Is Facebook trying too hard?

Gina Trapani - Smarterware

I read a Twitter post by @smarterware quoting Joe Moon’s article on Facebook’s New Timeline Feature (here http://bit.ly/r5Reru) who draws an analogy/parallel between Facebook and the wedding photographer. Both add value to the “events” of our lives however, as Jo points out, there becomes a point where the “event” begins to change and be adjusted by the wedding photographer who is permitter more and more authority to change the wedding. “Stand over here”. “Let’s wait a few minutes until the sun comes out” and so on. All the time the wedding photographer has the brides best interest at heart – we hope – and all the more the wedding photographer is making our important day according to their schedule and their values. Is Facebook doing the same as the wedding photographer? Is Facebook trying too hard?

@JeffJarvis has insight into these kinds of things and has led me to create a theory: that people, groups of people that is, do not inherently want to be organised. They want to self-organise. I believe that Facebook is beginning to do what governments do, and people resist; they organise us. There is a point where Facebook and the wedding planner begin to ruin the wedding. There is a place where governments start to ruin the country they are governing. We only have to look at the economy at the moment to see that.

Jeff often asks the question (such as in his book, “What Would Google Do?”) “What business are you in?” Is Google in the search business or the advertising business. Is Yahoo an Internet company or an Entertainment company. Jeff would say, for example, that the G is in the advertising business. Facebook, according to yours truly, is in the advertising business too, however my observation is that Facebook eloquently organises our social lives for us and for that we give them our eyeballs, our time and our information. Google on the other hand gives eloquence to information predominately, not society. Not yet anyway. Google organises our websites, our emails, our calendar. Facebook organises our friends.

That is why I see Google having a much harder time at launching a social network. They’re DNA is to eloquently organise data and to add value to that data. Facebook eloquently organises our social lives and adds value to that. The wedding planner eloquently organises our memories and adds value to that. Being a search engine Google is not built to create social networks, hence the complete, embarrassing failure of Wave, and Buzz, to name a few.

We – the people – want Facebook to give eloquence to our social lives. To our data – but not to organise us. In the same way that we do not want Google to have too much information – too much power – we don’t want Facebook to have too much power over our social lives. When Facebook starts to divide and create borders around not only our data but our friendships, our groups, they have crossed the line. They are trying too hard. They have become a government.

Now this is not a post about predicting an exodus from Facebook. Far from it. There are too many barriers to exit. (See Porters 5 Forces). This is an observation that the business Facebook is in is organising people. Jeff Jarvis once wrote that Google “eloquently organises information” making it useable and valuable in a way that advertisers are happy to pay for.

As the people of the world give freely and willing information that governments drool over they need to take the warning that we – the people – do not want to be organised.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/04/06/bill-of-rights-in-cyberspace-amended/

Links: www.buzzmachine.com, www.twit.tv, www.thinkupapp.com

Eli Pariser on Facebook Privacy and hiding truth online

Ted.com: “As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy”

Google Me

I succumed to ordering business cards even though my online presence is well proliferated. I’m easily found. I have a public identity on Google Profiles: www.google.com/profiles/ this is my new home (replacing Facebook) on the Internet. I do have the advantage of being the only Jonathon Sciola in the world. But what if you’re Jo Smith? Do you use Linked In or Facebook? Do you promote Skype or your mobile number? Now the world is mixed: work collected are friends on facebook (even clients) and your wife gives you a credibility plug on Linked in. It’s crazy.

I’m going for “Google Me” – soon to be released Facebook style solution by Google. But until then if you Google me which result is really me?

Check out this article:

http://mobile.pcmag.com/device2/article.php?CALL_URL=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366027,00.asp

So whoever you are be search-able.

Privacy is overrated

(Watch the video in my previos post)

Questioning Googles commitment to privacy? (See France claims success in Google privacy breach The German privacy paradox « BuzzMachine Privacy, publicness & penises). Google is guaranteed to build itself into your life: car, phone, home pc, house, life…. See: Ford adds ability to sync Google maps directions to Sync

Of course Google was collecting wireless info for Google Maps. Of course, Google’s mission statement (advertised on http://www.google.com/corporate) is

“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”

Hello!??? The “world’s information” is pretty broad, hey? And if you look at what they’re doing: earth, maps, mail, videos, (and their acquisitions: youtube, etc) you can see they are serious about fulfilling their mission.

Now I am not saying Google is evil. Rather I am saying that privacy is probably an outdated concept and needs to be revisited. See: http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Everything is being rewritten. The media, news, education, religion, business NEED to rewrite their foundational concepts, including banking and privacy. I think privacy should be included in our new charter of rights and protected, but what is privacy? See http://www.cluetrain.com/

This Week in Google

Every week I listen to watch, read and subscribe to TWIG. It is the most amazing podcast about technology, the internet and the cloud.

Hosted by Leo Laporte “…US-based journalist specializing in technology coverage on radio, TV, and the Internet. With weekly guests Jeff Jarvis author of What What Google Do? (yes I’ve bought it) and Gina Trapani, blogger and founding editor of Lifehacker.org.

Between them you really do see the world from a different perspective. The value of TWIG is that you see the world through the eyes of Google, a company that is innovative and unique in that it sees what’s going on with the web.

Enjoy last weeks episode;

You can catch the show notes here: www.twit.tv/twig

Future of newspapers

This video posted on buzzmachine about the future of news is great viewing as we watch the web and its evolution. An important part of the evolution of the Internet is seeing how the 5th estate evolves. One of the key foundations of democracy and capitalism is the ability for the people to watch the government – the very thing that newspapers used to do, and now are ending. The Internet is the new 5th estate – the watchdog of the governments and companies who history tell us will inevitably try to dominate the world. History shows us that Empires rise and fall and not all of them are benevolent. The end of “States” (the current way we divide up the world) is currently giving way, I believe, to companies, new empires that will rise on the tide of the Internet. This video is a glimpse into this one in an eon phase-shift in reality:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid933850474?bctid=68049760001

The Internet is a place not a medium

I remember studying e-business in 2001. My lecturer said, “Check out google” I’d never heard of Google and didn’t check it out for a year or so. The difference between e-commerce and e-business is that e-commerce is just the sale of products online utilising the web as an interface, whereas e-business is doing business online. It’s setting up entire platforms and infrastructures for example: did you know that tiny little chips can be placed on individual pieces of fruit so that as the check-out chich scans your apples, the computer automatically orders more apples from the supplier? If you dont believe me read this 2003 article on Supermarket Tests RFID Chips

Internet is a Place

Other e-business technologies include ERP and SAP.

At the time the theory behind e-business was that convergence is happening. For example the mobile phone is a convergence between a telephone and a computer. An ipod is a convergence of say a personal audio device (ie walkman) and a computer for example. An iPad – convergence between a computer and an iPhone, and so on. Kindle: book + computer.

On the Internet convergence was killing traditional forms of media. Such as the newspaper. Traditionally “Print Media” the newspaper is now available online (a convergence of print media, computers, and telecommunications). However that was so web 1.0. Now, in web 2.0 (and 3.0 is being called!) the Internet has moved on from being a medium where INFORMATION is organised, to a PLACE where people gather.

The Internet IS society. It IS a place. It is community. It is chaordic.

Chaordic: The (beautiful) mix of chaos and order is often described as a harmonious coexistence displaying characteristics of both, with neither chaotic nor ordered behavior dominating.

I used to think the Internet was a convergence of all media. However I am now inclined to lean towards media guru and journalist Jeff Jarvis, “We in media have the wrong expectation. In fact, the internet is a place where people connect. The internet is not a medium, it’s a place.”

I realised that the Internet is a place where people connect. It used to be where information was stored (1.) became where people interacted with that information and each other (2.0) and is becoming a place (3.0?)

Once you see the Internet as a place; uncontrollable and chaordic; self-governing, then you realise that two things happen:

1. A threat exists for companies (like Google and Yahoo and Bing) who’s business model is based on organising INFORMATION: hence “search”
2. An opportunity exists for new business models that can efficiently and beautifully organsise the chaos so that people can freely gather together: hence “social”

Like bees to honey we The People flocked to the sweet smell of the web: a place where we could find all the INFORMATION we were after: be it porn or shopping or banking or weather; and now there are so many people in thisPLACE that there is a new problem and an opportunity to GATHER these people, organising the chaos not the people.

We are now seeing companies like Google, News Ltd, Bing and Rupert Murdoch attempting to organise a place that they incorrectly think it is data. Or they are fooling themselves. If they continue to try to organise people using the same methods that succeeded for them to organise our data they will fail, or they will succeed and we will revolt because people do not want to be controlled for the sake of coins, Journalism, news sites, even Google.

We are now seeing articles like these appear, evidence of the new place of the Internet emerging:

Can Google Save the News Business?

White Pages on the way out at last?

If Australia censors the web, what will the others do? ).

The Internet is a place! The opportunity remains to organise the chaos, not the people.

Rupert Murdoch’s pathetic paywall

This is a hilarious and eye-opening article about how old men try to control something they don’t understand. We with the open-eyes are not Y2K doomsdayers manipulating the world into buying products and services they don’t need. The Internet is NOT a trend. It’s a new business reality to use the words of Jeff Jarvis. Here’s an excerpt from Jeff’s Article Rupert Murdoch’s pathetic paywall:

According to his biographer Michael Wolff, Murdoch has not used the internet, let alone Google (he only recently discovered email) and so he cannot possibly understand the dynamics, demands and opportunities of our post-industrial, now-digital media economy. I use the internet and teach it and write about it and I still can’t grasp the complete implication of the change. I don’t think even Google can.

So to try to transpose old business models to this new business reality is simply insane. Just because people used to pay in print they should pay now – when the half-life of a scoop’s value is a click, when good-enough news that’s free is also a click away, when the new newsstand of Google and Twitter demands that you stay in the open, searchable and linkable? This argument I hear about paywalls comes from emotional entitlement (readers “should” pay – when did you ever see a business plan built on the verb “should”?), not hard economics.

Fortunately for us Gen X, Gen Y and Millennial’s the world is currently controlled by boomers who don’t see the revolution we’re in which opens up a massive opportunity for those who know how to build in the new online infrastructure.

The new online infrastructure - invisible to people like Murdoch who think the world hasn’t changed and Facebook and Google can be ignored – is a new world of freedom, democracy and abundance where walls including barriers to entry (think publishing) don’t exist except in the minds of government, old business fools and those who still read the paperback yellow pages and pay rent for a land line! Those people probably haven’t even read the A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Surprisingly insightful this poetic Martin Luther style speech about the Internet was written over 10 years ago. How true it is:

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I
come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask
you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have
no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address
you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always
speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally
independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral
right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true
reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You
have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not
know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your
borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public
construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows
itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you
create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our
ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order
than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this
claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t
exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will
identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social
Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our
world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself,
arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a
world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice
accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her
beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence
or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and
context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no matter
here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by
physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest,
and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be
distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our
constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope
we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we
cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications
Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams
of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These
dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world
where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust
your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly
to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of
humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole,
the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes
from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States,
you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at
the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small
time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in
bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate
themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own
speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be
another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world,
whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed
infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires
your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same
position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had
to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare
our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to
consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the
Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more
humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996

Source: http://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration