social – Terence Eden’s Blog

Humin - A Zombie Idea

@edent — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:12:54 +0000

If you ever listen to the wonderful More or Less podcast, you'll have heard the term "Zombie Statistic."

It relates to stats which are factually incorrect - yet keep being circulated. Despite being disproved, they rear their ugly heads again and again. You probably know a few - men think about sex every 7 seconds, London is France's 6th biggest city, Christians are the most persecuted religion, etc.

In technology circles, we have Zombie Ideas. Products so awful that they are rejected by users again and again. Yet, still, every so often they reanimate. Rising from the grave to devour investors' money and users' attention.

Perhaps, one glorious day in the future, we'll make video calls on our Internet connected fridges, and send a micropayment to a crowdsourced politician, who promises to ban online pornography. But it's not coming any time soon.

The latest idea to come crawling out of the slurry pit is... the Social Address Book!

Humin - a company with a laughably pompous attitude to its self importance - wants us all to sign up to its service. In return, it literally promises to make us "awesome".

sigh

Theory vs Practice

In theory, the social address book is a pretty nifty idea. Alice has Bob's details in her phone book. Bob changes his details - moves house, gets a new number, changes corporate email address - and Alice's address book is automatically updated!!!!!!

And, yeah, get this. When Alice looks in her address book, she'll see Bob's latest Facebook post! OMG!

OK, I'm a little jaded. I worked, for a while, on Zyb. A company which did exactly what Humin does. This was.... Ooh... 5 or 6 years ago?

Zyb was pretty nifty. If you had it installed, you could get updates to my details, see my MySpace posts, and have it all update automagicially. Move phones? No problem - your Zyb details were all stored in The Clown.

It failed - and failed hard. Why? Well, partly because Vodafone bought it for $49 million and then killed it with bureaucracy 2 years later. It also didn't help that most people don't care about their address book that much.

My next experience was with the exciting new .tel domain names. I went and purchased http://edent.tel/ for €18 - stuck my details on there and installed their social address book.

Now this was cool. I got a new domain, and my details updated via DNS propagation! An open standard - no proprietary products, no evil advertising trying to sell my personal details, and err... well... who doesn't want a domain name where you can only host a limited set of information?!?! Right?

Turns out, only 325,000 people ever thought that was a good idea....

This is the crux of the issue. For a social network to be of any use, it has to attract a significant number of users. Being the first person on Humin is like being the first person with a fax machine. Interesting; but you can't do anything useful with it.

This brings us to Plaxo. I think it was 2004 when I first received spam inviting me to join Plaxo. I say spam because there was an unending torrent of emails from half-remember colleagues, random strangers, and quite clearly fake account all claiming that they wanted to connect with me.

This is were we are with Humin today. They realise that a connected address-book needs to have a significant number of users. So they send out a ton of unsolicited, automated emails, in the hope that you will give them your private data for free.

Cui Bono?

Here's the next serious problem with Humin. Who owns my data?

Is my email address private? When I hand you a business-card, what are your responsibilities with regard to my data? If you are a company, you are probably bound by the Data Protection Act (or local equivalent) not to share my information without consent. If you are an individual, no such laws apply. We have to rely on good manners.

If someone came up to you on the street and said:

Hey, I'd love Terence's email, phone number, home address, birthday, photograph, and any notes you have on them. C'mon man, I'll give you a cookie!

I hope you would have the good sense to refuse them.

Yet this is what Humin are doing.

Plaxo faced such a serious backlash against their hoovering up of private data they had to release a statement explaining their lax attitude to privacy.

So now Humin have stolen my personal data via a third party and then send me a menacing email saying "This is everything we know about you. Join us. Join us now to correct any mistakes. JOIN US! Please also share all your friends' data as well. kthxbai."

As the Scots say, GTF.

What Is Dead Shall Never Die

Ok, so Humin doesn't respect privacy. They don't have a critical mass of users. That's not why this is a zombie product. It's because it is useless.

Oh, don't get me wrong. For a tiny subset of people there's great value in having a 100% perfect address book. But for most of us, it's an overhead we just don't need.

I once spent a weekend going through my address book adding photos to every contact, making sure I had their addresses correct. What I discovered was that over 15 years of use, my phone had become a graveyard for the details of every half remembered acquaintance, plumber, and ex-girlfriend. Are most of the details out of date? Yes - almost certainly. Do I care? No.

Here's the bare fact. 95% of phone calls and texts are made to 5% of the numbers in your phone book.

And that's the trap that Humin falls into.

If my best friend changes their number - they'll let me know.
If someone hates me, or is scared of me - they won't tell me of a change of address.
On the off chance that I need to contact someone I met at a conference 7 years ago, and haven't spoken to since - I'll look for them on AltaVista.

Let's ignore the fact that Humin don't care about our privacy. Forget their closed-source product, closed protocol, and closed network. This isn't a problem that needs solving. They might as well say "lets disrupt the way people leave notes out for the milkman!!!!"

Yeah, the way we do things now isn't the most hyper-efficient system in the world. But it works. It's failure resistant, fully inclusive, and doesn't compromise personal privacy.

Death to Zombies.

Chumming Down

@edent — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 12:06:32 +0000

I'm turning into an old curmudgeon. Either that, or the new wave of social marketing has severely missed its intended target.

Let me ask you a question, do you want to be friends with your utility company? Your phone provider? Your soft drinks manufacturer?

I don't mean "follow-on-social-media" friends - I mean actual buddies. On the face of it, that's a ridiculous question. You can no more be friends with a conglomerate than you can trust a politician. When your local MP comes knocking on the door, she's all smiles, friendly language, and we'll-be-with-you-thick-and-thin - yet you know once your vote is secured, they really couldn't give a stuff.

That's what companies are now trying to do - be your best mate. They want you to feel like you have a relationship with them and that there is something more than a boring business transaction.

Let's be honest, the only reason companies engage in friend-washing is to make you feel guilty when you want to leave them for another supplier.

I first noticed this with Innocent Smoothies. They were just so nakedly desperate to have people notice their "quirky and independent" schtick - anything to avoid those awkward questions about the multinational Goliath which owns them.

More recently, my energy company is getting in on the game.

I like Ovo because they have cheap prices and their website isn't as piss-poor as their competitors'. That doesn't mean I want to be their friend.

When I joined them (on the basis of price) they sent me through a cheerful welcome pack which included a tea-bag and a small slice of cake. Ostensibly so that I could "put my feet up and have a cuppa on them" while waiting for the boring business of a utilities switchover.

Does anyone fall for this utter guff?

Well, yes.

Is it just me?

@edent Brands As Friendly Chum Chatters is #1 on my 2030 "Odd Things From The Past" list.

Archived Source

I don't want to be friends with the anonymous call-centre drones who are rushing through the prescribed faux-matey script.

I want to pay you some money - as little as possible - and for you to do a competent job.
When something goes wrong - I want you to show genuine empathy and help fix things.
If I decide to leave you for a competitor - I expect you to take it with good grace, not start acting like a deranged and jilted lover.

I have enough real friends.

It's all daringly postmodern and social and there's lots of academic or marketing wankery to justify it, I'm sure. You can't force jollity on people, and you can't fake genuine humanity.
-Tom Morris

I get that the waitress in a café is friendly to solicit tips. Salesmen want to close a sale. People, in general, are friendly and polite. But this "chumming down" of communication is insidious. It is specifically designed to bypass the rational parts of our brain and prey on the prefrontal cortex. It tries to moderate our social behaviour in a way which is beneficial to the brand - and detrimental to our wallets and wellbeing.

You know where this chumming down ends, don't you?

Social Media Marketing Fatally Undermined By User Sabotage

@edent — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 11:00:30 +0000

I was at a funeral the other day. A group of us were sharing memories of the deceased. Talking about her laugh, how mean she could be, how we never told her that we loved her.

Suddenly, a stranger walked over to us in the graveyard and said, "Friends, have you tried the great taste of the Big Kahuna Burger? With its mouthwatering blend of herbs and spices, you're sure to have a Big Kahuna Day! High-five me if you agree!"

Needless to say, we each gave him a high-five in the face and spent the rest of the week telling everyone how crappy Big Kahuna are.

That's where we are with Social Media Marketing today. The Prophets told us that "Markets Are Conversations" - but, somehow, the people doing the marketing didn't realise that conversations are bi-directional.

Part of the problem is just laziness. Vice magazine have done an excellent round up of all the faux-interactive marketing messages which are being pumped out by major companies every day.

The other part is that we don't like our private and personal spaces invaded by those we haven't invited. We use Facebook to woo, to reminisce, to love, to share, to play, and to argue - and we do it all with our friends and family. So when a brand tries to muscle in on that conversation, it cheapens the experience and makes us angry. Properly angry.

Go up to a couple kissing in the park, or a parent playing with their child, and start talking to them about the benefits of of a cordless drill and see how long it is before they tell you to piss off. Why should it be any different online?

Actually, online it's far worse; your positive message can be fatally undermined by the people you have angered.

Take this example from Tom Tom on Facebook. It's unbelievably lazy (and sexist) and it doesn't fit in with a social network. Unsurprisingly, users revolted. Below are a selection of comments left by angry users. Each one visible to anyone commenting on the advert. Warning - some strong language ahead. I've trimmed out a number of people who engaged positively with the advert - no doubt sharing their sentiment with their friends.

Is this what social marketing is? Shoe-horning your tone deaf messages into personal spaces? Ignoring the conversation? Refusing to acknowledge to legitimate complaints? Subjecting social media managers to a torrent of vile abuse?

James Whatley has asked some really important questions about how advertising will work in social spaces. I think he's missed the most important question of all - what do you do when people start rejecting your advertising and begin to sabotage your message?

Predicting The Next Social Network

@edent — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:20:04 +0000

We're in a fairly mature phase of social networks now.

Broadly speaking, most social networks separate out into a few main groups.

Eyes - e.g. services like Flickr for pictures and YouTube for moving pictures.

Ears - e.g. AudioBoo for voices and SoundCloud for songs.

Feet - e.g. FourSquare for where I am now and RunKeeper for where I have been (running).

Hands - e.g. Etsy and Github show what I am creating.

Mind - e.g. Twitter and Facebook for what I'm feeling and thinking, and what I "like".

Brain - e.g. Coursera for what I'm learning now and LinkedIn for what I'm doing with that knowledge.

I'm sure you can think of many more examples and some rather different (and equally arbitrary) groupings.

So that set me thinking about what else we could share socially. Some of these ideas may already exist (and no doubt I'm not hip enough to know about them).

Touch and Texture

3D printing is already garnering a community around it - Thingiverse, Shapeways, physibles. But what about touch and feel? Companies like Senseg are already able to simulate textures on a touch-screen.

Sharing the feeling of rain falling on your skin, the way your hand drags across a crocodile's scales, or the squeezability of a friendly cat.

Eventually, this leads us down the route of teledildonics - a technology of limited usefulness while it consists mainly of motor speed variations but perhaps of more popularity when we can share very refined haptics.

Smells and Tastes

Despite our best efforts, we haven't found a simple way to encode, distribute, and produce olfactory sensations.

Imagine a site like Untappd - which tracks which beers you're drinking - which allows your friends to experience the smell and taste of your beer.

I've watched with joy as my friends eat the food I've prepared - and laughed helplessly while they try to handle a spicy curry or super-sour sweet. I could use InterFlora to send you some roses - or I could create a personalised fragrance to emanate from your phone whenever I call you.

Bio/Health

My friend Alex Blandford has written about tracking medical conditions with personal technology. Perhaps we don't want our friends to know our body temperature, T-Cell count, or the level of dopamine in our brain - but it might be useful for our doctors. Or maybe social attitudes will change and sharing our body's weight and brain's happiness with the world will become de rigueur.

Sites like Fitocracy check our physical fitness and share it with the world - so why not track our mental health in the same way?

As we experience dramatic emotional reactions, why not share them and their causes? Services like ThisIsMyJam and GetGlue tell your friends what you're doing - but not how intensely you feel it.

We may not always know how we feel, be able to identify the cause of our distress, or understand how to articulate it - a medical implant could silently monitor our brain chemistry and alert our friends if we needed help.

Integration

None of these are a paradigm shift - they are all datapoints which can easily be integrated into our existing social networks. Until we have the ability to directly create memories and sensations in the brain - we may be limited to vicarious enjoyment by proxy.

Many years ago, the next big term was "Social Objects":

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. [...] There needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that "node" in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.

Our social objects are only conduits to what we really want to share. When you tell a joke, you want to make people laugh, when you tell a friend to see Les Mis you want them to cry, when you talk about your bowel movements you want them to know how you feel.

What if "checking in" to The Seven Year Itch allowed you to directly share the weird feeling in the pit of your stomach when Marilyn Monroe's skirt is caught in the updraught from an air vent? What if sharing your car's average fuel efficiency of Fuelly allowed your friends to experience the same smugness you do?

When we share, it's not because we love a brand, or a film, or a mere thing - we share because we love our friends and we want to bring them joy and help them understand the journey we're taking.

Maybe that's what's next for social networks.

Why Facebook Makes Me Feel Like A Loser

@edent — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 12:00:18 +0000

I'm sat here, in my dressing gown. My fingers are greasy from eating crisps all morning. My back aches because I spent all night playing a stupid video game. The gin hangover isn't helping either. My week off work has been a wash out. I didn't write any code, I didn't cook anything other than pizza, and I'm beginning to smell of used dish water.

I log on to Facebook - and this is what I see, all complete with photos of smiling people doing awesome things.

Melody checked in at Bury Lane Farm Shop "Stocking up on pâté :)"
Dan "First sky diving lesson. Love it!"
Lloyd "Sushi!!!"
Luke "Welcoming the birth of our new baby with some champagne"
Steve "not being a fan of either presents or parties, just receiving tons of messages on Twitter and FB for my birthday is pretty much perfect :)"
Ewan "Read my latest piece in Forbes magazine"
Laura "Red wine, cheese and live classical music... how else would one spend a balmy Australian summers eve?"
David "Amazing street art in New York City"
Andrea "Jason & I have gotten around to updating our relationship statuses on Facebook."
Lexy "London. Heathrow. Cape Town. All in 24 hours"
Gillian "Is loving being at Hotel du Vin, Henley."
Menna "This evening I bought a Le Crouset casserole dish before attending a pub crawl at which several people were dressed in onesies"
Helen "spent a very long time in the swimming pool today and might have to go to bed early to recover!"
Jess "This Knickerbockerglory may be the death of me!"
Kate "Planning a trip to see my astronaut friends!"

Literally everyone I know is doing amazing stuff! Sure, there's the odd moan about a crappy commute, or a missed Christmas present. But everyone is so unnervingly upbeat all the time.

I wonder what this does for our mental health? When all you see is the relentless cheeriness of all your friends, suddenly finding yourself miserable can be deeply distressing.

Your friends are always flying off somewhere exotic, and buying new cars, and having exciting careers. You just sit in your underwear wondering if visiting Vimeo rather than YouTube counts as a life changing experience...

It's no longer a case of "keeping up with the Joneses" - you now have to keep up with everyone you've ever met, no matter what the cost!

What we're overlooking, of course, is that Facebook presents us a rather one sided view of our friends.

Let's say your average friend only flies off on holiday every two years. With 100 friends, you'll see someone jetting off every week. All of a sudden, our view of reality is distorted. Our friends aren't all globe-trotters who do nothing but sip champagne in the first class lounge - but the steady drip-drip-drip of friends posting their adventures makes us feel like we're missing something.

Look through your photo album - digital or physical - and count the ratio of photos of people smiling vs looking grumpy. We want to remember the good times. We want to capture and share the brief moments of joy in our lives.

But all those perfect moments combine to a deluge of unfettered joy and love which, if you're not careful, can drown out any rational thought.

I'm not saying that people should post more depressing status updates, or that they should refrain from sharing their happiness. It's just that perhaps we, as a species, aren't yet used to dealing with a constant flood of our friends' successes. It can make even a little failure feel like you're letting down your entire social circle.

Looking through my Facebook updates for 2012 - I've been to some incredible countries this year, changed job, visited zoos and art galleries, had my work published, been retweeted around the globe, raised money for good causes, eaten at some lovely restaurants, won best in show at OverTheAir, drank expensive cocktails with a friend I haven't seen for a decade, been to a Beatles gig, and completed Angry Birds Star Wars.

I am, ostensibly, not a loser. So Facebook can fuck right off.