Social Media as philosophy and other developments in social software...

Lisa Devaney's post on TheWall 'Stop Dumping Social Media On Your PR' seems to have earned me a rash of new Twitter followers (thanks to her very generous inclusion of some of my thoughts).
I'll quote a hefty chunk below - since it's so flattering.

As social media has grown over these last five years, I’ve watched several people really embrace the emergent sector and turn it into a profession. Some of these folks I know are getting the tossed around label of social media “gurus” which makes you wary that what they are offering is a new kind of mysterious snake oil. However, it is time to get to know these experts and take the knowledge they have developed seriously.

David Cushman (@davidcushman) is one of the big thinkers in the social media space, who, following nearly two decades of experience working with emap, set out on his own with passion and enthusiasm, and a spark of genius to devote himself to social media. He is now a managing director at the 90:10 Group, offering the kind of deep thinking counsel client’s need to approach social media. I asked David about his approach to social media and for some tips and tricks that might help PRs and clients get their head around it all.

“Our approach is to think consultancy – to get out of the way as much as possible. We use the tools and techniques of social media to solve business problems – creating new efficiencies by working with the crowd (hence the 90:10 name – 90% of the effort coming from outside the org, 10% inside),” he told me.
“Ultimately this social stuff is, like the web, for making things with people who care about the outcomes – rather than broadcasting messages through.”

David offers this advice in approaching social media:

• Social media is not a set of tools or channels – it’s a philosophical approach.
• It is not an innovation in and of itself.
• The innovation and the true value derives from the application of its tools and techniques to support people in solving problems that matter to them

Five years ago, there wasn’t the kind of choices of experts and agencies available, but now, the social media sector is booming and it is time to call on leaders like Maz or David to take a smart approach to what is proving to be the most important channel of influence between a brand and its public. Reputations are being made and destroyed, sometimes in a matter of days in social media, and to just dump such a crucial responsibility onto overworked account executives is a recipe for disaster."

So thanks very much for that Lisa. And if Lisa thinks I understand the space and have a few reasonably wise things to say about it, then all I can say is, it takes one to know one.
While I'm on big-up-me Friday, I also received a copy of a book today which includes a chapter from myself - based on the presentation I gave at BlogTalk in Cork in 2008. I have John Breslin to thank for my involvement in this project.
The book is titled: Recent Trends and Developments in Social Software.
My chapter is: "Reed's Law and How Multiple Identities Make the Long Tail Just That Little Bit Longer."
It's available on Amazon (Prime and Kindle) but the price is on the scary side (and nothing to do with me - honest). At £40-plus those with a clear academic interest in the area - and a good grasp of the tech - are likeliest to get best value from it.

Related articles

• (R)evolution: Frank Eliason on the Social Business and Customer Service (briansolis.com)
• Point of View: David Cushman (zemanta.com)
• Social media, Nokia style (browsermedia.co.uk)
• ULTIMATE GUIDE: How To Create A Business Social Media Strategy From Start To Finish (businessinsider.com)

Clay Shirky on how algorithms caused the credit crunch

I had the great good fortune to meet and interview Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) yesterday at Incisive Media in London.
He was in town for the AOP conference among other keynotes - and meetings with Government Ministers, no less.
So to get a one-to-one for any length of time was fantastic. We had a scheduled 20mins... but things got interesting so we stretched it...

The result is the video you see below. At least, that's part of the result. It's part one of seven. The interview lasts over 35mins in total and Clay answers not only my questions, but all those put through comments on this blog or via twitter over the last few days.

I'll be adding the next six parts over the next week or so - and for those who can take it all in one go - I'll add the full and unedited (and higher quality) version to google video before too long (youtube limits me to 10mins a pop, anyway).

In part one we talk about Clay's journey - what is in his background that makes him place the human element so high in his consideration of group forming network theory. (image by matlock via flickr)

And the new ways value are created in self-forming communities of purpose leads us to Clay's fascinating analysis of what the bankers did wrong and what they can learn (how social capital mitigates risk) from reconnecting with humans.

Hope that's whetted your appetite: Now hear from the man himself. And if you've missed Clay on his current trip to the UK, you can catch him again here. (blog of the event here) And you can buy his book, here.

Why hits MUST have less value in the networked world

I spoke at Digital Asset Management in London yesterday, on a panel in the morning and on my feet in the afternoon.
I also had the good fortune to hear Professor Malcolm McDonald speak about marketing (a real pleasure - you really should check him out if you haven't come across his work) and to be interviewed by the clearly brilliant Michael Moon - in for the event from San Francisco.

Once again during the Q&A sessions I was involved in I found myself trying to explain the 'reason' why hits MUST have less value in the emerging networked world. I've never included slides for this in any of my presentations. So, I thought I'd better whip some up.

They are shown below (and on slideshare). Your thoughts, as always, actively welcomed. Apologies for the quality - hope the relevance counts!

| View | Upload your own

What Google means when it says mobile internet ad revenues will outstrip web

When Eric Schmidt says mobile will be the next big advertising platform AND that within a few short years it will outstrip ad revenues from the web, it might be time to take a fresh look at your own predictions and assumptions about what advertising is.

Schmidt is Google CEO. He knows a thing or two about ad revenues, and particularly about those coming from the web. He has deals in place for advertising on MySpace and, of course, ad revenues from YouTube.

He has tricks up his sleeve for new and improved search and, and, and... but what he has identified is that the mobile internet is the right medium for the most personal of advertising. And the most personal of advertising is the most effective.

The mobile is the most edge-in, networked device we currently have. It is what makes it such an exceptional fit with the way the network works, and how groups form. I wonder if it's this that Google has identified when Schmidt says in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
"Some things work, and others just don't – but the mobile internet always works."

If he's talking about response rate, places where the ad is the content and the content is the ad have a tendancy to high response rates. Where perfected the response rate ought to be 100%.

Google is working towards cost per action models. Where that action is purchase (and isn't that where all measurement is intended to lead?) then you can have 1:1 relationships between ad and content and charge accordingly.

I'll make a wild guess that Schmidt isn't predicting that there will be more display advertising or even more text-link advertising on the mobile internet compared to the fixed line.

He is predicting that ad models that take advantage of the personal nature of this edge-in device, which offer ad as content rather than as interruption, will prove way more valuable precisely because it will be way more effective.

He is predicting that ad models which are a better fit for the networked world will win.

He's not alone.

You the channel

Microsoft Research was kind enough to invite Bauer Consumer Media (the company I work for) behind the doors of its Cambridge (UK) facility today.
I was joined by our Head of Technology Gus Swan and, along for the fun of it, Communities Dominate Brands' Alan Moore.
My very sincere thanks to Natasa Milic-Frayling for putting together a sparkling agenda and group of brilliant people which sparked some fascinating conversation.
Microsoft Research is the blue sky arm - where new stuff gets toyed with - often ideas that are years from being turned into a product, if they'll ever see the light of day.
And for that reason I'm not going to repeat the bulk of what we were shown.
However, one thing Natasa demo'd is in the public domain and I think it's very interesting indeed: WeConnect.co.uk.

Early in the afternoon we discussed Reed's Law (Group Forming Network Theory) and the idea that navigation and real-time discovery of people who share the same purpose is the thing that unlocks the potential of Reed's Law.

The problem that needs solving is: how do I find people who want to achieve the same as I do right now?

One limitation to overcome (and a pretty significant one at that) is the fact that the tools which enable this kind of connection, social networks, even social mediums like twitter, are still, no matter what their scale, silos.

The long term and monumental win is in a platform-agnostic solution. It is where we are the platforms. We, the nodes, connect through the internet as a whole, not a small subsection of it.

Which is why I find WeConnect.co.uk so interesting.

At this stage it's a series of platform-agnostic personal broadcast channels. I take a picture in Venice - I can share it with you on your mobile, or to my online picture gallery, or directly to your desktop; one-too-one or one-to-many. The connections are between us (via Internet Explorer in this case). The device we use simply realises that connection. There is no social network or medium involved.

Natasa and co are thinking about adding some of the kind of commenting we come to expect of social networks, but know that this will also bring complex design issues.

As it stands it's a brave first step.

Imagine an internet in which there are only blogs and those blogs exist nowhere other than at the point at which they are realised, or rendered, on a device. Imagine a place without platforms or silos, instead a place where groups attract through the implicit and explicit data each of these blogs exhibit. In real time. To and from any enabled device.

(nb, these are my imaginings, not those of microsoft, at least not on this occasion!)

A few steps to go then, but I like the direction WeConnect points.

In digital space, everyone can hear you scream

When the transaction cost of group activity falls through the floor, economic behaviour must change.

That's my paraphrasing of Clay Shirky's description of the critical disruption the power of the network is causing (in his book Here Comes Everybody).

Clay has identified essentially the same learning that Dave Weinberger brings us in Everything Is Miscellaneous, or indeed that the Cluetrain Manifesto showed (in the idea that in the digital space the gap between humans is zero).

In the digital space everyone can hear you scream.

And it all comes back to Reed's Law (Group Forming Network Theory).

Value gets created by fuzzy-edged communities of purpose. The thing that allows those communities of purpose to gather, evolve, talk, cooperate and act is the medium of zeroes and ones - the digital space.

Digital IS different from the physical realm because it has the potential for us to ALL to be permanently hotdesking, globally.

Unlike the physical world it is possible for ALL the potential of Reed's Law to be fulfilled in a global digital medium.

Where that potential isn't currently fulfilled it is because we are not able to find absolutely every node on the network with whom we could, or should, connect for any given purpose.

There must be huge value in creating the optimum fitness landscape for the individuals who form groups of purpose to find one another. The more people of shared passion and purpose can find one another in real time, the more value will get created.

Until we as individuals become our own platforms, for want of a better word (ie until we as individuals are each able to connect with networks of trust without the need for mediation of any kind) there remains a place for the mediators of this process, potentially the last generation of mediator.

For media as platforms.

Identity: Complexity or opportunity? Depends who is asking the question?

Tuesday proved to be a really interesting day at the VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) day Adriana Lukas organised at the October Gallery in Old Gloucester Road, London.

Some concepts/deployments of VRM-style models got a little air time: pintarget.com (please try it, they'd love your feedback), Paoga's My Sorting Office (which takes the spam out of email and gives you some control over vendors by allowing consumers to set up multiple temporary email accounts through which they can receive pitches from vendors without revealing their own ID.) and I liked BoxedUp's approach which ex FT man Chris Osbourne describes as 'Del.icio.us for products'.

And these are all worthy manifestations of the spirit of vrm.

But I particularly liked Adriana's own grappling with the creation of an infrastructure on which an ecosystem of such manifestations could evolve.

Growing from readily available tools and concepts (RSS, igoogle etc) it raised questions about how multiple personality facets could be shared – in a user-driven way. (Something my white paper on multiple digital identity and the long tail explores a little)

It sounds kind of mad that someone might want to expose facets of their digital identity in the form of 1000s of rss feeds (possibly more) of data about themselves, shared with whom they choose when they choose.

But that's likely because those of us who didn't grow up in the digital age see complexity where digital natives may see the opportunity for self-expression (in a psychological self-deterministic way)

For example,

World 1.0 question: How can I simplify the management of all these multiple identities?

World 2.0 question: Where are the tools that allow me to express all the subtleties of me?

I think Adriana may be on the right track with her infrastructure approach. Build something on which others can express; a fitness landscape for the evolution to begin on. That's where the value will emerge.

And it's kind of the world2.0 solution, isn't it?

The death of death

We like a good death.

Death of the 30-second spot, Death of newspapers, Death of interruptive advertising, Death of the website (url), Death of Mass Media… etc...

Perhaps we should start thinking, instead, about life – in all its evolutionary glory – to reveal what’s really going on as the network disrupts everything it touches.

Life; in the disaggregation that digitisation has wrought, in the explosion of distribution of content and services we witness.

Life; in widgets’ freedom to explore and evolve. An explosion of new fauna and flora while the hamstrung dinosaurs of ‘websites’ lumber around hoping their food will come to them.

Life; in the freedom of nodes to connect one to another, one-to-many, one to whichever they choose.

Life; in the way conversations evolve.

Life; in self-forming, non-directed, rapidly-evolving, fuzzy-edged communities of passion and purpose. Out of chaos emerges new beauty, massive energy.

Life; in how groups form and reform online in ways THAT WERE NOT POSSIBLE in the physical world of the atom. Life; in ways the one-dimensional view of the node in Reed’s Law must underestimate.

This is the Columbo Moment.

Walks towards door. Pauses. Turns. Raises hand and eyebrow.

“Er… just one other thing.”

“These conversations of ours. The ones creating all the value. They couldn’t happen before could they?”

Lieutenant, you have me. No, they can only happen in a digital world. The Power of the Network relies on something more than a series of tools returning us to our ‘normal’ social selves – the We Species that Alan Moore refers to. The very fact that these tools are digital, that they function on/with/through the web, makes a fundamental difference.

The Power of the Network goes beyond returning us to our communal ‘we species’ roots. It pours Miracle Grow on those roots, blitzes them with mutating isotopes and carries out multiple cross pollination while harvesting and experimenting on the results ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Every time I move desk I get a new perspective on the business I work in. I have conversations with people who are now much more conveniently placed for me than they had been previously, new people. New nodes, more connections = greater value emerging (one extra node doubles the value of your network).

In the digital world I can be next to everyone, all at the same time. There is no restriction imposed by atoms. Self-forming groups of passion and interest, ever forming and reforming, ever evolving, swirling around the world with fuzzy, permeable edges… these could not exist when conversation relied on two or more people being in the same physical space at the same time.

The self-forming networks of trust evidenced by blogrolls is one great example. But they don’t quite hit the ‘in real time’ (synchronous communication) spot.

Twitter, offers our latest best illustration.

Here’s what it does:

1. Nodes can connect without the limitation of sharing the same physical space. It’s your global, everywhere-at-once hotdesk.

2. It enables real-time, drop-everything-to-join-in conversation.

3. The group involved in the conversation has permeable edges (anyone can follow anyone else – being led to relevant people through their own networks of trust, anyone can spot someone else they might like to follow, referred to by someone else they are already following etc etc). There are no structural limitations imposed by reliance on personal data ownership. They are fuzzy. Facebook’s are more sharply-defined, for example.

4. Since the groups have permeable edges they can (must) constantly form and reform, pursue new interests, break-up, reform around a new purpose etc. They are about flow rather than focus.

5. The distributed micro-blogging nature of Twitter means the conversation can start from any node in your current self-formed fuzzy-edged group. The conversation itself can evolve rapidly thanks to rapid iteration and amplification, creating more opportunities for value to emerge, drawing in and ejecting contributors as it evolves.

Conversation, the great intersection of ideas, is the driver of value of the network. Now it is enabled to evolve in complex adaptive ways, just as the economy does, just as the internet itself does.

New stuff will emerge.

The digital world is not about death. It is about evolving and amplifying ideas through groups who could never have come together before. It is about life. New, amazing forms of life.

The evolution has begun.

Hoarding data can seriously damage your wealth

When you aggregate personal data in profiles (eg facebook) you risk imposing structural limitations on the conversation and on the way groups form. This leads to severe restrictions on value and growth creation in your network.

How so?

I was just chatting with JoshuaMarch in twitter about the ratio of followers/followed we maintain. I try to keep mine at 1:1 to enable conversation.

When you have more people following you than you are following, you run the risk of broadcasting to those who can only listen to what you say.
Listening of course has great value. But its greatest value is in the way that it acts as a precursor to your engaging in a real-time human conversation. It's why conversation (two-way flows) trumps broadcast.

Joshua mentioned how good facebook's new chat looks (my self-forming network of trust acting as an excellent newsfilter once again!). At first look, it seems a powerful and overdue play from facebook. Facebook has finally enabled the conversation. A bit.

But twitter still has the edge because the hurdles you have to leap over to become a friend in facebook are greater than those in twitter.

The facebook rules-of-engagement-bar is much higher than twitter's. And that bar must remain high because of the amount of private data you would otherwise have to share wshen you connect in facebook.

There are therefore structural reasons why nodes cannot be as free to connect in facebook as they can be in twitter. No wonder facebook is working on allowing people to connect without sharing all their data (ie degrees of friendship)!

It seems then that if your model relies heavily on aggregating personal data in a profile then you inevitably risk leaning towards conversation and group inhibiting models.

In twitter the process of becoming a friend is as simple as clicking that person's 'follow' button. Once you've done this you have the opportunity to see every microblog micropost from your new 'friend' in real time.

Assuming the followed follows you, every new post you see is a potentional conversation starter shared with every one of the conversation starter's 'friends'. Any person who you follow can instigate that conversation.

This has a powerful and positive impact on how groups of passion, purpose and intent can self-organise and evolve (see Reed's Law and Group Forming Network Theory).

In twitter groups of followed and followers aggregate themselves around shared passions and interests. No one leads. No one is in charge of deciding whether or not the next person is allowed to join. No one sets the agenda. We all do.

Each group has fuzzier, faster-reacting edges than facebook's do. A friend's mention of @twitterpersonB might raise your interest in twitterpersonB. You might end up following them as a result. Your group now has an additional node, a new shape and a subtly reformed character and purpose. The group is therefore faster to evolve by amplification than can be the case with facebook friends. Its synchronous nature makes real time amplification of purpose, and therefore evolution of action, real and fast.

In facebook chat you have to go looking for a conversation. You have to pick one with one selected other friend*. The conversation isn't at the heart of its model. Privacy and closed networks have to retain their dominance for that structural profile-reliance reason referred to before.

And it looks like facebook chat will be for one-to-one conversations only (*please correct me if I'm wrong about that). If so, it means the potential for growth in value will follow the shallow curve of Metcalfe's Law.
Twitter's enables many-to-many so follows the exponential growth of Reed's Law.

Hey Twitter: Beware the Groups!
Why Twitter will beat Facebook

Centre giving you a tough time? Just add a connection

Via Twitter... stoweboyd "When you are a software guy in a hardware company, you are like a second class citizen in a third world country.' - John Paul

Quite. And my response? When you are an edgling and you have to confront any centralised edifice, you can experience similar frustrations.

But, you know, there's really no need to worry. The open network will always prevail. If (and according to Reed's Law, or Group Forming Network Theory, this is true) the value of the network doubles with each additional node, then just by making one connection you've doubled the value of your contributions and of everyone else's in your network.

So if/when you're battering your head against the proverbial brick wall - if you fail today don't lose heart, don't give in. Respond the way an edgling must.

Add another connection. Then go back and try again. Literally: your efforts redoubled.

BlogTalk 2008 impressions and takeaways

I was lucky enough to have my paper 'Reed's Law and how multiple identities make the long tail just a little longer' selected to be presented at BlogTalk 2008, in Cork, Ireland.
So while I could quite happily repeat to you what I had to say (though there's little need while there's that link to the paper itself) I thought it might be better to share a little of what I heard and learned.
I was only there for the Tuesday, March 4, the final day of the event - so apologies for those I missed.

Twine and the semantic web for consumers

Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks - the creators of Twine - gave the keynote on Tuesday morning. Twine is a wonderful mix of the various attempts to do semantic web; human, linguistic, AI, statistical etc. I'm lucky enough to be invited to try it in its 'VIP' Beta mode and will be sharing what I learn right here.
Nova says google is about organising the world's information, while Twine is about organising YOUR information.
He describes the semantic web as a 'Hi Res' version of the web. If web2.0 connects people web3.0 (by which Nova means the third decade of the web, and nothing else) will be about connecting people and things. It will be about data getting smarter so that it is possible to take the sum of all human knowledge and offer that in a machine expressable form on the web. We're talking about software that can think here, and help us think collectively.
This has huge implications for humanity - for what we can collectively achieve as a species together, Nova argues.
The Semantic web is not some fantasy requirement of the future, it's an increasing necessity for today - as anyone who searches google knows. With each passing day it's taking more and more iterations to find what you are looking for - because with each passing day there is more and more data to be sifted through.
And as I've dsecribed before google doesn't know what you are looking for.
Anyway, if you get a chance to try out twine, take a look. It's been on my list of 'ones to watch' (see left hand nav, way on down) for some time now.

So that was a tough act to follow, but that was my job. I was thrilled that Nova wanted a copy of my white paper after the presentation. And if you think I'm too cool to mention that, you way overestimate my coolness by several degrees...

Blogs vs Microblogging

Other highlights for me: Panel discussion re blogs and conversational social media - basically the battle of the long form blog versus the micro... which led to some interesting feedback re twitter usage (some use it to float ideas which then converge in a more traditional blog later - I know I do). To be honest, the floor contributed better than the panel to this - but that's not a bad thing by any means. Who is aggregating the comments and the thinking twitter inspires?

Web2.0 is all about advertising. A Lastfm of content anyone?

I enjoyed Michael Breidenbrucker's afternoon keynote in which he posited that a) Germans like copying and pasting (entire websites and concepts...) but more seriously b) web 2.0 is all about advertising.
Michael (who was one of the founders of Last.fm and is currently with Lovely Systems) essentially makes the argument that our recommendations of good stuff to each other (through our actions as they are shared via the facebook newsfeed, or our contribution to the processing of an algorythmn which results in a recommendation a new piece of music to enjoy) act as content.
This is content we create, content we distribute and content which serves as advert. Advert as content. That's be engagement marketing then.

Had an enjoyable chat with Michael over coffee, discussing the potential for a UGC-driven Lastfm of news.
He was concerned that what makes Lastfm work is the back catalogue of available music. Back catalogues aren't of much use in news (which needs to be, er new). But in principle, it's all about tagging and algorythmns. And they could apply to audio, text pictures, video... information... content (as advert as content).
Ok, well, I argue maybe news doesn't have to be new, as in just happened, it has to be new - to you. ie something that you didn't know you needed to know, but now you do. And it's relevant to you. That fits the relevance over quality model of news I bang on about.

Make it a Lastfm of content and... hmm maybe that's what twine can become. Maybe that's why they compare themselves against google "organising your information" indeed!

And if that wasn't enough for one day I was certainly inspired to take a look at Microsoft's Popfly (a way of creating mashups without needing to know a line of code) by Martha Rotter (Martha also advised us to watch out for an announcement re Silverlight er today), impressed by MindVoyager's social tools for marketers and blown away by the impressive array of tools for collaboration assembled within IBM (thanks to Gabriel Avram and Brian O'Donovan for that insight) where 10% of the staff blog and a third are actively involved in internal social networking - complete with self-forming networks of purpose.

Plenty more good stuff too, including videos of some of the presentations - start here.

Digital Identity and Reed's Law: The podcast

I'm presenting a paper at BlogTalk2008 in Cork next week (and internally for Bauer Consumer Media people on Thursday this week). It's the same paper I presented at the Digital Identity Forum in London last November - and which is also available to download from the 'white papers' section you'lll find in the left hand navigation of this blog.
Before I spoke at Digital Identity Forum I met with its brilliant organiser Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion. He recorded our conversation for a podcast and I'm pleased to say that has now been made available.
So if you'd rather listen to a conversation than read the 11 pages... go here

The value of random friends: Just another reason why open will beat closed

I've spent a few days out of the office discussing things as diverse as fashion, aggregation, how companies function, mobile communities, pervasive computing and the future of marketing and advertising. Talked about football, too - but that was on my own time...

Many of these discussions get heavily skewed by notions of openness. Facebook is our reference for closed (I-tunes and Apple offer another version).
And I've often said open will always beat closed. So here's another reason: the value of random friends.
You'll have heard of small world theory, or six-degrees of separation. The reason these are possible is because random friends are introduced to networks - people outside of your usual experience. For example, someone you meet on holiday, or at a party - who opens up a whole series of new connections for you.

These do not happen when you are in jail.

Some people I have met in this open way are among my closed facebook friends. But I didn't find any of them on facebook - it's closed nature prevents just this kind of random connection (this and the suspicion you feel when you receive an unsolicited friend request, which perhaps is part of the paranoia of the closed).

Random friends are the parts of your network which allow its value to grow exponentially (see Reed's Law). Remove them and your network has considerably less value.
And perhaps this is why my facebook connection's value will never be as great as, for example, those acquired through this blog.

The blog is the medium through which connections are made (those self-forming groups of shared interest and purpose I believe create so much value) while facebook becomes the habitat in which SOME of those random friends are caged.

Whoops - there goes your identity. Mass hysteria in the UK

I spoke at the high-brow but fun Digital Identity Forum at London's Clink yesterday - on the subject of Reed's Law and the Demand Curve. It was an interesting place to be when news broke of The UK Government's rather careless loss of the personal records of somewhere around half of the entire population.

For those not familiar with the story a Government department was asked for sensitive data records by another - and it chose to send them in the post on a couple of discs - unsecured. Not even recorded delivery. And they didn't arrive.

Whoops.

A story Dr Ian Brown told at Digital Identity (you might have seen him talking on the subject on Newsnight last night) reveals how/why this kind of thing will inevitably happen.
Apparently it was the case in the National Health Service that access to computer terminals involved a swipe card. This card revealed your personal level of clearance. The higher your rank, the greater your access - essentially. Great in theory. Trouble was, each day the most senior person in the department would swipe to log in and then leave the terminal open for all to use - probably because this was expediant.

And in the same way, you could make the data the Government has lost as secure as you like when you control the process, but the moment you introduce human beings, things can go wildly wrong. In this case a human took the expedient course of sticking them in the post. Not wise; But not beyond the realms of reason either.

Even so, I'm not sure there is quite the cause for all this hysteria. The kind of information about me currently available on those missing discs include bank account names and numbers, home address, my child's name etc. Sounds scary. But it's only scary if someone can do something scary with it.

Aren't our security conventions just a little screwed up when they rely on us NOT sharing the name of our child, or our home address. Isn't that just a bit inhuman? Anti-social?

It's time we changed the locking mechanisms, rather than making it the responsibility of users to be less social - to be less like, well, human beings.

It's in our nature. Technologists - design for it!

In any event - isn't my address and other details available publicly on the electoral roll? Sharing the name and number of our bank account gives no one access to remove anything from it. So what's the big deal?

The issue is for other people's security systems. For example - someone could apply for a credit card or some such with 'my' details. Great. They could apply for it. Not me. They are responsible for any bill racked up on it. Not me. So the problem is for the system which makes knowledge of a few social details about me its dirty big key. They are making a few social details equivalent to my identity. Mistake.

Those guys have the problem - get on with making better locks. Leave me to enjoy being human.

See you at Digital Identity

I'm back in London tomorrow, this time to speak at the eighth annual Digital Identity Forum at the Clink.
It starts tomorrow and also runs on November 21 - though I can't stay for day two, unfortunately.
It's an interesting time to be considering digital identity - with the growing buzz around the social graph.
I'm going to be speaking on 'Reed's Law and the Demand Curve'. For those who can't be there, much of what I'll discuss is covered in the white paper you'll find here.
For those who can, please come and say hello.

The Social Graph: Is it what me, myself and I want?

Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang offers this executive summary today to help define terms for men in suits as the buzz around The Social Graph becomes a clamour.

“The Social Graph is the representation of our relationships. Today, these graphs define our personal, family, or business communities on social websites. Unfortunately, we’re duplicating our same Social Graph on multiple websites, resulting in inaccurate data and time spent managing it. Despite many challenges, our Social Graphs should be self-managed from a single trusted source, replicated to websites of our choosing, thus resulting in accurate, efficient, relationship management.”

Which is simple enough. But is the idea of the Social Graph anything new and/or useful? And can it really be this simple?

I’ve got three problems I hope you’ll help with:

1. What does The Social Graph add to what we can already discern from Reed’s Law (Group Forming Network Theory)
2. If the Social Graph is about mapping the individual within networks, is this single ID approach all positive?
3. Finally, is what Jeremiah and many others describe actually Social Graph Lite?

Reed’s Law describes the exponential growth of value potential in networks – based on each node’s ability to move between groups, operate within multiple groups and choose which groups they wish to belong to.

The Social Graph maps the individual within those networks.

If we accept that multiple connections in multiple groups require your node to exhibit characteristics (it is these which enable the connections – ie shared interests/passions) then it is these characteristics that are the true enablers of the network.

So the social graph is inherent in Reed’s Law.

In other words; without a node sharing its characteristics in some form the network cannot be sustained and certainly won’t grow. If you know nothing about me why would you connect? (you could, of course, but you would be spam).

So Reed’s Law cannot function without shared characteristics. The Social Graph is simply the way those characteristics can be described.

Its benefit is that It’s a way in which we can define and describe the demand for a digital identity utility which carries a key to all your relationships with it.

As Jeremiah puts it: “centralising a users Social Graph on a trusted, third party area that can be a central place where relationships are updated, and then replicated to every social networking website using a common process and technology.”

That means it’s about making the potential for value growth in networks described by Reed’s Law closer to actual value. That's because the bits in networks that create value are those which connect with purpose. If you give me a way in which its easier for those connections with purpose to form, you're going to create more value.

And this is where I have to ask, is this single ID approach all positive?

I get the efficiencies: time saving, completeness of picture – and potentially the better ability to serve as a result. But…

But it’s not always what we want. There is value in allowing the same node to have multiple identities. It’s an idea I explore in detail in this paper (Reed’s Law and How Multiple Identities Make the Long Tail Just a Little Bit Longer). And I’m speaking about it at the Digital Identity Forum at the Clink, London on November 21, 2007.

In a nutshell: I think differently when I act differently. And acting differently is influenced by which facet of identity is deployed, depending on the social mores of the community I am interacting with.

When I think differently I contribute new value to the network.

So the charge towards a one-hit social graph may have a negative impact on the value created by networks. Whether the creation of value emerging from multiple identities is greater than that created by more efficient sharing of my characteristics remains to be seen. It’s a calculation that may have critical importance as the network evolves.

The ideal of course would be to deploy a fluid social graph which serves multi-faceted individual nodes, allowing me to choose which of my multiple IDs is revealed to each community.

It’s going to be a complex beast – particularly if you accept that “I am part of a community, therefore I am”. That is: your ID is created by those around you.

So there has to be a constant feedback to your central social graph, and it has to work out which of these updates is relevant to which other of your facets. And you have to be able to rate the accuracy of those updates – and you may want to switch off vast swathes of characteristics for displaying in one community compared to another. And all this may eat into the better-serving efficiencies we must hope the Social Graph creates.

And if you think all that is a bit complicated, consider this: The idea of the Social Graph emerges from the ‘six-degrees-of-separation’ work of Jeffrey Travers of Harvard University and Stanley Milgram of the City University of New York.

It inspired mathematicians’ Watts and Strogatz to model connections which resulted in some pretty pictures and some scary maths. So when you take a look here you may conclude that what we’re looking at in the concept of the Social Graph emerging in social network thinking today is a bit of a watered down version. And if anyone can explain how that maths is currently being deployed in the development of social networks, please contribute by commenting!

All thoughts very welcome. It feels like there are some tough nuts to crack here so the more minds, the better!

Join in creating a shared vision of the networked future

The wiki vision of a completely networked world

The network will disrupt everywhere it touches. I keep saying it. But what does that actually look like? In detail?

Making predictions is a tough gig. Back in 1987, when I left university, I started writing a book (didn’t we all?). It was called The Auto-composer and I. Don’t bother looking on Amazon, I never got round to finishing it, let alone getting it published.

It was a science fiction novel (I read a lot of it at the time…), the themes it explored were familiar ones to anyone following my blog. But it’s only now that I look back that I find my themes have been quite consistent over 20 years. It’s just my perspective has changed – and how full my glass appears.

At the core of the book was how family life and the normalcy of sustained relationships got disrupted by a centrally-dictated regime of cyclical suspended animation. Everyone had to go into suspended animation for five years every 10 years – thus reducing the human demand for resources by one third (yes, kids, even then we knew resources were finite). Oh, and you only got to live for a standard 70 years.

The society-shattering bit was that you had no choice over the stop-and-start of your five years in suspended animation. Didn’t matter if you were out of synch with the people you came to love. Tough. The centre remained in charge. And that impacts on the value/reliance you can place on relationships. Imagine bringing up children…

This level of control from the centre had implications for almost every aspect of life. No real family life, no real long-term friends, time segmented lives – with no chance for appeal when your deadline arrived.

The auto-composer of the title was a device which played back the music in your head, to you. The notion was that the best sounds you ever wanted to hear were the perfect versions (reflections/echoes even…) of what was in your head. The idea was that they ought to be – at least to you.

Relevance over quality. I got that, even then.

You could share what you’d created with your auto-composer. But few wanted to. One scene I wrote described a party in which everyone was dancing to their own beat. Another simple metaphor for the world I was imagining.

Things got really interesting in the book when the makers of the auto-composer launched the auto-reality… people started getting lost in their own virtual realities. None of these were connected to anyone else in any way whatsoever.

So, I guess I was writing about the same ideas – the impact of control from the centre, the importance of relevance over quality, 20 years ago.

When you look at this from a disconnected perspective the world we’re lead to is a bleak one indeed.

In 1987 I didn’t have an email address or a mobile phone. I had a home pc for playing games on (and writing unfinished novellas…) but it wasn’t connected to anything other than the mains.

And this coloured my vision: Centrally controlled and individually obsessed. Maybe I thought like that because that’s how life actually was in 1987?

I had no way of understanding the positive impact the network would yield.

But with the arrival of a platform to enable the network (that’ll be the internet) – taking control away from the centre - everything changes.

The world becomes a positive place in which we can all engage, share and participate. It’s not their world any more – it’s ours.

The individually-obsessed ‘auto-composer’ would be something much more fun and social seen from the networked world of 2007. Perhaps a Last FM with music I collaborate on with others, people I have learned to trust through recommendation of friends and shared passions. Music made from the nobody-is-as-clever-as-everybody perspective. Global niche orchestras/bands/ensembles – developing tools together and taking their music to the places they (not the man) want it to go.

The auto-reality has obvious echoes in Second Life – and the versions of virtual reality that will follow, those which will enable the cinematic experiences in which you and your friends are the stars – which has to be more fun that sitting back and watching a movie (having one broadcast at you). Joining others in creating a virtual world to share is always more fun than making one you only share with yourself, isn’t it?

And instead of enforced down-time for the vast tracts of the human race through suspended animation, the network is allowing us to create value in new ways which I believe will ultimately create an absolute fit between demand and supply – an improved allocation of resources.

Effective models of co-creation enabled by the network will ultimately mean that only that which there is an actual demand for right now will get created. That has to help us towards a less wasteful world.

The notion that we can’t all participate in the creation of everything we need seems to make common sense.

But I wonder if that’s just because we haven’t cracked the tools yet, haven’t fully transferred into a flow rather than focus world, of the kind Stowe Boyd describes.

I’ve referred before to the absolute (potential) match between the demand curve of the long tail and the shape of the exponential growth of Group Forming Network Theory (Reed’s Law). Fulfilling the potential seems a few steps away – just yet.

But what would an utterly, completely, unrestricted networked world look like?

In simple terms what will change when something which is controlled from the centre is controlled from the edge.

We know that in broad terms it should change how things are produced, how education is shared, how politics works, how mainstream media operates. We know the broad strokes.

But I’d like to paint a more detailed picture of the world.

And it’s right that I leave this to the edge. Please, if you can think of one small detailed example to illustrate this, post it as a comment and/or add to the wiki version of this post (which you’ll find here) http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/The_Wiki_Vision_of_a_Networked_World .

Obviously, pass it on to someone else, share it on your blogs and forums.

Together we will be creating a vision of the future – one which belongs to us all.

CLICK HERE TO ADD YOUR PART OF THE VISION

The long tail and the death of the (passively consumed) hit

My blogging buddy BadgerGravling got me thinking about our 'hit' culture (and the long tail) and the argument that there will 'always be' hits. (read his post What the Long Tail is missing)

And I started feeling myself drawn to the idea while I watched two mass media events at the weekend - the Rugby World Cup final and the F1 in Brazil. Surely this kind of broadcast - of live events - could never be supplanted by the long tail?

I think Badger is right about the relationship changing. I want to hear the Radio 5 commentary, and then decide which camera angles I want to watch from etc etc. Theoretically (streaming mobile, anyone?) everyone witnessing can be part of the process of producing that live event. Many people will default to what's shown from the centre, but those many people will likely be those who aren't mashing up in the rest of their lives - for whom participating and co-creating is less natural. Time will change the % on either side - as generation-c takes charge.

As for the F1 - did I want all the interruptive TV ads, did I want the poor ITV analysis? No, I didn't have a choice. A communal experience served by people I have trust in (place authority in) would have served something better, for me.

Some things will always be popular. But the versions they are witnessed as will be myriad. The aggregation of these versions may approximate a 'hit' in the old broad model. But it won't be the same thing. There will be multiple community niched versions of how we witness the same single 'hit' event. Advertising should be devised to suit each of these differently witnessed versions - if it wants to overcome the crisis of interruption.

Badger describes the AND/OR world we are in. You can have 'hits' AND 'long tail'. And I agree. Right now that is clearly the case. But it won't always be. Prepare for the shift.

Reed's Law (referred to in my white papers) reveals that the economics of the long tail will always overtake those of the 'hit', given time.

The film example Badger refers to is good (ie I'll watch a clip on YouTube AND go and see the movie in a theatre). But I can imagine 'films' created in a far more co-creational/ participatory way. Take a step or two down the road. Wouldn't it be more fun to step into the film, take part, shape its outcomes with your friends?

SecondLife is but a baby step towards that. Wait till we get jogging along. Then, is it possible you'll still want to sit back and watch someone else's centrally contrived movie?

The networked world is a participatory one. Passive consumption does not fit.

It's not what you've got, it's what you do with it

I helped run an interesting (I hope) seminar/workshop, yesterday, about the power of the network and the dominance of communities with people working on digital stuff.

And while the toolkit they had to work with faced certain restrictions, what was interesting to me was that if you give people permission to think differently, they come up with solutions that have real value for their communities - regardless of the technology available to them.

It isn't about the technology - it's about your view of the emerging socio-economic ecology and your place in it.

Alan Moore (Today life is always in beta) on Communities Dominate Brands talks about a project he's involved in - and a more extreme approach to development. In short hand: The best way of finding out what's wrong with your digital play is to get it built and see what the users think.

Traditional R&D is hung up on 'getting it right first time'.
There is a good reason why the traditional 'getting it right before we release' approach leaves the old guard flat-footed: It requires them to give up control - to release it from the centre to the edge.

You can't really learn where your connected community will want to take their community until you give them some basic tools to connect and share. Once the community is functioning then - and only then - does the R&D of the nobody-is-as-clever-as-everybody variety start.

I read some claptrap recently about how the best websites in the world have 'not been developed by committee'. The implication is that the strong leader, stick-to-my-guns approach makes for supreme winners.

The original kernel of an idea may well come from one person or from very small teams - but the execution as (exponentially growing) social phenomena has only been possible because of the engaged involvement of their participating communities. They have shared, marketed, developed, contributed to ALL the global digital successes.

To dismiss the huge role played by EVERYONE is, to my mind, tosh!
It's all about the Power of We - and unleashing it. See my white paper: The Power of the Network = The Power of We for more on that.

Social networking is wasting whose time exactly?

The BBC reports that 'Facebook costs businesses dear'

According to some number crunchers somewhere (see the Beeb article for the full credits) 233 million hours are lost each month to employees 'wasting time' on social networking. £130m a day, apparently.

And you'll recall the cases of companies who even go so far as banning google (Bosses Who Ban: Out of Touch and now Out of Control).

Some argue that facebook will stop being regarded as a waste of time when the business applications get developed for it. JP Rangaswami on Confused of Calcutta has some wise words on the issue.

I'd argue anything that facilitates self-forming communities of interest (and facebook is surely one) can be conceived of a business app itself. Sure, if all you do is gabble and play solo games, it's a waste of time. But if you are connecting with a purpose...

So where is the story about how much value is created by people being part of social networks during their working day? Which set of number crunchers have added up those figures?

All depends on your terms of reference of course. Relationships made via social networking may have a business benefit to the company. That relationship will continue outside of working hours. The constantly connected communities of today continue those relationships on mobile, on their home pcs etc etc.

So where is the line between working time and personal time for these people? Are they putting in a bill to the company each week when they connect outside of the 9-5, when they even think about work outside of business hours?

My guess is that if they really go through the balance sheet with a fine-tooth comb they'll start demanding their employees do MORE on the network.

I'll give you one example. Through blogging, and connecting with other bloggers, I've become a facebook friend of Stowe Boyd. Stowe is based on San Francisco. Face-to-face meetings in Cambridgeshire UK are therefore pretty unlikely.

However I saw on a Stowe's facebook status update that he was in London. So we exchanged messages and ended up meeting for dinner.

This meeting was arranged and held in our own 'personal' time. It will result in a range of value - introductions to new people and new ideas, which I will find of huge value to new projects and who knows what else. Hope Stowe got something too.

The point is, if I regarded social networking as a waste of time, none of this value would be created. None of the introductions would be made, none of the new ideas would emerge.

I particularly like Stowe's notion that there's no such thing as your 'own' time any more. I think companies may have to reconsider what they consider 'their' time, too.

As referred to in previous posts and in my paper: Reed's Law and how multiple identities make the long tail just a little longer Stowe says: "Productivity is second to Connection: network productivity trumps personal productivity. I am made greater by the sum of my connections. So are my connections."