Too Much Information

When is sharing your life online with others crossing over into  TMI  (Too Much Information) territory?

Like it or not, we make judgments about people based on the integral of all we know about them.  The baseball player who bets on sports in Vegas is assumed to have a vested interest in tailoring his own play to affect his financial bets, whether or not anyone can prove that that’s true.  We assume Tiger Woods credibility as a spokesperson for various corporations is called into question because of what he has done, or hasn’t done in his personal life.  Bill Clinton apparently had a long reputation of “being a dog that was hard to keep on the porch”, but somehow, he still manages to be a brilliant guy and a pretty great president, overall.

We learn about friends and family these days, not just by our own experience, but by the deluge of information available about them on the web.  Before I meet with a client or speak to a group, I do a Google search to find out a bit about them in advance.  It helps me feel prepared, have a sense of who I think they are, and a chance on meeting in person, to match that preconceived notion, based on web data, with what I see in person.

This is why I try to teach my kids and constantly remind myself that everything I say or do online is the most public of records.  The DM’s I get on twitter, the text messages sent to my phone, my email- all of that- has an illusion of privacy, but it is still discoverable by others, in some way, at some point in the future, legally or illegally.

If you note the recent media discussions about controlled leaks from Apple about the upcoming tablet computer, and rumors of similar controlled leaks in government, you’ll note that these conversations all occur over the phone or preferably in person, aren’t taped or recorded, and provide both parties with plausible deniability because there’s no documented paper trail.

The clear lesson here is that if you want to have a private conversation, clearly don’t leave a voicemail message and don’t put any of it in writing- don’t leave a web or digital or actual paper trail.

This brings me to the point of this post, which is a new service called Blippy, where you can share your recent purchases (and the amount spent) on various sites, including Amazon.com, Netflix, Threadless and iTunes.  You can link a credit card as well, so every time you make a purchase at the convenience store, that, too, is posted to this social network.

Here’s a list of the accounts you can link to Blippy:

iTunes	Amazon	Zappos	Audible
GroupOn	Threadless	StubHub	GoDaddy
Netflix	Blockbuster	SeamlessWeb	Wine Library
Credit card (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX), debit card, or bank account

I am all for living life out loud.  I know people can find almost an infinite set of information out about me- but this crosses the line into kind of stalker-ish territory.  It’s one thing to get pointed to cool apps , books, and music that your friends are buying.  In fact, when looking around Blippy, I found a bunch of great things my friends had purchased, especially books and iphone apps,  that makes it almost certain I will purchase the same, which I am sure is Blippy’s whole marketing attempt.  After all, if you can find out, passively, what your friends are up to and what they’re getting, what better way to keep up with the digital Joneses?  Or even better, find out what your friends are into when it comes to birthday times, or for marketers doing blogger outreach?

However, it’s another thing to be updated every time they buy milk or cigarettes at the convenience store.

And let’s talk about the judgments people make about our private spending habits.

Say I get an account and share with my friends and co-workers.  How long before my boss finds out I rent weird films from Blockbuster?  Or am ordering books on how to develop a side career on Amazon?  How long before a health insurance company figures out you never did quit smoking like you swore you did on those forms?  What if they never see me paying for a gym membership?  What happens if you are buying books on how to make a career transition or how to pad your resume?  What if you ordered books about medical issues?  Or your bill from Wine Library TV seems to indicate you have a serious drinking problem?

Yeah, I don’t much care if all my friends learn I have an old school Tretorn addiction and Zappos is my favorite supplier, but does my husband need to know every single penny I spent there?  What if he gets notifications of things meant as gifts for him?

While it’s great all this information can be aggregated in one spot and I can see it being useful even for companies to track what employees are spending on Company credit cards, this is the first social network in a long time asking us to share information that has long been isolated in your credit card bills, email accounts and the sanctity of your ipod and cell phones.  (I’ve long thought you can learn a ton about someone by seeing the contents of their ipod alone- often leading me to be a bit cautious about giving mine to friends and seeing the plethora of various kid tunes (What? an addiction to Trout Fishing in America?  Really?), my secret like of old school hip-hop, and other music that leads to raised eyebrows in some social circles).

After only a few minutes of poking around, I’m getting more information than I planned about my friends.    Not only did I find out about a great analytics app, but the same person also downloaded the  Playboy app as well.  Clearly  information I probably didn’t need, even if it’s clearly nothing to be prudish about.  Likewise, a recent troll through the people my friends are following led me to Leo Leporte’s account, and the multiple $1,500 purchases he made in a short period of time at the Renaissance in Vegas.   People commented on the site about whether he was paying for his team’s hotel rooms or having a bad night at gaming tables,  but is this information everyone should have? Should Leo have to justify what he was buying to everyone on the internet, or his sponsors?   Likewise, Ev Williams bought a Pregnancy Tracker app for his iPhone.  Does that mean I should offer my husband’s services as an OB-GYN?  Should I start knitting a baby present?  I don’t think so, and that’s why I think Blippy, while a marketer’s dream, is a privacy nightmare.

Feel free to make your own conclusions, but for now, for better or for worse, I think I’ll be keeping my purchases to myself.

Tags: Blippy, information, Leo Laporte, privacy, TMI

Searching Walled Gardens…

I’m still getting caught up on podcasts that got the better of me recently, but the one that caught my attention was one of NPR’s Planet Money podcast about Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and an effort to make certain media content “exclusive” and free to that search engine only.

Apparently, Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch are in talks where Microsoft would pay the Wall Street Journal to make its contents exclusive and indexed only on Bing and no other search engines.

I found this whole concept kind of shocking.  While I understand that news organizations have to find new revenue streams, I would happily go back to paying for getting the New York Times delivered to my inbox and  iphone rather than this model.  The idea that search will devolve into separate walled gardens, with parts of the ‘net only searchable on certain search engines seems to me to be against the very nature of what the internet was about- to make information open and “findable” in ways it never has been before.  And frankly, if I have to go to yet another website to see if the Wall Street Journal has a piece of news I might need, I might as well go to the WSJ site directly and search their site internally than use yet another search engine.

From Microsoft’s point of view, I can understand how becoming a site that indexes primarily news, for example, might seem like a great competitive advantage.  What it fails to take into account is that money alone isn’t the only thing that matters anymore.  News comes out via non-mainstream media news sites including the Huffington Post, Politico, not to mention the excellent tech blogs like Tech Crunch , Mashable, and Gizmodo.  News is no longer proprietary in the same way it used to be.

It’s going to be virtually impossible for Microsoft to make news a walled off garden, and even if they do, how will they keep people from re-publishing the same material via, say, a tumblr blog and making it easily indexed by Google as well?  Isn’t this just begging for a “Pirate Bay” solution if established?  How long before bit torrents of news are being siphoned out and placed where they can be indexed and re-indexed by any search engine?

There may even be some anti-competitive issues at play here, but as usual, the law drags so far behind actual technology, it will be years and largely irrelevant before that’s all sorted out.

The bottom line here is that information is a precious commodity, but news is only news for a short period of time before even in its old, traditional newsprint form, it starts lining bird cages and train puppies all over the land.  Information now flows faster than we can analyze and process its meaning, which means the value in this play is at most, temporary and ephemeral.

My largest objection is to turning the internet into a series of walled gardens regarding search, and how much more cumbersome it will make finding good and relevant information.  And as the ‘net has already shown us, in the absence of great and thoughtful information, people will simply propagate what is readily available, which may include rumor, innuendo and more.

The Bing/WSJ deal will be an interesting experiment if it happens, but I wonder what it will mean for the future and how long it can last in an economy where information is distilled down to bits and transmitted faster than Marconi ever could have imagined with the radio telegraph.

Tags: bing, Microsoft, planet money, WSJ

Interesting or Identifiable?

I’ve been reading Chuck Klosterman’s “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs- A Low Culture Manifesto”.  It’s basically a collection of essays-each one different, but each one (so far) displaying Chuck’s great sense of humor, connecting what you would think are wildly disparate things together in a way that gives you pause.  I first heard about Chuck Klosterman through Ira Glass and This American Life, in particular, the great show that’s entitled New Kings of Non Fiction, which is just amazing and easily worth the price and a donation to WBEZ.

In an essay talking about how MTV’s “Real World” helped to define reality TV and how everyone becomes a one-dimensional archetype because it’s easier to cast and tell stories than dealing with the real world complexity of ordinary humans, he says near the end, “Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.”  And this struck a real chord with me.

There seems to be a real tension in life between being genuinely interesting, and being identifiable.   You find this in everything from food, to stores to social media.  In food, there’s a group of people who are always looking for the different and inventive (just watch Top Chef) but most Americans seem to eat more frequently at chain restaurants, serving up familiar and predictable fare, even when they are visiting new cities.  This is a clear case of going for Identifiable over Interesting.  Identifiable is predictable and known- you don’t have to think too hard.  Interesting can have upsides, but it’s risky and you don’t know what you’re getting in advance, and that can be pretty scary.

Even in retail, I see a confluence of both stores and merchandise that plays into choosing an archetype over choosing your own style.  Department stores have gone under major consolidation, so you are basically left with the ultra-high end Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom’s, then Bloomingdales and Macy’s, then Sears and JC Penney, who are basically on the same fashion wavelength as Kohl’s and not far behind are Target and Walmart.  The lack of variation leads to a lack of choice, so we see more and more stores popping up with similar pair structures like the Gap/Old Navy and  Ambercrombie/Aeropostale.  When I shop for clothes for my 14 and 11 year old sons, I find wherever I go, my choices come down to Preppy, Sports Kid, Skater Dude, Rockstar/punk, and My Mother Dresses Me.  My choice in clothing for my kids seems loaded with buying into a stereotype, and I feel like I have to guess the right one to avoid too much scrutiny from either teachers or other students.   Getting the line right between “cool” and “I still respect my elders and won’t cause trouble” is not easy at all, but I have to admit, occasional social media conference t-shirts work well to blur this line between cool and geek.

In social media, it can seem like everyone wants to have an “elevator pitch” of who they are and what they do, classifying themselves into archetypes for others.   For those that seem much more complicated than a  simple label, it becomes harder to market your business and ideas because they aren’t easily labeled or defined.  And in an attention-deficit world, anything that’s too complicated gets left at the curb.

Life is easier if we pigeon-hole everyone we know.  They can be classified and re-categorized, but it saves you time and effort and actual thought if you play the archetype game.  It’s easier to identify people, to tag them, to label them, than get to know them.

But in reality, people and friends are more than trading cards.  We may have lots of friends on social networks, but how many of them are friends that would buy you a cup of coffee or let you crash on their couch?  In a quest for new media popularity, are we going for identifiable over interesting because it’s simply easier?   People are more complicated than the simple archetypal mold we try to fit them into.  But it takes time, effort and actually listening to people consistently over time to see past the label and delve into the interesting.

I’m not sure if we can easily walk the line between interesting and identifiable, because interesting simply takes more time and engagement than a simple identification and label system of interfacing with the world does.  But I know I extract more value out of interesting than I ever have from identifiable relationships with others.   So I’ll continue in my quest to be interesting, even though it often seems the vast majority of people value identifiable, because it’s quicker and easier.  What’s your choice?

Tags: chuck klosterman, clothes, food, indentifiable, interesting, MTV Real World, social media

Challenges and Victories

The Miracle is not that I finished, the miracle is that I had the courage to start. John Bingham

This has been a big week for me.

After organizing Podcamps – digital media community unconferences – for the past few years, we were asked to organize the Open sessions at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City.  This was a tremendous experience that felt a bit like graduation day.  I think we found that you can create intimate learning and sharing spaces within a big conference- and how to engage, even as others found the larger conference colder and less friendly than they may have hoped.  For those that attended, it was a smaller and more intimate podcamp-like experience with some of the most compelling content, ranging from Augmented Reality, Eric Skiff and Bre Pettis talking about NY Resistor and great projects like the Makerbot coming out of it, to talks by Julien Smith of Trust Agents fame, Mitch Joel, best-selling author of Six Pixels of Separation, JC Hutchins, Dave and Lynette Young- and more- I could list the whole schedule here, every session truly worth every minute of your attention and time.  (Special thanks to Li Evans for pinch-hitting at the last moment…)

Then, on Sunday, November 22, I walk/ran the Philadelphia half-marathon.

Having been a desk jockey for quite some time, starting to get in shape and train for this event began in August.  I started working out with a trainer twice a week, and walking almost daily on a treadmill.  I’ve made a lot of progress in a short period of time.  Today, the day after, I am reaping the benefits in any and all shortcomes in my training.  And this is all my fault, of course- not doing enough course-like road work in advance, not doing enough distance, not realizing that all the signs about “pain is a sign of weakness and fear leaving the body” would have infinitely more meaning to me today than they did when I saw the signs along the course at mile 8 or so.

At 43, the fact that I took on this challenge at all is the real miracle, as John Bingham said.  I certainly don’t expect that I’m going to become a world class runner any time soon.  But I am working my way now through physical as well as mental challenges in ways I could not have fully predicted or appreciated beforehand.

And what I’m learning from all of this is that friendship and community is REALLY important, online and offline.

Friends came to NYC under their own steam, paying for their own hotels, to speak at a conference because I asked them to.  I am grateful to all of them, because the success is the sum of everyone’s effort- I just got the opportunity to provide the platform.

The success in finishing the half marathon also had a large amount to do with friends.  Elizabeth Stitson and Letisha Baldwin were also crazy enough to sign up to do this with me, and make it to the end.  Elizabeth was bleeding through her shoe like Curt Shilling in the World Series, but still made it happen.  Jen Yuan let me stay with her in Philly and was out there to cheer us on throughout the course, which was just terrific!  I tweeted out my progress which also went to my Facebook page, and a huge variety of friends from across the country sent on encouraging messages that I got when I needed them most- those times where the temptation to sit down, to stop moving were like a siren’s song.  It’s amazing how that cheering and encouragement, from friends online, and even from strangers on the side of the course- the high fives and more- really make a difference when you are fighting pain like you have never felt before.

I have a suspicion that like childbirth, the pain I feel now will soon recede into a memory.  But the support of my community when I needed it most won’t soon be forgotten.

Like John Bingham, for me, the finishing and doing well were all about keeping momentum going once I got started.  Taking on these challenges in the first place, and the audacity to dream that they could be accomplished took more courage and replacing fear with optimism.  (Okay, sometimes also with a certain naive-ness and not knowing how difficult or painful it would be when I decided it was a great idea…)

Bu t whether the challenge has been physical, mental, or largely a combination of both, the strength to get through has been helped tremendously by my friends and community.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I truly have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and will be thinking of you all on that day when we count our blessings.  More than ever, I feel truly grateful and thankful for a community that is so supportive, giving, kind, and a fountain of possibility and encouragement.  That’s a lot to be thankful for.

Why Should You Share?

I had someone ask me a question about sharing and linking at my recent presentation about Blogging for Business at AGS University.  They said someone had told them they shouldn’t link out to others because it was taking traffic away from your website and giving it to others.  I thought this was a strange perspective and strategy to take, and here’s why.  If you never link to anyone else, why should they link to you?  You will then be limited to only the traffic you can generate yourself, and very little referral or word of mouth traffic from others, which is how most people generate new business.  It seems to be a short-sighted strategy, like overbuying food you’ll never be able to consume- it’s hoarding your own traffic at the expense of others, but it’s also not doing you very much good, either.

There’s a chapter looking at Altruism in the new Super Freakanomics book. (There seems to be some controversy around, especially regarding the chapter on global warming, but the most relevant chapter to me was about altruism.)  In this chapter, the authors discuss how part of altruism and doing good things for others that may not always serve you the best, is the side effects of being seen as a good and trustworthy person.  The warm feeling you get from helping other people is one of the benefits of altruism, and it’s why most people who volunteer will say things like “I get as much out of it as I put in.”

On the web, trust, authority, search engine optimization and the like are all geared towards measuring whether or not your business/blog/website is relevant to people searching for information.  The more links, tags, keywords and the rest on your site, the more the search engines can parse whether your site is a good match for people searching for “dog food” “specialty gifts” or even “consultants.”  The more other people consider you an authority, the more authoritative by default you become.  It’s a positive (or negative) feedback loop, that you grow by being generous with others.

This is a concept at the heart of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents- how you can build your “juice” online by being someone worthy of trust, by becoming an authority, by helping other people.  This is the old “bread on the water” strategy, that often you help other people without charging, with a tacit if unspoken understanding that if you are asked for a favor in return, it’s more likely than not someone will help you out in return.  It’s “paying it forward”.  It’s the old cliche of “you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

And if you want to get down to the neuro- and behavioral science, people remember positive experiences- positive reinforcement is the greatest tool to help alter behavior, where negative reinforcement or bad experiences tend to cut off a behavior, but doesn’t necessarily replace it with a new behavior.  So for example, if I want my kids to clean up after themselves, small amounts of praise is more likely to get them to comply next time than yelling at them ever will.  Likewise, if I want people to come back to my website, I better offer them useful information, a product they can use or take advantage of, or share  resources- something to make it worth their time and attention.

Personally, I use Google reader and Delicious, a social bookmarking site, to save and share blog posts, websites, and other online information sources for myself, but also offer it up for others who are interested.  I tell people in seminars that if you really want to know what I am up to, a check of my Delicious site will give you an idea of what I’m finding new and notable and what I’m researching.  I check on the sites of friends for the same reason, because usually I find something there that I haven’t come across on my own.  Rather than keep these bookmarks private on my computer, these bookmarks are web based, meaning I can access them from anywhere and use this information more efficiently than if it’s locked up at home on my machine.

Likewise with Google Reader- there are gazillions of blog posts everywhere online.  Using my friends as a filter, I get pointed to some of the best stuff around, on topics I may be interested in, that I might not have found on my own.  Over time, these tools build my personal library of information, making it more useful for me, but also to everyone I know.

Keeping this information a “secret” helps no one.  When we’re taking about information out there on the web, we can’t possibly keep up with it all, yet it’s all public, so how “secret” can it be, anyway?  By taking a sharing mentality, I help myself, but I help others at the same time.  I become a resource for information, which helps my reputation and consulting business.  This “looking to help others” mindset therefore also pays off for me personally, creating another positive loop.  It also has the side benefit of just being good karma, which I can live with as well.

So in the end, I honestly believe sharing information online helps you more than it hurts.  While you might not share a secret pharmaceutical formula or the 7 secret herbs and spices on the web (some things are industry secrets), anything available on the web, openly, you might consider sharing- you become an aggregator, a reference source, and a trust agent, just by sharing a bit of what you know and think.

Plain and simple- people you like you more and pay attention- and that’s not something that you can discount these days.