Privacy

The Best Laid Deals Oft Go Astray

by Ike Pigott · November 10, 2011

Clout is an important thing to have. Klout can be a fun thing to have.

Clout is the ability to influence, and get things done. Klout purports to be a measure of your online influence.

Presumably, the more Clout you have in real life, the more Klout you’ll have online. And just like in real life, it turns out that we’re all influential in different things.

What Klout is trying to do is admirable, in a way. But at times the execution will be off.

8 comments

Social Media Research And Privacy: Where Do You Stand?

by Tom Webster · March 17, 2011

Last week I was part of a neat experiment with a group of about 30 or so forward-thinking market researchers to come up with the five “hot” and five “not-so-hot” trends that will affect our industry over the next few years. The goal was for all of us to publish our posts at roughly the same time (I say “roughly,” because I was late ) and see where we all agreed and disagreed. Here were mine, in case you are interested. Fellow market researcher Tom Anderson (who organized the event) produced these word clouds to represent the hot and not-hot posts; if you can tell the difference between them, you’re a frickin’ genius.

10 comments

Christmas: A Breach Of Trust

by Jason Falls · December 24, 2010

We live in a new era. One of radical transparency. Wikileaks is exposing state secrets. Facebook is reconditioning us to share more of our selves, even if we don’t want to. Whether it’s making your buying preferences known to fuel smarter advertising delivery systems or leaking war strategies, the global democratization of information is forcing our hand — good or bad — to be one important thing: honest at all costs.

12 comments

Spilling Secrets: Social Privacy and Confidentiality In a Wikileaks World

by Mark Dykeman · December 21, 2010

You keep secrets. Your company keeps secrets. Your government keeps secrets. Is this a bad thing?

If you want to keep a secret, steer clear of Wikileaks. (Look what’s been happening lately.) But wait just a moment. What Wikileaks did was to make it overwhelmingly obvious that secrets are kept and that everything is not as it sometimes seems. And, to be fair, Wikileaks was the middle man: the whistle-blowers provided the raw data and Wikileaks publically funneled the data to other media organizations. These other media organizations had the audience sizes and reputations to help spread the news.

5 comments

Common Sense Safety Tips For Foursquare And Gowalla

by Jason Falls · March 29, 2010

Location-based platforms like Foursquare and Gowalla (and I heard Friday Facebook might be unveiling location-based data soon) are the hot new thing in the tech world. That means the rest of the world will probably think they’re cool about 6-9 months from now. Like many Web 2.0 companies, the location-based services have open source coding and Facebook-like privacy ignorance in their DNA. It’s astounding how little concern has been given to people’s privacy, safety and security with these softwares. But I blame the users almost as much as the companies themselves.

33 comments

Do You Know Who Your Friends Are? Google Does.

by Jason Falls · June 19, 2008

Robert Scoble is known for befriending nearly anyone in the social media space. It’s part of his appeal. Nice guy, well-loved blog, interesting TV show, popular columnist and everyone’s cyber-friend. But what happens when friend or follower status is taken out of context?

I’ve met Robert. I’m digital friends with him on several social networks like a lot of people. We have exchanged messages on Twitter a few times, but I don’t know that he would consider me a friend in the off-line context. We might be fast friends if we lived in the same area and hung out together, but the ‘Ville and the Valley are a fair bit apart.

4 comments

How Personal Is Too Much?

by Jason Falls · April 21, 2008

My daughter Katie was born late Saturday night. She was six pounds, two ounces and 17 inches long. Mother and baby are exceptionally well. My son Grant and I are good, too.

[flickr style="float: left"]photo:2426616395[/flickr]Katie came early â€“ three weeks to be exact â€“ and we didn’t know she was coming until late Friday afternoon when a 24-hour hospital stay for what the doctor’s termed, “precautionary monitoring.” The precaution turned out to be preventative and labor was induced Friday afternoon.

29 comments

Employee Policies For Social Media Participation

by Jason Falls · March 7, 2008

Does your company support your participation in social media? Are you apprehensive about admitting you work there when you comment on blogs, participate in forums or list your workplace or contact information on social networks?

Chances are those of you reading this blog have discussed your social media participation with your employers or you work for yourself, so the questions are more rhetorical than direct. But think about the millions of people out there who either choose to separate themselves from their professional life in online activities or are forced to do so.