[colour matters...even in the twitterverse]

New Box UK Study Finds Twitter Users of Both Sex More Likely to ‘Follow’ White Women



Between June and October of 2009 London-based digital agency Box UK (http://www.boxuk.com) conducted two sequential social experiments to test how Twitter users reacted to being followed by strictly controlled test accounts. The results strongly suggest that given a choice of following black and white people of either sex, Twitter users are more likely to ‘follow’ white women, and least likely to follow black women.


This distribution also holds when the data is sub-divided into male followers and female followers for each account, showing that both sexes are most likely to follow White Female or Ambiguous accounts, and least likely to follow Black Females. We can also deduce that on average, female twitter users are 30% less likely to follow a request from a stranger, than a male twitter user.

“While it may be rather premature to conclusively argue that white women get more followers on Twitter than non-white women or men, we do know that a digital divide does exist and that certain groups of people tend to explore new applications with greater speed and enthusiasm. Without wading into a debate on technology users, more information on the aggregate of Twitter users is necessary to come to any real conclusions about their use of technology,” says Dr. Tina Basi a sociologist specializing in ethnography for design.


Basi, who previously worked with Intel’s Digital Health Research Group argues that, “perhaps what the data is pointing to, is that our relationship, as users, with new social media remains somewhat perplexing. We are still struggling with using Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, as ways of engaging and connecting with others, and instead, fall back on using them to simply keep tabs on others. The internet, as a medium, still holds the spectacle of say film or television, and seeing someone on your screen attaches a celebrity like status to them. The lack of reciprocity for some of the Twitter accounts created in this experiment, might better reflect our assumptions about celebrity and tendency toward voyeurism, as opposed to forming any real argument about Tweeters.”


Twitter is an increasingly important platform for conducting social experiments, with its ability to tap-into and measure human communication and behaviour on a massive scale. As the platform grows, we expect to see businesses and academics harnessing this capability to ‘invisibly’ survey the real behaviour and reactions of people, enabling a new wave of social research and customer intelligence.

Read more about the methodology and report here.






Image from Dan Zambonini's post on the report findings.

[facebook and canadian privacy laws]

Time is up for Facebook to find a way to live up to Canada's privacy law after this country's privacy watchdog gave the social-networking website one month to close its "serious privacy gaps."

And if Jennifer Stoddart, Canada's privacy commissioner, isn't satisfied with Facebook's final response Monday, she has two weeks to take the California-based company to Federal Court in Ottawa to try and get a court order requiring it to change its business practices to comply with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the country's private-sector privacy law.

[...]

The privacy probe began last year when the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa filed an 11-part complaint, alleging Facebook violated key provisions of Canada's private-sector privacy law.

In addition to an "overarching" concern relating to the "confusing" or "incomplete" way in which Facebook provides information to users about its privacy practices, Stoddart concluded Facebook's policy to indefinitely keep the personal information of people who have deactivated their accounts is contrary to the act.

[...]

But the bigger dispute over Facebook sharing personal information to companies that operate third-party applications on its site is another matter, he said.

In order to download popular games and quizzes, Facebook users must consent to share all their personal information, except their contact details. These companies, totalling nearly one million, operate in 180 countries.

Read more here: http://www.canada.com/technology/Facebook%20must%20satisfy%20Canada%20privacy%20commissioner%20Monday/1899277/story.html

[social networking conference: wolverhampton uni]

Wolverhampton Internet and Technology Society (WITS) together with the Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group are hosting the 1^st Social Networking in Cyberspace conference in April, 2010. We welcome contributions from scholars in the social and behavioural sciences and media and information disciplines, regardless of theoretical orientation.

The conference, which is to be sponsored by the Research Centre in Applied Sciences (RCAS), will be a one-day event and will take place on Friday the 23^rd of April, 2010. The Venue for the conference will be the Lighthouse Media Centre in Wolverhampton (Please click here for Map).

Call for papers

We invite potential presenters to submit an abstract (no longer than 300 words) for peer-review. The deadline for submission of the abstract is October 30^th, 2009. A decision on this abstract will be made by November 20^th, 2009 and authors will be notified via email soon after.

Abstracts should be submitted to SNIC@wlv.ac.uk

Subsequently, all presenters will be invited to prepare a paper for publication. The International Journal of Internet Science will be publishing a peer-reviewed selection of the best papers from the conference.

Papers should be submitted to SNIC@wlv.ac.uk by the 28^th of May 2010.

Postgraduate poster competition

We will be running a postgraduate poster competition on the day of the conference. Prizes will be awarded for the best posters on the day (further information to follow). We invite postgraduate students to submit an abstract by October 30^th 2009 for consideration.

Keynote Speakers

The following have been confirmed as keynote speakers at the conference:

Professor Mike Thelwall: University of Wolverhampton – “Detecting and analysing emotion in social networking sites”

Doctor Monica Whitty: Nottingham Trent University.

Fees

£80 standard rate

Discount rate for presenters (£60)

Discount rate for students (£50)

The fee includes morning and afternoon coffee and lunch.

Registration

Conference registration opens in January 2010

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: 30^th October 2009

Notice of acceptance deadline: 20^th November 2009

Conference date: 23^rd April 2010

Full papers deadline: 28^th May 2010

contact us

If you have any enquiries or would like to contact us regarding the suitability of your research for the conference, please email us on SNIC@wlv.ac.uk

[ether pad]

According to the creators, EtherPad is "the perfect way to collaborate on a text document and keep everyone literally on the same page."

So I had a little play around with it and my first question was "how is etherpad different from google docs?" After a bit more research and reading of the faqs it seems a few other beta users have wondered this very question and the creators are quick to point out that "No." EtherPad is different from googledocs:

"Google Docs is a suite of products that do many things, from word processing to spreadsheets to document management. One thing that Google Docs does not do is real-time collaborative text editing. We think this is an important use case, so we built EtherPad with real-time collaboration as the focus.

For example, with Google Docs it takes about 5 to 15 seconds for a change to make its way from your keyboard to other people's screens. Imagine if whiteboards or telephones had this kind of delay! In contrast, the EtherPad infrastructure is built to carry your every keystroke at the speed of light, limited only by the time it takes electrons to travel over a wire (such as an "ethernet" cable)."

The aspect of real-time updates is something I've noticed first-hand when working with people on google docs (hi Sue! hi Kate!) and EtherPad lets you see changes/revisions/additions as they happen. This has interesting possibilities for classroom use too.
Thanks to my brother for the tip.

[new media, romance and evidence]

"Mobile phones, BlackBerrys, emails, social networking... Never before has it been so easy to cheat on a partner. But has technology made it simply too difficult for philanderers to cover their tracks?

*****

In today's world, to function as an effective member of 21st-century society, we have to engage with a bewildering array of electronic gadgets, few of which we fully understand. We stomp digital footprints all over the place, and the unforeseen result of engaging in the information age is that it is becoming harder to have secrets – and, as a result, it is harder to cheat on each other.

Day-to-day actions, such as taking the bus to work and buying a magazine on the way, used to be ephemeral. But today, every journey, every communication, every penny spent, is logged and stored. As we move through life, we leave millions of specks of electronic evidence. Stored on hard drives and mainframes, this data acts like specks of DNA sprayed across the bedsheet of cyberspace. It's all there waiting to incriminate us."

Read the whole article at the Independent.

[lively learning]

with google's new 3-d avatar-including chat room are there some cool opportunities for using this in our teaching?

According to Niniane Wang, google engineering manager: "A while ago, I looked around the social web and wished that it could be less static. Sure, you can leave a comment on a blog or write a text blurb on your social networking profile. But what if you want to express yourself in a more fun way, with 3D graphics and real-time avatar interactions? I started asking this question as a 20% project, and I'm excited to announce today's release of Lively by Google - a 3D virtual experience that is the newest addition to Google Labs."

[wikivision...now twittervision]

xposted at PART:

In January I wrote about how strangely addictive WikipediaVision was (and still is) but now I've come across something that inspires even more obsessive behaviour...at least for me.

I realise TwitterVision (by David Troy) has been around for a while; Nat Torkington blogged about its hynosis-inducing effects back in last March. Although I checked it out then (albeit briefly), it seems much more interesting to me now...perhaps because I'm also hooked on Twitter itself. Its seems this mashup would make a geography lesson or social studies lesson quite fun too...





Follow David Troy on Twitter here.

Other interesting Twitter mashups:

twistori
twitterfeed
twhirl
twitterrific

For more, check out the extensive list (100 examples) at MoMB Labs.

[social networks & identity]

This article by Scott Monty on his social networks and what it means for his identity fits well with the upcoming NLab Social Networks conference.

"I've been getting a lot of requests for friends on various social networks lately. You probably have been too - there seems to be an explosion of interest lately, particularly on Twitter.

I'm generally encouraged by this, as it means that the space is continuing to grow, rather than to wane like some short-lived fad. But at the same time, it can make life a little more complex or cluttered if you're not ready to deal with it.

But social networks are inherently different from each other. How you use one may not reflect how you use another, nor will contacts be consistent across every one of them. I thought it might be instructive to share how I think about my social networks - particularly focusing on how I consider friend requests in each. I've linked to my profiles, if you'd care to connect with me on them.

Facebook
Ah, Facebook. One of the most visible and recognized brands in the social networking space, where "friend" is a verb. For me, Facebook is a combination of business and social contacts.

I'll immediately accept a friendship request if I know you or follow you on another network. But that's not to say I'm exclusive in my friending. If we don't know each other, just introduce yourself and - most importantly - give me some context as to how you know me.

LinkedIn
I use LinkedIn as my professional social network. Like the old three-ring binders of business cards that I kept, LinkedIn is my real-time virtual collection of business cards.

As you can imagine, my requirements for LinkedIn are a bit more stringent. If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, we should have met or at least have had some meaningful interaction. I'll also accept introductions via people I know.

Twitter
Twitter is probably the loosest of all of my networks. I generally like connecting with more people there because I enjoy the exchange of ideas, links and quick personal interaction that it allows."

From Marketing Profs Daily Fix.

[social media: metrics and analysis]

As we gear up for the upcoming (June) NLab conference on Social Networks and Business I'm more than ever on the prowl for interesting posts/tweets/rss updates that tackle these issues. (nb: find NLab on facebook and upcoming) I've just come across Ryan MacMillan's (a digital marketing consultancy) "Contagious Report" on social media, methods and metrics.

Some interesting parts:

"The four qualities of Social Capital The similarity to economic capital only goes so far. SC has the following four qualities:
Utility through Accumulation: Like economic capital, the more SC an individual accumulates, the more easily that individual is able to affect their environment.
Inequality of Distribution: Like economic capital, SC is differently available. Some individuals have a lot,others less.
Expiration through Under-Use: Unlike economic capital, which expires through over-use, SC expires through under-use. 'Use it or lose it'.
Based Upon Trust: Regular capital is merely the exchange of agreed values as
guaranteed by a central authority. SC, however, is a stockpile of trust, which is
guaranteed only by the exercise of reciprocal actions between
diffuse individuals within a social network."

"Measuring Social Capital Any planned social media activity by a brand within an OSN must be measurable by the way in which it increases or depletes the brand's SC. Measuring a brand's SC, particularly in reference to their online SC, can be
achieved through analysis of online sentiment and influence.This in effect is a measure of the 'tone of voice' that online conversations about a brand have. Sentiment metrics describe the level of the 'stockpile' of trust which constitutes SC: how trustworthy is the brand understood to be, and how useful or desirable is its
content or activity?

Influence metrics describe the efficacy with which a brand is able to make use of that trust in order to (positively) affect their environment: how easily is a brand able to share its knowledge around its social networks?"

Read the whole report here.

[JP Rangaswami on web 2.0, social networking + business]

I've just been watching Dan Farber (ZDNet editor-in-chief) interview JP Rangaswami. Rangaswarmi talks about BT and the role of new media and open source. Some interesting quotes:

"In fact if you look at what I’m doing with Facebook, what I’m really achieving, what any of us who wants to use it in an enterprise environment achieves, is to say that you’ve taken what happened at the water cooler or at the coffee shop and made it persistent, made it shareable, made it teachable, made it learnable. That’s a huge win because we’ve spent years talking about the value of the water cooler conversations, of the coffee shops, of the more amorphous softer discussions. Now we have the ability to actually understand what these relationships are, how information and decision making migrates horizontally, laterally through an organization, rather than through the published hierarchies, how people really work, and what people do as part of that work."

and, BT is no longer simply a telecoms company but (here's a mouthful):

"a platform based software driven networked IT services company."

Interestingly Dan Farber asks:

"Now as part of that environment that you’re talking about, the software as a service and exposing the assets to the customer and letting them build upon it, obviously that might deal to some extent with the web 2.0 type technologies, how are you investing in those types of approaches?"

and Rangaswami responds:

"Well as you would expect, I don’t think I could have joined a firm that didn’t believe in collaborative tools and techniques and at BT it’s pretty much part of our DNA. Collaboration is right at the heart of what we do, we have very very large internal use of blogs and wikis, we have considerable use of IM techniques. We also have a growing ability for ourselves to be able use various forms of, I mean if you look at facebook, I think we’re probably up to 6000 people just on the visible BT."

But does social media always work for business? No, not in any generic way, businesses need to use aspects of social media that work for them, their brand and their ethos. The moral of the story:

"I have not failed, I have found 10,000 ways that do not work."

The video of the talk is here. The transcript here and Dan Faber's blog post here.

[business + social media = search engine optimization]]

Reading Blogstorm and I see Patrick Altoft talking about the possibility of SEO resistant searches. In other words, searches can be powered by what Altoft calls the "social graph" but that doesn't mean the death of SEO, just a different kind of instantiation:

"Imagine how hard it would be for a commercial site to get high rankings on a search engine powered by the social graph. The marketing department probably wouldn’t have a clue where to start and are likely to be labelled a spammer at the first social network they target. The only way for a commercial site to see good results would be to hire a social media consultant / SEO to create a long term social media strategy for them.

Search can’t ever be SEO resistant because any signal can be manipulated - a good SEO consultant will figure out what the search engine needs to rank a site highly and give it to them. No tricks just give the search engines what they want whether it’s links, keywords, bookmarks, RSS subscribers or anything else."

Tyler Banfield, one of Altoft's readers draws our attention to a post by Vanessa Fox where she sums up her view of SEO rather well:

"The bottom line is this. Yes, if you want your customers to find you using search, then you have to understand search engine optimization. And you should want your customers to find you using search because search is the entry point on the web. But if you are operating an online business, you absolutely should understand online marketing. I don’t understand people who say it should all just work and they should be able to concentrate on their core business. (Looking at this from a search engine’s perspective, however, I think they should and certainly they are working on ways to make sure it all just works, because it’s in their best interest to provide searchers the best content on the web, whether the owners of that content understand SEO or not, but that doesn’t negate the point.)

If you have an offline business, you have to understand offline marketing and customer engagement. If you are opening new stores and your core skill set is painting, you will likely hire others for other aspects of your business: determining the best location for the store, branding and advertising, merchandising. You will probably ensure your store is attractive, both inside and outside. You’ll arrange merchandise on your shelves so that people know where to find stuff and can easily reach it. You’ll make your aisles wide enough for carts.

You wouldn’t open your paint store with no sign and a broken door in a back alley that had a brick wall blocking the road. Why would you do the same on the internet and then blame Google?"

The cool image is from RagePank.

[taxonomy of social network services]

Recently Christophe Prieur shared with the AoIR list this interesting take on a taxonomy of social network services. According to him, he's tried to "map" the various services along two trajectories. Going left to right is the notion of action, being (etre) to doing (faire). The top to bottom axis seems to reflect the kind of identity construction, is it more "real" (reel) or virtual (projete)?

More precisely:

"L’extériorisation de soi caractérise la tension entre les signes qui se réfèrent à ce que la personne est dans son être (sexe, âge, statut matrimonial, etc.), de façon durable et incorporée, et ceux qui renvoient à ce que fait la personne (ses œuvres, ses projets, ses productions). Ce processus d’extériorisation du soi dans les activités et les oeuvres renvoie à ce que la sociologie qualifie de subjectivation.
La simulation de soi caractérise la tension entre les traits qui se réfèrent à la personne dans sa vie réelle (quotidienne, professionnelle, amicale) et ceux qui renvoient à une projection ou à une simulation de soi, virtuelle au sens premier du terme, qui permet aux personnes d’exprimer une partie ou une potentialité d’elles-mêmes."

And graphically:

The five highlighted areas signify types of visibility. There is the "partition" or "folding screen" (my translation so perhaps not 100% reliable...) which allows users to "hide" behind categories, eventually revealing themselves only to those of their choosing. There is also "clair-obscur" which sounds like the Italian "chiaro-scuro", a technique which allows users to "rendent visibles leur intimité, leur quotidien et leur vie sociale, mais ils s’adressent principalement à un réseau social de proches et sont difficilement accessibles pour les autres." Other categories include the lighthouse (Le phare), the post-it and the magical lantern (think avatar identities in Second Life).

Take a look here for more.

["don't be efficient"]

David Eaves has a great post on gen y-ers using (or attempting to use) social networking tools to be "more productive" but ending up shot down...

"Take for example my friend who wanted to use survey monkey to send out a questionnaire asking 10 public servants across their department about potential dates and times when they would be free to meet. The survey took 5 seconds to complete and would quickly identify the optimal date for such a meeting. However, her manager let her know very quickly that this was unacceptable. It was more important that each person be emailed - or better, called - individually, a process that gobbled up hours if not days. Time after time I hear stories of young people who, after doing what they do at home, quickly feel the full weight of the department descending on their cubicle. I won’t even mention an acquaintance who related a story of trying to set up a wiki (not even on accessible to the public!)."

I've read quite a bit about bringing these kinds of technologies into educational environments or at least educating people about their possibilities and there are certainly a lot of people out there working on it...I just assumed that businesses etc... would have already sunk their teeth (mostly) into these kinds of tools that allow sharing of information so easily and quickly. I guess not...

A point I'd like to make explicit though...as one of David's commenters explained "A vast majority of young people are entirely clueless about the technology they’re using - they see it as magic as much as the older generation does." Too true! But, I don't think it's just a case of Gen Y-ers being able to do it better than others...I strongly feel it isn't a generational thing and certainly not a "digital native vs immigrant" thing either...(maybe it does have a lot to do with access though)

[web 2.0 resources]

I recently came across this excellent compendium of web 2.0 resources via Dawn Hogue's own useful "Blogs, Wikis, & Web 2.0 in the Classroom" site.

Some of the more interesting ones:

• pimp my news: "scours the web 24/7 for text news and blogs you love and instantly converts them to MP3s that you listen to on your iPod, iPhone or your computer, anytime, anywhere."
  

• trackr: "Use trackr! to let people know where you are and where you have been. All you need is the Internet, a GPS receiver and your mobile phone (or a mobile phone with an internal GPS receiver). Download the application to your mobile phone, create a friendslist and let your friends know where you are."





• arenAsia: "a good way to get ahead in Asia. Professionals use ArenAsia to cultivate business relationships, promote their skills or services, and share insights, opinions and information through discussion groups, event listings, marketplace and knowledge base."






• trutap: "allows you to take your online social life where you go. You can send group messages, SMS and email from your mobile phone for free. You can also chat with your friends on IM (e.g. MSN) and post to blogs, photo-sharing accounts and social networks - all from your mobile phone."






• ecolet: "a web–based company that provides the design community timely, accurate information and news about sustainable materials for product design, architecture, furniture design, graphic design, and more. With headquarters in both Providence and San Francisco, Ecolect LLC aims to be the place for individuals and businesses to learn, connect, share and discover the best in eco–materials."






• guru del vino!!!: "a place for people passionate about wine where they can learn more, share their knowledge and meet with other people who share their passion. It relies on intuitive drag & drop functionality, behaving just like a normal desktop. It is especially easy to use for elderly persons, who form a great part of the wine business target group."






• songza: "allows you to find songs, share them with your friends, and even create playlists."






• wise mapping: "the web mind mapping tool that leverages the power of Mind Maps using new technologies like vectorial languages (SVG and VML)."

[bah: facebook]

[ioct public lecture: oort-cloud.org and social publishing]

Blurb from the ioct blog:

A lecture by Paul B. Hartzog and Richard Adler, at the IOCT, 3pm, Wed 14th November, 2007.
This lecture is free and open to the public.

The frequency and intensity of global communications is increasing, ushered in by collaborative technologies that make possible innovative forms of collective action. As a result, in many ways the structures of industrial modernity face a challenge from emerging peer-to-peer coordinated alternatives. These new alternatives are poised to transform “culture industries” like film, music, publishing, and others.

One recent force is “social publishing” which offers both new practices and new theoretical tools for thinking about the future of publishing. Oort-cloud, an online commons for writers, has embraced social publishing and “Open Lit” in an effort to explore this exciting terrain. A look at Oort-Cloud (http://www.oort-cloud.org) will illustrate the potential of such cooperative enterprises, and provide insight into how how network culture is created.

Important: how to find things of quality (see O'Donnell) Social Publishing (article published in sept. 2006) by Paul

"authors create and distribute their work, and reader, individually and collectively, including fans as well as editors and peers, review, comment, rank, and tag, everything."

What's happening online - there is a creator and there is someone looking to be involved with a creation Authors - create and distribute their work and on the other side we have readers (individually and collectively) - this embodies what Paul and Rick see as the *ideal state*. "OpenLit" is beyond social tagging creative commons is the *lubrication* for this system of openlit. cycle of openlit:

Write - share - read - response

Why has oort cloud settled on science fiction? have a community, willing to take on something new, already have an online presence, have an *open-minded* community, and history of exchange between readers and writers

Current project - Star Trek Rick: "the more you hear feedback the more likely you are able to improve."

Paul: what does this give you? "living with stories" as a consequence of the ubiquity you have the opetion not "select, then publish;" but "publish, then select." (Michel Bauwens).

Paul: his way of participating is as a "good reader." Links in to project gutenburg's call for distributed proof-readers. So challenges of quality and access - the traditional model would have us believe "select, then publish" but it is *perfectly feasibile* to invert this process (see Michel Bauwens).

Question: Bruce - what is the financial model for making this work? Paul: tends to ask questions from the view of equity and participatory culture - so, what might be happening to *large* structures as a result of technological advancement. In his experience, participation is not often because of option for monetary gain (in fact they rejected having google ads on their site in effort to monetize). Decided that monetizing the site would turn away the people who should be participating. Rick: fan fiction communities already have great problems with sense of ownership, the community is what oort cloud is all about

Paul: the reason you give things away is to generate more interest. Think of istock photos.

Rick: think of radiohead example - $3mill for something that was made available for free. 38% people donated. But, donation model worked well for Radiohead because already had a fan base. So, to overcome the idea of obscurity is to get known through something like oort cloud (to establish a name for yourself, get a group of fans). Thus, oortcloud becomes a place where you can build a reputation.

See Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions by Lucy Suchman - her book is an artifact to conversation as the latest release includes her original book with added chapters:

"This edition includes an annotated version of the original text, plus six new chapters looking at relevant developments since the mid 1980s both in computing and in social studies of technology. The focus is on humanlike machines and new forms of human-computer interaction on one hand, and recent theorising regarding humans, machines and relations between them on the other."

What kinds of patterns of behaviour have been developing? Paul: Serialisation was a big thing - the community was able to pick up and read the signals, determine for themselves which evolutionary paths they would take Rick: oort cloud has never had a flame war (!!!) it's been a "very cordial group." There has been strong criticism and rigorous checking but all have remained polite.

[folksonomy and thomas vander wal]

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of listening to Thomas Vander Wal share with us his charting of folksonomy, from its beginnings to future possibilities. He began with his definition of folksonomy (which funnily enough, Vander Wal noted, Wikipedia gets wrong):

When Vander Wal spoke about the important aspect of folksonomy, that it is a "social" activity, he reminded us that in a pre-networked world, networking was walking your floppy across the office!

The "f-word" (as Vander Wal puts it) allows "regular" folks to categorise or structure information in a way that is pertinent to them (i.e. personalised).

This aspect of personalisation has important impacts for the business sector in that it allows businesses a view of their product from the customers' point of view. Again, Vander Wal gave us a funny example of how tagging can affect your product by showing us cd available on amazon.com (see here) and how it was tagged:



You wouldn't want your product labelled as "talentless" would you...?

So, with the help of folksonomy, businesses can move from their "top down" approach to a more open and realistic understanding of their product (or at least how it is perceived).

Vander Wal concluded his talk with an excellent visual representation of what he sees happening in certain social networking arenas:




People/users/taggers are moving from employing tags as descriptors for solely personal use to, the other end of the spectrum, where tags seem to be jumping off points for dialogues and stories (that's the bit I'm personally interested in. Especially after noticing on flickr how some photos start so many stories).

As Vander Wal says:

"The people using the tools, including enterprise need to grasp what is possible beyond that is offered and start asking for it. We are back to where we were in 2003 when del.icio.us arrived on the scene, we need new and improved tools that understand what we need and provide usable tools for those solutions. We are developing tag islands and silos that desperately need interoperability and portability to get real value out of these stranded tag silos around or digital life."

NB apologies for the not so great photos! Annoyingly I forgot my camera (such was the excitement to attend the presentation) and to hand was only my blackberry...

[blogs are corrupting popular opinion]

So says Andrew Keen. Lastnight on newsnight Gavin Esler was supposed to "interview" Keen but seemed rather to put forth his own prepostorous views (though they were aligned with Keen's more of less).

To me, this discussion seemed just another attempt to subvert the positive potential of blogging or any other collaborative enterprise based on the internet. Esler's introduction highlights discrepancies in Wikipedia and he makes grave assertions that the *poor* public will be misinformed. In fact, he says rather smugly, it was the BBC that created the page on Alistair Darling replete with incorrect information; they cunningly replaced Darling's photo with an image of a badger (innuendo?). Oh goodness me. Esler says that's the problem with web 2.0 - "anyone" can edit and create thus everything online is unreliable (his logic, not mine). Really? He's assuming that "the masses" (as Keen calls us) aren't critically literate and the web just enables us folk to do too much. We know that educators are consistenly teaching students on the merits of certain sites and isn't that what we might call critical literacy? Does that mean everyone believes what they watch on television? I think it's safe to say we *understand* life isn't quite like tv...and guess what, neither is the 'net. It does seem that Esler thinks it should be; he asks viewers who think everything they read online (but wouldn't that apply to offline too?) is true whether they'd be interested in his flying machine (which doesn't fly...).

After his scene-setting intro. Esler turns to Keen and says (now how's this for journalistic objectivity?): "Andrew, I mean, a lot of things on the web are pretty stupid or irritating..." Keen later responds: "If we are all amateurs, there are no experts." And there you go - a nice summary of the ensuing talk. I wonder what sites Esler navigates to lead him to that odd assumption. Charles Leadbeater was there too but sadly wasn't able to get a word in with Keen and Esler raving about the woes of web 2.0. Leadbeater did constantly remind Esler and Keen that the public is knowledgable. The key is to make people participants and that of course would help them develop critical literacy.

I did video it and was planning on uploading it to youtube but probably can't do that for copyright reasons (seeing as I didn't make everything in the video...). At least the bbc have put a link up to the video on their site, here. This is the blurb that goes with the video:

"In the era of what author Andrew Keen calls online amateurism, can we trust everything we read on the internet?"

Interestingly, the bbc's blog post about Keen includes segments of Keen's latest book (oh no, is that distributing unreliable information?!), but more interestingly there are 120 comments. All those people participating but does that mean more unreliable information is being created (as both Keen and Esler claim)? Maybe Esler et al should read Nancy Patterson's helpful guide on how to evaluate web resources. To me, though, it seems so odd in this day and age - after postmodernism, modernism, poststrucuralism, feminism, postcolonialism, and a myriad other "events" - that people like Keen and Esler still seem to believe in a single Truth. Whether in print or online or on tv or on radio - who's *truth* is it really?

If you're interested in what Leadbeater has to say, there's a presentation of his here.

[sk*rt: like digg but better]

According to design mom aka Gabrielle Blair, sk*rt is like digg but "she-inspired."

From the sk*rt site:

The Real Dirt on sk*rt
What is sk*rt anyway?
Plain and simple, sk*rt is the female version of Digg. sk*rt is the place to find and/or link to anything and everything on the Web that you'd like to share with other women. If sk*rt users like what you submit, they'll vote for it. The more votes, the more likely your link will make it to the front page. Links on the front page are seen by everybody and get lots of love. The front page content is ever-changing and always cool.

Of course, no one person can keep track of every cool thing out there. So sk*rt users bring the content. Vote for the content. Determine what's good and what's bad. sk*rt works to make sure you don't miss any of the good stuff.

Who's behind the sk*rt?
From the East Coast. West Coast. And in between. Read all about the 4 lovely ladies behind the site here.

What is sk*rt-worthy?
Anything and everything you think women will love. A new Web site. A sample sale announcement. An essay on body image. A pair of gorgeous red peep-toes. The latest on the elections. The best new hair-straightening tips. World news. A funny blog. Environmental updates. A hot recipe. An addictive online game. A party idea. And on and on and on."

From design mom, sk*rt is:

"an online media ranking site created for and by women, featuring topics women dig. Sk*rt was designed to promote sites, blogs, video, products, articles, ideas, art — anything online, really — to women and to the men who want to get in our heads. Sk*rt is basically a filter of cool stuff on the Web. If you aren't familiar with the concept of Digg, it goes like this. Any item (site, product, idea, video, blog, article, etc.) can be submitted by anyone. Readers can vote for the items by clicking the "Love It!" button on the left hand side of each submitted item. The items that get the most votes raise up to the front of the site. It's actually a great design, because it's organized so that if you only have a few minutes, you can scan through what's new, what's highly ranked or what's interesting to you; or you can search more specifically by category."

One word: fabUlous!

[user-created content a *must* for gaming]

At the transliteracy colloquium on Tuesday we talked about the role of co-operation and collaboration in transliteracy and Sue brought up Surowiecki's "wisdom of crowds." Today I read Doug Lombardi, marketing director at Valve Software, argue that home consoles must embrace user-created content if “they want online to matter.”

"Half-Life 1 was okay as a multiplayer game and Team Fortress Classic was really good, but Counter-Strike kicked both their asses no question. And that came from a kid going to college in Canada and another kid going to high school in New Jersey, who had our code and thought it would be cool to play our game.”

"The PC has that great advantage; has had that great advantage, and it comes from multiplayer and modding starting in the early '90s and [online] multiplayer only showing up on consoles in 2000 or 2001.”

“You've got a good 10-to-15-year lead there and you still have broken pathways on both consoles, so the PC has the advantage of time and a clear pathway," he added. "You've got a freeway set up on the PC and you've got this dirt road with roadblocks all over it on console in terms of getting user-made content out there."

As it stands, home consoles are only just starting to become acquainted with user-based content, as seen in the Playstation 3’s LittleBigPlanet from Media Molecule, which is distributed player to player.

However, Valves upcoming project, like many efforts that stemmed from PC titles, will likely be a commercial effort, requiring certification.

"I would love to see that happen, but I think the platform holders are always going to need certification, which means it's usually going to have to be a commercial thing," admitted Lombardi.


Story from Gameworld Network

[Google searches web's dark side]

One in 10 web pages scrutinised by search giant Google contained malicious code that could infect a user's PC.

Researchers from the firm surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to "in-depth analysis".

About 450,000 were capable of launching so-called "drive-by downloads", sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user's knowledge.

A further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user's computer, the team report.

To address the problem, the researchers say the company has "started an effort to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious".

Phantom sites

Drive-by downloads are an increasingly common way to infect a computer or steal sensitive information.

They usually consist of malicious programs that automatically install when a potential victim visits a booby-trapped website.

"To entice users to install malware, adversaries employ social engineering," wrote Google researcher Niels Provos and his colleagues in a paper titled The Ghost In The Browser.

Finding all the web-based infection vectors is a significant challenge and requires almost complete knowledge of the web.
Google researchers
Avoiding attacks

"The user is presented with links that promise access to 'interesting' pages with explicit pornographic content, copyrighted software or media. A common example are sites that display thumbnails to adult videos."

The vast majority exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to install themselves.

Some downloads, such as those that alter bookmarks, install unwanted toolbars or change the start page of a browser, are an annoyance. But increasingly, criminals are using drive-bys to install keyloggers that steal login and password information.

Other pieces of malicious code hijack a computer turning it into a "bot", a remotely controlled PC.

Drive-by downloads represent a shift away from traditional methods of infecting a computer, such as spam and email attachments.

Attack plan

As well as characterising the scale of the problem on the net, the Google study analysed the main methods by which criminals inject malicious code on to innocent web pages.


It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets.

Widgets are small programs that may, for example, display a calendar on a webpage or a web traffic counter. These are often downloaded from third-party sites.

The rise of web 2.0 and user-generated content gave criminals other channels, or vectors, of attack, it found.

For example, postings in blogs and forums that contain links to images or other content could unwittingly infect a user.

The study also found that gangs were able to hijack web servers, effectively taking over and infecting all of the web pages hosted on the computer.

In a test, the researchers' computer was infected with 50 different pieces of malware by visiting a web page hosted on a hijacked server.

The firm is now in the process of mapping the malware threat.

Google, part of the StopBadware coalition, already warns users if they are about to visit a potentially harmful website, displaying a message that reads "this site may harm your computer" next to the search results.

"Marking pages with a label allows users to avoid exposure to such sites and results in fewer users being infected," the researchers wrote.

However, the task will not be easy, they say.

"Finding all the web-based infection vectors is a significant challenge and requires almost complete knowledge of the web as a whole," they wrote.



Story from BBC NEWS

[privacy policy - i think not...]

*Beware of other sites infiltrating your address book...sadly, Flixster is not the only one.* (See this article from two years ago!)


Is Flixster a Big Fat Spammer? Are They Accessing Your AOL or Hotmail Address Book? The Answer to at Least One of These is Yes!

Recently I started getting invitations to join Flixster from both friends and complete strangers. Obviously, this was spam, but why were these complete strangers sending it to me? (For that matter, why were these friends inviting me to join Flixstr, which is a social networking site geared towars movie reviews?)

Here’s what the typical spam invitation for Flixster looked like:
–
To: me@example.com
Subject: John D has sent you a private message

http://www.flixster.com/servlet/invite/619917699cmcA619918163Btlkhlp3Cm

John D

This note was sent via Flixster by John D (johndoe@hotmail.com) to me@example.com. If you prefer not to receive emails like this, tell us here: http://www.flixster.com/DoNotSend.jsp?e=me@example.com.
–
Then I noticed two curious things: 1. All the spam was coming from AOL and Hotmail accounts - real AOL and Hotmail accounts of real people, and 2. It was coming not just to me, but to role accounts at our organization - for example support@example.com. These people had really contacted us for support at one time or another, but a generic role account would hardly be a friend to whom you would send an invitation.

Then I got email from someone, a professional contact with an address at AOL, asking me (and everyone else in his address book) to please ignore the invitation to join Flixster which appeared to come from him but which, he said, had actually been sent by Flixster.

So, what is actually going on?

We decided to investigate, and here is what we found:

Once you join Flixster, Flixster commandeers your address book - your list of all of your personal contacts in your AOL (or Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail) address book - and sends out an invitation to join Flixster “from” you. Oh sure, you enable them to do it - but clearly enough people are unaware of what they are doing that it’s causing a problem.

How?

Flixster is getting their AOL (and Hotmail, and Yahoo, and Gmail) passwords!

Read on.

Using AOL as an example, when you first sign up for Flixster using an AOL email address, after you select a username and password, the very next screen prompts you for your AOL password!

Here’s that screen - look how compelling it looks that you should give them your AOL password!:



If you use a Gmail address, you can get the same screen, only with the Gmail logo. Same for Hotmail and Yahoo.

Once you give them your password, they grab everyone’s email addresses from your AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail address book, and spam them with the invitation. In your name using your email address.

And they access your AOL account before you ever get to the next step. Even though they make you feel as if you have complete control over the process by telling you “On the next page you will be able to select whom to invite”, they already have your contacts by that point. How do we know they access your account first? Watch what happens if you give them the wrong password:



How compelling does that look?

Now, who do we blame for all this? Flixster for asking for the password? The user for giving it to them? After all, the user had to take an affirmative action to send you the invitation spam. But, do they feel compelled to send it? Do they even understand what they are doing?

Do they feel that their ISP has approved this or even partnered with Flixster because Flixster has placed their ISP’s logo right next to the password prompt?

Is this phishing in plain sight?

For their part, Flixster is not only unrepentant about their tactics, but brag about them. An article in American Venture Magazine following Flixster’s getting $2million in VC funding last month, included the following:

“But the site has also grown due to its aggressive viral marketing practices that have raised the hackles of some potential users. Such practices might include the automated selection of your email account’s entire address book in order to send a Flixster invitation to all of your contacts. (Emphasis ours.)

But such practices are becoming increasingly more common as new and even established web sites look to attract visitors without expensive marketing campaigns and a hefty advertising budget.

“I attribute our success to a combination of both of those,” Greenstein said. “We make it easy to invite your friends. Other sites don’t provide good ways for people to spread the word. And, we tried to build a really compelling site.”

Flixster’s Terms of Service start out by saying: “I can’t believe you really clicked on this. What are you trying to find out? Here is our privacy policy (link to privacy policy).”

If you actually go on to read their Terms of Service, however, you’ll find that they mention nothing at all about this. Nothing. One way or the other. But they do, ironically, state that it is a violation of their Terms of Service to “Create a false or misleading identity of, including, but not limited to, a Flixster employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity, for the purpose of misleading others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of a message or to harvest or otherwise collect information about others.”

Oh, and it’s also a violation to “Disseminate any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, ‘junk mail’, ’spam’, ‘chain letters’, ‘pyramid schemes’, or any other form of such solicitation, or to “Harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of Members, including usernames, from the Flixster.com website by electronic or other means.”

But, it’s ok, because their entire TOS is governed by their privacy policy, which states very clearly:

“Our Just-Say-No-to-SPAM Policy

We do not send SPAM of any kind. The only email you will get from us is a weekly update of the latest movies and quiz questions and, of course, any personal messages sent directly to you by your friends.”

Me? I’ve now got a Just-Say-No-to-Flixster Policy.



NOTE the comment from one of Flixster's founders:

Hi Anne,

I am one of the founders of flixster. I happened upon your article via technorati.

As a social community on the web, we take issues of email privacy and permission very seriously. Obviously i am saddened by the way your article describes us. Let me clarify a couple things…

1. We do allow users to access common web-address books to select friends to invite. The whole point of flixster is sharing movie ratings with friends - so making it easy to invite people is very important for us. (This is also incredibly common practice around the web - see yelp/facebook/myspace and many others that also offer it. Plaxo actually offers a popular widget to allow any site to offer this feature).

2. We don’t do anything tricky or misleading. The invite friends screens are all clearly explained (visible even in your slightly fuzzy screenshots) and to actually send anything the user must click a button labelled “send invitations” on a screen with their friends names and a list of checkboxes.

2. We use the user’s credentials only to retrieve the contact list and then do not store them in any way. We absolutely don’t do anything malicious or affect their account in any way.

3. The user is then ALWAYS given the list of contacts and asked to select whom to invite. We do not invite anyone they do not select. Of course we want people to invite friends to come try our site - but it absolutely does not benefit us to send invites they didn’t intend and end up with angry users.

4. Once registered, users can control their settings on every single email we send - from weekly movie summaries to new friend requests. If you choose, you can receive no email from us at all.

5. We never sell, rent or buy email addresses from anyone. We are a small company. The intro to our terms of service was intended to be funny. In no way does it reflect us taking privacy issues lightly - which is exactly why we wrote our privacy policy in such clear terms.

Anyway, if you have any questions or want to discuss with me, drop me a note at the email above. i appreciate that your efforts are to help protect people from malicious or dangerous sites - a noble endeavor - i’m really sorry that you felt like our site fell into that category.

Sincerely,
Joe G

[not myspace anymore]

From :

Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded.

MySpace, the Web’s largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.


At stake is the ability of MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, to ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90 million visitors each month.

But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.

“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly,” wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. “MySpace will now only allow you to use ‘MySpace’ things.”

Ms. Tequila, born Tila Nguyen, has attracted attention by linking to more than 1.7 million friends on her MySpace page. To promote her first album, she recently added to her MySpace page a new music player and music store, called the Hoooka, created by Indie911, a Los Angeles-based start-up company.

Users listened to her music and played the accompanying videos 20,000 times over the weekend. But the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute. She then vented her thoughts on her personal blog.

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

A MySpace spokeswoman said yesterday that the service did not remove anything from Ms. Tequila’s page. “A MySpace representative contacted her and told her that she had violated our terms of service in regards to commercial activity,” the spokeswoman said. “She removed the material herself, after realizing it was not appropriate for MySpace.”

Ms. Tequila and her representatives would not comment.

But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace’s actions undercut the notion that the social networks’ users have complete creative freedom. “We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can’t do anything that violates terms of service,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t they call it FoxSpace? Or RupertSpace?” Mr. Goldberg said, referring to the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch.

The tussle between MySpace and Indie911 underscores tensions between established Internet companies and the latest generation of Web start-ups. Without a critical mass of visitors to their sites, many of these smaller companies are devising strategies that involve clamping on to sites like MySpace and Facebook and trying to make money off their traffic.

MySpace, meanwhile, is trying to show that it can generate stable revenue. Google will pay it at least $900 million over the next three years to serve ads to the site’s users. And last fall, MySpace announced a partnership with Snocap, a San Francisco-based company, to sell music.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this year, MySpace blocked widgets from Revver, a video-sharing site that embeds advertisements in its clips, and Imeem, a music buying service.

[...]

“We probably should have stopped YouTube,” Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, a part of the News Corporation, said in an interview in late February. “YouTube wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for MySpace. We’ve created companies on our back.”

MySpace and its corporate parent say they want to find ways to support and exploit the growing widget economy. Last year, Fox Interactive Media introduced a service called Spring Widget. The service provides tools to help developers create widgets for use both on computer desktops and online networks like MySpace.

In a recent use of its technology, the studio behind the horror film “Dead Silence” used a Spring Widget tool on its promotional MySpace page to count down the minutes until the film’s release.


Continue reading the article here.

Links added by me.

[women, business & blogging conference OH MY!]

Come to the Women, Business and Blogging Conference on Friday 8 June 2007 at De Montfort University to find out how blogging by women and for women builds networks, improves customer reach, monetizes creativity and infuses your business with Web 2.0 goodness!

Business is becoming increasingly interested in social media and especially in blogs. In Europe over the last year several conferences have explored the
potential of Web 2.0 networks to increase business opportunities - see LIFT07 (Geneva) and Le Web (Paris) for just two examples. But there have been no European events focusing specifically on women and social media - until now.

Women, Business and Blogging is organised by NLab at De Montfort University, Leicester. NLab was developed in the Faculty of Humanities by Professor Sue Thomas to connect creative businesses with writers and generate pioneering partnerships. In 2006 NLab ran a series of professional workshops and seminars on blogs, wikis, games and new media writing. In 2007 NLab is proud to present this first-ever European conference for and about women who read and write blogs.

Who should come?
This event is for small businesses, individuals, researchers, nonprofits, artistic and educational organisations interested in:
- women bloggers
- women in business
- women customers
- social media and networking
- creative communications
- innovation and cooperation
- customer relationships
- opportunities of Web 2.0 and the Long Tail
- usability
- you!!!

And, just to be clear, men are definitely invited. All the speakers are women, and we'll be talking about women users, readers and bloggers. But everyone is welcome to attend the conference and participate in the sessions.

Join the conversation
We'll be blogging right up to the day and beyond it too. Join the conversation at Tracy Harwood's Biz Benefits and Jess Laccetti's Blog This

How much does it cost?
The conference fee includes refreshments, lunch and a delegate pack
Full Rate: £60 GBP including VAT
Concessionary Rate: £40 GBP including VAT
Bursaries: A limited number of Full Rate bursaries are available for delegates living in the UK East Midlands.

Where is it?
Bede Graduate School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. A 5-minute cab ride from Leicester Train Station.
Leicester is in the heart of the UK, less than 90 mins from London by train and 30 mins from East Midlands Airport.

We hope to see you there!

See the website for more information and how to register http://www.nlabwomen.com

For all enquiries, including press and sponsorship, please contact:

Margaret Barton
Short Course and Conference Co-ordinator
De Montfort Expertise Ltd
De Montfort University
Innovation Centre
49 Oxford Street
Leicester
LE1 5XY
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 116 250 6213
Fax: +44 (0) 116 257 7982
mbarton@dmu.ac.uk

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