He states: ‘Communication is said to exist in order to transmit data.   Forget it.   Data exists to enable communication.”   “Business models of entire industries are changing due to social identity.’ “Non social businesses like Craigslist give way to social businesses like AirBnB and Astrid.”

The interesting thing about his talk is that he does not mention the individual except in passing.   He states that identity is changing to a social identity based only upon connections and relationships.   Andrew Keen (the author  wrote “The Cult of the Amateur”) asked if Dr. Weigend could address the internal life of people and how that was related to identity.  Dr. Weigend said a number of words in a sequence but did not answer the question, as Mr. Keen pointed out.  He then gave him a copy of the book, which is based upon discussions between the author and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

Dr. Weigend, a German raised in the former East Germany, displayed a copy of his Stasi birth record during his talk.   It seemed like something of a non-sequitor, given that the rest of the talk is about the evolving nature of society in the wake of technology.  Why would Dr. Weigend avoid answering what could have been a softball question?  There seems to be a reluctance among many internet theorists to embrace the concept of the individual, to define a concept of an individual participating or not in a social context, but rather a structure where social “connectivity” is assumed.  What could possibly be so unnerving to these theorists about the role of individuals in a social context?  Could it be that human society will wind up in a kind of Borg, where the individual identity and awareness will be routinely suppressed or ignored -  ala various 20th century dystopic science fiction novels?   Where does the individual go when identity is painted as purely reflective of technology-dominated social activity?

There are many instances throughout human history where various structures are created in order to generate social control of the ‘masses.”  In one sense, thank Heavens for some social structure.  But the West and it’s philosophy is predicated upon the notion of an individual consciousness, contributing and collaborating as makes sense for that individual.  Why the moves towards a dystopic kind of technology-driven social collectivism?   Why has the individual become suddenly so inconvenient?  -Kelly

Joanne Lang, CEO, About One.   “User’s Own their Own Data.”  @aboutone

Patrick Ambron, BrandYourself @brandyourself

Emily Marshall, CoupleFire, A private social network for couples.  Very interesting.   @couplefire

Rob Banagale, CEO, Glif @gl_ph.  A digital identity platform.  With secure VOIP, secure messaging, everything encrypted.   Interesting from a security perspective.

Robert Leschner, Safe Shepard, CEO @safeshepard.  “Batman for the user on the internet.”  “We help users opt out.”
They are scoring every website on the internet for privacy and using machine learning to comprehend their policies.

Christian Sigl, CTO, secure.me @securemehq.  Like Antivirus for personal data.   Doing analysis on personal data in social networks.  Reputation guard,

David Cho, CEO Sidebark. @sidebark, a secure social network where customers are the users.

Alisha Outridge, CEO, TapTank @taptank.  A life management tool that’s not super quant, but more about personal development from a goal-driven perspective.

Currently, Natalie Fonseca,  Christine Herron (Intel Capital), Kevin Mahaffey (Lookout), Rob Sherman(Facebook), and Anne Toth (@cleanfreak) are discussing company approaches to privacy.

Rob is talking about how to make privacy a value add for the company. This is interesting given the controversy surrounding the imposition of openness about people’s personal data, and the rapid changes in personal data management, the management of default settings, and the complexity of their management interfaces.  Shows the need for 4th party management of privacy in big services like Facebook.

Rob says that Facebook’s position with respect to plugins on its site is more about educating developers rather than creating a uniform environment for safe use of the site.  Kevin mentioned that many developers don’t care very much about personal data that’s grabbed and they are more interested in revenue than empathy for their users.

This is one branch of a very unattractive tree where digital dossiers are assembled about even friends of friends.  It makes sense that Facebook in the short term will make plugin apps conform to their privacy methods and standards.  In the longer term, the only answer is to enable users to use 4th party services that manage their relationships to sites, plugin apps.  In the really long term, Facebook really doesn’t need to know much information about their users.  They just need to provide relationship management and let the personal data ecosystem players manage personal data and support avenues for monetization.

“Engineers are hoarders,” noted Christine.  There is a duality between the data level needed for product viability and the level needed for the business side of the organization.

Kevin is talking now about the rise of permission management functions like those included in the Android platform.  He says that this is a really cool development.

Heads are nodding about giving users ‘control.’  Methinks this is more of a positioning issue rather than a real acknowledgement of the users personal data being harvested in exchange for control of the data.  FB’s valuation is $130 per user, divide that by a 3-year valuation and that means that personal data is worth just over $40 per user per year, as priced by the market.

by Kelly.
Editor, Personal Data Journal
@personaldataj

Feature Article: Personal Data in Decentralized Network Architectures, by Markus Sabadello, Technical Analyst

Special Report:  Privacy Bill of Rights from the White House,

Book Review: The Daily You & Consent of the Networked

Opinions

• Personal Data as a New Asset Class: Petroleum or Snake Oil? by Sara Wedeman
• Words of a Feather by Tony Fish

Publisher’s Note: ”Catalyzing the Ecosystem,”

Editorial: “US and EU: A Tale of Two Cities,”

+ Industry News, Upcoming EventsEvents, The Latest on Standards and New Resources. 

You can subscribe here.

Feature Article: Personal Data in Decentralized Network Architectures, by Markus Sabadello, Technical Analyst

Special Report:  Privacy Bill of Rights from the White House,

Book Review: The Daily You & Consent of the Networked

Opinions

• Personal Data as a New Asset Class: Petroleum or Snake Oil? by Sara Wedeman
• Words of a Feather by Tony Fish

Publisher’s Note: ”Catalyzing the Ecosystem,”

Editorial: “US and EU: A Tale of Two Cities,”

+ Industry News, Upcoming EventsEvents, The Latest on Standards and New Resources. 

You can subscribe here.

Proponents argue that in an increasingly connected world, the state’s ability to request access to such data is necessary for law enforcement and the fight against terrorism, and that sufficient safeguards are in place to prevent abuse. However, in the countries that have adopted the directive in the form of national laws, the powers it grants, the storage duration, and also the safeguards vary greatly. For example, depending on the concrete implementation, access to the data may or may not require that an individual is suspected of a severe crime, that a court has explicitly granted permission, and that the targeted individual has to be informed that such access has taken place.

Critics argue that the law establishes a surveillance system which places all citizens under general suspicion, and that therefore the freedom of civil society as a counterbalance to state power is no longer guaranteed. The amount and nature of the collected data is certainly sufficient to create a detailed profile about a person’s private life. In Europe, the last century has seen authoritarian regimes of various extreme ideologies that had founded their power to a large part on the surveillance of their citizens. As a consequence, the sensitivity today to intrusions into the private sphere is high. Besides such political considerations, the potential for commercial abuse also seems extensive, for example, a corrupt employee of an Internet service provider might be tempted to simply sell the highly valuable data.

Sometimes, to illustrate their point, critics draw a comparison with the postal service, where it would seem ridiculous to record the sender, recipient, time and location of every letter. Criticism has also increased in connection with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is a treaty that among other things targets copyright infringement on the Internet. Also, the actual usefulness of the law for combatting crime is questionable, since there are still many ways of communicating privately.

The introduction of the law has sparked online petitions as well as street protests under the motto “Farewell Privacy” in Vienna and other cities, although they were smaller than anticipated. The Austrian instantiation of the Anonymous collective had announced a counter-surveillance campaign (“Operation Pitdog”), during which it would publish thousands of e-mails related to political corruption, which later however turned out to be a hoax. Several organizations, including the Austrian Green Party and a human rights institute, announced that they would challenge the new law at the Austrian Constitutional Court – a move that had already succeeded in several other countries. For example, courts in the Czech Republic, Germany and Romania have ruled the law to be in violation of peoples’ rights, including the rights to privacy, to confidentiality in communications, and to freedom of speech.

On the European level, there has been much discussion whether the Data Retention Directive is compatible with the union’s treaties, with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and with traditionally strong data protection policies. Even among policy makers, there seems to be an increasing sense nowadays that the directive is characterized by low effectiveness and potential negative effects, and that it is therefore not proportionate and not in the best interest of society. In 2010, the question of legality of the directive was referred to the European Court of Justice, which is expected to decide on the matter during the course of this year.

The Data Retention Directive is basically Europe’s version of the global question about freedom vs. security on the Internet. In other words, how much control of a state over its citizens’ communication is healthy for a democratic society? This is a political and legal question that is not easily answered. What is certain however is that both the amount and the value of personal data will continue to increase. At PDEC, we believe that an ecosystem around this personal data should on one hand provide the tools and rights for individuals to control their own data, and on the other hand also enable new business models around this asset.

Feature Article: Understanding OAuth

Book Review: “Big Data and Privacy”

+ Industry News, Upcoming EventsEvents, The Latest on Standards and New Resources. 

O’Brien: Kaliya Hamlin tackles our online identities by Chris O’Brien in the San Jose Mercury News, March 7th, 2012

On Tuesday, the World Economic Forum acknowledged Hamlin’s work in this area by announcing she was one of the 192 people from around the world selected for its Young Global Leaders program. The WEF is based in Switzerland, and is perhaps best known for organizing the annual Davos forum.

People like Hamlin interest me because they constitute what I think of as tech’s quiet influencers. Their power doesn’t flow from holding a big corporate title, but from their passion around a subject and their ability to persuade others through their writing, talks and research.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Main Auditorium, U.S. Department of Commerce – Herbert C. Hoover Building, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC

Since the creation of the Internet, there have always been difficult questions surrounding privacy, security and trust. How do we know with whom we are interacting? How do we know they are trustworthy? How do we balance the desires for anonymity and personal privacy with the need to secure our information and transactions? In an effort to address these questions, President Obama signed the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC or “Strategy”).

The U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will host a workshop with thought leaders from government and industry to discuss aspects of the Identity Ecosystem governance structure called for in the NSTIC.

This workshop will review and take questions on NIST’s February 2012 paper, Recommendations for Establishing an Identity Ecosystem Governance Structure, and on specific issues concerning the establishment of that governance structure.

Web Chat: Protecting Online Privacy hosted by Allan A. Friedman, Fellow, Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution

 12:42 Comment From Robert E: Could stronger measures to protect data stifle innovation in the tech sector?

12:43 Allan Friedman: On some level, these rules could stop a firm from finding new ways to exploit consumer data. There’s no question about that, any more than other popular consumer protection laws such as automobile safety or drug testing can have that unintended effect. However, I would argue that finding ways to engage consumers while respecting their privacy and giving them control of their own data could create far more opportunities for innovation. For example, the “personal data ecosystem” movement aims to shift control of data to consumers, allowing more opportunities for people and firms to exploit the value of our digital lives

Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World was released by the white house.

The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights provides a baseline of clear protections for consumers and greater certainty for businesses. The rights are:
Individual Control:  Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data organizations collect from them and how they use it.

• Transparency:  Consumers have a right to easily understandable information about privacy and security practices.
• Respect for Context:  Consumers have a right to expect that organizations will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
• Security:  Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
• Access and Accuracy:  Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data are inaccurate.
• Focused Collection:  Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
• Accountability:  Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World was released by the white house.

The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights provides a baseline of clear protections for consumers and greater certainty for businesses. The rights are:
Individual Control:  Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data organizations collect from them and how they use it.

• Transparency:  Consumers have a right to easily understandable information about privacy and security practices.
• Respect for Context:  Consumers have a right to expect that organizations will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
• Security:  Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
• Access and Accuracy:  Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data are inaccurate.
• Focused Collection:  Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
• Accountability:  Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

The report from the event was released at the end of January 2012; the event was December 8–9, 2010: the IETF’s Internet Architecture Board (IAB) co-hosted an Internet privacy workshop with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Internet Society (ISOC), and MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

The objective was to discuss some of the fundamental challenges in designing, deploying, and analyzing privacy-protective Internet protocols and systems, and to find ways to address such challenges in a systematic way. One of the key assumptions was that the topic of privacy is not an issue that can be looked at from an isolated perspective, but rather one that touches on many other standards development efforts. This vision of treating privacy as an overarching principle has since then be partially realized, for example by the establishment of the W3C Privacy Interest Group (itself part of the W3C Privacy Activity), or the IETF Privacy Program.

Topics of the workshop included the increasing ease of user/device/application fingerprinting (try the Panopticlick tool), difficulties in distinguishing first parties from third parties when making web requests, unforeseen information leakage, and complications arising from system dependencies. Some of the concrete technologies that were discussed were the W3C’s early P3P standard, HTTP cookies, HTTP referrer headers, private browsing modes in web browsers, Do Not Track (DNT) technologies, the Tor onion router, the Geolocation API, and the OAuth protocol. Beyond the technological level, the workshop also addressed problems with transparency and user awareness, the difficulty of achieving balance between business, legal, and individual incentives, and the role of regulation in pushing for this balance. The tension between privacy protection and usability was also a major topic. For example, using Tor protects you from network surveillance, but it decreases browsing speed. Disabling cookies can protect you from being tracked by websites, but it impacts personalization.

The workshop concluded with a set of recommendations each single one of which is highly relevant for the PDE: The need to develop a privacy terminology and privacy threat models; The responsibility for protecting privacy to be split between protocols, APIs, applications, and services; The minimization of user data; The goal to give users granular control over their privacy; And the challenge to find the right balance between privacy and usability. A press release, meeting minutes, as well as the accepted position papers and slides are available for further information.

Network from Michael Rigley on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/34750078

According to Michael Rigley, the average user has 736 pieces of personal data collected every day and service providers store this information for one to five years. 

The video explores the “secret life of our MMS data and the tradeoffs we inadvertently face as we choose convenience of communication over privacy and control of personal data,” writes Maria Popova at BrainPickings.org.

We recommend this video because it explains in plain english the types of data people generate as they use their mobile devices, what metadata is and how it is then used to make meaning from the data and what is crucial is that most people don’t know about how long the information is stored and how it is used by the phone company.

The report is free with registration: http://www.ctrl-shift.co.uk/shop/product/60

The data set is for sale: http://www.ctrl-shift.co.uk/shop/product/61

Ctrl-Shift scored the privacy policies of the IMRG Hitwise TopShop list of 100 online retailers against ten key questions including how clearly the privacy policy is written, how easy it is for the customers to express and change their preferences, whether their data is used for marketing purposes and how they treat cookies and behavioral targeting.

This 21 page report covers the following topics:

• Summary findings and conclusions
• Introduction: Why research privacy policies?
• The new data sharing relationship with customers
• The Results: Overview
• Survey results: The details
• How is the privacy statement written?
• Preference Management
• Options for receiving electronic communications
• Data sharing for marketing purposes
• Providing individuals with access to their data
• Cookies, pixel tracking and related mechanisms
• Behavioral targeting
• Data retention
• Policy changes
• The scope of the contract

by Ed Busby, Tawfik Hammoud, John Rose, and Ravi Prashad

The gathering of online-user data is among the most exciting and controversial business issues of our time. It often brings up concerns about privacy, but it also presents extraordinary opportunities for personalized, one-to-one advertising.

The report highlights trends that are driving the supply side from advertisers and demand side from publishers each with a growing interest in building user profiles. It names trends that hamper growth including spending shifts to closed platforms like Facebook, concerns about accuracy, the proliferation of low-cost remnant inventory and a reluctance to share PII because of fears around regulation and public backlash. The article goes on to outline the different types of data that are collected and their view into the current marketplace for User Data with 6 distinct layers. They conclude with an their analysis of the implications for ecosystem companies.   They mention a personal-data ecosystem but it does not outline a future with user-centric tools and systems.

Get the full article: https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/marketing_technology_evolution_of_online_user_data/

Given the flood of data generated by digital devices around the globe:

Researchers and policymakers are beginning to realise the potential for channelling these torrents of data into actionable information that can be used to identify needs, provide services, and predict and prevent crises for the benefit of low-income populations. Concerted action is needed by governments, development organizations, and companies to ensure that this data helps the individuals and communities who create it.

The report highlights a few key areas where this data could make the most difference:

• Financial Services
• Education
• Health
• Agriculture

They name user-centric solutions offering compelling possibilities.

Data ecosystem dynamics are highlighted as a future focus to consider different types of data, actors and their incentives along with proposing the development of a data commons.

Obstacle that are named include:

• Privacy and Security
• Data Personalization
• Data Sharing Incentives
• Human Capital

Novel approaches to overcoming these obstacles are named such as “data philanthropy” and of course Governments have a catalytic role to play.

Early Bird tickets for the day are $125 and on sale for the next week. After that, the price goes up.

It is at Bohemian Loft again this year, close to downtown, and a short subway or taxi ride away from Moscone.

We will begin at 9am (doors at 8:15 AM), and close by 5pm. We will start by creating the agenda for the day as we do at IIW, providing the opportunity to do a range of real work on key emerging topics and issues in real time.

We have had the event on the Calendar since last year’s very successful event, a collaboration between IIW/IDCommons and the Kantara Initiative. This year ,we add IDTrust into the mix of collaborating organizations/groups. We are excited about the opportunity that RSA brings with the wide range of security professionals that come to town.

You can see topics from past events on the IIW wiki: http://iiw.idcommons.net

Please let us know if you have any questions.
Register at http://idcollab2.eventbrite.com/

Contacts:

• Kaliya, Phil and Doc – IIW/IDCommons
• Joni and Dervla – Kantara Initiative
• Dee and Jan – OASIS IDTrust

P.S. IIW 14 registration is open! Get registered now at Super Early Bird Rates

P.P.S Kaliya is traveling to Australia to speak at Digital Identity World Australia on March 20th and facilitating an IIW-like Unconference about Identity that they are hosting on March 19th.
People who are interested or people who have colleagues based in Australia who might be interested can contact Kal…@identitywoman.net or Stephen Wilson to get more information / specifics Stephen Wilson swil…@LOCKSTEP.COM.AU

It is a constant complaint: We’re choking on information. The flood of data on the Web has reached mind boggling proportions, and it shows no signs of stopping. But wait, says Harvard professor Ann Blair in an NPR radio program — this is not a new condition. It’s been part of the human experience for centuries.

Listen to program (or read transcript)

(via InfoDesign)

The date was January 3, 2008. Facebook had kicked me off for running a script to try to save the common web.

See, I worked with Plaxo to run a simple script. One that would have taken my contacts out of Facebook and put them back into the common web. The script did some very simple things:

1. It grabbed all my friends names.
2. It grabbed all their phone numbers.
3. It grabbed all their email addresses.
4. It gave me a simple CSV file with all that data so I could bring them back to Google, or Microsoft, or anywhere else I wanted to put them.

Facebook’s answer was predictable. They shut me down.

Oh, a few people supported me. Joseph Smarr, for one. Marc Canter, for two. It isn’t lost on me that Joseph now works on the Google+ team and Marc isn’t in the San Francisco area anymore.

They understood what was at stake: the future of the web.

But many others said I deserved to be kicked off of Facebook.

Did I get invited to speak at John Battelle’s conferences about how the common web was screwed? No.

Did Dave Winer lead a SOPA-like protest? No.

Mike Arrington and I had violent disagreements on the Gillmor Gang about my motives.

Heck, these arguments continue to this day. Yesterday Steve Gillmor, again, on yesterday’s Gillmor Gang, said I had broken Facebook’s Terms of Service, which implied that I deserved to get kicked off. I had, but I was trying to save the common web.

The message was loud and clear: Facebook should be allowed to be a data roach motel: data can come in, but damn you Scoble if you want to take that data back out.

The lesson today, four years later, is that the common web is in grave threat, not just from Facebook’s data roach motel but from Apple’s and Amazon’s and, now, Google.

It isn’t lost on me that Joseph Smarr now works at Google and that some of the others who spoke up on my behalf now work at Facebook.

Today their arguments are hitting my ears. Only four years too late. Here, look at their arguments:

Dave Winer says: “Having Google break the contract is not just bad for Google, it’s bad for the web.”

John Battelle says: “The web as we know it is rather like our polar ice caps: under severe, long-term attack by forces of our own creation.”

Now do you get why I really don’t care anymore? The time for a major fight was four years ago.

I understood then what was at stake.

Today? It’s too late. My wife is a great example of why: she’s addicted to Facebook and Zynga and her iPhone apps.

It’s too late to save the common web. It’s why, for the past year, I’ve given up and have put most of my blogging into Google+. I should have been spending that effort on the web commons and on RSS but it’s too late.

Normal users don’t care about the argument anymore and they are addicted to Facebook and Google+ and Twitter and apps on iPhones and Android. Heck, if you are at the Super Bowl tomorrow the official app is on iOS and Android and not other platforms.

The common web isn’t just under attack, it’s been under attack for more than four years.

Why did it take so long for people to wake up?

Me? I really don’t care anymore. I’m locked into Vic Gundotra’s trunk where Google+ has helped me get 400,000 followers since July 1st last year alone. That’s, what, seven months? Did RSS ever do that for me? Did Dave Winer’s systems ever do that for me? Did John Battelle ever put me on stage to help me out? No way.

It’s too late.

I’m not going back to the open web. Why? The juice isn’t there.

So, what would I do now? What’s Dave Winer’s answer? He deleted his Facebook account and is working hard to try to get people to adopt RSS again. Sorry, Dave, but Twitter is a better place to get tech news. Not to mention that the best place to read that list is Flipboard on iOS.

Sorry, will RSS help me get new access to Google’s search engine? No.

Will RSS help me get access to Facebook’s Open Graph, which let Spotify share five billion songs in the first few months of its existence? No.

Will RSS help me get access to your Facebook news feed? No.

Will RSS help me get a better Klout score? No.

Will RSS help me get a speaking slot at O’Reilly’s conferences? No.

Will RSS help me talk with my wife, and her friends, who are all addicted to Facebook? No.

Will RSS let me get my photos onto Instagram? No.

Will RSS help me get my food consumption behaviors onto Foodspotting? No.

So, cry me a river. I’m a user. I tried to stick up for the common web in 2008. Where was the protest then? I was called an “edge case” and someone who should be ignored.

Sorry, Dave and John. It’s too late to put the genie back into the bottle.

See you on Google+.

And next time someone tries to point out that the “data black holes” of these big companies are something that should be fought against maybe you’ll be there with a better protest than what you put up.

It’s too late. Now, excuse me, while I crawl back into the trunk that Google, Facebook, Amazon have locked me in.

It’s interesting to go back and read those comments. Chris Saad is one that has been very consistent for four years. He built a company, Echo, which is still trying to keep our content separate from these big “data black holes.” If anyone deserves credit for trying to keep the web commons alive, it’s him.

What’s the right way to protest TODAY?

1. Don’t delete your Facebook account. Deleting your account just makes you look like a weirdo in today’s world. Dave Winer has that luxury, but most of us don’t.
2. Make ALL data on your Facebook account PUBLIC. Most technologists have done the opposite. To the point where if you aren’t friends with most geeks you can’t even see ANYTHING on their account. That isn’t helping the commons.
3. Work to figure out how to get our data OUT of Facebook, Google+, and Amazon and back into the commons.

Me? I’m just a user and I grew tired of this fight back in 2008. That was the year we could have done something about it. Today? No, sorry, most of this argument doesn’t make any sense to real users. My wife doesn’t care and, even, doesn’t like being in the open web for a whole lot of reasons.

Today? No, don’t put me on stage at conferences. Get regular people, like my wife, who could tell you why they don’t like the open web and, why, even, they are scared of it.

But, no, it makes for beter headlines to try to fight.

John, where were you? At least Dave has been consistently trying to keep us putting content on blogs and on RSS, which ARE the open common web. It’s just that it’s too late. We’re firmly locked back in the trunk and the day for blowing open the trunk has come and gone. Now, excuse me while I check into Foursquare, message my friends about the parties at SXSW on Facebook, find a cool meal to have tonight with my wife on Foodspotting, and go back to posting on Google+.

PHOTO CREDIT: I shot this photo of the hallways of CERN, which is where the web was invented.

UPDATE: already there are more comments on Google+ than are here. On Facebook there’s quite a bit of reaction too. Sort of underscores my point, no?

The New York Times released its latest earnings report earlier this week, spurring another round of discussion about the newspaper’s paywall, which was launched near the beginning of last year. The consensus: Early signs are positive, but it’s not doing well enough to offset plummeting print ad revenue.

What’s the solution? Well, if you listen to a number of online media pundits, it’s all about bringing more value to the most devoted members of The Times’ readership. Over at GigaOm, Matthew Ingram suggests, “Regular readers should get more than just a sales rep hitting them up for a monthly payment — the fact that they are a devoted fan should entitle them to earn rewards, whether it’s money off their subscription for interacting with the paper, or offers that others don’t get.” It’s a point he’s made before, as has Clay Shirky, who wrote that “this may be the year where we see how papers figure out how to reward the people most committed to their long-term survival.”

I’m a happy New York Times subscriber, but I have to say: I don’t think The Times is doing a good job on this front, or much of a job at all. It’s odd, because NYTimes.com general manager Denise Warren appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation with Shirky, and she seemed largely on-board with his ideas:

I think Clay has outlined it exactly right. I mean, this model was not designed to get everybody who comes to our website to pay. Clay is absolutely right in terms of the distribution of the audience, and I think this is true for most publishers. The vast majority of people come and turn one article or two articles.

But there is a very loyal minority of folks who told us through rounds and rounds of research that they value the New York Times content, they’d be willing to pay to support the New York Times content. And so the key for us in this model was threading that needle – remaining open to the Web, enabling those who are coming to us for that one article or two article, et cetera, to still enjoy the content but at the same time enable those who are very loyal to have some kind of a different experience with us.

Warren goes on to outline some of the advantages of a Times digital subscription — not just access to unlimited articles (20 per month is the limit for non-paying readers, though there are lots of ways around it), but also to the Times smartphone and tablet apps, as well as bonus apps like Politics and Collections, and email newsletters giving behind-the-scenes portraits of the newsroom. Now, as someone who’s constantly reading The Times on both his laptop and his iPhone, I’m happy to fork over $15 a month isn’t a bad price for those features, but I also feel like they’re a missed opportunity.

As Shirky puts it, newspapers “must also appeal to its readers’ non-financial and non-transactional motivations: loyalty, gratitude, dedication to the mission, a sense of identification with the paper, an urge to preserve it as an institution rather than a business.” Those seem to be some of the main reasons people subscribed, but The Times isn’t doing much to encourage that feeling.

The closest it comes is through its newsletters, but those newsletters also have the clearest shortcomings. I’ve been a Times subscriber since the program started in March, and in that time, I’ve received a total nine newsletters. And of those, five are “Innovations” emails, which function as ads for new features on The Times website — useful, maybe, but not particularly loyalty-inspiring. Emails offering “The Story Behind The Story” are better (though a still a little impersonal for my taste), but they show up about once every two months.

Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan makes an interesting comment about this during his interview with Shirky and Warren: He notes that NPR has convinced one in six listeners to donate, while The Times has only convinced one in a hundred to subscribe. He later says, “If you get into the tote bag business, we’re going to have a problem.”

Here’s the thing about those tote bags — they’re nice, but as NPR broadcasters constantly remind listeners, they’re not the real reason to donate. To pick an example from my local NPR station, is there anyone who would pay $144 just because it’s a great deal on a KQED hoodie? (I hope not.) They make the donation because they love KQED, and the hoodie is a sign of their dedication.

Compare that to The Times digital subscription page and pricing model, which are all about functionality — there are three pricing levels, and they reflect different levels of mobile access. That approach has its limitations — from a functional equivalent, it can be hard to justify the price, especially when you take into account the easiness of circumventing the paywall and the low price of other online services. (As a friend pointed out, it’s $15 a month for the cheapest plan, which is more than a basic Netflix subscription.)

To keep The Times in business, however, I’m happy to pay $15 a month, and I’d probably be fine paying significantly more. I don’t think the basic subscription price should change (if anything, it seems a little high), but I suspect the paper could also offer higher price points without providing a dramatic improvement in the product. It just needs rewards that make subscribers feel loyal to The Times, and maybe a little special — the digital equivalent of a tote bag.

Amid plans for a $10bn share offering, the social networking giant has come under fire for its controversial ‘Timeline’ feature. Two Observer writers discuss the merits of logging off for good

James Silver, writer and journalist I could blame it on the launch of Timeline (Facebook’s now mandatory reboot of users’ profile pages) or the forthcoming mega-IPO. Or even claim I was taking some high-minded stance (a social suffragette perhaps?) on how social media gnaws away at our privacy/sense of self-worth/ability to enjoy simple pleasures such as reading a book.

But in the end it was the soul-crushing ennui that led me to deactiviate my Facebook account last week. The sheer bloody listlessness logging on to the site produced in me in those final, dreary visits. “Steve listened to ‘Death of an Interior Decorator’ by Death Cab for Cutie on Spotify for Facebook.” “Bob and Sophia commented on Mark’s photo album University of Loughborough Reunion 04.” Not forgetting that other classic: “Nigel likes Cordelia’s post Me and My Cat Archie Eat a Tuna Flan.”

It’s not that I dislike social media. I know at their best these platforms can help spark the overthrow of despots, raise cash for medical research and share brilliant links. I’m a big fan of Twitter, which has become a primary news source for me. LinkdIn is a bit of an odd duck, but I can see what it’s for. But Facebook? It’s just white noise. A time sink. If you want to tell your life story, as the Timeline tagline has it, then go and write your autobiography. No one would read it. But that’s kind of my point.

Elizabeth Day, Observer writer and author For me, the key to social media is that it’s, well, social. What I value most about Facebook is the ability to keep in touch with friends, wherever in the world they find themselves. Although James is bored by the endless videos of cats eating tuna flan, I actively like being able to see the latest photo of my goddaughter in Hong Kong or having an instant messenging chat about the best way to eat panettone with my friend in Milan (thinly sliced, with a cup of tea is his take).

Perhaps it’s because I have a strange form of phone-phobia. I hate the faux cheerfulness I have to assume when I call someone; the awkward pauses; the way you can never hang up until you’ve put the next social rendezvous firmly in the diary; the anxiety that you might be boring them. The thought of Skyping, where you can actually see someone’s face, is enough to bring me out in a rash. I prefer communicating through Facebook – I like the jokes, the bonhomie and the sense that you’re part of something (especially because, as a writer, I often work from home). And if the whole tuna-flan-feline thing gets too much, the true joy of Facebook is, of course, that you can always log out.

JS Is Facebook really the best platform with which to browse photos of your goddaughter or discuss how to eat Italian fruit bread, Elizabeth? Photo and video messaging on your phone would do just as well for the first (or one of the picture sharing sites) and if you could summon up the nerve to use Skype for video calls, you could even watch each other eat a whole variety of southern European cakes. In real time. Hell, you could even live tweet it.

I take your point that you can always log off, but what about your privacy when you’re logged on? Unless you have a PhD in machine learning, you are unlikely to be able to operate Facebook’s privacy settings, which means a disgruntled ex is just a couple of clicks away from checking out his former girlfriend’s new man, and people who are “friends” – but only in a Facebook sense (ie they met once on holiday in Magaluf in 1997) – have an access-all-areas pass to each other’s Facebook back-story.

But my problem with Facebook is not so much utility as ubiquity. From the IPO filed on Wednesday, we know the platform had 845 million monthly users, and 443 million daily, by the end of 2011. The next target is one billion. In fact, from its filing statement we learn that Mark Zuckerberg has plans for global domination: “There are more than two billion global internet users… we aim to connect with them all.” (Don’t you love that insidious word, “connect”?)

When will they be satisfied? When there are only six people in Africa who haven’t connected with Facebook? When they’ve hardwired the Facebook “like” button into toddlers’ teeth?

ED I know it’s tempting to view Zuckerberg as an evil genius (especially after he wore pyjamas to a board meeting in The Social Network), but I don’t personally feel his goal to “connect” people is all that sinister.

Of course, if you choose to leave your Facebook privacy settings wide open, if you choose to befriend someone you only met once on holiday to Magaluf, and if you then compound the error by posting (or failing to detag) a photograph of yourself in a compromised state with a vodka luge, then there might be certain drawbacks.

But I don’t understand why everyone has got in such a tizz about the Timeline. It only organises the data that is already on your profile. If you want something to remain private then – here’s a handy little tip – don’t put it on the internet. On Facebook – unlike Twitter, which allows anyone to follow you – I am friends only with people I know and like. I have customised my privacy settings (truly not that difficult) so only certain of them can view my posts. Because of this, I find it a brilliant way of sharing photos, keeping in touch with lots of people in a time-effective way and using status updates for shameless self-promotion when I have a book out (Scissors Paper Stone, out now in paperback if you want to buy a copy, James).

JS Actually, I don’t buy into the “Zuckerberg equals evil, cat-caressing genius” theory. I’m merely arguing that Facebook’s plans smack of hubris. Yes, Google, Microsoft and Apple have flourished, but the evidence suggests that social networks come and go, as fashions change. Between 2005 and 2007, MySpace was the dominant player. Bebo, too, showed early promise. Friends Reunited once had 15 million users.

Facebook faces many bumps in the road, not least competition and regulatory issues, particularly over privacy. To those I would add the likelihood of new rivals appearing, seemingly from nowhere. Just a couple of years ago, few of us had heard of (games developer) Zynga or (deals site) Groupon – both titans now. As everything goes social, we can expect new, niche networking sites to emerge.

Leaving Facebook is a bit like quitting a cult: you can leave, but you’re never truly free. Yes, my account is deactivated, but my details, friends, “likes” and even those dreaded status updates are merely mothballed in some underground server farm, waiting for that moment of weakness, where I log on once more… For now my resolve is strong. But you never know when the urge to “like” pictures of household pets eating savoury snacks may strike once again.

ED I’m sure all of this is true (not least the likelihood of James logging back on for those cat videos) but the fact that Facebook might face future challenges doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the site as a user at the moment. I’m on Twitter as well but for different reasons – as you say, it’s a great way of getting the latest news developments. But Facebook performs a different role. It is more sociable – there is less pressure for constant 140-character updates and less competition over the number of followers/friends you have. Interestingly, whenever I speak to teenagers, they generally tell me they use Facebook but don’t see the point of Twitter, which suggests Zuckerberg and his henchmen will be around for a while yet. So James, if you are ever lured back to the light-blue land of “likes” and Scrabulous, I’ll be the first to request a friendship add.

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If you think such policies are fine and don’t have anything to hide, then I would like to know your logins to all your online accounts, forums, and bank details, as well as your Social Security Number, and credit card information. I would also like a record of all your online purchases, you know, for “advertising” purposes. Oh you don’t want me to know that? Then maybe you do have something to hide and fliers like these are meant as scaremongering instead.

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Everyone has a cloud strategy these days. Of course, when you hear about clouds, you hear questions like “Are we talking about IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS?” This assumes an enterprise-centric view of clouds that is belied by what Robert Scoble calls the game of games. Facebook, Google, and Apple are most selling clouds in various guises and see their cloud strategy as a key to their future.

The problems with these “personal clouds” is that they have no operating system. An operating system is what makes your personal computer personal. Without an OS, it would be a special purpose appliance that does specific things (like run an office suite) but not others (like play a game). There are certainly those who wish that was the norm, but for now, at least, we have general purpose computers that run a variety of applications and can be configured according to the dictates and wishes of their owners.

[An aside for those of you getting ready to comment: yes Facebook allows apps and is an app platform, but they are ancillary to the experience, not core. The core experience is still very much a Facebook-determined thing.]

The user-focused clouds we see today are special purpose. You can’t customize them much or make them do something their builders didn’t envision in the selection of applications that they offer.

In contrast a personal event network is like an OS for your personal cloud. You can install apps to customize it for your purpose, it can store and manage your personal data, and it provides generalized services through APIs that any app can take advantage of.

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The spirit of the popular uprising – so much in the zeitgeist that Time Magazine named the Protester as its person of the year for 2011 – is, in its own way, also affecting customer service.

There’s certainly no shortage of technological revolution affecting the way organizations serve their customers. For example, much of the industry buzz in 2010 and 2011 revolved around the impact of social customer care (net: low volume, high brand impact) and the continued adoption of SaaS-based customer service (net: still gaining momentum but migration taking longer than most thought).

Looking forward, we will see product announcements, articles and analyst coverage galore around the impact of mobility on customer care as a growing majority of users seek assistance using their smart, connected phones and tablets.

A less obvious revolution has also been gaining momentum that may, in the long run, have a profound impact on customer care strategies.

For the first time, consumers are taking service into their own hands, applying the “over the top” strategies that we’ve seen threaten industries such as telecom (Skype, Google Voice), cable (Hulu, Roku, Boxee) and even book publishing (Lulu).

Building on years of pent up consumer frustration, a new class of organization has emerged, offering consumers a DIY solution to the pain that they often (rightly or wrongly) associate with calling toll free numbers.

It’s not news that many consumers simply want to talk to an agent when they call a service line. This is especially true today, given the rising number of self-service options available online. Of course phone self-service is, and will continue to be, a very useful offering; it can be frustrating, though, when speaking with an agent feels like the right answer to a particular problem.

The popular GetHuman initiative, created by Kayak CTO Paul English in 2005, was one of the first well-known services to provide consumers an end-run around frustrating aspects of customer service, in this case the IVR.

As you probably know, GetHuman provides shortcuts for getting to an agent for most major toll-free numbers. The site rocketed to 40,000 daily page views within a year of its launch. While this represents less than one tenth of one percent of the people calling for customer service each day, it clearly shows that the site touched a nerve.

Naturally, others followed suit. DialAHuman (2008) and Get2Human (2008) sprung up to provide similar live agent short-cut compendia.

Around the same time, a few companies started to attack a related consumer frustration – waiting on hold. Fonolo (2007), Lucy Phone (2009) and Fast Customer (2011) allow consumers to connect directly with agents by actually waiting on hold for them. In their case, they spoof IVRs by emulating user input and then connect callers when an agent comes on the line.

Evidently enterprise adoption of courtesy callback solutions from vendors such as Virtual Hold is taking too long.

At the leading edge of a new wave, Insidr (2011) attempts to connect consumers to people who have “worked in big companies and are willing to help when the company can’t or won’t.” They’re targeting the frustration associated with what sometimes feels like rigid policy enforcement and empowering by reducing information asymmetry (most consumers don’t know what companies are willing to do to retain them).

Interestingly, the average bounty paid by consumers for Insidr tips is around $8, roughly the cost to the enterprise of the call that might have just been averted. This is mostly a coincidence but shows that some consumers are actually willing to dig into their pockets to resolve service issues.

These are just three examples of organizations that have emerged to allow consumers to start to take matters into their own hands to reduce customer service frustrations.

It’s worth spending time revisiting each of these organizations a few years into their existence to see if they’re delivering on their consumer empowerment missions or have lost steam or shifted focus / tactics.

Additionally, we should consider how these services are changing the way enterprises think about serving their customers – are they shining a light on weaknesses and forcing a re-prioritization of investment decisions or are they largely being ignored or stone-walled?

Finally, we should explore ways in which the tactics employed by these companies could be leveraged inside large organizations to accomplish their goals.

Alas, these are subjects of future posts. Meanwhile, let me know what you think and, obviously, which other organizations and related “over the top” trends should be included here.

* I couldn’t resist using this title because it invokes a reasonable metaphor and, frankly, sounds pretty catchy. I certainly don’t intend to suggest that consumers’ frustrations with customer service are in any way correlated to the general outrage with financial inequality, etc., being protested by the OWS movement.

Voluntary audits are conducted free of charge and the ICO has indicated that it will not issue monetary penalties if it discovers compliance breaches during a voluntary audit. Following a voluntary audit, the ICO produces a comprehensive report of findings and an executive summary.  The executive summaries are made available to the public on the ICO’s website (with the relevant organization’s permission), and full reports on audits of public authorities may be subject to freedom of information requests.

The ICO is eager to use audits as an educational and best practice-sharing tool, to encourage organizations to improve their data protection procedures. Although it convinced 52 organizations to submit to voluntary audits last year, the ICO is keen to see greater participation in its audit service, noting that it “can still be an uphill struggle to get organisations to see the benefits.”

With this in mind, the ICO has recently begun to roll out “advisory visits” as an alternative to voluntary audits. Advisory visits are aimed at small and medium-sized organizations (“SMEs”) for whom a full audit may be too comprehensive. As with voluntary audits, advisory visits are conducted free of charge. A member of the ICO’s good practice team conducts a day visit to the organization and provides basic, practical advice focusing on three key areas: (1) data security, (2) records management and (3) subject access mechanisms. Following the visit, the ICO prepares a short report with guidance and next steps for the organization. As with voluntary audits, the fact that a visit has been conducted is published on the ICO’s website, together with a summary of the visit (with the consent of the organization). The first two advisory visits were undertaken in December 2011, and the ICO hopes to encourage more SMEs to follow suit during 2012.

Just how important are things like mobile technology, social media and cloud computing to businesses today?

Can a business expect to survive and thrive if it doesn’t stay on top of the latest trends in technology? According to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the answer is, not surprisingly, ‘no.’

The firm’s 4th Digital IQ report (PDF) involved surveying just under 500 U.S. companies with at least $500m in annual revenue, with a focus on those with more than $1bn in annual revenue. It looked at how these firms are adopting technology and addressing the “consumerization of IT.”

It found that there are four key trends that are forcing executives at these companies to “rethink their strategies”:

• The growth of mobile. While many companies are adopting mobile tools for their employees, just 45% are using mobile significantly to engage with their customers.
• The use of social media as a source of customer data. Despite all of the hype around social media in the past several years, well under half (37%) of the businesses PwC surveyed are investing in social media tools to interact with customers.
• The rise of public cloud-based business applications. Cloud-based applications give employees the ability do things they never could before, like perform sophisticated processes while on the go. Not surprisingly, adopting public cloud applications is something many businesses have done slowly, but PwC sees broad investment in this area in 2012 across the companies polled.
• The constant and increasingly rapid creation of data. For most businesses, data is a valuable competitive asset. The good news is that there’s more and more of it. The bad news is that there’s more and more of it. As PwC notes, “According to some estimates, the world today creates as much information every couple days than was created from the dawn of civilization until just a few years ago.” So it’s no surprise that over half (56%) of the companies participating in the 4th Digital IQ survey plan to collect more consumer data this year, and nearly half (45%) will collect more data around operational performance.

According to PwC, the good news is that “strategic IT remains a viable and vital business differentiator.” The bad news is that “IT organizations that can serve customers and their firm, deliver projects on time and on budget, and distill mountains of bits into meaningful insights are as rare as ever.”

To succeed, companies will increasingly need to boost their ‘digital IQs’ by plotting out a long-term technology strategy, mobilizing the organization to act on it and focusing on “back-to-basics” execution.