Understanding Social Networks: Frequency
Last month I discussed understanding social networks with a focus on delivery. I continue to see lots of people cross posting from Twitter to LinkedIn, something that I consider to be a bad move due to the nature of the different audiences on each social network. Today let's discuss something with even less hard and fast rules than delivery: Frequency. We've all had someone in our online social network who updates their status too much or with items we don't find interesting. I am sure I have been that person before (please let me know with a comment below, thanks). On LinkedIn most of your network is professional and oriented towards different goals and habits than on Twitter or Facebook. Here's an example from LinkedIn today:
To be kind to friends and connections I have blacked the cross posters' information. As you can see these folks are cross posting from Twitter. I already get these messages on Twitter from these people. I used the colored dots in the top right of the updates to identify the same user's updates. The frequency of these people's tweets is preventing me from viewing as many different LinkedIn updates as I would like. I see the same people constantly in my LinkedIn updates section.
The frequency of tweets (1-20/day) is very different than the usual frequency of LinkedIn updates (1-3/week). I know I am going to get into a bit of hot water here as everyone has different ideas about how often updates should be made on different social networks. There are NO hard and fast rules here, but when people ask me how frequently they should post I give them this list:
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| My Twitter Stats from tweetstats.com |
These are frequencies I recommend using for posts. What do you recommend or use?
We are all busy and seeing things we aren't interested in can turn people off, consider how easy it is to "unfollow" on Twitter or "hide" on Facebook. This is why it is so important to understand and respect each audience for their differences in the frequency and delivery they expect.
Virtual Economies: Gaming and Gambling
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| The Second Life Economy |
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| Buying Farmville cash or coins |
The boy's mother's credit card was billed $1000 while the child's savings account was emptied of $400. A spokesperson for the mother's credit card company indicated "that had the expenditures been on a gambling site the escalating transactions would have raised warning flags, but since the purchases were technically Facebook Credits, they didn't warrant suspicion". When do online purchases raise warning flags? How are regulators and businesses like Facebook protecting children from this? They're not.
Gambling isn't only bad for kids who do it; it's also bad for kids whose parents do. This demonstrated by the record numbers of children being left in vehicles outside of Casinos around North America (see this exhaustive list of examples from a Massachusetts site against slot machines).
Today thousands of dollars can be gone in a matter of hours through virtual transactions. A debate rages in the UK around whether or not these virtual worlds should be regulated by gambling laws that govern the winning of funds in real life. Some online worlds have entire task forces dedicated to the removal of real currency trading in their worlds. Virtual economies often result in interaction with the 'real' economy as characters, spells and items are sold on sites like eBay for real money thus getting around 'task forces' trying to remove real currency from in-game transactions.
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| A gold farm in China |
On Second Life a group of users recently filed a land claim suit against Linden labs, the game's creator, for deceiving users about their ownership of the game's virtual property. This April 2010 case uses the precedent set in the 2007 case of Bragg V. Linden which has been cited in a number of articles and research papers from "Virtual World End-User License Agreements" to "User-Generated Content and the Future of Copyright". The rights of users to the virtual property they purchase or create are being established through these precedent setting lawsuits. Are these users gambling or are they gaming?
The lines between gaming and gambling are increasingly blurring and the speed of regulatory change will not help the young people who are currently addicted to Farmville, Second Life or World of Warcraft. Playing video games casually, less than 3 hours a week, can be good for social skills, problem solving and relaxation. Problems arise when we see people, particularly young people, playing excessively in an addictive manner. If you are addicted to a virtual economy where you continually exchange money for virtual goods are you a gambler or a gamer?
This convergence of virtual and real economies in our world speaks to larger questions about jurisdiction and the Internet. Who controls the online economy and the ability to tax it when physical borders are no longer part of the equation? If there is a black market for virtual goods is that virtual property taxable? Is the government right to spend millions to recover millions from these emerging economies? How can they regulate and monitor these worlds? Regulators from the UK, US and Canada are pushing to have the onus put on those who manage the virtual worlds and games to submit income statements for users. The potential tax revenue is huge estimated to be $30 billion by 2012 (up from $21 billion in 2008).
The stories lead from one to another and the amount of regulatory change we will see in the next 5 years will be enormous and bureaucratically prohibitive (it will take a long time). I have listed some related stories I found in my search for information on this story:
- Governments eye online gaming as a revenue source -KPMG Report.
- Is Second Life being used for money laundering? -alphavilleherald.com.
- How has social network gaming become so big so fast? -nma.co.uk
- UK social networking sites may lose online gambling ads -gamingzion.com
- UK minister suggests changes to gambling laws -legalbytes.com
- Why people pay for virtual goods -gamesbrief.co.uk
- Virtual Goods, Virtual Economies, Gold Farming, Second Life, World of Warcraft -Wikipedia.org
Intellectual Property and Social Media: What is stealing?
I spent the next five minutes unsuccessfully trying to explain the importance of offering information for free on the web. It came down to my personal belief that we can educate the world through the web by providing access to information. She really got me thinking about how I am valuing my intellectual property.
Should I work to create a pay wall? Should the New York Times? Should Wikipedia charge for the information they provide? Doesn't making someone pay ensure they value what they receive in the transaction? What happens to my video once I publish it online for all to see, share, download, show and use?
This story all came to a head today when I took a look at one of my presentations which has been stolen and re purposed without any credit to me. I have embedded the two presentations below, first mine then the other with a crappier layout but the same content. I first noticed it a few months ago through a Google Alert I have setup for my name. At the time I didn't mind and thought that it was flattering. I didn't notice that he was trying to sell the presentation for $100.
View more from Kemp Edmonds.
When I first noticed a few months ago I didn't really mind. I posted a comment mentioning my dismay on the presentation. That comment was deleted. Today I added another comment referring to the stolen presentation but I don't expect it to remain on the slide deck too much longer.
I wouldn't care except this person has used my creation in a manner that is against all of the unwritten rules: for-profit, no attribution and without permission. That's the rub though isn't it. There are no rules to the Internet, just yet. They are being established by stories like this and prosecution that is creating precedents around intellectual property, ownership and privacy. What do you think I should do now? What would you do? Is there any point in doing anything?
UPDATE: Thank you for your comments and creating enough noise around this that the presentation has been pulled. I wouldn't be surprised if most of his 'presentations' were lifted from someone else.
I know bits and pieces of my presentation came from reading the internet. That's where most great information comes from these days. I took the time to rewrite, reorganize and add information for my purposes. This is a line that continues to grey and will surely be the topic of a future post. When does creation stop and plagarism start? When it's exactly the same.
These days we are all learning and increasing our collective intelligence together. The problem comes when some of us try and take advantage of that sharing spirit for financial or professional gain.
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