Former Financial Times journalist Tom Foremski provides analysis and insight into the business and culture of innovation -- at the intersection of technology and media.
The Washington, DC organization Consumer Watchdog is making a big publicity push for its "Do not track me" campaign, which asks Congress to create a list for people that don't want to be monitored on the Internet.
If the campaign succeeds it will be a massive blow to Internet advertising and e-commerce companies because they will lose the ability to tailor targeted commercial messages and discovering user behaviors across a range of web destinations.
Consumer Watchdog has purchased a 540 sq. Ft. Jumbotron digital billboard on Times Square and is showing a video showing an animation of Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, driving an ice cream truck so that he can spy on kids.
Consumer Watchdog said:
Google has collected massive amounts of personal data from Wi-Fi networks through its Street View cars, made private Gmail contacts publicly available on Buzz, and done a complete about-face on net neutrality, joining with Verizon in calling for toll lanes on the Internet.
Schmidt has appeared clueless regarding privacy himself, Consumer Watchdog said. When questioned about privacy, he has said, ?If you have something that you don?t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn?t be doing it in the first place.? Recently, he suggested children could change their names when they got older if they wanted to escape what was embarrassing and public in their online lives.
- About 80% of Americans support a national "Do not track me" list according to a poll by Grove Insight.
- 90% said that it is important to ?have more laws that protect privacy of your personal information? online.
The poll indicated strong support for:
- Require the creation of an ?anonymous button? that allows individuals to stop anyone from tracking their online searches or purchases: 86% favor; 9% oppose.
- Ban the collection of any personal data on children under the age of 18: 84% favor; 10% oppose.
- Prevent online companies from tracking personal information or web searches without your explicit, written approval: 84% favor; 11% oppose.
-- Ban online companies from tracking and storing information related to children?s online behavior so they can target them with advertising: 83% favor; 12% oppose.
- Require the creation of a ?do not track me? list for online companies that would be administered by the Federal Trade Commission: 80% favor; 12% oppose.
[Daniel Romero is a Ph.D Candidate at Cornell Univeristy in the Center for Applied Mathematics. He works with Hewlett-Packard's Social Computing Lab Bernardo Huberman and colleagues.]
By Daniel M. Romero
The importance of mainstream news has changed with the advent and immense popularity of online social media.
The mainstream media is now aware that they have to be involved in the social media in order to keep their audience engaged. They understand that they no longer have complete control on what information people will attend to.
With social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc people can find the news they want even if the mainstream media may not be providing it to them. This is why today we see all major broadcast networks present and active on Twitter.
But are they as successful at social media as they are at mainstream media? Are they as influential as they are assumed to be in the offline world? Who are the most influential ones?
The data includes all tweets containing a URL from June 15th through July 22nd of 2009. You can find the list of the 100 most influential news media accounts here (and below).
Most of the major news broadcast networks are present in this list. However, they do not fully dominate it. We see blogs such as@mashable, @bigpicture, @gizmodo, @harvardbiz, among others with very high influence ranking and above major players from traditional media such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
The list also includes the number of followers each account has. The same observation about the weak link between popularity and influence made in the previous post can be made here.
Having a large number of followers does not imply having influence in news social media. Furthermore, not having a large number of followers does not mean lack of influence.
A particularly interesting example is @bigpicture, a photo blog for the Boston Globe; with a mere 23K followers it is the 3rd most influential account on the list. After taking a look at some of the very high quality photographs tweeted by this account it becomes clear why people are willing to re-tweet them and why this account has so much influence.
This demonstrates that to be influential on Twitter news media networks have to keep their audience engaged through valuable tweets and not simply convince people to "follow them on Twitter".
The work on this project was done in collaboration with: Wojciech Galuba (@wgaluba); Sitaram Asur (@SitaramAsur); and Bernardo Huberman (@bhuberman)
[From left to right: Loren Feldman with Mike Arrington, Loic LeMeur, Robert Scoble during happier times - photo from Loic LeMeur]
Loren Feldman is the New York City based publisher of 1938Media.com, a fascinating, irreverent and funny critic of the West Coast tech scene.
Loren used to be an insider, a close friend of the princes of the Web 2.0 world: Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Loic LeMeur, and others. But Loren has managed to upset all those people, and more; and so have I simply by retweeting some of his comic puppetry.
(I've been blocked and called names because of my re-tweets of Loren's material but that won't stop me. It's a guy with a sock (puppet) on his hand -- people need to lighten up.)
Loren's puppets are hilarious. He has puppets representing Robert Scoble, Loic LeMeur, Shel Israel, Peter Cashmore, Dave Winer, Mark Zuckerberg, Gary Vee, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Steve Ballmer, and more.
Here is an example of Loren Feldman's puppetry: Steve Ballmer's iPad review.
Loren often hits the nail on the head and says things that I hear others saying privately. When he talks about how the West Coast tech scene is so fixated on incremental additions to operating systems; the obsession with the iPhone, iPad; the fact that we have enough technology and not enough useful applications of technology; and the overbearing shouting of some of our leading Web 2.0 evangelists.
The things he says are things that many would love to say but they have to live here, and they don't have a sock puppet to say things for them. Many of the things he says are funny and true.
Truth can be uncomfortable, which is why I get into trouble retweeting his work, and I know people who have gotten in trouble simply for retweeting my retweets of Loren's material (wow).
Court jester...
In my opinion, Loren is playing a key role, the role of the court jester. It's a vital role that keeps influential people humble, honest, and a reminder not to smoke too much of their own stash, drink their own koolaid, etc.
Irreverent, libertine, self-indulgent, witty, clever, roguish, he is the fool as court jester, the fool as companion, the fool as goad to the wise and challenge to the virtuous, the fool as critic of the world.
The court jester is a universal phenomenon. He crops up in every court worth its salt in medieval and Renaissance Europe, in China, India, Japan, Russia, America and Africa.
Instead of getting mad at Loren we should be seeking out more like him. People get surrounded by minions who agree with everything they say -- that's not a good thing. We get caught up in our own echo chamber and it takes a court jester to pop our balloons, wake us up, slap us in the face metaphorically.
Jesters used to be prized by royalty and they would compete for the best jesters. Queen Elizabeth I of England once threatened her jester because he wasn't harsh enough with her.
Loren can seem to be pretty harsh but that's a subjective reaction; his nature is that he keeps it real. And that used to be a key quality of bloggers -- keeping it real, keeping things authentic. These days such qualities are rare and becoming rarer as commercial interests can take precedence over authenticity.
Loren Feldman is a big critic of many of the things the Web 2.0 crowd finds dear, such as Twitter, which he says is one long river of advertisements as people promote their own work time and again (true - I do it all the time).
Harsh truths aren't pleasant but truth is not harsh it is simply the truth.
The point is not to kill the jester but to celebrate the jester. That's why we need Loren Feldman and 1938media, imho.
Women In Tech: Sol Tzvi On Starting A Startup . . . Part II [Sol Tzvi is head of Genieo, an Israeli startup. She shares her story of starting a startup. Part I is here.]By Sol Tzvi, CEO of GenieoConvincing others - Being a humble CEO
I enjoyed working for Microsoft for those few years in the past. I was presented with many challenges, especially at a time when securing Microsoft product was a major problem, which required prompt solving, due to Microsoft software being regularly infected by viruses.
I had multiple roles in the organization, the major one being building our customer messaging system from scratch, a system designed to deal with the frustration caused by hacker attacks on the Microsoft software. People used to hate Microsoft so much back then (now they've shifted their attention to other targets).
I loved Microsoft as a company, I loved the people around me and I loved dealing with these challenges.
However when working in corporations one too often finds oneself seeing holes when others see only walls. You find yourself knowing what the right thing to do is, yet taking forever to convince others. You spend all your energy talking to people instead of taking action.
Too often I found myself frustrated and thinking: "Oh well, when I have my own company I'll be the one making the decisions, and I'll lead all my people to the Promised Land, in my own way."
Years went by, and ironically I must admit, I've learned that in order to be a good leader one has to sometimes let other people lead.
Everybody's seeking guidelines. And still, if you choose to work with great and smart people, you must allow them the freedom of choice; otherwise you will only find yourself building another corporation, with people taking forever to convince you and each other before actually beginning to build the product.
Startup companies do not have this time to waste, and as the leader of such a company you must hire great and creative people, and make sure you allow them the space and freedom to spread their wings and take you up.
This is why, even at the earliest stage of founding my own company I realized I cannot tell people: "Hey! THIS is the right thing to do."
Instead, I knew I had to bring them around my ideas, make them understand what I want, and let them come with their own solutions -- so that they can express themselves the same way I always wanted to do myself back then.
Raising money
For the longest time, my impression of people who went around raising money from strangers in order to support the development of their own ideas was that they must be arrogant. Today I know otherwise.
People who believe so strongly in their own ideas, can feel comfortable enough asking for other people's money as a means to realize their dreams. However, whether it's VC money or Angel money, it all comes from people who worked very hard for it, and therefore it must be respected.
So, I eventually found myself asking investors to believe in an idea of mine.
It took me a while to understand that it is not the idea I'm selling for the money, but it is rather me and my skills. I don't think that Genieo is the cleverest idea I ever had but I do believe it came up at the right moment, which enabled me to make it happen and lead my company to success.
Oh yes, I may fail, the investors may lose their money but they can rest assured that they've put their money into a great management team, which increases their chance of success.
When you go around raising money do not fix yourself only on the idea or on its potential. Investors are after the full package, they are looking for the right people who can make it happen.
I never spend extra money on a business class ticket when I travel around the world, I never buy fancy stuff to make me feel like a successful CEO, but I do try to spend a fair amount of money on my employees. This is the wisest investment I can make with my investors' money.
Find your partner
Never start a company by yourself. A great partnership and collaboration will always prove more beneficial than anything you can do on your own.
The greatest challenge when starting up a new company is finding the right partner. A person to walk with you all the way: "To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part" - yes, exactly like a good marriage, you must find the person who will complete you, fill in your weak spots, encourage you when you lose faith -- a person with whom you can share all your intimate thoughts on your path to success. It may be hard to do but you'd better find that great partner for this journey.
Consider as well, that your investors and employees are also partners. When they lose you lose, when they fail you fail, their success is your success.
And always remember that when you win they should all be winners, and you must make them part of the celebration by showing them your goodwill and gratitude, and give them more than you promised to give. Remember that without them you wouldn't be standing there, at that moment of success.
We can all fail, as great as we may be. Sometimes it'll be because of wrong timing, other times we may take the wrong direction. People who dare always make mistakes.
Remember that you are not defined by what you do or don't do, or by what you achieve or do not achieve. You are the reflection of the strength of your faith, and of the power of your will and diligence. This is what makes you who you are and it all has to do with the freedom you give your mind. You are the dreams you dare to dream.
Every light bright or faint, begins with a spark of the freedom of dreaming and the courage to believe. This is the difference between the creator and its opposite, the eliminator.
The road does not seem so long and hard when in good company.
- - -
Part I is here.
{Rebecca Kaplan and team built the above 20-ft metal sculpture for Burning Man which travelled to San Francisco.)
There's a strange hush around San Francisco and the Bay Area. There's fewer people around, there's a little less traffic, and there are parking spots where there are normally none.
This week is the week of the Burning Man festival -- a celebration of abundance, creativity, the arts -- set within one of the most inhospitable places on earth, a place where NASA might test its Mars Rover because of the extremes of temperature, wind, solar radiation and dust storms.
About two hours drive outside of Reno, Nevada, a city of about 50,000 rises up from the bed of an ancient alkali lake where nothing grows. For about a week it is one of the largest cities in Nevada, and then it disappears, leaving no trace.
Residents of what is known as Black Rock City build incredible buildings and art installations. The creativity and ambition of many of the projects is breathtaking. Yet there is no commercial involvement or commerce allowed at the event beyond being able to purchase ice and coffee from a central location.
There are several daily newspapers, several dozen radio stations, and hundreds of theme camps that offer experiences of many kinds, or simply a shady place to escape the sun or the dust storms.
Despite the grandeur of so many installations there is nothing labelled "Sponsored by Google" or "Intel" or "Oracle" yet there are many people from those companies and more, attending every year.
Burning Man's culture of openness, creativity, self-organization, sharing, and innovation plays a key influence in SIlicon Valley's culture, and one has influenced the other, countless times. The idea for the open source movement could very easily have come from the open collaboration that Burning Man started. There is a lot of common culture between the geek engineer community and Burning Man.
Burning Man is part of the mythology of Silicon Valley, for example, it is how Eric Schmidt got his job at Google, by showing up one year and impressing founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both avid "Burners."
Beach party...
Burning Man grew from humble origins. It started as a beach party in San Francisco in 1986 and then moved to the remote and desolate high desert of Nevada.
The early days were wilder than today, there were no rules. People would set up crazy things such as a drive-by shooting gallery. These days each ticket to the event warns in large letters that participants face possible death but there are lots of rules to prevent death and injury.
But despite some rules, it is still an open event where much of anything goes. And people do die in unfortunate accidents.
A blank canvas...
The vast expanse of the playa -- the empty space at the heart of Burning Man, acts as a canvas for spectacular art projects. My favorite part of the Burning Man experience is cycling across the playa and discovering new art seemingly coming out of nowhere overnight.
The huge playa is like the Internet, a massive blank canvas, a platform for people's creativity. And like the Internet, you often don't know who is behind the projects, or even like some of the projects...
The event is not a weekend getaway. Don't think you can throw a bag in the back of the car and head off to party for a few days because you will likely run into serious problems. Even a little alcohol starts to dehydrate your body very quickly. And many people are hospitalized for thinking Burning Man is just another party town.
If you plan and pace yourself then the experience can be transforming. You spend the day sheltering from the sun and the heat and the dust, and then Black Rock City comes to life as the afternoon sun wanes. The temperature cools and its night becomes as glittering and bright as Reno or Las Vegas.
It has been about 5 years since I last visited Black Rock City and each time it feels very fragile as if it might not be there again next year.
One of the most striking aspects is the lack of commercial messages for an entire week. You only notice it once you leave: the ads in magazines; the advertising on the radio; even the brand advertising on the side of trucks becomes very noticeable and oppressive after a week away...
If you ever get the chance to go, you should take it. The event's temporary nature and spectacle are a good metaphor for our times. And "leave no trace" is a great lesson we can learn from Burning Man.
[Sol Tzvi is head of Genieo, an Israeli startup. She shares her story of starting a startup.]
By Sol Tzvi, CEO of Genieo
As a young CEO and Co-founder of a startup company I often find myself thinking of the path I chose and the destination I lead myself to.
Thinking of all those lonely times, when I'm traveling around the world in the middle of the night - sometimes even in the middle of nowhere really; crossing the world from one corner to another; scheduling meetings with different people from different cultures; speaking in a foreign language which forces me to concentrate not only on what I have to say but also on how to build a proper sentence, all in the cause of reaching out and touching these different cultures.
This is my idea of living: exploring, learning, teaching others, sharing thoughts and ideas, braking rules and lines I locked myself in years ago without even noticing, growing day by day and becoming the person I am today, re-inventing myself to with every new dawn - every day I am the person I am that day.
Our definition of ourselves as people is based on our past: past behavior, past experiences, past achievements. And yet, is observing a prior behavior really the best approach to understand who we really are? Well, to some extent - yes. But then this could lead us to live in a false impression and view of ourselves. After all, we humans are only trying to simplify complex questions, such as who we are.
This is an event well worth catching, it gets better each time: The 2010 01SJ festival is September 16-19.
Steve Dietz, the artistic director, and Jaime Austin, Assistant Curator, write:
The future is not just about what's next. It's also about what we can build to ensure that what's next matters.
How can we, as resourceful, innovative, and knowledgeable local and global citizens build and participate in a desirable future in the face of global climate change, economic meltdown, political instability, and cultural divisiveness?
The 2010 01SJ Biennial is predicated on the notion that as artists, designers, engineers, architects, marketers, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build the world, conceptually and actually, virtually and physically, poorly and better, aesthetically and pragmatically, in both large and small ways. 01SJ is about how powerful ideas and innovative individuals from around the world can make a difference and come together to build a unique and distributed city-wide platform for creative solutions and public engagement.
Under the theme "Build Your Own World," ZER01, in collaboration with dozens of partners, will present over the course of 4 days, from September 16-19, hundreds of artworks, performances, events, and artist talks, which not only imagine the future of the world) but begin to build it.
Here is an extract of my interview with Steve Dietz from the prior 01SJ:
The goal of the festival is to change people's perception of San Jose by establishing a festival that showcases digital arts and that will one day rank alongside Sundance and Austin's South by South West festivals. "Those festivals took 20 years and we're just starting," said Steve Dietz, creative director of Zero One.
And here is a video SVW commissioned from a prior 01SJ:
Mathys van Abbe, one of my favorite European entrepreneurs is in town this week. He's the founder of Moby Picture, one of the top photo sharing sites and also the developer of a unique media platform: MobyNow.
With MobyNow you can coral all that fragmented media: tweets, blog posts, shared photos, audio, video, location data into one page. It's excellent for companies or organizations that want to bring together all that content, from multiple locations into one location.
The upcoming Burning Man festival is an excellent event to demonstrate the flexibility of MobyNow.
If you are headed to Black Rock City this year you should check out "Burning Man Now" and watch for your tweets, photos, etc, showing up on the site.
As a professional journalist this has been a question that I've struggled with over the past five years since leaving the Financial Times.
I can produce a lot of media content, and hopefully, it is all quality media content. But my concern is that if I produce too much it will cause my readers and subscribers to switch off because there is too much from one source.
I know that if some of my sources are too noisy on Twitter, Facebook, even on their blog or web site, I will switch them off because it is too much -- even if all their content is good. I don't want my readers doing the same to me.
This question of how much media is too much media is not just my concern, it should be a concern for others, especially companies. I've been writing about how every company is a media company, (EC=MC - the transformative equation for business) how every company has to get better at producing, distributing and responding to media content.
Media is important in establishing companies in their field, it is important in establishing their thought leadership. If you aren't seen by your potential customers then you don't exist.
But we have a media tsunami washing over us and this media tsunami is becoming ever larger as more people and companies discover how to produce ever more media. How do you stay relevant when there is an ever larger media tsunami crashing all around us all the time?
Do you produce more media? Do you add to the media tsunami hoping that your media will be seen as opposed to competitor's media?
The same questions apply to online advertising. And in online advertising the principle seems to be that more is better than less. That's why we are inundated with advertising that crawls across our screens blocking what we want to see; advertising that takes up ever more space on our displays; and advertising embedded in links in copy.
But there is a lesson here. More advertising is leading to less value per advertisement. More advertising is reducing advertising income for many online publishers because there are more places to advertise. More means less.
Does that apply to content? Does more media equate to less value? If a company produces too much media will that tire and turn off potential customers? There were 87 Old Spice videos in one day. Too much? Not enough?
I think it is too much. Even if every piece of media is quality content, I think that dealing with the media tsunami with your own media fire hose is the wrong approach.
No one is listening...
There is a very good lesson to be learned from a recent incident where Leo Laporte, a popular broadcaster, found that his Twitter stream wasn't broadcasting his Google Buzz posts. It took him more than two weeks to notice and he was upset that no one else noticed.
It makes me feel like everything I?ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. All this time I?ve been pumping content into the void like some chatterbox Onan. How humiliating. How demoralizing.
This incident perfectly describes the media tsunami problem.
Louis Gray, who recently became VP of marketing for My6Sense, an Israeli based startup, wrote about Mr. Laporte's problem. He says it is an issue of engagement.
The person who shouts the loudest can get a lot of attention over a short time, but shouting is hard to listen to for long periods, and it is hard to sustain. You cannot replace engagement, true conversation, a give and take of ideas, and an exchange with a real community.
I agree that engagement is great if you can get it. But the media tsunami means that engagement becomes diluted.
Louis Gray has noticed that "many blog posts are getting no comments to fewer comments. Tweets are not getting replies. Shares on FriendFeed and Google Buzz that once got conversations in times of heightened awareness are lying fallow. Photos on SmugMug and Flickr are getting fewer views."
I think the answer lies right in front of Louis Gray and us all. I think that the right content will come to find us and not the other way around. If you create the right content, relevant to a person, it will find its way to them.
If you focus on creating media content that is relevant then it will find its way to the right people. And that will be true for advertising too.
And it will be very difficult to game media content. No amount of SEO or distribution via Twitter, Google Buzz, Facebook, etc will matter. If the content isn't relevant it won't get through to me.
The same goes for advertising content. Imagine a world where your ad copy finds the right targets each time: you won't have to pay huge advertising costs. It will dramatically reduce marketing costs for many companies and they will be able to concentrate on making products and services relevant to their customers instead of worrying about how to reach potential customers.
Will this mean an end to marketing and PR? Probably not but it will reduce their importance.
The technology to do all of that is already here and available from several sources: My6sense, Genieo, and others. These are self-organizing filters, self-organizing curators of content that will bring you the right content at the right times.
We are still at the early stages of deployment but these technologies will come because they can, and because it is the only way to deal with the media tsunami.
· Honoring key women innovators from science and technology on Monday, September 13th. This year?s honorees are: Sandy Carter of IBM, Dr. Ruth David of Analytic Services, Inc., Dr. Adele Goldberg, Dr. Susie Wee of Hewlett Packard and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Katie Boehret, Reporter for The Wall Street Journal, will serve as Master of Ceremonies.
o WITI NextGen
· At this Young Women?s micro conference on September 13, 2010, leading women from technology will teach, mentor and share with 20 middle school and high school girls to encourage the pursuit of careers in technology. The day will feature career, leadership and mentoring panels and workshops, as well as the opportunity to share and have lunch with distinguished WITI Hall of Fame Honorees.
o The WITI Foundation Executive Auction and VIP Reception
· Provides an opportunity to network and bid on one-to-one meetings with the top executives of companies such as GEICO, Symantec, eBay, Genentech, McKesson and Charles Schwab. Auction items include packages such as an executive lunch or dinner meeting with Mr. Randy Spratt of McKesson at a Bay Area restaurant of the winner?s choice; plus an iPod Nano, American Express gift card and tickets to the September 16 San Francisco Giants vs. Los Angeles Dodgers game at AT&T Park in San Francisco. The Executive Auction is the WITI Foundation?s annual fundraiser and closes the Annual WITI Summit on the evening of September 14, 2010.
News Feeds 
{Rebecca Kaplan and team built the above 20-ft metal sculpture for Burning Man which travelled to San Francisco.)
[Sol Tzvi is head of Genieo, an Israeli startup. She shares her story of starting a startup.]
This is an event well worth catching, it gets better each time: The 2010 
Mathys van Abbe, one of my favorite European entrepreneurs is in town this week. He's the founder of Moby Picture, one of the top photo sharing sites and also the developer of a unique media platform: MobyNow.