Oxford University Professor Jonathan Zittrain in his new book, The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It, according to NetworkWorld, states that:

…today’s Internet appliances such as the iPhone and Xbox hamper innovation. That’s because these locked-down devices prohibit the kind of tinkering by end users that made PCs and the Internet such a force of economic, political and artistic change.

Zittrain argues that if the cybersecurity situation doesn’t improve, we will migrate to a different kind of Internet. The new Internet will have as its endpoints tethered appliances such as iPhones, which are controlled by their manufacturers, instead of open, changeable PCs attached to an open network that can foster the next round of disruptive innovation.

A bold statement. And he’s got a point.

Now these devices are innovations unto themselves, and some even are positioned as development platforms. Take the iPhone, for example. Apple just released the latest version of their Software Development Kit (SDK) and developers everywhere are coding away, looking to build the next great iPhone application.

But in classic Apple style (i.e. heavy DRM within iTunes), Apple remains the gatekeeper. Applications can only be distributed via their App Store, and will only be distributed if approved by Apple. Apple will explain that this is for security and quality-assurance reasons, but it still puts them in control of what’s available, with the ability to shut an app off if they so desire. So yes, you can be as creative as you want on their platform, but it’s up to Apple if anyone is going to see it at all, or in perpetuity.

There’s a similar situation going on with Google’s new App Engine (the preview version was launched on 4/8, then taken down on 4/9). Google’s vision is that instead of freely building apps with their API, you can develop applications using their APIs and host them on their servers, free of charge. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Salesforce’s Appexchange are also providing similar opportunities for developers. Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch, as ArsTechnica reports.

Perhaps the most blatant downside is being locked into Google’s platform. Existing projects will have to be ported or written from scratch, and those that rely on traditional relational databases will probably have difficulty making the transition. Even more difficult would be transitioning your application to your own servers if you choose to leave Google’s tender embrace. Once you’ve created an established application on top of Google’s authentication service and stored all your data within the company’s datastore, removing all this code and data and moving it to another location would appear to a be fairly onerous task.

Once again, applications — and even more importantly, data — are locked into someone else’s platform. And this is precisely what Jonathan Zittrain is talking about.

This is a disturbing trend and runs afoul of what led to the creativity that yielded many of the most popular websites of the last few years. Imagine if Warhol was free to create any art he wanted, but someone else owned the canvases and could destroy or bury them at any point if his art offended someone? That’s what’s going on here.

It doesn’t seem that this is a trend that will let up anytime soon as companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon have way too much to gain by housing and hosting application engines. Doesn’t feel like ‘do no evil’ anymore does it? And a little more ‘PC’ than ‘Mac’, if you ask me.

Food for thought…

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MIT Convergence Culture guru Henry Jenkins posts a 3-part essay on the cultural politics of Web 2.0 with colleague Joshua Green (together, Jenkins and Green organize the Futures of Entertainment conferences).

This essay focuses on the resulting reworking of the “moral economy” that shapes the relations between producers and consumers. “Moral economy” refers to the social expectations, emotional investments, and cultural transactions which create a shared understanding between all participants within an economic exchange. The moral economy which governed old media companies has broken down and there are conflicting expectations about what new relationships should look like. The risks for companies are high, since alienated consumers have other options for accessing media content. The risks for consumers are equally high, since legal sanctions can stifle the emerging participatory culture.

And I highly recommend reading it if you do any kind of marketing that benefits from engagement, content creation, and community. So that pretty much means all of you.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

Happy Friday.

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Craigslist has become part of our lives. And we’ve become comfortable with its simple, almost never-changed html interface.

But what it mixed things up a bit? What if not just the design, but the experience was tweaked slightly to mean less page reloading, easier searching, and a cleaner look and feel?

Well, Designer Ian (nice) Coyle apparently wondered the same thing and launched crgslst, a more ajax-y redux of everyone’s favorite classifieds site.

(via Unplggd)

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First off, I’d like to thank Ian for allowing Nick and myself to have the opportunity to write for his blog and let us loose on you. I liken it to a house party when the parents leave town. Hopefully we leave the blog unscathed and not like what this kid did.

I’ve talked about a range of topics this week all centering on social networks at some degree. My last post of the week speaks to this once more and harkens back to the essence of why I’m in this biz. At my source as creative and as a designer is one of the first things I learned. That being typography. And with that was exposure to Helvetica.



We’ve all seen it thousands upon thousands of times in our lives, most of us without even knowing. It recently celebrated it’s 50th birthday and some consider it a perfect font. Gary Hustwit did a phenomenal documentary on Helvetica, interviewing some of the best in the industry and it’s impact on not only design, but the world.

It’s considered a social font. Designed to be a part of the fabric of our everyday life and to make communication easier. It’s easily adapted to what we need and used to depict any aspect in the environment around us. From warnings to welcomes, exciting news to legalese. Where is it tougher to find? Online. Arial is Microsoft’s attempt at Helvetica as a screen font (and print as well,) but it doesn’t quite have the elegance of Helvetica.

For a font to still be in use and to the extent it is after 50 years is an amazing feat. Will the online space have something as socially relevant as this in 50 years? Will there even be the internet in 50 years? The online landscape changes constantly and continues to redefine itself. It’d be amazing to to know the social networks and habits we are developing now will create the societies of the future and maintain a relevancy throughout history. Something as simple as a font changed aspects of communication and connection. This arena of new media is doing so as well.

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A certain kind of Facebook game (vampires and zombies, I’m looking at you) may have turned many away from visually simplistic stat-building MMOs.

Well, that’d be a shame, because Wagner James Au has posted on GigaOM about start-up GameLayers new (and interesting) PMOG (Passively Multiplayer Online Game).

Here’s the description from GameLayers site:

PMOG transforms our web surfing into ongoing social play. With a Firefox plug-in, players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions.

and

This unconventional massively multiplayer online game merges your web life with an alternate, hidden reality. The mundane takes on a layer of fantastic achievement. Player behavior generates characters and alliances, triggers interactions in the environment and earns the player points to spend online beefing up their inventory. Suddenly the Internet is not a series of untouchable exhibits, but rather a hackable, rewarding environment! .

When Kotaku’s editors posted about it a couple weeks ago, I skimmed and shrugged. Seemed like an ultra-niche, early prototype of a genre developed as part parody, part web-tech experiment.

After reading Au’s post, though, and checking out the offering more thoroughly, I think I misjudged.

First off, it’s got a Steampunk aesthetic. Steampunk is the black mini skirt of the blog surfing early-adopter set (see boing-boing.net and Doctorow, Cory) ~ it’s never going to go out of style (I hope I don’t eat those words). This overlay may have been conceived as an outreach strategy…or maybe because it’s so cool. I’m guessing strategy, though. Au reports that they’re “backed by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures LP and Internet guru/venture capitalist Joi Ito.” Probably not a lot of random decisions being made.

Another plus: The game play reminds me of dorm assassins. One of the greatest things about on-campus living.

These aesthetic choices will work in the short term, but there’s something more interesting going on…once people start setting traps and scoring against friends based on predicative behaviors (Johnny knows Billy is a sap for Hayden P., so he plants a mine on the URL of a candid pic on perez…Billy clicks and BOOM! Johnny scores!) PMOG is going to clearly distinguish itself from those goofy games with undead characters. Why? Because it’s just the opposite ~ by allowing friends to accrue points based on how well they know one another, its scoring is determined by the vitality of the richest friendships. Bite that, vampires.

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MIT’s Technology Review just published it’s list of 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008. The one piece that resonated with me is Sandy Pentland’s exploration into Reality Mining especially in relation to social networking, new media and interactive.

Reality mining “is all about paying attention to patterns in life and using that information to help [with] things like setting privacy patterns, sharing things with people, notifying people–basically, to help you live your life.”

This becomes a hot topic for a few reasons. First and foremost is, once again, privacy issues. Data capture is part of our daily lives – credit card usage, cookies on sites, social network profiles, company swipe cards – and as technology continues to slowly infiltrate more of our lives, we become more tolerant and accepting of what information is divulged and distributed. Everyone has see the movies with the FBI trying to trace the criminals phone call with the criminal hanging up just before being caught. However, most people don’t think about that even with mobile phones being on all the time A simple Google search on his/her name would surprise a lot of people.

Reality Mining has been a reality for years. And as mobile phones become more prevalent with WI-FI, Bluetooth and GPS-type systems (ala iPhone,) in addition to the laptops we carry around and use, the continual social network is our daily life. And as mobile technology advances, our blip on the grid becomes more prominent. The Human Cyborg ideal continues to press forward. Professor Kevin Warwick first started research into this in 1998 by planting microchips in his arm for recognition of systems in his lab.

The major benefit of Reality Mining is from an anthropological standpoint. How people interact, where they are and when they are. Tying this information into disease outbreaks, advertising models (when a person sees an ad, what do they do right afterwards?) and general healthcare and “human maintenance.” Smartex in Italy is working on clothing that does just that.

It’s a bit of the God factor (being omnipotent and omniscient) that is also fascinating. Knowing where your friends are at any time, knowing what they’re doing, where to get the food your phone knows your craving. It’s bringing the idea of Facebook, Google Maps, Dodgeball and other sites into the physical space. The ultimate social network. Maybe even a step closer to SkyNet.

Real-time in real-time. Very meta.

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A fellow co-worker and myself were discussing various social aspects and the new trend of how people use space. As in, where they spend most of their time. The topic was very interesting where we initially narrowed it down into three areas. Home, work and the ThirdSpace (or Being Space as TrendWatching points out)

commercial living-room-like settings, where catering and entertainment aren’t just the main attraction, but are there to facilitate small office/living room activities like watching a movie, reading a book, meeting friends and colleagues, or doing your admin.

BEING SPACES charge us for eating, drinking, playing, listening, surfing, working, or meeting, just as we would at home or in the office, while successfully reintegrating us into city life 

An all too common example is the way Starbucks has made the coffeeshop into a living room type setting.

I also believe that in addition to these three spaces, there is a 4thSpace - online and social networks. A place where people go as a virtual home, from their landing page on Facebook to iGoogle. People dwell in one or two of these spaces at any one time. Usually one is physical with the second being virtual (ex: sitting at home playing Xbox Live, in Starbucks surfing Facebook, etc.)

The Four Spaces
1 - Home
2 - Work/Office
3 - Being Space (Starbucks, Borders Books, Panera Bread)
4 - Virtual Space (Facebook, iGoogle, MySpace) 

The intriguing aspect of 4thSpace is that it continues to exist without us after we place our identity into that realm. With MySpace, there are pages of deceased members that still garner visits and posted comments. So much so in fact that those that have passed now warrant their own sites like MyDeathSpace.com. The virtual identity becomes, or takes the place of, a real presence. Granted, social networks also allow users to be someone (or something) other than themselves, but the 4thSpace allows comfort in a setting where the other three spaces may not.

People unfamiliar, and even the familiar, become known by their page or avatar. Xbox Live, Facebook or when SecondLife was viable allows users to drop in for a visit and say hello. No one home? Leave a message and they’ll get back to you.

It’s a fascinating topic that is vast in it’s research potential, especially with user trends and emerging technologies with the additional social aspects and implications. As we get drawn into The Matrix a bit more, it’ll be nice to know how cozy it will be. Or when a Starbucks opens a Starbucks in it. Trust me, NYC is close already.

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A group of internet users (some call them hackers) known as ‘Anonymous’, have basically launched denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against the Church of Scientology, and have gotten their hands on, and subsequently released confidential, highly-sensitive Scientology documents.

A great recap of the story can be found here.

My contemporary, Tom Hespos weighs in on this via his blog, and calls it a ‘crowdwar’, that it will prepare us for cyberwarfare, and that ‘we will be talking about this for years to come’. AdRants commented on this issue as well.

And I agree.

But I will also add that while there are bits and pieces of this effort that have the air of what we traditionally think of as ‘cyberterrorism’, e.g. DoS attacks, we can not underestimate how the internet can be used for propagandism and the spread of (dis)information.

In addition to attacks targeting servers, cyberwarfare can also make use of web properties and communities, specifically, various forms of social media, like blogs, social networks, and social news aggregators. All of these tools can be — and have been — used for the spread of love, hate, patriotism, jingoism, rhetoric, dissemination of facts, and the manipulation of the truth.

Lets take a look at what Anonymous has done:

* YouTube
Almost 400 videos mentioning Anonymous + Scientology. Here’s Anonymous’ ‘coming out’ video…

* News Aggregators
Numerous ‘Dugg’ stories on Digg, each with an average of about 4,000 ‘diggs’. And thousands of comments in total, with each one making the prized ‘front page’ of Digg.

* File Sharing Services
I won’t link to them here, but if you reference the aforementioned Digg search results, you can see how Anonymous is disseminating all the top-secret Scientology documents they can get their hands on, using outlets like BitTorrent (via PirateBay) and MediaFire.

If you are a user that frequents any of the social media sites referenced above, you have no doubt been exposed to the ways that these properties (and utilities) have been used to spread both factual information and propaganda. But don’t think this is just the realm of Scientology-haters. It’s the realm of Ron Paul supporters, Hilary Clinton bashers, war crime accusers, environmental crusaders, and liberals, independents, and conservatives alike.

Just as social media is a wonderful tool to find like-minded peers with similar beliefs, it’s also a way to convince others to share our beliefs. As marketers and advertisers, we’re trying to figure out how do this ourselves, albeit usually with less serious consequences.

Anti-terrorism experts learn from the volume of ‘chatter’ on message boards and communities. Presidential fund-raising can reach record one-day levels via social mediab. Two polar extremes, both using similar methods.

What social media allows groups from Al-Qaeda, to Anonymous, from Democrats, to Republicans, to do is provide supporters and potential converts unprecedented access to information. It has never before been easier to get access to hour-long videos or 300-page documents. What used to be underground rallies in clandestine locations have become groups on Facebook, channels on YouTube, and comment threads on Digg. Heck you can even use social media to facilitate those same in-person clandestine meetings (Meetup).

Social media, as wonderful a tool as it can be, can also be used to wage war, spread propaganda, or liberate information. What ‘Anonymous’ is doing is probably a combination of all three. And as Tom Hespos stated, yes — we will be talking about this for a long time, because this war is nowhere near over.

But it should be noted that social media doesn’t fight wars. People do. And it’s what people do with social media that matters. People, by nature, are joiners. Joiners of causes, groups, movements, lifestyles. Social media facilitates it all. In a way, it makes us hyper-joiners.

What this particular ‘cyberwar’ can teach us is that as marketers, we must remember this propensity to join, and figure out how to use social media to better galvanize audiences. As consumers, we need to remember just how easy it is to join something — and determine what is propaganda, what is noise, and what we believe in.

Information and disinformation are equally as easily spread via social media, but it is up to us, as individuals, to determine which one is which. What is a malicious ‘hacker’ to one can be the exposing and enlightening bearer of truth to another.

Which one is ‘Anonymous’? That’s up to you to decide. But what we can all agree upon is that social media represents part of the evolution of communication. Free communication should never be limited — but we must thoroughly understand all methods of communication if we expect to be able to separate information from disinformation.

And social media is no exception.

Heck, most advertising can usually be defined as propaganda. Consumers choose which advertising to believe hundreds of times a day. But hmmmmm…If social media makes the spread of propaganda so easy, why are advertisers having such a tough time figuring it out?

Maybe we need to become better propagandists. Or maybe we need to stop spreading disinformation.

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If you were there, and you want to relive it, or if you weren’t and missed it (or if you were just stuck on the 405) you can view, share, and/or download my presentation below.


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Here’s something interesting, if you haven’t seen it yet…

Operator11.com is a site that allows you to basically host your own live video broadcast — with a twist. Instead of a “call in” feature like on, say, talk radio, viewers can be invited to comment, live, using their webcams.

It’s really cool, and really in its early stages. But the potential for both consumers and advertisers is significant enough that it should be on your radar now.

This may very well be the evolution of the BBS/MUD/newsgroup/message board/chat room methods of communication.

Below is one of the more popular shows that’s broadcasting live, as I type.

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