Social Software Explored

This was too big for Twitter and I didn’t want to lose it.

From an excerpt I just read (from John Bargh a social psychology professor at Yale)

“We know now that there is a very high likelihood of finding unconscious influences that effect our decisions, preferences, etc.”

Have you ever heard of a third party cookie? Do you know what it is? Are we breaking free from a prison placed on our brains by experience, culture and the thoughts of others or are we entering into a time where we are innately predictable and defensive our perceived notions of free will?

I want to drag and resize everything. Put my grubby hands on it and handle it like a “thing”.

As I go through the interface for our new software version I can’t help but want to drag items around on the page and put them where I want. Even with the increased real estate of a 15 inch laptop it doesn’t seem like its enough. I want to open a Rich Text Window – hold the bottom left corner and the top right corner – slowly stretch it apart and resize it to about 24 inches across. Then when I want to insert a link, I want to touch (physically touch) like where I can feel the rounded beveled edge of the button under my fingers (the button should be about the size of 3 fingers) and when that dialog appears to choose a link – I want to drag it to the center of my viewing area. Resize it the way I did the Rich Text Block.

Cool Plastic Feel

It would be nice to feel the cool plastic of these windows in my hands too – while I am handling them. I then want to push all other things away while I work on this link. When I am done with the link and click the “finish” button with my index and middle finger, I want the most relevant window (which I previously slide away) to reappear in the same dimension and size as it was when I started linking.

Is this really too much to ask?

1.) Man in the Mirror

2.) Remember the Time

3.) PYT (Pretty Young Thing)

What Facebook chooses to do with your content in the coming months/years will unequivocally determine its fate. Period.  I really could stop the post here and we could all move on but for some of you that have been reading and I suggest the following:

1.) Facebook Change of Policy: Why You Should Care

2.) How do You Feel About Facebook Owning Your Content?

3.) Zuckerburg On Who Owns User Data On Facebook: It’s Complicated

lets spend a minute to talk about the possibilities.

What if Facebook did sell your photo to and advertiser and they made a commercial which sold a product which made millions and Facebook got half.

What if Facebook took your idea that you posted in your note and sold it to a VC company who turned your idea into a multi-million dollar product which in turn made millions for Facebook

What if….

The list goes on and if you read Mona’s examples you may be left with an uneasy feeling that you should be protecting your information.  You might even go so far as to stop posting pictures, and notes and comments for fear that your information will be sold to the highest bidder.  You might even become an ultra  radical and remove your profile from the site and start an "I Hate Facebook" Bebo site.  Go ahead, its a free country.

I am going to tell you why you shouldn’t though

Content is King

First of all everyone at Facebook knows that as long as there is fresh new content by new users each day – people will continue to show up.  The content (which some people are losing site of) is the only thing that Facebook has going for it.  From pictures, to status updates and comments.  From videos and links to (yes even) those stupid Bumper Sticker requests.  Its all good.  Facebook has more content then it knows what to do with and that’s why they are wrestling with how they handle it.

The recent updates to the TOS is really just a sneaky way for Facebook to value its site.  Advertising sucks and will continue to suck as users become more savvy towards old school marketing tactics.  Although there is still some value in the number of people that visit a site its the information that is placed into this site which ultimately holds this thing together.

Erich Schonfield sums it up like this:

When you share your data with someone else, whether it be an email or a photo, it becomes their data as well. You cannot normally rescind data you share with other people in an e-mail. So why should a social network be any different?

And I for one agree. Facebook is a digital history book of all your interactions (good or bad) with all of the people that participate in your network.  If that digital history starts to get holes in it the site loses its luster.  The changes are an insurance policy to investors and suitors which Facebook will use to improve its valuation.

What If?

So back to the what if.  Well what if one day Facebook started to use your content for profit with or without your knowledge.  What would you do?  You would do the same thing that everyone else would do.  You would leave.  But before you left, you would leave your mark.  You would tell your friend, your friends friend and anyone else who would listen.  You would start a group.  You would reach out to advocates and you would tell them your story.  You would inform them that Facebook has used your content and is now profiting and that you got nothing.

It will become easier and easier for ordinary people to be heard.  The walls of communication have been knocked down.  Facebook knows this.  They understand this very well.  They don’t want you leave and if they are going to put this at risk then they will fail.  Miserably.

Up to know Facebook and I have an agreement in writing and one in principal. Until either of these agreements are broken I think we are safe.  And if any of you think that its hard to re-build something like Facebook – think again.

Update (2.18.2009): Facebook posts this message at the top of the home page today:

Terms of Use Update

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.
If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Hmmm… thank you for validating my point. No need to worry.

I have been wanting to right this article for a few weeks (er months) now.  It has to do with the changing face of marketing especially around advertising.  Particularly with how things get sold. The article which sparked my interest was actually written late last year and posted on Business Week.  It is entitled: “A Modest Blogging Proposal” The article talks about a growing trend in the blogging world: “pay per post”.  The idea being that a company can pay an important or well followed blogger to essentially influence readers by writing good things about a product or its company.  In the early days of Social Media an idea like this was outlandish and preposterous.  No good blogger would ever write anything that was either untrue or tainted simply to satisfy a sponsor.

In “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell speaks of the power of influential people and challenges, that perhaps it is only a few influential people who “tip” the scales of modern day consumerism.  He tells a a tale about Mavens, Connectors and Salesman and how they can control the most innocuous fads such as the growth of Hush Puppies as the trendiest of trends.  His story and others like it have forced me to think about why we buy and how that has changed over the years.

Influences

We all have influences – the TV, the World wide web, magazines, radio, newspapers. They all play some sort of role in how we make decisions.    Without marketing and advertising many of the products you buy (even consistent products) wouldn’t exist because you wouldn’t know about them.  Those 10-15 pages in the front of almost every magazine with full page ads are there to influence our choices and display branded images that we can relate to.  Without this form of advertising you would have to see a product in use or more likely you would have to hear about it from someone you knew.

A lot of how we buy however is influenced by other people: friends, families, co-workers. What if we erased marketing and advertising and didn’t have sites like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Twitter and every other social network around (eek sounds like the dark ages to me).  Without any marketing, advertising or social networking we would essentially be back to the way it was at the turn of the century, at least in the minds of a product owner.  Consumers had little knowledge of anything outside their local network which if they were lucky stretched a few towns separated by a few miles at most.

What if we really did erase marketing and advertising? How would you even know that a product existed? Really, in a nut shell marketing and advertising is a few people (or companies) that decide which products and brands will sell.  What if marketing and advertising wasn’t the only way you could find out about a product?   What if we had a network of people (at our fingertips) that could help us make these decisions?  At the turn of the century you could picture a few people riding from town to town with carts or wagons selling products that solved this problem or a new product you have never seen that could be used to clean dirt off a pan or your clothes (yikes another scary vision).  But is that essentially where we are?  Full circle?  A few influencers using this new medium to distribute their ideas and thoughts?

Enter Social Media

The ultimate result of the debate spawned by the article “A Modest Blogging Proposal” was this:

…we came to the realization that few bloggers see any conflict in being paid to write a post, even if payment comes from the same company being reviewed.

Hmmm… bloggers who don’t make money on their blog turn to sponsorship by companies who can’t use traditional means like television and magazine advertising to sell products because nobody is listening.  Hmmm…scary.

This is where I feel Wayne had us all beat – back in 1992:

Benjamin: Wayne! Listen, we need to have a talk about Vanderhoff. The fact is he’s the sponsor and you signed a contract guaranteeing him certain concessions, one of them being a spot on the show.
Wayne Campbell: [holding a Pizza Hut box] Well that’s where I see things just a little differently. Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor.
Benjamin: I’m sorry you feel that way, but basically it’s the nature of the beast.
Wayne Campbell: [holding a bag of Doritos] Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but for me, the beast doesn’t include selling out. Garth, you know what I’m talking about, right?
Garth Algar: [wearing Reebok wardrobe] It’s like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that’s just really sad.
Wayne Campbell: I can’t talk about it anymore; it’s giving me a headache.
Garth Algar: Here, take two of these!
[Dumps two Nuprin pills into Wayne's hand]
Wayne Campbell: Ah, Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
Benjamin: Look, you can stay here in the big leagues and play by the rules, or you can go back to the farm club in Aurora. It’s your choice.
Wayne Campbell: [holding a can of Pepsi] Yes, and it’s the choice of a new generation.

In short, when you have 20K+ people listening to almost every word you say (like @davewiner, @scobleizer, @techcrunch, @guykawasaki and many others – http://www.twittown.com/friends/topfollowers_1 ) its hard to not imagine the above scenario.

Fortunately, I don’t see it quite like that.  Sure you will see some of the people in that top list influence decisions (knowingly and unknowingly) and you may also see some of those people in that list take money for services rendered.  But what you won’t see is the change in the fundamentals here: we are all connecting at an alarming rate using common platforms like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc…. and by connecting on these common platforms we are removing the need to rely on traditional means for purchasing decisions.  Some will be swayed but the smarter ones will realize that there’s a choice.  And that choice will come from trusted individuals in a wide circle of friends that have no geographic boundaries.

When I think about what Twitter has done (and continues to do) I can’t help but think about XML and what being "Standards Based" means to the evolution of our human (and non-human) communication.  What XML has done for the Web I am in no doubt convinced Twitter (or something similar) will do for communication.

Another way to look at it is to think about SMTP.  It is just a protocol.  When I was in college we could plug-in to our VAX system and send e-mail to other people in the world.  That quickly evolved to desktop clients like Netscape 2 and Eudora (I know that there were many others).  Eventually, we saw a growth in servers that could handle millions of E-mails a day and what we are left with now is essentially Free E-mail for everyone (thanks Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the like).  All on top of an agreed upon framework – SMTP.

Twitter is a framework.  Twitter is not: IMing, Texting, Friending, Linking, Time wasting.. its a framework. And frameworks let us build bigger and better things easier.

The beauty of Twitters the framework is quite simple:

1.) All messages are routed through a single server, or in this case a cloud of servers.

2.) Discovering, connecting and communicating with individual people is stone simple.

Conversations are open

Since everything goes through a single point of entry and there are ample API’s you get an amazing effect.  Take a look at Monitter.  Type in any three words and you get a glimpse of every conversation in the recent past and present where those words exist.  What is amazing here is that you don’t have to know any of them.  You hear conversations going on around the world.  The US government paid millions (maybe billions) for a similar service – it was called Carnivore.  Twitter enabled this for far less and in far less time.

Framework is key to growth

Twitter started out as a simple website where you could go and communicate.  It really wouldn’t have grown to where it is now without a strong API.  In a short time (about a year and a half) hundreds of desktop and mobile applications sprung up.  Allowing you to post, read and connect on Twitter.  You can equate this growth with the same growth of e-mail after Netscape 2 launched.  Not surprisingly, most people didn’t do to well interfacing with green screens and the desktop interface that Netscape 2 provided allowed more people to send e-mail easily.

We see the same thing happening now with applications like Digsby, TweetDeck, Twirl, iTweet (and many, many more).  Without these applications – Twitters proliferation into the mainstream would not be possible.  Look at it this way.  If Twitter were to try and develop a single interface into Twitter that satisfied every user – they would go broke.  They would need 100′s of developers and it would take forever to release new versions.  Undoubtedly, they would never provide just the right interface.

With a published API Twitter does what they do best – manage Twitter and provide framework enhancements (in the form of API’s and services).  With those API’s developers can develop many different applications that allow people to communicate on the Twitter network.  Each application slightly different then next.  Each providing a unique experience which is capable of capturing many different users’ desires.  So in effect what Twitter gets is an army of developers guaranteeing that Twitter stays alive.  Without Twitter and its framework – TweetDeck dies.

Where is this going?

What we are seeing now is that intelligent entrepreneurs are beginning to extend the framework of Twitter to offer services on top that were not part of the initial Twitter framework.  Take TwitPic for example.  Twitter is only a text based system – there was no thought in the design (or at least in the first iteration of the service) for external document support.  However, since Twitter has published an API websites like TwitPic can piggy back on top of the service and provide easy integration between Twitter and a Photo hosting solution.

No one really knows what is going to happen with Twitter but if you think about some of its quintessential qualitie s it is nothing more than a protocol. An open conversation protocol which will be stretched beyond its limit someday – just like e-mail is today.  The defining moment in Twitters place in history will be when applications available to the mainstream public offer services on top of the framework and the users of consumers of the services are ignorant to the fact that Twitter is the underlying architecture.  Much like most mainstream people today couldn’t even tell you what SMTP is or what it stands for or that they should curse it.

And I doubt anyone made any money from the development of SMTP.

A recent article was published by a very famous (and well liked) blogging network yesterday that really irked me in a way that is requiring more of my effort.  I guess it is a good thing and ultimately I am quite happy that they posted this article because it has fueled a thought I have had for sometime:

I am sick and tired of “non-targeted” advertising

I don’t really care if all of the product and marketing directors know everything about what I buy and read on the Internet.  Truly I do not.  I have nothing to hide and I would release my data under full disclosure if the following qualifications were met:

1.) No one comes up to me on the street and says to me “Hey wanna buy a new mic stand for RockBand” (I like playing RockBand)

2.) I don’t get a flood of e-mails from marketing departments asking me if I would like to test drive the new VW CC (I own a VW Passat)

3.) My information about me is not connected to me in any meaningful way (e.g. I don’t want marketing people to know that I am really Ron West and that I live at 57 Gro…. – ooops)

See in my mind I am just a number – a thing – a buyer/seller in this consumer driven market and the data for what I buy, sell and talk about is really just data.  It may describe my habits and what I am interested in but it is not me.  I want to remain FaceBook profile #66004104.

Your Data is For Sale (sort of)

You can read the post that irks me here but let me point out a few of the important details: (Well first let me start off by giving you the all important title)

Facebook Plans to Make Money by Selling Your Data

C’mon – really do you have to put it that way.  I agree it got my attention – prompted me to read and comment – and I am now writing about it but – ok that title is genius.  But the problem lies in the text:

Starting this spring, companies will be able to selectively target Facebook’s members in order to research the appeal of new products through a polling system called Engagement Ads as demonstrated at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

…

If the Telegraph report is correct, Engagement Ads have had a massive tweak; companies will be able to pose questions to and receive feedback from selected members in real time based on user information that Facebook provides.

Ok that statement “selected members” please – that is misleading.  If we were in the court of law I would simply say “I object your honor” and he/she would say “Sustained”. Then I would ask for the statement “selectively target Facebook’s members” stricken from the record – and the judge would agree again.

Facebook is not going to give companies the ability to target Ron West or any of my friends.  Facebook is not even going to allow companies to target profile #66004104 or #40034994 or any other profile because if you log out of Facebook and you type in the following URL: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=660041048&ref=name you know what you get? Nothing.  A login box.  Would Facebook be stupid enough to allow Pepsi or Coca Cola or any other company in to see that data? No.  That would be just plain stupid.

What Information is For Sale?

Ok – so now for the “shocking” news (at least for some of you):

YOUR DATA IS ALREADY FOR SALE

Well at least your likes/dislikes are already being used to drive advertisements.  Take a trip around Facebook.  Look at the ads in the right hand side of the page.  Notice anything peculiar?  I do.  They are all targeted to information about me.  Especially about where I live.  “Foreclosures in Massachussets”.  One of the commenter’s on the ReadWriteWeb blog post even commented about he is targeted by his sexual preference.

Take a look at the following public information about advertising with Facebook found here:

Target your exact audience with demographic and psychographic filters about real people. The targeting page defaults to people age 18 and older in the United States, but you are encouraged to modify this to reach the most appropriate people for your ad. Be sure to reference the top of the page for an estimate of the number of people who match your criteria. For more information, check out our FAQ for definitions of each target filter.

And if you actually read your EULA agreement (you do know what the EULA agreement is right?) you will see that the data you enter is not only yours but it also belongs to Facebook.  Check out some inserts from the Privacy Policy found here:

Facebook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you Facebook. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they’re more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don’t tell the movie company who you are.

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).

…..

We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you.

So – why am I so fired up? One reason and one reason only – misinformation. I believe that the post by ReadWriteWeb was designed to get people fired up (it worked) and by not providing some of the facts actually misguided lesser informed people.  Isn’t this the reason we are migrating from the Media best now which is governing the mainstream?

I was working late tonight when I received a Facebook Chat request from a friend of mine that I have not spoken to in some time. The request came shortly after this person’s Facebook Status was updated to “NEEDS HELP URGENTLY” – so it wasn’t a total surprise.  When the chat started, I was expecting a request to help with a coding issue or web site problem.  Since we had worked on several projects together I had assumed that this was the nature of the issue.  Here is how the Chat began to transpire:

My friend comes from overseas so this is not a completely far fetched idea but it was very strange that he reached out to me since I am not in his first or second tier of friends.  It all sounded too weird.  I then responded with:

He never really answered my question about helping me guarantee that it was him so I became suspicious at this point and went back to Facebook.  By now a few people had commented on his status and so I questioned them about my friend’s whereabouts – wondering if there was any chance that he was overseas.  I then asked again about confirmation that he was who he said he was:

“worked at the consulting gig for a year” – I almost hired this person for a job at my company and he didn’t even say the magic word “CommonSpot”.  That is all I really need to hear from him and I would have probably sent him whatever he needed.  The conversation finally ended up here:

So there are a few morals to this:

1.) Don’t ask me for money on Facebook when you know my phone number and you worked with me on a CommonSpot project

2.) Be careful if someone asks you for money anywhere on any site

3.) Join a site like Dopplr and if you are a hacker – make sure that you hack that site too and post a trip.

UPDATE: Looks like there were more reports of this exact same thing happening elsewhere that night:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/05/facebook.impostors/index.html

There is a bit of buzz this morning over a rather suspicious twitter post that was posted by @foxnews:

Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay

It has since been removed.  If you missed it here it is:

One of the largest complaints a majority of citizens here in the United States have today is that for whatever reason they don’t really have the opportunity to make a difference.  Especially when it comes to the political actions of the very government which is designed to serve us.

During Abe Lincoln’s great Gettysburg Address – he stated that our government system is a one that is

… of the people, by the people, for the people …

Today the “by the people” really can only occur during election years (theoretically).  I know that I can write a letter to my congressman or go door to door to get signatures on a petition – I am fully aware of the chain of command.  The problem is – that not only does this type of message take long to deliver (unless you are personal friends with a congressman) the message is a one way message.  No one but my congressman (and probably not even the congressman but rather a deputy director or associate) will see this message.

If that congressman is supposed to make decisions based on his/her constituents then this current system needs a boost.  Especially with over 300 million people equally guaranteed a voice.

In comes Social Media!

With Twitter, Blogging, FriendFeed, SocialMedian or any of the other Socially aware sites out their today (and coming in the near future) we are hopefully seeing a radical change to this paradigm of communication.

I have been turned on by a rather amazing phenomon which was started in late September/Early October by the makers of Twitter.  They created a special site called Election 2008 (http://election.twitter.com) which gave site visitors the ability to view real-time Twitter “conversations” happening all over the world.  It was truly remarkable and has lead to some more open sites like Monitter and TweetGrid which allow you to monitor the conversations on any topic.

So while I sat there yesterday listening to the 3 CEO’s of our great auto industry grovel for cash to withstand this economic downturn – I couldn’t help but notice Senator Dodd flipping back and forth between ‘auto industry’ and ‘auto bailout’ on www.monitter.com with his iPhone – tilted oh so slightly as to “pause” the stream when an interesting question arose from the community.

We truly do live in an amazing time.  Truly historic.