Apr 01 2008

Are we too connected to social media?

Published by Ken Stewart at 11:55 am under Change, Culture, Social Media, Technology

Is Big Brother Watching You?Do you ever feel like you are too wired in? Do you find yourself using a password manager to keep up with your passwords to your other password managers? Dan Keldsen just posted a very interesting piece that really got me thinking on linking all of these various social media types together to form multi-dimensional and very personal POP’s (point-of-presences) for every individual.

They are a meta-meta-aggregator in the sense that they are aggregating (collecting) information from multiple sources, and that their underlying data sources can also be aggregating information from multiple sources (such as ZoomInfo). This extends the reach and richness of the information that they are able to pull back on behalf of users of their system, in a similar fashion to the functionality of federated search or universal search in more traditional enterprise search.

In an ideal world, or at least with the smarter salespeople and marketers, such information will help to weed out who the appropriate people are to engage in more targeted discussions, and to engage in informed conversations of the “2.0 age” rather than in continuing to hammer out cold-calls and blanket, un-personalized (or badly personalized) mass-marketing.

Though Dan’s article is referring specifically to a product called SalesView by InsideView, I can’t help but notice we are drowning in a sea of social media outlets. For instance, Twitter is interesting, and a social medium to which many people subscribe. It begs a question though, in the context of its underlying purpose,

What is the end-game for this type of social experiment?

[Dan contends] social networking is not purely about person-to-person connections, or in providing a virtual watercooler (or virtual voyeur perhaps) view into your “friends” (peers, co-workers, etc.) but also for the ability of participants IN the network to use the data within that network to become smarter in the ways that they interact with the people in that network.

Bluntly put, information about people abounds through many different channels, all of which were never before captured outside of family photo albums or epitaphs. Now that all of this information exists in a connected world, it is becoming a very relevant question to ask,

What can be done with all of this information about you? Is your information usable in its new formats?

All of this latent “social information” is buried in the heap of individual silos both inside and outside of the control of any one [corporation], even deeper … than “normal” electronic information is.

InsideView has a few ideas, according to Dan, albeit a bit Minority Report-ish. However, let’s assume we all have the best intentions of using this information to the benefit of mankind; it makes me wonder whether this medium will connect us in ways never before dreamed or allow us to conduct plastic surgery at-will to our public persona? And just who decides someone, or some organization, should be granted access to a given network of POP’s?

For now, everyone is having fun, and rightly so. By all accounts, this is a golden age of connectedness not seen in centuries past. Even as we marvel at our own magnificence, I can’t help but step back, take a breath and ask if we are all too connected?

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    Viewing 2 Comments

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      Ken - thanks again for popping over and commenting, and then this great commentary here!

      Definitely worth keeping an eye out for the Big Brother-ish and Minority Report-ish bits (presumably the predicting your future issues rather than the portal/dashboard-like view?).

      The privacy aspects are certainly concerning, although as any sufficiently paranoid person will tell you, your private information is already quite public - if not overtly, then in barely hidden silos.

      Still, yes, human oversight is needed, and it is tricky stuff, whether automated, done by a 3rd party, or managed by the individual/owner of their social/relationship information. Who is right? Who is wrong? If I say I went to Harvard on every social profile I can find, yet I didn't, does that tilt these systems towards pollution or purity?

      Early days, although we're motoring along - and stumbling in the right direction, getting some things right and some thing wrong.

      And the answer is, yes we're too connected. Except that the vast majority of the world isn't - so there is still hope! ;)
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      Dan, I appreciate the great comments. As a technologist, I know my information is much like a stone laying under a fallen leaf... if you are walking the path, and look down, there it is laying at your feet.

      It is odd timing, this thread and yours. I just ran across a feed from Scoble on FriendFeed. The comments were quite interesting... Stay tuned for the next post on this...
     

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