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

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) 

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The final day of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference included two presentations that really stood out to me.

Joel Selanikio discussed the potential for Africa to be a major source of mobile phone software innovation, in sectors ranging from health to financial services. He argued that many of these innovations could make their way back to the United States and other developed countries: because mobile banking initiatives are a low priority in the US, but are a necessity in Africa, these systems can be beta tested and refined in African markets before becoming major product offerings in World 1.

Though interesting, his talk focused too much on applications that could "reverse leapfrog" back into World 1. Instead, I would have liked him to explore the implications of Africa's developing a core competency in software development aimed at bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers worldwide. African programmers could profit greatly by developing products for Worlds 2 and 3 instead of focusing on retrofitting these solutions for PC-dominated World 1 nations.

W. James Au, author of the blog "New World Notes," gave a presentation entitled "Why Won't Second Life Just Go Away Already? Understanding Web 2.0's Most Misunderstood Phenomenon." He reviewed Second Life's growth amidst its on-again/off-again relationship with the media, which tends to oscillate between finding the virtual world exciting and declaring it useless. My favorite takeaway from the session was Au's assertion that Second Life's steep learning curve for users is actually a boon, in that it guarantees a high level of user knowledge and sophistication.

Image: We Make Money Not Art (Flickr)

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.

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In the latest example of virtual identity and activity blending with real life, virtual worlds blog New World Notes reports that Vodafone has recently released a service in Second Life called "InsideOut" that lets users inside Second Life send and receive messages on virtual mobiles to real mobile phones outside Second Life, and vice versa. Second Life users can take their avatars to Vodafone's site inside of Second Life and get a handy virtual mobile phone that makes all this possible.

The most interesting part of the service, to me at least, is that real world mobile phones can also text message the phones in Second Life without revealing the number of the real-world phone. The text messages only display the name of the avatar who sent the message, so users are able to communicate from their real mobiles using their avatar identity--another example of the distinctions between virtual and real identities slowly but surely fading away. By making the avatar mobile, companies like Vodafone are showing that virtual identities and social interactions do not need to be tethered to a computer, making it possible for one's avatar to play an expanded role in day-to-day communications.

More details on the service can be found at Vodafone's Second Life webpage.

Image: Social Technologies 

New applications and uses for online worlds have been on my mind, perhaps because I’ve recently written two briefs dealing with online worlds: one discussing the future of play, and one about objects migrating from the virtual to the real world. So I was intrigued when I saw this story about famed Japanese game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi and his recently announced effort to recreate Tokyo in the Second Life world. What makes this effort different than Google Maps’ Street View application, is that the virtual Tokyo will be subjective. Rather than a straight recreation of Tokyo, Mizuguchi will be designing the Platonic ideal of Tokyo. As Mizuguchi himself states, “The Tokyo we are trying to create is based on the image of the city.”

It s not far-fetched to see that one of the benefits of real-world venues recreated online is an increase in online tourism—people visiting the virtual Tokyo in lieu of the real Tokyo. This will create a whole group of tourists who can claim they’ve seen Tokyo without ever leaving their desks. But as more locations are realized online and visitors increase, the subjective nature of the virtual representation becomes an issue. And as more people use virtual sites as a replacement for the real experience, the question, in this case, becomes, what is Tokyo? Vacations and trips have always been affected by personal tastes, one visitor might not want to wander far from Ginza, while others would seek out more quiet, out-of-the way places. The recreation of tourist sites online replaces individual choices made within the real world with a collective subjectivity: here is what we say Tokyo is.

People are not going to stop travelling, and in fact as economic conditions in Worlds 2 and 3 improve there will be an increase in tourism from these regions. But new barriers or hassles to tourism are looming every day: infectious disease (avian flu, SARS), heightened border security, rising transportation and environmental costs associated with travel. These will only serve to make virtual tourism more attractive.

But the recreation of tourist sites online raises some questions: Who do we trust to create our virtual cities? Did you visit Tokyo or “Tokyo?” Will people even differentiate between the two? (Image: Social Technologies)

For a while, my 12-year-old son played "Need for Speed," a video game in which he could customize and race various makes and models of cars. I’ve noticed that, although he hasn’t played the game in months, he will see a car or a picture of a car and say something to the effect of “I have one of those. It was great (nor not great) because…” and then launch into a discussion of how he souped up his in-game vehicle.

It is also interesting (and somewhat alarming) that because he was able to afford a Porsche in his virtual world, he has the expectation that he will be able to get a Porsche in the real world when he is old enough. These rising expectations, based on virtual world experiences, mean my wife and I have to work extra hard to keep him grounded in reality when he returns from his adventures in World 0.

This suggests two things:

• World 0 is a powerful marketing environment, as more and more companies are concluding.
• There will be a growing demand for ways to export objects and services from World 0 to the real world -- a topic we are now working on.

It was only a matter of time before companies began replicating the real-world retail experience in the virtual world. Recently, American Apparel announced the grand opening of its first virtual store in the online world Second Life.

What I found particularly fascinating about this marketing strategy is the assumed correlations between Second Life users and their avatars, which seems to be the basis of American Apparel's efforts. I wonder how successful marketing to a person's real-world identity will be if it is done through a secondary identity like an avatar. Will something get lost in translation?

I don't doubt that interacting with American Apparel's virtual environment could generate positive feelings for its real-world counterpart. The question is whether or not customers will want to buy clothes simply because they look good on their avatar. Avatars are a form of personal expression that may have little relation to who we are in the real world. Just because I like the way my avatar looks in sequined hot pants doesn't necessarily mean that I want to go out and buy a pair to wear out on Friday night. 

If you really think about it, virtual identities pose all kinds of problems to virtual marketers. How do you market to an avatar when the real-world user doesn't match the demographic you're aiming for? What do you do when the real-world user is of a different gender, age, or race than what is implied by their virtual form? Now take it to the next level; when Thorzaxk, a sexually ambiguous six-armed quadruped stops buy your virtual store, what are you going to try to sell to him/her?

I imagine that some of these issues could be addressed by virtual sales people, but addressing someone's real identity through their avatar could be considered rude. People participate in virtual environments to escape the real world and to be entertained. By dispelling the illusion you might end up alienating the customer.

(Image: Social Technologies) 

The New York Times recently ran an interesting story on younger workers blogging about their offices/jobs. One section caught my eye:

But the line between what is public and what is private is increasingly fuzzy for young people comfortable with broadcasting nearly every aspect of their lives on the Web, posting pictures of their grandmother at graduation next to one of them eating whipped cream off a woman's belly. For them, shifting from a like-minded audience of peers to an intergenerational, hierarchical workplace can be jarring.

In our writing about the ubiquity of networks and sensors, we at S)T often discuss privacy implications, and how privacy will need to be protected. The above passage gave me pause -- “What if that is stodgy, GenX and older thinking?” Sure, people will (hopefully) still want to keep financial/medical details secret, but what if we have been overplaying privacy concerns? If young Gen Y and Z bloggers are willing to be open about writing about their lives, are they going to be concerned about people tracking their movement or recording their purchases? Are they giving privacy concerns the big ‘Whatever’? I don’t know.

It is not just blogging that is eroding what can be called traditional privacy zones. The rising popularity of social networking applications is also contributing to this. Where just five years ago we were faced with dire warnings about sharing personal information on the Internet, today's sig. files contain a wealth of data: Skype names, Flickr names, GoogleTalk handles, and mobile phone numbers. These applications all work only if users are open and are willing to expose their preferences to other users.

But some of these young workers abandon privacy at their own risk. Employers are becoming savvy users of  services such as MySpace and Facebook, and are incorporating regular searches of such site as part of the standard vetting of potential hires. Already some companies have withheld or withdrawn offers based on information found on these websites.

The openness of today’s users could be the precursor to a society-wide dimming of privacy fears. Or it could be merely a generational fluke and their kids may end up creating some neo-Victorian Internet culture. Which might be the logical reaction to having read your mother’s blog entry about her senior year spring break.

 

Recently a funeral was disrupted when the funeral party and mourners were attacked and brutally murdered by a rival faction. More violence in the Mideast? Nope, just another day online in the World of Warcraft (WoW), one of the more prominent virtual worlds. Such artificial online worlds are growing larger and more complex, and in March 2006 WoW’s population exceeded that of Denmark. As these online worlds develop, players are bringing real-world concerns with them into the game. There have been virtual anti-war protests, and so it is no surprise to find gamers celebrating rites of passage in their virtual world. In this case, gamers were holding a funeral for a friend who had died in the real world.

Because the original designers of the game didn’t anticipate the extent to which players would “live” in the world, members have had to create their own social norms and cultural customs, and in some cases devise ways to enforce them. (In the Korean game Lineage, Korean players have been systematically eliminating Chinese teams due to rumors that Chinese players are looting “dead” avatar bodies for money and items that are then re-sold online for real-world money.)

In perpetrating the funeral massacre, the raiding partying did nothing wrong according to WoW rules, but their actions highlight a divergence between those who are living their lives within the game vs. those who are playing the game. Until explicit rules or strong norms regulate such behavior, offended WoW gamers will have to make do with posting vilifying messages to the WoW message boards. Not that the raiding party cares: they have posted a video of their massacre online, complete with soundtrack, in order to recruit members to their guild. (Found via Sploid; Image: Marcproe, Flickr)