The changing nature of television, including how new platforms and content delivery methods are being developed, is something I've been working on for a while. A great example of the changes afoot is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a new project of writer-producer Joss Whedon. Bored during the television writers’ strike, Whedon—the mastermind behind cult fave Buffy the Vampire Slayer—along with his brothers devised a short-form musical story to be broadcast over the Internet. The result is a perfect example of what we mean when we talk about power shifting to content producers with the advent of these new delivery platforms. Following the "airing" of the first (of three parts), the show racked up more than 300,000 Google hits and more than 100 Google News hits, and is the top selling video on iTunes. (That people are paying $1.99 for something they can watch for free is the subject of an entirely different blog post.)

Granted, the popularity and seeming success of this is due in part to Whedon’s large and enthusiastic fan base, but nevertheless, television programming execs should be nervous. You can hit the link at the top to watch but hurry, it is only online for a limited time.

I'm a sucker for Top 10 lists, so that's probably why these thoughts from Internet Evolution on how Web 2.0 sites are changing society caught my eye. Paragraph-long descriptions of all ten are available here.

1) New Buying Habits
iTunes is to eBay as Ellen is to Maury Povich.

2) Poor Man's TiVo
Forget to set the DVR? Click on YouTube, the world’s largest, virtual broadcast network, for American Idol caterwauling or Jon Stewart’s latest.

3) Infinitives We've Come to Love

To Skype, to RSS, to podcast, to blog, to Flickr, to GPS...

4) The E-Generation Gap
You “talk” to your teenager on each other's MySpace pages. “Private data” is only what you show 800 “friends.”

5) Attack Mode
We don’t just get spammed anymore – say hello to pharming, phishing, and vishing (voice-over-IP phishing).

6) Suddenly, Those Spring Break 2003 Photos Aren’t So Fun
Employers and recruiters use Google and popular social networking site searches as part of due diligence on prospective employees.

7) OMG!
Emoticons and IM shorthand have entered the popular vernacular, even popping up in high school English compositions.

8) Thingamajigs, Doohickeys on the Way
Wikis, widgets, applets, mashups, and dashboards have transformed desktops and GUIs.

9) That Huge $ucking $ound
Venture capital has flooded the market, fueling both clever and dubious entrepreneurs on a level not seen since the first Internet bubble of 2000. Now if some .com could somehow reverse oil’s big run-up…

10) Who Am I Today?
Create an avatar to get a Second Life. Use anonymity to flame opponents or razz friends. Online identities are a lot more fluid than they are in the real world.

Image: Social Technologies

Friendships centered around e-mail were the focus of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on May 13 by reporter Tim Barker.

Entitled, "Internet enables faceless friendships," the article describes two women who met online and talk daily via e-mail -- but have never actually met in person. He quotes one of the women as saying: "In some ways, [our friendship] is probably deeper because of the anonymity."

But not everyone has a great experience socializing virtually, warns Barker, who interviewed Social Technologies' Simeon Spearman about the security risks associated with online-only friendships.

Generally speaking, those cyber friends should be treated with more skepticism than the ones you meet in the real world, said Simeon Spearman, an analyst for Social Technologies, a futurist research and consulting firm based in Washington. If you do find someone you hit it off with, it never hurts to invest a little effort into confirming your new friend's honesty. "Get them to talk to you on the phone or in video chat," Spearman said. "I wouldn't recommend hiring a private investigator or anything like that."

Read the entire article.

Image: by Chaparral Kendra (Flickr)

The case of the “MySpace suicide" has finally found its way to the courts. (Quick recap: Neighbor-mother creates fake Myspace account to spy-on/harass neighbor girl who was once friends with her daughter. After tricking the 13 year-old neighbor into thinking she was in an online relationship with a boy, the neighbor lady ended the “romance” with series of hurtful emails, after which the 13 year-old killed herself.)

This case could be interesting for all sorts of precedents it might set. For example: where is cyberspace? According to the legal filings, it is physically co-located with the Internet server farms that support it. That raises other questions: if the perpetrators were in Missouri, but the alleged crime occurs and the charges are filed in California, where the server farm is located, how is the case affected? Does California have stricter or laxer laws regarding the charges? Stricter/laxer sentencing guidelines? Could the defendant appeal based on the fact she committed no crime in California?

As more daily interactions and transactions occur online and in virtual worlds, more questions about what is legal and what is not are being raised. How do you apply laws and bring justice to what we call World 0? And are crimes that take place only in virtual spaces still crimes? For instance, is creating online images depicting child-like avatars in sexual situations child pornography? No child is involved, but some governments say yes.

The charges brought in this case reflect the difficulty in applying real-world laws online: the defendant is charged with technicalities (conspiracy, unlawfully gaining access to a computer) in her misuse of MySpace in representing herself as someone else. And, as some have mentioned, the defendant herself seems guilty or nothing more than childish behavior, poor judgment, and cruelty. But looking at the issues this case raises, it could be an important step in developing online legal codes. I myself think some old-time justice is merited -- perhaps some time in the stockade or a public flogging?

Image: Bloomsberries (Flickr) 

If you found this post useful, make sure to sign up for our RSS feed or subscribe by email.

An IDC report released this year predicts that the amount of digital data we are creating will soon outpace our capacity to store it. One contributing factor: exponential growth in online video. AT&T's VP of Legal Affairs, Jim Cicconi, notes that:

...video makes up 30% of net traffic now and in two years will hit 80%. Add in the move to high definition video which is seven to 10 times more bandwidth hungry....and you get a recipe for failure.

AT&T, whose telecom infrastructure makes up part of the Internet's backbone, is worried about future growth in online video. In a 2008 report, Internet hardware maker Cisco projects the amount of IP traffic will likely grow 46% annually through 2011. However, not everyone is concerned:

Professor Andrew Odlyzko, one of the few academics who studies net traffic growth, said predictions about the collapse of the net have been made with alarming regularity. "It's an idea that crops up very frequently," he said, "but I do not think we need to be worried."

Image: greencandy8888 (Flickr)

If you found this post useful, make sure to sign up for our RSS feed or subscribe by email.

Color me old--though I get made fun of here at Social Technologies because I’m the youngest employee--but I was shocked to see this recent Pew Internet and American Life survey that shows Internet-speak is creeping into teens’ school assignments.

The survey revealed that in school assignments:

• 64% of teens have used “informal” chat-style writing
• 50% of teens don’t use proper capitalization and punctuation
• 38% use common Internet-speak abbreviations such as “LOL” and “OMG”
• 25% have used emoticons--yes, emoticons, those annoying symbols to denote mood :(
  

What?! In school assignments? These statistics do seem ridiculous. But, assuming they’re relatively accurate, imagine what the future of writing, grammar, and communication will be. What scares me is that the majority of my generation seem to find it acceptable to write "formally" in this manner. Will correct spelling and grammar vanish, replaced by LOLCat speak?

Click to read more ...

SHANGHAI--The French have done it again.

The fallout from the Olympic torch run through Paris earlier this month has spread through the Chinese blogosphere on a wave of nationalist outcry. As I write, our Shanghainese research assistant is being bombarded by requests from friends to add a heart symbol to her instant messaging tag to prove that she loves her country and stands with China against France. She has also been asked, as has just about every Chinese person on the Internet, to boycott French retail giant Carrefour as an expression of disapproval.

Sound familiar? Recall the immediate aftermath of the French refusal to participate the Coalition of the Willing in 2003? French wine was poured into the streets, vacations to France were deferred or cancelled, and French pâté was tragically uneaten.

The decision by the Chinese government to publicize the French protests in China has catalyzed a grassroots fervor similar to the immediate post-9/11 years in the United States. Failure to express patriotism in a pre-approved way, whether in the form of an “I heart China” symbol on your IM profile or an American flag in your front yard, is met with swift and often intimidating disapproval.

The irony is that, as far as the cause of Tibetan independence or autonomy is concerned, the Olympic protests in Paris and elsewhere will likely do far more harm than good. Westerners, and certainly the Western media, are already predisposed to supporting Tibet, so nothing short of total independence would ever please them.

The real shift will be among the Han Chinese population. It’s safe to say that most Chinese were largely unaware of the Tibet issue before the events of the past few weeks other than having a vague sense of Tibet being a part of China. Now they’re fully energized and supportive of the government, and it feeds into a notion they have of themselves as victims. China watcher Roland Soong describes how much of a public relations coup this might be for the Chinese government.

Shanghaiist picked up on this earlier today as well.  

Image: Social Technologies

Iran’s online world is more vibrant than you might expect. While Reporters Without Borders ranked Iran’s press as the fourth least-free in the world, its blogosphere is full of lively conversation and rife with political dissent, as revealed in a new Berkman Center for Internet and Society (full disclosure: my former employer before I came to Social Technologies)  report on the state of the Internet, the blogosphere, and its affect on democracy in conservative, religious Iran.

 The report found that:

• Iran's blogosphere is male-dominated and incredibly diverse in content, and often features heated discussions about politics, religion, and pop culture.
• While the Iranian government vigorously censors the Internet and has arrested bloggers for expressing dissenting opinions, the report found a significantly smaller percentage of blogs being blocked than they expected: only about 15% of what the report deemed “reformist” (anti-government) blogs were blocked.
• Women are a significant minority in the Iranian blogosphere, except in poetry-themed blogs. (Poetry is a very popular form of expression for Iranians.)
• Even with the threat of arrest, Iranian bloggers don't write anonymously nearly as much as expected: for instance, the majority of "reformist" bloggers wrote under their own name, while the majority of "conservative" bloggers wrote anonymously.
• Young Iranian bloggers tend to be conservative and religious, while older bloggers tend to be reformist and secular.

What has emerged is a portrayal of an engaged, lively online community in Iran, a country where freedom of expression isn’t exactly valued. It's fascinating to see how a somewhat open Internet can change the way the citizens of an authoritarian regime are able to express themselves. It is also clear that while the Iranian government has attempted to block the most contentious blogs online, it lacks the resources to get all of them. And while it might be overly optimistic, the fact that this kind of honest and open dialogue can exist (with limits, of course) gives many the hope that the Internet can foster change in Iran, beyond just expression of personal opinions.

Image: Sander (Flickr)

 "Facebook's new privacy controls will add an extra incentive for the many users who are now using ... LinkedIn for business contacts, Facebook for friends and school contacts, MySpace for everything else, to invest most of their time in one social networking site where they can fine-tune who sees what information," Social Technologies' analyst Kyle Spector said in an E-Commerce Times/ TechNewsWorld article by Erika Morphy on March 19.

If marketed correctly, he added, these controls could become a competitive advantage for Facebook.

"This move could certainly force other social networks to follow suit and make it potentially difficult for niche networks to compete with Facebook," he said.

Read the entire article.

 

SHANGHAI--After one week with the tap turned off, YouTube is accessible again in China. Also, to my great joy, BBC News is now available for the first time in my two years here. Free blogging sites like Blogspot and Wordpress remain inaccessible except via proxy.

The only question is, "For how long?"

If the lid stays closed on any pre-Olympics politicization, I'd continue to expect a loosening of the firewall. If flare-ups continue in sensitive areas (e.g., Tibet), all bets are off.

Image: Kai Hendry (Flickr) 

SHANGHAI--Youtube, CNN, Anonymouse (my go-to proxy server), even Boing Boing…all blocked as a result of the events playing out in Tibet. This is in addition to the stuff that’s already blocked, e.g., all Blogspot, Typepad, Squarespace, and Wordpress blogs, all BBC access, and Wikipedia, among others. I wonder if Bjork can somehow be blamed for the unrest?

I had assumed the next few months would see an easing of such restrictions. I hadn’t fully considered that domestic groups with a cause would use the fact that the spotlight will be on them from now until the Olympics in August to make themselves heard, but surely some will. This will be true of groups outside the country as well. I imagine we’ll see more powerful people like Steven Spielberg under pressure to make statements against the Chinese regime, whether or not they’re associated with the games in some official capacity, as Spielberg was. I can virtually guarantee a burst of criticism from some members of the US Congress beginning in the early summer and carrying through the games. It’s an election year, after all. Some European parliamentarians are likely to chime in as well.

What no one knows is how the Chinese government will respond before, during, and after the games.

Click to read more ...

I'm in San Diego this week at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I'll be providing daily updates for ChangeWaves covering the various sessions I'm attending. Here's a recap of some of the stand out sessions and ideas from today:

• Megaphone, a startup specializing in interactive digital signage, started off the morning with an interactive game that people played while waiting for the first series of talks to begin. About 20 people called in to a phone number, then moved a character around on the interactive sign using the 2, 4, 6, and 8 buttons as up, down, left and right arrows. Players could then shoot other players by pressing 5 while moving in the direction of their opponent.
• Saul Griffith was the first presenter of the morning, and his talk was entitled "Energy Literacy." He covered the statistical background of climate change and explored various steps governments and individuals need to take to address the issue. He offered a meticulous analysis of his personal energy consumption relative to global energy consumption through the lens of the "best case scenario" presented by the IPCC and Stern reports.
• Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Design gave an intriguing presentation on data visualization as a medium. He showed various data visualization projects like the Oakland Crimespotting maps and MySociety travel time maps. Rodenbeck focused on showing how we can use data visualization to interact with information--in ways previously too difficult for widespread adoption--for both analysis and entertainment.

Click to read more ...

Why are young girls leading their male counterparts in online content creation? 

Although there are more women than men enrolled in universities across the country, computing remains a largely male-dominated field as evidenced by the low numbers of women in graduate engineering, math, and science fields.  That helps to explain the fact that only 27% of computer and mathematical jobs are held by women (pdf). Then-Harvard president Larry Summers remarked on this in a not-so-PC manner, which ultimately forced him to resign.

So it's interesting to see this article in the NYTimes about girl bloggers outnumbering boys. Girls aren't supposed to be interested in computers, right? Wrong. Not only are there more teenage girls than boys blogging (perhaps that advantage in writing coming out), but girls are also building and working on their own web pages. Still, of the students taking the AP computer science test in 2006, only 15% were girls, which seems to say girls are more interested in expressing themselves than learning C++.

What does this mean for the future? Will we see men continue to create new programs while women master them to create most online content? Or will this newfound interest in online activity prompt more girls to choose careers in more technical fields so they can generate their own platforms for interaction?

Image: crimfants (Flickr)

There I was driving through the Atlanta suburbs on February 10 when I started seeing teenagers with handmade signs and masks. In a few seconds I came over a hill and saw around 75 people with signs and face masks standing across the street from a line of police in riot gear outside of the local Church of Scientology. Later, I discovered that I had found the local version of a worldwide anti-Scientology protest held that day, organized by a group simply calling themselves "Anonymous."

Anonymous is a group of Internet users from across the globe who are organizing a series of protests against Scientology using basic Web technologies. What began as a simple series of hacks against Scientology's websites has turned into an international movement occurring in both cyberspace and in the real world. The amazing part of this story is how easily the group has managed to organize worldwide protests without a central leader or group telling everyone what to do.

Click to read more ...

I really noticed the potential for "old people" to invade what I thought should be my generation's domain of social networking this summer when my mom (prompted by a Newsweek piece on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg) asked me if I use Facebook or MySpace. Without Newsweek, I doubt she'd even know what they were.

But the fact is a lot of adults are on Facebook and MySpace and increasingly want virtual contact with family members, creating some intergenerational clashes, as this MSNBC article discusses:

Nowhere are the technological turf wars more apparent than on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, which went from being student-oriented to allowing adults outside the college ranks to join.

Gary Rudman, a California-based youth market researcher, has heard the complaints. He regularly interviews young people who think it's ``creepy'' when an older person -- we're talking someone they know -- asks to join their social network as a ``friend.'' It means, among other things, that they can view each others' profiles and what they and their friends post.

``It would be like a 40-year-old attending the prom or a frat party,'' Rudman says. ``It just doesn't work.''

The social acceptability, or awkwardness, issue stems mostly from lack of clear etiquette guidelines on these sites (college students aren't immune: many people choose to "friend" everyone they've ever met). For instance, I didn't think it was awkward to friend my aunt after we discussed the different demographic appeal of Facebook and MySpace, but I would have thought it was really weird if she'd friended me out of the blue. I still try to limit our Facebook interaction to messaging, although she seems to be fairly active based on her profile and the number of wall posts.

It seems that navigating the frontiers of social networking will take some time and adjustment from both generations.  I may be Facebook friends with my aunt, who seems fairly adept online, but I won't be showing my mom how to set up a profile anytime soon.

Image: cambodia4kidsorg (Flickr)