1.You know me because you know my friends.
2. You know me because you know my usage/consumption patterns.
Is (1+2) == ME ?
Yes, pretty much.
The new iPlayer is more social, new Spotify is more social, everything and every service has gradually become more social… We’ve been working on this ‘social layer integration’ for a few years now, it’s always surprising how long it actually takes to become mainstream. In any case, this means as a user i am constantly confronted with the presence of my friends, my social reality whatever service i use or place i visit. I can go through their broadcasts, their choices and discover new interesting things. As i discover i add to my own visible identity and reinforce the very objects which are discovere.
Mashables and Techcrunches have already proven that operationally, journalism is nothing more than clever and pragmatic networking. That’s the best way to discover first. To be able to discover first as opposed to getting it on the 8′oclock news, is a major behavioural shift. There is information i want as it happens, other i want daily, and other i want every now and then. My social network gives me the first and lends it a trust factor.
As i discover from my social network i am connecting and re-cementing the bond i have with my friends. I praise those who surprise me and by doing so encourage it even more. ‘I like it’ will soon become ‘I love it’. Everyone is encouraging everyone else, poking: make me laugh, show me your cool experiences in the shape of photographs and videos, surprise me and i will like you, I will love you.
The omni-presence of my social network is now the space i am most likely to navigate, trust and be entertained by. This is because I choose my friends and in the process am chosen by them. They understand and know me and I them.
Businesses want to be my friends. They want to understand me as my friends do and have enduring relationships with me. They try and speak to me through a human voice even though I am just a number with variable potential purchasing power. [Of course i prefer small bespoke shops run by little teams of people. Because they are people! This is one of the reasons some small businesses fare so well online, because they are able to have a much more honest relationship with their users. It almost feels like an Arts & Crafts Ruskian renascence and it's great].
By visiting a place you may or may not choose to have a perpetual connection to that place. Places and people become the same and the internet is now being aptly called the internet of things. Real places are starting to cross-reference users who physically visit them and mention them in their online conversations. This is the internet of things. An internet of objects, regardless of their nature where what is important is the connection they have with one another and not, as mentioned, their intrinsic nature.
So how do i manage my digital identity when:
1. My digital identity is more and more fragmented through the various services i use and the fact I must sign up to every single one of them.
Note that a lot of new services are just requiring basic sign up with as little information as possible, or simply using twitter or facebook connect because they get precious user information from the services that own our valuable social network.
2. In spite of 1, my digital identity has never before been so visible and cohesive. Both to myself and others. This is partly due to the hegemony of 3 main services that I use to connect with others. Google, facebook and twitter permeate all my behaviour and are integrated in most smaller services: This means my identity has never before been so objective and visible to myself and others, simply because it’s so easy to piece it together by accessing those 3 services.
The real endeavour here is in how we piece users together using their usage patterns and social networks. We are able to synthesise life’s building blocks and piece them together in order to engineer life. We are doing the same at a micro social level in order to manipulate the macro social layer, i.e. we are capturing massive amounts of usage data and we have engines that are piecing it all together in order to recreate and predict user behaviour and ultimately influence it.
The intelligence that is able to piece all this usage and synthesise models that aid in understanding user behaviour is amazing and frightening and seldomly discussed. It is is being developed inside some corporations and is the best kept secret of this, the internet of things.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple… everyone is fighting for ownership of the users that use their services.
They all need your data and why not. After all you are entering their shop, their environment. Whether you pay or use it for free, you are ultimately the most valuable commodity. If they understand you, what you like, who you hang out with, they will serve you better and make you happier, so they say, and maybe we are happier. At least we are more connected and as social beings we should and do derive some happiness from it.
The reality is none of these services actually cares about me as a person. I am just another user turned into a set of preferences and numbers they can mine and sell more stuff too when they are not selling those very preferences to third parties (like google). They have shareholders to account to and wallstreet has just changed its name address to chinatown, so everything has become much more object oriented [wink] Social media, yes. But lose the hypocrisy. It’s social media because we are social beings and the best way to sell products is through my trusted and very real social network.
We’ve become hooked on each other, it’s not like i can suddenly change my name so that corporations stop taking advantage of my unified identity. If i change my name I would lose the connection with my friends. My name is connected to my bank account, my taxes… In reality they don’t care what my name is, they only care about my preferences, my desires and how they can influence my next moves. I am one, not a fragmented being, and have to live with it. Real privacy control is impossible and almost futile. The information is still stored by engines whose sole purpose is to make sense of it, make sense of me, put the pieces together just like we’ve been doing with dan and small cells. Plus, now with the internet of things, where we love to experience physically, attend and rate the world around us, a robot would not work, a virtual pet is very 90′s… so I have resigned to the fact that I am an object to be pimped by those who know me, who have taken the time to understand me and who give me happiness in return.
I gave in. Control your privacy settings as much as you can and let go, i say. You don’t know who’s flying the plane you just hope they’re well trained and there is some government body paying attention to rogue pilots out there. It’s so much work to clean up ones browser history, cookies, remember all ones passwords, make sure to untick the tricky subscription box… Why not just let go and allow everything to connect with everything? My online optician should know about my upcoming trip to St. Lucia and recommend a pair of sun glasses. In knowledge lies a good buck. Amazon should know about the fact ‘I liked’ one of my friends posts regarding Anti Nuclear activism, and recommend me a book on the subject the next time i visit their book store… My local cafeteria should be aware of the fact that I put a good comment on its yelp map and give me a discount the next time i walk in…
Connected awareness has suddenly acquired a new purpose.
Google, facebook, twitter… they all sell ME through the shape of my context. They are so horny for my data and homogenization of privacy laws, that you can see their hard-on all the way from micronesia. If they don’t have us they have nothing. We are them until we reinvent ourselves and render them obsolete.