Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called up Tweet-storm over his comments that the Age of Privacy is over.  Zuckerberg tells TechCrunch:

When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

But the internet has made privacy more complicated rather than vanquished it completely. The issue for both Zuckerberg’s Facebook and online users is that our expectations of privacy and the reality are far separated. The truth is we are just as private as people. But the internet changes the scale.

Expectations for privacy often revolve around the good intentions of the companies we give information to. Facebook and Google will keep our data secret, for our use only.  One study found that most people, rather than reading a website’s privacy policy, assume that if a website has one, it means they will keep the data protected.

Of course, this is far from the trust. Even the best intentioned websites have security breaches or mistakes that leave users open to privacy violations.  Several of my family members are still petrified to use their credit card online, not concerned by the dozens of credit card and social security number leaks done because some employee lost a laptop.

On Facebook, privacy concerns focus more on our personal data, like interests, pictures, and relationship status. Talk about a widespread case of narcissism. No one cares about every little college student’s love of the Big Lebowski or how they’ll take “whatever they can get”. My rule, if I don’t want people to know something, I don’t put it online because once its online, it’s up for grabs. Even if I deleted one of my old blog posts, there would still be ways to find them.

Shockingly, several studies show people will give out personal information, including passwords and income levels, if you simply ask or if you’re nice, offer them a chocolate bar.

And the data many expect to be private, or to use the buzzword, anonymized, but would be surprised to know how easy it can be for an intrepid researcher, like Latanya Sweeny, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who showed that just gender, zip code, and birth date are unique for about 87 percent of the U.S. population.

So expectations – people and companies want and keep data private (and apparently lots of people want your information too) but the reality is tons of data leaks out all the time, most people are unaffected because there’s so much data and yours isn’t that important, and it takes just a tiny bit to figure out who you are (even the stuff you feel safe sharing).

Zuckerberg is right that our concept of privacy is changing. When I first went on the internet, my mother forbade me from telling anyone my name or where I live, but now I post that all over. I regularly meet people in person that I first talked to online. I often recommend people buy the domain of their full name and build some kind of web presence for in case they get Googled (better the first link is something you know and control).

This is not because we keep less private. Just more people know. Like everyone who wants to. You had no problem telling a room full of strangers at a party what you do, where you live, and how you like your steak. Now, it’s incredibly easy to tell a world wide web full of strangers.

Privacy still matters. And more than an effort, it should at least be a challenge for bad guys to get good data. But now we’re not just teaching our kids (and adults) to not talk to strangers. It’s about common sense online. Knowing that anything you share can be shared again. And again and again. And it might never ever go away.

I like marketing; I don’t like selling. Various jobs have asked me to perform varying levels of both. One I enjoy; one makes me feel dirty.

First, let me define marketing and selling for you. Marketing seeks to offer solutions for the needs of a group of people. While marketing is targeted, it is targeted at those with this need rather than a specific person. Selling is done to a specific person.

Let’s say I make lunches. Everyone in my office is my market for lunch. I can put up posters marketing my lunch and some people will buy it. If I’m selling my lunch, I go up to a specific person, relying on them to buy it. If they don’t, I’ve wasted lots of time trying to convince them.  Think about the difference between seeing a car commercial and going to the car dealership. One is exciting, the other leaves you feeling dirty.

I recognize I am coming at marketing with an idealistic view. I believe that marketing is a worthwhile endeavor when handled in a needs based manner. This is why often the best products need no advertising, relying instead of word-of-mouth and brand trust. While that’s an extreme (it worked for Google), most companies and products can benefit from smart marketing rather than selling.

Now social media throws some new tools in the marketing arsenal while also complicating my definitions (is promoting something on Twitter marketing or selling?). I think the best way to approach any marketing is to focus on building your brand and then letting that trust (and the quality of your products) sell themselves). For instance, marketing on Twitter or on your blog should be more about providing a service to your readers, whether by providing information on a subject important to them or highlighting research in your field. Corporate blogs are excellent tools to show your company’s expertise and provide valuable information to users, ensuring readers will turn into future customers when you have a product they might want.

The biggest secret in search engine optimization is that quality content, not buzz words, will get you top spots on Google.  This, of course, is the hard part.

Google’s PageRank determines the value of your website by who links to you. The more popular the linking site, the higher you’ll jump on search results.  The best way to get these links is to provide worthwhile and helpful content that others will want to recommend and link to.  One of the best ways to make this happen is to get your employees writing.

I receive significant push-back at this recommendation. Either employees are already too busy or they don’t know how to write.  Even if these excuses are true (and they are excuses), re-prioritization of resources and time (and some editing) can turn your entire staff into a blogging machine.

Recognize that your staff is already made up of experts in your field, and this if valuable for both your company and employees. IBM knew this and gave every staff member a blog, creating a vibrant and exciting array of niche, technical blogs. These blogs increased traffic and brand awareness for IBM while giving its employees visibility and respect among their peers (and likely helping them earn promotions or better jobs in the future).

Most companies can get away with a single blog written by most of the staff, each writing to their strengths. Have marketing people write about marketing your brand. Sales people can talk about new tricks they’ve learned.  The key is to make the content valuable to others, not simply self-promotion.

This should only take 30 minutes or so, and it can easily be done once or twice a week without hurting other aspects of your business.  The benefits far outweigh the added responsibility. Marketing and sales can become easier since clients have more ways to evaluate your company (and see how smart your employee’s are). Employees will enjoy the creativity and chance to show off their intelligence while learning new skills making them more attractive to future employers. This is a win-win and important for any company’s SEO and social media strategy.

I keep looking for other things to write about, but the newspaper industry just keeps giving me great posts to write.  Let’s first look at this Washington Post article that pretty much argues for ending all the useful innovations of the internet to save newspapers.  It’s written by two former newspaper lawyers, but the Washington Post wouldn’t be swayed by that kind of conflict of interest.

Michael Masnick does an already perfect job of dismantling the outrageous arguments in the article. To summarize, the authors, Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown, seem to be calling for an end to search engines and fair use while expanding copyright law to cover “hot news” and allowing newspapers to violate antitrust laws (while still offering them tax breaks).

But all this talk of saving newspapers still ignores why newspapers are more important than news. Newspapers are not the only source of journalism and any legislative attempts to save them only support an obsolete business model. Masnick cites from Dale Harrison’s comments on the Post article.

A lesson worth remembering is at the turn of the 20th century people had a transportation problem…and the solution turned out not to be a “faster horse”…but a Ford.

And one should note that the Ford didn’t arise out of the “Horse Industry Revitalization Act”.

I think the future of the media business will look as different as Ford and Toyota’s operations look from horse traders and blacksmiths.

Imagine what the passage of such ill-conceived legislation would have done to the car industry a century ago.

Harrison goes on to show that newspapers, for decades, had a monopoly on distribution. This lead to inflated advertising prices and likewise inflated budgets (much of the reason newspapers are in trouble now is the massive amount of debt they acquired during the bubble 90s). This monopoly distribution is dismantled with the internet, forcing advertising prices down to real market values and giving customers almost infinite choices for their content consumption.  Because of this basic economic fact, newspapers cannot sustain the business model they’ve been using for the past century.  It’s time to evolve.

But we’re scared if we lose newspapers, we lose journalism because none of these bloggers or aggregators create content.  If that so, then why is Maureen Dowd getting accused of plagiarizing a blogger? I’ve already criticized Dowd’s incredible misunderstanding of the internet and newspaper economics as well as her accusations of copyright infringement at Google (even though Google only links to content).  I actually have no problem with Dowd copying the blogger (she can copy me anytime) – plagiarism can actually be a good thing sometimes – but Dowd’s hypocrisy shows that 1) newspaper journalists are not perfect and 2) some bloggers can apparently write really well.

Also, let’s note that bloggers exposed Dowd’s plagiarism and pressured her to update her column online (and a correction in the Times).

Thankfully, not every newspaper wants to remain in the 1980s. John Naughton writes for the Guardian saying capitalism will eventually kill off newspapers that can’t evolve, leaving the market winners to better understand how to run a news business (not just paper) in the 21st century.

The problem at the moment is that the web is awash with free content, and in a competitive market the price always converges on the marginal cost – which is currently zero. But as providers disappear (or, like Murdoch, decide to charge), the supply of free news will diminish and something more like a normal market will emerge. Only then will we find out what people are willing to pay for news.

That takes care of the economics. But what will journalism be like in the perfectly competitive online world? One clue is provided by the novelist William Gibson’s celebrated maxim that “the future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed”. In a recent lecture, the writer Steven Johnson took Gibson’s insight to heart and argued that if we want to know what the networked journalism of the future might be like, we should look now at how the reporting of technology has evolved over the past few decades.

The future is now. See if you can catch up.

The internet has made writing and publishing easy.  So why aren’t the leading writers writing?

Several writers have influenced my views and shaped my own writing through their unique opinions and books.  Old-school journalism provided big name writers with high-profile columns.  This old-school thinking is challenged by the constant stream of dialogue provided by the internet.    Waiting for short columns or years for books makes no sense in the Internet Age.

Two deterrents to blogging come to mind.  First it’s time consuming, and that’s very true.  But looking at the number of established writers who do blog regularly, like Paul Krugman, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and Clive Thompson (hasn’t been updated for a while) blogging can fit into already busy schedules.

Second is if you blog for free, people won’t buy your books.  That is not so true.

Blogs offer writers so much value in keeping their readership informed and loyal.  Blogs can be used to help research and focus group future book ideas, like Chris Anderson did and still does with the Long Tail.  His blog keeps the book relevant years after being published. 

Dr. Henry Jenkins, co-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program wrote on his blog why academics should blog noting how much interest his blog generates in his work and his program at MIT.  His blog helps him inform prospective students, alumni, news media, and the public in a convenient and reliable way that builds up the status of his program and himself.  Jenkins credits the blog as being central to his recent book’s success.  He published outtakes, revisit case histories, and attract international interest.

The BuzzMachine quoted several news media editors who expect new journalist applicants to have blogs saying there’s no excuse not to have one.

Established journalists should be expected just as much as new writers to have blogs.  Having the constant outlet not only holds readers attention, but it constantly reminds readers who’s voices are worth listening to.  I try to post on Prodigeek every day to keep the site fresh and relevant.  Even the most famous of writers have to recognize the growing media landscape, and if you don’t evolve with it, you’ll be supplanted by something new or worse, become forgotten in the clutter and noise.  The New York Times shielded most of its top columnists behind its paywall, allowing dozens of political commentary blogs and websites to provide online readers with the information they craved.  When the New York Times wonders why people keep reading the Huffington Post instead of its own columnists, it’s because the Huffington Post had three years without competition to define and shape online political discourse.

With writing and publishing so easy, the noise can get very loud, even the most commanding voices could get drowned out.  By regularly updating a blog, writers can avoid that, and making me happy.  And that’s what really counts.

Prodigeek has changed the way geeks…just kidding, Prodigeek hasn’t done shit yet.

The internet has, for better or worse, allowed anybody to commutate their thoughts, feelings, and opinions to the world.  At first you needed some web programing skills, but now everybody and their grandmother can share their ideas on the world wide web with a blog.  Blogging existed in some form throughout the late 80s and 90s as sort of personal diaries organized in chronological order.  Sites like Open Diary and LiveJournal expanded the technology to more people, but the tipping point came with the launch of Blogger in 1999 which took all the technical requirements out of blogging, letting people just write what they wanted to write on a simple template.  Whatever the blogging system used, the web is stuffed with geeky knowledge from all the blogs we write.