I’m all for app development, creativity, and free market capitalism, but this piece in The Wall Street Journal caught me Afro-Carib-Irish eyes this afternoon.

Seems like broadcast and cable channels are considering developing applications for wireless devices that would allow viewers to interact with TV show actors and advertisement.

Just imagine Bobby Bubba sitting on the couch with the iPad on his lap and the 100 inch flat screen in front of him. Also imagine First Lady Michelle Obama having a fit as she tries to convince home slice to get off the couch.

If you work from home and have a couple kids buzzing around, you should be able to deal with the added distraction apps can provide.

I can see a broadcaster leveraging a platform like Twitter or Facebook to deliver content to listeners or viewers wherever they may be, while eliciting their comments. I guess the big difference is that with the app, a broadcaster can engage real time with the viewer while advertisers hawk their products to Bobby Bubba.

I for one don‘t care for the intrusiveness and would rather that businesses that I regularly patronize, like my grocery store, or gas station, offer me a free download of their app. That way I know who is bombarding me with ads, but I wouldn‘t mind so much because I already have a relationship with the advertiser.

I am not surprised by the changes Facebook makes, nor should we be up in arms about how a private organization goes about conducting its business. Facebook is an information aggregator, displayer, and distributor. Information is a product, and Facebook gathers it and sells it to the highest bidders. We should either learn to exploit it for our own gain, or as the author suggests, log-off.

Facebook is introducing a new video chat feature in partnership with Skype. The platform will provide one-on-one chat services powered by Skype. Mark Zuckerberg and company may be responding to a little heat from Google’s new social networking platform, Google +, which also has a video chat feature that allows members within groups to video chat with each other.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to try Google +. As a blogger the last thing I need is another reason to remain floating around in cyberspace with more “friends” and “followers”, most of whom I’ve either not met or seen since I was in the first grade.

More importantly, here, at least sometime down the road, is another reason to worry about spectrum crunch. All it’s going to take is for a few businesses to form focus groups online, or a bunch of AKAs to hold a grad chapter meeting online and boom, you’ll have an increased demand for spectrum.

Yahoo! Finance posted some interesting news about Google and Facebook trying to woo Skype into an Internet marriage.

That great sucking sound you hear is bandwidth leaving the room. Imagine if Facebook had Skype. A Facebook user would encourage their friends to buy webcams and instead of just posting text to a friends wall, you would live chat with any of your friends via a split screen. You could be brought one step closer to a “friend” you haven’t met in person yet. You could also develop a page for professional colleagues where you could collaborate in real time via Skype on your Facebook page. Interesting possibilities.

Thanks to the czarina of tech news, Cecilia Kang at The Washington Post, for herarticle on the settlement agreement between Google and the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC, who I think was unfairly described as a regulatory lapdog by the Center for Digital Democracy, got Google to agree to rework its privacy policy and audit itself periodically. If not, then the company is looking at a fine of $16,000 per violation.

That’s a lot of cheese given Google’s size and blonde ambition for some of Facebook’s market share in the “we’re making money off of free consumer-provided content” industry.

But that’s the thing about free. Social media and social networking is free, at least access wise, for the consumer. The consumer gets to add followers on Twitter like Jesus added disciples in Galilee. Consumers add so many friends on Facebook that shows like “Living Single” and “Friends” would have never got on the air in the first place if social networking were around in the 1990s. All this networking for free.

In the legal world parlance, if a consumer is getting this unprecedented access to people who would otherwise walk past them without speaking, where is the consideration due to Facebook, Google, and Twitter? Why shouldn’t they get something for all they have invested into making the consumer feel like they are putting together their very own virtual mafia family?

Sure one can argue equity for the social network consumer who wants to know how much information about him is being put out there. The real problem, however, is the consumer’s unwillingness to educate himself about the basics of a medium that to this day its power he doth not appreciate.

The bottom-line is that concerns about privacy in the digital age are being blown out of proportion. If you don’t want it out there, keep it to yourself. Otherwise, learn how to leverage and make a market for the content you put out there.