Web 2.0 Experiments, snafus and stumbles
December 17th, 2007 | Published in Web2.0 | 7 Comments
I seem to have lost my head. Really. I was all curmudgeonly until last week, when I started tweeting and got into Spock. You know why I started to twitter. Ages and ages ago, when Spock was still in private beta, I got an invite, and used it. I was underwhelmed, and forgot about it. Then, last week, I got a request from Beth Kanter and Deborah Finn to join their “trust networks.” Well, I already trust them, so I joined them. I then decided, why not - let’s find out who else is on Spock. So I did the usual, gave up my gmail password.
Turns out, unlike Facebook, or Myspace and such, the “Spock Bot” makes pages for people without their knowing. So people who were in my gmail address book, and in Spock, got a request for trust from me, not knowing where it came from. So, although I can trust Beth and Deborah, it appears I can’t trust Spock.
There have been lots of blog posts about Spock, mostly negative. I’m hoping that Spock ends up in the dead pool, but who knows.
Then, for the creepy part. I joined Spokeo. Spokeo takes your gmail, aol, or yahoo address book and, looking at a wide variety of web 2.0 communities, from LinkedIn to Flickr to … Amazon.com, keeps track of your contacts content. So when someone in your addressbook posts a new photo to Picasa, or tweets, you’ll know about it. Creepy part: do I really want to know what’s on my ex-girlfriend’s MySpace page? Or that a certain nonprofit Executive Director Dugg a post about starting a video game company? (Although I do have to admit its fun to know what a very old friend is listening to on Pandora.)
What have I learned in all of this? What my colleagues and friends do has influence. I did set a pretty high bar a while back for the next social network I’d join. And what did I do with the influence of colleagues and friends? Walk right under it. This is not at all to blame them, it’s just to state a reality - what other people (those I trust and follow) do matters, and I think it matters for most people.
What else have I learned? Privacy matters. I happen to be someone who has had a relatively high online presence since before the web (remember Usenet?) I’m someone who has, since day one, tried my damnedest (and succeeded 96% of the time) to only say by email, or put up, what I would say in a room full of people. But for a long while, it took a lot to gather all of that information. No longer. The tools are getting better and better, and one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 - the APIs, make it all the more simple to aggregate all of someone’s online content.
I think I’m going to wait at least a few weeks after getting an invite to the next web 2.0 tool to jump in. Or perhaps maybe I won’t even. What a concept. Maybe it’s time to go back to being a curmudgeon.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:07 pm (#)
Eww, yeah Spokeo is not for the feint of heart. I really could have skipped the pictures of two of my work colleagues necking. :) Kinda fun though.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:22 am (#)
Michelle, I think we have to shift from thinking - wow, this is the cool and need to try it to being critical. I’m not joining any social networks like this anymore. I’ve had enough
December 18th, 2007 at 12:39 am (#)
Spokeo connects people from different networks together, just like how RSS readers connect disjoint blogs into one united Blogosphere. As frictions to communication crumble down, the Web will be more and more social, and people will be more and more connected.
It’s an irreversible trend. Just like how search engines allow you to quickly find anything you want, future technologies will help you easily connect with friends from anywhere.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:52 am (#)
I hate giving my Google password to any web site that’s not at google.com. Given the widespread problem with phishing schemes, it’s disturbing that web apps are training users that it’s OK to give a new site your email username/password.
And if you have a Gmail account, it’s the same username/password that you’d be using for Analytics, Google Docs, Adsense, etc. The effects could be disastrous if someone got their hands on that information.
BTW, I’m paranoid enough that I wrote a tool for easily finding people on Twitter that doesn’t require you to give up your Gmail account. I don’t necessarily think Twitter will abuse the info, but you never know what’s happening behind the scenes.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:45 am (#)
[...] - there has been a fair amount of traffic about this on the ISF mailing list (see, e.g. zenofnptech). I must admit I was really surprised to get a “trust invite” from Cyber-Yenta Deborah [...]
December 18th, 2007 at 11:20 pm (#)
Hi - I wanted to clarify a few things about Spock mentioned above. I hope this will help in understanding how it works.
1. Invites - we never send automated emails or email to anyone unless it was specifically requested by the user. 96% of people who ask Spock to scan their address book do not end up inviting anyone to their trust network. Only 4% of people do actually invite people in their address book to their trust network on Spock. Now, I admit there are cases where people may have been confused about the process and accidently invited other people. we do take feedback seriously and try to add any other information possible to make it clear to people that an email will be generated to the user you are requesting trust from. In addition, the person getting the email is clearly told who sent the email.
If you felt that the process was confusing and sent invites when you did not plan to, I am sorry. We improved the process based on feedback during the past week and so far have not recieved any direct complaints about users sending out a trust request when they did not intend to. Please let me know what can be done to make it more clear. I take feedback from users very seriously
2. Data - We collect only data that is on the public web like all other search engines and never display personally identifiable information (phone, email, address). As a search engine, users never have to sign-up to get value from Spock. You can come to Spock whenever you want to search for someone without ever having to login or share any data with Spock. The ability to login is just a benefit to people who want the ability to search within their own network and stay up to date on what data changes on the web about people they know.
I welcome your feedback and critique:)
January 4th, 2008 at 6:28 pm (#)
[...] after my brief lapse, I’m going back to my promise: no more social networks until the data flows both ways, and I [...]