Category Archives: Web/Tech

“Americans care about privacy mainly in the abstract.” – Jonathan Franzen

At a lunch the other week a successful entrepreneur who runs a large social network in Latin America said that he predicts internet users will:

(a) soon unpleasantly discover that they’re publishing more personal info on the web than they’re aware of, and therefore
(b) want more refined privacy features,
(c) want additional social network profiles each with varying levels of publicness and professionalism.

I have the opposite intuitions about (a) and (c). First (a). I agree that many users do not understand how their personal information is tracked and displayed. But I do not think the majority mainstream users of any age care and I think no young people care. Young people will soon replace old people.

It is important to pay attention to who expresses outrage at privacy scandals on popular web sites. When Facebook announced its new privacy settings in December the usual suspects (EFF and other Silicon Valley geeks) issued condemnations.

Did any mainstream user under age 30 give a shit?

Young people care the least about privacy. Or, if we’re not proactively anti-privacy, we have at least stopped clutching to the illusion that real privacy is still possible:

Younger people… are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

All this notwithstanding being told countless times to reign in transparency and cover your private life…or else. Every college senior gets the “be afraid of Facebook, be very afraid” talk from career advisors who trot out examples of drunk photos costing students their jobs. This is overblown. For one, a would-be employer is seeking authenticity and honesty. If they’re so stupid as to expect not a single somewhat embarrassing photo from years 12 – 21, you probably wouldn’t want to work with them. In fact, a raw Facebook profile might just be the breath of fresh air that the hiring person is looking for after reviewing a hundred whitewashed uber-polished resumes.

Also, don’t forget about mutually assured embarrassment: if everyone has few missteps here and there are documented on the web, it’s hard to hold any one person’s gaffes against them.

In response to (c) above, I do not think the majority of users want to maintain different profiles. The web is accelerating the collapse of multiple identities. It is too much work to project different identities on the web, and it’s too easy to spot contradictions. Imagine the embarrassment if on your professional web page you list your favorite music as Chopin and Mozart and on your personal supposedly private blog you rave about Jay-Z and Eminem.

So a most-natural-version-of-yourself synthesis emerges from all your various masks (work mask, family mask, messing-around-with-friends mask, etc). I’m sure people will continue to post various personal information on various web sites, but the substantive content and style will not vary much. Facebook and LinkedIn will consolidate its worldwide dominance of personal and professional profiles, respectively, but even there I predict the differences between the profiles will shrink not grow.

Bottom Line: Young people continue not to care about privacy out the gate. More and more older people view the loss of privacy in a cost-benefit framework and support increased transparency. And “identity synthesis” will drive internet users to require fewer formal online profiles and broader general consistency in how they are portraying themselves on the web.

When companies achieve a certain level of market dominance, similarly-themed complaints tend to emerge. The headline in the tech industry goes: Is Company X Evil? The evil charge usually has three components: 1) the complaints are about corporate strategy more than tactics, 2) the company is only able to execute said strategy thanks to its near-monopoly in a niche, 3) the strategy feels good to consumers in the short-term but is harmful long-term.

Apple and Google have faced the "evil" charge for a few years now. With Apple, people have raised philosophical objections about everything from its policy of approving each iPhone app to its iTunes DRM to its general closed-OS mentality that has been with the company since the beginning. With Google — and now Facebook — the rankle is over how it manages private information.

The one company that has so far been immune to the evil charge is Amazon. Probably because their customer experience is so damn flawless. But the time has come: Is Amazon.com Evil?

Last week, Amazon stopped selling all Macmillan books. Macmillan is one of the big publishers and it was impossible to buy any Macmillan book in print or electronic form from Amazon directly. Amazon did this in response to Macmillan's intent to price e-books above the $9.99 ceiling that Amazon maintains. Over the weekend Amazon reversed its position but the episode provides key insight into how Amazon is trying to consolidate its dominance in the industry.

Here are two outstanding posts which are long but provide essential background. Start with Charlie Stross's introductory overview of the economics of the publishing industry and how Amazon's dominance has changed things. Then read Tobias Buckell's long dispatch on the Macmillan case. Both posts were written before Amazon reversed its decision, but they are worth reading nonetheless.

This update on Amazon changing its mind contains rhetoric from Amazon that is quite misleading. Amazon is positioning itself as fighting for the customer in trying to maintain low prices for e-books, but the truth is that Amazon is loss-leading e-books for the next five years to solidify its supply chain dominance allowing it continued ability to set prices however it wishes, which screws authors and publishers and ultimately readers as well.

For all you iPad haters, see the goodness Steve Jobs has brought? Apple represents a threat to Amazon both in the device / e-reader space and in its potential to launch an iTunes-like e-books store. Competitive dynamics in a market force companies to capitulate to a more enlightened position than monopoly self-interest would advise alone.

And that is reason enough to support the iPad launch. Even if the iPad itself is not that much better than Stone 40,000 BC.

One definition of a personal brand in the intellectual realm is someone for whom you read everything they write no matter the topic or outlet.

The web makes it infinitely easier to both establish a personal brand and follow one. Consider my list of icons / heroes. It's easier to have such a list of personal icons because individuals can now publish their ideas all the time, in organized chronological form — and I can follow them.

For people in the business of spreading ideas, it's critical to establish a brand and develop a following independent of an overarching media brand.

Patricio Navia is one of the most influential columnists in Chile. He writes a column in a top newspaper, he maintains a large Twitter following, he appears on TV, he has a mailing list. To me (and most people) it's irrelevant that Navia is at La Tercerca.

Vivek Wadha is a research professor at UC-Berkeley, but he publishes all over the place: on TechCrunch, on BusinessWeek, on his email mailing list, on Twitter. He is known more for being Vivek than for being at UC-Berkeley.

Another example: I read Jonah Lehrer in Wired, the New Yorker, Nature, on his blog, on Twitter, etc. To me the medium, topic, or media outlet is irrelevant: I have a "relationship" with Jonah individually and want to read everything he writes.

Even though big media companies — and the one-size-fits-all information bundle they deliver — are dying, I'm not sad. I see a future that's increasingly made up of customized information blends which in turn will be made up of content and reporting and analysis delivered by individuals I respect and follow.

In other words: think about information bundles driven by people not topic. A magazine not about "sports" or "business" but rather one featuring commentary by five individuals of my choosing (and I can rotate the five individuals as I wish).

Bottom Line Brainstorm: Perhaps the journalists of tomorrow will remain agnostic to formal institutions and eschew exclusive content distribution deals (e.g. Friedman only appearing in the NYT as he does now). They will be able to do this because their ability to connect direct to customer will be so great. This will allow distribution-only media entities to create lots of different bundles of personal brand driven content. I would pay money for print delivery of a bundle a week's worth of content from, say, Tom Friedman, Richard Posner, Catlin Flanagan, Peter Beinart, and Lee Siegel.

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God Bless the Economist, but I predict a decline as I expect someday soon they will no longer able to attract journalists who will refuse to work at a place where they cannot develop their personal brand, due to the magazine's lack of bylines.

A terrific post by venture capitalist Josh Kopelman on why marketing and customer acquisition plans are strategic and core to a business and not something you put off until the product's ready to ship. I especially agree with his point about the buzzword "virality." Building word-of-mouth doesn't come by wishing it so or "sprinkling" on some magic ingredient at the end of the product development process…

When you type a query into Google it will suggest the most popular completions to the given prefix.

There are some remarkable contrasts, Slate found, between "dumb" searches and "smart" ones. People who start their search "how 2" are more likely to search "how 2 get pregnant" or "how 2 grow weed." People who start their search "how one might" are more likely to search "how one might discover a new piece of music" or "how one might account for the rise of andrew jackson in 1828."

The most fascinating contrast is between "is it wrong to…" vs. "is it ethical to." One change in word generates very different suggestions.

"Is it wrong to…" generated the following suggestions:

Whereas "Is it ethical to" generated the following:

 

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Someone once told me that there is nowhere we are more honest than the search box. We don't lie to Google. Period. We type in what we're thinking — good, bad, and ugly. There's probably no piece of information that would better show what's on someone's mind than their stream of searches.