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February 18

Are we teaching open social networking?

Another discussion in the open!

The NY Times recently hosted/posted Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog: "Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?"

A collection of thought leaders (Martin Baily, Danah Boyd, Steve Chazin, Judith Donath, Nicole Ellison, and William Reader) responded with some pretty insightful ideas, and there has been much discussion in follow up.

As note in my comment there, I see a tendency toward focusing on specific social networking sites. This limits the ability to examine and understand the phenomenon. MySpace replaced Friendster as the leader by offering what we the people demanded, and Facebook, LinkedIn, and others are trying to (and succeeding in their efforts to) redefine the space. The collection of people we relate to and incorporation of communication tools are the keys to success in this space, not “the site.”

These sites may not last forever, but we have always been engaged in social networking — now supported by technology. The top 5 SN sites could crash and burn tomorrow and we would still do what we do. It’s a revolution, and it’s here, now. Let’s usher in The Relationship Economy!
http://carterfsmith.blogspot.com/2008/01/revolution-called-relationship-economy.html

In response to the Freakonomics Quorum, Paul Glazowski has a recommendation for parents: teach kids (as well as yourselves) as much as possible about any and all networks. He observes that though a percentage of Web users find them useless, redundant, and banal, tens of millions have found such services to expedite tasks - for work or personal purposes - and essentially streamline their lives significantly. There is, after all, something important to saving time and energy.

I think the presumption is that parents know what networking is all about. I'm not so sure that they do! Today's younger (and many older) networkers often connect just to connect. Where did they learn that from? Is it possible that a parent would sit down and explain why everyone at their office came over last night for a dinner when all that parent does when they come home from work is complain about everyone they work with? Do we really think that kids understand (or care) why their folks stop at some chamber of commerce mixer after work?

I think we have to assume that people connect 'cause they think it's the right thing to do, but many have no idea why.

Here's an installment on the challenge:

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=04ced4ee44c4b9104e8e

What do you think?

7:31 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | The Relationship Economy

War of the Worlds - Spoofing Social Networking

BOOK ONE/CHAPTER ONE - THE EVE OF THE WAR

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought ofthem only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.

The War of the Worldsby H. G. Wells [1898]

In "Social Networking Sites Linked to Poor Social Networking Skills," Barry Foy reports:

A study released yesterday draws a strong connection between websites devoted to "social networking" and the inability of their subscribers to network socially. The survey's results suggest that teenagers who conduct social activities via the internet are likely to end up singularly ill-equipped to conduct social activities.

On the plus side, the report goes on to say, many of them develop impressive skills at making pornographic videos with cellphone cameras.In the Stanford University experiment, 30 teenagers were banned from their computers and forced to engage in face-to-face social interplay for a period of three weeks. For nearly all, this proved challenging.

Among the most difficult adjustments they reported were: 1) eliminating frequent pauses they had learned to introduce into conversation to allow for advertising, 2) getting used to just how few actual human heads are highlighted from behind by customized "wallpaper" and 3) finding the cursor.

The humor is perhaps subtle (reminiscent of War of the Worlds?), but the two-pronged message is clear. First, social networking has arrived. You don't spoof things that are not working. Sometimes folks take their time to write about things that aren't going to make it (like the HD DVD that just admitted defeat by BluRay), but no one takes the time to spoof the nearly dead. Second, there may be a bit of reality in this post. How long have today's youth been called socially unaware, only to be defended by well-meaning parents and psychologists who pointed to intereaction in online social networks.

I think the problem we have here is one of transition. The old-school networking model (mostly face-to-face) required social skills like looking at someone (not their shoes) while speaking to them. It required speaking in complete, understandable sentences, not slurring, speaking in code, and using half-finished sentences. And most of all, it required actually finding some value in the relationship, not just connecting for the sake of connecting.

No matter how social we (or our kids) get, you can't learn that stuff behind a computer screen.

What do you think?

7:30 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | Computers and Internet

If traditional marketing won't work in The Relationship Economy, what will?

Relationships, that's what!

In Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up, Business week reminds us that "Social networking was supposed to be the Next Big Thing on the Internet."

The article covers a variety of noteworthy points:

Advertising on social networking sites is growing fast. Last year global ad spending on these sites shot up 155%, to $1.2 billion, expected to jump 75% this year, to $2.1 billion.
The forecasts may prove unrealistic. Besides the slowing user growth and declining time spent on these sites, users appear to be growing less responsive to ads, according to several advertisers and online placement firms.
Google didn't generate as much revenue from social networking as expected.
Many people on social networking sites pay little to no attention to the ads because they're more interested in kibitzing with their friends.
Social networks have some of the lowest response rates on the Web, advertisers and ad placement firms say. Marketers say as few as 4 in 10,000 people who see their ads on social networking sites click on them, compared with 20 in 10,000 across the Web.

So what should we be doing to get the attention of the people formerly known as the audience? Perhaps we should treat our markets as conversations . . . perhaps we should engage our customers in dialog, getting to know them before we tell them what we have "just for them." Possibly, we should stop selling, and start listening . . .

In The Relationship Economy, the first step is the relationship. We are sick and tired of the push-marketing model, and are demanding that the pull (our pull) be implemented. The days of build it and they will come are gone. We want you to build, make, and provide stuff that we tell you we want. We'll only tell you in a conversation. The only way you will get it is if you are listening.

That's how relationships work.

Take a look at the new model, brought to you by some of the Cluetrain Manifesto authors.

The updated theses (numbering is not a mistake -- he skipped a few) as posted by Charlene Li - Josh Bernoff at Social Media Today.

1. Advertising as we know it will die.

2. Herding people into walled gardens and guessing about what makes them "social" will seem as absurd as it actually is. (Facebook is his example.)

3. We will realize that the most important producers are what we used to call consumers. (Yup.)

4. The value chain will be replaced by the value constellation. (Many connections.)

5. "What's your business model?" will no longer be asked of everything. (What's the business model for your kids?)

6. We will make money by maximizing "because effects". ("Because effects" are what happen when you make more money because of something than with it.) E.g. search and blogging.

8. We will be able to manage vendors at least as well as they manage us. (Agreements between companies and customers shouldn't be skewed in favor of the companies.) At Harvard Law they call this VRM -- vendor relationship management -- which is what Searls is working on (projectvrm.org).

10. We'll marry the live web to the value constellation. (The Live Web isn't just about stars. Relationships of anybody to anybody.)What do you think?

7:30 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it

Big Brother -- the future of social networking?

In no less than two articles I reviewed this morning, there was the undercurrent of "Big Brother" watching our every move. That's not the Big Brother you've been watching on television. That's the "Big Brother" that was the character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. I've had enough of these conversations to predict the responses by most of my contacts, but here's another opportunity for discussion.

In Science Daily, the article Wireless Monitoring Of People and Things: Future Of Social Networking?: observs that "Electronic tags promise to create what some call the 'Internet of things,' in which objects and people are connected through a virtual network." Imagine having instant access to your possessions, and being able to set up your system to tell you when you left really important things behind.

This sounds a lot like an upgrade of the "As seen on TV" sales of The Clapper that helped us find things when our memory failed us. Technology experts predict that RFID tags will soon be incorporated in consumer devices, such as cell phones, laptops and music players. Each tag, which looks a bit like a thin, flexible credit card, costs about 20 cents to produce. A specialized reader can scan the card through any non-metal barrier and from up to 30 feet away, depending on the type of tag. RFID tags are miniature computer chips that contain far more information than a barcode.

Also, you can write to an RFID tag--meaning the signal could not only identify the item, but what group it belongs to, when it was last seen, and other information. The technology has already proven its use in tracking goods. A manufacturer can identify a cart of hamburger patties and know which plant it came from, when it shipped out and a history of its temperature during transit. UW computer-science staff members have already requested to participate in the study so that they will be able to track their equipment as it is moved through the building.

Another useful tool mentionned by the author was the Friend Finder. This allows you to see where your friends are, and connect with them much easier than expending the effort to call them and say "hey, where are you." There's another article on Friend Finders at AFP where a new social network site, Gypsii, allows you to track your friends like the police track a fugitive. "The real time location-based element of Gypsii adds a new dimension to the social networking phenomenon," said the founder and chief executive of the company, Dan Harple.

Gypsii is compatible with other big social networking sites, allowing the core location-specific functionality to be transferred to a user's Facebook page, showing their friends' and their own location. The tracking is made possible with (as you can imagine) your friend's mobile phone. The location of a mobile phone can be identified in two ways. The first is via a GPS chip, which allows a device to recognise its position based on communication with a constellation of satellites around the planet. The second is by triangulation. A phone sends signals to communication towers located around it and by measuring the speed with which signals travel to these different base stations a position can be determined.

The ease with which phones can be located -- to within 25-50 metres of their position, say experts -- has sparked a wave of innovation in the mobile phone industry. I am very interested in these technological developments, and can't wait to hear the dialog!

So, what do you think?

7:29 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it

THIS CANNOT BE REAL! TSA - DHS Site has been hacked!

THIS CANNOT BE REAL. There's no way that a bureaucracy-laden government agency gets it . . .

I happened across a New York Times Article that covered what they purported to be a blog that was sponsored by the Transportation Safety Administration. The article claimed that the site has links to independent bloggers and real news reports, including negative ones. Allegedly, the site even allows anonymous posters and publicly-viewable comments.

"A whole lot of our employees are really anxious to engage with the public," Mr. Hawley, the Director of the TSA was "quoted" as saying. The NYT writer reported that after the blog went up on Jan. 30, many reader responses were angry and sarcastic. But later, a greater sense of civil discussion set in.

Here's a look at the alleged blog, in case you are inclined to assist me with my quest to root out the real owner. It's called Evolution of Security, and claims "This blog is sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process."

P-Lease . . . do they expect us to believe this nonsense? Having spent several years working in one government position or another, I can tell you that the last thing any government agency wants is to hear what their "customers" think about their "service." It's not like they need to make anyone happy. What would we do if we didn't lke the "service" we got from the TSA -- go to another airport in another country?

OK, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend that a government employee did ask permission to run with a public blog. The process for approval is so archaic with the government that you literally would rather try to get God and Congress to agree on something. Form after form, approved by no less than five levels of leadership, would have to be completed, reviewed, returned, and resubmitted. The Internet hasn't been around long enough for this to have received approval -- especially in an election year!

And then we're talking the likelihood of accuracy for those posting -- the "meet our bloggers" section shows that none have more than 5 years with the organization. R-i-g-h-t!!!

The URL appears to be spoofed to http://www.tsa.dhs.gov/blog/index.shtm, but I have friendly hackers who are checking into the validity of this. It is also possible that the DHS site itself has been hacked, but I think there would be a little more craziness posted . . . and wouldn't the media have covered this by now? Slashdot covered an incident like this at LAX TSA about a month ago. I wonder why they haven't done a follow-up! Others in the blogosphere have hit on this, but they appear to be buying into the cover-up.

As a taxpayer, I hope that our federal law enforcement agencies swoop down on the perpetrator of this fraudulent site. As a periodic flier, I would love to believe that the crappy attitudes we find so often on the other end of the x-ray machine might somehow change for the good. As someone who believes in the power of The Relationship Economy, I hope that the corporate world takes a serious look at the hurdles they will need to overcome and uses this as an challenge!

What do you think?