June, 2008

Noticed — No Comments
27
Jun 08

Google Debuts Personalized Adverts

From Saul Hansell at the NYT:

Google acknowledges that it is now testing ways to use some of the data it has been gathering to better aim search ads at Web surfers, although it won’t say how.

Hansell continues (bold mine):

This is important because it marks the first time Google is using the store of data it collects about people to target its advertising.

Google is upfront that it places a cookie on the browser of all of its users. And it records the number of the cookie, along with what the user searches for and some other information.

A few years ago, Google changed its privacy policy to warn users that it might capture personal information about them for reasons that include “the display of customized content and advertising.” Yet despite this broad disclosure, Google has told me and others it doesn’t use the data about what people search for, or any other information they provide, in selecting ads.

Finally:

Google is quick to point out that some of these systems are not connected to each other. And most of the information it gets is not what is generally considered to be personally identifiable, like a name or e-mail address. But the issues are not so simple. Once a user chooses to provide personal information to Google, say by signing up for Gmail or Google Checkout, that information can be linked to much of the information that had been until that time collected anonymously.

This is the real singularity.

Noticed — No Comments
25
Jun 08

Google’s Ad Planner, TechReview on Web 2.0 and Facebook’s Business Network

A few links for Wednesday morning:

The New York Times reports on Google’s new Ad Planner, a streamlined analytics client for ad buyers. TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld and SearchEngineWatch ask if Google Toolbar data is being used in these new aggregate data. I’m not sure why this is surprising or noteworthy – one would have to assume that Google is utilizing all of its identifiable data sources – Toolbar, Analytics, Adwords, Properties (yes, including this blog). Perhaps it is Google Toolbar’s unique scope of data collection that is interesting – unlike session- or cookie-based services that can only track you across properties, Google Toolbar allows for total monitoring. If you need a mental image, session-based tracking is akin to being caught on surveillance tape, whereas use of the Google Toolbar is like wearing the surveillance camera.

Technology Review has posted a new edition exploring Web 2.0. There’s a lot of content here to digest, including articles on The Business of Social Networks, Facebook’s technical architecture (a true skill of the company), Twitter, medical data and so on. Dive in and enjoy.

Finally, news that Facebook has partnered with Visa to create a network for small business. Obviously targeting Facebook’s emergent 35-plus population, you’re supposed to use the Visa network to schmooze business contacts and so forth. I’m not sure if this was leaked before embargo, because as I clicked around the Visa network on Facebook I got a bunch of 404′s. Even though this is the opposite of exciting, I’m going to keep my eye on this – a big success here could be a huge validation for Facebook. I’m skeptical, though; huge, impersonal idea and networking markets are often races to the bottom, as opposed to the spaces of proper discourse executives imagine.

Post-script: Check out Lilly Nguyen et. al.’s new invention, Twitflicks. Using Flickr images, Twitflicks visually represents public Twitters. Fascinating.

Thoughts — No Comments
24
Jun 08

Web 2.0′s Breakpoint

This was big news Friday, but I’m still processing the fact Joshua Schacter has left Yahoo, and del.icio.us. I’ve never met Schacter, but I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time. Memepool distracted me endlessly when I was working for TMF during the first dot com, and Del.icio.us has profoundly shaped my lens on Web 2.0. I’m also hopelessly addicted to del.icio.us – I use it extensively for academic research, it has shaped my thinking about all things social, and Terrell and I employed its design patterns for ClaimID. As Joshua leaves Yahoo and Del.icio.us, I wanted to acknowledge his work and the legacy he leaves behind.

It also strikes me that Schacter’s exit, as well as the exit of Flickr co-founders Butterfield and Fake, create a nice breakpoint for Web 2.0. In 2005, we saw the success of Flickr and Del.icio.us as beacons of hope – not only that the web remained monetizable, but that people still cared, that “web people” hadn’t just been chasing false hopes and dreams. Looking back from 2008, the frenzy of Web 2.0 looks more like gentle turbulence. Web 2.0 marked a change, in which our software enabled participation, identity and peer production. Perhaps it is now time to realize those facets are no longer novel, as the web turns and searches for its next transformation.

Noticed — No Comments
23
Jun 08

Doug Rushkoff on Obama’s Brand

In the post Obama and the Internet, I discussed the power of Obama’s brand. Via techPresident, an essay by academic and critic Douglas Rushkoff exploring participatory politics and Obama’s powerful brand.

Brands were invented primarily to replace local commerce and social activity with mass produced goods and corporate-provided services. Brand mythologies alienate people from one another and insert themselves in the place of real relationships. Instead of buying meat, corn, drugs, or soap from local producers, we buy them from A&P, Green Giant, Wal-Mart or P&G. These national brands have great mythologies, but serve to disconnect us from one another, and distribute power to those with capital and away from people who actually do work.

The danger in Brand Obama is that our focus on a heroic or mythic presidency could easily distract us from the hard work and reality of creating change ourselves. “Hard working” democrats loved listening to Hilary Clinton talk about how hard she was going to work for them because it made it seem like the president is in position to stay up all night and, through the extra effort, get food on our tables or money in our bank accounts. It just doesn’t work that way, and Obama’s refusal to, say, cut gas taxes over the summer to cater to this mentality speaks volumes.

Read the full essay.

Noticed — No Comments
19
Jun 08

Linking Unit Structures

Commenting on a few items that have caught my attention:

The last few emails I’ve received from Barack Obama have been accompanied by a short video. In the videos, Obama appears in front of a dark backdrop, with a tight camera shot – just like Ze, without all the cuts. These videos evoke a personal conversation – Obama often introduces himself simply as “Barack,” the dark background offers no distractions or location information, and they’re usually kept to a minute or two. They’re very reminiscent of a hallway conversation – as if you just bumped into Barack and he wanted to catch up.

These strike me as fireside chats for the digital era; Obama’s team seems to understand this by only deploying them in “big news” situations. What is most interesting is the personal connections these videos can forge. While Obama is clearly broadcasting, the video retains a personal feel, as if the potential president dropped by for a chat. I wonder how such an approach would transfer to the oval office. Now that the YouTube “Gotcha” clip is passe in digital politics, I’ll be very interested to watch how this particular video strategy evolves.

In other news, The awesome adaptation of privacy-encroaching technology award goes to “teenagers” who are now using Google Maps to find backyard swimming pools, and Facebook to organize illicit dips in said pools.

ABC News runs a piece entitled Will GPS Make Us Dumb? Terrible title, but just like we’ve forgotten phone numbers and CD track titles, what elements of the spatial experience will go away when we’ve got persistent positional data? With modern transit we’ve moved to a place-to-place mentality – is GPS the death knell for the pass-through areas? On the other hand, one might argue that positional data stands to create new interest in the areas we used to just pass through – you might have never known great tacos were just two minutes off that random exit on the freeway.

Noticed / Thoughts — No Comments
17
Jun 08

Remembering Paul Otlet

Today, the NY Times remembers Paul Otlet, someone we’ve never forgotten in schools of information and library science. Otlet, an information visionary, sketched out systems for search and interconnection of indexed data. Comparisons are made to Vannevar Bush’s Memex, with particular similarities between Otlet’s links and Bush’s trails.

If you’re interested in these systems, you might wish to check out the later work of Gordon Bell, whose MyLifeBits systems attempts to emulate elements of the Memex. While I’m not sure we’re going to see the emergence of the individual Memex, I believe we’ll see a Memex built from meshed data collected from mobile and ambient devices. This data, reassembled with positional data from personal beacons, would allow the creation of community Memex, a living, evolving street-view of one’s life.

Thoughts — 2 Comments
16
Jun 08

Obama and the Internet

This morning, Pew released summary findings from their ongoing study of the Internet and the 2008 election. Alan Rosenblatt’s written them up for techPresident. In the context of Obama’s recent victory in the 2008 primary, I thought I might revisit some of my previous thinking on Obama and the internet.

There seems to be consensus that Obama is the internet’s candidate. Pew’s findings confirm this, as do countless anecdotes about Obama’s internet prowess. When thinking about technology and campaigns, we have to think about directionality. The common assumption is that technology generates awareness; i.e. campaigns should create technologies to market a candidate. This internet-centric view affirms the value of the internet as a game-changer, in which a candidate can win because of the internet.

The opposing view casts the internet as a harness; rather than generating interest online, interest is generated in many spaces, and internet technologies exist to harness the interest. Instead of looking as a technology as an end, technology becomes one of thousands of means through which interest, communication and money is funneled. I’ll argue that this model, as opposed to the game-changing model, is the model of Obama 2008 and successful future candidacies.

Candidates are brands. This was never more clear to me than the years between 2000 and 2006, where “W” and Bush/Cheney bumper stickers proliferated. Affixing that bumper sticker was a signal of class, status and ideological affiliation – that one could “afford” to support Bush, and all that Bush’s brand embodies. With all due respect to the other candidates, Obama has emerged as the brand of 2008. His message, youth and pan-cultural appeal have created a perfect storm, and now he’s bigger than Apple, Google, Nike and Vitamin Water all put together.

So lets get back to technology and directionality. In January I wrote a piece for TP called Social Networks and Youth Voter Activation. Rejecting the game-changer model, I argued that social networks act as harnesses for activated interest. If you’ve got a population that is activated by a brand, they’ll turn to the information tools at hand to further that interest – through information seeking, friend-finding, volunteering, donating, etc. Therefore, the first part of Obama’s success wasn’t the tools he developed, but rather the tools that were at hand, that we all knew how to use – Facebook, YouTube, etc.

Tools are only part of the equation – they only provide a venue for communication. In The Social Filter, we see how communicative norms have changed around the technology, to allow all of us to become “personal marketers” to one another. Yes, I hate the idea of personal marketing, but the fact is when you send a YouTube link, invite someone to a Facebook group, broadcast a Twitter of support – you’re marketing to your networks. This is very low level, contextually-appropriate marketing (and if you’re like the 95% of the homophile us, your friends share your interests), but it is marketing nonetheless. Such marketing builds a cycle of activation, one that drives interest back into toolsets, marketing to personal networks, and so on.

This is not to say that Obama hasn’t developed cool tools. I’m sure he has. But I’ve used his creaky social network, and I can guarantee you that Obama’s success online has nothing to do with the tools he’s developed, and everything to do with the tools we already use. These tools of social interaction provide spaces for communication, spaces into which we share our messages, contest our beliefs, and negotiate our candidate of choice. That Obama’s demographic is very clearly the users of these tools, that he has creative types working for him, that he isn’t fighting peer-production only makes this cycle more successful.

Obama’s is the model of successful internet campaigning. Supporters must be activated, they must use the tools they know and understand, and the campaign has to take its hands off. This formula has created a cycle of activation, one that will continue to grow through the general election and thereafter.

← Older Entries