in-one or different components. As far as the component device, Apple TV – you can use it on any display. Will it dominate? I don’t know. But the formula for how the world is going to move to digital TV, I think it is finally here.”

The stakes are high and Apple’s reinvigorated entry has upped the ante a little.

Andrew Eisner, director of community and content at consumer electronics recommendation site Retrevo said that from a Silicon Valley perspective, there are two clear contenders set to duke it out:

“Again this is all about the apps. Apps make the world go round and everybody is interested in apps. Google is also interested in apps and this is another part of the war with Google for the living room.
 
“Personally I think as people migrate to getting their information from apps rather than going through a search engine, it is an area of concern for Google. People will get their stock prices and weather reports from an app rather than a search engine. Of course Google could address that too with their TV efforts.”

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Music and technology have long been willing bedmates.

Now the band Arcade Fire has jumped in with search giant Google to create an interactive video for the song We Used To Wait aimed at answering the question “What would a music experience designed specifically for the modern web look like?”

Aaron Koblin said that Google Creative Lab‘s answer was to devise a “project built with the latest web technologies [which] includes HTML5, Google Maps, an integrated drawing tool, as well as multiple browser windows that move around the screen”.

Billed as the Wilderness Downtown, you are asked to insert your childhood address. As the video plays, a window pops up zooming into the area if it has been mapped by Google Street View.

“These modern web technologies have helped us craft an experience that is personalised and unique for each viewer, as you virtually run through the streets where you grew up,” said Thomas Gayno, Google Creative Lab.

No sitting back and just absorbing the music, then.

Is this the future of music video? As an artistic endeavour, it is fun and compelling and clearly illustrates what is possible with HTML5 technology.

The director behind the mash-up is Chris Milk.

Google recommends you watch the video on Chrome, but it worked fine for me on other browsers. I watched on both Safari and Firefox.

And if you’re minded, don’t forget to “write a letter of advice to the younger you” that lived wherever it was all those years ago.

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A couple of months ago Facebook was up to its ears in trouble over the way it was treating users’ information and privacy. It led to a crisis meeting at the company’s California HQ.

Politicians in Washington even got wind of the stramash (good Scottish word for uproar) and told the company get its act together.

Europe weighed in. So did privacy officials in Canada. Advocacy groups had a field day as Facebook seemed to get it so wrong as it made its play to rule the web as it becomes more social.

There was even a kind of Facebook revolt with plenty of people talking about quitting the world’s biggest social network. That clearly didn’t come to pass given that since the April/May debacle, Facebook has announced it has over 500 million users.

Of course, it wasn’t Facebook’s first tangle with privacy problems. And it probably won’t be its last.

But back in April/May it seemed there was a kind of perfect storm around the issue and four enterprising students saw their moment and grabbed the spotlight.

Maxwell Salzberg, Daniel Grippi, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirski got together to create an alternative to Facebook that would be a “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network”.

At the time they told the BBC “this is not just about Facebook. Facebook is not what we are going after.

“We are going after the idea there are all these centralised services where people are giving up their personal information. We want to put users back in control of what they share. “

But the Facebook backlash helped the enterprising students raise over $200,000 on Kickstarter, the highest amount ever raised on the site. And get this – they were originally only after $10,000. Such was the furore over Facebook’s missteps that the money just poured in.

Over the last few months, the boys have been coding like mad. In an update on their blog, the team announced when they will roll out their product.

“We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th.
 
“We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies.”

So what kind of web world will greet Diaspora when it is launched next month?

The fevered atmosphere towards Facebook has eased somewhat after the company made some adjustments to its privacy policy.

While privacy remains a serious issue that users care about, people have not fled the site as many threatened back then. It is just too useful to their lives.

All this will affect Diaspora to some degree but I don’t think these changes will sideline interest. I do think Diaspora will be more than just a passing curiosity. The four students just have to deliver on their promises and come up with some ideas that will challenge the space.

Sure, as the New York Times notes, Diaspora became something of a media darling at the time, but I think there will be a lot of people watching to see just what the team come up with. Not least from Facebook founder and ceo Mark Zuckerberg who did express support for what the boys where doing at the time. Perhaps he might even offer them a job.

It’s a big test for the foursome but Maxwell, Daniel, Raphael and Ilya will clearly worry about all of that later as they prepare to kick up their heels for a hedonistic getaway at the world famous Burning Man Festival in California.

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PayPal’s ambitions are clearly impressive.

One of their goals is to become such an accepted everyday form of payment that instead of offering up your Visa card or Mastercard at a till, you will opt to use your PayPal account. And most likely you will do it by swiping your phone across a reader.

This plan to grab a share of the reported $2.4 trillion market dominated by credit card companies, surely underlines the self confident air of a company that has already changed the way people pay for things over the internet in its 12 short years.

Its big success was of course helping buyers and sellers on eBay conduct financial transactions easily and securely.

“We started on eBay and ventured into off eBay businesses but it was all e-commerce and that was where our focus was,” said PayPal president Scott Thompson, who formerly worked for Visa.

“Now the focus is not just e-commerce, it is online transactions. What fits into that that wasn’t in there before is everything from payments to not for profits, charities and government agencies and even, in my case, my son’s school accepts PayPal. Those are just some useful cases for you as a consumer and it just keeps going and going.”

Mr Thompson believes as more and more devices become connected to the internet, they also become payment vehicles. This includes everything from the TV to the cellphone and from a dvd player to a car.

“These new point of sale devices are about being at the end of a network and you being able to connect and any payments occasions in there are best suited for us. Eventually we [PayPal] will be everywhere that is online.
 
“If you are a customer of ours you should be able to use us anywhere on the internet and around the world.”

More specifically, Mr Thompson said PayPal’s future strategy going forward is simple.

“Where are we going next is anything that is mobile, anything that is digital and lots and lots of e-commerce online payments.”

When Mr Thompson says “lots and lots” he means hundreds of millions. At the moment PayPal has 87m active customers and 8m active merchants. He noted that while there are over 1bn people online, there is something like 5bn cell phones in the world.

The new offerings include smartphone applications, partnerships with Facebook and Google, micropayment solutions and a number of third parties that have integrated PayPal into their applications. Reports abound that the firm is also in talks to embed its payments platform on Android, Google’s mobile operating system.

A major priority is to turn phones and connected devices into “digital wallets” that can be used by shoppers to buy merchandise, collect coupons, and store loyalty program information using electronic funds. The software is to be introduced by PayPal at their developer conference in October.

Another big play for the company is micro-payments. All those 25 cents and $1 transactions add up to lots of profit.

“This is going to be big, really big for us,” said Mr Thompson.

“I believe what is happening here is the subscription based economy where I want to pay for it when I use it. I want to pay for it when I consume it. And I only want to pay for what I use, not pay for 100 of something and use 10.
 
“This is going to lower the overall transaction size but there are going to be millions and millions more transactions. And if we are the most convenient and most secure way of doing that, you won’t do tens of transactions with us over the course of the year, you will do thousands of transactions but they will be much smaller.”

One example of that “pay for what you use scenario” is easily illustrated when you think of parking said Mr Thompson.

“At the moment you pull up to a parking meter and put all this money in and worry about ‘Oh I put in too much and I don’t use it or get the value or I didn’t put in enough and I get a traffic violation’.
 
“Why not when the car pulls up to the meter, because it is a connected device, it clocks in and when you pull it out it knows how much you owe. You have that money exchange with the automobile through your PayPal account embedded and capable of paying that transaction. Think of all the useful cases where that will happen, all those small transactions.”

Visa also agrees micropayments offer a lucrative future. At a recent technology conference called Techonomy Visa’s North America president Bill Sheedy was understated in his assessment.

“When we look at micro transactions, we see that as a growth area.”

PayPal’s Mr Thompson believes the company’s ability to grab market share from established players is down to their approach which puts technology at the heart of everything.

“The secret sauce of PayPal? Strip it all away and what do we do that no-one else does is risk and fraud management and its completely proprietary and it is all tech based.
 
“If you wandered around to a lot of legacy companies or those that have been around for a long time. When you talk about technology, they view it as a cost to the business. ‘Yeah we have a few of those tech guys around and they cost us a lot of money’ or they outsource it.
 
“We would never do that. This is the life blood of what we do. Every great disruptive innovation that we have seen and done has been through the use of software and technology.”

Mr Thompson asserts technology has enabled the company to remain flexible and nimble to customer demands and it is what will ensure its future as it continues to take on the established players in the game and perhaps even change the rules of the game:

“We are big today but I would tell you that we are more innovative today than in the last five years. It is through innovation we will be more disruptive moving forward.
 
“Where we are in the growth of this business is we are just getting started. This is year one again.”

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There is little doubt that Apple’s App store started a phenomenon that has spawned an industry and changed the way we all use our mobile phones.

In the early days, stories of developers hitting the jackpot with a winning app seemed almost commonplace. Today, with increased competition, that crown is harder to win.

But at the same time as the App store continues to grow with over 4 billion downloads, so do other app stores. There is Nokia’s Ovi store, BlackBerry, Windows, Google’s Android and of course the independent app store operated by Getjar which recently hit a billion downloads.

With around 5 billion handsets in the world, and an estimated 20% of them smartphones, the market looks pretty robust for some time to come. Recent research gives two sides of the same story.

ABI showed that downloads of mobile applications from “app stores” will peak in 2012-13, then begin a slow decline in numbers.

But Juniper Research reported that the “combined revenues from apps funded by pay-per-download (PPD), value-added services (VAS, including freemium and subscription) and advertising is expected to rise from just under $10bn in 2009 to $32bn in 2015″.

Matt Murphy runs the iFund at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most respected venture capital firms in the country.

The iFund is aimed specifically at developers who create apps for Apple’s App store. It was recently increased from $100m to $200m ahead of the launch of the iPad.

“When we started the fund it felt like a greenfield site for every category and today there are over 250,000 apps. It’s gotten very very competitive and in some ways that is good and in some ways that is challenging.”

Mr Murphy said their focus is on a number of areas including location based services, social networking, mCommerce (including advertising and payments), communication, health care, education, and entertainment.

To date the iFund has put its money behind 14 ventures from the first iPhone-only gaming publisher ng:moco to social gaming giant Zynga and from music discovery service Shazam to Cooliris which offers a 3D interface for browsing vast amounts of rich media.

“I think the analogy of the gold rush where anybody could show up and make a ton of money – I don’t now that it’s over but it’s harder.”

He said the fact there are many more players will require a different mindset.

“I think it will create a discipline among entrepreneurs who will say I want to build a big company. I think there will still be a lot of successful one-off apps, where any mom and pop can create an app and monetise it well and do well but to a certain scale.

“They are not going to get rich on it, well they might depending on their definition of rich. But they are not going to build the next Google, Amazon, eBay or Netscape of the mobile internet. As a venture capitalist, we are looking for opportunities that have more of that potential to really break out and be one of the companies you talk about in ten years time.

“I would say everybody can show up and make a little to a good amount of money but it’s getting harder for people who say I want to be that really big company. But that’s how these platforms shake themselves out.”

From Mr Murphy’s point of view, those companies who are on the path to becoming big and have set the standard for others to attain include Zynga, ng:moco, Pinger, Shazam and GOGII.

“Take ng:moco. It’s really a pure play around iPhone gaming right now and they are the leader in that category,” said Mr Murphy.

“This all came from one guy who walked into our office two years ago and said I really want to be this greenfield category. Then people were thinking of gaming and apps as a one off and he said ‘let’s build a network’. That’s an example of what I am talking about.”

From Mr Murphy’s point of view the ingredients to success include simplicity, attention to detail and having fun.

“Start off really simple with something that every user can resonate with and then over time provide more in the app that makes it stickier – more functionality, more social things. That is what we are seeing with Shazam right now and GOGII which is moving from free texting into groups and communities.

“No one has really nailed chatting communities on the iPhone so that is a greenfield opportunity. But you have to nail them initially with that simple-use case. The people that try to do too much too soon are the ones we have seen struggle.”

The iPad has presented a whole new opportunity for developers and for the iFund which was boosted by $100m ahead of its launch.

But Mr Murphy said for those with an eye to developing apps for the iPad, the important thing to remember is that it offers a very different user experience compared to the iPhone.

“If the iPhone is all about the five to ten minute snack, the the iPad is all about heavy media consumption of an hour or an hour plus. Developers and companies that master that are going to do really well.”

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For many of Silicon Valley’s chief executives, the name Neelie Kroes was one that surely made them quiver in fear.

As the former competition chief for Europe, Ms Kroes, sometimes referred to as Steelie Neelie, took tech giants like Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Microsystems to name a few, to task for their anti-competitive behaviour.

“I felt my role was to be the referee and in every game you need a referee to ensure the teams conform to the rules. If not it is no fun. No fun for the game, for the public watching and for your counterpart,” Ms Kroes told me during the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Northern California where the marriage of technology and economics was discussed.

These two are subjects very dear to Ms Kroes’ heart, especially now she has a new job driving Europe’s digital agenda.

“It is extremely important for Europe to get back in the driving seat. There are still digital virgins, as I am always saying. From 2013 every European should be digital whatever your age, nationality, background.
 
“There shouldn’t be digital virgins anymore and anyone should be able to enjoy this great step forward in technology.”

Ms Kroes noted that 30% of Europe falls into this category.

It’s a situation Ms Kroes is clearly not happy about as she told an audience at the conference that “this is my political life now” to make this digital vision a reality for every European.

America is also championing a similar mission with its own broadband plan [12.1MB PDF] which aims to deliver a high speed internet connection to every US citizen by 2020. The Federal Communications commission (FCC) has noted that 100 million Americans do not have a broadband connection.

Of course it has had quite a bit of challenge of late with the thorny issue of net neutrality, the principle where all web data is treated equally and no traffic is given preferential treatment over another.

The FCC last week called off backroom talks with internet service providers and internet companies after it failed to reach a consensus on the issue.

That didn’t stop search giant Google and telecom titan Verizon coming up with their own suggestion for the FCC to consider. Their seven principles have been royally criticised because they map out different positions for wireline and wireless.

Ms Kroes told me she is watching that debate very closely given that she is set to face a lot of the same issues.

“We face the same battles as the US. While we are not so far ahead we will be following what the consequences are.”

While Ms Kroes noted that Europe and the US are embarking on similar digital paths, she also noted quite a few cultural differences.

She acknowledged that the strict labour laws in Europe do not make it easy for start-ups but that change is afoot as the economic recession forces progress.

“We are on the move,” said Mr Kroes.

When quizzed about privacy, where Europe is seen to have stricter laws, Ms Kroes said it remained central to getting people online and trusting doing business on the internet.

“Everybody should be online with the feeling of trust and that I am backed by my privacy. We have to take that into account and yes there is a difference in culture here but the government is taking a bigger role to play in privacy action in Europe.”

While Ms Kroes would not be drawn on what that means for a company like Facebook, which has had its share of issues over privacy, she did agree that regulating Facebook like a big telecom company was perhaps something that will come to pass.

And when it came to differing cultures between the US and Europe in terms of the approach to business, Ms Kroes said that “doesn’t mean we are less talented.”

However she agreed that unlike America, and Silicon Valley in particular, the belief that failure is good does not carry over in Europe and that it tends to follow you around.

“What I get from the US is it is even more that is positive – you were a survivor and when you start again that’s great.
 
“Talking about myself, I have learned more from my mistakes than my successes… and my list of mistakes is much longer.”

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Perhaps you tweet like a fiend, all day and every day. You are followed by hundreds, nay thousands of people. You appear pretty popular – but how much influence do you really have?

According to research by HP Labs, not as much as you might think.

“High popularity numbers does not necessarily add up to high influence and vice versa,” says Dr Bernardo A Huberman, director of the Social Computing Lab.

He and his fellow researchers devised an algorithm to measure tweets with the aim of measuring why and how some posts get more attention and “bubble to the top”.

In a paper called Influence and Passivity in Social Media [502.29KB PDF], the algorithm assigns a relative influence score and a passivity score to every user. The labs examined nearly 3 million public tweets.

“There is an immense amount of passivity on Twitter with its 105 million users,” says Dr Huberman.

“Everybody tweets thinking that everyone is going to learn about your tweets but in order for that to happen someone has to read them, find them interesting and pass them on.”

Dr Huberman says the algorithm “notices how messages from a user propagates. You could be tweeting and have 50,000 followers but if they don’t retweet your stuff, it doesn’t go anywhere and that is where the measure of influence is.” The team tracked how far up the food chain a retweet goes to understand influence.

So what is the value of all this? The lab’s analysis of tweets to predict whether a movie will be a box-office hit suggests some possible practical applications:

“Imagine when you are discussing or pushing products, trends, public policy or say politics. We can discover the two people who are making an impact there and not just target those who have millions of followers.
 
“These people, these influentials inside a network are responsible for bubbling stuff up to the top and that is how we become aware of certain things.”

The $64,000 question is: how do you become a person of influence on Twitter? Dr Huberman says it’s down to the content of your tweet. Make it interesting, novel, fun, off the chart and surprising – and, mostly, make sure it resonates with the audience:

“This has a lot do with the fact that humans are very social people.
 
“You have all these people who say look at me, read me, see me, download me, buy me. And what is it that finally captures your attention and the attention of millions? That it elicits an emotion.”

So who makes the grade?

• @mashable – Social media blogger
• @jokoanwar – Film director
• @google – Search giant
• @aplusk – Actor
• @syfy – Science fiction channel
• @smashingmag – Online developer magazine
• @michellemalkin – Conservative commentator
• @theonion – News satire organisation
• @rww – Tech/social media blogger
• @breakingnews – News aggregator

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Techonomy, a conference discussing the marriage between technology and economy here in Lake Tahoe in Northern California, has seen a fair number of tech gods in attendance.

There’s been Google co-founder Larry Page, its CEO Eric Schmidt, Sun Microsystems co-founder and so-called “Edison of the Internet” Bill Joy, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, inventor Dean Kamen and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.

A pretty impressive bunch. But when former Microsoft boss Bill Gates arrived, it was like a rock star entering the room. Even Larry Page jostled for some one-on-one and the pair chatted about – what else but technology?

As well as catching up with his peers, Mr Gates spoke to a host of other attendees and to the students who have been helping out here all week.

Among them was 15-year-old Talia Leman, to whom Mr Gates paid particular attention; the day before he had played bridge with her grandparents. The fourth player was the sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet.

Mr Gates had also come with a note from Talia’s gran, Evelyn Mintzer. “That is so typical of my mom,” said Talia’s mother Dana.

But this wasn’t Talia’s first encounter with Mr Gates. When she was 12, she heard him speak at Harvard where her father graduated. (The same cannot be said of Mr Gates who dropped out to start a small software company.)

His commencement address had an effect on Talia:

“He said the barrier to giving is not too little caring – it’s too much complexity. That means when we see suffering in the world and we don’t know how to help, we look away.”

“It was such a reassuring message that people do care – but it’s our job to make it simple for them to find a way to make a difference,” said Dana. “Mr Gates is the one that liberated Talia to understand that complexity is her only enemy. It’s not apathy. That is a very liberating thing to realise.”

Talia used the quote in speeches to stump for her non-profit start-up Random Kid, which aims to use the “power of anyone to solve real problems” – that is, to help children help other children.

The first project was raising money for Hurricane Katrina. Her organisation has gone on to provide funding for water-pumping projects around the world, refurbished schools, provided play centres and anti-malarial nets for Africa and crutches and artificial limbs for those injured in the Haiti earthquake.

Random Kid has raised over $10m and counting. Not bad for a 15-year-old. Talia has also been appointed Unicef’s first known National Youth Ambassador and has amassed a slew of national and international awards.

Over her short career to date, she has harnessed the energy of over 4,000 school districts. It sounds like she could give Mr Gates a run for his money in the “over-achieving” stakes.

While Talia clearly regards the software mogul as an inspiration, she said he also comes across as “a real down-to-earth person. He’s very real and very legit and I hope to learn some of his wisdom.”

Talia said she has been soaking up the conference atmosphere and learning as much as she can:

“Everybody here has something to offer and everybody comes from a phenomenal background with amazing resources we can bounce off.
 
“I feel everyone is interconnected in some way, which is really cool. I feel like I am listening in on something I am not supposed to – like I am part of this cool new present and like I’m not supposed to be listening because it is all the most intelligent people in the world discussing the biggest issues that we are facing.”

Talia is planning a big site relaunch in the next couple of weeks. Her mum Dana is also looking for a mentor for her because “there’s only so much a mum can do. She needs someone to help her to the next level.”

For the moment, Talia is concentrating on spreading the world about Random Kid:

“You realise that coming from rural Iowa, you can be part of something that is so much bigger – and that’s incredible. Also that the small efforts matter most not just that they matter.
 
“I’m in it for the real deal, for the long term.”

And the outcome of that bridge game between Talia’s grandparents and Messrs Gates and Buffet? Dana said that Mr Gates told her he couldn’t remember.

Dana noted that last year her parents won.

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