The Problems of Web 2.0 & Free Software Applications

Twitter has locked me out. I can't "tweet" or "re-tweet", I just can't do anything. At all. I'm not sure if someone has hijacked my account, if something odd happened. I installed the latest update of TweetDeck, signed in using my regular account and now I've been locked out. Done. Two hours later and I still can't get in.

Herein lies the main problem with Web 2.0 Apps; you do require patience and some knowledge of getting applications to work for you. At some point, you'll run into an issue with software updates a service shutdown or some other related technical issue. As I did with TweetDeck.

Unfortunately, TweetDeck has not found a simple way to enable updates without requiring a total re-sign-in. This issue resulted in me wiping TweetDeck from my hard drive and installing competitive (and better) solution, Seesmic. But I'm comfortable with doing this. Many, in fact, the majority of people, aren't.

So they stop participating. Frustration sets in. And here we find another issue. Economics. TweetDeck is free and the general public expects it to be so. TweetDeck is looking for a way to monetize it's solution I am sure, but it hasn't yet. So this challenges the expectations between consumer and the products they use when they are free - just how much service should we expect and what happens when we don't get any service?

As a consumer, we expect service, but when the product is free, the "social contract" changes. We haven't paid for anything and in a capitalist society, that means the provider really isn't obligated to do anything.

I don't have an answer. What do you think?

The Dangerous Side of Blogging & HIV

Mainstream media loves a scary story about Social Media. Well, I have one of my own. I was a little nervous thinking about my approach to writing this blog entry. Overall, I am perhaps overly optimistic about the Social Web and the Web as a whole. Last year, I experienced the dark side of the Web.

In 2005 I began a blog called "Slimconomy" about the business and economics of HIV/AIDS. Why? Well, I had the distinct privilege of working for 3 years at the very front line of the battle against HIV/AIDS. I was marketing, globally, a 90-second rapid test for HIV. Arguably the best in the world. After 3 years of trotting around the world to some of the more remote and darker parts (Western and Central Africa and Latin America) on the road 80% of the time, I was exhausted. I decided a change was in order and left a great company, MedMira, which has a great product. I'm HIV negative just to state that. Anyone who calls it a "gay disease" is ignorant and daft beyond consideration.

Without going into the scary details of the business of HIV here, I'll tell the quick story. A year into my blogging, I wrote an article about the people who believe AIDS is a government/mega-corporation conspiracy despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Despite that I held a dying mother in my arms in a remote African village as her two sons of 6 and 7 looked on. Despite the horrors I'd seen in real-life. They are called the AIDS-Denialists. There are many of them.

My first blog entry attracted some heated blasts at me for writing against them. I wrote again. More hatred spewed at me. So I wrote again. From there it started to escalate. Within two weeks I received nastier and nastier emails.

Then it got worse. I got a phone call at home. It was a death threat. I thought, OK, a phone call is one thing. I ignored it and wrote more, delving into the bizarre beliefs of these denialists. Then I got a letter in the mail. Another death threat.

Yes, it was police time. Without going into too much detail, the threat was considered by authorities to be real, and from a known source of violent action - the detail was frightening. With a family I hold so dearly to my heart, it was time to think hard about what I was doing. I was writing a book about the business of HIV, with a contract from a publisher waiting to be signed.

With a very heavy heart, I put the blog into "hibernation", especially after Google contacted me about a Denial of Service Attack against my blog and some shifty moves by a far-right Christian Fundamentalist group.

The blog is hibernating more than a year later. I've had no more threats. Perhaps this blog post will produce some. Hopefully not. But it was a walk on the darkside of Social Media. One I hope never to take again. Perhaps I'll have the courage to bring Slimconomy back, but for now, not so.

Why "Slimconomy"? Well, in Africa, AIDS is called "Slim" because of the wasting part of the disease. Hence the economics of HIV and "Slim" = Slimconomy.

That's my experience of the downside of Social Media.

Social Media: It's Not The Technology It's How We Use It

In a Twitter discussion tonight (#PR20chat - hat tip to Beth Harte for initiating a good chat), there was some discussion around "technology" and it's importance in Social Media. Yes, it is important, but the technology is simply an "enabler" or "facilitator" and the original intent of the creator of the technology can change - this the "bargain" created by the end user. The bargain?

Sure. As an example, Facebook was intended for students. After a few years, it became available to everyone and now the average age of a Facebook user is in their 40's. Why? Because that's how it was adopted. As MySpace was adopted by youth. The underlying technologies are similar, but the use is very different. So the bargain is recolved when

Twitter was put out as a secondary interest, but then the public got ahold of it and next thing we knew, it was an emotional search engine and became a vital political communications tool for Obama in 2008. The public changed the intent of the technology - and made the bargain on each tool, not the inventor of the technology.

Spammers got a hold of email and turned it into the next Direct Marketing tool. SMS/txt messaging has grown into a tool for bringing people together and helped organize the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2005.

While it is vital to understand "how" the technologies work, it's most important to understand how they are actually used - and how they are used closes the bargain between the initiator and the end public.

More of the conversation on Twitter search here.

Thoughts?

Social Media, Scribes & The Printing Press

The parallels between the early days of the printing press (late 1400's) and Social Media today are quite astounding. As Western Europe was going through the transition between Scribes and the newfangled and amazing thing called the "printing press" very few entrepreneurs made money. The business model was pretty much an unknown. Many failed, some succeeded. Today, we take "print" very much for granted and we pay for books, magazines and newspapers, although these business models too are changing.

Sound familiar? Twitter is searching for a viable business model. Marketers are trying to figure out how to leverage Social Media and generate returns. Variations on business models are tried all the time. Some work; most fail.

Yet we forge ahead, just like the early printing shops.

Back in those days they had in Europe what were called "cartolai" which were stationers shops; paper, ink, quills, blotters etc. As paper has been widely and instantly adopted in the 13th century, but oddly enough, the printing press struggled. The most celebrated Florentine book merchant, Vespasiano da Bisticci was said to have made no money printing books. Yet he did until he died.

The first commercially successful book printed was the bible. And certainly Christian e-commerce sites have done well by the Internet too. More similarities.

The transition from Scribes to printed matter was long and hard with a trail of financially ruined entrepreneurs. Sound familiar? Newspapers are today like the ancient Scribes.

Just as there are those who resist Social Media and call it useless (sic. Amanda Chapel construct) so was the same at the advent of the printing press. The Abbot of Sponheim Johannes Trithemius wrote a famous treatise on how Scribes should not stop copying despite the printing press, decrying the value and relevance of books. Yes, he published it as a book. And there was no way the car would replace the horse and buggy was there? Someone got a hitch in their get along methinks.

Surprisingly little has been written about the impact the printing press has had on our society. I was fortunate in my wanderings of a great used book store to stumble upon "The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe" by Elizabeth Eisenstein...what an eye opener to the parallels of the Internet and Social Media.

Do you see any parallels?