Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

Why We Need One Trick Ponies

As a rule, we love it when people say something that is so utterly foolish we immediately begin ripping it apart.

Call it inbred narcissism, or jealousy, or pettiness, or just pure unbridled joy that someone that was perceived to be smart is, in fact, a rambling, idiotic buffoon. But, we love to destroy.

We take to online networks to decry a blog post or news article, questioning how this latest asshat of the day got any airtime with the content they’ve just shared.

We character assassinate people, saying how dare this person represent our industry when they clearly have no clue what the industry is all about.

We leave angry comments on articles, citing the downfall of Rome and the decay of modern society as being less of a seismic shift for the worst in human intellect than the inane drivel we’ve just read.

And yet…

When we do this, we’re looking at this and reacting to things in completely the wrong way.

Instead of mocking and destroying, we should be praising and wanting more – because, let’s face it, the more obvious idiocy is recognized, the more the smarter examples will come to the fore.

The more we help these folks trip up, the more doing business right will succeed. And that can never be a bad thing.

So let’s celebrate the one trick ponies – after all, they’re helping the thoroughbreds shine brighter…

Why Storify Misses the Point on Protecting Privacy

When is a private thought not a private thought? When online curation tool Storify decides to bypass privacy wishes and share that thought publicly.

Over at AGBeat, there’s an interesting (and alarming) story about how Storify can be used to post private updates on Facebook publicly. By using their curation tool, someone in a private or secret Facebook group (where only members can view content) can share something meant for a limited audience for the whole web to view.

Storify co-founder Burt Herman seems to think this is okay, and the perfect example of why you should be careful in who you trust online.

But he’s missing a very key point.

People Can Make Mistakes – Technology Should Be Smarter

In a post on the Storify site addressing the AGBeat article, Herman suggests that curating private posts into a public stream is no different from taking a screenshot of a private update and posting that too.

While technically that may be true, in reality there’s a big difference between the two methods. Founder of business network pioneer Adholes, Marc Lefton, succinctly sums up the issue:

Screenshots are malicious. This [a Storify share] can happen by accident. That’s the difference.

Because Storify makes it simple for people to be browsing a site or network and share something that catches their eye, users (rightly or wrongly) will not always consider the limited audience the original update was meant for.

That’s the equal beauty and fallacy of human nature – excitement about content that grabs attention can result in the emotion of finding that content override the logic of respecting the audience limitation.

Technology like Storify, however, isn’t built on an emotional reaction – it’s bits and bytes taking a logical approach to enabling you to share emotionally-rich content.

Or at least it should be – but as the AGBeat article and Storify co-founder Herman’s shifting of blame to the user proves, the technology only works logically if the developers build it to do so.

Herman’s logic – that you should trust who you share content with not to reshare it if it’s meant to be private – would carry more weight if his platform was consistent in that mindset across all networks. But it isn’t.

If you try and share content via Storify from a protected Twitter account, the privacy settings from the micro-blogging platform prevent Storify from being able to quote the tweet. So it’s clear that Storify’s technology can be stopped by a network’s API.

Which suggests both Facebook and Storify are at fault here – Facebook for not preventing sharing the way Twitter does, and Storify for not recognizing a private group or community’s restricted access settings. Unfortunately, Storify doesn’t really see it this way.

It’s Your Fault

In the comments section of the AGBeat article, I questioned Herman’s stance on user blame after he stated it wasn’t a technology issue, but one of etiquette.

Herman’s answer, ironically, highlights Storify’s failing – the “power” effected by being able to share easily needs to be countered by the ability to identify whether that content should be shared.

Herman’s logic suggests if a private update is shared, it’s your fault for trusting the wrong friends to begin with. But that’s simply absolving responsibility from the platform that offers the public sharing of a private update. Former journalist, and General Manager of Social Media at New York-based technology startup Internet Media Labs, Amy Vernon identifies the flaw in this logic perfectly:

This is the difference:?

You protect your tweets, Storify won’t allow people who are allowed to see your tweets to Storify them. You protect your Facebook posts, Storify will allow people who are allowed to see those posts to Storify them.

Plain and simple.?

Is it, at its root, a human problem? Sure. But all this is changing faster than the average person can keep up. That doesn’t absolve tools and platforms from trying to abide by privacy levels.

Instead of blaming the user, why doesn’t Storify take the higher road and have a filter/blocker in place (similar to the Twitter scenario) where a message pops up prior to the sharing that asks the simple question: “This content is from a restricted source – are you sure you wish to share?” Or, better still, simply change the way Storify scrapes network API’s and only allow sharing of clearly publicly available content.

Of course, to do this would mean admitting Storify (and, by association, Facebook) have a problem. And no-one likes to admit they have a weakness…

image: AGBeat

The Fallacy of the Democratization of Influence

When we currently think of influence, we probably think of social scoring platforms like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex. These are the early adopters to the social influence space and, as such, have built an impressive level of awareness around their platforms and definition of influence.

Proponents of social scoring have praised Klout, as the most popular platform, for democratizing influence – allowing anyone to be an influencer regardless of audience size, social standing and location.

While it’s true that social scoring can start the process of finding influencers, it’s not quite as clear cut when it comes to being democratic around influence itself.

Social Scoring Silos the Elite

The problem with any scoring system is that it only rewards those with a high number. Want to buy a car? Tough luck if your FICO score is under a certain amount. The same goes for social scoring in the influence space.

Want to have a new Cadillac to test drive for a weekend? You better have a score over X amount. Free flight or upgrade to first class hotel accommodation? Make sure your score is high enough.

This engenders an ” us against them” mentality. Jane Average may be a better person to drive conversation and foot traffic to a car dealership because she’s a gearhead yet Joe Average, who has no intent to buy that car brand but has a higher Klout score because he’s more active online, is the one that gets the car keys.

This elite rewards system now engenders another problem – it begins to affect the natural tone of online conversations, as those below the fold realize they can change their language online and be identified as an industry influencer because they’re speaking about a certain brand more.

As the online language changes, the algorithms are rendered ineffective because now everyone truly is an influencer – and yet, they’re clearly not.

The True Definition of Influence

Which brings us to the real crux about influence – who truly impacts how a decision is made and at what point in the purchase cycle of a customer does this decision get made? Is it as a result of a socially active broadcaster, or someone else completely? And, if it’s someone else, do social scoring platforms have the ability to identify that person?

Our belief is that social scoring is not true influence, and that’s why the democratization of influence through social scoring is a flawed, if worthy, ideal. It’s one of the reasons that an early mover like Kred is moving away from scoring as a defining metric.

There are bigger pictures and scenarios at play at every single touchpoint of a customer’s journey through an influence-led path, and the results of who actually influences their decision may surprise you.

Yet it’s these decisions that truly matter to a brand when it comes to influence marketing – because scores and amplification will only get you so far. No company can remain in business on the amount of retweets and Facebook Likes they received alone.

The conversation around the future of influence is just getting started – and it’s not about an elite partygoer trading on online noise and a grade…