February 2010
Privacy Is Old
Lohr says our approaches to online privacy are no good, but the experimental alternatives he mentions are at best mildly interesting, but don’t seem to be strong in any way:
- Steve Lohr, Redrawing the Route to Online Privacy
On the Internet, things get old fast. One prime candidate for the digital dustbin, it seems, is the current approach to protecting privacy on the...
Operational Publicy
Jeff Jarvis was nearly marooned due to the recent storm in the Northeast, but thi sled him to a new insight about the powerful opportunities for business through operational publicy: simply publishing what used to be private.
- Jeff Jarvis, Operaitonal Transparency
I am in Tampa waiting to fly back home to New Jersey and, thanks to the snowicane but rather than sitting in the usual...
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Yet Another Earthquake: The Pressing Need For...
During the Haitian Earthquakes first frightening days, the web world reacted in nearly instinctive fashion, clamoring for help, money, and technological approaches to mobilizing. The world’s larger response led to emergency crews trying to assist, doctors and nurses working in makeshift hospitals, and people the world over sending money and emergency supplies.
Even so, the devastation...
Nick Bilton On The Future Of User Experience
Nick Bilton jumps in on the concept that future OS’s are likely to move away from the file/folder/desktop metaphor of Mac OS and Windows to something more like iPhone (as I did, here, here, and here):
Back in the dark ages of personal computing, if you wanted to look through the programs on your machine and, say, open a Microsoft Word document from the floppy drive, you would need to...
Twitter Backlash Over CNN And MSNBC Talking Heads:...
- Jon Graef, Twitter users tell CNN anchors to STFU during health care summit
Here’s but a sampling of the discontent that as arisen on Twitter with CNN (note: if these are your handles, and you don’t want it to appear here, send us a DM @CNCollegenews):
@thisisrobthomas: cnn speaking about the health care summit like they’re watching football. hey people, this is not a fucking game. ...
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How Private Or Public Should Location Be?
The controversy about location privacy is heating up: we know because they are talking about it in congressional hearings, so we can expect all sorts of ‘intertubes’ nonsense coming from that.
- Alexander Howard, Congress hears testimony on location-based services and online privacy
“Location-based applications and services are springing up each day like wildfire,” said...
Palm's Days Are Numbered?
The tectonic shifts in the smartphone market are bringing down the roof on Palm, which is shortfalling at least 30% of expectations.
- John Paczkowski, Time to Start Looking for a Buyer, Palm?
So much for Palm’s (PALM) big recovery. This morning the company lowered its fiscal-year revenue forecast and warned of an ugly 30 percent shortfall in its current quarter. Palm expects third quarter ...
Is Yelp The Mafia?
Yelp is again in the news for extortionate sales practices alledged by small business owners (see More Complaints About Yelp Business Practices, Now In Chicago, and Is Yelp Committing Extortion?), but this time they are headed for court:
- Christie Lagorio, Yelp Lawsuit Alleges Extortion Tactics
Customer-review website Yelp’s sales tactics included demanding $300 monthly payments in...
Going Public: Business Publicy
I have been stewing for several weeks about this piece by Stephanie Clifford of The NY Times, about companies and individuals airing their business disagreements in public, as a new way to bring pressure to bear:
- Stephanie Clifford, Corporate Antagonism Goes Public
When Time Warner Cable was tussling over fees with the News Corporation, it did something that would have been unthinkable in...
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The Internet Will Save TV: Social TV
Instead of stealing viewers away, the social web is augmenting the experience of TV watching and making it much more social, leading to an uptick in viewing:
- Brian Stelter, Water-Cooler Effect: Internet Can Be TV’s Friend
Many television executives are crediting the Internet, in part, for the revival.
Blogs and social Web sites like Facebook and Twitter enable an online water-cooler...
Augmented Publicy
One of the most common social embarassments is forgetting someone’s name, and so the idea of some application to identify people when you meet them is very interesting.
TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) has demoed a cell-phone app that does just that:
- Erika Jonietz, Augmented Identity
TAT built the augmented ID demo, called Recognizr, to work on a phone that has a five-megapixel camera...
Geo-Fencing: The Future Of Advertising Is Outside...
We are starting to see the outlines of a revolution in geolocational, text-messaging advertising. The North Face is one of the leaders in so-called ‘geo-fencing’ advertising, where ‘geo-fences’ are created within a certain distance from physical stores, and when people pass inside those fences — and if they have opted in to advertising from the company —...
Is Chatroulette Really A Way To Regain Lost...
I don’t buy it:
- Nick Bilton, The Surreal World of Chatroulette
Our lives used to be private by default, yet with the advent of each new social network, privacy has become increasingly difficult to preserve. Every status update or photo we share online becomes an indelible tattoo of where we’ve been and who we’ve been with.
In contrast, Chatroulette is a social Web site that allows...
The Right To A Secret Life? Wrong!
The media’s response to Tiger Woods’ attempts to get back in their good graces prove once again that there is no right to a secret life.
Here’s a piece John Feinstein at the Washington post, who says, out of one side of his mouth, that of course Woods has a right to privacy, and out of the other says that Woods owes it to the people that made it him rich to tell all. Oh,...
JooJoo Is Pretty
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Don't Be Afraid Of Foursquare, But We Need Circles...
“Team Foursquare” published a we-get-it-donn’t-worry sort of post, responding to the Please Rob Me induced concerns about geolocational privacy:
Anyway, we definitely “get” the larger issue here - location is sensitive data and people should be careful about with whom and when they share it. And at foursquare, we do everything we can to make sure that our users know with what...
Social Architecture: A Webinar Series
Starting in mid March, I plan to launch a webinar series on the topic of Social Architecture, which is a user experience oriented approach to the design and analysis of social tools.
In recent years, I presented some of these ideas in various conferences — like the Web 2.0 Expo, and others — but those are too few and far between, and it is hard (if not impossible) to develop any ...
Adina Levin on Publicy
Adina Levin relates a conversation we had a few weeks ago in San Francisco. She seems to have grasped my ideas on publicy and smoothed them out in a great way:
- Adina Levin, How boundaries are formed in a more transparent world
Last night at the Social Business Tweetup in San Francisco, I had a conversation with Stowe Boyd about new ways boundaries will be constructed in a world of...
Failin.gs Is A Bad Idea
Kashmir Hill, in a post in which she examines the privacy gaffes of Google Buzz, Facebook, and Chatroulette, mentioned a new offering from Urban Daddy called Failin.gs:
Urban Daddy wants to turn friends against one another. It plans to launch Failin.gs. In an email inviting users to try a beta version, Urban Daddy says:
Welcome to Failin.gs, a dangerous new website where your friends can post...
Google Buzz Is Not "Designed For Meaning"
Umair suggests that Google’s design for Buzz exhibits bad design: it is not ‘designed for meaning’:
- Umair Haque, Google Buzz and the Five Principles of Designing For Meaning
Once upon a time, Google laid down the law: we’ll never bundle stuff the way Microsoft does — because that’s evil. But Buzz is bundled with Gmail so tightly, it’s the first thing you...
Google Buzz: Next Stop, Mornington Crescent!
Kevin Marx dissects Google Buzz, and in so doing intruduces me to Mornington Crescent, a cultural reference I had never encountered before. It seems that Marx believes Buzz is sort of a mess, although perhaps a promising one.
Update on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 2:35PM by Stowe Boyd
corrected to Mornington Crescent, thanks to Ed Simnett.
Bit.ly Graffiti
Google Buzz: Scoble's Suggestions, And An Open But...
Robert Scoble assails Google Buzz (Google Buzz copied FriendFeed’s worst features, why?) but if you dig into his complaints he seems to want a better Friendfeed.
Robert argues for features that will make it more usable for a guy like him, following bazillions and being followed by bazillions. No matter how you slice it, he is calling for a Buzz rebuzzed to suit his needs. Which is what he and...
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Not A Wall, A World: The Future Of User Experience
I loved Minority Report’s gestural interface, as a scifi representation of what we think a police state might use to watch us, given the ability to move through a nearly infinite amount of data — and time — searching for clues.
Apparently, that interface is not just the stuff of Hollywood, as it appears that John Underkoffler, the guy that mocked up that experience for the...
Nokia Augmented Reality Mockup
Terminator goggles!
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Social Innovation In User Experience: Tiles,...
Microsoft has gotten a lot of people excited with the radical break that Windows Phone 7 represents. Behind the user experience shift is the simple realization that phones aren’t really small computers. Especially computers from the ’90s, with folders, files, and a desktop. See my recent post, Why Closed Works: Moving Past Steampunk Thinking About The Future Of Computing, which...
Forbes 20: Gee, I'm Connected
Taylor Buley pulled some data out of Google Buzz, and figured out who the folks at Forbes magazine are talking to. Surprise! I am connected!
I think it might be a bit much to say that this group represents the ‘most media-connected’ in our crazy media connected world, but that’s what Buley thinks.
- Taylor Buley, Google Buzz Reveals Tech’s Twenty Most...
Google Buzz: Privacy And Surprise Should Not Be In...
A huge backfire for Buzz, based on the gaping loophole in privacy when Buzz exposes all sorts of things unexepectedly.
I mentioned that the Buzz model — which lets people who are in your email contact list see other contacts identities, and even exposes their email addresses — might cause problems for a lot of people, including people involved in an acrimonious divorce.
Via...
“The perfect lie detector is the end of privacy.”
– Judith Donath
Erick Schonfeld On PR Lies
Erick writes about a recent experience with AOL, who actually asked Techcrunch to change the facts in a story about Ted Cahall, then CTO, leaving the company. Tricia Primrose Wallace stated we was not leaving, at a time when Cahall was telling his team he was leaving. Then a week laterm AOL spins on a dime and ‘breaks’ the story, and informs Techcrunch that there had been a...
Fred Wilson Agrees: Buzz Is Friendfeed 2.0
I posted the other day that Buzz feels like Friendfeed, which was not an expeience that many of us liked. It’s all about A-listers holding court in a world made up of chat rooms. Fred Wilson seems to agree:
- Fred Wilson, Thoughts On Buzz
Buzz copies the FriendFeed user experience for the most part. And as much as I admire FriendFeed and the people who built it, I don’t believe ...
Google's Anti-Buzz: Too Much Publicy?
Looks like Google has run afoul of people’s publicy concerns: too much information being outed. Also, it seems that people don’t want to follow their landlord, and other people they interact with though email:
- Joshua Brustein, The Negative Buzz Around Google’s New Social Network
Google’s new social networking service, Buzz, has been live for just two days. But it is already...
Social Business Summit: Publicy And The Erosion Of...
The program for the Dachis Group’s upcoming Social Business Summit has been unveiled, and it’s a powerful group of presenters. Dachis Group folks are out in strength, like Lee Bryant, Kate Niederhofer, Peter Kim, and Jeff Dachis. And the other folks are a who’s who: Doug Rushkoff, Charlene Li, Jaime Punishill (Citibank), Jackie Huba (Ant’s Eye View), Frank Eliason...
First Look: Google Buzz
A few days have passed, and I have started to get a sense of Google Buzz. There is certainly meat on the bones there, but here are some questions and observations:
My World Is Not In Gmail
There is a real difference between the people that you work with via email — which is the starting point of your Buzz network, based on integration with Gmail — and the folks that you might...
MySpace Musical Chairs
Kara Swisher dissects the ins-and-outs at MySpace, which reads like one of the bloodier of Shakespeare’s plays, where all the players lie dead in a heap at the curtain fall. MySpace meanwhile is falling like a meteorite and causing serious hemorrhaging for News Corp.
I have stated from the beginning that they paid way too much for MySpace, and that it doesn’t fit into...
Is Journalism Just A Form Of Art?
An insight I should have had already, and maybe has been bandied about without my noticing: is journalism just a form of art? In the new world of exploding web media, and collapsing direct subsidies (‘salaries’ from publishers), maybe journalists are just like musicians, painters, dancers and actors.
Deanna Zandt had a Twitter exchange with Andrew Golis in which she suggested this...
iGeneration: Raising Socially Wired Children
Young kids are becoming more wired than their parents and Millenials because of their exposure to the web and cell phones: social tools are shaping their minds and our culture faster all the time.
- Sharon Jayson, Tech-savvy ‘iGeneration’ kids multi-task, connect Move over, Millennials. You’re not the younger generation anymore.
For the past decade, you were the ones to...
Facebook Suicide
It does not surprise me in the least that Facebook is blocking two programs that help people delete their accounts, nor am I surprised that USAToday has a gleeful article talking about people ‘reclaiming their lives’ buy dropping out of social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
- Marco della Cava, Some ditch social networks to reclaim time, privacy
As the social networking train...
Feudalism 2.0 In The World Of Analysis
Forrester recently announced a new blogging policy for it’s analysts, which basically blocks them from writing personal blogs that overlap Forrester’s coverage areas, as reported by Carter Lusher at SageCircle. He points out that Forrester has had a pretty aggressive policy on analyst freedoms in the past:
This move – if true – is very consistent with Forrester’s efforts to manage...
Google Making Gmail Social?
- Ashlee Vance, NY Times
Later this week, Google will introduce add-ons to Gmail that let users post and view messages about their day-to-day activities, according to a person at Google briefed on its plans. This simple tweak to Gmail will allow Google to mimic the status updates that have driven much of the success of Facebook and Twitter, as people return to the services again and again...
Anne McCrossan on Social Value and Social Fees
Anne McCrossan makes some valid points about the power inherent in social belonging, and the challenges of creating for-fee walled gardens:
The Synaptic Fluid Of Social Business
Technology is a finite game. It will ultimately solve all the problems it’s capable of addressing, now matter how shiny and new it seems now. What’s a more infinite game are the opportunities of human connectivity,...
Circles Of Insight (DRAFT)
post will describe the notion that specifics about social identity and social actions erode as they move away from the origin. So a post that starts out as a specific comment from me to a friend, like this
stoweboyd: hey @gregarious, are you going to SxSW this year?
would be seen just like that to people that are firends of mine and of @gregarious. A friend who only knows @gregarious, and...
Gartner's (Hedged) Predictions About Social...
Gartner has released a report that says the social tools are moving fairly quickly into the world of business, and they make five extrapolations based on what is going on today:
via email (password protected report here)
1. By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
During the next...
Web Passports?
Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and development officer, proposed that we may need to institute Internet driver’s licenses for people and applications. The idea is that we can track people who are doing bad things, and potentially take their license to use the Internet away.
- Barbara Kiviat, Driver’s licenses for the Internet
What Mundie is proposing is to impose...
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Demonizing Twitter: Fear Of The Future
Recently, David Carr wrote a piece called Why Twitter Will Endure, in which he expressed some surprise at his own conversion to Twitter advocate:
On Twitter, anyone may follow anyone, but there is very little expectation of reciprocity. By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are...
The Institute for Collapsonomics
collapsonomics, n.
The study of economic and state systems at the edge of their normal social and economic function, including preventative measures to avoid destructive feedback loops and vicious cycles.
via collapsonomics.org
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The New Spatialism: A Talk From Reboot
The folks at Reboot have (finally) gotten around to uploading the videos from the 2009 conference. Here’s my talk on New Spatialism: Reclaiming The Social Web.
- via Reboot
More of our social interaction in moving from the primitive but relatively open and egalitarian world of the blogosphere onto a set of closed or at least controlled applications. How can we — as a...
Rackspace's Mike Mayo on Mac OS 11
Based on his experience with the iPad SDK, Mike Mayo is wondering about what it means for Mac OS 11:
- Robert Scoble, Rackspace’s iPhone developer reveals what’s inside the iPad SDK
“I feel like it’s most likely a glimpse into what eventually will be MacOS 11 and in some ways that’s scary,” said Mayo. “If this becomes OS 11 and we have to go through Apple to publish any app—that’s really ...
Call For Participation: Win A Free Pass To Social...
I have announced that we’re doing a slam at the upcoming Social Business Edge, and four lucky people are going to get a free pass to the show based on the quality of submissions, talking about some aspect of social business.
Get your four minutes of fame!
I will also be picking the best, based on the submissions and the acclaim at the show, to take their idea and make it a part of the...
Schwartz (Finally) Steps Down At Sun… By Haiku
Jonathan Schwartz resigned from Sun, tweeting this:
Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more
Kids, pay attention. Twitter can be used productively for many things, but resigning by haiku is not one of them.
Early last year it was obvious that Schwartz was adrift in his job (he had a...
