Social Networks No Playground For Bullies

Interesting post by Yasmin Joomraty on 'cyber-bullying', arising from the Keely Houghton case.

It seems clear from this case and other instances I've heard about that if someone resorts to cyber-bullying it's just the tip of the iceberg. So 'cyber-bullying' doesn't really exist as some kind of distinct evil in itself. Moreover, the bully's use of a social networking site is self-defeating, in that it arms the victim with the evidence needed to successfully fight back.

So cases like this are actually good PR for social networking services, just as, say, Betfair's standing was helped by the utility of its audit trail for those trying to clean up corruption in sport.

However, such illustrations of how evidence from online services actually helps with the detection and prosecution of crime also suggest we need to remain vigilant against the potential for the abuse of civil liberties, privacy, personal data and so on when it comes to the access and use of online data by the authorities and others.

Private Sheriffs in Cyberspace, Counter-Regulation

Last night I attended the lecture by Professor Jonathan Zittrain on "The Future of the Internet: Private Sheriffs in Cyberspace", organised by the SCL organised in collaboration with the The Oxford Internet Institute. Jonathan is a Professor at Harvard Law School, Co-Founder and Faculty Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a great intellect and a fabulous speaker.

As the title suggests, Jonathan was highlighting the role of private rule-makers in the development of Internet-based services. Helpfully, he suggested a quadrant on which you can place rule-making for all scenarios. On the vertical plane, one considers whether rules are decided "top-down" by a dictator or small group of individuals, or evolve bottom-up amongst all interested participants. On the horizontal plane, one considers whether the rules are handed down and enforced via a single hierarchy or via a polyarchy of different people or agencies. I've re-drawn it here for the purposes of discussion, and hope Jonathan doesn't mind:

You can plot various examples on the chart, with a totalitarian regime being in the upper left corner, and Wikipedia being in the lower right.

Interestingly, Jonathan suggests that the likes of Google, Apple and Facebook are top-down rule makers, because their site terms and policies are all decided by the company and not the users of their services, albeit those companies tend to be very responsive to bottom-up pressures. He cites the exclusion of certain lawful, though potentially offensive, applications from the iPhone and Facebook platforms as examples of decisions that might not be consistent with previous decisions, nor deemed constitutional in the public environment. He queries whether, in time, these might result in some alternate form of regulation and considers what that might entail.

My sense is that this scenario is not quite so clear cut, since the evolution of services or platforms provided by those companies (read iPhone apps in the case of Apple) seems primarily based on user participation, feedback and complaint, rather than board or departmental decision-making. I'm not even sure that, when push comes to shove, those companies necessarily triumph. There are significant instances where - to their enduring credit - each of those companies backed down and modified services and terms in the face of widespread user vitriol.

However, it is true that in general terms, at least before push comes to shove, such firms are the 'sheriff' of their own platforms. And it is conceivable that there could be a substantial gap in time, and a significant amount of individual consumer detriment - mild or otherwise - before any arbitrary, inconsistent or harmful exercise of corporate discretion is corrected by some kind of mass user "action". But of course this phenomenon occurs even in the context of highly regulated businesses all the time - e.g. retail financial services, as Financial Ombudsman statistics demonstrate. Offline retailers and distributors also decide not to distribute certain products on their own whim, or due to informal pressure from certain interest groups.

So the responsiveness of a service provider to its users, and the legality of its behaviour, does not seem to be a function of how that service provider or its services are regulated. But is users' trust or faith in the provider a function of the type of regulation that applies to the service?

Jonathan looks at various models for keeping the private sheriffs honest, e.g. vicarious liability for harmful material of which the service provider is on notice (see PanGloss), public law constraints on municipal authorities and 'due process' requirements. But, crucially, he points out that when users start to feel powerless they look to top-down bodies for help - i.e. towards the top left of the quadrant - when perhaps the online world is demonstrating there are more trustworthy solutions to the lower left and right. To the lower left, Jonathan cites the adherence to the robots.txt exclusion standard, whereby researchers effectively agree not to interrogate certain parts of web publisher's domains. To the lower right, he cites the broad editorial body of interested participants in Wikipedia. Either solution might be safer than entrusting control to, say, government institutions that think nothing of bending or breaking the law under the guise of detecting crime, or the vague notion of "national security".

And here's the crux of the problem. When does a trusted service provider suddenly cease to be trusted to make and enforce its own rules?

To me, this seems to me to be answered by whether the service provider is perceived to be acting in its own interests or that of its users - or when it loses its "human effect", as I think Jonathan put it in answer to a different question. Here, the Wikipedia example is an interesting one. As Jonathan noted there is a constant preoccupation amongst the Wikipedia editorial community about what Wikipedia is and what it means to be a Wikipedian. This has also been touched on in the context of brands striving to be facilitators rather than institutions. Is this human element necessary for rule-makers and service providers to preserve users' trust in them?

As I've mentioned previously in a wider context, the rise of Web 2.0 facilitators that have enabled us to seize control of many of our own retail, political and other personal experiences has been accompanied by a plunge in our faith in our society's institutions. Are they causally related, or inter-related?

In this context, it is interesting to consider a shining example of a service provider and rule-maker that has utterly lost its way, and our respect: the UK's own House of Commons. Weeks of attention on MPs' excessive expense claims - widely viewed as a proxy for their attitude to the taxpayer generally - has forced the nation's legislators to reconsider how they themselves should be governed. And it's worth noting that much of that attention has been brought to bear via the Internet. Ironically, and in line with Jonathan's observation about where we look to when we feel powerless, the MPs are looking to the upper left quadrant in suggesting yet another Quango as an external regulator of their activities - a so-called "Parliamentary Standards Authority". That such a body needs to exist raises huge questions about the ethics of the body it is supposed to supervise.

But who on earth should comprise the members of such an authority? How could it bring about a positive change in the attitude of MPs to us, their constituents?

Which brings us to the notion that the private sheriffs of cyberspace may have a lot to teach their 'real world' counterparts about what it means to act in the interests of their users in order to retain their trust. This is a notion that I explored in an article for the SCL in May 2006, entitled "Counter-regulation" - a term I used to describe when the law requires offline businesses to implement the benefits of successful online business models. So, to borrow from Jonathan, perhaps MPs should be looking to the lower left and right of the rule-making quadrant for an alternative regulatory solution that could begin to restore a human element and raise the level of our faith in Parliament. And maybe our suspicion of Quangos as merely a means to reward government supporters with a nice cushy job would also be eased if the Quango in question comprised a very large, active group of UK taxpayers.

Phoul-Mouthing the Phoul-Mouthers Who Phoul-Mouth Etc

I'm very much looking forward to a balanced, impartial, rational presentation of my balanced, impartial and rational - and very much personal - views on behavioural targeting or interest-based advertising at the SCL Information Governance Conference on 12 May.

In the meantime, I would only observe that this site is a nice illustration of the implications I discussed a few months back, of trying to build a brand that is perceived as an institution, rather than trying to build one that is perceived as a facilitator.

Phorm Town Meeting

By the end of Phorm's "2nd Town Hall Meeting" it became obvious that the company is still trying to launch a product with both hands tied behind its back.

It's structure means that Phorm's online behavioural advertising service will only be successful if internet service providers implement it, then successfully market it to individual users, advertisers and web site owners. At that point, the company says, advertisers will experience less wastage in advertising spend, content owners will find it easier to monetise content, web site owners can charge more for space, and end-users will see more relevant ads as they browse.

Exactly what this means in commercial terms is naturally unclear. And Phorm rightly points out that it would be wrong for it to release the details of ISPs' trials or take-up incentives likely to be offered to ISPs' customers, at least until the ISPs are good.. and... ready..... to...... launch....... After 7 years of development, Phorm says it has learned to be patient - a revolution in the internet space.

It seems fairly pointless to have public meetings to talk about offering "choice" when you have no product in the market and the meat of your proposition is under wraps for commercial or regulatory reasons. Nevertheless, Phorm chose the opportunity to engage in further damage limitation on the privacy front and to set the commercial context for its service with a rundown on the online advertisting market.

All the legal points have been made on the privacy front, and don't bear repeating here - though I'll summarise them at the SCL's Information Governance conference. Phorm seems to think they've all gone away, or will be made to go away by launch. Network opt-out was mentioned. Network opt-in is preferred, as is a way to block the service altogether, so that I don't need to store either their opt-in or opt-out cookies. Having to choose whether to store Phorm's opt-in or opt-out cookies is only a choice about how you use Phorm's service, not a choice between using its service and not. Phorm says the current cookie practices are less transparent than its own service will be. From a user standpoint this doesn't deal with the point that I can choose not to go to certain sites, and to clear their cookies selectively, but I can't as readily avoid Phorm's service - or choose to use it on some sites and not others - if it's being run at the ISP level. That "choice" doesn't feel very personalised at all, and personalisation is at the heart of how the web is developing. Phorm asks why the likes of [Google and Facebook] don't have "town meetings" to explain their privacy policies and settings, but I can't think of a venue big enough - and of course they do constantly explain and respond to privacy queries from their massive, global communities in a very public way, online, where everyone can participate.

Phorm also appears to be creating some kind of moral panic by saying that it is part of the solution to preserving the humble newspaper - not to mention journalistic integrity. Shock, horror: journalists are apparently being asked to insert certain keywords in their stories to help attract the right traffic to their newspaper's online ads. Apparently, if Phorm were implemented and used by [everybody] content publishers would not [have to] do this. But the newspapers I read from time to time don't seem all that averse to coupling themes and stories with advertising in their offline manifestations, so it's hardly the end of the world as we know it. And I don't see how newspapers can escape people's desire to see their content unbundled any more than the record companies could. Their challenge is to keep innovating, as Eric Schmidt told US newspapers yesterday. Phorm suggests that the major ad service operators (Google, Facebook et al) aren't entitled to their current or growing flows of advertising revenues. The market will no doubt decide, but this suggestion ignores how those companies finance their own core businesses, which millions and millions of people clearly find very compelling - apparently more so than limited bundles of "news". It also ignores the importance of search and online communities for newspapers' content, not to mention ad deals.

Ulimately, comparisons with Google and Facebook highlight the fact that Phorm is not a bottom-up phenomenon. It's something that will only happen if big telecoms providers say so, and that collides with the Web 2.0 ethos. This, coupled with the Orwellian privacy issues - whether real or perceived - makes Phorm's marketing job very much harder.

LinkedIn Goes Social

LinkedIn has just added various collaborative, work-oriented applications to its platform. But I'm struggling to get beyond it as a fairly static place to hold your CV and network in a fairly basic, formal sense. I do receive requests for my services via LinkedIn, and it's useful for making introductions and learning a bit about someone you're scheduled to meet or call – the whole reason they published their profile. I guess people might use it as a “work” platform, add their blogs stc and yet retain the air of formality. But not all of that seems compatible. We'll see.

In the meantime, Facebook still seems more engaging and better aligned with the blurred social, business and academic blogosphere - it's the equivalent of meeting with the founders of a start-up in Starbucks, or with colleagues in a bar to talk shop and whatever else is going on. So that's where I prefer to share my blog, for example.

It will be interesting to see whether, and if so, how Facebook reaches out to the business community as LinkedIn evolves to be more engaging.

"Platform" as "Markets"?

A hat tip to The Bankwatch for pointing out Umair Haque's interesting post "What Apple Knows That Facebook Doesn't".

My sense is that there's really not much in this, and there are more similarities between the Apple and Facebook approaches than substantive differences.

I understand Umair to be saying that Apple has adopted a "market" business strategy, whereas Facebook is taking a "platform" approach. Apple facilitates an increase in flexibility and utility for its customers, while Facebook channels its users into functionality of its choosing and exposes them to advertising. Apple will dominate, Facebook is somehow doomed. Specifically, Apple's approach will alter the basis of competition, irrevocably alter the market by unleashing a domino effect and open the value chain to myriad new entrants.

But how does this improve on O'Reilly's explanation that the success of Web 2.0 businesses stems from their "architecture of participation"? He sees the internet as a "platform" but with a different set of rules for success. So it seems we should see platforms as a feature of markets or certain market phases, rather than "platforms as markets", as Umair would have it. Perhaps this is nothing more than saying that markets consolidate around 2 or 3 large participants (platforms?) and fragment again over time.

And you could easily switch Umair's examples.

Facebook has actually made the internet and internet technology more usable for people who want to network, socially or otherwise. Yes, there are crappy apps, but VC's are funding some of those because of their ability to acquire signficant numbers of users overnight, hence the notion of the Facebook economy. It may be hype, to some extent, but what VC-fest isn't? The basis of competition has changed, because you can launch a business today with a tenth of the funding you needed 3 years ago. The domino effect might be seen in the way incumbents are forced to enter the social network services space and in the numbers of start-ups and early phase businesses relying on low-cost services like cloud computing to reduce their "burn", helping making those services viable in turn. Similarly, Facebook is encouraging new entrants, and opening up the long tail of apps and content for all those niche communities you see in the groups.

Apple, on the other hand, sought to make its iPod and now the iPhone the dominant platform in its space. Apple drip-feeds new functionality, new versions and content deals with the majors as a way of trapping people on those platforms. The result is a standards war between device manufacturers, by any other name, and it's boring for anyone who wants truly interoperable mobile applications and music that will play on any device.

Actually, I sense that the approaches of Facebook and Apple may be more similar than different. Each has created an architecture of participation, and time will tell which is more successful at sustaining it - perhaps both will be.

Are You Dealing With Introverts or Extroverts?

Interesting piece on Mashable recently, suggesting that most social networkers are in fact introverts. That means they are driven by their own thoughts and feelings, whereas extroverts are driven by external interaction (I think you could be neither - i.e. somewhere in between on the continuum - but not simply "both", as the Mashable poll suggested).

For any online service provider this begs the question whether your customers are introverts, extroverts or neither, and how you should manage your marketing and communications for each type. However, assuming your objective is to generate passion and connection amongst your customers as a community, then perhaps its better to view your staff and customers as a team comprising all types who need to get along.

Further, as Idea points out, the introvert/extrovert dichotomy is but one aspect of personality and how personalities interact in a team scenario:

"In the Myers-Briggs assessment, personality characteristics are categorized along four continuums: Introvert/Extrovert; Sensing/Intuition; Thinking/Feeling; and Judging/Perceiving....

Whereas introverted team members need extroverts to initiate spontaneous verbal discussions, extroverts value an introvert’s capability for problem solving based on careful reflection and consideration of all ideas....

intuitive members need sensing personalities to remind them of facts and limitations. Conversely, sensing individuals need intuitive members to remind them to think outside of the box....

As team members, thinkers are effective in articulating logical reasons behind decisions, while feelers can bring people together....

A team needs the right mix of judging and perceiving personalities to ensure adaptability as well as adherence to project boundaries and deadlines."

Now I don't want to stifle debate, but some takeaways might be:

1. An extrovert staffer could be asked to initiate discussions and debates, but might need to take some care to leave the discussion and conclusion open to engage the introverts;
2. Provide opportunities for people to think outside the box;
3. Articulate not only the reasons for decisions but also acknowledge how the decisions make people feel;
   
4. Demonstrate flexibility, but set expectations about any constraints on flexibility, like resources and deadlines.

Discuss?

Employers: Underreact to Staff Social Network Case

Laurie Kaye reports on a recent case, Hays v Ions, where an ex-employee has had to reveal the data from his LinkedIn account to his former employer. The reason?

"Hays had encouraged Mr Ions to use the LinkedIn services for the purposes of his employment. However, the Court decided this did not constitute authorisation to use the information gathered and stored on his LinkedIn account after he had left Hays."

So Mr Ions was ordered to disclose:

- the business contacts on his LinkedIn page which had been requested by Hays;
- all emails sent to or received by his LinkedIn account from Hays' computer network;
- all documents that indicated his use of the LinkedIn contacts and any business obtained from them."

While employers need to be clear with employees about what is confidential and what is not, let's not rush to amend staff handbooks to deal specifically with social network services in this respect. That would infringe the 'principle' (adage) that a "hard case makes bad law".

This decision does not extend the ordinary obligation on any employee to respect his or her employer's confidentiality. It is clear from the decision that the employee was found to have agreed to use LinkedIn in the course of his employment; in the course of doing so he sent, received and stored confidential information; and then accessed or otherwise used that information outside the employment relationship. That LinkedIn was involved is irrelevant. The result would have been the same (though less topical) if the employee had used a third party email account for the same purpose.

Long Tail Financial Services: Passion & Connection Require Social Network Services

Kevin Kelly has built on Seth Godin's discussion of the idea that there are "three profit pockets" on the tail of product popularity.

In brief, Seth says that the first two - at or near the head - are profitable for the creator, while the third - the long tail - is only profitable for the aggregator:

"The most common misconception about Long Tail thinking is that if you don't succeed at pocket 1, don't worry, because the tail will take care of your product and you'll just end up in #2. That's not true. #2 isn't a consolation prize for mass market losers. Mass market losers are still losers. In order to become a mass market star you make choices about features and pricing and quality--and if you lose that game, there's no reason to believe that those choices are going to pay off for a different market."

Kevin (with whom Chris Anderson agrees) says you shouldn't conflate the views of creator and aggregator, but view each section consistently from each perspective. True, because you then see clearly the challenge that each faces when products are in the long tail - albeit one that aggregators are able to meet more easily:

"...if we view the long tail as a market of a different type, as a market of enthusiasm and connection, then as the long tail expands, this increases the chance of two enthusiasts meeting, and so the longer the tail, the better. The first two pockets of the curve are trying to maximize profits; the last pocket of the long tail is trying to maximize passion and connectivity.

There is one further indirect advantage to the long tail. Since your creation now exists in a market (where it would not have existed at all before) it can, if you are lucky, start to migrate uptail."

This emphasises why creating a social network among interested buyers and sellers of each of the products, or sets of products in the long tail, becomes critical to maximising revenue from it. As discussed on Wikipedia:

"A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade."

Facilitators' discussion boards, blogs and social network services all clearly help enable those buyers and sellers to find their type of interdependency - so do open marketplaces like online auctions, or simply knowing what people who bought one item also bought, or what other profiles they viewed, and so on. Ultimately, transparent, reliable, timely pricing and product description are key to sales.

Applying this to retail financial services is interesting, given current market conditions. Where's the passion? Well people get really passionate (angry) when there is significant change. The last time the most people got the most passionate about retail financial services was in the early '90s when many houses prices plunged into negative equity (the dotcom bubble-burst mainly affected the retail investment world - the preserve of far fewer consumers).

The Internet wasn't around commercially to help people get out of negative equity in the early '90s, but a whole "specialist" (and substantially sub-prime) mortgage industry ignited around the fact that 25% of the people who'd had a mortgage from a high street institution suddenly couldn't get one. Connectivity arose because their lawyers and other advisers knew that those clients who were "battlers" and worth a punt. They arranged loans from other clients or themselves, starting new mortgage and loan providers and brokerages in the process. All manner of strange, alternative finance deals became available - a veritable long tail of mortgages, secured and unsecured loans - and daytime television advertising hasn't been the same since.

Most recently, Northern Wreck sent a shock wave rippling through the UK population, and similar disasters are striking at US retail borrowing sentiment. But this time the Internet and social network services are there to facilitate connectivity amongst the passionate at the same time as the institutional and specialist mortgage market has panned. Coincidentally, social lending facilitators, like Zopa (2005) and Prosper (2006), are also on the scene, enabling individual consumers to lend and borrow at rates that suit them personally. Importantly, lenders decide how diversified they wish to be, and choose their borrowers. Zopa is still citing a default rate of less than 0.1%. These sites were started by people (and I confess to being one) familiar with the effect of both the dotcom bubble on personal investment as well as the early '90s issue of negative equity. They've had time to work on their propositions, strategies and tactics - the use of social networking tools being amongst them.

Of course, the long tail of products represented by online social lending did not really exist before (except perhaps more informally, off-line). These products are being created by the individual lenders offering their money, and the borrowers who post their requests for money (depending on the model operated by the relevant facilitator). Successful lenders, in particular, therefore challenge the notion that creators can't make money out of the long tail.

It's also worth keeping a look out for other shocks that signal passion in other markets - particularly those not yet disrupted by the Web 2.0 trend. Insurance? Pensions? I shudder to think of the disasters that will set those wheels in motion!

Lifestreaming is Social Networking on Steroids

At a time when the number of social network services is skyrocketing to the point where it's impossible to join them all, aggregating them into a single feed is the next challenge. FriendFeed does it for me.

Welcome to "lifestreaming".