HOW GOOGLE GLASS WORKS

Facebook Dodges Tough Questions

 

Written by Kim Davis

4/9/2013

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 28-year-old founder and CEO, rarely gives press interviews. He surely can't regret, however, giving access to Vanity Fair's Kurt Eichenwald, who asks few hard questions and gets no revealing replies.

After I had waited for just a moment in a lounge area, Zuckerberg invited me in. The office was modest, with four glass walls, letting passersby peek in at the Facebook C.E.O. Zuckerberg was open-faced, smiling, and unfailingly polite.

Eichenwald supplements his facetime with the boy-king by interviewing Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and Facebook investor and director -- hardly the voice of unalloyed objectivity. Oh, and he also spoke with some ad clients and senior executives and reviewed "reams of data."

So what do we learn from this exercise?

• Zuckerberg and his close circle think of Facebook as a "feedback loop." Well, duh: That's a concept we've been using right here, since Internet Evolution was founded in 2007.
• Revenues "jumped" in 2012. However, as Eichenwald tells us a paragraph later, the rate of revenue growth has slowed yearly since 2009.
• "Advertising" on Facebook is about engagement, not encouraging quick clicks to buy.

There's the conundrum Eichenwald's article doesn't even recognize, let alone address. Look at this comment by Nestle's head of marketing, Tom Buday:

I kind of scratch my head a bit when I hear a lot of the conversation that's going on in the industry these days, questioning whether entire social-media platforms like Facebook… work or don't work in regards to advertising. We know this is working well.

I bet Facebook is working out very well for Nestle, whose Facebook page has more than 800 thousand Likes. The page is frequently updated with recipes, nutrition information, competitions, news about social initiatives, and yummy pictures of desserts. It's evidently a fantastic platform for Nestle.

My question -- and it should have been Eichenwald's -- is how much advertising Nestle needs to buy on Facebook to support this page. Moreover, I wonder how much advertising Nestle is likely to buy going forward, if the word-of-mouth effect is as powerful as Facebook's supporters, like Eichenwald, presume.

After all, we know that some retailers have figured out how to increase sales by using Facebook's free tools rather than buying ads. After all, Facebook is supposed to be good at generating engagement through shared content, and it's quite possible to achieve that without buying ads at all.

And then there's the pesky fact that Facebook's users are increasingly accessing the plaform via the mobile app rather than the website, and the mobile world -- with its relatively small display space -- is notoriously a turnoff for advertisers.

Some analysts say mobile plays to Facebook's touted strength: Sponsored Stories that appear in the News Feed, rather than banner displays or pop-ups. Eichenwald is totally drinking the Kool-Aid on this:

As time passed, advertisers began to recognize that Facebook was not simply a passing fad. And that led companies to begin scouring the landscape for people who knew how to communicate with Facebook users without sounding like a clichéd version of a marketer.

But one of the best ways of communicating with users is by using alternative methods other than sponsored stories and paid advertising. Brand-appropriate social marketing, gamification, attractive content -- all of which are supported, again, by Facebook's free tools. Perhaps advertising helps seed an audience for a Facebook page, but if the page is well run, it should (in theory) take on a life of its own.

Perhaps Facebook's new Android initiative, Facebook Home, will provide part of the answer. Perhaps users really will respond to Sponsored Stories as if they represented real messages from real friends. Zuckerberg told Eichenwald that the reaction to Sponsored Stories appearing in the News Feed was "net-positive" -- ads seemed to turn off a limited number of users.

The truth is that we don't know how the audience will respond in the long term to the retooling of a social platform as a marketing vehicle. Recent changes to the News Feed will allow users, in effect, to channel-surf away from ads. That may not be a good idea. As Zuckerberg says:

If people don't connect to the advertising content, then it's not good for anyone. It's not good for the people using Facebook, it's not good for the advertisers, and then ultimately we don't make money.

And that, of course, is one quite possible outcome.

Why Facebook Home bothers me

It destroys any notion of privacy

by Om Malik

APR. 4, 2013 - 12:50 PM PDT

photo: Om Malik

SUMMARY:

Facebook’s history as a repeat offender on privacy, and playing loose and easy with our data means that need to be even more vigilant about privacy issues, thanks to this Home app/faux-OS.

One of the great things about attending Facebook’s events is that one gets to see Mark Zuckerberg mature as a chief executive and hone his presentation skills. And today, he didn’t disappoint in his ability to spin the media corps. It was all claps for “four colors on HTC First” and ideas “inspired” by the likes of Amazon Kindle (ads) and Path. But what he did most brilliantly was obfuscate the difference between an app (Home), the user experience layer and the operating system.

Zuckerberg did that for two reasons: First, to buy his company time to build a proper OS that will come to us in dribs and drabs and then will wash over us suddenly, like a riptide. And secondly, to convince people that ”Home” is just like any other app. Unfortunately, Facebook’s Home is not as benign as that.

In fact, Facebook Home should put privacy advocates on alert, for this application erodes any idea of privacy. If you install this, then it is very likely that Facebook is going to be able to track your every move, and every little action. It is a future I wrote about a few days ago, and let me explain using that very same context.

The new Home app/UX/quasi-OS is deeply integrated into the Android environment. It takes an effort to shut it down,  because Home’s whole premise is to be always on and be the dashboard to your social world. It wants to be the start button for apps that are on your Android device, which in turn will give Facebook a deep insight on what is popular. And of course, it can build an app that mimics the functionality of that popular, fast-growing mobile app. I have seen it done before, both on other platforms and on Facebook.

But there is a bigger worry. The phone’s GPS can send constant information back to the Facebook servers, telling it your whereabouts at any time.

So if your phone doesn’t move from a single location between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. for say a week or so, Facebook can quickly deduce the location of your home. Facebook will be able to pinpoint on a map where your home is, whether you share your personal address with the site or not. It can start to build a bigger and better profile of you on its servers. It can start to correlate all of your relationships, all of the places you shop, all of the restaurants you dine in and other such data. The data from accelerometer inside your phone could tell it if you are walking, running or driving. As Zuckerberg said — unlike the iPhone and iOS, Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the platform, and that means accessing the hardware as well.

This future is going to happen – and it is too late to debate. However, the problem is that Facebook is going to use all this data — not to improve our lives — but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us. Zuckerberg made no bones about the fact that Facebook will be pushing ads on Home.

And most importantly it is Facebook, a company that is known to have played loose-and-easy with consumer privacy and data since its very inception, asking for forgiveness whenever we caught them with its hand in the cookie jar. I don’t think we can be that forgiving or reactive with Facebook on mobile.

It is time to ask for simple, granular and easy to understand privacy and data collection policies from Facebook, especially for mobile. We need to ask our legislative representatives to understand that Facebook wants to go from our desktops and browsers right into our home — the place where we need to be private.

The iPhone Killed My Creativity

 

Brian S Hall March 29th, 2013

 

I love my iPhone. I take it with me everywhere. But I am starting to fear it may be killing my creativity. 

Numerous studies and much accepted wisdom suggest that time spent doing nothing, being bored, is beneficial for sparking and sustaining creativity. With our iPhone in hand - or any smartphone, really - our minds, always engaged, always fixed on that tiny screen, may simply never get bored. And our creativity suffers.

Peter Toohey, author of Boredom: A Lively History, told the New York Times that boredom is the experience of "wanting to, but being unable to engage in satisfying activity." No wonder those of us with smartphones are able to avoid boredom so easily. We can always engage in some satisfying activity, no matter how trivial - snap a picture of our meal, play a quick game of Angry Birds, check-in on Foursquare or leave a tip. 

We may be helpless, despite knowing the deleterious effects of these devices. Consider that Apple's latest marketing campaign perfectly captures the breadth of functions and fun the iPhone readily delivers to its millions of users. There is so much anyone can do with this magical device, so simply, so quickly, from any place, at any time. The problem is that this may not be a good thing. At least, not always.  

Mobile Blinders

Eradicating boredom and banishing downtime has its upside, of course. In a recent Bloomberg report, major advertisers, including Coca-Cola and Hearst, expressed their concern over lowered "impulse" sales at the grocery store checkout aisles. This is not at all surprising. Staring into their smartphones, with their "mobile blinders" on, people are less inclined to buy gum, candy or those trashy magazines.

"For years, publishers could count on bored shoppers waiting in the checkout line to pick up a magazine, get engrossed in an article, and toss it into their cart alongside the milk and eggs. Then came 'mobile blinders.' These days, consumers are more likely to send a quick text and check their Facebook feed than to read a magazine or develop a momentary craving for the gum or candy on display."

Awesome. Score one for the smartphone!

But this victory comes at a cost. Spending so much time texting and updating, tweeting and watching, calling and playing at every free moment, from every location, never alone with our thoughts, never allowing our thoughts to drift, impacts our creativity, which in turn can limit our full potential.

Edward de Bono, business consultant and self-described "father of lateral thinking" has authored numerous works on creative thinking. de Bono calls moments of boredom "creative pauses," which allows the mind to drift, and avails the person to new forms of input and understanding. 

Boredom may be even more important for children than adults. Spending so much time on gadgets may "short circuit the development of creative capacity" in children, according to educational expert Dr. Teresa Belton. Other education experts similarly suggest that a child's imagination and creativity is ultimately aided through bouts of boredom.

Earlier this year, Science Omega examined the benefits of boredom.

"Psychologists from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) have conducted research into the potential upsides of boredom and found that the time we spend daydreaming could improve our creative ability."

The lead researcher on the UCLan study, Dr. Sandi Mann, emphasized boredom's role in society:

"I do strongly believe that we shouldn’t be afraid of boredom and that we all – adults, children, workers, non-workers – need a little bit of boredom in our lives. Of course I’m not saying we should make people attend boring meetings for the sake of it, but allowing staff downtime where they can daydream and let their minds wander could possibly lead to benefits for an organisation."

Short-term Gain

There is the possibility, of course, that by killing our boredom smartphones are freeing up time for better, more productive or uplifting pursuits. For example, psychology professor Gary Marcus distinguishes between the two primary types of pursuits we use to defeat boredom.

"Boredom is the brain’s way to tell you you should be doing something else. But the brain doesn’t always know the most appropriate thing to do. If you’re bored and use that energy to play guitar and cook, it will make you happy. But if you watch TV, it may make you happy in the short term, but not in the long term."

So much of what we do on our smartphones, however, is decidedly short-term: a few moments playing a game while we stand in line, a minute to scan Instagram as the person in front of us at the grocery store pulls out their checkbook. 

A study last year by UK carrier O2 examined the amount of time the typical user spends each day on their smartphone. It's a lot - more than two hours a day, everyday. Most of that is spent browsing the Internet, on social networking sites, playing games, listening to music, calling, emailing and texting - and not, for example, learning a new language.  

No Off Switch

At work, employees are often encouraged to 'think outside the box.' The assumption is that such thinking will lead to creativity, innovation, and newer, better solutions to existing or expected problems. Spending so much time with our heads focused inside the box - staring at our smartphone - may mean, however, that we are ultimately limiting our creativity. There is no time freed up to see the larger picture, to make connections where they previously never existed, to allow our brains rest, to see and hear and accept alternatives. 

Though I confess I hope I am wrong about all of this.

I spend far more time than the average user with my eyes staring into that small, bright and highly receptive screen. I am not sure I am able to shut it off, even now. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

 

Brian S Hall

Brian S Hall writes about the "Smart Social Mobile Web" and how it is rapidly re-constructing markets, industries, business models and relationships around the world. His fiction works are available at Amazon.com. His personal site on the "Smartphone Wars" is at www.brianshall.com.

Is Facebook Causing a Deterioration of Society as We Know It?

  MEDIA  

 

Al Jazeera English / By Belén Fernández

 

Is Facebook a boon or cause for concern for the mental health industry?

March 29, 2013  |  

According to a New York Times article by Jan Hoffman referencing a study of the Facebook profiles of 200 university students in the United States, approximately 30 percent of the students “posted updates that met the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for a symptom of depression, reporting feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, insomnia or sleeping too much, and difficulty concentrating”. These findings are said to “echo research that suggests depression is increasingly common among college students”.

Hoffman’s point is that Facebook can therefore serve as an “early warning system for timely intervention” by parents and therapists. The article ends with a quote from a mother in Ohio: “Facebook might be a pain in the neck to keep up with… But having that extra form of communication saves lives”.

No mention is made of the obvious exacerbating influence of social networking sites when it comes to phenomena such as insomnia and concentration difficulty. Rather than promote Facebook as a life-saving tool, one could easily argue that such forums and other technological distractions in fact contribute to depressive trends.

Alienation from reality

The “Facebook Newsroom” currently lists developments such as “Today we’re rolling out improvements to timeline that help you express what's important to you” and “Today we're announcing a new version of Facebook designed to… focus more on stories from the people you care about”.

The attempted injection of human emotion into what is ultimately a dehumanising experience is symbolic of a general estrangement from reality in which Facebook culture is both a cause and a symptom.

The detrimental effects of the conversion of emotion and empathy into a click on a computer or a mobile phone can be observed in the following anecdote from Hoffman’s article:

“Replying to questions posted on Facebook by The New York Times, Daylina Miller, a recent graduate of the University of South Florida, said that when she poured out her sadness online, some readers responded only with the Facebook ‘like’ symbol: a thumb’s up.

‘You feel the same way?’ said Ms. Miller, puzzled. ‘Or you like that I’m sad? You’re sadistic?’”

Similarly inauspicious examples of the constriction of empathy and warping of inter-human relations include the “liking” of death announcements.

On my own Facebook feed, I’ve witnessed friends post news of a parent’s death only to be bombarded with the thumb’s up and comments to the effect of: “Sorry man!”

In addition to a cheapening of sentiment, Facebook also encourages alienation from reality by displacing the space-time continuum: instead of experiencing events and thoughts as they occur in real-time, users are often distracted by how best to market these events and thoughts to their Facebook audiences.

The transfer of the self onto a computer screen is furthermore decentring given the attendant diffusion of identity. As for the conditioned need for personal validation in the form of little red notifications appearing at the top of one’s Facebook page, this is conducive to a state of perennial anticipation that is counterproductive to the functioning of the nervous system. Posts on bowel movements and the like are an extreme example of the need to reiterate, and obtain acknowledgement of, one’s fragmented existence.

Though the Internet may compound the schizophrenic nature of US society, there are clearly more established causes of dehumanisation and individual alienation. The national glorification of violence and militarism, for one, abrogates realities of human suffering worldwide; in this context of dedicated estrangement from humanity, it is not overly surprising when citizens devoid of empathy perpetrate acts such as the 2012 Connecticut school massacre.

Mass attention deficit disorder

The ostensible function of social networking sites is, of course, to bring people closer together. The same function is attributed to the process of neoliberal globalisation.

Despite obvious superficial increases in interconnectedness in both cases, however, the fundamental outcome is alienating. In the latter instance, ‘interconnectedness’ has been characterized by enhanced disparity in socioeconomic conditions and a crusade for profit at the expense of communal wellbeing. In the former, the face-to-face contact for which human beings are programmed is replaced with electronic exchanges incapable of satisfying innate communication needs.

Willful misinterpreters of contemporary history continue to argue that globalization constitutes the solution to the very global ills it creates. In vaguely similar fashion, Hoffman’s New York Times article portrays Facebook as a potentially useful aid in the quest to promote mental health when the two concepts appear to be inherently at odds.

The neoliberal experiment in the US has helped mold a society disconnected from the human condition, where oppression of the individual has aimed to thwart popular solidarity that might threaten the experiment. What should be a universal right to health care, for example, is instead wielded punitively against the population, and, as acclaimed journalist and radio host Doug Henwood points out, “Obamacare” will presumably result in a situation in which “scores of millions are thrown onto the private individual insurance market and forced to pay $1,000 a month for crappy coverage”. 

Henwood hopes that “this could vastly increase the constituency for a single-payer scheme, such as Medicare for All—assuming our rulers don’t destroy Medicare first”.

In the end, perhaps Facebook and similar phenomena have already contributed to solidarity on the health care front: in the very least, we’re united in mass attention deficit disorder.

Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, released by Verso in 2011. She is a member of the Jacobin Magazine editorial board, and her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books blog, The Baffler, Al Akhbar English and many other publications. 

Follow her on Twitter: @MariaBelen_Fdez