Search Sense

I was using Facebook this morning to look at the new Facebook chat function and I started to think about data capture and the position of power that Facebook has attained. There is an underlying commercial exchange that occurs when we opt in as nodes in a network such as Facebook - in exchange for our position as a node we hand over personal data that can then be traded as a commodity by Facebook (Beacon).

I dont know if I like that, so I started to look for the ‘answer’. I came across an excellent post by Christoper Carfi on his blog The Social Customer Manifesto. He quoted his friend who had come out with a rather nice statement:

“Networks don’t have people. People have networks” - Demian Entrekin

These 7 words encapsulate how Carfi feels that the industry will evolve.

I think this is shaped and ratified by the concepts of web 3.0 and VRM. When I say Web3.0 I refer to the description put forward by Dave McClure as “the condition which exists when someone is always ‘logged in’ on the web, and can move from site to site without ever having to re-enter a username/password.”

This is a big step from web2.0 and is the most succinct description I have read to date.

If this is combined with VRM (Vendor Relationship Managment) where individuals choose what data they allow social networks to ingest then this may well result in a power shift. Instead of individuals having to enter relationships defined and controlled (sometimes from both sides) within each network controller’s silo, we can now become the point of integration. We reclaim personally controlled approaches to relationships, including the all important privacy variables. Sounds odd but is very simple when articulated by Carfi:

“Having my information (social network connections, preferences, purchase history, etc.) stored in someone else’s silo makes no sense. Having my information stored in (literally) dozens of silos makes even less sense. (Yes, dozens. Think about it. Your information is in Facebook, and LinkedIn, and innumerable CRM systems like Salesforce — one for each vendor you deal with — and in Visa’s systems, and in…you get the point.) The right point of integration is around the individual. Each of us is at the centre of our own universe!”

Here is a slick visualisation:

At the centre of our social universe (yes I am aware the image above is technically a solar system) we reposition ourselves as the gatekeepers of our data. We begin to reduce the power disparity and minimise the in your face commericialism that threatens to taint social media (until the next evil marketing scam….).

In theory this great, but it does come with some big buts (which I like):

- we can always just not use a site if we dont like its terms

- for this to work then social sites need to develop more efficient ways to monetize their offerings (if they dont have data collaterol and display isnt bringing in the bucks) - are the days of philanthropic networking sites behind us?

- does anyone care that people sell data other than when their mates find out what xmas gift they plan to buy them?

Here’s a top tip when you’re posting pictures in HTML - expect many of you know it already. Sometimes, if the original image is too big, it won’t fit properly on the screen. With the iCrossing internal blog, for example, it ends up overlapping the middle column.

If this happens, you don’t need to manually resize the picture itself - particularly handy if you’re linking to one hosted elsewhere. If you use the visual editor on Wordpress or a similar platform, you can simply drag a corner of the image outline to resize it.

If you use an HTML editor, check the line of code that embeds the image, which might normally look something like “img src=’path to image goes here/image.jpg’”. It may also specify “height=’number in pixels’” and/or “width=’number in pixels’”. Take out the height bit altogether, and change the width bit to “width=’100%’”.

This should scale the picture to the full width of your post, keeping the height in the correct proportion. Obviously, choosing a lower percentage will make the picture smaller still.

Without a doubt, the big search news story so far this month is Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. Bloggers and industry analysts indulged in a little “will they, won’t they” speculation as the story dodged a warning shot from Google. Nilhan Jayasinghe was among those speculating, writing:

For many people in the advertising and marketing space, the partnership could provide a plausible contender for Google. And at least on paper the numbers add up. But if all we can expect is increased market share based purely on combining their current capital then I’m worried.

He needn’t have been; Yahoo cruelly spurned Microsoft’s advances. Still, there was even more excitement for the search engine on Valentine’s Day, as reports surfaced that Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace-owning News Corporation was considering a stronger bid. The story rumbles on.

The last fortnight has seen a few blows to openness on the web, with eBay silencing negative seller comments, the government wanting to unplug illegal downloaders, and a US court plugging Wikileaks.

Over on Open, meanwhile, Antony Mayfield was wowed by Gartner’s prediction that two years hence, social lending will account for 10% of the loans market:

Imagine ten percent of your market disappearing in a few years to social marketplace… Of course it’s happened (and then some) already for music, news, classified ads, movies etc - but there’s something thrilling about seeing the forces of change stirred up by the social web reaching the personal finance sector.

Antony’s also been discussing the technology of the US presidential campaigns, and the way that some of the most effective campaigning is being done by people outside of the campaign staff. He shows how wrong the approach can go with a “cringe-inducing” video from Hilary Clinton’s team:

Someone in the room knew it was an abysmal idea and stayed quiet. Let us remember that always, and swear never to be the person who didn’t say: ‘That completely sucks. People will laugh at us.’

I came across Lijit today - a social search widget that allows people to search using individuals as filters for information. It claims to search content, posted items, bookmarks etc. associated with an individual and their network.

The widget regards individuals as a trusted sources of information, and leverages their network for further sources. Could this work for brands too?

It will be interesting to see how this takes off in terms of uptake and sentiment.

www.lijit.com

Our What is Social Media?: now available in Chinese thanks to three strangers who met via a social network and went on to create an eBook publishing platform.

In September last year Jia Liu, an MA student of marketing in Boston put out a call on an incredible communtiy site Yeeyan.com for people to collaborate on a project to translate the eBook into Chinese. Zhifeng Sun from Shanghai and Xinyu Mao from Qingdao answered and over about a month they created a Chinese version of the What is Social Media?, complete with illustrations of Chinese blogs and social networks where it was appropriate.

So far there have been 2,000 downloads and following the project the three have created an eBook publishing venture/platform called Innobook and have published five freely available eBooks, by authors including Seth Godin and Richard Adler.

The translation and adaption of the eBook is possible for anyone in any language without permission from Spannerworks because we released it under a Creative Commons licence.

Everyone on the team that worked on the eBook are delighted to see it spread even further. It’s also added extra impetus to our work on its sequel - watch this space…