Wake Up to How You Share on the Web | chrisbrogan.com
What Facebook is saying, and they have to, is that they have to own your stuff, because if Facebook Connect and other services are going to make your data ubiquitous and shared and spread all around like peanut butter, then they have to have the rights to republish and distribute it. (I might have this a bit wrong. I’m willing to be a bit wrong.)
via Wake Up to How You Share on the Web | chrisbrogan.com.
Here’s one of those places where language can trip you up, and which may be part of the problem with the Facebook TOS.
Facebook doesn’t need to own your content. It may need to retain the rights to keep a copy of it for certain purposes — but ownership implies a much different set of requirements.
“ownership” implies they control future use of the item, that they are now “in charge”. In reality, what Facebook needs to be working towards is a non-exclusive usage license. There’s a huge gulf between OWN (“all rights”) and a non-exclusive license. What Facebook needs to be aiming for is the recognition that once you share something, it’s practically impossible to unshare it, so they need to maintain rights to maintain those shared versions of things in perpetuity. But they can still make explicit that once you delete “the original” their right to create new shared copies ends. They should commit that when you chose to stop sharing, they’ll stop allowing new copies or instances to be created.Technically could be a bit interesting, but do-able.
The other aspect, the one that seems to have is their use of things for marketing. At one level, this is understandable – if only because when you do screen shots, god knows what content is going to be in there, and faking all of the content looks bad. But – there needs to be real clarity of how and in what forms this will and won’t be used. The lawyer-friendly “forever and however we feel lik eusing it, including selling CD’s of stock photography to chinese brothels” doesn’t work, even if it allows lawyers to sleep well at night. Lawyers covering all possible bases shouldn’t be the primary goal of the TOS, however, right?
Facebook | Update on Terms
A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.
Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.
via Facebook | Update on Terms.
It’s good to see Facebook commiting to try to do the right thing here. It’s too bad they had to get raked across the coals in public first. While a lot of the bloggers and pundits love to declare evil first and loudly, it seemed to me that there was a lot of noisy over-reaction going on; but then, that’s unprecedented here in the online world, right? It’s not news unless we can post an unflattering photo and declare our superiority, after all. Preferably with a snarky meow.
To me, the more interesting question is how Facebook got here and how they could have avoided it.
The first problem, and its a big one, is that the TOS was updated without notification of the users. Notice that Apple’s itunes always puts up a dialog announcing a TOS change and making you pretend you read it and click the “I accept” when they change it? Legally, you can write a TOS that allows you to change it and users are expected to somehow know this has happened. Legally, users have the right to hate your guts when you do it. Disclosure is a big plus here; when it changes, announce it and explain it. that’s one reason why a blog exists, right?
Zuckerberg did explain it — after the fact, once the controversy started. By the time he did, it was too late. People were already ripping Facebook. By the time Facebook engaged the community, it was too late. (and why, for a site that’s basic function is enabling communication and community, is Facebook so quiet and distant from its community? Just asking. it’s not unique in this, either).
But the second problem here isn’t the late engagement. It’s that what Zuckerberg said the intent was, and what the TOS said, were two very different beasts. And here’s the big problem, and one where Facebook made the mistake so many companies make; they allowed the lawyers to dictate corporate policy and not define it.
Imagine if Zuckerberg had taken his blog postings and given it to the lawyers when the TOS rewrite project started. Imagine if every time a draft of the TOS came back, he said “that is not what our intentions are” and rejected it. Imagine…
I’ve been in far too many meetings with lawyers over things like this, and far too often, everyone defers to the lawyers. Ultimately, the lawyers get to write legalese in ways the lawyers are comfortable with that managers can live with, rather than pushing the lawyers to come up with language that the managers are comfortable with that the lawyers can live with.
So you end up with TOS’s that require a college degree to decode, that basically take away everything from the end user rather than strike a balance with the user, one that makes the lawyer comfortable.
Problem is, the more comfortable your lawyer is, the more uncomfortable your user will be. And if you’re the manager driving the TOS wording, your job is to make sure the TOS both reflects the company’s needs and goals and intentions, but also allows the user to be comfortable uing the site. As the manager in charge, your lawyer is your friend and looking out for the company’s best interest — but it’s critical that the lawyer be tasked to come up with language that fits the company’s needs and which is going be acceptable to users.
That’s a rare accomplishment these days. But it can be done by setting the tone early (as Zuckerberg did – too late!) and then pushing the lawyer to find a way to enable that in the legalese. You don’t do that by deferring to the lawyer; in this case, the managers in charge have to champion for the users. Better yet, has anyone ever bothered to “beta test” a TOS, or even focus group it? nope. It’s a one-sided discussion, and there’s no feedback until it goes final and people get pissed. And at that point, it’s too late.
So if you don’t want to be the next Facebook, or if Facebook doesn’t want to end up doing this again, a few suggestions:
- See the blog entry Zuckerberg wrote? That needed to be written before the first meeting and handed to everyone involved and the lawyers tasked with implementing that philosophy into the TOS
- Every time a draft comes back and it doesn’t match the intetions in that opening memo, send it back.
- NDA a few key users, especally people critical of your policies. Get their feedback. Listen to it. Find the compromise position.
- Don’t release it until you’re happy with it. the lawyer doesn’t have to be happy with it. I’d argue that the happier the lawyer is with it, the more work you have in balancing the TOS to handle the user’s needs as well. Your lawyer has to be willing to LIVE with it, not like it.
- When you release it, announce it; blog what you’re doing, and why. document and explain the changes. Transparency rules.
- And don’t be afraid to take the wider feedback and tweak it again.
And remember, as we move more and more into shared content creation, social networking, people stuffing things on sites they don’t own and run, these issues are going to become more widespread, more complex, and less clear. So unilateral “lawyer first, end-user never” TOS language is going to increasingly create friction points, and occasionally turn into full-scale firefights. So either recognize this up front and commit to avoid it, or risk being the next to face the wrath of pissed off users.
In a shared reality, dictating terms is becoming increasingly impractical. Lawyers love to dictate. The manager of the project’s job is to both champion the users and keep the lawyer focused on doing what’s best for everyone. the lawyer is there to do the company’s bidding on defining the terms — not dictate them. Too many companies are unwilling to make the laywer do that.
In the social world, that’s going to increasingly become a requirement. Embrace it and it can become a competitive advantage — think about it; right now, there are a bunch of people looking for alternatives to Facebook over this. Facebook now has to convince them that alternative IS Facebook. And competitors can use their TOS right now to compete with Facebook, if they do it right.
Is that an opportnity you want to give to your competitors?
Does Google Friend Connect have a point?
Yet – and I’m sorry if I seem ignorant, but I really do want to know – I still ask: What’s the point of it? Why would I want to be part of Google Friend connect on someone’s blog, or someone join it on my blog? Once we all do that, then what?
via Does Google Friend Connect have a point? — NevilleHobson.com.
I’m glad it’s not just me. When I set up the new blog, I installed both Google Connect and MyBloglog widgets, mostly to experiment with them and see hwo they work and what people use them for.
As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of these things is to give you a way to show the universe just how popular you are. Which, if you’re into counting numbers and telling people how popular you are can be a really useful thing. Probably also useful if you’re trying to convince folks you’re an A-lister.
But honestly, that’s not me, so last night, as I was tweaking the sidebar and navigation based on watching the first couple of weeks of use of chuqui.com, I pulled both of them. I considered putting them on the About page for a while, but to be honest, I just couldn’t see any real advantage to me to having them.
Your mileage may well vary. But since I’m more interested in whether people find my writing interesting and not crowing about how many people “connect” to me, I don’t see a lot of use to either setup — for now. I am, however, going to see how Google enhances it down the road, because there’s still a need for a good, centralized common profile technology. This, however, isn’t it yet.
(MyBlogLog? well, it’s pretty much what it was when Yahoo! bought it. I’m not sure what plans, if any, Yahoo! has for it — and what I’m looking for these things to be seems to be something Yahoo! is trying to build into it’s account profiling and email platform. We’ll see. But the real story here, like Feedburner, is that being bought may pay off the founders and VCers, but it’s also almost a guarantee that a site will grind to a halt, because, of course, the first priority after being bought is revamping everything to fit the new corporate standards and migrate to their data center, technologies and servers. And that, the way the internet goes, is almost a guarantee to being irrelevant once you surface and try to figure out how to innovate the technology again…)
40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them
Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. This piece, and the knowledge I learned from the incessant hours invested, demonstrate why brands do belong on Twitter. No other medium gets you inside a business or brand quiet like Twitter.
via 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them.
I’ve been having this discussion on and off with some folks over the last week or so as we try to figure out things like how Twitter fits into a larger strategy with blogs, facebook, friendfeed, etc (the list can go on forever…).
To me, Twitter is conversation; it’s effectively the latest reinvention of instant messaging. It’s also transient; it’s the literal lifesteram that you dip into when you can, and which flows past when you don’t — and it shouldn’t be something you need to or want to save for later or archive for the future. That’s just not what it’s about, or should be.
The key word, though, is conversation. If all a company or a person plans to do is dump pointers to blog entries in it, then don’t bother; it’s not just an alternative to RSS. When I find someone doing that in the list of people I follow, I drop them. Ditto, if someone comments at you, you should be chatting back. Companies that see twitter as just another one-way communications feed are going to lose out and be disappointed.
And as we were talking about this, I had this really strange thought: beating on Apple for not blogging, for not twittering, for overtly refusing to get into conversation with its customers in any real way isn’t a new concept, by any means, and people know my view of that from way back.
But — I realized yesterday that so many “mainstream” companies have — Ford and GM, the NHL, Burger King, Pepsi — these companies have all stepped into this new conversations marketing world and are exploring how to use it to connect to customers and grow their business.
And as of this week, so has the White House and the President of the United States.
And where’s Apple? Still basically marketing the way they did a decade ago, hiding behind the firewall and pushing a one-way conversation. When do we say that companies aren’t just not playing “bleeding edge” about this stuff, but starting to fall behind the power curve completely?
This is going to sound funny, but while I’ve been on the Internet since, well, we used banging rocks together to make modem sounds — and yet I remember the day when I realized that the internet had “made it” and was now part of larger society. I was working in my garden turning soil and adding steer manure in large quanties to what was going to be a vegetable garden. and I realized, all of a sudden, that the bag a FREAKING URL TO A WEB PAGE on a bag of cow crap.
Ford blogs. GM blogs. The president of the united states has reached out and started that conversation with the people.
So where’s Apple? And when does it’s refusal to join this conversation stop being amusing and start impacting business?
(actually, that’s a big part of the answer: as long as Apple can look at its business and say “what’s broken?” the motivation to make significant changes is limited. It doesn’t have to. Nor can you really blame it, because it’s working. But when that changes? If you don’t invest in these things now, they won’t be there when you need them. That was a lesson Apple should have learned from the MobileMe rollout disaster. Businesses fighting to improve or fix themselves are more wiling to take risks and do new things — but all companies need to make these strategic investments).
I can’t see how any company can look at what’s happened this week with whitehouse.gov and Obama’s embrace of the online communications environment and NOT have to have a long discussion with itself about whether it can afford to NOT be involved in these conversations any more. It is going to be increasingly a competitive disadavantage to companies that don’t.
Open Source Communities – Push cx
Open source projects should be judged as much by their community as by their technological achievements. The code tells you what it’s good for, but the community tells you what its future is.
Communities need to be active to continue improving the project, deal with bugs and changes to their ecosystem. If no one is interested enough to talk about the project, none of that will happen. Newcomers need to meet experienced users to be sold on why to use the software, to get help as they learn their way around, to maybe be drawn into contributing to the project itself.
I nice view of the dynamics of communities by Peter Harkins. One of the aspects of this, I think, is that from the communities I’ve been involved in over the years, the smaller the set of people actively involved in the decision process, design and implementation, the more sensitive that project is to fading or falling apart if the life or motivation of a key member changes. For that reason alone, communities really need to foster new members into the project and ways to recognize and enable the most effective and capable into the “inner circle” where they’re ready and able to step up and move a project forward. If you don’t do this kind of “succesion planning” from the start, when you need it, it won’t be there.
Geeks tend to think you don’t need marketing, but they’re wrong. Marketing, even of an open source project, is key to enable adoption and convince people to evaluate it and join the project. projects really should consider community growth as a key metric in he success of a community, and communities really need to look at outreach, evangelism, and recruitment to be tasked out the same way bugs, features and documentation are, and those members should be part of the “core team” whether or not they actually code.
One reason it looks to me that Rails has taken off faster than django is simple: the rails guys did a lot of talking and promoting and evangelizing of rails, where the django folks have been quieter and less self-promoting of themselves and the technology.
A technology nobody knowss about may be great, but it won’t change the world.
Of categories and tags, and why they matter
Chris asked
What are the odds of getting an “Everything Else” feed that includes everything BUT the Two For Elbowing stuff, for those of us who liked how we had our RSS configured before? I like reading your stuff, but at the same time it would be annoying to manage six different Chuq feeds in my Personal folder where I only had the one before. (And the 24E bits I had going to my Sports folder.)
Which is a legitmate question. My answer was that it was unlikely to happen. With tools like Yahoo Pipes, though, it’s easy to set up a pipe that you can customize to your heart’s content (Chris wrote back, not having touched Pipes before, that it took him five minutes. Pipes is one of those tools you should have in your toolbelt, folks).
I took a look at just how granular I wanted to make the categorization and feeds. It gets really complicated really fast if you aren’t careful. Hell, even if you are careful. My original design for the categorization was two levels with tags (sports/hockey, tech/apple, tech/yahoo, etc), and mixing and matching categories, sub-categories and tags went to chaos really fast.
So I ended up doing a single level of categories, and everything else as tags. Each top level category has its own rss feed (see the sidebar on each page for them), and was set up as one of the core content areas I expect to talk about over time:
- About Chuq: My life as a series of random blog posts.
- Birdwatching: Birding and Birdwatching: things feathery.
- Living in Silicon Valley: Living in Silicon Valley; stuff to do, places to be, companies to start up….
- Photography: All things photography and digital imaging.
- The Offline Life: Things that make shutting down and unplugging part of your life: food, wine, books, movies and the great outdoors. Remember when your mom told you to go ouside and play? She was right..
- The Online Life: The tools, technologies, people companies and techniques that make the online life possible and interesting.
- Two for Elbowing – Hockey and Sports: Hockey and other sports, how the media and sports deal with each other, and the business realities of sports.
Two for Elbowing is what was on my sports blog, now integrated. Birdwatching and Photography are my two great lusts, where I’m focussing most of my “me” time these days, and in 2009, I plan on starting to move photography into a semi-pro or pro state. More on that later. Birdwatching is going to carry the content that was originally targetted for my now-parked siliconvalleybirders.org site, and which will at some point move back to that domain in some way (more on that later, too)
The Online Life is the area for talking about all of this “online stuff”, the work-geek-tech universe.
The Offline Life and Living in Silicon Valley are the core pieces of what was originally my “Dare2Thrive” project, which I was working heavily on when I left StrongMail, and which (story of my life the last couple of years) never launched. That’s another “more later”, yeah. Lots of that right now. The core for both of those is life balance, a growing focus of mine since I decided to leave Apple. Living in Silicon Valley is about the region and what makes it such a fun and interesting place to be (if you ever leave your cube and go outside!), while the Offline Stuff will be about all of those things you can (and should) do when you get away from that damn computer and that dumpy cube and take some time off.
Some discussion of the categories is on the postings page. I’m going to also put it in the sidebar one of these days.
One note for those wondering, there’s no top-level category about Apple. My writings about Apple will be in the Online Life, or perhaps in my “about me” category, as appropriate. You shouldn’t assume I’ll be writing less about Apple based on this, but that my writing about Apple will be more in balance with writing about the larger industry and about life in general. Of course, if that’s all you really care about, you can always grab an RSS feed of the Apple tag, but honestly, if your interest is that narrow, I feel sorry for you… You need to get outside more.
Tags will be used to define the content into narrow content areas. My goal is for most articles to live in only one top level category, but to use lots of tags to define what’s in each message. All of the defined tags are visible on the tags page, and there’s a tag cloud of the most common tags in use in the sidebar.
As long as I’m careful with tagging, that should really help with findability down the road, and minimize content duplication and search problems. At least, I hope so. It definitely solves the categorization problems I had on the old blogs, where the category system just didn’t fit well with where my writing went over time. This new setup should be more flexible as time and interests change, and require less re-architecting to stay clean and current. At least, that’s the ope.
Hmm. write one blog entry, promise three more. That’s probably a bad trend, no?
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