On Thursday, I noticed something a little funny with my Droid Incredible. The phone number of a contact that I frequently called was suddenly missing. By Friday, it had turned into full blow phone number armageddon, whereby the phone numbers of every nearly single one of my contacts were missing, yet their names, email addresses, and other contact information remained. After going into my Gmail contacts out on the server side (at Gmail.com) I was further dismayed to see that the phone numbers were also removed from each contact out on the server. What this meant is that Gmail had deleted my contacts and the Droid Incredible had auto-synced with Gmail and during this sync the server side pushed down blank phone number fields and overridden the phone numbers on the phone with blank data.
Just for a second, I’ll take a quick step back and explain how contact and calendar sync on the Droid actually function in case you’re not familiar with the Droid OS . Droid basically syncs your gmail contacts and your Google calendar with the Droid’s contacts and calendar. So it’s totally odd that all of a sudden the phone numbers would be missing. What’s even more ridiculous is that Google would build a contact sync function that would OVERWRITE data fields with blank data. What I’m saying is that the phone numbers of the contacts on the Gmail side of things were somehow, though a Gmail FUBAR move, deleted, but why would the blank phone number fields then be pushed down to the phone? Why wouldn’t the phone just re-sync with the Gmail contacts out on the server side and re-upload the missing phone numbers back into Gmail? Google – how can you not figure this out?
After a little research, it turns out that many other Droid users have had this same mysterious “contact missing phone numbers” issue. There’a a pretty detailed forum thread on the subject. Droid users beware of this bug. Luckily, I was able to easily recover my contacts using Time Machine, and re-sync the restore contacts with Gmail, and then have these restored contacts pushed back down to my Droid. The moral of the story is – backup your machine regularly, because not even Google has their act together when it comes to mobile address book syncing.
Life really does go by fast. In less than 3 years I’ve gone from a bean counting accountant to the creator of 2 companies, one of which is a ridiculous new website that shares people’s entertaining voicemails publicly. Since Audioo’s launch on May 24th, we’ve been getting a lot of press and attention – TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, Gizmodo, Gorilla Mask, as well as a Los Angeles Business Journal cover story. Traffic is really nice right out of the gate. I won’t give exact numbers but let’s say I think we’re really onto to something big and it could just be a matter of time before we break the next big celebrity voicemail scandal and Audio blow ups bigger than a Michael Bay film. Audioo’s content is quite entertaining. Who couldn’t use a good laugh these days?
In light of Audioo’s attention, I’m humbled to have been asked to appear as a guest on This Week in Social Media with host Sean Percival today, June 17th at 11am PST. Past guests include Brian Solis (principal of FutureWorks PR, author of Engage, and all around PR maverick) and Muhamed Saleem of Digg fame. I promise to be opinionated, direct, and maybe a little sarcastic. Perhaps they’ll let me give a little background as to why I even joined MySpace / Facebook in the first place and why I’m still using these services today. Overall, it should be a good time.
Watch the full TWiSM episode 3 above.
BTW – I’m NOT a social media expert in any way. I fact I cringe every time I hear people claim they are. The attention on Audioo is actually natural. By doing something ridiculous (taking voicemail, which is traditionally private, and making it public), we’ve been able to cause a lot of controversy / polarization and its exactly this controversy that’s working to our advantage, enabling us to attract attention and new users of the service.
In my opinion, Audioo is not about privacy, it’s merely about entertainment. Who doesn’t enjoy a little comedy? However, the entertainment is not what’s getting us all the attention. Scaring the heck out of uptight people into believing that their voicemail is not public is what’s actually getting the attention. It’s pretty funny when you step back and look at it. Privacy is dead. It was dead a long time ago and I think we’re all just now getting used to it. You really think your social security number is safe with the hundreds if not thousands of outlets that you’ve given it to over the course of your life? I don’t think it’s safe for a minute. So why’s it so surprising that your voicemail, email, and text messages could be publicly shared? Really, why is that so surprising?
Ryan Born is the Founder & CEO at HAAWK, Inc., which ranked as the USA's #16 fastest growing media company on the 2024 Inc 5000 and was acquired by SESAC Music Group (Blackstone) in 2024. He is also the Founder & Former CEO of AdRev (AudioMicro, Inc.), a VC backed rights management and content licensing network, which was acquired by Zealot Networks in 2014-15 for $25M cash and which today is part of Downtown Music Holdings / FUGA. AdRev ranked as the USA's #5 fastest growing media company on the 2015 Inc. 500 (#162 overall, #5 in LA). Previously, Ryan was an investor in and VP of Finance for WireImage (acquired by Getty Images in '07 for $208M) and an angel investor in NewCondosOnline and InternetMarketingInc. He has been a guest lecturer at Emory University, UCLA, UCSB, Loyola Marymount and various industry conferences and events. Learn More.
