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Category Archives: That’s Janky

When Did the Super Bowl Become PG-13?

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The only thing worse than watching the call to pass up the middle at the end of last night’s Super Bowl was watching the ads with my young kids (okay, watching the fight at the end was worse – how lame).  In 3 hours my kids saw more explosions and graphic violence, more over-sexed-up themes, and more sadness and angst than they have seen in their entire lives. After the Nationwide commercial (more on that in a moment), I got increasingly agitated about what other sights my kids had to see for the sake of advertising. Left me wondering what the heck is going on here?!

Super Bowl ads used to be a chance for brands and agencies to showcase cleverness, creativity, and humor. Here’s the “top” ad from 20 years ago, good old 1995:

Edgy, eh? Did it “raise awareness” of something? Nope. Did it tickle our fancies? Nope. In fact, it wasn’t really that funny at all. But it was original, it was light-hearted, it was memorable – it did everything an ad is supposed to do for its brand. So much so that if you talk to anyone over the age of 30 they can still quickly recall the Budweiser Frogs. And by the way, big thumbs up to Budweiser for maintaining a higher standard than so many others during their 30 second spots. BTW yeah, I’m praising Budweiser – that’s how bad things were this year.

Here’s a list of all of the 2015 Super Bowl ads, “ranked” in some way by USA Today (we can ignore the rankings, since, who cares?). How many were “clever”? A tiny handful – coincidentally I thought Nationwide’s “Invisible Mindy” commercial was one of the best of the batch. How many made you laugh, or even chuckle? How many left you feeling positive thoughts?

Now how many featured a little more “sexiness” than is needed for a Super Bowl ad? Do I *need* to explain to my 7 year old what the little blue pill falling into the Fiat is for? Do young women need to get exposed to Victoria’s Secret’s idea of what a woman’s body is “supposed” to look like (if one is genetically gifted, that is)? Is the fun of playing iPhone games the chance to win a Kate Upton? This isn’t a 9:30pm commercial on FX, this is supposed to be “fun for all ages”.  As my friend Alan Wolk said:

[my son] is 16 now, but when he was younger and we’d watch games on TV, I’d cringe every time a Viagra or Cialis spot came on, thinking “please don’t ask me what an erection lasting more than 4 hours is.. please don’t ask me what an erection lasting more than 4 hours is…”

How about violence? I’m pretty sure that with Blacklist episode previews alone my kids saw more cars explode than they ever have – cumulatively (I like The Blacklist FWIW – but there’s a reason it airs late).  The new Terminator movie preview shows a “skeleton robot walking through fire”.  I love Mophie, but does God have to watch some bizarre apocalyptic thriller to be entertained?

Lastly, straight out morbid and depressing ads seemed to be the Super Bowl Ad Meme. Yes, I’ll cry for pretty much any use of Cat’s in the Cradle – as all dads do – but do I really think Nissan is helping the father-son relationship? And this year’s Budweiser entry, with “sad dog”, while it was certainly not one of the worst offenders, sure brought us all down a notch. But even that wasn’t nearly as bad as the Nationwide commercial. I won’t link to it, as I don’t want to give more views to a thing I found terrible.  And terrible it was. So bad that numerous memes were instantly created on Twitter as a result, which in turned  provoked a response from Nationwide – in which I found this little gem:

The sole purpose of this message was to start a conversation, not sell insurance.

Sorry, but I’m calling BS on that. No offense to the entire insurance industry, but yours is not one of altruism. I have no idea the true motivation behind the ad, other than to shock and awe. It was literally despicable at every level, and I’d rather see a thousand more wardrobe malfunctions than anything like this ever again during daytime sports television. In my opinion, the decision-maker behind that ad should be fired, and shame on NBC for allowing it to air. Per my friend and colleague Jesse Redniss (of BRaVe Ventures):

As a parent, it was very difficult watching a game of sport with a light hearted and fun Half time show and then explaining to my children what the #NationwideDeadKid Commercial really meant? “Daddy, Why did that boy die?  “Dad, he looks so sad… why is the bath tub overflowing”

In some senses, it was like watching a scene out of True Detective. SB49 felt like advertiser ambushes. Taking advantage of these moments and literally sucking the life out of the family friendly entertainment value that many of us were expecting.

As a sports fan and parent, this year’s Super Bowl Ads will have an impact on how we watch it next year. I don’t need to be ambushed by advertisers, especially ones who want my business. The NFL, NBC, and brands need to think much more deeply about their audience – because we aren’t all 25-year-old boys drinking out of red cups anymore. There are plenty of ways to entertain, delight, and intrigue audiences without resorting to such tactics. I may sound stodgy and out of touch, but I also know how to tell when a line’s been crossed.



Blocking Apple Pay Won’t… Pay.

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55688263So Rite Aid and CVS have decided to block Apple Pay in their stores. I’d characterize this as short-sighted and a likely damaging mistake. It’s one thing to not rush to adopt the new platform, but to deliberately get in consumers’ way is pretty much never the right option. Once a certain technology is in enough peoples’ hands and is convenient to use and the blockade is transparent enough to regular people, they will deliberately seek out alternate solutions.

As more and more people buy NFC-enabled phones (the technology that powers Apple Pay, as well as numerous Android options as well), they’ll expect/demand the convenience. Further, considering the motives of these retailers is suspect (they have a competing solution to avoid paying as much credit card fees), these are the combinations that create long-term resentment.

The better solution for these retailers is to re-enable Apple Pay, and then present a better, viable alternative. For example through loyalty programs, or discounts, or freebies, or any other positive incentive they can offer.

Considering the relative easy with which a consumer can choose a nationwide pharmacy chain, I’m curious to see how long this blockade holds.

My rant on passwords, the most craptastic part of using technology

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Hmm, ESPN.com. I better use my double-helix encryption system for this one.

Seriously, is there anything worse about using websites, apps, services, products, or technology in general than having to enter in usernames and passwords?  Half the sites want a username, half use my email address, and most of the time they don’t even tell me which one to enter.  Not only do I have many different passwords, I even have different approaches to making passwords on different sites.  And not a week goes by that I need to complete some kind of “Reset my password” process.

Some sites want some uppercase letters.  Some don’t.  Some need a number – but make sure the number isn’t the first character of your password.  Some have minimum amounts of characters, some will let me through with “1-2-3-4-5” (yeah, I know, your luggage…).  The all time granddaddy for most inconvenience?  My online bank.  Why?  Because when I forget my password, I are required not only to make a new one, but one I haven’t used before.  I’m sure this is more secure, but it pretty much creates a 100% certainty that when I come back I have some brand new approach to making the password this time, and therefore, will forget it again the next time I return.

Unless I cheat, and write down the password somewhere, or save it in a google doc.  Which pretty much invalidates the entire purpose of all of this added security.

Oh, and I’m sure it doesn’t help that 90% of the “remember me” or “save my password” features fail.  Which is doubly bad when its a site that has some obscure requirement on usernames, so I can’t remember those either.

It’s awful, and I’m sure that it creates a major amount of headaches and frustration for the typical Internet user.

Supposedly Google is trying to fix it with “automatic strong passwords” but it just gets me thinking: maybe not every single site needs a super strong password system?  Do I really need a distinct username for my online bookmarking service?  Or for Words with Friends?  Isn’t that the entire stated purpose of Facebook Connect?  Is there no way for me to “trust” that this really is a computer only I have access to, and for me to relay that concept onto the websites I want to use?

And I think that’s part of the inherent problem here: every single individual site, service, app, etc is taking on the entire trust responsibility themselves.  There’s absolutely no common sense in play, just a CYA style approach to “best practices”.

So I’ll personally waive some of my online security to the sites I use.  Yes, online banking and credit card companies, this is the only computer I plan to access your sites with, and if I visit, then yes, it’s me visiting.  This goes to you too, video sharing site, online game, and document backup site.  If someone steals my computer, I’ll deal with the consequences and will use the service you build me to un-authenticate this one.  And yes, Zynga, all the apps on my phone are mine, and only I will be playing them.   And if someone should snatch my phone, I too will take responsibility to close access remotely.  Because in all of these examples, I can do exactly that.

I’m not trying to diminish the needs for security and privacy (I’m a huge privacy advocate), but I believe we need to distribute and balance the responsibility in solving this as a relationship between users and services.  I don’t need an extra set of keys to every room in my house, nor provide a thumbprint to use the stereo or air conditioner in my car.  Let’s assume that we do need some strong passwords, good encryption, and safety standards, and let’s also assume human beings can take responsibility for their actions once they are properly informed and the right experiences are delivered.

It's got a pen?!

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For the 14 people who missed the Super Bowl this year, a “notable” commercial was the debut of the Samsung Galaxy Note, which basically enlisted virtually every trick of the trade.  Hipster rock band? Check. Playful teasing of Apple users? Check. Flashy seeming new gadget? Check. Tablet with a stylus? Check.  Wait a sec, rewind, what is this, 1998?  Or, as I tweeted (and BTW, Twitter – yet another simple feature: enable easy embedding and reblogging of tweets to other platforms, because screenshots? really?):

So my advice this evening is to Samsung and everyone else competing with the iPad – which is actually nobody in reality.  If you want to play this game, you need to stop grasping at straws.  Go build a damn good product and the market will support your endeavors.  I’d heard some interesting buzz about the Note, that it might be the first “other” tablet to give the iPad a real run for its money.  And then? StylusGate.

Now wait, maybe it’s not about consumers.  Maybe it’s enterprise or other specific applications.  I’m sure there’s a decent market in several verticals for a tablet with a stylus (something I blogged about a full year ago now!).  But your marketing wasn’t about some productivity device, it was about consumers.

Does anyone really think any hipster, businessman, student, soccer mom, or any other typical consumer with an iota of self-respect would walk around using a stylus when everyone else doesn’t have to and can accomplish the exact same goals?  That commercial didn’t show a product superior to an iPad.

That’s the key thing here.  The stylus is showing up in an effort to get on par with the iPad’s user experience.

Except it doesn’t.

Not even close.

We Need a Digital Do Not Disturb System

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I don’t need to write much “backstory” on this one.  Thanks to the technologies that pervade our lives, we are in a hyper-connected world.  But methinks it’s too much, and the blame lies solely on us, but all of us and in two different ways.

  1. We let ourselves get interrupted.  Multitasking is basically a lie, nobody’s good at it, and it’s proven unproductive.  If you have multiple windows doing different things, bottom line is you are getting less done.  Further, we leave our ringers on, have pop-up alerts for lots of things (from meeting notifications to Twitter DMs), leave our chat/IM programs open, have email checking once a minute, etc.
  2. We interrupt others.  Sending a chat request, a text message, a DM, etc is, in effect, an interruption on someone else’s time.  I loved Jeff Jarvis’ post on how we need to redefine “rude”.  The problem right now is, we’ve all accepted so many interruptions as “the norm” that we are imposing it upon others, and expecting them to react to our whims.

We need to fix this, and soon.  And I don’t mean for the “decreased productivity” factor – Americans especially have gotten far too focused on how productive we all are.  Here was Bobby Kennedy’s famous quote on measuring productivity:

“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

I think we’ve all tolerated these interruptions because we are chasing these false ambitions, and perverting the concept of productive to “work all the time, letting anything interrupt me, because it makes me seem/feel busier and therefore more important and more productive.”  I suggest we stop it.  And, since I’m human too, I’m going to state that I am fairly guilty myself, but I’m working on it.

I want a “do not disturb” app.  I want it to run on my desktop, iPad, iPhone, and laptop.  I want it to let me control when I’m interruptible and when I’m not.  I want it to work in a “polite” way, so nobody thinks I’m avoiding “them” but can be properly informed that I’m using this block of time to work on something specific.  I want it to let someone override in case of emergency, and I want it to mesh with my schedule.  I don’t need it to be very “smart”, it doesn’t have to “learn”, it just has to work.  And yes, I know it’s impossible, and this is unicorn territory.

But what I can do in the meantime…

  • Shut down Tweetdeck and start using Twitter when I want to, not worrying that I’ll “miss something” because in all truth, real-time is irrelevant for 99% of our personal and professional lives (unless you are actually in the media).
  • Turn off all notifications on my iPhone.
  • Close Skype and Adium except for when I want to chat with someone (which I’ve hopefully scheduled already).
  • Close mail, only checking it a few times a day – and move all “rapid back & forth” email conversations to the phone.

I have no idea how to do the above 4 things and actually make it work, but I’m going to try.

ps – my official interruption count while writing this was: 3 incoming texts, 1 twitter DM, 1 Skype instant message, 1 appointment reminder, and a Words With Friends update (I won – yeah, baby!).

Yet Another Cord Cutting Stumble

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For the third straight season, I signed up for NHL GameCenter to watch Montreal Canadiens games and so far the experience is a good one ($160 for 82 games is a pretty great deal, although offering 40% off a season that is 60% over is certainly questionable). I also have the sports channel Versus through my cable subscription, and they broadcast around 8 Habs games per season, which should mean more hockey for me (yay!).

But unfortunately, that isn’t what winds up happening. In fact, I get less hockey. Because Versus has the rights to air certain Habs games in my local area, they are blocked out on NHL GameCenter for two days (see above, infuriating pic). What that means, then, is that if I forget to DVR the Versus game at my home, the footage is unavailable to me for 48 hours, even though I have paid to watch the game on two distinct platforms. And I don’t always remember to set a recording, given state of the art hockey schedule on the Versus site (so easy to read!). There is nowhere to go on Versus or on NHL GameCenter to watch the game while it is blacked out. This makes no sense. I can sort of understand blacking out the NHL GameCenter footage during live play (sort of), but once the game is over, the online version should be available to everyone who paid into it. In my opinion, the best way to grow the sport is to show more hockey, not less.

These media blackouts need to go the way of rabbit ear antennas. In an era of streaming online content, DVRs and smart, mobile media players, locking paying customers out of content for any length of time is silly. Someone needs to figure out a way to deliver out of market games in a timely manner so that “blackouts” become a thing of the past. These antiquated media restrictions show that cord cutting is far from a reality at this time. This is an issue facing technology and media companies, as well as the sports world.

Blackout rules were a bad idea when they were first conceived in an effort to make people go to the stadium and they are even more ludicrous now.

The Internet Needs More Humans In Charge

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I keep running into a problem with Gmail. Every so often – without warning or good cause – it rejects one of my emails as undeliverable spam.

These aren’t mass email blasts or creepy solicitations. These are emails addressed to my coworkers and colleagues getting bounced back for no discernible reason.

From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <mailer-daemon@googlemail.com>

Date: December 2, 2010 3:16:09 PM PST

Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

Ugh. There are two main problems here. The first is that an email between two people who work together and know one another in real life is getting marked as undeliverable spam. This should be a “solved problem”, but apparently it isn’t. Bummer.

The second, far worse, problem is that I have no (reasonable) way to correct to this error message. There is no one to contact in person. Literally not one customer service professional at Google to call and fix this situation. The only recourse I have is a help forum. Which is ridiculous.

Sure, I could pay Google $50 per year and get phone support, but this seems outrageous. And I am not the only person who feels this way. Quoting from Krish Subramanian’s excellent post on this same topic:

I fully understand that Google cannot offer support for free users. However, there should be some other option for me to get in touch with Google (say, an email support for an one time fee of $10). It is important to recognize that Google Apps Standard Edition users not only help Google monetize through Google Ads, they also serve as a “testbed at scale” for Google so that they can serve their paid customers better. Also, many free users eventually become paid users too. In short, these free users are not freeloaders and Google should offer some way to escalate those issues that are not getting solved in the forums.

That last point is especially salient. I support Google in other ways. I search, I click ads, and I use and evangelize their apps. They should be invested in my well being and satisfaction.

But this issue is larger than Gmail’s nonexistent customer service. The bigger picture is a lack of humans in charge on the internet. In order to flourish, the internet can’t be all bots and algorithms. There needs to be a personal touch influencing (or at least checking) high level decisions.

Now, humans can’t run the entire web, but certainly we can do better than this scenario recently published on the RAAK blog. This social media firm set up a few Twitter bots in order to see how klout measured their influence.

The four bots Tweet[ed funny non sequiturs] once every minute, once every five minutes, once every fifteen minutes and once every thirty minutes respectively. They are completely anonymous, have no avatars or custom user profiles set, and do not follow anyone.

The results weren’t pretty. Here are the klout scores for the once a minute bot.

It should not really be possible for a bot to reach a Klout Score of 50 within 80 days merely by Tweeting random (yet entertaining) rubbish every minute, should it?

No, it shouldn’t. And even though the CEO of klout jumped in to the comments to participate in this discussion, the real issue here is a lack of humanity making key decisions online.

I would look back at Rand Fishkin’s post which we wrote up last month:

Why does a page rank first in Google for a particular query? Why does one link stay on Reddit’s homepage for hours while another, with a similar number of votes, fall off in just a few minutes? Why does Facebook show me ads for customer service jobs at Comcast? Why did Amazon recommend buying whole milk with this Badonkadonk Land Cruiser?

If we don’t understand why these suggestions were made, couldn’t that bias us against trusting future recommendations from these services?

As a closing example of the frustrating state of the machine-run internet, Google once marked my personal blog as Spam. And there was literally nothing I could do about it other than fill in some form and hope (I also tried doing the blinky-thing like in I Dream of Jeannie, not sure which was more effective). Not one person to call. No one to follow up with face to face. A machine blindly made a (wrong) decision and I couldn’t contact a human being to talk about why this happened and how we could prevent it from happening in the future. For all the talk about “connecting people,” the internet – as it is set up today – actually does a poor job of allowing humans to interact with one another when they need to most. When things break or don’t turn out as expected.

This isn’t just an problem with Google. It’s Facebook. It’s Yelp. The system we have all agreed to online is callous, demoralizing and broken. And it’s getting worse.  Yes there are help forums and FAQ sections and Customer Service email addresses on Help Pages. But what I am arguing for here- and what the internet should be – is a network that unifies and empowers people. A place where all are welcomed and made to feel welcome by people who care about getting things right all of the time. And for that to happen, the way things work online will take a more human touch.

In other words, make the Internet more like Soylent Green.

Spoiler Alert! How To Avoid Secrets, Surprises and Twist Endings Online

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Warning: Spoilers Ahead (for real).

For a time, twist endings, surprise cameos or cliff hangers were shocking secrets that were not discussed in the media. Psycho ads even asked movie goers to “not give away the ending.” Ah, that was nice.

Then, around the time of “The Crying Game” and later “The Sixth Sense,” people and media began to publicize clever plot twists (in my opinion the “big secret” of The Crying Game was that it was a pretty lousy movie). This lead to an environment where viewers went in to movies aware that there was going to be a “shocking twist ending.”  On the small screen, virtually every show seems to end with “scenes from the next episode” as if we viewers need some teaser just to watch the following week’s episode (heightened to its worst moment ever by having Heroes show a preview of a scene later in the same episode during a commercial break – like I was about to change the channel, but ooh, cool, now I won’t just to see that little gem.  come on.).

Now, with the rise of real time media, it seems that no secret is safe anymore. CNN Showbiz recently tweeted that Ricky Gervais will make a surprise cameo in “The Office” later this season. The blog post mentions a “top-secret cameo, which was shot in September.”

Awesome. Now I know it’s coming. No spoiler warning. Nothing in the headline that hints at a secret that is getting ruined. Just a leaked secret that can not be unseen.

If I am already an Office fan, viewing that tweet, blog post or headline made my experience with that show worse. I know that the “secret” cameo is coming so the surprise and delight that would accompany an uncredited, unspoiled cameo by Gervais is gone. If I am not a fan of the show then I have no reaction to the headline. It is just news (sort of), as opposed to a leaked secret.

The bottom line is that there is no upside to broadcasting spoilers as news with no warnings attached that tell people what is coming. Sure, some small segment of fans or potential viewers will be gratified by the news, but the large majority of other fans and casual observers will either be spoiled, upset or indifferent.  In my opinion, treating audiences this way is, in a word, disrespectful, as if we are just so flippant that the only way we can possibly like your content is by knowing what’s coming.  Some of us just like you for what you are, not what you will be.

Another example of real time media and spoilers comes up frequently in sports. Readers of this blog know that I am a big hockey fan and support the Montreal Canadiens (Go Habs!). Living on the West coast means I watch all games timeshifted, and have done so for over a decade.  At first I just had to ignore my family calling me after/during big games – that was easy.  Over the past couple of years they’ve learned (somewhat) not to text me either until the next day.  But between the terrible UX surrounding the otherwise awesome NHL Gamecenter Live (Web and iPad app both default to showing scores, not hiding them) and the official Twitter accounts for the teams and sports services, I have to close multiple windows just to avoid getting score updates!

It is easy to point fingers at Twitter and say that real time media and 24-7 micro-broadcasting has erased our right to be surprised by films, television and sports. But I don’t see this as a technology issue. This is a personal issue. Why do so many people have the desire to spoil things? We all should reexamine our Netiquette in this regard. How can we live spoiler free in a media saturated world? The answer is not more tech (a top of mind easy solution is the creation of spoiler accounts (ex: @CanadiensMTL and @CanadiensMTLScores) and spoiler free accounts for social TV clients, or splitting up fans by time zones). The answer, for me, at least, is more conscientious communication when it comes to disclosing spoilers, secrets and plot twists (the first rule of Fight Club is…).

I think this issue is sure to grow and gain more media attention with the rise of social TV. For instance, how do you avoid a twist ending or a season-finale cliff hanger on the west coast if all of Twitter is sending out the  the ending as soon as it airs back east? Expect even more on this topic as Connected TVs take off and “Social TV” heads toward the mainstream.

Is the Smart Phone also a Smart Remote Control?

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photo source: Engadget. markup: JT

Over the past few months I’ve seen tons of speculation, demos, and implementations of companies building apps and technology to turn smartphones into remote controls.  Now I get the vision, and yes, for some folks, this is going to be a wonderful marriage of technologies.  But when I say “some” I mean few.  I just don’t think people are really thinking it through in an actual home with real people.

Here’s what I think is going to happen:

  1. User downloads smart remote app to phone
  2. User manages to get said app working
  3. User controls TV with phone
  4. User is psyched, declares new configuration as “hella cool”
  5. One of the following occurs:
    1. Phone battery dies terribly rapidly due to persistent wifi connection.
    2. User takes remote control to bathroom during pivotal moment of show.
    3. Phone call during even more pivotal moment of show.
    4. etc
  6. User goes back to using regular, reliable remote.

Sounds great on paper, but I think it’s one of those problems that people aren’t going to typically face until they actually run into issues like I describe above.  But once they do, the safe prediction I can make is they stop using it that way.  For more, here are the 9 reasons a smart phone makes for a dumb remote, in my latest column at Crave on CNET.

Robert Scoble CEO of Chatroulette? GoDaddy Acquiring Foursquare? Get ready for the kinda-funny, but not really, April Fool's Day tech headlines…

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Tomorrow morning you’re going to see a lot of headlines across your favorite tech blogs that will sound a little… extra-ordinary.  Small companies seemingly acquiring big companies.  Well-known individuals joining startups or other odd-fit engagements.  They will be, for the most part, well written.  And to a few dozen people (specifically: the writer, the writer’s best friends, and the named individuals in the blog post), fairly funny.  To everyone else? Smirk-worthy, at best.  Why?  April Fool’s – a fun day to pull pranks.  That is, if you are either extremely clever and funny, or you are an 8-year-old.  And I hate to say it (not really), but this basically rules out just about the entire techie blogosphere.

That’s pretty much it for my thoughts on the subject.  You’ve been warned.

JT the Curmudgeon, out.

ps – in order to provide anything entertaining or somewhat related, here’s Wired’s Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds. enjoy.

Your Privacy Online: The Internet's Greatest Bait and Switch

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There was a time when things like decency, self-respect, and privacy mattered, and that time was not too long ago. I’m not going to spend this post lamenting modern society abandoning the concept of self-respect, poise, decency, and other things which seem practically alien in our show-all, tell-all, midriff-sporting, trampstamp-pride (yeah, I hate the word too, but it’s appropriate) oriented culture. I may seem like one heck of an old fogie, but I’m talking about a time I remember that was less than 15, maybe even 10 years ago! With regards to the “living near the bottom” mindset America seems stuck in, I think (hope) it’s just a natural cycle and it will just get better in time. But when it comes to the privacy topic, I’m more than disappointed, I’m near outraged. And I’m going to point some fingers.

It’s hard to say when and where we decided to give up our rights to privacy online. Note that I’m focusing to the online world, and have no commentary regarding people’s ability to do things like steal credit card receipts, dumpster dive, or other methods of specifically targeting an individual, as these take concerted and directed effort. One could argue the entire concept of the “social web” might be in exact defiance of personal privacy. Some of the early players (this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all things social on the web!), in semi-chronological order:

  • Geocities – instead of, well, not really existing online, you can have a home page! Unquestionably the first time people chose to give up personal privacy for some flirtation with Internet fame – but – it was at a time when there was little “networking” from one site to another, so a given person’s home page actually was it’s own disconnected “island” on the Internet (as opposed to the inherent connected nature of services like Facebook). Geocities deserves special mention for being the first (but far from last) time an individual could not only create their own customized page, but make it extremely ugly and hard to read. Privacy impact: moderate.
  • Delicious – instead of keeping your favorite bookmarks to yourself, share them with the world! The reality of the potential harm here is fairly low, as one still has a local bookmark capability through the Web browser AND one can easily choose not to share a bookmark they don’t want shared. Privacy impact: negligible.
  • MyBlogLog – instead of being able to read a blog post in relative anonymity, a “footprint” is left of the trail you have as you surf various blogs. Again, this is extremely opt-in, however, the mere enablement of this plug-in on a blog meant a third-party could specifically “follow” you as a unique Web surfer. Privacy impact: low.
  • Flickr – instead of having to manually share your photos with your friends/family, automatically upload your photos into the public eye unless you specify otherwise. Flickr represented a massive shift in thinking, and I’d personally argue it ushered in the concept of “live in public” to the masses. Example search for pictures that are probably going online without consent of those who are actually in the pictures. Privacy impact: major.
  • Friendster – technically not the first attempt at social networking, but the first one to bring it to a wide spectrum of users. I honestly don’t even remember what I did on Friendster, other than befriend the fake users others had so much fun creating (except for the management team, who clearly thought using the Internet for anything fun was a bad idea). Friendster marked the first time people really paid attention to “numbers of friends” as a metric of importance (ah, the implacable human ego). Privacy impact: moderate-to-low.
  • YouTube – Take Flickr up a notch, by enabling anyone, no matter how dreary and boring, to have their own special place to upload pirated commercial personal videos. Prior to YouTube one was judged purely on their attractiveness (based on the best-looking picture of themselves ever taken, regardless of how long ago), but now we could take every embarrassing, awkward, and goofy moment we have, and immortalize ourselves online with it. It didn’t take long for YouTube to be the haven for people falling off skateboards, failed catapult launches, or (one of my personal favorites) take the video of your friend accidentally hurting herself and further embarrass her by putting it on the Internet – but don’t worry, she didn’t bleed or anything (now that is a great example of friendship!). Privacy impact: major.
  • MySpace – It’s like GeoCities, but now with 10 times the ugly, and more ways to connect than ever before. Originally started as a way for bands to connect with their fans (and for fans to connect with each other), MySpace evolved (or devolved) into a haven for bizarre methods of self-representation, a lustfulness for comment-writing and a bizarre desire to have as many friends as is humanly possible. Today it’s a bit of a “black sheep” in the social networking world, but still has millions of people sporting the most outrageous color schemes (oh look, it’s red-on-red, hey thanks!) and online “bling” imaginable. Privacy impact: massive.
  • Blogging – While there’s no specific technology at play here, the notion that one and all could have a “web log” aka a public diary became very in vogue in the latter half of the aughts (you know, the decade that just ended?). Blogs were key to creating the illusion that one’s deeper thoughts should be shared, in written form, with the world. Since there’s actually a decent amount of work required in order to blog, and most blogs are rapidly abandoned, on an individualized basis it’s not a big deal – except for those who go overboard. And yes, I do get the irony of this blog post. Privacy impact: minor-to-major (highly self-inflicted!).
  • Zoominfo – You might not have heard of this one, but ZoomInfo.com uses all the content it can find about you to build a profile of who you are (or might be) – screenshot is below. On the plus side, they will allow you to effectively delete your profile, and it’s really focused on your business “identity”, but if you ever needed an example of how scary the concept of being stalked online is, this is the one. To be clear, the company itself is not doing anything wrong, they are simply finding information about you through completely publicly available sources, that’s the scary part. Privacy impact: N/A – they themselves merely aggregate stuff.
  • Twitter – Without analyzing use of the service, Twitter is just a “public update” one can make, in 140 characters or less. Not a big deal. However, the cultural shift one is inclined towards after deep adoption of the use is where the problems show up. For those who actually use the service (which is not the majority of Twitter’s users), there is a sensation wherein it becomes more and more challenging not to share things. And for those with poor critical-moment-decision-making skills AND a lack of extreme discipline, Twitter is the ultimate tool in accidental self-representation online. Self-censorship is a difficult thing, and a tool like Twitter makes it way too easy to accidentally tell a lot of people something you’d rather have kept to yourself (and yes, we can make the argument that people should just be better about how they Tweet, but that’s like blaming bullets for shooting deaths). Privacy impact: massive.
  • Foursquare, Gowalla, and other location-based services – Take Twitter (above), now apply it specifically to enable you to proactively tell the general public where you are at a given moment. This plus the free white pages is about the easiest way in history to explicitly tell thieves when your house will be unoccupied. Granted it’ll take a bit before the average criminal gets quite so sophisticated, but the mere concept of it should be giving you the willies. And if it doesn’t, check out Blippy. Privacy impact: so high it’s amazing anybody uses it.
  • Facebook – The grand-daddy of them all. Over 300 million people use Facebook today, one could call it an individual’s “hub” of personality on the Internet, not to mention the best place to buy fake farm animals and even throw sheep at each other – awesome. Now when Facebook first launched, it was for (and from) college kids only – us old folks couldn’t even see what crazy fun was ensuing inside the closed doors. They then opened it up for anyone to use, however all activities were “private” within Facebook – only your “friends” (a term the service has effectively destroyed) could see your activities. This notion of privacy is what got people really using Facebook to share personal moments en masse. Facebook then, and this is the worst part, threw that precedent out the window. Facebook not only shares your content, updates, photos, friend lists, and everything else in public, it does so with the entire world! Privacy impact: words don’t describe.

I want to make sure I explain my premise again properly, as by now I’m sure some people just think I’m a loony laggard who doesn’t “get it”. I get it. I get how we’ve been tricked. I see it very clearly. Let’s face it, Friendster was clearly the “gateway drug” which led us down the path to sharing crazy intimate details in the public eye, and thinking how it’s expected. Heck, it was an easy path to follow, and it played into so many people’s desires to feed egos – finally it could be done unilaterally! The Internet basically enabled the individual to be famous. And if it’s not clear, fame sells – and sells well. But it’s at a cost – simple google searches showed me information like prominent bloggers’ home addresses, birthdays, and other data that makes identity theft (an actual real crime) something so easy that a clever hacker could probably write a web program to do it automatically.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg even went so far as to say something to the equivalent of “that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years” (source). Guess what Mark – you might not be at the helms of a huge company had you made that choice. I hear a lot of industries afraid to make certain decisions because of the “slippery slope” they lead to. Well, it’s happened, and there’s really no one company to blame. Sure, each played their part, and some more aggressively/offensively than others, but let’s face it – we all got suckered in.

Please note and be aware – your privacy has been in violation for a long time. Public records show home ownership details, birth certificates, licenses, and much more. These have been available to the lowest bidder for quite a while. I view this as a different (albeit serious) issue, as none of these are opt-in privacy flaws. But just because someone can do things like dumpster dive to find your most recent credit cards statements does not by default imply that one should sign up to Blippy and voluntarily throw this information info the public eye. Further, I’ll completely acknowledge that I am just as guilty as many others for living in oversharing mode – but I guess the first step is being aware that there is a problem.

I read today (I’ve been working on this post for a while, so the timing is a little ironic coincidental) that people are starting to give up social networking for a variety of reasons – privacy being one of them. I don’t know if that’s necessary, but I think it’s certainly understandable. What I think is more important is for people to make certain choices about the public scrutiny they choose to live their lives under.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

  • Make sure you are personally aware of the various nuances and ramifications of each of the services you use (for example, did you know that your status updates on Facebook will, by default, be seen not only by your network, but by their networks as well? – here are some tips for improving your Facebook privacy settings – go do them immediately upon finishing this reading).
  • Think about how your choices to proactively share can impact not only yourself, but your family, coworkers, and friends. Take into consideration that you might think it’s adorable to put up a photo of your kid in some embarrassing moment now, but they might not appreciate it when they are an adult and it’s still on the Internet (and it will be)!
  • Don’t forget about the future you – who may not want to have the world know about some incident better left in private.
  • Finally, consider your real objectives. Do you actually care about Twitter followers? Does it matter to be the Mayor of your local Starbucks? Of course not, and there’s nothing wrong with having some fun and frivolity – but remember that it all comes with a cost. When you proactively give up free information, companies are profiting from it.

Your privacy is an asset. Take care of it.