March, 2009

Noticed / Thoughts — 3 Comments
31
Mar 09

Freedom featured in Salon

Rebecca Traister of Salon has posted a great meditation on Freedom:

Yes, Freedom. Like the word Mel Gibson’s William Wallace shouts just as he’s being disemboweled by a British executioner in “Braveheart.” Freedom, like the thing that people around the world yearn for, fight for, die for. Freedom riders, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. Freedom like “chimes of.”

That’s just like what I downloaded, except in my case, the Freedom I was seeking was meant not to liberate me from the oppressive bonds of an unjust regime. No, my Freedom was designed to bind and restrict me, to prevent me from e-mailing, surfing, browsing and playing online games. Ah … sweet, sweet Freedom.

Traister continues:

I’d need to take a breath and dive in for more. And that’s when I wrote this sentence. And this one. All of the sentences so far, actually. Except for the few minutes during which I did call the bank to check on getting my money back from that guy who was using my credit card for gas. But that was actually kind of important, too. The kind of thing that might have been put off for another hour, or another day, if I had Webs to surf, words to unscramble.

It’s been about a week with Freedom, and I like it, I really do, even if I’m a bit ashamed that I need it. I still use it mostly for about 15- or 30-minute periods.

It is inspiring to read commentary like this – even if it is a little tongue-in-cheek (and appropriately so), it is pretty cool to know that you’ve developed softare that has helped people.

One note, in the article the writer includes a verbatim quote about what I do with donations to Freedom.  I use the money Freedom generates to 1) pay for shareware (I’ve now paid for most of the shareware I use) and 2) purchase software I need for research.  Freedom has allowed me to purchase DevonThink Pro Office, which is completely revolutionizing my research process.  I didn’t start out with a plan for what to do with donation money, it just sort of worked out (and felt right) that it be passed on through the software economy in a virtuous cycle.

Download Freedom.  Read Traister’s Story.  Story Comments.

Noticed — No Comments
29
Mar 09

Porter on Relationship Asymmetry in Facebook

Joshua Porter has a lengthy piece predicting relationship asymmetry in Facebook.  Joshua writes:

I predict Facebook will soon go fully asymmetric, allowing all users of the system (not just celebrities or companies) to have “follower” relationships that don’t require reciprocation. I believe they will once again follow in Twitter’s footsteps and people will be able to have follower lists that are much bigger than the number of people they follow.

I don’t know how they’ll do this, my guess is they’ll attempt to keep both systems intact. They’ll keep the friends designation for symmetric relationships, but also add another asymmetric capability. It would probably be best to use the term “follow” for this, but they may continue to keep the term “fan”, even though being a fan of another individual sounds a bit silly…the term “follower” is better.

Facebook will announce this publicly in their common way, by saying their goal is to help you connect to your friends and family better. They’ll say they’ve realized that there are many relationships that aren’t as strong as mutual friends but are nonetheless important…and therefore they’ve hit upon this wonderful new functionality for you…and they’ll somehow recast it as “Open” in some way…and blah blah blah. Pundits will point out how they’re copying Twitter. Robert Scoble will say it’s brilliant and remind us Zuck just doesn’t care what people think. Users will revolt by creating a “Facebook Users Against Fan Designation” group and it will quickly grow to 1 million members. The actual design of the system will hardly come up. Ev Williams will probably tweet something completely unrelated. You know. The usual.

The real reasons why Facebook will go asymmetric are reach (growth) and data.

Facebook will grow their service by allowing people to accrue attention in a way they can’t currently in the system. People will realize the same benefits they currently do on Twitter…you can actually start to have an audience that is larger than your current friends list. In other words, this will allow members of Facebook to have a much larger reach than they could before…thus giving Facebook a larger reach as well. This will be the next big growth spurt for Facebook, who has executed so well on almost everything they’ve done so far…but at the present moment the structure of the system prevents this from happening.

In short, Facebook will improve the ability of its members to accrue social capital within the system. And, if you aren’t familiar with this notion, check out Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, which lays out in excellent detail why social capital is the wealth of networks. He also describes the way humans have trouble with exchanging social capital with economic capital. (this exchange is the nut Facebook and other social networks are trying to crack)

Well worth a read over at Bokardo.

Noticed / Thoughts — 10 Comments
29
Mar 09

Using Zipcar may damage your credit

Update: A representative from Zipcar has called me and told me they are reviewing their practices.  I’ll update here when I get more info!

A note to Unit Structures readers: be careful if your Zipcar account lapses, as the company may give away your personal information and attempt to damage your credit.  Last year, I spent some extended time traveling in Zipcar-friendly areas, so I created an account.  My experience with Zipcar was fine.  Fast forward to March 8, 2009 – I get an email from Zipcar telling me they had attempted to charge me for a membership renewal, and my credit card was no longer valid.  I “lose” my credit cards yearly to avoid sneaky auto-renewals just like this.

zipcar-logo

Since I wasn’t planning on using ZipCar any time soon, I decided not to renew.  I assumed they would just lock my account until I re-opened it at some time in the future.  Instead, ZipCar started sending me increasingly menacing emails, which culminated in this one (bold mine):

This is the third and final reminder to let you know that we have been unable to charge your credit card for your balance of $50.00, outstanding since Mar 8th.

If you have updated your credit card information please disregard this notice.

Please contact us within three business days or your account will be closed and turned over to a collection agency for payment.

Huh?  A collection agency?  You’re going to turn my personal and financial information over to a collection agency, and tarnish my credit simply because I chose not to renew my account? And after only ten business days?  Is this any way to treat customers?  Its not like I was using my Zipcar and had run up some huge tab, my account has been dormant (and fully paid) for months.

It gets better.  So I go to the website (within three days!) to delete my account.  I am on the phone with a customer service rep who is talking me through account deletion.  She guides me to the page for deletion, and it isn’t there.  I am not allowed to delete my account until I enter my new credit card number, which would automatically charge me $50.00.  I suppose then they would let me delete my account.  Even the customer service rep seemed a little surprised that I wasn’t allowed to remove my account.  Thankfully she was able to override the system.

I understand that when I was setting up my Zipcar account I was probably forced to agree to auto-renewal, and that if I had just deleted my account before the auto-renew, I wouldn’t have had to deal with this mess.  Still, Zipcar’s overly aggressive tactics are inexcusable.  Turning over my personal information to a collections agency after two weeks on an auto-renewal?  Damage my credit simply because I don’t want to use your service any more?  This is a company with dangerous business practices.  I know that everyone is hurting in this economy, but Zipcar doesn’t have the right to damage the credit of good-faith customers.  Well, ex-customers, in my case.

1: From the Collection Agency FAQ: Third-party collection agencies may report a debt to one or more of the credit bureaus, as a “Collection Account,” including the amount, and whether it was paid or not.

P.S. Zipcar wouldn’t actually let me delete my account.  They would only allow me to make it inactive.  Another failure on their part.

Noticed / Thoughts — 4 Comments
26
Mar 09

Facebook Family Groups: A Smart Move

Via AllFacebook.com:

Facebook appears to have it out for the developers of large family applications on Facebook. The company has created a new landing page where users can create groups specifically targeted to their family. While there is nothing unique about the end product, what is unique is the way in which Facebook is promoting the creation of new groups that are private only to family members.

According to Facebook, the Family Groups are a place to “Share stories, photos and videos with your loved ones privately and securely.”  AllFacebook’s analysis is simplistic – I think this move is a major move for Facebook that will drive adoption and content creation.

The problem that Facebook faces is simple – users are often reluctant to connect across generations.  While it is OK for cousins to connect, parents or children often feel conflicted about friending.  Without getting into the intricacies of this interaction, it is clear that Facebook is missing a lot of latent value with awkward family connections.  A child may not want to grant a parent access to their everyday goings on, but it is quite likely that the child will want to see pictures from family events, read notes about family members, or find out about events from relatives.

In theory, family groups will serve as a bridge between family members, creating a space where content can be shared securely without requiring friend connections.  This is a big deal, and I think it can surface a lot of value for Facebook.  Particulary, I think it will encourage more content creation and sharing (digitzing old pictures, uploading new ones from family events), and it will give late adopters a final push to join.  These late adopters will be able to see content from people they care about without having to do the awkward dance of Facebook friendship (which can come later when norms are established and understood).

For this to work, Facebook needs to treat the family group as special, affording it a prominent and sensible space in the interface.  If you have to click through three levels of hoops to share with your Family group, it will be a miserable failure.  Facebook needs to build this product to answer the needs of late adopters who have been incentivized by family content – otherwise these users may be frustrated.

If executed properly, this is a very smart move for Facebook.

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25
Mar 09

John Hope Franklin, 94

Esteemed historian John Hope Franklin has passed away.  I got to know a little about John Hope while visiting ISIS and working with HASTAC in the building that bears his name (I even passed him in the halls a few times).  NPR put together a great piece on him which aired during All Things Considered.

I wanted to pass along this link from Simon Spero.  This is a transcript from Grutter v Bollinger, et al., the landmark case where the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action.  In it, Franklin recounts his academic training and encounters with institutionalized racism in his work.  Franklin tells the story with a historian’s knack – it is hard to imagine this happened so recently.

Read the full transcript.

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25
Mar 09

Jones to Lecture on the Media Gap

Local folks: Paul Jones will give an interesting talk Tomorrow at UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. I was just reviewing his slides, and it looks like an interesting talk.

Who: Prof. Paul Jones, UNC-Chapel Hill
Where: Room 283, 2nd floor, Carroll Hall, UNC-Chapel Hill
When:Thursday March 26, at 2 pm
What: Changing Communities Inside the Media Gap

Abstract: We know that social networking software is creating new spaces for discourse and interaction. We see SNS forming the social lives and attitudes of our children and to some extent ourselves.

How did this come about? Certainly not overnight and not unnoticed by scholars and technologists.

In 1980, Tetsura Tomito noticed a media gap that he felt will soon be filled by new communications technologies. At the same time, work in the areas of social capital, friendship networks, brain scans (fMRI) and conceptions of community began to grapple with the changes within Tomito’s media gap.

This talk will look at selected attempts to understand how communities are constructed and what changes have already been noticed in these converging areas of research.

You are invited to read, edit and comment on the slides by going to GDocs here: http://tinyurl.com/JOMC-March-26 and during the presentation, you are invited to bring your backchannel discussion to the front by joining a gTalk commentary at the same address.

You’ll also want to mark your calendars, as next week’s speaker is Prof. Daniel Solove, noted privacy expert and author of The Future of Reputation, The Digital Person, and Understanding Privacy.

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19
Mar 09

Turow on Behavioral Targeting

Saul Hansell reports on Joseph Turow’s proposal for awareness of behavioral targeting:

I’m coming to the conclusion that each advertisement on a page has to speak for itself. That’s implicit in the approach Google is taking for its new behavioral targeting system. It puts the phrase “Ads by Google” on all its advertisements. Click that link and you’ll get some limited information about Google’s targeting system and an ability to adjust some of the interests that Google is tracking.

But Google’s approach is presented in a way that glosses over what they are doing and discourages people from reading the disclosure and exercising control, says Joseph Turow, a marketing professor at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Turow has developed a plan that is simpler and more comprehensive: Put an icon on each ad that signifies that the ad collects or uses information about users. If you click the icon, you will go to what he calls a “privacy dashboard” that will let you understand exactly what information was used to choose that ad for you. And you’ll have the opportunity to edit the information or opt out of having any targeting done at all.

via An Icon That Says They’re Watching You – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

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