This is who Google thinks I am, based on its analysis for ad serving:
Google has taken between 15 and 6 years off my age. Boy, it knows how to flatter me.
(Or is it just saying that I'm immature...?)
Recently in Web 2.0 Category
A blog post earlier today makes it clear that Google is does exactly what we expected with Google+: integrating it with search.
Here's a movie to show you how:
Because I have so much knowledge, passion and expertise about war, don't I?
It's a conference day today, at the Dell B2B Social Media Huddle. Not sure how much I'll be liveblogging - it depends how the fancy takes me. But keep an eye out for an important post (to me) not long after 2pm...
Today has been filled with people howling in protest at the changes to Google Reader - and I just didn't notice the difference. But then, I rarely actually log into the interface; the majority of my consumption is done using the Reeder app, which is available on Mac, iPad and iPhone.
I'm not a great user of the sharing features, and while I do subscribe to some people's shared items, that's been more annoying than useful of late (which suggests I should have pruned my list a while agi, but still...) and so those changes weren't of huge impact to me. But I did log in and have a look at how the new interface works. I had great hopes - I like the Google+ interface and the related Gmail revamp, as they feel clean, readable and pleasant.
But, wow, have they botched the Reader interface. For some reason, they seem to have taken more design notes from GMail than Google+, and they've ended up creating a reading experience that is truly atrocious. A former Google product manager articulates why rather nicely.
My "24 hours using the New Google Reader" experiment lasted all of an hour, before I scurried back to Reeder. The interface makes the main river of news so small and undifferentiated that reading becomes an effort rather than a fluid process. And keeping up with a large number of information sources is such an integral part of my workflow these days that I just can't afford the extra time using the new-style Reader demands of me.
So I hope the new Google+ / +1 style of sharing makes its way into the API and into Reeder? I sure do. I like Google+, and I'm more than happy to share content there. That part's fine. The interface revamp is a mess, and needs to be rethought, fast.
More cogent analysis at the Experien Hitwise blog.
Image via Wikipedia
David r was banned in July. Banning is a social measure where the community decides that the person's invitation to edit the site has been rescinded. You can read David r/Hari's ban discussion: there were fifteen users who supported a ban (myself included), and three who opposed the ban. David r is banned indefinitely from editing anything on Wikipedia. As we now have confirmation that David r is Johann Hari, Johann Hari is indefinitely banned from Wikipedia. This means that if he pops up with a new account and someone can confirm that the account is a "sockpuppet" used by Hari, that account will be blocked indefinitely on sight.Interesting contrast to The Independent's decision.
Who does all this? Volunteers.
Warning: Liveblogging - error, omission and appalling grammar likelyClaire was an academic in Cardiff - deputy ethics officer - lots of conflict over journalist wanting to do illegal things in a "good cause". On to the BBC College - where there were fights about contacting people and using materials from the web.
For her, the important stuff is the soft stuff - no-one is going to die if we do this, but is it right? Lots of journalists think that all information on the web is free for them to use. It's nonsense that journalists are all lazy and unethical, but there is increasing pressure on them to get the best news possible... The infamous Hudson River plane crash got used for free. People are getting wise to this - and are starting to put contact details on their pictures. We should ask.
Arab Spring: Bahrain - DMs on Twitter are being used to threaten people. Activists using social media are targeted in particular. If we don't look at the darker side, we're being naive. Protecting sources is not new.
Blagging? Journalists befriending people on Facebook just to get information about them. It's not right, but it's not new either. Journalists have always blagged. The BBC has a policy that an open profile is fair game, but one you only have access to through a calculated friending or because you're in (say) a university network is wrong.
Verification: doesn't go away just because the social web is there.
Claire ran us through a bunch of challenges, and it became clear that there's an interesting tension between journalistic misinterpretation of the social web, and users not understanding what they are exposing to the world. When those decisions are made in a pressured news environment, some pretty nasty mistakes can be made.
Karin Robinson
Worked on the Obama campaign. Now advises major brands on social media policies. Has a day job and a night job - the night job is campaigning for the Democratic Party. Set up an Obama London blog for SEO purposes.
Sarah Palin "All round fascinating human being" - put up a photo of Gabrielle Giffords in the cross-hairs of a gun prior to the shooting. Karin wrote a blog about this. And then she noticed that the one thing not removed from Palin's Facebook page comments was about it being good that a child was killed. It got loads of media coverage - but no-one ever contacted her about it from the media. Karin ended up feeling ambivalent because she didn't think it was that important in the scheme of things.
This issue is about how important people are - Palin, for all her fame, is not in government. Should we hold public officials two higher standards that "ordinary" people. For what level of public good is it OK to use fake identities on social media sites? Context is everything. Karin suggests that the more powerful you are (brand or individual), the higher standard of behaviour is expected of you on social media.
Categories of unethical behaviour:
- astroturfing - creating fake online grassroots reviewing/feedback. US airforce looked for persona management software to create fake personas on the social web. Why?
- stolen identities - some brands write auto-posts from services you connect to Facebook as if you wrote it yourself.
- overreaction- Fouad Mourtada created a fake Facebook profile for the Crown Prince of Morocco - and was arrested and tortured for it. He shouldn't have done what he did - but the punishment outweighed the crime. The Trafigura case was an example of trying too hard to silence things.
- spying - US government departments have mentioned that Twitter is hard to get information from - but Facebook is co=operative to requests. The NYPD have a team trawling social media for evidence of crime. Ethical? Probably!
- inappropriateness - Habitat using an Iran protest hashtag with their marketing promotions. #mousavi. Wrong and stupid.
So - have clear guidelines, reinforce them constantly, follow the Hippocratic principle - and keep some perspective.
Danvers Baillieu
Getting harder for companies to maintain the "halo" of being good/ethical. Ethics and the law are not the same thing. Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 gives a carve-out for news reporting - but specifically excludes photos. The Pigs on the Wing debate about the BBC's copyright stance... The Act suggests that you have to know you are infringing copyright for it to be criminal. Baillieu thinks that it's reasonable to use it first and ask the question later, if it's been pushed to a publishing platform like Twitter. It's an "implied licence" Doesn't apply to Facebook photos if you're murdered, because they were published without that expectation...
Plenty of rules govern advertising, and some specifically make astroturfing a criminal offence. Two year stretch! OFT sys it is never acceptable for traders to prevent to be independent consumers. Still, lots of it is happening, and the chances of getting caught are slim. But it does happen. Are you responsible for comments left on, say, your Facebook wall? Yes, if you Like it or otherwise respond to it.
The "Twitter bomber" saga - the CPS are taking a zero-humour approach. Sean Duffy sent to prison for leaving hostile comments about people who had been in accidents our murder - both prosecuted under the Communications Act 2003 (section 127). Designed for heavy breathers on the phone, pressed into action as an anti-troll law.
Dangers inherent about using people's social media presence to research them. You can break discrimination act if you do this and discover their race/religion/pregnancy status... Pretending to be someone else for the sole purpose of gathering information is straightforward illegal. Fine or prison.
(Unfortunately I can't stay for the Q&A - will try to Storify any tweets later or tomorrow)
A few weeks ago, a rather well-judged piece of linkbait set the journalism social media world aflame, as the BBC was accused of "losing" large numbers of followers when Laura Kuenssberg decamped to ITV and took her Twitter account with her. I was, as you may recall, rather sceptical of that argument.
Well, somewhat after the event, she's decided to weigh in herself, behind the sheltering Great Paywall of Wapping:
If the Editor of this paper were to suggest that he owned you just because you are reading these lines, you might understandably be puzzled. Perhaps, not unreasonably, you would be downright irritated that the choice you made to read a particular article in a particular newspaper on a particular day could make you the property of a particular journalist.
And, in light of the growing evidence of how very efficient Twitter has become as a news distribution medium, I find this to be a rather revealing statement:
But, more importantly, what the fuss did demonstrate was how central online reporting has become to the work of journalists. No doubt, having started tweeting as an experiment two years ago during the party conference season, it became almost as important to me to break stories on Twitter as it did to get them on air on the BBC's rolling news channel.It's a good, thoughtful piece, that, to me, really helps undermine the corporate-structure centric blog post that kicked off this whole discussion. It's about the communication between reporter and their interested audience. It's about speed. It's about relationship.
Well worth the price of admission. :-)
