In a user centric world, while the digital “e” is already naturally taken for granted, the shift to the user centered  “I” is reshaping relations and the power balance between users and providers. From building product identities, such as Apple’s  Iphone, Ipad,… through marketing campaigns that emphasize the product/service direct benefits  to the user, and up to tailored personalized offerings and information strings around personal interests –  all create a real user centered digital world that reframes traditional values and assumptions on provider – user paradigms,  be it with commercial entities, information organizations or egovernment systems.

The internet today is truly personal. It’s about the individual “I”.  The self sovereignty and natural sense of entitlement of users is expressed  by their intrinsic motivations to get what is most relevant to them, anywhere, anytime, and speak up their mind and wishes. This is the source of users’ power, that puts them in the driver’s seat in their web based interactions.  It creates personalized fragmentations that force providers to dedicate more extensive efforts to target, reach and satisfy their potential users, and even greater efforts to preserve their loyalty without using captivity methods that immediately bounce back as they only motivate users to reject the offering or provider.

Taking an Icentered approach, customers clearly specify what they would wish to have, evangelize  what they find useful, annoying, and bring up ideas for product/service improvement and better suitability to users’ needs. Mostly, such expressions of needs, wants, dissatisfaction or praise are independent, targeting their own social networks. Furthermore, users seek to trust those they interact with. They express their degree of faith and demand transparency, ethics and engagement from their providers.

Therefore, the voice of the user should become a compass to providers in defining new systems and crystallizing their offerings, relations and even corporate identity.  In a user centered world, listening to that independent  voice of the customer, is priceless not only in usability design, but in defining, acting upon and creating brand identities and conducting an engaging dialog with customers.  All this translates to relevance, usability and increased user satisfaction from both the product/service and its supplier.

User centricity is gradually maturing from a being a term coined as a lip service from the Petri dish of digital marketing CRM culture, to become fundamental in digital relationship. User centric systems, tailoring offerings and information strings to specific user demands, giving users independent access options to endless choice in a long tail economic model, personally modified offerings that the digital economy empowers, create a new power balance.

In a way, users’ powers of selection and expression liberate providers from taking all the responsibility on what to offer, and turns users into real partners to the whole process – from design, manufacturing, marketing and up through very transparent user satisfaction feedback.

Providers try to humanify their offerings, give it personalities. But even this is not always enough, as we, users, want more from our providers than just get our attention with their offerings, because it’s relevant. We want to trust them, identify with what they stand for. In the new digital marketing discourse, users own the conversations, manipulations are rejected and social media empower immediate feedback. A new discourse, attitudes and power balance will reframe the current paradigm to create a more balanced, trustworthy digital sphere.

Transparency empowers trust.

The internet is one of the most significant catalysts of transparency. Users own conversations, foster diversity, choices and openness.  The internet, information technologies, social media and users’ engagement have cultivated a culture of open sharing.  They keep providers, leaders, corporates and governments under a glass menagerie,  evangelize virtues and broadcast any misbehavior.

The internet allows visibility that we can’t control. Visibility on people, actions – from Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, articles, comments…. It makes us vulnerable, because we can’t control people’s reactions to what we do or say –voluntarily through the likes of  Facebook and up to bully disclosures of  Wikileaks – we are more exposed as people, employees, managers, officials, politicians…

This leads to greater personal accountability. Once we understand the inevitable power of the  exposure  of our actions, for better or worse, it leads to greater awareness to who we are, and accountability as to why we do what we do. The internet allows us to harness, share, cooperate, engage, become more sensitive to our surroundings – human, social, environmental.

Transparency becomes a key to authenticity.  In our personal life, transparency of social networks, a sharing state of mind and web culture support and empower our authenticity. It makes it natural for us to expect it from the brands, services and systems we interact with. We grow to demand the same accountability from our employers, providers, leaders.

Traditional conservativism cherishes playing one’s cards close to the chest, having full control and disclosing as little as possible, as a means of manipulating reality for corporate, sector, government and even personal interests.  Once organizations cannot control the ripple effects of their doings, gates, walls and a unilateral  top down control become a non applicable paradigm in an age of being under the constant microscope of user monitoring.

Embracing a state of mind of transparency spells a new paradigm – one that transcends regulations and is based on openness, disclosure, accountability, open systems as an organizational culture.  It requires relinquishing control in favor of direct connections, letting others decide. It’s a window to who corporates, institutions and individuals really are, what they stand for.

Therefore it becomes a cultural imperative for brands, corporates, organizations and governments.

Authenticity is a key to trust building.

The internet is more than just a global system of interconnected computer networks. It’s about us, people, and not just about technological platforms and apps, bits and bytes.  It is key in establishing transparency, authenticity and trust mechanisms and  plays a cultural and ethical role that transcends its material, practical and functional aspects.  Therefore the soft values that we users embrace as part of a web culture, will drive changes that will ensure a trustworthy, transparent, empathic way of life, that corporates and institutions will have to embrace to reach us.

Trust based relations are the new green – the key to a clean web ecology.  This fabric is what matters now – a new ecological culture of transparency, trust and engagement that individuals, corporates and institutions alike must embrace.

]]> http://www.icentered.com/trust-is-the-new-green/feed 0 http://www.icentered.com/wwic-why-wasn%e2%80%99t-i-consulted-%e2%80%93-from-user-participation-to-user-control http://www.icentered.com/wwic-why-wasn%e2%80%99t-i-consulted-%e2%80%93-from-user-participation-to-user-control#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:33:40 +0000 Ayala http://www.icentered.com/?p=577

Why wasn’t I consulted?

   For Paul Ford it is the fundamental question of the web that distinguishes it from any other medium, since  the web is a customer service medium and people like to exercise their power and knowledge. WWIC (why wasn’t I consulted) translates to free web initiatives. Paul Ford scales the evolution of the expression by the level of interactivity and intuitive ease of expressiveness. Phase I – interactive, open to comments, talkbacks, phase 2 – Liked, shared, socially evaluated and appreciated, phase 3 – user initiative sites that let us, users, upload our content, fully debate our views- all that empowers full participation. As long as you consider service providing as a conversation, WWIC web empowers users to own the conversation.

Yet, this observation still stems from e a reactive frame.  It evaluates evolutionary boundaries of traditional paradigms, based on of top down defined relations, where corporates own the game but attentively empower customers’ conversations. More advanced ones still own the game but reframe the discourse and adopt a socially involved more humane corporate identity,  follow their customers and reach out to them in their social spheres, indeed a customer service medium.

To us this is our web, not a customer service medium.

 We invented the web to happen to ourselves, not to create content.  

As such, we should own the web, not just the conversation.

Each one of us is an individual with a defined mark . We’re Itoms in a people’s grid, what we want, how we handle it and what we control is defined individually. This cannot be endowed. It should be naturally ours.

The defining question of the web is who controls it. The answer to Who controls the web  requires a different mindset. A proactive mindset that puts the user at the center, with the wheel in her hands and full control over the relationship.

 For us, the web’s native users, the fundamental rule is to control it. For that end, new paradigms are required  An icentered state of mind spells user ownership and control over data, privacy, sharing, a new pact of relations, based on pull models,  freedom from captivity in siloed sites, from being manipulated as part of hegemony wars over web dominance.

The battle over net neutrality and over open web as opposed to closed systems will only increase. In this struggle  the fight over the web’s  ownership and its usage patterns is a global powerful war. On its face level, the struggle can be seen as commercial struggle for  owning the principal platforms for web dominance, owning the apps’ infrastructure to ensure that whatever we use, we go through that platform namely, through closed systems that make us bend to their terms.

 In fact it’s about preserving corporate paradigms based on rigid rules of engagement, privacy policies of the old world, where top down hierarchies and policies dictate the business models and our captivity.

 It is  opposed  to open  systems that acknowledge and thrive on the cultural, consumer, social shifts and the free spirit of the web that encourages the  harnessing of  new business models to accommodate users.

The internet is etheric, ubiquitous, heterogeneous, distributed and intangible. It includes all the markets of the traditional world. And as digital takes an increasing part of our life, power struggles become more sophisticated and the fight to keep an open web takes further significance. It’s no longer about what devices we use, not even what operating system, but what culture, approach and relations we’ll have with companies that cater for our digital life.

This battle incorporates, from an icentered lens, the most threatening aspects for abuse of the free spirit, culture and mindset we want for our web life. It is a battle over our rightful place in ecosystems created around us, over our freedom of choice,  and our right to proactively manage our privacy and sharing.

We cannot be owned by providers. The battle to become our personal portal and the hegemony wars over web dominance between Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft are cannibalizing the basic web future and mindset it should spell for us, its users.

From a corporate perspective it’s about  transparency, data management, privacy policies and customer relations. The battle over who will have control over anything we interact with on the web.

We should be thankful for those super giants of the digital economy for empowering us with a new digital dimension that has revolutionized our lives and has made digital a commodity. At the same breath, we should fear the lack of sensitivity and respect, of those companies, who, through their offerings, define the rules of what our digital life will look like.

What awaits us in that power struggle?

Apple has revolutionized our communications consumptions, yet their closed system of Macs, Iphone,  iPads are closed gardens relying on itunes for entertainment content. Will the future spell a web built on micro apps?

Google’s search results, as our primary source of reference, dictate to a large extent how we perceive things. Will the future depend on an organized web according to Googles’ keys for inclusion?

Facebook has redefined our social connectivity, dialogs and the way we interact with each other over the web. Will it our personal operating system be dressed in Facebook’s outfit?

As the world goes mobile, smart phones will indicate the next evolutionary stages of web usage, the battle between the mobile Android based Google mobile OS and the closed Iphone systems is a micro cosmos of the battle over closed or open web. And on it goes…. 

 We are at the verge of web 3.0 that will bring with it awareness and contextification, that will make us, users, more vulnerable as computer systems will automatically analyze  our interactions with advanced semantic tools, spot our whereabouts and activities through location awareness. Add that to the downpour of information, data and media, personalization will be the name of the game – and control and privacy issues will augment with that.

The symbol of the battle between open and closed is the cultural difference between the basic approach of two of the giants fighting for hegemony – Google and Facebook.

We used to fear Google’ Big brother master plan for web dominance,  We can be mildly reassured of  Googles’ Don’t be evil motto that they have made a central pillar in their corporate identity, that their culture tends to be more open, today, and by the level of transparency that goes together with being a public company.  

Facebook opts for closure, secret and obscure policies, remaining private so not to have to embrace the transparency and accountability of a public company.  The Goldman_Sacks Facebook deal, a quasi private investment , asserts this. If  Facebook really wanted to, it could embrace an open culture, Zuckerberg preferred  not to assume that accountability.

 We must encourage privacy activists, consumer watchdogs and netizens  to foster constant awareness to the importance of open systems, transparency and user control in a free, neutral open social web.

A neutral web will ensure our security, safety, independence – as contrary to a closed web dominated by digital superpowers who constantly track us without any ability on our part to block or share at will, controls our data and dictates the economic food chains around our data.

For all these reasons, protecting us from the closing movement of the giants who want to dominate it all – calls for a paradigm shift. One that reverses relations between providers and users, is based on technologies and  an open mindset that will allow for pull based permission and data exchange context based food chains, proactively managed by users who become equal partners in the food chains created about them.

Some basic new ground rules for rearranging relations between consumers and providers must be respected. No commercial corporate, acting for its own capital gain, should own our data or have the ability to manipulate or expose it unsolicited, or arbitrarily and unilaterally dictate what additional offerings become integrated to the services and what their consequences are to us, users. They should respect our rightful place as the only owners of personal data, visibility and sole control over sharing handles.

Only then will Zuckerbergs relinquish their power, acknowledge and act with the humility and accountability that come with assuming the culture of reciprocity and respect of truly catering for individuals.

How can I track down old information about me that floats out there in the digital Ether? Whether I’m just  privacy sensitive and don’t want scraps of data around me dispersed all over without my knowing or control, wish to minimize places I registered to but did not deactivate, hate to think that companies out there manipulate my data, feel abused by the goldmine of my data that makes marketers and advertisers happy but leaves me out of the food chains, or wish to make old hunchbacks  that can be dug by search engines,  fade away – I can now have a personal privacy cleaner at my disposal.

A  US privacy company, Abine, launched DeleteMe - a “delete button for the Internet.”   It  tracks down, on users’ behalf,  traces of personal identity and information from data, passwords, profiles, and up to search results that make people unhappy, and erases them. Price is between 10$-100$, depending on  how much one wants to remove and from where.

I haven’t tried it, so I have no way of telling how thorough and efficient it is, and maybe in the distributed internet there can’t be a seal proof guarantee.

Regardless, the initiative deserves  praise for several grounds:

To start with – it’s a universal service that exceeds the boundaries of specific siloed sites. As such it takes a harmonized approach for my digital residues from a holistic point of view and caters for my privacy needs all across.

In the current state of web related privacy policies, where as a user I’m helpless in front of opaque data gathering in sites, can’t really keep track or notice data manipulation and have to deal with a plethora of privacy policies, it’s good to have a privacy policeman directly protecting my side, working on my behalf.

The business plan based on profit generated from direct provisioning for my privacy demands, is a trust enhancer because it assures no need or ulterior motives for my data manipulation as part of the company’s business plan . I pay – I’m the customer – they cater for my needs.

 Straight. Simple. Clean.

Also the cart of services they offer answers any need from any prism a user may wish for.

The company offers data removal methods activated through both automated tools and manual data manipulation in sites, that in itself promises a more thorough and systemic cleaning.

User side services such as DeleteMe that empower me, the individual, to take active control through outsourcing expert based is yet another step towards enhancing user centered paradigms and shift control over web interaction from providers to us users – an  important step towards a transparency culture and a cleaner web ecology.

I was recently asked about the icentered view on trust, so I am summarizing the Icentered view on trust, privacy and new  web ecology.

Icentered means the individual user is at the center, with the wheel in her hands,  a personal vantage point on a web that is personalized, trusted, contextualized, private and safe –  a truly user centered web.

 It’s a reversal of trust empowering mechanisms – Instead of providers asking us to take a leap of faith in their protection of our privacy and data management, and claims of preserving an ethical code and transparency as trust building mechanisms, Icentered will look at trust from different aspects, as a new mindset, a new web paradigm.

The prevailing paradigm driving web interactions today is based on a silo approach where the context of sites, providers, and platforms… is the key. Users are required to adapt to the provided scheme. Site centered leaves users no options. They depend on one-sided privacy and trust management policies of providers, can choose to agree to these policies, and enter the site – or decline and go away. Most trust related discussions are centered on how best to protect consumer privacy while supporting information sharing and relevance enhancement.

 The basic questions at the heart of trusting site centered paradigms are:

•  Do I trust them? Am I relieved with privacy assurances provided by the sites with which I interact
• Do they abuse this trust?
• Do I have any means to check?
• Do I really know what knowledge they accumulate about me?
• Is the bargain of sharing information for receiving targeted offers or expose information for free services a bargain from hell?
• Am I in any real position to verify that the privacy policy stated is actually preserved?
• Do they save records?…Track movements?…Follow my activities?
• What security measures can I take?
• How paranoid should I be?

 Shouldn’t I at least be in a position to proactively manage my privacy and trust relationships? It is my data, my privacy!

 From an Icentered view, I am no longer the “user” as defined by web site owners and digital merchants. In all three spheres of interaction (people, content and services), there is one holistic harmonious “me” interacting with all of “them”. It is me driving all such interactions, in my context, from my point of view, under my control and my direct proactive management

The essence of the Icentered trust and privacy paradigm is that I, the user, am with the wheel in my hand and I master the process. My data will be kept at my end and not within the walled servers of the providers. I will expose/ share/hide as much as suits me personally. There is no need to pay 3rd party companies to monitor me, invade my social graph and provide tools to lure me.

 Contextualization infrastructure, cloud computing, user side filtering mechanisms, proactive privacy and trust management solutions that reside locally for each user, completely visible to her, and under her full control,  will empower a true Icentered web and create new trust based transparent food chains,  taking into account and rewarding all the willing participants in the food chains.

The reversed trust management has context  as the reference base of all explicit and implicit targeting efforts. To empower that a context based measuring scale is needed, that will become an open tool of the trade for enabling trusted context based offerings. Once our data are distributed, harmonized around contextual strings, trusted user centered services (contextual equivalent to Visa for money) can manage user context based transactions that reward all the participants in the food chains and still create a transparent, trustworthy web ecology.

The Internet is a direct expression of the emerging energy structure of the planet in which the need of the individual can be met within the organic evolution of the whole, and the evolution of the whole served through the free participation of each individual.

Llewellyn Vaughan Lee

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.  The internet is more than just a global system of interconnected computer networks. It’s about us, people, and not just about technological platforms and apps, bits and bytes. As a growingly digital habitat for millions of users, as it increasingly becomes part of our life’s fabric, and not just a delivery platform, we should look beyond its material, practical and functional aspects. There’s an array of soft attributes, quality of life and mutual respect and caring that should be a strong stratum woven into its infrastructure.

The internet’s global nature transcends political, geographical, religious, national… boundaries. It offers us day in and day out innovation plateaus that reshape our communication capabilities, handling of our personal and professional life. The interconnected world of the social web offers opportunities across media and makes connectivity ubiquitous. Corporates will build the technological and commercial layers. It’s up to us to build the compassion and awareness ones. You don’t need to be a new age practitioner, or a believer in Sufism in order to consider the internet as a ground place for global consciousness, connectedness and involvement.

Connectivity is not just the physical and technical attributes of who, where and how you connect with someone. Once that is made axiomatic, the vacuum must be filled by reverting the focus to the quality of communications – the soft attributes of connectedness.

It is no longer just the sum and scope of our interactions, or, if you want, the attributes of our interactions that make it searchable for corporates to become part of the web based economic food chains. It is about trust,  the values and quality of what is being communicated.

When old orders begin to crumble around us, when the current world crisis affects each one of us, and will continue to have a long run impact – we must look around and seek the deep causes and ways to make our life better.

The empathic consciousness and awareness to the soft attributes of our life, and web life, will drive  harnessing us, bottom-up, to make a difference and contribute to paradigm changes that will ensure a trustworthy, transparent, empathic way of life,. This, in turn, will force corporates and institutions to embrace it in order to reach us.

Jeremy Rifkin writes about the global connection that must have a transcendent reason to it, a sense of purpose. In  The Empathic civilization – the race for global consciousness in a world in crisis, he talks about the global consciousness that makes each of us responsible for the well being and quality of the whole, because we are all individuals living in a global neighborhood. Harnessing empathy in our personal communications will become the life force that sustains the greater whole of which we are all parts. This, to him, is the third industrial revolution that will release the capitalistic grip, will transcend self interested greed and will allow  value based governance systems, bottom up.

The Internet, because of its individualistic nature, combined with its function as a global connectivity platform, is where such shifts can best be felt, where human connections can be strengthened, glued around value based purposes, and can influence our digital and physical existence alike. The soft attributes of empathy, consciousness, sharing, bonding for do good, are rooted in the individual choices and values. Their sharing and advocating create a global conversation that turns into a zeitgeist, that in turn creates an increasing return cycle to empower putting together the corner stones and then the blue print for different, better, more empowering paradigms.

   When we insist, bottom up, in many small increments on seeking transparency, freedom of choice, decaptivation as hostages in providers’ power struggles over us, new norms are being built. Only then can the not caring as the real root of the crisis be reversed and replaced by a new caring economy that will rise through us, where each of us becomes a facilitator, particles in the global brain and heart of the web of thought and conversation. Although we each only touch a local part of it, ideas can travel a long way,  by connecting the dots- create a movement whose magnitude ‘s resonance will globally impact.

These notions of values that are not hard core smart decisions but questioning, doubting realities, wanting from the heart and not from structured brain layers are beautifully expressed  in Diesel’s “Be Stupid” campaign for their  spring- summer 2010 collection, a campaign that encourages the religion of the heart and not of the brain. When  these values become a trend and infiltrate the main stream of youngsters, the ones who have the power, culture  and zeal to influence their worlds –  this is  the window of opportunity for paradigm shifts that will roar bottom up and hopefully reshape our worlds – the digital and physical alike.

 Initiatives such as One Young World, a next generation Davos like convention of  hundreds of future leaders from almost 200 countries, teaches us that when a global new strata of leaders gather, they can spread a new culture, a new zeitgeist, building their future activities on trust based, do good and new paradigms for transparent more equal doing.

This will lead to a clean life ecology, paradigm shifts based on attributes that bring back the soul to business, empower a participatory web ecology not just as noble purposes to be put as lip service in corporate identity brochures, but as a way of life, a new pact between all participants in our lives’ physical, digital and  and spiritual food chains.

Social networks’ integration/diversification of offerings is the new frontier in the war over web dominance, and we may be left wounded in the battle field. It is therefore time to rethink the basic paradigms that dictate our current social communications. After all, it is about us, not about the companies that serve us.

Social networks are consolidating and it will reshape our communication ways. For us our social networks are the town squares, the camp fires around which we share, converse, expose…. All the major players are adding features so that their offerings in order to  capture a larger users’ activity share on their communications platforms. They all want to be the platform of choice over which we manage our relationships, turn it into an ad delivery multi headed monster, and draw the golden eggs of the ad and targeting based revenue streams associated with it. 

The results – borders are blurring, distinction features between the web technology moguls are fading, web based interaction is going one level higher on all fronts – and we users, are faced with situations that demand a new level of awareness – we need a new set of active choices to optimize our interactions in the over exposure to all our social networks’ activities and a stronger privacy lens in our watching eye – we need to protect ourselves, as we are being exposed and targeted on all fronts, since marketers will strive to find us wherever we are.

We can’t control this blurring, or at least it demands a proficiency level that is not intuitive to all mainstream users, and eventually it may cause many of us to lose all the trust we might have had in parts of the offerings they had all together, so that a supposed added app blessing, will turn into a core service curse.

Until today the distinction was quite clear:

• When I want to answer a dedicated mail message I use outlook, Gmail….
• When I just want a short comment – I tweet (140 characters)
• When I want a short personal message -  I use IM, SMS
• When I want  a one to many  communication channel I use my social network – e.g. Facebook
• When I want it for a vertical communication channel like profession related – I use LinkedIn.
• When I want to share my thoughts or muse on an issue – I blog.

With such “communication empire” under my command, each provider wants to become a full scale communication platform, and they all start to look alike. When they all offer me the same, duplication is redundancy, and privacy, segregation and verticalization considerations may leave me more confused and eventually cause me to drop some – so that in fact channels that wanted to do it all for me, risk losing me all together.

Attempts to sort it out primarily focus on comparing their benefits for the industry’s sake, so they will know how to best target their customer in the tectonic shifts that are dynamically changing the balances, not from my users’ point of view of how we may optimally benefit and still feel secure.

First thing first – how is the scene changing? Facebook, Twitter, Google and even Microsoft are radically harnessing the missing components

It started out in a war between FaceBook and Twitter and the battle field was data portability. From FaceBook’s Connect to third party sites, Twitter’s answer, and MySpace following.

Then it scaled up. From basic blurring, like the Twitterization of Facebook to a full communication platform. Facebook ‘s Titan  project – a full fledged web mail system that will make full mailing from the Facebook platform simple and intuitive. This is more strategic, because it makes the lines between Twitter, Facebook, MySpace…. really blur.

Along comes Google’s Buzz and changes the scene. By harnessing a whole social network from millions of dispersed Gmail web mail users into a global social network, integrating blogs,  Twitter, Google Reader shared items, photos and other feeds, Buzz aims for the slot of placing it all under Gmail  - our one to one, one to many, segregated sharing, full exposure – and hence the hegemony over all our web communication.  

Where does it all go? According to Google, to a universal map of monitoring users wherever ( mobile and location awareness), whatever (desktop Buzz integration) with whoever ( social integration) in real time as the fertile ground for an ad based world that will follow us in all our activities and whereabouts, and will pop up offerings in our faces every mile of the way, every minute of the day, every click we make.  

Privacy fears

 Privacy and social networks are not two contradicting hiding and sharing  terms.  The balance and the granularity of exposure and sharing  is a very personal decision. Buzz’s initial fully automated set up option of full exposure of correspondences and contact lists, addresses, activities, scanning mails…..violated its very essence.   No one has the right to assume such a totally ubiquitously naked world. They failed to give us the keys for choosing what, when, with whom, how. They lost the trust of is users’, breaching such basic privacy issues to such an extent is outrageous. No matter how its leaders will apologize for the privacy breach and bullying forcing of the service and allude it to their being novices in the social sphere (is that so?  Do they really not fully understand the market they came to serve or seeing us as means to an end was above all?) It does not matter – they have won their sit in the pantheon of corporate predators we should look out from.

Gmail is an email service. Capitalizing on my mailing list to allow Google to create an active social network on my back without my consent or active optioning is a digital rip off; entangling us, users, in impossible cross options, so that no matter what you do, somehow leaves your private information open and searchable, is a faux pas much more than any other communication platform, because many of us use other Google applications to manage digital life as a commodity. Google Inside has turned into an omnivore that coarsely invades every ounce of privacy and selection criteria we may have. It not only holds us captive, but strips us naked in the town square.

It is inconceivable that we will have to look for ways to protect ourselves from companies who are supposed to provide us service for our own good. Can a “no shame” scale based titan culture abolish all the basic axioms of relations between providers and users and settle for lip service?

This may be the last straw to show how acutely a paradigm shift is needed:

• No commercial corporate, acting for its own capital gain, should own my data or have the ability to manipulate or expose it unsolicited.
• No commercial entity should arbitrarily and unilaterally dictate what additional offerings become integrated to the services and what their consequences are to me – and force me to struggle to undo what they decided for me should be automatically activated.
• The only person that is allowed to have the keys to my personal data and the segregations I want to make about my interactions is me.
• Ownership of my data, my visibility and my sharing handles should be at my sole control.

Too much demands a context filter as a protection means

From our point of view – this entire saturated social environment is becoming exhausting. Too much diversification, parallel platforms to manage, social duplications.   I can get lost  in the multi management and so can my privacy, jeapordising also sensitivity to  the privacy of the people in my social sphere.

 Less networks with more meaning seems the natural next step. Less is more. Absolutely. Less with meaning is even more.  To me meaning spells context or relevance. When everything is searchable, context becomes a compass that leads the relationship overflow.

The context of what I communicate about and with whom, or the personal relevance of what is being communicated to me – that is the decisive noise selector in the avalanche of web sociality. Contextivity is humanizing. I am in the center and my dynamic personal context is a guiding principle for a new level of conversations. It turns 6 degrees of separation into 6 degrees of connectedness. Once context based interactions’ keys are established, the delivery platform is less important.

This is why context is the next Holy Grail that technology titans will hunt for. I, the user, want a single place (doesn’t have to be a server – can very well reside in the Cloud) where all my info, connections, personal stuff (photos, books, social networks, profiles) are stored and I can manage that.

However, mastering contextual personalization must be in the hands of the only one who should know all about me in order to draw my context – and that is me! Assuming that not all people are techno savvy to mange that, companies that will be establish to handle my profile derivatives on my behalf should be strictly liable  like banks and credit card companies that manage my financial assets and as such are bound to me  and my privacy under strict regulations.

A higher level of manageability will come to be when communities of interest, devoid from financial imperialistic considerations, will become “users’ data bankers” of users’ profiles’ data repositories on their behalf, to assure cleanliness  transparency and inclusion of users’ in all the food chains created on top of their data.

 A catch.

It is not in any provider’s interest to allow me that. Would you voluntarily hand over the chicken coop with the golden eggs? It is all the more reason why context keys must remain in our hands. Our personal context is our asset to expose or share at our will, with the keys in our hands.

We must cry out and ban anti web culture activity that disregards us as the purpose core of the services we consume.

It is up to us – if we all harness bottom up our demands and the way we want it, our voice can serve to help corporates’ leaders and policy to make the right decisions that will not alienate us and will harness a win-win trust and loyalty based modus vivendi between all participants in the food chains. To empower it, an icentered paradigm shift is needed that will establish cleaner meaning based interactions.

Something is rotting in the kingdom of Facebook.

In a TechCrunch live interview two days ago Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, said that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public. Zuckerberg says that people have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information but more openly and with more people, and that privacy was no longer a ‘social norm’, it had just evolved over time.

At the same time, in the name of a new privacy policy, Facebook has reset its privacy settings in a way that exposes its users’ names, profiles, demographics, social graphs and pages they subscribe to, as publicly available information on Facebook, for everyone on the web to see or search.

 What does Facebook own today that they want to capitalize on?

• The profile information of 350 million people
• The social graph of their family and friends
• The content they put up – personal, social,
• The sharing path of content and people

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Sum total – the wet dream of every marketer, advertiser and data miner to tap into.

When a company can monetize the private data of 350 million users, sugarcoating it with philosophical claims of openness in sharing, reflecting social norms and feeling the pulse of current privacy related zeitgeist, calls for more than just raising an eyebrow.

Who gave Facebook the mandate to define what current social norms are? When a commercial company, in prey of  revenue streams, claims to be the canon of privacy related zeitgeist – you can take it at its face level or understand that you are watching  the sliding door to Heart of darkness.

Facebook started out on a trust platform. You place your information in their hands  and they provide you with the handles to share it at will with whoever you wish, according to your personal privacy inclinations – It is yours to expose or withhold.

The fact of the matter is that  Facebook has been toying with privacy related policies,  talking the talk but not walking the walk.  

Was it only two years ago that Facebook launched Beacon, a system that tracks activities from other web sites and  sends  information about the actions of Facebook users on their site to Facebook system. It raised such a turmoil over privacy concerns that Zuckerberg had to publicly apologize for the faux pas he did and change it into an opt-in feature. He said then “Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information”

Now it seems that as the sounds of $  roar in Zuckerberrg’s ears, this understanding of what should lie at the heart of such a  trust based service, evaporates. Their latest move of opening users’ personal data , a treasure box for 3^rd party data mining companies and a targeted advertising platform, rather than an anthropological reflection of a no privacy culture.

Zuckerberg  is creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Disguising himself as just a trend spotter, he will impose open settings, will assume that the critical mass of users will not really be aware of what is being done, and even if they are, will not know how to go about it,  and then will be able to prove his claim that privacy is no longer a social norm. Therefore it is legitimate, and maybe even natural, to open all settings for the public to see, showings statistical data of 350 million users where the majority does not actively oppose such an exposure.

The situation where a capitalistic corporate keeps personal data and social graphs of 350 million people hostages of their flinging interests  of whether to respect or abuse their individual privacy choices must be reversed.

It is an offense to the basic contract between a serving company and the well being of the users it serves. Facebook is the leader of the web’s social revolution – 350 million users are the living proof. As such it should have a moral obligation to the millions who trusted their personal connectivity with that platform.

As for the debate over privacy.  Zuckerberg’s speech only shows the need for a paradigm shift in privacy management. The icentered privacy paradigm reverses the order and frees me, the user, from any dependence on the good will of providers to protect my interests. It rewrites the book, placing me, at the center, to take charge.

• My data, profile, social graph are mine – nobody owns me
•  The only one who knows all about me is me
•  I will expose/ share/hide as much as suits me personally.
• I am in the driver’s seat with the reins in my hands
• I and only I proactively manage my privacy and trust

And as for an age of no privacy – that’s a very legitimate debate, as long as it is done on neutral grounds, with no ability to abuse. When Stow Boyd claims that we are in  a decade of publicy, you may agree or disagree, but he is not harmful.

When Zuckerberg is in a position to gain millions from abusing personal data of his users, his social sensitivity to fluctuation norms should be taken with a huge pinch of salt.

Today’s zeitgeist strives for a cleaner web ecology, based on transparency, authenticity and trust. We strive for leaders and CEOs that manage their companies not just for financial results, but by values that guide their management.

It is this time of year, full of contemplations about the passing year, trend predictions, resolutions and musings on the year to come.

Seth Godin asked over 60 thinkers to write a page on what they think is needed now, as resolutions for the coming year, to shake things up, to make a difference. The result is a free e-book What matters now.

It touches on the soft, intangible fabric of life, defines a sense of purpose in personal attitude as a change factor in the social sense. The choices were made mostly around the humanizing traits that are the engines to make things happen.

Just a sampling :

Generosity –giving to others will reward you, you will make a difference

Dignity – creating ways for people to solve their own problems

Ease – relaxation, stop the race of life not to forget appreciation of what we touch upon

Compassion – We are all connected and compassion is the order of the day and a core business value

DIY – a prescription for empowerment, as the best prevention

Harmony – defines other goals, creates teams and a soft place to develop in

Speaking – use your authentic voice and talk about something that is your passion

Evangelism – the future belongs to people who know how to spread ideas, create causes and remain tuned to the authentic voice they spread  

Autonomy – Less management and more freedom will empower autonomous individualism and better directed and motivated people

Thnks – Thank you economy for sharing, engaging, when the cost of interaction is negligible

 Attention – can be given, bought or earned by producing something meaningful  and publish it online for free

Vision – the lifeblood of progress

These are the building blocks to leap into the next year with passion, inspire, and leave a rewarding impact.  The choices many of the thinkers made came from the heart, not the mind. You can feel the spirit of do good, values that foster consideration, compassion, positive thinking, ardent striving, personal belief, mostly abstract constructive attributes that people who will find them in their hearts will be able to make things happen, influence and make a meaningful change, enriching themselves and others.

The web today is not about the technologies, platforms and e -businesses. It is about the people that comprise it, their relationships and conversations. That’s why it is time to reach upon the humanizing effects. That is why a sense of purpose that comes with do good, be sensitive and you will be rewarded, influence and make a difference wins over just practical, cerebral, tangible, logical thinking .

I believe that the decade to come will be transformational in more ways that we can envision. Signs and vibes are around. It starts with us, the people, the rest follows. What Matters Now offers a soft toolkit for the emerging zeitgeist and  points at the building blocks of the engines that will empower those transformations.  The engines are the people. From there it can develop to corporations who will have to learn how to bring thick value, a real do good tangible value.