ERA OF NETWORK: Data, Networks, Contagion, Oh My!

Physicist Albert-László Barabási and social-political scientist James Fowler discuss the nature of our networked culture, the value of online network user data, and asks is society ultimately turning inward?




"...as a social scientist, I'm always asking, 'Why do people do stuff?' So for me, what is most amazing about networks is that they completely transform the way we think about data. For a really long time, we've thought about individuals as though they were islands — a Robinson Crusoe model of social science. Being able to integrate information — not just about people, but about their relationships — is something that's completely new. The rise of online social networks in the past few years has been very important in this respect. Now we can ask, 'What's happening in that whole complex set of relationships that we could never learn by looking at just each individual?'" --James Fowler

"Social networks have also given us a new cache of hard data so we're no longer talking so abstractly about networks...." --Albert-László Barabási

"...the great thing about these massive, passive data sets is that we're going to have really deep information about a very, very large number of people."--Fowler
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Japan: Robot Nation

I know this is long (25 minutes) but its an interesting documentary from Current TV on Japan's economically-destructive population decline and the rise of creating and assimilating robots to compensate:

In Flux: Identity and the Role of Brand

Great video by Amanda Mooney....happy Wednesday!


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Because Your Data Is $$

Some people have claimed that user data on Facebook is worthless (silly people). I recently wrote a post for Mashable on how Facebook could build a revenue model by essentially selling even anonymized user data. Silicon Alley Insider then posted about this same idea. Commenters to the SA post clearly didn't get that what they view as "useless" or frivolous Facebook data is in fact extremely rich and valuable trend data-- worth a lot of money to marketers, government entities, and private enterprises.

Its the value of our data that incenses me so much over the current Facebook TOS hubbub. Its not enough to say "Facebook doesn't own your data" when the license we grant them is so wholly encompassing so as to allow full usage of user data as if they did own it.

That everyone is somehow claiming victory over this because Facebook reverted to the old TOS is to completely miss the point. That license agreement is so over-arching as to dwarf any other service's TOS. Think about it.

And one more thing...I know what you're thinking, "nothing is private on the internet, so who cares?" Right? Well, consider this, Facebook data is not fragmented, unstructured data across the internet. Data in Facebook is structured, segmentable, historical, and therefore sellable. And the license agreement in both the old and the new TOS gives them the right to do so.

And lastly, Facebook, if you DO want to build a revenue model on selling user data, pay your suppliers. Users should get a cut or reward for supplying data, as outlined in this post on Mashable. You essentially could become a Vendor Relationship Management system in which we users enjoyed some kind of value exchange (beyond getting to use the Facebook service itself) for supplying you with such rich consumer data.

Facebook's "About Face"

(please note: this vid briefly touches on the complex topic of Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), and does not give justice to the complexity of this theory or undertaking, nor was it meant to. VRM is a corollary to some of the issues facing FB with regards to the topic of consumer control over their own valuable data, and is only mentioned here as a brief note).

Well, after a firestorm of activity yesterday that bubbled up from the blogosphere around Facebook's change to their TOS, Facebook announced today a return to the old Terms of Service. They posted an announcement on the Facebook homepage that reads:

"Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities."

While this certainly is another display of the power of social media and the voice of the people to drive change....there are still several lingering questions I have that this "about face" does not appease, largely because all of this is clever misdirection by Facebook's PR team. Some questions:

1. Firstly, why didn't Facebook notify users of the change to the TOS in the first place, through a homepage notice like the one they posted today recanting the changes to said TOS?

2. Facebook made a point to address the issues in the new TOS from the standpoint of who "owns" User Content. They clarified that Facebook does not "own" User Content. But ownership IS NOT THE POINT. The unnerving thing about the new TOS was how absolute and all-encompassing the LICENSING agreement was. To put it another way, Facebook was mandating a perpetual license for UGC, meaning they can do whatever they want for as long as they want, and so can the content owner. Read:

"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof."

Facebook then went on to say that they apologize and that the new TOS was only intended to clarify the old TOS. This is hardly satisfactory. The new TOS, again, was so far-reaching that is was a clear departure from the old TOS, aimed at asserting an amazing amount of control over the use of User Content and data. Blogger Amanda French also took the time to compare that new TOS with other popular services' TOS's including Flickr and MySpace, and concluded that Facebook's new TOS was extraoridnarily far-reaching compared to these others'.

And lastly, Facebook....why can't you simply explain what your intention was with the new TOS licensing agreement? There is such a stark contrast between the new and the old that simple "clarification" is certainly not all there is to the story.

And one more time....this is not about ownership. Data use is just as important as data ownership and this licensing issue has yet to be explained.

Eveybody's weigh-in?

Eames: A Communications Primer

Its a little known fact that I'm a huge design fanatic...and am particularly partial to mid-century luminaries Ray and Charles Eames. So, as a respite from the Facebook TOS fury, enjoy their 1953 short film, "A Communications Primer"

Facebook TOS Update

UPDATE from previous post...

Since yesterday, there have been several new additions to this saga, including a mediocre "response" by Zuckerberg himself in which he states:

"Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with." He goes on to assure users that, "In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want."

This response was picked up by several news outlets, including CNET who seemed to think this clarified the whole issue.

Sweet, Facebook doesn't "own" our content. We already knew that. And its not what concerns me about the new TOS...

Here is my issue-- this is NOT about content ownership. The fact that Zuckerberg's and every other Facebook response addresses "User Content is exempt from ownership claims" is somewhat of a red herring. Ownership over content is not the issue. Its about the all-encompassing licensing. The licensing agreement is so over-arching that "ownership" becomes irrelevant because you basically grant Facebook the ability to use your content in whatever way they want, including the right to sublicense! Lets read it again:

"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof."

So, some key questions for Facebook:

1. Why weren’t FB users notified of the significant changes either via a message or notice on the homepage?

2. The termination clause was deleted, why?

3. Where is the intellectual property rights clause from the old TOS and how is that affected in the new TOS?

4. As per the licensing clause, does this mean to include any User Content that is posted by a brand, including any trademarked or copyrighted materials as owned by the brand? Essentially, are you saying that brands agree to license material to Facebook with which they can do anything with, including sublicense it?

Follow the debate on Twitter
And check out the Consumerist follow-up which includes links to a side by side comparison of other TOS's, and blogger Kent Davidson's rebuttal to Zuckerberg's response

Conundrum: Media Companies and Social Media

Recently, I attended a panel at Social Media Week New York on "Building a Media Company From Scratch"-- ostensibly a discussion on how social media has impacted the lightening-fast rise of Tina Brown's The Daily Beast. Moderated by the brilliant Faris Yakob, the panel proved entertaining and interesting as it promised:

Management from the Daily Beast (Caroline Marks, Bryan Keefer and Debbie Fink) and Colin Nagy (Attention), join moderator Faris Yakob from McCann NY to talk about the site's conception, the process of building a media brand from scratch, and also the role of social media in building awareness and driving traffic.

The panelists pointed out that Daily Beast is not so much an aggregator of news and content as it is a curator of content (well put). Another interesting lesson for media companies is the Daily Beast's practice of publishing compelling user comments as content itself. Colin Nagy, of Attention, discussed briefly their efforts in distributing content and links to bloggers and across relevant social networks (including maintaining a Facebook Page and Twitter feed) for the purpose of driving traffic and optimizing content distribution.

This is the part that got me. This, of course, is what all social media strategist espouse (free the content! Let it live where users live, where attention is already aggregated!). And while this is true, allow me to play devil's advocate for a sec:

As a general rule of thumb, in the social Web all brands need to be content producers in order to have relevancy and be able to "engage" with consumers...as opposed to simply leveraging advertising assets. But unlike media companies, these brands have a distinct advantage with leveraging social media through content production precisely because their business models do not revolve around monetizing said content. Rather, the content serves many purposes from raising awareness, shifting perception, building loyalty, etc. Therefore, the content can live in many different social spaces (so long as they are relevant, useful, etc) without the pressure of needing to convert the attention in those spaces to traffic and attention elsewhere (i.e. a site monetized with ads). As a brand, I can host all kinds of content on my Facebook Page and not worry as much about converting eyeballs to my homepage because I am happy to leverage that content for brand building and creating loyalists through Facebook. A media company, however does not have this same luxury.

The paradox lies in this: As content becomes increasingly channel-agnostic (due in large part to, and perpetuated by, social media) and the demand for ubiquitous content across multiple channels and services rises-- media companies find themselves in increasingly precarious positions as ultimately, their business models are extremely channel-dependent.

Look at the Daily Beast: they are setting their content free, to some degree. They distribute through Facebook, through Twitter etc...but at the end of the day, their "audience" is the one that traffics to their site and pays the bills (not necessarily all those engaging with them in Facebook). At the end of the day, the attention in those social spaces needs to convert to traffic and attention on The Daily Beast site itself. And while social spaces do provide that kind of conversion, driving traffic tends to be a secondary or even tertiary result of social distribution and engagement.

Thoughts? Brevity is not well with me today....

Facebook: All Your Data Are Belong to Us

For anyone using Facebook, and important notice:

As per the new TOS for Facebook...all content and data (YOUR content and data) on Facebook.com servers is now owned under the auspice of an all-encompassing licensing agreement with FB that doesn't expire even if you quit. They even retain the right to sublicense your content. Even if you take content down, if its been archived on their servers they can still use it.

This, of course, has everything to do the Facebook Connect (obvs)--- especially since they just lifted the 24-hour caching limit of 3rd party sites

Read: FBC -enabled sites can now (probably) store, display and use your data too.

But here's an important question I have...what about all the brands on Facebook? Will they have special concessions made here? Surely Facebook cannot claim the right to use copyrighted, branded material forever and forever in any manner they may so choose? Can they?

Granted, most people don't read the TOS of every service they use online...and generally I'm all about Free the Data! But this is not "freeing" anything, its simply giving more control to FB and once again, the end user cannot capitalize on their very valuable data (and lets be real, for all intense and purposes, its your identity data). So here's one very important part of the new TOS:

"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof." ("post on or in connection with the Facebook Service = FBC sites)

And TWO IMPORTANT NEW PIECES TO CONSIDER:

"You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."


"The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other."

So....GOOD NEWS FOR FACEBOOK CONNECT ENABLED SITES and realizing full potential to leverage FB user data in content serving, product merchandising (and can we say a Facebook Connect ad-network makse even more sense now?)....BAD NEWS FOR USERS...

Next stop...maybe they WILL start selling our data as one, er,blogger has proposed...

A Perfect Quote from Antony Mayfield

Antony is my esteemed colleague at iCrossing and blogs about social media at Open

From the Horse's Mouth: Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic (Data) Web

Still awaiting footage of his TED talk on this same issue, so this year-old video will have to suffice in the meantime. If you're ever wondering what the vision and hub-bub of ubiquitous data access is all about:



...Looking beyond the current landscape of APIs to the data Web