Open Social Kumbaya: Pass the API, please
Well honestly, the name Open Social sounds a bit more 1962 than web2.0…I am thinking church social and maybe Aunt Bee serving up the Kool-Aid and announcing in simple to understand terms, “everyone that joins our social will share the same hymnal .”
The announcement from MySpace for the Open Social went like this:” Our partnership with Google allows developers to gain massive distribution without unnecessary specialized development for every platform,” said Chris DeWolfe, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of MySpace. “This is about helping the start-up spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding it for every social network. We’re pleased to collaborate with Google to establish a landmark standard for social applications.”
Or, said another way, the folks that write the programs for all those fun applications that you might be familiar with from say Facebook, can write them once and they can then run on any site that is openly social. This compares to the days before the Open Social when every social network had its own markup language.
As B.L. Ochman notes, “OpenSocial will let developers use Javascript and html code to write applications which are essentially widgets that will work on any website that chooses to implement OpenSocial. These applications will be able to access user profile data, friend lists, and friend-related notifications. And they can broadcast content across a wide number of sites simultaneously.”
OK, this is definitely not 1962.
Bad example though, because Facebook at this moment in time is not singing Kumbaya and according to Brandee Barker, Director of corporate communications at Facebook as quoted on TechCrunch:
“Despite reports, Facebook has still not been briefed on OpenSocial. When we have had a chance to understand the technology, then Facebook will evaluate participation relative to the benefits to its 50 million users and 100,000 platform developers.”
Along with Google and MySpace, Bebo, Ning, LinkedIn, SixApart and a vast collection of other social networking sites and developers are all signed onto Open Social. B.L. also highlights the importance of the fact that “every marketer who wants to stay relevant will need to start taking social networks very seriously indeed.”
One big question seems to be, will Facebook join Google’s attempt to out Facebook Facebook? Or as the New York Times puts it, “Google and Friends Gang up on Facebook.”
Charlene Li writes,” Facebook isn’t threatened — for now. Application developers are going to go to where the heat is, and that heat is red hot at Facebook…. Add on the third leg of the social app stool — monetization, which Facebook is set to announce Nov. 6th — and you have a developer’s dream. Any developer worth his/her salt is developing on the Facebook platform, trying to figure what works, what doesn’t. And because of this head start, developers will still develop for Facebook FIRST before developing for OpenSocial.”
So, take that Google. Or, at least for today. Of course Peter Kafka at Silcon Alley Insider does raise a good questions also: will any of this change the user dynamics? He writes, “Most people are on Facebook because their friends are on Facebook; not because they can throw sheep, turn people into zombies, etc. If you weren’t using Orkut, Ning or Friendster before, will a new set of apps make you use it now?”
Tags: Google, Open Social, Facebook, B.L. Ochman, Charlene Li, Forrester, Media2.0, Peter Kafka, LinkedIn, Bebo, Ning, SixApart, Steve Rubel, TechCrunch, MySpace, Mashable
MySpace to kids….ID, please.
MySpace recently announced that it was developing software that would be installed on home computers and allow parents to monitor the profile name, age, and location that children (or presumably any other computer user) provides when setting up a profile.It monitors sign ins from the computer on which it is installed as well as from other computers. Access to content within the account is not part of the surveillance.
The issue of online -predators lurking ﾃつ for under age victims on MySpace and other social networking sites is obviously what is driving this…the question is whether or not this kind of surveillance addresses the problem it is being implemented to address. And it does feel a bit icky from many respects.
MySpace and the other online social networks have been apparently unable to find an age verification solution for the underage users. Other sites employ various means to address some of the peripheral issues of protecting kinds on the internet. Yahoo for instance has a parental control for content feature.
There does not seem to be a solution on the horizon to keeping the predators off the site or really controlling determined offenders, adult or child;ﾃつ so MySpace according to Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for Fox Interactive Media, the unit that oversees MySpace,ﾃつ is positioning Zephyr as a way toﾃつ "give parents a tool to force a discussion with their kid."
ﾃつ Forced discussions are of course always so productive…in reality it is probably safe to say that with most similar issues, the parents who are involved and have positive relationships with their children won’t need to be "forced" and those whose relationships and involvementﾃつ with their kids put their kids most at risk, cannot be "forced."
And then you have situations such as the kidnapping of Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby in Missouri where there were Missouri; there were no neglectful parents, no online social networks; just victims and predator. 2 teenage sons. I have Iﾃつ I live in the town next to Kirkwood Missouri with my two teenage sons. I have replayed in my ain the thought that mind the fact that Michael Devlin was employed in a pizza place that I have been in;ﾃつ that I have actually encouraged by kids to walk places in our neighborhood (fortunately, it seems now, they prefer to be driven everywhere).
Danah Boyd has a visual on a post about the fact that for all the talk about on-line predators, there isn’t enough attention being paid to the fact that greatest number of sexual predators are in the most intimate relationships with the children that they abuse…..parents, relatives, household members: 95% of abusers are family members, 79% are parents and 5% are not those other than family members.
This is one frightening pie chart.
ﾃつ She references an article by Pete Reilly that provides some interesting data regarding an unfortunate outcome of concerns about online sexual abuse of children, restrictions of the use of educational technology tools and online resources.
So….back to my original question: Does Zephyr, or any parental surveillance tool, address the problem of on line sexual predators? Well, just off the top of my head, there are many activities that parents should monitor, both online and off. In my experience as a child and as a parent, monitoring is most effective as part of an involved, attentive relationship; trust is the currency of a positive relationship. In my opinion, surveillance tools violate trust.
Online sexual predators are but one risk online; sexual predators in terms of sheer numbers are lurking off line rather than on; ironically it seems based upon the data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems that parents themselves are frequently the predators.ﾃつ
The code name for the software is Zephyr although not sure of the relationship between the god of the west wind and protecting kids from online predators. Perhaps parental surveillance tools as it relates to online sexual predators is much like shouting into the {west} wind; less shouting more listening, better outcome.
From a marketing perspective, for MySpace this seems like a lose-lose; alienate your core audience with an empty gesture.
Tags: MySpace, Zephyr, sexual predators, online sexual predators, Pete Reilly, Danah Boyd, Marianne Richmond, Shawn Hornbeck, Ben Ownby
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In Social Networks…You’ve Got Birthday
OK, so my birthday was a few days ago and although that fact seems to have escaped the minds of my children (I think they must have also forgotten who the real Santa Claus is and how close my birthday is to Christmas) it did not go unnoticed in SocialNetwork World, a very friendly place where the meaning of friends is perhaps under revision.ﾃつ This one from Faces may have been my favorite…..
There were others in email: Hello Marianne Richmond,
We at PMB - Pimp My Blog would like to wish you a happy birthday today!
Others came from MySpace friends, in MySpace email and Comments….Some with offers for a free drink:
I also got an email from Plaxo, telling me that Frank Barnako was having a birthday the same day as mine. I am more than willing to wish Frank a happy birthday inasmuch as we have "met" via the blogosphere, just not sure why Plaxo was emailing me the birthday news.
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I guess I thought that there were other reasons that social network sites asked for birthday information….I had no idea it was all about saying, "Happy Birthday."
This started me thinking about the evolution ofﾃつ "Happy Birthday"ﾃつ in a social network world. Although e-cards and email have more or less replaced paper birthday cards,ﾃつ this year, for the first time, I got text messaged "Happy Birthdays." Now if my kids were reading this blog post, which I can say for sure that they would rather be reading anything else, they would no doubt be rolling their eyes over the statement "first time….text messaged" and the thought bubble would be "Mom is sucha loser." But,ﾃつ if you need help texting happy birthday, try lingo2word.
So, what does it mean?ﾃつ Well, let’s look at some of the underlying concepts that drives all of this…..the foundation of Web 2.0 is sharing, collaboration, generosity and, well, isn’t that what friendship is all about? That and remembering birthdays and sending and receiving lots of Christmas cards (Ok, well I am a little preoccupiedﾃつ right now with the spirit of the Season and the annual Christmas card photo).
Web 2.0 is about business, but of course this is the personal web. We collaborate and share, use and produce. And we have lots more friends than we used to. We meet them in so many places and have so many identities that there is a new service available, FindMeOn, and a similar one, Profilactic in beta, that will help create a single social network identity to either simplify the process, keep us honest, or "cure multiple web personality disorder" depending upon how you look at it.
As an aside, I think they might be missing an important point, context; we have "multiple personalities" in real life, too. Tristan Louis expands upon this in a post about why social networks fail.ﾃつ And, as Stowe Boyd writes, "If social networks provide a value, it has to be contextual. An SNA cannot provide some sort of blanket support for all sorts of people doing all sorts of things."
We don’t necessarily want a single identity; we are on Dogster because of our dog owning identity while on LinkedIn that is mostly irrelevant. Fred Stutzman discusses this as part of his post on Why They Are Leaving MySpace.
And if you thought TV was dead, maybe it will live as the missing link to document life meeting art (or art meeting life). Mike Yamamoto notes that MySpace meets reality TV on ProjectMyWorld, as three young women embark on a journey to meet their virtual friends face-to-face. It’s on DirecTV and of course DirecTV’s majority owner is News Corp which also owns MySpace.com…which I think makes it art imitating life.
So, what DOES it mean? Well, for one thing, if you enter your birth year as "1906" on a social network site, be prepared to be wished a happy 100th birthday. On Flickr there are 341 photos tagged 100th and birthday. My photo is not there. My social network identities are not quite in alignment…. yet.
ﾃつ From a marketing standpoint, I will note that I did not receive a happy birthday email from Vocal Point, the P&G mom’s network.
Tags: social networks, MySpace, Tristan Louis,ﾃつ Stowe Boyd, DirecTV, NewsCorp, Mike Yamamoto,Web 2.0, Faces.com, Fred Stutzman, LinkedIn, Dogster,ﾃつ FineMeOn,ﾃつ Profilactic, Frank Barnako, Plaxo,ﾃつ Pimp My Blog, Marianne Richmond,ﾃつ Flickr
President John Edwards Delivers the State of the Blogosphere…
A John Edwards presidency may be that moment that we look back upon and say, "He was the first president of the social media age." He seems to "get it." His wife, Elizabeth seems to "get it." I am not saying that just because he was the keynote speaker at Gnomedex. Visit his website and you will see a veritable showroom for social media…not only does he have a blog, he launched it in Beta.
You can receive updates on your mobile device; he has podcasts, he has video. He is using YouTube. Want to know what he talked about at Gnomedex? That’s correct, go to YouTube. He has a blogging family, Elizabeth and Cate. You can chat and there is community.
If John Edwards delivers the State of the Union in January of 2009,
can we expect authenticity and transparency? Will we nod and say, "its
the blogosphere, stupid." Will there be a national dialog on the
question: "Are all links created equal?" Will we need laws that state
that discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, age and Technorati
links is not permitted? John Edwards, if elected will become our first
blogging president; Elizabeth will become the first blogging First
Lady. Pass the Kool-Aid, please.
Tags: John Edwards, blogs Gnomedex, podcasts, videoblogs, Elizabeth Edwards, Technorati, YouTube
Net Squared Live Online!
The Net2 conference begins on May 30th in Santa Clara and ifﾃつ like me you are not one of the lucky 350 participants, Marshall Kirkpatrick informed me that there is a remote conference, live online at http://netsquared.org/remote. How cool is that going to be?
There is chat which features "special Q&A sessions with NetSquared speakers and other guests." The agenda is here and a speakers list is here….there is even a frappr map. Net2’s mission is to help non-profits understand and use the tools of the social web, or as they put it remixing the web for social change.ﾃつ Relationships are, of course what non-profit capacity building is all about and the tools of web 2.0, blogs, wikis, online social networks, RSS, podcasting, vlogs are transformational tools to enable non-profits to achieve their missions faster and further than ever before.
So, if you haven’t been to Net2, you need to; and sign up for the remote conference. I’ll see you there!
Tags: Net2, Net Squared, non-profits, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Web 2.0
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MyGrace: The Other Blog Evangelists
Inspired by a member of his congregation that used MySpace to attract listeners for his rock band, Rev. Patrick Gray, am Episcopal priest from Boston set up a MySpace profile, the Advent, to attract listeners to his sermons. His site includes reminders about service times as well as audio files of the choir. The graphics are very cool and the Advent has 671 friends. The WSJ reports that churches across the US are using social media such as blogs and podcasts and on line social networking to connect with members and potential members.
Church Unplugged, according to the WSJ, attributes its growth to its MySpace profiles, saying that the church profile can be found while searching for music, television, or local MySpace users. Unplugged has about 100 church attendees and over 2000 MySpace friends.
The evangelicals are leading the way with blogs such as Outside the Box Ministry and Church Marketing Sucks that provide "how to’s" for churches to improve their marketing and their messages.Church Marketing Sucks has a Squido lens and posts with titles such as, "What Web 2.0 can mean for your church." Outside the Box Ministry is a little less "in your face" than Church Marketing Sucks but the message is similar. Their language is about engagement, connection and recognition that if people are on MySpace or Facebook that’s where they need to be.
The Vatican is podcasting and has a web site and according to Businessweek is hard at work on a faith based social networking site which is referred to as MySpace for Catholics. Sister Judith, the nun who is responsible for the web site and the upcoming social networking site, says that "the Net is the ultimate way to reach millions of people and to connect… it’s about something much bigger than myself…you can touch it, you can change it, and you can touch people with it." Spoken like some other evangelists at a different church.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2004) 64% of online Americans use the Internet for faith based acclivities. The study said, "Faith-related activity online is a supplement to, rather than a substitute for offline religious life. The survey found that two-thirds of those who attend religious services weekly use the Internet for personal religious or spiritual purposes." Sounds like online out reach is reaching the target.
But what about the MySpace environment for delivering the MyGrace message? Businessweek recently reported of the growing campaign to protect children from online predators that may close space on MySpace. One church education group mentioned in the WSJ article that the challenge was to reach teens without exposing them to inappropriate content. I think he may have the equation backwards, teens and actually most people, are probably not on MySpace to find a church but rather may find a church while they are MySpace.
As Ross Dawson writes about the MySpace generation, on Trends in the Living Networks, " The way I see relational technologies such as mobiles, chat forums, multiplayer roleplaying games, video sharing and so on, is that they extend our capacity as humans to relate. People have a built-in drive to connect with others, and now that has a far wider canvas across which to express itself. We can now discover many of the latent propensities and characteristics of humans, because we have been given new tools to explore our human identity." Or our spiritual side.
Outside of the Box Ministry has a post titled Blogging is Similar to Spiritual Multiplication which is a pretty good explanation of word of mouth marketing with blogs. If you want your message to be heard, as Businessweek notes, OClick All Ye Faithful.
Tags: MySpace, WOMMA, word of mouth, Church of the Consumer, Evangelism, marketing, church marketing, blogs, social media, media, podcasting, social networks
Trust in User Generated Content: Youth Say Yes, Adults Say No
Forrester has released a new study that says that although three fourths of on line adults access user generated content their confidence in the content is declining; conversely, the over 90% of on line youth that access user generated content indicate that their trust in the content is increasing.
Forrester’s report on Social Computing concluded that technology had made the top down model obsolete, that value was in experience not ownership, and that power was shifting from institutions to communities. This report spoke of connected buyers with less brand loyalty, less trust in institutions and more reliance on peer-to-peer networks and user generated content.
User generated content is proliferating. Trust is important. Brad Feld in a post called, Its The Trust Stupid says there are three principles for user generated content, trust, attention and relevance.
So if trust in user generated content among adults is declining but increasing among the young what does this mixed message mean?
Here is some of the available data on user generated content among the young and among adults:
Teens Create Content: An earlier study by Intelliseek indicated that Teens lead all segments in the creation of CGM; almost 30% of teens send photos via mobile devices, 45% have created a blog, and almost 10% subside to RSS feeds.
Young consumers rely on friends and families for purchase recommendations:
According to an earlier Forrester study, 50% of youth rely on advice from those they know and 65% report giving recommendations or information regarding products to others.
Social Networking sites are user generated content. YouTube users add 35,000 videos each day and viewers view 30 million videos each day according to Newsweek.
My Space is the 7th most popular English language website. If you need more data, see If You Don’t Get MySpace, You’re a Lametard at Mashable! or The Site That Ate the Blogosphere at Mobile Jones and Blogher.
MMOG (Massive Multi-Player Online Games) are user generated content. Participation is growing dramatically. There are 10 million people playing. They defy any preconceived demos one might have about gamers being young and male. Games such as Second Life The Sims, or The Movies are driven by the creation of user generated content. Included in the content development tools of MMOG is advertising. Players have the ability to put up their own advertising in the games such as promotions of in-game events or businesses.
Forbes reports that Mind Ark, creator of Project Entropia, and the first advertising tool built into a game has announced a collaboration with the distributors of ads from Coca-Cola and Warner Brothers that will appear in over 100 games. Clickable Culture reports that the Coca-Cola "will make its first official appearance at a live music event as part of the corporations sponsorship of the event’s real-world counterpart." OK, I admit…I am a little confused here between the real world and the counterpart; nonetheless, user generated advertising content is part of the real world and part of this virtual world. Something like life imitating art, imitating life imitating art….Coke’s tagline becomes the virtual thing?
Politicians bypass the mainstream media and turn to blogs: According to the Salt Lake Tribune and increasing number of politicians are using blogs to provide information directly with their constituents. However, a trust warning is included, "Of course as blogs spread, readers need to understand what they are seeing and what is behind it…when searching for information on a candidate or a lawmaker, readers should be wary of what site they peruse because some information may be missing our skewed….some of these blogs are controlled by parties or by parties or by political candidates." Yep, just like that other media source that we don’t trust.
User generated advertising seems to be everywhere. It is used by Jet Blue, Sony, MasterCard, Converse, and Tahoe. Results and opinions are mixed.
Consumer generated health and medical content have and important influence on decisions:A study by Cybercitizen Health (r) v5.0 indicates that consumers are increasing
relying on the Internet for health care decisions. They report a market of 99 million US adults. The Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that direction but indicates that 52 million Americans or 55% of adults with Internet access use the Internet to get health or medical information. Regardless, the numbers are huge.
Importantly, Cybercitizen Health reports that there are a "small group of health
consumers (20 million)" that have tremendous influence on those using the Internet for health information. They speak of a "zone of influence, ranging from spouses, children and elderly parents to extended family and friends. In fact, other health consumers are very
likely to seek out advice from this group of highly influential health consumers, who are more likely than the average consumer to be using interactive media such as the Internet."
An aside, GE Healthcare joins and sponsors the delivery of consumer generated health care content. See also GE Imagination at Work.
So…there are many more data points indicating an increasing reliance on consumer generated content which doesn’t track with the reported decrease in trust among adults…at least as yet. In fact, a increase in reliance on user generated medical advice would indicate that adults are trusting the advice of their peers with something quite valuable….although a decline in trust measurement might precede an actual change in behavior.
The marketers who get the importance that consumers place upon the recommendations and opinions of their peers combined with the extent of the connections are already building new relationships with consumers and revising their marketing to foster collaboration and participation.
Clarence Fischer of Remote Access while drawing some comparisons between MMOG and classroom learning makes an interesting point about what makes these games
successful, "For a game to be successful, the secret is often not to make the game better, but to make the community which surrounds the game better. Empower them. Give them responsiblities and the power to personalize their experience." This might also be applied to marketing within the context of social computing.
Cory Treffiletti says that user generated content is a viable ad medium and makes the point that once a brand is in the public domain it belongs to the consumer, is controled by the consumer, and if they are provided with a sense of ownership for the brand and the ability to provide input that is responded to, will be a successful brand; if not the brand will suffer the consequences. He refers to this as brand democratization and says it is the wave of the future.
Technorati Tags: consumer generated content, consumer generated media, marketing, advertising, media, social computing, trust, MMOG, MySpace, blogs, advertising,
2 Cool Sites From 2 Cool Sites
Even with RSS and aggregators, there is still too much information for me to process and use. In my email was Inter Alia Weekly Research, which always has great information to help manage the overload. This time, a site called memeorandum which takes daily news articles and links to the blogs that are talking about the the stories. Then from Seth Godins Blog came a reference to Emily Chang’s e-hub which is a constantly updated reference to everything new in blogs, social software, folksonomy, design and well, just everything.
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