Shift Happens

My father sent me this video which had been forwarded around his office (small semi-strugling Christian publishing firm). I think it helps convey the changing state of the world in terms of the economy and the strong up-and-comers in the world (China and India). It's also especially relevant to me today, as I write this from Germany struggling with the super weak dollar to the record-high strong Euro. The United Kingdom was the greatest, most powerful nation in the world in 1900... the United States has held that position for much of the 20th century... but shift happens and who knows how long the US can hold that dominant position. Maybe we should all start learning Chinese?



Check out the wikisite: http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/

Or Not

Forgive me for this, because it is really creepy but I feel the need to share.

So two weeks ago I wrote about how teens are protecting their privacy online, right? Well, hahaha.

I was reading the Washington Post online at work today and came across a nice article about military blogging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very well written article about how soldiers blogging helps relieve a little of the stress of war and about the military's fight to control that release of information. So I was just going to write about that tonight. Then I saw this article, also about military blogging, where it mentioned that the author of the first article, Nikki Schwab, was an AU grad student. Of course, I went to facebook and... her profile was open access. So I can see all 292 photos of her, date of birth, hometown, where she went to undergrad, that she supports Hillary Clinton for President in 2008, and her cell phone number and home address, complete with apartment number!

I'm not going to post that information here, because this is slightly more open than Facebook but is she serious?! So lets say someone didn't like her recent article... bam, great stuff for bad people there. Come on Nikki, limit at least some of that information!

Study: Teens protecting their profiles

Spent the day at work with CNN's homepage open... finally something good came up: "Study: Teens protecting their profiles"

Basically, a Pew survey shows that 2/3 of teens don't post their personal information online or use privacy controls to limit public access to their profiles. All I can really say is IT'S ABOUT TIME!!

Even if all these teens think that they're just preventing Internet predators and perverts from getting to them, that's great. Let the fall-out help prevent these same teenagers from getting screwed over by potential employers.

Now, if only Facebook and other SNS would change their privacy structure from an opt-out to an opt-in structure. Instead of having to select each "friend" individually to put on a limited profile access, the system should automatically place friends on limited access and then allow the user to grant more access to specific friends. It would take a bit more work for the users but would provide significantly improved privacy controls. (It may also limit the "fun" of Facebook stalking... but I guess that's the price you pay for privacy and getting a job!)


EDIT: Two YouTube videos of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's Think Before You Post TV commercial series.

Using SNS to Get a Job? Really?!

I may just be acting simple-minded but I really can't see myself getting a job through Facebook or even LinkedIn. I can see its usefulness in maintaining or rekindling contacts with former business associates and coworkers but I don't see it getting me a job. However, I'm not looking for business jobs that are filled by 40+ weekly hour computer users. Something about criminal justice system jobs and Facebook seem unlikely to mesh. Maybe because many of my friends in the law enforcement and corrections fields aren't too comfortable with computers, let alone the Internet!

Things are changing but even over the next few years those face-to-face connections will remain the key to success. Which reminds me, I need to send a note (paper!) to someone I met at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on a field trip last week... gotta solidify that connection with him, make him remember my name. And I can't just add him as a friend on Facebook. :)

SNS & Virginia Tech

To second Jordan's thoughts on SNS and the Virginia Tech tragedy, I also noticed the quick rise of groups, events and changed profile pictures on Facebook. What I noticed in particular was the power Facebook offered to people seeking information on their friends. The group "I'm ok at VT" was created within a few hours of the shootings for people who survived the attacks to let others know that they were okay. It has evolved into a message board for people still seeking information on loved ones, a list of the confirmed victims and as a general posting board of condolences offered from other, non-Virginia Tech Facebook users.

Another VT connection with this class' topic is the earlier post I'd written on main-stream media "blogs" versus "amateur" bloggers. Virginia Tech's Collegiate Times student newspaper maintained a constantly updated information list on its website about the shootings while the attack was occurring. The site is still being updated with information as it becomes available and has been a source widely used by the mainstream news outlets seeking information. And these obviously aren't journalists with degrees (yet).

How many bloggers does it take to plug in a president?

So I heard a quick reference on the radio this morning about the Ford CEO apologizing for making a joke about President Bush almost blowing up a hybrid car. Sounded interesting enough and I did a quick Google News search. Then I found this article about how the joke didn't actually match any of the actual events of the day and bloggers had simply blown the joke out of proportion. The author (Todd Lassa) wrote on the MotorTrend magazine's editorial (blog?) that "the media, including car magazines, are being led around by small-time bloggers who have never signed up for a journalism class, let alone stayed awake during one. And they're running every stupid little rumor extant without checking up on them."

Seems like he doesn't take bloggers too seriously. Just because many of the "famous" ones lost their day jobs because of blogging. Or because blogs are often used as electronic diaries by teenagers. Maybe he should take our class, learn a little about the benefits of social networking tools and business. But Todd might figure it out himself since some of those bloggers he's talking down on left comments pointing out how the auto blog websites are competitive with MotorTrend and (possibly) have larger user bases.

And I never would have cared about this issue until I took this class... I guess now I'm a blogger. :)

LinkedIn

Just in case that last blog post doesn't make sense, I was also thinking about the LinkedIn assignment we just completed (or are quickly finishing). This morning, I imported my Gmail contacts into the website and found an old high school teacher on LinkedIn. I requested a connection with her and personalized the request with a short explanation that I'd joined as a class assignment.

She accepted me and wrote me back this evening. She'd looked over my previous employers and pointed out a non-LinkedIn connection we had, other than my being a former student of hers. She was my high school's mock trial teacher and for the past few years the professional advisers had come from the Public Defender's office--where I worked last summer and am returning this summer. Without using LinkedIn as a form of quick resume and "life summary", I never would have realised that we knew some of the same people from those different contexts.

Also, I was wondering what was up with Professor Melander not my connection...?

XM Customer Support Sucks

I've got a great story on how great customer management systems can't save other bad business practices. Read on:

Disclaimer: I'm still a little angry about this one but I do have a point at the end.

***Rant Alert***

I got an XM satellite radio for my car as a gift back in January. After installing it in my car, I thought it was wonderful.

About a week ago, my radio broke. After trying for a few days and deciding it really was broken, I called XM's customer support line. After 20 minutes, I got my first human. I spoke with her for about 5 minutes until she agreed the radio was broken. She then needed to transfer me to someone else to get me a replacement.

5 more minutes on hold.

New guy picks up (in the Cancellation department, haha). He takes about 10 minutes to explain to me that they can replace my radio with the same one. But they're out of stock. He has no idea when it'll be in. But there's a different model that uses the same base as my current model/accessories. Pause. Out of stock.

Well, for $49 plus tax and shipping I can get a different model. But it won't work with my current installation and accessories. And it's $49. Oh, I didn't understand, they would replace my current broken radio (that is only 2 months old) for $29 plus tax and shipping.

Did I think this was a warranty issue? Well I'll just need to call the manufacturer. Yes, they understand the radio says XM and the box says XM and the service is XM. But they can't do a warranty replacement.

I called the manufacturer (Audiovox, by the way). They only dealt with warranty issues during standard business hours--9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

I called XM back to just cancel the service since I saw no sense in paying to replace a radio with a warranty issue. I hadn't paid for the radio in the first place, so no loss for me. After 10 minutes, I reached a human in the Cancellation department (again). After briefly explaining my issue and asking to cancel my service, the woman offered me two months of service for free. I didn't see the point in getting free service for a non-working radio and declined. She upped it to three free months of service and explained that even if it took a month to get the radio replaced, I'd still have two months of free service. That logic worked for me and I accepted, vowing to take the warranty issue to Audiovox on my next free day...

By the way, I understand XM didn't make my radio but I simply assumed they would handle problems with it. Similar to cell phone providers--mine phone is made by Sanyo but has very limited functionality and usefulness without Sprint's service. Similarly, my Audiovox XM radio doesn't do much if I don't have an XM subscription. When my phone is broken, I call Sprint; I thought the same applied with XM.

***End of Rant***

After my experience with XM, I remembered hearing how XM and Sirius weren't doing well financially because they were having difficulties retaining subscribers. They were doing very well reaching new subscribers through offers of free service with radio purchases or with new car purchases after working deals with car manufacturers. However, after the new subscribers trial periods ended, people weren't signing up for extended service. I found one (admittedly old) article in a quick Google search that described XM's financial difficulties last summer.

I couldn't find much newer information on XM's difficulties and they may have solved this issue but wondered if their customer support system shared any of the blame. I think great things about XM's actual radio service and had become someone who turned up his nose at pedestrian "terrestrial" radio... until I had a problem. When I called, XM's CRM system and caller ID correctly identified me and provided that information to the first human I spoke with. She was able to tell me my billing address, cell phone number, the last four digits of my billing credit card and how long I'd been a subscriber. I was a little unnerved by her quick access and recitation of that information but glad I didn't have to provide it all to her after submitting it online when I joined XM. That made my initial contact very easy. But even with that wealth of information, XM wasn't able to provide basic support for an obviously angered customer.

My point: Even with the powerful technology XM employs to quickly identify which customer is contacting them, the customer may still leave that contact situation unsatisfied. The only reason I didn't cancel my service when I called was because the last person I spoke with listened to my complaints and offered me a reason to accept her offer. Great technology won't replace good customer service reps.

Yeah, Of Course

The main thing I've gotten from the posted readings that I've done is a sense of "of course, isn't that obvious?" But I'm not feeling that way because I thought of the ideas, I'm saying it after reading about the military's use of collaboration software to link commanders together and with front-line soldiers. That just makes sense. So a bunch of generals can make better command decisions than a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, okay. But the general doesn't get the battlefield perspective... until now. And doesn't that just make sense? Sure "back in the day" the generals were on the battlefields, but no one today would allow General Petraeus to walk down a Baghdad street. Why not allow technology to walk those streets with the troops? Much better perspective without any stretch of the imagination.

Or what about Business Week's article about using collaboration software to link consultants and clients hundreds of miles apart as if they're just in the next room. Duh, that also just makes sense. Use the Internet and PDFs (among other tools) to make sure the project turns out the way the clients want. Even if your client is on another continent. Why not? That just makes sense, right?

I guess one of the only things holding back the implementation or "invention" of these uses of technology was the deployment of high-speed Internet. While the military's system does allow low-bandwidth uses, both systems rely on high-speed Internet connections. I wonder what other common sense products will be unveiled in the future... maybe we'll be the ones thinking it up...

No SNS for Lent!

So I read this article on "giving up" social networking sites while I was at work today (hopefully they can't scan my home computer to read that!). Basically, CNN found it an interesting story that people have given up social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace for Lent. I'm sure the professor's glad no one in our class decided to do that!

But the article does have a good point, sometimes people can become so involved in SNS that they can experience "addictions" to the sites. How often do you check your Facebook, MySpace or Mixi page? I check my Facebook frequently, probably 2-3 times an hour when I'm at home and I have mobile messaging enabled so whenever I receive a message or friend request, I know immediately. Is that an addiction? I don't think so, but isn't that what alcoholics think too?

Privacy in the Workplace... Hah!

Jordan wrote an excellent post on Sunday about how emails really aren't private and I commented that even "private/personal" emails used at work can be easily read by your employer. Then I read the CFO IT article on Six Degrees of Cooperation about how software has been created that reads employee email to see who knows whom and who can form better business deals through their connections. I think this is a valid use of the company's email system to use it for all it's worth but I worry about the potential for "mining" personal emails.

The article mentions the privacy concerns and suggests that you might be asked to help based on a "business connection" with an ex-girlfriend. I think that might be a case where the connection could help prevent the deal from occurring. I like how the Visible Path software has the anonymity built-in to the software where if a connection isn't approved by the link, no one knows who that link was.

I wonder how easy that employee protection would be to circumvent if a supervisor really wanted or needed that connection to be made. How much more would the company simply have to pay out for that privacy layer to be removed?

Collaborative Projects vs. Group Projects

I was talking to my parents this weekend about the Google Docs assignment and how it was designed to make group projects more unified in theme and structure. That got me thinking about how difficult it is to make the transition from the classic method of group projects: "You do this section, I'll do that." I like the idea of making the document creation as transparent a process as possible in that I can edit my partners work and he can edit mine. It also lets us see where the other person is in completing the assignment and to see if they're on the right path or have better ideas than yours.

I think the problem with this concept is that it requires a paradigm shift to accomplish the goals of a unified voice in the paper without those awkward transitions. With our assignment, it began with splitting up the parts and then putting it all together at the end. One advantage of the
collaborative paper, compared with tradition papers, was that the awkward transitions were reduced and it allowed each of us to see how the work was progressing. I liked the assignment but I don't think I got the full benefit of using Google Docs, yet.

Six Degrees of Social Networking

I'll make it simple: if you've got room in your schedule, take this class. You will learn a lot about new social networking systems and technologies that already exist that you had no idea about. I just finished a group assignment without ever working in the same building as my teammate all through Google Docs. Professor Melander makes excellent use of technology and you will actually use the technology we're learning about and discussing in class. This class always has great discussions and we've also been having great speakers. So sign up for ITEC-333 with Melander.

Bloggers Are More Techie... Duh

Our reading from Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's Naked Conversations on how blogs might represent an "echo chamber" and what bloggers present as important might only be important to them was utterly pointless. It points out the obvious fact that bloggers are not representative of the world or US populations. So Howard Dean was very popular with bloggers in 2004... and those bloggers just weren't that numerous when it came to the voting public. Or Firefox has a greater market share and user-base with bloggers. The authors found two statistics for Firefox's market share: 10% according to "OneStat, a web-analytics company" and 38.7% according to "BoingBoing, one of the five most popular blogsites" at press time in 2006. Maybe I'm just in a cynical mood tonight but this seems to show that blogs really aren't (yet) the end-all of freeing information for the masses and may only be doing this "liberation" of ideas for a select group of users who can devote their time to using computers and Internet access to write about their favorite politicians while using their favorite web browsers. What about the regular people that are still using Internet Explorer on their Windows 98 PC... or poor people who can't afford to buy a computer or Internet access? And what about illiterate people who can't even read others blogs, not to mention write their own?

So Tom, Is The Internet Losing?

So Tom Kyte came and talked to our class about his experience with blogging and sharing his vast knowledge through the Internet. One thing he mentioned stuck out with me and then was reinforced in another class I'm taking. Tom's monthly readership is approximately 10,000 unique visitors to his personal blog; 100,000 to his Ask Tom blog at Oracle; and 500,000 through a column in a print magazine. I'm taking a weekend class on Domestic Violence that met this past weekend. One of our speakers was Peter Banks, the Director of the Law Enforcement Training Center for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He explained how the "Internet Age" increased their monthly calls for information or help from 12 per month to 2,500 per month. However, in one case he mentioned (that was offered as typical), forensic sketches of a murdered child's reconstructed face didn't yield any information after several months in circulation, but once the child's face was shown on nationwide nightly news programs, it took literally 2 minutes for 4 calls to come in identifying the deceased child. Peter also said that the best "marketing" material they have is the "Have you seen this child" mailings that go to millions of households with other advertising via the US Postal Service.

My point in all of that is that the Internet, for all its power and ability to bring together "the masses", still doesn't reach the numbers of people that traditional media reaches. While it can be easily argued (and I'm sure someone will argue with me) that Tom delivers more developed and detailed information via Ask Tom than the print magazine, his website still misses 80% of the magazine subscribers. Similarly, although the Internet has increased the visibility and accessibility of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, it is still the traditional media that reaches people and gets the results.

Negative Feedback on eBay

I was reading Jordan's blog post about online reputations and it mentioned eBay and the fear to leave negative feedback. This is a valid point and a problem with eBay's feedback system. It seems to limit the course of action a buyer has to tell others that the seller is not a good seller. However, it also prevents buyers from leaving frivolous negative feedback because the item they purchased did not meet their standards. While sometimes a product will arrive to a buyer in a condition that is significantly worse than it was described in the auction listing, however, if the buyer has a standard higher than what the seller is describing and it doesn't meet that standard, it's not the fault of the seller. The way eBay's feedback system works does favor sellers but it serves to limit frivolous complaints. And as a strictly business decision, it makes sense for eBay to favor the sellers--they're the ones paying the listing fees!

eBay Feedback

Howard Rheingold's point in Smart Mobs about how eBay's feedback system works is very true today, as it was in 2002 when this book was published. He uses Paul Resnick's three points about how a "reputation system" works to show why eBay's system works: buyer's and seller's identities are long-lived, feedback is visible to others (potential buyers and sellers) in the futur and that people pay attention to the ratings. Rheingold believes that part of why the system actually works is because people have faith in it and trust what it shows.

I've worked for an eBay business, PeriodPaper, for several years and the owner and all the employees are very proud that with over 4000 unique feedback left, zero have been negative. To Troy Ylitalo, the president of PeriodPaper, his business' online reputation is everything. He values customer service above all else and really goes out of his way to treat his customers with great respect. This is evident in every aspect of his business, even down to the packaging he uses to ship products out. This care and attention to the customers' needs are apparent in his feedback rating. And, because of his high online eBay reputation level, PeriodPaper is able to draw in new customers at a very high rate (4000 feedback represent unique users and there are nearly 5900 total feedback received--the higher number includes repeat and multiple-item buyers).

Would you want a cop to blog?

I went for a drive tonight and wound up on Georgia Ave driving from the Beltway into DC. While I was driving down the street, I saw a lot of police cars... some that I thought were going to hit my car while they were racing somewhere, some that I thought were going to pull me over and others that were already busy with work. It made me think of an earlier class we had where employees blogging about their company's and workdays came up and it was asked "what do they have to hide by not blogging?" I'd like to know, would you really want to know what a law enforcement officer does on his/her shift everyday? What about a correctional officer in a prison? Maybe I've got the wrong look on blogging since I'm not a business major but I think there are certain jobs that blogs would not fit very well.

Street Blogging

I think Howard Rheingold's point about how powerful street blogging could become is a very valid point. To be able to upload a short text message from your mobile phone to the web in near-real time is incredibly powerful. Photos and video are even more powerful. This type of personal blogging can be useful in many different aspects of life. When my family and I packed up the rental van and drove to college to drop me off as a freshman, I used my mobile phone's camera to take lots of pictures and upload them to my blog with short captions describing where I was, what I was doing and who I was with. During those first few weeks at school, I didn't have time to sit down at my computer and blog about my daily happenings (still don't!) but I was able to use my phone to keep in touch with lots of friends without having to spend much time at it. This was before video phones were easily accessible but I don't think a video would've served much more useful a purpose. I feel that short video clips throughout my day would require me to spend more time on text explanations or longer clips with an audio commentary--not very feasible.

Another way that mobile street blogging is incredibly powerful are in instances of crisis and catastrophe. When the London Underground was bombed in July 2005, many of the first images of the bombing were published on blogs via mobile phones taking photos and videos of the destruction. Other recent events, including the aftermath of the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, have seen mobile blogging with pictures and videos getting "out" into the world's view before traditional media could do so.

Even Facebook Blogs

When I was reading the Financial Times article on blogging and corporate America, I remembered when facebook introduced the News Feed feature. Facebook introduced the new feature without telling anyone how it worked, how to adjust the privacy settings, and pretty much just made it the easiest way to tell any kind of change in someone else's Facebook profile. Within hours of the feature launch, hundreds of thousands of facebook users had created and joined groups protesting the feature. Within a day or so, the facebook creator wrote in the corporate facebook blog that they'd messed up in launching the News Feed without providing adequate information about it. Within days of that blog post, facebook users were provided with very detailed privacy controls for the News Feed and learned what exactly could and could not be appear on others News Feeds about themselves. The article said that it was blogs that were driving forces in changing corporations practices but in the case of this very popular social-networking website, the blog was used as the means to show change was happening. Maybe that's one way blogs can be used... similar to Hardee's advertising campaign that their burgers were terrible--companies can use blogs to admit mistakes and show honest attempts at improvement.

The Internet Beat Game Theory

In Smart Mobs I think it's interesting that the Internet was created in a way that "self-interest and public goods were identical." This allowed the original hackers that created the Internet to put lots of hard work, creativity and energy into something that was both immediately useful to them and would eventually become incredibly useful and valuable to the public as a whole. By combining the self-interest and public good into one creation, the Internet beat all game theory that trumps the public good for self-interest. I don't really understand how this happened, other than through deliberate decisions and forethought by its creators, but I think it was vital to allowing the Internet to become as large and powerful as it is today. Much thanks is owed to those hackers both for the act of creating the easily expandable networks and for the forethought to make improvements to the 'Net both self-serving and beneficial to the public.

Network mapping with Email

I think the tool that Cross talks about that tracks emails to map a network sounds absolutely fascinating. Thinking about my Gmail frequent contacts list and who I email often generally follows who I regularly meet with. Applying that concept of email mapping to work, in my case, it would show that I almost never contact certain coworkers that simply aren't useful to me (as harsh as that sounds). It also shows what coworkers in other areas of the company or organization are important to my work. This goes back to the informal networks that are frequently more useful than formal organizational charts and networks. To be able to map out those informal networks through this email tracking application just sounds amazing.

Surprised by Ineffective links?

The first question asked of Cross in the interview with him surprised me because of Cross's answer. Cross said that people are not surprised that informal networks allow work to be done (which I agree isn't surprising) but he did say people were surprised to learn who is and isn't influential in a network. I don't think that in any organization I've worked for the official organization chart is the way to get things done. For example, in my current job as an RA, in order to get a facilities problem fixed I'm supposed to report it online to 2FIX and to my supervisor through an online reporting system. This is supposed to allow for more accountability and to ensure the work is completed. In actuality, for a repair to happen, I need to seek out one of the facilities guys that I've established a relationship with and tell them what I need done. Once I tell them, I'll put in a work order through the traditional means so they can show their supervisor that they're doing work. If I just submit the request online, I've been told that the request prints out and is often looked over and can take weeks or months to get worked on. In another job in a more formal office environment, if I need to get information about something, I rarely went to my supervisor (my only "organizational" link to the company as a whole) but went to other personnel in other parts of the company directly. If I went directly to my supervisor, it would have taken too long to get my answer. By ignoring the main links in my organizational charts, I can use "informal" networks very effectively, which is one point of Cross. However, it doesn't make sense that the informal links surprise people, which is what Cross asserts.

Social Networks vs. Social Groups

The most interesting item I took from this week's reading in Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs was that it's better to look at social groups as social networks. Barry Wellman said that groups are special networks that are "densely-knit, tightly-bounded and multistranded." This really makes sense to me because I don't know of any of my friends that are in a single group that doesn't have any outside connections. Also, many of my group memberships do not overlap with any other members except myself. I am the only "node" connecting many of my group-networks.

Large groups don't necessarily have to be group-networks. For example, American University isn't closely bound enough among all its students to be considered a group-network. It is a network because it is a loose binding of its members. However, several American University alums working together at a firm could be members of a group-network because their small size creates a tight enough bond. The AU group-network isn't a group by itself because of the network that created it--the firm where the alums worked. The AU group-network also isn't a "group" because there are many outside network connections. Each group-network serves as a node between different people and creating connections.

First Post!

This is my first blog post for my Six Degrees and Social Networking class at my university.

On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own.