Connect.me is a socially verified reputation system in which people vouch for other people using customizable tags. This is called social vouching. The whole system is based on it, so someone has to vouch for another person to join the network. The purpose of this session was to help a group of people get their initial vouch and learn how to use this new network.
It works in conjunction with/on top of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you follow or are connected to someone in one of those networks, they show up in your network as someone you can offer a “vouch” for. For example, I vouched for Drummond with tags “digital identity” and “trust frameworks,” which are both areas that he has done considerable work in for years. I also vouched for Kaliya (one of the organizers of this event) with tags “identity” and “digital identity” because she’s known widely as “identity woman.”
People can refer to others on this site by their reputation, as represented by their tags (what people know them for). One of the tags I’m known for is “early adopter.”
Much of this session was working through some of the user interface glitches and idiosyncracies. This was a great opportunity to see how things work with more people doing the testing. Once we got past some of the early work-in-progress, it was clear that there is a good networking resource in the making.
For anyone at IIW who wants to start using the network, you can either: 1) have anyone that is already using it — and that you have a link to on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – vouch for you (and then you’ll be sent a custom invitation link), or if you’re not at IIW, 2) go to http://connect.me, sign up, and then either give the username you registered to Drummond (or send it to him at drummond — at — connect — dot — me ) and he will vouch for you as an early adopter to get you into the beta.
Danah Boyd is an insightful researcher. She just wrote a post called “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power in which she takes Google to task for their changing policies and rather abrupt practice of kicking people off of Google Plus. I agree that being arbitrary is an abuse of power when it affects people so strongly (disabling an account removes the use of all services, not just Google Plus). However, there are two kinds of power: shared, and proprietary.
Google, along with Facebook, Twitter, and in fact nearly all Internet-based services (Amazon, eBay, your Internet service provider, etc.), are proprietary. These services are run by companies that:
are private or beholden to shareholders (their “business model”),
have one-sided Terms of Service and Policy documents that users are required to agree to, and
are based on the selective delivery of their user base to their customers (usually advertisers).
A striking characteristic of these businesses is that they have a practice of reducing things to black and white. Our chosen (registered) name “is” or “is not” really us. See Doc’s post A Sense of Bewronging for more thought on this. In a simplified (business) sense, it is an abuse of social power to declare that many of us are not who we say we are, even if we’re known to many others by our chosen registered name.
Contrast this with a shared power model, like a commons, or services that are implemented according to open standards. The underlying Internet protocols (the apache web server, sendmail, TCP/IP, etc.) are not owned by anyone, everybody can use them, and anybody can improve them. These resources are shared—no terms of service is required to use the Internet or email with any device you choose, with any compatible software, from any location that has access. “Commons” is where you can be who you are, no matter what name you go by.
Coaching moment: This may be a non-issue for some. I have friends that use their name to create a “brand” for themselves—so people will recognize them everywhere, and know what they’re about. However, that’s not an option for people in sensitive situations. Think of it this way: Everyone has a moment when they choose not to disclose some bit of information to the world. Sometimes it’s a name. That’s not a bad thing, and it should be a choice.
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?
This is the delicate balance that exists for those of us representing our companies thru social media. Since conversation is king, those who are great at engaging in dialog both online and offline will likely become the voice of their company whether intentionally or by accident.
We become part of “the brand”–the marketing and communications efforts that help distinguish our company from the rest of the marketplace. In a sense, we become our work and our work takes on life through us. This is interesting because people don’t always have good filters to separate their personal “self” from their work persona (or lack the ability to be professional enough to represent their company).
I asked my friend Neenz Feleafine for her thoughts on this. Neenz uses social media tools like Twitter and Facebook for her professional life.
JC: Do you think people ever find this confusing–as if you were being a commercial?
NF: A few years ago when I first began participating in social networking sites it was out of curiosity. Today, it’s purely for business. I use social media tools to build my network, but I engage in relationships through other more intimate forms of communication: emails, VoIP, IM, telephone calls and most importantly real life meetings to maintain my network.
One of the greatest things–although making friends was never a goal for my use of social networks or social media tools–I have discovered very good people, and am developing not only solid business relationships, but lifetime friendships.
JC: Do people ever confuse you and your personal network with the companies that you promote? I mean do people think that Alltop is involved with some of your personal interests?
NF: My role with Alltop is Chief Evangelist which means that I am to spread the good news of Alltop without ceasing. And, it’s my honor to do so. I have been blessed with a much coveted opportunity to work with Guy Kawasaki–learning and growing, loyalty and perseverance, and grinding it out are my personal interests.
I have also recently launched my social media marketing startup, Pono Media–as an entrepreneur there isn’t much else to be interested in except for its success.
I am fortunate to have the unconditional love and support of Lilinoe, Chelsea, and Jayden for me to invest so much of my time in Alltop and Pono Media.
JC: What are your thoughts on managing your digital self in mixed purposes?
NF: More than 95% of my network met me as “Alltop’s Chief Evangelist”. Only in the recent months have my classmates, friends, and family members taken an active interest in Facebook. And, I have exactly 2 friends that I knew since childhood whom have joined Twitter, but very rarely participate.
Coaching moment: Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and LinkedIn often work to blur the distinction between our personal and professional lives. It’s not enough to compartmentalize yourself with the confines of a specific service. For example, your personal (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) life can–and sometimes does–crash into your professional life (e.g., LinkedIn, or a potential job interviewer Googling you before your interview). Your Twitter stream (sometimes referred to as a form of “life streaming”) likely contains conversations about all parts of your life.
Whether you are online to represent your inner personal self and/or companies that you do business with, it’s worth noting that services and people on the Internet are archiving everything, and they have no particular reason to keep everything in context. Until tools are developed to help us manage our conversations, transactions, and relationships, we’ll need to be mindful of who we really are.
Yesterday was my first of three days at the identity Commons’ Internet Identity Workshop. I posted about this workshop earlier, and how I was excited to be attending. Now that I’m here, the conversations and technology are more fascinating, and the people way more engaging than I indicated in my earlier post. You can get a remote taste of the conversations by checking the twitter stream while its available.
One of the sessions I attended was about the Information Card and various selector software. I’ll be looking at these in a future post. For now, think of information cards as the digital equivalent to the membership, identity (e.g., driver’s license, health care card, etc.) and credit cards in your wallet. Think of the selector software as your digital wallet, but with some smarts to suggest cards that have the appropriate credentials.
Coaching moment: You have a wallet, and likely there are many cards inside. The idea is that a digital wallet is portable, and pictures of various cards might work easily for people that don’t want to know any more about identity than which card is the right one to use. We do that every day anyway. What if that were easier, and more secure? Might you be interested in this?
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Danah Boyd
