The Role of Government in Social Networking

Originally published 10/27/2011

It has been an interesting year for politics and social networks.  It began early in the year with the so-called “Arab Spring” when several countries in the Middle East found themselves in the midst of a social network-fueled demand for regime change that spilled over into the real world.  A few weeks ago something similar began in New York and has since spread rapidly to other cities in western democracies: the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Again, largely using social networks to spread the word, these protests against economic injustice have quickly grown from a few, largely-ignored “fringe” elements to a much more recognized political faction (just as the Tea Party did a couple of years earlier).

While I don’t expect the OWS movement to lead to the overthrow of western democracies, it does give one pause to wonder what the role of the US government should be when faced with a rising tide of voices demanding change to “business as usual.”

We all certainly hope that our government listens and responds to legitimate criticism.  It may be telling, though, to read through what some think the US government should be able to do within social networks.  I had occasion to review a Broad Agency Announcement (sort of a pre-RFP) from DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) entitled Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC).  Just so you know, this BAA is a matter of public record and freely available on the web (or at least it was as of this writing), so I’m not divulging anything secret or even remotely confidential.  Here are some of the things DARPA was interested in having someone develop:

“The general goal of the Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program is to develop a new science of social networks built on an emerging technology base. In particular, SMISC will develop automated and semi‐automated operator support tools and techniques for the systematic and methodical use of social media at data scale and in a timely fashion to accomplish four specific program goals:
1. Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation.
2. Recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across social media sites and communities.
3. Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion campaigns.
4. Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.”

In other words, DARPA wants the US government to have the ability to monitor social networks to detect “threats,” then identify individuals connected to the “threats,” and to inject “counter messaging” into social networks to disrupt “threats.”  Now ostensibly this capability is supposed to be used to provide sort of an early warning radar to detect “events of strategic as well as tactical importance to our Armed Forces.”  And, since the US Armed Forces are not supposed to be operating within the borders of the United States, this capability is presumably intended to monitor and defuse threats on foreign soil. 

I think, though, that this would be a very difficult genie to put back into the bottle if it were ever unleashed.  To begin with, social networks aren’t greatly confined by geographic borders.  It’s a slippery slope from detecting and deflecting threats on foreign soil, to detecting threats originating on foreign soil to assets in the US, to detecting threats within the US to assets within the US.  Furthermore, what constitutes a “threat?” Certainly acts of violence constitute a threat, but what about threats of a more political nature; demands threatening protests and unrest if something isn’t done to change “business as usual?” 

In short, is what’s happening with Occupy Wall Street something that politicians (the people who will have the keys to anything DARPA builds in this arena) would perceive as a threat?  And if they do, would they be tempted to unleash countermeasures to marginalize and ridicule those messages as a means of defusing them.

Is this a capability that we want our government to have? And if so, how do we “ring fence” that capability so that it isn’t used domestically to stifle unwanted political opposition?

Social Politics

Originally published 8/4/2011

Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the last few weeks, you’ve been inundated with news out of Washington D. C. about the debt ceiling passage.  To me, it was interesting (and immensely infuriating) to watch our political process unfold. Perhaps the thing that interested me most was how social networking was used by the participants as leverage to influence the outcome. 

It’s obvious that politicians in the United States believe (at some level) that constituents participating in social networks are a force. Many these days have Facebook pages and/or Twitter accounts (although I’m sure that a tiny minority of them ever actually contribute content—just like they have staffers to answer phones and mail, they have staffers who are responsible for the content on social networking accounts). And clearly some of them believe that a “call to action” to social networking participants can generate useful political discourse.  Not only did the President suggest to Twitter followers in a speech last Friday night that they tweet their Congressional representatives, his office followed up by issuing a series of tweets providing followers with the Twitter handles of their recalcitrant (and largely Republican) representatives. 

Two things happened directly as a result of this effort.  First, the President’s account was unfollowed by around 30,000 Twitter members.  Second, Congressional accounts were (predictably) deluged by tweets from concerned constituents.

The question in my mind is: did any of that matter?  When you make a phone call to a politician, someone answers the phone (or you get to leave an actual voicemail); when you write a letter, someone has to open the letter and do something with it (round file); even when you write an email, someone has to do something with it (even if it’s delete it without reading it).  Unlike any of those more traditional forms of communication, social networking isn’t interrupt-driven: With social networking—particularly Twitter—unless someone looks at the social networking site, the message can go completely and utterly unnoticed.  When you tweet something to @SpeakerBoehner, for instance, neither he nor any of his staff has to notice it in any way whatsoever.  They don’t have to read it; they don’t have to process it; they don’t have to respond to it; they don’t even have to delete it from anywhere (unless, of course, you are managing a Facebook page for a politician, in which case you still have to scrub any critical or embarrassing messages left on the wall).  I have to believe that of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of tweets that were sent to Congress last weekend, not very many (if any) were actually noticed by members of Congress.  At most, one of their staffers told them how many messages they got, and if they were mostly positive or mostly negative.

While using social networking is a great political mechanism for getting you’re message out, it seems to be a woefully inadequate means of getting feedback (unless you go looking for it).

Breathing New Life into an Old Social Network

Originally published 7/28/2011

One big question that is eventually faced by all mature social networking sites is, “how do you breathe new life into an existing social network?”  How do you take a site whose popularity and relevance has dropped off over time and revitalize it?  How do you attract new members? How do you win back old members who used to be active but have moved on?

Perhaps social networking can take a cue from a completely different medium for some of the answers: television. In many respects, a social media site is a lot like a television series.  TV shows are created and debuted with much enthusiasm.  A few people try them out for a while before deciding if they like them.  Some shows are wildly successful, but most are not.  Television networks routinely retool flagging shows in an attempt to attract new viewers or bring back viewers they’ve lost over time…which is exactly the same goal of an aging social network.  So let’s examine a few of the tricks that television shows use when ratings begin to decline and see if we can find some best practices that translate to social media.

1)      Change the cast of characters.  Bring in new characters or promote minor characters to major roles.  This allows the writers to think of new and (hopefully) interesting character dynamics and plot lines.  Or perhaps bring in a famous guest star for a few episodes. For the social media analog, this might mean recruiting new bloggers or administrators to bring fresh viewpoints to the site and change some of the existing dynamics of the network’s interactions.  It might also mean bringing in guest bloggers from other sites, or sponsoring AMA (Ask Me Anything) question and answer sessions from luminaries in a field or other subject matter experts. Part of the excitement of a social networking site is finding new and fresh (and valuable) ideas: new blood is always a good way to bring in fresh viewpoints.

2)      Change the location.  Take the old characters and upset the apple cart by moving them to a different country or city.  Again, this is a commonly used plot device that allows the writers of a show to explore new venues in new ways.  For the social media analog, this might mean adding features to the site that it never had before.  Or making a feature that wasn’t used much into one that is far more useful.  Add a chat or instant messaging feature perhaps, if there wasn’t one before.  Allow people to interact in real-time vs. an extended conversation on a forum. Perhaps add a contest or a way for members to play games with each other (hey, it seems to have worked for Facebook).  Changing the way the community members can interact with each other can be a catalyst for increased popularity.

3)      Change the focus.  Perhaps kill off a main character and let the writers focus on a different one. Or fire a character and change the focus from a work situation to a home situation.  Give the audience and the writers a chance to learn something new about a favorite character that they didn’t know before, or see a different aspect of his or her persona.  For a social network, this might mean a shift in the focus of the website.  Instead of being about government change, for instance, perhaps a shift to being about societal change in general might broaden the potential member base.  Or if the current focus is broadly based, perhaps a change to a more narrow focus that would interest a smaller, but potentially far more passionate, community.

4)      Change the show runner.  Let the person (or people) that have been running the show move on and bring in a fresh voice.  Bring in someone who has revitalized shows in the past, or who has a history of creating content that people like.  For social media, this is all about community management. Community management isn’t just about administration and moderation.  It’s about marketing. It’s about finding ways to build excitement among existing members and to attract new ones.  It’s about finding interesting people with challenging viewpoints and recruiting them to be involved in the network.  It’s about promoting the value of the social experience to existing and potential members.

You’ll notice one thing all these ideas have in common: the element of change. Change the characters, change the location, change the focus, and change the people in charge.  And of these things I would argue that the most critical one is the last one.  People with fresh eyes and fresh viewpoints are often the driving force behind the other types of change I’ve mentioned.  And when those people are successful, they are usually given the majority of credit when a show pulls out of a ratings slump.  

As with television shows, not all change in social media is for the positive (i.e., Digg…also known as the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” rule).  We’ve all seen shows that introduced change in such a way that they alienated their original base without attracting enough new viewers to matter. 

One other lesson to take away from all this is that television series, even the most beloved and enduring ones, are all eventually cancelled.  While we are still relatively early into the age of social media, I suspect that lesson will also prove true in the long run (i.e., AOL, Napster, Friendster, MySpace).

Facebook for People Who Hate Facebook

Originally published 6/29/2011

Well, at least one of the predictions I made last December for 2011 has come true: Google this week announced a rollout of their new Google+ (pronounced “Google Plus”) social networking platform.  Expect to hear a lot more about it over the next few months (although you are probably already tired of hearing about it, judging from the massive PR it’s gotten over the last few days). 

So far (because I haven’t been invited to actually use it yet), it looks like Google+ is basically Facebook for people who don’t like Facebook (with a tip of the hat to XKCD).  What are its chances of succeeding as a true competitor (or successor) to Facebook?  Unlike Google’s previous attempts to enter the social networking space, I’d give this effort a better than even shot at dethroning Facebook as the top social networking site in a couple of years.  Here’s why.

Google+’s first advantage over Facebook is going to be ubiquity:  you’ll see it integrated into every Google product you use, from search, to Gmail, to Google Maps, to Google Documents, and Google Apps.  Google+ will be less a destination on the web than a service that is available from a lot of the important Google sites that you already use.  Point to Google+.

The second advantage I see to Google+ is it’s ability to better manage your acquaintances (note I didn’t say friends) into different Circles (one of the things I don’t particularly like about Google+ is its new terminology…do we really need circles, sparks, and huddles in our vocabulary?).  Yes, the ability to organize your friends into different groups is indeed present in Facebook, so you can keep recreational posts from being visible to your work friends and vice versa, but not very many people ever use it.  Consequently, a majority of Facebook users that mix friends in social circles with friends from professional circles don’t post a lot of information that would be considered inappropriate to either group (well, smart Facebook users, anyway).  With the new Google+ circles, posts to your Work group and posts to your Friends group don’t mix, so you are free to post work conversations that would bore your Friends, and post news and pictures of friendly social events that would be irrelevant or inappropriate for work.  Of course, if this feature becomes popular, there’s no reason that Facebook wouldn’t implement something similarly easy to use, but the initial point has to go to Google+.   I can see this feature not only stealing traffic from Facebook, but also from primarily work-related sites like LinkedIn and Plaxo as well.  After all, why sign into two or three different sites when you can just use one?

The third advantage would be the ability to create video conferences (huddles) with one or more of your contacts.  While not something Facebook particularly cares about (yet), it’s certainly something that has the potential to eat into Skype’s business model.  And unlike Skype, it’s integrated into the Google+ platform, so no additional applications need to be run (and if you think Microsoft isn’t planning on integrating Skype into all their online offerings, you haven’t been paying attention).  And since Facebook doesn’t currently offer multi-way video conferencing, the advantage goes to Google+.

The fourth and perhaps most important advantage for a lot of users would be privacy.  It seems that unlike it’s rollout with Buzz where your contacts were automatically searched and enrolled (BAD Google!), Google seems to have learned its lesson with Google+, requiring you to specify which friends you want to involve and how you want to involve them.  Facebook has a long history of playing fast and loose with privacy settings (and use of “private” data).  If Google can convince users that they will have more control of their privacy with Google+, a lot of people who don’t use Facebook for that very reason will be potential users. Big point to Google+.

Finally, since Google already knows so much about you, having the additional information they would gather from your activity on a high-volume popular social networking site would absolutely cement their place as the one place to stop for advertising dollars.  So indeed, this could be the ultimate straw that breaks Facebook’s back: if the advertising dollars going to Facebook start going instead to Google, Facebook will have some real problems.

All of this is conjecture at this point.  Like the success of movies or television shows, it’s really hard to predict the ultimate popularity (i.e., success) of social networking sites. It might be wildly successful; it might be another flop.  Google+ has the potential at least to make Facebook (and LinkedIn and Twitter and Skype and who knows who else) into the next MySpace. 

I wish it success, because having strong competition can only make both Google+ and Facebook (and LinkedIn and Skype) into better products.  I just wish it had a different name.  Google+? Yuck.

Stupid and Smart Social Ideas

Originally published 5/12/2011

In the news this week were some new ideas for social networking applications I found interesting.  One of them struck me as very, very smart (although the mechanics might need a little work), and a couple of them struck me as kind of, well, not smart. Stupid, even.  Let’s start with the smart one.

Social networks (like all human networks) are built around a kind of producer/consumer model.  Certain members of the social network (or the owners of the social network) produce content of value and other members consume it. Crowdsourcing is a variation on this theme, where the consumers of content actually become producers by voting up or voting down content they like (or dislike), thus adding value to the content.  I read an article this week about an interesting application using crowdsourcing as “eyes” for the visually impaired.  It works like this: the visually impaired person has an app on their mobile device (called VizWiz, a project developed at the University of Rochester).  When they want to identify something visually, they snap a picture of it and record the question they need answered.  For instance, they can take a picture of two cans side-by-side and ask “which one is the soup?”  Sighted members of the community get an alert that someone is asking a question, and can record and send an answer to the question: “the soup is the can on the left.”  Pretty cool!  I thought this was an amazingly constructive and innovative way of leveraging the power of the crowd to accomplish something useful. It’s a little slow at the moment (it can take a minute or two to get an answer), but I have to think that as more people sign up (and more automated resources become available to scan photos and understand human speech) this could be a wonderful tool for the visually impaired.

And now for the other end of the intelligence spectrum, from an article in the New York Times.  Blu, a company that makes electronic cigarettes, has developed a social cigarette “pack” that contains sensors that let you know when another Blu e-smoker is nearby.  What struck me as kind of stupid with this concept is that in most places, smokers are already relegated to a specific tiny area where smoking is allowed. So if someone wants to go hang out with other “smokers,” they aren’t usually all that hard to find.  So I fail to see the added value of a sensor to alert me if I’m within 50 feet of another e-smoker. Perhaps with other, not so obvious social connections, the concept might make more sense: Alert me if I’m within 50 feet of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan…the TV show not the movie…hmm.  Anyone want to run with that one?

And finally in the “your tax dollars at work” category (assuming you live in the United States): The US Navy has created a MMO (Massively Multi-Player Online) game to develop strategies to fight piracy at sea.  MMOWGLI, the game, lets players either act as Somali pirates or as ships that might be attacked by Somali pirates, to figure out strategies to deal with the ongoing problem of naval piracy in that part of the world.  Don’t bother trying to register for the game, however, as it’s playable by invitation only.

Didn’t we figure out how to deal with pirates a couple of hundred years ago?