Google+. A Teenage Boy's Nightmare

With Google+ set to announce 20 million users by this weekend, we are all witnessing the fastest growing social network ever to exist. Whether you think it’s a social behemoth in the making or a futile attempt to encroach on Facebook’s dominion, one thing’s for sure - they’re making things interesting...

Having used G+ fairly intensively over the last couple of weeks, I can honestly say that it is  the most intuitive, inventive and innovative platform I have ever come across. Not to mention the fact that it’s downright sexy to look at. Imagine one of Apple’s iPad adverts that make you feel like you would literally neuter yourself without anesthesia to own one. Then imagine that what they are describing isn’t an oversized iPhone without the ability to make calls but is, in fact, something you would actually remove your own testicles for. You’ve just imagined G+. More or less. 

‘Circles’ offers something that nothing else has; unparalleled speed, a unique level of flexibility when it comes to censoring and filtering yourself in the online realm, common-sense drag and drop functionalities and a mechanism to effortlessly direct your posts at whichever circle(s) you see fit. And, like all brilliant ideas, it all so wonderfully simple. 

I have only had the pleasure of using the ‘Hangout’ feature twice; once was with my best mate who has recently flown to Argentina - not that you’d have known as the audio and visual was so slick, he might as well have been in the same room. The other occasion was with two friends from university and again G+ delivered an awesome experience. 

With ‘Sparks’ offering you real time streaming of anything you might be interested in (my rather crass selections are ‘Tottenham’ and ‘Cricket’!) you really do find yourself immersed in social networking Nirvana - one that’s fully integrated, fully automated and ludicrously simple to understand. The scary thing is that it is still in ‘trial phase’ with ‘bug fixes’ and ‘additional features’ on their way. I can’t wait. 

I love the fact that you can add people who don’t even have G+, but whom with you can still engage via their Gmail account. Call me a geek but I even love the nerdy little nuances like using an ‘+’ symbol instead of a ‘@’ when tagging fellow geeks in posts. 

I’d also like to point out that I think Google’s PR team have done an excellent job in selling G+ to the world. By initially only releasing the platform to a chosen few, Google created a buzz around the confidentiality of the site. Simply put, people want what they can’t have or aren’t allowed and by not allowing the vast majority of the population access to the most eagerly anticipated social network of the last 5 years, G+ became a rare, sought-after commodity. Bravo.

Finally there’s the app for Android. With so much sex appeal I’ve even found myself nervously surveying the scene before launching it - in the same way a commuter with a copy of The Sun nonchalantly glances left and right before casually flicking from page two to three. Google Plus - it really is that good. 

The super-injunction function

So it appears gagging orders in Britain have just been rendered useless. A frightening insight into the pernicious power of Twitter and its ability to make a mockery of UK law or a liberating victory signalling the end of ludicrous legislation that unfairly protects the sanctimonious celebrities of the modern era?

Many would argue it simply isn’t that clear cut.

I, on the other hand, think it’s a travesty that such rights exist to protect the ‘more-money-than-sense’ types that think their status grants them moral and ethical invulnerability, invariably in the form of sexual incontinence. Premiership footballers across the country are fidgeting, and rightly so – they are no longer immune. 

 A few opinion leaders on the subject are buying in to the idea that Twitter’s power to expose such individuals has created a paradox in public interest. Essentially the idea is that super-injunctions protect us -the impressionable masses - from the salacious misdemeanours of our role models ensuring we aren’t compelled to emulate such behaviour. To be frank I think that’s insulting. Far more realistically, I believe that super-injunctions suppress the very information that helps society identify what is acceptable and what is not acceptable behaviour. In essence, by ‘naming and shaming’ I think the allegedly suggestible public learn where to draw the line, not how to step over it.

Shooting elephants is bad PR

Shooting an endangered species, videoing it, uploading it to your personal blog and then remorselessly boasting about it via a formal statement isn’t the perfect way to devastate a corporate reputation, but I think it’s close.

The man in question is Bob Parsons; American entrepreneur and CEO of the highly successful web hosting site ‘GoDaddy.’ On a recent holiday to Zimbabwe he is seen shooting an African elephant dead to the dulcet tones of AC/DC’s ‘Hells Bells.’ A horde of local villagers, many sporting GoDaddy promotional attire then proceed to eat said elephant. Oh dear.

To give a little perspective, let me present to you Parson’s statement following the incident:

"I kind of figured that this [backlash] might happen. So be it, I’m not ashamed of what I did. All these people that are complaining that this shouldn’t happen, that these people who are starving to death otherwise shouldn’t eat these elephants, you probably see them driving through at McDonald’s or cutting a steak. These people [Zimbabwe villagers] don’t have that option...The people there have very little, many die each year from starvation and one of the problems they have is the elephants, of which there are thousands and thousands, that trash many of their fields destroying the crops.

So he’s actually a freedom fighter. Not a senseless killing machine that’s just reduced our largest land mammal’s already dwindling numbers by one more. If Wikipedia is to be believed, that’s the equivalent to 0.01% of all African elephants gone in the pull of Parson’s trigger.

Either way, a man of such high profile should understand the enormous ramifications this could have on his business. As you’d expect, animal rights groups have reacted with fury, PETA in particular immediately terminated their account with GoDaddy labelling Parsons the “Scummiest CEO of the Year” whilst encouraging others to boycott the site. 

This is a genuine crisis at GoDaddy: a complete PR disaster. It will be interesting to see how the PR team respond and react especially since they have barely recovered from a set of highly controversial adverts that were banned from the Superbowl earlier this year. I think Parsons has inflicted a certain amount of irreparable damage to GoDaddy simply because he’s done the hard work for everyone already by uploading the video to the web and making it go viral. I think this makes it all the more staggering that he’s done it. He even says “I kind of figured that this might happen.” It’s ironic to the point of hilarity that a CEO of a web hosting company didn’t envisage the ensuing media furore as anything other than inevitable following his injudicious actions.

We live (depressingly) in an age where Justin Bieber is racking up combined views of over one billion on YouTube. This gives some indication of how far something viral can go despite being devoid of any talent, amusement or interest. A generation of vapid drones borne out of overconnectivity will literally watch anything, and Parsons will/should know this better than anyone.

 

I just wanted to mention that amid the media buzz, NameCheap.com, a competitor of Go Daddy, has started offering donations to Save The Elephants, hoping that, like the big-eared mammals in question, people don’t forget. Touch!

Click for the full video

'Google before you tweet' is the new 'think before you speak'

We’ve all done it: listened on helplessly in horror as the words tumble unrelentingly from our mouths in what a swift dose of hindsight reveals was misguided at best and unforgivably absurd at worse. You can choose the scenario. First date, board meeting, wedding day – the only prerequisite is that it must be important and/or there must be lots of people listening. This seems to be the case for me anyway. Although for the record I’ve never been in a board meeting and I’m not married.

In a virtual realm we’d be furiously pounding the backspace key in tune with the ever-slowing tempo of swear words as thoughts of what could have been slowly dissipate in a timorous chuckle. But this isn’t the virtual realm. Oh no, wait. It is. But it’s a virtual realm in which the opportunity to typecast oneself as a blundering moron has never been greater. The advent of Facebook, YouTube, Jaiku, Pownce, Delicious and, most pertinently, Twitter has induced a surge of user-generated, uncensored and largely unedited information that can be shared with the world at the click of a button. A valuable asset to the majority, but a medium for self destruction for a few: Here’s my coveted list of people that clearly didn’t listen to their digital mothers when they were told to Google before they Tweet:

1. “Oh my actual God, the donkey-botherers are 2-0 up thanks to two of the worst refereeing decisions ever!”

Blackpool Councillor Simon Blackburn commits political suicide.

2. “So stop f*****g around, Levy.”

Darren Bent, Aston Villa and England Striker publicly slams Daniel Levy, the man paying his £50,000 a week salary, following stuttering transfer negotiations.

3. “It means a lot when Josef Fritzl is getting better press than us.”
Matt Horne shows a lack of taste in a comment over criticism of his double act sketch show with James Corden.

4. Hardcore Australian Hugh Jackman calls the Sydney Opera House the ‘Opera Centre’ and subsequently admits that doesn’t write his own updates.

5. “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

‘TheConner’ tweeted this little gem after receiving a job offer from Cisco.

Cisco’s response: “Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

Result: Job offer rescinded.

6. "No, no, I didn't go to England; I went to London."

Paris Hilton, who else?

7. "Why is that people always try to understand estimate my intelligents?! They should never do that!"

Mary J. Blige. Enough said.

Information overload or filter failure?

Last week Nicholas Carr’s brilliant blog threw up a tantalizing yet simple quandary: is it information overload or filter failure? The idea came from an enlightening talk delivered by an exuberant Clay Shirky.

Shirky suggests that filters are failing to accurately siphon information that is pertinent to us and thus we are experiencing a profusion of irrelevance that, quite frankly, we are all finding a bit much. 

Now these filters come in many forms; from hashtags and RSS feeds to delicious bookmarks and, for the traditionalists, that little ‘tick here if you do not wish to receive our crap’ box that, with its size 3, incomprehensible font, seeks to dupe us into signing up. But is it really their fault?

Carr posits that the reverse is true – suggesting that better filters don’t mitigate information overload; they intensify it. The moment I read it I instantly thought of the Road network paradox  (geek): mathematical proof that ‘improving’ a road network system actually results in increased congestion. I think it depends on your definitions of information overload and information filters. For a while I made the mistake of assuming that a filter implies a reduction in information. I don’t think this is necessarily the case; rather filters should find everything that is of interest to us and present it accordingly because that’s what they are designed to do. And that’s what they are doing to an increasingly sophisticated degree. The filters are doing their job by sorting the wheat from the seemingly infinite chaff and the type of overload we are experiencing is this overwhelming amount of interesting and important information that we feel pressured into keeping up with because it’s so tailored to us.

Carr succinctly differentiates between two kinds of information overload: situational overload which is the ‘needle in a haystack' problem of information that is important to us being lost in a sea of information that is not. Then there’s ambient overload as described above - the problem of having too much relevant information readily available so that it becomes impossible to assimilate all of it. 

So I think Shirky misses the point. There can be no argument as to whether information overload is the fault of filters failing, because by overloading us with compelling information they are doing quite the opposite.

The one gripe I have with Carr’s post is his sign off:

“If you really want a respite from information overload, pray for filter failure.”

I think it undermines much of his previous rhetoric because it’s a ludicrous claim. With filter failure would come a barrage of situational overload. Forget needles in haystacks, we’re talking drops in oceans, stars in galaxies even. We’d have to wade through hourly promises of a larger penis only to be drowned in a sea of lottery jackpots wins that we never entered from a country we’ve never heard of. 

Perhaps the answer is to better define what we think an ‘improvement’ of a filter might be. Will technology allow us the refinement for an artificial source to intelligently select and rank items of interest so save us the rigmarole? Probably.

The End of The Press Release?

For years it’s been a potent literary weapon nestled snugly in the PR pros holster, primed and ready to be flourished at the first mention of a gun fight (or corporate affairs crisis). Now it seems that the relentlessly expanding arsenal of PR firepower may be the catalyst for this once indispensable bastion becoming obsolete as it battles a synergy of social media and rapacious journalism. I am, of course, talking about the press release.

It was yet another perusal of the astonishingly prescient Cluetrain Manifesto that got me thinking on the subject, particularly Levine and Co’s mention of the pervasive PR paradox: that, ironically, PR has a huge PR problem. The acerbic nature with which they deconstruct the value of the press release to the industry and impute the failure of countless agencies to its misuse, paints a worrying picture to those still so heavily reliant on it. Of course Levine et al are speaking from a ‘traditional’ press release point-of-view; you know the ones that are churned out by battery-hen type PR bots with dangerously high levels of access to journalist contact details and an equally pernicious inability to understand that what they are writing is a sexed-up plea for some free advertising. And in my (albeit relatively limited) experience of PR, this isn’t a rare scenario.

Unfortunately I think The Cluetrain has it right:

“Say that you’re an award-winning PR person and most people will want to change their seats.” It seems our reputation does precede us. Dishonesty in PR is a pro forma.

It occurs to me that everything a traditional press release seeks to achieve can be done more easily, more efficiently, more effectively and for less cost through other means.

The online revolution has created savvier markets, markets that, simply put, are detecting the bullshit. So why bother? Why not give the market your brand or idea or service and let them play with it? Let them tell you what they really think. Blog! With a bit of know-how, huge online followings that eclipse anything a paid-for database can give you can be forged. And what’s more, the relevance of these publics to your organisation will be so much greater than half the crap you’d normally get. Blogging is fast, free, immediate, open-source and engaging. Pretty much everything a press release is not.

With such intimate engagement whereby consumers will happily comment on your blog telling you your idea is brilliant, a new kind of relationship is forged. A level of trust is built between consumer and organisation because the barriers of bullshit have been removed. Transparency is achieved and better public relations result.
 This post is really just dipping the proverbial toe in what is an ocean of online opportunity for PR firms to rid themselves of antiquated, ineffective methods of targeting publics and building reputation. I think it’s time to get the shoulders under.

The Net Delusion Delusion - how not to write a book review

I must admit, I admire Morozov - genuinely. He’s a man after my own heart; showing a proclivity for unfounded scandal and conspiracy mixed with an insatiable desire to be annoyingly profound, infuriatingly provocative and intentionally controversial. I was tempted to add “for the sake of it” to the end of that sentence, but I feel I would be doing him a disservice. Unlike when I indulge in my favourite pastime of playing devils advocate because I’m bored or just fancy being irritating, the magnitude of Morozov’s argument and the wonderfully eloquent manner in which it’s constructed deserves more than a “fuck off, Toby”, which is what I usually get. This is serious stuff.

Morozov’s polemical prose must be commended for its originality. In a sea of social media and internet literature that promises an enlightened age of democracy, liberalism and justice, it would have been easy to jump on the bandwagon. Morozov is a rare breed in this field, one of the few that believes the hype surrounding the internet and the perceived, positive impact it imparts on a global scale is, simply put, a delusion.

Morozov coins the term ‘cyber-utopian’ to describe the West’s inflated sense of self-righteousness towards the power of the internet. The idea that this phenomenon will break the shackles of populations oppressed by totalitarian regimes, helping forge a new-age world that is rife with democracy is largely dismissed by Morozov. Instead he cites the 2009 ‘Twitter Revolution’ in Iran. “Let the people tweet and they will tweet their way to freedom.” Morozov thinks not, rather, conversely, he focuses on the empowerment the Iranian government experienced courtesy of the internet. In essence, the very tool that people were using to try and liberate themselves was now being used by the government to achieve the opposite. The deployment by the Iranian government of a twelve-man cybercrime team tasked with ridding Iran of those spreading “insults and lies” on websites was initiated. Those spreading this information were quickly hunted down and arrested. The team would trawl through social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube, seeking the faces of those involved in protests, and there was no shortage thanks to the ubiquity of social media. Iranian news service Raja News published photos of the accused and demanded public cooperation in the detaining of them. The Iran Defence Ministry sent out a charming text message to all Iranians with a phone:

“Dear citizen, according to received information, you have been influenced by the destabilizing propaganda which the media affiliated with foreign countries have been disseminating. In case of any illegal action and contact with the foreign media, you will be charged as a criminal consistent with the Islamic Punishment Act and dealt with by the Judiciary."

So the premise is that the internet can just as easily be used to control publics as publics can use it to find freedom. And if the internet is such a powerful Trojan horse for freedom, the oppressive regimes of Iran and China should fear such a force. Quite the contrary, it would appear. But just how much influence can these regimes impart? I suspect it’s not quite as much as Morozov would like to think and his tendency for needless repetition bolstered by a myriad of, often unnecessary, citations from secondary sources makes the book feel didactic in parts and less prescient.

Morozov largely disparaging view of the ‘youth of today’ as ‘depoliticised’ seems out of touch and unfair. John Preston of The Daily Telegraph notes that the recent student protests in Britain proves there is still some political passion amongst us. Not to mention Clay Shirky’s example of hundreds of thousands of South Korean teenagers protesting for weeks over their government’s decision to reopen beef trade channels with the US, following a bout of mad cow disease. The protests were almost entirely organised via social media, and when the government turned to police brutality to break up the protests, videos of such atrocities were uploaded to YouTube, putting further pressure on the country leaders. Ultimately, the government were forced to act, bringing in tighter regulations of beef imports in line with the people’s demands. The democracy spoke and the democracy was heard. 

The ongoing Egyptian riots, largely organised through social media is another example of a disillusioned public having their say on matters that greatly affect them. Granted, people or governments will always try an impart some control but it seems like a pretty good compromise to me if so many voices of the oppressed can be heard, enough to inspire phrases such as the ‘Twitter Revolution’. Enough to provoke global awareness. Enough to empower people to believe they are a vital cog in the machine destined to democratise the globe. Call me a naïve cyber-utopian. I call Morozov a cynical cyber-dystopian. We’re probably both wrong.

The Net Delusion is a brilliant read, full of insight and thought-provoking ideas. Whatever your opinion, Morozov produces reams of evidence to support his conjectures and has written a book that will see him marked as one of the most influential authorities on the subject. In my opinion he lacks some refinement and breadth in his work. If "cyber-utopians" are short-sightedly optimistic about the political power and consequences of the internet, then Morozov himself might be unfairly pessimistic about the people that use it.