Social Media is relatively new for most people and many are still exploring the possibilities and uses of it. One of the things that happen with social media is that we become more transparent, we share more of our self to more people then we normally do. This transparency is good in some ways and less good in some.

There’s been several stories of sharing too much information on social media. One example is the case where a British women forgot she had befriended her boss on Facebook.

Another example is the recent case of a Swedish guy who published a picture of himself where he wore a cap with the text ”porn star”. His problem was that parents had seen the picture and the principal called him up and fired him from the childcare center he was working at.

When do people share too much information? I recently found the site pleaserobme.com which wants to make people aware of the risks of telling too much about themself to the world.

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.

The website lists everyone that displays their status on Twitter as being away from home. Not in itself a dangerous feature but coupled with a quick search on the persons name on a site that lists where they live (e.g. hitta.se in Sweden) it’s an easy way to rob them without risk.

Keep being transparent but reflect on how and what you share with the world!

We had a workshop about political communication where we chose to do some interviews on political communication and social media. The interview with Zana was done over e-mail and the one with Anna was taken over the phone. Both interviews were done in Swedish and translated into English by me. I’m happy to correct any misstakes I might have made in the translation if you point them out.

The two interviews were conducted with:
Zana Hussan, who started one of Sweden’s biggest Facebook groups ”Sverigedemokraterna i Riksdagen – Nej Tack!”
Anna Troberg, Vice Vice Chairman of Piratpartiet

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Interview with Zana Hussan
The Facebook group ”Sverigedemokraterna i Riksdagen – Nej tack!” was created by Zana Hussan on August 31st 2009. The group is in response to ”Sverigedemokraterna” (SD), who is an extreme right party trying to get into the Swedish parliament. The aim of the group is to show that SD is not wanted in the parliament according to the group members. The group has no political ties and is open for everyone that wants to renounce the party. The group managed to reach 300.000 members in its’ first five months which is a significant amount compared to the population of Sweden of 9M inhabitants. The ”anti-group” that started in response to this group managed to reach 16.000 members.

”…large groups will remain latent and ineffective if not mobilized by selective incentives” (”Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union” by Karolina Karr, p. 46)

”I had been thinking a long time about there being no organization or movement on internet collecting Sweden against racism, xenophobia and especially against ”Sverigedemokraterna”. Xenophobia isn’t a left or right question but a question for all of Sweden. I wanted to do my part in this which is why I created this Facebook group with an ambitious goal of collecting the broad Sweden with everything from the stockbroker to the assistant nurse”

Zana writes that he wants the group to be a rally point for discussions and actions where everyone is welcome to debate. Members are able and encouraged to share articles, arguments, experiences and strategies. Zana stresses the importance of not being quiet to the members of the group.

”People who are members in the group can achieve something by showing that they refuse to be quiet and thereby actively taking a stance for diversity and against racism. I constantly encourage people to become members of a political party or an organization to have a better influence in society”

Interview with Anna Troberg
Piratpartiet is a Swedish political party that started in 2006 to limit intellectual property and enhance the rights for a private life. Piratpartiet has from their upstart been in the forefront of internet and has had a big presence in social media. Politometern just listed the most influential political blogs in Sweden where Piratpartiet was listed in 10 places in the top 25, this despite that the party has only existed since 2006.

Anna Troberg told us that Piratpartiet uses social media for a lot of their political communication. One of the reasons for them working mainly with social media is that newly started parties in Sweden have very limited resources, the other reason is because of it being an effective way of communicating. She also emphasized that even if they had more resources they would keep using social media to the same extent as today. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter often create a discussion climate where people have an ability to express themselves in a deliberative democracy. Anna believes that through social media the political communication of smaller parties has been simplified but that the traditional parties have a hard time adjusting.

Piratpartiet has an official Facebook group  with 20.000 members and an official Twitter account. Their twitter account is most of the time updated through their Skype channel which is accessible to 70-80 of their members. Piratpartiet also set up a ”live web page” to monitor and inform people about what is being said about the party.

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Some Conclusions
Social media will become more and more important, not only in political communication but also in other areas of society. There is a lot of talk about social media and the effect it will have on this coming election in September and many are inspired by Barack Obama’s campaigning for presidency in 2008. Social media has a big effect as a creator of public opinion which can easily be seen by a group on Facebook managing to rally 300.000 members or by Piratpartiet managing to get 7% of Swedish votes in the EU-election. The ”two step flow of communications” also maintains an important part in the spreading of information through opinion leaders who passes it on to a greater mass.

The importance of having a big network and several channels to reach people is of bigger importance today. Internet makes the line between a political actor and a citizen very uncertain. A user of social media can easily express their opinions and get others to follow their lead. Groups are created between like-minded people that enhance and strengthen their power. Citizens gain more power and politicians must realize the importance and possibilities that this new digital era gives to democracy.

In this digital age we work more and more by ourselves from a distance. We still meet up every now and then, but a lot of our projects and work are done from home. Normally when there’s a group-project we do some of the work by ourselves at home and then meet up (or via e-mail) and compare what we have done in order to merge the texts into one document. This way of working makes us lose a lot of time on catching up and comparing documents to see what to merge.

In this digital age we need to make use of the technology available to make our work more effective. Working from a distance does not have to be ”solo” work anymore. Tools exist that allow us to collaborate in real-time with each other. I’ll here present 3 of the best collaboration tools: Etherpad, Skype and Dropbox.

Etherpad
This tool works as a collaborative real-time notepad. It allows several persons to work on the same word document at the same time and thereby eliminates the need to waste time on merging versions. It also makes the work more effective since you can directly get the input of others instead of having to wait for a meeting. Etherpad also allows chatting and keeps track of the changes you make which means you can go back to a previous version of the document if needed. The bad part about Etherpad is that it creates a tricky address to remember for your pad, BUT this can be solved by using an url shortener and making a custom name for the link. Etherpad recently decided they were going to close down the service but they made the code available which means you can find it at piratepad.net and a few other places now.

Skype
Sometimes it is hard to put your work into writing and sometimes you need a more direct feedback then the written word. This is when Skype comes to use. Skype is basically ip-telephony where you can call each other for free. It also allows transmission of your web-cam which means you can use body-language as well, if needed.

Dropbox
This tool helps you store all your files and documents in a secure way which is easily shareable. Dropbox works just as a normal folder on your desktop BUT it also uploads everything you put into the folder onto your account on the web. Thereby it eliminates the need for you to remember to make back-ups (which we NEVER remember). The other positive side is that you can install Dropbox on a second computer as well and then it synchronizes all the items in the Dropbox between the two computers! You can suddenly reach all the files needed on all your computers (as well as other, more temporary, computers through your account on the web). Dropbox also allows you to share folders between each other which means that ALL files made for the project group can be synchronized between each other.

These three tools are great for increasing productivity and efficiency in a group. Each one of these will help you a lot but the real synergy effect comes when you integrate the tools. An example of this could be:

Calling someone on Skype about the word document they just uploaded in the shared Dropbox folder and suggesting you two can  work a bit on the formulation on the introduction. I copy the text into a pad on Etherpad and start editing it in real-time together whilst talking over Skype, motivating the changes made to the document and discussing which one is best.

Do you have any other good collaboration tools that you use?

Edit: Collecting some more tools here

Google has always had a hard time in China but now they seem to have had enough and wants change. Google just announced on their official blog that they would start ”a new approach to China”. Google implies that Chinese governments might have something to do with the following three crimes:

1.  A cyber-attack in mid-december on Google and ~20 other companies
2. Google claims to have evidence that the main goal of the attack was accessing Gmail-accounts belonging to Chinese human right activists.
3. The follow-up investigation on the cyber attack by Google also revealed that several e-mail accounts used by human right activists in US, China and Europe has been continuously accessed by a third part that initially got login-information via phishing or malware on their target’s computers. [Thanks to @nikkelin for summarizing the points in Swedish.]

Google has because of this opened up their censoring somewhat, one example being pictures of Tianmen Square crackdown that were not available earlier.  They also say they might cease doing business in China if they can’t find ”a new approach to China”.

”These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Another important point that didn’t come out in the official Google blog post was revealed on Wikileaks saying that:

”gossip inside google China is gov hackers found infiltrating google source code repository; gmail attacks an old issue.”

The possibility of Google moving out of China becomes very interesting when you look at the Baidu vs. Google war for the Chinese search engine market. In China most people prefer Baidu because of them providing a better service for the Chinese. If google pulled out it would most likely mean that Baidu got almost all of those searches. According to Jennifer Li, Baidu’s chief financial officer, their share of the market for search was 77% in the 3rd quarter (+1.4% from 2nd) and Google’s share was at 17% in the 3rd quarter (-2% from 2nd). I believe these numbers are related to the stock market but it still shows a negative trend for Google if they are true. Democratic ideologies don’t stand a chance before financial capitalism.

Another market loss for Google would be the one in mobile phones. Google announced a partnership with China Mobile in 2007, China’s largest cell phone operator, to provide mobile search and has been dominating the mobile market. At the end of October Baidu announced signing a partnership with China Unicom, the second largest cell phone operator. China Unicom are predicted to grow to 50% of the market by 2011. This must affect Google’s part of the market share for cell phone searching negatively and should be evident to them at about this time. Source

Another factor that might be contributing to their new approach to China is the recent negative media coverage Google received in combination with Bono’s filesharing hypocrisy and praise of Chinese censoring. ”Google’s currency is user trust” ”Simply put, China is one of Google’s weakest markets”. The censoring might get worse if Google does decide to pull out of China, an example of what might come:

Go to baidu.com – Search for anything. Then search for ”google.blogspot.com” You are now totally blocked from Baidu (via @azaaza)

There are often a lot more reasons then the official ones if you start looking. This will be very interesting to follow with big changes to come if Google gets a change in their approach to China OR if they pull out and Baidu is allowed to have a ”monopoly” on the search market in China.

The problem today is that industries still work under the old traditional economic idea of ‘choice under scarcity‘. When there is a limited amount it gets expensive. We have to choose where to spend our resources (money).

The part that has changed, compared to earlier, is that information no longer is limited in this digital age. We have an abundance of information. Now we have to choose where to spend our resources (attention). One of the ways of reaching peoples attention is using Word of Mouth (WOM), a specific message that is accessible and spread by users.

The cost of copying digital information is reaching zero and we are moving towards externalities and alternative economies. New technology’s deflationary force is nothing new but the speed at which this is happening causes a problem for companies trying to adjust to this new economy.  Unfortunately this fast shift has made a lot of companies try and keep the obsolete economy of ‘choice under scarcity’ by limiting the access to information and thereby causing a shortage. This limiting has mainly been done by lobbying and creating laws to protect their outdated business strategies. We are moving away from traditional economies and towards an attention economy despite the friction caused by some companies.

This new economy benefits from Word of Mouth spreading. Compared to spam the reaching out of information by WOM becomes personal and thereby receives attention. The value is increased by sharing the product and a big mass normally amplifies the effect and usability of the product.

Free is the future of business. A few examples of this employed as business strategies could be giving away free razors (to sell disposable blades), free cell-phones (with a monthly plan), free programs (with an upgrade option) to name a few.

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Business models of the ‘free’ economy:

• Freemium
  Giving away basic model for free. People paying for premium normally pays for other 99% of people
• Advertising
  Free in exchange for some of your attention
• Cross-Subsidies
  Free product that will get you to buy other products
• Zero Marginal Cost
  No appreciable cost to anyone
• Labor Exchange
  Free in exchange for work. E.g. answer questions
• Gift Economy
  Free for everyone, money not only motivator.

sources:
Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business
The importance of viral marketing