blog.think27.com
Three most important (potentially game changing) social media concepts. IMO
Presence - the ability to immediately share my state of being, including my location, from anywhere.
Ownership - the ability to own all the data you are creating. Such as your social graph.
Moments - using the data you have been (or facebook as been) collecting to digitally travel back in time and get a keen sense for what was going on in that moment.
…ok, heading to the Funding Symposium.
Via social media, people are sharing more and more online. The aggregation of their various profiles (facebook, myspace, friendfeed, etc.) can create a near mirror reflection of their real world actions and feelings.
We have the power to empathize better then ever, to understand people in a new light. How can we use that to preempt mental downswings, specifically in kids?
Thinking here: You can’t just watch over and swoop in every time you see something negative. What is the balance? Should we have social workers trolling profiles for “signs.” Will we just develop the sense to tell if someone is having a hard time. I’m talking about preventing tragic events - every time they happen it seems it was all over the students profile. right. So what can we do?
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Thanks to Skyler for getting me thinking about this again. And to Danah and Bambi for chatting a while back. Outreach20.org is a site I made a while back about this.
Last night I had dinner with my Uncle. He’s a leadership/exec coach so after dinner we hung out and he gave me a couple hours of coaching. I was surprised how much what he was saying sounded like a social media pitch.
The ideas are the same: get to know your customers/employees, build (empathetic) relationships with them, be able to understand where they are coming from, ask questions, don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know.”
It seems like companies should have an internal social media strategy: a series of outlets created just for employees. A way of keeping a conversation going.
Just asking questions now… Is that the value of having an internal social network? How do you keep people using it? How do you make it fun? Who is an expert in this?
I’ll be thinking.
I almost erased this blog because I didn’t want this company to get any press, good or bad.
MOLI.com, has anyone heard of this site? I just learned about it from the DEMO website. So, it was started by the founder of E*TRADE, him and some other early investors put up 29.25M. Recently they raised another 29.6M from, among others, the two founders of Home Depot (huh?).
DEMO says they have no primary competitors - listing Facebook, mySpace, and Linkedin as secondary. The reason, MOLI allows you to have multiple profiles under the same login. uhh, that’s not that different. I’m pretty sure this would be an easy move for Facebook to implement - ask users “Hey, have more that one account - enter the email address you used to create that account and we’ll link ‘em up. We’ll never share with anyone that your accounts are linked! (small print: But, we’ll know and so will our advertisers and everyone else we sell data to!)
I signed up for an account with MOLI and after a few minutes all I could think was “OMG it’s AOL.” It’s a huge nonorganic network for everything.
The layout is hip - kinda feels like a less refined VIRB - and they do have a cool feature called CoVibeLive (patent pending) that shows you statistics of the people who’ve visited your page. It looks like they spent a lot producing the site - dark tones and gradients are everywhere. All this slick and cool doesn’t mean speed though, it takes a while to load - if you’re gonna have all that, have some AJAX goin on to limit the need to refresh.
TechCrunch, GigaOm, and Webware are are all very nice to MOLI in their reviews. Where they paid? heh There is a lot of talk about the site being for adults - doesn’t feel like it. There is a video tutorial where an overly excited twentysomething makes jokes and talks mostly about privacy controls (Which to me just seem like a joke - I don’t care about privacy, I want people and companies to know who I am personally. If I was to work anywhere I would want them to look at my facebook/myspace/flickr/radar/twitter and say “yeah, he’d fit in our culture” - what’s up with this separation, what a pain in the ass — if you’re worried about this take Tim’s advise)
We’ll see what happens. They have ~60M to burn through, lots ads, commercial content and a couple paid services that let you turn your profile into an online store.
Reading a post at BornEntrepreneur.com titled Deep, Meaningful SMALL Talk, made me remember one of the reasons I started blogging and making information about myself public: If I blog consistency and others do the same then perhaps we’ll reduce then need for general confab, allowing me/us to get talking about something of value asap.
Online profiles help, but not in real time. I wish that when I met a new person they could just pass me some sort of beefed-up “about me” that included their backgroud, job, goals, education, etc. Having to ask questions to get that information can really take a while - and most of the time we don’t have it. What else would that document include?
I actually wrote this up back in February ‘06 and never posted it, but after reading Stuart and then Léon’s recent blogs, I fugured at add my own on the topic.
10 February 2006–
Today, while I was studying for a marketing test, I became distracted by an idea I had a while back for a “virtual lanlord” service. So I got up, because a good biz idea is a great reason to stop studying, and did some Google’n. Long story short, I didn’t find what I was looking for - maybe a good thing for my virtual landlord company - but I did find two services that I think are awesome: Prosper, in the US, and Zopa, in Great Britain, are the only two online marketplaces facilitating person-to-person lending (PLEASE correct me if I am wrong). They remove the bank from the lending/borrowing sequence and take advantage of their countries’ Automated Clearinghouse (ACH) to electronically transfer money for free. On the lender’s side, I think of it as a “virtual landlord” for leased moneys. It compiles a repayment schedule, tells/reminds borrowers (renters) when to pay, allows them to pay online, and enforces the law (forecloses) when they don’t pay; therefore taking the stress off the shoulders of the lender. The above still sounds kinda confusing, check out this Via Prosper’s “how it works” page:
“People who need money request it, and other people bid for the privilege of lending it to them. Prosper makes sure everything is safe, fair and easy. Here’s how it works:
(click image to enlarge)
…and via zopa:
“The markets work just like, well, markets. Lenders put their wares on display; in this case, money they are prepared to lend to other people for a certain length of time. And, just like any market, different vendors may have different prices (otherwise known as interest rates). Some may pick lower rates but only want to lend to borrowers who have a very high likelihood of paying it all back. Others may pick higher rates but be prepared to be more flexible, thereby taking a punt on borrowers who might be slightly more likely to default. Borrowers can then come and have a sniff about, see what the rates are and if they’re good value agree to borrow. Because Zopa cuts out the middleman, everyone gets a great deal. … All lenders and borrowers enter into a legally binding contract with their respective borrowers and lenders. Zopa manages the collection of monthly repayments and if any of that money is not paid on time, uses exactly the same sort of recovery processes that the high street banks use. Zopa earns money by normally charging borrowers an exchange fee of 1% and if borrowers take out repayment protection insurance on their loan, receives commission from its insurance provider. Zopa doesn’t charge lenders a bean.”
Continue reading ‘Prosper, Zopa, P2P Lending - Heard of it?’
Interesting article from Reuters London - thus the use of “boss.”
Google boss warns politicians about Internet power
Wed Oct 4, 2006 1:53 AM BST
LONDON (Reuters) - Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google Inc. boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years.
Politicians have yet to appreciate the impact of the online world, which will also affect the outcome of elections, Schmidt said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday.He predicted that “truth predictor” software would, within five years, “hold politicians to account.” People would be able to use programmes to check seemingly factual statements against historical data to see to see if they were correct.
Continue reading ‘Google boss warns politicians about Internet power’
Services like this are, I believe, just the start of.
I believe social networks are the catalyst for the gradual move towards centralized identity management. Maybe I’m using the term Social Network too loosely, but I’m not sure there is descriptor yet for what I’m attempting to express. Maybe we can fill it in:
The “networking” part is only a drop in the puddle. It’s the idea of centralized management of your online identity AND all the information and resources that are pertinent to you.
It’s the unity of services like start.com or google.com/ig with Facebook or MySpace. It’s all the data and the resources on your computer, its all your pictures, its everywhere you leave your mark in cyberspace, its your bookmarks. …If it is all that, is it also you credit score, your social security number, your bank accounts?
And, it’s available anywhere – via Wi-Fi. 
If only there was a social-network standard. Like AT&T of the past, yes, it was a monopoly, but what unfolded was one of the greatest telecommunications infrastructures in the world.
There is a lot to be said on the future of online reputation systems and additionally – identity management. Howard Rheingold discusses these topics comprehensively in chapter five of Smart Mobs. Explaining, for example, eBay’s public Feedback Forum, where buyers and sellers can comment on the quality of a transaction and contribute +1, 0, or -1 to the aggregate score of the reciprocating party. This system allows potential patrons to foreshadow the quality of a future transaction, and implies trust. The use of avatars or screen names to detach true-identity by a degree or more is what allows even the most privacy-conscious individuals to participate in this system.
This brought to my mind another interesting example: the reputation structure used by Prosper.com, a person-to-person micro-lending service. At Prosper individuals loan money to other individuals based on general institutional criteria, such as credit scores and homeownership, but also their profile and group affiliations. Here, it is advantageous to merge and share the details of your personal life with your identity on Prosper; including posting a picture, discussing past financial endeavors, and in some cases medical conditions, and the like.
What both of these examples have in common is the creation of trust based on identities and the narrative associated to that identity.
Similarly, most students have realized that their identities on Facebook and MySpace are subject to a comparable scrutiny by potential employers. Profiles and pictures give an inside look at the real life of a candidate. Now, how you fill-in the “about me” section is very important. I believe most millennials take it as healthy pressure to do the right thing, in general. After all, even if I don’t post those pictures of me acting belligerent, someone else might and they will probably tag my face to my name. This could be called transparency – it’s like everyone is running for political office.
What’s the other side? The fear and pressure of being watched can lead people/kids to take on secondary identities; going by an alias, or many. Generally this is not bad. People do this indirectly in the real world all the time. However, I would theorize that being void of all pressure is not the best case. Especially for already repressed youth.
Conversely, applying the concept of transparency in the classroom, creating a social classroom, I believe, would be a move millennials could handle. If I knew my work could be seen by my peers I might want to do a better job; even if I don’t care what my teacher thinks, I probably care what my peers think.
Like our identity on eBay, we cultivate trust through our public dealings, through transparency, through a narrative. Some will choose to reveal all, good or bad, some will claim privacy, others may never catch on. I believe, like on Prosper, sharing, because it encourages responsibility and empathy, is the best option.
Smart Mobs is an amazing book. Though I read pieces of it two seasons ago, the words and metaphors hold new meaning in light of my recent research. It is incredible to me that in 2002 Howard Rheingold could predict the future so accurately.
In the first section Howard talks about privacy and virtual identities. This got me thinking about a new technology we are using here at the University of Texas and some other recently widespread services.
The deal is, Mobile Campus finds businesses local to UT who want to advertise to students via their mobile phone. To facilitate their growth, they pay our Student Government one dollar per signup and give them other perks, such as paying for the redesign of the SG website (these details are accurate to the best of my knowledge). SG then push MC on the student body (especially freshman) as the official student discount program, replacing those little coupon books.
Yeah, it’s cool that SG gets some extra money, etcetera, but is the trade off really worth it? It’s a game of ratios and reach. The database Mobile Campus is creating is worth far more than anything they are giving SG. If MC could they wouldn’t give SG a cent (a better business model), but without them a corporation would never have the kind of reach that SG can provide.
These kinds of tradeoffs seem to be the trend amongst today’s successful marketing and advertising corporations. Take Google’s GMail for example, great service, I use it. But now because Google’s bots can search the contents of my inbox (one where I never delete anything) they can more accurately classify me. True, if I have to see ads it’s nice that they are relevant and I do trust Google, but isn’t our identity our own? Shouldn’t we receive most if not all of the revenue generated by its use? We are so used to our identities being sold and traded and getting nothing in return that we love GMail because it gives us something in return. However, that something is given in exchange for a type and scale of profiling that was never before possible.
Will we ever have a say in who sees the information that makes up our identity or see any of the revenue generated by their commodification? Reheingold’s second chapter, Technologies of Cooperation, made me envision a way it could be possible (I’ll elaborate more on this idea in another post).
You’re going to create breadcrumbs, if you don’t pick them up someone else will.
There are and have been many predictions on the path Wi-Fi will take and the role it will assume. The concluding chapter of Going Wi-Fi, published in 2003, gives 20 predictions – 10 of which I believe have come true. Some predictions are far fetched. A faculty member at the University of Texas at Dallas predicted that by 2007 mobile communications devices will “be voice-controlled and use heads-up holographic display[s].” Unfortunately for many, it doesn’t look like 2007 will embrace this kind of future.
Nevertheless, these predictions were very insightful, covering the topics of business (maybe a wireless PBX), medical care (24hour vital monitoring and reporting), etcetera, but something was missing. And that was any allusion to the growth of social networks, virtual identities, or the like. Social networking, used in a broad sense, is big now, but the spread of wireless, I believe, will transform the revolution; connecting people, groups, and intelligence in ways never before possible.
We, the participants in the MySpace generation, the blogging generation, and others are connected to an identity, and/or identities, in cyberspace. The strengthening of that bond is parallel to the spread of Wi-Fi (most importantly, free Wi-Fi) and the doggedness of cellular; simply, more convenient, efficient, and economical access to the World Wide Web.
The blogosphere and projects such as WeFeelFine.org have been invaluable to sequentially interpreting the status of society as a whole. However, the nature of blogging is not conducive to real-time feedback. Wi-Fi, the great Last Mile, offers this.
Moblogging, radar.net, mobile video sharing, elements of Web 2.0, to name a few are the current tools moving a nearly synchronous Info Strada. What does the future hold? I believe the exponential growth of social networks and their assimilation of mobile communication devices is foreshadowing a trend towards increased Interconnectedness.
As it becomes easier to mirror ourselves and our lives virtually, it becomes more significant to mirror the state of cyberspace as a whole, and relay it back to its elements. Components seeing themselves as an integral part of a whole, then acting and reacting based on the state of the collective, the world – this is the model for self-consciousness; and a step for progress.
Recently, I have been staying up until the wee hours of the morning reading everything I can on social networking and giving other people’s blogs and inboxes lots of love. So, this is the start of collecting those messages and adding them to my blog.
I spent some of tonight on Networked Publics. A very cool blog sponsored by The Annenberg Center for Communication at The University of Southern California. The topic was “Is MySpace a place?” There were other comments before mine. In response to those and the original topic I had to say:
I love all this talk about something I do every day, something I have grown up doing: hanging out on mySpace, facebook, AIM or a chat room.
MySpaces is a space. It is a “space” because that is the word my generation uses to refer to the concept you are debating. Remember, we look at things different. If I like a band, I can be that band’s friend, if I like Al Gore’s new movie I can be friends with it on mySpace. These things (movies, bands, political movements, people) are just ideas and concepts that we think are cool enough (in mySpace terms) to friend.
Reputation: How you fill your space tells who you are and what you care about (marketers love this); or more likely, how you would like to be seen. Who would you let hang out in your space?
I think as more and more employers do Google searches, etc of potential employees, how you fill these spaces becomes very important. This is good for me. I take it as healthy pressure to do the right thing. After all, even if I don’t post those pictures of me chugging beers and running around naked, someone else might and they will probably tag my face to my name.
What is the bad side? The fear of being watched can leading people/kids to take on secondary identities; going by an alias, or many. Generally this is not bad. People do this indirectly in the real world all the time. However, I would theorize that being void of all pressure is not a good thing. Especially for already repressed youth. What would you do if you were invisible?
I’m very interested in discussing these topics. I see so much potential for good, such as using the excitement and addiction of social networks to increased communication within teams and teach online collaboration. Creating a social classroom, if I knew my work could be seen by my peers I might want to do a better job, because even if I don’t care what my teacher thinks, I probably care what my peers think.
Any thoughts from the 20+ people that visit my blog but never comment?
