The core node.
The core node of the internet changes, over time.
It used to be a specific machine, a specific email address, a specific website, a specific profile.
Lately, the core node online is a person. And the tools that tie other outposts, other data, to the idea of a core, identity-based node, are the ones that are winning.
Which is why I don’t feel like many deeply interesting things emerging online will last. Not because they are broken, or inaccurate, but because they’re using the wrong anchor point.
The story is the root element of human differentiation. The ability to create, share, embellish and pass on stories is the root of our myriad cultures. But I don’t believe the story will ever be the core node online, because every story has perspective, and that perspective is inherently glued to the core node - a story from the Guardian has a different perspective than one on the same subject from the New York Times. A story from me has different meaning than the same one from you.
When I see people trying to avoid the core node question, or tie it to something ephemeral and open to broad interpretation, I wonder how their ideas will grow and survive.
People interact using their identity as the core node that ties everything else together. This is true online or offline. And I don’t think this is a step on the path to something else, I think it’s an inherent element of how our species works.
internet privilege.
[I’m always uncomfortable writing about privilege as a concept, in large part because I’m a straight, middle class male, and therefore likely have a blind spot to some of the role privilege plays in my own life. But, I do feel that this needs to be said.]
I’ve been getting angry as I listen to the debate about anonymity, pseudonyms, and multiple identities online.
One of the things that derails tech-utopianism, is the face that it definitely seems like most of the platforms we’re using have been created by groups that are majority white, western, middle class male.
I’m pointing this out because it’s simple to see that most of the people weighing in and saying that people who want to use a fake name, or an obvious pseudonym, or multiple identities, have something to hide, or are being dishonest, or are being immature.
Identity isn’t as simple as you’re making it out to be.
Identity, online or off, is like a prism. The same beam of light can hit it, but if the angle changes, different colours are thrown off. A person is not the same with one peer group, as they are with another. They are not the same with their family, as they are with friends. They are not the same at work, as they are at home.
They are the same person, yes. But identity is fluid.
The thing is, when you (and I’m including myself in this) live in a society where the top line points of your identity (gender, sexuality, race, political affiliations / beliefs, etc) are not going to be persecuted, or when you are not in a situation where you could be ostracised from your family and friends due to revelations about your identity (I’m thinking specifically of sexual orientation or gender presentation, but this could also relate to politics and beliefs) it makes sense to think like Mark Zuckerberg, who has stated that anyone who wants more than one facebook identity is sketchy (paraphrasing).
But that’s because you, and most of the people making these arguments, have the (rather fantastic) privilege of not NEEDing to separate the different elements of their personas into different identities.
Not everyone has this benefit.
So, before I read another justification from Google or Facebook that tries to argue their stance is about anything beyond maintaining the purity of the data set they sell to advertisers, and before I read another pundit saying that the new reality of technology is that all actions will be aggregated and attached to your identity, I ask one very simple thing.
Consider people who don’t have all of the benefits you do, when you think about the impact of technologies on society, identity, and self-conception.
Because the people who benefit from things like multiple online identities, or pseudonyms, are rarely the people who are in a position to steer a globally popular platform, or criticize it to a massive audience.
A Tentative Google+ Use Case
Since joining Google+, I’ve learned the three things that seemingly everyone on there is learning:
- The number one topic on Google+, is Google+
- Despite the service’s focus on relevance and modeling actual human social grouping, there are still people who think of social connections as ‘points’, and aim for a high score
- Very few people really know where it fits in, in their social media mix
But I think I’ve cracked it. Google+ is, in part, the solution to Facebook Connect authentication.
Facebook is trying to own identity online. This is what FB connect, and ‘Sign in with Facebook’ buttons are really doing - if your access to a million different things is tied to your Facebook identity, their data set becomes more valuable, and you chances of closing your account decrease to near zero.
The downside of this, is that suddenly Facebook is a public space. Even people like me, who responded to Google+’s circles concept with ‘I already do that with Facebook lists’, start decreasing thier use of Facebook as a place to share - to me, Facebook is turning into it’s namesake; it’s a static page that identifies me, and shares information about what I do elsewhere. Unlike a yearbook, we’re talking about what articles I read on CNN, not whether or not I was in Chess Club, but the idea is the same.
Google+ is far more focused on sharing content, and publishing content as well, to specific networks. Given my current use of Facebook, I don’t think there’s actually any overlap.
Facebook shares a more-or-less static profile, and online activity that you choose to tie to that identity.
Google+ offers a way of publishing content to select groups, but doesn’t really focus on sharing anything about you. Because (spoiler) Google doesn’t give data away. Google stores massive amounts of data, and then uses it behind the scenes to 1) sell things to you, and 2) sell you to things.
So what is Google+?
Google+ is a solution for the fact that status updates and link sharing on FB doesn’t actually make sense anymore, given what Facebook has become.
The Panoptic Dilemma: 3
False boundaries are the next major battleground in the effects of social media on human social patterning and communication. They aren’t false in terms of being based on deceit, they’re just accepted boundaries that were created in support of flawed behavioral systems. Much in the way online documentation will force a redefinition of how indiscretions should be addressed, the boundary between personal / private, professional / social, and friends / acquaintances are blurring heavily, and the assumption these worlds can and will remain separated needs to come into question.
No genuine social interaction can exist without persistent identity. This doesn’t mean literal identity, but a consistent username or handle is essential to build connections. As real names are becoming more common, persistent identity is making it difficult to separate personal and professional identities. To maintain a full-featured online presence for a separate work and home self is a double shift, in something that is already a full-time proposition. At best, this separation reduces the impact of unnecessary prejudices on work or social life. At worst, it reduces context and understanding; you don’t work with or hire a resume, you work with people. People are full featured, and deeper understanding leads to deeper synchronicity.
Boundaries are best managed by different levels of access to the same data set. Not separating identities, but separating types of access. This can happen by channel, by permission level, or by technological literacy. Maintaining separate data sets on one platform related to your identity and actions online is essentially the definition of duplicitous. Assigning levels of information to levels of trust, however, is an adaptation of an established and justifiable human behavior to the online space.
As social capital becomes a key component of so many tasks, the idea that social and professional have a hard boundary becomes problematic. The actions in either space have an impact on overall identity, which in turn defines interpretation in both social and professional life. Again, this comes to a point where we need to decide if we will redefine acceptable behavior, or police ourselves into falsified behaviors.
Facebook: calling the identity bluff.
The interesting thing about the current facebook backlash has nothing to do with privacy, and everything to do with identity. The Zuckerberg quote relating the desire to maintain two (or more) distinct personas to a lack of integrity got me thinking about this.
Ignoring, for a moment, the very real risks caused by facebook moving from a system with user control and privacy baked in, to the current, open by default system; Zuckerberg almost, sort of, has a poorly expressed point.
The people who are responding indignantly to their social actions being public by default, are often the same people who have been arguing passionately that such things shouldn’t need to be hidden. If everyone makes decisions or takes actions that aren’t reflective of their best judgement, why are we all living in the online equivalent of a small town - knowing everyone’s dirty laundry, but being afraid to discuss it?
Even if it’s being done specifically because a unified persona is more useful as both a demographic data point, and as a target for ads, facebook is one of the few companies that can actually call the massive bluff attached to this argument.
With 400 million users, clinging to old social norms regarding public shaming and shunning for common actions is an issue of mutually assured destruction.
I’m far from sure how it will play out, but I think it’s slightly hypocritical to intimate facebook is declaring war on privacy. Facebook, whether or not it is a business decision, is potenially forcing the social shift the internet has been begging for since social media became a buzzword.
The way we deal with watching and judging a person might actually have to change, without the half-joke of waiting for the boomers to die actually coming to pass.
A Consumerist Manifesto; or Why I Love What I Do.
Why wouldn’t we define ourselves by our possessions? They are a reflection of our tastes, our personalities, our vanities, our obsessions and desires. They are earned through our labour, shared with our aquaintances, shaped and scarred and stained by our experiences.
I won’t apologize for conscious, careful consumerism, they way I would for wasteful, destructive consumption. Surrounding myself with things that speak to me, that speak for me, is only logical - truth is expressed in subtext, explanations are what we need to spell out word for word, after we’ve already been misunderstood.
It’s the ultimate vanity, the chief arrogance of the artist, that you can only express yourself by that which you create with your own talents, your own two hands. The belief that expression is somehow limited to those with the skills, the talents, the words and images and passion that they can somehow force into life.
We all craft a life out of experience and object. Whether the art of your life is the conversations you have, or the actions you take, you create as surely as the painter, the dancer or the writer.
I don’t have a story for you. I don’t have art in any standard sense. But this is my art - the idea, the shift, the hope that my words can shape actions.
Don’t lecture me about the destructive nature of buying, or wanting and desiring and associating ourselves with the things that speak to and at time for us.
We attach meaning to things, so people can use things to attach meanings to themselves, so that people can tell their story in a passive meaningful way. In the real world, not behind the guise of fiction, behind the protective mask of art that saves us from needing to dissect, address and consider ourselves, the ugliness we can bring.
My things tell a story as surely as my words. And I don’t just write it, I live it, as do you. As do we all.
An Unfinished Post.
I’m an english lit geek. This informs my point of view on pretty much everything.
It’s taught me that people are stories. If you understand narrative, understanding people isn’t that much of a stretch.
This is probably why I think of marketing as being about plot points. Everything is a decision made by the storyteller (or the consumer) to communicate something about the character, the plot, the narrative they’ve constructed for themself.
Thinking of it this way, rather than use cases or demographics or badge theory, makes it a hell of a lot easier to plan around human behaviour.
We’re slaves to our stories, and it’s impossible for us to resist constructing them with ourselves in the lead.
[I never finished this, and started writing it weeks ago. I’m posting it now, rather than deleting this fragment.]
Facebook Connect and Owning Reputation.
Anonymity is dying, and that’s probably a good thing in regards to online conversation and communication.
As more and more services switch to Facebook Connect as an authentication option, Facebook will become a very valuable arbiter of reputation. A service that will happily delete your profile if your name sounds too fake, Facebook has made no effort to hide the fact that it’s supposed to be about real people, and real lives. Facebook has also been making attempts to tie your actions to their social graph for a while - the first major attempt, with Beacon, scared the crap out of people. Facebook Connect is a better solution, because it’s not packaged as a way to attach your real world identity, and therefore reputation, to your actions. Connect is sold to users as a way of reducing the hassle of logging in to leave comments.
But it solves the reputation problem, which has been plaguing anyone trying to have important real world conversations online, for as long as people have been trying to have important real world conversations online.
Facebook ties your name, and a small (and optional) amount of biographical information to your friends, your actions in the Facebook ecosystem, and images and events. When it starts connecting that identity to all the comments you make online, blog conversations, arguments and opinions, it will be the best barometer available for reputation.
It’s entirely foreseeable that Facebook could functionally own individual reputation online. Which is why, from my point of view, any conversation about them being in competition with Twitter misses the point entirely.
Voltron and the Social Media Super-Presence
A few weeks back, I compared platform independent strategy to Voltron. Unsurprisingly, this resonated with the Tumblr community in some small way.
Earlier today, I realized Voltron is actually the best metaphor for the social web. Or at least the most awesome.
Everyone who is active on the social web is, for all intents and purposes, a Voltron analogue. We’re complete identities built piece by piece on platforms that are self-contained, pre-designed sub-units of personality. We share links on del.icio.us, photos on Flickr, personal details on Facebook, our life stories and ideas on LiveJournal, Wordpress and Tumblr, our thoughts and conversations on Twitter, and our location on BrightKite or Google Latitude. Taking all of these services together, and collecting the profiles into one set of information, each of us already has a super-presence to control, stronger than the sum of its parts.
Tying into my last post, there is an inherent weakness in being a social media Voltron. The super-presence you develop is dependent on dozens of companies remaining solvent, keeping your best interests at heart, and resisting the urge to sell your personal information for use in targeting advertisements. Being dependent of services or platforms that you don’t own can mean that a central hub for your online identity can collapse at a moments notice, leaving your super-presence lacking a key element. In other words, be careful who you decide to let form the head.
Social Media: Reducing Conversational Fluff.
Social media has made it possible for the last decade or so, to inform my friends, en masse, about big events in my life. I have said, dozens of times, “did you see my blog post on (insert subject)” allowing me to jump in to the actual conversation I want to have, rather than spending precious time with people I care about giving out background information.
The same principle is in effect when you find out about a friend’s wedding, or birthday party, or break-up, or career change through a blog, twitter, facebook, etc. This is a sub-unit of conversation that you no longer need to waste time exchanging in person. More than that, it’s the extension of a relationship to a wider world than direct, real time conversation.
When I hear about using data from social networks to target, I feel people are missing the point. I’d rather the (truly staggering amount of) data available online related to my interests, my personal life, etc, be used to cut the wasted time out of transactions and conversations. The same way I would expect any potential co-worker to have researched the firm I work at, the same way I research every client and client corporation before meeting them, I expect people who specifically want to interact with me, to (at some point in the near future, at least) take advantage of the mass of data I leave in my wake.
Social media, in my experience, is most powerful when it’s being used to build or intensify real-world connections. When I say real-world, I don’t mean ‘in person’, but instead ‘not confined to a single platform’. You can walk into your first face-to-face meeting with someone, and know enough to conduct a genuine, meaningful conversation. The information is out there, and with the right mixture of looking for it, and asking if you can see it, you can be prepared.
Don’t worry about scalability or lead generation. Worry about reducing conversational fluff.
