Facebook user welcomes Belo libel suit

Activist-lawyer Argee Guevarra, who was sued by doctor to the stars Vicky Belo for allegedly maligning her in his Facebook account, yesterday welcomed the move, saying it was “an opportunity to invite public attention to the hazards of cosmetic surgery clinics performing surgeries with untrained and unskilled medical practitioners and advertising such services as safe.”

“We hope to ring alarm bells at the Health Department against the proliferation of such colorum clinics, which is destroying the country’s medical tourism industry and earning for the country the moniker of being Asia’s No. 1 Chop Shop,” Guevarra said in a statement sent to The STAR.

Belo and the Belo Medical Group filed the suit against Guevarra at the Office of the City Prosecutor in Taytay, Rizal.

Belo protested Guevarra’s shoutouts referring to her as “Reyna ng Kaplastikan, Reyna ng Kapalpakan” (Queen of False Pretenses, Queen of Incompetence) and updates calling for a national patients’ boycott of Belo clinics in his Facebook account.

Facebook is a popular social networking site.

Guevarra is the counsel of Josefina Norcio who sued the Belo Medical Group for botched butt augmentation procedures using the banned substance Hydrogel.

Belo, previously involved in a video sex scandal, operates swanky plastic and cosmetic surgery clinics frequented by the elite. She also owns various offshore clinics and booking offices in Thailand, South Korea and the United States.

She, however, is not licensed by the Philippine Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (PAPRAS) to perform cosmetic surgery procedures.

The suit is the first Facebook libel case in the world where Belo does not even belong to the defendant’s network of Facebook friends, Guevarra said.

A previous Facebook libel case was, however, filed in the United Kingdom where businessman Mathew Firsht sued a former school friend over a false personal profile status on the site, which included private information about him and untrue allegations about his sexual orientation.

The libel suit against Guevarra was commenced through Dr. Belo’s general manager who managed to add herself to Guevarra’s network of 1,472 friends.

More than this, Guevarra seeks to defend himself all the way to the Supreme Court in order to elicit jurisprudence regarding internet-based libels.

Unfazed

Guevarra remained unfazed by Belo and reacted about his latest legal battle in his Facebook status update and referred to Belo as a “wannabe mortician.”

“A wannabe mortician masquerading as a cosmetic surgeon will never be able to stitch up the difference between formalin or botox, between free speech or slander when suing for libel a Facebook user for his shoutouts and status updates. Such surgical stupidity results in mistaking Facebook for Erasebook.”

For his part, Guevarra’s counsel J.V. Bautista pointed out the suit’s material defects, saying it would not prosper because there’s no such thing as Internet libel.

“The alleged defamatory statements are privileged communication and are per se, not libelous. Said statements of Atty. Guevarra fall under constitutionally protected exercise of free speech,” Bautista said.

“Finally, the analogous libel case of Alfonso Yuchengco/Pacific Plans vs. Philip Piccio, arising from a blog written by Mr. Piccio against Pacific Plans, was ordered dismissed by the Department of Justice which ruled that there is no such thing as Internet libel since Art. 355 of the Revised Penal Code strictly provides that libel can only be committed by means set forth therein (writing, printing, radio etc.) and does not include the Internet. Furthermore, criminal statutes are construed strictly in favor of the accused.”

The STAR tried to contact Belo’s counsel Adel Tamano through his cell phone, but he was not available for comment.

The preliminary investigation is set on Sept. 24 at the Taytay Hall of Justice, Rizal before Asst. City Prosecutor Cheloy Garafil.

Switzerland bans civil servants from using Facebook

The Swiss government has banned its employees from using Facebook after failed appeals for them to reduce time spent on the social networking site, a statement said on Thursday.

"Workers who need to access the social network for professional reasons can request a special dispensation," said a statement from the federal government.

Of the government's seven ministries, only the foreign ministry will still allow employees to access the site once the ban comes in next week.

Government workers were asked in May to "show moderation in private use of the Internet, notably of Facebook," the statement said. Such use did decrease slightly, but Facebook remained one of the four most popular sites.

Facebook to let users tag friends in status posts

Facebook will soon let users "tag" their friends in their posts, similar to how they already can with photos.

Product manager Andrew Huang said the status tags — coming over the next several weeks — are "all about engagement." He said Facebook wants to let users reference their real-world connections in their status posts.

For example, if a status update mentions having lunch with a friend, the user can tag the post with that friend's name. That'll make it easier for someone to pull up all status posts mentioning that particular friend, regardless of who made the posts.

It's similar to how someone can now easily pull up photos of a friend, regardless of which user had taken and shared the image. People will also be able to reference brands and businesses that have Facebook pages, as well as events, groups and applications.

To use the feature, users will have to type the "at" symbol in their post. This will activate a drop-down menu, from which users can select the friends to reference. The "at" symbol won't appear in the post itself; only a link with the person's name will show up.

Asian social networking sites profit from virtual money

By selling an array of virtual products from avatar clothes to e-furniture, Asia's social networking sites appear to have solved the conundrum of how to leverage big profits from their extensive user bases.

It's simple, they say, the money might be virtual but the profits are all too real.

Chinese university student Tan Shengrong spends about 20 yuan ($2.90) per month purchasing outfits for her pet penguin avatar or playing games on QQ, an instant message portal on Qzone, China's most popular social networking site.

It might not seem like a hefty sum, but every fen, or cent, is money in the bank for Tencent Holdings, which owns Qzone and saw an 85 percent increase in its second quarter net profit this year compared to 2008 despite the economic downturn.

"They keep growing even though the economy's bad because they keep making millions from cents from millions and millions of people," said Benjamin Joffe, head of Internet consulting firm Plus Eight Star.

From virtual clothes to e-pets, Asians spend an estimated $5 billion a year on virtual purchases via websites such as Qzone, Cyworld in South Korea and mobile-phone based network Gree in Japan, according to Plus Eight Star. That's about 80 percent of the global market for virtual products, it says.

"Social networking is just a way to get people together, but if you want revenue you have to sell them something. What they found was that people were happy to pay for content related to emotion, status and entertainment," said Joffe.

Of the virtual sales in Asia, about 80 percent comes from the sale of such items as equipment for online games such as rods for GREE's fishing game Tsuri Star 2. The rest comes from purchases for avatars on social networking sites.

Such is the success of virtual sales on Asia's most popular social networking sites that Myspace and Facebook are starting to look with a fresh eye at the potential of virtual money to generate cold hard cash.

Qzone's Tencent Holdings made over $1 billion last year with just 13 percent coming from advertising revenue. In contrast, Facebook and Myspace depend on advertising to fund most of their revenue.

The evolution of virtual money on social networking sites in Asia is partly due to a less developed online advertising market which drove Asian web businesses to seek new ways to profit.

Cultural issues are at play too. Gaming is popular among adults in Asia, whereas in the West it tends to be only for kids.

East Asian societies are also very status conscious. Players are loath to be the only avatar without the latest gear and Asians are perhaps more willing than counterparts in the West to buy virtual products to update their avatars or social space.

Asia's social networking sites tend to be country specific but they have very active user bases.

Qzone had 228 million active user accounts for the second quarter of 2009, although it won't give out monthly visitor figures. Meanwhile, Cyworld, which says that 90 percent of South Korea's 20-somethings are members, had 23 million unique visitors per month at the end of the first quarter of 2009.

Virtual rentals

Like their Western counterparts, Asian social networking sites allow their users to chat, play games and share photos.

There is also some advertising, but the sites earn most of their revenues from their users. Members are represented by avatars and acquire virtual currency from the sites to buy digital goods, game packages or upgrades.

The model has taken off abroad but there is still a long way to go until the West catches up with Asia.

Habbo, a social networking site for teenagers owned by Finland's Sulake Corporation, sells virtual clothes and furniture. Meanwhile, games such as Pet Society which is available on Facebook and allows users to raise virtual pets, sells goods such as virtual pet accessories and e-food.

Playfish, creator of Pet Society and other social games, says it has 47 million active users per month playing its games.

With seven million or so inhabitants, the virtual world Second Life offers a range of e-wares for sale for Linden dollars. Some are mundane and others are controversial such as guns and virtual phalluses with price tags based on the size.

Asia is also a playground for a range of virtual business models such as rentals. For example, Cyworld rents background skins of popular South Korean baseball players for limited periods. Such rentals drive repeat sales and tap into trends.

Lost in translation

The success of these East Asian sites contrast sharply to the frustrated social media landscape across the Pacific where despite immense popularity, Facebook and Myspace are yet to fully harness the profit potential of their massive user bases.

Facebook, the world's biggest social network with close to 300 million visitors per month, is on track to bring in more than $500 million in revenue this year, mostly from advertising, but its focus is on growing its user base rather than making money.

Still, a recent New York Times article suggested signs of an exodus from Facebook as disillusioned users leave due to privacy concerns or complaints of rampant commercialism.

Rupert Murdoch's MySpace has been unusual among the major social networks in turning profitable through advertising sales, although is now undergoing a major overhaul, including ousting its CEO and firing hundreds of staff, in the face of worrying user metrics.

Meanwhile, both Facebook and MySpace are eyeing the virtues of virtual money. Facebook, which sells virtual goods mainly in the form of 'Facebook gifts' through a credit system, said in March that it was looking at offering a common virtual currency to third-party application developers.

At the Web 2.0 Summit late last year, Myspace's recently-departed chief operating officer Amit Kapur mentioned that that the firm was also seeking to develop a payments and virtual goods system.

Meanwhile, Internet entrepreneurs are coming to Asia to pick up on innovative web business models.

In June, 32 venture capitalists and Internet entrepreneurs visited Japan and China under the banner "GeeksOnAPlane," to learn about local success stories such as DeNA, video hosting website Tudou, and gaming website PopCap.

"They were all blown away even though some of them already knew about what was going on here," said George Godula, founder of Shanghai-based consultancy Web2Asia. "They (Asian social networking sites) are quite nimble at finding out business models or ways of how to make money," he told Reuters.

Social networking sites grab big slice of Web ads

About one of every five Internet display ads in the United States is viewed on a social networking Web site like MySpace and Facebook, according to a new report.

The report by analytics firm comScore underscores the increasing prominence of social media sites in the Internet landscape and broadening acceptance of the sites by brand advertisers.

It also illustrates the increasing competition between social media sites and established Internet companies like Yahoo Inc and Time Warner Inc's AOL which have long billed themselves as the top online destinations for brand advertisers.

The study by comScore, released on Tuesday, said social media sites represented 21.1 percent of U.S. Internet display ads in July, with MySpace and Facebook accounting for more than 80 percent of those ads.

"Because the top social media sites can deliver high reach and frequency against target segments at a low cost, it appears that some advertisers are eager to use social networking sites as a new advertising delivery vehicle," said Jeff Hackett, senior vice president of comScore.

According to comScore, AT&T Inc, Experian Interactive and IAC/Interactive Corp's Ask Network were the top three advertisers on social networking sites in July.

While social media sites have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years -- Facebook is now the world's fourth-most visited Web site -- some observers have questioned whether the sites can be effectively monetized.

Because the content on social media sites is created by users, and could therefore prove racy or offensive, some have questioned the willingness of marketers to place their brands alongside that content.

"They are sensitive to some extent, but nowhere near to the extent you might think," Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay said of advertisers.

The price of placing ads on social networking sites is significantly less than on a Web portal like Yahoo or AOL, said Lindsay. The vast amount of Web pages available on social networks means that advertisers can purchase a massive volume of ad impressions at bargain prices.

The strategy may not be ideally suited to smaller marketers, or advertisers seeking a direct response from their ads, said Lindsay.

"For big, national brands it works just fine, just like TV," said Lindsay. "It's a huge, huge volume game."