Archive for the 'Social Networks' Category

Ideas About Ideas

Published by Jarred on December 20, 2009 in Advertising, Books, Business, Computing, Consumer Behavior, Copyright, Culture, Design, Environment, Google, Health, Legal Issues, Lifestyle, News, Politics, Privacy, Science, Social Networks, Space and Web 2.0. View Comments

The New York Times recently issued the ninth edition of its annual Ideas feature for its magazine.  I’ve read through most of the entries and found several really fascinating; others were also interesting but neglected to surface other important angles.  I thought I’d use this space to highlight both, seeing as Tropophilia is all about ideas that may bring about change in our world.

The Advertisement That Watches You - I’ll leave the details of this particular implementation to the article, but the essence of the technology is a billboard with a built-in camera that, through facial recognition technology, can tell when anyone within a certain radius of the advertisement is looking at it.  This one, interestingly, changes to its main message when people are not looking.  You can imagine, however, how this technology might develop over time: electronic ads could be powered off until it new there were passersby actually looking at the space.  Facial recognition could also be used to power an impressions-based ads payment system, much like exists on the web: advertisers would only have to pay per “view” or elapsed “eyeball time” on the ad.  Of course, such commercial use of facial recognition technology also raises enormous privacy concerns (How long are camera images kept?  Would the technology eventually be used to identify people and serve ads based on their personal interests, or  even the clothes they were wearing or the book they are reading at that moment?).  It will be interesting to see how this area grows, if at all.

Bicycle Highways - I thought this was a cool idea, but I’m not sure I see it gaining widespread adoption outside of cities that have significant numbers of bike commuters.  What I think is really clever is the possibilities raised with GPS and RFID technology that would allow for bikers to create on-the-fly pelotons, which in turn would be able to gain privileges for traffic lights and such: a mix between EZPass and carpool lanes.  Throw in a custom social network for the city so you could plan your departures in order to meet up with a regular riding group, and this could be really great for those cities with big biking cultures.

The Counterfeit Self - I think this research has implications for the Web.  There has long been a debate about authentication online: when writing a blog, posting comments, or joining a social network, is it “better” for users to have the ability to remain anonymous or pseudonymous, or should they be encouraged or required to use their real identity (obfuscated to whatever degree they prefer).  Many argue that encouraging or requiring authentication would, for example, solve the problem evidence by the (often hateful and troll-like) comments of any given YouTube video.  Opponents summon the right to free dom of speech as a defense of anonymous use of the web.  Some governments, like South Korea, actually require what is referred to as “real name verification” for websites in their jurisdiction that surpass a certain threshold of users; users are required to authenticate against a national registry before they can interact with the site.  Considering the idea of how behavior is influenced by fake identity could offer a fresh perspective in this debate.

Good Enough is the New Great - One aspect that this idea doesn’t cover (and I can’t remember anymore if the Wired article does or not) is information.  Just as consumers are turning to cheap cameras, low-fi music files, and YouTube videos, they are also turning to Twitter for their information fixes.  Many argue that in moving from mainstream to social media as our main source of information, we make a similar sacrifice of quality for convenience.  I think that may be true in the short-term, but I’m hopeful that just like companies are starting to fit better and better sensors into those tiny Flip cameras, so will Twitter eventually recapture some of the fidelity of the “news” that it carries.

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Reconsidering Personal Branding as a Concept and a Practice

Published by Taylor on December 18, 2009 in Careers, Culture, Lifestyle and Social Networks. View Comments

A thought on personal branding from my friend Luis Sandoval, from his latest newsletter:

Ski Slope

All of us have a level of personal value that in today’s connected community driven conversations, we can establish very quickly. This personal value relies heavily on the skills you hold and in how you use them. With access to social networks, online media outlets, and the ability to expand your network, personal branding can catapult you and the knowledge you have to new heights.

This strikes a chord with me, as I’m typically skeptical of “personal branding” as a discipline.  It always feels inherently phony; as something you do to hide anything that doesn’t fit in whatever box you’re carefully crafting for yourself.   But lately I’m giving in a bit to the personal branding evangelists, mainly because I’m gaining more and more confidence that who I am personally and professionally will, on balance, lead to more opportunities than disappointments if it is reflected online.

Part of what always bothered me about personal branding was a sense that you needed to be “on message” at all times. I first experienced social media in a purely social way as a college student on Facebook.  The evolution of social media into a tool for business, politics, and activism still hasn’t changed my prevailing view that certain social networks can and should remain social in nature.  Any friend of mine who seems “on message” on Facebook actually strikes me as being “incredibly dull.”  Thus, any attempt at message discipline on my part results in a bit of self-loathing: I worry that I’m becoming “one of those people” who seem unable to let their guard down long enough to genuinely converse with people online or publish an honest, unfiltered reaction to news or life events.

All of the personal branding experts (and blogging experts, for that matter) will tell you to pick a single topic and stick to it.  The word from social media “pros” is to develop expertise and build your reputation.  I’m interested in many different things, and I go through phases of intense interest in very random industries, issues, concepts, and hobbies.  I liken my consumption of online content to a continuation of the liberal arts education I so enjoyed.  As a result I have trouble focusing with any consistency on one topic, one angle, or one message.  Nowhere is this more apparent than, well, right here: the theme of this blog is “change.”  And to think, Jarred and I worried that would be too limiting.

But now I’ve come to view my own brand—and, by extension, the concept of personal branding—to be inclusive of both my authentic self (versus a caricature crafted for the internet) and of my varied, ever evolving interests.

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Defending Social Media

Published by Taylor on February 2, 2009 in Blogging, Computing, Culture, Facebook, Lifestyle, Privacy, Social Networks and Web 2.0. View Comments

Reader Jared (not Jarred) left a lengthy comment on my post about what I feel is our growing need and ability to create and share content.  In short: our attraction to social media.  I want to pull out what I think is the essence of Jared’s concern, because it merits a more complete response:

Dig[ital] interconnectedness, to me, connotes an element of dystopic irony, a warning that we might not end up getting what we want out of this, and someday find that while social media was created and driven by a fundamental desire and longing for connection…it left that behind at some point in the past. [...]

The more data and content we create, the more noise. We keep finding more noise, more noise, more noise everywhere. White noise. [...]

It’s good stuff, this Internet….as long as we know what we’re getting ourselves into.

The issue of useless “white noise” comes up a lot.  The fact that the web is for all purposes infinite, and the information online limitless, makes the idea of constant content creation by an ever-expanding group of people seem completely overwhelming.  “I can’t even find time to read all the online articles in the NY Times every day” we think to ourselves; “My Google Reader is up to 4,000 unread items!  I don’t need MORE content–I’m barely keeping up with what I’ve already chosen to follow!”

Questioning whether the social media we use and follow will allow us to connect and grow in meaningful ways is almost completely tied to the issue of noise.  After all, absent the noisy distractions that Jared describes, the Internet would be an incredibly useful place.  Anyone who skims through the comments section of any popular YouTube video (a phenomenon captured brilliantly by XKCD) understands the limits of the current social web: when everyone speaks with equal weight and access, a lot of useless and ignorant crap is published online.

But let me argue that the proliferation and widespread adoption of social media–even in the midst of more noise–will be a good thing for a few reasons:

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It’s The Technology, Stupid!

Published by Jarred on January 27, 2009 in Politics, Social Networks and Web 2.0. View Comments
obamawordle

Wordle of President Obama's Inaugural Address

There was a lot of press last week about the horrid conditions in which the new administration found the White House.  Of course, all the floors were mopped and clean, the windows sparkling, the gardens perfectly maintained, the Oval Office tidy and ready for its new occupant.  There is one part of the White House, however, that was left in utter disarray.  To the naked eye it is invisible and mostly buried under the floors, hidden inside the walls, or tucked away in closets.  Yet it is decrepit, neglected to the point of near disfunction.  I’m talking about (surprise!) the technology.

Now don’t get me wrong — I didn’t expect very much.  A Washington Post article describes the surprise of incoming White House staffers who seem to have been expecting to show up with their MacBook Air laptops, hop on a wireless network, and update their Facebook status to “OMFG I’m at my desk in the West Wing, feeling like such a n00b, LOL!  Top secret clearance, FTW!”  That would just be silly.

Yet while I had low expectations, the conditions still managed to shock me.  New members of the administration showed up to find no computers at all.  No loaner laptops.  On the few computers that were there and worked, the e-mail system was broken to the point of forcing staffers to route messages through their personal Gmail accounts.  Maybe it was because they were using Windows 2000.  Even some of the phone lines were down.  I mean, really?  I wouldn’t have expected this in 2001, let alone in 2009.

But as I mentioned, there’s been a lot of press and blogging done about this already.  What I want to talk about is how this situation is symptomatic of a much larger problem — and, as with any large problem, a very large opportunity as well.

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Will The Personalized Web Filter Out Diversity?

Published by Jarred on January 14, 2009 in Book Reviews, Consumer Behavior, Culture, Search, Social Networks, Sociology and Web 2.0. View Comments

About a year ago, I wrote that I had received a book for Christmas called The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr.  I’m a little embarrassed to say that it was only two weeks ago, on my post-holiday flight back to California, that I finally finished it after ten months of letting it collect dust.

Carr’s attitude about the rise of cloud computing, social networking, and all the other web 2.0 buzztrends caught me off guard.  While he seems to marvel at and mostly celebrate the speed and scale at which this phenomenon has grown and subsequently become integral to modern life, he does so with a very cautionary and sometimes pessimistic tone.  I guess I should have expected as much after reading his piece in the Atlantic last summer (hat tip to Joel for passing it along) called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”.  Though I don’t share all of his concerns, it is refreshing to find a voice like his among the generally over-enthusiastic technorati (myself included).

Carr highlights a particularly interesting threat in the chapter he titles “The Great Unbundling.”  While granting that the jubilation over the democratizing and barrier-lowering nature of the Internet is mostly well deserved, he also warns that these characteristics come with potential harm.  What harm?  In short, Carr argues that the speed and personalization offered by the Internet facilitate our natural human tendency to cluster into isolated groups that can deafen and blind us to differing opinions.

Carr’s main evidence is an experiment conducted in 1971 by a Nobel Prize winning economist named Thomas Schelling.  The experiment consisted of a grid of squares and a set of white and black markers.  After randomly distributing these markers to represent an “integrated” community, he moved the markers around based on the rule that no one marker could have more than 50% of its immediate neighbors be of the opposite color.  This rule, Schelling posited, mirrored a natural instinct that humans possess: to be closer to people similar to ourselves than we are to those who are different.  After moving pieces one at a time based on this rule, he ended up with one all-white cluster and one all-black cluster.  Self-segregation, Schelling concluded, is the natural result of our instinctual preference to be closer to those that resemble us than to those who differ from us.

Extrapolating from these results, Carr hypothesizes that because the Internet removes so much friction from the market for information, self-segregation will happen much more quickly and completely online than, say, in a once-integrated neighborhood that slowly segregates over many years into two or more distinct socioeconomic or racial groups.  In my opinion, however, his interpretation of Schelling’s experiment, and his application of it to the Web, is flawed from the start.

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