Both of these services analyse your patterns and email behaviour to make suggestions…..leaving the only question as “when will Gmail write the email for me, sent it and respond so I can spend all day on the beach?”

*Got the wrong Bob*  is a new Labs feature aimed at sparing you this kind of embarrassment. Turn it on from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings, and based on the groups of people you email most often, Gmail will try to identify when you've accidentally included the wrong person — before it's too late. When's the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, "Are you sure you meant to send this to me?" and promptly realized that you didn't? Sometimes these little mistakes are actually quite painful. Hate mail about your boss to your boss? Personal info to some random guy named Bob instead of Bob the HR rep? Doh!
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-in-labs-got-wrong-bob.html

*Don’t forget Bob* ….Have you ever realized you mistakenly left someone important out of an email, or just spent too much time trying to decide who from your long list of contacts to include?

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-in-labs-suggest-more-recipients.html

A weekly post cast by Jim Hopkinson who works for Wired.com

http://thehopkinsonreport.com/2010/08/19/episode-118-social-media-is-the-new-rock-and-roll/comment-page-1/#comment-88918

This one is a thought providing piece on Social Media saying that SM is for this generation the rock and roll of previous generations - worth listening to.

my view is that I like the analogy draw up but I am not sure if I agree with it all but it did made me think.

One aspect to consider is why the youth love technology/ social media?  One answer is (based on a massive amount of real research by FT/ Orange) is that technology/social media gives kids a place to go where parents don't have control.

This idea fits well with what the article says and to the roots behind other generational gaps/ ideals/ fashions.

If social is a place where "we" go today as parents don't have control, with all these new controls there will be new opportunities as the new generation or youth find a place where their parents (or heaven forbid) grandparents are not.

Location should have created substantial new value on a mobile operators’ balance sheet.  In their rush to control and lock down this valuable data set, the operators set the charges to high and put up an impossible API; these actions meant that by-pass and alternatives would flourish and they have. Location is in so many ways unique to mobile, therefore we are right to question how an operator could try to capture some value back.

Here is an idea for you (free)   I would like my operator to control the location that my applications sees, I want someone to become the intermediately and offer me a “trusted service”, as the value has migrated from the knowing location to managing it.

Some example:-

Rich and Famous - you want to tweet your latest update with your location. Would be good but this means the Mr Robber and Mrs Burglar know that you are out or somewhere.  Please can someone allow me to put a false location on my tweets for a period to protect my privacy.

Celebrity – you want to tweet your latest update with your location. Would be good but this means you can be found by the hoards of fans who will mob you.  Please can someone put a 20 minute delay in my location.  Make it available but not in real time, unless I want to party with my fans.

Single female – I want to update Foresquare, but I am worried about …..  Please can my trusted location provider/ manager make my location available later, at some time period I am happy with.

The trusted service is to add a user control layer that adds a time delay to when your location become public.  Mr Operator, you could do it, but I expect that someone will do it before you.   Is this a big money spinner NO, this is about control, trust and loyalty; YES - think branding!

In the good old days there was the phone book.  A list of all phone numbers in your area.  You could flick through this open, public record and find out where someone lived and their phone number.  Easy, simple and in black and white delivered to your door.

Back in 2006 when Ajit Jaokar and I wrote "Mobile Web 2.0" we created an idea about "I am a tag and not a number" - which was to become a bedrock of PhoneBook 2.0 thinking.  The thinking was that phone books will die as the phone number is dead; you will become what others tag you as.  This move would allow phonebooks to move on from a disconnected phone number and become an connected action and activity delivering: book a meeting, message, call, IM, find and locate,

In the old model you trusted the company who printed the phone book to remove (in the next addition) your details if you so wanted.  However, once printed there was always a copy at the library if you wanted older versions to see if someone had just gone x-directory.

Yes there was a lot of work involved, you had to find the directory, pick it up, use your brain to determine where "F" "I" "S" "H" was in the alphabet, run your finger down the page and horror, write down the number, before you walked to a phone and dialled in the number.

But, however you look at it, this was a public record and was open. So why is there so much concern about web directories.  Yes it is easier to find and any lazy fool can do it from anywhere, but so what?

Is it that we now don't know who to turn to become x-directory (there are too many) or is it that we cannot delete what is there or is it that we are worried about someone else other than a trusted party publishing our data.

In the old printed world there was a sense of control, redress and trust, in the new on-line world we only control what we say we say about ourselves, but cannot control and have little ability to redress what others say about us, or someone providing data that we want, for whatever reason, to keep from open and public scrutiny.

Did our forefathers think, debate, wrestle about the implications of printing every phone number is an open and public book, or was it a useful utility?

Don’t forget to do a factory reset before you pass it on – or you will compromise your identity, privacy, security, reputation ……

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

I am interested in what makes up my digital footprint.  Aaron Zinman  (MIT) work on personas was first presented in 2009.  At that point I entered my name and have just been back to see if any thing has changed.

My issue is my name Tony Fish, of which there are several interpretations:-

1. I am not the only person called Tony Fish. A quick search on Linkedin  Facebook 123People shows there are lots. I have spoken to over 80 of them from across the world including US, Australia, UK and New Zealand.  I am trying to link more off http://www.tonyfish.com
2. There are a lot men called Tony who like fishing, therefore most images of Tony Fish are Tony holding his catch.  Google Images, Flickr
3. There are a lot of Tony’s Fish restaurants.  The most popular one at the moment is based in Canada, they have done well on social media Tony's Fish & Oyster Cafe
4. There is a semi-famous Tony Fish – who is actor in MadMen and the odd one from Taiwan

So when comparing my old and new results – very little has changed, as what I do is lost in the volume of data about Tony and his Fish and it does not really tell me who I am.

My company AMF Ventures does stand out any more than my name due to AMF Bowling and the French public body that acts to safeguard investments, but I am not sure where the religion and medical connections come from.

Andreas Constantinou (whom I know well and have worked with) is at VisionMobile and wants your input on his Mobile Developer Survey, sponsored by O2 Litmus. Have your say at http://www.visionmobile.com/developers on the future of mobile app development and see what everyone else in the community is saying.  Incentive is prizes, including: a Nexus One smartphone, an HTC Touch 2 and two massive Amazon vouchers (worth 500 and 250 Euros).

Survey closes April 16 and results become publicly available in Q2. Participants will receive a summary.

They have also published the Mobile Industry Atlas which is a visual who’s who of the mobile ecosystem.  The Atlas provides an unparalleled view of the entire span of 1,100+ leading companies in the mobile industry, neatly arranged into distinct categories so you can easily browse through them. The Atlas is available from 95 GBP incl. Download a sample at www.visionmobile.com/research.php

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….