Participation blurs the line between who owns traditional corporate IP

Large public companies have been struggling with a variety of issues around social media. One of the more recent to come to light is more of a legal nature. Most employees sign agreements that anything they think of or work on during their employment belongs to the company. It's typical "work for hire" contract language. But as we know, social media changes everything. So, if I blog or twitter as part of my job and I amass a large group of followers and then I leave my job - who do my followers belong to, me or the company? The company would argue that the followers belong to them and that the list of people is their IP, but what happens if the lawyers try to enforce that. Even a legitimate legal claim could backfire on them causing severe brand dilution.
 
When companies are trying to establish their corporate policies around the social media, they need to stop taking a "this is how we do it" attitude. The social web requires rethinking all of your traditional business rules and practices, it no longer matters how you did business last year, last month, or yesterday, but how you will do business tomorrow. This particular issue affects multiple business units and raises many questions. Should HR and legal be discussing re-writing their employment contracts? Can one agreement cover all situations? The company can argue that they provided the platform, but was the employee speaking for the company or him/herself, was blogging part of the job description, was it being done on company time? Should companies have plans and policies in place to purchase the list of these social followers?  Does the company suffer from brand dilution when an employee leaves a company and no longer provides that communication between the company and its customers?
 
These are just a few of the questions that come to mind as more and more companies like DELL and Zappos start to encourage a large number of their employees to participate in the conversation with their customers...And what happens, if anything, to high-affinity brands like Apple who have a policy of not allowing employees to communicate in any way with its customer base.

It is a hot issue for sure and one that Michael Della Penna and I are tackling head on as part of SuiteDialog’s social media practice.  For more information on SuiteDialog visit the website or drop us an email at info@thepmn.org.

http://www.suitedialog.com/html/social-media.htm
http://rulethirteen.com

In the Network Economy The Fastest Learner Wins - Interview with Eric Ries

I often say that on the social web there are no experts - only experiments.  The fastest learner wins.

We are living through a sea change in business - Think about media with music, newspapers and publishing - or manufacturing with Flip (nearly two guys in a garage - design, manufacture in China, market online - then hit the big box stores and finally sell to Cisco for 1/2 billion) Astro Gaming (similar story without the buyout yet), and the new crowdsourced Crunchpad- think about the ubiquity of mobile devices and their rapid evolution or the rise of Twitter and the first chink in Google’s armor etc.

In these conditions the only lasting advantage a company has lies in its ability to adapt rapidly.

Which brings me to Eric Ries.  I have had the privilege to do some work recently with Eric, author of the Lessons Learned blog — Eric’s basic premise is that a startup needs to maximize its resources and have a relentless focus on creating tight, iterative decision loops.  A lean startup is defined by

1. Leveraging already-existing software and services whenever possible (off the shelf, open source etc.)
2. Using Agile development to quickly prototype, test and deploy functional code
3. Aggressively testing reality every chance they get with REAL customers (aka customer development)

Startups obviously need to run lean - they have modest resources and no real idea if the products they are putting out will meet actual customer demand.

But these conditions (uncertainty and rapid change) and these practices (customer development, agile and rapid prototyping) are not only advantages for startups - As Eric points out, they can be defensive tools for an Enterprise.    This is an interview I ran with Eric on behalf of O’Reilly Media.  It originally appeared a few days ago in a post by Tim O’Reilly welcoming Eric to the Radar community.

Eric will be running Lean Startup Master Classes over the coming months — whether you are a startup or not - this is a game changing approach to product development.

The Other Side of Social Media - Part Three - The Digital Panopticon

In 1785 utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed architectural plans for the Panopticon, a prison Bentham described as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.” Its method was a circular grid of surveillance; the jailors housed in a central tower being provided a 360-degree view of the imprisoned. Prisoners would not be able to tell when a jailor was actually watching or not. The premise ran that under the possibility of total surveillance (you could be being observed at any moment of the waking day) the prisoners would self-regulate their behavior to conform to prison norms. The perverse genius of the Panopticon was that even the jailor existed within this grid of surveillance; he could be viewed at any time (without knowing) by a still higher authority within the central tower - so the circle was complete, the surveillance - and thus conformance to authority - total.

In 1811 the King refused to authorize the sale of land for the purpose and Bentham was left frustrated in his vision to build the Panopticon. But the concept endured - not just as a literal architecture for controlling physical subjects (there are many Panopticons that now bear Bentham’s stamp) - but as a metaphor for understanding the function of power in modern times. French philosopher Michel Foucault dedicated a whole section of his book Discipline and Punish to the significance of the Panopticon. His take was essentially this: The same mechanism at work in the Panopticon - making subjects totally visible to authority - leads to those subjects internalizing the norms of power. In Foucault’s words “…the major effect of the Panopticon; to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary” In short, under the possibility of total surveillance the inmate becomes self regulating.

The social technologies we see in use today are fundamentally panoptical - the architecture of participation is inherently an architecture of surveillance.

In the age of social networks we find ourselves coming under a vast grid of surveillance - of permanent visibility. The routine self-reporting of what we are doing, reading, thinking via status updates makes our every action and location visible to the crowd. This visibility has a normative effect on behavior (in other words we conform our behavior and/or our speech about that behavior when we know we are being observed).

In many cases we are opting into automated reporting structures (Google Lattitude, Loopt etc.) that detail our location at any given point in time. We are doing this in exchange for small conveniences (finding local sushi more quickly, gaining “ambient intimacy”) without ever considering the bargain that we are striking. In short, we are creating the ultimate Panopticon - with our data centrally housed in the cloud (see previous post on the Captivity of the Commons) - our every movement, and up-to-the-minute status is a matter of public record. In the same way that networked communications move us from a one to many broadcast model to a many to many - so we are seeing the move to a many-to-many surveillance model. A global community of voyeurs ceaselessly confessing to “What are you doing? (Twitter) or “What’s on your mind? (Facebook)

Captivity of the Commons focused on the risks corporate ownership of personal data. This post is concerned with how, as individuals, we have grown comfortable giving our information away; how our sense of privacy is changing under the small conveniences that disclosure brings. How our identity changes as an effect of constant self-disclosure. Many previous comments have rightly noted that privacy is often cultural — if you don’t expect it - there is no such thing as an infringement. Yet it is important to reckon with the changes we see occurring around us and argue what kind of a culture we wish to create (or contribute to).

Jacques Ellul’s book, Propaganda, had a thesis that was at once startling and obvious: Propaganda’s end goal is not to change your mind at any one point in time - but to create a changeable mind. Thus when invoked at the necessary time - humans could be manipulated into action. In the U.S. this language was expressed by catchphrases like, “communism in our backyard,” “enemies of freedom” or the current manufactured hysteria about Obama as a “socialist”.

Similarly the significance of status updates and location based services may not lie in the individual disclosure but in the significance of a culture that has become accustomed to constant disclosure.

The Other Side of Social Media - Part Two

In January 2002 DARPA launched the Information Awareness Office. The mission was to, “ imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness (emphasis added)” The notion of a government agency achieving total information awareness was too Orwellian to ignore. Under criticism that this “awareness” could quickly migrate to a mass surveillance system the program was defunded.

Fast-forward to last week and my near-purchase of Libbey Duratuff Gibralter Glasses (the perfect bourbon glass one might speculate). Over the course of the next few days I was peppered with exact-match ads for Libbey Duratuff glassware on several other websites; A small example of information awareness at work.

Personal data is the currency of Web 2.0. Knowing what we watch, buy, click, own, what we think, intend and ultimately do confers competitive advantage. Facebook possesses your social graph, your personal interests and your full profile (age, location, relationship status etc.) not to mention your daily (or hourly) answer to their persistent question, “what’s on your mind?”. Reviewing the “25 Surprising Things Google Knows About You” should give anyone pause. And it’s not just the Web 2.0 set. Credit Card Companies, Telcos, Insurance , Pharma… all are collecting vast stores of personal data. If you watch the trendline it is moving toward more data and more analytic capability - not less.

So why is it that we seem to have more comfort when the capacity for total information awareness lies with corporations as opposed to government? Experience shows that there is a very thin barrier between the two. To wit, the release of thousands of phone records to the U.S. government - and, conveniently, government immunity for those same corporations after the breach. Google and Yahoo! and Microsoft have all been accused of cooperating with the Chinese government to aid censorship and repression of free speech. What happens if/when we encounter the next version of the Bush administration that sees no problem abrogating civil rights in pursuit of “evildoers”?

What’s more, when we deliver our personal information over to corporations we are giving this data over to an institution that is amoral. Companies are not yet structured to deliver moral or ethical results - they are encouraged to grow and deliver “shareholder value” (read money) which is a numb and narrow measure of value. Do I want my data to be managed by an amoral institution?

To be clear - I want the convenience and miracles that modern technology brings. I love the Internet and I am willing to give over lots of data in the trade. But I want two fundamental protections:

First, change the corporation. The structure of the corporation continues to be driven by 20th century hard goals of efficiency and scale - not by more complex measures of environmental sustainability, value creation and the commonweal. These are simply not adequately factored into any structural, organizational, incentive or taxation systems of business today. Profit and profit motive are fine - but hiding social and environmental costs is no longer acceptable. I want to deal with institutions capable of morality. This is no small task - but if we can build the Internet….

Second. We need a right to privacy that matches the 21st century reality. As a friend of mine likes to say, “privacy is now a responsibility - not a right.” While it is pithy (and perhaps true), the reason we grant rights - and laws to enforce those rights in society is the simple fact that people do not generally have the wherewithal to protect themselves from large, institutional interests. In the same way that regulatory structures are needed to keep a financial system in balance (alas even the Ayn Rand acolyte Greenspan finally agrees with this truism), we need new rights and regulations governing the use of our personal data - and simple sets of controls over who has access to it.

The true work of the 21st century lies not in refining our technology - this we will achieve without any political will. The work lies in re-imagining our institutions.

The Other Side of Social Media

I am an evangelist of social media and an active participant: on Linked In (business), MySpace (music) and Facebook (increasingly my online identity), I blog on several sites and I am a daily user of Twitter. I also make my living speaking to companies about the value and operating principles of these more open, participatory technologies.

I have read the proponents that abound (Why I Love Twitter, Groundswell, Here Comes Everybody etc.) and found much to agree with. I have read the detractors (“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” …, Facebook Addiction is Real etc.…) and found little to agree with.

So over the course of the next few days I will post a series of questions on the value and function of social media (a.k.a. social technologies). I will not be arguing that social technologies are a bane or should be stopped. I don’t believe the former is true and I believe the latter is impossible… I will not be arguing against technology. Rather, I will raise questions about the potential abuse of social technologies and the steps we might take to remedy them. The more discussion this prompts within the Radar community the better. I will also be leading a webcast on May 27 at 10AM Pacific to discuss these topics in detail.

This is the first of these posts:

The Evangelist Fallacy, Social Media and The New Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment swept through Europe in the eighteenth century, upending the notion of a divine right (religious and monarchic) to rule over the population. Its tenets centered upon the idea that humans were capable of reason and could seek governance that accorded individuals liberty and some semblance of equality. Western society still embraces principles and speaks the language of “freedom,” “democracy,” and civil rights born during The Enlightenment.
There is another side of the historical record. While the public dialogue of The Enlightenment was centered on freedom, equality and human progress, institutions of the age were rapidly developing sophisticated means of control over individual movement and action; from highly structured factory work and military regimentation (the true birthplace of modern management theory), to isolating deviant segments of society (the birth of prisons, debtor’s prisons and asylums) and an emphasis on police surveillance and the “dossier” to track behavior. In fact many of the same political and social theorists of Enlightenment (Montesquieu, Bentham etc.) were the architects of detailed studies on how to subject individuals to institutional control. These tactical manuevers were often cloaked in the more lofty rhetoric of The Englightement.

This is not an isolated reading of history. Knowledge is almost always being produced in service of power - not as a liberating force from it and there is always a gap between what a society proclaims about it’s goals and aims - and the functional outcomes of its institutional policies and procedures (the “War on Drugs” being a quintessential modern example).
The idea of social technologies as a liberating force echoes the Enlightenment language and, just as with the original, there are good reasons to view this discourse with some skepticism. This knowledge about the value and meaning of social technologies comes from industry champions (Cisco’s Human Network), industry analysts and corporate consultants. This discourse is good for business - I know because I speak regularly on the topic in boardrooms and at conferences. Proponents have a personal stake in seeing the positive side of the equation (and there is a positive side) and encourage participation as a means of personal empowerment (“the customer is now in charge” “the end of command and control hierarchy” etc.).

Social media is cloaked in this language of liberation while the corporate sponsors (Facebook, Google et al ) are progressing towards ever more refined and effective means of manipulating individual behavior (behavioral targeting of ads, recommendation systems, reputation management systems etc.). As with the enlightenment the tactics of control are shielded by a rhetoric of emancipation. Let’s not forget that the output of all of this social participation is massive dossiers on individual behavior (your social network profiles, photos, location, status updates, searches etc.) and social activity.
How do these corporations intend to use these vast records of our behavior? The next post, Captivity of the Commons will explore the risks associated with personal data being collected at the behest of corporations whose main motivation is not in service of “customer empowerment” but on the traditional goals of manipulating behavior to grow their share of wallet.

...a level of interactivity not possible before

"The Web has become a new stage for the creative class, joining radio and TV as a third broadcast medium. But it promises a level of interactivity not possible before — and could revolutionize how people think about game shows."

Read about it here

Why Common Sense Matters in Social Media

Everyday, while 500,000 people are going online for the first time in their lives, we hear a steady drumbeat about new tools, new apps, new platforms and new ways to reach each other online.  We learn that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, while we see China surpass the online population of the U.S. with relative ease.  We hear about 200 million blogs, countless forums, new wikis and how many followers our friends have on Twitter or fans on Facebook.  

It's enough to give you a headache, at times, if you are thinking about what to do for your company.

It doesn't have to be that way.  In fact, we are arguably at a tipping point for how social media will be used in modern day companies.  Social media is actually a discipline, similar to marketing or communications or both, that can improve the effectiveness of every aspect of a company.  It will change our organizations over time.  

We can improve how we receive ideas from our customers and integrate their ideas into the creation of new products and services.

We can identify who cares about your company and help you proactively join conversations that matter. 

We can unlock the ideas inside the minds of your employees to improve your business.

We can automate business processes and build new B2B relationships not previously possible. 

We can do a lot, together.  And all it takes is knowledge of how social media can work combined with common sense.

We are all capable of leveraging the benefits of social media for our organizations.  This is the mission of Common Sense Media Group -- to be your partner in building social media strategies that work for your business.

Results matter.  So does common sense.

We'll do our part to make a difference for you and your customers.

All the best, Bob & George

In Pursuit of Apple

Most brands, whether they want to admit it or not, are envious of how Apple has built such a high-affinity brand. Many companies assume that proffering the right kind of marketing campaign will raise their brand to the same lofty heights as Apple. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The answer to Apple becoming a high-affinity brand lies in the "experience" and "meaning" that they deliver to each of their customers. Whether its an ipod, MacBook, interacting with a Genius, or the activation strategies that they have introduced throughout the stores, Apple delivers a memorable experience and it's that experience that triggers long-lasting meaning with the consumers. Meaning is the transforming factor for them to become brand loyalists and word-of-mouth marketers for Apple.

Consumers now have more choices in products and services than any other time in history...
Consumers have more information to make buying decisions than any other time in history...
Consumers are sharing information with more frequency and in greater quantity than any other time in history...

This translates into the fact that consumers can wait until the exact product they're looking for strikes them and that realization is not going to be delivered from some traditional marketing effort. At the very least, it would have to be more experiential in nature.

So, what changes do traditional brands and organizations have to go through to develop the right creative process that will result in products and services which deliver the experience and meaning that their customers hunger for? How do they tap the knowledge base of their customers to aid them in this process?

What other brands have enjoyed some of the same success as brands like Apple and Lego?

Greetings from Rule 13

I figured that my first post should be a welcome.We have teamed up to create what we believe will be a firm that will be a comfortable home for those who share our passions around social media, an invaluable partner to those companies that we work and collaborate with and an indispensable asset to our clients. Hopefully you will visit often to share your vision, thoughts and ideas on the revolutionary times that surround us.

Welcome!