September 2006 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

(no subject)
by Dr. W. Reid Cornwell 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

I understand that they are young and that they are computer scientists. I am not really impressed with these protests at all, these are (mostly?) undergrads we are talking about. Does anyone realize how astoundingly irrelevent and pseudo-scientific these remarks seem? Are you proud that you made them? ________________________________ Dr. W. Reid Cornwell The Center For Internet Research P.O. Box 6369 Breckenridge, CO 720.212.0719 (phone) 970.485.5109 (mobile) wrc(a)tcfir.org http://tcfir.org

1 0

Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests/last.fm
by Nancy Baym 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

Martin, I too love what last.fm is doing, that's why it frustrates me no end to see them drop this ball. I understand that they are young and that they are computer scientists. To their credit, they've engaged in discussion about these issues that I've raised through that site. I know that they are aware that their communication with users could be better, though I'm not sure they're aware that their understandings of them could be improved. I don't know their business model, but I can't believe that any business founded on users voluntarily giving over tons of data and getting personally invested in its site would not function best with systematic study of its users (especially prior to implimenting big changes) and continuous proactive systematic communication with users. Yes -- their users will socially shape the baby they dreamed up in their dorm room, and they need to understand what's going on that they did not envision or control and how to make the most of it. Another thought on that is that it is very reminiscent of fandom dynamics where fans are so into a text and then a character gets killed off and they're furious that this happened to THEIR story. But I think it's more significant in this context where social networks are becoming technologically-dependent. Short version: I believe last.fm would make more money with social scientists/people who specialize in communicating with users on staff and am sad that I've failed so far in my efforts to convince them that it is an investment in the best interest of their long-term financial well being rather than a cost they are too small to afford. For the interested, my critique of last.fm's communication shortcomings with respones from their developers (and primary communicators) is here: http://www.last.fm/user/popgurl/journal/2006/06/16/158091/ Nancy -----Original Message----- > Date: Thu Sep 07 10:04:40 CDT 2006 > From: "Martin Garthwaite" <marting(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > >... I have > had a meeting with last.fm guys. Not surprisingly the CTO is very young as > are most of his team, they developed the idea whilst at university. We > absolutely love what they are doing! > > So they are computer scientists, not social scientists. This is a very > important distinction, what you have described is a classic example of > unintended consequences / social shaping of technology. These guys only > have their perspective through which to try and understand what it is their > users want, but they are not social scientists. If only they and other > social networking sites had a trained social scientist on staff!

1 0

Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests
by Dr. W. Reid Cornwell 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

I have spent the last hour reading these threads. This low stakes dialogue is replete with opportunities for investigation. It is worthy of AOIR and its brain power. Ellis Godard's dissertation contains a phrase which has application (paraphrase) "We are all half blind on the Internet." The illusion of privacy here seems to be a longing to be anonymous in a crowd; a longing to be recognized without intimacy. The protest seems to come from having this illusion discredited. Also, I have observed that young people tend to confuse acquaintantship with friendship. Being half blind, this confusion is exaggerated. Back to my goats, Reid ________________________________ Dr. W. Reid Cornwell The Center For Internet Research P.O. Box 6369 Breckenridge, CO 720.212.0719 (phone) 970.485.5109 (mobile) wrc(a)tcfir.org http://tcfir.org

1 0

Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests
by Amanda Lenhart 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

To build on what Nicole writes, and also what I think Mark touched on earlier, I think there is another issue overlaying user frustration with the Facebook changes in that there's still not enough nuance in the "friend" designation. In the past, "friends" could come to your page as often as they want and comb it for whatever sort of minutiae interests them. For your boyfriend, girlfriend or best friend, that might mean daily visits, frequent perusals of your list of friends and wall posts. But for your Chem. lab partner from last year, that might mean stopping by once a month, or right after running into you at a party. But now, everyone in your network is forced to interact with any new information you post in the same way. And you as the user have only one basic friend designation. You can give more information ("worked together" vs. "hooked up"), you can create a more limited profile to share with certain people, but you're still relatively limited in how you can designate friends. Some of my former students have been calling the changes "stalkerish," but really they're almost the inverse of that -- the newsfeeds assume that everyone in your network has the same level of interest in the details of your life that a stalker might, and foists those details upon them regardless. At the root, I think it's because online social networks are so much more of a blunt instrument when compared to the spoken and unspoken nuances of offline social networks. Amanda Amanda Lenhart Pew Internet & American Life Project alenhart(a)pewinternet.org -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Nicole Ellison Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 10:39 AM To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests Hi Nancy, I'm not sure this qualifies as "more thought out" but I think you've on to something. Yesterday my colleague Cliff Lampe and I spoke with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115759058710755893.html?mod=technology_ main _promo_left) and this was a slant to the story they wrote: the fact that facebook users were upset not only about the feature itself, but also the fact that it seemed to be implemented without any feedback from users. Which seems to be the case, as this quote from the article suggests: "Ms. Deitch said Facebook's feedback from users comes in the form of emails to its customer-service email address, which the company's product-development team reviews weekly. But the company typically doesn't solicit feedback by showing features to users before launching them." Because these social network sites are built on user-supplied content, users feel more ownership over the site as a whole (compared to, say, a news portal or e-commerce site). It may be that the reaction to this change might prompt deeper, better user research on the part of these sites (which I agree is needed). Following up on the earlier conversation: My sense from speaking with students is that they dislike the feature not because it is pulling already available information, but because it is displaying profile changes that otherwise would be hard to identify. If I have 150 friends on the site, I won't typically notice when someone de-friends me. But this feature puts this info in my face, so to speak. As the old saying goes: there are some things better left unsaid. This feature is articulating information we don't necessarily want to hear. N. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Nicole Ellison, PhD Dept. of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media Michigan State University nellison(a)msu.edu _______________________________________________ The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

1 0

Re: [Air-l] air-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 6
by Jonathan Sterne 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

I've been reading the facebook thread with interest. I don't think the issue is privacy, but with presentation. There is definitely a "stalker" vibe to how the feeds read. As far as I can tell, though, it is possible to delete items from your own feed. So someone could easily delete everything if they want no news in their feed, or be selective about it. People have long made mistakes in negotiating issues of self-presentation in their lives, and social networking software simply documents those mistakes. Which rightly makes students more nervous, since many of them are still working it out. We're debating this like it's all crystal clear to everyone what should be public and what should be private, or that the distinction itself is a hard social reality just because it's how the law deals with issues of personal information. It's certainly NOT clear to students, it's not even that clear to facebook's designers, and I'd also submit that in most of our lives -- in actual practice as opposed to legal definition -- there's a huge grey area where most personal information lives. Not totally private, and not fully "public domain" either. --J

1 0

Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests
by Martin Garthwaite 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

Nancy, I have just completed my MSc in New Media, Information and Society at LSE and am currently working at the BBC is Radio and Music Interactive; I have had a meeting with last.fm guys. Not surprisingly the CTO is very young as are most of his team, they developed the idea whilst at university. We absolutely love what they are doing! So they are computer scientists, not social scientists. This is a very important distinction, what you have described is a classic example of unintended consequences / social shaping of technology. These guys only have their perspective through which to try and understand what it is their users want, but they are not social scientists. If only they and other social networking sites had a trained social scientist on staff! I feel extremely fortunate in that in my undergrad degree I trained as a computer scientist and my postgrad as a social scientist - I feel very well equipped to see both view points, the biggest problem is that scientist are very binary, they really don't like fuzziness We have done an interesting experiment with last.fm, we set up user accounts for our radio stations and pump in the songs played in real time, this has generated some very surprising findings; one of our radio stations is currently a very good predictor of future pop music trends. I find last.fmvery very interesting, but these guys are still working out how they will make money.

1 0

Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests
by Martin Garthwaite 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

Nancy, I have just completed my MSc in New Media, Information and Society at LSE and am currently working at the BBC is Radio and Music Interactive; I have had a meeting with last.fm guys. Not surprisingly the CTO is very young as are most of his team, they developed the idea whilst at university. We absolutely love what they are doing! So they are computer scientists, not social scientists. This is a very important distinction, what you have described is a classic example of unintended consequences / social shaping of technology. These guys only have their perspective through which to try and understand what it is their users want, but they are not social scientists. If only they and other social networking sites had a trained social scientist on staff! I feel extremely fortunate in that in my undergrad degree I trained as a computer scientist and my postgrad as a social scientist - I feel very well equipped to see both view points, the biggest problem is that scientist are very binary, they really don't like fuzziness We have done an interesting experiment with last.fm, we set up user accounts for our radio stations and pump in the songs played in real time, this has generated some very surprising findings; one of our radio stations is currently a very good predictor of future pop music trends. I find last.fmvery very interesting, but these guys are still working out how they will make money. On 9/7/06, Nancy Baym <nbaym(a)ku.edu> wrote: > > > > >While we might call users naive for not understanding how 'privacy' > >works on the internet, we might also call the designers behind Facebook > >naive for not understanding how privacy works in the social world. > >-- > > > This raises a point for me that I have been thinking about a lot in > the last several months as another social networking site where I > spend time (last.fm) introduced some fairly large changes that were > done, apparently, with no systematic understanding of how its users > use the site, what they do and don't like, etc. (in one thread, one > of their developers described their process of studying their > million+ users as reading the emails they get, reading the forums, > and imagining themselves as new users, all methods which make the > social scientist in me SCREAM for better data on which to make > decisions). It's not a question of privacy in this case, and though > some last.fm users are unhappy, they have not been crying out in > protest to the same extent that facebook users seem to be, but I find > my own interest in the site lessened, and see the amount of > interesting peer-activity on the site dropping since the changes. > > What I find interesting, and frankly rather upsetting, and cannot yet > fully articulate (help fellow listers!) is that we (speaking here as > a user) get invested in these sites. We use them to build identities, > to create connections, to network, for whatever purposes. We spend a > lot of time there and we get invested through time, social > connections, and affect. And then the developers get a new idea and > suddenly we all have to live with it or leave. To use the front lawn > metaphor, it's as though they decide that actually the streets > shouldn't be on a grid pattern, they should all be cul-de-sacs and if > you didn't want to live on a cul-de-sac, well, move to a new town. > Who were you to think you had any say in city planning? > > As these sites become more and more integral to everyday experience, > it seems the developers have more and more of an obligation to > understand and their users, and to incorporate their concerns into > the design before making big changes, and to give people options for > managing problematic elements of the changes they decide to make > anyhow (in the facebook case, turning off the minifeed for your own > profile). > > There seems to be a real difference between the ethical and practical > obligations to users in these "web2" sites and the way that > businesses have related to their customers in the past. As I say, > this is not something I've worked through, but design and > development, customer service, public relations, and community > relations all seem to merge in new ways. > > Does anyone have more thought-through ways to think about what I'm > trying to get at here? > > Nancy > _______________________________________________ > The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ > -- Martin Garthwaite +447957 764819 +4420 7871 9656 (Skypein - call me and wherever in the world I am I'll either talk to you or get a voice mail) Skype id mgarthwaite1330 MS IM marting(a)gmail.com

1 0

Invitation to VKS meeting on Web archiving
by Paul Wouters 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

Apologies for cross postings INVITATION What is the use of Web archiving for research? - a discussion from the point of view of the social scientist and humanities scholar 26 September 2006 - at 13.30 o´clock - at the Virtual Knowledge Studio, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam. For directions see www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl Increasingly, social scientists and scholars in the humanities are exploring the use of the Web in their research as a source of data or research objects. Usually, these studies are incorporating "the live Web" because there is no practical alternative. As a result, scholars have to cope with the instability of the Web, with ambiguous instances of data sources and Web objects, and with the disappearance of Web phenomena. This creates strong limitations to the interpretative and explanatory power of Web studies. This meeting aims to explore a new way of collecting and analyzing the Web: the use of Web archives in social science and humanities research. Web archiving has already been initiated by a number of national libraries, amongst others the Australian, French, American, British and Dutch national libraries. They were stimulated by the invention of the Internet Archive in the US. These initiatives can be mobilized to create new research possibilities provided they are enriched and confronted with the perspectives of the research communities in the humanities and social sciences. The meeting will explore the potential of Web archiving to enhance existing research projects. Prof. Steve Schneider (Web Archivist, State University of New York) will give a keynote entitled "Scholarly Web Archiving: Processes, Challenges, Techniques & Tools" (for the abstract, see below). The second part of the meeting will be an exploration of the type of research questions that may profit from some form of Web archiving. We will also discuss the limitations and conceptual puzzles posed by Web archiving as a prospective tool for research. We would like to invite you to participate in this discussion. We have reserved room in the programme for responses and additional presentations on the topic of Web archiving. If you would like to give a presentation or prepared contribution, please contact Paul Wouters at paul.wouters(a)vks.knaw.nl. RSVP: please let us know if you will participate in this event (paul.wouters(a)vks.knaw.nl) You will receive a detailed programme of the meeting a week in advance. Abstract keynote Steve Schneider: This presentation will introduce the "VKS Web Archiving Knowledge Base," a presentation of current knowledge and understanding concerning scholarly Web archiving. The knowledge base, built on a wiki-like platform, is itself an exercise in scholarly Web archiving, and demonstrates in a reflexive mode the processes associated with Web archiving, and the challenges Web archiving poses to scholars in the humanities and social sciences. The knowledge base also identifies techniques and tools that can be deployed to complete each of the processes, reviews recent Web archiving projects, and outlines potential projects and collaborative opportunities with the Virtual Knowledge Studio. -- Paul Wouters Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Cruquiusweg 31 1019 AT Amsterdam, NL T: +3120 8500463 F: +3120 8500271 www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl

2 2

Google News Archive Search
by Jillana Enteen 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

fyi jillana Jillana Enteen jillana(a)jillana.net >> >>> Google just released their news archive search this morning, >>> which allows you to search 200 years worth of historical >>> digitized news archives. Some news articles are free; however >>> some of them cost a fee. >>> >>> <http://news.google.com/archivesearch> >> >

1 0

Re: [Air-l] american internet penetration stats?
by Kris Markman 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

>Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 10:51:25 -0500 >From: Nancy Baym <nbaym(a)ku.edu> > > >Has anyone got a good source of estimates of internet penetration in >the United States over time? I am fanmiliar with Hobbes Internet >Timelines' charts of total hosts, but that is not specifically >American, and with Pew's charts, but those have enormous gaps prior >to 2000. What I am hoping for is a simple summary of what percentage >of Americans used the internet in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, etc. Nancy, This doesn't exactly answer your question, but the US Census Bureau began asking questions about Internet use on its Computer Use and Ownership survey in 1997. http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/computer.html There are items that hint at the existence of the Internet on the surveys prior to that year (i.e. the use of "bulletin boards"), but apparently the Internet was not on the government's radar until the late 90s. Hope that help! -Kris -- ********** ********** ********** ********** Kris M. Markman, Ph.D. Email: krism(a)alumni.utexas.net http://kris3198.home.comcast.net ********** ********** ********** **********

3 2