Mike Butcher just written a post about the case of a 15 year-old Welsh girl getting herself into what could have been a very dangerous situation as a result of a relationship she developed with two men via the social network Netlog.The rest of Mike's piece explores Netlog's role and responsibility with regard to this drama. The reason I'm referring to it here is that it is also a good example of how the online predator/prey relationship typically operates. In the case Mike refers to, the 15-year-old Welsh girl pretended she was 18 and befriended 19 and 20-year-old Turkish guys via the social network Netlog before running away from home to meet them. The thing is that the truth about how the predator/prey relationships works is highly counterintuitive. If you follow your instincts you would guess or assume that typically the predator poses as another child in order to lure in and entrap their unwitting victims. The fact is that in most cases the minor is often seeking out and collaborating with and sometimes deceiving the adult. This is an uncomfortable notion to say the least. Uncomfortable enough to make it a taboo subject. But the facts bear it out. And are laid out by the world's foremost quantitative scientists studying this field. Its just over a year since the top researchers on child online safety gathered to deliver their research at Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization: Here's some excerpts from the transcripted video inserted below: 04:50 Dr. David Finkelhor,

The predominant sex crime scenario, doesn’t involve violence, stranger molesters posing online as other children in order to set up an abduction or assault. Only five percent of these cases actually involved violence. Only three percent involved an abduction. It’s also interesting that deception does not seem to be a major factor. Only five percent of the offenders concealed the fact that they were adults from their victims. Eighty percent were quite explicit about their sexual intentions with the youth that they were communicating with ... So for example, Jenna – this is a pretty typical case – 13-year-old girl from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chat rooms, had the screen name “Evil Girl.” There she met a guy who, after a number of conversations, admitted he was 45. He flattered her, gave– sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And eventually, he drove across several states to meet her for sex on several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested in her company, she was reluctant to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities. Many of these cases have commonalities with this particular instance. In seventy-three percent of the crimes, the youth go to meet the offender on multiple occasions for multiple sexual encounters. The law enforcement investigators described the victims as being in love with or feeling a close friendship for the offenders in half the cases that they investigated. In a quarter of the cases, the victims actually had run away from home to be with these adults that they met online. So this is very different, I think, from the predominant impression that one might get from how these cases are being presented in the media. And also, I just think the inferences people make. And then I think it has a lot of implications for prevention just to go to that point. We can talk about some of these things in greater detail. But first of all, we think it means that our prevention messages really need to be directed at teenagers themselves in language and format and from sources that they relate to.

13:44 Dr. Michele Ybarra,

First, things that we assume to be true did not seem to be worn out by the data. For example, we assumed that if adult men are meeting young women online, deception must be involved. We assumed that if young people are posting and sending personal information to other people, this must place them at greater risk for victimization. The data suggest that the vast majority of young people who are meeting adults online are not deceived and instead, knowingly, at least as knowingly as a young person can, consent to this relationship... Over and over, our assumptions turn out to be not reflective of the experiences that youth tell us. This is important because if we’re to keep young people safe, we need to understand what truly puts them at risk and what the risks truly are.

Of course we should continue to do everything in our power to tackle online predators. But the research shows that is only part of the problem. We need to remember is that children, by definition, need to be protected from themselves. To rework that choice phrase of Clay Shirky's, we need to remember that 'a youth is its own worst enemy'. The truism that 'a youth is its own worst enemy' is useful as it helps us remember that tackling an internal enemy is always a hard problem. It reminds us we need to take a different approach. Its a reminder that cuts through and clarifies the task we are faced with. People will clamour for us to treat the symptoms. And even champion us when we do. But the phrase 'a youth is its own worst enemy' can help us to focus on the class of problem we have before us. And remind us that the only way to solve the problem is find a way to tackle the root cause.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Karatechimp"] [/caption] There are 3 main life stages of a trend monkey. A species commonly spotted out and about on the techpreneurial scene. Stage 1: I'm pretty certain we've ALL been here. Imagine the scene. You just met someone and they say to you

I've got this cool new idea. Yeah it's a social network for X. We KNOW people like X, right? And we know people love social networking, right? So my idea is to put them together? Brilliant. Right? Yeah, I know we've got competition. But that just validates the market right?

You are standing wondering if this person realises they sound like they are trying to pitch cheesy peas? Stage 2: I've a good feeling we've ALL been here too: Six months pass. The market is getting a wee bit noisy. Ever day its getting more difficult to differentiate. And every day there are more and more 'me too' start ups entering the market. At first. most of the 'me toos' are run by the young and hopeful. A bit later they are run my old media types trying to cathc a bit of cool. Its beginning to look like this market is going to be 'validated' out of existence. You bump into 'social network for x' and ask how they are getting along. They say:

Its not really a social network as such. Its really all about X. Okay it has some social networking functionality in there too. I mean you have to have that these days, right? But is not really about that. Its about our really fresh new approach to X. It's an approach that's never been done before. Well. Not exactly in the way that we are doing it anyway. It could be quite revolutionary so we're not really ready talk about it yet.

Stage 3: I've got a feeling we are all going to be hearing a lot of this in the next 6 months. We'll hear a lot of people explaining that THEIR service is NOT a social network. In ANY way. It will go something like this.

Our service has no social networking features because it is not a social network. That's not our thing. There are others that provide those services and good luck to them. That's not to say that we won't serve social networks as customers. In fact we are happy for them to use the valuable data we will provide to enhance their services. But we will NOT be confined to servicing the needs of social networks alone. Our data will in fact be used by all sorts of services that make up the entire internet ecosystem. For example merchants like Amazon, Ebay, Travelocity would find our services especially useful. But we're not just talking about Amazon and Ebay here. A whole multitude of online sellers big and small could use our services. We thinking we can actually reach out to the high steet with this. Its a massive, massive market.

Important Disclaimer: At this point, I think it highly advisable to point out that most of those you meet who have passed through these same 3 life stages are not trend monkeys. In fact it can be very difficult to come up with useful screening criteria to distinguish the trend monkeys from those who genuinely do have revolutionary new ideas. There's little doubt that any such screening criteria would have filtered out Google as Johnny-come-lately, trend monkeys trying to hitch a lift on the search engine bandwagon. The same goes for Facebook, with their social network for the university campus. STOP PRESS: I was just about to post this. When I came across someone tackling this subject from another angle. So, I'm tagging it right onto the end of the original post What a nice piece of synchronicity. I just came across the video below on Mulley.net: "The Cool Curve" by Toby Moore CEO of Sleepydog talks about ideas that are in the comfort zone that exists somewhere between far out creativity and what the world ready to adopt. He puts the whole thing in much better context. He talks about those creatives that are sadly ahead of their time, those that are one hit wonders, and those are bang on consistently over time. He describes what I call the trend monkeys at t=5:00 as:

...the flighty ones, they think they know about all kinds of things but actually know very little. They flit from thing to thing. They've always got this great idea. They are basically just headline people. They've read the headlines. But they have no depth. They are just. really. tiring. people. to. hang out with.

Spotting a trend monkey is not as easy as I thought it was when I started writing this post. In fact, I've decided that Toby Moore's characterisation 'they are just really tiring people to hang out with' is pretty good indicator of who you are dealing with. Which you could argue exposes this post as woefully incomplete. And/or creates an open invitiation to any passing readers to drop comments describing the judging criteria that they use or that they find works for them.

Just got the news through Slashdot. Facebook's been talking about their breakthrough in privacy controls for quite some time. They have an elite team working on it and they are highly motivated to resolve the issue. Its pure business logic. A sense of privacy encourages the free expression and authenticity needed for Facebook to become more effective at targeting ads. So I suppose it was inevitable. And Zuckerberg has been filing patents to beat the band. Here's most of the excerpt from Slashdot:

...but take a gander at the Facebook founder's patent application for Dynamically Generating a Privacy Summary to get an idea of what's in the works. After you check boxes on a form to indicate that 'Everyone from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard' can see your profile, Zuckerberg's 'invention' will miraculously display: 'People from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard can see your profile.' How dare Rolling Stone question his inventiveness!"

Ahem. Not exactly the earth shattering advance we've been primed to expect. All kidding aside. I imagine its really only a matter of time.

via Ina.

From here:

The problem that I'm seeing with most of the current social networks is that 90% of the time spent on those social networks is work that is done in order to maintain currency, keep content fresh, and continue building a sprawling network of friends and raise popularity. So, what does that mean? What it boils down to is this: If you are working for your social network instead of your social network working for you, you my friend, are standing on top of a classic MMO-style treadmill grind. I have bobbed in and out of various social networks and there is something that every single one of them had in common: for me to gain any value from that network, I had to go out of my way to perform repetitive, out-of-band tasks just to gain any value from the network. Having been the victim of many a MMO treadmill grind, I recognize an infinite loop of horse poo when I see it, so I bailed. I have yet to find a measurable value in Facebook or any of a dozen other social networks I've played with. At some point, someone is going to get it "right", and there will be a social network that gives us tremendous value without us having to sacrifice for the cause, and all of the apologists using MySpace, Facebook, and the others who don't know they're apologists will flee to the new network in droves.

If you've been talking to me at all you probably heard me say stuff like this. Connecting 'people 2 info' is trumped by connecting 'people 2 people'. Google is great at connecting people to information. But a better way to create new knowledge is to connect people to people. When you connect to people they discover and create new knowledge. And people find this activity deeply rewarding and highly addictive. As the guys discoverio say '..discovery is the new cocaine'. The company that manages this will be bigger than Google To give people what they want. To really connect people online. We have to create the same sense of privacy, reputation, identity and trust online that we take for granted in the real world. I came across this today. An article riffing on a comment made by a leading VC...

Search is dead...[In the near future, people will] find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?

Social discovery pivots on identity

...this focus on online identity is what could turn search upside down... it’s conceivable that the information could attempt to find us—the old concept of push media, but in a far more refined way. As new content enters the Web, it could tumble through the various filters that you set up around your identity...

The unholy mess of privacy and security issues show us where the pivotal opportunity lies

...[currently] nobody owns this space the way Google “owns� search. And as it evolves, there will be an unholy mess of privacy and security issues to work out.

This kind of talk was the ever-constant ever-recurring theme at the Web2.0 expo this last week in San Francisco. And this has made me even more excited about RelevantM than ever. If that were even possible.

O'REILLY CAPTURES IT IN A NUTSHELL Conference blurbs usually drop me into a coma with their schmarketing speek. But not from O'Reilly Media for the Web2.0 conference.

Web 2.0 technologies are empowering us in ways we could only have imagined even just a few years ago. We're able to... connect more, have more fun,...and do it all faster. But as the pace...accelerates, separating signal from noise, useful from annoying...becomes increasingly challenging.

How can we provide a more meaningful experience ... have a positive impact on the world we live in?...deliver relevant information...increase conversation and collaboration?

Right on the money. And a word perfect context for explaining... What MAKES RELEVANT MEDIA UNIQUE in the Web2.0 ecosystem. In a nutshell: Relevant Media works 'with reality'. Rather than working with 'models of reality'. All existing social tools begin by capturing something of real life into a model of some sort. Social networks, for example, try to create an online model of your real world social network. Recommendations engines create a model of what to recommend based on the expression of your tastes by you and your friends. The problem with models: The problems with models is that by definition they only capture aspects of the real thing And this in turn leads to instances where the model and the reality clash. For an example you can take any problem peculiar to online social networks. And I include all those problems related to breakdowns of privacy, reputation, identity and trust. All result from incidents where there have been unanticipated breakdowns or clashes between the model and the reality. Reality bites: What is needed are tools and platforms that support, merge and coevolve with the dynamics of social reality Relevant Media's tools and platforms couple and coevolve with the emergent and dynamic characteristics of real life social interaction as opposed to trying to capture reality and shoehorn it into a model of the real thing. This is what gives us a unique ability to better answer all those questions raised by O'Reilly for the upcoming Web2.0 expo. If you are there, make sure to look me up here on Crowdvine and come over for a chat.

via Valleywag:

After he left Facebook, Nipon Das wanted the social network to erase his personal information from its servers. Eventually that happened. But only after two months, a lengthy email exchange and -- ultimately -- threats from a lawyer. "It's like the Hotel California," Das told the New York Times. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." Facebook PR flack Amy Sezak claims the company is doing users a favor by making it easy to come back to the site after they quit. 6,000 members of the Facebook group "How to permanently delete your facebook account" don't seem grateful.

Jean Burgess is deleting her account partly because of all these facets of her identity are collided together in an unnatural and unmanageable way on facebook. Which illustrates the point that faceted identity does not scale well and on facebook many people have discovered that it has been stretched uncomfortably out of shape.

Too many worlds colliding, too many invites to vampire garden pirate fishtank zombie kissing applications, and yes, I ended up with kind of too many friends from too many different spheres of my existence (not that I don’t love them all, really) for it to be non-complicated and fun.

And check out what your facing if you want to really remove yourself from Facebook...

Oh, and by the way, in order to delete your Facebook account, apparently, you have to not only deactivate it, but also delete every single item you have contributed to the site (messages, wall posts, posts other people have written on your wall, photos, links to contacts, profile information) and then email customer service and request they delete your account completely. Oh, and also, in order to delete absolutely everything, I’d also have to re-add every single one of the applications I’ve ever had installed, and then go through and remove the content, and then delete the applications again. Because when you delete an application, guess what? Your data is still stored there somewhere. That’s not just meanness, but I’m pretty sure it’s also not just to be helpful in case you’re quitting in a fit of pique like this one and might decide later that you want to come back. It’s also because of the way the business model works: Facebook and all the marketeers who sail in her pretty much just want you to visit as many ad-bearing pages per visit as possible (that’s what all those applications and invites are for), and having lost your eyeballs, they’d quite like to keep the data that can be mined from those activities. So they’re going to make it as difficult as possible to scrub that data out of the system. Can you guess how much that softens my heart toward the company?

Mark Evan's compares his relationship with facebook as a kind of 'amour fou' that has run its course.

At first, the romance was hot and heavy...It was a lusty, unhealthy affair that made me crazy but you know how lust consumes you...You know that awkward feeling when you’re dating someone, and the romance starts to fade? ...I feel that way about Facebook these days...Truth be told, I’ve found someone else - younger, sexier, more streamlined: Twitter. Yet, I’m not as enraptured with Twitter as I once was with Facebook, which is a good sign.

At etech 2006, danah boyd gave what Kathy Sierra called an astonishing talk.  It ended with this definition of an intriguing problem.   Is anyone aware of any solutions to this problem going public in the last year or even in the near future?  

Provide the cultural environment where people can accidentally connect with strangers over meaningful things without being forced to face everyone on the system. Let users privatize or wall off access to only certain people for their own needs. Let users see the values of being public. Of course, balancing privacy needs with public possibilities with the lack of interest in dealing with the *whole* public is quite tricky. Anyone who can solve this design challenge with a robust system will win the hearts of users and investors.