::Making Sense of the Ebbs and Flow of Social Data
Below are notes + slides of my presentation at the BRANDSconf. I’d like to acknowledge Hunter Whitney. Portions of this content were based on a discussion and an upcoming article he is writing on this topic (link coming shortly):
I’m extremely passionate about data analysis and design. My work focuses on the intersection of the two. I play with data, and figure out ways to make it more accessible to people. I’m here to talk about why the art of making sense of massive amounts of social data is critical not only for geeks like me, but any professional using Twitter. And my goal is to get YOU all excited about the opportunity that understanding data unveils for us.
Whether you’re a multi-national enterprise, a local deli or a mah-jong meetup, the proliferation of social network services like Twitter have created an expectation that you interact with your customers, users and followers. There’s an expectation to connect rather than broadcast. We’ve been hearing this over and over this morning – you are a brand. And as a brand you are expected to interact with your audience like a person would interact with others. You need to engage in conversations, provide and receive feedback, network, create hype, and do all this in a timely manner.
But how can we be expected to interact with an ever growing and diverse group of people when we can’t really “see” them?
Giving Shape to our Audience
Judith Donath of Harvard’s Berkman Center talks about human signaling and how that translates to digital spaces. I get a variety of signals from merely standing in front of you all – your age, what you’re wearing, how you’re feeling, whose smiling and whose already fallen asleep. Being here, with you, part of this event, I have context that helps me understand how best to interact with you all. I’ll happily switch to speaking Hebrew, but obviously that will not be helpful. Even the little bit that I know about you helps me make some useful assumptions – speak English, tune down the analytics/mathematics terms, tune up the user experience/brand jargon.
Social network spaces are fueled by social interactions. Think of people’s interactions online as digital breadcrumbs, trails of connections, likes, thoughts and opinions. By piecing together these crumbs we can start making sense of the people giving us attention on Social Network sites. We must use as much of the tools available to mine the data about our audience – location, time of day, language, interests. In order to interact with an audience we need to be able to sense it.
There are a variety of tools that give us this opportunity to mine content. This is only the first step. We need to put an emphasis on looking at the connections between people, and not only the content that is being published.
The Social Graph
Social Graph is a term that I’m certain you all will hear more and more as social network spaces become a fundamental component of our lives. A social graph is a dataset that represents people and their inter-connections within a group. Mark Zuckerberg is known for popularizing the term in his description of the value that Facebook Connect brings to websites. Facebook’s social graph is made up of you all who I’m sure have accounts, and all your connections. Additionally, that graph distinguishes between types of connections – whether colleagues, friends or family.
Twitter’s social graph is different. Its a directed, which means that connections have directions. The person who you follow does not necessarily follow you back. Twitter’s social graph is fascinating because it maps people’s interests; what people are willing to give their attention to. By understanding people’s interests over time as well as their interconnections, we have the ability to identify we can reveal valuable points such as (1) bridges: people who connect two distinct communities (2) influencers: those who can get their audience to participate (3) experts: people who specialize on a specific topic (4) hustlers: culture creators.
While it is fairly straightforward to aggregate large datasets, we are still challenged by making sense of graph based data. These constantly changing graph indexes are massive at scale and may require complex queries in realtime: whats the shortest path between person A and person B, whats the intersection between group C and D or whats the clustering coefficients amongst group E. Once calculated, these results reflect on the intricacies of people’s relationships, and shedding light on properties that directly affect their behavior: influence, trust, authority and personal preference.
Understanding information flows
In the social web, information spreads through people, networks of friends, fans and followers. Social network sites create compelling spaces where users feel comfortable to hang out, interact, consume, poke and publish. Social interactions lubricate the flow of information within these spaces, creating a plethora of dynamics. These spaces are filled with endless streams of content, encouraging users to participate, add to, consume from and redirect content. As information flows by, users grab content when it is most relevant, valuable, entertaining or insightful, and at times, choose to pass it on.
Because information flows through networks of people, attention has become a scarce commodity. This is truly a game changer. Media companies no longer control people’s attention, but are rather fighting for a smaller section of the pie. True power lies in understanding how information flows and its effect of where people choose to focus their attention. In order for messages to propagate through social networks, people along the way must be attentive to the pieces of information, see them at the right time, and pass them onwards.
Whether you’re interested in socializing or in selling a product, understanding people’s habits around information consumption and production is imperative to attaining people’s attention and building an audience. By leveraging the publicly available data around people’s practices, we can create services that shed a light on people’s habits and preferences. Additionally, by mining this data over time, we can infer their value in affecting information flows.
I’ve been following @jeffpulver for a while now and know that he’s quite generous in terms of attention. A great time to catch Jeff is in the morning (wherever he is), as he sends out a ‘good morning’ Tweet, there tend to be reciprocal pings and messages. I also know Jeff is interested in new developments in the Israeli startup scene. If I have any juicy piece of information on that topic, I’d make sure to post it, possibly with a /cc/ to Jeff, and ideally around his morning time. I have a mental model in my head, around Jeff’s practices in consuming and producing content.
We all do this, but can only capture so much in our heads. We need tools that scale and capture our networks as a whole and not just individuals. Remember, its not necessarily about the size of an audience or someone’s number of followers, but rather who they are and who they’re connected to.
That all sounds really great, but in effect, representing large graph datasets can easily get out of hand, however loved by geeks, usually becomes a tangled mass of lines and dots. We must remember that this data is beneficial only if people are able to make sense of it. We need to think about interfaces that will let us play with the data; slice and dice the parts that we deem relevant or interesting. In addition to an intuitive interface, we need controls that will help us dive into and observe patterns or connections that would have otherwise been hidden.
Closing
There are three points I want to make sure you all come out of this talk thinking about:
1) Mine Digital Breadcrumbs – use the exiting tools to get a sense for how our audience looks and its segmentation (I’ve made a oneforty kit here)
2) Social Graphs are Extremely Useful – yet complex to aggregate and mine.
3) understanding information flows is Powerful – especially as we’re shifting from broadcast mode to that of engagement
Social network analytics tools may fundamentally change the way we engage with our online audiences. We need to build better tools that do the above mentioned tasks. But I need people like you all to be vocal about your needs and frustrations. As we’re building out these technologies, we want to make sure they are tailored to real needs. We’re only at the start of the journey, and I’m super excited to be a part of it!
Towards the end of Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, there’s a detailed description of an hour long meeting that the author had with President Obama at the oval office. He recounts the scene with such detail, that I felt as if I was there in the room. The body language, attitude, charisma and humor.
At the end of their meeting, Bob hands Obama a passage from The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson, which I found both inspiring and saddening.
…for war was not just a military campaign but also a parable. There were lessons of camaraderie and beauty and inscrutable fate. There were lessons of honor and courage; of compassion and sacrifice. And then there was the saddest lesson to be learned again and again. That war is corrupting. That it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit. That even the excellent and the superior can be defiled. That no heart can remain unstained…
Obama reads this quote, and responds by pointing Bob to his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
No matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldiers courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing dedication to county, to a cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such. So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths.
That war is sometimes necessary.
And that war in some level is an expression of human falling.
War used to be such an dominant part of my reality. But now feels so distant. I’m not wishing for the stress, worry and fear that came along with that. What I am worried about is living in a country where there’s such a lack of concern and connection to where its own soldiers are fighting, or to the major fronts that see daily battles. From reading this book, I’m invigorated by Obama’s seeming concern to gather as much information as possible in order to make the best decision about the continuation of these wars. I see little hope in finding a policy that will not cost the US military many years and high involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. To make things right, they must work with local communities, build trust and a solid social infrastructure, using counter insurgency techniques. However, with the general public so disengaged, how the heck are they going to pull it off?
Today I sat through an incredibly frustrating talk by the newly appointed Israel ambassador to the UN, Meron Reuben. Meron recently replaced Gabriela shalev who most likely resigned from her post after serving for the last two years. Meron gave a generic politico talk, spanning the ways in which Israel is helping the UN reach its millenium goals through its innovation in clean energy tech and agriculture. He also noted how tricky Israel’s relationship with the UN has been (historically) and how challenging of a role this is (I totally agree) – especially as the ambassador does not have any say in the political agenda, but merely represents the decisions made by the Israeli gov’t in front of the assembly.
The Q&A section was where things got both interesting and frustrating. Meron used the commonly heard Israeli political narrative. I’ll try to map out his main arguments, and then include my point of view.
Uneven Representation
“They have much more representation than Israel in the UN. There’s only one Israel and many Arab states.” This makes it extremely difficult to “be heard”, especially when your enemies repeat the same arguments over and over again. Meron mentioned that he can only speak so much, while the Arab nations have, in aggregate, substantially more time on the stage.
Antisemites are Out to Get Us
Meron uses the same techniques that politicians and the Israeli media know so well. He depicts Israel as the scapegoat, being harrassed and bullied. Constantly pointed at and given an unjustified amount of attention. He called this a “new form of anti-semitism”, something that he claims, is quite common in the UN.
Lies! Unlike us, They Don’t Fact Check
Meron claims that it has become hip to point a finger against Israel. “It is the trendy thing to do, especially if you’re part of the political left”, he claims. It is apealing for people to amplify messages that are anti-Israeli, even if they are not true, or fact-checked. When asked about how we can affect people’s perception about Israel, his response was that there’s not much we can do. That Israel is cautious and investigates claims, but by the time results and proof come back, nobody really cares anymore.
My take:
I am extremely weary of the language that Meron uses, which is reflective of the general way that Israeli politicians have been framing political reality in the Middle East. Creating an “us vs. them” narrative and never admitting any mistakes, but rather constantly justifying. Calling out anti-semitism whenever there is critique against the State of Israel is absurd and counter productive. You can only get away with that so many time before that term loses its value. Perhaps this is what one must do strategically when playing political power games, but it is certainly not convicing me to keep supporting the country that I would like to support.
Truth is, it’s driving me away.
Perception vs. Reality
Israeli politicians and diplomats are so focused on the hard facts that they are absent from the public discourse, and thus lose support worldwide. They need to be actively addressing events as they occur, engaging in conversation, and in effect “fighting” to affect people’s perception in real time. Because once an event occurs, and an opinion is engraved in someone’s mind, it is extremely difficult to change.
I’ve watched this happen too many times. Israel makes a military move that incites worldwide critique. In the first couple days, Israeli gov’t heavily controls all communications around the hot zone – always failing to completely stop the flow of information. Like in the flotilla incident, and during operation Cast Lead, only a number of formal military channels release information. People are left to asses the military sources, versus numerous leaks coming from Palestinians or activists under attack. Why would anyone be rooting for Israel in these cases? Instead of utilizing diplomats and representatives to engage in discussions with the public, Israel blocks all channels, and while it supposedly investigates all claims, the major source of real time information is coming from the other side.
You lose the battle over people’s perception.
And you lose the battle.
Imagine a reality where for a day, Snookie from Jersey Shore becomes the single most visible representative of American military and foreign agenda around the world. A world where whatever she says, is taken as representative of an organization that she is not even remotely a part of. As frightening as that thought may be, this is exactly what happened last month in Israel when a clueless 20-year old ex-IDF soldier posted disturbing photos taken during her army service, on her Facebook page. She smiles and poses in front of a blindfolded and cuffed Palestinian detainee. Her friends comment and ‘like’ the photos. Unbeknownst to her, all this content is publically accessible because of Facebook’s December ’09 changes in privacy defaults. The content is immediately picked up by a local Israeli blog, and within a day, through a world encompassing media avalanche, reaches the New York Times, Guardian, BBC and hundreds of front pages around the world.
Within a fortnight, Eden Abergil becomes an Israeli public figure, stamped on news articles slashing one of Israeli IDF core principles, its moral values, and Israeli society as a whole. All because a single, insignificant girl’s actions; a girl who has no connection whatsoever to the army anymore. Domestic and international news agencies turn against her. The IDF condemns her actions and releases her from reserve service. Yet Eden still does not really grasp why here photos are perceived as problematic. In a recent interview, when asked if she understands the world’s anger about the photos, Eden answers: “of course I understand! The whole world is against us. Its not a secret that the world hates us (Israelis)”. It was her army service, the photos were her souvenir which she posted on her supposedly private Facebook page, and had “private” conversations with her friends. She did not physically harm the prisoners. On the contrary, she claims that she fed and gave them water. “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about!” – she exclaims.
But the powerful fact still holds. With a tiny click of the mouse, by uploading these photos, Eden provided the world with ammunition against one of the most powerful armies in the world: a way to attack the IDF’s *prized* moral values. Compulsory service means that every Israeli is connected to the army – siblings, parents and friends. It is an integral part of Israeli society, making it difficult for one to criticize its actions. When you criticize the IDF, you’re criticizing your brother who might be serving, your father who is in reserves, and your friend’s family, whose son was killed in one of the many dangerous oprations in Gaza. The story of Eden Abergil hit one of Israel’s most sensitive spots – the IDF’s moral values. During the Lebanon and Gaza wars, as well as the Flotilla attacks, Israeli “hasbara” consistently uses the IDF values as its main defense reasoning. IDF soldier’s intent is to target militants and terrorists NOT civilians. IDF soldiers act to protect Israeli civilians, they react when attacked. Their values are aligned with what the western world would expect a truly valiant army.
The repercussions of Eden Abergil’s actions are a country’s worst nightmare, and a byproduct of the difficulties Facebook users have grasping issues of privacy on Facebook. When looking at Eden’s photos it is hard not to jump to conclusions and judge the IDF as a whole. “Finally the true face of the IDF has been revealed” – “see how they ruthlessly treat Palestinian prisoners”. But as we all know, the truth tends to be much more complex and multi-faceted. Yes, there are countless cases of detainee mistreatment by IDF soldiers. Hundreds of Palestinians are held without any legal justification. However in Eden’s case, there was none of that.
From blogs to mainstream media, Israelis disgusted by the sheer stupidity of this girl’s actions, horrified by the fact that within a day, Eden Abergil turned from being a nobody retired soldier chatting about shopping, parties and boys with her friends, to a world-wide symbol of “vicious Israeli occupation”; the face of the IDF, affecting people’s perception of Israel around the world.
The harm that Eden’s photos did to the image of the IDF will take a long time to heal, if ever. However, the damage done to her personal image will never be erased. Eden is mocked and publically slandered by media outlets as well as Isarelis across the country. The following youtube skit marks her as an “Arsit” (a.k.a. ‘white trash’) while numerous Internet memes have unfolded with her photo and name plastered all across. Eden will always be rememberd as that stupid girl who posted abnoxious photos on her Facebook account. She will have a hard time finding a job, and will always be the poster case for “people doing stupid things online”. Her micro-celebrity status will most likely drive her insane or to the extreme edge of society. When the waters settle, she will be forgotten.
We often experience the clash of contexts that happen on social media sites. We all have a different perception of what is funny or what is considered true. We are used to dealing separately with each of our friend groups. However, with many social media services, all of our relationships are classified within a single bucket. Personally, this has taken the fun our of my Facebook experience. I rarely post anything without thinking twice about the consequences. That said, something’s recently changed. I’ve grown to somewhat appreciate this clash. As the Flotilla event evolved, and things got politically charged, I realized that it might actually serve a constructive purpose.
This recently posted video of Israeli soldiers dancing to the beat of Ke$ha’s “tick tock” in the middle of their patrol in the West Bank is a great example of the clash of context. The video went viral extremely fast, as many Israelis re-posted and proudly emailed the link, naively thinking that “the world will finally see that our soldiers are humans who also like to have a little fun”. They could not have imagined just how offended people across the world would be from watching the video. Slogans like “It’s easy to laugh at the occupation when you’re the oppressor” were posted in response, causing lots of frustration and confusion all around.
Intentions were good, but were lost in translation.
Ethan Zuckerman has been writing about xenophilia and culture bridging for a while. He points at people’s tendency towards homophily (‘birds of a feather flock together’) and sees this as a fundamental challenge, since with the web, we’re more able than ever to find people that are like us. He stresses the importance for us to seek out and understand people different from us, especially as cultures clash on global web services become more common. Ethan defines xenophilia as people in the world who are genuinely fascinated by the breadth, complexity and difference of the world; “third culture kids”, people who were raised in one country, but are “from” another. Bridge bloggers are xenophiles who have the capacity to connect both sides of a story, because they themselves are associated with both sides.
In his recent blog post, Ethan looks at data released by peace.facebook.com, boasting how many daily connections are made between pairs of battling entities. According to the site, 15,747 connections between Israelis and Palestinians have been made over the last 24 hours on Facebook. I find this piece of data incredibly hard to believe (especially since the number doesn’t seem to change over the course of the week). Even if a reciprocal relationship equals 2 connections, I can’t imagine such a high number of connections forming on a daily basis. That said, 20% of Israeli population is Arab, many with roots and family in Gaza or the West Bank. This fact could certainly explain the data.
Their notion of “connections” makes me wonder if they account for Facebook fan pages. Successful fan pages tend to be politically charged, and polarize the users according to their political agenda rather than bring those with different views together. However, if Facebook’s data is counting Israeli Arabs as Israelis (as they should!), I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d accounted for multiple connections forming via these fan pages.
I am extremely doubtful that much bridging happens through direct Facebook “friending”, nor that it is represented by direct Facebook “friendships” between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. So where does it happen if at all?
In order to answer this question, we must discuss the notion of a “safe space”, which I consider crucial for bridging to happen. A safe space makes us feel comfortable, almost at home. Its an environment where we are supported and validated; a place where we are willing to lower our defenses.
I am a huge fan of Global Voices, but wouldn’t consider it as a safe space for Israelis. The majority of readership on the Middle East section tilts heavily towards Arab articles, comments and opinions. One might say that is totally fair since it is representative of actual world distribution of population. But the outcome is an imbalanced environment, which for an Israeli, feels unsafe; a place where they won’t be supported, nor will they be identified with. Why hang out where everyone’s picking on you when you can easily go play with fun friends elsewhere? For the most part,like the Guardian or Al-Jazeera, Global Voices is not perceived as a safe space.
However I believe that Facebook creates new opportunities for safe spaces to form, especially as they are based on people’s familiarity with each other.
Facebook received massive adoption in Israel, easily taking over any other Social network or service. Israel is a tiny place, and people are inherently social – making Facebook a perfect place to interact with the “hevre” (Hebrew for ‘gang’ – also the name of one of the earliest Social Networks that saw light in Israel). Facebook is a place where my friends from Israel feel extremely comfortable. Even when someone lands on my profile page, there are always other friends a mere click away, in the periphery. One is never alone, in any given context.
The Flotilla incident triggered something I hadn’t seen before. Friends from different contexts don’t tend to communicate with each other, even when reacting to the same post. The flotilla events changed this.
When dealing with such a complex topic that has no clear “right” or “wrong”, I witnessed multiple “cross boundary” conversations happening on my own Facebook page, and also amongst my Israeli friends who are also living abroad. Our pages served as bridges, or safe havens, where contacts from “opposing sides” could have a conversation.
It would go something like this – (1) Facebook page owner posts link to article (2) Israeli friend/relative responds with a pro-Israeli message (3) European friend responds to that with a counter opinion (4) Another Israeli friend responds (5) another foreign friend supports #3 (6) profile owner mediates…
…you get the drift.
The interesting part here is that even if there are no direct links between those in Israel, and those with opposing perspectives wherever they were, a conversation could take place because of the personalized nature of Facebook. Because it felt safer to do it there, on a shared friend’s page. Much safer than on Global Voices, or other international news websites.
The more Facebook grows, the more I see these kinds of exchanges happening. In his post, Ethan claims that “we overestimate how many of our online contacts cross borders and underestimate how often these tools are used to reinforce local friendships”. While I agree, I’d add that we shouldn’t only look at direct cross-border connections, but rather try to understand and estimate the value that Facebook serves as a safe space for bridging to occur. I’m not sure how we quantify the amount of cultural bridging that is not represented by FB connections. We could only do this by analyzing public discussions happening on profile pages, between profiles who are not friends on Facebook.
To conclude, Obama argues that we suffer from an “empathy deficit”, as quoted from a speech to college students:
“There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room. As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier.”
Placing yourself in someone else’s shoes is much easier when the store attendant is your close friend. Facebook as a platform has the potential to host these conversations; be the store. Safe space.
But we the users, have to make the conversations happen.
If you’ve never been to one of the twice-a-year shows held at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, you’re missing the weirdest, coolest, most insanely inspired geek projects around. Red Burns sez ‘ITP is about enhancing the human spirit through imagination. when we grow up we have it knocked out of us and we’re afraid to be embarrased. The minute you tell people they don’t have rules to follow the floodgates open, and they do things even they’re suprised of’. As an alumni, I can confess that Red is absolutely 100% right. Here are some of the projects I loved from the recent Spring 2010 show:
Scrollables is a stunning exploration that uses paper as an interface for digital content. Move the scroll, and control the content projected onto it:
Current is a real time data visualization of the life-cycle of internet memes, from birth to evolution and decline, in relation to the daily news cycle. By visually anthropomorphizing the capricious nature of public attention we are able to spotlight missed opportunities in news coverage, and, potentially, recover news readership that has been lost to more sensational sources. Download and run the application yourself!
Plus and Minus visualizes the progress of HIV/AIDS in the last 20 years and lets users see how changes they make can affect the future. It is based on data from 1990 through 2007 and lets one compare see possible outcomes of investment in different solutions like condoms, HIV screenings and education.
Mobile Logger is an iphone application that lets its users record location, direction, speed, altitude and sound level as they go off on a journey. This is especially designed for bikes, but can obviously be used in other “journey” situations. Check out the Gizmodo post.
Chat Roulette 1988 is a phone based system that allows you to chat with different people anytime, anywhere. Since the 80′s are back (or so claim the creators), you might as well give this a try! The project leverages the Asterisk Open Source telephony project.
SHORT++ is a pair of interactive robotic elevators shoes that are activated by an iPhone app. (There’s a new UP for that…) Check out Adi’s video:
Papel is a retail display that mixes paper art, illusions and human interaction. When a viewer is not present, the wall paper will radiate a soft glow. When the viewer stands in front of the installation, the glow fades out, and their image is back-projected onto the paper structure.
Thermogen is a cool project that converts heat from a toaster over to electricity. In essence, a cirtuit to be used where power is unavailable, but heat is plentiful. Additionally, David created not only electricity from the heat, but also yummy choc-chip cookies.
Check out our recently installed piece, the ‘Future of the Book’, at the Berkeley Center for New Media window (next to the free speech cafe). It is a mixed media electronic sculpture, built in collaboration with Judith Donath and Martin Wattenberg. Initially commissioned for the Boston Book Festival in 2009, we reconstructed the piece for BCNM, where it will be in display until August. The piece includes three unique visualizations that display content related to books and reading:
Three glowing screen are set amidst arching piles of ghostly pale books. One continuously reconfigures Twitter posts about reading, on another bouncing letters randomly settle into place, revealing pointed quotes about reading drawn from well-known books, while the third uses the viewer’s image to trace out a series of related passages.
Like many friends, I have been horrified to see Facebook take aggressive measures to make as much of its content publically available. Since its shift in privacy defaults last December, Facebook has been working diligently to take away our privacy in an attempt to ‘colonize’ the web’s social graph (as Kara Swisher suggests). It is now ridiculously easy for any website to embed Facebook functionality, and thus personalize its experience per visiting user. Truth is, I am torn; torn between hating Facebook as a user and excited for the opportunity as a web entrepreneur; mostly excited at the prospect of creating compelling, contextualized socially-rich user experiences. And as much as I despise Facebook, I will not delete my account.
I am sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, since ceasing to exist on Facebook so will drastically reduce my ability to communicate with many friends. And this gets to the crux of the challenge: are we so addicted to Facebook that we can’t tell whats good for us anymore? Is Facebook an Evil? Are they trying to Monopolize the social web? All of the above??
Last December, Facebook broke the social “contract” that we all signed up for by changing its privacy defaults. It switched the context right under our noses, prompting some 65% of users to go public without even knowing it. Many users still have no clue how visible their profile information and photos are (we all know how unintuitive FB privacy controls are). While this is totally unacceptable behavior and places some users in potentially risky situations, I can’t help but also look at the flip side. Facebook is on its way to becoming the first truly global social network platform that has potential to fundamentally change the way we experience the web. By placing social information in context and not in a single, aggregated feed, Facebook might actually succeed at creating some fantastically useful socially-aware and personalized browsing experiences. All that simply traded for our privacy!
Well, not so simple.
Some think that it is possible to bring the demise of Facebook by creating applications that will scare users; creepy apps that know way too much about you. While this might make headlines, it is unlikely that such an approach will prove to be successful in the long term. As a society, we’ve become so hooked on Facebook, that we are willing to take potential future risks in return for current socializing. And realistically, unless I were a hormone-fluctuating, socially uncomfortable teen, what content could your app possibly surface that is so detrimental to my life?
Raul Pacheco hits the spot when he writes that Facebook’s actions are ‘not enough for us to care’:
There has been a lot of debate online about how Facebook keeps making it more difficult for users to keep their privacy. My question to everyone is — if Facebook is that “evil,” why are we all still using it? Why not be completely democratic and demonstrate (with our vote, e.g. with our not having a Facebook account) that this loss of privacy is unacceptable?
The answer is — because not enough of us care. If the millions of users of Facebook really cared that much about their privacy, they would make the Big Brother/Sister accountable. But in a society that is valuing privacy less and less, accountability has become an afterthought and not mainstream. Sadly, that also means that we have lost the power of protecting our privacy to commercial interests.
I wouldn’t say that Facebook users don’t care about privacy. I just think that many don’t care enough to be obsessing and worrying about potential future risks. Even if one recognizes a slightly riskee photo or comment, it is tempting to just leave online, as the fun of social interaction trumps the thought about potential future uncomfort. While these types of actions most likely don’t affect users in the near term, there are two things that we should be aware of: (1) the consequences of our actions onto others, and (2) the long term implications of sharing our data.
This is where User Experience Design can play a significant role, as we are facing an extremely difficult design challenge. We need to create a visual language that helps users understand these potential risks taken by making content visible. Not unlike the automobile association in West London who set the first warning signs on roads in 1908, or the cigarette manufacturers who were mandated to highlight the medical issues correlated with smoking, we need to figure out best practices to display potential risks without scaring users away. We need to design digital warning signs that keep attracting people’s attention and not fade into the background. We should be aware of our privacy controls at all times – perhaps by placing icons of just how many people can see an item before it is submitted.
I shouldn’t have to dive into complicated settings that give the fiction of privacy control but don’t — since they’re so hard to understand that they’re ignored. I shouldn’t need a flowchart to understand what friends of friends of friends can share with others. Things should be naturally clear and easy for me . . .
Would you like to see your dad, teacher and ex-girlfriend’s icons next to an item before submitting it? Probably not.
Is there a system that can helps us visualize the audience to which we are writing? That’s something users don’t want to see, and thus a challenging design problem.
There is a growing need for applications that help us understand our personal online brand: how we are portrayed online, and what potential risks we face. What’s the equivalent of an anti-virus application, that instead of protecting our computer, protects our online persona? We need something that can warn us when a risky action was taken online (either by us or our within our social network).
Facebook’s new APIs makes is super easy for web developers to build on top of its social graph. Almost too easy. By embedding widgets in the form of like buttons and status update boxes, websites can easily personalize their views according to you. For a growing number of services, this is done without even requiring users to login. For example, on likebutton.me you will see your Facebook friend’s activities from a variety of websites, as long as have previously logged into Facebook. A central listing of what my friends recommend, separated by topics. Creepy, but potentially useful.
The same type of connection happens with both yelp and pandora. At first feels creepy, yet as an experience, potentially something we may get used to, or even like.
Here are two examples where things can get out of hand:
(1) There are Facebook “community pages” that automatically add any status updates that include the page keyword. From CIA and FBI to Terrorism, they’ve got it all, with your name and thoughts right there, thanks to your inability to understand their privacy defaults! As a user, without even knowing it, your name is automatically associated with a community that algorithmically formed around a used keyword.
(2) It is dead simple to create Evil “Like” Buttons – by hacking the button to point to another page. Again, adding the risk that our usernames would be associated with something we are not aware of.
As a User Experience designer my task is to think about users first, place them in the center of my design, protect them, respect their needs, and help them accomplish whatever they come to do in the best possibly way. However, Informing users of privacy hazards is a difficult design challenge, one that Facebook obviously doesn’t want to handle. As web entrepreneurs, should we be leveraging this powerful yet scary technology that Facebook has enabled?
If so, how do we warn our users without scaring them away? How do we show users what they don’t really want to see or deal with? How can we warn of risks that only affect the far future?
We should also ask ourselves if regulation is needed. And if so, what would it look like and how it might further complicate the matter?
I was fortunate to be invited this year as one of the contributing artists at TEDActive. This is the simulcast event that happens in Palm Springs at the same time that the main TED event takes place in Long Beach. The organizers frame it not as “TED jr.” but rather a more intimate version of TED; in essence, what it used to be like before it became a 1500 person event.
Ironically enough, Bing sponsored a really cool lounge which included a number of interactive art pieces. This is were Dan Goods and I installed a variation the Aerogel installation. For TEDActive, we slightly altered its interactivity and the projected material:
Aerogel is a solid made up of 99.8% air and 0.2% of a smoky form of silicon, hence its other name: ‘solid smoke’. While it is easily breakable, the material is super light and a fantastic heat insulator. Throughout the week, Dan would let people hold a piece of Aerogel on their hand while directing a blow-torch at it. When projected upon, it captures light in a stunning way:
NASA uses aerogel to capture dust particles in space. These particles vaporize on impact with solids and pass through gases, however can be trapped within the aerogel. Our installation dealt with this notion of capturing that which difficult to hold or grasp. As the conference progressed, the ideas that were raised and discussed during the talks were captured and projected on the aerogel pieces. At different times, a variety of topic would be projected within the aerogel pieces. When left by itself, the projections morphed between movement and colors. But as a person would move their hands in front of the installation, some of the most recent messages posted on Twitter about TED or TEDActive would explode within the projected space.
Here’s a video demonstrating the material’s amazing capability to capture light:
Here’s another video showing Dan interacting with the piece:
#CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike is a hashtag created by @mattsly the morning of October 26th. He submitted the following snarky message – ‘Go Phillies. #CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike hoping investment bankers get really huge bonuses of at least 8 figures‘ – hoping to entertain his friends, and possibly get others to participate. Matt had 182 followers at the time, not sizeable by any means on Twitter. Little did he expect that some 9 hours later, 271 different users, most of whom have no connection to him whatsoever, would participate, posting around 500 messages in total.
How did this happen and what prompted this message to spread?
#CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike
About an hour after Matt sent out his first message, one of his followers, @lizzieohreally, wrote the following message ‘@jaketapper? @abcdude? …Hoping someone w/ more Twitter than I can help popularize #CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike (via @mattsly)‘. Lizzie clearly understood that in order to get many others to play, she would have to get someone with a large set of followers to participate. Lizzie had only around 500 followers at the time, so posted this message in an attempt to seek @jaketapper or @abcdude’s attention.
Sure thing, some twenty minutes later, @abcdude see’s the message and adds his own variation to the meme: ‘#cheeringfortheyankeesislike pulling for Regina George in “Mean Girls.”‘ He enjoys it so much that he promptly posts another message and attaches the hashtag. @abcdude is a new york based correspondent for ABC news. He dubs himself a RedSox fan and a cosmic power broker. Not as cosmic as Lizzie had hoped, but still, he has some 7,000 followers, which could certainly help give the meme some traction. We see a small spike after @abcdude’s participation, and by now, some 3 hours after Matt sent the original message, there have been 34 different messages posted with this unique hashtag.
But it wasn’t until @jaketapper joined in that the conversation really took off. The hashtag came to Jake’s attention after @DetourJazz, whom he follows, participated. Jake reacted by posting: ’RT @DetourJazz: #cheeringfortheyankeesislike rooting for “Craterface” in Grease to beat Danny (via @Laura_Martin)’. He then added a new message that he posted to his followers. Jake is a senior White House correspondent for ABC news with over 30,000 followers. Before he took part in this meme, new posts appeared at a frequency of one every 5 minutes. Immediately after he joined, we see a sharp rise in participation, with multiple messages from a variety of users every minute.
Seeing it Spread
1. Graphing the Network – Every user who participated in the meme is represented by a gray circle (Matt, whom first started the meme, is shown in yellow). Edges represents the person who most likely influenced the other to first participate.
2. Seeing the Flow – in this applet, a user is represented by their twitter icon. As the timeline moves forward, each profile lights up when they post a new message with the hashtag. Tthe moment that @jaketapper chose to participate is evident – there’s a clear, sudden spike in participation after his profile picture lights up.
3. Seeing the distance – the following applet highlights the total social distance that this hashtag traveled between users. Each user is represented by a circle, the more influence a user has, the larger their circle is drawn. Edges in this example represent the social ties – when there’s a follower/friend relationship between two users, a line is placed between their representation on the screen. The first column includes only Matt who first used the hashtag. The second row consists of only those people he directly influenced to participate (his followers). While there are a total of 9 columns, it is crystal clear that the most important phase happened in the second and third column, when a core cluster of users chose to participate, and a mini tipping point was reached.
Parsing the Data
#CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike lasted for a total of 9 hours that day, activated 271 different users and included around 500 messages in total. From looking at this meme, it is clear that on Twitter, there’s great advantage to having many followers if one intends to spread a message. It is also clear that having the right followers is key. If it were not for @lizzieohreally who knew to actively pass the message onwards to heavy Twitter users, the meme would never have spread out the way it did. In order to come to these conclusions it was necessary for me to look at social ties in addition to the semantics of the messages posted.
I used the Twitter API to discover the follower/friend relationships between all users who participated in this meme. This is extremely important data, especially when modeling the flow of participation and influence within this hashtag. For example, lets look at a simple case where user B follows user A. If user A first participates and is followed by user B participating, user A is rewarded some number of influence points – this is assuming user B saw the hashtag posted by user A, and decided to participate. Additionally, if a user is retweeted or ‘@’ messaged they are rewarded some number of influence points. Real life situations can easily become complicated, as user B might also be following user C, who participated in the meme as well. Now how do we know if user B was influenced by user A or user C? Hard to tell, but we can build an influence model that takes these situations into account, which is exactly what I did.
Translating the semantics and social ties from the dataset into a visual language that made sense was key to helping me understand this hashtag experiment. I am a big fan of visualization as a means to parse large datasets, however dealing with social, implicit data is tricky, and extremely challenging to represent visually. But when done right, these representations can shine a whole new light and hopefully help us better understand some of the dynamics at play.
@edchi@msbernst@alexleavitt Its so tempting to give simple answer: X gets most clicks at time Y... Ppl love those msgs, but so misleading!Time ago
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@msbernst@alexleavitt@edchi brilliant. This is the exact post I was looking for. I'm writing a critique that's very similar.Time ago
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@alexleavitt yeah, but that doesn't really work with data from social networks. Can't transform to fit normal dist.Time ago
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Inshallah we'll start seeing better shawarma joints in the US! RT @echen: Shawarma: t.co/vwfQES10Time ago
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Looking for solid critiques of using averages when analyzing data from social networks (power law distributions)Time ago
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RT @kurtosis0: Love the part in 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' where Samuel Jackson goes "I have had it with these muthafckn salmon in the muthafckn Yemen!"Time ago
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