From CEO to employee with an opinion, we all share at least a slight intrigue about how much someone can find out about us from the web.  Further, we have become aware that our initial personal and/or company brand/ reputation is often determined by what someone else can find out from the web prior to meeting or buying. Given these views, here are a few guides lines for a quick digital footprint audit and "how to" find out what the web "may share" about you and or your company. 

Review by Tony Fish, 2008

Overall a good book, but this is a speed read.  For me personally well balanced and good issues raised.  Downside too US centric, too much about the law and too little about the complex inter-relationships.

Overall the book left me with a number of questions the most important one being “at what point does reporting on (shamming) the norm breakers make it acceptable that more people will break the norm, seeing the shame as tolerable to gain the benefit.”

The basic premises (which I agree with which is why I read it) is that the Internet model provides a broadcast, available and permanent record.  The ability to forget, forgive, ignore, wash away, remove or bury has gone. 

Throughout the book I picked up five core themes

            Change (why this is an important topic)

Judgements (where and how is reputation created)

            Trust (the components of reputation)

            Context (how reputation can be destroyed and responses)

            Law (the balances and checks for democracy)

Solove makes some good points about how to move forward and as these are the key values of the book, I’ll leave you to buy it and read them.  However his middle ground approach does not really encompass Scott McNealy views on privacy as of “get over it”

I would like to have seen developed a model about the complex inter-working relationships between the creation of norms, culture, shaming, correction, law and rights (including free speech)

It made me think however how much I enjoy story telling.  Imagine that great wheeze that you recall how you climbed Everest in bare foot with your best mate after a good night out.  In truth this was something you read as you were camping in the Alps.  Today you can tell the story, which indeed improves with time and becomes more embellished ( a true story).  However, someone else will soon be able to look on the Web and see that it was not you and there is no truth in your story.  Will this indelible web world be the end of great story telling?  However, I hope my mind map helps present the scope of the book, what it does not show is the over-emphasis on law that is prevalent in the book.

The economic climate means that there is a focus on costs and revenue at the expense of opportunity and innovation.  “In the bank” is winning over even “in the bag”, but it is also true that you cannot cost cut your way out of recession, you need to trade. Balancing future and survival is as much an executive skill today as at any time in corporate history.

Companies who are taking the opportunity to adopt networked technologies, which have been developing over the last 5 years and in our view are starting to become stable enough to show promise, are likely to seriously enhance their ability to offer better services, provide unique customer experience, be more responsive, delivery on service promises and keep costs down, during these difficult times and the upturn.

A key driver for these pioneering companies in the adoption curve is how they handle and analyse customer and social graph data.  To explain this concept, this Viewpoint focuses on “The WHAT principle and the WHO effect”

We hope that our Viewpoint improves awareness, raises questions and promotes deliberation over lunch.

The WHAT principle

The focus of today’s higher value services is personalization – the making of your user experience, creating value from the reduction in churn and incremental service revenue, assuming that any incremental margin is not eroded by competitive pressures.  The focus on personalization is, to AMF Ventures understanding, a focus on WHAT:– what you as a user want to do; what service you want; what is needed now.  The sole benefactor is the individual, but does this create any value?  The assumption is that personalization provides focus, and that this focus leads to the ability to deliver engaging and personalized services including advertising.  This advertising being derived from the same advertising budgets, which is now redirected from other display channels.  Therefore does personalization actually create any new value and will it actually grow the overall spend of the entire market?

Commentators, consultants and media sellers will provide convincing evidence to back their own propositions and the purpose of this Viewpoint is not to debate the personalization opportunity but to introduce the WHO effect.  Whilst personalization will increase value for the provider [more effective marketing and efficient sales]; assuming that there is value for the user, it does not itself create new value for the entire converged industries.   However, personalization could create value, if the focus is on WHO and not WHAT!

The WHO effect

Personalization has been about the WHAT principle. This has focused on a single customer: ‘you’.  The WHO effect is the multiplier. The focus shifts from WHAT, to orientate on WHO you are doing something with.  In simple terms when you go for dinner, who are you with? When you are in a business meeting or seminar, who are you with? When you are at a concert, in school, or on holiday – who are you with?  The opportunity is that these ‘WHO’s’ are gravitating towards and enjoying the same experiences as ‘you’.  The additional profiles of those who you are ‘with’, can combine to create a new and incremental market value, assuming as a company you are able to reach these customer and deliver services that they want.

Consider the advertising issue created through personalization, it reaches you – one person in two billion.  The world is divided into two billion personalized worlds, only relevant to one person at any given time, and each person with an unequal bite of the advertising spend!  The WHO effect would suggest that as you are enjoying something with others, even though it is outside of their personalized preference, it is possible that it would be worth providing information on products and services to the group.  The WHO effect is the electronic ‘word of mouth’.  It assumes and depends on the fact that we adopt at different rates and some not at all. These issues provide the limitation to personalization and the WHAT principle, but opportunity to the WHO effect.

How WHO Works

WHAT based decisions are not using information in a sophisticated enough way. To move to the WHO based system, customer data needs to be understood in a more nuanced way. We think of data on 2 main axes: How ‘active the data is’ (static to dynamic) and ‘type of data’ (factual to behavioural)

Factual vs Behavioural.

Factual Data just is – date of birth, where you live etc.

Behavioural data is what you do, your footprint over time.

Dynamic vs Static

Static data is data that doesn’t change – your date of birth. Highly dynamic data is what is changing every minute – movement, current location etc. Some data is dynamic, but over long time periods – eg place of work, home address etc

Some dynamic data is repeated, ie there are patterns in it (such as the daily commute) that allow one to predict behaviours and events.

Clearly, if a service provider has a grasp of this information, they would be able to make better decisions about the user context and thus serve up better information or services to the user – critical for the limited real estate on even the smartest of mobile devices. 

Creating advantage

This WHO effect is not open to the traditional broadcast, TV and entertainment companies, although they are the traditional home of the display advertising budgets.  This service could be offered by Web companies, however as your profile and personalization has a dependency on your web access time, it could be difficult. The major benefactor of the WHO effect will be mobile companies as the mobile device becomes the platform to collect data, interrupt the connection and deliver the value.

Caveats

First: the opportunity to exploit the WHO effect is not open to companies who want to ‘control’ the user experience and developer environment such as Apple, they can only enjoy the WHAT principle. Open mobile platforms, open access services and developers who services work across all devices will be able to exploit the WHO effect. The multiplier value of mobile is not in knowing WHAT you are doing (location and attention), but WHO you are doing it with. 

Second: user pre-acceptance and buy-in is critical – “Snooping” behaviour has already blown up in a number of companies’ faces. Users need to be certain that data will not be misused, sold on or otherwise exposed.

Third: trust is critical.  Is your Brand value on of trust and what will the user trust you for?

Fourth: regulation and law.  This is a black hole of debate

Fifth: this concept is deeply embedded in “web as a platform concept” This is a change from domains, destinations and portals. A way to understand this is to view that owning a top level domain such as www.news.com is not important.  Users will never visit this site, but rather interact with the data that comes from this source via Twitter, RSS feeds, readers, blogs and social sites.  The stats on your site are not important, but rather where you content is consumed and how? Customer ownership, as per caveat one, is not important – owing the customers data is.

Migrating some original work to here - first posted in May 2009

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?

one of the joys of the android phone and some other services is "voice search"

Applications are as obvious as:

- sitting in the kitchen needing to convert lbs to Kg, hands are dirty, but you can use voice search to find out

- driving along and needing to find directions or a phone number

- leaving a voice reminder to do some action later

However, would you feel the same about this (voice oriented) data and the search results being added to your digital footprint as one you typed in.  I am starting to explore why we feel differently about our voice conversations than typed data.   If adverting appeared for a kitchen scale conversion on your TV after your searched would you mind?

All views welcome.

Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor

“Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things."

Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is".

"I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type."

He says that at present "we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are". The search engine also knows your location, which according to the WSJ, means if you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk.

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

However, social media consultant Suw Charman-Anderson told the BBC, the problem was not as great as Schmidt believes. "There's always a lag between the introduction of new technology and the development of a set of social norms around the behaviour that the technology encourages."

She said the idea that everything is stored online is not true and it will be quite some time before that can become true "because of the enormity of the internet".

"As a society, we are just going have to become a bit more forgiving of the follies of youth."

However, many women are now considering keeping their maiden names rather that changing to their husbands to maintain their professional digital reputation, I suppose it all depends what you need to hide !

Life is a Game – it is just that most of it is not well designed.

This video suggests that now the social web is built, we can move to the game dynamic and make the web fun, some is already here (Loyalty cards – first level of game, just not well implemented). This moves a digital footprint from being one you generate to one that you are forced to add to.  Elsewhere this is called Behavioural Economics.

Four key game dynamics that can influence you

Appointment – do something at a predefined time.  Forcing interactions and removing freewill.  Examples are Happy Hour, Farmville, taking medicine on time,

Influence and status – personal desire.  Examples are credit card colour, modern warfare game, exam results

Progression dynamic – need to complete and doing something to unlock rewards.  Linkedin; you are only 85% complete. 

Communal discovery – find and source the best.

This is an article from Treeworld on August 21, 2010.   There are many Tony Fish’s and shows how someone could associate this one with me and think that I have a new job.  Learning - always take care to check that the name is the person you really want.

AN ENVIRONMENTAL expert has agreed to 16 months of koala community service after giving a developer advice that was so deficient a local council says it caused the deaths of 30 breeding females.

After pleading guilty in the first prosecution of an adviser to a developer, Tony Fish and his company Orogen Pty Ltd have agreed to provide $160,000 worth of environmental services to preserve koala communities by mapping their habitat for Port Stephens Council. The order to help protect koalas, known as an environmental service order, is on top of $120,000 in fines and legal costs and an order that Mr Fish and his company serve a modern-day equivalent of a stint in the stocks by publishing details of their offence in the Herald and the newsletter for the Ecological Consultants Association.

Under the headline ''Environmental consultant convicted of causing damage to koala habitat at Taylors Beach, Port Stephens'', the advertisements say Orogen and Mr Fish provided a developer with advice on what vegetation could be lawfully cleared on the property, but failed to advise that damaging the habitat of the koala was unlawful under the National Park and Wildlife Act.

''Both Orogen and Mr Fish were aware that the property contained habitat of the koala and koala movement corridors. Vegetation containing koala habitat was subsequently cleared.''

Mr Fish told the court that because of an oversight he failed to advise the owner of the land, Buildev, that it was illegal to damage threatened species habitat without a development consent from council, which saw more than three hectares of the 30-hectare site being unlawfully cleared in 2007.

Justice Nicola Pain said there was "no evidence before the court of any physical harm to the koalas as a result of the clearing activity".

But Lee McElroy, a vegetation officer with the Port Stephens Council, said he had no doubt that felling the trees caused the deaths of koalas which, he said, ''panic if they don't find the trees they have previously visited''.

"They remember if they passed a tree on the left or right side and they get confused and scared if the trees they climb are gone and they run across the road,'' he said.

"We lost 30 breeding females straight after the clearing event. That's a large breeding colony that has been virtually wiped out from one incident … It's not anecdotal evidence, they were using it [the cleared area] as a corridor and they ran across the road when they discovered the trees they knew and expected to use had been removed."

While admitting he had made a ''significant'' mistake, Mr Fish denied the clearing was responsible for the deaths.

"There is no evidence the clearing activity had caused any harm to the koalas," he said.

Mr Fish said he and the company he part-owns were "sorry for it" and had decided "to learn from it, to grow from it and to contribute to the industry from it".

Lisa Corbyn, who heads the Department of Environment which prosecuted Mr Fish, said the decision put environment consultants on notice they "have an important responsibility to provide accurate advice" to clients.

Mr McElroy agreed the decision was a ''very valuable lesson'' for environmental consultants.

"We come across this all the time where we have so-called consultants giving advice contrary to the legislation,'' he said. ''While there were good environmental consultants there were also bad apples who would simply tell developers what they wanted to hear. "There are ecologists trying to please developers knowing they'll get further work with them."