Digital ID Coach

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friends/family, history, records, tools ads, advertising, business, Communication, Communication design, Design, Graphic design, Internet, marketing, personal information, sharing, social networks, Technology/Internet, web 2.0

Your Network, Your Reputation

August 3rd, 2009

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With the rapid growth and use of social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and many others, there’s a growing interest by service providers, marketers, and hosting companies in mapping this fertile ground. Your network (online and in person) is where your reputation resides. What does your network say about you?

What to Measure?

IBM (a company with more than 38,000 patents) published a paper called Social Ties and Their Relevance to Churn in Mobile Telecom Networks in which the authors point out that it’s not the individuals that are important. It’s their relationships. From the abstract, “Exploring the nature and strength of these ties can help understand the structure and dynamics of social networks and explain real-world phenomena, ranging from organizational efficiency to the spread of information and disease.”

The bottom line here is that if enough of your friends don’t like something, there’s a tipping point where people start changing to something else. In the case of mobile phones, for instance, lots of people will get a new phone when their provider becomes a problem, and their friends agree about that problem.

There are two parts to this issue. First: whether you are a leader or a follower. Marketers and advertisers really care about leaders because they will influence their friends to do (or not do) something. Second: the mapping process can get rather personal. The IBM paper above looks at the “aggregate” or group behavior of a network. However, tools can be tuned or created to be very specific about your network: whom you see, how often, and who else they’re connected to.

In the case of politics where transparency is informative, you can see nice, detailed visualizations of networks at work around TARP (the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or “bank bailout” money), federal funding earmarks, or health care. But what about when it gets personal?

Coaching moment: Records of your relationships and your network are everywhere: in your social networks, in your email, on your phone, records of bridge tolls, and more. The mapping technology doesn’t yet work in real-time, but it’ll happen. By itself, this isn’t the major concern for me. The really big problem lies in the fact that we don’t have rules for how this information can or should be used.

Our corporations do not have the same concerns, priorities, or moral compass that people do. Corporations are motivated by what the company can do that is profitable and makes their shareholders happy. There are no laws or other forms of guidance about what proper social behavior is, largely because as a society or a culture, we’ve never talked about it.

I suggest now is a good time to start talking. With your friends. What do you want in an Information Policy Platform?

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friends/family, history, records, tools analysis, bank bailout, Community building, Facebook, IBM, Interpersonal ties, mobile phones, MySpace, network, Online social networking, reputation, social network, social networking sites, social networks, Social psychology, Sociology, Technology/Internet, Twitter

Social (Media) Memory

January 27th, 2009

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(Holy cats: 10 days since my last post. Where does the time go?)

A little while ago I had the distinct joy of talking with my friend Jean Russell when she was en route to Boston. I always come away from our conversations with a warm glow and lots to write about. Alas, I did not get my thinking into words fast enough to do justice to our conversation about social networks, and how we effectively (creatively) integrate and braid the threads, interests, and work of our lives with our friends, colleagues, and supportive strangers. I do remember that as she was arriving at her destination with time to spare, I was able to call another friend (hey Judy!) in Boston and hook them up. Each of them reported having a fascinating conversation; both reported that the timing was weird and interesting. That’s sometimes how networks work.

This taps into a post that Jean has today about becoming “sticky” in other people’s memory. Jean is a busy gal:

I “follow” abut 700 people on twitter, with about 1000 following me. At scale like this, the question I often am asked is, “How do you remember all those people?”

You know that anyone whose “network [is] made of hundreds of brilliant, interesting, inspiring, compassionate people” is a person to be reckoned with. Additionally, you know that getting a new job or new clients is often (at least partly) about who you know and word-of-mouth. It’s worth noting that your social network can help raise you up in times of need, and all boats rise with you (meaning others benefit too).

Coaching moment: Your reputation is part of who you are. Your social network is where your reputation resides. This doesn’t mean that you need to use all of the social media tools available. Pick one or two and try them out. If they feel right, add a few friends and keep testing. If not, delete that account if you can, and start on a new service. You might wish to find a service where your friends are (like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn) and start there, as your friends will be your early support for exploration and learning.

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friends/family, tools @nurturegirl, Boston, Facebook, Jean Russell, LinkedIn, MySpace, reputation, social media, social network, social networks

Working toward Personalized Commerce

December 13th, 2008

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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada made this outstanding video called Privacy and Social Networks. It’s important to understand, as this video shows, that this harvesting of personal data is going on all the time.

Coaching moment: There are two sides to this problem. On one side are the account holders of these social networking sites. They are busy disclosing their interests, connections, and lives. These account holders may not realize that they are being mapped and sold out to the extent that they are. Perhaps they think it’s ok.

On the other side are the businesses that run these sites. They have Terms of Service (TOS) contracts that account holders agree to, whether they read the terms or not. The businesses engage in harvesting and selling practices that benefit their bottom line. (Would you expect anything less? They are businesses, and this is one way that it’s done.) The problem is that the buying and selling of account holder data is not transparent to the account holders.

If this makes you feel uneasy (and I think it should), think about how you’d change this model. An underlying assumption of the whole user data exchange is that companies want to sell you their stuff. The harvesting and data collection is about making sure you’re more likely to be interested in what they want to sell you. Marketers don’t like guessing, and they often get it wrong. (When you don’t buy, it’s a wasted catalog).

But what would it look like if you had a platform for requesting marketing material for something you’re interested in buying, instead of getting angry that you have so much spam and bulk mail (catalogs and the like)?

This is a much longer post about some work being done in this area. Read more…

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