Jean-Jacques Halans ‹› Afterhours

Just the other week I experienced two occurrences where Twitter was used by business for product support, which I’d like to share, for those who still doubt the power of social media. These are web businesses (UserVoice and Google) but that shouldn’t make any difference. Any business should monitor the Internet for their brand and reputation. I wasn’t necessarily looking for answers from them, but they did answer.

Earlier last week Google introduces a new version of their Profiles. I had set mine up, and using it I had a concern:

It was a rather generalized question I put out there for the twitterverse. I wasn’t expecting a response at all. Less than two hours later I did get a response:

Google obviously cares about their reputation and seem keen to keep track of whatever’s being said about them. Unfortunatly they didn’t include a link to their report abuse system, which would have been nice if I had a problem (which I didn’t). They could have pointed to a particular blogpost addressing these concerns, or they could create one based on these concerns found around Twitter or the blogosphere in general.

Then last Thursday at a workshop I was demoing a couple of my little web apps where I noticed that one was crashing Firefox and the other had a weird Firefox rendering issue (in effect duplicating the content, though view source only showed the content once). I quickly dugg around and uncommented the UserVoice script loading in those page, which seem to resolve the issues. I posted my concerns on Twitter, to see if anyone else had the same problem.

Two minutes later someone (who I think/hope is involved in UserVoice which wasn’t obvious) replied:

Since I had the UserVoice code removed and was at a workshop (and it’s not really critical to me), I told him I had fixed it for now, and would look at it again later, to which he let me know that I could contact him if I needed any more help. I did not have to go to a UserVoice forum to get help (I wasn’t looking for help actually) , as it could well be an issue with one of the Firefox plugins I have installed. But UserVoice cares enough about their reputation that they try to keep all customers (even little old me, even free customers) happy.

Twitter has been useful for me before in resolving (or sharing) problems. For example, when all my sites hosted on (MediaTemple) were down a couple of weeks ago, I obviously tweeted about this, and got responses back from other people having the same problems. Some of them then pointed me to the MediaTemple Twitter account which was giving out status updates on the cluster problems they were having, to which I then subscribed and got into the loop of how and when things got resolved.

Twitter is an open micro messaging platform which allows people to use it in any way they see fit (within the 140 character constraints). It’s a diary, a bulletin board, a self-help system, a publishing platform,… enabling real time search for events, brands, people… and we haven’t seen the end of it yet.

We are on a the road to a major conversion of different technologies, a merger of disparate data points into a singular intelligence previously unknown (yeah, sounds preposterous, I know). And Google is (yet again) right in the middle of it. I won’t be fear mongering about a Skynet entity, or any of the privacy issues related to this. It is the nature of progress that technology disrupts people’s lives. People will adapt, and life evolves.

Google already knows all there is to know. But knowledge is only as powerful as the relationships you can make between facts. Recently Google started to add related results to its search results list. For example, you might look for Copernicus, and it dutifully lists all facts it can find about Copernicus. But Google also knows “who” Copernicus is, and it shows me related subjects, like Plato and Galileo. We finally see the Semantic Web coming into fruition, usable in our day to day lives. But it is still Google who decides to show me what it thinks I am looking for, what it thinks is interesting based on an algorithm, PageRank, they developed, based on number of relevant keywords and links.

But what if I was to ask my friends, my social network of contacts? What if I ask Twitter who Copernicus is, or services like Aardvark who query not a humongous set of data, but a collection of real people, my friends, my connections. They would point me to particular interesting articles they have read, book titles, facts they know. This is where the power of social recommendation comes into play, and the reputation (or social evaluation) of individuals, my connections. I know people who know nothing about software, or cars, or whatever, but who now a lot about philosophy, and are, for me, reputable sources of knowledge on this. They could have a list of recommended books on this subject at Amazon, or Goodreads,… or bookmarks to articles on Delicious.

How can I grow my own reputation in a connected world? By participation in the online social environment. Not a single social network (not just Facebook, or just LinkedIn), but a collection of different, topic specific networks. I am participating: bookmarking on Delicious, postings links on Facebook, blogposts on various websites, Twittering hashtags, writing book or movie reviews, reviewing restaurants (or public toilets), posting and (geo)tagging pictures on Flickr, presentations on Slideshare… The participatory design of social applications not only adds value to the network and whoever visits them, but they grow my own reputation which adds value to my own personal social network.

How does Google fit into Social Search (or Socialized Search)? Google started out as “just” a powerful search engine. Now it offers a whole bunch of, seemingly disparate, tools. With Gmail it knows what I converse about, who I talk to (people and companies) and it neatly keeps track of my address book with Google Contacts. It knows my day to day connections. Google allows me to broadcast my location using Google Latitude (in quasi real time using Android or iPhone), and knows who from my contacts I allow access to my location data, who I trust with this information. Based in Latitude’s proximity, it knows which contacts I socialize with not only online but also in real life. Google knows about Groups and Alerts I subscribe to, the Docs I have online, my search queries, my Calendar. I have a Google Profile which conveniently shows me a list of links of what it thinks are my public pages that I can add to my profile, and I can add additional ones myself. It even allows me to prioritize these links. Through my profile Google knows which social networks I reside on. It knows about me. It knows me.

Next time I ask Google “what movie to see tonight”, in stead of showing me some strangers’ recommendations, while it knows about me (and what I like), it could query my personal social knowledge network for movie reviews and recommendations, and show me a timetable for movies near me. In stead of merely searching for information, I could “discover” what my connections like or dislike, growing my relationships at the same time. Google could incorporate this through their OneBox results or optional through Subscribed Links (subscribing to my personal links). There still are some technological limitations for Social Search, especially with data portability, as a lot of this data lives behind social network walled gardens, and we might need to trust Google as a friend in order to allow it to handle this information.

Is this a privacy nightmare? It sure could be. Private data could be inferred from querying social data. But you only put out what you want, when you want it. And when you do, whatever you loose in privacy, you win in knowledge and reputation. Knowledge is power, reputation is social control.

I don’t remember who it was they were quoting yesterday morning at Sun’s Let’s Talk breakfast presentation on Cloud computing, but Facebook being defined as “Friendship as a Service” kinda made sense.

In which case LinkedIn would be “Reputation as a Service”, I guess, and as Reputation Management as a business slowly starts to take off (as a specialization of SEO), this service could well be considered “Reputation as a Service” too: SocialRecommendator.com. Give it some information like a name, company name, position,… and it generates a randomised recommendation for use in endorsements on sites like LinkedIn or Xing (refresh to get another one).

It even sort of has an API, returning plain text:
http://socialrecommendator.com/recommend.php?name=aname&gender=M&positionTitle=atitle&positionDescription=adescr&positionType=sometype&companyName=acompany&domain=aspecialtydomain

This is a fictitious story about a small Australian business owner, let’s say a Dentist. One day she decides to spend her marketing dollars on a website, instead of an advert in the Yellow Pages (who uses that nowadays anyway?), the local business guide or the local newspaper. Smart woman! Now, a website can be quite expensive. Or it can be very cheap! She gets her little nephew to setup a brochure site (a practice I don’t condone as a web professional!). Nothing fancy, people only need to find information about her practice, a contact form, maybe a feedback form for a little interaction.

All goes well. Calls for appointments come in, business is good. Once in a while, she looks up herself on Google, to see if people can find her. She tweaks the content a bit for search engine optimization, gets linked on some local business sites, decides to spend some money on Google adverts. She’s pretty happy. Once the site is on a roll, she really doesn’t need to look after it any longer, it seems. Her little nephew points her out that her website traffic is booming, it’s getting a lot of hits it seems. Cool!

Then all of a sudden appointments fall back, people aren’t calling her anymore. Is this the recession? Are people no longer getting insurance, so they can’t afford the Dentist any more? This must be the GFC! But then she looks at her website traffic, and it has fallen down to nearly nothing. She sees some European and US visitors, which obviously aren’t clients, but no more Australian users. What has just happened?

Her site got hacked! It’s not something she would be looking for, not something she knows anything about. It’s a bloody simple website. Why would anyone hack her site? What’s the point? And it wasn’t obvious either, it’s not like they defaced her homepage with pink elephants or something.

This is the point where I’ll be talking Today and Tomorrow.

Today, when your site gets hacked and points to malware/spyware, your Google entry will tell users that your site contains links to malware. But if people want they can still click through, they can still find you. Google doesn’t tell the website owner her site is hacked though, you have to find out yourself. As the website owner, you can take appropriate action, clean up your site, get some professional help protecting your site. You can then let Google know when to index your site again, as Google clearly points out the procedure. This is a private company trying to protect it’s users from downloading malware to their computers. A noble cause, though it might seem scary for the small business owner who relies on traffic coming from search results.

And this happens very, very frequently. Even to the best of us. All software, open or closed, contains holes. Some holes are easier to exploit than others. Some holes are easy to fix and get fixed quickly, some don’t. A lot of popular software contains/contained holes, like popular content management systems, forums, development platforms,… So, as it turns out, a website does need maintenance. It’s not something that you’d put out there, and let it run. You need to keep a watchful eye on it. (and start out by using a web professional, not your nephew).

But Tomorrow, things will be different. The government will protect us, the web users. Someone must think of the children. Our own anti-virus, host and router firewalls, parental filters, OpenDNS, modern browser,… just isn’t good enough.

In the case of the Dentist, it turns out the Russian mob had injected content onto her site, advertising content deemed illegal under Australian law, and then spammed millions of users pointing to the content. Her site was put on the government blacklist, according to the media, without her knowledge. The list is (used to be) secret, so it’s not something you can query to see if your site is on it. And Tomorrow, it will be taken offline. You get hacked, you get (secretly) charged, and your website gets killed off.

As said, this is a fictitious story, but it does hold some elements of truth. Web pages from those morally objectionable characters of the likes of a dentist, a dog kennel (MaroochyBoardingKennels.com.au) and canteens.com.au (that is “school cafeterias”, not whatever your and ACMA’s dirty minds make of it) ended up on the actual official government blacklist.

Any locally hosted websites hosting content deemed illegal by ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) must be removed by ISP’s and content hosts. If the site is hosted overseas (tip: if you are an Australian business targeting local customers, it does make more sense to host in Australia!), the ACMA adds you to a blacklist which Today is used by client-side internet filters, but Tomorrow it will be used by the Great Australian Firewall, the network level mandatory ISP filtering scheme currently on trial. It is not clear what the procedure will be (if there is any), for complaints received at ACMA, if and how ACMA will let website owners know they got complaints, if ACMA will allow website owners to fix any issues during a grace period…

Can we even imagine where this filter is leading us too? Do we really want to go there?

As a side note, compromised home computers are being used in the hundreds of thousands around the world in illegal activities, in botnets used for spamming, temporary hosting illegal content used by fast-flux domains. Will the government be blocking all these individual IP addresses too?

Wired’s Vanity Validator widget for iGoogle, found on the Julia Allison Wired article:

How famous are you online? Inspired by Chris Anderson’s best-selling book, The Long Tail, this gadget uses Google’s PageRank™ technology to give you a number based on how many good websites mention the name you enter.

Try for yourself:

What’s your score? (mine was 50 at this time, not quite famous or fabulous)