Social Networking With Strangers

There’s a well-known saying attributed to the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats: “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.”

As social networking has evolved to encompass a significant amount of people’s time on the Internet, divergent approaches to friending and following, sharing publicly and sharing selectively have emerged. Some networks have a solely synchronous relationship, where the bond can be broken unilaterally by either individual, but must be initiated by one and accepted by another, while others are asynchronous, meaning one can follow the content you make available publicly, even if you don’t explicitly pass approval.

The two best-known social networks that primarily rely on a synchronous relationship are Facebook and LinkedIn, preceded by sites like Friendster and MySpace. In September, Facebook introduced a “Subscribe” feature, which is asynchronous, but to be counted as “friend”, the connection must be mutual. LinkedIn connections are also mutual.

Other services, including, most notably, Twitter, but also FriendFeed and Google+, have used asynchronous relationships. For Twitter and FriendFeed, anybody who ran into your content, whether following you directly, or discovering it through search or friend recommendations, could respond to it via a Like, a Retweet, a Comment or Share. The same is true for public posts on Google+, while sharing to limited circles on Google+ reduces the visibility to those you have explicitly selected.

(Disclosure of course: I am on the Product Marketing team at Google+, and joined in August. Comments I make about the service and other social products are done with the best of intentions to be fully accurate.)

That people you don’t explicitly know or have a mutual relationship with can engage on your content can be a surprise, or even unnerving, to some users. While Twitter has seen user following numbers vault into the tens of thousands or even millions for some celebrities, not all have embraced the interest of being followed by the masses, who are often simply people interested in you or your content, not necessarily bad actors. Not blurring the lines of a “friend”, Twitter calls them “followers”, while FriendFeed calls these people “subscribers”, relating a connection between the individual and your content, not necessarily you.

Those used to an asynchronous model are used to connections with strangers, while others used to a synchronous model are often quite verbal about what is perceived as an onrush of random connections. As Google+ has been in the market for about six months, many users have been quite surprised at the high number of people who have them in circles, and I’ve seen some say they block those they don’t know. But as someone who has engaged in both models, the value comes from learning who sees your content, and what that means - especially on a network like Google+, where you can fine tune what content reaches which people.

Who Are These People Following Me? (via SocialStatistics)

For me, the overwhelming majority of people I interact with on social networks are people I met first through the web. I have made tremendous real-life friendships that started out as an online only relationship to start, through reading one another’s blogs, leaving comments, following people on Twitter and Google Reader, or any other myriad of places. Many of the colleagues I have now at Google are people who I knew years prior through FriendFeed, Twitter and their blogs, helping me continue the conversation when we finally met, rather than starting cold.

Not all online relationships turn into real life relationships later, of course, and not everything you share should reach everyone, particularly people you don’t know well.

On Twitter, if someone follows you, and your feed is public, your content is shared with them. The exception is when you may be doing @replies to a person they don’t follow as well. It makes sense to share on Twitter what you assume all your followers would see.

On Facebook, your publicly shared content is available to your friends and those who are subscribers to your public content. To share more selectively, choose one of the lists you have created. Strangers who follow you should not have access to this content, so you are at lower risk of oversharing if you use lists.

On Google+, your publicly shared content is available to all people who have you in circles, anyone who browses your profile or anyone who has a direct link to your content. To share your content without reaching strangers, you have multiple options, including sharing to any individual, any circle, to all your circles, or even extended circles, which reaches all those people you follow and those they follow. You can share as widely or as thinly as you like, and keep your content safe.

The goal is to share the right content with the right people. As people who you may not know add you, they are opting in to your public content, and nothing more. They don’t get any additional access to your contact information, photos or shares, and like Facebook and FriendFeed, you can moderate any comments in your stream, to remove spam or other unwanted feedback.

There’s no downside to new people asking to have access to your public shares, even if you don’t know them yet - and you just might be surprised about the relationships you build in the future. The requirement on your end, on any service, and trust me, I’ve tried just about all of them, is knowing what you are sharing and with whom. It’s our job, and those of other products on the web, to make this simple and easy.

You can connect with me on Google+ by going to http://www.louisplus.com. Howdy, stranger.

Please Track Me and Personalize My Ads

In the tug of war between privacy and personalization, there can sometimes be a visceral reaction to learning that a company to whom you may not have explicitly granted permission to learn details about you actually has that information - even if it's public. One doesn't need to look any further than the much-maligned Spokeo, who in becoming a next-generation people search engine, practically has to defend its business with every other blog post, even as traffic continues to balloon. Now, news that Google is offering a Chrome extension to opt out of advertisers' tracking services has put the issue of personalization and "Do Not Track" back on the front page. Unfortunately, many people are likely to download it, thinking the result will ensure greater privacy, when in actuality all it does is ensure off-target ads with a crappy experience.

In my view, almost all advertising online is very poor. There are two reasons I find most advertising bad. The first is that it is interruptive, and the second is that it is irrelevant.

1. Interruptive ads quite simply get in the way and can prevent you from seeing what it is you want to see, when you want to see it. I despise pre-load pages on news sites and pre-roll before videos, thinking, for example, that watching breaking news on CNN should not be preceded with ads for prescription drugs, or that I want to see a full-screen ad for a network switch provider when trying to read Network Computing. Almost without exception, I don't.

2. Irrelevant ads are all those who fill up your screen with offers you would never accept, products you would never buy, and sheer randomness. The click-throughs for all the non-targeted messages that surround and cram their way into your content have got to be pretty poor. That's why many studies have said an extremely small minority of users are the ones clicking on all those stupid ads. The rest of us have simply turned on ad blindness.

This isn't to say advertising is dead and ineffective. It's not. Great commercials and campaigns are memorable and can stop us in our tracks - be it Apple commercials that are dissected and analyzed fifty ways, or notices from your favorite band that their latest album has gone on sale. The issue is that most of the time, advertisers know very little about you, aside from the content of the page you are currently viewing, and even when demographic data is out there, it's either inaccessible, or only allowed to be used in aggregate.

For the most part, this aggregate data does not accurately reflect you as an individual. Facebook and other social profiles potentially have a wealth of data about you on their networks, but it is not yet being fully utilized at the ad level to bring targeted messages to you, and this has to change. What I am looking for, instead of more head-in-the-sand responses to information gathering is to work with advertisers and give them as much of a headstart in getting to know me as they possibly can. I want my social profiles to be leveraged everywhere, and I beg, plead for somebody to get personalization right when it comes to ads.

By opting out of ad tracking models, all we are guaranteeing is that advertisers will be randomly posting their offers in a hope that you're the one in a million customer they are looking for. But the true win becomes when they can deliver for you a personalized message at the right time in the right context for you as an individual. We should not be running from this type of innovation, but instead embracing it.

For almost two years now, I've been asking ad companies to leverage my social profiles online. I am tired of getting singles ads, or mortgage ads or used car ads or any type of ads that don't match me as an individual. I've complained about low-quality offensive ads on sites just out to make a buck, embraced Twitter advertisements, assuming relevancy, and did the reverse for the poor Facebook ad experience. So whether you're like CNN.com and want to make me the poster child for the seeming end of privacy or not, my stance on this has been consistent for some time. I would be more than eager to put more data into the system to make it a better system, including all the ads everywhere I go.

So instead of embracing these ad blockers and cookie strippers, let's find a way to make the quality of the ads more personal, more relevant, and simply better overall. Please.

Online Phone Number Revelation Prompts Calls, Texts

One of the more amusing byproducts of CNN's article Monday around what they called the "End of Privacy" was that by the author's listing my phone number in the article and prompting readers to "Give him a ring", many people actually did. Lots of people. Starting early morning Monday, and continuing throughout the day and yesterday, I got phone calls and text messages every few minutes. Many people were incredulous that the phone number in the story belonged to a real person who might pick up the phone, while others warned me that I had been listed on the site - fearing I had been the target of an overzealous reporter out to reveal my dirty laundry without my explicitly granted permissions.

While I have had a full meeting schedule this week, and couldn't pick up the phone to talk with every stranger, I did answer every random text message, and listened to the dozens of voice mails I received from all over the country. You'd think most of America had never seen anybody be so brazen as to make themselves easily available to contact. The episode was fun, and further exhibits the bubble that some of us trying to push the envelope of transparency are in when many others continue being extremely cautious.


   Monday Morning Had My Phone Ringing Off the Hook

Many of the calls I got were from numbers listed as "Restricted", where Caller ID was no help. Often, when I answered, people hung up, not sure what to do when a real voice picked up, as they hadn't gotten that far ahead in their mind when they dialed. I had quick debates with people who thought I was crazy, and in many other cases, reassured them that CNN had done nothing wrong, simply aggregating content I (or my wife) had previously chosen to make public.


    People Felt Compelled To Text Me, Curious

Of all the things in the article, from my kids' information to our filtered purchasing history and other personal details, it was the openness of the phone number that had people thinking I was insane. Early texts warned my that CNN had posted my data, and suggested I change my number. Others wanted to let me know, in the event I hadn't already found out. Some people just wanted to send a text and get a response. But when I tried to explain that putting a phone number on the Web wasn't all that different from having one's personal number in the local yellow pages, it didn't always compute - even after years of having my number publicly posted on my blog, in my e-mail signature, and even in the footer of my RSS feed, so anybody can call for any reason they like.


   I Was Warned My Phone Number Was Online

Despite the number being so visible for the better part of five years, it's never really been an issue. Being easily accessible has made it simpler for PR people or company execs to reach out on announcements, or for peers to use me as a sounding board. But with very few exceptions, the choice to be available has been extremely beneficial. (See from Monday: Solving Privacy On the Web: Be Smart, Not Scared)

Not everyone understands this yet, clearly. So when CNN put the number online and said "give him a ring", the combination gave people a level of curiosity that needed to be satiated. Could somebody (me) really be this dumb? Of course. Happy to play the role of the fool if for no other reason than to help people think more about how they approach the big world of the Web.

For more background, you can be sure CNN did not have any intentions to make my life difficult in their story. I participated and provided the reporter with the appropriate links to help flesh out his story. He even did me a favor to clear the opening paragraphs to confirm my approval, and I think the discussion is a great one, even if there are clearly opposing views.

And yes, in case you're curious, I put the phone on vibrate overnight the last few days so my kids didn't wake up. It seemed like a good idea.

Solving Privacy On the Web: Be Smart, Not Scared

When it comes to the amount of data I share about myself and my family on the Web, there's little question that I am at the odd end of the bell curve. It's not a secret what my family structure looks like. My kids' real names are out there to be discovered, as is my birthday, hometown, religion, political preference and much more. You can see real photos of me and my family if you search hard enough, and videos too.

I use Foursquare to share location data. I use Blippy to share purchase history, and I even use OneTrueFan to make my Web visits public. This hasn't been done with a reckless approach to privacy where I have thrown caution to the wind, but instead, has been more calculated. I believe the major trends on the Web encourage sharing, and if I can be the one sharing and not reacting, I am ahead of the game.

See CNN: The Internet and the 'End of Privacy' for their insight into my sharing behavior.

Some would look at what I choose to share and could suggest I feel that privacy is "dead". I don't believe this at all. What I do believe, however, is that intelligent sharing and knowledge of where personal data is distributed can bring value. Rather than take a more conservative approach, locking down what in other generations would be secret, I've opted to own what is shared, and to operate my life as if what I was not sharing explicitly would not be a disaster if it eventually were to be surfaced.

One needs to look no further than Facebook, the world's dominant social network, to see how the company's approach to privacy has changed in the last few years. Once a stalwart site prized for how it protected your content from prying eyes, more content has become public in practically each update. While some have suggested the best solution is to lock down one's profile, I have instead assumed the content will eventually become public and discoverable, shared to advertisers. This was one reason I downloaded an archive and self-hosted it, making the full copy available myself. (See: http://www.louisgray.com/facebook/)

But even with my level of publicness comes limits. I don't think it makes sense to chronicle the minutiae of my day through status updates. I don't muddy my main broadcast channels with location details, shopping updates or entertainment. I don't air embarrassing scenes with my wife or my kids. I don't post content of them that would be unflattering. And I try not to bore people with inane blather.

For me, the major reason I don't share some things is not because I am frightened my content will be used against me. After all, it took a simple e-mail account hack to get me fighting back on that front earlier this summer, and it wasn't tracked to my use of any of these sites. The major reason I don't overshare is because I believe it wouldn't add value and it would be boring to all who saw it.

In a conversation I recently had with a reporter from CNN.com, he asked if there were parts of my life I would be reticent to share if my transparency were further peeled back. The answer was essentially no. The trick is to live your life in a way that if your employer or future spouse were checking in on you, you would have nothing to fear. This doesn't mean you can't have a good time, but you should assume a consequence if your actions were to become public. Manage yourself well and what's discovered shouldn't turn an eye.

We live in a world with many imperfect people, and some really bad ones. That's no question. But I don't think being afraid to share and reducing the amount of personally identifiable information is the right approach. It makes more sense to assume the world is full of great people, cultivate the ones where this is known, and to be smart about what you share, and where you do. Watch the big networks to see if you think they are taking liberties with your data and prepare for the eventuality if they do.

Podcast: On Foursquare, Check-ins & Facebook Privacy

Following up on yesterday's discussion with new Foursquare product manager Siobhan Quinn, North Carolina blogger Wayne Sutton (@waynesutton) and I took time this afternoon to talk about how we see businesses benefiting from location-based services, and Google's role in the market. Additionally, we took a few minutes to talk about Facebook's announced changes to their approach to privacy, updated today in an event chaired by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In short, I said that I while I have always considered my content on Facebook public and open, the company's changes have negatively impacted users and were made worse through their poor rollout and a lack of clear communication. You can hear our comments in full in the below embedded podcast, and catch Wayne's blog here.

SocialWayne.com Podcast #11 - All about Location with @LouisGray by waynesutton

Spokeo Yanks Street Address Searches Over Privacy

As the debate over Facebook's recent moves around privacy (or lack thereof) continues to rage, one social search engine that has always lived on the edge of the rules is backing off a bit in one specific way that it lets people discover you based on your real world data. Spokeo, which I have been watching since 2007 and which has seen tremendous growth of late (which I highlighted last month), said today in a quick blog post that they are removing the ability to search within its database by street address.

One can easily see why the company's users found this particular feature a little unsettling, even if Spokeo is tapping into public records for all the data they have in store. Want to know more about your neighbor, or want to find the social network data of everyone on your street? Spokeo just made it a little harder.

With Spokeo's traffic continuing to boom, reaching more than a million unique visitors in March alone, according to Compete.com, awareness of the site is increasing. I even got a question about Spokeo today at the office - and as is typical, the question was one of unsettled concern, which won't be put at ease much with today's minor tweak.

Following last month's article, Harrison Tang, co-founder of Spokeo, sent me a note saying the company is "committed to build the best people search engine there is," adding, "We truly believe that the definition of a 'new technology' means breaking the norm. We understand that some people will love it, and others will not. All we can do is to try the best we can to accommodate everyone's needs, while remembering that we are on a mission to do something different."

Spokeo certainly is different. While Facebook is changing the way it approaches user data and is trending toward public, Spokeo has never been apologetic about its approach. If you are interested in removing your data from Spokeo, you can start on their privacy page - but as they state, "Spokeo does not originate data or publish user-generated content" and that data is already out there somewhere else.

Like It or Hate It, Facebook Shoves Us Down Slippery Slope

Last week, Facebook made some big announcements at the company's F8 conference, including a few aggressive moves to extend the company's presence to third party Web sites. The plan consisted largely to enable people to "like" content from around the Web, transmitting their downstream activity back to Facebook, and also - garnering an incredible amount of backlash from those opposed to the company's approach to automatically opt users in - they introduced the opportunity for partners to personalize your Web experience based on your profile. Facebook's introductions, as close as they are to exactly what I have been asking for over the last few years, are running contrary to what the company's large user base expected from the network, and the company's methods are presumably violating the public trust. While I do not have plans to delete my profile out of protest, as many have, I do not plan on acting as if any of my content placed on the site is done under the realm of being private. I expect my data, all of it, to be publicly searchable, shareable and indexable by the company and its partners, forever, and will act with that in mind.

In April of 2009, I practically begged for ad companies to "truly leverage our social profiles", specifically Facebook. At the time, I wrote:

" I think the real money is in Facebook offering to team up with all the major advertisers on the Web (Google/Doubleclick included) and letting said advertisers tap into our personal profiles, giving them a cut of the downstream revenue. Facebook has proven they know us, even as their ad team does not. Turn over the right data to ad people who do know what they're doing, and maybe I'll stop being annoyed by ads that have nothing to do with me."

Last week, Facebook opened up my profile to a select few partners, including Pandora, Yelp and Docs.com, a Microsoft front for their Web Office plans. While the ads are still terrible on Facebook (and other sites), presumably these three starter sites are going to be customized just for me. Sure enough, logging into each presents a "personalized" experience, featuring avatars of friends with whom I am connected. In theory, my recommendations on Yelp get better, my musical recommendations from Pandora get better and Docs... well, I have no idea. But two out of three's not bad, right?

Docs.com Uses Facebook to Personalize My Experience

I can't get too riled up about Facebook trying to make the Web a better place through leveraging my social profile. To be honest, I want this.

I want these downstream sites to tap into my personal profile and use the data they find. And I also believe that I am acting in a way online that doesn't have any skeletons in the closet, if all the data becomes public some day. I have seen Facebook work to extend to a more "public" (not open) status, and expect all my content to go with it.

I also can't get too riled up about Facebook's making this move unilaterally, especially given my stance on Buzz, when I thought the company (Google) made some initial mistakes around privacy, but I stuck with it, waiting for them to get the formula right. To accept Google's issues, but throw Facebook to the wolves would accurately appear two-faced.

From what I have seen, the major concerns around Facebook's moves are two-fold. First, there is a concern that they made these "special agreements" with the three mentioned merchants, and that this might be the tip of the iceberg, as they gain more relationships, and extend the ability for these relationships to see more and more of your content. Second, there is a concern, one I believe to be accurate, that the overwhelming majority of Facebook users will not only not understand what has changed, but they also will not know how to opt out of the process. It is clear that getting out of the process requires many steps, many more than it took to get into the process, effectively zero.

The flareup of response around Facebook's move has spawned more feedback from the network's blog, which aims to quell some of the concerns. In a post today, prefaced by "answers to your questions", Facebook said "Our highest priority is to keep and build the trust of the more than 400 million people who use our service every month," adding "None of your information—your name or profile information, what you like, who your friends are, what they have liked, what they recommend—is shared with the sites you visit with a plugin." The company also pointed to a help center, which tries to explain what is shared with whom when. The response wasn't very reassuring, but was better than nothing.

I am reminded of the phrase "first do no harm", which is often incorrectly attributed to the Hippocratic Oath. If Facebook has changed the rules in the middle of the game, and is slowly exposing more customer information than before, after they had an assumption of privacy, then that is wrong. But the question is, has Facebook violated users' trust based on the letter of the law, or the intent of the law? It seems to me that there are those who feel no data from Facebook should ever be shared with third parties without your explicit permission. But there are others, no doubt some at Facebook, who think you should be able to share as much as possible, until reaching the point where somebody could get hurt. So we ask, "where is the harm?" The benefit of a customized music station the borrows from your friends' likes seems fairly innocuous, as does personalized restaurant reviews. But then, what next?

One prominent tech geek I talked to on Friday asked me if I would be comfortable knowing my insurance carrier had shared my medical history with a third party, without giving me the opportunity to decline - suggesting Facebook's moves were the same - as one "trusted" resource passed along personal private data I had not intended to be public. While I understood his point, I did not share the outrage, as I never assumed my data on Facebook would be safe. In contrast to Blippy, Mint.com and others (which I discussed yesterday), I never had an explicit relationship with Facebook whereby I would give them information that, if it leaked, would fall into violation of contract or even legal territory.

As the tumult continues to rage, I think we are in an odd position in the industry, where we are in serious need of independent third party leadership who has our own data protection and privacy in mind. Many of the biggest names in the open standards front or in the privacy game are now working hard at the very companies who have a vested interest in monetizing our data. It's both a great thing and a bad thing, but when a company like Facebook makes moves like they have, it seems like we don't have anyone trustworthy to stand up and say "This is wrong" if it is indeed wrong, and spell it out. That's why on Saturday I posted a quick note to Google Buzz asking the leaders of these companies to find a way to help users without taking potshots at each other. I posted that note on Buzz, rather than this blog, as it was a casual and personal note, and it reached the people I hoped it would. But it also led to some tremendous conversation in the comments about why we need independent voices that have impact, and right now, it might have to be the government's oversight that lays down the law.

We are already seeing U.S. Senators asking for a solution to problems like those posted by Facebook and other companies who have our personally identifiable data and look to be cavalier about sharing it. Charles Schumer is already pushing the FTC for guidelines. But the case, as with most cases involving the Web, innovation and changing culture, is not cut and dry. There is not a "good guy" and a "bad guy" in this case. Take for example, David Recordon's position when he wrote: "Why f8 was good for the open web". I believe David thinks what Facebook is doing the right thing, just as much as I think some prominent Googlers and other techies think that Facebook is doing absolutely the wrong thing. It's a measure of whether you think Facebook is on the path to violating your trust, or if they already have, and depending on your experience, upbringing or personal preference, your results may vary.

As far as I am concerned, Facebook is in a very difficult position in terms of being able to make change and do so without upsetting the apple cart. The company enticed nearly a half-billion users into sharing some of their most private activity into the network, and now the company needs to grow in new ways that will require this data to be mined and shared. The company probably doesn't feel like it has the luxury of asking a percentage of its users for permission to share their data, because they know very few will outright, without convincing. To do so automatically and asking them to work hard to get out of the situation is a much more lucrative and beneficial position for them in terms of revenue and growth. It's very similar to what Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft said when we were at SXSW this March, when he suggested that users and companies' goals were in conflict.

Facebook has such a strong position in the social Web that they can do practically anything and keep users. My family uses Facebook for their networking, photo sharing and commenting. Even if they are vaguely aware of changes, they aren't going to delete their Facebook accounts because Facebook started being aggressive with its partners. And they know this. Facebook has an opportunity now to leverage their social capital and grow to be more of the rest of the Web - even if their users would not have given them permission in advance. Whether you think we are approaching the point of no return, or if we already crossed it, that's the direction and you can't undo it. Just plan on your data online being public - all of it.

Spokeo's E-mail and People Search Sees Skyrocket

Nearly a year after the company's shift away from aggregation into a full-fledged social mining tool and personal details engine, Spokeo has seen traffic and awareness dramatically spike in the last 30 days, following the release of Spokeo 4.0, which expanded the company's digital identities search to include name search, phone search, e-mail search and friends search. As people find their own listings in Spokeo, and are routinely surprised to learn how much data the site has on them - some of which they may not have known was public - word is spreading, leaving the small team "dazed" and "overwhelmed" at the traffic spike, which has made the site among the top 1,000 visited by U.S. Internet surfers, and has frequently seen the term "spokeo" among the top 100 search terms in Google in the last few weeks.

Spokeo, an eight-person strong team based in Pasadena, California, first gained my attention in the fall of 2007 as one of the very first to aggregate data from multiple social networks, with RSS feeds to boot, all in one place. But in the face of strong competition, as well as a general distaste with the world of Web 2.0, the company switched gears a year later, leading to the service they have become now, an occasionally controversial database with tons of personal data - much of it right, and some of it wrong.


In March, Spokeo quietly introduced version 4.0. Only two weeks later, as word of the new service spread virally, the company had to reiterate their promise to keep information private, after what had to be an assault from skeptical Web visitors. They explained how they were aggregating public information, and decried the often-used but not often described approach many have taken, called "privacy by obscurity".

Much of my Spokeo Profile is Correct, and Some Is Wrong

In a blog post on March 18th, they said:

"Many people believe in a concept called "privacy by obscurity", which argues that public information is private if you don’t know how to find it. This concept is flawed, however, because the fact you, yourself don’t know how to find such information does not mean that other people are equally clueless. What Spokeo does is something that many marketing and investigative firms have done for years and years, so this information has been available for quite some time, just without your knowledge!"

In the post, they committed to becoming "the best people search engine ever", and to continue making adjustments based on user feedback.

In my own tests of Spokeo, it absolutely proves solid in terms of discovering people, relationships, online profiles, and even locations, phone numbers and e-mails, if available. It correctly found my wife's maiden name, her place of residence and her brother and mother. It also correctly stated her age and zodiac sign. For me, Spokeo listed an old address, including apartment number, where I lived a decade ago, but otherwise, gained the data from Facebook and other sites to complete a fairly accurate profile. It also works extremely well for tracking down ex-girlfriends' current residences, marital status, and even their families. I'll just ask you to trust me, instead of providing you links on those...

So if you were in the people discovery business officially, or the stalking business informally, Spokeo absolutely has value. While the service had been kicking around for a year in its newest focus, it took version 4.0 to bring a tipping point. Seeing the spike in traffic for search terms related to Spokeo in my own blog traffic, and my younger sister bringing up the service on Facebook, I reached out to co-founder Harrison Tang to get an update. He confirmed tremendous growth and infrastructure expansion to take on the new load.

"I am not sure if our business is booming, but our traffic has definitely shot up in the past month," Harrison wrote me in an e-mail. "It's a pretty crazy experience, especially for a young 8-people team. We are overwhelmed by the response, and honestly, for the first 10 days after this traffic surge happened, we were just sitting there and looked dazed. We've now gathered ourselves, and we are trying our best to tackle each problem one-by-one."

Quantcast Shows Spokeo Spike Amid 4.0's Release

Regardless of what traffic stats engine you prefer, the data shows Spokeo jumping up and to the right. Alexa showed Spokeo outside the top 20,000 Web sites in mid-February, spiking to 746th overall in the United States as of yesterday. Meanwhile, even before the spike, Compete.com showed Spokeo at more than 600,000 unique visitors in February, up from about 100,000 the year before - and Quantcast data shows about 1.2 million visitors over the same period, tripling from January's numbers.

Alexa Also Shows Jump in Spokeo Traffic

The spikes have made the site unresponsive at times (See: Traffic Surge and Spokeo - the 60th Most Popular Search on Google from the Spokeo blog), and the company reported being inundated with e-mails and phone calls about the service late last month. They seem to be fending off all the inquiries from people excited and alarmed about just how much data is available online. (See also: The Truths vs. Myths about Spokeo)

"We (are) taking our time to add in new features to improve the site usability," Harrison said. "The first week was uneventful, and then all of the sudden, our traffic shot up to today's level. The only reason why we couldn't get more traffic is because we limit the number of connections to our servers to make sure they don't crash."

Having first reached the public eye in 2006, Spokeo is a little long in the tooth in terms of how some Web technologies are viewed. But they have shown the ability to adapt their business model to walk away from failure and find something that clearly has gotten incredible attention. They may not be the Valley darling that you see written about with regularity, but they look like they are on the verge of crossing the chasm. They even have a business model. Advanced searches and data discovery are available for monthly or annual fees. The 12-month account I purchased last June is still in effect, so I am looking into you guys.

What do you think I will find? Check it out at http://www.spokeo.com.

Google Buzz to Users: Do You Know What You're Doing?

In the company's continued efforts to reduce the impact rising from the initial confusion around Google Buzz controls and transparency following the social network's initial launch in early February, which saw many claiming privacy breaches or unsavory connections related to the initial autofollow feature, Google will ask all Buzz users to reconfirm their settings tomorrow when they enter Buzz. This move, albeit a minor one, is likely another requirement to get the network's house in order after taking numerous body blows in the press - which have helped to sully Buzz's reputation and cloud its success to date.

The settings, which are already available in the Buzz section of Gmail settings, as highlighted in mid-February, ask you to confirm:

1. Who you are following
2. Those who are following you
3. If the connections can be displayed
4. How many sites you have connected to Buzz

The changes come amid the resurfacing of stories around undesired visibility of connections, labeled as "privacy flaws", and the news that congressional representatives are asking the FTC to investigate Buzz for allegedly exposing private information from Gmail to outsiders.

All the bad news, which hasn't seemed to ebb in the two months since the service debuted, has often unfortunately overshadowed the very capabilities of that network and its activity - and has made it hard for Google, a company with assumed tremendous resources, to compete more directly with Facebook and other social sites. In a note from Google's PR team tonight, they promise the setting confirmation screens will roll out gradually to users throughout the day, and a post summarizing the move will likely appear Monday afternoon. They also promise more updates in the future through a number of Google channels including their own Buzz (of course), and on their YouTube account.

In my opinion, many of the problems have arisen from standard Gmail users who had Buzz enabled, but either ignored the network or were unfamiliar with it. The promise is to show this screen upon entering Buzz, but I believe it would be even more transparent and effective to show this announcement to all Gmail users - regardless of their Buzz history. That's a big step indeed, but one that could go beyond the series of small steps the Buzz team has had to make to step away from the brink. I have sent an e-mail to their PR team to ask if that is planned.

I know who I am connected to and what I am sharing. You can find me on Buzz here: http://www.google.com/profiles/louisgray.

Facebook Sharing Data Webwide Promising, Difficult

Despite its walled-in history, many of Facebook's recent strides have trended toward making what was once private public, and that which was previously unavailable to search engines discoverable. The company, cognizant of the failures experienced by data hoarders of the past, appears to have the desire to change - and will need to do so progressively, as to not upset the apple cart, inviting the fire and brimstone from a mob wronged. This week's tea leaf readings spell out plans for Facebook to share data from your personal profile with third party Web sites you visit, letting them tailor your Web content (and ads) just for you. The result, a much more relevant Web experience, would likely have big benefits for consumers, advertisers, and of course, Facebook, but it sets off the same alarm bells that rang with Beacon and other companies who have changed the rules in the middle of the game. The question is, can Facebook make the leap in such a way that it can still be trusted?

I've talked a lot about my own desire for companies serving ads to leverage the social profiles I have created around the Web, so I don't have to constantly be bombarded with off-topic dreck. (See: I Wish Ad Companies Would Truly Leverage Social Profiles and I Just Marked All Facebook Ads as Offensive. So Should You., both from 2009) So the news from various outlets saying that Facebook is planning this very thing, to share data with third party Web sites, has me nodding in understanding, while at the same time cringing, thanks to a lack of transparency to the process, and the knowledge that many people won't be very excited about the move.

If I were to look at the situation from Facebook's perspective, I can see how the company is at a crossroads, tied to the old rules they've had since inception, but trying to be nimble enough to compete with companies that haven't had the same restrictions. Facebook is sitting on a gold mine of user information and attention data, and advertisers are as keen as ever to find the right targets and deliver relevant advertising or content. Facebook doesn't have the luxury of starting anew and trying to develop a new company that doesn't have the shackles of the past which it does, but has the opportunity of a network with 500 million users. The hardest part is seeing how they can get from Point A to Point B without leaving a bloody trail in the streets.

Shortly after the debate on Google Buzz and its own privacy issues, and my posting of an article where I said I thought the cries were dramatically overblown, I met up with Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, and we talked about this balance of business versus privacy. In his opinion, social networks can never sacrifice their ideals on privacy, not matter the opportunity ahead of them. He told me, in a CinchCast (which blew up halfway through), that Microsoft had the opportunity to turn MSN Messenger and Hotmail into an open network like Buzz, but they chose not to because they determined it would be wrong. Buzz went through this process with Gmail, and they paid for it in the world of PR and trust, even if I thought the reaction was too strong. Facebook has had its struggles before with the same issue. For every public statement by the team's executives about the changing concept of privacy, and users like me who don't mind it at all, there are others who think their trajectory has them at odds with their user base.

I want to trust Facebook in the same way I have trusted Google and other networks with my data. I personally would not object to Facebook's sharing my information with third parties and advertisers, because I am not anti-ads, I am pro-relevancy, and I want to help solve these issues of quality. I think a world where third party sites know their targets better can only lead to more responsible business transactions and more commerce, period. I can see Facebook struggling to get 500 million people on its network to "opt in" to a system that shares their information, and them seeing pushing forward in a brutal way as the only option. It's a rough situation, where the end result would be great and the process in between would be a mess. I want the relevancy, but will everyone else find the cost worth it?

Google Lets Fearmongers and Unbelievers Opt Out of Buzz

Google's expansion and knowledge of the many things you do online collectively has some corners of the Web distrusting every move the Mountain View giant makes - even when they tell you in advance what they are doing, and how it might effect you. The company's moves toward openness and embracing of standards, though lauded by the tech community, haven't converted the confused masses who often at times seem to be blindly following a Pied Piper of fear, making them think the big G is reading your e-mail, sending updates to the NSA, and really cares whether you look at porn sites or not in your Web history. Take this simmering population, sprinkle on an aggressive push toward converting a private network (GMail) to a public one (Buzz), and the overwrought cries of fear and anguish were as predictable as rain. And now, after ten days of being thrown under the bus by head in the sand privacy-shrieking luddites, Google has had to backtrack again, repeatedly apologizing and now, letting you extract Buzz from your GMail like shrapnel from the field of battle.

Practically without exceptions, the hue and cry around Buzz, beyond those of us who embraced the new social network, was made by people who were not impacted by Buzz' move to "auto follow" in the first place. The examples given, from business partners, or potential headhunters, journalists' sources, psychiatrist clients and other possible unwanted revealings, were conjecture based on a complete lack of reality that ignored the fact that the majority of business e-mail is done through Microsoft Exchange, or if on Google's own products, in Apps, which doesn't yet support Buzz. Professionals leveraging free Web e-mail, which Gmail continues to be today, despite being exponentially better than its other free competitors, are getting what they pay for.

You Can Opt Out of Buzz If You Think You'll Get Stung

In comparison, the real potential problems with Buzz's gaining attraction, including assumed noise, and lacking of perfect integration into all networks on Day One, have been outshouted by the same people who squirm every time Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team move more toward public sharing and search discovery, and away from walled gardens. But again, the shrill minority has taken its pound of flesh, as Google's momentum with Buzz has taken body blow after body blow, primarily from an older generation of tech bloggers and business journalists unwilling or undesiring to embrace today's world of active sharing and aggregation.

After mea culpa following mea culpa, the Buzz team has released the option to disable Buzz outright, deleting all your posts, disconnecting your sites and users you are following. You also have the option to hide Buzz from your GMail (which doesn't make it go away, but hides it from you), in the event you suffer from severe distraction and interruption disorder.

You can find the new setting in GMail, where there is a new Buzz tab, letting you also hide those people you are following, either for your own sake, or theirs.

Amidst the din of the pack clustering around the body of Buzz, kicking at it like a group of children at a 6-year-olds' youth soccer match striking at a ball, some folks have seen beyond the tin foil hat nonsense and told people to look forward to something new. Thomas Hawk says to not listen to the naysayers, adding "they're wrong". But as I said Google blinked at the end of 2007, when the Reader team capitulated to the mob, a recalcitrant public is once again getting caught up in a world of old rules and ideals.

Knowing this nonsense would spring up, I asked Google vice president Bradley Horowitz on the option of "public" and automated friending when getting a preview of Buzz the Monday before its launch. His answer is as useful today as it was then:

"One thing that I have learned is that there are people who will always dislike a change you have made, including not making a change," he said. "We don't want to be prescriptive and say everything is public now. Sometimes it is an intimate sharing of an experience with coworkers, family and giving it to the right audience. The world is not going to abandon one form, but we would like people to have the right tools to make decisions for themselves."

Now the decision is truly in your hands. Want out of Buzz? Go to your GMail, click "Settings" and click "Buzz", and you can opt out of what is proving to be a very interesting network. Should you choose to instead embrace innovation, you can find me here: http://www.google.com/profiles/louisgray

Google's Move to Behavior Ad Targeting Should be Excellent for All

Today's Tech Web is ablaze with discussion around Google's announcement that they will be moving more toward behavioral targeted advertising in its offerings, letting advertisers learn more about the users they are messaging to, and, hopefully, letting consumers see advertisements that are more accurate, more targeted, and more interesting. If done well, advertisers will see higher click-through rates, consumers will be less irritated with off-topic ads, and Google will continue to make even more money.

Thanks to some of my more direct comments on advertising, I might be seen as being anti-ads in general, but that's really not the case. As often as I skip commercials and avoid ad banners, that's as much a function of them being completely nonsensical and having nothing to do with me as it is a function of some holy war against the market.

In June of 2008, I posted a comment using GMail/Google Talk to FriendFeed, saying, “I've seen a lot of stories lately around behavioral targeted advertising, and privacy. But in theory, wouldn't you rather see more relevant ads? Isn't this a good thing?"

It was my position that people were (and are) worried about passing data to a central source, and having Big Brother watch their online activity, but that I felt the concerns were overwrought. I have a tendency first, to trust services, and second, to expect the notion of privacy has changed dramatically in a world where we post all our particulars to LinkedIn and Facebook anyway.

At the time, responses ranged from Susan Beebe's direct, "I HATE online ADS . period. They suck big time," to Mark Krynsky's more diplomatic take, when he said, "I think it's a win for both advertisers and users and since I realize that ads are what allow me to receive great free content and services I welcome them."

Ads aren't going away. While my previous comments centered around what people should expect in terms of revenue from ads, or the ads being completely unqualified, today's move by Google signals a giant shift change in terms of what people should expect in this market. They're not the first company to embrace behavioral targeted advertising, but as the biggest, it should have wide ramifications.

I hope that this move means I will see fewer banner ads for dancing monkeys and silhouettes offering me low mortgages, and more ads for tech gear and sports items. I hope that Google's new direction means fewer false guesses of my interests, based on keywords in the content I'm reading, and more correct guesses, based on sites I visit - and trust me, I'm on the Web practically all day long, so the wrongness adds up. I for one welcome our new behavioral advertising overlords.

Five Ways OpenID Can Be Embraced

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Attempting to learn OpenID for the upteenth time, I ended right where I started: Confused. So I reached out to the community for help and received tremendous feedback that helped me better understand what OpenID is about. People left thoughtful, thorough comments on how to actually use OpenID and someone even left step by step directions. That made me realize: OpenID is still irrelevant for the average user.

However, the discussions held on FriendFeed and my personal blog opened an avenue to great (rational) exchanges of ideas, which got me thinking about how OpenID can be relevant to us.

• Verifying needs to be simpler
  Technicalities aside, verifying, signing up, claiming, or whatever the "correct" term is, one thing is clear: The steps need to be simpler. Right now, the process is a nightmare requiring many steps. Users should be able to go to OpenID provider sites, and with one step - two at the most, be able to verify.

• Email providers need to get involved
  With password storage managers the norm, URL log-ons should not be a burden - in theory. And that is the problem: in theory. Realistically, non-technical users are intimidated by using something other than their usernames, e-mails, or handles (nicknames) to log on. Since usernames and handles, without the URL, would be difficult to use as an OpenID log-on, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo et al joining the movement makes perfect sense.

• Partner with consumer sites
  One word: incentive. Imagine if OpenID were to be accepted by Amazon, eBay, PayPal and financial institutions. Why wouldn't everyone use OpenID?

• Update the site and Wiki with clearer instructions. I did not know that being logged into a provider site omits the verification process and log-on using OpenID without verification is possible - did you? That information is not readily available on the OpenID site, why? Or why isn't that on their Wiki? Almost every person with Internet access can go in an edit a Wiki. Will someone go in an update OpenID's Wiki page, please?

• Create a Need
  Either I am missing something or it is still unclear why OpenID is so important - and most of it is due to all the technical jargon that is on the site. OpenID / OAuth, privacy, owning information, decentralizing, centralizing, user-centric, SSL, profiling, identity, and other stuff (for a lack of a better term) - it would be helpful if it were re-written in English anyone can understand.

If OpenID were to implement at least three of the above five, even my mother would be able to understand and use OpenID. Are you a part of the movement? If not, what would make you use OpenID? Or do you even care about OpenID?

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits