LIVEdigitally

Tomorrow morning you’re going to see a lot of headlines across your favorite tech blogs that will sound a little… extra-ordinary.  Small companies seemingly acquiring big companies.  Well-known individuals joining startups or other odd-fit engagements.  They will be, for the most part, well written.  And to a few dozen people (specifically: the writer, the writer’s best friends, and the named individuals in the blog post), fairly funny.  To everyone else? Smirk-worthy, at best.  Why?  April Fool’s - a fun day to pull pranks.  That is, if you are either extremely clever and funny, or you are an 8-year-old.  And I hate to say it (not really), but this basically rules out just about the entire techie blogosphere.

That’s pretty much it for my thoughts on the subject.  You’ve been warned.

JT the Curmudgeon, out.

ps – in order to provide anything entertaining or somewhat related, here’s Wired’s Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds. enjoy.

It’s safe to say I’m not the only Web surfer who has lots of tabs open at any given time.  It’s also safe to say I’m not the only one who all of a sudden thought he was hearing voices, only to realize it was actually some Web site that automatically plays audio (or a video with audio).  Funny at best, annoying on average, embarrassing / disruptive at worst.  Especially if your desktop looks like this:

What if it looked something more like this:

I’m obviously not the best at Photoshop (and thanks to Jing for the easy markup tool), but there are so many ways to think about how to help users out a bit more.  Tabs could also show:

• Download status
• Buffer status
• Flash/script problems
• Incomplete forms
• Loading issues/status
• and so much more…

We’ve been online and using “the Web” for about 15 years now (some of us, at least), and despite the amazing advances in the capabilities of a Web browser, I find in many ways things aren’t much “better”.  Web sites still can’t seem to load much faster than they did a year, five years, or ten years ago. I understand you can “do more” in a Web page than ever before.  But is “more features” better than “load faster” in our fast-paced lifestyle?  I’m not quite sure…

Did you know you could lose insurance benefits from putting photos online?  Or that a Tweet can put you in jail?  Or that the FBI might be friending you on Facebook?  Or that even brand-new service Chatroulette isn’t truly anonymous? I’ve blogged recently on my concerns about privacy trends, and it’s quite the hotly debated topic these days.

I see two primary reasons why you shouldn’t do something online:

So without further adieu, here’s 11 Things You Should Never Do Online!

1. Show your goods. One would think this would be obvious. One would imagine that an individual would not normally choose to show their private parts to the entire world, presuming they are not in the adult entertainment industry. It took me less than a minute on Chatroulettemap to find a picture of a naked guy, and his hometown (pictured here, safely edited by me). Here are some NSFW pictures found on Facebook. Why shouldn’t you do this? How about “decency” or “self-respect”? I wouldn’t even call it prudish to say there is a reason for the phrase “private parts” and some things are simply best left out of the public eye. Leave it to the pro’s, people.  Nobody’s going to be walking around when they are 80 years old saying to themselves “I sure regret not showing my penis to the entire world.”  Unless they have some kind of exceptional penis, that is.
2. Meet a random stranger in a non-public location. As a child I was taught not to get into cars with strangers.  Of course I was also using public transportation as of age 8, but I don’t think that’s too contradictory.  We’ve heard numerous stories of people meeting strangers via sites like Craigslist, then bad things happen.  I have no problem with online dating services, but use some common sense people.  How about having 2-3 dates in public before you decide to even reveal your home address (assuming you haven’t done so already online – see more below)?  Why shouldn’t you do this? Pretty much goes without saying – and while there will always be creeps and they will always find methods of doing terrible things, but how about not enabling them to occur so easily?
3. Publicize travel plans. Be it foursquare, brightkite, gowalla, plancast, tripit, dopplr or anything else, the concept that an individual would specifically tell anybody in public that they aren’t at home is something I personally find mind-boggling.  Whether it’s a simple burglary (or much much worse), there’s no greater bait I can think of for a wrong-doer. And to think that all criminals are simply too stupid to figure this out is somewhere between ignorant and elitist. Heck, teenagers in the UK find empty swimming pools with Google Earth, and thieves last year used it to find and steal koi fish from backyards.  Why shouldn’t you do this? It doesn’t take extreme paranoia or a DVD collection of Law and Order to come to the simple conclusion that these activities are asking for trouble.  Combine public records with services like plancast and twitter, and you have the equivalent of a “how-to rob me” service that you are proactively choosing to use - it’s gonna happen.
4. Share identity-revealing data. Over 9 million Americans have identity theft issues every year. Why on Earth would you make it easier for them?  Further, one of the easiest methods of gaining access to an identity is through simple human error and naivete.  If you put personal information, like say your credit card activities, proactively into the public eye, you are asking for problems.  And unlike physical thieves (per the above point), phishers currently use technology to steal information.  You want to put your phone number in public? Fine! Get a Google Voice account, set up a redirect, and use that.  But don’t put the same number you have to authenticate important personal records! Why shouldn’t you do this? Actually this should be the opposite question – why oh why would you put private data out in public? If I can’t get you to stop buffoonery, fine, but at least be on the watch for things that can impact your finances and credit score!
5. Ignore privacy requests/needs of others. It’s perfectly legal to take pictures of people in public. It’s also perfectly legal to put those pictures in the public spectrum (so long as you aren’t profiteering from their likeness).  But that doesn’t mean you have to.  Some people prefer to keep their lives completely out of the public eye, and they have the right to do so (despite what many social media bloggers would like to say).  Just because you choose to publicize your life doesn’t mean everyone else has to as well.  Furthermore, and more specifically, parents should rethink what pictures they put online in public or semi-public locations.  Maybe your kids won’t want those pictures to be accessible one day when they are older – and I can guarantee they’ll have a tough time taking them down.  The oh-so-cute moments in the bath might be funny to reveal at a wedding or bar mitzvah (both private events, mind you), but how about during their sophomore year in high school, to the whole class? Not so much. Why shouldn’t you do this? It’s inconsiderate – and that’s enough of a reason.
6. Reveal vices. My healthcare company is raising our rates 35% this year – despite no claims or major changes of status.  Their business, in a nutshell, is to profit as greatly as possible, which they accomplish by (1) raising rates, and (2) giving out minimal claims/benefits.  I will say the following unbiased and bluntly: it is in their interest to find evidence of you smoking, drinking, and otherwise acting recklessly because it lets them profit more. If I were you, I’d make sure there were no tweets, status updates, or anything else containing “So drunk I almost fell down the stairs” or “Onto my 2nd pack today. Boy these Marlboros are smooth” etc.  Why shouldn’t you do this? If you don’t think insurance companies, healthcare providers, or other “big brother-like” organizations will use social technologies to raise rates or otherwise increase profits, you are just fooling yourself.  Drink, smoke, be merry – and just enjoy it with the people you are actually spending the time with (they’ll probably appreciate it too).
7. Mock those you may do business with. A famous PR exec once tweeted disparagingly about a magazine his firm had to pitch.  The editor in chief saw the tweet.  An ad agency salesman on his way to pitch a client openly mocked the city in which that client lived. The client saw the tweet.   Disparaging a potential (or existing) client is generally speaking, not the way one gets more business from said client.  The whole concept of doing things in public means anyone might just see them – including the people you are trying to get to spend money on you. Why shouldn’t you do this? How about… “livelihood”?
8. Sound like a schmuck. Per the above point, you never know who is going to see the words you write. Your “witty banter” with an old high school friend on Facebook might not sound so clever to a potential employer.  I’ll be the first to admit that I am a cynic and an outspoken one, and I am certain this colors peoples’ opinions of me. But I also do my best to sound objective and educated about whatever topics I’m talking about.  While I’m sure I’ve tweeted things I shouldn’t have, or left comments on blogs that could be misconstrued, I generally make a concerted effort to consider my commentary and how it would be interpreted by a complete stranger (though I could still use improvement myself).Why shouldn’t you do this? Your words will come back to haunt you – how about just not saying them in the first place?
9. Publicize your partying or let your friends put up embarrassing photos/videos of you. The most famous example I’ve found so far involves a swimmer and an arbitrarily-banned substance. Whoever took that picture is, in a word, a jerk. Not as big of a jerk as whomever made this happen, but a pretty big jerk nonetheless. But when you compare it to the amazing amount of inappropriate stuff you can easily find with simple Google searches, you really start to wonder if the entire concept of self-respect has gone out the window.Why shouldn’t you do this? A future employer? A future spouse? Your kids one day? Your grandkids? How about anyone you want to not massively unimpress one day.
10. Be inconsistent with your real life claims. If you call in sick, stay offline! Let’s face it, lying consistently can be challenging – it’s something you really have to work hard at. So if you are going to call in sick, you probably shouldn’t update your Facebook status or tweet or do anything else that conflicts with your claim. I recall the classic “which tire?” tale from university lore, only dramatically more impactful with public timelines and social presences.  You should also know that when you take pictures and upload them to sites like Picasa or Flickr, the actual day/time is logged in that photo somewhere as well. Why shouldn’t you do this? Hopefully you don’t need me to tell you not to lie or otherwise make false claims in the office space or personal life.  But if you are going to, try to tow the line with your online presence as well.
11. Assume you are not being recorded. We decided at the office to try playing Chatroulette last month. Every time we used it, we recorded our session (using freely available screen capture tools), just in case something funny/outrageous happened (and it did, and no, I won’t be sharing with the group).  Your web history is recorded by Google (if you are logged in).  Facebook knows everything you’ve done.  Most Web sites store your IP address along with the comment you leave.  The Internet Archive stores copies of just about everything. Your cookies have privacy flaws. When you do something on the Internet, it is there to stay. Don’t forget it!

The funny thing (if there is one) on the above list is if you were to ask your grandparents if you should do any of those things, they’d give you one of those “what’s wrong with you boy?” looks.  But instead here you are reading my blog because it’s actually a topic.  Them kids today…

There was a time when things like decency, self-respect, and privacy mattered, and that time was not too long ago. I’m not going to spend this post lamenting modern society abandoning the concept of self-respect, poise, decency, and other things which seem practically alien in our show-all, tell-all, midriff-sporting, trampstamp-pride (yeah, I hate the word too, but it’s appropriate) oriented culture. I may seem like one heck of an old fogie, but I’m talking about a time I remember that was less than 15, maybe even 10 years ago! With regards to the “living near the bottom” mindset America seems stuck in, I think (hope) it’s just a natural cycle and it will just get better in time. But when it comes to the privacy topic, I’m more than disappointed, I’m near outraged. And I’m going to point some fingers.

It’s hard to say when and where we decided to give up our rights to privacy online. Note that I’m focusing to the online world, and have no commentary regarding people’s ability to do things like steal credit card receipts, dumpster dive, or other methods of specifically targeting an individual, as these take concerted and directed effort. One could argue the entire concept of the “social web” might be in exact defiance of personal privacy. Some of the early players (this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all things social on the web!), in semi-chronological order:

• Geocities – instead of, well, not really existing online, you can have a home page! Unquestionably the first time people chose to give up personal privacy for some flirtation with Internet fame – but – it was at a time when there was little “networking” from one site to another, so a given person’s home page actually was it’s own disconnected “island” on the Internet (as opposed to the inherent connected nature of services like Facebook). Geocities deserves special mention for being the first (but far from last) time an individual could not only create their own customized page, but make it extremely ugly and hard to read. Privacy impact: moderate.
• Delicious - instead of keeping your favorite bookmarks to yourself, share them with the world! The reality of the potential harm here is fairly low, as one still has a local bookmark capability through the Web browser AND one can easily choose not to share a bookmark they don’t want shared. Privacy impact: negligible.
• MyBlogLog - instead of being able to read a blog post in relative anonymity, a “footprint” is left of the trail you have as you surf various blogs. Again, this is extremely opt-in, however, the mere enablement of this plug-in on a blog meant a third-party could specifically “follow” you as a unique Web surfer. Privacy impact: low.
• Flickr – instead of having to manually share your photos with your friends/family, automatically upload your photos into the public eye unless you specify otherwise. Flickr represented a massive shift in thinking, and I’d personally argue it ushered in the concept of “live in public” to the masses. Example search for pictures that are probably going online without consent of those who are actually in the pictures. Privacy impact: major.
• Friendster – technically not the first attempt at social networking, but the first one to bring it to a wide spectrum of users. I honestly don’t even remember what I did on Friendster, other than befriend the fake users others had so much fun creating (except for the management team, who clearly thought using the Internet for anything fun was a bad idea). Friendster marked the first time people really paid attention to “numbers of friends” as a metric of importance (ah, the implacable human ego). Privacy impact: moderate-to-low.
  
• YouTube – Take Flickr up a notch, by enabling anyone, no matter how dreary and boring, to have their own special place to upload pirated commercial personal videos. Prior to YouTube one was judged purely on their attractiveness (based on the best-looking picture of themselves ever taken, regardless of how long ago), but now we could take every embarrassing, awkward, and goofy moment we have, and immortalize ourselves online with it. It didn’t take long for YouTube to be the haven for people falling off skateboards, failed catapult launches, or (one of my personal favorites) take the video of your friend accidentally hurting herself and further embarrass her by putting it on the Internet – but don’t worry, she didn’t bleed or anything (now that is a great example of friendship!). Privacy impact: major.
  
• MySpace – It’s like GeoCities, but now with 10 times the ugly, and more ways to connect than ever before. Originally started as a way for bands to connect with their fans (and for fans to connect with each other), MySpace evolved (or devolved) into a haven for bizarre methods of self-representation, a lustfulness for comment-writing and a bizarre desire to have as many friends as is humanly possible. Today it’s a bit of a “black sheep” in the social networking world, but still has millions of people sporting the most outrageous color schemes (oh look, it’s red-on-red, hey thanks!) and online “bling” imaginable. Privacy impact: massive.
  
• Blogging – While there’s no specific technology at play here, the notion that one and all could have a “web log” aka a public diary became very in vogue in the latter half of the aughts (you know, the decade that just ended?). Blogs were key to creating the illusion that one’s deeper thoughts should be shared, in written form, with the world. Since there’s actually a decent amount of work required in order to blog, and most blogs are rapidly abandoned, on an individualized basis it’s not a big deal – except for those who go overboard. And yes, I do get the irony of this blog post. Privacy impact: minor-to-major (highly self-inflicted!).
  
• Zoominfo – You might not have heard of this one, but ZoomInfo.com uses all the content it can find about you to build a profile of who you are (or might be) – screenshot is below. On the plus side, they will allow you to effectively delete your profile, and it’s really focused on your business “identity”, but if you ever needed an example of how scary the concept of being stalked online is, this is the one. To be clear, the company itself is not doing anything wrong, they are simply finding information about you through completely publicly available sources, that’s the scary part. Privacy impact: N/A – they themselves merely aggregate stuff.
  
• Twitter – Without analyzing use of the service, Twitter is just a “public update” one can make, in 140 characters or less. Not a big deal. However, the cultural shift one is inclined towards after deep adoption of the use is where the problems show up. For those who actually use the service (which is not the majority of Twitter’s users), there is a sensation wherein it becomes more and more challenging not to share things. And for those with poor critical-moment-decision-making skills AND a lack of extreme discipline, Twitter is the ultimate tool in accidental self-representation online. Self-censorship is a difficult thing, and a tool like Twitter makes it way too easy to accidentally tell a lot of people something you’d rather have kept to yourself (and yes, we can make the argument that people should just be better about how they Tweet, but that’s like blaming bullets for shooting deaths). Privacy impact: massive.
  
• Foursquare, Gowalla, and other location-based services – Take Twitter (above), now apply it specifically to enable you to proactively tell the general public where you are at a given moment. This plus the free white pages is about the easiest way in history to explicitly tell thieves when your house will be unoccupied. Granted it’ll take a bit before the average criminal gets quite so sophisticated, but the mere concept of it should be giving you the willies. And if it doesn’t, check out Blippy. Privacy impact: so high it’s amazing anybody uses it.
  
• Facebook – The grand-daddy of them all. Over 300 million people use Facebook today, one could call it an individual’s “hub” of personality on the Internet, not to mention the best place to buy fake farm animals and even throw sheep at each other – awesome. Now when Facebook first launched, it was for (and from) college kids only – us old folks couldn’t even see what crazy fun was ensuing inside the closed doors. They then opened it up for anyone to use, however all activities were “private” within Facebook – only your “friends” (a term the service has effectively destroyed) could see your activities. This notion of privacy is what got people really using Facebook to share personal moments en masse. Facebook then, and this is the worst part, threw that precedent out the window. Facebook not only shares your content, updates, photos, friend lists, and everything else in public, it does so with the entire world! Privacy impact: words don’t describe.

I want to make sure I explain my premise again properly, as by now I’m sure some people just think I’m a loony laggard who doesn’t “get it”. I get it. I get how we’ve been tricked. I see it very clearly. Let’s face it, Friendster was clearly the “gateway drug” which led us down the path to sharing crazy intimate details in the public eye, and thinking how it’s expected. Heck, it was an easy path to follow, and it played into so many people’s desires to feed egos – finally it could be done unilaterally! The Internet basically enabled the individual to be famous. And if it’s not clear, fame sells – and sells well. But it’s at a cost – simple google searches showed me information like prominent bloggers’ home addresses, birthdays, and other data that makes identity theft (an actual real crime) something so easy that a clever hacker could probably write a web program to do it automatically.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg even went so far as to say something to the equivalent of “that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years” (source). Guess what Mark – you might not be at the helms of a huge company had you made that choice. I hear a lot of industries afraid to make certain decisions because of the “slippery slope” they lead to. Well, it’s happened, and there’s really no one company to blame. Sure, each played their part, and some more aggressively/offensively than others, but let’s face it – we all got suckered in.

Please note and be aware – your privacy has been in violation for a long time. Public records show home ownership details, birth certificates, licenses, and much more. These have been available to the lowest bidder for quite a while. I view this as a different (albeit serious) issue, as none of these are opt-in privacy flaws. But just because someone can do things like dumpster dive to find your most recent credit cards statements does not by default imply that one should sign up to Blippy and voluntarily throw this information info the public eye. Further, I’ll completely acknowledge that I am just as guilty as many others for living in oversharing mode – but I guess the first step is being aware that there is a problem.

I read today (I’ve been working on this post for a while, so the timing is a little ironic coincidental) that people are starting to give up social networking for a variety of reasons – privacy being one of them. I don’t know if that’s necessary, but I think it’s certainly understandable. What I think is more important is for people to make certain choices about the public scrutiny they choose to live their lives under.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

• Make sure you are personally aware of the various nuances and ramifications of each of the services you use (for example, did you know that your status updates on Facebook will, by default, be seen not only by your network, but by their networks as well? – here are some tips for improving your Facebook privacy settings – go do them immediately upon finishing this reading).
• Think about how your choices to proactively share can impact not only yourself, but your family, coworkers, and friends. Take into consideration that you might think it’s adorable to put up a photo of your kid in some embarrassing moment now, but they might not appreciate it when they are an adult and it’s still on the Internet (and it will be)!
• Don’t forget about the future you – who may not want to have the world know about some incident better left in private.
• Finally, consider your real objectives. Do you actually care about Twitter followers? Does it matter to be the Mayor of your local Starbucks? Of course not, and there’s nothing wrong with having some fun and frivolity – but remember that it all comes with a cost. When you proactively give up free information, companies are profiting from it.

Your privacy is an asset. Take care of it.

Per yesterday’s post on Twitter needing better demos, here’s a very (IMHO) useful way to follow live coverage, from multiple perspectives, using Twitter. I’ve created a “list” of people who are either live at the event, or following it closely. These people are more likely to tweet only about the Apple event during it. I’ve now taken the list, and embedded it here in the blog as a widget, to show the content. This means you, if the you in question is not a Twitterer, are now actually using the service. Enjoy.

As an aside, one of the “gotchas” about lists will be watching what happens to this same group of people’s content tomorrow. While there was a moment in time where they are united in function and content, within minutes it will become disparate conversations having virtually nothing to do with each other. Which is, unfortunately, another problem with trying to find common ground in Twitter. If you’d like to experiment more with lists, you can visit Listorious, a web site devoted to nothing but Twitter lists…

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but I saw a post on how most Twitter users do not use the service, and thought I’d expand some thoughts. The majority of my friends do not Tweet. Nor does my family. They do not care about it. They see “follow us on Twitter” during TV broadcasts and don’t know why they should. Further, they are not getting more interested despite an increasing barrage of the service.  If anything, they are even less intrigued to the mystique that is Twitter than ever before.  Note that some of my screenshots contain vulgar language – nothing compared to Xbox Live banter, but you’ve been warned.

Here’s the “first impression” a user gets by coming to twitter:

Independent of all other things, this doesn’t really give any insight as to why people are going crazy about Twitter. If I’ve heard that Oprah and Ashton are tweeting, and my favorite football player, and it’s the latest hottest thing, and all I see is a static page with a bunch of random-seeming terms, I’m not yet compelled.  Further, the major tagline “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world” isn’t exactly right.  If you make a search like “how are things in haiti” you get a very bizarre set of responses that do not inherently answer the question.  Knowing how to search in Twitter is important, yet isn’t taught.  Showing hashtags also overly geeks up the screen, and in a bad way.  To continue this “new user experience”, I clicked on “pregnancy pact” (was curious) and saw the following:

This didn’t really explain anything to me, just showed me, well, the exact type of garbage the average person does not want to be reading.  It’s not even gossip/fun, it’s just *weird*.  Sure there’ll be the occasional clever gem, but for the most part, especially with popular topics, it’s becoming a haven for spam or utter drivel.  Also, as an aside, Twitter should not display foul language to users who aren’t logged in – some people still prefer to keep vulgarity elsewhere. It actually gets even worse if you look at trending topics:

Huh?  No thanks.

Now how about the new user experience from the perspective of following someone they were “told” to follow.  The @CNN account shows recent CNN headlines, as it should.  However, this does not exactly “add value” to someone’s life, as finding CNN headlines is relatively easy to do.  How about mega-celebrity @Oprah?

Not exactly new and interesting, and definitely not “real-time”. All we’ve learned is she seems to like Avatar, uses capital letters inappropriately, and then includes a bunch of things that look like gobbledygook.  Why? Because once you do get “into” Twitter, you start using acronyms, links, and vocabulary that make texting look downright poetic.  What’s a ow.ly? Who’s RT? It looks foreign and daunting.  It’s as if there’s a huge “insider’s” club, and if you don’t get it, you feel awkward and alienated.

Finally, there’s looking at what happens once someone actually does sign up for Twitter and use it.  They are presented a seemingly random list of “suggested” users.  Following these people creates a stream of equally foreign and incomprehensible Tweets, likely about topics that aren’t interesting to anyone other than a small group, and again, in an exclusionary, not inclusionary, manner.  Trying to catch the eye/ear of others is near-impossible, and building a following outside one’s small social circle is unlikely to occur.  More stats:

The average Twitter user has 27 followers, which is down from 42 followers in August, according to the new study. About 25% of users have no followers at all; that’s up from 20% with no followers last August. Upward of 40% of users only have one to five followers.

So what should Twitter do about it?

This is the million billion dollar question.  The company is already in danger of reaching the backlash phase inevitable in modern society (get too big/successful and you become the enemy, deservedly or not – see Starbucks, Google, Wal-mart, etc).  Some say it’s already started.  I don’t think so, as I think we haven’t even come to the point where people care yet.  That said, my non-Twitter “regular world” friends are already telling me they’re tired of the inundation of “follow us on Twitter” they see during TV shows, Web sites, etc.  This is a problem, and Twitter must solve it to get as big as they want to be – otherwise this whole thing will get outed as a “early adopter only” toy, and valuations will come crashing down.  And if it starts to crash, even a little bit, it probably won’t recover – nobody wants to hang out in the club that was cool 3 years ago, but only your dad goes to now.

In my opinion, Twitter needs to thoroughly overhaul the new user experience.  Forget “suggested users” and focus on “suggested uses“.  Part of the reason the media like Twitter so much is it is actually useful for doing their job.  They can publicize their content rapidly and directly, can interact with both readers and companies, and make reporting/blogging/journalism a component of how they use Twitter. For celebrities, be they Web-only or real ones, it’s good for personal branding not to mention a nice ego-feed.  For events which occur in real-time (Hudson plane crash, Haiti earthquake, elections, etc) it’s a good way of finding out information as it occurs (though obviously fraught with error and rumormongering).

Notice how we’ve still ruled out “normal people living normal lives”?  There’s zero relevance to the average person who wants to live in private.  Even as they dabble at lifecasting, there’s no reward, as the game logic to using Twitter is fundamentally broken. Unlike FourSquare, or new site TheSixtyOne, there is no form of achievement system.  If anything, you are measured up against people with millions of followers, a completely unattainable goal.  Here’s the opposite: the very first thing I saw on thesixtyone:

Even though the above shot has some confusion, it’s so much closer to telling me something to do, how to do it, and how I benefit from it.  Twitter could easily do the same: “find 10 sports figures (or bands or politicians, etc) and follow them” or “retweet (RT) three people with less followers than you” etc.  This system could scale up pretty high, and create a much more interesting hierarchy for the “twitterati” as well.

The folks at Twitter are clearly smart (and yeah, they got a little lucky along the way, but that’s part of being smart IMHO), and clearly know they need to do something, and soon.  Twitter needs to be able to positively convert new users into active users, and absolutely must work on the “why do I care what someone’s having for lunch?” reputation the site has.  I believe an achievement type of system that rewards “good behavior” is the right way to do it (not to mention major user interface/experience overhauls).  As it stands now, I’ll return to my prior conviction that Twitter has not proven themselves as a viable platform, and must still navigate extremely well and carefully to be the billion dollar company everyone wants them to be.

Twitter Lists are all the rage. The shiny new object. The hot new thing.  For at least the next day or so… They’re a practical way to manage people you follow, and, of course, yet another mechanism to drive one’s ego and other forms of self-indulgence.  Especially since they aren’t even open to all Twits Twitterers yet.  But supposedly everyone’ll have access soon enough.  So let’s assume that by reading this post, you have access to the Twitter lists feature.  Not sure?  Go to Twitter.com, log in, and look for “lists” on the right of your screen.  Can’t find it? No lists for you!

I logged in today and found I’ve been added to TEN (10) lists!  Yay for me!  Is 10 good? I have no clue.  I’ll give it a resounding maybe.  But they like me, they really really like me.

The cool thing is, lists are public and totally fair game.  So not only can you easily follow anyone’s lists of amazingly cool wonderful people who tweet better than the likes of you or I, but you can also easily find out what lists someone is on.  Why would you want to do this?  Well, other than the obvious game of figuring out who is the coolest kid in school, it could be a great way to find lists of people that are relevant to you/your industry pretty quickly.  Here’s the simple 3 step-process to find out what lists someone is on…

1. Get the twitter name of the person you want to stalk know more about.  E.g. “jtoeman”.
2. Cut a hole in the box.
3. Go to the URL http://twitter.com/that twitter name you got in step 1 above/lists/memberships. For example: http://twitter.com/jtoeman/lists/memberships
4. Read list.
5. Think about the words you are reading.
6. Enjoy a cup of coffee with some freshly steamed milk (organic from sustainably farmed cows if possible).
7. Watch an episode of Glee.
8. Try to remember why you were looking up people on Twitter in the first place.
9. Profit.

Hope this was helpful!

Okay, the title is completely misleading, these were never lost, I merely forgot to actually post them.  Been busy, sorry bout that.

This was my first year going to the TC40/50 event, and I had a pretty good time.  The demopit was full of a lot of interesting (some not-so-much) companies.  I watched a few of the on-stage presentations as well, and it’s clearly a “sign of the times” that there were no Earth-shattering new startups unveiled. No offense intended, there were some very good startups, but I didn’t see anything that I thought was going to change the way I think about the world or technology…

But that said, here are some of the demo’s I had a chance to record:

oDesk:

yourversion:

360desktop:

h2tran:

moonit:

ecycler:

yourtour:

sulantra:

I took a handful of pictures as well, here they are.

In an interesting move, the FTC has created a seemingly arbitrary set of guidelines that apply to “the bloggers” and “facebooking” and how they disclose paid-for-posts (PDF file with the actual guidelines are here).  I call it arbitrary because, well, it is, but I actually applaud the concept – just not the execution.  I agree with the overall philosophy that there are too many undisclosed “paid-for” content spots happening in the new media landscape. But it’s not just the bloggers. In fact, I’d further state that blogs should be pretty low on the target list.

For example, products are being placed in video games, movies, TV shows, magazines, etc, with little-to-no disclosure to consumers.  When I see a character in a movie using a Dell laptop (or MacBook, etc), I wonder how it got there. I wonder how much screen time it’s “supposed” to have.  I wonder if the camera pauses on the Dell logo if that was in a contract, or an artistic decision.  I shouldn’t have to wonder.  Paid placements should be disclosed somewhere (hint: end credits), for all media, not just blogs, facebook and inevitably tweets. By the way, here’s a handy-dandy guide to paying for placements in a movie.

I think it’s even more relevant for mainstream media than for new/personal media.  In the personal media landscape, say this blog for example, it is the individual’s burden to build trust.  We have to earn it by our content, thoughtfulness, tone, frequency of writing (oops), etc.  The moment we break trust, it becomes hard to rebuild it.  So if a new mommy blog comes into the public eye, then it turns out the whole thing is a paid advertisement by a big brand, with no disclosure, odds are there will be a significant drop/plummet in readership.  This, in turn, will cause the brand to end their association with the blogger (no traffic = no ad spend), thus ending the cycle.

Further, to what end must we carry disclosure? Does a film critic need to state they were given free tickets to the movie?  If so, why? Do people out there really think a free movie ticket is going to change the tone of the review?? Of course not. But what if that critic works for a TV network who carries advertising by a studio (or magazine, etc), when those huge ad dollars are at stake? Maybe it’s more important to disclose the blatant paid relationship and clear conflict of interest there, as opposed to the remote possibility that some movie blogger  got a free bag of popcorn.

I’m much less concerned about pay-to-post/tweet than virtually any other medium. Which is why I really call foul on the FTC policies.  It seems to me like yet another example of the government creating watchdog efforts on individuals and small businesses, but letting the huge players continue to get away with shenanigans. I highly recommend reading Jeff Jarvis’ commentary here (disclosure: I was not paid to include the link to his website. ah, now didn’t that just help make the post flow so much better?).

Accordingly, here are the official LIVEdigitally disclosure policies:

Disclosure Policies

• At no time in the past, nor at any time in the future will LIVEdigitally accept payment to write a blog post. Unless said payment is sufficient to cover the outstanding balance of Jeremy’s mortgage, in which case we will take the check (and disclose it). Please, big brands, send this check!
• Due to deep industry connections, it is safe to assume that many of the products reviewed or discussed were given to us for free. That said, at no point in the past nor future is there an exchange of “product for post”.
• At some times LIVEdigitally will write about clients of Stage Two Consulting, however this is not a part of any business relationship, it is entirely at the discretion of the individual writer. NO incentives whatsoever are associated with these blog posts.  These relationships are always disclosed in the post.
• At all times we attempt to identify 100% of disclosures where any potential relationship or perceived conflict of interest would arise.  Failing to do so should be considered an oversight, not deliberate, and you are welcome to leave a comment on any post if you’d like clarification.

The backstory – some hacker broke into some Twitter employee’s email, grabbed a bunch of docs, and sent them to some bloggers. This guy is clearly a grade-A jerk, no debate there.

Lots of juicy tidbits in the emails, ranging from personal stuff to revenue forecasts.  Now since these were stolen it’s pretty obvious the guys at Twitter didn’t want them out in the open. This of course didn’t matter to a variety of “news-breaking” bloggers, who just “couldn’t resist” putting them up while throwing up a series of rationales like “if we didn’t, someone else would’ve.”

Actually, no, they wouldn’t necessarily have unless y’all didn’t pave the way.  You just got caught playing a classic little prisoner’s dilemma game, and you all failed, head directly to jail, do not pass go.  Here’s the visualization for you…

The Prisoner’s Dilemma of Being Ethical in the News-Breaking Blogging Industry

But this is par for the course if your job is breaking news as fast as possible, as there is no reward for being late nor is there a penalty for being inaccurate.

In my opinion the race to be first is full of nothing but losers, as it is utterly unsustainable as there is no loyalty being built by readers who will simply follow a trail to the news, rapidly forgetting who was first yesterday or the day before.  While the publishing industry has never exactly rewarded accuracy, modern technology and communications tools are clearly worsening the problem for us poor souls who simply want to be informed.

Incidentally, regarding the ethics of publishing stolen documents, I think it pretty well speaks for itself.  It’s not about how “easy” a hack was to steal something (despite the funny as shown here). If anyone feels the need to “justify” the actions, well then they are doing just that, aren’t they?  Funny how rarely you need to justify actions that are obviously ethical…

About a week ago I decided to hook my twitter stream up to my facebook status updates. I figured it’d be an easy way to get the same messages out to more people, and with more places for conversation/interactivity.  But I pretty much completely forgot about the following attributes of my Tweets™:

• Much of the time I am “re-tweeting”, passing along something someone else says, typically in an effort to seem cool or more knowledgeable than I am.
• Many of my other tweets are responses to tweets, which inherently include virtually no context whatsoever about the conversation when shown in isolation on Facebook.
• Often I tweet about new blog posts, which are automatically included in my Facebook content stream.

Here’s a snapshot:

This leaves about 2% of my actual tweets as “interesting content” (at best).  They look more like this:

Now on twitter, the whole concept that many of a user’s tweets are uninteresting to many of their followers is, for the most part, irrelevant.  Few-to-none of a twitterer’s followers are real-world friends, and there are so many other tweets flying by, the majority of Twitter users do not see the majority of tweets from the people they follow. And in the twitterverse, that’s just plain twitterfabulous!

But in Facebook it’s not.  By and large, the vast majority of Facebook users (in other words – people who use Facebook and don’t live in the SF Bay Area) are friends with people they know from real-life.  They rarely boast about quantity of Facebook friends because it’s mostly meaningless.  As a result, while a tremendous amount of content is still lost in the stream, the majority of Facebook users see much of the content from their friends.

Further, since these are more likely to be people we encounter in a medium beyond Facebook, we are discouraged from sharing, for lack of a better word, crap.  And hence, my crapstream will be discontinued from boring my friends on Facebook.  Sorry about that.  I’ll go back to boring you through other updates.

I just wanted to take a second to congratulate my friends Ryan Block and Peter Rojas for launching gdgt.com.  It’s a new site/resource/blog/community/social network/thing… words don’t describe… they should’ve sent… a… poet!  Ok, just kidding.  It’s a new site designed to really help people get the most out of their gadgets, whether by finding peer-based support, new uses, or other recommendations.  Here’s a link to their introduction, and I wish the guys the best – they’ve worked pretty hard to get here!

Here’s my personal gdgt profile (I manage to snag “jeremy” as my username there!):