Archive for the 'Society' Category

The dark side

“The online world can lead to isolation and anti-social behaviour. It’s all very well having all these virtual friends on social networks but they can’t give you virtual hugs. You need real people for that.”

“Facebook and social networks are dangerous because you can lose your privacy. I would never want to put my details on Facebook.”

“I don’t read blogs. They’re not relevant for businesses, are they?”

“What’s social media? I don’t like computers. It’s all much too modern for me.”

These are a some comments that came up recently in a number of conversations I’ve had over the last year with some business people, intellectuals and professionals. It seems there are many people who have not yet had the time or readiness to be introduced to the remarkable opportunities for human communication that is available through social media tools. One of them even said to me, “It’s so refreshing to come across someone who is so positive about social media for a change.”

I felt like I was the odd one out at these particular gatherings. For awhile now, many of my closest friends and colleagues are happy social media campers like me and I’ve met numerous business people and professionals who are engaged and curious about the possibilities of online communications. So it has been a surprise from time to time to have been the lone voice of enthusiasm. It got me thinking. Why am I so positive about social media?

The bright side

There used to be an ad for BT, British Telecoms, the phone company with the tagline “Reach out and touch someone”. In my mind, social media offers exactly that experience. Perhaps I’m more sensitive to such opportunities, having lived apart from my family since I was 12. All the way across the vast globe, my parents and family were home in Malaysia while I grew up during my years at school and university here in England. The only communication used to be letters that arrived a week after they were written or through echoey, expensive phone calls once every few weeks. It could be lonely, counting the days till the next holiday when I’d be able to see my Mum, wondering what my family was doing just at that moment, imagining them having dinner together in Malaysia eight hours ahead while I was in a Maths lesson.

So, how amazing it is now to be able to email a message within seconds, type out an instant message - well - instantly, speak with my family online free or for a few pence and even see the other person face-to-face online as you do so. How fantastic to make new friends through blogging about shared interests even though you may be on different continents. How incredible to be able to follow each moment of another’s life through Twitter or Facebook status updates.

Existential crisis

And I don’t think it’s just me trying to recover from childhood loneliness. The reason so many millions have engaged so intensely online is because of the very human urge to connect with others and to express ourselves.

Yes, there are people who isolate themselves in their rooms all day playing on the internet. In India, universities have become increasingly concerned about increased suicide rates which they link to too much time spent on social networks. In Japan, a young girl blogged about killing her mother and her public journals were only investigated after the mother died - and it was found that she did indeed kill her mother. For me, the question is what kind of society drives young people into isolation because they feel they can’t talk to real live people right there next to them so that they feel that they can only engage online? How are those live people right there next to them not engaging with them, not hearing them, not understanding them?

Facebook

Using blogging and Facebook, I keep in touch with my family and friends in Malaysia and all over the world. I have made new and interesting friends whom I have met subsequently in real life and who continue now to be real as well as virtual friends. OK, I can’t get a virtual hug but I can get a verbal one through their written, audio or video messages - which must surely be better than the silence of being offline and disconnected from this global neighbourhood. In my real life, I still have my friends and family in the flesh who give me the real hugs and I reckon a lot of bloggers and social networkers enjoy that, too. It just means that my friendships and relationships are no longer all bound by having to physically being in the same place with those others.

Yes, you can lose your privacy on Facebook. But only if you choose to upload your personal data like your date of birth, your mother’s maiden name, your social security number etc. No-one is forcing you to do that. And, yes, employers are now checking Facebook profiles before they hire and an inappropriate photo of you can affect your chances of getting the job. With Facebook, the key is to use it judicously and to look at the privacy options you can set. It is prudent to think of it as a public space rather than a private one. There are advantages if you navigate your way through such a public space wisely - for example, you can ask for introductions from friends to other friends - which is particularly useful in a business context, replacing the old-fashioned letter of introduction.

Beware FUD

Crime, suicide, isolation, murder and loss of personal privacy are important issues and I am not dismissing concerns about them. It’s just worth stepping back for some perspective and context - and for the other side of the story to be offered up. There are millions of blogs and millions of people engaging in social networks and online games. In most cases - ie in millions of cases - these experiences are positive and the new technology is helping people connect with each other. Traditional media like newspapers and broadcast media thrive on FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - no-one buys the paper to read that everything is fine and dandy. So newspapers etc will naturally pick out the doom and gloom stories. If you rely on the traditional media to tell you about social media, you’re only getting one side of the story.

Social media is here to stay and I think it’s a shame for those who choose not to engage out of FUD. They are losing out on ways to connect with friends, colleagues and family that can enrich their personal and business life. If you met your friends in a public place like a restaurant or on the street, you’d be sensible - you wouldn’t leave your handbag in an easily snatchable place, you wouldn’t give out your private details to a stranger walking by and so on. So it’s the same with social media - be sensible and you can get the best out of the time you spend online.

Photo: thanks to Ondra_L from flickr.com

Following on from my post about the founding father of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, who created HTML and the follow up, giving a bite-sized explanation of Web 2.0, here is an excellent video that animates the whole story from the humble beginnings of HTML code to the dynamic interactive arena that is Web 2.0 - and how Web 2.0 and social media is now making us re-think copyright, authorship, rhetoric and just about everything else.

Thanks to Lucy Soutter for sending me this video.

I’ve been researching the history of the internet and the world wide web as part of an introductory chapter on the relevance of the cyberworld to international public relations and communication. These days, we use the internet everyday to browse websites and communicate with each other that it is almost unremarkable. So, it’s been almost Zen-like to stop a moment and contemplate the amazing revolution that quietly took place in the 1980s and 1990s through the work of scientists and researchers who were then unknown to the wider world, building applications for their own use.

It all begins with defence and the military back in the 1950s and 1960s during the Cold War. The Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957 and the space race began. America saw the need for a nationwide network of communications as part of gaining the technological advantage. Over the next twenty years, computer-based communications networks were developed across university faculties and research facilities, connecting first universities in America and then including those in Europe.

Larry G. Roberts, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf and Radia Perlman are some of the scientists who developed the networks, protocols and algorithms on which development of the internet was founded. They paved the way for the interconnected infrastructure of computers and cables that we now refer to as the internet.

It was only in 1990 that the first website appeared, building on all the technology and research that had gone before. Tim Berners Lee and Robert Cailliau, scientists working at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), developed hypertext in 1989, the links system that allows us to click on text on a webpage and be immediately taken to another webpage - and that we all now take for granted .

Tim Berners Lee is also credited with inventing the HTML mark-up language and the HTTP protocol that are the building blocks of dynamic webpages. At their very simplest:

HTML is the code that gives the instructions for the creation of a page eg. for the layout and functions. For example, to make text bold, you preface it with an instruction in brackets “< bold >” and end it with “< / bold>“. To make a link, you preface the link with “< a href= [insert the site you want to link to]>” and then close it off again with “.

The HTTP protocol gives us the address of the webpage - take a look at the address of this and any webpage and you will see it begins with “http://”.

Taking hypertext, HTML and HTTP together, the world’s first website was put up in 1991 and you can still see it today at http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
.

It explains what the WorldWideWeb is - initially the phrase was conceived without spaces and referred to as W3 for short - and in a bold statement set out the founding ethics of the web: “The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone”. That core statement still resonates today in many of the debates about how websites, social media, information and creative products are used, shared and accessed online - all of which I will be exploring in more depth later as part of the book.

For now, let’s think back to 1991 and what we were doing back and how we were working while Berners-Lee and Cailliau were creating what seemed to be some fairly unremarkable few pages of text. I remember writing short stories on my Amstrad at home and watching as they installed computers running DOS at work so that the secretaries could learn how to word-process using WordPerfect. For communications, we relied on telephones, post and couriers. Faxes were fairly new-fangled and my friends laughed at me when I bought a fax for personal use. They also shied away from leaving voice messages when I bought an answer-machine with one large sized cassette tape for my outgoing message and another for incoming messages. Businesses sent out print brochures and hard copy mail or bought advertising space on print or broadcast media or billboards.

Within 10 years all our lives would be changed forever.

Photo: of Tim Berners-Lee thanks to hwsw.hu

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This post is part of my research project for the book New Trends in International Public Relations that I am co-authoring with business communications expert, Silvia Cambie. I am focusing on the social media aspects while she is working on the wider public relations issues.

You can find all my posts relating to this book project by clicking on the link in the sidebar New Trends in International PR under ZenGuide Projects.

If you have any comments or thoughts on any of the issues I’ve discussed in my posts, please do add a comment or email me. In particular, if you have any additional information or expertise that could add to the book, I would love to hear from you. Also, if you think that there are errors or inaccuracies in what I’ve said, I’d like to learn from you. I’ll credit you, of course, if your contribution is used directly in the book - you can check out my ongoing list of acknowledgements online. Please note that all contributions in respect of the book are subject to the terms set out in contributors release notice.

Laurence van der Posts book “The Bushmen of the Kalahari” instilled in me an awe for the skills of the bushmen trackers in the eternally magnificent African landscape. Now in the 21st generation, their ancient skill that has been passed down through generations is being enhanced by PDAs - personal digital assistants. According to the International Trade Forum:

The high-tech wildlife trackers have been used against poachers, in ecotourism, environmental education, research and monitoring. The free software that links up traditional knowledge to electronic data mapping has been applied around the world to social surveys, organic farming, integrated pest management and disaster relief.

I love this photo that shows how comfortably the uber-modern sits with the traditional.

Elton John recently ranted against the internet and social media, according to Neowin.net and other news sources. He is quoted as saying:

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there — communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

It reminded me that there are still many people out there who don’t know much about online social culture and who for some reason don’t want to know about it. I think it’s a shame for them - there is so much creativity and experimentation online in terms of self-expression and artistic expression as well as increased communications between people and cultures.

Here are some examples:

Music

There are a number of virtual recording studios like Net Studio where musicians can collaborate with other musicians anywhere in the world, not just those who are in the same town as they are.

Podsafe music is music that can be used for podcasting without paying a royalty. Podsafe networks allow musicians to distribute their music globally over the internet and there are internet stations like Accident Hash that specialise in playing podsafe music. And a lot of it is really good stuff, too.

Individuals doing funky things with music for themselves and their friends and in the process becoming music legends online - like this young Korean guy playing Pachelbel’s Cannon like you’ve never heard it before.

Books and Blogging

Bhagdad Burning was a blog by a young Iraqi girl which was subsequently turned into a prize-winning book of the same name.

Blood, Sweat and Tea is a book that was compiled by the blog of a London Ambulance driver, Random Acts of Reality

The Blooker Prize is an annual prize for the best blog, modelled on the Booker Prize for books.

Photography

Andrew Losowksy started a collection of photographs of doorbells in Florence, Italy on Flickr, the photo-sharing site. He would write stories to accompany the pictures. He gained a huge following online for his stories and the photos and stories have now been transformed into a book The Doorbells of Florence that has won the Blooker prize.

There’s a whole genre of photography around the theme of a daily photo from your city eg City Daily Photo Blog, Santiago de Chile Daily Photo Blog, Brighton Daily Photo etc

There is a group on Flickr that creates short stories using a series of five photos.

Art

I love this web installation by filmmaker and artist Miranda July - it’s filmic, witty and a commentary on websites all at the same time: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Rhizome is a site that posts news about new media art and the intersection of technology and art, with great links to a vast range of different art websites and blogs.

Social Networks

As for making connections, blogging and social networks like Facebook help people connect so much more easily than in the days of snail mail. I’ve personally made some great new friends in Malaysia through the litbloggers network there and I enjoy using the online telephony service Skype to connect with my family. Facebook and Twitter has enabled me to keep in contact with a range of friends in the UK and Malaysia that I might otherwise not keep in contact with. In many ways, I feel I have a much richer social life through both offline connections with my regular local friends and online connections with those who are further away or in another country.

In my view, the things that are going to “change the world and change the way people listen to music” - and for that matter, change how we relate, connect and create - are already happening online with great energy and creativity. With or without the likes of Elton John.

According to the International Herald Tribune:

“Emoticons, the smiling, winking and frowning faces that inhabit the computer world, have not only hung around long past their youth faddishness of the 1990s, but they have grown up. Twenty-five years after they were invented as a form of shorthand for computer-geeks, emoticons - an open-source form of pop art that has evolved into a quasi-accepted form of punctuation - are now ubiquitous.

“Applied appropriately, users say, emoticons can no longer be dismissed as juvenile because they offer a degree of insurance for a variety of adult social interactions, and help avoid serious miscommunications.”

I can see all the good reasons in a rushed and pressured world to use a shorthand like emoticons. But as someone who loves language - with all its variety, nuances and potential for precise and beautiful communication - I find it rather sad that we are losing our ability to use complex language and ditching the beauty of words for a few punctuation marks.

Back in the days when society was much less technologically sophisticated, the elite had stresses of their own - like assassination plots and the threat of beheadings for treason etc - yet, they managed to use language in a way that has an undoubted clarity of meaning and nuance. Here is a letter written by Queen Elizabeth I to Mary Queen of Scots on the eve of the latter’s trial for treason - which I’ve punctuated with emoticons just to make sure that Mary gets the message.

October I586.

You have in various ways and manners attempted to take my life and to bring my kingdom to destruction by bloodshed. I have never proceeded so harshly against you, but have, on the contrary, protected and maintained you like myself. These treasons will be proved to you and all made manifest. Yet it is my will, that you answer the nobles and peers of the kingdom as if I were myself present. I therefore require, charge, and command that you make answer for I have been well informed of your arrogance.
Act plainly without reserve, and you will sooner be able to obtain favour of me.

ELIZABETH.

Ah, yes, that’s so much clearer, isn’t it?

Malaysian writer and director Zona Marie Tan is about to marry the blogger she met via blogging. She blogs under the monicker Midnite Lily. She summarises her story on her blog:

“The Love story

The “Online Relationship” category on my blog will take you to snippets of my little love story that began in 2006. Lee and I had been reading each other’s blogs for over three years, which we found through Blogshares. It wasn’t until April ‘06 that we started talking to each other. First through email then subsequently on YM and Skype. It was love at first click… Heh… The first time we ever met in person was when he came to visit me in Malaysia in August, and I was then in Sydney with him for five months. Now, we’ are engaged and in the midst of journeying to joining our lives.”

Congratulations, Zona and Lee!

Blogging is about communication so it’s not so surprising to come across a romantic story like this. When you get to know someone through their writing and daily updates, it’s a great way to make a lasting connection. I’ve got to know a number of great people whom I would never had connected with were it not for blogging - they’ve become email and Facebook friends and I’ve also met up with a number of them. In particular, Malaysian bloggers are particularly friendly and open and whenever I’ve met up with them after getting to know them on their blogs, it’s like meeting long lost friends. In many ways, I feel closer to them than to some non-blogging friends who live in the same city - mainly because I know more about what’s going on with my blogging/ social networked friends than about my non-blogging friends with whom I may or may not speak on the phone every few months.

Do you know any other blogging love stories? Let me know!

User-generated content is all the rage at the moment. It’s cheap, and often free, for the average person like you and me to create content eg by blogging, podcasting or uploading videos to YouTube. There is also a social networking element in that others can read/ listen to / view that content and comment or create other content in response. For example, when you watch some YouTube videos, there’s a sidebar on the right where you can see other people’s video responses to that video. On blogs, other bloggers may be inspired to write something on their blog about what you’ve written - and they may agree or disagree with you.

So it seems a great idea for companies to involve their customers and everyone else in creating content relevant for their brand. It creates a buzz around the product or brand. It brings people together around the brand. It taps into people’s creativity and desire to be noticed and rewarded for their endeavours. That’s the theory.

Heinz launched a competition inviting anyone to submit a 30-second video ad for their ketchup. The New York Times reports:

“Heinz has said it will pick five of the entries and show them on television, though it has not committed itself to a channel or a time slot. One winner will get $57,000. But so far it’s safe to say that none of the entries have quite the resonance of, say, the classic Carly Simon “Anticipation” ad where the ketchup creeps oh so slowly out of the bottle.”

So what kind of entries did they get? Some examples given in the New York Time article are:

• a teenage boy cleans his teeth and shaves with ketchup

• another kid rubs ketchup on his face and puts pickles in his eyes

Videos that have been rejected by Heinz have ended up on YouTube anyway.

Heinz have also been criticized for trying to get cheap advertising by looking for user-generated campaign although they say that it has actually been more expensive in terms of managing the process and sifting through all the entries.

There are concerns that the campaign has damaged the Heinz brand by its being associated with “gross-out” video images of its product being used in inappropriate ways - and appearing in cheap, home-produced, badly uncreative images.

You can view the Heinz ad competition and the videos on YouTube for yourself.

Here’s one involving a toilet….

I think that the idea and the intention of looking to the public to create content around a theme relevant to your brand or product is a sound one. The issue here is the management of the particular project or campaign. In the old days, when a company launched a competition eg to choose its new logo or tagline or the image that most represented its brand or some such, it controlled the process entirely and no-one would see the rejected entries. These days, the bad, irrelevant, scurrilous stuff gets circulated anyway by the very tools that makes this new form of advertising possible. It’s worth doing a full risk assessment on any social media project - as in any big project - assuming the worst case scenario in human nature. Perhaps Heinz - naively? - just expected more of the people they were bringing into the video conversation…

But it’s not all doom and gloom. On Monday, I’ll look at a user-generated video campaign that worked.