Bianca Bosker's Blog, page 16
March 22, 2013
The Lesson From Google's Evernote Clone: When Tech Companies Rip Each Other Off, You Win
Google CEO Larry Page recently pooh-poohed the idea of imitating other companies. The company's focus, he declared, is tackling "moon shot" projects -- like building self-driving cars, augmented reality spectacles and lightning-fast broadband networks.
"We're one of the bigger companies of the world, and I'd like to see us do more stuff," Page told Wired. "Not just do what somebody else has done, but something new."
Fast forward two months: Google has just unveiled a note-taking, idea-tracking application, Keep, that's a clone of Evernote's own. It seems Google's moonshot endeavors include testing how effectively -- and how quickly -- it can reproduce what somebody else has done.
Even as Google has dreamed up far-out products unlike anything the world has seen, it has also proven itself an eager and aggressive imitator. And contrary to what Page's Wired interview might suggest, Keep is merely the latest in Google's ever-expanding line of clones: Google has copied Dropbox (Google Drive), Groupon (Google Offers), iTunes (Google Play), Apple's App Store (formerly Google Market, now Google Play), Yelp (Google Places) and Bit.ly (Goo.gl). Google Docs, a suite of office software, mimics not only the function of Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint, but has reproduced the color scheme of each. The icon for Google's documents tool is blue, the logo for Google's spreadsheets tool is green, and its PowerPoint-like presentations have a yellow theme, just like Microsoft's.
The disconnect between Page's innovation-or-bust stance and Google's knockoff tendencies highlights a larger tension that permeates the tech world: The companies that tout themselves as the most innovative in the world are also master imitators who regularly rip each other off. And, it turns out, not only do they have to copy, but we should hope they do.
Though a string of experts have argued that imitation and innovation feed off each other, Silicon Valley still traffics in the myth of innovation through a kind of divine intervention, and, more often than not, considers "copy" a dirty word. At the START conference in New York City last week, for example, several startups held a panel titled, "Know your enemy: copycats, competitors and partners." Entrepreneurs and engineers frequently describe their products in ways that suggest their ideas weren't created, they just occurred. And the digerati's favorite buzzword -- "disruption" - only adds to the impression that a new app, gadget or service is the equivalent of an earthquake: an entirely unexpected thing that strikes suddenly, seems to have no exact origin, and, on impact, upends the status quo.
Even as executives denounce their clones, many of the year's most innovative companies (so-called by Fast Company) have been churning out copies faster than you can say "Keep."
Facebook has cloned so many services, including Groupon, Quora, Instagram, Snapchat and Foursquare, that it's become a kind of social media Wal-Mart, offering every communication tool ever imagined. Amazon has replicated Gilt Groupe, Groupon, the App Store and Dropbox, to name just a few. Apple has created its own versions of Skype, BlackBerry Messenger, Instapaper, Dropbox, Foursquare and Postagram, among many others -- and this from the company whose CEO declared, following the verdict in his copyright infringement suit against Samsung, "We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy." It's not only the startups that get copied, either. Big companies are just has happy to steal from each other, as the large number of MacBook clones goes to show.
These tech colossi boast so many users and such economies of scale that imitation is irresistible. But even with their enormous distribution networks, which would seem to virtually guarantee an instant population of users, clones frequently fail to supplant the originals they were meant to replace.
In tech, copying isn't just commonplace: it's crucial.
The clone boom has its roots in the ongoing war over the ecosystem, that digital universe of apps, movies, magazines, books and music that every major tech player is hoping to provide. Because customers no longer only consider the hardware of whatever gadget they buy (but also the world of content which they're signing up to access with that device), every company now wants to be all things to all people.
Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook are turning into the all-expenses-paid cruiseships of the tech world, positioning themselves as a one-stop-shop for every purchase, every storage need and piece of entertainment. If people are downloading music on their phones, every firm wants to have music store. If people are tapping location services to find their friends, then each tech giant wants to have its own way to help people track each other (hence all-but-identical services like Apple's Find My Friends, Google Latitude and Facebook Places).
Of course, all this cloning doesn't mean people aren't also developing new ideas and approaches; it's just that the two are more intertwined than they might seem at first. Innovating can often mean copying better than the other guy, and creating a new-and-improved offering may entail launching a clone with only a slight twist on the original that, though minor, makes all the difference. Facebook, for example, took the Myspace and Friendster models, but had the genius idea to make people use their real names when they signed up. Google followed Yahoo and Microsoft into webmail, but offered accounts with mind-boggling storage space.
While entrepreneurs and chief executives declare war on copycats, the rest of us have reason to cheer them. More copies mean more choice, as well as more competition to create offerings that will delight us. Eventually, all this imitation raises the overall experience, and makes standout features seem standard. Once upon a time, we relied on a dedicated service, like Skype, for our video chatting needs. Now, video chat is built into Gchat, comes pre-installed on every iPhone and is merely an add-on on Facebook's messaging tool.
At the same time, the ease and speed with which companies can copy might push entrepreneurs beyond build-it-flip-it startups that merely offer neat features that are variations on well worn theme, and instead, encourage them to create novel, distinct products, tools, or services that represent landmark innovations. After all, the more ambitious and unprecedented an entrepreneur's deliverables, the more more difficult they may be to replicate.
"We're one of the bigger companies of the world, and I'd like to see us do more stuff," Page told Wired. "Not just do what somebody else has done, but something new."
Fast forward two months: Google has just unveiled a note-taking, idea-tracking application, Keep, that's a clone of Evernote's own. It seems Google's moonshot endeavors include testing how effectively -- and how quickly -- it can reproduce what somebody else has done.
Even as Google has dreamed up far-out products unlike anything the world has seen, it has also proven itself an eager and aggressive imitator. And contrary to what Page's Wired interview might suggest, Keep is merely the latest in Google's ever-expanding line of clones: Google has copied Dropbox (Google Drive), Groupon (Google Offers), iTunes (Google Play), Apple's App Store (formerly Google Market, now Google Play), Yelp (Google Places) and Bit.ly (Goo.gl). Google Docs, a suite of office software, mimics not only the function of Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint, but has reproduced the color scheme of each. The icon for Google's documents tool is blue, the logo for Google's spreadsheets tool is green, and its PowerPoint-like presentations have a yellow theme, just like Microsoft's.
The disconnect between Page's innovation-or-bust stance and Google's knockoff tendencies highlights a larger tension that permeates the tech world: The companies that tout themselves as the most innovative in the world are also master imitators who regularly rip each other off. And, it turns out, not only do they have to copy, but we should hope they do.
Though a string of experts have argued that imitation and innovation feed off each other, Silicon Valley still traffics in the myth of innovation through a kind of divine intervention, and, more often than not, considers "copy" a dirty word. At the START conference in New York City last week, for example, several startups held a panel titled, "Know your enemy: copycats, competitors and partners." Entrepreneurs and engineers frequently describe their products in ways that suggest their ideas weren't created, they just occurred. And the digerati's favorite buzzword -- "disruption" - only adds to the impression that a new app, gadget or service is the equivalent of an earthquake: an entirely unexpected thing that strikes suddenly, seems to have no exact origin, and, on impact, upends the status quo.
Even as executives denounce their clones, many of the year's most innovative companies (so-called by Fast Company) have been churning out copies faster than you can say "Keep."
Facebook has cloned so many services, including Groupon, Quora, Instagram, Snapchat and Foursquare, that it's become a kind of social media Wal-Mart, offering every communication tool ever imagined. Amazon has replicated Gilt Groupe, Groupon, the App Store and Dropbox, to name just a few. Apple has created its own versions of Skype, BlackBerry Messenger, Instapaper, Dropbox, Foursquare and Postagram, among many others -- and this from the company whose CEO declared, following the verdict in his copyright infringement suit against Samsung, "We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy." It's not only the startups that get copied, either. Big companies are just has happy to steal from each other, as the large number of MacBook clones goes to show.
These tech colossi boast so many users and such economies of scale that imitation is irresistible. But even with their enormous distribution networks, which would seem to virtually guarantee an instant population of users, clones frequently fail to supplant the originals they were meant to replace.
In tech, copying isn't just commonplace: it's crucial.
The clone boom has its roots in the ongoing war over the ecosystem, that digital universe of apps, movies, magazines, books and music that every major tech player is hoping to provide. Because customers no longer only consider the hardware of whatever gadget they buy (but also the world of content which they're signing up to access with that device), every company now wants to be all things to all people.
Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook are turning into the all-expenses-paid cruiseships of the tech world, positioning themselves as a one-stop-shop for every purchase, every storage need and piece of entertainment. If people are downloading music on their phones, every firm wants to have music store. If people are tapping location services to find their friends, then each tech giant wants to have its own way to help people track each other (hence all-but-identical services like Apple's Find My Friends, Google Latitude and Facebook Places).
Of course, all this cloning doesn't mean people aren't also developing new ideas and approaches; it's just that the two are more intertwined than they might seem at first. Innovating can often mean copying better than the other guy, and creating a new-and-improved offering may entail launching a clone with only a slight twist on the original that, though minor, makes all the difference. Facebook, for example, took the Myspace and Friendster models, but had the genius idea to make people use their real names when they signed up. Google followed Yahoo and Microsoft into webmail, but offered accounts with mind-boggling storage space.
While entrepreneurs and chief executives declare war on copycats, the rest of us have reason to cheer them. More copies mean more choice, as well as more competition to create offerings that will delight us. Eventually, all this imitation raises the overall experience, and makes standout features seem standard. Once upon a time, we relied on a dedicated service, like Skype, for our video chatting needs. Now, video chat is built into Gchat, comes pre-installed on every iPhone and is merely an add-on on Facebook's messaging tool.
At the same time, the ease and speed with which companies can copy might push entrepreneurs beyond build-it-flip-it startups that merely offer neat features that are variations on well worn theme, and instead, encourage them to create novel, distinct products, tools, or services that represent landmark innovations. After all, the more ambitious and unprecedented an entrepreneur's deliverables, the more more difficult they may be to replicate.
March 21, 2013
Volio Partners With Esquire For App That Turns Any Expert Into A Human Siri
A growing number of virtual assistants, like Siri, have charmed the world with their human characteristics -- they can speak, crack jokes and even get mad.
But Volio, a startup headed by Nuance co-founder Ronald Croen, is flipping that idea on its head with technology that uses artificial intelligence to give humans the characteristics of virtual assistants. With Volio's product, anyone from Oprah to Obama could be summoned instantly on a screen for a one-on-one chat about their area of expertise. It’s the face-to-face conversation, only automated, digitized and scaled.
Volio combines video with natural language processing software that helps computers make sense of human speech. The product lets public figures give the impression they’re available anytime to dispense personalized advice to their fans.
In Esquire magazine’s new "Talk with Esquire" app, the first to feature Volio technology, Esquire fashion director Nick Sullivan, grooming expert Rodney Cutler and drinks guru David Wondrich stand by ready to address readers’ fashion and mixology needs. Tap on Wondrich, and a video of him appears in which he asks, “What’s your favorite type of liquor?” Answer with a sentence like, “You know me I’ll drink nearly anything, so let’s go with vodka,” and Wondrich replies, “Not too picky I see.” The virtual mixologist then proceeds to narrow down a list of drink choices. He’ll ultimately go through the steps required to prepare a cocktail to teach the viewer how it’s done.
Volio’s speech-recognition and language technology allow people to speak normally to Wondrich and have him talk back, enhancing the impression that the Esquire columnist has interrupted his busy schedule for a video chat right then and there.
The app could offer a way to help people feel intimately connected with people they’ve never met -- but care about. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, Volio tries to give people the sense they’re actually looking their idol in the eye.
“It’s an immersive experience that feels different because of the face,” said Croen, Volio's founder and chief executive. “There’s no other place where I'm looking [someone] in the eye [who's] looking at me and effectively giving me the feeling that I’m being heard ... We’ve done user tests that show that’s what people use the most: 'I know its not real but I felt like the person was talking to me.'”
But because of the way they’re built, these virtual experts don’t have a limitless store of knowledge. Like automated call center agents, they’re ultimately available to provide the answers on a very specific set of topics, rather than being able to address any query a reader might come with. Croen notes these aren’t quite "conversations," but rather, the person on the app will “talk about what he came to talk about."
The Volio-powered side of the conversation is composed of snippets of video of the experts speaking. The clips were recorded expressly for the app according to a script outlined by its creators, and are stitched together to give the appearance of a fluid dialog. Since the answers are canned, one can quickly exhaust the expert’s well of advice. If Esquire, or another Volio partner, was to discover that people are frequently asking a question their avatar can’t answer, new responses could be added, but only by re-recording new dialog (preferably with the same backdrop, outfit and lighting as the original to make the addition appear seamless).
In some cases, conversing with the app might be less efficient -- albeit more novel -- than merely doing a Google search for cocktail recipes. And Croen agrees that there are times when it would be faster to find a YouTube video with instructions on making a mojito, rather than chit-chatting with Wondrich. Yet he maintains that the personal, face-to-face nature of the Volio experience will be compelling enough to draw in viewers.
“The interactivity advances the benefit, or there’s an emotional purpose or connection," Croen said. "If you have some benefit in the personalization and in the customization of the conversation ... or if you care about the person because you already know who they are, then this is better."
Croen said that the Volio technology could be used by essentially any public figure or brand seeking to interact with people on a more personal level. He has his sights set on recruiting celebrities, chefs, teachers and companies to offer everything from cooking tips to corporate training.
Eventually, it might even be possible for individuals to take advantage of the startup’s technology, and outsource any undesirable conversations to their own Volio-enhanced alter-egos. Does your aunt wish you’d call more often? Tell her to get in touch with your Volio self.
But Volio, a startup headed by Nuance co-founder Ronald Croen, is flipping that idea on its head with technology that uses artificial intelligence to give humans the characteristics of virtual assistants. With Volio's product, anyone from Oprah to Obama could be summoned instantly on a screen for a one-on-one chat about their area of expertise. It’s the face-to-face conversation, only automated, digitized and scaled.
Volio combines video with natural language processing software that helps computers make sense of human speech. The product lets public figures give the impression they’re available anytime to dispense personalized advice to their fans.
In Esquire magazine’s new "Talk with Esquire" app, the first to feature Volio technology, Esquire fashion director Nick Sullivan, grooming expert Rodney Cutler and drinks guru David Wondrich stand by ready to address readers’ fashion and mixology needs. Tap on Wondrich, and a video of him appears in which he asks, “What’s your favorite type of liquor?” Answer with a sentence like, “You know me I’ll drink nearly anything, so let’s go with vodka,” and Wondrich replies, “Not too picky I see.” The virtual mixologist then proceeds to narrow down a list of drink choices. He’ll ultimately go through the steps required to prepare a cocktail to teach the viewer how it’s done.
Volio’s speech-recognition and language technology allow people to speak normally to Wondrich and have him talk back, enhancing the impression that the Esquire columnist has interrupted his busy schedule for a video chat right then and there.
The app could offer a way to help people feel intimately connected with people they’ve never met -- but care about. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, Volio tries to give people the sense they’re actually looking their idol in the eye.
“It’s an immersive experience that feels different because of the face,” said Croen, Volio's founder and chief executive. “There’s no other place where I'm looking [someone] in the eye [who's] looking at me and effectively giving me the feeling that I’m being heard ... We’ve done user tests that show that’s what people use the most: 'I know its not real but I felt like the person was talking to me.'”
But because of the way they’re built, these virtual experts don’t have a limitless store of knowledge. Like automated call center agents, they’re ultimately available to provide the answers on a very specific set of topics, rather than being able to address any query a reader might come with. Croen notes these aren’t quite "conversations," but rather, the person on the app will “talk about what he came to talk about."
The Volio-powered side of the conversation is composed of snippets of video of the experts speaking. The clips were recorded expressly for the app according to a script outlined by its creators, and are stitched together to give the appearance of a fluid dialog. Since the answers are canned, one can quickly exhaust the expert’s well of advice. If Esquire, or another Volio partner, was to discover that people are frequently asking a question their avatar can’t answer, new responses could be added, but only by re-recording new dialog (preferably with the same backdrop, outfit and lighting as the original to make the addition appear seamless).
In some cases, conversing with the app might be less efficient -- albeit more novel -- than merely doing a Google search for cocktail recipes. And Croen agrees that there are times when it would be faster to find a YouTube video with instructions on making a mojito, rather than chit-chatting with Wondrich. Yet he maintains that the personal, face-to-face nature of the Volio experience will be compelling enough to draw in viewers.
“The interactivity advances the benefit, or there’s an emotional purpose or connection," Croen said. "If you have some benefit in the personalization and in the customization of the conversation ... or if you care about the person because you already know who they are, then this is better."
Croen said that the Volio technology could be used by essentially any public figure or brand seeking to interact with people on a more personal level. He has his sights set on recruiting celebrities, chefs, teachers and companies to offer everything from cooking tips to corporate training.
Eventually, it might even be possible for individuals to take advantage of the startup’s technology, and outsource any undesirable conversations to their own Volio-enhanced alter-egos. Does your aunt wish you’d call more often? Tell her to get in touch with your Volio self.
March 20, 2013
Comment les réseaux sociaux nous font toujours liker et positiver
Que vous le vouliez ou non, vous n'avez pas beaucoup d'options à part "j'aime" pour cet article.
Dans un article récent du New York Times, "Les bonnes nouvelles battent les mauvaises dans les réseaux sociaux", John Tierney a examiné une série d'études en neuroscience et en psychologie sociale ayant enquêté sur le contenu partagé en ligne. Dans leur ensemble, les résultats suggèrent que les bonnes nouvelles se transmettent plus rapidement et à plus de gens, que les informations déprimantes; et Tierney de passer en revue plusieurs explications psychologiques et scientifiques concernant notre comportement, y compris l'imagerie cérébrale, notre besoin d'excitation et des théories sur notre conscience sociale.
Mais il existe un autre facteur clé en jeu que Tierney ne considère pas: les réseaux sociaux sont construits pour faire partager les trucs positifs.
Les réseaux sociaux ont une infrastructure conçue pour distribuer des tope-là et des bravos numériques, il n'est donc pas étonnant que ce soit les bonnes nouvelles qui se répandent si vite et si loin.
Il suffit de regarder le vocabulaire des sites de réseaux sociaux les plus populaires sur Internet. Le langage et les symboles se lisent comme s'ils avaient été écrits par des pom-pom girls soumises à une dose abusive d'amphét': c'est une avalanche de cœurs, d'étoiles et de pouces levés, assortis d'encouragements du genre "j'aime", "favori" ou "digg", et ce quel que soit le contenu. Bien sûr, les gens peuvent poster ce qu'ils souhaitent sur les pages blanches de sites comme Twitter, Tumblr et YouTube, mais les outils pour le partage instantané de contenus joyeux et le langage élogieux ne conviennent guère pour transmettre de tristes nouvelles comme un décès, un viol, ou des catastrophes naturelles.
Le billet de Bianca Bosker se poursuit après la galerie
Après tout, pourriez-vous vraiment "liker" de bonne foi un article à propos de violences conjugales pour le poster sur Facebook? Les sites d'information, y compris le Huffington Post, auront souvent tendance à remplacer le "j'aime" de Facebook avec la touche "recommander" pour les articles au contenu plus sensible, mais même dans ce cas, les lecteurs semblent pouvoir "recommander" un empoisonnement alimentaire fatal ou un terrible tsunami - je me suis aussi rappelée d'une fois, il y a quelques années, où un ami avait posté la nouvelle de sa séparation sur Facebook. Quelqu'un avait alors "liké". "C'est embarrassant", avait commenté mon ami fraîchement célibataire.
Twitter qui, encore plus Facebook, a inventé sa propre terminologie pour partager son contenu, propose aux gens les mêmes options apparemment inoffensives pour tweeter: "favori" ou "retweet". Or, la touche "favori" - une petite étoile qui s'allume en jaune - n'a pas de sens associée à un tweet évoquant, par exemple, une fusillade dans une école; et de fait, les gens s'en prennent souvent aux twitteurs qui taguent en «favoris» des tweets offensants ou controversés. Les retweets en revanche, sont devenus tellement synonymes de louanges que des bios innombrables de Twitter comprennent l'avertissement: "Les retweets ne signifient pas approbation". Re-poster la mauvaise nouvelle de quelqu'un relève plus de l'exploitation que de l'empathie.
C'est surtout le site communautaire Reddit, qui est sous le feu des critiques pour abriter un contenu répugnant à propos de fantasmes de viol, ou plutôt qui semble avoir le jargon le plus neutre de tous: le "vote".
Le billet de Bianca Bosker se poursuit après la galerie
Bien sûr, sur des sites comme Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et Tumblr, il y a toujours la partie "commentaires" - le réceptacle pour les autres réactions, le petit carré qui révèle tous vos autres sentiments par rapport à une histoire, au-delà du "j'aime". Cependant, l'impact fort et éphémère de nos interactions sur les réseaux sociaux freine encore plus la propagation d'histoires tristes, lesquelles demandent tout simplement plus de temps pour être considérées, partagées et discutées. Il n'existe pas d'abréviation genre LOL pour "vraiment bouleversé par ça" (VBPC?). Même pour les gens nés dans l'ère digitale et les accros des réseaux sociaux pros des abréviations Internet, une émoticône ou un emoji à côté d'un post évoquant un scandale, une maladie ou un décès paraît mal venu.
Dans l'ensemble, les médias sociaux se sont surtout efforcés de nous fournir des outils pour transmettre nos succès, faire en sorte que des vidéos rigolotes fassent le buzz, et partager des moments "OMG", tout en ignorant généralement les éléments complexes, et déprimants, qui ne peuvent pas recevoir de cœur ou de pouces levés.
Tierney, et les recherches qu'il cite, auraient aussi tendance à nous attribuer un peu trop de mérite quand à ce que nous décidons de partager, étant donné que les sites communautaires sont socialement conçus pour les choses positives. Leur business model en dépend: il est certain que les marques préfèrent afficher leurs marchandises et leurs slogans à côté de posts à propos de découvertes sensationnelles ou d'animaux surdoués, plutôt que jouxtant des liens sur des fusillades d'école ou des accidents de voiture.
Le triomphe des bonnes nouvelles on-line sur les mauvaises a autant à voir avec ce que les réseaux communautaires souhaitent qu'avec ce que nous voulons.
Après tout, cela fait des années que les utilisateurs de Facebook réclament une touche "j'aime pas". Leur seule façon de la revendiquer passe d'ailleurs par l'affirmatif: la page Facebook "touche J'aime pas" qui réclame de pouvoir utiliser un pouce vers le bas sur les posts des amis, détient plus de 54 000 "J'aime".
VOIR AUSSI
Dans un article récent du New York Times, "Les bonnes nouvelles battent les mauvaises dans les réseaux sociaux", John Tierney a examiné une série d'études en neuroscience et en psychologie sociale ayant enquêté sur le contenu partagé en ligne. Dans leur ensemble, les résultats suggèrent que les bonnes nouvelles se transmettent plus rapidement et à plus de gens, que les informations déprimantes; et Tierney de passer en revue plusieurs explications psychologiques et scientifiques concernant notre comportement, y compris l'imagerie cérébrale, notre besoin d'excitation et des théories sur notre conscience sociale.
Mais il existe un autre facteur clé en jeu que Tierney ne considère pas: les réseaux sociaux sont construits pour faire partager les trucs positifs.
Les réseaux sociaux ont une infrastructure conçue pour distribuer des tope-là et des bravos numériques, il n'est donc pas étonnant que ce soit les bonnes nouvelles qui se répandent si vite et si loin.
Il suffit de regarder le vocabulaire des sites de réseaux sociaux les plus populaires sur Internet. Le langage et les symboles se lisent comme s'ils avaient été écrits par des pom-pom girls soumises à une dose abusive d'amphét': c'est une avalanche de cœurs, d'étoiles et de pouces levés, assortis d'encouragements du genre "j'aime", "favori" ou "digg", et ce quel que soit le contenu. Bien sûr, les gens peuvent poster ce qu'ils souhaitent sur les pages blanches de sites comme Twitter, Tumblr et YouTube, mais les outils pour le partage instantané de contenus joyeux et le langage élogieux ne conviennent guère pour transmettre de tristes nouvelles comme un décès, un viol, ou des catastrophes naturelles.
Le billet de Bianca Bosker se poursuit après la galerie
Après tout, pourriez-vous vraiment "liker" de bonne foi un article à propos de violences conjugales pour le poster sur Facebook? Les sites d'information, y compris le Huffington Post, auront souvent tendance à remplacer le "j'aime" de Facebook avec la touche "recommander" pour les articles au contenu plus sensible, mais même dans ce cas, les lecteurs semblent pouvoir "recommander" un empoisonnement alimentaire fatal ou un terrible tsunami - je me suis aussi rappelée d'une fois, il y a quelques années, où un ami avait posté la nouvelle de sa séparation sur Facebook. Quelqu'un avait alors "liké". "C'est embarrassant", avait commenté mon ami fraîchement célibataire.
Twitter qui, encore plus Facebook, a inventé sa propre terminologie pour partager son contenu, propose aux gens les mêmes options apparemment inoffensives pour tweeter: "favori" ou "retweet". Or, la touche "favori" - une petite étoile qui s'allume en jaune - n'a pas de sens associée à un tweet évoquant, par exemple, une fusillade dans une école; et de fait, les gens s'en prennent souvent aux twitteurs qui taguent en «favoris» des tweets offensants ou controversés. Les retweets en revanche, sont devenus tellement synonymes de louanges que des bios innombrables de Twitter comprennent l'avertissement: "Les retweets ne signifient pas approbation". Re-poster la mauvaise nouvelle de quelqu'un relève plus de l'exploitation que de l'empathie.
C'est surtout le site communautaire Reddit, qui est sous le feu des critiques pour abriter un contenu répugnant à propos de fantasmes de viol, ou plutôt qui semble avoir le jargon le plus neutre de tous: le "vote".
Le billet de Bianca Bosker se poursuit après la galerie
Bien sûr, sur des sites comme Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et Tumblr, il y a toujours la partie "commentaires" - le réceptacle pour les autres réactions, le petit carré qui révèle tous vos autres sentiments par rapport à une histoire, au-delà du "j'aime". Cependant, l'impact fort et éphémère de nos interactions sur les réseaux sociaux freine encore plus la propagation d'histoires tristes, lesquelles demandent tout simplement plus de temps pour être considérées, partagées et discutées. Il n'existe pas d'abréviation genre LOL pour "vraiment bouleversé par ça" (VBPC?). Même pour les gens nés dans l'ère digitale et les accros des réseaux sociaux pros des abréviations Internet, une émoticône ou un emoji à côté d'un post évoquant un scandale, une maladie ou un décès paraît mal venu.
Dans l'ensemble, les médias sociaux se sont surtout efforcés de nous fournir des outils pour transmettre nos succès, faire en sorte que des vidéos rigolotes fassent le buzz, et partager des moments "OMG", tout en ignorant généralement les éléments complexes, et déprimants, qui ne peuvent pas recevoir de cœur ou de pouces levés.
LIRE AUSSI
Reddit le réseau social dont tout le monde va parler
"Spotted": le courrier du cœur version Facebook des étudiants
Faut-il "liker" la journée sans Facebook?
Tierney, et les recherches qu'il cite, auraient aussi tendance à nous attribuer un peu trop de mérite quand à ce que nous décidons de partager, étant donné que les sites communautaires sont socialement conçus pour les choses positives. Leur business model en dépend: il est certain que les marques préfèrent afficher leurs marchandises et leurs slogans à côté de posts à propos de découvertes sensationnelles ou d'animaux surdoués, plutôt que jouxtant des liens sur des fusillades d'école ou des accidents de voiture.
Le triomphe des bonnes nouvelles on-line sur les mauvaises a autant à voir avec ce que les réseaux communautaires souhaitent qu'avec ce que nous voulons.
Après tout, cela fait des années que les utilisateurs de Facebook réclament une touche "j'aime pas". Leur seule façon de la revendiquer passe d'ailleurs par l'affirmatif: la page Facebook "touche J'aime pas" qui réclame de pouvoir utiliser un pouce vers le bas sur les posts des amis, détient plus de 54 000 "J'aime".
VOIR AUSSI
March 19, 2013
Comment les réseaux sociaux nous font toujours "liker" et positiver
RÉSEAUX SOCIAUX - Que vous le vouliez ou non, vous n'avez pas beaucoup d'options à part "j'aime" pour cet article.
Dans un article récent du New York Times, "Les bonnes nouvelles battent les mauvaises dans les réseaux sociaux", John Tierney a examiné une série d'études en neuroscience et en psychologie sociale ayant enquêté sur le contenu partagé en ligne. Dans leur ensemble, les résultats suggèrent que les bonnes nouvelles se transmettent plus rapidement et à plus de gens, que les informations déprimantes; et Tierney de passer en revue plusieurs explications psychologiques et scientifiques concernant notre comportement, y compris l'imagerie cérébrale, notre besoin d'excitation et des théories sur notre conscience sociale.
Mais il existe un autre facteur clé en jeu que Tierney ne considère pas: les réseaux sociaux sont construits pour faire partager les trucs positifs.
Les réseaux sociaux ont une infrastructure conçue pour distribuer des "tope-là" et des bravos numériques, il n'est donc pas étonnant que ce soit les bonnes nouvelles qui se répandent si vite et si loin.
Il suffit de regarder le vocabulaire des sites de réseaux sociaux les plus populaires sur Internet. Le langage et les symboles se lisent comme s'ils avaient été écrits par des pom-pom girls soumises à une dose abusive d'amphét' : c'est une avalanche de cœurs, d'étoiles et de pouces levés, assortis d'encouragements du genre "j'aime", "favori" ou "digg", et ce quel que soit le contenu. Bien sûr, les gens peuvent poster ce qu'ils souhaitent sur les pages blanches de sites comme Twitter, Tumblr et YouTube, mais les outils pour le partage instantané de contenus joyeux et le langage élogieux ne conviennent guère pour transmettre de tristes nouvelles comme un décès, un viol, ou des catastrophes naturelles.
Après tout, pourriez-vous vraiment "liker" de bonne foi un article à propos de violences conjugales pour le poster sur Facebook? Les sites d'information, y compris le Huffington Post, auront souvent tendance à remplacer le "j'aime" de Facebook avec la touche "recommander" pour les articles au contenu plus sensible, mais même en ce cas, les lecteurs semblent pouvoir "recommander" un empoisonnement alimentaire fatal ou un terrible tsunami - je me suis aussi rappelée d'une fois, il y a quelques années, où un ami avait posté la nouvelle de sa séparation sur Facebook. Quelqu'un avait alors "liké". "C'est embarrassant" avait commenté mon ami fraîchement célibataire.
Twitter qui, encore plus Facebook, a inventé sa propre terminologie pour partager son contenu, propose aux gens les mêmes options apparemment inoffensives pour tweeter: "favori" ou "retweet". Or, la touche "favori" -une petite étoile qui s'allume en jaune- n'a pas de sens associée à un tweet évoquant, par exemple, une fusillade dans une école ; et de fait, les gens s'en prennent souvent aux twitteurs qui taguent « favoris » des tweets offensants ou controversés. Les retweets en revanche, sont devenus tellement synonymes de louanges que des bios innombrables de Twitter comprennent l'avertissement: "Les retweets ne signifient pas approbation". Re-poster la mauvaise nouvelle de quelqu'un relève plus de l'exploitation que de l'empathie.
C'est surtout le site communautaire Reddit, qui est sous le feu des critiques pour abriter un contenu répugnant à propos de fantasmes de viol, ou plutôt qui semble avoir le jargon le plus neutre de tous: le "vote".
Bien sûr, sur des sites comme Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et Tumblr, il y a toujours la partie "commentaires" -le réceptacle pour les autres réactions, le petit carré qui révèle tous vos autres sentiments par rapport à une histoire, au-delà du "j'aime". Cependant, l'impact fort et éphémère de nos interactions sur les réseaux sociaux freine encore plus la propagation d'histoires tristes, lesquelles demandent tout simplement plus de temps pour être considérées, partagées et discutées. Il n'existe pas d'abréviation genre LOL pour "vraiment bouleversé par ça" (VBPC ?)? Même pour les gens nés dans l'ère digitale et les accros des réseaux sociaux pros des abréviations Internet, une émoticône ou un emoji à côté d'un post évoquant un scandale, une maladie ou un décès paraît mal venu.
Dans l'ensemble, les médias sociaux se sont surtout efforcés de nous fournir des outils pour transmettre nos succès, faire en sorte que des vidéos rigolotes fassent le buzz, et partager des moments "OMG", tout en ignorant généralement les éléments complexes, et déprimants, qui ne peuvent pas recevoir de cœur ou de pouces levés.
Tierney, et les recherches qu'il cite, auraient aussi tendance à nous attribuer un peu trop de mérite quand à ce que nous décidons de partager, étant donné que les sites communautaires sont socialement conçus pour les choses positives. Leur business model en dépend: il est certain que les marques préfèrent afficher leurs marchandises et leurs slogans à côté de posts à propos de découvertes sensationnelles ou d'animaux surdoués, plutôt que jouxtant des liens sur des fusillades d'école ou des accidents de voiture.
Le triomphe des bonnes nouvelles on-line sur les mauvaises a autant à voir avec ce que les réseaux communautaires souhaitent qu'avec ce que nous voulons.
Après tout, cela fait des années que les utilisateurs de Facebook réclament une touche "j'aime pas". Leur seule façon de la revendiquer passe d'ailleurs par l'affirmatif: la page Facebook "touche J'aime pas" qui réclame de pouvoir utiliser un pouce vers le bas sur les posts des amis, détient plus de 54 000 "J'aime".
Dans un article récent du New York Times, "Les bonnes nouvelles battent les mauvaises dans les réseaux sociaux", John Tierney a examiné une série d'études en neuroscience et en psychologie sociale ayant enquêté sur le contenu partagé en ligne. Dans leur ensemble, les résultats suggèrent que les bonnes nouvelles se transmettent plus rapidement et à plus de gens, que les informations déprimantes; et Tierney de passer en revue plusieurs explications psychologiques et scientifiques concernant notre comportement, y compris l'imagerie cérébrale, notre besoin d'excitation et des théories sur notre conscience sociale.
Mais il existe un autre facteur clé en jeu que Tierney ne considère pas: les réseaux sociaux sont construits pour faire partager les trucs positifs.
Les réseaux sociaux ont une infrastructure conçue pour distribuer des "tope-là" et des bravos numériques, il n'est donc pas étonnant que ce soit les bonnes nouvelles qui se répandent si vite et si loin.
Il suffit de regarder le vocabulaire des sites de réseaux sociaux les plus populaires sur Internet. Le langage et les symboles se lisent comme s'ils avaient été écrits par des pom-pom girls soumises à une dose abusive d'amphét' : c'est une avalanche de cœurs, d'étoiles et de pouces levés, assortis d'encouragements du genre "j'aime", "favori" ou "digg", et ce quel que soit le contenu. Bien sûr, les gens peuvent poster ce qu'ils souhaitent sur les pages blanches de sites comme Twitter, Tumblr et YouTube, mais les outils pour le partage instantané de contenus joyeux et le langage élogieux ne conviennent guère pour transmettre de tristes nouvelles comme un décès, un viol, ou des catastrophes naturelles.
Après tout, pourriez-vous vraiment "liker" de bonne foi un article à propos de violences conjugales pour le poster sur Facebook? Les sites d'information, y compris le Huffington Post, auront souvent tendance à remplacer le "j'aime" de Facebook avec la touche "recommander" pour les articles au contenu plus sensible, mais même en ce cas, les lecteurs semblent pouvoir "recommander" un empoisonnement alimentaire fatal ou un terrible tsunami - je me suis aussi rappelée d'une fois, il y a quelques années, où un ami avait posté la nouvelle de sa séparation sur Facebook. Quelqu'un avait alors "liké". "C'est embarrassant" avait commenté mon ami fraîchement célibataire.
LIRE AUSSI: Reddit le réseau social dont tout le monde va parler
"Spotted": le courrier du cœur version Facebook des étudiants
Faut-il "liker" la journée sans Facebook?
Twitter qui, encore plus Facebook, a inventé sa propre terminologie pour partager son contenu, propose aux gens les mêmes options apparemment inoffensives pour tweeter: "favori" ou "retweet". Or, la touche "favori" -une petite étoile qui s'allume en jaune- n'a pas de sens associée à un tweet évoquant, par exemple, une fusillade dans une école ; et de fait, les gens s'en prennent souvent aux twitteurs qui taguent « favoris » des tweets offensants ou controversés. Les retweets en revanche, sont devenus tellement synonymes de louanges que des bios innombrables de Twitter comprennent l'avertissement: "Les retweets ne signifient pas approbation". Re-poster la mauvaise nouvelle de quelqu'un relève plus de l'exploitation que de l'empathie.
C'est surtout le site communautaire Reddit, qui est sous le feu des critiques pour abriter un contenu répugnant à propos de fantasmes de viol, ou plutôt qui semble avoir le jargon le plus neutre de tous: le "vote".
Bien sûr, sur des sites comme Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et Tumblr, il y a toujours la partie "commentaires" -le réceptacle pour les autres réactions, le petit carré qui révèle tous vos autres sentiments par rapport à une histoire, au-delà du "j'aime". Cependant, l'impact fort et éphémère de nos interactions sur les réseaux sociaux freine encore plus la propagation d'histoires tristes, lesquelles demandent tout simplement plus de temps pour être considérées, partagées et discutées. Il n'existe pas d'abréviation genre LOL pour "vraiment bouleversé par ça" (VBPC ?)? Même pour les gens nés dans l'ère digitale et les accros des réseaux sociaux pros des abréviations Internet, une émoticône ou un emoji à côté d'un post évoquant un scandale, une maladie ou un décès paraît mal venu.
Dans l'ensemble, les médias sociaux se sont surtout efforcés de nous fournir des outils pour transmettre nos succès, faire en sorte que des vidéos rigolotes fassent le buzz, et partager des moments "OMG", tout en ignorant généralement les éléments complexes, et déprimants, qui ne peuvent pas recevoir de cœur ou de pouces levés.
Tierney, et les recherches qu'il cite, auraient aussi tendance à nous attribuer un peu trop de mérite quand à ce que nous décidons de partager, étant donné que les sites communautaires sont socialement conçus pour les choses positives. Leur business model en dépend: il est certain que les marques préfèrent afficher leurs marchandises et leurs slogans à côté de posts à propos de découvertes sensationnelles ou d'animaux surdoués, plutôt que jouxtant des liens sur des fusillades d'école ou des accidents de voiture.
Le triomphe des bonnes nouvelles on-line sur les mauvaises a autant à voir avec ce que les réseaux communautaires souhaitent qu'avec ce que nous voulons.
Après tout, cela fait des années que les utilisateurs de Facebook réclament une touche "j'aime pas". Leur seule façon de la revendiquer passe d'ailleurs par l'affirmatif: la page Facebook "touche J'aime pas" qui réclame de pouvoir utiliser un pouce vers le bas sur les posts des amis, détient plus de 54 000 "J'aime".
Why Happy Beats Sad On Social Media: It's Built That Way
Like it or not, you have little choice but to "like" this.
In a recent New York Times story "Good News Beats Bad on Social Networks," John Tierney examines a series of studies by neuroscientists and social psychologists that probed word-of-mouth sharing online. Taken together, the findings suggest happy news spreads more quickly, to more people, than depressing bulletins, and Tierney trots out several psychological and scientific explanations for our behavior, including brain scans, our need for arousal and theories on our social consciousness.
But there's another key factor at play that Tierney doesn't address: Social networks are engineered to lubricate sharing the happy stuff.
The social web offers an infrastructure designed to facilitate digital back-patting and high-fiving, so it's small wonder it's the good news that travels so far, so fast.
Consider even the vocabulary of the internet's most popular social sites. The language and symbols read like they've been penned by cheerleaders on an unhealthy dose of uppers: It's a mess of hearts, stars and thumbs-ups accompanied by nudges to "like," "favorite" or "digg" whatevers in front of you. Of course people can post what they choose to the blank canvases of sites like Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube, but the tools for instantaneous sharing feature cheery, laudatory language ill-suited for passing along grim news about a deaths, rapes or natural disasters.
After all, can you really in good faith "like" a story about spousal abuse to post it to Facebook? News sites, including The Huffington Post, will often replace Facebook's "like" with a "recommend" button for more sensitive stories, yet even then readers can appear to "recommend" a fatal food poisoning outbreak or disastrous tsunami. (I'm also reminded of a time several years ago when a friend posted about his break-up on Facebook. Someone else "liked" it. "That's awkward," my newly single friend commented in response.)
Twitter, which has, to a greater degree than Facebook, invented its own terminology for sharing, offers people the seemingly innocuous options to tweet, "favorite" or "retweet." The "favorite" button -- a small star that lights up yellow -- seems tone deaf for a tweet about, say, a school shooting, and accordingly people often lash out at Twitterers who make offensive or controversial tweets a "favorite." Retweets in turn have become so synonymous with a kind of digital pat-on-the-back that countless Twitter bios include the caveat, "retweets are not endorsements." Re-posting someone's bad news feels more exploitative than empathetic.
It's actually Reddit, the social site that takes more heat than any other for hosting unsavory content about rape fantasies or, that seems to have the most neutral sharing lingo of all: the "upvote."
Of course, on sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr, there's always the comment box -- the repository for all other reactions, the small square in which to reflect on all the other things you felt for a story, besides "like." Yet the high-impact, short-duration nature of our interactions on social networks further hinder the spread of sob stories, which simply take more time to consider, share and talk about, given the additional context that's frequently necessary. There's no LOL-like shorthand for "really upset by this" (RUBT?). Even for digital natives and social media addicts fluent in internet shorthand, an emoticon or Emoji next to a post about scandal, sickness or death seems crass.
By and large, social media services have focused on providing us with the tools to spread our successes, make funny videos go viral and share OMG moments, while essentially ignoring the messy, depressing stuff that can't be "heart"-ed or given the thumbs-up.
Tierney, and the research he cites, may be giving us altogether too much credit in the matter of deciding what we share, given that social sites are socially engineered for the good stuff. Their business models depend on it: Brands no doubt prefer to display their wares and brand messages next to posts about miracle breakthroughs and genius animals, rather than by links about school shootings or car crashes.
The triumph of good news over bad online has every bit as much to do with what social networks want as it does with what we want.
After all, for years, Facebook users have clamored for a "dislike" button. Their only way to demand it is through the affirmative: The "Dislike Button" Facebook page, which demands a way to give friends' posts the thumbs down, has over 54,000 likes.
In a recent New York Times story "Good News Beats Bad on Social Networks," John Tierney examines a series of studies by neuroscientists and social psychologists that probed word-of-mouth sharing online. Taken together, the findings suggest happy news spreads more quickly, to more people, than depressing bulletins, and Tierney trots out several psychological and scientific explanations for our behavior, including brain scans, our need for arousal and theories on our social consciousness.
But there's another key factor at play that Tierney doesn't address: Social networks are engineered to lubricate sharing the happy stuff.
The social web offers an infrastructure designed to facilitate digital back-patting and high-fiving, so it's small wonder it's the good news that travels so far, so fast.
Consider even the vocabulary of the internet's most popular social sites. The language and symbols read like they've been penned by cheerleaders on an unhealthy dose of uppers: It's a mess of hearts, stars and thumbs-ups accompanied by nudges to "like," "favorite" or "digg" whatevers in front of you. Of course people can post what they choose to the blank canvases of sites like Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube, but the tools for instantaneous sharing feature cheery, laudatory language ill-suited for passing along grim news about a deaths, rapes or natural disasters.
After all, can you really in good faith "like" a story about spousal abuse to post it to Facebook? News sites, including The Huffington Post, will often replace Facebook's "like" with a "recommend" button for more sensitive stories, yet even then readers can appear to "recommend" a fatal food poisoning outbreak or disastrous tsunami. (I'm also reminded of a time several years ago when a friend posted about his break-up on Facebook. Someone else "liked" it. "That's awkward," my newly single friend commented in response.)
Twitter, which has, to a greater degree than Facebook, invented its own terminology for sharing, offers people the seemingly innocuous options to tweet, "favorite" or "retweet." The "favorite" button -- a small star that lights up yellow -- seems tone deaf for a tweet about, say, a school shooting, and accordingly people often lash out at Twitterers who make offensive or controversial tweets a "favorite." Retweets in turn have become so synonymous with a kind of digital pat-on-the-back that countless Twitter bios include the caveat, "retweets are not endorsements." Re-posting someone's bad news feels more exploitative than empathetic.
It's actually Reddit, the social site that takes more heat than any other for hosting unsavory content about rape fantasies or, that seems to have the most neutral sharing lingo of all: the "upvote."
Of course, on sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr, there's always the comment box -- the repository for all other reactions, the small square in which to reflect on all the other things you felt for a story, besides "like." Yet the high-impact, short-duration nature of our interactions on social networks further hinder the spread of sob stories, which simply take more time to consider, share and talk about, given the additional context that's frequently necessary. There's no LOL-like shorthand for "really upset by this" (RUBT?). Even for digital natives and social media addicts fluent in internet shorthand, an emoticon or Emoji next to a post about scandal, sickness or death seems crass.
By and large, social media services have focused on providing us with the tools to spread our successes, make funny videos go viral and share OMG moments, while essentially ignoring the messy, depressing stuff that can't be "heart"-ed or given the thumbs-up.
Tierney, and the research he cites, may be giving us altogether too much credit in the matter of deciding what we share, given that social sites are socially engineered for the good stuff. Their business models depend on it: Brands no doubt prefer to display their wares and brand messages next to posts about miracle breakthroughs and genius animals, rather than by links about school shootings or car crashes.
The triumph of good news over bad online has every bit as much to do with what social networks want as it does with what we want.
After all, for years, Facebook users have clamored for a "dislike" button. Their only way to demand it is through the affirmative: The "Dislike Button" Facebook page, which demands a way to give friends' posts the thumbs down, has over 54,000 likes.
March 17, 2013
Ex-CEO John Sculley On Apple's Innovation 'Lull'
John Sculley served as chief executive of Apple between 1983 and 1993, during which time he oversaw the ousting of Steve Jobs and a tenfold increase in Apple's sales. Sculley left Apple in 1994 -- Jobs returned several years later -- and the former Apple executive is currently managing an investment firm with his two brothers, advising entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley to Singapore and focusing on developments in health care.
HuffPost spoke with Sculley about the state of innovation at Apple, what might be coming next and the advice he gives to all entrepreneurs.
You wrote in a blog post earlier this year that Steve Jobs invented a kind of predecessor to the iPhone -- the Mac Phone -- in the 1980s. Are there any other concepts he toyed with that might materialize?
If he were alive today, I suspect he’d be really fascinated about what’s happening with sensors. When you look at the ability to capture all kinds of information with sensors and then customize services back to individuals, that is so Steve Jobs. That’s the kind of thing he’d have salivated over.
I think the next big area of product [innovation] is probably not around a television, as many are speculating -- actually, Apple TV is pretty good right now. I think it will be around wearable sensor-type products.
In a recent interview, you observed that Apple is experiencing a “lull in innovation.” What do you attribute that to? And how can Apple emerge from that?
I don’t think that it’s because Apple has lost its ability to innovate. My guess is that it has nothing to do with Apple at all, but with the current stage of technology.
Moore’s law has been completely predictable for 40 years. You really need about a generation between each of [the] big innovations and the big innovation we’re going through now is all about cloud computing. You can only surf the big wave when there are big waves, and there are moments when technology is poised for innovators to come in and do something spectacular, and then there are other moments when you just have to play out an opportunity and wait for next big wave to come along.
So what’s the next “big wave”?
Right now the big wave is mobile video. It’s suddenly practical to do very high quality video wirelessly over mobile devices and we’re just in the early days of that. And right after that comes wearable sensors with big data analytics that will get mined by innovative companies
There are just moments when all the stars are aligned for breakthrough products. Steve had a tremendous talent to be able to spot those ahead of everyone. The question is, who is going be the one to spot the next big trend, the alignment of stars? I’d bet my money on [Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple] Jony Ive being the person to spot that.
This is the first time since your tenure as CEO -- and the period immediately following it -- that Apple has operated without Steve Jobs. What’s your advice to the company?
Steve left behind a great vision for Apple, a great culture and an extraordinarily talented executive team, so this is not a company in trouble, and I think Apple is getting unfairly beaten up.
Apple is now being challenged by the combination of Samsung and Google. I have the iPhone and iPad and Galaxy Note. Apple makes really good products, and Samsung makes really good products. It’s really a two-horse race. Where I think Apple is exposed: the price points of Apple’s products are just so high by comparison with Samsung’s. My sense is that there’s a big opportunity that Apple is either going to miss if it doesn’t bring out lower-priced products for emerging markets, or that it can end up getting and becoming huge success story if does.
In 1987, you helped develop the concept for Knowledge Navigator, which many have compared to Siri. What do you imagine the Knowledge Navigator of, say, 2030 looking like?
I suspect in that era it will be less about a product you pick up and hold in your hand like smartphone. It’ll be much more about you being personally connected to a system where things happening passively. We’ve been going through this active stage where you have to tap a screen, speak to a computer, or look at screen, and we’re so conditioned that that’s what computing is about. But we may soon be in an era where you don’t do anything, but there’ll be tech around you monitoring your health, making judgments about what it believes you like and protecting your safety.
You're presently working with several health care startups. What do you foresee will be the biggest change that tech catalyzes in the world of medicine?
The change will be even bigger than what we've seen with online banking or e-commerce. Health care missed the PC and Internet revolutions, but it can’t afford to miss the cloud and mobile revolution.
Sensors are at the early days of what they’ll be able to do. You're going to be able to track anything you can think of from a health standpoint. If you're driving a car, it will be totally practical in the next 5 to 10 years that you'll be able to evaluate someone’s health conditions just by monitoring them as they ride around in the car.
There will be major, big-brand consumer health services that will become institutions that everyone takes for granted. I'm confident that in health care we'll see consumer-branded institutions every bit as big as Walmart or McDonald's, but this time focused on health and wellness instead of selling products.
You mentioned you're now "mentoring" several startups. What’s the most important advice you give to entrepreneurs?
The easy part is getting the vision, getting people to believe in it, recruiting talent and raising money. The hard part is that disruptive innovation takes place on the edges of transformation, and it’s a thin line between success and failure. The most important skill of all is the ability to adapt and recover.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
HuffPost spoke with Sculley about the state of innovation at Apple, what might be coming next and the advice he gives to all entrepreneurs.
You wrote in a blog post earlier this year that Steve Jobs invented a kind of predecessor to the iPhone -- the Mac Phone -- in the 1980s. Are there any other concepts he toyed with that might materialize?
If he were alive today, I suspect he’d be really fascinated about what’s happening with sensors. When you look at the ability to capture all kinds of information with sensors and then customize services back to individuals, that is so Steve Jobs. That’s the kind of thing he’d have salivated over.
I think the next big area of product [innovation] is probably not around a television, as many are speculating -- actually, Apple TV is pretty good right now. I think it will be around wearable sensor-type products.
In a recent interview, you observed that Apple is experiencing a “lull in innovation.” What do you attribute that to? And how can Apple emerge from that?
I don’t think that it’s because Apple has lost its ability to innovate. My guess is that it has nothing to do with Apple at all, but with the current stage of technology.
Moore’s law has been completely predictable for 40 years. You really need about a generation between each of [the] big innovations and the big innovation we’re going through now is all about cloud computing. You can only surf the big wave when there are big waves, and there are moments when technology is poised for innovators to come in and do something spectacular, and then there are other moments when you just have to play out an opportunity and wait for next big wave to come along.
So what’s the next “big wave”?
Right now the big wave is mobile video. It’s suddenly practical to do very high quality video wirelessly over mobile devices and we’re just in the early days of that. And right after that comes wearable sensors with big data analytics that will get mined by innovative companies
There are just moments when all the stars are aligned for breakthrough products. Steve had a tremendous talent to be able to spot those ahead of everyone. The question is, who is going be the one to spot the next big trend, the alignment of stars? I’d bet my money on [Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple] Jony Ive being the person to spot that.
This is the first time since your tenure as CEO -- and the period immediately following it -- that Apple has operated without Steve Jobs. What’s your advice to the company?
Steve left behind a great vision for Apple, a great culture and an extraordinarily talented executive team, so this is not a company in trouble, and I think Apple is getting unfairly beaten up.
Apple is now being challenged by the combination of Samsung and Google. I have the iPhone and iPad and Galaxy Note. Apple makes really good products, and Samsung makes really good products. It’s really a two-horse race. Where I think Apple is exposed: the price points of Apple’s products are just so high by comparison with Samsung’s. My sense is that there’s a big opportunity that Apple is either going to miss if it doesn’t bring out lower-priced products for emerging markets, or that it can end up getting and becoming huge success story if does.
In 1987, you helped develop the concept for Knowledge Navigator, which many have compared to Siri. What do you imagine the Knowledge Navigator of, say, 2030 looking like?
I suspect in that era it will be less about a product you pick up and hold in your hand like smartphone. It’ll be much more about you being personally connected to a system where things happening passively. We’ve been going through this active stage where you have to tap a screen, speak to a computer, or look at screen, and we’re so conditioned that that’s what computing is about. But we may soon be in an era where you don’t do anything, but there’ll be tech around you monitoring your health, making judgments about what it believes you like and protecting your safety.
You're presently working with several health care startups. What do you foresee will be the biggest change that tech catalyzes in the world of medicine?
The change will be even bigger than what we've seen with online banking or e-commerce. Health care missed the PC and Internet revolutions, but it can’t afford to miss the cloud and mobile revolution.
Sensors are at the early days of what they’ll be able to do. You're going to be able to track anything you can think of from a health standpoint. If you're driving a car, it will be totally practical in the next 5 to 10 years that you'll be able to evaluate someone’s health conditions just by monitoring them as they ride around in the car.
There will be major, big-brand consumer health services that will become institutions that everyone takes for granted. I'm confident that in health care we'll see consumer-branded institutions every bit as big as Walmart or McDonald's, but this time focused on health and wellness instead of selling products.
You mentioned you're now "mentoring" several startups. What’s the most important advice you give to entrepreneurs?
The easy part is getting the vision, getting people to believe in it, recruiting talent and raising money. The hard part is that disruptive innovation takes place on the edges of transformation, and it’s a thin line between success and failure. The most important skill of all is the ability to adapt and recover.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
March 13, 2013
Hooman Samani On Kissing With Robots: How Machines Can Mimic Human Love
How do you improve the kiss?
The same way you upgrade warehouses and factories: with robots.
Hooman Samani, a professor at Taiwan’s National Taipei University, has developed the Kissenger robot, which “provides the convincing properties of the real kiss” via touch-sensitive, vibrating silicone lips. Kissenger offers an intimacy even Skype can’t match, though long distance lovers might also delight in his line of mini-surrogates -- doll-sized, internet-connected robots meant to be physical representations of far-flung spouses or friends. Singles still searching for a mate could find a friend in Samani’s robot companion. The tittering device, a cross between a Maltese, Roomba and neon sign, is equipped with an artificial intelligence system meant to mimic humans’ emotional and biological hormones.
Samani has coined the term “Lovotics” (a portmanteau of love and robotics) to describe his research, which seeks to better understand human-to-robot relationships and develop robots that can “love and be loved by humans.”
Samani stresses he isn’t seeking to replace human husbands with robot ones (or vice versa).
“I must mention that at the end of the day, I don’t care about the robot’s feelings,” Samani told The Huffington Post. “[T]he artificial intelligence I’ve been developing the last few years aims to create a robot that gives the impression to the human that the human is being loved by the robot. The main target is the human.”
We spoke with Samani about life with loving robots, how a machine shows it cares and humans forming relationships with machines.
People are increasingly concerned about being replaced by robots trained to do their jobs. Now we have your robots, which are trained to love. Do you see a limit to what robots can do in our stead?
We shouldn't consider robots as replacements, but as a means to improvement and enhancement. My aim is that Lovotics will improve contact and human relationships, not replace them. As an example, we are working with a hospital near our university and we’ve observed problems that can’t be fixed with medicine, but that are emotional and psychological. The point is to improve our affective lives through robots.
So how do you envision robots improving our relationships? What can a robot relationship offer that a human relationship cannot?
The most obvious usage is in special cases. Take the elderly for example: If you look at a lady who is 90 years old in a nursing home whose kids visit her once a year, she needs attention and care. Since not everyone is willing to do that work, then the robots can come in to help. The motivation is when humans are not willing to do something, then we can use robots as a replacement or assistant.
Or think about long distance relationships. I talk to many young people who have to live in different countries because of their studies or work. Humans used to write letters long time ago, and now they’re using Skype, but it’s definitely not enough. We need this technology to improve the lack of personal communication. My most recent work has been on the transmission of affective modalities, like kissing. At a conference, I recently presented work that we’re doing with a robotic system that can transmit a kiss and hug.
In the example you offered about an elderly woman in a nursing home, it seems like Lovotics could enable people to outsource some relationships to robots. What’s your response to critics who say your work will let people replace their friends -- or even lovers -- with bots?
I receive many comments and emails like this. I compare robots to a knife: you can use a knife to kill someone, or to do surgery and save a life, or to eat food. Our robots can be used or misused, but our responsibility is to give direction to them to be used in the right way.
What are the obstacles to getting people to accept robots as companions, such as in hospitals or nursing homes?
In addition to obvious matters like safety, accuracy and reliability, we have, on the one hand, technology limitations, which restrict robots’ ability to perform well in such environments. And on the other hand, we have people’s unrealistic expectations. I’ve noticed that often people associate robots to their only previous encounters with robots, which tend to be science fiction movies and books. People expect superhero robots that can save -- or destroy -- the world. However, in practice, robots are capable of doing small tasks. I believe acceptance will take time and requires that people have real experiences with the robots.
How do you give people the impression they’re being loved by a robot?
I’ve been working with psychologists and designers to achieve this. Anthropomorphism or personification are key here. Lovotics deals with the attribution of robot expressions, behaviors and interaction. Consider your pet’s behavior, for example: When you come home after work, your dog might run towards you, maybe only because it is hungry and it knows that you are the one who provides food. However you might relate its excitement to the fact that your dog is missing you and find it a cute behavior. Such aspects can be emulated in a robotic system as well to give such positive feedback and trigger a positive experience.
What’s surprised you about how people bond with your robots?
Bonding with robots is full of surprises. At the beginning, my students saw the robot we were developing as a device. But after a few months, I could see from the way that they handle the robot that they really care about it. When we give it [Lovotics] to people, they name the robot, they customize the robot and its starts to become a kind of artificial pet for them.
Have you noticed differences between how different cultures respond to robots?
Based on the experience I’ve had so far, I think there are three totally different conceptions of robots. In general, my perception is that in the United States, robots are seen as a practical device, like a computer. In Europe they see the robots as something functional, like a platform or a medium. In Asia, robots are seen as a kind of doll, or pet -- something very cool. I think one reason is that in this part of the world, people believe in ghosts and spirits, so they give spirits to other things. They try to make it alive.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The same way you upgrade warehouses and factories: with robots.
Hooman Samani, a professor at Taiwan’s National Taipei University, has developed the Kissenger robot, which “provides the convincing properties of the real kiss” via touch-sensitive, vibrating silicone lips. Kissenger offers an intimacy even Skype can’t match, though long distance lovers might also delight in his line of mini-surrogates -- doll-sized, internet-connected robots meant to be physical representations of far-flung spouses or friends. Singles still searching for a mate could find a friend in Samani’s robot companion. The tittering device, a cross between a Maltese, Roomba and neon sign, is equipped with an artificial intelligence system meant to mimic humans’ emotional and biological hormones.
Samani has coined the term “Lovotics” (a portmanteau of love and robotics) to describe his research, which seeks to better understand human-to-robot relationships and develop robots that can “love and be loved by humans.”
Samani stresses he isn’t seeking to replace human husbands with robot ones (or vice versa).
“I must mention that at the end of the day, I don’t care about the robot’s feelings,” Samani told The Huffington Post. “[T]he artificial intelligence I’ve been developing the last few years aims to create a robot that gives the impression to the human that the human is being loved by the robot. The main target is the human.”
We spoke with Samani about life with loving robots, how a machine shows it cares and humans forming relationships with machines.
People are increasingly concerned about being replaced by robots trained to do their jobs. Now we have your robots, which are trained to love. Do you see a limit to what robots can do in our stead?
We shouldn't consider robots as replacements, but as a means to improvement and enhancement. My aim is that Lovotics will improve contact and human relationships, not replace them. As an example, we are working with a hospital near our university and we’ve observed problems that can’t be fixed with medicine, but that are emotional and psychological. The point is to improve our affective lives through robots.
So how do you envision robots improving our relationships? What can a robot relationship offer that a human relationship cannot?
The most obvious usage is in special cases. Take the elderly for example: If you look at a lady who is 90 years old in a nursing home whose kids visit her once a year, she needs attention and care. Since not everyone is willing to do that work, then the robots can come in to help. The motivation is when humans are not willing to do something, then we can use robots as a replacement or assistant.
Or think about long distance relationships. I talk to many young people who have to live in different countries because of their studies or work. Humans used to write letters long time ago, and now they’re using Skype, but it’s definitely not enough. We need this technology to improve the lack of personal communication. My most recent work has been on the transmission of affective modalities, like kissing. At a conference, I recently presented work that we’re doing with a robotic system that can transmit a kiss and hug.
In the example you offered about an elderly woman in a nursing home, it seems like Lovotics could enable people to outsource some relationships to robots. What’s your response to critics who say your work will let people replace their friends -- or even lovers -- with bots?
I receive many comments and emails like this. I compare robots to a knife: you can use a knife to kill someone, or to do surgery and save a life, or to eat food. Our robots can be used or misused, but our responsibility is to give direction to them to be used in the right way.
What are the obstacles to getting people to accept robots as companions, such as in hospitals or nursing homes?
In addition to obvious matters like safety, accuracy and reliability, we have, on the one hand, technology limitations, which restrict robots’ ability to perform well in such environments. And on the other hand, we have people’s unrealistic expectations. I’ve noticed that often people associate robots to their only previous encounters with robots, which tend to be science fiction movies and books. People expect superhero robots that can save -- or destroy -- the world. However, in practice, robots are capable of doing small tasks. I believe acceptance will take time and requires that people have real experiences with the robots.
How do you give people the impression they’re being loved by a robot?
I’ve been working with psychologists and designers to achieve this. Anthropomorphism or personification are key here. Lovotics deals with the attribution of robot expressions, behaviors and interaction. Consider your pet’s behavior, for example: When you come home after work, your dog might run towards you, maybe only because it is hungry and it knows that you are the one who provides food. However you might relate its excitement to the fact that your dog is missing you and find it a cute behavior. Such aspects can be emulated in a robotic system as well to give such positive feedback and trigger a positive experience.
What’s surprised you about how people bond with your robots?
Bonding with robots is full of surprises. At the beginning, my students saw the robot we were developing as a device. But after a few months, I could see from the way that they handle the robot that they really care about it. When we give it [Lovotics] to people, they name the robot, they customize the robot and its starts to become a kind of artificial pet for them.
Have you noticed differences between how different cultures respond to robots?
Based on the experience I’ve had so far, I think there are three totally different conceptions of robots. In general, my perception is that in the United States, robots are seen as a practical device, like a computer. In Europe they see the robots as something functional, like a platform or a medium. In Asia, robots are seen as a kind of doll, or pet -- something very cool. I think one reason is that in this part of the world, people believe in ghosts and spirits, so they give spirits to other things. They try to make it alive.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
March 12, 2013
Think Google Glass Looks Freakish? How 14th Century Of You
Picture this: a new device that hangs glass in front of people's faces to help them see the world differently. It's a technology so unusual, people consider it awkward, unsightly and ridiculous, and a product so expensive, it's available only to the upper crust.
Sounds like Google Glass, doesn't it? Yet that could just as easily describe the world's early view of eyeglasses.
Glass, like spectacles long before it, has caught flak for looking strange. At the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, this past weekend, the Glass-wearing Googlers in attendance provided many people their first in-person glimpse of the new gadget, sparking a fresh wave of criticism over the product's appearance.
Business Insider declared the design "dorky," while Twitter user @3dg4r wrote his first view of Glass confirmed, "it's exactly as stupid looking as I expected it to be." The reactions shored up prediction from a Huffington Post commenter last moth: "It will become socially unacceptable to wear these in public."
While pundits argue that Google's biggest challenge with Glass will be convincing people to wear the things on their faces, the history of glasses -- another form of wearable technology that succeeded in spite of early criticism -- could offer some lessons, and some hope. Yet the success of the device will ultimately depend on whether Glass offers the same indispensable improvement to our lives that glasses have provided. Function will determine whether we accept Glass's form, not the other way around.
Although spectacles quickly demonstrated their merits to early adopters in the Middle Ages, it nonetheless took several hundred years for glasses to shed their social stigma.
"It's only in the last couple of centuries that they have come to be seen as mainstream, and it was only just before the second Word War that people were thinking of them as something that adorned the face rather than disfigured it," said Neil Handley, a curator at London's College of Optometrists and author of Cult Eyewear: The World's Enduring Classics.
Glass could follow a similar evolution, he noted, though he added, "I imagine Google doesn't have the time to wait that long for this technology to succeed."
First worn in the late 13th century by friars in Italian monasteries, by the 14th century spectacles had started their steady proliferation throughout Europe, though many considered the eyewear to be the antithesis of elegance and style.
"References to [spectacles], in documents as well as pictures, became more and more numerous; but the masses did not take kindly to the innovation," wrote Carl Barck in his 1903 lecture, "The History of Spectacles." "Wearers of the spectacles were not only ridiculed, but the glasses, according to the superstition of the times, were called a device of the devil."
Artists coopted glasses as symbols of deceit and malice, and they became a de facto accessory for devils and demons depicted in paintings. "In the 16th or 17th centuries, if you had a painting of someone wearing glasses, it was artist making a criticism of the person in the picture, either to suggest that they were mean, or morally suspect, or guilty of various other vices," said Handley.
Around this time, according to Handley, spectacle-makers in Europe mobilized a campaign to rehabilitate glasses-wearing, and embraced a classic public-relations technique that could work just as well for Glass: the celebrity endorsement.
The merchants selected Saint Jerome, the translator of the Bible, as the spokesman for spectacles. Though he'd died several hundred years before glasses were even invented, the long hours he presumably spent straining his eyes over pages of text made him, in the estimation of the glasses-makers, an appropriate figurehead for spectacles. There followed a slew of paintings showing Saint Jerome in glasses, as well pictures of the baby Jesus or Saint Joseph clutching their own eyewear.
"It's a total anachronism, but it was seen as means of making glasses-wearing respectable," said Handley.
While Google isn't likely to pick a saint to endorse Glass, Hollywood stars have proven equally effective at driving demand for glasses in more recent years. The success of the Harry Potter franchise sparked feverish demand for the very glasses that gathered dust in opticians' drawers for years, and even children who don't need glasses have sought out spectacles to match the fictional wizard's, explained Handley.
Google has already shared Glass with high-profile individuals, such as fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, though the company also has opted for a more democratic approach to pushing its new creation. In February, Google launched the second phase of its Glass Explorer Program in a bid to recruit "bold, creative" individuals to gain early access to Glass, a move that suggests an effort to show just how normal the device is by seeding it among diverse group of people. (Once individuals are selected as Explorers, they'll still be required to spend $1,200 to purchase Glass.)
Though Google's glasses are anything but orthodox, the emphasis thus far on the "freakish," "nerdy" appearance of Glass seems something of a distraction. Knowing little about Glass, people have focused on what they do know: It looks strange.
A savvy public-relations campaign alone didn't ensure glasses would gain mainstream approval, nor can it secure Glass's fate. Its future will be determined by what we see when we look through it, and less by what we see when we look in the mirror. Google will change how we see Glass if Glass changes how we see -- but only if it's for the better.
Sounds like Google Glass, doesn't it? Yet that could just as easily describe the world's early view of eyeglasses.
Glass, like spectacles long before it, has caught flak for looking strange. At the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, this past weekend, the Glass-wearing Googlers in attendance provided many people their first in-person glimpse of the new gadget, sparking a fresh wave of criticism over the product's appearance.
Business Insider declared the design "dorky," while Twitter user @3dg4r wrote his first view of Glass confirmed, "it's exactly as stupid looking as I expected it to be." The reactions shored up prediction from a Huffington Post commenter last moth: "It will become socially unacceptable to wear these in public."
While pundits argue that Google's biggest challenge with Glass will be convincing people to wear the things on their faces, the history of glasses -- another form of wearable technology that succeeded in spite of early criticism -- could offer some lessons, and some hope. Yet the success of the device will ultimately depend on whether Glass offers the same indispensable improvement to our lives that glasses have provided. Function will determine whether we accept Glass's form, not the other way around.
Although spectacles quickly demonstrated their merits to early adopters in the Middle Ages, it nonetheless took several hundred years for glasses to shed their social stigma.
"It's only in the last couple of centuries that they have come to be seen as mainstream, and it was only just before the second Word War that people were thinking of them as something that adorned the face rather than disfigured it," said Neil Handley, a curator at London's College of Optometrists and author of Cult Eyewear: The World's Enduring Classics.
Glass could follow a similar evolution, he noted, though he added, "I imagine Google doesn't have the time to wait that long for this technology to succeed."
First worn in the late 13th century by friars in Italian monasteries, by the 14th century spectacles had started their steady proliferation throughout Europe, though many considered the eyewear to be the antithesis of elegance and style.
"References to [spectacles], in documents as well as pictures, became more and more numerous; but the masses did not take kindly to the innovation," wrote Carl Barck in his 1903 lecture, "The History of Spectacles." "Wearers of the spectacles were not only ridiculed, but the glasses, according to the superstition of the times, were called a device of the devil."
Artists coopted glasses as symbols of deceit and malice, and they became a de facto accessory for devils and demons depicted in paintings. "In the 16th or 17th centuries, if you had a painting of someone wearing glasses, it was artist making a criticism of the person in the picture, either to suggest that they were mean, or morally suspect, or guilty of various other vices," said Handley.
Around this time, according to Handley, spectacle-makers in Europe mobilized a campaign to rehabilitate glasses-wearing, and embraced a classic public-relations technique that could work just as well for Glass: the celebrity endorsement.
The merchants selected Saint Jerome, the translator of the Bible, as the spokesman for spectacles. Though he'd died several hundred years before glasses were even invented, the long hours he presumably spent straining his eyes over pages of text made him, in the estimation of the glasses-makers, an appropriate figurehead for spectacles. There followed a slew of paintings showing Saint Jerome in glasses, as well pictures of the baby Jesus or Saint Joseph clutching their own eyewear.
"It's a total anachronism, but it was seen as means of making glasses-wearing respectable," said Handley.
While Google isn't likely to pick a saint to endorse Glass, Hollywood stars have proven equally effective at driving demand for glasses in more recent years. The success of the Harry Potter franchise sparked feverish demand for the very glasses that gathered dust in opticians' drawers for years, and even children who don't need glasses have sought out spectacles to match the fictional wizard's, explained Handley.
Google has already shared Glass with high-profile individuals, such as fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, though the company also has opted for a more democratic approach to pushing its new creation. In February, Google launched the second phase of its Glass Explorer Program in a bid to recruit "bold, creative" individuals to gain early access to Glass, a move that suggests an effort to show just how normal the device is by seeding it among diverse group of people. (Once individuals are selected as Explorers, they'll still be required to spend $1,200 to purchase Glass.)
Though Google's glasses are anything but orthodox, the emphasis thus far on the "freakish," "nerdy" appearance of Glass seems something of a distraction. Knowing little about Glass, people have focused on what they do know: It looks strange.
A savvy public-relations campaign alone didn't ensure glasses would gain mainstream approval, nor can it secure Glass's fate. Its future will be determined by what we see when we look through it, and less by what we see when we look in the mirror. Google will change how we see Glass if Glass changes how we see -- but only if it's for the better.
March 7, 2013
With New News Feed, Facebook Tries To Become What It Once Was: A Social Network
Picture this: a Facebook News Feed that shows only updates from your friends. No brands chiming in to ask you to name their next product, or "like" their photo of garlic pills.
That describes the Facebook I -- and 12 million others -- knew in 2006, the year the site first unveiled News Feed. And that's the Facebook the company seems keen to bring back, judging from the News Feed redesign announced on Thursday.
Facebook's original News Feed didn't stay friend-focused for long. In 2007, the social network introduced Pages, profiles designed specifically for businesses and public figures. The new feature opened the floodgates for brands, bloggers, corporations, singers and celebrities to push their messages alongside updates from people Facebook members knew personally. The social network promised its site would "always stay clutter-free and clean," but as Facebook acknowledged with its latest revamp of News Feed -- "a new version ... designed to reduce clutter" -- it hasn't quite kept that promise.
Over the last several years, Facebook has morphed from a sort of living room into a trade show of people trying to sell stuff. Our friends, of course, were always selling us the fantasy of lives filled with lush dinner parties and adoring boyfriends. But now American Express is selling us its love for small business owners, while Lay's sells us its new line of chips and a department store sells us the idea of dropping by its sale this weekend. Meanwhile, on top of it all, Facebook is selling our time and attention.
The social network is no longer a place to catch up with friends; instead friends are now merely the wrappers Facebook can put around its ads.
In pursuit of making the world a more open and connected place, Facebook has also made it a more cluttered one. For five years, News Feed has folded disparate types of information into a single place, so that a best friend's photos get little more consideration than a news site's latest links.
But on Thursday, Facebook made a move to bring back some of the purity of News Feed, and make good on its claim to help people "connect with friends." In a brief press conference at its Menlo Park campus, Facebook announced users will soon have the option to choose between topic- and people-specific News Feeds.
One feed will be an "All Friends" stream that shows everything posted by a user's friends -- and friends only -- in chronological order, free from interruption by sponsors or companies.
"This has consistently been one of the most requested user features and we're excited to now offer it," a Facebook spokeswoman said in an email to The Huffington Post.
There will also be distinct streams containing photos ("a feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the Pages you like"), music ("a feed with posts about the music you listen to") and a "Following" feed with updates from the Pages you follow.
As Facebook tries to fend off user defection to sites like Pinterest and Instagram -- and confronts statistics suggesting 60 percent of adult users have, at some point, taken a break from the site -- it's traveling back in time to borrow from News Feed's initial incarnation, where friends got special treatment and their own place to be seen and heard.
Whether people still have any interest in hearing from their Facebook friends is another matter altogether.
Making the rounds on Twitter is a snarky comment that sums up why some social media users are logging out of Facebook: "Facebook = people I know talking about things I don't care about. Twitter = people I don't know talking about things I care about."
To many users, Facebook has become an address book, a list of people they've met, rather than an online counterpart to their offline relationships.
Even as Facebook has introduced tools to make it easier for people to mute annoying acquaintances, the social network might also be to blame for encouraging of the over-eager friending and prolific following that often makes it so noisy.
For example, in December, Facebook announced that it was experimenting with a service allowing people to pay to have their message bypass another user's spam folder and land in his or her inbox. The move called attention to the fact that users have a hard time getting in touch with someone via Facebook Messages if they're not already friends -- so why not friend-request that person you met briefly at a conference, or sat next to at a dinner party, just in case?
Social media researchers have long warned that Facebook users may be turned off by the site's "context collapse," with a person's disparate social circles melded into a single audience of "friends." The latest incarnation of News Feed suggests users, and Facebook, should be wary of a related phenomenon: the content collapse.
That describes the Facebook I -- and 12 million others -- knew in 2006, the year the site first unveiled News Feed. And that's the Facebook the company seems keen to bring back, judging from the News Feed redesign announced on Thursday.
Facebook's original News Feed didn't stay friend-focused for long. In 2007, the social network introduced Pages, profiles designed specifically for businesses and public figures. The new feature opened the floodgates for brands, bloggers, corporations, singers and celebrities to push their messages alongside updates from people Facebook members knew personally. The social network promised its site would "always stay clutter-free and clean," but as Facebook acknowledged with its latest revamp of News Feed -- "a new version ... designed to reduce clutter" -- it hasn't quite kept that promise.
Over the last several years, Facebook has morphed from a sort of living room into a trade show of people trying to sell stuff. Our friends, of course, were always selling us the fantasy of lives filled with lush dinner parties and adoring boyfriends. But now American Express is selling us its love for small business owners, while Lay's sells us its new line of chips and a department store sells us the idea of dropping by its sale this weekend. Meanwhile, on top of it all, Facebook is selling our time and attention.
The social network is no longer a place to catch up with friends; instead friends are now merely the wrappers Facebook can put around its ads.
In pursuit of making the world a more open and connected place, Facebook has also made it a more cluttered one. For five years, News Feed has folded disparate types of information into a single place, so that a best friend's photos get little more consideration than a news site's latest links.
But on Thursday, Facebook made a move to bring back some of the purity of News Feed, and make good on its claim to help people "connect with friends." In a brief press conference at its Menlo Park campus, Facebook announced users will soon have the option to choose between topic- and people-specific News Feeds.
One feed will be an "All Friends" stream that shows everything posted by a user's friends -- and friends only -- in chronological order, free from interruption by sponsors or companies.
"This has consistently been one of the most requested user features and we're excited to now offer it," a Facebook spokeswoman said in an email to The Huffington Post.
There will also be distinct streams containing photos ("a feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the Pages you like"), music ("a feed with posts about the music you listen to") and a "Following" feed with updates from the Pages you follow.
As Facebook tries to fend off user defection to sites like Pinterest and Instagram -- and confronts statistics suggesting 60 percent of adult users have, at some point, taken a break from the site -- it's traveling back in time to borrow from News Feed's initial incarnation, where friends got special treatment and their own place to be seen and heard.
Whether people still have any interest in hearing from their Facebook friends is another matter altogether.
Making the rounds on Twitter is a snarky comment that sums up why some social media users are logging out of Facebook: "Facebook = people I know talking about things I don't care about. Twitter = people I don't know talking about things I care about."
To many users, Facebook has become an address book, a list of people they've met, rather than an online counterpart to their offline relationships.
Even as Facebook has introduced tools to make it easier for people to mute annoying acquaintances, the social network might also be to blame for encouraging of the over-eager friending and prolific following that often makes it so noisy.
For example, in December, Facebook announced that it was experimenting with a service allowing people to pay to have their message bypass another user's spam folder and land in his or her inbox. The move called attention to the fact that users have a hard time getting in touch with someone via Facebook Messages if they're not already friends -- so why not friend-request that person you met briefly at a conference, or sat next to at a dinner party, just in case?
Social media researchers have long warned that Facebook users may be turned off by the site's "context collapse," with a person's disparate social circles melded into a single audience of "friends." The latest incarnation of News Feed suggests users, and Facebook, should be wary of a related phenomenon: the content collapse.
March 6, 2013
Facebook Privacy Study Shows Why You Gave Up On Keeping Your Data To Yourself
While we've always known that Facebook has the final say in how people use its service, a new study reveals just how effectively the social network can nudge its members to behave in ways Facebook might consider most fitting.
An unprecedented study from Carnegie Mellon University followed the privacy practices of 5,076 Facebook users over six years, between 2005 and 2011. Researchers found that during the first four years, users steadily limited what personal data was visible to strangers within their school network. Yet through changes Facebook introduced to its platform in 2009 and 2010, the social network actually succeeded in reversing some users' inclination to avoid public disclosure of their data.
In fact, the social network's new policies were not only able to partly override an active desire not to post personal details publicly, but they have so far kept such disclosures from sinking back to their lower levels, according to the study. They also found that even as people sought to limit what strangers could learn about them from their Facebook profiles, they actually increased what information they shared with their friends.
This result “highlights the power of the environment in affecting individual choices," wrote the study’s authors, Carnegie Mellon University’s Fred Stutzman�, Ralph Grossy and Alessandro Acquistiz. "The entity that controls the structure (in this case, Facebook), ultimately remains able to affect how actors make choices in that environment."
“Like a modern Sisyphus, some consumers strive to reach their chosen 'privacy spot' -- their desired balance between revealing and protecting -- only to be taken aback by the next privacy challenge," the researchers added.
In an email to The Huffington Post, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes pointed to Facebook's customizable privacy features. "Independent research has verified that the vast majority of the people on Facebook are engaging with and using our straightforward and powerful privacy tools -- allowing them to control what they're sharing, and with whom they're sharing," he wrote.
The Carnegie Mellon study, the first to follow Facebook users over time, tracked how their sharing with friends and strangers evolved between 2005, when the site was open only to college students, and 2011, by which point it had attracted nearly 700 million users. The study’s cohort consisted mostly of undergraduate students and, later, recent graduates -- a limited sample to be sure. The researchers defined “public sharing” as disclosures to unknown individuals within the Carnegie Mellon University network.
As Facebook’s membership grew, and as the site increased the variety of information that could be shared, users in turn became more cautious about what they displayed to unknown individuals, the study found. Between 2005 and 2009, Facebook users in the study exhibited “increasingly privacy-seeking behavior” and gradually limited what information could be seen by strangers. They grew more protective of all types of personal data, from their interests and favorite books to their birth dates and hometowns.
Then something surprising happened: Between 2009 and 2010, these privacy-aware people suddenly became more open with certain kinds of personal data. The researchers observed a “significant increase in the public sharing of various types of personal information.” (Emphasis theirs.) Users' tendency to share their interests; favorite music, books and movies; hometown and high school decreased steadily until 2009. In 2011, when the Carnegie Mellon team gathered its final set of data, the cohort, which had seemed on a steady march toward sharing less with strangers, was still sharing details with non-friends on their network. As the study’s authors write, “disclosures in the majority of fields had not gone back down to the levels reached before those [privacy] changes.” (Again, emphasis theirs.)
The Carnegie Mellon researchers observed that the uptick in sharing applied only to certain kinds of personal data. After comparing the type of information shared with the changes Facebook had put in place, they concluded the reversal was, “with high probability,” caused by an update to the social network's privacy controls in December 2009 and the launch of Community Pages and Connected Profiles in April 2010, which made some previously private information about a user’s interests more widely visible.
Perhaps Facebook users simply became more comfortable with the idea of sharing personal information publicly, or perhaps they couldn’t figure out the new privacy settings. (Other research actually suggests people have grown more willing and better equipped to shield their private stuff from strangers. A 2012 Pew Internet and American Life report found that 79 percent of social media users considered privacy settings on social networks not difficult or “not too" difficult to use.)
More detailed privacy settings are not necessarily the answer for users who want to avoid public sharing, according to the study’s authors. They argue, perhaps counterintuitively, that elaborate privacy options might even be part of the problem.
Enabling users to choose which specific group of peers -- such as “friends” or “friends of friends” -- can view their posts can result in a “misdirection of users' attention” and has “been linked to increases in disclosures of sensitive information to strangers,” such as third-party apps or Facebook itself, the researchers wrote. However, they don't offer a clear alternative to Facebook's current approach.
Acquisiti, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon and one of the paper's authors, said the study’s findings call into question the merits of letting companies self-regulate on matters of user privacy. On Facebook, “users were taking charge [of their privacy],” he explained. “And yet things happened to push them to a higher level of disclosure than they’d expressed an interest in previously, or pushed them to disclose [information] to third parties that did not necessarily happen with users’ awareness or consent.”
An unprecedented study from Carnegie Mellon University followed the privacy practices of 5,076 Facebook users over six years, between 2005 and 2011. Researchers found that during the first four years, users steadily limited what personal data was visible to strangers within their school network. Yet through changes Facebook introduced to its platform in 2009 and 2010, the social network actually succeeded in reversing some users' inclination to avoid public disclosure of their data.
In fact, the social network's new policies were not only able to partly override an active desire not to post personal details publicly, but they have so far kept such disclosures from sinking back to their lower levels, according to the study. They also found that even as people sought to limit what strangers could learn about them from their Facebook profiles, they actually increased what information they shared with their friends.
This result “highlights the power of the environment in affecting individual choices," wrote the study’s authors, Carnegie Mellon University’s Fred Stutzman�, Ralph Grossy and Alessandro Acquistiz. "The entity that controls the structure (in this case, Facebook), ultimately remains able to affect how actors make choices in that environment."
“Like a modern Sisyphus, some consumers strive to reach their chosen 'privacy spot' -- their desired balance between revealing and protecting -- only to be taken aback by the next privacy challenge," the researchers added.
In an email to The Huffington Post, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes pointed to Facebook's customizable privacy features. "Independent research has verified that the vast majority of the people on Facebook are engaging with and using our straightforward and powerful privacy tools -- allowing them to control what they're sharing, and with whom they're sharing," he wrote.
The Carnegie Mellon study, the first to follow Facebook users over time, tracked how their sharing with friends and strangers evolved between 2005, when the site was open only to college students, and 2011, by which point it had attracted nearly 700 million users. The study’s cohort consisted mostly of undergraduate students and, later, recent graduates -- a limited sample to be sure. The researchers defined “public sharing” as disclosures to unknown individuals within the Carnegie Mellon University network.
As Facebook’s membership grew, and as the site increased the variety of information that could be shared, users in turn became more cautious about what they displayed to unknown individuals, the study found. Between 2005 and 2009, Facebook users in the study exhibited “increasingly privacy-seeking behavior” and gradually limited what information could be seen by strangers. They grew more protective of all types of personal data, from their interests and favorite books to their birth dates and hometowns.
Then something surprising happened: Between 2009 and 2010, these privacy-aware people suddenly became more open with certain kinds of personal data. The researchers observed a “significant increase in the public sharing of various types of personal information.” (Emphasis theirs.) Users' tendency to share their interests; favorite music, books and movies; hometown and high school decreased steadily until 2009. In 2011, when the Carnegie Mellon team gathered its final set of data, the cohort, which had seemed on a steady march toward sharing less with strangers, was still sharing details with non-friends on their network. As the study’s authors write, “disclosures in the majority of fields had not gone back down to the levels reached before those [privacy] changes.” (Again, emphasis theirs.)
The Carnegie Mellon researchers observed that the uptick in sharing applied only to certain kinds of personal data. After comparing the type of information shared with the changes Facebook had put in place, they concluded the reversal was, “with high probability,” caused by an update to the social network's privacy controls in December 2009 and the launch of Community Pages and Connected Profiles in April 2010, which made some previously private information about a user’s interests more widely visible.
Perhaps Facebook users simply became more comfortable with the idea of sharing personal information publicly, or perhaps they couldn’t figure out the new privacy settings. (Other research actually suggests people have grown more willing and better equipped to shield their private stuff from strangers. A 2012 Pew Internet and American Life report found that 79 percent of social media users considered privacy settings on social networks not difficult or “not too" difficult to use.)
More detailed privacy settings are not necessarily the answer for users who want to avoid public sharing, according to the study’s authors. They argue, perhaps counterintuitively, that elaborate privacy options might even be part of the problem.
Enabling users to choose which specific group of peers -- such as “friends” or “friends of friends” -- can view their posts can result in a “misdirection of users' attention” and has “been linked to increases in disclosures of sensitive information to strangers,” such as third-party apps or Facebook itself, the researchers wrote. However, they don't offer a clear alternative to Facebook's current approach.
Acquisiti, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon and one of the paper's authors, said the study’s findings call into question the merits of letting companies self-regulate on matters of user privacy. On Facebook, “users were taking charge [of their privacy],” he explained. “And yet things happened to push them to a higher level of disclosure than they’d expressed an interest in previously, or pushed them to disclose [information] to third parties that did not necessarily happen with users’ awareness or consent.”
