broadstuff

So - the FT is pulling down its paywall for Foursquare users - paidContent:

The Financial Times’ metered online paywall system is considered one of the more successful models, but a new partnership with location-based social net Foursquare is aimed at younger readers who are most resistant to paywalls. The partnership will launch sometime in the next few weeks, Business Insider reports.

The partnership is limited to specific areas on Foursquare, which lets users “check in” at various locations via their mobile phones, alerting users they’re connected with. The FT has chosen a number of cafes and businesses situated within business districts and schools such as Columbia, Harvard and the London School of Economic, among others. When Foursquare users check in at a designated spot, they can earn points that will ultimately unlock the FT.com’s online subscriptions, which can run from $183.04 for 52 weeks (or $3.59 per week) for unlimited access to $299 ($5.75 per week) for mobile access included as part of a premium sub.

At the risk of being seen as un-hip, this made me grumpy. Why? Because I'm curmudgeonly enough to think Foursquare is the sort of service run for oversharing jer....not your usual FT demographic - so I won't use it. My immediate reaction is that I am probably more the FT's natural reader demographic, so what's My Deal then?

It's probably not totally logical, but its an immediate gut reaction (its that "Hey! that's not Fair! behavioural psychology thing I guess).

So, FT, what deal do will give your "natural" user base to earn points to get behind the firewall for free?

I can't believe the Foursquare/FT demographic is that great - I originally wrote 1 in a million tongue in cheek, but Vuk Trifkovic's note about c 1 in 5 of his 4Sq followees being FT-able made me think about it a bit - 1 in 10, 100, 1,000, or 10,000, or 100,000 or 1 million? I'd probably plump for 1 in 1,000 as a guesstimate based on observed FoursSquare users and their behaviour on Twitter

Last night David Cameron spoke at the TED event, in London. It was in the stream dealing with Behavioural Psychology and Economics (I covered it here) and his talk was essentially a thesis in how this may be used by a future administration. My notes during the talk:

He started off very well - "politics is showbiz for ugly people"

Then moved to the first point - the central debate of the 21st century is..... global public debt - $32 trillion and counting. So how do we make things better without money?

- Give power to the people
- Go with the grain of human nature
- Use digital technology

There was then the regulatory discussion about the view that people get happier until income hits $60,000 (there must be a UK equivalent, quoth he) and then increased happiness tails off. He actually said that the differences between the middle class and the very rich therefore didn't matter, and took the view that the critical thing was to help poorer people who earn less than this to earn more. He didn't seem to get that if he did that, all that happens is that the "$60,000" number will go up, because its a relative difference.

I also think he's wrong re rich not causing envy among the middle class, but there are clearly Tories who want to believe this one.

There were quite a few other references to Happiness Theory, Behavioural Economics, especially Nudge etc

He also reckoned we have gone from pre-bureaucratic ages local power to industrial age, central power (bureaucratic stage) and we are now moving to ..... People Power.

As part of this, we were going to get Transparency, Accountability and Choice

Also, all government contracts above £20k were to be published online. I delight to see what will happen when We The People see how much they are spending on consultants

He then showed examples of potential mashups of government data, with true Government 2.0 fervour ...which prompted the first concerned Twts:

[Cameron] reveals he plans to publish live crime maps. Won't this lead to vigilantism, panic,fear?

Kevin Anderson has live blogged the whole thing over here.

So, All Good Stuff - Happiness, Nudge, Equality, Government 2.0 - what's not to like?

Here's what:

Firstly. he is picking and choosing his Behavioural Economics - one person picked him up on too much focus on Choice, pointing out that BE also shows too much choice is bad.

Secondly, he seemed to believe that moderation will be done by We The People being vigilant - as questioners pointed out, thats not the way it works now so why would it work online - "the only people who have the time to do this are the media, so we will have rule by media mob" as one questioner put it. (This by the way had many social mediarati grumpy when I twittered it, but I think the worriers may have a point, watching the way Social Media Mob Rule works)

Thirdly, he was dreadfully optimistic (naive?) about the sorts of things people will get up to with all the public's data out there - his approach to all the questions about how to control cheating behaviour, miscreants etc was to believe all people were Good Citizens at heart and to play the "shame on you for believing people are bad" card.

Fourthly, and most worryingly, overall I got the very strong impression that they (the Tories) do not have the inclination to take on the financial sector to get any of the $32 Trillion back. He made no reference to the Robin Hood Tax video that had just been shown before (see above YouTube video), suggesting that 0.05% tax on bank transactions could pay back a lot of what we had given them and solve global warming and poverty to boot. His thesis seemed to boil down to the approach that we should do all this low cost Government 2.0 / BE stuff to keep us happy in our new-found poverty while we rendered the loot unto the Bankers.

In fact, Government 2.0 looked like it was just a way of introducing Feudal 2.0 and BE will Nudge us towards Happiness, which will be the new opiate of the masses. Get ready to tug your virtual forelock to the New Barons Rothschild

(By the way, I am fairly apolitical - "don't vote, it only encourages them" seems as good a motto as any these days, anarchism without bombs works for me - but I got a very strong Brave New World feeling last night, and it would worry me, except of course I believe in the Wisdom of the People to resist it......ummmm )

Speaking of voting, by the way - it looks like Goldman Sachs rigged up a huge campaign to vote against the Robin Hood Tax proposal.

attended the TED first morning screening in London this evening. David Cameron gave his talk live and we patched into Long Beach for the rest of the session. I will cover Cameron's talk separately as it has Government 2.0/Social Media implications. Two of the other three talks were on behavioural economics & happiness (which also featured heavily in Cameron's talk), these are my notes:

Daniel Kahneman

Happiness is the new black, but it has a number of cognitive traps:

- failure to admit complexity, happiness covers too many areas
- confuse experience and memory (happiness about vs happiness in life)
- focus delusion - exagerrate importance of anything thought about

There are two types of self - the rembering and experiencing self - that have different happiness optima
- experiencing self has very short lived units of memory, 3 seconds or so, happiness is now.
- the remembering self stores memories of happiness which drives choices
- thoughts of the future are an anticipation of memories

Thought Expereriment - if your memory afterwards was destroyed, would you go on the same vacation vs if your memory stayed?

Because of the 2 selves, there are 2 happiness states - different optima - can't reconcile

- Can measure happiness of experiencing self physiologically
- Much harder to measure satisfaction of the measuring self eg about your life

Satisfaction differs between the 2 selves so optimizing them differs
- money (doesn't impact experiencing self, does impact remembering self)
- goals
- spending time with people you like

0.5 correlation between the two statistically for any one "happiness" vector, for example:

- climate is not important to experiencing self but is to memory self
- Gallup survey - feelings vary with income - above $60k pa flatlines experienced happiness, but remembering self likes reflecting on wealth

My Thought - So what will be optimized by policy wonks? David Cameron started to lay out his stall, but I will deal with it separately

Michael Shermer Global Sceptic

Belief is the natural state of things, science/scepticism is uncomfortable - we have evolved this way by natural selection. We have two cognitively dissonanent traits:

1. Patternicity

- We find patterns with random rewards
- Lion in the long grass evolutionary choice

- false positive (rustle in grass, assume since as Lion is unlikely, that there is no lion until evidence)
- false negative (every rustle in grass is a Lion - run).

We are designed to opt for Type 2 ie all patterns are real until proven false

Some behavioural psychology:

- Studies show that people who are more disposed to believe in ESP, UFOs etc are more likely to see patterns where there are none.

- Corporate environments study - people who feel they are out of control are more likely to see patterns in things

- More significant patterns seen by RH side of brain

2. Agenticity - the tendency to assume that its not chance or inanimate objects that do things

- We infuse patterns we see but don't understand with active agents eg angels, conspiracy theories, etc.

It is literally all in the mind - for example if you stimulate temporal lobe and you get Oot Of Body Experiences

Anyway, those are the notes.

Excellent post on Data and Privacy issues at Tech & Law blog . The author is a friend and a lawyer and is doing an MS in IT, so this is Good Stuff in my view. This is a summary, the original is over here (I of course am flattering here by copying ). She notes:

Here's a suggested list, the "Data Dozen", of 12 minimum essential requirements for proper privacy-protecting identity management systems. These are just some thoughts - any views would be very welcome.

Anyway, my summary of her 12 points:

1. Correct base information - verification of source info

Authorities need to verify properly the correctness of the information based on which they will be issuing identity credentials. This should go without saying. It's no good having official credentials which verify the identity of the wrong person or bear the wrong personal details. In this regard it's not just tech, it's people and processes too. While nothing can be 100% perfect, it's garbage in garbage out and things could and should be improved in this regard - especially if certain forms of identification, whether online or offline, are to be made effectively compulsory such as identity cards.

2. Good identifiers

Adequate identity data, where it is generated by authorities or other organisations - e.g. identifiers which are to be used linkably as means of uniquely identifying individuals (or other entities or resources), such as ID card numbers or social security numbers, need to be secure, and generated in a secure way. Unlike the US social security number, which was recently found to be guessable from knowing date and place of birth! (See the widely reported paper "Predicting Social Security Numbers from Public Data," by Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross in 2009). Use of identifiers is another issue, discussed at 9 below.

3. What data is disclosed - data minimisation and granularity of user control

Minimal "need to know" disclosure and fine grained user control over what is disclosed (rather than the current "all or nothing" approach) need to be mandated, via both law and technology - in the context of the purpose of the requester in seeking the information, and whether it's truly needed for the transaction in hand - with support for partial identities and pseudonymity, and with negotiation of disclosure & privacy policies.

4. True, informed consent

There need to be mechanisms for proper informed consent, opt in rather than opt out, which ensure it's true consent not engineered consent and which support revocation of consent (see the EnCore work including their publications). In relation to engineered consent it's well worth reading Soft Surveillance, Hard Consent: The Law and Psychology of Engineering Consent from the excellent (free to download) Identity Trail book.

What's "engineered consent"? If you have to give more information than is strictly necessary to access a web site or service or to buy a product online (e.g. your home address, which really isn't needed if you're buying software via download), then it is likely that you will provide the information (and consent to whatever broad uses of your personal information that the site requires - the box will probably be pre-ticked of course!), simply in order to achieve your immediate goal of accessing the site or getting the goods or services you want.

And then very likely you won't get around to going back to the site later to revoke or withdraw your consent, and/or you will later decide that actually you were happy to give your consent in the first place after all, for reasons to do with human psychology (decision theory's discounted subjective utility, prospect theory and cognitive dissonance - see Soft Surveillance, Hard Consent: The Law and Psychology of Engineering Consent which explains those concepts).

So in many senses your consent - whether in relation to the initial disclosure of private data, its ongoing use or the withdrawal of consent - has been "engineered", and is not true, free consent.

5. Secure transmission and storage of the data

A given. And ideally allowing anonymous or pseudonymous communications.

6. Proper constraints on access to disclosed data and secondary usage of data

i.e. access control and the like - including considering properly how the constraints are determined, communicated and enforced within an organisation - and with properly enforced data handling and data release policies that are sticky.

7. Retention and destruction of data when "expired" or on revocation of consent etc

Provision for self-destructing data (along the lines of Vanish) when no longer needed for the purpose consented to. Safeguards and mechanisms for securing or destroying the data are also needed in the event of the change of ownership, sale of business/assets or insolvency of the data-holding entity (consent to one entity doesn't imply consent to another entity, but that is currently assumed). Recall the problems after Verified Identity Pass, which ran the travel security service CLEAR in the USA and held biometric etc information on many US citizens, became insolvent.

8. Accountability and transparency

Through logging and ideally the ability for users to check what's held about them and how or by whom or for what purposes it has been accessed - i.e. systems oriented toward information accountability and appropriate use. See e.g. the Galway report.

9. Better anonymisation techniques, suitable for the individual purpose

- for medical records etc disclosed or accessed for legitimate scientific research, to ensure that anonymization is done as far as possible without (by allowing identification through re-linking) compromising confidentiality or privacy.

Reidentification is increasingly topical lately. In a well publicised paper in August 2009 on the risks of re-identification ("Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization"), US engineer turned lawyer Paul Ohm detailed some well known situations where re-identification had been relatively easily achieved. (And see also An Overview of Techniques for De-Identifying Personal Health Information.)

One famous example involved online movie rental company NetFlix publicly releasing massive datasets about their users for a competition to improve their movie recommendation algorithm. From the data researchers Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov were able to reidentify users including their politics and sexuality.

Despite all this, Netflix are planning yet another similar contest, and are being sued by a lesbian mother for disclosing inadequately anonymized data which could enable her to be outed.

Indeed next time round Netflix want to release even more info about their users including ZIP codes, ages and gender - even though some time ago Latanya Sweeney showed that zip code, birth date and gender combined were enough to uniquely identify 87% of the US population (demonstrated by her pinpointing Massachusetts Governor William Weld's health data from a supposedly anonymised set of state employee patient records)!

It's not just health data that needs adequate anonymisation. GPS data has also been reidentified, even though geo-location data is some of the most private there is, from a personal security and privacy viewpoint (there's a reason why "We know where you live" is one of the most potent threats). Incidentally, location data isn't considered "sensitive data" for which more careful treatment is required under the EU Data Protection Directive, but it ought to be.

Equally important and potentially troubling, social networking users have been re-identified from "anonymised" social networking data too (by Narayanan and also other researchers, see the Broken Promises paper for references).

On identification generally (not just in relation to re-identification of people from released "anonymised" data), Ben Laurie puts it very well that linkability is the key:

"If you view life as a sequence of transactions, then privacy can be defined as
the linkability of the transactions. Absolute privacy occurs when none of the
transactions are linkable, and zero privacy occurs when they are all publicly
available and completely linkable."



10. Checks and balances (both legal and technological) in relation to data aggregation, data mining and profiling and similar techniques

Unique IDs, aggregation and linkability are again relevant here. New techniques for processing data sets to glean and link personally identifiable information will undoubtedly arise over time, and need to be monitored and if necessary regulated.

In the case of Internet search engine usage tracking it's technically possible to use cryptographic tools to distort the profile of users when they use search engines, to preserve their privacy and minimise aggregation of their data (see the 2009 Preserving user’s privacy in web search engines by Jordi Castellà-Roca, Alexandre Viejo and Jordi Herrera-Joancomartí). But are users willing to pay for better privacy, would such technologies be adopted absent a legal requirement for it?

On online behavioural tracking specifically, which is another topical issue, a useful paper is Online Behavioral Tracking and Targeting: Legislative Primer 2009, detailing concerns and solutions from the perspective of the US Center for Digital Democracy and certain other organisations.

11. Improved usability, awareness and education of users and designers & developers

[Must take] into account the various privacy paradoxes, in order to empower users to disclose their data selectively in an informed way in accordance with their individual needs and preferences.

- The privacy paradox: people say that they value their privacy and online anonymity, but then disclose more personal info online than seems consistent with their statements. But there are also more paradoxes:

- The control paradox: "People desire full control on their personal data, but avoid the hassle to keep it up to date. People know that there are technology tools to protect them and think they may be efficient, but they do not use them."

- The responsibility paradox: "While most people believe that it is either their own responsibility, they seem to admit that many users do not have the knowledge to do this effectively."

- The awareness paradox: greater knowledge of data protection rights does seem not to "influence the behavioural intention to adopt digital services based on personal data disclosure".

What explains these paradoxes? It seems to be mainly a question of organisations exploiting elements of human psychology, combined with insufficient privacy (and privacy tools) literacy amongst citizens and consumers.

In this area recently much attention has focused on privacy salience ("Reassuring people about privacy makes them more, not less, concerned"), and it seems that organisations have designed websites around this concept so as to not remind people that there are privacy concerns, given that websites usually want people to be as free as possible with their personal information as their business and profitability depends on the opposite, i.e. getting as much personal data out of people as possible.


(My italics - and also note Facebook culling any software that allows you to cull followers, or see who is unfriending you etc)

.......

I believe all these issues can only be dealt with properly by requiring more privacy friendly design of systems, sites and interfaces (i.e. privacy-preserving default settings, as people do defaults), as well as user education - all of which has to be kept under ongoing review as new potential threats to privacy arise (e.g. facial recognition) through developments in technology and computer processing power and speed, and the discovery or improvement of processing algorithms.


12. Secure and safe delegation of a user's rights

As a practical matter, delegation (a user allowing someone else to exercise their rights e.g. to access data) needs to be properly supported and addressed to deal with the possibility of untrustworthy delegates etc. Possibly even pseudonymous delegation.

Thoughts very welcome. I think its a good a starting point for a Digital Data Privacy Manifesto!

The old saw is that women trade love for sex, men trade sex for love. It has been believed and rubbished over the ages, but its been impossible to prove or disprove until the sociological laboratory that is the Web came along. Dan Ariely, who wrote Predictably Irrational (a must read text for behavioural economists among you - actually, for anyone who reads this blog) put up this exhibit above in his post, showing the most popular searches for the term.

QED?

Actually, CES - Technology is getting in the way these days. Historically it has proven easier to build devices to ensure women have no need for men, but cometh the hour, cometh he robotics. Tacked on to every CES is teh Adult TEch show (thats the only reason most people actually attend CES I think, as Paul Carr points out there 's no real need to if its just Tech geegaws you're covering). IN this year's show there are the first:

- Robots that will - ahem - Lurve you, unconditionally. I have already predicted Robotics will take a front seat in 2010. shoulda guessed Porn would be ahead of the game (as it were)
- Devices using Haptics to stimuate your every desire
- iPod/iPhone sound driven devices to stimulate the male...ego. The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" will never be the same again
- 3D Moving pictures

This starts a totally new category of Internet User Devices for our value chain models

On Friday we looked at the 8 big trends in the networked technology space over the last 10 years (1999 - 2009). Today, as promised, we look at the trends over the next 10. In some ways its easier to think about 10 years rather than 2-3 years out as (i) you can see the big trends more easily and (ii) no one will remember this in 2019 unless we're very right .

A little digression, if I may. Bill Gates once said that things change more slowly in 2 years than people (and their business cases) want, but far faster in 10. My observation is that this is very true in consumer technology, less true in business technology, less again in the public sector, and public behaviour and structures change but slowly. We also have a model that says technology merely provides opportunity, its the economics, user behaviour and legal restrictions that drive uptake,

For example, VOIP was technically feasible in 2000, but it was only in 2003/4 that enough people had good enough bandwidth, and PCs were cheap enough, for it to "piggy back" on top of pre-paid for assets (your broadband connection, PC with microphone and speakers etc).

Anyway, enough of that - what what happens to the 8 trends we saw in the previous decade rolling forward? They were:


1. Bandwidth will carry on expanding

Given we have had a c 30x increase in the last 10 years, projecting that forward implies a mean of c 60 Mbps by 2019 in the UK. From about 20 Mbps per home upwards, you are talking multiple streams of HD video into a household so that allows the exciting prospect of everyone indoors watching their own HDTV channel, instead of TV channel as they do today. Plus ca change.

More to the point is that expanding bandwidth will drive richer applications, which we comment on below in points 2-4.

Critical to this will be whether the "frontbones" - the networks to the home - can take it. In countries where Government diktat has ruled rollout, this will happen. In those using "the market" it will (probably) happen - but later. The Digital Britain hoo-ha pretty much showed that the market will want to sell to the (urbanised, wealthy) 1/3rd of the population off its own bat, may then expand to the next 1/3rd but won't want to touch the last (poorer, rural, older) 1/3rd. Towards the mid 20-teens ("Twenteens"?) even the most market oriented of Governments will realise that to be competitive they need universal high bandwidth access and will force the issue.


2. Talking to each other will remain the Killer App

We don't know with certainty what New New Platforms will come after Twitter or Facebook, or what the successor of Web 2.0 - sorry, Web-squared - will be (though we have some ideas - see below). But what we do know is that it will revolve around P2P - person to person - communication. Always has, always will.

So, we will predict that whatever new platforms, technologies, etc etc emerge - and despite the resurrection of the standard old advertising and e-commerce use cases (see "you can find a great restaurant with your friends" below) - the killer application will remain enabling small world social networks of people to communicate.

This of course does not mean it will make the most money directly, as we saw in the 'Noughties that game went to being able to place low cost Ads against weak buying intention signals. But comms will still be the killer app driving people onto end to end platforms.


3. Our "Social Networks" evolve onto whatever the best platform of the moment is

An inevitable corollary of 2 above - given talking to each other is the killer application - the next need is to enable a "clearing system" to find people you want to talk to. The rate of change of Social Networks in the last 10 years - from email groupware to near real time video chatrooms - has been fairly predictable big picture (same function, different bandwidth), but - as always - it's hard to define at a detailed UI level just which design will succeed. The mayfly like existence of each new social network (2 year half life) means that (i) there is still massive innovation going on and (ii) the ones we have now will pass too.

The next 10 years will see more bandwidth, and more flexible social market-making. Twitter is the current design leader as it is asynchronous, asymmetric and ad-free (for now). Superimposing this on current platform trends we imagine more fixed/mobile convergence, more attempts to link metadata, more attempts to compromise privacy for searchability. Also, there will not be a "Paradigm Shift" - The users will migrate onto the "New" new platforms while maintaining use of the old (we still use email and SMS) - in fact we predict the ability to run "Unified Comms" systems will be increasingly critical.

In addition, as social networks get bigger and marketing zombies invade them, and signal to noise ratio falls, the ability to filter in the stream will be increasingly critical to its uptake - it is our view for example that Twitter clients will increasingly look like email clients (and vice versa - look at the new Mozilla Raindrop ) as the required functionality is proven over time. Another approach to filtering will be to increase the niche-ness of individual networks (this is what happens to the AltNet and GroupWare) - this story today about BeautifulPeople.com firing 5,000 userswho had got too fat over the holidays illustrates this quite well


4. All useful technology and applications commoditise over a 3-5 year cycle.....

Its worth looking at what is commoditising now to get a view of the main trends in the first half of the 20-teens. Low resolution video, fixed-mobile comms and devices, social media (or at least some aspects of it - group comms and basic profiling), the underlying protocols that Web 2.0 kicked off, text search, and even (near) real time services are busy commoditising. Its also easier to make simple payments now than ever before. The most powerful emerging services of the early decade will be built on combinations of these, as its going with the flow. We will be getting more interconnection of commoditising layers (ie the "walled gardens" will forever be climbing up the added value stack)

This is going to really hurt (ie bankrupt) some industries that have existed because parts of the value chain have not commoditised in the past. Those based on expensive physical delivery of data that can be delivered digitally will be under terrific pressure in the next 5 years, there will be major creative destruction there. Think newspapers now, and TV/Films etc as bandwidth increases. Ditto knowledge industries that have avoided global labour cost arbitrage owing to degrees of difficulty of moving the information to and from the markets. Say goodbye to Hollywood, say hello to Bollywood - and will Silicon Valley still have a hegemony in 2020?

The Cloud will be renamed at least twice in the next 10 years, it is coming, but at present the combination of relatively low system reliability, lack of decent SLA protection and too many competing platforms without sufficient plug and play and interoperability will keep it as a niche sport, and users in the 20-teens will mainly opt for hybrid models of Cloud + Own Equipment - though the niches will grow steadily. As with Electricity, the Cloud will have to be "tried and tested" at each layer before widespread adoption. Services on it - the ASP/SOA/SaaS/Whatever the next Acronym is layer - will continue to develop with bandwidth, penetration and sheer cycles of code-writing. Friction will be provided ny attempts to run wllaed gardens (it was ever thus)

Another part of the commoditisation story is the march of Moore's Law (or similar). By and large in this space you get twice the power at half the cost and size every 2 years. This won't change anytime in the next 10 years, and a 2**5 = 30x reduction is a useful tool to think about 2019 with - imagine iPhone and basic PC like functionality for $10, in devices the size of an iPod Nano for example! This is going to drive two other trends onwards:

- ubiquitous multimedia, at least in the OECD (this TED talk by Patti Maes is a sign of things to come)

- the Internet of Things - never mind a billion new mobile users, think a trillion new dumb devices. Say hello to Mrs Fridge!

5. .....but People are Still People. The more things change, the more they stay the same

The technology changes, we talk and interact with each other in new ways, but what we do remains the same. The human condition will remain to hatch, match and despatch, some will always want to seek power and money, and while running this never-ending circle of life we will still try and scrabble onto higher planes of Maslowian existence, and try and keep ourselves entertained in our downtimes. And being human we will still try and get something for nothing so the dreaded parasite that is advertising will, like death and taxes, remain with us for a while yet. So here are some things that this implies:

- We have a hypothesis (based on our reading of behavioural economics as it stands today) that genetic imperatives drive time value of attention, so people will pay real money for things that help them match and hatch. Anything that increases privileged access to mates, money, status, nest building etc will be seen as valuable. Entertainment media is by and large lowest value time (if you had better things to do with your time, you'd do it) so will continue to struggle to fight free models. Its a volume game with low prices.

- Advertising will move over to online media as attention shifts, but owing to the lower audience sizes and almost infinite inventory, the mean (and I mean "mean") rates will stay lower. Over the decade the best empirical metrics will emerge and establish a better economic basis, so by end 20-teens we expect Online Advertising to overtake "trad" advertising in revenue, if not in profitability (Yes, that means hitting c 50% of value by c 2017 or so). Some of this will be from growth, some will be from decline in the overall market as Advertising is just less relevant in a networked, interactive digital world.

6. Hype (and dodgy economic theories) spring eternal in the human breast
In 1999 there were high priests of the New Tech Age then as now. Anyone churlish enough to be a "New Age Economics Denier" was castigated, lambasted and told they "didn't get it". By 2002 the sceptics had been proved largely right as the dotcom bubble deflated to complete limpness. But by 2004 the New "New Economics" of the Internet was on the rise again with Wikinomics (allowing me to calculate that New Economic memes have a c 2 year refraction time) and by 2009 in full swing with various flavours "Free" etc etc which. We predict most of this will be largely discredited by 2011 and a 2 - 3 year period of a Return to Rational Economics will ensue (it has already to an extent).

Companies built in this period have historically been strong, simple because they are built on solid fundamentals.

Ecclesiastes Law however states that, by c 2014 there will be a new inflationary bubble in something, and cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman). A new generation of Tech Wonderfulness will thus be declared, that is of course quite unlike anything before, and it will of course herald in a New Economic Paradigm which (oddly enough) will promise to allow you to get richer with less effort, and that people who don't "get it" will of course be labelled as crusty old farts.


7. There is a Google or two in every Decade

In every decade a dominant New Media New Entrant emerges at a new layer that they make their own. In the past they have tended to be West Coast US companies (access to the worlds largest ubiquitous markets for risk capital and customers has pretty much guaranteed that). In the 80's it was Microsoft, in the 90's it was arguably AOL (and maybe Yahoo), in the Noughties it was Google.

Ten years later the last decades Cool Kids are nearly always still around, but now as large corporate entities rather than cool young companies. They are no longer the Innovators of the emerging "new" New Media and typically strategically buy innovation, and try and spoil it elsewhere. The ones for the 20-teens all exist already, the issue is spotting which has 10 year legs. In Social Networking I'm betting that Facebook is the New Yahoo, and something else will be the New Google. Maybe Twitter, maybe something in left field still.

Re Google in particular, we think that their search algorithms are going to be increasingly less useful over the decade - in a way a self inflicted goal, as by adding value to links means an entire parasitic SEO ecosystem has emerged. Given that Google funds itself entirely on its link economics, but subsidises many other ambitions, this is going to make its activities in other arenas harder over time. (I see John Battelle of all people, has come to similar conclusions)

In the next 10 years it will probably still be West Coast US companies that rule, but it will be less certain. China represents another huge, fairly homogenous market with its own barriers to entry, and Baidu seem to be able to hold off Google.

Others that are interesting are around the disruption of very big industries today - the growth of online video (Hulu), the disruption of Olde Print Media (Huffington Post, Techmeme) and the emerging Non-bank Banks (unless they get regulated sooner). Also the change to digital in the basic Telco layers implies the emergence of "Soft" Telcos (Telecoms companies that own no direct assets) - Skype is the first wave.


8. Planet Mobile will always overestimate benefits and underestimate time to get them

Planet Mobile runs on the perennial "You can use your mobile to select a great restaurant nearby for you and your friends" business case. It's been used to flog everything from m-commerce to location and augmented reality based services over the last 10 years. Three things have changed for the 20-teens though:

- The rogue entrant that re-sets the game for the next round has emerged (Apple and the iPhone). (Rogue Entrants use the technology available to build the "obvious gaping hole" system that the incumbents for various commercial reasons refuse to build). Going back in history, Apple always enters a poorly structured game with a well defined complete - and closed - solution, capturing about 15 - 20% of the more profitable market while the rest is then duked over by the guiants, and the lower economics usually means 1 dominant player emerges (Microsoft). Google Android is the early pretender for the Microsoft role in this industry, but its still early days and the shoe (and penny) still have to drop for the incumbents

- Pricing and network mean that the other billion or so of mobile users will come online this decade (Mobile penetration in Africa is now similar to the UK in 2000), but they do not have the economic value. Their entrance, however, will transform the market for follow on services (and quite a number of other Olde Industries in these locations)

- Smartphones do more stuff - which means that (i) a bunch of things PCs and other single purpose devices did will be taken on board, and thus (ii) a whole raft of new fixed/mobile applications will emerge. But "Mobile" will stop meaning "Phone" and mean anything from Handy via Tablet through Netbook to Laptop and whatever else comes along that can connect to the mobile nets (Mobile TV sets anyone?)

So, does this mean that Planet Mobile is now about to enter its (much heralded) decade of hegemony? Yes, it will be a lot better than in the Noughties, but... the rule of thumb of dividing all Planet Mobile projected benefits by 2 and multiply time to get them by 2 is probably as useful now as 10 years ago. apply.

Well, that is the projection of the Noughties going forward, but there are a bunch of "Intersection" technologies (those at the intersection of some of these" and some newly emerging trends which will help reshape things too. In the spirit of keeping things Prime, here are 5 we see emerging


9. Privacy (and a related issue, Trust) will become a bigger and bigger factors.

We thought Privacy would hit the headlines after Beacon, but it didn't - however, right now the buzz about Privacy is higher than its ever been. We expect nuanced Privacy to become a major issue in the design of next generation Social Nets, Web Services and eCommerce systems. Online Trust will see huge leaps forward in quantification, simply because without it a lot of the transactions (social, financial, political, etc) that we take for granted in the real world won't happen online very easily above a very basic level. It will require solving a wide combination of Social Capital, Behavioural Psych/Economic and good old Ownership issues. Plus Privacy, of course.

For this reason, by the way, I am less bullish on Location Based services - they are a privacy timebomb waiting to happen, and you just know some overenthusiastic and under-ethiced entrepreneur is going to build the short-cut system that gets accused of facilitating robbery, rape and worse.

(I rather liked Greg Battle's post and his comment that "there will be a sea of people paying for a decade of crimes of youthful oversharing. Credit services will ingest social profiles/footprints as a behavioral overlay to your FICA score and a new industry of removing those indiscretions will be born."


10. How Green was my Valley again?

The sheer amount of money being thrown at Eco-Science todasy - whether you believe in it or not - will ensure that all the networking technologies we know and love will be thrown at trying to make us, our goods and chattels, and by extension the planet, Greener. Some innovations will be very valuable, some will be total Greenwash. Most will come and go and be superseded by newer, better stuff as its very early days for most ICT based Greentech.

If I were to make a guess, its that the Greenwave will be more prevalent in the next few years and recede towards the end of the decade. This is because I (personally) believe much of the current climate change/AGW hoo-ha will be seen to be over-egged and the massive rampups in funding its had over the last 10 years will recede. Bt 2015 the colour of Green will be more "classic"

Anything that makes more efficient use of existing energy assets (renewable or un) is probably a real win. There is also so much money and interested vested in the whole Carbon Trading arena that no doubt many maths PhDs' time will be spent adapting systems from the financial industries to game this one.


11. Enterprise 2.0 will be rebadged with a Three Letter Acronym by 2011.

No one implements big new systems in corporates without a TLA Besides, Enterprise 2.0 as it stands is too limited. It reminds me of Office Automation in the 1980's - a great set of new technologies that aren't yet quite hitting the really big economic levers of the business. By the time Enterprise 2.0 is attacking the big levers - sales effectiveness (CRM), business operations efficiency (TOC, JIT), Churn reduction and Customer Satisfaction (TQC, 6Sigma), reducing CAPEX bills (BPR) and massively improving information flow (MRP2, ERP, OODA) then it will need a new name.

This is not to say that Enterprise 2.0 is not relevant, just that its still a very early day story with immature technology. What comes after is (literally) a 64-billion dollar question.

The Enterprise 2.0 movement will stand or fall on its ability to do 3 major things

- gain new customers/users/donors/whatever,
- keep them
- service tham at lower costs than current and "Good Enough" new systems will.

12. Government 2.0 will be a slow train coming

There are no doubt efficiencies to be gained by moving Governments services onto teh Web, however we believe it will be slower than many anticipate as:

(i) Those with power hate giving power away.

(ii) Governments, by and large, do not have stellar records in adopting new IT systems early, nor in rollling them out fast and successfully. Potential cost savings will be counterbalanced by the costs of purchase and implementation in cash-strapped public services. There will no doubt be Digital Inclusion lobbies arguing for 100% access to new services - a worthy aim, but it will serve to further slow things down. But full inclusion is expensive - however, so long as there is not Digital Inclusion, you can't take the savings. This is the Catch 22.0

(iii) Privacy is a major headache with public data, and current 2.0 systems are far from secure

(iii) Also, current networked systems are too simplistic to deal with the 5% of unpleasant people who will lie, cheat and scam. We can easily design Government 2.0 systems for the 95% of (usually) honest citizens (95% of the 2/3rds of the population who will have Broadband access) , but to do so will be to accept higher risk, and probably more collateral damage from the bad guys. And given how risk averse and lawsuit-keen We The People are en Mobbe, it will be hard for governments to do this. Even if they wanted to, which they don't

13. The Internet of (Moving) Things

Aka Robots. The combination of Moore's, Metcalfe's and .... Law means a lot of ICT power can be put on a fairly sophisticated yet inexpensive moving frame today. The Internet of Things is not the endgame, some of these things will be quite smart, some will move, some will do other fairly complex, unpleasant tasks (like fighting foreign wars, cleaning houses and dealing with low price service needs).

Anyway, that concludes a heroic set of guesses. I should add of course that our methodology is to write scenarios, calculate critical paths, milestones and "points of no return", attempt to understand the game theory of the scenario - and revise it every so many cycles with new evidence - so we will have changed our minds in a years time

I was inspired by Deirdre Molloy's reading list for Social Media to list the books I've read to date that I have found most useful. As is the fashion, one has to have a number - well, I counted the ones that were very useful and that I'd recommend to get up and running fast - and there were 11

Firstly, Background Reading to get the evolution and big picture to where we are today:

1. The Victorian Internet - Tom Standage
A good analysis of the rise and eclipse of the telegraph, and the "online" social communities it formed. Many parallels with the Web, the 'Net and Social Media

2. Non Zero - Robert Wright
Examines how and why human society is learnin g to co-operate in larger and larger numbers, from small related groups of early cavemen to supra-nation emergence today. Its essentially a treatise in the evolution of behavioural psychology of co-operation.

Secondly, the theory of Social Networks:

3. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means - Albert Barabasi

An early - and still very good - primer for social network analysis - enough theory to get you going so you can tell why and how say Twitter, Facebook and Linked In are differently architected. There are later and more complex books, but this is a good starter.

4. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age- Duncan Watts
The first - and still one of the best - works on how the "Social Media" age will evolve. Its useful today as you can compare what was thought in 2004 to 2009 and see where reality has devolved.

Thirdly, how Social Media works

5. Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky
Even Shirky would probably now admit the book is a tad optimistic, or at least does not examine the dark side enough, but it is still an excellent summary of the whole space

6. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom - Yochai Benkler
Hard going and aged in parts , but like Shirky a good coverage of the overall macroeconomic landscape of social networking. Also like Shirky, probably too optimistic (or politically naive, looking at how China censors Social Networks) but a good summary nonetheless

Fourthly, the critics and sceptics - the promoters tend to be on the optimistic side, but to get a balanced (realistic) view its necessary to pick up the views of informed critics:

7. The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It - Jonathan Zittrain
This is more about the struggle for control of the Internet, but the discussion has huge implications for social media services that sit on it, and touches on emerging issues like privacy abuse that tend to be glossed over elsewhere.

8. The Cult of the Amateur - Andrew Keen
The most vehement (and long standing) critic, who took the opposite side to Shirky et al. Lambasted frequently by many for his continual pessimism, he forms the counterweight. By 2009 it was clear that Social Media was in a middle ground between his views and Shirky et al.

Fourthly, the state of the art today. Sadly, (in my opinion) too much of the stuff that has come out in the last 2 years has been rushed out to satisfy a market demand (there are a plethora of new books essentially promising that you can make your fortune in Social Media - avoid!) rather than go into much depth to explain what's actually going on. Ones that I have been most impressed with are:

9. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies - Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
I don't agree with everything they say (We've had more than a few shots at their thinking on Broadstuff) but being "proper" analysts their writing gives you a rational and structured view of their hypothesized ecosystem, so you can see how they come to their conclusions - and they are comprehensive and up to date.

10. The Blogosphere
The latest stuff is not in books yet, I have been watching a number of disciplines as they are being applied to online social networks - emerging topics such as Digital Anthroplogy, Social Graph Theory and Behavioural Economics, and research reports from a range of sources such as McKinsey, the Pew Institute, the EFF, and eMarketing for example. Techmeme is a useful source if you ignore the obvious product pimps from the digital megacorps, and The Economist is often an early-up with a business angle. Its also useful to look at whats being talked about at SXSW last year and next - not so much by the well known names in the main panels, but the emergent topics in the group sessions.

And lastly, the emergent future - there are futurists, there are science fiction writers, and there is Cory Doctorow who is both a commentator on the Social Media scene and a Sci Fi Author, so the primer is:

11. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
An analysis of Social Capital (which he calls Whuffie) which is partly story, partly science fiction prediction, and partly satire. He has a large body (of work ) and its a useful starting point.

Now you will all feel that I have left some books out, and how dare I include say Andrew Keen but - in my view anyway - these are the ones that are original contributions, and still largely on target and allow one to get an overall picture to separate sincerity from snake oil (becasuse there is a lot of that around - in fact familiarity with the Gartner Hype Curve is essential in this space). Anyway, feel free to criticise, commend or create your own list.

I was reading this on Hutch Carpenter's blog:

The main reason “disruptive” causes confusion is that it sounds like “major upset,” which suggests that the technological cause should be major as well. This leads us to falsely conflate disruptive innovation with technically radical innovation. So we end up confusing disruptive with radical and sustaining with incremental. The two are orthogonal axes.

My inital reaction was Aha! (or FTW in 2.0-speak). It was originally from Ribbonfarm (see here) so off I duly clicked. Turns out that Venkatesh Rao has similar views to me (ie we are in dire danger of rejecting some of the Christensen Innovators Doctrine). But First, Why and how does disruption happen? In Christensondom its that:

Major breakthroughs, which are called ‘radical’ in Christenson’s model, may or may not be disruptive, while minor, or ‘incremental’ innovations can be massively disruptive. The opposite of disruptive is sustaining.

- A disruptive innovation usually starts as a low-quality differentiated product in a low-volume marginal segment of a much larger mature market, which demands attributes that the mainstream market does not, and which is willing to give up performance attributes the mainstream market is not (example, Wii customers willing to give up sheer processing horsepower for 3d input capability).
- A marginal player occupies this segment and starts growing rapidly, solving initial quality problems while retaining a cost advantage.
- The incumbent mature market leader, no matter how visionary, is forced to ignore the opportunity because it does not meet the growth needs dictated by its larger size, and also because the disruptive product is not yet good enough for its mainstream customers.
- The marginal player goes through a learning curve, solves its quality problems and suddenly starts threatening the market leader in its main markets
- The incumbent scrambles to put together a response, nearly always fails because of the disruptor’s head start and optimized culture, and retreats to a higher-end market

Why this happens is as straightforward as it is inevitable. It is an economic analog to the tyranny of majority rule.

Our studies of disruption and innovation in the media and communications industries over the last 10 years leads to similar conclusions (see here for example as a precis of TV, and I've posted our (now clearly iconic ) chart of Disruption above) to the extent that a lot of our research in the last 6 months has been focussing on the problems of managing such disruption.

One of the major issues is how to combat it. As Rao notes:

Christenson concludes that the only way for an incumbent to pursue a disruptive idea is to separate the new business completely from the culture, processes and market pressures of its old one. This was what worked for the IBM PC. I haven’t yet seen a counter-example to this principle yet.

I'd agree - any others know of any? One of the interesting arguments is whether to set it up as an independent entity, set it up within the old entity but protect it from grasping Stovepipe Barons, set it up as a Joint Venture, or just buy it when you want it (pay more, but at least you've bought something that has been winnowed by the market).

The options, from my research (and fairly ample experience, I must add) are:


Totally Independent Entity

Good News - best chance of an Internal Venture being free of Parental Control
Bad News - best chance of an Internal Venture being culled sooner rather than later as no one cares about it.

Internal but Protected

Good News - best chance of an Internal Venture avoiding the fate of the Independent Entity, with strong charter can still be relatively independent. BT's settup of its Cellnet (now O2 and Internet operations used this model, for example)
Bad News - best chance of an Internal Venture being grabbed sooner rather than later by Stovepipe Barons

I'd still favour Protected over Independent as in my view the entity is more likely to get to adolescence. The next option is:


Joint Venture

Good News - good risk sharing, best chance of potentially getting required skills from a reputable supplier, and potentially two major players as channels and/or suppliers
Bad News - thats two cooks, broth may be spoiled as the squabble

Hulu is a good example of the above, but it has required a strong charter and a tough stance by the Hulu CEO to achieve this. Another corollary example is the spinout, using the companies IP, where the company retains a stake and potentially re-sells the goods as an early customer.

Acquisition when Required

The other option is to watch the Darwinian market and acquire.

Good News - best chance of any Venture of being throigh the learning curve of market survival
Bad News - you will pay over the odds (the Build vs Buy case will look awful) and its hard to integrate.

Google, for example, has acquired a lot of companies which have withered on the vine, and they are not the only ones. Most studies of M&A deals reckon that 2/3 and up go sour.

Overall - on evidence we have to date anyway - is that the well protected Internal Venture or Joint Venture are the most likely to live long and well.

The other thing (and the reason for the original Aha!) is the difference between Radical and Disruptive Innovation. Rao notes:

The principles of disruptive competition work best to explain direct substitute competitions, like CDs for tapes. When innovations change consumer behaviors and force a redrawing of market boundaries, the explanation provided by the model is incomplete. Changes that come from much larger forces, like the Internet, are not well explained by Christenson’s model. Overloading the term by talking of ‘meta disruption’ as some people like to do, seems to me not very useful.

I agree here, and this is where I think the term "Radical Innovation" really applies. Radical are things that shift the game radically (ie a lot) but there is usually a gap between that and shifting the market, as other things come to bear. For example, the 'Net came alive in 1969, I'd argue that it was 1999 before it was Disruptive. In my models a Radical Innovation, to be Disruptive, has to shift the main factors by two orders of magnitude - which is typically enough to kick a totally new Darwinian niche of Innovation into being. Big ones I have studied in the communications field are:

- Invention of Aircraft - from Gliders to Bleriot in 10 years
- Telegraph and Telephone over c 40 years
- Pharmaceutical and Medical technology in the early 20th century
- World War 2 - pushed so many things so far in 6 years
- the Internet
- The emergence of behavioural analysis so we understand how we communicate so much better

I would argue that Disruptive Innovation tends to follow behind Radical innovation in any one field - first comes the radical new technology, then comes the parallel innovations, recombinations, tinkering etc that makes it disruptive.

At any rate, we believe that this management of disruption will be one of the core issues of the next 20 years or so as a number of technologies - not just the 'Net - are coming out the gate. (DNA and the resulting BioTech industry and its many offshoots, Robotics, and whatever emerges in 10 - 20 years time from Nanotechnology are the next major "Radical" technologies in my view - never mind their combinations like living robots - Androids, living structures and the Internet of Very Small Self Propelled Things - "intelligent dust")

(By the way, this was posted about 18 hours later as I forgot to change the button to "Publish" and didn't notice till now)

So this last weekend, finally, the first and most famous bonkblogger Belle de Jour outed herself as Dr Brooke Magnanti, PhD (or was possibly neo-outed, as Paul Carr suggests)

At SXSW earler this year there was a panel on Scandals in Social Networks, hosted by Techmeme's (nee Valleywag's) Megan McCarthy. Girl with a One Track Mind's Zoe Margolis was telling her post-outing story. So now, with Belle’s ringing in my ears I realised there may be a pattern here, and started to get interested in the underlying Game Theory of what makes up a Scandal.

The payoff table seems fairly clear - a racy blog gets lots of readers but little money, a book gets paying readers but there are limits to what marketing (and thus sales) can be achieved if you are anonymous - no book tours, signings, lectures etc. But an outed, scandal grade celebrity - now that really shifts sales into another dimension.

In other words, its a fairly predictable, repeatable process, with differing outcomes based on the decisions made on how far to push it, and thus it can be modelled as a rational Game. This is fairly easy to do as a decision tree flowchart (pro/am, blog/don't blog, book/not book etc), with varying payoffs and costs at each decision point, and you can even put optimal timings in. (How long should one wait before getting outed, for example, to optimise revenues?).

(Fascinating update here - Belle pretty much confirms this in an interview with New Scientist)

So far so good - but it doesn't take long going down this line of thought before the bigger question emerges - why should anyone even find it even vaguely scandalous that a woman indulges herself with multiple males, even for cash? Its hardly news that women have wandering appetites, after all. Scratch any suburban street, biography or sociology study and you are likely to find many Dangerous Liaisons. And there is a time honoured tradition of students putting out to put themselves through college – besides, cash for services is the cornerstone of our capitalist system (and most others) anyhow, and this particular stock has been traded since the beginning of time.

Well, one traditional adage is to Follow The Money - or in this case, the Social Capital - or Makin' Whuffie by Makin Whoopee

I read something implying modern Celebrity culture - is driving changes to what constitutes "fame" - aka Whuffie - in medialand:

Welcome to the twenty-first century where the days of celebrity status are assessed by breast size, amount of marriages/divorces, and the number of tabloid covers appeared on. Long gone are the legitimate celebrities. The best of luck to you if you're trying to find a famous Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, or Lucille Ball in today's world, as it is a much-desired rarity. What has society morphed minds into? Has the media really lost control of what is deemed as newsworthy? What about global warming? The Bird Flu? When did these lose priority to Lindsay Lohan's alcohol addiction and Pamela Anderson's latest divorce?

There is something interesting in this, I'd argue that we are looking at the emergence of new definitions of what "winning" means, in that you can now make a decent income from being famous for being famous. Money comes from media attention, regardless of how its attained.

But then – I hear you ask – if its all about Whuffie, why are there so few bonkbloggers, and not so many?. Why are all those other Dangerous (ly Liaising) Housewives not blogging it all like billy-o if its such a good Whuffie generator? The answer, clearly, is that it is still considered very rational game theory not to yell to the rafters that they've been swinging from them. So, the really interesting bit about The Scandal comes from the fact that only a very small % do write about it publically.

So Scandal is therefore not a Whuffie game, Whuffie is more a result of Scandal and most players of this game still choose not to take the Whuffie. Why?

Its worth looking at that other favourite, the game theory of male vs female procreation. Sociobiologists explain the breeding game theory between our sexes as something like this:

- The optimal male strategy is to impregnate as many females as possible, and then motivate the females to bring up those offspring with as little of that male's input as possible.

- The optimal female strategy is to optimise the male gene input, and to then ensure there is sufficient (traditionally male - but watch this space) resource to bring up the offspring.

In both cases above, the male inputting the genes and the one bringing up the offspring need not be the same male. Unfortunately other bits of reproductive game theory also says that males are not particularly motivated to bring up other males' kids (most child homicide is by male partners of females with other males' children, for example - and that's true across many species, not just ours) as there is no payoff, genetically speaking, for their investment.

So the female traditionally, to ensure male resource has to either (i) stay faithful or (ii) hide the activity of her optimal gene selection activity. (Stable, Open relationships being very rare in all species)

And if option (ii) is the game being played (which is the case, statistically, in between c 20 and 30% of all relationships apparently), then a key part of option (ii) - hiding the activity - is to keep quiet about it. Hence the army of Mommybloggers out there are by and large keeping schtum on any extra-curricular schtupping.

This is Nature’s Old Game – but there are two very important modern shifts to this:

Firstly, reproductive independence - today human females can still catch and match, but – thanks to the Pill etc - not necessarily hatch. Biologically speaking this is a huge gamechange as no longer does male male input define female output.

Secondly, economic independence - in the past females required male assistance to bring up offspring safely, but this is less and less so today as more women achieve economic independence – either via work or state support.

So, looking at this emerging game board layout, I would thus hypothesize that most of the bonkbloggers do not have kids - or if they do, are single and either do not require economic aid or wish to get it independently, as that reduces the self-censorship requirements considerably. But I'd also hypothesise that even then most women would also find this strategy risky, as:

- if they are in a relationship but are also otherwise elsewhere engaged, then broadcasting it essentially removes the connection between having cake and eating it, and will in most cases guarantee loss of

- if they are not in a relationship, then publically signalling one's unwillingness to Stand By Your Man is a fairly strong tell for males - it’s a beacon for the Kiwis (eats, roots and leaves), a turnoff for the Marryin' Kind, and a no-no for any guy who suspects his one night stand will stand up, fully rated, for posterity on Posterous or Twitter etc.

In fact, listening to Zoe Margolis at SXSW both these issues came up post outing, and I suspect that - going back to the Payoff Table mentioned waaay up top - the true costs of bonkblogging are only seen way down the line and are thus not properly costed in by these particular (smalll set of) bloggers. Thus it is likely that this strategy of public disclosure will never be undertaken by more than a small % of women, though many more are engaging in it under covers, as it were.

But even so, why is it a Scandal? Why the prurient fascination with some girls writing about who comes naturally, given that they are just the tip of an iceberg? It's quite interesting looking at what makes a Scandal in sociological theory:

1. (Alleged) behaviour breaches the rules of conduct in a given community.
2. The breach becomes known and discussed beyond the limited circle of actors involved.
3. The breach cannot be ‘managed’ within existing mechanisms for redress.
4. Often, the breach calls into question existing rules of conduct OR structures of authority.

In other words a Scandal is not just about What, but is also about How The Game is Played. I would hypothesize that, in Game Theory terms, the dynamics of a Scandal can be re-written as:

1. Behaviours breach the Game Rules in a given gameboard
2. The Game Rules become known outside the community playing that game
3. Once out the box, they can't be put back, and this changes the old payoffs to the original community
4. The Game itself then starts to be questioned, which resets the payoff benefits and hurts the original players who succeeded most

To this I'd add two further hypotheses from observation, that for it to be a Really Good Scandal, then The Game in question must:

- belong to a Higher Whuffie in-crowd and give them some real advantage over the out-crowd (ie evokes a sense of being cheated in The Rest (thus firing up all our anti-cheating social adaptations* ).

- be seen as a non-optimal strategy (ie excite the rubbernecking fascination of watching a potential trainwreck)

So far so good - we know How this could be seen as potentially scandalous stuff, so Why is this particular issue so resonant. One thought is that the process of a good scandal is quite predictable, and thus it also gives us that thing all humans love - a Narrative structure that allows us to set things into context and retell it. A good Scandalous Narrative must have a:

1. Breach - 'a social drama first manifests itself as the breach of a norm, the infraction of a rule of morality, law, custom, or etiquette, in some public arena’ [Aka Game Defection]

2. Crisis - ‘… a mounting crisis follows, a momentous juncture or turning point in the relations between components of a social field. … Sides are taken, factions are formed, and … there is a tendency for the breach to widen and spread until it coincides with some dominant cleavage in … relevant social relations’.[Existing Game payoff structures are disturbed]

3. Redress - ‘certain adjustive and redressive mechanisms’ are introduced to limit the contagious spread of the breach. These range from personal advice and informal arbitration to formal legal machinery and sometimes the performance of a public ritual - victim as scapegoat. [Resetting of Game Payoff - or the promise of resetting (this may be a game in itself of course)]

4. Reintegration or schism. - ‘The final phase consists either in the reintegration of the disturbed social group … or the social recognition of irreparable breach between the contesting parties’ [New Game Rules agreed]

Fascinating how the rules of a good story and that of Scandal have strong parallels. A very good point made about a Really Good Scandal is that the Rules of the Original Game (ie the "values and norms") should not be clear initially:

values and norms are often contested features of social life, adhered to by some individuals and groups and rejected (or simply ignored) by others. Hence scandals are often rather messy affairs, involving the alleged transgression of values and norms which are themselves subject to contestation.’ (Taylor, Scandal and Social Theory)

Echoing this, on the way back from SXSW I read a fascinating book called "The Bolter", about the life of the "Between the Wars" 1920's Scandal Girl Lady Idina Sackville, who married 5 men and had scores of part time partners etc. But the thing that fascinated me was the reason why she was scandalous. Consider the scandal of her first marriage:

To set the scene, upper class Edwardian society marriages were, like M&A deals, mainly to secure todays assets tomorrow. True Lurve was a nice to have, but not essential component. Consequently it was considered quite normal that there was infidelity, so long as the heir and spare belonged to the correct husband. After that it was anybody's game, but the risk was by and large shared among the in-crowd by ensuring all further offspring were hatched within the married upper class set - ie all offspring (official, that is - there was a whole 'nother ruleset for unofficial ones) were in the extended familial system.

Idina's scandalous behaviour was essentially to actually marry for love and demand fidelity, a very new-fangled idea in that set. So when hubby started playing Edwardian away games, she eventually wanted out and divorced (via elopement- the only real way of a woman getting a quickie divorce then) said hubby when he was not prepared to only play the home fixtures.

We immediately now know why this was a Scandal

- She breached the rules by not condoning the existing cosy Edwardian (im)morality play.
- She did in it such a way as to make it very public to other lower status social groups
- Her strategy cut her off from the economic wellspring, as the elopement target was not as wealthy as said husband - not an optimal game outcome at the time at all.

She also did it at a time when the underlying "values and norms" were under great pressure. Due to the First World War, women were having to compete for far fewer men (so many men having been killed). In these situations, game theory predicts that women will have to be more competitive to win men and men will be less likely to marry them, and a win will be a fleeting win at best - so the woman will now more likely remain unmarried or frequently dumped. Today's Trophy Wives (many women chasing small numbers of very rich men) and The Underclass (many of the men are in prison / on drugs / etc so not ideal partners) are in similar Game situations.

In other words, to stand above the crowd, women had to resort to "more outrageous than thou" behaviour (hence the Roaring 20's). Also, the general shortage of men meant, for the new and unmarried debutantes in the Edwardian Upper Echelons finding a shortage of beaus, other people's husbands were increasingly fair game (and boy were they game), rattling the foundations of the previous order which pretty much demanded a wedding band as an entry stake to play the hand.

However, at the same time women had tasted economic and social independence from working during the War, so had emerged far more self confident and prepared to go for what they want. Thus Idina and her ilk are hardly unpredictable - the husbands see more candy, the wives are less prepared to let them taste it and also increasingly believe they can do better for themselves anyway, some kick the trend off – and bingo, someone has to be first starter bolting out the gate and you get Idina.

The other thing Idina did was to do it all extremely openly, necessary for The Scandal - she was a typical Celebrity of her day, so her every doing was reported in the toff red tops of the era - Tatler etc. If blogs were invented then.....

The rest of the book is fascinating as what it really describes is the trajectory of a woman just a few years ahead of a general trend curve (divorcing, remarrying, wanting independence for herself in all things including going after what and who she wanted). In other words, she was a Scandal mainly because she was an early adopter, as it were - behind her came a wave of social changes which blew away the Old Order completely.

Summing it all up, a good sex Scandal – when all is said and done – can be seen as a marker of early adoption of new social mores in the larger culture. So – are Belle de Jour, Girl with a One Track Mind etc just the early swallows in an increasing migration? It seems fairly predictable that as women's economic emancipation increases so will the frankness of their blogging and general honesty about their real feelings - but will it be perfectly normal for girls to work at being working girls for a few years in future too?

Update - I got interested in the payoff economics when a friend pointed me to the Sunday Times article which gave £200 ARPB (work it out...) and her operating 2-3 x a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, over 14 months. A quick calculation, rounding up to 200 events at £200 a go is c £40k. Thats how much you make without going public, and thats not a particular high, um, utilisation - you can see that its probably not too hard to reach 6 figures. The blog generated a column in the Telegraph, so economically probably nowher near the original activity. The next step is The Book, which allegedly had a "six figure advance" - can't get total sales, but its sold c 150,000 in 2007 alone so - assuming c £1 for the writer and several years running - its an order of magnitude above the original activity (and pays back for considerably longer). But you don't get that book selling that sort of number without the blog, I suspect.

*The game theory of cheating for humans is fascinating - we as a species really, really don't like it - numerous behavioural studies have shown we will take "irrational" actions (ones that make us poorer / get hurt / are long term destructive ) if we feel we've been cheated by someone. We prefer to cut off our nose to spite our face rather than have our noses rubbed in it. In other words, the risk of a poor (and probably unpredictable) payoff of being outed for infidelity tend to be more negative than the game player necessarily wants to face. Another reason for keeping schtum!

If you liked this post, don't forget to vote for Broadstuff for the British BIMAs 2009 Best Blog Award

Went to the Mashup Social Media event this afternoon, what followed was a "Sorta Pecha Kucha" Session for 4 hours as the rapid-firehose presentations came thick and fast - there was a LOT of Media, the Twitterwall made it Social (after a fashion) and boy were we mashed up - it was full! I made some notes on my trusty iPhone as things kept coming, so here are the things that resonated from each talk. Apologies in advance for missing some names, things came so fast.

Robin Wright

- Brand is a decision simplification, as people are basically lazy
- Brands initially started using social media defensively when they realised people were dissing them and it hit top spot on Google
- TV Ad + Website = more engagement - mouse clicking is a small behaviour change that beds in larger new behavioural style (Shades of NLP methinks?)

Robin also won the Doc Marten Shoeshine Superman Sartorial Award

Katy Lindemann

- No such thing as social media per se, all media is social to some extent
- Being social isn't just about marketing
- You can't be social outside if you are not social inside

Katy won the George Orwell Social Media Buzzword Bingo! Award hands down

Sarah Beeny - Tepilo

- Sarah has used her real life fame to drive social presence on her new online product
- Set timing to go with her TV stuff
- Helped to make real life friends in the social network
- It took 5 minutes before a photo of Sarah's "media assets" were profiled. Remarkable restraint.

Sarah wins the Edwina Fabulous Stoically Coping Under Pressure Award as she scooped up her whimpering newborn child (Beeny Baby?) mid talk and soldiered on.

Marshall Manson

- Showed how you can rejuvenate Wonderbra by getting Dita Von Teese, a woman who is famous for taking off her clothes and showing off her great - ahem "media assets" - to front it.

Wins the Whoddathunkit Award for wondering why there was huge traffic for pictures and videos of Dita in a Wonderbra

Toby Gunton

- Cute bear in viral furry animal video got 2nd most hits after Obama.

Won the Compere the Meerkat award for first Cute Furry Animals in Social Media talk of the day

Emma Cowan, recruiting for RAF

- Wanted to change the image of the RAF of "a boys club that flies planes" to tell the real story via narrative and new media.

Wins the Brave New World Order. Next project, the British Army is just an Extreme Ironing Fan Club

Round about this time, one wag tweeted:

"Old media: Stick a celeb in an ad. New media: Stick a celeb on the web. Social media: Stick a celeb on Twitter."

He won a real award, a book

Then came some demonstrations from companies

Quiet Riot

- Trying to aggregate user complaints and leverage them to complain against Evil Faceless Companies

Tempero

- Seems to be a moderation system operating across multiple media sites

Mat Morrison

- questioning whether brands can actually use social media given the aim is to sell things
- conflict between value and values,
- Entertaining example of price vs knicker elasticity (what is the price of getting lucky with your date)
- More Serious Example - Compare The Meerkat is cute but false, the reality is a Large Company wants your money.

Wins the George Bernard Shaw award for Experimental Economics(see here)

Deborah Copeland, First Direct

- Used Wordle to show comparative differences in sentiment about FD verses other banks
- Online monitoring of sentiment, displayed on website

Wins the "No Sex No Slebs No Silly Virals are needed for Social Media Success" Award.

Paul Borge - Selling Safe Sex

- People are having Unsafe Sex
- Snigger, Titter, Condoms, Willies, Piers' Morgan willy etc but For A Good Cause.

Wins the "Nudge Nudge Wink Wink" Tankard for using Viral Sex For A Good Cause.

Mark Pack - LibDems Website for MP

- lesson was to build big site from first rather than add features later
- 3/4 of people go to blog tab, not news
- 33% of videos on Google maps get a boost
- ROI not just about numbers can use qualitative data

Wins the Very Worthy, But Why Are They Only Still At 20% Support" Plaque

Nic Ray

- Idea Bounty used Crowdsourcing (we covered this over here)
- most interesting thing is that they are in the middle of a blogspat with Amelia Torode about the cynical ethics of crowdsourcing (I believe she originated Compare the Meerkat, which is of course not at all cynical )

Wins the Ek is Gatvol van Fokkin Meerkats Trophy (South African Chapter) and a complete set of Meerkat Manor DVDs.

Dan Klein, Detica

- Network analysis - Ebay data looking for sodium and potassiumnitrate found 50 people
- take every call on a mobile, crunch the maths
- look at influential people from call records
- iTunes is an 80/20 and don't buy hip hop

Wins the Tom Lehrer Award for bringing Heavy Maths to the Party.

Andrew Gerrard

- Companies are already social today
- people will use Socmed anyway
- US Air Force chart on Social media usage (see chart on top). Some companies are working out how to use it, are you?

Wins the Sensible Party Award For A Very Sensible Talk. Also wins the Zombie Twitter for his tweets carrying on whilst talking.

Giles Rhys Jones, Ogilvy

- Discipline head
- Digital heart
- Muscles are multiple channels

Wins the Feat of Clay Award for using complex diagrams to describe quite simple things. 4 o'Clock Stubble was Mentioned in Despatches

Giles Palmer

- Buzz monitoring non trivial
- Sentiment Analysis on multiple axes can cause conflicting data readouts
- Crowdsourcing - machines not too clever esp with complex pages eg forums so needs mech Turk to handle hardest N% - works best for small volumes

Wins the Coals to Newcastle Award for talking Buzz Monitoring. Brave Man!

Heather Hampton Swine Flu DOH/COI

- Panic! headlines in the media
- 24 April launch media
- Monitored YouTube Twitter Blogs and other Social media
- use free tools
- social media picks up Memes early, one can prepare to counteract before it hits MSM
- Social media reflects a picture closer to real public mood

Wins the Rudyard Kipling Keeping Your Head On Award . Also broke the hearts of every Buzz Monitoring company in the room with the word "Free"

Jonathan Akwue

Some bits of Govmmt quite advanced eg:
- No 10 downing St really advanced usage on Twitter for example
- NHS direct use pinging with relevant data at specific time

Wins the Alastair Campbell Put Your Best Foot Forward Award. We are all waiting for teh Govmnts other shoe to drop

Andrew Grill

- If you complain on a Call Centre ACD no one hears, but on Twitter it's a different story - leverage
- Its marketeers that tweet while ops staff are the ones being tweeted to. Can the talkers learn to listen?

Wins the Oasis Award for most Tweets on the Twitterwall on the day. Also wins a kiss from Dame Edna for Best Australian Presentation

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Chris Thorpe

- Real time world driven by smartphone
- Every citizen becomes a data monitoring device
- The world could be a better place through social media.
- Zombieconomy and Ads will kill it as a beneficial service
- Calling for a happy smiley Real Time Web where everybody loves each other, with no horrible commercial people spoiling it

Wins the Thomas More Award for Most Uplifting Speech. Also Wins the Pangloss Award for Unceasing Optimism in the Face of Harsh Experience.

And as for the Organisers, we award them the Ethelred the Unready Award for not checking out the video display in the room first

As for this blog post - well, you decide on what Award you'd give it in the Comments - and vote for us at the BIMAS too