We are generating so much information every day that we don’t even know what it is being recorded about us. I just checked on Google for my name and found 184,000 pointers. Clearly they will be many that are not about me (I just made random sampling up to the 100th page and with just few exceptions they were about me).

What struck me as funny (or is it not funny) is that a good percentage of these pointers were about something I did that I have now forgotten. Thinking about it and following the link I had to admit that, yes, I did it!

A smiling ghost making your content disappear after a little while!

I also thought that I do not know what 99% of the information linked by those pointers are actually saying….

Yes, I have the feeling that I have lost control about myself in the digital space.

Another thing that came to my mind is that the web has change the way we communicate in the sense that nothing fades away (although it gets buried in those 184,000 links…). And this thought was prompted by an article I read.

Indeed, the article points out that even for the information I generate of my own will I cannot control it once I circulate it on the web. Place a photo on Facebook, send a tweet…. it is there forever! Even those places that let you delete the information may be captured by crawlers (like the ones sent out by the WaybackMachine) and reappear in other places. I still remember British Telecom publishing a wrong information on new tariff and removing it after just few minutes. It was too late. That info had already been captured by crawlers and people could still access to it and blame BT for a breach of promise!

A new company, Snapchat, is providing you the tools to attach a time of survival for an information you place on the web and takes care of erasing it once the time goes by. There are now 100 million photos and text messages that destroy themselves, courtesy of Snapchat, every day! They are ghosts that appear for some fleeting moments (e.g. 10 seconds) and then they are gone forever.

The system is not foolproof. A person looking at your photo can make a screen capture and you no longer have control on it. Although Snapchat will let you know that the photo has been copied by xyz there is little you can do about it.

DuckDuckGo

And, of course, if instead of making a screen capture that bad guy takes a photo of your photo….well, you won’t even know he did it!

So the problem is far from being solved but I found 100 million information going through Snapchat as a clear indication that people feel the need to be somehow in control and to be able to NOT record something they do!

Similarly, the success of the DuckDuckGo search engine that makes the promise not to record what you have been looking for is another indication that people wish, from time to time, to preserve their privacy.

DuckDuckGo has already served over 400 million search requests, an average of over 1.5 million a day. Of course nothing compared to the over 3 billions search each day by Google…, but still a lot of people do not know, yet, about DuckDuckGo, and many have said by clicking on it that they do care about privacy!

Too bad that no foolproof solution is in sight!

Video Cameras keep getting smaller and they can be embedded basically everywhere, including a pair of glasses. And this is what ZionEyez is doing.

You can get these glasses for 150$ starting this Fall. Then you can move around and make clips of what you see at 720 HD definition and send this immediately to your Facebook page so that it is shared with your friends. They offer 3 hours recording time and provide WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity so that your cellphone can act as a bridge to the Web and to your Facebook page.

Although this is just a gadget (not a very expensive one…) I can see it as the beginner of a trend and in a few year time my bet is we will see many youngster having embedded a camera in their sporty sun glasses and taking advantage of the video capture capability on a regular base. Come LTE and your increased upstream capacity and people will find a way to use it. These glasses are just one possibility.

I should say that I am a little uneasy thinking that any person wearing glasses may actually be recording my every movement… When I’ll be talking to a guy wearing glasses I should wonder if I am talking just to him or to the whole world!

For sure privacy issues will pop up as more and more opportunities are around to record all instants of our life. It seems to me we are a step further in the Big Brother view.

We are explicitly and implicitly creating huge amount of data. And the possibilities keep growing.

Many of us now have a web diary, like Facebook, and keep their agenda on something like Outllook or Google Calendar. Our cell phones are always with us and they can, with some apps, track where we are and even what we do. Just think to the day, coming soon, when we will buy many things through the cell phone.

An example of a dashboard created with Daytum

Well, we can start monitoring our life through a dashboard on our phone today, as an example by using Daytum (it works on iPhone and Android).

Basically, it helps you to create a dashboard interface to represent in a graphical form your data. Up to you to choose what data you want to control. It may be the number of days you travel, the number of times you see your friends, the time you spend reading and so on…

They offer the service for free (your data are stored on the Amazon cloud) with some limitation and for a 4$ monthly fee they provide you more features. Among the added feature is PRIVACY of your data! Curious to see that Privacy has become an option you need to pay for!

I am pretty sure that as more data are being created in our daily life we will see a growing number of applications ready to help us making use of these data and also leveraging on their economic value.

We should become much more aware of the value of our data and on the threats that may be connected to them. Possibly, applications like Daytum may help creating this awareness. Facebook has already taken hold of a good portion of many people digital life without them realizing what it really means…

I can see data as the real seed of future biz ecosystems. Control them and you are in business.

Yesterday I watched the movie The Social Network, the one about the founding of the social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits. I know that this movie is not new, but speaking about movies usually I watch them late. Anyway, I really liked this movie, maybe because I was expecting a boring documentary and instead I watched an exciting drama, or maybe just because I am a nerd and like all movies related to technology.

Facebook today is definitely one of the social networking website that I am using more, but it wasn’t like that three months ago. I have Facebook since 2005, and I kept this system basically to communicate with some friends in US and Europe, about 40 people in total. My main social networking website was Orkut, because in Brazil the most popular one was (or is) it (by the way, it is owned by Google). I can not affirm that it stills the most popular one, but among my friends is definitely not. Nowadays I rarely received one message in Orkut, and basically all my friends now have one account on Facebook. The curious thing is that it happened very fast, between the interval of three mounts. Yeah… the Web is always unpredictable. In this specifically situation there are some facts that could explain this phenomenon. Many people, taking me as an example, kept two accounts in similar systems (which is a waste of time), and in my opinion Facebook offers more interesting features. So many of my friends started to realize that creating a cascade phenomenon of migration to Facebook. I kind of miss using some features of Orkut, let’s wait for Google’s reaction.

Speaking about interesting features of Facebook, I really enjoy the “Like” button. I always thought that it was a brilliant idea. After reading one article about Social indexing (click here to access it), I start to think that this simple button is also very powerful.

“Many sites have tried to personalize what they offer by remembering your past behavior and showing information they presume will be relevant to you. But the social index could be much more powerful because it also mines your friends’ interests and collects information from multiple sites. As a result, the index can give websites a sense of what is likely to interest you even if you’ve never been there before.”

The code of the Like button is available to anyone add it in its website`s pages. If a user is logged in Facebook when it clicks in the Like button, of any page in Web, the link is shared with that person’s Facebook friends. This is a way to people express their interests on the Web. Many important websites use this feature, for instance Wall Street Journal.

Rely also in social networks information may be useful in web search. Google mathematically indexes the Web by scanning the hyperlinks between pages. This means that pages with many links from other sites appear on the top of search results, which is a great mechanism but it is not perfect for every needs. Using your friends’ opinions into account may be very interesting when you are searching for a restaurant, book, a place to stay or visit in a new city, and so on.

Since about 10,000 additional websites connect themselves to Facebook every day, I think soon we will see another interesting feature in Facebook, which will make me stick even more with this service.

According to Bret Taylor (Facebook`s CEO) Mobile is their primary focus for Facebook`s platform this year. “Mobile usage has been the fastest growing part of the Facebook experience,” he said. Currently, Facebook has over 200 million people using it on a mobile device, and those people are more than twice as active as people who use Facebook just on a desktop computer.

An important movement in the mobile marketing arena is the creation of Facebook Deals, a product that allows companies to create deals on Facebook and run them across multiple store locations. There are different types of deals that can be created to achieve different business objectives.

In one of Facebook`s pages you can check many examples of promotions that are being done for different companies.

To see a”demo” video of how it works clik the link bellow.

http://www.facebook.com/blog.php?post=446183422130

Unlike Groupon (deal-of-the-day website that is localized in major markets in the United States), which takes up to 50 per cent from profits made from the deals it offers, Facebook said that its service was free for brands and advertisers. “It’s about creating a kick-ass user experience,” said Facebook director Emily White.

Benetton is among the exclusive participants for the launch of Facebook® Deals in Europe. An extension of Facebook Places which offers access to special promotions and initiatives. This new Facebook function allows smartphone owners who check-in to make direct contact with the Benetton world: with the nearest stores chosen from a network of 3,000 shops letting people redeem the latest deals, special offers and promos from Benetton, Sisley and Playlife.

www.facebook.com/benetton

Another similar example that can be used for mobile marketing actions is FourSquare, a smartphone application launched in March 2009, that has already attracted 3 million users. When a person checks-in, a FourSquare user can signal and comment to his/her network of friends the place where he/she is at the moment (a coffeshop, a street, etc.). This application can interface with social networks like Twitter and Facebook, creating a synergy between smartphone and Web apps.

From an ethical standpoint it is also great because you will only send messages to those who have opted-in. Why not try it???

Fonts:The Times, February 01, 2011 10:29AM (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/o2-mazda-starbucks-benetton-debenhams-offer-discounts-on-facebook/story-e6frg996-1225997911605); Benneton (www.facebook.com/benetton); Bocconi`s news letter (www.unibocconi.it)

I was surfing the net when I came across a really nice video about the Coca-Cola Village, a summer activity for teenagers located in Israel. Well, this year the theme park became more social than ever! Each guest received an ID bracelet, which contained his Facebook user name and password, capable to transmit an RFID signal. Through these bracelets guests “liked” the various attractions in the village as if they were on Facebook, updating their status in real-time. How? By simply placing the bracelet to the readable RFID device next to every Coca Cola Village facility, a chip capable of collecting the users’ data and sending them directly back to Facebook. Moreover, to create a complete sharing experience, just by “touching” the official photographer you had your pictures tagged and uploaded on Facebook. Publicis E-dologic, the firm behind this event, nicknamed this pretty awesome solution “The like machine”. Aside from the obvious security problems that such a technology implies, I imagine it integrated into the supermarket shelves, with the possibility of extending the “likes it” on the products we want to buy by placing our phone beside them… And I do not think it will take a long time for this to happen.

A new social media study reveals that fashion brands have a significantly stronger social media presence than other UK retailers, by actively utilizing various platforms for the benefit of both the customer and the business.

Having measured the fundamental rise of ecommerce over the past decade, eDigitalResearch is now monitoring retailer’s social media as part of its benchmark activity, assessing brand’s presence over several different sites and their efforts to engage in two-way dialogue.

Assessing some 72 UK retail sites by looking at volume of followers alongside active interaction between the brand and consumer, the research found that fashion retailers are encouraging a larger degree of cross-communication through well-established Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. Topshop and River Island claimed the top two spots, recording a large number of followers and higher levels of customer engagement. ASOS came in third, with New Look and Next completing the top five.

Ed Handasyde –Dick, Social Media Manager at eDigitalResearch comments, “It is not surprising that brands aimed at a younger, more dynamic audience came out on top. We are beginning to see more content-driven marketing from many multichannel fashion retailers, such as in-house produced magazines, focusing on subjects that potential customers regularly talk about. It is only natural that consumers are turning to social media platforms to engage and identify with their favorites brands. The next challenge is for companies to utilize all this user generated content and integrate it into within their future marketing and business plans.”

The recent rapid development of mobile technology and the opportunities it provides for retailers is also becoming more apparent, with companies beginning to develop mobile sites and apps for consumers. Sitting just outside the top four, Next and Marks and Spencer’s, have recently launched mobile sites, cementing their commitment to developing their future ecommerce strategies. However, with a slightly older target market, who are less likely to be social media savvy, they both miss out on achieving higher positions as they have lower levels of customer engagement and interaction.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, fashion websites who target an older demographic, and electrical retailers, scored rather low, with many not even having a social media site presence. Most grocery sites also had low scores, with many only having just developed a social media strategy. For these sites, the conflict going forward will be to try and find engaging content that will captivate consumers and their online target market.

Source: www.theretailbulletin.com

The new GLoe Application from HP

HP has released Gloe, an application (so far for Android cell phones),  that automatically connect the place you are with information about that place from Wikipedia and other sources. And, of course, it integrates seamlessly with Facebook.

It is a further steps towards blurring the boundaries between the real world and the artificial one.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gloe_geotagging_web_content.php

I think this trend will characterize this decade and will slowly but steadily transform our perception of the world.

Facebook has been under fire from US lawmakers, senators, consumer groups and the European Union over new features that they claim compromise the privacy of its users. The message is loud and clear: users desire to have precise and comprehensive controls and want them to be simpler and easier to use.
Last month Facebook introduced some features that include the ability for partner websites to incorporate Facebook data, expanding the social network’s presence on the Internet. US senators are worried that personal information about Facebook users is being made available to third party websites, advocating that sharing personal information should be an opt-in procedure in which a user specifically gives permission for data to be shared. Moreover, they underline how Facebook now obligates users to make publicly available certain parts of their profile that were previously private.
On Saturday, Facebook said it plans to simplify privacy controls at the popular social-networking service to appease critics. However, a shift to an opt-in model does not seem to be in Facebook’s projects.
The privacy issue is taking a toll and it could reopen the competition.

MySpace is trying to return to the limelight by announcing that online privacy is taken very seriously at the company, announcing that it’s planning the launch of a simplified privacy setting for its user profiles. It might be a good strategy to regain popularity over Facebook, seen that Myspace is seeking to differentiate itself from the rival that long since has definitely eclipsed the News Corp-owned social networking service with its more than 400 million members. And according to what Facebook announced at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference a month ago, the company has gained more than 10 million active users in 3 weeks. A significant number? When compared to 2009, not really.
There is a two weeks ago article in which the author argues that looking at the past growing of Facebook, despite its optimism in announcing an ever increasing customer base, Facebook’s active user growth dropped 25% to 50%. The privacy issues might be hurting? Or simply Facebook’s growth just suddenly peaked, as it happened with other SNs?

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Facebook the patent on the “dynamic supply of a news feed about a user in a social network”.

The implications of the patent number 7,669,123 are many because the patent affects, potentially, many feeds since the definition of social network can be quite extensive. This may pose a threath to many players, today and tomorrow.

For example, Twitter, microblogging feeds community based, is listed as one of the  subjects that most would have to fear from the new Patent awarded to Facebook.

Once a company like Facebook has been recognized the authorship of “feeds”, the possible future scenarios are all new: the social network may decide to use the  patent against the competitors (Google, Twitter and others), or damage the new sector players before they reach a critical mass.

Facebook monetizes user data and certainly this patent is another way to gather and manage information on people lives.