data

Facebook: A Deal with the Data Devil

By Mark Evans in Social Media 6 Comments Tags: , ,

Unlike Julian Assange, I don’t believe Facebook is “the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invited” but I do agree with Niall Harbis Facebok has aggressive ambitions to dominate the Web.

Steadily, Facebook is appearing everywhere all in the name of the social graph. It starts with Facebook Connect making it oh so easy to register or log into a Web site. Then, it’s the “Like” button to show your friends the places you frequent. Facebook rolls out comments to the things you say on a blog can be streamed into your Facebook account. Now “Send” makes it easy to share articles or blog posts with your Facebook friends.

So what’s the end game for Facebook beyond global domination? The simple answer is: data. All the information and content shared and posted on Facebook, the “Likes”, the Facebook comments, “Send”, etc. are sucked into Facebook ever-growing server farms. The more you interact with Facebook directly or via a Facebook tool/widget on another Web site, the more intelligence they have on you – your likes, dislikes, job, favourite Web sites, hobbies, where you go (Places), etc.

By using Facebook to connect with friends and family, you’re making a deal with the data devil. A key part of using this “free” social network is you agree to provide Facebook with all kinds of data. Even if you’re super careful about your privacy settings – something most people don’t think twice about – you’re still providing Facebook with lots of data.

So why does Facebook hungry for your data? It’s simple: revenue. The more information they have about their users, the better job Facebook can do to serve the needs of advertisers who want to target specific groups of consumers. It’s a straightforward but brilliant economic proposition that will drive Facebook’s revenue growth much the same way that AdSense has turned Google into a money-making machine.

For anyone interested in Facebook’s ability to target consumers, go through the process of placing an ad on Facebook. One of the tools is the ability to target based on age, gender, interests, geography and even workplace. All of this information is provided by users, and then used by Facebook to sell ads.

Facebook’s need for more data is a financial necessity because it still needs to convince advertisers that spending money on ads is a smart thing. Facebook is hoping ultra-targeting is a way to get around the problem that many Facebook users ignore the ads because they see it as a way to stay connected with friends and family rather than a way to learn about new products and services.

But if Facebook can deliver super-targeted and relevant advertising, maybe consumers will start to pay more attention.

In the meantime, Facebook will continue its data jihad by rolling out new services that provide value to consumers and, at the same, help the social network collect more data about you. It’s a much more palatable approach than having to focus on privacy settings with far more economic potential.

The Looming War About Data Usage

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis, Uncategorized 6 Comments Tags: , , ,

For the past 15 years, the Internet has been an amazing all-you-can eat buffet. Not only have Internet access plans offered unlimited usage but the proliferation of free online services has thrived because there have been no concerns about how much bandwidth is being used.

The salad days, I’m afraid, look like they’re about to be a thing of the past. As consumers use more online services and, in turn, more data, ISPs providers smell money; a lot of money. To them, broadband services is the razor; the razor blade is the data that consumers need to satisfy their need to access online applications, games, video, telephony, storage, music, etc. According to someone on Twitter, ISPs are charging $1/GB of extra data – something that costs them one cent/GB.

The more that things move into the cloud, the more data we use and need. The cable and telephone companies have taken a long time to act on the new data reality but that’s about to change. Consumers should get ready for tiered services not so much based on speed but on data consumption. If you want to use online services, just be prepared to pay for the privilege. And boy you will pay because once ISPs have their hooks into data, they will squeeze this golden goose as hard and often as they can.

In Canada, ISPs have been playing this game with broadband access for the past decade. There’s no competition so prices keep going up. It’s a far cry from the sweet days of dial-up when there were hundreds of ISPs battling it out on price and customer service. Today, there are limited options so if you want broadband service, you pay for it.

The question facing consumers is whether they’re going to accept bandwidth caps without a fight. It’s important to remember that free and unlimited access to the Internet has been a key principle of its growth. The idea of actually paying for bandwidth AND access was never part of the mix. If ISPs are allowed to make bandwidth caps stick, the danger is innovation will be neutered because consumers will think twice about using new, high-data services.

It’s bad enough that there isn’t more incentives by the federal government to have more broadband competition. But the idea that bandwidth caps could become part of the landscape is troubling for a lot of reasons. My fear is bandwidth caps are here to stay. ISPs love them because it is another major source of revenue, particularly among telephone companies who have seen their local telephone business erode over the past five years.

So what are we going to do, take it on the data chin or fight?

More: If we’re looking for a friend to fight bandwidth caps, NetFlix looks like they’re gearing for major battle.

Why Bandwidth Caps Kill Innovation

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis 8 Comments Tags: , , ,

Content may be king but when it comes to people being able to access content, the value lies in the pipes from cable and telephone companies. The broadband market is an oligopoly with a handful of players offering service. As a result, they can charge pretty much whatever they want. If you don’t like it, there are few, if any, alternatives.

In Canada, most consumers are lucky if they have two options – cable or telephone. Not only do Canadians pay high prices but the new golden goose being embraced by broadband companies is data. With video, cloud computing, social media, gaming and telephony becoming more popular, consumers are gobbling up lots of data

For broadband companies, it offers a great opportunity to charge consumers for the privilege to using lots of data. This explains why data caps have quietly been put into place. They are not something broadband companies are actively marketing – speed is still the sizzle they want to highlight – but data caps are becoming a fact of life.

Aside from being an easy cash grab by broadband companies, bandwidth caps pose a major threat to innovation and how Canadians can use and take advantage of the Internet.

It wasn’t that long ago Canada was among the world leaders in broadband access but our status as a global tour de force is disappearing. The lack of competition is a sad state of affairs, and the fact broadband companies can pretty much do what they want is troubling.

It is a marked contrast to the wireless market in which the federal government has bent over backward to make sure there was more competition, led by the apparent need for more innovation and lower prices.

What’s puzzling is the potential of Inukshuk building a nation-wide wireless network to compete against the cable and telephone companies was snuffed when the federal government allowed it to be purchased by Rogers and Bell.

This has left Canada with an uncompetitive broadband market in which one player simply has to keep up with the other player to keep customers from jumping ship. And while the cable and telephone companies have invested a lot of money to build out their broadband networks, innovation isn’t a word that is used a lot. For Bell’s marketing push about the speed of its Fibe network, broadband speeds in Canada pale to other parts of the world.

If the federal government was serious about broadband competition and innovation in Canada, it would create real incentives for more players to enter the market, while keeping the existing players at bay – much like it is doing in the wireless market. Maybe this will happen when the foreign ownership rules are relaxed, which could encourage U.S. companies to move begging for more choices.

In the meantime, Canada will continue to suffer from a broadband infrastructure that is, at best, good enough as opposed to world-class. As a result, it stifles the development of innovative new services that could leverage real high-speed networks to meet the needs of data and cloud hungry consumers.

Facebook Should Give Up on Privacy

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: , , ,

After watching Facebook make so many missteps when it comes to privacy over the past couple of years, including how some leading game developers passed along user data to marketers, I’ve come to the conclusion it should just throw in the towel.

Forget about tweaking privacy settings so they’re easier to control, manipulate, configure or understand. Forget about having to worry if new services make more personal data public so that search engines can discover it so Facebook can serve up more pages to display more ads. Forget privacy settings altogether.

Facebook should just make everything public. Anything you post, share, like, comment on or message would be public data, available to anyone. It would make Facebook’s job so much easier not having to worry about pesky issues such as privacy. And it’s what Mark Zuckerberg really wants to create a more transparent, open world.

If Facebook went completely public, life would be easier for everyone. First, we’d all know the rules. There would be no ambiguities, no confusion, no surprises. Anything posted on Facebook would be public, making it even social because there’s nothing like sharing everything with 500 million of your closest friends…or friends of friends.

For Facebook, privacy is a headache so let’s turf it. Right now, Facebook wants to eat its cake and have it too when it comes to privacy. It wants to make a lot of data public to drive its business needs but, at the same time, it needs to meet the needs of consumers who want the ability to make some or most of their information private.

Perhaps the solution is a new service called Facebook Private. On FBP, everything is private other than what your friends can see. There’s no worry about privacy settings because anyone you decide to let into your FBP network would have access, putting the onus the user to be selective about who let in to their inner circle.

With FBP launched, Facebook could then make the old Facebook completely public because users would have a clear about what service best fit their needs. At the end of the day, everyone would be much happier.

Does this make sense or what?

Is Privacy Really Dead?

By Mark Evans in Google, Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

The New York Times published a story recently about how the existence of GPS technology in digital cameras and smartphones is another blow to privacy because it discloses your location if posted on a social media site.

When I shared the story on Twitter, one of the replies suggested “we have none” – meaning we no longer have privacy. It’s a fair point given the massive amounts of data collected about our Web activity, GPS in smartphones and digital cameras, the growing number of security cameras, Google roaming the streets taking photos of our houses in the name of a better mapping service, and more governments wanting access to Blackberry e-mail.

So is privacy really gone?

Have we got to the stage where everything we do is being tracked, collected and aggregated? Was George Orwell prescient with “1984″ with Google taking the role of “Big Brother”?

Unfortunately, the reality is “definitely” because technology has made it easier to track what we do online and, in many respects, off-line when you consider that every credit card, debit and loyalty card transaction is tracked, and that security cameras can quickly and easily take photos of our license plates when we’re driving.

It’s pretty troubling to realize just how quickly the concept of personal privacy had eroded in such a short period of time. It has happened so fast that most people are unaware of just how far the pendulum has swung.

While technology and the growing hunger among corporations and governments to collect data is a major part of the erosion of privacy, we’re also have to take a share of the blame.

Social media, for example, has become so public playground in which many people voluntarily and happily share information (including photos and videos) about their professional and personal lives, including intimiate details. The willingness to share with others also means sharing with Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.

Heck, we’re apparently even willing to publicly broadcast transactions made by our credit cards using services such as Blippy.

In other words, we’re willing participants in the anti-privacy movement, although we may not recognize our enthusiasm for waving the flag.

The question whether there’s anything to bring the pendulum back?

It may, in fact, be too late but there are small things you can do to protect your privacy. For example, throttle back the details shared on social media services. Do your “friends” have to see photos of your children frolicking on the beach, or you enjoying “refreshments” at a party? Does Twitter need to be a place to share details about the state of your mental health, or political views?

And maybe we should consider using cash more often rather than credit and debit cards, although it would mean giving up convenience delivered by technology. Cash means purchasing privacy and, who knows, you may even get a small discount in the process.


A Wake-Up Call About Data and Privacy

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Uncategorized 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

In toiling away on the content for mesh ’10 over the past several months, the focus has been on coming up on great keynotes, panels and workshops, as well as attracting people to turn our ideas into reality.

It wasn’t until mesh started that I really became aware of a major theme: the realization that we have so much of our personal and professional data on the Web, and how we spend little or no time thinking about whether this information is secure and protected. I would argue that most of us have optimistic faith that all will be digitally good, which explains why protecting our personal identities and our data is an after-thought – if we think about it at all.

After sitting in on several mesh panels and workshops, I now realize how lazy and cognizant I’ve been about my digital assets, and whether they are protected properly.

During his keynote yesterday, Joseph Menn, for example, talked about how a growing number of cyber-terrorists are focused on hacking into financial and banking systems. We’re not talking about small-time digital hoods but organized crime armed with sophisticated technology.

Adele McAlear did a workshop about what happens to our digital assets (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr accounts) when we pass away. She talked about a 32-year-old who died in this sleep but left no information about how friends or family could get into his social media accounts to keep them alive.

As well, Paypal CEO Scott Thompson provided more insight about the importance of digital security, and how Paypal has sophisticated anti-fraud and security systems to protect its 89 million members. It made me consider whether Paypal is a better way to make online transactions than using a credit card. Of course, this is based on the belief Paypal’s ant-fraud and security systems are rock-solid.

The reality is our personal and professional usage of the Web is going to grow so security is going to become even more important. For me, mesh serves as a serious wake-up call.

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