From the category archives:

Web2.0

The social network commitment

by Pearlbear on November 16, 2008

Getting involved in a social network, whether it be something like Facebook or Myspace, or a content-connected social network like flickr or delicious (I’m starting to get used to writing that without the dots,) is pretty easy. But there are SO many, and they all have their pros and cons.

What I have learned, though, is that a social network is only as good as something that you have absolutely no control over: how many of your real friends and colleagues use it. Sure, you can join a social network, and “friend up” a bunch of people you don’t know. Perhaps you’d meet some cool people. But you’d primarily be wasting lots of time.

And if you’re a nonprofit trying social networks out to figure out how to leverage your modest resources for maximal impact, it’s really important to know where your constituents are.

Over the last two years, I’ve joined more social networks than I can count (even after I vowed, and only a couple of times violated my vow to only join social networks that were based on open standards, like OpenID and ODD (Open Data Definition.)) The content-focused networks, like delicious, slideshare and flickr, I generally use as primarily a one-way method of publishing specific kinds of content to people I know (and, of course, people I don’t know, since it’s public.) I’ve learned that there are only a few that I really need to bother with:

  • Facebook: I consider it a watershed moment when my partner joined Facebook last week. The majority of people who are my Facebook friends I’ve actually met in person, and a surprising percentage of my actual, real, in person friends are on Facebook (considering that I am a relatively old fart of the Facebook set at 49.) I’m not bothering with MySpace, Orkut, etc. etc. If, perchance, there was a wholesale migration of my friends to a new platform, I’d certainly move, but it makes no sense to join a social network that might be more open, for instance, if no one I know is there.
  • del.icio.us (sorry, I couldn’t help it): I actually barely use the social networking capacity of delicious. I use it as both my personal repository of sites I want to keep tabs with. I know it’s public, and it also serves to share with people interesting stuff I think is worth looking at.
  • Flickr: I also don’t use the social network capacity of flickr much, except to keep track of the photos of a few real friends and family.
  • Twitter: The nonprofit technology community has chosen twitter as the microblogging service that it uses, so even though I use ping.fm to send status updates to plurk, identi.ca, rejaw, and some others, I never actually go to those sites. Very few people I care about are there (and they twitter too, anyway.)
  • Slideshare: Again, a service I hardly use for social networking – I use it to make public presentations that I’ve done.
  • LinkedIN: The professional, serious, network. I hardly use it, but I know it’s there, and it can be useful sometimes.
  • Plaxo: Once just my address book backup, it seems to now have become a social network on it’s own. I only agree to be friends with people on Plaxo who are actually already in my addressbook (or I know should be.) That keeps the address book more likely to be correct. I don’t want or need Plaxo to be anything else, thankyouverymuch.
  • FriendFeed: The compendium, with comments and likes. It’s great that I can follow all of the content (blogs, tweets, Flickr photos, etc.) of people that I want to all in one place.

An oddball one:

  • Seesmic: I am completely conflicted about Seesmic. For those of you who don’t know Seesmic – it’s a video conversation social network. I’ve had some great conversations with people (including Deepak Chopra, who seems to not post much anymore.) It’s fun, and I love the idea, and I think it has the potential to be very powerful. But, I have to say that it feels like 85-90% of the conversations on Seesmic are, well, inane. There are some great exceptions to this, like a recent conversation about electric cars. But then it seems like with interesting conversations, some guy pretenting to be a robot, or someone else will post something completely inane, and then it devolves from there. Of course, some large percentage of tweets are inane as well, but there isn’t the same overhead. It will take me half a second to scan the “I’m cleaning my garage” tweet (and another second more to scan the responses, if any,) but do I really want to spend 5 minutes hearing about it? And spend the time playing the responses to it? Not hardly. Also, unlike the others, there really isn’t a nonprofit technology presence (who has the time?) So conversations I care about aren’t really going to happen there until that changes.

Social Network Management Systems?

by Pearlbear on September 11, 2008

I have been thinking about the software tools we call “Management Systems” – like Content Management Systems, Document Management Systems, Learning Management Systems… I’ve also been playing a lot with an open source tool called Elgg, and have also played, in the past, with Crabgrass, another open source … “SNMS”?

What do these tools allow you to do? They allow you to create stand-alone social networks. Think a whitebox version of Ning, or Facebook. Elgg, a LAMP(hp) project, started it’s life as a learning platform with social network features, but has transmorgrified into a social network platform with learning features. It’s definitely a new project, and a very new community (with some huge warts) but it is promising for organizations that want to create private (or public, perhaps) social networks that include groups, discussions, document sharing, bookmarking, blogs and other things.

Crabgrass is written in Ruby on Rails, and has groups, messaging and wikis, among other features. It’s a particularly interesting project, because it has a definite political purpose:

Designed for social movements working for social justice, Crabgrass will consist of tools which allow people to connect, collaborate, and organize in new ways and with increased efficiency. In particular, we aim to help groups to communicate securely, network with other groups, and make decisions in a way that is easy to understand, transparent, and directly democratic. Where traditional social networking is about connecting individuals, Crabgrass is social networking to facilitate network organizing.

In the end, I don’t advocate that organizations build new public social networks in the vast majority of situations – I think they should find the people where they already are. But private social networks have their place, and can provide a compellingly interesting platform for our nonprofit standard “members only” websites. People are getting more and more used to social networks as the vehicle for connecting to others, and this is one way to provide this in a private setting.

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Speaking of open social networks …

by Pearlbear on August 14, 2008

I just joined identi.ca. identi.ca is a microblogging service based on an open source project, Laconica, and all of the updates are copyrighted by a Creative Commons (Attribution) license. You can log in using OpenID. All really great stuff. I imagine, too, because it’s based on an open source platform, developers will begin to code in data portability (or have they already?)

The documentation is a bit lacking, and it’s clear that it’s a very new project. There are an increasing number of third party apps that can use it (it supports the Twitter API.)

So I’m on identi.ca now (follow pearlbear). Like all social networks, they are only as usable as people in your social graph use it, and it’s pretty sparse for me right now. But hopefully that will change.

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WeAreMedia Project

by Pearlbear on August 13, 2008

Yet another great NTEN project is happening, spearheaded by Beth Kanter, to develop a Social Media toolkit for Nonprofits. It’s called “WeAreMedia.” I have been really slow on the uptake with this project (it started while I was on vacation, and I never caught up after I got back,) but I hope that I will be able to keep up, and participate more fully in it as it evolves and grows. The first set of modules, on the “Strategic Track” are already done. The next set of modules, that are more tool based (with case studies) are next to be developed. The project took a short break to catch its collective breath, and Beth has some thoughts and ideas that came out of that conference call.

I’m excited about this project – it’s gathering the knowledge and expertise of a great group of folks, and it will provide a free source of information and case studies so that nonprofits can best figure out how to step into the frothy waters of social networks.

A note: Most people will notice that I have pretty much lost my curmudgeonly approach to social media. A year ago, I was bear-ish on Facebook, and said I wouldn’t Twitter. Now, I tell my clients that they really have to think about a Facebook strategy, and that nonprofit staff can gain a lot from networks like Twitter. I’m up to 1,700+ updates on Twitter, and keeping up with my lifestream on FriendFeed is about as difficult as knowing where I’m moving to next.

No, I didn’t go soft in the head (well, some people might think so.) What has happened is basically a sea change in the landscape. Not only are Gen Y and Millenials engaged in these social networks, but a wider and broader range of people are. It’s fairly clear to me that going forward, increasingly, social networks are a major way people are interacting on the web – and nonprofits need to understand how to engage their constituents given those changing realities.

Of course, I’ve been a wiki fan since the very beginning, and I haven’t lost the desire for true data portability, and open source alternatives to the current social networks.  however, as you all know so well, I’m a realist.

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What is cloud computing?

by Pearlbear on August 11, 2008

You’ve likely heard a lot about “cloud computing“. And what’s true is that the sales-talk about computing in the cloud certainly makes the conceptual issues behind it, honestly, well, cloudy. So I’m going to try and lay out the details of what  cloud computing is, and how it’s useful for nonprofit organizations.

Quick definition

Cloud computing is basically running applications on the web via “Software as a Service (SaaS)”. That includes applications from Google Documents, to Salesforce.com, to Gliffy.com, (the service I used to create that graphic.) It also includes applications that you might develop (or have developed) that are hosted outside your network.  That’s really all it is – there isn’t anything fancy about it. It still requires the hardware and operating systems, and databases that more traditional applications that are inside your network require, but, generally, you hand off that responsibility to the folks that host your application, and access the application through the internet.

Advantages to cloud computing

The basic advantages are that you don’t have to maintain infrastructure for applications, saving you labor costs, as well as electricity costs. Also, you can access the applications anywhere you go.

Disadvantages to cloud computing

Depending on the vendor and the application, you are dependent on them to keep the application up and your data intact. Changes in the application happen without your knowledge or consent. Your data is not directly in your hands, but in the hands of a third party. You are dependent on your internet connection – which could be a problem for mission-critical applications.

What makes it possible

Cloud computing is made possible and easier by two trends, two that have happened closely in parallel, one that is relatively recent: High bandwidth to the curb and massive data centers.

High bandwidth to your home or office is a necessary requirement to cloud computing. Cloud computing just doesn’t make any sense, or work in any reasonable way without it (have you ever tried to use Gmail on dial up?) As the bandwidth available increases (via FiOS, and other methods) cloud computing will get even more attractive to organizations and people.

Huge data centers are being thrown up everywhere, and more and more companies are getting into the business of providing hosting for SaaS developers. Companies such as Amazon are creating massive grid storage and computing services for applications in the cloud.

What makes it usable

Newer applications are using AJAX and Flash, to give the kinds of functionalities we’ve come to expect with desktop applications – so it’s just like having a desktop application with our data – except it’s “in the cloud” not on our desk. As the limitations of both AJAX and Flash are overcome (and as both develop further) expect even more usability for online applications. And, further, efforts like Adobe AIR, and Microsoft Silverlight, are bringing full-fledged desktop application functionality to applications in the cloud.

What you should do

  • Make an assessment – will using this online tool really save money or time, or facilitate collaboration in ways that is not possible with local apps?
  • Always read the privacy policy – if you have sensitive data, this might be a deal-breaker
  • Always maintain your own backups. If the provider goes belly up with your data, you’re toast.
  • Make sure access is secure. Read up on the security of the application

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What is private? What is public?

by Pearlbear on June 10, 2008

Today, someone on the progressive exchange list asked about a tool called Rapleaf. A story about Rapleaf in Clickz (a newsletter for online marketers) says this:

Rapleaf allows you to quickly and inexpensively find out the social networking footprint of those you’re marketing to. Just send the company your e-mail list and tell it what social networking sites those on your list are using, their demographics, the numbers of friends they have, how many widgets they’re using, even their interests. Rapleaf digs into the usual social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), as well as newsgroups, commerce sites (like Amazon), review sites, forums, and news groups, and even searches the general Web to find out where your people are and what they’re doing online.

An interesting conversation ensued on the list – with some arguing that this was a problematic thing. I actually thought this could be quite useful for organizations to figure out how to allocate sparse resources in the Web 2.0 space. But that’s not the point of this post.

I realized that one of the most important things that we can do is educate the organizations we work with (as well as individuals) about privacy issues and data. When is data public? When is it private? How do we know? How can we assure privacy?

It is important to understand that Rapleaf is just gathering public information on people, based on their email addresses. It is an inevitable result of our desire for social networks, as well as our desire for information to be portable (like in RSS feeds.) What’s important is that we understand what is actually public, and what isn’t, and how to keep what we want to be private, really private.

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Google Health launches … and it’s not HIPAA compliant

by Pearlbear on May 20, 2008

Yesterday, the big news is that Google Health launched. Google says:

“Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful. Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online.”

Sounds pretty interesting, but hold on a second. Before you sign up, read the privacy policy carefully. And note: this application is not HIPAA compliant. Here’s why. They do have a point – since they don’t provide health services, they don’t need to comply with HIPAA. The language (especially in this table) seems to suggest that the privacy they are providing is better than HIPAA. I’m not so sure, and, in the end, it comes down to “trust us”. I’m just not so sure how far I should trust Google with my health care data. It gives me enough pause to trust them with my email.

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Twitter and Nonprofits

by Pearlbear on April 10, 2008

This actually was a post to the Progressive Exchange discussion list.

I love twitter, which in some ways surprises me, and in some ways doesn’t. It provides for me a sense of community, and a sense of what people I know and care about things I care about are talking about (in a certain realm, on other realms, not so much). I think that Twitter is, in many ways, a harbinger of the future – I think eventually, a lot of things that happen between people over the net will work a lot like twitter, even if it’s not actually twitter – social networks carrying short snippets of people’s thoughts, ideas and events.

But right now, at this moment, twitter’s demographic is both tiny and highly nonrepresentative of the population of the world. It is made up of people who are techically-oriented, largely affluent, and largely spend inordinate amounts of time in contact with electronic devices. We are still in innovator phase here, not even early adopters have signed on.

There is no question that you will get out of twitter what you give. And, wow, yeah, you can be highly successful in twitter. And so what on earth does that really mean?

If your organization’s mission will be greatly benefited by making connections with the twitter demographic then, yeah, twitter makes tons of sense. And organizations and movements can certainly use twitter to organize – I think that’s a great strategy – as long as the majority of those to be organized are on twitter – which is quite a stretch for most orgs or movements.

But there is no way on earth that I am going to suggest that a client of mine whose demographic is mostly women over 50 that they even spend any time on twitter in trying to accomplish their mission, or even get the word out about what they are doing. Should the communications person use twitter to connect with other nonprofit communications professionals? Heck, yeah, I could easily argue it will help them in their work. Should they spend a bit of time tying their RSS feed (if they have one) to a twitter account? Sure, why not. But should the organization as a whole put resources into a “twitter strategy”? Or even a social network strategy? I’d be really hard pressed to suggest that they spend much of their meager resources on that.

I know that people are doing fantastic work around the ways in which social networks can be powerful tools. And there are, for sure, some interesting case studies. And there are also some organizations for whom this makes sense, and who have the resources, and are ready to take good advantage of all of these tools, including twitter. But from my perspective, working with organizations that are sometimes having a hard time moving from a static website to a CMS, social networks in general, and twitter specifically, are a long way away.

I feel like what happens all the time is that we nptechies grab onto a new technology, and the first thing we think is that we gotta get organizations using it. And people in orgs hear all this buzz about this thing or that thing, and feel hard pressed and stressed to get on the bandwagon. And I feel like we don’t spend enough time thinking about whether or not it is appropriate – whether it makes sense, whether it really is going to benefit the mission of the organizations we work with.

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An interesting call from danah boyd

by Pearlbear on February 8, 2008

Those of you steeped deeply in Web 2.0 know danah boyd. She’s a brilliant academic who studies social networks. A couple of days ago, she made a call on her blog for academics to stop publishing articles in closed journals.

On one hand, I’m excited to announce that my article “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence” has been published in Convergence 14(1) (special issue edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze). On the other hand, I’m deeply depressed because I know that most of you will never read it. It is not because you aren’t interested (although many of you might not be), but because Sage is one of those archaic academic publishers who had decided to lock down its authors and their content behind heavy iron walls. Even if you read an early draft of my article in essay form, you’ll probably never get to read the cleaned up version. Nor will you get to see the cool articles on alternate reality gaming, crowd-sourcing, convergent mobile media, and video game modding that are also in this issue. That’s super depressing. I agreed to publish my piece at Sage for complicated reasons, but…

I vow that this is the last article that I will publish to which the public cannot get access. I am boycotting locked-down journals and I’d like to ask other academics to do the same.

It’s really worth a read. If I were still an academic, I’d totally take her up on it. She is also realistic – she describes in detail in the post what people can do, whether they are tenured or not.

I agree with her that open journals are the future. She says, at the end of her long entry:

Making systemic change like this is hard and it will require every invested party to stand up for what they know is right and chip away at the old system. I don’t have tenure (and at this rate, no one will ever let me). I am a young punk scholar and I strongly believe that we have a responsibility to stand up for what’s right. Open-access is right. Heavy metal gates and expensive gatekeepers isn’t. It’s time for change to happen! To all of the academics out there, I beg you to help me make this change reality. Let’s stop being silenced by academic publishers.

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Data Portability update

by Pearlbear on February 6, 2008

If you’re not so connected either to the “twitterverse” or the web industry, you probably haven’t heard a lot about the buzz that is currently happening around the issue of data portability, and the dataportability.org organization and effort. I figured, since I’ve been getting a bit involved in the community, I’d give a bit of a summary of what’s going on, and what will possibly come from this effort.

Dataportability.org – the organization, has gotten a lot of press in the tech industry lately because some very big players recently joined. These include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and many others.

So first, what is data portability? Basically, it means that the data that you put into social networking sites, like profiles, social graph (those who you are connected to,) media, etc. are *yours* to do whatever you want with. In addition, they are portable – you can move your data from place to place. And you have control over who can see what. There is a good blog article, which, in some regards, might be seen as a criticism of the dataportability.org group, but which, to my mind, actually defines quite well what I’ve thought data portability means.  He talks about data “accessibility”, “visibility”, “removal” and “ownership” – all things that, to my mind, are components of data portability.

I’m involved in the evangelism action group. So, I’m evangelizing. I’ll be doing an entry soon, sort of “how social networks could use open standards 101.” I think as nonprofit organizations begin to work more and more using Web 2.0 tools, they need to understand the implications of what they do, and demand that the tools use open standards.

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