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Monday, July 16, 2007
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Pew Report on Teen Privacy in Social Networks. The folks at Pew Internet and American Life Project have released the full results of their study examining teen privacy in social networks. I looked at the preliminary results here a few months ago, and was impressed by teen privacy utilization.
I feel the same way now, looking over this analysis. From the study, teens seem to have developed a nuanced, culturally-informed viewpoint on how to engage in social networking sites. They largely share information with their friend groups, and have a good understanding of what information is important to protect (at least according to our society's norms).
I'll likely dive into this analysis later in the day when I find some free time, but I wanted to share this right away. With all of the hysteria and fear generated by media reports about social networks, this Pew report is a refreshing sanity check. The kids, in fact, are all right. [Unit Structures]
8:21:14 AM 
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The Myspace Report - Never Ending Friending. Today, Myspace released a snazzy market intelligence report (PDF download) to some of its top media clients. Forbes' Rachel Rosmarin has the most-blogged coverage, though I've seen many media outlets covering the press release as well.
Let's get the obvious out of the way - this survey was constructed to glorify Myspace, which is actually not that hard of a thing to do. That said, I didn't find any major red flags - I actually found it somewhat interesting (as long as you take it for what it is). Here are two nuggets I enjoyed.
The first question examines the effect of social networking on alternative media consumption. Assuming a margin of error of 3.5%, there are significant negative effects for video games, but significant positive effects for the internet, email (weird? possible misleading wording leading to conflation of 'messaging' with email), IM and cell phone (also a little surprising, seems spurious). Put simply, this means that social networking leads us away from a solitary activity like video games, but it makes us engage more with social technologies such as a cell phone.
I'm most interested in the significant negative effect for video games. Assuming that most video game play is not a social experience (in gross hours played), it is interesting to see social engagement winning out over non-social engagement (in the time-wasting space). Not that this is surprising, but, cool to see.
This is reinforced by another question "If you had 15 minutes of time, which activity would you most like to do." This was interesting to me because I think it illustrates our complicated relationship with social networks (especially Myspace). Again, assuming a 3.5% margin of error, social networking is significantly preferrable to video games, IM, and listening to an MP3 player or the radio (mostly solitary experiences, exception IM). It is not significantly preferable to chatting on a cell phone, generally surfing, or watching TV. With the exception of TV, which is a pseudo-social experience, those other experiences were social.
Let's not demean the value of social networking - I think it's incredible that social networks are as favored a time waster as TV or talking on a cell phone. I just think that we're seeing a canary in a cave mine here - given a choice, we are ultimately more interested in engaging in social experiences in our time wasting than non-social experiences. We're social beings, and the technologies we use allow this engagement - and we prefer them.
If I were a marketer reading the tea leaves from this report, I'd pay very close attention to the value of social engagement. As technology allows us to interact with each other, we're seeing a halo effect carrying over to other social technologies. Myspace (and social networking) is currently the most important place because it enables social serendipity, but there are certainly other innovative ways to spread the effects of a social networking campaign to other media.
Download the report here. [Unit Structures]
8:18:38 AM
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Symposium on Academic Productivity. I'm organizing an event for local students and faculty exploring academic productivity. Basically, academic productivity can be thought of as the tools and strategies you use to get your work done. Here are the details:
UNC Symposium on Academic Productivity
June 7, 2007, 1-4PM, Manning Hall 208
To attend: Add yourself to the wiki
Hosted by the School of Information and Library Science, the SILS Doctoral Students Association, and the SILS Research and Doctoral Committee.
About: The purpose of this symposium is to bring together students and faculty to share tips and strategies for academic productivity. What is academic productivity? It refers to the strategies, hacks or tools you use to get your academic work done. Perhaps you've got a good strategy for keeping abreast of new literature, or maybe you've got a strategy for backing up your files that you'd like to share. Simple or complex, come out and share what works for you.
Format: This is a three hour event, drop-ins are welcome. Each hour there will be four 10-minute presentations, followed by 20 minutes of discussion/hands on. If you'd like to present, you must be willing to document your hack and share it electronically so others can use it. The talks will generally be "walk throughs" of your strategies. A wide range of subjects are encouraged, and presentations should be casual. [Unit Structures]
8:16:23 AM
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The Facebook Platform: Analysis. Update: Please see additional notes and criticism of the Facebook Platform in this post.
I've spent the morning reading the endless coverage of the recently-launched Facebook Platform. In case you can't figure it out from the breathless tone of the coverage, this is big news; I commend the folks at Facebook for all of their hard work. Since it's not particularly valuable for me to re-state things that have already been said (read here or here for a good treatment of the platform), I figured I'd just share my own take.
Let's start simple - what is the Facebook platform? The platform is an extension of the Facebook API that allows third-parties to integrate applications within the profile. That is, the Facebook profile is now customizable. Among many other things, I can now add a list of adoptable dogs or cats to my profile (my favorite Facebook Platform app by far, thanks Dogster). The applications are "deeply integrated" into Facebook, meaning they have access to Facebook data. Unlike Myspace's approach, where third-party applications sit above and apart from the platform, Facebook's applications can reach into the platform and pull out data. This means you can know things like how many of your friends use an application, for example.
The setup process is simple; you select an application, agree to the terms of service, customize the application and then use the application. There are two outcomes - in one, the application is added to your profile. For example, you can add a list of adoptable pets to your profile. In the second outcome, you become a member of the application, but you don't add it to your profile. You can still interact with the application, but it is less of an identity statement.
Understanding the differences between these two outcomes is important. In the first case, we can think of applications more as widgets; simple tools that enable individuals to make identity statements through their profiles. In the second case, we can think of Facebook as the gateway to rich applications, ones that leverage your data to provide a better experience. This is the "portal" example - where Facebook may become a portal to places like Ebay, Amazon or YouTube.
The play is simple; Facebook seeks to become a starting point for its users web experience. In essence, it is solving the "what's next" problem by providing users a potentially endless set of experiences to encounter within the Facebook framework. Facebook knows that it has limited resources, by ceding some control of its space to third-parties, it retains users while enabling them to spend more time exploring the endless depths of the Facebook experience. In a sense, this is Second Life applied to Facebook; Second Life is only as interesting as the environments developed within - Facebook is no different.
Sounds like a great plan, right? I agree, it does sound good on paper. But how it shakes out in the real world is still left to be known. Facebook users engage with the service to have social needs answered; while Platform adds a bunch of new capability to the service, does it actually answer social needs? I think you could argue that the diversification of information presented on a profile is a relevant social need, but what about an Amazon marketplace? Is that a relevant social need? The ultimate question revolves around how these applications enable mutual disclosure between friends - how they help friends learn more about each other. That's been the killer app of Facebook since day one, and just because the audience has changed somewhat I don't believe it is no longer relevant.
The good news is that Platform is value-agnostic. There's a lot of room for people to develop the applications that enable discovery about friends. And while that might not need to be the main goal of all applications, the applications that leverage discovery and revelation about friends will engage their audience in a different way than those who do not.
Ultimately, I think the Second Life metaphor is the one that sticks best to the Facebook Platform. Facebook has opened its doors in a way that Myspace has never dreamed of. In doing so, they've created a marketplace of ideas that will benefit the company and the community. They have realized that to create a thriving community, and ecosystem must be fostered. Facebook Platform is that ecosystem, well-positioning the company for its inevitable growth.
Update: Please see my notes and criticism of the Facebook Platform in this post. [Unit Structures]
8:14:20 AM
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The Facebook Platform: Notes. In my previous post, I went into depth about the role Platform will play in Facebook's strategy going forward. This post is a less coherent collection of notes and criticisms I have about the Facebook Platform.
- Fees: On the record, Facebook has stated they don't plan to charge fees for Platform access. However, the Terms of Service, section III, clearly provides FB the opportunity to start charging: "We reserve the right to charge a fee for using the Facebook Platform and/or any individual features thereof at any time in our sole discretion." Smart money says that FB will stay away from charging as long as possible, its not in their best interest to stunt growth.
- Re-arrange your profile: With Platform, you can now drag-and-drop rearrange your profile. Cool stuff, but limited. You can't raise any elements above your Friends (left side) and your Mini-feed (right side). To move stuff around, go to your profile, click on the blue top bar of your profile elements, and drag around. You'll need javascript for this to work.
- Time to re-think privacy? Its great that I can post these new applications to my profile, but what about the 99% of Facebook that can't see my profile? Now, this has never bothered me, but it might bother people who are developing applications for Facebook. Perhaps it is time to let branded apps selectively peek through the privacy layer, with approval of course.
- Friends.get still broken. One of the main problems with the API is that it will only allow you to see the friends of the current user. What this means is that the user of an application can only see their friend network, but not the networks of their friends. This makes no sense because I can easily see my friends' networks in Facebook proper. By not allowing the API to get a list of a friend's friends, my ability to get interesting information by stumbling around is critically limited. Right now, Facebook apps have to be just about you. I already know me - let me find things out about my friends via their friend networks.
- Feed.publish: In my opinion, this is the biggest deal in the API. A secret of Facebook is that people actually don't spend all that much time on each others' profiles. I don't check my friends' profiles each day, and I certainly don't check my less-than-friends profiles every day. First off, the news feed handles that for me, and second, we just dont have the time or inclination to surf our friends endlessly all the time. This is a key drawback to profile apps - people actually arent going to see them that often. However, with the feed.publish call, people can now have access to a news feed, meaning an app can broadcast what you've done to your newsfeed. This is a huge addition, and is very important. Also important to note is that the amount of times an app can publish to the feed is limited (about 20x/person) so applications must be careful when using feed messages.
- Joe or Jane Developer to the Background? The Facebook API has largely been used by hobbyists and independent developers. While a few corporations peeked in, the majority of the development was done by people who were experimenting with the API. The applications created to date have a distinctly second-class feel, and the launch was really all about companies, not the individuals who have been providing the necessary testing, experimentation and feedback that Facebook required to get this product out the door. If companies become the first-class citzens of the Platform, expect students and hobbyists to go elsewhere; that would be a bad, bad situation for FB. FB should re-invest in its developer community, reward and encourage development going forward.
- Higer Ed, its time to colonize: Of course, the last people who will develop Facebook platform applications will be Higher Ed, which moves as fast as a glacier on things like this. This is a shame, because Higher Ed has every incentive to participate. Why? This is the prime digital space for your constituents. Higher Ed should look at developing useful, need-answering places in Facebook. Give me a page with the academic calendar, links to Blackboard and student services, give me messages from time to time. Higher Ed can do all of this without worrying about FERPA or anything else. I'd also like to see alumni associations look into this - its extremely relevant and useful for the alumni context.
I think my thoughts on how higher ed could use the platform warrant another post. I might even mock up a few ideas. Your ideas and feedback welcome in the thread. [Unit Structures]
8:12:16 AM
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Facebook Public Profiles. Sometime in the past few weeks, Facebook began exposing profiles to be indexed by Google (A search today returns over 350,000 profiles). Granted, profiles are still private, but how will people feel about their profile being indexed in Google? At the same time, there seems to be no way to turn this functionality off, and Facebook help documents have no mention of this new "feature."
These types of context-leaps have caused problems for Facebook in the past. When newsfeeds were turned on with no privacy, Facebook failed to understand that privacy was both quantitative and qualitative. A context jump from "searchable within Facebook" to "searchable in Google" is a big deal. The fact Facebook was not upfront with its users in saying "we're going to be letting Google in to index our userbase" is troubling. Even more troubling is the seeming inability to opt in or out of this service. I'd rethink this approach.
Update: French reader provides advice on how to turn public profiles off. To do so, deselect "everyone" in search privacy. This turns off the public profile. You can then re-enable the rest of the options to make yourself widely searchable in Facebook. Thanks to French reader for this important bit of information.
Update 2: Anonymous commenter writes: Facebook listened. Go to the search privacy page and there's an option to shut this off now. Great news! [Unit Structures]
8:11:25 AM
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Adopting Communication Practice. Over on the O'Reilly Radar Blog, I came across a piece by Peter Brantley entitled "Working in Facebook." In it, Brantley discusses a topic I often think about - how we adopt and carry forward technical skills. He argues that the skills students are learning in social networking tools will remain with them as "normal" communications practice as they move forward in their career. He says:
First, this is a fundamentally important shift generationally in what we expect from our software productivity tools. The grad students and young faculty using Facebook have used MySpace, and been Facebook members through their whole adolescent and adult school experiences. They are taking this experience with them into their work. The work of the people that I see most often is in research and teaching. But the lesson is broader: this generation will be working collaboratively in tools like Facebook. In schools, in corporations, in small non-profits, in community centers - people will collaborate and work together in social applications. And that is going to be as natural to them as email and text messaging. Second, regardless of the ultimate fate of Facebook, the set of characteristics that it has established - the sense of community; user control over the boundedness of openness; support for fine grained privacy controls; the ability to form ad-hoc groups with flexible administration; integration and linkage to external data resources and application spaces through a liberal and open API definition; socially promiscuous communication - these will be carried with us into future environments as expectations for online communities. Facebook is an empty wasteland for people who have not climbed over the hump of use. For those who have active community within it, it is this generation's Lotus 1-2-3.
While I agree with Brantley's premise, I take issue with a few points. First, Facebook has only been around since late 2004, and really only became broadly accessible in 2005 - certainly not enough time for grad students and young faculty to be users "through their whole adolescent and adult school experiences." Furthermore, I find there is little academic collaboration inside of Facebook at the graduate level. Facebook acts as a social nexus to find and connect with fellow students, but I'd dispute that many of us are actively and meaningfully working in Facebook. Sure, we can create groups, but the Facebook groups tools are poor at best, and ill-equipped to serve academic needs.
However, the key is that Facebook is a point of centrality on a campus. From this point, well-designed tools could truly serve the student base - there's a lot of opportunity to develop such tools with the Facebook API. This is certainly an area where monetizing the API is quite possible - the amount of money schools spend on substandard learning- and course-management tools is so immense that even a fraction of the market is extremely valuable.
Back to Brantley's point, though, I too agree that the skills students develop using social networking tools will persist throughout their lives - both social and professional. The social communication tools we use when we're developing relationships (say, during college) become the tools of a lifetime. The practice of communicating and forming identity in social networks are normal, and we will continue to use these skills going forward. For those not "socialized" in these tools, the adoption process will be challenging (though not unlike non-email users picking up email). However, this sort of communication - using social networks and associated techniques - is past the point of becoming normal. For a large swath, it is normal, and teachers and designers should work on incorporating these methodologies going forward - the are inevitable. [Unit Structures]
8:06:33 AM
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Patents Don't Pay. tarball_tinkerbell sends us to the NY Times for word on a book due out next year that claims that beginning in the late 1990s, on average patents cost companies more than they earned them. A big exception was pharmaceuticals, which accounted for 2/3 of the revenues attributable to patents. The authors of the book Do Patents Work? (synopsis and sample chapters), James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer of the Boston University School of Law, have crunched the numbers and say that, especially in the IT industry, patents no longer make economic sense. Their views are less radical than those of a pair of Washington University at St. Louis economists who argue that the patent system should be abolished outright.Read more of this story at [Slashdot]
8:00:50 AM
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© Copyright
2007
Bruce Landon.
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8/1/2007; 8:29:04 AM.
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