With the rise of SNS, we’ve also seen the parallel development of its evil twin, SNAM. Clay Shirky points to an article over at Trendsetter.com:

Social networks have spawned a new form of spam that uses the FOAF (Friend of a Friend) message feature frequently found in this new genre of networks. Google’s Orkut, a network of some 200,000 members, offers the ability to send messages to FOAFs. FOAF messages often contain conference promotions or job postings that, while low in volume, will one day require action on the part of network managers.

Source: Trendsetter.com, “Spam”

At the same time, Stowe Boyd mentions his latest Darwin article, “The Ethics and Etiquette of Social Networks” where he discusses some of the ins and outs of maneuvering within the system, and the consequences of those movements:

Some have started to call the spate of e-mails that get created by public social networking applications “social spam.” I reserve that term for those who subvert social networking systems to attempt bald-faced selling of laser cartridges, Viagra or click-throughs to XXX porn sites. But I am certain that my conservative use of the term will not parallel general use in the media, which will lump together all sorts of SNA-generated messages into that all-embracing and negative category.

There is a real conflict between the Darwinian need to attract participants into a network of users — which increases a network’s value for all users — and the desire of individuals to minimize the number of requests coming their way — which represent an implicit cost of being a network member. The public SNA companies have strong incentives to drive up their numbers, while each individual user in principal would like to avoid that at all personal cost. (Note: this is based on today’s economic model, where the individual is not directly or indirectly compensated for brokering introductions. We can imagine other models, but I haven’t seen them in use. Yet.)

Source: Stowe Boyd, “The Ethics and Etiquette of Social Networks”

A few weeks ago I attended Flash In the Can, a Canadian Flash Developers’ Conference. I find it particularly interesting to visit with different circles of connected people to see some of the interesting differences from one group to the next.

Sitting in a room with a wide array of designers and artists definitely puts a different spin on your perceptions. Sure everyone’s up to their elbows in geekiness in one form or another, but, at the same time, that sense of “bucking the system” is hard to escape.

Over the last few days, several people have been swapping links to a presentation done by a group known as wefail. I was going through the slides where I found this funny little nugget:

CHALLENGE PERCEPTION.

remember: the internet is not real.

there are no real consequences for the lies that you tell.

the only people that think the internet is real are bloggers.

Source: wefail presentation. Flash in the Can 2004

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The WSJ Online has an interesting report out on how to make money selling content. It’s quite lengthy, so I’ll use the bold print method to summarize. Here’s the plan they outline:

• Give consumers something they can’t get elsewhere.
• If you’re going to put up a wall, make sure it’s in the right place.
• After putting up the wall, make it easy for visitors to climb over.
• Setting prices: Start low, aim higher.
• Bundle Up.
• Hang on to your subscribers by giving them more for their money.
• Get subscribers to upgrade.

Source: WSJ Online, “Making Them Pay”

Surprisingly good and simple advice.

The WSJ has an article out that discusses the role many small web sites play in the distribution of information. Specifically, they were examining the release of breaking news or otherwise controversial information. Decidedly missing from this little snippet was any mention of the blogging world.

Later in the article, there is some discussion of an error that occurred when one site received the wrong pictures which were syndicated through newspapers across the country. The question of responsible journalism seems to be on many minds.

This again brings me back to the absence of blogging. Many in the blogosphere have accomplished the same level of distribution as the sites mentioned in the article. Perhaps more interesting, however, is this: Is a blog in disguise better for the world? As bloggers we tend to assume that everyone should know about blogging, RSS, and other related technologies and phenomena, but does it really matter? If millions of people can publish to their AOL Journal from IM, why weigh them down the significance of that action?

It seems that almost everyone has an appreciation for publishing in one form or the other. Perhaps our focus on standards, interoperability, and technology could be hindering the viral epidemic that is blogging.

An interesting question about the potential use of decentralized software.

http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002760.html

An interesting question has been raised by a Microsoft employee, where’s Apple’s blog community?

http://blogs.msdn.com/decheung/archive/2004/04/26/120086.aspx

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a regular visitor of the site. For the most part, this reader has a great deal to say, though she remains anonymous preferring to initiate conversation outside of the blog (which is totally fine with me). The reader posed an interesting question:

okay, so i read your blog about advertising on blogs… and it occured to me that blogs are one of the most perfect places to advertise. They are usually a niche market, people interested in one specific topic. I guess if you don’t mind making a couple of bucks off all the writing, research and time you spend on your blog it’s aight. The only thing i’d be worried about of course, is: are you “selling out” if you advertise on the blog? wouldn’t it make your blog seem just a little bit less credible, more skewed to the advertisers you place there? If i was making money off my ads i certainly wouldn’t want to piss off the advetiser and have them yank their ads from my site.

This is really the long-debated issue of ethics in journalism, the proverbial separation of church and state. Opinions vary considerably, so I’ll share my understanding and approach to the situation.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I have come across a wide array of articles that are going on and on about how terrible the new GMail service is, and stands to be. It’s amazing the wide range of public outcries that have been lobbied against this new service.

Generally, I tend to remain in the camp that if something offends, betrays, or otherwise compromises you in ways that you are not comfortable with, what danah boyd would qualify as “ickiness”, stay away. That’s right, don’t use it. Don’t respond to messages from it. Make up your own search.

It’s a hard line to draw, I know, and it most likely offends more than it really should. I’ve had a discussion with someone one night about the SparkCard. Although I definitely understood the main points, I was not, much to the dismay of the attacker, “admit” that I was intentionally taking advantage of other people.

The fact of the matter is that most things have a cost associated with them, be it emotional, intellectual, or financial. The notion of free services are always colluded, in a large part, by the secret motives of the underlying organization. For example, many, many individuals have placed orders for products via TV infomercials. They have offered up credit card information, address information, and other “unmentionables”, along with their 4.95 for shipping and handling of the otherwise “free” product. So how free was it then?

I tend to assume that the individuals that make it to consider a service long enough to part with this information, or control, as you might call it, understand enough to have commit this information, or deem it on par with the “free prize”. When was the last time you read a User Agreement from start to finish?

Does it surprise anyone that marketing guru, Seth Godin, says this in his latest book, “Free Prize Inside!”:

It’s all marketing now. The organizations that win will be the ones that realize that all they must do is create things worth talking about.

Now if I can only figure out how to convert the SNS free prize into something valuable, I would have something to talk about indeed.

Lately, there seems to be a renewed interest in the role of advertising within the blogging community. I am not sure that I’ve had enough time to really research and digest these issues with much detail, but some recent reading unearthed some controversy over the potential to generate revenue

At BloggerCon, Stowe Boyd was one of the few individuals that was clearly making money from sponsorships on his blog, to the tune of about $3,000 a month. This was indeed newsworthy to some, like Julie Haggerty of The New York Times, while being mystifying to others.

Most of the discussion seems to stem from a general disbelief in the value of marketing to specific audiences. I’m wondering if this debate needs to involve more innovators from the marketing space to assist those with less experience in contextualizing the marketplace.

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I was reading a friend’s blog the other day when I came across a post about the Business of Blogs. Naturally, my ears perked up in curiosity. Over the past couple of weeks I have been a bit immersed in the concept of Business Blogging and finding this gem on a non-business, non-social networking site was very interesting.

I’m not familar with the journal that this article was originally published in, but it seems geared towards a very business crowd, not that that’s remotely a bad thing. This doubles my belief that the business world is the crowd immediately at the edge of the blogosphere and itching to cross over.

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