InnoWiser

I love comics of most types. I grew up on a staple diet of Phantom , Mandrake the Magician , Spider Man and many others during my childhood. During teenage years I discovered Asterix, Obelix and the gang and the characters have remained my favorites ever since. Later I discovered Calvin and Hobbes , that irreverent comic strip that appealed to my inner child. Who am I kidding, it still appeals to me as ever. Rather sad then that the official Calvin and Hobbes isn’t online.

In the past few months I have enjoyed xkcd . However, my top new favorite is the new (to me) Noise to Signal strip, written by Rob Cottingham. Satire crossed with all the social media hype crossed with technology, and wrapped up in a memorable graphic. That’s what I love.

(via Noise to Signal)

Four hundred people –
The line snakes two blocks, at night
Still no iPhone

All night vigils
$300 down, activation fail
Really worth it all??

Tomorrow’s Friday the 11th. Nothing too significant about it, except it means it’s time to open up the wallet to the fine folks at Apple. Having already plonked down a couple of grand on a new Mac laptop, I am totally in the zone - the so-called "reality distortion field" whose rays are close enough at the local Apple store in Clarendon.

I am in the market for a smart, chic, mobile-web capable phone, and having held out for so long for the faster version of the iPhone, I think I will hold out just a little bit more. Not for me the midnight vigils, shivering in the cold, as some of the NZ folks did [via Kedrosky ]. Not for me the early adoption of iPhone 1.0 and the subsequent post-purchase dissonance anger at the $200 price drop. I like my hardware tried and tested, though I’m game for early software.

So.. as a result, I will not be in the line for iPhone tomorrow. However, I just might be in the store on the weekend. Let’s see the likes and dislikes.

Likes: Faster, cheaper, better. Lots of software. The AppStore is already open and folks have already downloaded, ahead of the release of the phone itself, plenty of games and applications. Super Monkey Ball? Hmm. Maybe worth buying. Facebook mobile and Google Mail? Definitely.

Dislikes: Total Cost of Ownership. Let’s see how this stacks up.

Phone: $300 (I like the 16 GB model)

AT&T Plan: an extra $30 for data (that’s 10 bucks/month more than iPhone 1.0)

Text PlN: $5 (for a paltry 200 texts), to $20 for unlimited. This is, as others have pointed out, an extortion, in which all carriers are quite happy to participate. At 20 cents/text, up from 15 cents/text, this would amount to almost $1500/Megabyte . Yikes!

In the US, texting has caught up in the last 2-3 years. And there is little alternative if you maintain a really mobile lifestyle. Which is why carriers have upped the prices in the past 2 years. Let’s hope some new apps will reduce the burden of (vastly expensive and inefficient) texting.

Total operational cost: $1,080/ year, not including taxes.

Here is more on what the iPhone will cost.

Twitter’s Fail Whale has a fan club . Apparently as a result of being lifted out of water — a few too many times — by its feathered friends And a Facebook club . And a complete set of merchandise at Zazzle , from mugs to that all-American necessity - the T-shirt.

Many bloggers have commented on Twitter’s downtime . I’ll restrict mine to a little haiku.

"Too many tweets"
says Fail Whale. Seek inner peace
Time to do real work.

[Image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurita13/2625253306/]

Most mass media have evolved on the backbone of advertising. Advertisers support the medium by buying ad space, inventory, etc.; consumers (readers, surfers, listeners, etc.) get their fix of the media’s message for free or by paying a small sum to the channels. Newspapers have used business model for years, and so has TV and radio. It’s a concept that is readily understood by all the parties.

The Web is no different. The evolution of Internet and advertising has shown, very clearly, that this ad-supported model is well entrenched. Internet advertising is about $24 billion a year market, and growing faster than you can say “Stop! Spam!”. Users / readers / listeners have consistently shown that they prefer “free” content on the web over over paid content, even if the cost of that “free” content is consuming ads. The New York Time has abandoned its paid subscription model (reportedly earning less than $10 million a year) in favor of an open, ad-supported business. Rumors are persistent that even the Wall St. Journal may offer free, ad-supported access to its content. Even the BBC has started displaying ads on its website for out-of-the-UK users. Perhaps the media are seeing the online message.

But the larger question is - who clicks on these online ads? And more relevantly for this post - who clicks on mobile ads?

BBC commentator Bill Thompson writes that that the writing is on the wall for ads.

“The growth of the internet, and the availability of content, services and even software, would seem to depend on the continuing stream of advertising revenue that flows across the network… This growing reliance on advertising over other forms of income carries with it the same dangers as any other dependency on a single source of revenue in business. While it is unlikely that Google, Microsoft or Yahoo will vanish, changes to their business models could threaten the deals which currently keep many sites alive.But the real problem is that the flow of funds into the advertising networks could diminish, especially if there is an economic downturn.”

And it indeed is. The downturn of 2000 - 2003 is a persistent reminder. It would seem that users who click on these ads are indeed serving an important purpose, namely, keeping the online content (mostly) free for the rest of us.

So who are the people who click on ads? I, personally, have only clicked-thru while doing a focused product / service search. Something like the Canon 800 IS, or Garmin Nuvi that I recently bought. I rarely click thru the banner ads largely because I don’t see them in the first place, thanks to AdBlock Plus, the super easy Firefox extension that blocks most visual ads. (Not being part of the MTV generation who were constantly fed the erratically moving images that I find utterly distracting, not to mention head-ache inducing, I have never gotten accustomed to these distracting, fast-moving images, even on shows like “24″ or movies like “Bourne Ultimatum”. So, no dancing people or annoying graphics for me. Wonder if NYT will now let me access their site? What about BBC?? Hmm…) And I’m pretty sure, I’m not the only one of the not-clicking kind.

Quoting dana boyd, one of the first people to research online communities and their social interactions and networks, Bill says the ‘heavy clickers’ form roughly 0.2% of web users and they are largely older folks, predominantly women, and predominantly mid-western, with some from New England and mid-Atlantic. They tend to click on sweepstakes more than any other content. (See danah’s interesting post here.) The results were part of an AOL study. (I’m assuming this study was US-based.) Danah goes on to add that these users are likely to be:-

• More representative of lower income households than the average user.
• Less educated than the average user (or from less-educated environments in the case of minors).
• More likely to live outside of the major metro regions.

In other words, these are “more likely to trend lower in both economic and social capital than the average user.”

Hmm… now if you are an average web advertiser, would this be your target market, broadly speaking? I thought so.

Now, it’s entirely possible that there are richer segments (financially speaking) that are heavy clickers, or that different sites would have different consumer characteristics and therefore varied click-thru concentration. The question, though, is still quite valid - who are the more frequent clickers?

I am looking for more research on this, and would appreciate any studies or links you may have come across. Thanks!

Mobile

In the mobile space, this question is even more relevant. Mobile advertising is still in its infancy, with roughly $870 million spent in 2006 (Informa estimate). Estimates of its growth vary dramatically, from $5 billion in US by 2011 (eMarketer estimate) to $11 billion globally by 2011 (Informa estimate) to beyond $14 billion globally by 2012 (Strategy Analytics estimate).

One mobile firm that is offering ad-subsidized mobile services is Blyk. Analysts and industry watchers have keenly followed the launch and rise of Blyk. Blyk offers 16-24 year olds (in the UK) free “217 text messages and 43 minutes” per month, in exchange for 6 SMS texts per day. Users fill out a questionnaire about their habits and the brands they like, and receive ads based on their taste. Blyk’s Timo Ahopelto writes about its business model:

First, the need to lower the phone bill is universal among young people. No matter where you go, young people are students or early in their careers, needing to save money for both necessity and fun. Second, Blyk links young people up with brands they like. Access to brand messages is social capital among young people. Third, advertising in traditional media is losing its power exactly like in Europe. Street corners are packed with billboards, and television programs are testing the limits of advertising per hour. A mobile media where themes, frequency, timing and pace of advertising are designed to deliver the best impact for brands and user experience for consumers does play very well in this environment.

Looks like Blyk has its bases covered. The youth market is a hot commodity in advertising, and if Blyk succeeds in targeting them, well, the industry will likely follow. All the best to Blyk, people are closely watching.

In other research, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has written that it’s not just the youth who may be clicking on mobile ads, but also the older, more professional crowd who form the bulk of the Blackberry crowd, paying $10 per month or more for email access. Indeed this segment would be a good catch, if the advertisers can entice them to click on the ads in the first place.

So, if you are a mobile user, have you clicked on ads? Which ones? What types (SMS texts, coupons, videos, etc.)? Let me know!

Also, I would love to see more non-vendor supported/sponsored studies on mobile advertising. If anyone has any links, please do share. Thanks!

This is classic, from Ms Rogue.

What trait do teenagers share with Facebook?

An inability to see the long-term consequences of their bad short-term decisions.

This is, of course, with respect to the Facebook Beacon and the ensuing brouhaha. Not that I don’t want Facebook to succeed; on the contrary, it would interesting to see it success (as if 40 million users isn’t successful enough). But for those who are concerned about the privacy issues of FB Beacon and are looking to stop the FBook beacon, here’s a quick link on how to do it.

MIT students hackers, in keeping with their long standing tradition of hacks, practical jokes and other humorous pranks, recently scored another one*. This time they pwned venerable John Harvard’s statue.

Olde John is seen sporting a Spartan helmet complete with a Beaver emblem, a la a Halo 3’s Master Chief warrior, an assault rifle, “in recognition of the release of Halo 3″ video game. Right on, I say!

As it happens, that statue is a statue of “three lies”. The university was not founded by John Harvard (it was named after him when he bequeathed his library); it was founded in 1636 (not 1638, as written on the statue’s pedestal); and the model is not John Harvard, but a friend of the sculptor’s. The old guard who sits somewhere near it never fails to inform tourists after they have taken their picture with it.

At MIT, we always enjoy(ed) a little friendly rivalry with the school down the river. It’s great to see the tradition continued. Apparently, the blogosphere has noticed.

Some of the previous hacks have included installing a police car on top of the great MIT dome, hauling a cow on it (which had to be offloaded by a helicopter), a Lord of the Rings inscription around the dome, among others.

For the curiously minded, a chronology of MIT hacks is documented in “Nightwork“, reportedly written by “Institute Historian T.F. Peterson“. An inside joke, if ever there was one.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist this story, even if sort-of off-topic. After first dissing leetspeak, I can’t help noticing it everywhere.) It’s been a while since I saw these hacks. Interesting How Time Flies Past…

“Internet Addiction Disorder“. Sooner or later, this term had to enter the zeitgeist. It happened way back in ‘95, but now the trend-spotting ad agency JWT claims it affects “more than 1 in 3 Americans”. Americans are giving up socializing and other offline activities in favor of a WiFi signal and an Internet connection. Interestingly, the survey says many people think of their mobile phones as an extension of themselves. Maybe the surveyors forgot to include Japanese teenagers about how they feel about their mobiles?

John P., formerly of GMSV and now at All Things D, has a funny take on it.

I’m ambivalent about many of these (media-created/ publicized) “disorders”, like the “restless leg syndrome“, but if these are repeated often, do they become self-fulfilling prophecies?

On the other hand, the tribe of those CrackBerry Blackberry wielding people (you know who you are) is ever increasing. Lucy Kellaway, always the one to make fun of corporate trends and shenanigans, has her take on it. Even the WSJ dipped its toe in it talking about “Blackberry Orphans”. No doubt, to appeal to those same people.

(For the record, I am still haven’t joined the ranks… yet).

The explosion in social networks of all flavors on the web may have increased one’s online social presence; however, it has also created several problem of its own, both technical and social. Multiple identities with its attendant password problem is just the tip of the iceberg. Far more grave is the information overload from blogs, newsfeeds, updates, emails, tweets requests for responses and all manner of attention-seeking sites. How many users consider these are real problems? How serious are these? And how are users coping with them? Solving these problems is not very easy; if it were, they would have been resolved to some extent. Whoever seeks to surmount these challenges will require deep insight into users’ behavior and needs, and will have tremendous opportunities.

[This is a rather long post. I appreciate your patience here. It was important for me to jot down all the thoughts together, rather than present them piecemeal.]

Today, most users are on multiple social networks. You might have your own page on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo if you are college student, or perhaps somebody persuaded by the recent slew of articles in mainstream media (BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Time, WSJ, etc). You might be on LinkedIn or Ryze if you are a professional. If you are a travel fan, you might be on TravelPod, BootsnAll or have atleast surfed some of those blogs. You might have your own blog on Blogger, Wordpress, Vox, LiveJournal or on your own domain, and interact with your users using MyBlogLog. You might surf the web using recommendations from your virtual ‘friends’ using Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or other recommendation sites. If you are a music fan, you might be on last.fm, imeem or MySpace. If you are particularly well known or an early adopter, you might have your own set of followers on Twitter, or any of the mobile social networks. If you are into photography, you might have your pictures (and friends/fans) on Flickr, Photobucket, or Slide. You may already have multiple email accounts on Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail or all three. You may also be chatting with your friends and family on Yahoo!, Gmail, Skype, MSN, etc. This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you are like most people I know, you might have several accounts, either known to each other or not.

I know I’m not the first one to think about it. Jon Udell writes :
“How many networks can one person join? How many different identities can one person sanely manage? How many different tagging or photo-uploading or friending protocols can one person deal with?” He also notes whether and how each new social network will reach a critical mass. (More on this later). Echoing him, Tim O’Reilly writes: “What really needs to be done is not just to connect the various social networks that do exist in internet network-of-networks style, but also to social-network enable our real social network apps: our IM, our email, our phone. Where, I keep asking vendors, is the Web 2.0 address book?”
ZDNet Blogger Steve O’Hear Read/Write Web’s 2007 Web predictions and writes: “Another driving force for social networks in 07, will be the increasing number of niche networks which are highly targeted to particular interest groups or social activities. The question that still remains however, is how many social networks any one user is likely to join and remain active in? This is where Read/WriteWeb’s prediction of fatigue has more weight.” In another post, he goes on to talk about data rights issues.
Sure, the problems have been discussed before, but I can’t help feeling that there’s more to these problems - more social than technical, perhaps - and we need more insight before we “solve” them.

The Problems

The way I see it, there are atleast five problems (in no particular order). I will list the solutions or attempts at resolution later, but first I want to focus on the problems themselves.

1. Multiple accounts. Everybody has them: accounts for various social networks, accounts for banks and other financial institutions, accounts for email,… The problems are not unknown or new - lost or forgotten passwords (been there), lost or forgotten user names (I’ve been there), etc. Over time, the passwords get more predictable, perhaps leading to easily hackable accounts. Of course, there are ways to solve some of these problems. Password managers on browsers come to mind. But more on solutions later.
2. Multiple identities. An issue close to, but not the same as, the multiple accounts. This is a more deep seated issue and has more social implications than the previous one, which had mainly technical issues. How do users reconcile multiple identities on multiple networks? *Do* they reconcile, and do they care? Do YOU want all your identities/avatars known to every person in your network? Think anonymity, think differing interests, think professional network versus the casual, social network, and think the differences between off-line networks and online ones. This is the reason why most ‘kids’ on Facebook don’t want to ‘friend’ their parents, who seem to be joining the network in droves, perhaps out of curiosity to see who among *their* age-group is on it, if not to snoop on their kids’ online activities.
I believe users lie along the entire spectrum here, from wanting only one identity across all networks to having completely separate identities on each different network. I am somewhere in between, and I suspect most users will stand somewhere in between as well. Technologies like Open ID exist to solve this problem. However, this is an evolving issue, and it cannot be resolved completely without first understanding the needs, behavior and issues of different user segments.
3. Privacy. Is privacy on the Internet dead, as Scott McNealy once proclaimed? And shall we get over it? This issue is moot when you consider the issue of multiple identities. The more online presence one has, the it is easier to stalk, hack, and disrepute someone. This is especially worrisome when more and more younger kids are getting online, joining various networks, and exposing their entire life online. The net-gen is cool with discussing their angst for all to see, perhaps leaving embarrassing imprints for posterity. And if not for posterity, then surely for future employers. Besides these, the question remains: who owns your personal data, your click streams, your interactions, your preferences? Some social network du jour? Or you? And how would you control it, if at all? Of course, this problem is not unique to social networks, except that networks only compound it. I do not have any great answers… just some obvious questions here.
4. Information overload. With dozens of social networking sites, thousands of blogs, news sites, shopping sites, entertainment destinations, portals, 24/7 crackberry with push email all constantly vying for a piece of our attention, no wonder many people feel overwhelmed. Again, this concept is not new. It’s been discussed before: Read/Write Web has an excellent overview. The book Attention Economy discusses the causes and effects. The Web is only increasing in size, so there’s ever more demand for our attention. Online social networks are only adding to the noise on the signal. No wonder then, that there’s a surge in recommendation sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and others where users “recommend” stories to other users, each designed to provide a better user experience based on taste and preference. Technologies like RSS and information filters like news readers (Google Reader Newsreader, and so on), do allow users to be selective, but too many subscriptions create their own problems.

As expected, there are users who will cope — indeed flourish — within this information glut. And then there are those who will find it overwhelming and seek out a quiet time. It is not surprising, then, to see sites like NoSo Project - a ’social’ network that is a “real world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking events. The NoSo experience offers an opportunity to create NO connections by scheduling NO events with NO friends”. Hmm… an *unsocial* social network?
5. Utility. Social networks obviously provide a benefit. Networks are formed around people with certain affinities. So long as the perceived value of the network is more than the perceived transaction cost of connecting with others, the network will grow. Its members will derive some benefits. But it’s a different matter whether *each* new social network will grow beyond a certain *critical mass*.
Let’s say you are a new user, until now not connected to any network. You are faced with the choice of joining a dozen (or 20, or 40) networks. How would you decide which network to join? You might say: Gee, Metcalfe’s law says that a network’s value increases (quadratically, or exponentially) with every node. So would you join all the dozen networks? Would your utility increase proportionately after joining all the networks? Umm… I am not so sure. You’d probably join the one (or few networks) with perceived maximum utility based on your tastes. After a certain point, joining a new network does not increase the utility. In fact, it may diminish the utility within your existing networks. And the reason for that is simple: the demand on our time divide our attention, to the extent that the quality of connection (or value) diminishes. In the real, off-line world we limit our physical interactions to the most important.
While the above analogy may seem theoretical, here’s a practical example. On networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace where adding number of “connections” or “friends” is often a competitive sport, do you balk at connecting with users who have 500 “friends”? How about 1000? Or 10,000? or 1 million? If so, then that might be your threshold of diminishing return. If you’ve never balked at any such number, then perhaps you and I are viewing quality of interactions with a different lens.
The trouble, of course, is that we do not know the quality of these connections. That’s a whole ‘nother topic of discussion, but it points to the perceived value or utility of the network.

The Solutions
None of the above problems are meant to be seen in isolation, nor does it mean that these are not resolvable. There are technical solutions and social solutions. There is, of course, one technical solution to the problem of disparate networks. Join them together. And Facebook is doing just that, with its social networking platform.

More on this and other solutions in another post.

Meanwhile, what do YOU think are the problems with social networks? Have you experienced any? What would make you join or leave another social network? Let me know in the comments below!