Why Facebook may want to track your location

Facebook may be working on an app that will let your friends, or even complete strangers, know where you are at all times.

If that sounds unpleasant, even creepy, you're not alone. But it sounds an awful lot like a small but growing mobile sector in which users knowingly sacrifice some privacy in exchange for "social discovery."

And, as Facebook works to make money off its constantly growing list of mobile users, such a feature raises questions about how the company will use the personal info it would collect.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Facebook is developing a smartphone app that would track the location of users. The app would run in the background of smartphones even when not opened and is designed to help users find nearby friends, according to one of two unnamed sources cited in the article.

A Facebook spokeswoman told CNN that the company has no comment about the report.

Social discovery, or stalking?

Some observers have expected such a move by Facebook since last year when the social networking giant bought Glancee, a mobile app designed to help users find nearby friends.That's similar to a handful of other mobile apps, such as Highlight, Banjo and Sonar. These services seem pitched mostly to a young, outgoing user base seeking existing or new pals for drinks, dancing, sipping coffee or sexual hookups. But, when applied to Facebook's purported 1 billion-strong membership, which includes everyone from teens to grandparents, it gives some privacy advocates pause.

"We've already seen some of the mishaps that can occur when location is used in unexpected ways," said Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington-based think tank. "I think the challenge is that aggregating by location clearly might provide some really useful information. But there are a whole lot of social norms that can be stressed, by even public information."

Polonetsky cited Girls Around Me, an app that rounded up check-ins by women on Foursquare and Facebook to let users, presumably guys on the prowl, know which bars, clubs or other spots currently had lots of women in them. Girls Around Me raised concerns about stalking and eventually got booted from Apple's App Store.

"It didn't clearly violate any of the specific rules that the App Store lays out, other than extreme creepiness," Polonetsky said. "But creepy is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. One person's creepy is another tech enthusiast's tool."

The key, he said, would be whether Facebook clearly sets out guidelines for how such an app would be used. He said members should be allowed to opt in to the service, not automatically be enrolled in it unless they opt out.

"You don't want people ever sharing information without knowing, and I don't think Facebook is going to be in a position to do that," he said.

The future of social sharingHeralded briefly as the next wave of social sharing, a handful of these location-based "social discovery" apps launched last year amid some degree of hoopla. But a year later, none have gained much traction among mainstream audiences in the way Twitter, Foursquare and some other apps did before them.

Paul Davison, CEO of discovery app Highlight, acknowledges it's been a slow burn for a service such as his. A year after launching, Highlight still won't release how many active users it has (though he said membership has tripled in six months).

Privacy concerns, he said, are part of the challenge.

"That's not surprising," Davison said. "I think that any time a technology comes out that allows us to share in a way we haven't been able to share before, you see this really familiar pattern.

"Most of us look at it and think, 'That's weird. That's creepy and I don't like it.' What you normally see is a subset of people saying 'That is kind of crazy, but I'll try it out.' And they see it's pretty rewarding and fun."

Davison considers apps such as his no less than the future of social sharing.

"If you look at what's happened on the Web over the last 5 to 10 years with Facebook and other services, we love to share," he said. "We love to talk about ourselves ... and we're obsessed with learning about other people."

But for some, he said, the real world can be like "some bizarre social network where every profile is a single photo." On Highlight and similar apps, profiles are meant to let users know if someone around them shares their interests and might be a fun person to meet."It's a big change in how the world works," he said. "It's hard for me to think of a bigger shift in how the world works, but it's not going to happen overnight."

How Facebook might use app

Facebook-owned Glancee was somewhat more limited, pinging users when people already in their other social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, are around.

But for the folks from Mark Zuckerberg's company, such an app could have another payoff. Literally.

It would provide Facebook with reams of new data about not just where its users frequently go, but where they are right now.

Facebook said it doesn't sell its data to advertisers. But it definitely leverages the data to help those advertisers target potential customers. It's not hard to envision ads showing up letting users know that there's a 2-for-1 drink special right around the corner, or that the restaurant next door has the best burger in town.

"They need to make money on mobile, and that's what they've been pushing for since the IPO," said Justin Lafferty, co-editor of AllFacebook, an unofficial Facebook blog. "They're trying to build the technology first, then maybe find out how to build ads into it, too."

Lafferty, who wrote about this week's Bloomberg report, said Facebook could launch a social discovery app separate from its main mobile app -- at least at first.

"That's sort of how Facebook usually works," he said. "They'll test features, then they'll implement them all in the native app."

How will users react to such an app, were Facebook to launch one? Privacy advocate Polonetsky said that remains to be seen.

"The reality is that, for most people, even if things are broadcast to all their friends and the public, they still have some expectation about the way that it's used," he said. "I totally get that my neighbor knows when I come and go and may even say, 'We haven't seen you in a while -- is everything OK?'

"But if someone else seemed to know about my comings and goings and offered me a product or service based on it? I don't know."

In the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock

Playing a real-life character was hardly a new challenge for Dame Helen Mirren - after all, she has previously portrayed three Queens of England, not to mention Tolstoy's wife, Sofya.

But unlike those, her latest true-to-life role, as Alma Reville, will be unfamiliar to most cinema-goers.

Reville was the wife of Alfred Hitchcock - she was was married to the acclaimed film director for over 50 years, until his death in April 1980.

And it is the story of their relationship, and Reville's role in bringing classic thriller Psycho to the big screen, that is brought to life in director Sacha Gervasi's first feature film, Hitchcock.

"With Alma, I had the advantage that nobody knew (her)," says Dame Helen.

"Everyone knows what Alfred Hitchcock looks like and sounds like, nobody knew what Alma looked like and sounded like and it's extraordinary that there's very, very little film of her. She very much kept in the background."

Reville entered the film industry before her husband, getting her first job at the age of 15 as a rewind girl in the cutting room at Twickenham Film Studios.At 16, after moving to the London Film Company, she began training to be an editor and went on to work on many of her husband's films, both as editor and script writer.

The saying goes that behind every man there's a good woman and Dame Helen believes that Reville was happy to take a back seat.

"I think she was proud of the success of that partnership, as manifested by Hitchcock," she says, adding that Reville was equally proud of "the Hitchcock brand".

"She was as much a creator of that brand as he was," she explains.

"She was very happy, like the CEO of any big company, to stand in the background. Alma didn't want to be a public face.

"Film is an incredibly collaborative medium. The majority of the people who create a film have no public face at all - so film people are kind of used to it."

Director Gervasi agrees: "Hitch wouldn't have been Hitch without Alma. For every creative genius, there's someone lurking in the shadows who's not seeking the limelight, who is there to help and listen to all their craziness. That's a story I want to tell."

Despite Hitchcock's well-known infatuation for his leading ladies, Mirren believes Hitchcock and Reville had a solid marriage.

"They had a very happy and very successful relationship. There was never, ever a moment when there was a feeling that was breaking down."

Gervasi says he was fascinated by how Reville handled Hitchcock's obsessions.

"What must it have been like living with Alfred Hitchcock after he obsessed over these blonde goddesses? Eternally out of reach but who you could fashion and mould into this fantasy image."

Bafta recognition

The project gave Dame Helen the opportunity to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins for the first time.

"It was wonderful partly because we come from a very similar tradition, we both come from British theatre and we're not 'American actors', for want of a better word… We're very much of the school of 'get on there and do it.'"

The pair have both won Academy Awards before - Dame Helen nabbed a best actress Oscar in 2007 for The Queen, while Sir Anthony won best actor for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs in 1992.

And this weekend, Dame Helen is up for a Bafta (her fifth nomination to date) for her portrayal of Reville.

The actress acknowledges that award recognition is crucial.

"Awards are important for a movie, especially for a small, low-budget movie like this one, although it doesn't look it. These kind of movies don't have huge marketing budgets, so awards are very important because they draw attention. We make movies because we want people to see them."

Gervasi hopes that, by bringing Reville to the foreground, the film will reveal the man behind the Hitchcock caricature.

"I think it (his marriage) makes him even more fascinating than he already is. It makes him richer and more human.

"He wasn't just some cinematic deity on a pedestal, he was a massively complex man... I think the films were, in a strange way, his therapy," he adds.

"Was he a monster, was he a god? He was all of those things but he was also a man who was an artist trying to work his stuff out through these movies."

Netflix's $100 million bet on must-see TV

As streaming content grows more competitive, Netflix is branching out in a big way: producing its own original series. It's a bold and risky bet, particularly the $100 million Kevin Spacey vehicle "House of Cards" that went live just after midnight on Friday.

In 2011, after a series of missteps -- let's call it "the Qwikster era" -- Netflix (NFLX) grabbed headlines by announcing its foray into original programming. Its splashiest project is "House of Cards," an American reboot of a successful British miniseries. The star-studded lineup and premium production values are widely believed to be costing the company $50 million per 13-episode season. In addition to Spacey, the cast includes Robin Wright and Kate Mara, with David Fincher on board as an executive producer.Netflix's original series lineup also includes "Lilyhammer" (already picked up for a second season), an upcoming new season of the canceled TV show "Arrested Development," a new series from comic Ricky Gervais, one from horror king Eli Roth, and another from "Weeds" creator Jenji Kohan.

"Part of our goal is to become like HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix," says Netflix spokesman Joris Evers, echoing an oft-spoken line from CEO Reed Hastings. "Perhaps people saw us in the past as a distributor, or aggregator. We want to have an experience that cannot be replicated by our competitors."

Series like "Cards" -- which chronicles the cold world of Washington politics, with Spacey starring as a ruthless congressman -- are key to the strategy.

"When I say 'Game of Thrones,' you think HBO," says Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. "But if I say 'The Dark Knight, you don't think HBO -- even though you can watch it on HBO. That matters. You have to have your own content that can't be obtained anywhere else."

Plus, buying content from others is getting more expensive. Studios now shop their prized shows around to a bunch of Netflix rivals: Hulu, Redbox (CSTR), Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) and more. HBO (owned by CNNMoney parent company Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500)) and Showtime are also expanding their streaming offerings.

Netflix acknowledges that original content game is a gamble.

"There's a lot still to be released, and we'll see how this goes," Evers says. "Some of the [metrics of] success will be attracting new members and retaining the existing ones. It's also about making Netflix a place for unique content."

Rich Tullo, an analyst at Albert Fried, appreciates that goal -- but he's concerned about Netflix's method.

"The approach is solid: content is king," Tullo says. "But they're taking a lot of unnecessary risks on what could otherwise have been a coup."

The most obvious risk, Tullo thinks, is the $50 million per season price tag. With 56 million Netflix shares outstanding, the two seasons of "Cards" alone will cost the company nearly $2 per share.

Netflix earned just 29 cents per share in all of 2012, weighed down by its streaming-content bills. Those will keep rising: Netflix is on the hook for at least $5.6 billion over the next few years to pay for its content deals, according to its latest annual report. This month, the company said it's considering issuing debt to raise capital and fund more original programming.

"It can't just be a good show," Tullo says of "Cards." "It has to be a spectacular show, where people say, 'Wow, you've got to sign up for Netflix to watch this.' Is it really great enough to bring in two or three million people not subscribing already?"

Netflix spokesman Evers insists Netflix spent about the same amount on "Cards" as it would have on an exclusive streaming deal with an outside studio.

Pachter, the Wedbush analyst, points out that $2 million per half-hour of original television is on par with standard production costs. He doesn't think Netflix has to inspire new customers to sign up and stick around for its deal to pay off.

"If they keep their 27 million customers happy, and fewer people quit, that's great for them," Pachter says.

"Early on, the cost isn't justified by the benefits," he adds. "But if you have four or five successes, if you have great stuff coming out in March, April, May that are all must-haves, that can get you there. No one is going to join Netflix for life to watch 'House of Cards.'"

Thanks to the unusual way Netflix is releasing "Cards" -- all 13 episodes at once -- someone could sign up for a month and cancel. That's what concerns both analysts.

"Why give up the benefit of word-of-mouth that lasts the entire 13-week season?" Pachter asks. "That's the nature of serialized drama. Instead they'll get a few days. [Netflix CEO] Reed Hastings says, 'This is what our customers want,' and he's too arrogant to realize he's wrong."

Netflix often waxes poetic about its immediate-release setup, saying it's catering to binge-watchers. In its fourth-quarter earnings report this month, the company employed a drawn-out metaphor about traditional networks making a book available one chapter at a time, for an hour per week, and then closing the book again.

But Hollywood has its reasons for the serialized setup.

"It's a really risky proposition to completely remove that feedback loop, both from [studio] executives and the audience," says Tullo, the Albert Fried analyst. "You see a lot of shows kind of change direction midseason based on viewership: '24,' 'Sopranos.' You take what works and provide people with more of that."

Pachter is more concerned about viewers signing up to watch series like "Cards" and promptly canceling their subscriptions when they're done.

"It's not like the tech [in Hollywood] only permits weekly broadcasting. There's a reason they don't run the whole season as a marathon," he says. "But Hastings wants to be different. And instead of getting a new subscriber, he's going to get eight bucks."  

Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinesky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinesky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."