One potential USP for Diaspora

July 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been following the progress of Diaspora since it started – in the midst of Facebook’s last privacy problems, four young programmers at NYU asked for funding to create ‘a privacy aware, personally-controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network’.

And they got a lot more funding than they asked for – before they’d written a line of code, their Kickstarter page raised over $200,000. And they’d originally set a goal of $10,000. Backers even include Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg!

They’ve just posted their one month update, and things seem to be going well. But in the midst of writing a post on 140char, something struck me.

The big worry about Diaspora is that even if it’s finished, available, and a great service – not enough people will necessarily care enough about privacy etc to sign up and get critical mass to it.

So what about taking a different route.

Advertisers and marketers are increasingly using social networks as a primary route for reaching consumers effectively.

Revenue generation is increasing for the social networks and companies using them.

Customer service and CRM are following along slightly behind.

So why not make the unique selling point to the average user something slightly different – why not make Diaspora the first social network to serve as a platform for Vendor Relationship Management?

With Diaspora, not only could you control all your own data from a privacy point of view, but you could control all your own data from a VRM point of view – selecting what you might want to release to a company, and how long you’ll allow it, whilst it’s relevant.

It could be the social network which doesn’t let you ‘Like’ a company – but lets you control your relationship with all the companies you’d like to do business with. And with the open source and distributed, open approach to data, it could be made easy for consumers and companies to hook up using Diaspora as a platform and channel, rather than having to be within the social network itself.

Maybe that would give both movements more leverage?

Filed Under: open source, social networks, Vendor Relationship Management Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How the ‘traditional’ world punishes social networking

March 8, 2010 By 1 Comment

If you’re familiar with social networking it can be easy to scoff at the latest report of the non-digital native world failing to understand the benefits of the connected world. But sometimes, being ahead of the curve can carry a cost.

A U.S. University Professor was recently suspended because of a Facebook status update on what was intended to be a private page for family and friends. Similarly in the UK, a joke on Twitter led to an arrest under the Terror Act and a lifetime ban from an airport. And in a related privacy matter, a school appears to have been using anti-theft software on laptops issued to students to spy on them.

But all of these might appear to be isolated cases against individuals or small groups – and some might argue that publishing anything remotely contraversial is foolish, even in jest, on a public platform, whatever your privacy settings – and events like this one don’t help.

But there are far more insiduous happenings taking place which can affect all of us – how would you feel about the fact that Facebook and Twitter Usage Could Raise Your Home Insurance Premium by 10%?

Or that banks are mining social media sites for personal information which can affect your credit score?

You can argue that telling the world about your location, or revealing any financial information justifies the data collection – although the suggestion that some Facebook application exist purely to collect this data surreptitiously has to be somewhat alarming.

But given that social media and social networking is so new and quickly evolving, and that there’s no proof that mentioning your location, your new purchase, or joking about your future actions has any relation to reality, it’s important to remember that traditional institutions still have the tendency to believe anything published as factual evidence. Even as half the UK population converses via Facebook, it appears we’re all still cast into the role of rebels on the fringes of society who need to be aware of laws, regulations and risks that haven’t moved anywhere near as quickly as they should in the face of the ever-increasing rate of change.

The problem isn’t that the world can’t move quickly enough to build a logical framework which facilitates individuals, businesses and governments to a reasonable level – the problem appears to be that none of the people in a position to do it have the knowledge/incitement to bother, and so we’re left with a legion of the internet-enabled complaining about the inability of the internet-challenged to wield power correctly.

The question is what will you do about it?

Filed Under: Digital Culture Tagged With: , , , , ,

The aftermath of Twitters biggest phishing scam

March 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Over the last week, many people have fallen foul of the latest phishing scam to do the rounds of Twitter. And an unusual number of high profile individuals have been included in the list of users affected, including the Press Complaints Commission, BBC correspondent Nick Higham, the Guardian’s Head of Audio Matt Wells, bank First Direct, and environment minister Ed Milliband.

Environment Minister Ed Milliband caught by phishing scam

Environment Minister Ed Milliband caught by phishing scam

Phishing scams have long been endured by most internet users – the traditional mechanism has been via email, but as social networks have becoming hugely popular, they’ve become the vector of choice. And Twitter is particularly attractive as the speed with which messages can spread is combined with the use of short urls, which help to mask the malevolence of the message.

While this is just another example of the huge amount of phishing attempts which exist, the higher profile of these attacks as they affect prominent politicians will hopefully lead to a better awareness and response by governments.

It’s probably a forlorn hope, but for example, here are some things which might change:

  • More education about phishing and spam to the ‘general public’ – how about a public awareness campaign?
  • More understanding about how normal users can have accounts compromised very easily – for instance, with ‘Three Strikes Rules’.
  • More people using offline backups of any content that is valuable or useful to them
  • More of a move towards data privacy, and Vendor Relationship Management, to allow users to only share the information they choose with any service provider under strict controls.
  • A rethink of the UK Identity Card scheme which includes private businesses taking fingerprint and photos.

Importantly, it should place the risks of Social Engineering alongside those of teenage cyberwarfare specialists taking down defence satellites from their bedroom. If a private company was, for example, storing fingerprint data, you wouldn’t need to target their infrastructure (Although I’m not sure most chemists have a particularly high level of internet security) – you’d use social engineering on their employees via Facebook, Twitter, or offline in person to gain information and access.

Of course, technology can play a part, and I’m sure Twitter will increase their response to phishers in future, particularly as a high profile attack via any platform is never good for PR. But any measures will always be part of a never-ending arms race, and only when every individual is educated enough will there be any noticeable difference…

Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Making millions on Twitter

December 8, 2009 By 1 Comment

If you’re looking for an example of a significant financial return on Twitter, then Dell has long been used as an example – and you can expect it to be quoted even more often after revealing revenues have now risen to $6.5 million globally via Twitter.

Of course that requires almost 1.5 million followers for their main @DellOutlet account, Dell Canada, the $800,000 from @DellnoBrasil and over $150,000 from @DellHomeSalesCA , but it’s still a mightily impressive amount.

Key points for the future from Dell Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca?

  • Streamline our presence in social media networks, create meaningful content for customers and continue to increase our connections with them in those places
  • Focus on building a tighter integration between Dell.com, Support.Dell.com, our Dell Community sites with our presence in social networks
  • Continue our focus on scaling support of social media initiatives into the Dell business units

There’s a few more bits on the Dell post worth reading.

Filed Under: Case Studies, twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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