Social networks and common sense. Can they mix?

Feb 092009

I want to touch on something – again – which I’ve mentioned a few times.
I have problems understanding all these “new” social websites, the entire web 2.0 wave and the continued pull on so many people to judge their self-worth based on these site.
And yes – I am so very aware of the irony of using similar services myself and even more blogging about it. There is no need to point it out – I am just a lemming, although one of my reasons is “keeping up” with the technologies due to professional interest. But I’m also a lemming who view these things critically.
Anyways – as I see it, much of it is just a continued development of the usage of the internet, to a degree. The popularity of something increases (drastically), more people, new technologies and so on.
Back in the “old days” of being online it was the bulletin boards which were the big thing, then the web struck it big and everybody and their dog had to have a website. IRC chat, ICQ and UseNet groups existed and people socialized via them, but it was for the nerds and geeks and people with no life. But it was Web 2.0, and it was it before anybody had even thought about calling anything for Web 2.0.
But then development stepped up pace discussion boards where big and sites such as “MySpace” popped up and now everybody and their dog had to have a MySpace page and be a member of umpteen forums, and share their thoughts and often private details with the world. Websites were a thing of the past. Well not really, but it wasn’t “cool” any more.

Nowadays it is Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the likes – there are a ton of social sites out there, where ICQ and IRC have died out. People have moved on to the next new thing. No big surprise there.
But where does this development take us? It is almost a race to keep up. New social network and “big thing” and people flock towards that without judging whether it is worth it or not.
Reports are flowing around now that Facebook sells the information it gathers on its users  for advertisement purpose – logically I’d say. Of course they’ll do that, almost anybody would much like Google does – few people give away services for absolutely nothing.

But combine such reports with so many people’s inability to separate their private sphere, or business sphere from their online Facebook (for example) activity, it results in confidential, private or even harmfull material is flowing around an mass.
And then enters the security risk of all the hundreds of applications people spam other people with, all masked with the approval of friends, meaning the critical sense and safeguards are clouded which would otherwise safeguard you from clicking links you shouldn’t.
Just imagine the amount of data which shouldn’t be there, based on the cases we actually hear.
I even saw some analyst suggest that people should hurry on to these sites and simply create a profile to reserve their name and avoid fake profiles, so you/your company wouldn’t be spoofed?

I mean where have common sense gone? Why is it common anymore? My Facebook profile is mostly used as a contact book for friends, and so I can keep up with what they are doing and have an easy way to contact them in case I need/want. But why do people post private pictures on what is essentially a network they have no control over? People post they go on vacation alongside their full name and address/home town.
I’ve also start seeing reports in the news that “kids” these days measure their worth in how many friends they have on services as Facebook. “Oh noes, I only have 20 friends, so I must be less popular and interesting and worthwhile then that one who has 200”.

I’ve often wondered whether the expansion of the internet have made common sense go away as it becomes a larger part of our life – or it is because lack of common sense is a constant and we just see it much more visible than ever before due to modern technology?
Are these social networks really beneficial for many people? Can they not control themselves when the border between private and public becomes blurred out due to technology?
Has technology moved too fast? Or have it just exposed the people who lack common sense?

 

Web 2.0 not making much money.

May 282008

Financial Times is reporting that many Web 2.0 are failing to create (significant) revenue.
I’m far from surprised, as it is something I’ve argued in many discussions before and wrote about in my blog

Web 2.0 as a concept looks to me to just be a buzzword, and worse – a reminisces of the “happy venture days” in the mid 90s, where mentioning the word e-solution, webpage or something similar had people standing by with a big bag of money, cause it was the “new economy”.

I seriously question all services which does not form their business on some tangible product or stream of income. Information about consumers are valurable, but if the information stands alone and doesn’t create sales, it is doomed to fail. And then there are all the other services which now have to be plastered with advertisements to make a buck.

It seems more and more that Web 2.0 is just the re-emerging of advertise driven content …. Just now the users are better armed and prepared towards advertisements, and so the struggle between users and advertisers continue.

Web 2.0 indeed. It is still Web 1.0, just with faster broadband connections.

Adverts on YouTube

May 142008

Seems Google is thinking about placing advertisements on YouTube in an attempt to get it to make a profit. http://news.ebrandz.com/content/view/1897/568/

Well, personally I do not mind such advertisements myself, as long as
they do not come in the form of "roll over", pop up or other such
annoyances, and especially not if they starts containing sound and
music.

What strikes me most though, is that YouTube isn't making Google much
money (nooo, really, a free service isn't turning a large profit),
which fits nicely into my Web 2.0
piece I wrote the other day. t looks to me very much like people
(companies) just though that money would flow in, if you "Web
2.0"-ified your websites, whereas even a company as Google decides to
start using ads on their Web 2.0 sites. And this is on top of the
copyright problems associated with a service such as YouTube which I
bet is also a large cost.

Now I'm sure Google doesn't need the money, but it all comes back to my
point – Web 2.0 is not a silver bullet. Revenue is not guarenteed, and
it is not a new economy (like the internet bubble buzz back in the mid
90s). It still needs to provide a product – adverts now – to be able to
turn revenue.

It will be interesting to see how far Google will go with their
advertisement, cause if they go a overboard (I doubt it, but well, I
guess it is possible), the "customers" will simply move towards the
next service which provides something comparable. A number of them
already exists.  

 

Social Networks, the new water cooler?

May 132008

Some time ago I was reading a magazine from a professional organization I’m a member of.
It said that in England, IT people and office workers were spending about half an hour a day on services such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, which equated to a huge number of lost revenue a year. The original survey was performed back in January …. yes I’m a tad out of the loop. Anyways….
Even though the piece did list a number of benefits; building relations and a fast way to information, it did focus heavily on the loss it caused.
So what striked me most about this piece was how the loss was actually made up because it looks to be half  hour used equals a half hour “lost” productivity.
There was little mention on whether people were doing this on their breaks or in the work time. That alone is the first caveat that something was ”off” with this.
I doubt most people can work a full 8 hours a day without any form for break. So what if this half hour takes place in a timeslot which otherwise would be used to …. say, take a break. Then it can’t be lost productivity, ‘cause that implies 100% productivity in a work day.

Now, I’m a programmer, and as such I spend almost my entire workday behind the computer, and yes, I do venture into Facebook once a while or look at some videos on YouTube, however I generally also work enough hours that breaks are warranted. And when taking a break, sitting behind the computer – it is easy to just alt-tab over to a browser, and do a little light surfing or “networking”.

Funnily enough, then in the same magazine two pages prior to this piece, there was another article which stated that “small talk” was important to build social relations around the office. Basically a positive form of gossip, water cooler talk, because it helped you connect with your colleagues and possible find out more personal stuff about them, or even work related information. Now I know it wasn’t the same author of both articles (I hope) and the sources for the information likewise, but I find it fun how one type of “wastefulness” can be considered beneficial and the other as loss of productivity.  Also when considering that nobody can be fully productive 100% of the time, and that “half hour” relaxation might mean that people actually work a half hour faster than they normally would do.

Personally I think – especially for people in my line of work, those social networks like Facebook for example is the new water cooler.
I rarely use facebook for many usefull things, other than as a method of keeping up with friends, but most of my colleagues – and even bosses – are on my friend list on Facebook (and LinkedIn, my other social network I visit – linkes to my profile are found under links to the right). It provides easy “openers” for small talk at work; which statements the persons have posted, quizzes taken and all such things.
So is the “loss of productivity” bad, or is it a new method with which you can connect with your colleagues on another more personal and informal level? Is it the new water cooler, or just an alternative to the “how about that weather” opener?

Well, as long as I know that these sites do not interfere with work – and of course, if usage of them becomes a problem for a person, like an addiction, then something must be done – then I’ll continue to use them because “small talk” *is* important and a remark dropped on a social network is a good opener.

Web 2.0 – The next big thing, the next bubble, or just another buzzword

May 072008

I’m getting sick of hearing about "Web 2.0" and "the future of the internet" and all such predictions.
The term Web 2.0 seems to have changed significantly over the last period of time, because when I first started hearing about the term a year or two ago, it was used simply to describe websites and services which was based on user driven content, which – well, when you think about it, is pretty much every single user driven forum out there.

Anyways, it was meant more for site such as YouTube and MySpace et al.

Along the same time the MMO like game, or world if you will, Second Life started getting incredible hyped in the media, online as well as offline traditional media.
Suddenly “everybody” wanted an avatar in Second Life and companies had to buy virtual land, build virtual company buildings so to “meet” the customers on their terms. People earned real life actual money in this game. I even read about somebody becoming a millionaire based on Second Life revenue.

Strangely enough, most of what I heard of the game though was about how you could have sex in the game, and how people bought virtual genital for their avatar. *sigh*.

Since then, it has kind of collapsed on its own. You hear little about Second Life now, you do not hear about companies spending big buck building virtual corporate headquarters there anymore and well – the hype has gone away, and it seems to have taken its place as just another MMO.

Now you can’t rule out that Second Life was a preview of a more "graphical" internet where people roam as avatars and interact more “real”, a kind of Tron-type cyberspace with better graphics. But Second Life as a concept seems to have blown over.

Anyways, back to Web 2.0 , then nowadays it seems to be about the next interation of the internet and describing new technologies used to make webapplications – but I already hear people talk about Web 3.0 or 3.5 without anybody ever having figured out if we truly are moving away from web 1.0 (which I would think is what we have today) or even what Web 2.0 actually is about.

A simple “Web 2.0” search in Google lists 559.000.000 results, many of these arguing over what the definition is.

So if we take the original meaning – user driven content – then is it truly so different from Web 1.0?
User driven content, well we are all users online – a company providing a webpage is a user, however the users can’t change the content but do we want them to do so? If I go to a companys page, I want information from said company – and if I want reviews of said company, I know where to find that as well.
Is there even a place for user-driven content in online business? I mean actual user driven content, from you and me?
Well, not in the traditional business in my humble opinion – at least as I see it, so we’ll have to look towards the "new" Web 2.0 services (no, not the forums – they apparently aren’t Web 2.0, cause they were there even in Web 0.5)
to figure it out.

If we take a service such as Facebook then it is hugely popular right now and Microsoft bought 1.6% for 240million dollars.
Is the site worth that much? Is there actual money to be made in the long run, or is it just another bubble like we saw in the late 90’s early 2000?
The only way you can make money off Facebook right now seems to be advertisements and sharing the information which is generated from the users on there. And
considering how many are starting to block adverts, and block cookies and how
much privacy issues are starting to become public domain, well then I question
such a strategy. It seems the value of such sites are solely connected to only how much people/companies are willing to pay for them, or how much people/companies think other people/companies are willing to buy the service for. 

Will it be enough once the next fad hits the web? The next online sharing your feelings and sit in a circle – community? Web 2.0 buzz or not?

I have my doubts, because if we compare with the happy internet days right smack in the middle of the bubble, everybody talked about “The New Economy” and how it’d replace the “Old” (traditionally).  I think this Web 2.0 trend strikes a lot of resembles to how companies behaved back in the bubble before it burst.
People uncritically assigning huge number values to services which have no obvious or firm revenue stream. Companies are seemingly willing to pay these numbers right now, just as they were back in "those days" – E-Bay and Skype ring a bell (pun intended), where E-Bay paid huge sums for Skype and now is rumored to be selling it off again because “it doesn’t fit their business plan” or something like that.
Does that not sound like all the nice venture companies which went belly up when the bubble burst? Just so far on a smaller scale (E-Bay will not go bankrupt on this, but somebody else might if they "try")

Of course – it might not be that Web 2.0 bursts like the previous bubble, bringing down services like Facebook (I doubt YouTube is going anywhere, lest copyright brings it down, because Google is earning big buck on search advertisements) if they do not find a steady stream of income, or possible being sold off to another big company which fails to do anything significant with it – aka Skype.

Personally though – I think Web 2.0 is just another buzzword management can use combined with ROI and SOA, web services, thin clients (yeah – we tried that once already) and what not.
But deep in my heart – the Web 2.0 buzz still feels very much like the internet bubble, and while I'm not holding my breath, I would not be surprised if it burst like it.

Facebook on BBC Click.

May 022008

I saw the clip from BBC News tech program ”Click” about facebook security and was kinda surprised about what they did.

For those who’ve been living under a rock or on the moon or something the last period of time, Facebook is a social networking site – “Web 2.0” buzzwords and all – where people share all sorts of things about themselves. Like so many other similar sites.

I use it marginally myself (link in right hand column), mostly because I’m terrible at keeping in touch with people, so having them “collected” in some service is handy Embarassed

Anyways, on Facebook you can play all sorts of mini-games and take all sorts of quizzes and people can develop these third party applications for others to utilize.
What BBC did in Click was make an application which could take all the private data you have on your profile and send it to the developers of said application. Now, this is bad enough in itself, but worse – you didn’t even have to use the application yourself, but it would apparently be enough if one of your friends did so, as it could lift data from the friend list.

Now personally I’m a type which drifts between complete paranoia and complete trust  Laughing

If I trust a site, I have few qualms about sharing a number of private information, if not – I’ll keep a tight lib about most actual information. But I’m also extremely careful what I install and run and accept – hence I do not fear such applications on Facebook if only I had to run them myself, cause chances are slim that I would anyway.
But if I’m suddenly dependant on my friends not running all sorts of small applications in their facebook time, the danger factor multiplies. Not because I think my friends would run such applications and simply run anything they get their way – but simply put – more factors, more possibilities.

I hope Facebook is on top of this situation and it quickly will go away due to increased security about our personal data.
Otherwise it only takes one or two larger cases of identity theft on facebook to drive many users away and then the entire buisness plan crumbles. 
Personally though, then on top of all this Beacon information sharing, I share next to nothing of consequence on a site such as Facebook which couldn't already be found by searching the web – but I’ve seen many others share much personal information though. It is a dangerous situation waiting to happen lest security is top notch (perhaps it has already happened yet people do not know about it themselves)  

 

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