What if Facebook is doing us the biggest favour of all?
What if Facebook's scooping up of our personal data is doing us a huge favour? How can that be? Let's imagine, and think, really big for a moment.
Humans as corporeal beings may be facing an extinction event. We are destroying our eco-system at an alarming rate, making large tracts of land uninhabitable. Sperm count has fallen in developed countries by 50% in four decades. If the rates of decline continue we'll be hitting 'The Handmaid's Tale' scenarios before we run out of Earth to live on.
There are those that argue (Life3.0) that far from dieing out, we may be about to evolve. That evolution would see us abandon our bodies and attain consciousness as digital beings.
To do so would free us from the challenges of keeping our bodies in a decent state - alive for example, and enable us to explore the universe, giving meaning to the vast tracts of it that currently have none (because there is no consciousness out there to experience it).
With me so far? Ok. So how does that mean Facebook is doing us a favour?
AI needs a lot of data to start learning and doing things humans do. It will need even more to recreate conscious versions of ourselves to live in infinity as zeros and ones.
What if this is Facebook, Google, Baidu, Yandex, Amazon's real mission - even if they don't realise it themselves? They are gathering and storing the data - to enable our evolution-as-upload as part of (rather than subject to) The Singularity.
Someone has to do it. If Facebook wants to make use of my data in the meantime to personalise an ad or two - I think that's a very reasonable exchange.
The whole Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle can be read as a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from people who like to see the internet as a wild west awaiting their control. But there is an important lesson for anyone using data.
First - why the fuss? There are already plenty of laws and forthcoming rules to prevent the misuse of data.
The General Data Protection Regulation explicitly states that someone's data cannot be used or stored without their express permission, for example.
So, even if you were to grant a company permission to use your data, you can't grant permission to them to use your friends’ data. A company can't ask for that or use that. Even Facebook realised this was a share too far in 2014 and ended the practice (which had until then been employed by 'abusive apps').
However, the argument is that all that data has already been hoarded by the bad guys. But GDPR will make every item they hoard subject to compliance. So even in the case of old data (which loses its salience by the second in any event) the hoarder must make it easy for anyone to remove their consent and retrieve their data.
That's going to be a challenge for bad actors. And when the auditors come calling they will face fines for every single data point. And these are fines at the scale of 'put you out of business'.
The short term issue for Facebook and, therefore, for much of digital marketing and communications, is the breach of trust. This is based on the notion that we didn't understand the scale of what could be done with the posts and likes and comments we gave away in exchange for better connection with people and information that was useful or interesting to us.
Facebook could act on this, at least re the instance of Fake News. They could set their engineers to work creating an algorithm to automatically add links to fact-checking or cross-checking validated sites.
They could of course do the same for their adverts. Imagine the potential to cut through the lies...
However, these are only solutions if you have difficulty filtering truth from deceit. In reality we humans have a brilliantly well-developed ability to see through bull.
Large parts of our brains are dedicated to sorting the trustworthy from the cheats. (Martin Novak's Super Co-operators says this was essential to our ability to live in co-operative societies). Target me with all the propoganda you like, I won't be voting Nazi.
So we do have a responsibility in this as individuals. We choose what we are willing to believe, and we must ensure we apply our innate abilities to spot the fraudulent at all times.
And naturally - any business or organisation handling data must do so with care and with all due respect for the owner. It is this respect for the owner that points to the most critical learning.
If the digital industry takes one thing from Facebook's woes, it should be this:
Since the value of data rapidly decays, the relationship with the human behind the data is always going to be of far greater value than the data assets themselves.
Data is not the relationship. It is the output of a relationship. Get one.
Twitter: Where investors can have their cake and eat it
Image courtesy: Bakerella.com
Things I wish I'd done... registered for the Twitter IPO. I took interest far too late. By the time I was ready to put my money where my mouth was I discovered I needed to jump through some hurdles (filling forms, sending them to a postal address etc) to be allowed to trade in US shares. Oh well. Yesterday (before the float) I thought they'd rise about 15-20% on day one (I was guestimating they'd hit $30 to anyone who'd listen). As it happens twitter went ballistic - up 93% on the day. I expect a lot of profit taking over the next few days as the market takes stock of that. For the record - I warned against investing in the Facebook IPO at the time. Personal investors in Twitter would be wise taking enough profit to cover what they've paid - and perhaps leaving the rest in for the journey. Essentially you get to have your cake and eat it too. And it looks like it's going to be some journey - there are more than 200 new jobs being advertised by Twitter on Linkedin.com right now - more than a dozen in London. From what I recall of the size of the London office, they're going to have to find new premises. Scale that around the world and you can see this is going to be an exciting few months for twitter. It's rather wonderful that a company that describes itself as operating at the 'extreme of the open wing of the open party' is finding a very significant place in the world. For why I think Twitter is worth its IPO asking price (and a little bit more right now) take a look at the post I wrote here.
Cutting brands out of the conversation is not a wise business strategy. It is is limiting and potentially damaging for all concerned.
I’ve used Flickr for many years – as have many of my colleagues.
I’ve even used Flickr for ‘Branded’ functions – setting up accounts in the name of brands, using its functionality to upload and display to those brands' own websites etc.
So when we thought of running a competition using the group functionality of Flickr no one thought – STOP surely this is all nasty commercial stuff Flickr won’t accept.
So it came as something of a surprise when we discovered that a competition group associated with a brand runs the risk of being closed down because it contravenes Flickr’s commercial use terms and conditions.
Let’s consider the landscape here for a moment. We’re told by Flickr that groups don’t support competitions. We found 3600+ running when we last looked. Image courtesy
A vast proportion of the users of Flickr are promoting their photographic wares, from just displaying the quality of their work right up to (and including) people selling T-shirts and mugs with their images on them.
Huge numbers of groups are brand-related. From the obvious (Canon and Nikon users) to the might-as-well-be-an-advert of group’s extolling the virtues of one of Ford’s trucks.
None of these have links to buy stuff (though, hang on a minute, many of the groups do, it turns out).
Seems even if your group has zero links to external sites, no calls to action to buy – in other words is less commercial than most, you’re still not welcome if you come attached to a brand.
It seems a little unfair that because you organise a group FOR a brand Flickr will take exception but if users of brands (and how can you tell the difference in most cases) create a group, all is well.
Not exactly encouraging transparency now, is it?
Is this a case of ‘if it’s from the edge its ok, if it’s from the centre, it isn’t’. A big principled philosophical stand?
Nah. It’s all about the money. Any brand can PAY for a sponsored group, which Flickr will then happily spam its users with by pasting it all over the homepage with no regard for that user’s interests. There is no moral high-ground in that.
Good brands don’t use social media, they participate in it. At least, their representatives do.
They go to the trouble of reaching out to people who care about a particular competition, theme or idea - to join in. And they ask them to bring others – more people to Flickr in this case – more of the people who make Flickr.
Flickr is the provider of tools and a platform. The community that emerges is not Flickr's, it's simply enabled by those tools.
Good examples make Flickr more useful for all those concerned. Users end up uploading and sharing more images, and forging more connections. And each new node on the network doubles its value.
We didn’t intend to give Flickr money. We did intend to give it more people and something useful those people could do together.
We usually charge for this service…
I suspect those at the top in Flickr get all this. But those charged with hitting short-term commercial targets don’t.
So, a little advice for the commercial strategists at Flickr. Nose off grind-stone a minute. Look around you.
Facebook. More images than you. More people than you. Treats brands just the same as it treats users. There I can set up a fan page, share functionality etc, as a brand or as a user. Perhaps they’ve noticed brands are made up of people (you can but hope…) Whatever the case, Facebook’s treatment of brands is welcoming. Come and play. Join in. Learn from the networked world.
Consider Youtube. Brands can create channels, profiles, upload content. They are treated like users. Join in: Brand or user.
Consider Blogger. Brands can create blogs and have them hosted by google. All at no cost. Join in: Brand or user.
Consider Twitter. Brands can create a profile and interact just as much as any individual user. Join in: Brand or user.
These, and the vast majority of communities, see the bigger picture. They are not the owners of a community. They are the owners of a set of tools for the community to do with as they will. And the communities include people who happen to work for brands.
Flickr, and communities like it, are made up of people who have to create part to take part. Brands are one of the things they want to create around and interact around – just try some searches to see. Creation and interaction is what makes community valuable.
My best advice: Don’t stand in the way of this.
Youtube, Facebook, Blogger, twitter are all applying the principles of the because effect – when something that was once scarce becomes abundant you can no longer make money with it, you have to try to make money because of it.
The classic model is music. Now that digital music is everywhere and all-but free you can’t make money charging for it (selling cds) but you can make money because of your music (ie concert tickets –things that are scarce).
Youtube made uploading, sharing and broadcasting video abundant. They realized therefore they couldn’t make money from that. They have focused on making money from what has resulted from that (because of that) – their place as one of the biggest sites on the planet with huge, huge audiences and increasingly clever in context ads.
We appreciate these are difficult times for commercial considerations. We appreciate the lines are blurring.
But Flickr and other social networks have lessons to learn if they want to connect properly with brands as they adapt to the networked world.
Social Glue has a plan to open debate around this and get the social networks (yes Flickr dudes, you included), users and brand-promoting folks to join in and establish some new ways of doing business in this networked world - ways which will be to all parties' advantage - particularly for the communities we're all trying to serve.
How much will you pay for twitter? It's something all twitter users will have to consider because, like it or not, subscription is in the business plan. So is a (they hope) subtle form of advertising.
These details were included in the pitches they made in the recent round of funding. Even those of us who weren't privy to those pitches have been able to work this much out for ourselves.
Recently set limits on the numbers of followers/followed hints at a TwitterPro kind of model in the Flickr vein. By the way, Flickr refuses to disclose how many people have taken up their pro option. LinkedIn isn't exactly raddled with pro users either, for that matter.
The 140 characters allowed in each tweet, rather than the standard 160 characters of an sms message indicate, perhaps, a place to carry a word from our sponsors...
Yes Twitter got its funding. But funnily enough, the model didn't float the boat of every VC that Twitter pitched. Particularly when those VCs considered the numbers of truly active users (still something of a guarded secret).
For all this Twitteris extremely useful. It is one of a handful of elements of social media I would willingly pay money for.
But I had to use it first to discover how valuable it was to me. Same, I guess, is true of blogger.
So I'm guessing the entry level on twitter will remain free. Perhaps for anyone with up to 2000 followers. This will be ad supported. Perhaps there will be an option to pay NOT to be interrupted by advertising.
I hope not, because that would indicate twitter isn't thinking very cleverly about what advertising can become within its communities of purpose (there are fantastic opportunities for real-time human interaction at the point of intent, recommendations from within your network of trust, etc).
What is for certain is that without a revenue stream Twitter is just another feature when viewed from the VC end of the telescope. A nice to have. Ecosystem et al.
And,.as Facebook is discovering, features without revenue streams point in only one direction when it comes to valuation.
Josh is hosting a Facebook F8 developers bash (live streaming London garage, to be more precise) on Wednesday this week. If it sounds like something you should be at, sign up here. (you are on facebook, aren't you?)
What if Facebook's scooping up of our personal data is doing us a huge favour?
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