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Huffington Post to Scare Users About Their Addresses, Phone Numbers

Posted on by jessestay

privacy-6161404I decided I should prepare you for what is to come. You’re already seeing (hence my title – you can read more here), and will see over the coming weeks a hailstorm of critique, saying Facebook is sharing your phone numbers and addresses with third party sites and applications. Huffington Post’s (see the link above), and I predict many others to come, are, and will be absolutely incorrect. The truth is 1) we don’t know exactly what Facebook is going to do (and hence it’s too early to freak out anyway), and 2) we do know Facebook isn’t going to just share your phone numbers and addresses with 3rd party sites. Huffington Post makes this sound like they’re giving it away like candy.

Here’s what will likely happen:

  • Facebook will require 3rd party websites and applications to prompt users before they can access any information about you. This includes your phone number and address, and means websites and applications can’t just get this information WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION.

  • Facebook will prominently display a warning when an application or website is trying to get your address or phone number, and you will be completely aware your address or phone number could be used by the application. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GIVE AWAY YOUR ADDRESS OR PHONE NUMBER, DON’T GIVE ACCESS TO THE APPLICATIONS THAT ASK FOR IT.

  • There is also rumor that Facebook will be preventing minors from being able to give away their phone numbers and addresses to 3rd party applications and addresses. This is something only Facebook can do, unless a minor is posing as an adult – unlikely.

Let’s set the record straight. FACEBOOK IS STILL THE MOST PRIVACY FOCUSED WEBSITE FOR CONSUMERS ON THE PLANET RIGHT NOW. They will be even more so after this feature. What’s the other option? Applications can ask you to manually type in your address and phone number each time you log in. If you’re okay with that experience, maybe you shouldn’t approve applications to have your phone number and address. Heck, maybe you shouldn’t be on Facebook in the first place – at least Facebook is trying to make that process easier.

In the case you choose not to be on Facebook, be especially careful – Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Google Contacts, and even financial services like Paypal don’t even offer this level of granularity. If you give them access, 3rd party websites get access to all your information, phone number, address, and all. In fact, for many of those services I listed, not only do you give your own address and phone number, but you give your friends’ addresses and phone numbers as well. Facebook doesn’t even allow that.

So I caution you over the next couple weeks – don’t believe the sensational headlines. Be prepared to stand up for your privacy. Facebook’s next move makes things more private, yet accessible, not less. At the same time fight that Gmail, Google Contacts, Yahoo, Paypal, and others all offer this level of granularity to 3rd party websites. At least Facebook is doing something about it.

For more background, be sure to read Facebook’s post where they phased this out in preparation for a better version here.

Like ’em or Hate ’em, Paypal May be the Best Checking Account Alternative for Business Banking

Posted on by jessestay

Most of you know my relationship with Paypal. They sent my wife away in tears on a recent Ebay transaction, and their customer service can be horrible at times (I’m now out $230 of my own money because of it, and because supposedly they can’t trust me). At the same time I’m on their Developer Council and I love ’em to death, because as a developer I feel I have a voice with them. Regardless, when compared to my bank, I see Paypal in an entirely different light than the situation with my wife. Without a doubt, Paypal is one of the most innovative banking solutions out there right now, and that’s hard to ignore. I wonder, could Paypal be a decent replacement to my business checking account at my bank? I’m starting to think it could very well be.

Innovation

Let’s start with their biggest strength. Paypal is by far one of the most innovative banking platforms on the planet right now. They are entirely set up to work virtually. They were one of the first to set up online money transfers. With just an email address I can send money to someone. I can set up, and take credit card transactions, entirely online. I can scan checks with my cell phone and they go into my Paypal account. They’re attached to Money Market funds that produce interest on my checking account. I was even able to order a debit card online, and now I can withdraw actual cash from my Paypal account.

Let’s add to all the additional payment services I can use and set up, all online. I can add, just by copying simple HTML, a payment widget to my website if I want to take payments. I can set up shopping carts with ease. I can integrate to payments, deposits, and more, all through a developer API. My banks can’t do that.

With my bank, especially my business account, my options are limited. I don’t yet have online check deposit capabilities on my business account.  I don’t have an API to access payments. Heck, for many business checking accounts you don’t even make interest on your accounts! Granted, my personal account situation is much better – I use USAA, whose services are second to none, but let’s stick to business for purposes of this post.

Customer Service

As I mentioned, Paypal customer support sent my wife away crying because we just happened to throw away our shipping receipt for an Ebay transaction that went bad 2 months after the fact. However, if I contrast that with my business banking account, that’s not so bad. With them there is no leverage – if you make a late payment, you get a fee, no leeway. I have to travel somewhere to get any sort of personal service, and calling them takes long waits on the phone. My bank is constantly trying to find new ways to charge me more money. At my bank I have very little protection if someone makes a fraudulent purchase from my bank account. I just don’t see that as much from Paypal. Compared to my business banking, Paypal looks pretty good!

Maybe my experience is different than yours. For my banking solution I have to have a multi-state banking solution that has offices in Delaware, considering my business is a Delaware LLC and my business is almost entirely virtual. So I guess my options are limited. However, Paypal is starting to seem like an awfully good solution to me right now to replace my business checking account. True, they’re not FDIC insured, but is the FDIC even viable any more? I’m starting to think my money may actually be better protected with a solution like Paypal, vs. the FDIC.

What do you think? Are there any better solutions for business banking out there? Should I consider moving my business accounting entirely to Paypal? I’m starting to think that may be a good option.

Paypal Launches "Embedded Payments" Platform for Easy Integration Onto Any Website

Posted on by jessestay

Today at the Paypal X Innovate 2010 Conference Paypal, in a demo with the social shopping cart payments provider, Payvment, announced in a live demo their new “Embedded Payments” platform.  The platform, at least according to the demo, allows developers, by just copying and pasting, to place a simple “Pay with Paypal” button into any app or website.

Paypal also demoed an integration with GigaOm, allowing premium content to the readers of the site, enabling GigaOm to charge for premium content.  The demo implied the integration was very simple and easy to implement.

We are in a new era of APIs.  We’ve gone beyond the era of backend, REST-based APIs that you have to write communications code to pull the data and then formulate the front-end to look the way you want.  We’ve now moved into an era where implementing someone else’s platform is as simple as “copy” and “paste”, and nothing more.

Facebook has done something similar with their “Social Plugins” platform, launched earlier this year at their F8 conference, and that was preceded with Twitter‘s “@Anywhere” platform, each one allowing simple copy and paste into the view of any website or application.  I’ve talked about the Building Block Web – Paypal has just entered the View component of the Building Block web.  This is a very useful move by Paypal and I can’t wait to start playing with it!

Paypal Innovate 2010 – Expect Mobile, Personal

Posted on by jessestay

If there’s one thing Paypal does well it’s put on a great Conference.  This year at their annual Paypal Innovate Developers Conference, Paypal is ramping up for some big announcements, great training, and amazing guests.  Greeted at the Conference is a multitude of Paypal employees inviting guests to the next generation of payments platform.  The one thing that seems evident at this conference – we’re going to see a lot of “personal” and “mobile” in the era of personalized, simplified payments.

The first thing attendees got as they attended the conference is a new serviced offered by Bling Nation, allowing guests to pay wirelessly at participating vendors with a pre-populated $20 given to each attendee in their Paypal account.  The service offers attendees a sticker they can attach to their phones that seems to send an RFID signal to the payment processors participating in the service.

Also launched last night was a new version of Paypal’s iPhone app, offering push notifications and other ways to pay on a cell phone.  Paypal has really been pushing to improve their mobile payments solutions.

Whatever they announce, there’s no doubt that the future is here.  Paypal will no doubt be entering further and further towards removing the cash from your wallet and into an era of mobile, and personalized payments with your Paypal account.

Paypal Pays Off With Paypal X Innovate Conference

Posted on by jessestay

screen-shot-2009-11-02-at-12-12-51-am-1375797Paypal has spent awhile now planning a conference for developers which they would be able to announce their new Paypal X developer platform for flexible payments.  I’ve talked to Sudha Jamthe, in charge of many of their social media promotion efforts for awhile now, and I know they’ve really been looking forward to this event.  I must say their planning and preparation for this event have truly “paid off”, as audience reaction has been spectacular, many stating on Twitter that the event was one of the best events they’ve ever attended, others saying it was “one for the record books”.  I must agree.

Internet problems yesterday aside (today seems to be a little better), Paypal has aimed to please.  Starting off with some amazing keynotes and announcements of an incredible flexible payments platform for developers showcasing some amazing companies that have implemented this platform, it just didn’t stop there!  Paypal continued to impress, offering every developer at the event a free Eee PC Netbook.  The internet quickly went down from additional traffic. 🙂

The event was filled to the brim with snacks, food, drinks, and things to feed developers brains as they would think of the next big idea utilizing the Paypal X developer platform.  Freebies were everywhere.  Sessions included all kinds of howtos and tutorials on how to implement the platform.

Then, concluding the event, an amazing party ensued full of speed painters, dancing, music, “Stomp”-like performers, drinks, food, and more.  Audience members and attendees were able to truly build connections with each other.  They were treated like royalty, and their brains and stomachs were fed.

Paypal has done an amazing job at this conference.  It’s something that many, including myself will remember for years to come.  Thank you, Paypal, for allowing me the opportunity to come out and be a part of this amazing experience.  I hope there are many more to come and others will also be able to experience this in the future.  Paypal truly understands that developers are the “X” factor in their product.  I’m stoked to see what I can do with it.

Ebay Suggests Identity API – Can They Do it Alone?

Posted on by jessestay

screen-shot-2009-11-02-at-12-12-51-am-5974120Ebay’s CTO, Mark Carges, today announced at Paypal X Innovate plans by Ebay, Inc. to begin incorporating the Paypal login process as an identity platform for consumers to eventually open up to developers.  The platform, Carges said, aims to use the existing Paypal login ID which includes address and phone number verification, bank account attachment, and more to identify individuals as real people.  He stated Paypal already goes through great lengths to protect these users’ identity, suggesting this was a natural move towards identity in the cloud.

The move makes sense, but searching Twitter during the Keynote revealed a different story.  Audience members are skeptical, stating things like “scary morning talk by the Paypal CTO. all your ID belonging to us. a closed OpenID?” and “wonder if this is what @timOreilly is afraid of – platforms becoming the OS?”.  In many ways these audience members have a point – is it possible for Paypal to go alone in this identity space when they could either be leading or joining existing identity efforts such as OpenID?  I may be wrong but I do not recall any mention of the word “open” in his proposal.  And when he mentions things like “they are working with Government” it gets a little scary that a single company may control all this along with government.

At the same time, maybe this is the solution.  Will the solution to identity be a closed platform that has devoted ways of verifying identity like Paypal and Ebay can provide?  Does the web need a “more secure” closed platform to finally solve the identity problem?

I’m very interested to see how Paypal progresses on this.  My hope is that they either lead or join existing open standards in this effort, and rather than taking this alone they approach others.  A platform is always a good thing, but a platform is not “open” until it is based on open technologies and the technologies themselves are built by the community.  This is especially applicable in the identity space.

Paypal’s CEO yesterday reiterated that through the years payment itself was controlled by a few big entities.  Paypal’s vision is “Into the hands of many” , intending to pass that control to the developers.  He even compared it to Linux and how the future is in the community and no one company having control.  My hope is that Paypal maintains this standard in the identity arena.  Based on their vision so far it looks hopeful – let’s hope they don’t feel the need to take the Identity platform alone.

When it’s uploaded you can listen to the whole Keynote in my Cinch folder.

"X" Marks the Spot for New Paypal Development Platform

Posted on by jessestay
“X”. It’s a common variable used in many a code base.  It’s one of the most common variables of any code base.  It’s what counts.  That’s what Paypal wants to become in the hands of developers, as they stated in their kickoff Keynotes this morning at the Paypal X Innovate developers conference in San Francisco this morning.  Paypal is bringing back the name of their original developer platformed, called “X”, to introduce new, easier, and better ways of facilitating transactions for developers.

Paypal has big visions for their new payments platform.  As Ebay CEO Jon Donahue stated, “I believe Paypal will be bigger than Ebay because Paypal can power all e-commerce”.  It would appear any rumors to Ebay selling off Paypal may be bunk in the eyes of their CEO.  Together, Paypal and its customers are working to release the next wave in payments integration. Today Paypal announced a new adaptive payments platform in which developers are now going to have the capability to integrate into their own applications.  Among the examples shared:

Integration of Paypal into your online banking experience — an example was shared of a bank enabling you to pay your friends by simply visiting your bank’s website, entering the e-mail address of your friend, and sending the transaction to that friend through Paypal.  (I wish my banks allowed this!)

Facebook Integration – Payvment did a presentation of their software that enables developers and website owners to integrate an entire shopping cart experience via just a simple snippet of Javascript code.  They also announced that they are open sourcing this software for Facebook developers to also integrate this same shopping cart experience into their own Facebook apps.  (This is very valuable!)  I’ll try to do an interview with them tomorrow.

Sun and Java Integration – Sun Microsystems did a demo of their own sharing how they were using Paypal’s X Platform in their Java store

Mobile – With the launch, Paypal is launching new mobile SDKs.  They did a demo on the spot integrating a simple payment code using Paypal’s iPhone SDK in XCode.  A couple drags and drops and copies and pastes and they had a fully-integrated payment experience on the phone.

In addition to the launch of their new platform, Paypal announced a series of new payment standards.  The payments will be adaptive, depending on the amount being charged, making a very appealing option for micro-payments to even very large payments depending on the size of the transaction.  In addition, developers will be able to decide who pays the commission, something different from their current developer platform, meaning the business itself does not have to pay the commission.  The commission can be paid by either the seller or the buyer, ensuring new creative ways of facilitating payment transactions.

Paypal’s new X platform of course compares with Amazon’s Flexible Payment System.  Tomorrow I’ll do a post comparing the two as I’m able to gather more data.  With the new platform it would seem that Paypal is putting the pressure on Amazon and stepping up the game of finally getting rid of the cash in your wallet in favor of much easier payment services in the cloud.

I look forward to sharing more from the conference.  I’m very intrigued by some of the Facebook solutions, as well as Twitter payment systems and I’ll share those as I get them.  I’ll also be watching the various ways other companies are utilizing the platform.

I truly believe we’re on the cusp of an entirely new wave of payments.  The competition is on in full strength at Paypal X Innovate and I can’t wait to see what comes of it.

Here are a few Cinch recordings I did of the keynotes in case you missed them:

screen-shot-2009-11-02-at-12-12-51-am-5993707“X”. It’s a common variable used in many a code base.  It’s one of the most common variables of any code base.  It’s what counts.  That’s what Paypal wants to become in the hands of developers, as they stated in their kickoff Keynotes yesterday morning at the Paypal X Innovate developers conference in San Francisco.  Paypal is bringing back the name of their original developer platform, called “X”, to introduce new, easier, and better ways of facilitating transactions for developers.

Paypal has big visions for their new payments platform.  As Ebay CEO Jon Donahue stated, “I believe Paypal will be bigger than Ebay because Paypal can power all e-commerce”.  It would appear any rumors to Ebay selling off Paypal may be bunk in the eyes of their CEO.  Together, Paypal and its customers are working to release the next wave in payments integration. Yesterday Paypal announced a new adaptive payments platform at x.com in which developers are now going to have the capability to integrate into their own applications.  Among the examples shared:

Integration of Paypal into your online banking experience — an example was shared of a bank enabling you to pay your friends by simply visiting your bank’s website, entering the e-mail address of your friend, and sending the transaction to that friend through Paypal.  (I wish my banks allowed this!)

Facebook Integration – Payvment did a presentation of their software that enables developers and website owners to integrate an entire shopping cart experience via just a simple snippet of Javascript code.  They also announced that they are open sourcing this software for Facebook developers to also integrate this same shopping cart experience into their own Facebook apps.  (This is very valuable!)  I’ll try to do an interview with them tomorrow.

Sun and Java Integration – Sun Microsystems did a demo of their own sharing how they were using Paypal’s X Platform in their Java store

Mobile – With the launch, Paypal is launching new mobile SDKs.  They did a demo on the spot integrating a simple payment code using Paypal’s iPhone SDK in XCode.  A couple drags and drops and copies and pastes and they had a fully-integrated payment experience on the phone.

In addition to the launch of their new platform, Paypal announced a series of new payment standards.  The payments will be adaptive, depending on the amount being charged, making a very appealing option for micro-payments to even very large payments depending on the size of the transaction.  In addition, developers will be able to decide who pays the commission, something different from their current developer platform, meaning the business itself does not have to pay the commission.  The commission can be paid by either the seller or the buyer, ensuring new and creative ways of facilitating payment transactions.

Paypal’s new X platform of course compares with Amazon’s Flexible Payment System.  Later today I’ll do a post comparing the two as I’m able to gather more data.  With the new platform it would seem that Paypal is putting the pressure on Amazon and stepping up the game of finally getting rid of the cash in your wallet in favor of much easier payment services in the cloud.

I look forward to sharing more from the conference.  I’m very intrigued by some of the Facebook solutions, as well as Twitter payment systems and I’ll share those as I get them.  I’ll also be watching the various ways other companies are utilizing the platform.

I truly believe we’re on the cusp of an entirely new wave of payments.  The competition is on in full strength at Paypal X Innovate and I can’t wait to see what comes of it.

Here are a few Cinch recordings I did of the keynotes in case you missed them:

http://www.cinchcast.com/user/default.aspx?albumUrl=Paypal-X-Innovate

Paypal X Innovate

Posted on by jessestay

Paypal X Innovate 2009I’ve been invited by Paypal to come out to San Francisco and participate in the Paypal X Innovate conference on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I’ll be in San Francisco starting tomorrow morning.  I’d love to meet you!  If you’re going to be at the conference, or in the San Francisco area, let me know and we can try to meet up if I have some time.  Maybe we can arrange a Tweetup or Facebook dev garage while I’m out there or something.

What is Paypal X Innovate?  It’s a conference for developers on the new Paypal X development platform.  At the conference, Paypal will be announcing their new platform, showcasing what you can do with it, and supposedly will be announcing a few surprises as well.  At the event you can expect to see speakers such as Tim O’Reilly, John Donahoe, and Om Malik, amongst many other industry luminaries interested in this space.  Paypal’s going all out at this conference!  I even hear there’s a special surprise gift for each conference attendee.

So if you’ll be at the event, come say hi!  If you haven’t signed up, the event is sold out, but there may be a few tickets available for walk-ins if you want to try the day of.  I’ll be covering everything I can while I’m out there both here, and on my Facebook Fan Page at http://facebook.com/stay. I look forward to seeing you!