Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

What does Facebook's support for XMPP mean to the enterprise?

Blogger: Mike Gotta

If you are a enterprise organization rolling out instant messaging and presence platforms from IBM or Microsoft, then the roadmap that Facebook revealed does not alter what is going on behind the firewall all the much. Organizations involved with unified communications based on SIP/SIMPLE are not going to significantly change their minds or direction because of Facebook per se.

But, a couple of points are worth mentioning. First, this announcement adds further credibility to XMPP as a worthwhile standard that IT architects and infrastructure planners should be aware of - and actively monitor. Second, XMPP should become a core requirement for organizations implementing gateways that federate their internal instant messaging and presence systems with public networks and other platforms (such as Facebook). Third - not only is Facebook supporting XMPP but Twitter is also aligned with XMPP. There have also been on-and-off discussions on possible synergies between XMPP and Atom/AtomPub. Perhaps at no other time has XMPP looked so interesting to so many different audiences.

For IBM, I would expect someone from IBM's unified communication and collaboration team to realize that this is a great marketing opportunity. At some point, I expect IBM to aggressively pursue interoperability between Facebook's XMPP system and the Lotus Sametime Gateway. 

For Microsoft, this news presents them with a problem - they are in a position that is almost impossible to defend. There is absolutely no technical reason why the current Microsoft gateway does not support XMPP today. It is simply a political decision (in my opinion), by the folks at Microsoft as they compete with Google. Granted, GTalk does not have the market share of other public networks (Yahoo!, AOL), but even so, the strategy is clearly not customer-focused at all.

While promoting anything that helps Google might be difficult to accept, Facebook's implementation of XMPP might prompt Microsoft to reconsider. Facebook has a credible install base and its position as a leading social network site, (coupled with Microsoft's partnership with Facebook on other fronts), might likely persuade the company to finally support XMPP within its IM/presence gateway. Such a move I believe would be well-received by many of Microsoft's customers.

Using Facebook Chat via Jabber

Right now we're building a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat. In the near future, users will be able to use Jabber/XMPP-based chat applications to connect to Facebook Chat to:

• Communicate with their friends
• See which of their friends are online and view their profile pictures
• Set their statuses

Users can securely authenticate and authorize applications to connect to Chat on their behalf and send messages to their friends just like they can on Facebook.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News

Facebook Is Correct...

Blogger: Mike Gotta

When you agree to the terms-of-service of a social network site, don't be surprised when that site seeks to apply those policies to its members and to applications that operate within that environment. While a credible case can be made that a user should be able to export their own data - relation data (the data jointly shared between members) cannot be systematically harvested or shared without some level of consent or as defined by the terms-of-service. If Facebook, or any social network site, deems that a systematic method for its members to share and/or export information in a manner that circumvents the terms-of-service, that site is perfectly within its rights to act in a stewardship manner to enforce such terms and protect the confidentiality of that jointly owned data.

As I outlined in an earlier post on my personal blog ("federated social networks") - there needs to be some type of an intermediary entity through which such systems operate at a relationship level (Google's FriendConnect exposed within Facebook's environment in this case). There is probably a good case for some type of content filtering to occur (perhaps based on microformats) that allow certain social network fragments (small data structures) to be be shared or exchanged with other parties.

Two points: (1) members need to adhere to the terms of service of the social network site they join and (2) relation data that is jointly owned needs to be shared/exported in a way that adheres to the terms of service and probably consistent with some type of consent model between the people that jointly own that relation data. 

Privacy and openness go hand-in-hand – as we open up, we have to make sure that users always have control of their information, and understand how and where it’s being used. We’ve maintained that trusted environment while opening up Facebook Platform and the social graph to external developers by requiring third-party application developers to treat user information with the same respect we do. All Facebook Platform developers agree to the Developer Terms of Service, which strictly limit the collection, use, and redistribution of user information. We have technology and a team to ensure applications abide by those policies.

We’re excited that our industry partners are taking greater steps toward openness and enabling users to share their information around the web. We hope, though, that we can collectively find a model that allows users to share data while protecting the privacy of our users’ data and ensuring that the user is always in control.

In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News

Free Web Analytics: Google, Microsoft, and Now Yahoo! Offer It

Blogger: Guy Creese (cross-posted on Pattern Finder)

On Wednesday, April 9, 2008, Yahoo! announced that it was buying IndexTools, a web analytics vendor. On the following Tuesday, Dennis Mortensen, the COO of IndexTools, announced on his blog that, "Yahoo! currently intends to provide the IndexTools Web Analytics service FREE of charge to clients and partners who accept the standard Yahoo! agreement."

In other words, at this point, three large vendors--Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!--now offer web analytics packages for free. Furthermore, they are not watered down versions, but functional products that any small- and medium-size business (SMB) would die for:

• Google (Google Analytics): Executive dashboard, custom reporting, map-based reports, search engine marketing cost analysis, landing page optimization, user segmentation, scenario analysis, and detailed help.
• Microsoft (Microsoft adCenter Analytics [currently in beta]): Summary reports, custom reporting, campaign reporting, user segmentation, and scenario analysis. 
• Yahoo! (IndexTools): Executive dashboards, path analysis, custom and comparative reporting, workflow, search engine marketing cost analysis, campaign management, user segmentation, merchandise reporting, scenario analysis, and detailed help.

If you're an SMB and don't analyze how visitors behave on your website--how long they stay, where they come from, what pages do they bail from--then I'd encourage you to look at all three, pick the one you like, and use it.

If you work in a large enterprise, you probably use a different package, but investing twenty minutes in reading the Microsoft blog, the Yahoo! datasheet, and watching the Google video is a great way to get a mini-tutorial in web analytics. This is especially true if you've heard the web analytics term bandied about and either don't know much about it or are trying to figure out if you can do more with what you have.

If you're a Burton Group client, I'd encourage you to read two Collaboration and Content Strategies reports I've written on web analytics:

• The Current "Suite Spot" of Web Analytics (Market Landscape, 23 pages)
• Avoiding the Data Pitfalls of Web Analytics (Technology & Standards, 26 pages)

"Not as flat as it used to be": Globalization Hits a Roadblock?

Blogger: Craig Roth

I was having breakfast this morning before going to work to prepare for my telebriefing tomorrow on The Role of Enterprise Content Management in Content Globalization/Localization when I opened my Wall St. Journal (4/28/08 page A1; link) to read that nationalism may be thwarting globalization.  The article by Bob Davis points out that while globalization was supposed to be inevitable (hence the WSJ's reference to Thomas Friedman's famous globalization manifesto), nationalism and protectionism seem to be on the rise.

Trade talks are shelved.  Barriers to foreign investment are rising around the world. State-owned companies are expanding, particularly in oil and gas. Public support of immigration restriction is growing in countries from the U.S. to India.

So what do I say tomorrow about the need for IT organizations to get involved in content globalization and localization efforts?  I think I'm still on track in saying that there is a sharp increase in content globalization occurring and that IT can help.  It's possible that some expansion plans in industries that could be brought under state control (energy and foodstuffs in particular) could be put on hold.  But for other industries, the drivers of IT involvement in globalization efforts that I discuss in my telebriefing are still very relevant.  These include:

• Containing or reducing costs: Whatever degree of globalization occurs, there will be a need to contain globalization costs
• Clarification of central and local control through governance: If power shifts are occurring and barriers are rising between central and local branches, governance takes on increasing importance
• Timing/responsiveness: The uncertainty of the globalization landscape places even more emphasis on an organizations ability to react quickly to changes
• Safeguarding brand image: Increased nationalism means increased attention must be paid to local culture and customs, so proper translation and QA processes become more important for a deeper swath of content
• Improving consistency: As with safeguarding brand image, inconsistent translations will have increased risk of harming the brand
• Need to handle increased complexity: Potential increases in regulation will increase the need for complex workflow that can handle documents based upon content typing

I'm not a politician or economist, so I'm (way) out of my element in predicting what effecting nationalism, protectionism, and a global backlash may have on international relations.  The article isn't saying the slowdown is definite, but a possibility when certain threads in the news are connected.  But from an enterprise content management perspective I think the globalization storm is looking even more vicious than before.

Why GMail is Disruptive

Blogged by: Karen Hobert

Yesterday I was asked to comment on a series of blog posts my colleague Guy Creese recently made regarding Google Apps for the enterprise and how I felt about his commentary. For background here are links to the posts in Guy's blog, Pattern Finder:

1. Google Should Announce Google Exchange (April 8, 2008)
2. Stark Reminder: Gmail Is Still in Beta (April 17, 2008)
3. A SaaS Lesson for Microsoft: Simplify the Licensing (April 18, 2008)

The person who asked my opinion was concerned that Guy was being too biased towards Google in his posts and what I thought about his commentary, especially regarding the challenges he's posited to Microsoft. I think this is a great discussion and thought that I'd share it with you as well.

I actually agree with Guy’s observations on the situation. First, in my opinion, I don’t feel that Guy has ever sung the praises of Google or Gmail as an enterprise solution. I've always found his commentary to be thoughtful and he hasn't been afraid to point out the warts. Read the Guy's recently updated report "Google Apps in the Enterprise: A Promotion-Enhancing or Career-Limiting Move for Enterprise Architects?" if you want proof. However Guy has highlighted some very important dynamics that are making Google disruptive for enterprise e-mail vendors including Microsoft, IBM, and Novell.

• Organizations are fed up with e-mail costs: costs for licenses and resources are skyrocketing and IT managers are looking for a cheaper more cost manageable solutions. Google Apps is extremely attractive to companies that are frustrated with the cost of maintaining e-mail. This is a very emotional issue and the reality of running an enterprise on Gmail becomes a secondary priority when facing a huge IT savings (and CIO cap feathers) in these economically strained times. Licensing and system management complexities are a big complaint with respect to Exchange. Even hosted Exchange services are more costly than other hosted e-mail options. For example, the average per user, per month cost of hosted Exchange is ~$15, contrasted with hosted Zimbra or other e-mail which is around $5 per user per month. That’s a $120 per user per year difference. So Guy’s point about Google’s simplicity model is very valid and its turning heads of IT decision makers who are looking for ways to solve e-mail cost problems.
• Decoupling e-mail services from clients is a good thing for customers: Guy’s point about using Gmail as a messaging engine but letting end users work within Outlook is very compelling to organizations. IT is finding it difficult to meet the demands of users who are familiar with Outlook and the demands of the business to manage costs. As Guy mentions, Google is very close to having a solution for customers in this position. This is a dynamic that could be very disruptive to Microsoft and other enterprise e-mail vendors. E-mail vendors such as Novell, PostPath, and Zimbra have created Outlook connectors for their mail systems so users can keep working in familiar tools. After all it doesn’t matter to users if the e-mail back end is Exchange, Gmail or something else, just as long as the e-mail is being delivered and received. Removing the need to convince end users to use a new e-mail client means that you only need to convince IT that a platform move is a good idea. Big win.
• You get what you pay for: I don’t think Guy’s post on Gmail still being beta is a retraction of his earlier post – after all his earlier post made the point that he felt Google was on “it’s way” and is not “there” yet. The post is a valuable warning that “you get what you pay for” in these circumstances. That any organization needs to enter into this e-mail business with open eyes (OK, I’ll stop with the aphorisms). The real question is what are the trade offs for moving to Google? Since this decision is placed in IT's hands it’s hard to argue against the substantial cost savings that Google represents. IT should do its homework to know what is lost for that savings and then turn the decision around to the business. Is the business willing to loose certain assurances that the current system provides in order to save the money, such as a Gmail outage?

Some customers that we’ve spoken with have said that Google Apps is 10% the cost of their current e-mail system (Exchange or other). A 20% savings might not be worth the effort and disruption of changing the e-mail system and the organization can likely manage to squeeze out a 20% savings from within their current environment. However, an enterprise would be negligent if it did not investigate something that might mean a 90% savings. That is what is making Google so disruptive. It isn’t a foregone conclusion that the customer will switch to Google but they at least should do their homework and find out what they are getting for their money. This investigation will likely include looking at other hosted options, including hosted Exchange. The problem Microsoft is facing is a market perception that Microsoft is more expensive. Right now Microsoft is offering entitlements for customers for its hosted services; however that doesn’t address how it will make Exchange less expensive over time. If hosted Exchange could beat Google’s price (say $40 per user, per year) then Microsoft would likely find itself inundated with phone calls for the service.

I also agree with Guy’s reaction to the numbers provided in the Cemaphore Systems' MailShadow Press Release (March 26, 2008). They indicate that something is going on and that people are looking for answers. I agree with his assertion that Google Apps is grounded in the SMB market and that most enterprises are probably looking at Google Apps from a “kick the tires” perspective. Like Guy, I expect that Google Apps will fall short of enterprise requirements. That said, enterprises may find that certain segments of the workforce, those non-information workers who don’t generally use Office, might be fine using Google Apps (or maybe just Gmail). I expect that large enterprises are looking to Google or other hosted options to provide e-mail services to those users while maintaining more robust e-mail services, such as Exchange, for users who need more than basic e-mail. Being able to integrate the two platforms (e.g., common directories, centralized management) will be paramount to these types of customers.

The Impact of Moving from Final Versions to Early Drafts

Blogger: Guy Creese (cross-posted on Pattern Finder)

An excerpt from page 13 of the 2006 Burton Group Collaboration and Content Strategies report, "The Copernican Revolution in Content," bears repeating:

Content management has moved upstream in the creation process over the years. In the past, secretaries typed only important documents, such as major memos and contracts, since it was too expensive and time-consuming to type ephemera. However, as employees began typing e-mails, they started to document unformed thoughts, while blogs now capture thought snippets and distribute them to potentially millions of readers. Wikis are literally works in progress.

While capturing work-in-progress content helps employees collaborate, it also brings with it an increased compliance burden. Rather than locking up a set of file cabinets containing important documents, enterprises must now archive memos, spreadsheets, e-mails, instant messages, pictures, and a host of other digital content. Furthermore, depending on content type, this can become a complex process. For example, a company may retain e-mails for two years, but contracts for seven. This means that if a contract is e-mailed, the archiving system must store the contract and the e-mail separately, so the contract does not vanish when the system destroys the e-mail transaction.

Generating content earlier in the process also means that enterprises must offer a spectrum of control. While companies must ensure that final versions of documents are secure and cannot be altered, such control is anathema to wikis, which exist just so scores of employees can modify them collectively.

Two years after writing this, I find that people still miss this pattern: the shift from businesses (1) creating only final versions to (2) creating the full spectrum of documents, ranging from early drafts to working versions to officially published documents. Since this shift occurred slowly--it's a three decade span between the heyday of typewriters and the arrival of wikis--it's not surprising that people still don't recognize the change. However, once you convert to this worldview, a whole bunch of Aha! moments take place.

For example, this helps explain the explosion in digital content that needs to be searched and backed up. When secretaries held sway, not a lot got written down. Now that everyone has turned into a typist, the entire corporation can generate content, not just 5% of it. Furthermore, not only has the group that creates content exploded in size, but the range of content has expanded as well: from final memos to drafts to e-mails to blog posts to IMs.

In addition, a lot of the management concern about things such as blogs and wikis comes from the fact that unformed thoughts are now written down. In the past, a lot of employees would blurt out, "Well, that's a stupid idea," but they'd do so in the cafeteria or around the water cooler. While the sentiment would be passed along informally, there was no official record of it. This has changed with the arrival of blogs and wikis, and that leads to a cascade of secondary effects: employees' feelings being hurt, warring factions breaking out, and potential liability if those comments are discovered in a court case. Thirty years ago it was normal and acceptable to have "offhand comment amnesia"; now, with digital content being created all the time, that's impossible.

Finally, the area in the market that's hot are the products that help people collaborate and generate early drafts: things such as blogs, wikis, search, and social networks. While free products such as Lotus Symphony and OpenOffice.org help enterprises save money, they don't necessarily make employees more productive. Based on thirty years of practice, we now know how to generate working and final versions; it's creating early drafts in a productive fashion that we're still trying to figure out.

Is Managing Information Overload Just Self-Discipline? No - Some People Can Actually Do Something Real About It

Blogger: Craig Roth

An article in today's WSJ by Lee Gomes (4/16/08, page B1, You Can Enjoy a Book On a Mere Cellphone; (Hit Spacebar Now)) has a tidy summary of a statement that tends to make me cringe:

The biggest drawback to the experience involves the sheer proximity of the Internet and the constant temptation it provides for the aforementioned thumb to wander away from the realm of timeless literary art toward a cheap, quick-information fix in the form of email or blogs. This is one of the cultural problems of our time and I don't have much to offer in the way of solutions, save to nag everyone about steely self-discipline.

While Mr. Gomes is referring specifically to the itch to check email or blogs, I've seen the entire attention management issue framed this way as well: that information overload and info-stress are like the weather in that everyone likes to talk about it but no one ever does anything about it.  Why waste much time talking about the dangers of our always-on, go-go culture if all you can do about it is nag people to buckle down and change their behavior?

I can understand that the average information worker feels that dealing with the overabundance and addictive nature of information (just as with food) is a matter of self-discipline.  But there are a handful of people in any organization that can take action to impact the productivity and stress of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of information workers.  I'm talking about CxOs and the IT owners, stakeholders, and champions of attentional technologies.  Cornering the folks in the corner office about Information Overload can pay dividends.

Enterprise Attention Management (EAM) pulls together the various puzzle pieces involved in the information overload issue and lays them out in a conceptual architecture that provides a view (a cross-section really) of the myriad technologies and processes involved.  Once laid out in this fashion, EAM can be applied to a specific organization's situation.  For a demo of how this works, see my entry that applies the EAM to personal attention management and then think about doing that for the organization as a whole.

If you're one of that handful of people I mentioned, you can take real action - actually do something about information overload for scores of people in your organization.  For example, if you're the owner of the e-mail system, you can enable filtering rules, teach people how to use them, or place them on your list of evaluation points for an email product evaluation as your situation warrants.  If you're a CEO or head of a large division you can lead by example in how you send out and accept communications (e.g., using appropriate channels, not accepting electronic interruptions during meetings, demanding full attention for short periods of focused collaboration).  If you're in a position to roll out RSS technology you can accelerate its entry into the organization.  These are just a few examples.  Each is only a small piece of the puzzle, which is why the EAM conceptual architecture is important for laying out how all of these pieces interconnect.  And how they apply to each organization is different.  But only when they are laid out in the context of attention management can strategic direction become evident.

Oracle Getting Deeper Into Records Management

Blogger: Guy Creese (cross-posted on Pattern Finder)

Oracle announced two records management products yesterday at Collaborate 2008: Oracle Universal Online Archive and Oracle E-mail Archive Service. Built with Oracle's ContentDB technology, the Universal Online Archive is a place where enterprises can archive digital documents. ("Online" in the name refers to the fact that it stores digital (online) versus paper (offline) documents, not that it is a SaaS-based service.)

The product interrelationships are as follows. Oracle's Universal Records Management serves as the policy engine; Oracle Universal Online Archive serves as a high-volume repository; Oracle E-mail Archive Service is the archiving interface for getting e-mails from Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, and SMTP-based mail systems into the Oracle Universal Online Archive. Oracle says that e-mail is the beachhead; it will offer other archiving services over time to make it easier to archive documents from other systems (e.g., Microsoft SharePoint, file servers, production systems).

I'd say there were two interesting tidbits from the pre-briefing I had last week. First, Oracle is mentally splitting content into three buckets: active content (controlled by Universal Content Management), transactional content (controlled by imaging and process management), and historical content (controlled by Universal Online Archive). While I would split it into draft, active, and historical buckets instead, I applaud Oracle's larger view. Too many vendors concentrate on talking about one or the other: active content (content management vendors) or historical content (backup, information lifecycle vendors). At this point, no one talks about draft content (blog and wiki vendors should). Second, Oracle noted that within Oracle, active content (which it defines as having a 30-day life) is a much smaller percentage of documents than that of historical content (which it defines as having a 5-year life). A stat worth keeping in mind from both a security and disk cost point-of-view.

Salesforce.com Now Selling Google Apps

Blogger: Guy Creese (cross-posted on Pattern Finder)

Salesforce.com is announcing rather breathlessly--using the headline, "A Dream Come True for Your Business"--that it will start reselling Google Apps. Henry Blodget, in Silicon Alley Insider, characterizes the deal as, "Google-Salesforce Deal Shows Google Not Insane, Microsoft Disruption Continues." A more accurate headline (and analysis) would have been, "Google-Salesforce Deal Shows Google Apps is Struggling, Microsoft Disruption Continues."

Fourteen months after announcing Google Apps, Premier Edition, Google still has not convinced a major corporation to install Google Apps enterprise wide.  I've heard rumors that Genentech has decided on Google Apps, but the connection there is that Dr. Arthur Levinson, the Chairman and CEO of Genentech,  also serves on the Board of Directors at Google.

A year ago, Google announced Google Apps Premier Edition to great fanfare, and the cheap price ($50 per user per year) meant that Google got its foot in the door at many corporations. But Google then found that enterprises, after listening to the sales pitch, slammed the door on their leg. It isn't that enterprises aren't listening--they didn't shut the door completely--but at the same time they aren't opening the door wide, welcoming Google in, and signing the necessary paperwork.

There are a number of reasons for this wariness, but they all come down to the fact that Google Apps is missing certain features expected by large corporations: e.g., an offline ability to work (which Google is fixing by stages), records management for documents (Google has a solution for e-mail), and role-based administration (which Google says it's working on). In other words, the strong Google brand hasn't been able to overcome product shortcomings. (That Google was figuring its brand would overcome any objections was brought home to me one day when a client told me that when they told Google that they wouldn't be buying, the Google sales rep blurted out, "But you have to--we're Google!")

This is not to say Google Apps hasn't been successful--it has been in the SMB and education markets, where requirements aren't as stringent and the price isn't as high (Google Apps Education Edition is free). But Google hasn't been able to sell Google Apps to the Fortune 500, and that's frustrating it.

Consequently, it's changing its sales strategy. The first thing it did was sign up Capgemini to support and recommend Google Apps, but the only installation I'm aware of through that partnership is an internal installation of Google Apps at Capgemini itself. Then Google came out with Google Apps Team Edition, which bypasses the IT gatekeepers and encourages business users to ultimately gang up on IT and demand the solution's installation. (I can't imagine that strategy has won a lot of friends in IT departments. They're probably sitting there thinking, "Google is doing evil.")

The latest gambit is to have Salesforce.com sell it. Salesforce has a much larger sales force, and is also much more enterprise savvy. Also, the integration within the Salesforce.com application is quite nice. However, this is an installed base play--non-Salesforce.com customers won't be touched by this initiative.

Google Apps is a supreme disrupter and creating a whole new market sector in the process. But until Google figures out how to talk to the enterprise and offer a product it needs, it's going to be stuck at the door--and companies already in the door (e.g., Adobe, Cisco, Microsoft) are going to be working hard to get a signature before Google does.

Participatory Surveillance: Co-mingling Intimacy & Exposure

I recently came across two articles independently that actually come together quite nicely. Leisa Reichelt is credited with establishing the term "ambient intimacy" and has coined a new term she refers to as "ambient exposure" (see the first citation below). Both concepts and the perspective she provides as context came out when I went back and re-read something I had come across earlier (see the second citation below).

The idea of interacting within in a mediated public space (such as Twitter) is clearly an exercise in participatory surveillance. A similar situation arises with services such as Friend Feed. In both cases, I have people "following me" on Twitter or subscribing to my shared activities on Friend Feed, whom I do not know at all. In some cases, this works out well - sometimes the notification that I am being followed causes me in turn, to follow that person if they seem to have some mutuality with my interests. In some ways, these types of mediated public and the ability to establish some level of mutually assured surveillance (reminds one of the cold war term "MAD"), can promote some amount of homophily. 

On the other hand, as Leisa rightly points out, it can make one feel uncomfortable as well. Especially when you are followed/subscribed to by someone that you cannot in turn, establish a similar level of surveillance. The sense that there is an unequal power distribution in the relation can lead you to block that person from following you for instance (as I've done at times in Twitter). This situation can lead people to seek certain "walled gardens" (e.g., Facebook) within which they feel more comfortable to share information because such interactions are within a closed circle of trusted relationships whose ties perhaps reflect real-life connections.   

Article snippets and citation links below:

Ambient Exposure

It’s been more than a year now since I first wrote about Ambient Intimacy, and in that year it seems a whole lot has gone on.

.....

All of these changes in the past year have gotten me to thinking about something that I’m going to call Ambient Exposure. Exposure in terms of disclosing information of course, but also exposure in the way that a trader might think of it - a vulnerability, a risk associated with taking a position that could, potentially, result in loss or harm.

.....

In the same way that we are not necessarily good at or able to forecast the impact of choosing to add someone to our contact list, we are similarly perhaps not good at anticipating the impact of sharing particular types of information with others.

disambiguity - » Ambient Exposure

Participatory surveillance

In the following I suggest using the concept of participatory surveillance [5] to develop the social and playful aspects surveillance. First, online social networking is related to the traditional hierarchical surveillance concept. Second, the aspect of mutuality will be studied. Third, I will elaborate on the idea of participatory surveillance with regards to user empowerment, subjectivity building and information sharing.

.....

Empowerment, subjectivity building and sharing

In the following, I will call attention to two aspects of surveillance in the context of online social networking which are missing or underdeveloped in the previously discussed concepts. These are the idea of user empowerment and the building of subjectivity, and, second, the understanding of online social networking as a sharing practice instead of an information trade. Together, these two aspects, along with mutuality, makes up what I call participatory surveillance.

As mentioned earlier, a hierarchical conception of surveillance represents a power relation which is in favor of the person doing the surveillance. The person under surveillance is reduced to a powerless, passive subject under the control of the “gaze.” When we look at online social networking and the idea of mutuality, it appears that this practice is not about destructing subjectivity or lifeworld. Rather, this surveillance practice can be part of the building of subjectivity and of making sense in the lifeworld.

.....

Online social networking can also be empowering for the user, as the monitoring and registration facilitates new ways of constructing identity, meeting friends and colleagues as well as socializing with strangers. This changes the role of the user from passive to active, since surveillance in this context offers opportunities to take action, seek information and communicate. Online social networking therefore illustrates that surveillance – as a mutual, empowering and subjectivity building practice – is fundamentally social.

.....

The practice of online social networking can be seen as empowering, as it is a way to voluntarily engage with other people and construct identities, and it can thus be described as participatory. It is important to not automatically assume that the personal information and communication, which online social networking is based on, is only a commodity for trading. Implicit in this interpretation is that to be under surveillance is undesirable. However, to participate in online social networking is also about the act of sharing yourself – or your constructed identity – with others.

Accordingly, the role of sharing should not be underestimated, as the personal information people share – profiles, activities, beliefs, whereabouts, status, preferences, etc. – represent a level of communication that neither has to be told, nor has to be asked for. It is just “out there”, untold and unasked, but something that is part of the socializing in mediated publics.

Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance