Monthly Archives: December 2007

Marc Orchant, a Hero to Many

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All this week, since I heard about the massive coronary that my friend, Marc Orchant, suffered last Sunday morning, I’ve been following the progress reports that Oliver Starr has been posting for the entire blogosphere.

Unfortunately, the news tonight is not good. Marc has passed on from this earth leaving many of us on this earth grieving. Marc was a husband to one, a father to two, a friend and hero to many. He was a beautiful man, always looking to help anyone else he could in any way he could. Anyone who knew him would vouch for this.

On Twitter, his last message was to me – encouraging me, in a way that Marc seemed to always emulate. It does not matter why he was encouraging me. It was just his way. I will miss him.

Oliver noted Marc’s love of music on his blog. I can attest to this, and Marc and I shared a lot of discussion about a mutually favorite band – Dave Matthews Band. So while Oliver left a Grateful Dead song, I leave a Dave Matthews song:

Where Are You Going?
Where are you going, with your long face pulling down?
Don’t hide away, like an ocean
That you can’t see but you can smell
And the sound of waves crash down

I am no superman.
I have no reasons for you
I am no hero, Aww that’s for sure
But I do know one thing:
Is where you are is where I belong.
I do know, where you go, is where I wanna be.

Where are you going? Where do you go?
Are you lookin’for answers to questions under the stars?
Well if along the way you are growin weary, you can rest with me
Until a brighter day, you’re ok.

I am no superman.
I have no answers for you.
I am no hero, aww that’s for sure.
But I do know one thing:
Where you are is where I belong.
I do know, where you go, is where I wanna be

Where are you going? Where do you go?
Where do you go? Where are you goin? Where do you go?

I am no superman.
I have no answers for you
I am no hero, awww thats for sure.
But I do know one thing:
is where you are is where I belong
I do know, where you go, is where I wanna be.

Where are you goin’? Where do you go?

Tell me where are you going?
Where? Let’s go.

Update:
If there is any doubt the impact that Marc has had on so many, I show you this screenshot of Techmeme where his death is the top thing being blogged about, commented on and discussed in the technology blogsphere. This does not even come close to reflecting the sentiments being expressed elsewhere. I have cried all night. I’ll continue to mourn longer.

Operation: 1000 Subscribers

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There is a major milestone approaching here at Technosailor, and since I don’t really feel like writing anything of any real substance tonight, I figure now would be a good time to point out that we are approaching 1000 RSS subscribers here at Technosailor. In fact, I’ve made it easier than ever to subscribe to three different feeds here at Technosailor – the English language feed (which is also the main one), the Spanish language feed, and my Google Reader Shared Items feed – by providing those options in the sidebar.

Notably, however, I’m also displaying how many active subscribers there are (according to FeedBurner) in the sidebar as well. For me, it will be a monumental milestone when I break that elusive 1000 subscriber number. Help me get there if you aren’t already subscribed. :)

Now is Gone is Here

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Good friend of mine and sometimes-columnist here at Technosailor, Geoff Livingston, is celebrating the launch of Now is Gone, the book he’s been working on for quite some time (it also has a blog associated with it as any good new media book does). Now is Gone is described as a “Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs” based on his own knowledge and experience running a social media-oriented PR firm.

So, Geoff is a friend of mine but I told him I’d give him an honest review of this book, and honest review I will do. Overall, the book is brilliant. I’m glad this is not “yet another book on blogging”. It doesn’t provide a how to. It doesn’t provide options for choosing your platform or describe how to subscribe to RSS.

It’s obvious that this book was written mostly for executives. This is not a bad thing as Executives are the ones steering companies and the reality is that if companies don’t embrace social media, they will be left behind. It is presented in a very philosophical way, describing the challenges that companies face today when it comes to the social media landscape, brand management and public relations. The simple message is, “Hey guys, you need to get what is going on today and you need to do it fast because Now is Gone”.

The book starts with an intro from Brian Solis who you may remember was a member of the PR Roundtable discussion hosted here in November, 2007. I love Brian, but the foreword was too lengthy and off-putting. As a reader, I wanted to get into the meat of the book and it seemed to take awhile to get to that point.

Geoff makes some common sense analogies between social media mirroring real life. It stood out to me that people do not like to be controlled but they will allow themselves to be influenced – as long as you don’t try to control them! His 5 steps to the basis of an effective social media message could probably be broken out further, but were effective for the book:

  1. Giving Up Control of the Message
  2. Participating in a Community
  3. Is Your Community Social Media Savvy?
  4. Dedicating the Resources
  5. Ethics and Transparency

This book as a whole is a slam dunk, effectively communicating a message that is very much needed and, is very timely at a time where companies are embarrassing themselves more than ever in their engagement with social media. In that way, this book could not be more timely.

I would suggest for the next book, however, (There will be another one, right Geoff? :) ) that fewer callouts be used. It seems that call outs were half the book and if that was the intention, you might as well have made them part of the book. :) That’s a minor point though.

Bottom line… 4 out of 5 stars (does that mean anything anymore?). Job well done. Go buy Now is Gone (aff) today.

La Privacidad como Moneda

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Alex Rudloff escribe un interesante artículo (en inglés) sobre el uso de nuestra privacidad como moneda, pudiendo cada quien intercambiar partes de su privacidad por servicios.

De esta forma podemos indicarle a Facebook nuestra fecha de cumpleaños a cambio de que nuestros amigos estén al tanto y puedan felicitarnos. A mint podemos contarle nuestros hábitos de consumo personales a cambio de información y recomendaciones para ahorrar. A LinkedIn le informamos en dónde trabajamos y así podemos conectarnos con nuestros colegas. A Google le permitimos almacenar nuestros correos, a cambio de la comodidad de tener acceso a ellos desde cualquier conexión. A Amazon le dejamos estudiar nuestros gustos a cambio de mejores recomendaciones. Y así sucesivamente.

Lo interesante de este modelo, es que es dinero renovable. A cambio de la misma información podemos obtener múltiples servicios, siempre y cuando uno de los proveedores de servicio no comparta nuestra información.

Cuando un proveedor de servicios decide compartir nuestra información sin nuestra autorización, esta pierde valor. ¿Si todos los websites conocen nuestra fecha de nacimiento, por qué darnos algo a cambio de ella?

En el caso particular de Facebook, ya han violado la privacidad de sus usuarios en dos ocasiones. Pero al parecer, el servicio que ofrece Facebook, o mejor dicho, el valor que obtienen sus usuarios es lo suficientemente alto para que la mayoría permita estos abusos. Eso, o simplemente no se dan cuenta de lo que está ocurriendo.

Cuando activaron el Mini-Feed, Facebook compartió información de las actividades de sus usuarios con el resto de sus amigos en Facebook. Y ahora con el caso del Beacon, Facebook y sus socios comerciales compartieron información entre ellos sobre las actividades de los miembros de Facebook en otros websites.

En ambas ocasiones Facebook ha recapacitado, explicado y ofrecido una solución. Pero también en ambas ocasiones Facebook ha preferido comenzar con la versión más abusiva de la privacidad de sus usuarios, rectificando solamente después de una reacción de estos.

Es sólo cuestión de tiempo para que los datos de más de 50 millones de usuarios estén comprometidos. Y entonces nuestra privacidad se habrá devaluado.

Zuckerberg, Quit Insulting Our Intelligence

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Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook has taken one more step in the Beacon war. As we’ve noted, Facebook is wrong to not fully make Beacon an opt-in program, partner companies are wrong for releasing customer data to Facebook and by the way I made a Firefox extension that will help consumers know when they are on a site that is using Beacon technology and will send data about their customers to Facebook, regardless of whether the consumer has a Facebook account or have the program turned off.

So, back to Zuckerberg. Mark posted an entry today on the Facebook blog apologizing for Beacon, admitting that the program was mismanaged from the start and that the response to the outcry were abysmal:

We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users.

Zuckerberg continues on to outline how to turn off Beacon altogether – and that’s where this is still breaking down. First, Beacon is still “opt-out”. That is, users still have to proactively turn the “feature” off. I’m guessing that most Facebook users are not paying attention to this whole Beacon uprising, and thus probably have no idea that there is something that can be turned off and how it would be turned off. The majority of Facebook users, I’d venture, are purely using the site to keep up with their circle of people. No one is paying attention to these higher-level issues – something I admit I’m disappointed in as I think these issues affect all users.

The reality is that Beacon is damaged goods and I will be surprised if partners don’t continue to drop the technology. It’s a huge mistake to send data to Facebook and let Facebook determine if the user 1) exists or 2) has not opted-out.

Someone I talked to recently described Facebook and Beacon as, “[Facebook] is like inviting the devil into your home by accident and now [Beacon] is seen as angel of death.”

No, despite Facebook’s steps to “right the wrong”, they have not gone far enough. At the very least, they need to make it completely opt-in and let their marketing department “sell” opting-in to their users. In an ideal world, Beacon is completely abandoned – something that might very well happen if the backlash doesn’t stop soon.