Facebook Politics

Have you ever noticed your Friends/Connections/Followers number decrease on one of your favorite social networks and wonder who you offended this time?  Oh, maybe that is just the most likely scenario for me.  It could be an accidental unfriending, such as a few too many haphazard clicks whilst cleaning out their friends list.  Possibly one of your drama-filled friends deactivated their account…again.  On the contrary, perhaps you have so many online friends you would not notice if 100 of them deleted you.  That would never happen, though, because a social media deity such as you would never deprive your friends of your every mundane action, lest they grow confused and become unable to continue on with their own lives.

 So true it hurts.

Why do we choose to virtually follow the lives of some but ignore others?  Well, according to a recent study, it turns out online social networking works a lot like offline socialization.  Most people tend to stick with people they know, but are also more likely to chat with friends of friends than perfect strangers.  Also, most people do not like people who offend them, are boring, or are simply annoying.  So, as with real life, it would seem getting somewhere online is all about who you know.  Also, being a bit of a downer causes others to quietly push you out of their lives.

 Philosoraptor might be on to something here…

What is really interesting, though, is men and women have different requirements for their online social circles, much like in everyday life.  Women are most likely to friend people online who they actually know outside the internet.  Men, on the other hand, are more likely to accept a friend based off of other factors, such as who said “friend” knows, what they look like, what business they are in, or even for no reason at all.  On the flipside, women are more prone to unfriend people who post offensive comments (commit social faux pas, if you will), or who they just do not know very well, while men are more apt to delete someone who pesters them to buy something.  The study also points out men are more prone to use social media for business networking and dating, while women use it as a creative outlet and to participate in the marketing efforts of businesses who utilize social media, particularly to provide positive feedback.

 The "Like" Button = catnip for the ladies.

On the surface, the numbers make it seem like men and women use social media in mutually exclusive ways.  However, the study points out most of us—men and women alike—use online social networking primarily for the reasons it was invented:  staying in contact with family and friends, reconnecting with old friends, and finding for new friends.  Even with technology altering our day to day interactions, and completely overhauling how we communicate with each other, our social constructs appear to translate perfectly.  While social politics vary from culture to culture and generation to generation, our innate need to provide order and context to our interactions with each other prevail regardless of the forum.  After all, man is by nature a political animal, as Aristotle observed some 2400+ years ago.  Some things never change.

Oh, and if you really have ever wondered who, exactly, was the person who unfriended you, you will be happy to hear there is a Facebook app for that!  Well, so long as you use Firefox, that is, as it requires a companion extension to work.  There probably is a version out there for other browsers, and you can find out right here.

Protecting IP Rights...No, the Other One

Recently, a friend of mine (Nate) and I had a nice little debate about the anti-piracy laws being introduced to Congress this year.  Specifically, we talked about the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (S.968, otherwise known as the PRevent Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property act) introduced to the Senate back in May.  However, we may as well include the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R.3261), introduced to the House in October, since it includes PROTECT IP.  That’s right; we’re not talking about Internet Protocol again here, although you would never know if you read the plethora of comments around the web regarding this bill.  This is all about updating copyright and trademark law to account for modern technology.  Sounds sensible, yet it has caused a torrent of rage across the internet—even from those who don’t actively visit places like The Pirate Bay–resulting in the mass voicing of fear of government censorship, loss of privacy, and the end of the internet as we know it.  Now that sounds like serious business.

  There’s a 2 parrot minimum for serious piracy.

 

Nate had originally posted a link on my Facebook wall to a site very much against these new laws, going so far as to  claim they would “break the internet,” and “stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.”  Well, I guess that explains the hysteria because that would be pretty terrible.  Admittedly, this seemed a bit sensationalist to me, so I went ahead and read the proposed bills, and my suspicions were confirmed.  The bills simply seek to hold those who create sites dedicated to stealing IP to be held liable for their actions.  It stops there, as well.  There is no liability for advertisers and financiers, and there is no mention of prosecuting those who use the site; it is all about going after the owners and operators of the domain name.  Considering currently the RIAA sues individuals for each song they download, this seems like a better deal for the average pirate…err…consumer.

 “Yargh, but now where me be downloadin’ the latest Family Guy?”

 So what is this really all about, anyway?  Intellectual Property, the other IP, is all around us:  music, art, literary works, software, movies, any and all intangible properties created through intellectual processes.  We, as consumers, spend billions every year on IP, but yet it’s no secret virtual piracy in this digital age is rampant.  Illegal copying and distribution of IP has existed since the means to copy various forms of it were made commonplace in households (copy machines, recordable cassettes, VCRs, CD burners), but piracy really only became mainstream in the late 90s with the advent of digital music (.mp3 format) and the godfather of P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing programs, Napster.  While Napster was ultimately shut down after just 2 years of service, the notion of “free” IP was already instilled into a significant portion of our society (at its peak, Napster had 80 million registered users, which was about 22% of worldwide internet users back in 2000).  Countless offshoots of the program were created, and are still around today due to legal loopholes including outdated law and jurisdictional issues.  Now billions in revenue are lost every year to piracy, and billions more are spent by companies to try to protect their IP.

The list of supporters of these bills to extend legal protection of IP to the internet makes perfect sense: the music industry, Hollywood, game and software developers, and basically anyone that offers digital content which is commonly pirated online.  Surprisingly (to me, at least), Google is against this bill.  I find it odd because they already willingly do so much with YouTube and their many other services to remove copyrighted material.  I guess this somehow fits into their novel idea to “make money without doing evil.” 

 Not even a little evil?

Unsurprisingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is against these laws just as they are against any sort of regulation of the internet.  Really, though, the EFF are the anarchist of the digital world; that is, their theory of absolute freedom sounds good on paper, but—once you realize laws exist because people naturally tend to group themselves with others who share similar beliefs (the basis of the many levels of society), and, as such, come up with agreements about how we all should treat each other with a certain level of civility (as low as said level may be)—absolute freedom just seems silly.

Regardless, we already established the fact these bills are only after those who run sites which serve no other real purpose than the illegal distribution of IP.  Social media sites do not fall under this category in the slightest.  So, that leaves the stifling of creativity and innovation, and the loss of privacy as the issues driving the outcry against this legislation.  However, since the legislation is only after domain owners, there is no reason (or even permission) to look into users of these services, meaning the privacy issue is non-existent.  Unless, of course, you are the owner of one of the soon-to-be-deemed-illegal domains, and your ISP will be legally obligated to turn over your information and block access to your site.  Beyond that, search engines like Google would also be obligated to remove you from their search results, but they don’t want to take part in your ill-gotten gains anyway.  As for stagnating creativity and innovation, I would think stopping the illegal use of other peoples’ creative and innovative property would promote us to create our own, original IP.  Maybe what qualifies as art eludes me, but setting a song you did not write to Japanese anime you did not draw to add to the other thousands of dubbed anime videos on YouTube does not seem all that innovative.

 Music only detracts from the profound revelations anyway.

In the end, PROTECT IP and SOPA are only trying to ensure those talented folks who provide us with countless hours of entertainment are properly compensated for their work.  It gives them a reason to keep creating.  It just so happens to be a beautiful side-effect less convenient access to other peoples’ hard work will force us to bring our own visions to fruition.  That is if the legislation is properly implemented, interpreted, and executed well enough to be effective.  Hey, it could happen.

Of course, the ultimate solution to stem copyright infringement would be to only come up with terrible ideas nobody would want to steal, such as a strap-on bovine “gas factory” designed to turn cow farts into biofuel.  Seriously.

The Internet of Things…Made in China

Internet technology is steadily improving by becoming faster and more adaptable while bringing more and more new internet-based technologies to the table.  Logically, internet penetration to users will continue to grow even beyond its current levels.  Earlier this year, the last of the 4.29 billion addresses of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) were sold, but yet internet usage rates keep going up.  Fortunately, this was a long foreseen issue, and IPv6 is already up and running in some places to take over for the 30+ year-old IPv4.

Wait, what happened to IPv5?  It was developed in the late 80s, but it was never released for public use.  It was more of a stepping stone for modern internet applications, particularly streaming data.

Anyway, IPv6 offers 2¹²⁸ addresses, or around 30 quattuordecillion (45 zeroes), which is nearly 600 quadrillion (15 zeroes) per every square millimeter on the planet.  Seems like overkill, right?  Well, not so much when you consider the possibilities of every device you have being assigned an IP address.  A true worldwide web, if you will.  “No way,” you say, “that’s just crazy.”  Preeminent technology developers don’t think so.  IBM, as well as many others, expects The Internet of Things to be the future.  All of our technology will communicate with each other to make our lives more efficient and easier.  Corning, one of the largest glass and optical fiber manufacturers, has a wonderful vision of what the future can be with all of our tech working together.  It is not just a pipe dream, either; it is already happening as RFID (radio frequency identification) chips are included in all kinds of consumer goods these days.  IPv6 provides the platform for all this to become possible.

Of course, there are some potential downfalls to this new technology, but that is always the case with major advances in technology.  Technology, no matter how noble its intent, can always be used for “evil,” so to speak.  If all of our devices and goods can be tracked on the internet at any given moment, we have to wonder if we will ever have privacy again.  Not to mention I’m pretty sure I saw a movie about this sort of über network of machines.  It had to do with terminating oddly designed time traveling robots which were predisposed to terminating waitresses and annoying teenagers for some reason.  The title eludes me at the moment, however.

With a grin like that, how mean could he be?

Still, we cannot fear what might go wrong.  If our species was ruled by fear about what could be, we would have died off long ago, while we still lived in caves…naked, dirty, and cowering in our own filth.  Besides, we humans have done rather well so far in terms of inventing new things while managing to avoid completely unraveling society and life as we know it.  Well, mostly.

The powers that be may never forgive us for this.

Beyond the extra space, IPv6 is more efficient in just about every way, is more secure, and offers better support for mobile devices, use of which are on the rise globally.  IPv6 is not yet the primary platform for the internet in most places, but China happens to be one nation which is already putting it to use.  Particularly, they make use of IPv6’s ability to keep an IP address assigned as you move from network to network, essentially creating a sustained mobile connection across great distances.  Additionally, the overabundance of IP addresses offered by IPv6 solved China’s problem of having more high-speed internet users than they did IP addresses, and now China has plenty of room for growth in the next generation of internet technology.

Simply having near endless IP addresses is just the tip of the iceberg, however.  By developing IPv6 early, China is expected to move into the forefront of internet technology, as well as becoming a science and technology force to be reckoned with.  We all are aware of the whole outsourcing phenomenon which built China’s position as a manufacturing leader, but their work with the international organization that deals with the development of the internet—the Internet Engineering Task Force—to develop new standards has allowed them to have substantial input on the development of IPv6, which, in turn, provides China a significant advantage in the coming age of internet technology.  China is expected to have the capability of transferring data 100 times faster than currently possible, to stream video at unprecedented levels, and to have companies at the forefront of IPv6 infrastructure worldwide.  Besides global positioning, China will be able to launch CERNET2, linking over 160 various educational, government, and research institutions with the technology to conduct research and experiments in ways the world has never seen before, further securing China’s role as a science and technology leader well into the future.

I think this is a clear sign America needs to step back up to the plate.  If China can manage to stay on the cutting edge of technology while in their industrial revolution, we should be able to lead the way.  IPv6 technology will allow companies to operate at unheard of levels of efficiency than ever before.  Supply chain management would be flawless if companies knew exactly what we needed to buy before we go to buy it.  Easy integration of mobile applications will allow workers to do more while out of the office, as well as offer more ways for businesses to interact with customers (both to attract and retain), and open up whole new location-based markets.  We need to look forward to pull ourselves out of this economic slump.

On a side note, translation technology is on the rise in order to prepare for the inevitability of the various dialects of Chinese will become more rampant online.  Currently, English rules the internet, but the rise of Chinese text online will not mean English-speakers will be left in the dust, however.  I think we are on the verge of having on-the-fly universal translators straight out of science fiction.  Plus, cultural exchange online should increase exponentially with the language barrier decimated, and learning about other cultures is never a bad thing.

Why Hello There...

Greetings to the blogosphere!  I've been an avid internet user for over 15 years now--since the days when online social networking meant message boards, AOL chatrooms, and sending angry IMs to the guy on Napster who kept canceling your pirated song at 99% (we all used it, so don't look at me like that).  The point is, I've been spewing my opinions about a great deal of things to an untold number of faceless people (likely angsty teenyboppers for the most part), and I think it's about time I started sharing all my vast knowledge of the interwebs in a single place.  You know, uniformity never leads to bad things...*ahem*.  Oh, and here's a grain of salt to go with all my "vast knowledge."  Go ahead, take it.  Trust me.  You'll need a lot more.

Honestly, as a wistful, up-and-coming marketer, I really need to have a larger social media presence online.  A truth which was painfully made obvious to me when I missed out on a great job opportunity today just because I could not prove I spend most of my waking hours online.  So, it's time I stop lurking so much (for the uninitiated, that's net slang for the creepy guy who stands in the corner watching everyone else talk...or, uh, who simply reads a lot online without posting many comments), and start sharing.

My goal for this blog is to have a lighthearted sharing of information about marketing and business development, the modern job searching process, technology, and various other things which interest me at any given moment (I'm an avid gamer, so expect to see a lot regarding that industry).  Basically, if I run across something on the web I think warrants sharing or debunking, it will likely end up here!  You can take my opinion as you will, but, even if you do not agree with my reasoning, the information provided is probably worth a good look.  Remember, "There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued." - T. H. Huxley.

I'm not here to persuade the masses to any particular cause; I'm just hoping to share some useful information and perhaps a couple of laughs.  That does, of course, mean the title to this blog is a bit contradictory.  Hard selling is a direct, high-pressure approach to making a sale, after all, and I'm not even try to sell you on anything!  With any luck, you'll find something useful amongst all my tomfoolery.

Thanks for reading (and helping me get that much closer to landing a marketing job), and stay tuned for my first real topic in the next couple of days!

Regards,

Mike Pergola