Posts
If you are a kewl social networker like myself, you update your status message on Facebook regularly, as in more than once a day. If you are a Twitterer, you do it as part of your ongoing Twittering, meaning you update something like once an hour unless you're in an airplane. Honestly speaking, there is something nice about knowing the status of my friends and their mundane lives. It's not totally mundane to me, and it does give something to talk about when we get together or speak.
Potentially, the status message could be useful. I've seen a number of blogs from big social networking types regarding how they've gotten immediate help by Twittering or updating their status message on Facebook. I've made a point of responding to a number of friend statuses to see what happens, and every now and again I've gotten some responses to my status messages (usually claiming I was being funny, a sign that at least a few of my friends have humor as dry as my own.)
By and large, though, the status message just doesn't matter. Honestly, 90% of what most people do is what they did the day before. I'm sure it is of no interest, even to my good friends, to have updated info about when I am at work or at home. There are only so many moods you are going to put on there. Thus, those of us who update our status regularly spend a fair amount of brainpower thinking of something clever to write in there. And being entertained when someone else puts something clever there.
I've made some genuine attempts to use the status message to do useful stuff, like get a babysitter, invite friends to something, get you to read my blogs, catch a coffee with someone in Tel Aviv, etc. Unlike the big social networkers with 4999 friends or followers, or those who post specific questions on how to configure their web servers, I've found the status message basically useless.
Assuming that most people don't have thousands of friends, and that their requests are more arbitrary, and that most people don't check their friends status on an hourly basis, it's pretty reasonable to assume most of us will find our status to be insignificant.
Status messages, furthermore, suffer from configuration scatter problems much worse than e-mail. We may have a few e-mail accounts, but most of us have our mail forwarded to one or two, both of which we check at least daily. But status messages? I have status on every social network, status on g-mail, messenger, Skype, etc., and each one needs to be set separately.
Do you know anybody who, when they answer the phone, sets all of those to "busy"? I think not. Presence and status actually are of importance in communications; but today's implementation is incredibly crude. Add to that the minimal amount of attention our associates are spending worrying about our status messages, and the value of them diminishes even further. I guess that just goes to show that there's only so much status to go around.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
You're Never Alone
When I travel for business, it tends to be to conferences. As the marketing guy, I am there to learn, my main job is to meet new people in the industry. What this amounts to is that what sounds like "getting away from the bustle of daily life" ends up more like a non-stop marathon of being friendly to strangers and desperately trying to keep up with work in between.
A typical day starts with my waking up 2 hours early to catch up on e-mail, walking over to the conference center, mingling and attending conference sessions all day, making my way back to the hotel, and answering more e-mail. Often I have a scheduled meeting before, after, or during the conference.
You might ask how I have time to blog, and the answer is, obviously, I don't and apologize for the 2-week delay since my last post.
Despite having come on this trip alone, I don't get much of a chance to actually be alone. So I greatly cherish the one hour I religiously take for myself, no matter how busy my business trips are: I take myself out to a proper dinner in a proper restaurant.
Being in downtown London, I'm not the only diner eating alone, and on Monday another lone business traveller entered and sat at the table next to mine. Keeping in mind that it's basically my profession to strike up conversations with strangers, this should not have made me in the least uncomfortable; but being as I was quite determined to have this one hour to myself, I immediately started thinking of ways to avoid conversation. Fortunately, the gentleman pulled out his cell phone and began texting away.
Indeed, it's noteworthy how unaccustomed we have become to being alone. One of the VPs at a local cellular carrier told me that they actually have tracked the phenomenon of people who pretend to be talking on their phones in public places, just so as not to have the appearance of being alone or unimportant.
How are you with alone? Do you too feel you need to text, twitter or call someone just so you won't be too bored with yourself? Can you just sit still and enjoy your meal without multi-tasking? Moreover, are you avoiding doing things alone because it might make you look like a loser?
Take heart, you are in the majority. But also take care. We need our time alone to decompress, to think, to enjoy being with ourselves. When we lose touch with that, we lose something precious.
A typical day starts with my waking up 2 hours early to catch up on e-mail, walking over to the conference center, mingling and attending conference sessions all day, making my way back to the hotel, and answering more e-mail. Often I have a scheduled meeting before, after, or during the conference.
You might ask how I have time to blog, and the answer is, obviously, I don't and apologize for the 2-week delay since my last post.
Despite having come on this trip alone, I don't get much of a chance to actually be alone. So I greatly cherish the one hour I religiously take for myself, no matter how busy my business trips are: I take myself out to a proper dinner in a proper restaurant.
Being in downtown London, I'm not the only diner eating alone, and on Monday another lone business traveller entered and sat at the table next to mine. Keeping in mind that it's basically my profession to strike up conversations with strangers, this should not have made me in the least uncomfortable; but being as I was quite determined to have this one hour to myself, I immediately started thinking of ways to avoid conversation. Fortunately, the gentleman pulled out his cell phone and began texting away.
Indeed, it's noteworthy how unaccustomed we have become to being alone. One of the VPs at a local cellular carrier told me that they actually have tracked the phenomenon of people who pretend to be talking on their phones in public places, just so as not to have the appearance of being alone or unimportant.
How are you with alone? Do you too feel you need to text, twitter or call someone just so you won't be too bored with yourself? Can you just sit still and enjoy your meal without multi-tasking? Moreover, are you avoiding doing things alone because it might make you look like a loser?
Take heart, you are in the majority. But also take care. We need our time alone to decompress, to think, to enjoy being with ourselves. When we lose touch with that, we lose something precious.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Topping Off Education
A recent blog by Clay Burrell speaks about Using Alltop to Teach Social Networking If you don't know what Alltop is, you aren't a blogger. Alltop is an aggregator of the top bloggers, divided by topic, so that you can ask yourself a question like "What should I be reading if I want to learn about life?" and then you just go to "http://life.alltop.com/", and there you have a list of blogs about life.
Guy Kawasaki has managed to jaw-droppingly outdo himself for marketing brilliance on this one. Without making any predictions on the viability of the business itself, the built-in marketing aspect is a work of art.
Obviously, if you are a well-known and respected entrepreneur, and you are starting a blog aggregator, every blogger is going to want to be on your list. Guy is generous about adding you if you ask nicely. I'm assuming there is an engine in the back which tracks how popular your blog is, so that your placement on the page could change over time, depending on how many people click through. Once you are listed, then of course, you have an interest in Alltop's success yourself, meaning you will want to mention it in your blog.
Along with his generosity in adding bloggers and his characteristic gentlemanliness in personally answering all of his e-mail, Guy's marketeer gears are well-greased. Coincidentally, just a few days after announcing Alltop publicly, his blog magnanimously offers useful tips on kissing up. Now, I don't want to sound cynical here, especially because I am taking his magnanimous advice, but you can read into it whatever you want.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about Clay Burrel's blog, in which he talks about his failure to get his students excited enough to use RSS feeds, and his relative success in getting them to use Alltop. Mr. Burrel doesn't claim to be using Alltop to teach research; just to teach writing. However, it did get me thinking about where we get our information, and what information is considered reliable these days.
Increasingly, my reading list is made up of books, sites, and reports that I've heard about in blogs. Increasingly, I get my news from blogs rather than news sites. My RSS feeder has both, but I read the blogs a lot more. Blogs are more interesting, no more biased, and for the most part, better written and more insightful than most of the news. When I fill in forms asking "where did you hear about our product?" I don't know whether reading it on a blog is "word of mouth" or "from another Web site".
It's good to see this kind of innovation in teaching. On the other hand, how many of us, like myself, are getting lazy about fact-checking, and are relying increasingly on word of mouth for our news? I think we would all agree that there's a qualitative difference between a New York Times report and a blog about an event. On the other hand, increasingly, we don't care.
For work purposes, if you are in the high-tech industry, nothing but real-time blogs will do for industry intelligence. I know my kid uses Wikipedia as her main reference for school report, and so far the sky hasn't fallen. How long will it be before blogs become a legitimate reference too?
Guy Kawasaki has managed to jaw-droppingly outdo himself for marketing brilliance on this one. Without making any predictions on the viability of the business itself, the built-in marketing aspect is a work of art.
Obviously, if you are a well-known and respected entrepreneur, and you are starting a blog aggregator, every blogger is going to want to be on your list. Guy is generous about adding you if you ask nicely. I'm assuming there is an engine in the back which tracks how popular your blog is, so that your placement on the page could change over time, depending on how many people click through. Once you are listed, then of course, you have an interest in Alltop's success yourself, meaning you will want to mention it in your blog.
Along with his generosity in adding bloggers and his characteristic gentlemanliness in personally answering all of his e-mail, Guy's marketeer gears are well-greased. Coincidentally, just a few days after announcing Alltop publicly, his blog magnanimously offers useful tips on kissing up. Now, I don't want to sound cynical here, especially because I am taking his magnanimous advice, but you can read into it whatever you want.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about Clay Burrel's blog, in which he talks about his failure to get his students excited enough to use RSS feeds, and his relative success in getting them to use Alltop. Mr. Burrel doesn't claim to be using Alltop to teach research; just to teach writing. However, it did get me thinking about where we get our information, and what information is considered reliable these days.
Increasingly, my reading list is made up of books, sites, and reports that I've heard about in blogs. Increasingly, I get my news from blogs rather than news sites. My RSS feeder has both, but I read the blogs a lot more. Blogs are more interesting, no more biased, and for the most part, better written and more insightful than most of the news. When I fill in forms asking "where did you hear about our product?" I don't know whether reading it on a blog is "word of mouth" or "from another Web site".
It's good to see this kind of innovation in teaching. On the other hand, how many of us, like myself, are getting lazy about fact-checking, and are relying increasingly on word of mouth for our news? I think we would all agree that there's a qualitative difference between a New York Times report and a blog about an event. On the other hand, increasingly, we don't care.
For work purposes, if you are in the high-tech industry, nothing but real-time blogs will do for industry intelligence. I know my kid uses Wikipedia as her main reference for school report, and so far the sky hasn't fallen. How long will it be before blogs become a legitimate reference too?
Reservations Notwithstanding
Using the Internet, it's now amazingly easy to invite people to events and track RSVPs. Sites like Ning and Facebook allow this as a feature; MeetUp and Evite are specifically set up with the purpose of creating real world events. I also belong to a number of sites, such as groopy that are designed for specific groups, in this case cyclists, to meet for sports workouts. I suspect there are similar non-jock sites, but I wouldn't know. And plenty of people just use plain old e-mail. Just today I read an e-invitation from someone saying "Please regard this as a personal invitation to..." Real personal, thanks.
As the invitations have become less personal, so have the responses. If you've been to a groopy ride, a Pulver breakfast, high-tech meetup, or FB-organized party, you will quickly see that the number of RSVPs and the number of attendees have a loose relationship. People RSVP and don't show, or show without RSVP, and the number of attendees is invariably 50-70% of the RSVP-ers. Not having asked for RSVPs for my wedding, I don't know how this compares to real life events.
Someone raised the question of whether the RSVP-to-attendee rate varies per site. That would be an intersting study, but my gut feeling is that the rate is determined by (a) the size and type of the event (b) your relationship to the invitee (c) cultural factors.
Two extreme examles are signing up for a dance party on FB, where you have never meet the inviter, and signing up for a 7 am cycle ride in the desert with people you've ridden with before. In the first case, you have pretty much no obligation to come. In the second case, you would send an SMS to notify if you can't drag yourself out of bed, so your friends don't wait up for you.
In all honesty, virtual invitations are ineffective. If you really want people to come to something, you need to call them, ask them face-to-face when you see them, or send something that looks actually personal. After you do that, you also need to send a reminder by SMS on the day of the event. It sounds ridiculous, but I have found that I get reminders for courses that I've signed up and paid money to attend.
At first I wondered about that; If I am paying that much money, you can bet I will show up. On the other hand, your dentist's office also calls to confirm the appointment. Apparently, people who really make a living at this know the honest truth: people forget or skip out even on the important and expensive appointments in their life. If you want them to join your networking event, political rally, or celebration, only the personal touch works.
As the invitations have become less personal, so have the responses. If you've been to a groopy ride, a Pulver breakfast, high-tech meetup, or FB-organized party, you will quickly see that the number of RSVPs and the number of attendees have a loose relationship. People RSVP and don't show, or show without RSVP, and the number of attendees is invariably 50-70% of the RSVP-ers. Not having asked for RSVPs for my wedding, I don't know how this compares to real life events.
Someone raised the question of whether the RSVP-to-attendee rate varies per site. That would be an intersting study, but my gut feeling is that the rate is determined by (a) the size and type of the event (b) your relationship to the invitee (c) cultural factors.
Two extreme examles are signing up for a dance party on FB, where you have never meet the inviter, and signing up for a 7 am cycle ride in the desert with people you've ridden with before. In the first case, you have pretty much no obligation to come. In the second case, you would send an SMS to notify if you can't drag yourself out of bed, so your friends don't wait up for you.
In all honesty, virtual invitations are ineffective. If you really want people to come to something, you need to call them, ask them face-to-face when you see them, or send something that looks actually personal. After you do that, you also need to send a reminder by SMS on the day of the event. It sounds ridiculous, but I have found that I get reminders for courses that I've signed up and paid money to attend.
At first I wondered about that; If I am paying that much money, you can bet I will show up. On the other hand, your dentist's office also calls to confirm the appointment. Apparently, people who really make a living at this know the honest truth: people forget or skip out even on the important and expensive appointments in their life. If you want them to join your networking event, political rally, or celebration, only the personal touch works.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Yoo Hoo! Where are You?
"Howcome you have so many friends?" asks my 9-year-old daughter, Maya.
"Like who?" I ask, "I don't have that many friends."
"I'll prove it," she declares, picking up my phone and scrolling down, "Adrienne, Alik, Allan, Alon, Alon, Alon, Alona, Amir... "
"Wait, read slower." We went down the list for a while and found it is composed of approximately 20% obsolete contacts, 10% semi-obsolete (I could imagine needing them some day), 50% business or community (school, synagogue, etc.), 8% friends I speak to occasionally, 2% friends I could call and tell my troubles to without a pretense for the call. Considering the number of contacts I have, that is a good number of friends, btw.
Speaking of troubles, the trouble is, my contacts are totally out of control. So are yours, I guarantee. How often do you look at your cell phone to find the number before calling from a land line? Look up someone's e-mail signature to find their number? Become frustrated when their sig doesn't include it? Google someone you actually know to find their e-mail? Cut-and-paste an e-mail address to/from Gmail to Outlook? From Facebook to Gmail? Download a LinkedIn vcard? Get email from someone you have known for years asking for your phone number?
More often than you care to admit? Me too. I remember the days when every, I mean, every, one of my contacts was found in my computer address book. Sheesh, I remember the days when every one of my contacts was in a dead-tree address book, but I didn't know that many people back then.
Or didn't I? How much of our perception of who we know has changed, as a result of technology, or just as a result of getting older?
Once upon a time, I went to an event, and I met people, and that was nice. Now, I go to an event, I meet people, and then I friend them online. Now I can get some information about them, since heaven knows I won't remember where I met them later on down the line. I can't wait until someone figures out that I want to tag them, too. If I had anonymous tags (or trusted any of those networks to keep them anonymous), I would use tags like "overpriced", "SOB", and "sponge-worthy" as well as tags like "attorney", "friend of Jane", and "met at VON".
That would be cool, but it wouldn't solve my fundamental problem, which is that my contacts are spread out over bunches of apps, formats, networks, and devices. Furthermore, most people have a preferred contact methodology. Some people like SMS, some e-mail, some IM, etc. A growing number of people rely on caller-ID and expect you to return a call even when they don't leave a message. My brain knows which of my contacts to find in which of my address lists, and the preferred contact preferences for each, but that information isn't stored anywhere other than my brain, which also stores the information on whose turn it is too call whom.
What we've got here is a huge mess. There are two organizations who address (groan) the problem, while the other organizations are busy trying to lock you in. The two organizations are Microsoft and Plaxo.
Despite whatever else it may have done oddly, Microsoft Outlook has always gotten this right. It is fairly easy to import contacts from almost any other device or format, whether it is a scanned business card, a list of comma-separated-values, or the address book from your telephone. The main limitation is that most synchronization programs on mobile devices seem to lose a bit of data each time you synchronize. So Outlook almost has it down perfect. Granted, everyone felt the need to accomodate Microsoft standards, but at least there are standards to adhere to. Furthermore, Outlook allows you to export into a wide range of formats that can be imported elsewhere.
Plaxo has taken this a step further, and allows you to align your addresses with other people's address books. That is, if you and I are in the Plaxo network, and you update your phone number, my Plaxo account will show that updated phone number. As far as I am concerned, that is the ultimate clincher feature. Plaxo Premium (which costs significantly less than Microsoft Outlook) synchronizes with a good chunk of the social networks and on-line services.
So what have I ended up doing? I export all of my different phone books into Outlook, then I export my Outlook into CSV, and then I import it into Plaxo. If I join as a premium member (free for the first few weeks), I can coordinate the duplicates I have in my address books, and I have lots.
Unfortunately, to use Plaxo, I now have to be online, which somewhat defeats the point of having telephony. If' I'm online, I might as well Skype you. Oh, wait. My Skype addresses. Dang.
"Like who?" I ask, "I don't have that many friends."
"I'll prove it," she declares, picking up my phone and scrolling down, "Adrienne, Alik, Allan, Alon, Alon, Alon, Alona, Amir... "
"Wait, read slower." We went down the list for a while and found it is composed of approximately 20% obsolete contacts, 10% semi-obsolete (I could imagine needing them some day), 50% business or community (school, synagogue, etc.), 8% friends I speak to occasionally, 2% friends I could call and tell my troubles to without a pretense for the call. Considering the number of contacts I have, that is a good number of friends, btw.
Speaking of troubles, the trouble is, my contacts are totally out of control. So are yours, I guarantee. How often do you look at your cell phone to find the number before calling from a land line? Look up someone's e-mail signature to find their number? Become frustrated when their sig doesn't include it? Google someone you actually know to find their e-mail? Cut-and-paste an e-mail address to/from Gmail to Outlook? From Facebook to Gmail? Download a LinkedIn vcard? Get email from someone you have known for years asking for your phone number?
More often than you care to admit? Me too. I remember the days when every, I mean, every, one of my contacts was found in my computer address book. Sheesh, I remember the days when every one of my contacts was in a dead-tree address book, but I didn't know that many people back then.
Or didn't I? How much of our perception of who we know has changed, as a result of technology, or just as a result of getting older?
Once upon a time, I went to an event, and I met people, and that was nice. Now, I go to an event, I meet people, and then I friend them online. Now I can get some information about them, since heaven knows I won't remember where I met them later on down the line. I can't wait until someone figures out that I want to tag them, too. If I had anonymous tags (or trusted any of those networks to keep them anonymous), I would use tags like "overpriced", "SOB", and "sponge-worthy" as well as tags like "attorney", "friend of Jane", and "met at VON".
That would be cool, but it wouldn't solve my fundamental problem, which is that my contacts are spread out over bunches of apps, formats, networks, and devices. Furthermore, most people have a preferred contact methodology. Some people like SMS, some e-mail, some IM, etc. A growing number of people rely on caller-ID and expect you to return a call even when they don't leave a message. My brain knows which of my contacts to find in which of my address lists, and the preferred contact preferences for each, but that information isn't stored anywhere other than my brain, which also stores the information on whose turn it is too call whom.
What we've got here is a huge mess. There are two organizations who address (groan) the problem, while the other organizations are busy trying to lock you in. The two organizations are Microsoft and Plaxo.
Despite whatever else it may have done oddly, Microsoft Outlook has always gotten this right. It is fairly easy to import contacts from almost any other device or format, whether it is a scanned business card, a list of comma-separated-values, or the address book from your telephone. The main limitation is that most synchronization programs on mobile devices seem to lose a bit of data each time you synchronize. So Outlook almost has it down perfect. Granted, everyone felt the need to accomodate Microsoft standards, but at least there are standards to adhere to. Furthermore, Outlook allows you to export into a wide range of formats that can be imported elsewhere.
Plaxo has taken this a step further, and allows you to align your addresses with other people's address books. That is, if you and I are in the Plaxo network, and you update your phone number, my Plaxo account will show that updated phone number. As far as I am concerned, that is the ultimate clincher feature. Plaxo Premium (which costs significantly less than Microsoft Outlook) synchronizes with a good chunk of the social networks and on-line services.
So what have I ended up doing? I export all of my different phone books into Outlook, then I export my Outlook into CSV, and then I import it into Plaxo. If I join as a premium member (free for the first few weeks), I can coordinate the duplicates I have in my address books, and I have lots.
Unfortunately, to use Plaxo, I now have to be online, which somewhat defeats the point of having telephony. If' I'm online, I might as well Skype you. Oh, wait. My Skype addresses. Dang.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Anarchy is Better
Most of the time we don't like to acknowledge the real reason why democracy and law work fairly well. Truthfully, the reason government and law are reasonable systems is because most people intrinsically understand and live by the rules. If we really needed to force people to follow the rules of common decency, and we were depending on government to take care of us, we would be up you know where without a paddle.
I spent a good part of my evening at a City Council meeting here in Hod Hasharon. I mean "good" in the sense that it was a large part of my evening. It certainly could not be considered good in any other sense of the word. As the title of this column implies, it was a notch or two worse than anarchy. It was chaos.
My town is blessed with a charismatic and well-intentioned mayor who has done nothing of note in the 4 years he's been in office. I mean, unless you consider throwing money at expensive and impotent consultants to be "of note", and most of us would agree that for a government official, that is not worth noting.
Hod Hasharon is also blessed with 14 additional council members, none of whom seem to be able to work together for any significant amount of time. The ones who were elected on the same ticket are barely on speaking terms, and they almost never come up with anything they agree on, except for opposing the mayor. Most of the elected officials are there hoping to get some personal benefit in the form of a job for a family member, desirable zoning for family property, or a cash flow to a dubious non-profit organization. You'd think with such a group of people who can be easily paid off, the mayor would have no trouble forming a coalition, but even that is beyond his grasp.
Basically, going to a city council meeting is not terribly different from dinner with your in-laws. A bunch of people sit around a crowded table, complain about who is spending too much money on what, interrupt one another, try to show how smart they are, and when none of that succeeds, stand up and yell at one another. After about 4 hours of this, they and go home having achieved little more than getting on one another's nerves. The other significant difference between this and a holiday dinner with your in-laws is that the newspapers write about it.
People tell me that anarchy isn't better, but the more virtual I become, the harder it is to convince me of that. The Internet is a pretty good reflection of how anarchy would look. Yes, there are perverts, people who rob Second Life banks, and destroy one another's data. But by and large, most people behave fine, most of the time, and those who don't are labeled as such and avoided. And because of the transparency of everything on the Internet, it is easier than in real life to find out about someone's credibility.
I thought about this in the context of buying electronics the other day. A friend tried to prove to me that when I make a large purchase of an electronic item, I need to go and touch it and talk to the guy in the store, etc. After some thought, I realized that the opposite was true.
When I go to the bricks-and-mortar store to buy, for example, a refrigerator, I am fairly sure the guy there is trying to sell me the thing that will give him the highest cut, not the thing that will give me the highest satisfaction. I have a limited selection per store, a limited number of stores I can physically get to, and nobody to ask about that product or seller once I get there.
If I go online, the process is the opposite. First I go to a site that gives me ratings of a bunch of items in my category. I can compare a virtually unlimited number of options, and read what real people have to say about them. I can then look at the retailers offering the item, and the reliability and terms of the retailer. I can't do any of that in real life.
All of this works online because, fundamentally, anarchy is a decent system. The vast majority of people give their true opinions of things, probably because they feel anonymous. The vast majority of people want to warn you about the scammers, and the scammers are labeled and downrated. You even have tools to screen out the people you don't want to see. (Imagine if I could do that in the city council meeting. Just the thought brings my blood pressure down several notches.)
In short, anarchy is a better system than government. If you still doubt me, you simply haven't spent enough time in city council meetings.
I spent a good part of my evening at a City Council meeting here in Hod Hasharon. I mean "good" in the sense that it was a large part of my evening. It certainly could not be considered good in any other sense of the word. As the title of this column implies, it was a notch or two worse than anarchy. It was chaos.
My town is blessed with a charismatic and well-intentioned mayor who has done nothing of note in the 4 years he's been in office. I mean, unless you consider throwing money at expensive and impotent consultants to be "of note", and most of us would agree that for a government official, that is not worth noting.
Hod Hasharon is also blessed with 14 additional council members, none of whom seem to be able to work together for any significant amount of time. The ones who were elected on the same ticket are barely on speaking terms, and they almost never come up with anything they agree on, except for opposing the mayor. Most of the elected officials are there hoping to get some personal benefit in the form of a job for a family member, desirable zoning for family property, or a cash flow to a dubious non-profit organization. You'd think with such a group of people who can be easily paid off, the mayor would have no trouble forming a coalition, but even that is beyond his grasp.
Basically, going to a city council meeting is not terribly different from dinner with your in-laws. A bunch of people sit around a crowded table, complain about who is spending too much money on what, interrupt one another, try to show how smart they are, and when none of that succeeds, stand up and yell at one another. After about 4 hours of this, they and go home having achieved little more than getting on one another's nerves. The other significant difference between this and a holiday dinner with your in-laws is that the newspapers write about it.
People tell me that anarchy isn't better, but the more virtual I become, the harder it is to convince me of that. The Internet is a pretty good reflection of how anarchy would look. Yes, there are perverts, people who rob Second Life banks, and destroy one another's data. But by and large, most people behave fine, most of the time, and those who don't are labeled as such and avoided. And because of the transparency of everything on the Internet, it is easier than in real life to find out about someone's credibility.
I thought about this in the context of buying electronics the other day. A friend tried to prove to me that when I make a large purchase of an electronic item, I need to go and touch it and talk to the guy in the store, etc. After some thought, I realized that the opposite was true.
When I go to the bricks-and-mortar store to buy, for example, a refrigerator, I am fairly sure the guy there is trying to sell me the thing that will give him the highest cut, not the thing that will give me the highest satisfaction. I have a limited selection per store, a limited number of stores I can physically get to, and nobody to ask about that product or seller once I get there.
If I go online, the process is the opposite. First I go to a site that gives me ratings of a bunch of items in my category. I can compare a virtually unlimited number of options, and read what real people have to say about them. I can then look at the retailers offering the item, and the reliability and terms of the retailer. I can't do any of that in real life.
All of this works online because, fundamentally, anarchy is a decent system. The vast majority of people give their true opinions of things, probably because they feel anonymous. The vast majority of people want to warn you about the scammers, and the scammers are labeled and downrated. You even have tools to screen out the people you don't want to see. (Imagine if I could do that in the city council meeting. Just the thought brings my blood pressure down several notches.)
In short, anarchy is a better system than government. If you still doubt me, you simply haven't spent enough time in city council meetings.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Fake Flirts
I was chatting with a friend I had met on a social network, and at some point, we realized we did not know who had initiated the friendship.
In fact, this happens quite a lot these days. Someone uploads their contact list to their social networking account, and voila. Since we have set our e-mail program to remember everyone we ever send mail to, most of us have a fair number of contacts who, for the life of us, we cannot remember. Perhaps we answered their question on a professional mailing list. Perhaps they recommended a plumber to us. Perhaps we did business with them a decade ago. Maybe we met them on a bicycle ride.
Personally, I have a lot of business contacts I can't recall, because I worked as a consultant for almost a decade, and have been a prominent contributer on a wide number of listservs, as well as a moderator for a few. Because I was a consultant, I made sure to upload most of the business cards I got, and use LinkedIn to connect to anyone I ever did work for or who did work for me. (If you are a marketing consultant and don't have many contacts on LinkedIn, you don't look like much of a marketeer.)
Also, as a marketing person, and just as a friendly type of person, I tend to "friend first, ditch later" rather than "ask first, friend later". I've ditched very few friends. As long as someone isn't sending me some new app twice a day, being lewd, or trying to sell me stuff, they are my friend. You are my friend if you are reading this, as far as I am concerned. I never complain about having too many friends.
But it did occur to me, as my newfound friend and I were both denying First Friending rights, that for some apps, false friending could be a feature rather than a bug. For example, a dating application could set up an algorithm that would take into account age and geography, and set you up with a match arbitrarily.
Obviously, if they did this too often or too blatently, it wouldn't work. But if 10% of the matches you got were faked by the system, you might never find out and it might increase your satisfaction with the app. At first, as a marketer, I thought: what a great idea! Forget the ethics of it, you can always justify giving people more friends as morally good. You can get people to use your system more by making them artificially popular!
In fact, none of us really know how Facebook apps work at the backend, and we are astonishingly nonchalant about adding them. The apps have access to our personal data, and we usually have no idea who the creator is. (I have one developed by my brother-in-law, but that's an exception.)
In fact, this happens quite a lot these days. Someone uploads their contact list to their social networking account, and voila. Since we have set our e-mail program to remember everyone we ever send mail to, most of us have a fair number of contacts who, for the life of us, we cannot remember. Perhaps we answered their question on a professional mailing list. Perhaps they recommended a plumber to us. Perhaps we did business with them a decade ago. Maybe we met them on a bicycle ride.
Personally, I have a lot of business contacts I can't recall, because I worked as a consultant for almost a decade, and have been a prominent contributer on a wide number of listservs, as well as a moderator for a few. Because I was a consultant, I made sure to upload most of the business cards I got, and use LinkedIn to connect to anyone I ever did work for or who did work for me. (If you are a marketing consultant and don't have many contacts on LinkedIn, you don't look like much of a marketeer.)
Also, as a marketing person, and just as a friendly type of person, I tend to "friend first, ditch later" rather than "ask first, friend later". I've ditched very few friends. As long as someone isn't sending me some new app twice a day, being lewd, or trying to sell me stuff, they are my friend. You are my friend if you are reading this, as far as I am concerned. I never complain about having too many friends.
But it did occur to me, as my newfound friend and I were both denying First Friending rights, that for some apps, false friending could be a feature rather than a bug. For example, a dating application could set up an algorithm that would take into account age and geography, and set you up with a match arbitrarily.
Obviously, if they did this too often or too blatently, it wouldn't work. But if 10% of the matches you got were faked by the system, you might never find out and it might increase your satisfaction with the app. At first, as a marketer, I thought: what a great idea! Forget the ethics of it, you can always justify giving people more friends as morally good. You can get people to use your system more by making them artificially popular!
In fact, none of us really know how Facebook apps work at the backend, and we are astonishingly nonchalant about adding them. The apps have access to our personal data, and we usually have no idea who the creator is. (I have one developed by my brother-in-law, but that's an exception.)
And for all we know, they are sending us fake flirts, fake greetings, etc., from our real or virtual friends. Did you really challenge my knowledge of '80s sitcoms? Because most of my aquaintances are aware that neither my current home nor my childhood home had a television set.
In short, we don't really know what any of the applications are doing. We don't really know if the notifications are real or fake. Marketers may think they are very clever by creating defaults that make it seem our friends are constantly sending us something, inviting us, or challenging us. Frankly, it's only clever for about a month. After that, it's just noise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
