http://ycorpblog.com/2010/06/10/internet-safety/

Yahoo! Gives Parents a B+ During Internet Safety Month posted 10 June 2010 -

Parents take action

We are encouraged to learn that parents are taking action to actively monitor their kids’ online activity.

* 70% of parents talk to their children about online safety at least 2-3 times a year; 45% talk to their children least once a month.

* 74% of parents are connected to their children’s profiles on social networking sites.

* 71% of parents have taken at least one action to manage their children’s use of the Internet or cell phones.  Parents are checking to see where children are searching online, setting time limits, setting parental controls on video sites, and using filters to limit where their children go on the Web.

MDFP Comment – what worries me is that Parents (and I am one) think that they can stay ahead of the kids (and I was one).  Orange conducted some research that asked “why do kids love technology” and concluded “it is a place they can go where parents don’t have control”   Once we were allowed to roam across the fields and go to friends house, but today this is somewhat more limited for many reasons.  However that same spirit of our children is still there and there is a fine line ( as with management ) between trust, supervision, instruction, command and control.

I am worried that the default that parents are forced into is “command and control” parenting for digital stuff as they don’t understand it.  Kids will move on faster than you will ever know, Facebook watch out!

Dads are doing their part and then some.

* 71% of dads (compared to 63% of moms) say they are taking at least one action to help manage their children’s online behavior, including having conversations about respecting the privacy of others and checking their children’s privacy settings.

* Fathers more often check to see what personal information can be easily found about their children by searching their names online.

* 53% of dads surveyed told us they plug their children’s names into a search engine at least 2-3 times per year (compared to 38% of moms), and 33% of dads told us they search at least once a month.

“Digital footprint” is a mystery to many

Do you know what your “digital footprint” is?  If not, you’re not alone.  65% of people are not sure what a digital footprint is.   I define a digital footprint as the data trail (i.e. photos, profile information, comments, and blogs) that you leave through your activity in a digital environment. The survey unveiled that:

MDFP Comment – alas if Yahoo! get this wrong then we have a problem Huston.  What you say about yourself is such a small part, it is what your data says as well and what others say and then how you react – previous blog on this is here. http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com/whats-your-digital-footprint-mdfp

When was the last time you conducted an online search of your name or your child’s name?  We found that only 20% of people plug their own name into a search engine once a month or more, and 49% of people do it 2 – 3 times a year or less.  That’s not enough.  This is not about doing a vanity search; it’s about learning what’s out there and ultimately taking control of your online image.

MDFP Comment – I posted on the new Pew Reputation – far better stats. http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com/pew-report

In the book "My Digital Footprint" eight business models were explored, this blog is an update to model 5. If the balance of value is not already in favour of web companies, as they barter free services for your privacy and data it soon will be, as they need more data to continue their growth and seek differentiation but are unable to offer more in return.  The blog presents that there is now a continuous test on the consumer resolve for privacy, the unmarked boundaries of private and thresholds of liberty as web companies find routes to extract more information on you, without you realising.

Content Creation leads to Value Creation

In March 2010 Facebook was estimated to be worth $11.5bn, Twitter $1.4bn, Linkedin $1.3bn and Google $170bn. But why? In simple terms these web companies and many more like them, consist of millions of users creating and sharing large amounts of content which is subsequently monetised through advertising to create these public valuations.

Symbiotic Relationships

When studying the bonds and bridges between the users and these web companies, in the context of privacy, trust, identity, reputation and digital footprints, it clear that there are complex inter-dependencies. Indeed the relationship between the users and the web companies could even be described as symbiotic, as the users and web companies are mutually beneficial participants.

The implied contract between web companies and their users is simple; they'll provide users with free web services in exchange for "permission" to datamine and monetise the users "public" data via related advertising. This is a digital data trade as show in diagram.

Constant Tension

However, there is a hidden cost of this seemingly beautiful symbiotic relationship, the more that users make "public" their data, the more they relinquish their privacy.

It is this tension between the users desire to protect their privacy and limit their "public" data, that contrasts with the monetary needs of a web service business  to access and liberate more of the users "private" data; that is constantly testing the symbiotic relationship. 

Money Talks and Privacy Walks

Although this freemium model is working well during this Web 2.0 era,  advertisers are seeking to maximise their ad budgets through improved targeting and behavioural advertising. A mechanism to make this happen is if web services can convince their users to either make public more personalised information or to unilaterally force through privacy policy changes. To do so might result in users abandoning the web service, to not do so might result in the advertisers spending their budgets elsewhere.

For example Facebook has for sometime been changing their users privacy settings in order to test the users elasticity of acceptability.  On more than one occasion users have protested so vehemently against the changes, ironically using Facebooks own Fan pages, that Facebook have rolled back the privacy settings, only for them to make smaller incremental privacy policy changes later on which the users then seemingly accept.

Only recently Facebook unilaterally chose to remove its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users' profiles, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests" will now be transformed into "connections," meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them." 

Source: Open Rights Group - 21.04.10

Facebook may have reached a tipping point where the potential value from forcing more openness, by unilateral changes to privacy, for user data outweighs the potential lose of users to an alternative.

Privacy Talks and Money Walks

Of course the fight to retain user privacy remains a tender point as proved by the recent introduction of Google Buzz and the scant disregard that Google placed on users privacy. 

The draconian way in which Google forced every GMail user to adopt Buzz was bad enough but to then set the privacy setting to "public" as a default meant that everyone's email contacts where exposed publicly. Only a deafening outcry across the blogosphere and beyond led to Google publicly apologising for their faux pas and resetting the privacy policy of every user back to private as a default.  Google's monetisation of Buzz may take a lot longer now that users will be more cautious to open up their privacy settings.    

It is not difficult to comprehend that there is a balance between the amount of data that users will or can give up and the level of data that businesses demand for monetisation.

For a symbiotic relationship to develop this balance between brand, trust, privacy, security, risk, identification and value needs to be understood and analysed.  Fear, uncertainty and doubt go hand in hand with the erosion of privacy and liberty, get the balance wrong and the user will not give you data and the web business will not survive. Finding and pushing the balance is the new executive skill.

Adding value through social CRM

Companies, such as Kontagent, Klout, Gravity, Rapportive, Etacts, Grader and Flowtown are building analytical tools that track and interpret the way users behave on Facebook, Gmail and Twitter i.e the Public Interest Graph, particularly how they interact with third-party applications. Such analysis tools help figure out, for instance, which invitations lead to the most registrations and why. Collecting data is one thing, making it useful quite another and that’s the key challenge for every business in this digital era, indeed AMF Ventures would go as far as to say this is the next battle ground of the web.

Disruptive change to a status quo

A well published fact from the dark side of digital footprint data is that the invasion of liberty or privacy, snooping, identity fraud and the subsequent abuse of your data costs £25 per person in the UK Source Identity Theft

Counter to this cost is the economic value created by user data, which is in the order of £100 per user.  Market cap of Google (March 2010) divided across the number of users.  Each user value will increase if Youtube, Facebook and other social media valuations are added to the equation.

Your digital data has value – it is fragmented but users may realise that they don't get a fair trade.  The value created by them is far greater than the free service reward.  Free may be good, free plus cash or share of an IPO for my privacy could be an alternative model for a new entrant who wants to cross the next boundary of user privacy, but at least there is an exchange value.  This could leave those who want to hide their privacy having to pay, rather than free-riding.

The Way Forward

ideas please … and watch facebook’s like button unravel

Thinking further about the Greenpeace cloud paper  where their emphasis is on the type of electricity production that powers the cloud. In my view they should open up another attack angle that will have a different effect.  They rightfully acknowledge that efficiency gains from technology advancement will reduce energy requirement but I don't think they look at what is possible with a bit of old fashion price/demand theory.

I agree that one prime focus of attack should be the move to sustainable energy and away from coal/gas, however, I would argue that an equally important focus should be on straight forward reduction.  But how do you encourage less use of a free cloud service. 

Every new consumer of cloud applications or new user adds new demands for computing, storage and power, every active existing user also increases demands and all in-active users, have an energy consumption that remains a constant bleed on the system. 

The area where I think there is some thought needed is on ageing data and in-active users.  How can cloud companies could use pricing to remove inactive accounts and moved aged data to dark (zero energy consumption) storage reducing demands, as well as moving to more sustainable energy sources.

This post focuses on consumer, business cloud thinking needs more than a train journey home…..

Case 1.   Users want access to old data - in this case let us assume that data from 1996 is archived off to dark storage.  If the disk has to be powered up, the user has to pay.  This is the application of a very blunt instrument to allow companies to reduce their backlog of digital data.  Rather like going to a library and looking up an old newspaper article on a microfiche.

Case 2. Users want to keep an inactive account. A user signs up for a slideshare or youtube account and eventually they move to vimeo and Scribe instead. If they want to keep the old account, after a period inactivity, they have to pay or the Service Provider can delete/ dark archive.

Case 3.  Users want their entire history always immediately available. So here the crunch.  Many are worried about an old discretion coming back to haunt you. Imagine Facebook continues to deliver the service for free, but free is only the last 12 months of data. If you want to keep older data active on spinning energy consuming disks you pay, or off it goes (access is still possible case 1).  A potential employer now has to pay for access to your old data, putting a little barrier up.

Case 4.  My Digital Footprint data.  Please can I have all my old data back to put on my own server, centralised, and you can delete it – saves you money and gives me control.

To me here is the message – it is possible to slow down on the new build of data centres by allowing service provider to use price to enable them to archive old stuff to a zero-energy platform.

Question : Can someone now dimension and scale this to see if it would produce any net benefit? 

Future post - how much could a cloud services (facebook) charge to keep old data instantly available? Bet it's £3.99 or some other hoax price as a means to reduce cost!

I thought it was time to revisit Spokeo http://www.spokeo.com and  http://pleaserobme.com/ - as you can now find out if they are out and worth robbing, adding Google maps street level enables you to plan the escape route. PleaseRobMe has made its point, however, Spokeo has not moved on. Trying a few friends in the US, I personally found the data was inaccurate (white and not back sort of level) or hopelessly out of date and a few have managed to hide their data.

Spokeo is not new launched in 2005 (USA) says it is a search engine specialized in organising people-related information from phone books, social networks, marketing lists, business sites, and other public sources. Most of their data is publicly available on the Web.  For example, you can find people’s name, phone, and address on Whitepages.com, and you can get home values from Zillow.com.  Spokeo’s algorithm can piece together (however not that well reading some of the reviews and my test) the scattered data into coherent people profiles, giving you the ‘some’ intelligence about anyone you want to find.

Time to revisit a few others I think….

 Dark Screen

When writing my digital footprint I updated the Six screen’s of life work originally developed for mobile web 2.0  (extract on read/write web)  However, I have now realised that I missed one out.

What is said in summary is that for the most part, we are consumers of content. In our daily lives we consume professionally created, produced and edited content from traditional and new media providers on our ‘six screens of life’. These screens are divided into two broad categories, big screens and small screens, each with three subgroups as per figure 2.

Figure 2:  6 screens of life

 Both for big and small screens, the user has traditionally been a passive receiver of content (content has been broadcast to the user) or the user has been seen as a member of a carefully controlled and managed audience (e.g. voting) – but not as a primary creator of content. For instance:

· both TV and cinema need users to consume (view); and

· a website needs users to consume/interact in most cases.

However, according to Forrester, “Monolithic blocks of eyeballs are gone. In their place is a perpetually shifting mosaic of audience micro-segments that forces marketers to play an endless game of audience hide and seek.” As advertisers lose the ability to invade the home, they will have to wait for invitations, and this means they have to learn how to adopt and understand the user, a good reason for understanding the impact of digital footprint.

Reflecting the above trend, most of the content on the mobile device to date has also been the ‘re-presentation’ and ‘reproduction’ of existing material delivered to the mobile screen. The mobile device, however, is changing from being a primary consumer to a major creator of content. It is worth noting at this point that the separate screens of life don’t have to be managed or offered by separate service providers, devices will no longer control what you can do and where, instead the screen will be able to come under the control of the user, with services relevant to the size of the screen. However, least we forget that the interactive age of communicates and social media delivers diversity and innovation, broadcast amplifies.

The missing one is as obvious as the one’s in front of you as it is the one you don’t look at.  The seventh screen it is the “dark screen”, the screen that is off the bottom of the lit screen.  Why is this dark screen important, as it is the one that represents your scrolling that means some content has just gone or is the one that someone is trying to be lit up for you.  99.999% of the internet is dark screen.  The data and information is there is it just not lit. 

Why was I thinking about this?  I have been working out how long a Tweet is relevant for as it moves from the top of the list, down to the unlit portion of your web page.  Have some interesting data on this ready for the next blog.

image from the BBC

Words are both a blessing and a curse; phrases are fashionable, colloquial and always misinterpreted.  Today at the dentist I was told I had a “communication” and that got me thinking about how we use the same word in different professions and how the same phrase communicates different things depending on location and intent.  My interest here is “Digital Footprint” and here are the most common interpretations I found today….

1. Digital Footprint is an term that helps educate our children about the dangers of being on-line; followed by the following advise; if in doubt don’t do it and if you do it will be found (probably the most popular use)
2. Digital Footprint describes the data you leave in the Internet from your keyboard and mouse.
3. Digital Footprint is the data you leave in the cloud from you all your interactions, creating and consuming, passive and active with all digital devices.
4. Digital Footprints describe your digital identity and digital reputation.
5. A Digital Footprint is your history of financial transactions.
6. A Digital Footprint in the area that an integrated circuit/chip/silicon occupies
7. Digital footprint is the footprint (area) that a digital device occupies when placed on a surface (least Popular)

My insight from this is that more is needed to gain common ground and bring about insight.

Telecom.TV asked this week “Who owns the clickstream? Perhaps we all do!

Whilst we all think we do own the click stream, it is not so clear. The click stream is also only a tiny proportion of the data that you can get as a company. The issue raised about Trust in the article is an important, but it should have asked what we trust companies for. There is a grey area between what we trust a supplier for, what we would trust them for, what by law they could do and what I expect them to do. This is a mind field and opens up opportunities for growth companies who want to take a leadership position where the major brands are too concerned about protection and governance.

Telecom.TV article