Kasi-Blog

Optimists:

• Global Social Networks are growing.
• Younger Consumers are more receptive to advertising on user-generated content sites.
• Widgets make Facebook a great platform.
• Recipe for Succesful Facebook Apps

Pessimists:

• Social Networks won’t work for business.
• Social Ads won’t work.
• In order to make money, Facebook-Apps would need more users than currently exist on Facebook.
• Facebook-Apps are for children.

Neutral:

• The biggest and most open network wins.
• Pros and Cons of Opening a Social Network
• Facebook needs to buy content from other user-generated platforms.
• Long-Tail distribution of Facebook-Apps

This is is just a short list of articles that I find very illuminating on the whole Facebook-Controversy. More articles are going to be added to this list.

Steve Rubel points to this graph and seems to say: does this feel like a bubble, all this talk about Web 2.0? Maybe it just reflects the fact that HR departments realize that this is important?

The Judge Business School seems to be a large playground. Today’s “toddlers” came from Silicon Valley, ready to meet start-ups, entrepreneurs, students and an interested crowd.

Amicably, as Americans are, the conference was very entertaining and a good opportunity to learn about what is “Hot” at the Silicon Valley: Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, User-Generated-Media, Facebook, Data Privacy, Consumer-Media-Applications, Facebook. Oh, and did I mention that we talked about Facebook a lot?

The experts were good. Kara Swisher’s dry humour about how much she is annoyed by Facebook or Reid Hoffman (from LinkedIn) witty about the seven deadly sins working in Social Networks stick to my memory.

Facebook deserves the buzz. But discussions only scratched the surface. It seems to me that real hardcore-information is sometimes hard to get and the experts are reluctant to give it away. How to avoid the problems which scaling a social network involves? How to best organize the user-support? Which features are sticky? What are the essential characteristics of succesful Social Networks? Innovative new ideas? A viral user-base? An appealing design? Or is the random factor very important? How important is data-security? Hans-Peter Brondmo made an interesting remark that we need to look at user-data as an asset that is individually owned, which should be protected from theft but which also could be sold if the user consents to it. Would the users care more about their data if they really own it?

The answer to these questions are more likely to help decide whether there is a Web 2.0 bubble. The question is not whether technology stock prices are too high or companies are bought for incredible sums. The question is not whether there are too many start-ups or too much Venture Capitalists running with the herd.

The last bubble burst because everybody had wrong expectations about the behaviour of people on the Internet. The expectation was that by 2005 everything would be done on the Internet. The question is really: has the behaviour changed enough to change the way money is earned on the Internet?

Great Cartoons from Social Signal, via Web Jungle and One Degree.

Despites Microsoft involvement with Facebook, what would happen if Google and Facebook merge? Like in the screenshot of Google in 2084, can you then literally search your brain, your friends’ private life or conversations of your former colleagues?

It is possible to link Google and Facebook. With this Facebook-Application it is possible to search Google directly. Another (malfunct) Widget displays your Facebook profile on IGoogle. Yet another (malfunct) application links Orkut and Facebook.

In reference to my previous discussion of Facebook Advertisment, I think that Facebook-Pages might be a good possiblity to spread information for local public institutions, such as libraries.

Facebook would certainly be a great tool to search for books in my library, renew my loans, share recommendations about books and discuss the class material with my classmates. Some libraries have created a profile on Facebook. Sarah Glassmeyer writes:

A couple of British libraries decided to start into the Facebook Pages. As of 9:30am EST (on November 14th), there are 70 Library Facebook Pages. There are 36 university libraries, 30 public libraries, 2 private libraries, 1 corporate and 1 virtual.

Several discussion groups have emerged around this topic: FacebookAppsforLibraries and LibAds(sm) discuss SocialAd technology to retrieve local library information.

The Library 2.0 Interest Group discusses how Social Networks can help libraries to bridge the Social Space and the Academic Space (see diagram on the left). Gerry McKiernan’s blog reports about the use of online social networking sites for library-related programs or services and is a great resource for developments in this field.

Does Online-Marketing work on Social Networks?

Can Social Networks earn enough money through online marketing to justify their investments? The pessimist answer to this question is given by today’s article in the Financial Time called “Publicis warns of web bubble”. Journalist Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson quotes Maurice Lévy, CEO of the marketing company Publicis:

“Far too many people are building plans based on advertising and they may well be disappointed because there is not enough money for everyone. [...] It’s exactly the same situation as we saw at the end of the 1990s, when everyone thought that because he had a website he’d get the valuation. Now everyone building a Web 2.0 operation believes he will receive the advertising. [...] I’m not sure we’ve found the right way of communicating with that audience.”

The general argument is twofold: the market for online-marketing is too small compared to the evaluations of companies like Facebook and Social Networks are not suited for online-marketing.

Social networks can not be compared to sites like Ebay or Amazon. Social networks are primarily used for exchanging social information and staying touch, not for buying and selling items. Online Marketing is a nuisance to Facebook users, but does not disturb on Ebay or Amazon.

Facebooks Marketing Mechanisms

Companies might use social networks for totally different reasons then marketing. They can use social networks for market research and getting an idea of what their target group is concerned about (trend scouting). They can test new products and establish feedback channels. They can use social networks for recruiting or for their internal social networks.

Facebook has six mechanisms to co-operate with businesses:

• Socialads: These are classical ads placed in the left margin of the site or as horizontal bar in the News Feed for the users. The cost very little – the minimum charge is 5 US-Dollars.
  According to Brad Lindner, big brand names such as Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Sony Pictures, and Verizon Wireless have entered advertising deals with Facebook.
• Pages: Similar to a user-page, advertisers can create a page of their own that allows users to write on the advertiser’s wall and send messages.
• Insights: Like Google-Analytics, Facebook offers a tool for the advertisers to see the impact of their campaign. It is a free service for users of Social Ads and Pages.
• Applications: Applications are small programs that users can install on their profiles. They allow specific interactions between users, such as sharing videos or sending visual messages. Other applications allow to play games with other users, compare users with each other or rank them.
• Polls: Advertisers can create surveys in which users can participate. The results from the surveys can be seen while users are filling them out.

Are Beacons Illegal?

The sixth piece of Facebooks Advertising Strategy are Beacons: Beacons can be used in combinations of pages and ads.

Beacons track what people do on the Internet while being logged in to Facebook. When I read an article in the New York Times, the New York Times will send a short notice to my Facebook profile which then will be displayed to my Facebook friends (or whoever can read my feed according to my privacy settings). I need to be logged into Facebook.

Allfacebook and Techcrunch had released plans of this earlier this week:

From what we hear, third parties supply this data to Facebook without compensation; what they get in return is a link back in the News Feed (which is effectively a free ad). Facebook, of course, gets incredibly valuable data about the user. This data can be used to serve targeted (highly, highly targeted) ads back to them in various other places on Facebook and elsewhere.

Fred Stutzman explains how this works:

Any time you load [a] Beacon-enabled page, Facebook knows exactly what you are looking at. In essence, this setup is sending your clickstream and path data to Facebook, precisely correlated to your Facebook identity.

Adam Ostrows Poll shows that a large majority of people find this intrusion into their privacy very dangerous. William McGeveran argues that this part of Facebook ads might even be illegal:

It may break the law. [...] Privacy law, as it should, treats advertising uses differently from other uses. One of the four common-law privacy torts forbids “appropriation.” Specifically: “One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name of likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for an invasion of his privacy.” [...] Several states including New York and California have statutory provisions that are similar. New York’s well-known statute creates both a misdemeanor and a civil cause of action for “[a]ny person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained.”

In easier words: it is illegal to use somebody’s name and picture to advertise a product without his consent. But this is exactly what happens with the Beacon feature. As Sachin Balagopalan writes:

So when a member becomes a fan of say Coke all his/her friends will see the announcement in their news feed – something like “Joe is a fan of diet Coke”. Where it gets interesting is Coke can pay to place their logo and a caption underneath every news feed item that references diet Coke. In addition to that Joe’s friends will see his image and text stating his likeness towards diet coke on the banner ads throughout the site.

The general legal discussion is quite fascinating, however it is unclear how users will react. In response to these concerns, William Tildesley created a Facebook group and Om Malik has questioned a representative from Facebook about how users can avoid being tracked, but the answer is far from satisfying. Natt Weiner explains how to block the Beacon mechanism when using Firefox Mozilla.

I think that only experienced users which care about their data privacy issue would take these steps. I agree with Sohaib Thiab:

With more and more sites eventually use Facebook Beacon, our browsing, purchasing and general internet habits will be recorded and distributed in our news feeds. [...] This partially answers the questions everyone has been asking, why is Facebook worth that much (15 billion)? Consumer data that Facebook is gathering is and will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if not more.

Conclusion

The reason why Facebook is an interesting marketing platform has nothing to do with the sales on its platforms. It is far more valuable as strengthening the link between the target group and the advertisement campaign.

This is Jörg Reschke. I met him first some eight years ago in the German School Student Organisation. He came from Schleswig-Holstein and he had lots of very good ideas. He already worked in the Youth Press in Schleswig-Holstein, organized Youth Media Camps.

He worked in Bosnia for a School Projekt called Schüler Helfen Leben. Then he became one of the most prominent activist in the NGO Servicestelle Jugendbeteiligung – a coordinating agency for youth participation.

While surfing around on the Internet, I stumbled across his name and learned that he had written a book. The title is “Coaching in the Context of Education and School Development”.

He offers to download the book for free. So I had a quick glance today and was absolutely astonished! This book is not only a good text for schools, easy written. It is actually quite a good set of recommendations for coaching in any kind of situation, be it consultancy or mediation. Joerg, great work!

Rana Sobhany reports that a Facebook-Application called “Total Sports Fan” was hacked, causing unwanted posts in a forum on Facebook under the name of users which have installed this application.

The Facebook-applications have been under critique for their possibility of infringing data security. Liam Tung and Harald Weiss from Silicon.de in an article from July 2007, quote Ryan Olson from Verisign saying that the applications can be used to spread damaging code.

Joshua Kamper from Fracebookobserver writes:

Concerns raised by group members in the other discussion topics, that the problem is not with the application and is just a Facebook flaw. As one of the members rightly points out “no virus, someone figured out how to edit posts other people made, nothing wrong with the app, just the discussion board”.

In Marios Blog I found this remark about the Social Network “Iwiw” created by Szabó Márton and Seprenyi Péter:

The page has 2.6 million users, even though only 3.5 million Hungarians have Internet.

This is a market penetration of 75%. [...] In July 2006, the site had 1 million users, it grew by 50% in six months and another 70% in the last ten month. Last year the social network was bought for 5 Million US-$ by Magyar Telekom (subsidiary of the German Telecom).

Neil writes that iWiW stands for International Who is Who:

With 1.6 million members out of a population of 10 million, if you’re a young, social and computer-literate Hungarian, you’re almost certainly a member.

It was perhaps this opportunity to have almost universal access to the country’s most sought-after consumers that prompted T-Online, a part of Deutsche Telekom, to pay almost €4m for iWiW in April 2006.

The deal made the founders, led by Zsolt Várady, pretty well-off overnight – although they must now be wondering if they could have held out for more, given the speed with which T-Online has increased the operation’s revenue from online advertising.

“We started the network in 2002. At that time it had no name; it was just an IP address where friends could connect. We had no cash, we used old computers and we worked from home,” says Márton Szabó, another founder, who is now managing director of iWiW.

Rather than being a scheme aimed at making millions, iWiW owes its existence to a “sociometric survey” of people’s social habits, which revealed that the internet could improve social dynamics. As membership snowballed to 20,000 in the first six months, the founders brought in a local software firm.

[...]

In 2005 iWiW turned over just €20,000 and made no profit. Under T-Online it turned over nearly €900,000 revenue and made a profit, the vastly increased revenue stream owing everything to a strictly commercial approach to web advertising adopted by T-Online.

Thanks to Laberena for the link.

The American President offers a tour through his White House Office, the so-called Oval Office. He seems to be suffering from amnesia while talking about his office.

Clearly, he prepared himself by memorizing certain phrases and facts about his office. But he seems to derail from his train of thought quite easily and only repeating what he just said gets him back on track.

An Example:

First thing I see in the morning shining through this big windows. They are, uh, magnificent. They let in the sun light.

Then he talks about his paintings:

The other paintings on the wall are from Texas. This a Onderdonk. A man named Julian Onderdonk painted these paitings. A man named Julian Onderdonk was the artist.

About another painting:

This also is a Texan painting, by a named Tom Lea. A personal friend of Laura and mine. He passed away unfortunately this year. This painting here is by Tom Lea, he was a personal friend of Laura and mine.

But his best quote is:

In this office you need to have a great sense of humour, otherwise it makes the day awfully long and the night awfully short.

See also the comments on Bush’s Conducting a Meeting by Alex Tabarrok.

Prof. Angus Maddison is a retired scholar of Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, but he is far from passive. He recently published a book called “Contours of World Economy 1-2030 AD“.

Economic theory can be sometimes a little bit abstract. If you want to know what really happened in Economic history, read Prof. Maddisons book!

He is one of the few scholars who write as clear as a sharp knife. He makes his points in the most precise matter. does not distract his readers by referencing to theoretical camps in Economics or Political Science.

The book is split in three parts: the first one deals with various regions of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa), their economic development since 1 AD, and their economic relations. If you want to have a precise summary of world history and major trends, then each chapter can be useful starting point.

He also presents a multitude of data on income, population growth, and GDP. For me personally the period between the end of the West-Roman-Empire in middle of the first millenium and renaissance in the middle of the 15th century was most interesting to read. Maddison covers the political events taking place in the Middle-East and in Africa during that time.

The second part of his book discusses the history of Macro-Measurement. It is quite interesting to see how the development of macro-economic measurement coincided with the emergence of nation-states and large-scale civil administration.

The third part features an outlook of the World Economy in 2030. He predicts that by 2018, China will become the world’s biggest economy, India will be third. Maddison covers in detail is the impact on Climate Change on Economic Growth.

For a glimpse into the future of our planet, the book is a fascinating reading.

Truth, government and debate

“From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the demon of Socrates affords a memorable instance of how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud.”

Does this quote describe the ongoing detachment of the Bush-Administration from the rational center of American Foreign Policy?

The quote is used by George Kennan to describe the Soviet Government in the famous article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct“, published in 1947 in the “Foreign Policy”-Journal. Kenan was an influential American politician who architected the American Containment Strategy after WWII. According to this strategy, open confrontation with the Soviet Union should be replaced with isolating the Soviet Union and fighting their influence in other states.

In his article, Kennan advances the interesting argument that the Soviet Government claims to be the sole owner of truth in order to strengthen its domestic power:

The Soviet concept of power, which permits no focal points of organization outside the Party itself, requires that the Party leadership remain in theory the sole repository of truth. For if truth were to be found elsewhere, there would be justification for its expression in organized activity.

Therefore normal relations with the Soviet Union was out of question. A condensed argument would be: Democracies should not negotiate with governments that don’t allow a public debate within their domain. A corollary of this argument is: Only authoritarian regimes suppress a public debate, democracies don’t.

Pakistan and Burma, and to some extent Russia and Iran could be named to support this argument.

The Iran-Debate in the USA and Hitler comparisons

There is, however, some evidence that the public debate in the USA is moving into the paradigm of another war with Iran. Such a paradigm would render a rational debate about the pros and cons difficult to sustain – the rational center would once again be silenced.

In his book “Containment – Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror“, Ian Shapiro explains how the Bush-doctrine in 2003 succesfully advanced the idea that any opposition to its plans is un-american and un-patriotic.

Since 2003, there was no neutrality in the War on Terror, opposition to the President was political suicide, and French fries became Freedom fries. Doubts, diplomacy, and negotiation were no longer part of the toolkit of American Foreign Policy. Read on, my friend »

Written by Pete Foggitt and Thomas Hewitt Jones in 2006, who created a group on Facebook to push their record sales. Their ingenious songs features such lines such as:

Poke me night or day whether you are straight or gay.

Classes are very intense and I spend a lot of time in my College library and the department library, but I am really happy that I came to Cambridge. What I really like about my Master Programme is that it is exactly the kind of mixture between applied research, theoretics, economics, law and politics.

I take four classes, and for all of them I have to write an essay this term. The first two essays are due next Friday and the second set two weeks later. So currently I spend a lot of time researching and reading. I am taking International Law, International Political Economy, International Economics and US Foreign Policy. They consist each of a 1-hour-lecture and a 90-minutes-seminar.

International Law

International Law is taught by Dr. Gehring, a German law professor who has taught in Oxford and Yale. He is quite young and one day he surprised us all by taking his two-year-old son into his class.

International Law is a big fiction. Without a sovereign legislator and enforcement agency, international law is sometimes contradictory. Despite its incoherence, the legal fiction of International Law has achieved a lot to encourage peaceful dispute settlements between states. Administrations of states have to uphold the fiction of sovereign domestic law, and because many law students enter public service, admitting that International Law is a sophisticated power play doesn’t come easy.

For the seminars, I have to prepare three to four cases and then discuss them in the seminars. Some of the other students are quite vocal in expressing their opinions and have a good background knowledge in law, which sometimes derails the discussions a little bit off-topic.

For the Law class, I have to write an essay related to State and Internet:

Cybernauts have created a virtual state: the Internet Republic. The IR has members in the whole world who communicate via the internet, a clear and democratic system of governance, a flag and other state symbols. The L. A. Nerd is elected as president and proposes that IR applies for United Nation membership. An island in the Caribbean is bought and sovereignty over it ceased to the IR, this is also the place where IR has its main servers. Several states with strong internet commercial interest have signalled that they are prepared to recognise IR as a sovereign state. Advise the Secretary General on IR’s UN membership potential.

International Economics

This class is taught by Michael Kuczynski and John Forsyth. We have a few students which have a very strong economic background, and a few which have only very little. This makes the class very interesting, because both Mr. Kuczynski and Mr. Forsyth are very good at explaining very complex economic matter in simple language. When I am in their classes, I often have these “Aha”-moments.

So far the lectures and the seminars focused on macro-economic performance and trade in all its aspect. The topic of my essay will probably relate to my Master-Thesis, therefore I am currently reading books about Financial Markets and their Financial Regulations. Doesn’t sound as interesting at first glance, I know. Yet researching on whether governments or central banks or markets run this world is a little bit like thinking in conspiracies – which is great fun, if you have to work empirically as well.

International Political Economy

Dr. Amrita Narlikar teaches the class in IPE.

We covered the World Trade Organisation in the last three weeks and together with the International Economics, I feel I have now a much better understanding of how the trade regime works. The course is really the best compliment to the theoretical treatment in the IE-classes.

Dr. Narlikar is very enthusiastic in class and in the seminars encourages a vively discussions, but also is tough on keeping the discussion closely related to the theme of the seminar. I will probably write my essay about something related to the World Trade Organisation, but I am still researching.

US Foreign Policy

The fourth class is US Foreign Policy, by Dr. Stefan Halper and Dr. John Thompson. It combines learning about the domestic politics in the US and the political history in key regions, such as the Middle East.

Currently in the lectures we focus on the Post-WWI-Period and the impact of Woodrow-Wilson, in the seminars we focus on the Post-WWII-era.

Interestingly, the basic features of Post-War-Policy were always planned during Wars, therefore it is interesting to think about what Post-War-Policy emerges if the Iraq-War ever comes to an end – or whether George W. Bush is already planning about the war in Iran.

Given that Dr. Halper has been working in the White House under several presidents, I sometimes catch myself thinking whether the scholar Halper and the politician Halper would have different views on some of the issues that we discuss.

International Security and History of Political Thought

I was thinking for a long time whether I should also choose some more theoretical classes.

I have to admit that I have very little knowledge about political science theories compared to some of my classmates. I chose to attend the lectures of two classes “just for fun”. One is International Security by Dr. Barkawi, the other one is History of Political Thought by Prof. Jonathan Haslam.

What makes both interesting is that they put International Relations into a larger historic frame – and both have no fear to draw conclusions for the present.