I was an early adopter of Facebook, so I have more friends than most people my age. Facebook friends that is.  Thats because when Facebook first started, only a very few people in your peer group had an account, so you were less choosy about who you friended.   I think up till now a large number of FB friends has been a relative asset for me. Similar to Danah Boyd’s take that “radical transparency” has been something she has benefited from by choice – my relatively public persona has provided visibility that makes it easier for me to earn a living via personal earned media.

One of the ways we differentiated Flux – a white label social media toolset for brands where I worked for 2 years – from Facebook was that we were encouraging less private social media activity in order to increase interaction with content (video, photos, games) via a streamlined set of business rules. Simply put, you knew you were building a profile on MTV.com or Souljaboy.com in order to behave in a public manner, there was no expectation of privacy. We weren’t trying to help you invite people to a party at your house, or share photos of your children with your cousin. Based on the implicit privacy contract we though FB was making with its users, we assumed that FB had too much overhead infrastructure to be the underlying social technology for content companies.  Bravo Facebook, you got there, it just took you a few years to catch up…

An analogy is the collapse subscription music business v 1.0. It wasn’t the lack of market demand that killed the first generation of subscription music products, it was the unnecessary technical overhead created by DRM requirements. Enforcing strict digital rights imposes performance costs, technology costs, and bad user experiences even if the DRM software is license-free (see MSFT VIsta). Now that a lighter level of subscription DRM is available, Pandora and other other alternatives are becoming profitable.

Because Facebook is pursuing an ad supported model, it is moving its implicit privacy contract to the less private side of the spectrum. This encourages more interaction with content, which is what Facebook is ultimately are selling. It also will reduce their technology costs over time since DRM is hard.  In hindsight its the obvious move, and nobody should be surprised. Some people like Umair Haque call this “evil”, but strategically its the way to capture the most market capitalization right now, so those business ethics are pretty straightforward. The brands are going to come running with buckets of cash, that is for sure.

The result of this math is that you are more valuable to Facebook as a user the more 1) you interact with content (by liking etc.), and 2) the more friends you have.   Because of the friends of friends (see Danah Boyd’s post for an explanation) there is an exponential effect.   And your resulting privacy diminishes inversely. The equations are something like:

(Facebook NPV) _(user) = b X (FB activity) X (Number of friends _(user))²

Privacy _you = 1/FB NPV _(you)

where b is a coefficient that reflects your account privacy settings

What are the implications of his math?  The more FB friends you have, the less privacy you have.  Probably squared if you haven’t adjusted your privacy settings.  While this may seem obvious and is the reason I reject more “friend” requests than I accept now,  it wasn’t as obvious 5 years ago when I started using FB.  Fact of the matter is that a lot of my FB friends aren’t really friends, they are just people I knew back when we were both early adopters.

I’m not ready to leave FB altogether, it does provide value both personally and professionally.  So I just went through and did a high level culling of my FB friend list and “unfriended” 20 people. (This is really tedious to do).  Especially high on the list for elimination are casual friends with 1000s of friends.  Their low value “networks” are (were!) really just privacy sinks for me.  If you are one of them – nothing personal, it’s Zuckerberg’s fault!!

Posted: May 16th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Great post/

The most insidious ignorance meme going forward is the liberal-bias-in-media propaganda. Lately (the last week or so) I am seeing a lot of objective data being presented by the MSM about the proportion of “positive” coverage Obama has gotten vs. the amount of “negative” coverage McCain’s campaign has gotten, and then using that data to draw the conclusion that the media is biased.

The problem with that line of logic is that OBAMA/BIDEN ARE OBJECTIVELY THE BETTER CAMPAIGNERS AND THEIR CAMPAIGN HAS BEEN OPERATED MUCH MORE SKILLFULLY THAN MCCAIN/PALIN’s HAS.

By any impartial objective measurement this can be shown to be true – politics aside. Obama has made fewer mistakes, been more consistently on message, been more skillful with his communication strategy, been the better debater, given the better speeches, and shown better judgment. When Obama has made a mistake (clinging to guns and religion, having a batshit crazy minister friend) the press has been all over him. But his mistakes in aggregate don’t compare with not knowing the difference between a Sunni and Shiite, prattling on and on about the surge and whether its successful or not, choosing a woefully unqualified ideologue as a running mate, saying he’s going to suspend his campaign and cancel the debate and then not doing it, saying the economy fundamentally sound, scowling like a crazy old coot during the debate, etc. Obama has kicked McCain’s ass at politics for 5 months and an objective non-biased press should indicate that fact, just like the polls do now and just like the ballots will next week. There is a difference between fairness and justice, and an objective press doesn’t have a duty to make sure the positive/negative ratio is 1 for both candidates. When one guy is better, its OK for that fact to come out.

But to come back to Mark’s post, perpetuating this liberal bias myth is the ultimate Orwellian capitalization of a populace’s ignorance. As long as the Republican spin meisters can find a home deep oin our public consciousness for this line of bull, they’ll have a reliable patch of ignorance from which to launch their other misleading screeds. It doesn’t matter what FACTS YOU READ OR HEAR, the only unbiased truth comes from Hannity and Rush and the other troglodytes.

Originally posted as a comment by steveray on Mark, my words using Disqus.

Posted: October 30th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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A lot of buildup.  I’m guessing this debate was the highest rated of all time.

This was Obama’s debate to win, and he did not win.  The McCain campaign has been in a tailspin for 2 weeks, they are on a wing and a prayer.  Obama’s had more primary-debate experience and he has beter command of the issues.

Obama played it safe.  Which in a lot of respects is gambling.  The best way to play his hand right now in a completely game-theory-optimal game would have been to attack.  Not a flailing attack but a coherent relentless attack.  Stronger body language.  Mention Bush more.  He never mentioned Cheney!?! Ask McCain direct yes or no questions – it is the classic rhetorical defense to an illogical tact.  Much stronger than saying “That’s not true”.

That being said, I think Obama played it right.  McCain is old, and his campaign is careening.  His “suspend the campaign” gambit failed – yesterday!  Palin.  The economic issues are breaking HARD in Obama’s favor.  McCain can’t win if Obama shuts it down right now.  Obama is totally controlling the tempo, and he can’t lose as long as that is true.  Obama wins if every debate is like this.  Its dissapointing on a gut level, but I approve.

The Obama campaign should *publicly* fly Bill Clinton to Obama’s side to prepare for debate #2, and Bill will help Barack NAIL tone.  and McCain can’t counter (ARBITRAGE!)

I heart Rachel Maddow.  Sorry Keith and Hardball guy.

Full disclosure.  I was wrong in 2000 and 2004! (but you can’t prove that!)

Posted: September 27th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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As I wrote back in June, you can gamble on the outcome of the presidential election on various betting sites.  On June 4th, Obama was running at -194.  I checked in after the Democratic convention but before the Palin bubble and the odds had dropped to -166.  Obviously they sank like a stone post convention as McCain’s polls shot through the roof.  Not sure where they bottomed out, but 2 days ago I looked and Obama was -122.  The economy and McCain’s stump gaffes of the last few days have pushed the line back to -143.

There are some cool sites out there that regress the various state by state polls and keep a running tally of the the two parties odds of winning in the electoral college.  I like the one from Princeton the best.  Because the EV estimator is based on less frequent state polls, it’s likely a lagging indicator.  The blogger guessed today that Obama’s should expect to win 300 Electoral votes based on recent national poll trends.

I’m still sticking to my meta analysis that Obama v McCain ends up playing out like Clinton vs. Dole in ‘96.  IMO McCain is already channeling Norm McDonald channeling Bob Dole.

Posted: September 18th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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Thanksgiving school performance

Originally uploaded by steveray.

They knew all the words

Steve

Posted: November 20th, 2007 under Uncategorized, moblog.
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One of the best guerrilla marketing campaigns I have seen from my friends at Fon. Encouraging people who live within range of a Starbucks to set up shop and undercut T-mobile.

Posted: March 21st, 2007 under Uncategorized.
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Gomez

Originally uploaded by Steve R’s screen.

Testing moblog

Posted: March 20th, 2007 under Uncategorized, moblog.
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SxSW

Originally uploaded by Steve R’s screen.

My late night treo photo of Antone is better than Collier’s

Posted: March 20th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
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Happy

Originally uploaded by Steve R’s screen.

Testing the flickr connection

Posted: March 5th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
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