Bianca Bosker's Blog, page 15
April 15, 2013
Vine In Boston: 6 Seconds Of Horror, On Repeat
Within 55 minutes of being posted, Doug Lorman’s video of the Boston marathon explosion, recorded from a television news report and shared to Twitter, had been tweeted more than 15,700 times, and seen by over 35,000 people. Those without Twitter texted the link to friends.
The video was posted through Vine, Twitter’s video-sharing service that launched earlier this year. Because Vine limits videos to just six seconds, and because it automatically replays those six seconds of video in a continuous loop, Lorman's Vine showed the initial bomb blast playing over and over, horrifying six seconds after horrifying six seconds.
As soon as the video begins to play, there’s a flash of yellow, followed by smoke. Flags topple and people keep sprinting toward the finish line. It starts again. There’s smoke billowing behind the flags, which are jostled into the street, and runners looking around. It starts again. Smoke, flags, runners. Other details begin to emerge as the video plays itself for the third time, then the fourth. The clock counting up from 4:09. A runner in the middle of the frame who ducks, whose legs give way and who tumbles onto his back. The video loops and he gets up, then falls again. People still jogging toward the finish line. A person whose arms are raised in victory. Questions come to mind: Is it strange that they kept running? Is it normal? What was behind the flags? Who else was there?
Other Vine videos were shared in the aftermath of the explosion, some showing Twitter streams rapidly updating with news, others documenting the scene on the streets, still others recording news reports through TV screens. Few, so far, have had the reach and instant impact of Lorman's, but the decision to use Vine prompted speculation that a turning point has come for the young platform.
“Is this Vine’s Tahrir square moment?” tweeted Nicholas Jackson, the digital director of Pacific Standard.
Alex Goldmark, a producer for WYNC, also opined on Twitter: "Vine sure is getting it's [sic] moment now as a breaking news tool."
All eyes may be on Vine, and the Boston bombing has elevated the service to new prominence. It also has validated Twitter’s bet on adding video to its bevy of text- and photo-sharing tools. But in the initial hours following the first reports of casualties at the Boston Marathon, it seems more pressing to consider not what the tragedy has meant for Vine, but what Vine’s rise might mean for us.
Every new popular technology changes how we experience the world, and we see that perhaps no more acutely than during disasters. Twitter, for its part, has made the news of strife, tragedy and upheaval more personal and immediate, as we’ve seen during events such as the Newtown shooting and, as Jackson noted, the Arab Spring. It’s allowed people to share dispatches from their viewpoints while on the go. YouTube likewise allowed for the sights and sounds of disaster to travel quickly.
Yet more than photos posted to social media sites and more than the videos uploaded to YouTube -- both widely shared in the aftermath of Monday's explosion -- Lorman's Vine video was a chilling, unrelenting vision of the moment of the bomb's impact. It zeroed in precisely on the instant when everything changed, and played that instant on endless repeat.
Vine allows users to record six seconds of the greatest emotional intensity and play them without pause. In Lorman's video, there’s no chance to even take a breath before the explosion starts anew. There's no break in the video, and no break from the video.
It's worth bearing in mind that Lorman's Vine wasn't even taken at the scene, but was filmed through his television screen.
"I taped the Boston NBC feed," Lorman, 29, wrote in a tweet. "I was hoping one of my cat vines was popular, not this tragedy." Lorman, or @Doug_Lorman on Twitter, lives in Nashua, N.H., about 45 miles north of Boston, and identifies himself in his Twitter bio as a "geek, hockey fan, atheist, and married to the greatest woman alive, Jess : )."
"I decided to Vine the video because at the time, no major news station had even begun covering the story," Lorman wrote in an email. "My real goal was to let people see what anyone not in the Boston area would see. I am sad it was that popular, I wish my Vine account didn't get this attention this way."
His video's impact had more to do with its timing than its novel or unique viewpoint. Many others saw the local news broadcast, but Lorman caught it and posted it precisely when he did.
Photos captured a moment in time, videos and news networks captured multiple moments in time and Vine captured the moment in time -- and played it in a loop where the violence doesn't let up or end. Does that make us feel it more? Less? Longer? Unfortunately, we may have more opportunities yet to find out.
The video was posted through Vine, Twitter’s video-sharing service that launched earlier this year. Because Vine limits videos to just six seconds, and because it automatically replays those six seconds of video in a continuous loop, Lorman's Vine showed the initial bomb blast playing over and over, horrifying six seconds after horrifying six seconds.
As soon as the video begins to play, there’s a flash of yellow, followed by smoke. Flags topple and people keep sprinting toward the finish line. It starts again. There’s smoke billowing behind the flags, which are jostled into the street, and runners looking around. It starts again. Smoke, flags, runners. Other details begin to emerge as the video plays itself for the third time, then the fourth. The clock counting up from 4:09. A runner in the middle of the frame who ducks, whose legs give way and who tumbles onto his back. The video loops and he gets up, then falls again. People still jogging toward the finish line. A person whose arms are raised in victory. Questions come to mind: Is it strange that they kept running? Is it normal? What was behind the flags? Who else was there?
Other Vine videos were shared in the aftermath of the explosion, some showing Twitter streams rapidly updating with news, others documenting the scene on the streets, still others recording news reports through TV screens. Few, so far, have had the reach and instant impact of Lorman's, but the decision to use Vine prompted speculation that a turning point has come for the young platform.
“Is this Vine’s Tahrir square moment?” tweeted Nicholas Jackson, the digital director of Pacific Standard.
Alex Goldmark, a producer for WYNC, also opined on Twitter: "Vine sure is getting it's [sic] moment now as a breaking news tool."
All eyes may be on Vine, and the Boston bombing has elevated the service to new prominence. It also has validated Twitter’s bet on adding video to its bevy of text- and photo-sharing tools. But in the initial hours following the first reports of casualties at the Boston Marathon, it seems more pressing to consider not what the tragedy has meant for Vine, but what Vine’s rise might mean for us.
Every new popular technology changes how we experience the world, and we see that perhaps no more acutely than during disasters. Twitter, for its part, has made the news of strife, tragedy and upheaval more personal and immediate, as we’ve seen during events such as the Newtown shooting and, as Jackson noted, the Arab Spring. It’s allowed people to share dispatches from their viewpoints while on the go. YouTube likewise allowed for the sights and sounds of disaster to travel quickly.
Yet more than photos posted to social media sites and more than the videos uploaded to YouTube -- both widely shared in the aftermath of Monday's explosion -- Lorman's Vine video was a chilling, unrelenting vision of the moment of the bomb's impact. It zeroed in precisely on the instant when everything changed, and played that instant on endless repeat.
Vine allows users to record six seconds of the greatest emotional intensity and play them without pause. In Lorman's video, there’s no chance to even take a breath before the explosion starts anew. There's no break in the video, and no break from the video.
It's worth bearing in mind that Lorman's Vine wasn't even taken at the scene, but was filmed through his television screen.
"I taped the Boston NBC feed," Lorman, 29, wrote in a tweet. "I was hoping one of my cat vines was popular, not this tragedy." Lorman, or @Doug_Lorman on Twitter, lives in Nashua, N.H., about 45 miles north of Boston, and identifies himself in his Twitter bio as a "geek, hockey fan, atheist, and married to the greatest woman alive, Jess : )."
"I decided to Vine the video because at the time, no major news station had even begun covering the story," Lorman wrote in an email. "My real goal was to let people see what anyone not in the Boston area would see. I am sad it was that popular, I wish my Vine account didn't get this attention this way."
His video's impact had more to do with its timing than its novel or unique viewpoint. Many others saw the local news broadcast, but Lorman caught it and posted it precisely when he did.
Photos captured a moment in time, videos and news networks captured multiple moments in time and Vine captured the moment in time -- and played it in a loop where the violence doesn't let up or end. Does that make us feel it more? Less? Longer? Unfortunately, we may have more opportunities yet to find out.
April 13, 2013
How A Tinder Experiment Lured 70 Guys To A Froyo Shop In Search Of Dream Girl
Tinder, the online dating app, has exploded in popularity precisely because of its bare-bones simplicity.
There’s purposefully no profiles to fill out, and Tinder’s creators say its superficial focus on looks mimics the social dynamics of the offline world. All members see about potential dates are a few photos, mutual friends and interests, and the other person’s location.
But given how little there is to go by, do people really meet up with strangers they find on Tinder -- with no friends in common, zero personal information and an unusually pretty face? Are a few cute photos and an invitation enough to lure people on a date?
Emphatically, yes. And more than five dozen people, at that.
Intrigued by Tinder’s success on their college’s campus, three Brigham Young University college students set up a social media experiment to test how many men would show up at a frozen yogurt shop to meet a pretty girl they’d found on Tinder, but knew nothing about.
“We were looking at it the other night and wondered, ‘how many guys would actually randomly meet up with someone they’d never talked to in real life or anything?’” said Bowman Bagley, a junior who organized the Tinder test with roommates Danny Gessel and Joshua Valdez. “We weren’t sure we’d be willing to do it … We didn’t think that many people would. And we were proven wrong."
Since Tinder requires a Facebook account to log in -- a measure meant to weed out precisely the kind of fake accounts the roommates created -- Bagley and his friends set up a Facebook profile for a fictional, 21-year-old girl they dubbed “Sammy.” They uploaded a handful of photos taken from Miss Teen USA Kendall Fein’s online profile, signed into Tinder and, on Wednesday at around 9 p.m., spent an hour “liking” every guy that appeared. Tinder online allows two users to message each other if both have “liked” each other.
Soon, Sammy had amassed about 250 matches, meaning several hundred people had “liked” her back. And the following day, the roommates messaged each guy, inviting him to meet Sammy at a local frozen yogurt shop in Orem, Utah.
“I’m going to yogurt shop called yogurtland tonight at 9 in orem with some girl friends if you want to meet up ;) [sic]” Sammy wrote.
Bagley figured it’d be a bust.
“We thought maybe five people would show up because it’s kind of sketchy to have just a random person you’ve never met send you this one message,” he explained.
When his friends arrived at the local Yogurtland, they found it packed with hoards of men, between 19 and 30 years old, milling about in the parking lot, in cars, at tables and in the shop.
“The whole place, just groups of guys after groups of guys showing up in to this little yogurt place on a Thursday night to meet this girl that no one’s ever heard of, has no friends on Facebook or anything,” he said. “People were sitting there on their cars outside the shop watching with their friends to see if this girl would ever show up. A group would leave and a new wave of people would walk in, look at every single girl in the shop and stand against the wall 15 minutes by themselves waiting for this one fake person.”
He estimates that more than 70 men showed up at Yogurtland.
“It blew my mind,” he added.
On the blog A Little Bit of Lizzy, an onlooker described a similar scene.
“We walked toward the door to see groups and groups and groups of guys getting out of their cars, hustling into the building,” "ALittleBitofLizzy" wrote. “I could not believe it! They were swarming! Literally swarming!”
Image credit: Bowman Bagley
The fake Sammy wasn’t a particularly sophisticated fake: The dream girl had just four photos, but no friends, no personal details and no interest in learning more about her matches. “Her” first message to her matches had been her invitation to meet in person. Her primary Tinder photo, visible here, would also seem suspiciously perfect.
What makes the success of the experiment even more impressive is that Tinder’s demographic is theoretically a web-savvy one, used to negotiating the social web. According to Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, more than 70 percent of Tinder’s users are between 18 and 24 years old, and 20 percent are between 25 and 34.
In an interview earlier this month, Mateen said Tinder hadn’t had problems with fake or spam accounts.
“You have to have a Facebook account with at least 50 friends,” he said. “We kind of depend on Facebook to authenticate users for us, so you don’t really see fake users on Tinder, which you do see on other applications.”
At Yogurtland, the men quickly realized they’d all shown up in search of the same, imaginary dream girl, but most laughed off their mistake. (“If you’re going to act pissed off, it doesnt look as cool to your friends,” noted Bagley.)
Before the Brigham Young roommates erased Sammy’s profile on Friday, they’d received a flood of messages from guys who’d either missed the Yogurtland meet-up -- and wanted to see if she was free on Saturday -- or had been stood up.
“I have to say. Well done. You got a whole bunch of guys to go to Yogurtland. I totally didn’t expect it, until I saw throngs of dudes (who obviously don’t eat at yogurt land [sic] often if ever) in line,” wrote a user named Tim. “Curiosity killed this cat.”
“So, missed ya at the thing tonight,” wrote another.
“social media experiment,” Sammy answered, “her” standard reply.
Bagley, for his part, recently deleted his Tinder profile, just three weeks after setting it up.
“I thought it’d be a fun idea, but then I found myself just sitting there judging people the whole time,” he said. “I’d rather go outside and play volleyball in shorts, enjoy the weather and meet someone that way rather than looking at a picture and seeing if I like them from that.”
There’s purposefully no profiles to fill out, and Tinder’s creators say its superficial focus on looks mimics the social dynamics of the offline world. All members see about potential dates are a few photos, mutual friends and interests, and the other person’s location.
But given how little there is to go by, do people really meet up with strangers they find on Tinder -- with no friends in common, zero personal information and an unusually pretty face? Are a few cute photos and an invitation enough to lure people on a date?
Emphatically, yes. And more than five dozen people, at that.
Intrigued by Tinder’s success on their college’s campus, three Brigham Young University college students set up a social media experiment to test how many men would show up at a frozen yogurt shop to meet a pretty girl they’d found on Tinder, but knew nothing about.
“We were looking at it the other night and wondered, ‘how many guys would actually randomly meet up with someone they’d never talked to in real life or anything?’” said Bowman Bagley, a junior who organized the Tinder test with roommates Danny Gessel and Joshua Valdez. “We weren’t sure we’d be willing to do it … We didn’t think that many people would. And we were proven wrong."
Since Tinder requires a Facebook account to log in -- a measure meant to weed out precisely the kind of fake accounts the roommates created -- Bagley and his friends set up a Facebook profile for a fictional, 21-year-old girl they dubbed “Sammy.” They uploaded a handful of photos taken from Miss Teen USA Kendall Fein’s online profile, signed into Tinder and, on Wednesday at around 9 p.m., spent an hour “liking” every guy that appeared. Tinder online allows two users to message each other if both have “liked” each other.
Soon, Sammy had amassed about 250 matches, meaning several hundred people had “liked” her back. And the following day, the roommates messaged each guy, inviting him to meet Sammy at a local frozen yogurt shop in Orem, Utah.
“I’m going to yogurt shop called yogurtland tonight at 9 in orem with some girl friends if you want to meet up ;) [sic]” Sammy wrote.
Bagley figured it’d be a bust.
“We thought maybe five people would show up because it’s kind of sketchy to have just a random person you’ve never met send you this one message,” he explained.
When his friends arrived at the local Yogurtland, they found it packed with hoards of men, between 19 and 30 years old, milling about in the parking lot, in cars, at tables and in the shop.
“The whole place, just groups of guys after groups of guys showing up in to this little yogurt place on a Thursday night to meet this girl that no one’s ever heard of, has no friends on Facebook or anything,” he said. “People were sitting there on their cars outside the shop watching with their friends to see if this girl would ever show up. A group would leave and a new wave of people would walk in, look at every single girl in the shop and stand against the wall 15 minutes by themselves waiting for this one fake person.”
He estimates that more than 70 men showed up at Yogurtland.
“It blew my mind,” he added.
On the blog A Little Bit of Lizzy, an onlooker described a similar scene.
“We walked toward the door to see groups and groups and groups of guys getting out of their cars, hustling into the building,” "ALittleBitofLizzy" wrote. “I could not believe it! They were swarming! Literally swarming!”
Image credit: Bowman Bagley
The fake Sammy wasn’t a particularly sophisticated fake: The dream girl had just four photos, but no friends, no personal details and no interest in learning more about her matches. “Her” first message to her matches had been her invitation to meet in person. Her primary Tinder photo, visible here, would also seem suspiciously perfect.
What makes the success of the experiment even more impressive is that Tinder’s demographic is theoretically a web-savvy one, used to negotiating the social web. According to Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, more than 70 percent of Tinder’s users are between 18 and 24 years old, and 20 percent are between 25 and 34.
In an interview earlier this month, Mateen said Tinder hadn’t had problems with fake or spam accounts.
“You have to have a Facebook account with at least 50 friends,” he said. “We kind of depend on Facebook to authenticate users for us, so you don’t really see fake users on Tinder, which you do see on other applications.”
At Yogurtland, the men quickly realized they’d all shown up in search of the same, imaginary dream girl, but most laughed off their mistake. (“If you’re going to act pissed off, it doesnt look as cool to your friends,” noted Bagley.)
Before the Brigham Young roommates erased Sammy’s profile on Friday, they’d received a flood of messages from guys who’d either missed the Yogurtland meet-up -- and wanted to see if she was free on Saturday -- or had been stood up.
“I have to say. Well done. You got a whole bunch of guys to go to Yogurtland. I totally didn’t expect it, until I saw throngs of dudes (who obviously don’t eat at yogurt land [sic] often if ever) in line,” wrote a user named Tim. “Curiosity killed this cat.”
“So, missed ya at the thing tonight,” wrote another.
“social media experiment,” Sammy answered, “her” standard reply.
Bagley, for his part, recently deleted his Tinder profile, just three weeks after setting it up.
“I thought it’d be a fun idea, but then I found myself just sitting there judging people the whole time,” he said. “I’d rather go outside and play volleyball in shorts, enjoy the weather and meet someone that way rather than looking at a picture and seeing if I like them from that.”
April 11, 2013
Facebook Home's Ultimate Goal: Ingesting Your Messages
Mark Zuckerberg has staunchly rejected the notion that Facebook Home, the social network’s new Facebook-ified smartphone software, is a “phone.”
In a sense, he’s right: Home isn’t a phone so much as it’s a three-by-five-inch messaging center designed to get the world hooked on chatting via Facebook.
The social network’s foray into smartphones underscores a push to make every interaction with phones into an interaction with Facebook. But more specifically, Home marks an effort to make Facebook the hub for all conversations. On a phone that puts Facebook front and center, Facebook has put messaging front and center.
Zuckerberg asserts that messaging is what people want, telling Wired, “the big stuff that we’re seeing now is sharing with smaller groups."
Yet tech industry analysts note that the sooner people channel their chatting through Facebook, the sooner Facebook can turn messaging from communication between friends into a moneymaker that involves brands. More messaging will give Facebook more data it may use to provide advertisers with personal, personalized ways of interacting with its members.
"They're just trying to make sure that you don’t use anyone else's messaging service," said Carl Howe, an analyst with the Yankee Group, of Home's messaging capabilities. "They make it so convenient that you would never think about using what are actually very popular other services ... Once you're really invested in their messaging, maybe you won't mind as much when they start showing you ads on your messaging as well.”
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
In the version of Home that launches Friday, the most compelling offering -- and greatest differentiator -- is a feature dubbed “chat heads.” The chatting tool combines Facebook messaging with texting, and replaces friends’ names with their Facebook profile photos. The circular chat heads pop up on the screen with each new incoming message, and allow people to open and answer their messages without exiting whatever app they’re using.
“Messages reach you no matter what you're doing -- whether you're checking email, browsing the web, or listening to music,” wrote Facebook in a press release. When users first open Home, Facebook encourages them to log into Facebook so they can “keep chatting no matter what you're doing.” It’s a pitch that sounds almost as much like an order as an offer.
Home ultimately lets Facebook interrupt whatever activity a user might be doing, and chat heads ensure that any action on a phone can instantly become Facebook-focused.
“Messaging carries that Facebook experience across other apps,” said Chris Silva, an analyst with Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm. “If … you leave the Facebook app to go to Chrome or some other app, messaging is still there at the forefront. It becomes a lot more persistent in the interface than any other messaging has been to-date.”
Beyond the convenience and prominence of messages on Facebook's software, the service also stands to gain users by virtue of being budget-friendly. Much like Apple’s iMessage or BlackBerry Messenger, chat heads bring together text messaging and Facebook’s own chat service, making them appear interchangeable. But while each text leaves users one step closer to exceeding their monthly limit, Facebook Messages draws from people’s more generous data allowances. Data show that given the option between the two, people will opt for messaging apps. This trend to replace texting with messaging isn’t one being cheered by carriers, who, according to Ovum data obtained by the Wall Street Journal, lost $23 billion in text messaging fees by the end of 2012.
Analysts say Home’s spiffy messaging tools suggest a plan to deliver new forms of advertising that more closely target members' behavior.
“Gmail was the Trojan horse to get us hooked on Google services, from which they were able to advertise to us, mine our data and create really detailed profiles of who we were,” said Silva. “Messaging tends to be the Trojan horse in these situations. It was for Google. It probably will be for Facebook.”
Facebook’s Messenger app currently gives people the option to attach location information to each post. Next, say experts, the social network might analyze the content of messages to serve up ads targeted to each conversation, much like Gmail. An exchange via Facebook Messages about feeling lonely after a breakup and hoping to find a new love interest could yield banner ads from online dating sites, matchmaking services or therapists.
Facebook is not only embracing a Google-like approach, it’s also using Google’s own Android software, on which Home is based, to conquer a new frontier of mobile advertising. Though Google is chasing the same advertising dollars as Facebook, the company’s highly-publicized commitment to keep Android open and free for people to customize leaves them little ability to thwart Facebook’s plan to leverage Google’s own software against its rival.
Advertisers might also contact users directly via messages. Facebook has recently tried charging people to guarantee that a message to a stranger arrives in her Facebook inbox, rather than spam folder, and those tracking Facebook anticipate that the social network might adapt that model for brands. Instead of showing up in the News Feed, advertisers could pay to ensure a Samsung or Microsoft chat head appears when you’re walking by the Apple Store.
“[Facebook’s messaging platform] is not just for connecting people," said Howe. "It's for connecting brands, too."
Whether users would accept advertising via messages -- private, personal and traditionally off-limits to brands -- remains to be seen (Home, as a whole, could itself be a total flop). Facebook said in a recent earnings call that adding ads to its mobile News Feed yielded only a small decrease in engagement. But can the company go so far -- if it so chooses -- as to add marketing into individual messages without alienating its users?
“There’s a certain creepy factor to that, but users are getting much more comfortable trading privacy for convenience,” said Silva. “If the targeting works the way it should, and it’s hyper-contextual, targeted and users like it, engagement [with ads] will go up.”
Facebook’s emphasis on messaging follows a wave of interest in mobile applications, such as WeChat and WhatsApp, that offer an alternative to text messaging. WhatsApp, for example, boasts hundreds of millions of users, processed 18 billion messages a day in January, has been valued at $1 billion and fended off an acquisitions attempt by Google, according to a Digital Trends report. Like Facebook's Snapchat clone before it, chat heads on Home may mark just another attempt by Facebook to copy its way to success and avoid losing users' time to competing social apps. While a Facebook-sponsored study by IDC found that smartphone users spent a quarter of their phone time on Facebook, Mobidia, a company tracking data usage, reported that Facebook accounted for just 9 percent of the time U.S. Facebook users spend on their phones. In Spain, Mexico and Argentina, WhatsApp actually occupied more time than Facebook, Mobidia found.
Home could help Facebook convince people to make the social network their mobile home.
"For Facebook, it's about putting Facebook at center of your experience," said Forrester's Charles Golvin."If messaging is going through Facebook ... it's providing more loyalty and retention in the Facebook experience."
In a sense, he’s right: Home isn’t a phone so much as it’s a three-by-five-inch messaging center designed to get the world hooked on chatting via Facebook.
The social network’s foray into smartphones underscores a push to make every interaction with phones into an interaction with Facebook. But more specifically, Home marks an effort to make Facebook the hub for all conversations. On a phone that puts Facebook front and center, Facebook has put messaging front and center.
Zuckerberg asserts that messaging is what people want, telling Wired, “the big stuff that we’re seeing now is sharing with smaller groups."
Yet tech industry analysts note that the sooner people channel their chatting through Facebook, the sooner Facebook can turn messaging from communication between friends into a moneymaker that involves brands. More messaging will give Facebook more data it may use to provide advertisers with personal, personalized ways of interacting with its members.
"They're just trying to make sure that you don’t use anyone else's messaging service," said Carl Howe, an analyst with the Yankee Group, of Home's messaging capabilities. "They make it so convenient that you would never think about using what are actually very popular other services ... Once you're really invested in their messaging, maybe you won't mind as much when they start showing you ads on your messaging as well.”
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
In the version of Home that launches Friday, the most compelling offering -- and greatest differentiator -- is a feature dubbed “chat heads.” The chatting tool combines Facebook messaging with texting, and replaces friends’ names with their Facebook profile photos. The circular chat heads pop up on the screen with each new incoming message, and allow people to open and answer their messages without exiting whatever app they’re using.
“Messages reach you no matter what you're doing -- whether you're checking email, browsing the web, or listening to music,” wrote Facebook in a press release. When users first open Home, Facebook encourages them to log into Facebook so they can “keep chatting no matter what you're doing.” It’s a pitch that sounds almost as much like an order as an offer.
Home ultimately lets Facebook interrupt whatever activity a user might be doing, and chat heads ensure that any action on a phone can instantly become Facebook-focused.
“Messaging carries that Facebook experience across other apps,” said Chris Silva, an analyst with Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm. “If … you leave the Facebook app to go to Chrome or some other app, messaging is still there at the forefront. It becomes a lot more persistent in the interface than any other messaging has been to-date.”
Beyond the convenience and prominence of messages on Facebook's software, the service also stands to gain users by virtue of being budget-friendly. Much like Apple’s iMessage or BlackBerry Messenger, chat heads bring together text messaging and Facebook’s own chat service, making them appear interchangeable. But while each text leaves users one step closer to exceeding their monthly limit, Facebook Messages draws from people’s more generous data allowances. Data show that given the option between the two, people will opt for messaging apps. This trend to replace texting with messaging isn’t one being cheered by carriers, who, according to Ovum data obtained by the Wall Street Journal, lost $23 billion in text messaging fees by the end of 2012.
Analysts say Home’s spiffy messaging tools suggest a plan to deliver new forms of advertising that more closely target members' behavior.
“Gmail was the Trojan horse to get us hooked on Google services, from which they were able to advertise to us, mine our data and create really detailed profiles of who we were,” said Silva. “Messaging tends to be the Trojan horse in these situations. It was for Google. It probably will be for Facebook.”
Facebook’s Messenger app currently gives people the option to attach location information to each post. Next, say experts, the social network might analyze the content of messages to serve up ads targeted to each conversation, much like Gmail. An exchange via Facebook Messages about feeling lonely after a breakup and hoping to find a new love interest could yield banner ads from online dating sites, matchmaking services or therapists.
Facebook is not only embracing a Google-like approach, it’s also using Google’s own Android software, on which Home is based, to conquer a new frontier of mobile advertising. Though Google is chasing the same advertising dollars as Facebook, the company’s highly-publicized commitment to keep Android open and free for people to customize leaves them little ability to thwart Facebook’s plan to leverage Google’s own software against its rival.
Advertisers might also contact users directly via messages. Facebook has recently tried charging people to guarantee that a message to a stranger arrives in her Facebook inbox, rather than spam folder, and those tracking Facebook anticipate that the social network might adapt that model for brands. Instead of showing up in the News Feed, advertisers could pay to ensure a Samsung or Microsoft chat head appears when you’re walking by the Apple Store.
“[Facebook’s messaging platform] is not just for connecting people," said Howe. "It's for connecting brands, too."
Whether users would accept advertising via messages -- private, personal and traditionally off-limits to brands -- remains to be seen (Home, as a whole, could itself be a total flop). Facebook said in a recent earnings call that adding ads to its mobile News Feed yielded only a small decrease in engagement. But can the company go so far -- if it so chooses -- as to add marketing into individual messages without alienating its users?
“There’s a certain creepy factor to that, but users are getting much more comfortable trading privacy for convenience,” said Silva. “If the targeting works the way it should, and it’s hyper-contextual, targeted and users like it, engagement [with ads] will go up.”
Facebook’s emphasis on messaging follows a wave of interest in mobile applications, such as WeChat and WhatsApp, that offer an alternative to text messaging. WhatsApp, for example, boasts hundreds of millions of users, processed 18 billion messages a day in January, has been valued at $1 billion and fended off an acquisitions attempt by Google, according to a Digital Trends report. Like Facebook's Snapchat clone before it, chat heads on Home may mark just another attempt by Facebook to copy its way to success and avoid losing users' time to competing social apps. While a Facebook-sponsored study by IDC found that smartphone users spent a quarter of their phone time on Facebook, Mobidia, a company tracking data usage, reported that Facebook accounted for just 9 percent of the time U.S. Facebook users spend on their phones. In Spain, Mexico and Argentina, WhatsApp actually occupied more time than Facebook, Mobidia found.
Home could help Facebook convince people to make the social network their mobile home.
"For Facebook, it's about putting Facebook at center of your experience," said Forrester's Charles Golvin."If messaging is going through Facebook ... it's providing more loyalty and retention in the Facebook experience."
April 9, 2013
Why Tinder Has Us Addicted: The Dating App Gives You Mind-Reading Powers
Tinder, a dating app for the iPhone, has become so wildly popular in the six months since its launch that it’s already spawned its own malady: Tinderitis, or the sensation of having a sore thumb from swiping to approve or reject the faces of people offered up as potential date material.
Tinder has lured people in by unabashedly offering a place to do all the things we love doing online, but won’t admit to: act shallow, make snap-judgments based on looks, obsess over what people think of us and boost our egos. It’s turned passing judgment into a pastime, and people are thrilled to take part.
“People don’t think of [Tinder] as online dating, they think of it as a game,” said Rachel Ellicott, a sophomore at Cornell University who downloaded the app earlier this winter after hearing about it from friends at other schools. “I think of it as a beauty contest plus messaging.”
Tinder, which first launched at a University of Southern California party and expanded to other college campuses from there, is part HotOrNot.com -- a site that lets people rate strangers’ appearance -- and part “f*ck, chuck, marry” -- the high-school sleepover game that makes players pick which they’d do to three people. After signing in with Facebook, Tinder users are shown singles nearby, then asked to “like” or say “nope” to a potential match based on a few postage stamp-sized photos and some scant details about mutual interests and friends. Only if two people both “like” each other are they allowed to message, reducing the barrage of messages women often receive on other online dating services.
Though Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen declined to specify how many active users the app has attracted, he said the iPhone app is currently being downloaded 10,000 to 20,000 times a day. Sixty percent of users check it daily, with many consulting the app five to six times a day, Mateen added.
The secret to Tinder’s success is a small circle that appears below each photo: The “X” button. In a social media world rampant with “likes,” “hearts,” “favorites” and “thumbs ups” designed to ensure everyone gets along, Tinder actually encourages people to pass judgment in a superficial way. That, however unkind it may seem, holds real allure. In some ways, it's even refreshing.
Judging on Tinder is “mostly based on looks,” acknowledged Nikki Blank, a Tufts University sophomore who’s helped Tinder with its outreach on campus. “I think it’s definitely part of the appeal, though. And it’s socially acceptable under the guidelines of [the app’s] rules.”
Tinder is like The Facebook before it became Facebook: a pure, unadulterated means of dissecting people’s physical appearances, with no extra details about recent articles read or apps used to slow down the judging process. Tinder makes the scrutiny even more streamlined than on Facebook and doesn't try to disguise it -- making the app wildly popular and intoxicatingly enjoyable.
This online dating app is really a judging app, and Tinderers have responded to the app’s rules by rating each other over 3 billion times in six months. The app's creators have cleverly designed Tinder to make rating both faster and, in a subtle way, more literal. Instead of tapping a big red “X” to pass over someone, Tinderers can flick the photo aside, as if the person has been summarily dismissed, banished with a wave of the hand.
All that mutual rating, those billions of taps and flicks, has allowed Tinder to tap into the Holy Grail of what people seek to know about the world: who’s attracted to them among the subset of people they’re attracted to.
The startup has used technology to uncover and help us communicate our attraction to each other, information that because of our egos, social norms and general inter-personal awkwardness, we’ve almost always kept locked up. Tinder offers the digital equivalent of stepping into a party and immediately knowing which of the people you find attractive think you’re good looking, too. It’s as if singles suddenly had mind-reading super-powers.
Being rated, for many of its users, actually seems to feel good. Instead of receiving lascivious compliments from faceless strangers sent to OKCupid inboxes or via Facebook Messages, Tinderers get to learn if people they find cute like them back. At the same time, there's little fear of suffering the sting of rejection. Because Tinder appears to show people at random, there’s the plausible excuse that if a handsome stranger hasn’t liked you back, it’s simply because he hasn’t come across your photo.
"It’s become an ego boost,” said Ellicott. "I downloaded it just to appease my guy friend, but ended up getting addicted to it because it’s like, 'Oh, a cute guy in my class likes me back!'"
Blank agrees, noting her peers have used Tinder "more as an ego boost-type situation than a dating situation or a way to connect with people."
Tinder's rapid rise has worried some, who argue it feeds our shallow inclinations.
"It grants permission for those in our culture to rate others based on physical appearance, and furthermore, it teaches us how to slash an 'X' on those we find unattractive (too old, too short, too much facial hair)," lamented Carlina Duan, a contributor to the University of Michigan's Michigan Daily student newspaper, in a story about Tinder. “It teaches us that dating, then, is a process of physical attraction and only physical attraction."
It's a fair criticism. But it may actually be the "likes," not the "X's," that offer more cause for concern.
Tinder is telling people things they wouldn’t have learned otherwise, and wouldn't have learned offline. It reveals the Ryan Gosling-lookalike down the street thinks you’re hot, the cute girl in Starbucks likes you back or that the guy you’ve checked out in class has eyed you back.
That deeply personal, useful and instantly gratifying information makes Tinder an addictive experience, with each match fueling a kind of emotional high. Research has shown “likes” on Facebook and retweets and Twitter can release a dopamine surge that, in some cases, lead to social media addiction. Now imagine the chemical effect of immediate e-feedback that's even more personal: While Facebook tells you if someone liked your status update, Tinder tells you if someone likes you. How soon will it be before people go from enjoying that feeling to craving it?
Tinder’s popularity both underscores and feeds an obsession with constant acknowledgment and approval. It suggests we're all but starving for likes, eager for affirmation, and will no doubt be suffering even more acute Tinderitis in our push to figure out which strangers, and how many, think we're hot.
Tinder has lured people in by unabashedly offering a place to do all the things we love doing online, but won’t admit to: act shallow, make snap-judgments based on looks, obsess over what people think of us and boost our egos. It’s turned passing judgment into a pastime, and people are thrilled to take part.
“People don’t think of [Tinder] as online dating, they think of it as a game,” said Rachel Ellicott, a sophomore at Cornell University who downloaded the app earlier this winter after hearing about it from friends at other schools. “I think of it as a beauty contest plus messaging.”
Tinder, which first launched at a University of Southern California party and expanded to other college campuses from there, is part HotOrNot.com -- a site that lets people rate strangers’ appearance -- and part “f*ck, chuck, marry” -- the high-school sleepover game that makes players pick which they’d do to three people. After signing in with Facebook, Tinder users are shown singles nearby, then asked to “like” or say “nope” to a potential match based on a few postage stamp-sized photos and some scant details about mutual interests and friends. Only if two people both “like” each other are they allowed to message, reducing the barrage of messages women often receive on other online dating services.
Though Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen declined to specify how many active users the app has attracted, he said the iPhone app is currently being downloaded 10,000 to 20,000 times a day. Sixty percent of users check it daily, with many consulting the app five to six times a day, Mateen added.
The secret to Tinder’s success is a small circle that appears below each photo: The “X” button. In a social media world rampant with “likes,” “hearts,” “favorites” and “thumbs ups” designed to ensure everyone gets along, Tinder actually encourages people to pass judgment in a superficial way. That, however unkind it may seem, holds real allure. In some ways, it's even refreshing.
Judging on Tinder is “mostly based on looks,” acknowledged Nikki Blank, a Tufts University sophomore who’s helped Tinder with its outreach on campus. “I think it’s definitely part of the appeal, though. And it’s socially acceptable under the guidelines of [the app’s] rules.”
Tinder is like The Facebook before it became Facebook: a pure, unadulterated means of dissecting people’s physical appearances, with no extra details about recent articles read or apps used to slow down the judging process. Tinder makes the scrutiny even more streamlined than on Facebook and doesn't try to disguise it -- making the app wildly popular and intoxicatingly enjoyable.
This online dating app is really a judging app, and Tinderers have responded to the app’s rules by rating each other over 3 billion times in six months. The app's creators have cleverly designed Tinder to make rating both faster and, in a subtle way, more literal. Instead of tapping a big red “X” to pass over someone, Tinderers can flick the photo aside, as if the person has been summarily dismissed, banished with a wave of the hand.
All that mutual rating, those billions of taps and flicks, has allowed Tinder to tap into the Holy Grail of what people seek to know about the world: who’s attracted to them among the subset of people they’re attracted to.
The startup has used technology to uncover and help us communicate our attraction to each other, information that because of our egos, social norms and general inter-personal awkwardness, we’ve almost always kept locked up. Tinder offers the digital equivalent of stepping into a party and immediately knowing which of the people you find attractive think you’re good looking, too. It’s as if singles suddenly had mind-reading super-powers.
Being rated, for many of its users, actually seems to feel good. Instead of receiving lascivious compliments from faceless strangers sent to OKCupid inboxes or via Facebook Messages, Tinderers get to learn if people they find cute like them back. At the same time, there's little fear of suffering the sting of rejection. Because Tinder appears to show people at random, there’s the plausible excuse that if a handsome stranger hasn’t liked you back, it’s simply because he hasn’t come across your photo.
"It’s become an ego boost,” said Ellicott. "I downloaded it just to appease my guy friend, but ended up getting addicted to it because it’s like, 'Oh, a cute guy in my class likes me back!'"
Blank agrees, noting her peers have used Tinder "more as an ego boost-type situation than a dating situation or a way to connect with people."
Tinder's rapid rise has worried some, who argue it feeds our shallow inclinations.
"It grants permission for those in our culture to rate others based on physical appearance, and furthermore, it teaches us how to slash an 'X' on those we find unattractive (too old, too short, too much facial hair)," lamented Carlina Duan, a contributor to the University of Michigan's Michigan Daily student newspaper, in a story about Tinder. “It teaches us that dating, then, is a process of physical attraction and only physical attraction."
It's a fair criticism. But it may actually be the "likes," not the "X's," that offer more cause for concern.
Tinder is telling people things they wouldn’t have learned otherwise, and wouldn't have learned offline. It reveals the Ryan Gosling-lookalike down the street thinks you’re hot, the cute girl in Starbucks likes you back or that the guy you’ve checked out in class has eyed you back.
That deeply personal, useful and instantly gratifying information makes Tinder an addictive experience, with each match fueling a kind of emotional high. Research has shown “likes” on Facebook and retweets and Twitter can release a dopamine surge that, in some cases, lead to social media addiction. Now imagine the chemical effect of immediate e-feedback that's even more personal: While Facebook tells you if someone liked your status update, Tinder tells you if someone likes you. How soon will it be before people go from enjoying that feeling to craving it?
Tinder’s popularity both underscores and feeds an obsession with constant acknowledgment and approval. It suggests we're all but starving for likes, eager for affirmation, and will no doubt be suffering even more acute Tinderitis in our push to figure out which strangers, and how many, think we're hot.
April 7, 2013
How Umoove's Eye-Tracking Tech Will Make Apps That Can 'Flirt'
Over the past several decades, computers have evolved to become ever more sensitive to our cues. Room-sized machines controlled by punch cards were gradually replaced by desktop computers hooked up to mice, which have recently given way to palm-sized touchscreens we control with our fingers.
Next, predicts Israeli entrepreneur Moti Krispil, we’ll direct computers with our eyes: Ads on smartphones will come alive when we glance in their direction, ebooks will flip pages themselves when we've finished a section and videos will pause instantly when we look away.
Krispil is the chief executive of Umoove, an Israeli startup developing head- and eye-tracking technology for mobile devices that, according to Krispil, can be used to create more “human” devices that respond to our subtle movements and natural cues.
Next month, Umoove will make its tracking technology available to anyone from app developers to smartphone and tablet makers and Kirspil predicts applications that integrate Umoove’s tracking tools will be available within three to four months.
The Huffington Post spoke with Krispil about how his technology can spot movement in the eye's pupils; how it could be used to create content that seizes -- and holds -- users' attention; and what it means for the future of our interactions with machines.
What would we be able to do with head- and eye-tracking technology in our phones?
Imagine you go to your architect and you bring out an iPad to look at a diagram. By the angle of your head, the diagram will automatically tilt -- the content will be automatically aligned with your face. If you look closer, it automatically zooms in.
Now say you’re rushing into the subway and you want to read the latest news, but you only have one free hand, and you can’t scroll with your thumb. So you simply move your head, up down -- you’re reading like a human teleprompter. When you look at an image long enough, it plays a video. When someone asks you if this is the right station and you raise your head, the video automatically pauses -- it waits for you to look back again, and then it plays. You can also have intelligent content that reacts to what you do with your eyes even if you don’t move your head.
Which of our movements can your technology recognize?
If you move your head -- up, left, right, down or tilted -- then I can spot this change. If you are changing the distance between your head and the screen, I can spot it. If you move your pupil or iris, I can spot this change. I can spot a one-pixel change in your eyes.
How does the head- and eye-tracking technology work?
All we need in order to track you is the raw video frames coming from the camera. We have technology that learns each and every frame in real time, compares the differences and by comparing the differences in the way we do it, we identify specific elements in your face and eyes.
On top of the main engine that knows how to translate your facial characteristics into a motion or movement, we have other smart engines that are helping us avoid typical pitfalls of tracking, like dynamic lightning conditions. [With our technology], you can turn on the light, turn off the light, go from a well-lit room to a dark room, while constantly being tracked.
Why use this? What’s the appeal of incorporating this tracking technology into apps?
We are using your natural head and eye movement to control things. People will feel that they become the interface because we do not require them to pinch or to twist. You were not born pinching or twisting. You were born moving your head and eyes, looking closer at things, twisting your head. We want to transform those into meaningful actions that convert intention. I call it “back to people.”
And we can provide you with insights by watching where you’re looking, what you do with your head and what your focus of attention is. Then we can apply that in very creative ways, such as increasing your attention span, and it can be monetized in many ways.
How could you use the technology to increase people’s attention span?
If you see a picture of Adele somewhere in an article, when you’re looking at her for more than 2 seconds, an Amazon ad could pop up suggesting you buy her latest record now. Or let’s say you’re looking at a book for kids. When my daughter is looking at Pooh the bear, why shouldn’t Pooh the bear smile and say, “Come with me, let me show you where I’ll go. The rabbit’s tree is there.”
[The content] looks like it flirts with me, it “understands” my attention. If you put all of that [technology] into an image or article or book, you can increase the attention span because people tend to follow what interacts with them. I’m using your natural head and eye movements to indulge you to do something, to explore something.
Misusing this will not be good. But using it wisely creates a new breed of content that’s much more compelling to explore.
What sort of data could you collect about people by tracking their head and eye movements?
If we put aside the privacy issues, dry facts-wise, you can gather what are probably the best analytics in the world. You can get some analytics on where people are looking, which articles are being read more, things like that, and convert it into optimized placement, ranking of articles and customizing your local preferences, so maybe you like to get certain type of content more often than other kinds of content.
How do you predict this technology will change our interactions with machines?
I believe it will make devices more human, more intention based. It will make devices look more natural and allow them to respond without mediation. Our devices will understand many things that up until today you had to tell the system explicitly -- like if I can see your face, I will not dim the lights, but if you look away, I will dim the ebook to save power.
If sometimes people feel that what’s in front of them is more human, then I’ve achieved my goal.
What’s your goal for this technology?
The most compelling thing for us as humans is to expect that we will not notice that there is technology behind something. I always used to joke that it’s like the photographer in a wedding. If he’s doing a great job, you don’t notice him, but at the end you have the memories. Eventually you need to forget you have some technology in front of you.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Next, predicts Israeli entrepreneur Moti Krispil, we’ll direct computers with our eyes: Ads on smartphones will come alive when we glance in their direction, ebooks will flip pages themselves when we've finished a section and videos will pause instantly when we look away.
Krispil is the chief executive of Umoove, an Israeli startup developing head- and eye-tracking technology for mobile devices that, according to Krispil, can be used to create more “human” devices that respond to our subtle movements and natural cues.
Next month, Umoove will make its tracking technology available to anyone from app developers to smartphone and tablet makers and Kirspil predicts applications that integrate Umoove’s tracking tools will be available within three to four months.
The Huffington Post spoke with Krispil about how his technology can spot movement in the eye's pupils; how it could be used to create content that seizes -- and holds -- users' attention; and what it means for the future of our interactions with machines.
What would we be able to do with head- and eye-tracking technology in our phones?
Imagine you go to your architect and you bring out an iPad to look at a diagram. By the angle of your head, the diagram will automatically tilt -- the content will be automatically aligned with your face. If you look closer, it automatically zooms in.
Now say you’re rushing into the subway and you want to read the latest news, but you only have one free hand, and you can’t scroll with your thumb. So you simply move your head, up down -- you’re reading like a human teleprompter. When you look at an image long enough, it plays a video. When someone asks you if this is the right station and you raise your head, the video automatically pauses -- it waits for you to look back again, and then it plays. You can also have intelligent content that reacts to what you do with your eyes even if you don’t move your head.
Which of our movements can your technology recognize?
If you move your head -- up, left, right, down or tilted -- then I can spot this change. If you are changing the distance between your head and the screen, I can spot it. If you move your pupil or iris, I can spot this change. I can spot a one-pixel change in your eyes.
How does the head- and eye-tracking technology work?
All we need in order to track you is the raw video frames coming from the camera. We have technology that learns each and every frame in real time, compares the differences and by comparing the differences in the way we do it, we identify specific elements in your face and eyes.
On top of the main engine that knows how to translate your facial characteristics into a motion or movement, we have other smart engines that are helping us avoid typical pitfalls of tracking, like dynamic lightning conditions. [With our technology], you can turn on the light, turn off the light, go from a well-lit room to a dark room, while constantly being tracked.
Why use this? What’s the appeal of incorporating this tracking technology into apps?
We are using your natural head and eye movement to control things. People will feel that they become the interface because we do not require them to pinch or to twist. You were not born pinching or twisting. You were born moving your head and eyes, looking closer at things, twisting your head. We want to transform those into meaningful actions that convert intention. I call it “back to people.”
And we can provide you with insights by watching where you’re looking, what you do with your head and what your focus of attention is. Then we can apply that in very creative ways, such as increasing your attention span, and it can be monetized in many ways.
How could you use the technology to increase people’s attention span?
If you see a picture of Adele somewhere in an article, when you’re looking at her for more than 2 seconds, an Amazon ad could pop up suggesting you buy her latest record now. Or let’s say you’re looking at a book for kids. When my daughter is looking at Pooh the bear, why shouldn’t Pooh the bear smile and say, “Come with me, let me show you where I’ll go. The rabbit’s tree is there.”
[The content] looks like it flirts with me, it “understands” my attention. If you put all of that [technology] into an image or article or book, you can increase the attention span because people tend to follow what interacts with them. I’m using your natural head and eye movements to indulge you to do something, to explore something.
Misusing this will not be good. But using it wisely creates a new breed of content that’s much more compelling to explore.
What sort of data could you collect about people by tracking their head and eye movements?
If we put aside the privacy issues, dry facts-wise, you can gather what are probably the best analytics in the world. You can get some analytics on where people are looking, which articles are being read more, things like that, and convert it into optimized placement, ranking of articles and customizing your local preferences, so maybe you like to get certain type of content more often than other kinds of content.
How do you predict this technology will change our interactions with machines?
I believe it will make devices more human, more intention based. It will make devices look more natural and allow them to respond without mediation. Our devices will understand many things that up until today you had to tell the system explicitly -- like if I can see your face, I will not dim the lights, but if you look away, I will dim the ebook to save power.
If sometimes people feel that what’s in front of them is more human, then I’ve achieved my goal.
What’s your goal for this technology?
The most compelling thing for us as humans is to expect that we will not notice that there is technology behind something. I always used to joke that it’s like the photographer in a wedding. If he’s doing a great job, you don’t notice him, but at the end you have the memories. Eventually you need to forget you have some technology in front of you.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
April 5, 2013
Facebook Home Means You'll Never Check Facebook Again (It'll Check You)
At a press conference Thursday, Facebook unveiled Home, a new smartphone software design it cryptically said “isn't a phone or operating system,” but is “more than just an app” and will deliver a "completely new experience."
That "new experience" doesn’t stop at the phone’s screen. What Home seeks to deliver is not only a Facebook environment for our phones, but also a Facebook environment for our lives.
With Home, Facebook has crossed the line between something people check -- that they have control over, and deploy according to their wishes and needs -- to become something that’s always on, checking in with us, fighting for attention, waving people we know in our face. Rather than a tool we use to talk to others, the phone, thanks to Facebook, has become something that communicates to us. And it’s Facebook that gets to do the talking.
Home, which will be available for download on a handful of smartphones next week, is essentially a Facebook-ified version of Google’s Android operating system, modified by Facebook engineers to place the social network at its core. A flow of updates from the News Feed will be the first thing people see when they turn on their phones -- the newly named “cover feed,” a slideshow of friends’ photos and status updates, will take over the phone’s primary screen, though users can swipe past to access other applications. Home also touts “chat heads,” a feature that brings together texting and messaging, replaces names with Facebook photos and lets users message within any application. Ads will be on their way to the cover feed soon, Facebook conceded. And though the social network didn’t say as much, technology observers, such as Om Malik, have pointed out that Home will let Facebook scoop up even more personal information about everything from our locations to our calls.
The social network has a very specific idea of what we should be doing on our phones and has designed Home to push that mission. The phone "[puts] people first," Facebook's director of product, Adam Mosseri, explained at Thursday’s press conference, noting that Home’s design purposefully shifted the focus "away from tasks and apps."
Seen one way, Home makes communication with loved ones more seamless, more fluid. Seen another, however, Home lets Facebook ensure we don’t have bothersome news readers, workout trackers or even work emails -- those irksome apps and tasks -- distracting us from Facebook.
All tech companies want us to spend more time with their products. But Facebook is unique in that its fortunes depend on convincing us to pay attention to it over all else, and it just invited itself to be the DNA of our most personal device, which we carry with us, on average, all but two hours of our waking day. Google, Apple and Microsoft of course want their users to spend hours with their smartphones and consume liberally from the ecosystem of content they have for sale. Yet they compete with each other in no small part to deliver the smartphone software that will be most intuitive, helpful and easy-to-use. Facebook's software isn’t there to necessarily offer the best smartphone software or most intuitive design, but to offer the best version of Facebook, one that more quickly and permanently attracts our attention.
Facebook doesn’t just want us to spend time on its phone. It wants you to spend time on Facebook. Home is strategically designed to grab our attention, with mewling chat heads and rotating pictures of our friends, and to make everything it shows more interesting than whatever you see around you. Phones can still be slipped into pockets and darkened, but for Home adopters, Facebook will be the first thing they see when they pick up their phones -- on average, we do so 100 times a day -- and Mark Zuckerberg expects we’ll be enthralled by what his social network sends to our screens. Our phone, more than ever, now has an agenda.
“From the moment you wake up your phone, you become immersed in cover feed,” a Facebook press release promised. Take out “your phone,” and we might have a sense of what else Facebook has in mind.
Mark Zuckerberg dismissed concerns that Home would distract people from their surroundings or from being in the moment with the people around them.
"Whether or not communicating online disconnects you from people offline ... I think that’s overblown," Zuckerberg said, according to TechCrunch. "With Facebook and other tools, you can stay connected and get more context from more people."
And yet Facebook’s advertisements for Home show people checking their screens at dinner parties, sprawled on the couch with a friend and even while in bed with a loved one. Even the name raises questions: Does Home reference the fact that Facebook has found its home on phones? Or is Home supposed to be our home?
Clifford Nass, a Stanford University professor and expert in human-machine interaction, observed in an interview last month that companies have been wielding an ever-more powerful arsenal of tools in the fight for our attention, and Home would appear to be the latest weapon. Although it’s too soon to predict how Facebook’s innovation may shift our eyes, Nass’ research has shown that the high-tech war for our time is leading us to multitask with greater frequency, which in turn is injuring our ability to focus and think deeply.
“The way to make money in media is to sell attention. You have to fight and claw and do all these things to get attention. And the more media there is, the more you have to compete, so it’s an arms race, with everyone competing harder and harder to grab people’s attention,” Nass said. That “arms race” drives multitasking and, Nass explained, “If we’re breeding a world in which people chronically multitask, that has very, very worrisome and serious effects on people’s brains.”
Home will also be free to interrupt its regularly-scheduled broadcast with a word from its sponsors, Facebook confirmed, bringing ads ever more directly into our personal space and consciousness. Facebook could theoretically let Bank of America “poke” people when they’re near a branch, or, by comparing our location to the content in our cover feed, assure J.C. Penney that we stepped into its store moments after seeing its ad rotate through the phone’s screen.
Facebook’s phone ties what we’re doing in real life to what we’re doing on Facebook. It even promises to go both ways, so what we do on Facebook could change what we’re doing in real life.
That "new experience" doesn’t stop at the phone’s screen. What Home seeks to deliver is not only a Facebook environment for our phones, but also a Facebook environment for our lives.
With Home, Facebook has crossed the line between something people check -- that they have control over, and deploy according to their wishes and needs -- to become something that’s always on, checking in with us, fighting for attention, waving people we know in our face. Rather than a tool we use to talk to others, the phone, thanks to Facebook, has become something that communicates to us. And it’s Facebook that gets to do the talking.
Home, which will be available for download on a handful of smartphones next week, is essentially a Facebook-ified version of Google’s Android operating system, modified by Facebook engineers to place the social network at its core. A flow of updates from the News Feed will be the first thing people see when they turn on their phones -- the newly named “cover feed,” a slideshow of friends’ photos and status updates, will take over the phone’s primary screen, though users can swipe past to access other applications. Home also touts “chat heads,” a feature that brings together texting and messaging, replaces names with Facebook photos and lets users message within any application. Ads will be on their way to the cover feed soon, Facebook conceded. And though the social network didn’t say as much, technology observers, such as Om Malik, have pointed out that Home will let Facebook scoop up even more personal information about everything from our locations to our calls.
The social network has a very specific idea of what we should be doing on our phones and has designed Home to push that mission. The phone "[puts] people first," Facebook's director of product, Adam Mosseri, explained at Thursday’s press conference, noting that Home’s design purposefully shifted the focus "away from tasks and apps."
Seen one way, Home makes communication with loved ones more seamless, more fluid. Seen another, however, Home lets Facebook ensure we don’t have bothersome news readers, workout trackers or even work emails -- those irksome apps and tasks -- distracting us from Facebook.
All tech companies want us to spend more time with their products. But Facebook is unique in that its fortunes depend on convincing us to pay attention to it over all else, and it just invited itself to be the DNA of our most personal device, which we carry with us, on average, all but two hours of our waking day. Google, Apple and Microsoft of course want their users to spend hours with their smartphones and consume liberally from the ecosystem of content they have for sale. Yet they compete with each other in no small part to deliver the smartphone software that will be most intuitive, helpful and easy-to-use. Facebook's software isn’t there to necessarily offer the best smartphone software or most intuitive design, but to offer the best version of Facebook, one that more quickly and permanently attracts our attention.
Facebook doesn’t just want us to spend time on its phone. It wants you to spend time on Facebook. Home is strategically designed to grab our attention, with mewling chat heads and rotating pictures of our friends, and to make everything it shows more interesting than whatever you see around you. Phones can still be slipped into pockets and darkened, but for Home adopters, Facebook will be the first thing they see when they pick up their phones -- on average, we do so 100 times a day -- and Mark Zuckerberg expects we’ll be enthralled by what his social network sends to our screens. Our phone, more than ever, now has an agenda.
“From the moment you wake up your phone, you become immersed in cover feed,” a Facebook press release promised. Take out “your phone,” and we might have a sense of what else Facebook has in mind.
Mark Zuckerberg dismissed concerns that Home would distract people from their surroundings or from being in the moment with the people around them.
"Whether or not communicating online disconnects you from people offline ... I think that’s overblown," Zuckerberg said, according to TechCrunch. "With Facebook and other tools, you can stay connected and get more context from more people."
And yet Facebook’s advertisements for Home show people checking their screens at dinner parties, sprawled on the couch with a friend and even while in bed with a loved one. Even the name raises questions: Does Home reference the fact that Facebook has found its home on phones? Or is Home supposed to be our home?
Clifford Nass, a Stanford University professor and expert in human-machine interaction, observed in an interview last month that companies have been wielding an ever-more powerful arsenal of tools in the fight for our attention, and Home would appear to be the latest weapon. Although it’s too soon to predict how Facebook’s innovation may shift our eyes, Nass’ research has shown that the high-tech war for our time is leading us to multitask with greater frequency, which in turn is injuring our ability to focus and think deeply.
“The way to make money in media is to sell attention. You have to fight and claw and do all these things to get attention. And the more media there is, the more you have to compete, so it’s an arms race, with everyone competing harder and harder to grab people’s attention,” Nass said. That “arms race” drives multitasking and, Nass explained, “If we’re breeding a world in which people chronically multitask, that has very, very worrisome and serious effects on people’s brains.”
Home will also be free to interrupt its regularly-scheduled broadcast with a word from its sponsors, Facebook confirmed, bringing ads ever more directly into our personal space and consciousness. Facebook could theoretically let Bank of America “poke” people when they’re near a branch, or, by comparing our location to the content in our cover feed, assure J.C. Penney that we stepped into its store moments after seeing its ad rotate through the phone’s screen.
Facebook’s phone ties what we’re doing in real life to what we’re doing on Facebook. It even promises to go both ways, so what we do on Facebook could change what we’re doing in real life.
April 1, 2013
Nuance Voice Ads Can Talk With You, Ask You Questions And ID Your Gender
For years, ads have screamed in our direction in an effort to get our attention. Nuance Communications hopes its latest offerings will get us to stop plugging our ears -- and even to talk back.
Nuance, a provider of speech recognition and language technology, on Monday announced a new ad format, Nuance Voice Ads, that allows consumers to carry on spoken conversations with mobile advertisements.
Nuance’s push for more interactive ads underscores the challenge marketers face in delivering their messages on small smartphone screens that give them only a few inches of space (if that) to make an impression. Facebook and Twitter, for example, have redesigned their applications and websites to help brands bring their sponsored photos and videos to the fore.
Yet unlike images and videos, Nuance’s Voice Ads won’t settle for being seen and heard. They also demand to be spoken to.
“It’s sort of like a little slice of a virtual assistant application,” said Nuance chief marketing officer Peter Mahoney. “It’s designed to engage you so you can literally have a direct conversation with a brand.”
In a demonstration of the technology, Nuance showed how a fictional deodorant company, dubbed "Alpha," could use Voice Ads to create an spot featuring a chatty Magic 8 Ball that answers questions and dispenses advice, all while working in the company’s tagline and staying loyal to the brand’s image.
Ask the Magic 8 Ball, "Should I go to work today?" and a male voice answers, "Do you want to?"
No.
"Um, duh, don't go," the ad answers. "But on the off chance that you run into someone in person, use Alpha. Smells like money in the bank."
Though the deodorant example is more fun than functional, the Voice Ads could be designed to offer coupons or dispense practical information about a product. Nuance’s speech recognition technology can also distinguish the speaker’s gender, so it could tailor the ad copy to either women or men, in real time, depending on who’s speaking.
Mahoney said that since the ads can ask questions in a conversational and friendly way, Voice Ads would not only be able to get a user's attention, but collect personal information as well.
“There are some really interesting applications for ads that have a data gathering or survey application,” he said. “You could imagine seeing an ad for a coffee shop that says, ‘Hey I can give you free drink coupon. What’s your favorite coffee?’ And you could say, ‘I would like a double mocha chai.’ And it would understand what that was and say, ‘Let me give you a coupon for one of those that you like.’”
“The data is really valuable, of course, for the brand, because they want to know what people like,” Mahoney added. “And that creates loyalty for people because they feel like it’s great customer service.”
Voice Ads are currently designed to appear within advertising on mobile apps, such as the banner ads that appear at the top of free games. According to Mahoney, the company could eventually expand the technology to other devices, including televisions or even cars, where radio commercials might one day be able to carry on a conversation. He estimates that Voice Ads are two to three months away from appearing on consumers' phones.
Marketing experts agree that the first brands to incorporate Nuance’s Voice Ads will benefit from the sheer novelty of the approach. But Nuance's more interactive audio advertising could also be more intrusive. Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm, argues that people are often on their smartphones in settings where it would be inappropriate to talk out loud.
“Smartphones are largely meant for browsing and for time-wasting, and people use smartphones in many, many situations that are not appropriate for talking,” said Lieb. “When you think about serving the right ad to the right person at the right time, this is not always going to be [it], because voice interaction is not always going to be desirable or possible for smartphone users.”
And do people really want to talk to the ads they so often try to ignore?
The appeal of Voice Ads -- and whether the technology can become an indispensable offering -- will ultimately depend on how advertisers incorporate them. Nuance is partnering with several ad agencies, such as Leo Burnett, Digitas and OMD, and a handful of mobile advertising firms, including Millennial Media, Jumptap and Opera Mediaworks, to persuade companies to adopt the new form of chatty marketing.
“To some this will be annoying and gimmicky no matter how it’s deployed,” said Chuck Martin, chief executive of the Mobile Future Institute, a research firm. “But it can evolve to be useful because now that the capability exists, marketers will figure out how to best use it."
Nuance, a provider of speech recognition and language technology, on Monday announced a new ad format, Nuance Voice Ads, that allows consumers to carry on spoken conversations with mobile advertisements.
Nuance’s push for more interactive ads underscores the challenge marketers face in delivering their messages on small smartphone screens that give them only a few inches of space (if that) to make an impression. Facebook and Twitter, for example, have redesigned their applications and websites to help brands bring their sponsored photos and videos to the fore.
Yet unlike images and videos, Nuance’s Voice Ads won’t settle for being seen and heard. They also demand to be spoken to.
“It’s sort of like a little slice of a virtual assistant application,” said Nuance chief marketing officer Peter Mahoney. “It’s designed to engage you so you can literally have a direct conversation with a brand.”
In a demonstration of the technology, Nuance showed how a fictional deodorant company, dubbed "Alpha," could use Voice Ads to create an spot featuring a chatty Magic 8 Ball that answers questions and dispenses advice, all while working in the company’s tagline and staying loyal to the brand’s image.
Ask the Magic 8 Ball, "Should I go to work today?" and a male voice answers, "Do you want to?"
No.
"Um, duh, don't go," the ad answers. "But on the off chance that you run into someone in person, use Alpha. Smells like money in the bank."
Though the deodorant example is more fun than functional, the Voice Ads could be designed to offer coupons or dispense practical information about a product. Nuance’s speech recognition technology can also distinguish the speaker’s gender, so it could tailor the ad copy to either women or men, in real time, depending on who’s speaking.
Mahoney said that since the ads can ask questions in a conversational and friendly way, Voice Ads would not only be able to get a user's attention, but collect personal information as well.
“There are some really interesting applications for ads that have a data gathering or survey application,” he said. “You could imagine seeing an ad for a coffee shop that says, ‘Hey I can give you free drink coupon. What’s your favorite coffee?’ And you could say, ‘I would like a double mocha chai.’ And it would understand what that was and say, ‘Let me give you a coupon for one of those that you like.’”
“The data is really valuable, of course, for the brand, because they want to know what people like,” Mahoney added. “And that creates loyalty for people because they feel like it’s great customer service.”
Voice Ads are currently designed to appear within advertising on mobile apps, such as the banner ads that appear at the top of free games. According to Mahoney, the company could eventually expand the technology to other devices, including televisions or even cars, where radio commercials might one day be able to carry on a conversation. He estimates that Voice Ads are two to three months away from appearing on consumers' phones.
Marketing experts agree that the first brands to incorporate Nuance’s Voice Ads will benefit from the sheer novelty of the approach. But Nuance's more interactive audio advertising could also be more intrusive. Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm, argues that people are often on their smartphones in settings where it would be inappropriate to talk out loud.
“Smartphones are largely meant for browsing and for time-wasting, and people use smartphones in many, many situations that are not appropriate for talking,” said Lieb. “When you think about serving the right ad to the right person at the right time, this is not always going to be [it], because voice interaction is not always going to be desirable or possible for smartphone users.”
And do people really want to talk to the ads they so often try to ignore?
The appeal of Voice Ads -- and whether the technology can become an indispensable offering -- will ultimately depend on how advertisers incorporate them. Nuance is partnering with several ad agencies, such as Leo Burnett, Digitas and OMD, and a handful of mobile advertising firms, including Millennial Media, Jumptap and Opera Mediaworks, to persuade companies to adopt the new form of chatty marketing.
“To some this will be annoying and gimmicky no matter how it’s deployed,” said Chuck Martin, chief executive of the Mobile Future Institute, a research firm. “But it can evolve to be useful because now that the capability exists, marketers will figure out how to best use it."
March 27, 2013
Siri vs. Xiao i Robot, The Chatty Chinese Assistant Apple's Accused Of Copying
Apple has seen its phones, tablets and even stores cloned in China. But this week, it was a Chinese firm fingering Apple as the copycat.
Shanghai's Zhizhen Internet Technology Co. Ltd. appeared before a Shanghai court on Wednesday to argue that Apple's Siri infringes on patents Zhizhen uses in its own voice-controlled assistant, Xiao i Robot. The virtual assistant can be found on smartphones, TVs, cars, in web browsers and powering call centers, among other applications. According to the company, Xiao i Robot is used by over 100 million people in China.
A Zhizhen spokeswoman told Shanghai Daily that Siri illegally used the "word chat robot system" the Chinese company patented in 2006 -- two years after first applying for the patent, and five years before Apple debuted Siri in 2011. An earlier China Daily story about the lawsuit described the Zhizhen patent in question as covering "a type of instant messaging chat robot system." Before Apple launched the assistant on the iPhone 4S, Siri existed as a standalone app, also called Siri, that a California-based startup began developing in 2007.
"We think Siri infringes our patent right in the word chat. We want them to stop it as everyone can see iPhones and iPads are widely sold in China," the spokeswoman told Shanghai Daily.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zhizhen first brought its suit against Apple in June 2012, when Siri made her debut in China, and the case is slated to be heard in court this coming summer.
A Zhizhen lawyer told the AFP that the company "will ask Apple to stop manufacturing and selling products using its patent rights, once Apple's infringement is confirmed," and may eventually sue for compensation.
So just how similar are the two assistants?
Screenshots of the Xiao i Robot iPhone app on iTunes suggest the assistant doesn't bear too much of a resemblance to Apple's. However, videos showing Zhizhen's assistant on an Android phone and running the app on a Lenovo handset suggest a Siri twin.
It's unclear which app came first, or if the two were in fact developed simultaneously. Given Apple's emphasis on design and aggressive trademark maneuvering, it seems a bit of a stretch to argue they directly copied an existing app for a flagship product. And, a video uploaded five months ago that purports to show Xiao i Robot on an HTC phone pictures an interface that looks nothing like Siri's.
However, certain features of Apple and Zhizhen's assistants do share certain qualities, according to online videos:
They look alike: Xiao i Robot is personified by a yellow, bobble-headed cartoon figure -- where Apple has eschewed any sort of avatar for Siri. Yet videos shared online picturing the Xiao i Robot in action show an app that looks nearly indistinguishable from Apple's own once a user begins speaking with it. Like Siri, Xiao i Robot appears as a small microphone in a silver circle that flashes to indicate it's thinking about an answer. And when asked for restaurant suggestions or information about the weather report, it will offer pictures or graphics along with a spoken answer.
Xiao i Robot in action.
They sound the same: Both assistants answer in a female voice, and both chime twice to show they're listening. They also reply via identical speech bubbles.
They can complete similar tasks: According to the description of the Xiao i Robot iPhone app, Zhizhen's assistant finds restaurants, places calls, checks the weather, offers flight updates and train schedules, gives directions and looks up all manner of facts -- from the latest stock quotes and exchange rates to biographical information for people like Lee Kai-Fu.
They both have some attitude: Siri may have met her sassy Chinese cousin: As this Baidu video (in Chinese) goes to show, Xiao i Robot can carry on a human-like conversation just like Siri (say "You're really smart!" and she'll send back a smiley face) and is able to answer personal questions such as, "Who's your mother?" or "When's your birthday?"
The two could be long-lost virtual twins. So do Xiao i Robot's icons, earcons and speech-bubbles predate Apple's? Or is the company that's accused Apple of stealing actually doing some pilfering of its own?
Shanghai's Zhizhen Internet Technology Co. Ltd. appeared before a Shanghai court on Wednesday to argue that Apple's Siri infringes on patents Zhizhen uses in its own voice-controlled assistant, Xiao i Robot. The virtual assistant can be found on smartphones, TVs, cars, in web browsers and powering call centers, among other applications. According to the company, Xiao i Robot is used by over 100 million people in China.
A Zhizhen spokeswoman told Shanghai Daily that Siri illegally used the "word chat robot system" the Chinese company patented in 2006 -- two years after first applying for the patent, and five years before Apple debuted Siri in 2011. An earlier China Daily story about the lawsuit described the Zhizhen patent in question as covering "a type of instant messaging chat robot system." Before Apple launched the assistant on the iPhone 4S, Siri existed as a standalone app, also called Siri, that a California-based startup began developing in 2007.
"We think Siri infringes our patent right in the word chat. We want them to stop it as everyone can see iPhones and iPads are widely sold in China," the spokeswoman told Shanghai Daily.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zhizhen first brought its suit against Apple in June 2012, when Siri made her debut in China, and the case is slated to be heard in court this coming summer.
A Zhizhen lawyer told the AFP that the company "will ask Apple to stop manufacturing and selling products using its patent rights, once Apple's infringement is confirmed," and may eventually sue for compensation.
So just how similar are the two assistants?
Screenshots of the Xiao i Robot iPhone app on iTunes suggest the assistant doesn't bear too much of a resemblance to Apple's. However, videos showing Zhizhen's assistant on an Android phone and running the app on a Lenovo handset suggest a Siri twin.
It's unclear which app came first, or if the two were in fact developed simultaneously. Given Apple's emphasis on design and aggressive trademark maneuvering, it seems a bit of a stretch to argue they directly copied an existing app for a flagship product. And, a video uploaded five months ago that purports to show Xiao i Robot on an HTC phone pictures an interface that looks nothing like Siri's.
However, certain features of Apple and Zhizhen's assistants do share certain qualities, according to online videos:
They look alike: Xiao i Robot is personified by a yellow, bobble-headed cartoon figure -- where Apple has eschewed any sort of avatar for Siri. Yet videos shared online picturing the Xiao i Robot in action show an app that looks nearly indistinguishable from Apple's own once a user begins speaking with it. Like Siri, Xiao i Robot appears as a small microphone in a silver circle that flashes to indicate it's thinking about an answer. And when asked for restaurant suggestions or information about the weather report, it will offer pictures or graphics along with a spoken answer.
Xiao i Robot in action.
They sound the same: Both assistants answer in a female voice, and both chime twice to show they're listening. They also reply via identical speech bubbles.
They can complete similar tasks: According to the description of the Xiao i Robot iPhone app, Zhizhen's assistant finds restaurants, places calls, checks the weather, offers flight updates and train schedules, gives directions and looks up all manner of facts -- from the latest stock quotes and exchange rates to biographical information for people like Lee Kai-Fu.
They both have some attitude: Siri may have met her sassy Chinese cousin: As this Baidu video (in Chinese) goes to show, Xiao i Robot can carry on a human-like conversation just like Siri (say "You're really smart!" and she'll send back a smiley face) and is able to answer personal questions such as, "Who's your mother?" or "When's your birthday?"
The two could be long-lost virtual twins. So do Xiao i Robot's icons, earcons and speech-bubbles predate Apple's? Or is the company that's accused Apple of stealing actually doing some pilfering of its own?
Jason Scott's Archive Team Is Saving The Web From Itself (And Rescuing Your Stuff)
On Feb. 15, the Archive Team, a loose collective of programmers and netizens, received its equivalent of a 911 call: The founder of Posterous, a blogging platform, announced the site was shutting down -- and taking its users' content down with it.
After years spent convincing people to trust Posterous as the repository for their baby photos, recipes, musings and travelogues, the company gave its over 15 million users just ten weeks to back up their information before it would be permanently deleted.
A handful of Archive Team volunteers quickly convened in a chatroom to figure out -- like they had many times before in similar situations -- how to save Posterous' millions of posts from disappearing with the site itself.
The Internet never forgets, goes the oft-quoted saying. But it erases with ruthless efficiency, and the Archive Team is frequently the only group that will intervene to prevent years of information from being lost.
"[I]t is exceedingly easy for digital objects to become collateral damage as tech companies change and grow," Robin Camille Davis, the emerging technologies and distance services librarian at the Lloyd Sealy Library, wrote in an email. "They [the Archive Team] do an enormous service on behalf of Internet users."
The last two decades have seen an explosion of sites that try to accumulate as much of people's lives as quickly as possible. Yet as the demise of once-humming blogging and photo-sharing services like Posterous and Webshots have revealed, companies often feel little compulsion to preserve the materials they've so effectively extracted. Spooked users are realizing that "forever" often means "for now," and the Archive Team, by backing up sites' data and putting it online for anyone to access, is helping to save individual memories and rescue the history of the web.
The group's work underscores a contradiction in the web world: Decreasing storage costs coupled with the growing quantity of personal information posted online makes it increasingly feasible to store everything, indefinitely, about a moment in time. All that data shouldn't have to be discarded -- but it is, often with little thought and even less recourse.
Doug Reside, a digital curator at the New York Public Library, notes that websites are currently treated as something disposable, -- the same way old manuscripts and artifacts, now valued as important historical documents, were seen in their day. He calls the Archive Team's work “essential.”
“So much of our cultural experience … happens online and is recorded in a digital form that we need to have people who are taking the preservation of that work seriously,” said Reside.
Jason Scott is the creator and outspoken public face of the Archive Team. Depending on the day, he describes his role as “mascot,” “archivist” or “loudmouth.” He's said the group, which has no official status as a business or nonprofit, operates by three virtues: “Rage, paranoia and kleptomania.”
"I'm a bit of a chaos agent in the world," says Scott, who has thick black mutton chops and has been known to show up for conference keynotes in a top hat and tails or, more recently, a medieval leather vest and cape, with a flask of Red Bull strapped to his chest.
Since 2009, Scott and the Archive Team's international group of volunteers, many of whom have never met in person, have been backing up sites just before they're erased. When Yahoo pulled the plug on Geocities, for example, the Archive Team raced to download a decade's worth of fan sites and photos (Scott calls it a "cultural artifact that needed to be saved"). The Archive Team has rescued 498 terabytes of information in total, more than all the web archive data collected by the Library of Congress. Because of privacy concerns, the Archive Team copies only web pages that are publicly available.
A core group, deemed the "Golden Twenty," lead most of the efforts -- though "tourists" can also briefly lend their bandwidth or disk space to the backups. Hundreds of people sometimes contribute to preserving a site, and Scott observes it's "almost like the Red Cross or Burning Man." Once a site has been downloaded, it's re-uploaded to the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization that's creating a kind of Library of Alexandria of the web.
In deciding what sites to save, "We'll ask ourselves, 'What out there, if it went away, would seriously wreck people?'" explains Scott.
Though the demise of Google Reader has seriously wrecked people, the Archive Team hasn't yet found a way to access the data necessary to create a backup of its information. In Scott's view, Google is guilty of more than disappointing its users: In the process of building Google Reader, it effectively crushed rivals and now leaves few alternatives in its wake.
"It's like, 'Thanks for free stuff, but you are murdering markets by doing it," Scott said.
There's a lot that bothers Scott about the way Internet companies behave.
He's dissatisfied with what he perceives as a general disregard for preserving web history and people's personal data. As he sees it, users remain "the most ignored factor in a website."
He's irked by the cheeriness with which entrepreneurs announce that because of an acquisition or change in strategy, terabytes of user data will be deleted. A friend of the Archive Team recently created a Tumblr, “Our Incredible Journey,” that highlights companies' attempts to spin their closure as a blessing for all involved -- though the culmination of a "fun and exciting ride" can mean mass erasure of personal information.
"It sounds like you're holding hands with your userbase on the beach and walking with them into the sunset, when in fact you're choking them to death in the ocean," says Scott. "There's the fake civility written in shutdown messages that reflects people trying to act like somebody who cares."
And Scott especially isn't crazy about startups, which he sees as Archive Team's enemy number one. He says the feeling is mutual.
While "thinking like a startup" has become a mantra inside companies large and small, and startups are cheered for their founders' risk-taking ways, Scott is one of few dissenting voices troubled by the constant reinvention such a mindset entails. The decreasing costs of running and building sites means new products can be born faster. At the same time, they can die off more quickly, too.
"The startup world does not like people like me because their attitude is 'fail often, fail frequently, sell quickly,' and I don't come from that world and I don't like that world," explains Scott. "Startups are not made with a long-term goal. Their goal is to make something that can be sold, and that attitude pervades everywhere: 'Do it for a year and if it's not working, kill it.' And I just don't like that because it leads to these unannounced shutdowns and the loss of user content."
Though he notes the Archive Team doesn't frequently face resistance from the sites it tries to download, Scott recently clashed with the founder of Punchfork, a recipe-sharing site, over the Archive Team's move to copy user data before the service's closure. Punchfork's Jeff Miller tweeted at Scott asking the Archive Team to back off. Miller was "archiving my own user's data for them [sic]," he said, though he hadn't specified as much in announcing the startup's sale and pending shutdown.
The Archive Team went ahead with their work. Neither Miller nor Punchfork responded to a request for comment.
Privacy and policy experts see few causes for immediate concern in the Archive Team's work. Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, notes that copyright issues or privacy complaints could theoretically arise -- but said the group's efforts so far have provided a helpful service.
"You could imagine situations where individuals might object to hypothetical instances of archiving in the future," said Sanchez. "But I'd assume that the much more common response would just be that users of these sites -- and everyone else who gets benefit from that information -- would regard it as a great boon to not suddenly lose access to years' worth of material they anticipated would be available indefinitely."
Scott, despite his grievances, is optimistic that companies will eventually be required to take better care of individuals' digital property.
"The fact is that for user data, we're still smoking in the baby's face. Eventually people will recognize that you can't do this to people," says Scott. “I would love to be put out of business."
After years spent convincing people to trust Posterous as the repository for their baby photos, recipes, musings and travelogues, the company gave its over 15 million users just ten weeks to back up their information before it would be permanently deleted.
A handful of Archive Team volunteers quickly convened in a chatroom to figure out -- like they had many times before in similar situations -- how to save Posterous' millions of posts from disappearing with the site itself.
The Internet never forgets, goes the oft-quoted saying. But it erases with ruthless efficiency, and the Archive Team is frequently the only group that will intervene to prevent years of information from being lost.
"[I]t is exceedingly easy for digital objects to become collateral damage as tech companies change and grow," Robin Camille Davis, the emerging technologies and distance services librarian at the Lloyd Sealy Library, wrote in an email. "They [the Archive Team] do an enormous service on behalf of Internet users."
The last two decades have seen an explosion of sites that try to accumulate as much of people's lives as quickly as possible. Yet as the demise of once-humming blogging and photo-sharing services like Posterous and Webshots have revealed, companies often feel little compulsion to preserve the materials they've so effectively extracted. Spooked users are realizing that "forever" often means "for now," and the Archive Team, by backing up sites' data and putting it online for anyone to access, is helping to save individual memories and rescue the history of the web.
The group's work underscores a contradiction in the web world: Decreasing storage costs coupled with the growing quantity of personal information posted online makes it increasingly feasible to store everything, indefinitely, about a moment in time. All that data shouldn't have to be discarded -- but it is, often with little thought and even less recourse.
Doug Reside, a digital curator at the New York Public Library, notes that websites are currently treated as something disposable, -- the same way old manuscripts and artifacts, now valued as important historical documents, were seen in their day. He calls the Archive Team's work “essential.”
“So much of our cultural experience … happens online and is recorded in a digital form that we need to have people who are taking the preservation of that work seriously,” said Reside.
Jason Scott is the creator and outspoken public face of the Archive Team. Depending on the day, he describes his role as “mascot,” “archivist” or “loudmouth.” He's said the group, which has no official status as a business or nonprofit, operates by three virtues: “Rage, paranoia and kleptomania.”
"I'm a bit of a chaos agent in the world," says Scott, who has thick black mutton chops and has been known to show up for conference keynotes in a top hat and tails or, more recently, a medieval leather vest and cape, with a flask of Red Bull strapped to his chest.
Since 2009, Scott and the Archive Team's international group of volunteers, many of whom have never met in person, have been backing up sites just before they're erased. When Yahoo pulled the plug on Geocities, for example, the Archive Team raced to download a decade's worth of fan sites and photos (Scott calls it a "cultural artifact that needed to be saved"). The Archive Team has rescued 498 terabytes of information in total, more than all the web archive data collected by the Library of Congress. Because of privacy concerns, the Archive Team copies only web pages that are publicly available.
A core group, deemed the "Golden Twenty," lead most of the efforts -- though "tourists" can also briefly lend their bandwidth or disk space to the backups. Hundreds of people sometimes contribute to preserving a site, and Scott observes it's "almost like the Red Cross or Burning Man." Once a site has been downloaded, it's re-uploaded to the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization that's creating a kind of Library of Alexandria of the web.
In deciding what sites to save, "We'll ask ourselves, 'What out there, if it went away, would seriously wreck people?'" explains Scott.
Though the demise of Google Reader has seriously wrecked people, the Archive Team hasn't yet found a way to access the data necessary to create a backup of its information. In Scott's view, Google is guilty of more than disappointing its users: In the process of building Google Reader, it effectively crushed rivals and now leaves few alternatives in its wake.
"It's like, 'Thanks for free stuff, but you are murdering markets by doing it," Scott said.
There's a lot that bothers Scott about the way Internet companies behave.
He's dissatisfied with what he perceives as a general disregard for preserving web history and people's personal data. As he sees it, users remain "the most ignored factor in a website."
He's irked by the cheeriness with which entrepreneurs announce that because of an acquisition or change in strategy, terabytes of user data will be deleted. A friend of the Archive Team recently created a Tumblr, “Our Incredible Journey,” that highlights companies' attempts to spin their closure as a blessing for all involved -- though the culmination of a "fun and exciting ride" can mean mass erasure of personal information.
"It sounds like you're holding hands with your userbase on the beach and walking with them into the sunset, when in fact you're choking them to death in the ocean," says Scott. "There's the fake civility written in shutdown messages that reflects people trying to act like somebody who cares."
And Scott especially isn't crazy about startups, which he sees as Archive Team's enemy number one. He says the feeling is mutual.
While "thinking like a startup" has become a mantra inside companies large and small, and startups are cheered for their founders' risk-taking ways, Scott is one of few dissenting voices troubled by the constant reinvention such a mindset entails. The decreasing costs of running and building sites means new products can be born faster. At the same time, they can die off more quickly, too.
"The startup world does not like people like me because their attitude is 'fail often, fail frequently, sell quickly,' and I don't come from that world and I don't like that world," explains Scott. "Startups are not made with a long-term goal. Their goal is to make something that can be sold, and that attitude pervades everywhere: 'Do it for a year and if it's not working, kill it.' And I just don't like that because it leads to these unannounced shutdowns and the loss of user content."
Though he notes the Archive Team doesn't frequently face resistance from the sites it tries to download, Scott recently clashed with the founder of Punchfork, a recipe-sharing site, over the Archive Team's move to copy user data before the service's closure. Punchfork's Jeff Miller tweeted at Scott asking the Archive Team to back off. Miller was "archiving my own user's data for them [sic]," he said, though he hadn't specified as much in announcing the startup's sale and pending shutdown.
The Archive Team went ahead with their work. Neither Miller nor Punchfork responded to a request for comment.
Privacy and policy experts see few causes for immediate concern in the Archive Team's work. Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, notes that copyright issues or privacy complaints could theoretically arise -- but said the group's efforts so far have provided a helpful service.
"You could imagine situations where individuals might object to hypothetical instances of archiving in the future," said Sanchez. "But I'd assume that the much more common response would just be that users of these sites -- and everyone else who gets benefit from that information -- would regard it as a great boon to not suddenly lose access to years' worth of material they anticipated would be available indefinitely."
Scott, despite his grievances, is optimistic that companies will eventually be required to take better care of individuals' digital property.
"The fact is that for user data, we're still smoking in the baby's face. Eventually people will recognize that you can't do this to people," says Scott. “I would love to be put out of business."
March 25, 2013
Googler Julie Pagano Explains Why Women In Tech 'Are Seen Differently'
Adria Richards' tweet denouncing as sexist remarks made by a man at a tech conference has brought out a fierce and angry backlash. Two people have been fired (Richards and the man she accused of making inappropriate comments), Richards has faced a torrent of abuse and threats; and both Richards and her former employer have been on the receiving end of denial of service attacks.
But the controversy has had a more constructive outcome as well: Women are speaking up to share their own tales of slights, sexism and discrimination they've experienced the tech world, bringing attention to problems that often go unreported for fear of ill-will and precisely the kind of backlash Richards has faced.
Silicon Valley has clung to its vision of itself as a meritocratic place where everyone has an equal chance at success and everyone receives the same support. The slew of recent blogs from women in the tech world suggest it's anything but.
Julie Pagano, a software engineer at Google, is just one of several technical women who are sharing their experiences online. Business Insider, which first covered Pagano's post, notes that her comments refer not to Google, but to prior employers.
"I learned early that sometimes being a software engineer means death by 1000 cuts because you don’t have the power to make it stop. Even the tiniest little things add up to something big -- sometimes it’s really death by 1000 paper cuts," writes Pagano. "I’m not the only one covered in bandaids trying to stanch the bleeding and focus on programming because it’s a thing that I love."
In another blog, she writes she realized at a previous job "[t]hat women are seen differently. That homophobia can run rampant. That people will say whatever the hell they want because they think there are no consequences."
In two entries both published on Tumblr on March 24 (neither of which mention Richards explicitly), Pagano describes how the "cuts" started in school, where she felt "discouraged and humiliated in math classes," and recalls that a teacher tried to dissuade her from pursuing an engineering degree in college, advice Pagano ignored. Her courses had few other women, she writes, and she endured a professor's "creepy comments about 'geeky girls' during class."
Conferences, colleagues, and jobs have provided additional challenges and frustrations, writes Pagano, who said she regularly observes double standards and demeaning comments about women being unable to understand or appreciate tech. At a previous job, she says,
Those who argue that the fuss over discrimination against women is overblown and who counter criticisms by saying they've heard few complaints from female colleagues should read Pagano's posts for insights into how difficult it can to call out troubling behavior in the workplace.
Courtney Stanton, a game developer, echoed Pagano's observations in a post on BuzzFeed, observing that though she didn't agree with Richards' decision to tweet a photograph of the man making penis and "dongle" jokes at a tech conference, she also understood that "trying to address the situation privately might not have worked very well, given the barriers to direct reporting that clearly still exist at events like this."
"Historically in the tech community," Stanton writes, "Private is synonymous with 'swept under the rug and ignored.'"
Tech consultant Amanda Blum also weighed in on the matter and, while critical of Richards, says she's sympathetic to her frustration.
"To be clear, I believe the tech industry, of which I am a part, is rampantly sexist," wrote Blum. "It runs so deep and so organic to the industry that even men who would see it in other places don’t recognize it in our insulated world."
(h/t Business Insider)
But the controversy has had a more constructive outcome as well: Women are speaking up to share their own tales of slights, sexism and discrimination they've experienced the tech world, bringing attention to problems that often go unreported for fear of ill-will and precisely the kind of backlash Richards has faced.
Silicon Valley has clung to its vision of itself as a meritocratic place where everyone has an equal chance at success and everyone receives the same support. The slew of recent blogs from women in the tech world suggest it's anything but.
Julie Pagano, a software engineer at Google, is just one of several technical women who are sharing their experiences online. Business Insider, which first covered Pagano's post, notes that her comments refer not to Google, but to prior employers.
"I learned early that sometimes being a software engineer means death by 1000 cuts because you don’t have the power to make it stop. Even the tiniest little things add up to something big -- sometimes it’s really death by 1000 paper cuts," writes Pagano. "I’m not the only one covered in bandaids trying to stanch the bleeding and focus on programming because it’s a thing that I love."
In another blog, she writes she realized at a previous job "[t]hat women are seen differently. That homophobia can run rampant. That people will say whatever the hell they want because they think there are no consequences."
In two entries both published on Tumblr on March 24 (neither of which mention Richards explicitly), Pagano describes how the "cuts" started in school, where she felt "discouraged and humiliated in math classes," and recalls that a teacher tried to dissuade her from pursuing an engineering degree in college, advice Pagano ignored. Her courses had few other women, she writes, and she endured a professor's "creepy comments about 'geeky girls' during class."
Conferences, colleagues, and jobs have provided additional challenges and frustrations, writes Pagano, who said she regularly observes double standards and demeaning comments about women being unable to understand or appreciate tech. At a previous job, she says,
I’m asked to take notes in meetings where I am a technical lead and should be actively participating. Male coworkers make comments about stalking women on facebook and looking at images of booth babes in work meetings (some later apologize). Others say that front-end development isn’t real software engineering. I suspect I’m paid less than male colleagues (perhaps paranoia, perhaps real -- it’s a hard thing to verify). Problems are easiest to resolve by finding a new job -- this is what I do (thankfully the new job is much better). A thousand paper cuts for the working world.
Those who argue that the fuss over discrimination against women is overblown and who counter criticisms by saying they've heard few complaints from female colleagues should read Pagano's posts for insights into how difficult it can to call out troubling behavior in the workplace.
Courtney Stanton, a game developer, echoed Pagano's observations in a post on BuzzFeed, observing that though she didn't agree with Richards' decision to tweet a photograph of the man making penis and "dongle" jokes at a tech conference, she also understood that "trying to address the situation privately might not have worked very well, given the barriers to direct reporting that clearly still exist at events like this."
"Historically in the tech community," Stanton writes, "Private is synonymous with 'swept under the rug and ignored.'"
Tech consultant Amanda Blum also weighed in on the matter and, while critical of Richards, says she's sympathetic to her frustration.
"To be clear, I believe the tech industry, of which I am a part, is rampantly sexist," wrote Blum. "It runs so deep and so organic to the industry that even men who would see it in other places don’t recognize it in our insulated world."
(h/t Business Insider)
