Clunky Flow

Facebook’s privacy settings are so byzantine that few can get to grips with them and most users ignore them after tinkering with them once or twice.

This is true whether we are talking about

… tech savvy professionals with an interest in keeping the boss from viewing their profile

>From the recent BIMA Facebook debate in London via Josie Fraser

I talked about having your boss included in your contact list as a good excuse to finally get to grips with Dante’s 10th circle of hell - aka the peculiar granularity of FB permissions. I asked for an audience hands up on who in the room felt really confident about setting up and using permissions, and about five people did.

…to social networking savvy students who have grown up with the imperative of keeping their online diaries and profiles hidden away from the view of their Moms

19 yr old college-going Californian Sinead Kennedy talks about her use of Facebook. (Great interview. Real insight. Perfect use of the podcast format)and how she’s set her privacy settings ‘pretty intense’ on Facebook to absolutely block her Mom yet is pretty certain her Mom has still been able to see the photos she least wants her to see.

Its clear that existing privacy controls on Facebook pretty much suck.  It’s all about granular filters and lacking in any real appreciation of the dynamic reality of social relationships. They insist that we put everyone we know in different boxes detailing how close we are to them and in what context we know them. This kinda works for organisational hierarchies. But of course doesn’t allow for the reality that our social relationships are constantly evolving and dynamic.

What Facebook needs (and should consider buying now that they have about $750 million to go shopping with ) are privacy controls that are so simple that they are natural to use and reflect the way real people negotiate real privacy in the real world.

When Facebook has these tools people will feel more confident about their online privacy. When users feel confident, they will share more and become more expressive. This will enhance the experience for all and allow Facebook target the expressed needs of its users as and when they are expressed. Making everybody happy.

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Dean Donaldson sees Facebook’s plans to monetize your attention through in-your-face advertising as uninspired and uninspriring and old hat.

Facebook are back hard-hitting the headlines of the industry press with rumours of anticipated advertising offering. Though currently generating a measly $125 million a year in advertising revenue, plans based around user-profiled advertising are beginning to emerge that fuel speculation as to the company being worth somewhere in the region of $15 billion (as shown by Microsoft recently buying a 1.6% stake) - and this would certainly put them out there as a force to be reckoned with.

…

I do not agree, as either a user or as a marketer. It is not sufficient to say that just because I want to chat with my friends, I also want to be tracked and approached by advertisers. If digital advertising has taught us anything, it is that intrusion will not sustain itself for too long as it is getting lost in all the modern day clutter – and shown by falling results. Shouting louder does not help and neither does just following me around like a cyber-stalker. Unless you can come up and hold an interesting conversation with me, engage and immerse me, then I am most likely to tell you to shove off with the same gusto I would tell a drunk lady at a bar trying to chat me up…

…

Web 2.0 is not about social networking, it is about conversation – and that is ‘two-way’. That is why companies are now contemplating how they build a brand against a vocal audience that no longer buys the tripe of a marketer. We are intelligent people, not experiments in an ad lab. As a user, we want to be appreciated and treated as an equal – and our opinion matters. Rush ahead and dictate to the rest of us and watch the backlash against Big Brother.

Ask and you may well receive, dictate and you’ll probably end up with a smack in your Face-book…

Full post here

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From Manas Tungare

So why isn’t something like this on the market yet? I’m sure there would be throngs of people lined up outside the offices of the company that makes the first such thing. And if they try to patent it, you can cite my blog post as prior art. A head’s up display for social networking.

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Note: This Wordpress blog has been giving me all manner of gyp these days. Below is a copy of a post that I lost and subsequently rescued from Google’s cache. Thanks to Paul  Browne at FirstPartners.net for that level-headed tip. The comments were rescued from my mail and are now located after the jump.

That’s the message in Paul Graham’s latest post. The less provocatively titled “Why to move to a startup hub”

Do the Irish startups out there agree or reluctantly agree? Ooops. I mean do they disagree or virulently disagree?

But like a good blog should it raises more questions than it answers. In an Irish context

• What would a simple poll on one of our more trafficked Irish blogs reveal?

• Do people think Paul’s opinion is skewed by bias or insight or both?

• Can any Irish Startup planning to stay in Ireland could actually be sure they are not just codding themselves?

I mean, it’s got to niggle away at you in the back of your mind, right?

Weren’t we all astounded to listen in to that interview with the Collison brothers in Open Coffee Limerick ( 2 very young brothers from Limerick making the kind of splash in SV that you have to admit would have been much less likely here ).

Continue Reading »

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Why Jaiku instead of Twitter? One word: Vision.

• Google bought up/into the vision of the founders of Jaiku.
• Google buys up companies in order to buy in talent and insight.

Jyri, one of Jaiku’s founders has been on a year long evangelical road trip informing everyone that would listen of the underlying sociological insight of what they are doing.  And Jaiku has been working consistently at implementing a clear vision to serve that insight.

Twitter, on the other hand have always worked to give the impression that they just experimented and got lucky.

Google (looking to the future) is buying the team with the vision.

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Tech commentator Niall Kennedy interviews his 19 college-going sister Sinead about her use of Facebook. Great interview. Real insight. Perfect use of the podcast format.

• Sinead reveals how social sites are all about photos and keeping the parents out.

• She’s set her privacy settings ‘pretty intense’ on Facebook and has absolutely blocked her Mom. Yet she seems pretty certain her Mom has still been able to see the photos she least wants her to see.

( Niall K. used to podcast along with Om Malik. But he popped up on my radar because he occasionally catches the occasional stray tweet from Maryrose Lyons that was actually intended for me. How’s that for digital overhearing? )

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-Did you know you can file your companies annual return online!

-Really?!
-Yes. Fill in form online and then all you have to do is print off some pdfs to sign.
-Huh? Okay. Is that it?-Almost. They also don’t take credit card payments. But you can write a cheque.

-Oh Okay? So you’ve got to go writing cheques and printing, signing and stuffing envelopes and finding a stamp and making sure you make the last post.

-Yep. That’s about it. Innit cool? Online filing. Eh Sorta.

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