The race is on to become the most valued and credible network identity guarantor on the net, and the stakes are high. If a company can serve as a trusted validator of user identity online, then they will be in a key position to negotiate and benefit from that user’s internet experience.

Witness Facebook Connect, which allows Facebook users to log into sites like the Huffington Post, Citysearch and USA Today without establishing new, separate accounts with each. The sites rely on Facebook to provide an identity management system for their users (who are also among Facebook’s 200 million users), and implicitly recognize the authenticity of Facebook’s profiles. The recent announcement of Pay with Facebook suggests how Facebook can further leverage its credibility as an identity broker to interpolate itself into a user’s web experience.

Yahoo has been flexing its muscles recently as well. The portal posted some pretty astounding traffic following the news of Michael Jackson’s heart attack (providing a useful reminder that although the company is often the butt of jokes in the tech world, when it comes to serving users it is no lightweight), and in its ongoing re-branding strategy the company has reportedly been emphasizing the site as “your home on the web”, although questions remain as to whether Yahoo’s users consider it as such.

Google is also interested in providing the services of identity brokers. With a Google account users can access numerous products, from Picasa and YouTube to Docs, GTalk and Google Checkout. Each of these accepts the same Google login, and of course GMail can be used as a credential for innumerable sites that require an email address for registration.

In each of these cases, we are faced with a proposed fix to an essential conundrum of the internet: that users cannot be trusted to be who they say they are. Each of these institutions seeks – by its size, reputation and database – to be able to declare authoritatively that they can certify that a web user is who they say they are. Whether there will be room for multiple brokers, or if one will win out over the others, remains to be seen. Whatever authority emerges, however, we can expect an increasingly prevalent network identity that remains the same across different platforms and services, and a general intolerance to serve those who insist on an anonymous internet.

4 Comments »
Filed under: Identity
Posted by: Richard
On: Tuesday, June 30th

Trends are very trendy right now. In an effort to develop a couple of short features for the blog, I’ve settled on a regular post exploring what I recognize to be emerging trends in network identity, digitization, globalization and the other themes that inform this blog.

So here’s the first entry in that series: Microcelebrity

The notion of microcelebrity was first spelled out years ago by Clive Thompson at Wired. In his words, Microcelebrity is “the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group.” In its first iteration, it was mostly linked to personalities that used the web to build a toehold in the discourse of popular culture, and was typically fodder for blogs and some unscrupulous print rags.

Now, however, I see the notion of microcelebrity taking root. There is the obvious reference to Twitter power-users getting increasing visibility as content concierges, but I am more interested of late in the use of microcelebs in marketing and promotional campaigns online because it suggests to me that businesses see real potential to profit through these strategies. Here are three recent examples to illustrate the trend:

1. Carl’s Jr. recently launched a campaign employing YouTube microcelebs to promote their new $6 Portobello Burger.

2. Ford’s Fiesta Movement campaign to promote the new product line employs 100 ‘Agents of the Fiesta Movement’ to blog, vlog and otherwise share their experience with the car.

3. JetBlue is trying to build buzz for their new service to LAX from JFK and BOS with a planeload of social media microcelebs who will create and upload content during the inaugural journey.

While these are only a couple examples, industry watchers do believe that social media spending will continue to grow while display ads decline. This may be a happy medium for now between direct connection with individual customers (which has had some messy consequences before) and the lofty and unreachable heights of ‘proper’ celebrities who are more picky about endorsement deals. You can expect more campaigns of this type in the future.

No Comments »
Filed under: Announcements, Features
Posted by: Richard
On: Friday, June 19th

Virtual worlds could be said to have had a rocky takeoff, with the over-hyped Second Life disappearing back into relative obscurity over the past year and Google shuttering it’s fledgling virtual world, Lively. I would argue, on the other hand, that American consumers as a whole have never been more accustomed to operating withing virtual environments, and appear to be welcoming increased virtualization of their lifestyles day by day.

Last week, a video demonstrating X-Box’s Project Natal was the #1 viral advertisement online, its views having grown by over 1,000% from the previous week thanks to high-profile nods by Jimmy Fallon and other television personalities. The technology, which you could say is X-Box’s answer to the Wiimote, uses motion capture technology to allow gamers to use their body as the controller in gameplay and other interactions with the X-Box 360.

I argued in a presentation for a gaming class that controllers have become increasingly realistic as gaming has developed, in a bid to improve the sense of presence and the subsequent feelings of enjoyment for the player. What was once an abstract pressing of buttons has become a real swinging of the arm for a player trying to hit the ball in a tennis game. Project Natal appears to push this method forward yet further – the video makes a note of showing users playing a soccer game with their feet and body.

Although the product demonstration film signs off with the tagline ‘The only experience necessary is life experience,’ this is only partially true. A particular kind of life experience is necessary to intuitively understand how to use the technology presented by Project Natal – one which accepts the virtual, and is at ease comprehending and navigating virtual space.

From telepresence in the board room, to remotely controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the battlefield, to webcams in the bedroom, our contemporary culture appears to be one that is increasingly comfortable with virtual experiences.

No Comments »
Filed under: Digitization
Posted by: Richard
On: Thursday, June 18th

Unrest continues in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran after the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and every source under the sun is talking about how the post-election demonstrations and subsequent government crackdown unfolded on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As virtual communities scholar Howard Rheingold quipped, social organizaton through electronic media increasingly moves to the center of world events. And it’s true; Iranians have posted many streams of information ranging from photos to microblogs and cellphone videos, providing a glimpse of conditions in the Islamic Republic during this unprecedented civil disobediance.

We are seeing data that is being spread through the network from the streets of Tehran to our screens in the West, and we are now getting access to information that would previously have been unavailable to us. However, we also need to be mindful of the sources of that information. Opposition supporters are definitely over-represented online, and although everyone appears to want to presume that Mousavi did indeed win, the facts aren’t in yet on that count. There is a definite risk of getting carried away with our notion of social media changing the world, although social media or no social media this does appear to be a very significant event in the history of the Islamic Republic, and will probably continue to unfold over the coming days.

It also demonstrates an important caveat in the techno-utopian discourse that is expounded by Rheingold and others: use of the internet for social organization requires access to network infrastructure, and that infrastructure – for all of the talk of the internet freeing us of geography – exists in a physical location under the jurisdiction of a sovereign authority. Although the Iranian government apparently forgot to add Twitter to the list of blocked sites, they have taken serious steps to limit cellphone and text message use, and blocked satellite signals. We will see how far this escalates, but the government of Iran always has the extreme option of shutting off the network itself until the disturbance passes – if it does.

So I guess that we haven’t fully subjugated geography quite yet, have we?

1 Comment »
Filed under: Network Society
Posted by: Richard
On: Monday, June 15th

One of the key processes that I failed to touch upon in that manifesto I dreamt up last week was globalization. The process of globalization has been an ongoing human effort for thousands of years – I just a few short weeks ago found myself standing at the Jade Gate in China’s Gansu province, which marked the limit of the Emperor’s (天子) territory. This facility marked a significant node of global trade at the time, and two of the branches of the Silk Route entered China through this gate bringing with it wares from Anatolia, Arabia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, India and even Europe. It was also a cultural node as well, bringing together the merchants, traders and officials who gathered in the area to profit from the commerce that globalization had encouraged. The nearby Mogao Caves reflect the cultural capital (.pdf) accrued by powerful merchants who sponsored elaborate statues and frescoes in the contemporary Buddhist style.

Today airplanes have replaced camel trains, and the airport is the new Jade Gate that connects across distance and between culture. Functioning as a crucial node in the global network, airports present both an enticing business opportunity and an enormous management responsibility. It feels ordinary today to go to the airport and travel thousands of kilometers to a distant destination in a single day. This is definitely a contemporary attitude, as travel used to be incredibly time consuming. Distance used to be something that you measured in time – the time that it took one to travel a given distance. For instance in the 19th century It took settlers five to six months to follow the length of the Oregon Trail to the West Coast, and in 1912 the Titanic was in the midst of a five day journey to cross the Atlantic. Thanks the greater speeds enabled by airplane propeller (and later jet) engines we can cross the same distance in just a handful of hours.

When travelers reach their distant destination, they first enter the liminal zone of the airport. As a node in the global transportation network, airports are venues that stand in-between the place that you departed from and the place that you are traveling to. Experience tells us that airports do not tend to take advantage of this privileged position to build their own identity, and If you think about all of the airports that you have been in over your lifetime chances are most of them had similar features arranged in a typical style. This space of the airport terminal itself is an example of what Marc Auge calls a ‘non-place’ – a location from which cultural context and identity are largely stripped as a consequence of their transient nature.  This can be soothing – if a little boring – because of the volume of different kinds of people that transit airports, all of whose needs must be served by the same space. This has led to a general homogenization of airport terminal layouts and design around the world to make the ‘non-place’ of the airport surprisingly familiar, if unspecific to its geographic location.

So here is the conundrum: airports must be functional above all other considerations – their value is primarily tied to their ability to connect travelers and cargo with the global aviation network. And yet, as a consequence of this effort to serve functionality, airports have largely neglected developing an individual identity that reflects the geographical and social circumstances surrounding them. If international airports are modern-day Jade Gates, then they are too often lacking in their demonstrations of institutional cultural capital; they do not have their own Mogao Caves.

Without sacrificing essential functionality, airports should be striving to develop individuality instead of sameness in their terminal experience, and distinguishing themselves from both regional and international competitors through performances of their fitness as essentian nodes of the network and their socio-cultural significance as the facilitator of contemporary global consumer lifestyles. By developing and propagating a stronger institutional identity, airports will be able to tap into the potent strengths that are inherent to their essential function in the global market, and assume a singular character as among the most meaningful places of contemporary life, rather than an abstract ‘non-place’ connecting to other ‘non-places’ in the network.

No Comments »
Filed under: Globalization, Identity, Network Society
Posted by: Richard
On: Thursday, June 11th

As consumers have invested more and more time and effort into developing their social networks online, they find that their identity is increasingly tied to their virtual presence on commercial sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Yelp. Where previously one may have set up their own website, or at least fumbled around on GeoCities (RIP), users now increasingly rely on services like Facebook or GMail to act as their ‘home base’ for identity management online. The self-created personal website may be becoming a rarity, replaced by the commercial social network profile page.

Facebook today announced that it would enable users to claim ‘vanity URLs’ that simplify the address of their profile page (for instance, my address could go from http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=34600004 to http://facebook.com/richard.nevins). They are opening the gates for username registration at 12am EST, June 13th and putting the presumably valuable URL’s up in a first-come first-serve basis that is bound to attract the social media equivalent of cyber-squatters (Twitter has seen its share of ‘name squatting‘). Customers in the land grab can choose one username that will remain with their account from that point on (according to FB it cannot be changed, so choose wisely).

While it might be easy to see why people would prefer a vanity URL to the incoherent numeral URLs of the present, there are compelling reasons to balk at this move by Facebook when it comes to identity management. As Marshall Kirkpatrick summarizes: “I don’t need a Facebook vanity URL because I already own MarshallK.com.” While I would echo Kirkpatrick’s suggestion that users should prefer the greater control over their digital identity that operating their own website provides, I suspect that it is one that appeals to fewer and fewer new ‘net users, who are now accustomed to user-friendly pre-fab solutions that require less cost and effort to set up and maintain. They are more likely to prefer to outsource the hosting of their web ‘home base’ (the principle source of their network identity) to a third party like Facebook or even Google.

I see this as a part of the broader trend of removing computing power and applications from local control and sending them off into the cloud. What was once the ‘Personal Computer’ is increasingly becoming the ‘Remote Computer,’ excelling at accessing offshore resources, applications and personal data that is no longer located on your person. The problem with putting all of your data in the cloud is that when you cannot access the cloud, you are cut off from your data. Then you’ve really lost control of your network identity!

No Comments »
Filed under: Identity
Posted by: Richard
On: Wednesday, June 10th

Yet again the blog has hit the quick sand. Having recharged the batteries and experienced some excitement and wonder in a foreign land, I think that now it is time to recommit myself once more to the project of this blog. Following in the footsteps of my pal Ryan over at MetaBrandGreen, I suppose one way to encourage that recommitment would be to begin with a statement of principles that underlie my thinking about communication, technology and society, and drive the kind of coverage that I will be providing on Blunks.

1. We did not arrive in this contemporary networked condition by accident; it is rather the necessary consequence of the process of modernity that began in the Age of Enlightenment. In the modern industrial era, scientific methods and mathematical modeling were applied to social organization, establishing an ideology of measurement, analysis and forecasting that enabled the rapid advancement of material conditions in ‘developed’ nations. Through the application of statistics, the methods of organizing society (demography, education, planning) depended on the reducibility of social conditions to numbers on a spreadsheet that can always be analyzed and cross-referenced in relation to one another. Adorno & Horkheimer: “Society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract qualities.”

2. Increasing prosperity among a significant proportion of the populations of ‘developed’ nations and technological improvements in the means of production in the late 19th and early 20th century transformed the lifestyles of citizens. In addition to their existing cultural, physical and social identities, the people of modern industrial societies gained a new consumer identity as their social behavior adapted to the new material conditions facing them. In this situation, identity becomes inextricably related to consumption, and an individual’s taste in products that say something about what makes them different. Bourdieu: “Tastes (i.e., manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes.”

3. Following this process of data accumulation and identity formation, the Network Society has emerged as a consequence of the digitization and subsequent pooling of what had been individual data silos. Crucially (and consequentially), the ruling ideology that guided this process from the start was benevolent and not commercial, favoring increased access, data and redundancy over strict hierarchies of power and arbitrary restrictions on access. Castells: “[The Internet] was rooted in a scientific dream to change the world through computer communication.”

4. In the present network society, another transformational process is ongoing in the area of computer-mediated communication. With technology having conquered geography, individuals have ever greater ability to communicate with physically remote audiences. Barriers that once made mass self communication prohibitively expensive have crumbled for those with access to the network, and a new paradigm of networked communication prevails. In the social environment of the network, identity plays a crucial role in establishing relationships and developing connections between the actors and institutions that constitute the network itself. Zuckerberg: “Facebook … makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all of these people.”

These four principles underlie my thinking and reasoning on communication, culture and technology and the content of this blog will be concerned with exploring and expanding upon them. I will focus on exploring the development of the fourth principle, the ongoing transformation of life fostered by the network society, but will remain mindful of the first three and may often reflect on them in light of current events, campaigns, products or expressions.

As always, I encourage you to share your response to any post in the comments. You may also contact me through the various links on the right.

4 Comments »
Filed under: Announcements
Posted by: Richard
On: Friday, June 5th