Invasion of Privacy

This is not enough...think before you post! (image by The Lobby)

Ars Technica yesterday ran a story about how a woman in Canada, suffering from severe depression, had her sick leave coverage pulled by her insurance company, Manulife, after seeing pictures of her at a party on facebook.

This kind of situation is nothing new; prospective employers today are known to look at facebook profiles ahead of interviewing candidates, so it is more than likely that insurance companies do the same. But this situation is very different – the lady in question, Nathalie Blanchard – posted pictures of her own birthday party on a private section of her facebook profile, i.e. only accessible to certain individuals. Her insurance company, according to the article, decided that “people diagnosed with depression are incapable of having fun for even short periods of time, because Manulife pulled Blanchard’s benefits with no notice. When she called to inquire about the checks, Manulife said she appeared to be “available to work” thanks to Facebook.”

The author of this post uses the same setup. Posted pictures are private, and only a handful of contacts can access them. So how did her insurance company, Manulife, get hold of these pictures? There are ways of accessing private pictures, even deleted pictures, but that’s another debate in itself. The worrying trend here is that companies, insurance companies in particular, are using social media to gather intelligence on its customers.

So, just to recap, as has been said and written over and over again – don’t upload pictures that you don’t want to be spread around. With reports of politicians, Commission officials, MEPs (and their assistants etc) using Twitter, facebook, and surely Flickr, there is a lesson to be learnt here. To use a term coined by the world’s number one spook agency, the ‘blowback’ that can result from pictures on social media networks can (will?) be much greater for a political figure compared to an ordinary citizen…

It’s simple really. Think before you post (and please, also, think before you tag).

- Emil

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TwitterIn – Twitter joins forces with LinkedIn

It was yesterday announced that LinkedIn, termed by some as the ‘professional version’ of facebook, has teamed up with Twitter – allowing users of both social networks to cross-post their status updates.

Both companies argue this is a good thing, as you can see in the video below, but is it? Personally, when facebook introduced its ‘stream’ for instance it really turned into an information overload platform.

The solution to make sense of all the tweets/feeds/streams is perhaps better real-time search. Come on Google, chop chop…

- Emil

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Facebook set to lead the way in ‘social trading’

Social media platforms are dominating the headlines lately and are poised to start generating a lot of money. A US floral retailer (1-800-Flowers) has recently opened the first “facebook storefront” where users can buy and send flowers directly from facebook.

Instead of trying to drive traffic (i.e. consumers) from facebook toward the company website, 1-800-Flowers has decided to go seek out the customer where he or she prefers to spend time, i.e. on facebook rather than on a corporate website.

So far, businesses have mostly considered social media as an additional marketing tool, but this initiative indicates a possible way forward, namely the option of social platforms hosting online shopping sections and virtually (no pun intended!) transforming themselves into big online shopping malls as more and more businesses set up their own storefront and take advantage of this huge network to reach consumers.

Traditionally facebook has been dominated by young people, and it’s no secret that advertisers have long known about and targeted “tweens” (generally this is said to be children between 8 and 12 years old) for their staggering purchasing power. And just as the design of the basic facebook profile has evolved over time, so has its users. Facebook recently announced that it now boasts 250 million users, but what is perhaps more interesting is that the fastest growing demographic is 35+ year olds. Is this an indication that the techie crowd is approaching maturity? Take a moment to think about the purchasing power of 40-year olds.

Yes, exactly, that is some serious purchasing power. There is no doubt that companies, both offline and online, will put two and two together and realise the gargantuan opportunity offered up by applications such as facebook’s storefront (if they haven’t already!).

The UK internet watchdog, Ofcom, today released their annual report which indicates that, apart from food, Britons want to spend most of their money on technology such as mobiles, internet and TV. The report further states that some 19 million people in the UK, which represents 50% of internet users, visit facebook and spend on average six hours a month on the site, an increase of two hours per month compared to 2008. This means that the internet allows businesses to reach consumers with increasingly high purchasing power, even in the greatest recession since the 30s!

So the share of older people using facebook is growing massively, they have money to spend, and they want to stay wired-up even in times of economic hardship, and facebook has opened its door to  businesses – should the likes of Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com be worried? Is social trading the right term to describe these commercial activities?

- Maxime & Emil

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Augmented reality technology, adding a digital layer to your world

Augmented reality (AR) technology is all about combining computer-generated data and real-world data, blending computer graphics and real footage in real time. Er, ok, good, but what does that mean? Take the case of New York: New Yorkers, and visitors to the Big Apple, will soon be able to find their way around the metro system using the yet-to-be-approved iPhone 3GS AR application acrossair (see below).

AR technology is coming, hard and fast (see the Guardian, Lifehacker, Los Angeles Times, Core 77 etc) and will most certainly revolutionise the way we use and ‘see’ data. For instance imagine an application designed for finding your way around the European Parliament (EP). Let’s call it ‘EP Insights’.

Imagine you’re a new MEP/a new MEP assistant/a still wet-behind-the-ears consultant/a visitor (pick one, they all share a common inability to find their way around the EP) and you are running late for parliamentary vote. EP Insights could allow you to take out your smart phone when entering the EP, inputting the room name/number that you need to go to and then by simply holding up your phone in front of you, computer generated directions would appear on your touch screen, superimposed on real video footage. The application could show you arrows, distance and time to destination and more. You would find your way around the EP in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

Does a digital layer on top of your real world sound really cool to you? Yes? OK, well then you are ready to meet the Swedes behind ‘The Astonishing Tribe’. They have developed an application called Augmented ID, which is (possibly) an example of the darker side of AR technology. It’s an application that visualises the digital identity of people you meet in real life.

Imagine you are giving a presentation, someone in the audience picks up their phone, points it towards you, identifies you digitally using Augmented ID; they instantly get access to whatever digital information you have decided to share (your facebook account, your LinkedIn profile, your latest YouTube upload, your digital business card etc.).

Are you scared yet (see below)?

- Emil

(UPDATE 20 JULY 2009: Wired Magazine picks up on Augmented ID video.

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EU lobbying scene not quite ready for next generation PR

On Saturday Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times published an article that has made the rounds of the blogosphere in quite some fashion (a Google blog search for the article generates just over 14,900 hits). The article “Spinning the Web: PR in Silicon Valley” is a well-researched and timely piece about how public relations (PR) execs in Silicon Valley propel new tech start-ups not by issuing press releases and calling up journalists – rather they court Web gurus, influential bloggers, and Twitter users.

The article mentions a few interesting examples, for instance, Brew Media Relations, the firm that began representing the popular photo-sharing site Flickr in 2004, never issued a press release for it, even when it was acquired by Yahoo. Ms Hammerling of Brew Media Relations explains “Flickr would publish news on its company blog, a few more blogs would pick it up, and two days later Business Week would call”.

But the piece does not tell the full story of the fundamental revolution PR is presently undergoing, as Brian Solis of FutureWorks aptly points out on his blog PR2.0. Solis explains how PR, particularly in Silicon Valley, is “much more potent than most entrepreneurs, investors, and executives realize”. He also stresses the degree to which PR today is under-appreciated and misunderstood. PR is not about ‘pushing’ news, rather it is about creating relationships “with the greater communities of influencers and users who can help extend a story, intentions, value, and sentiment as a means of driving awareness, building communities, and empowering advocates over time”.

Granted, Silicon Valley is more conducive to ‘new’ PR strategies, tools, and approaches, than say Brussels, for instance, but this should not stand in the way of PR innovation in a more ‘traditional’ arena such as the EU heartland. While there are excellent initiatives and a clear momentum towards true recognition of new PR (for example, in this year’s European Public Affairs Awards there is a new category for best Web 2.0 campaign), Brussels’ agencies are seriously lagging behind their US and continental competitors and partners. Yes, there are agencies that feature polished blogs (see Fleishman Hillard’s Public Affairs 2.0, ZN’s HyperThinker or our very own The Lobby) and there are trade associations that are successfully using Twitter or facebook (see Enviro.aero or Pesticide Information) but that’s about it. Brussels agencies are keen and the tools are all around us, but it remains to be seen whether Brussels and its opaque institutions are ready for them.

I challenge you to name a single senior Brussels PR executive who has 6 influential bloggers and 4 prolific Twitter users on speed-dial rather than 10 members of the Brusssels press corps (and who is willing to take his or her story to them rather than to the press)?

- Emil

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Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are OK but Photoshop is not OK?

As election posters are strewn across Swedish towns and squares (and across Europe for that matter) one Swedish paper has questioned whether some Swedish candidates are overly touched-up on their election placards.

First, I think it is important to remember that this European election is something of a novelty. Never before has a European election and its candidates made so much (good?) use of technology and both online and offline media. Second, we are already surrounded by touched-up images and videos, e.g. fashion magazines, television ads, and online marketing in all shapes and forms. One of the more famous examples of how pictures are touched-up is the now relatively old Dove Evolution video (below).

Seriously, does it really matter if a candidate is made to look a few years younger on an election poster? Personally, I don’t think so – it’s their choice. I am going to vote for specific candidates based on their approach to particular questions that I find important, not based on how they look on an election poster. How will you vote?

- Emil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

Social media sweeps across Europe ahead of elections

How will you vote in the upcoming European elections? Platforms such as EU Profiler can help you figure out where you stand on the liberal-conservative and Euro-enthusiastic or Euro-sceptic scale, but there’s more to it than that, right?

A recent study conducted by the GfK Polonia research institute in Poland suggests that voting behaviour is still largely dominated by charismatic and well-known personalities. The degree to which candidates employ creative and original campaign methods seem to matter more than the actual details of the party programmes.

We all know that Obama was very talented at this game. He used social media tools to their full potential and managed to extend his personal network of “fans” even further than any showbiz star (except, of course, Ashton Kutcher on Twitter). Many campaigners in Europe are now playing catch-up and the methods are proving to be working quite well – though better for some than others.

Libertas, with its controversial rhetoric, uses the full spectrum of social media tools to its advantage and has managed to create a platform ungoverned by rules on speaking-time and where self-censorship is timid at best. Their webpage is full of 2.0 gadgets and widgets pointing to their Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts (also see Libertas Strikes Back). Yesterday, they claimed to have the most visited webpage of all European parties. But as any geek knows, hits do not equal unique visits, and unique visits do not necessarily equal votes on the big day…

- Agnieszka