Whatever...

Here's to my digital pals!

By Lindsey Challis

Are you joining chat rooms left, right and centre? Adding people you think look interesting online, but you've never met? Or, perhaps you're divulging your most intimate thoughts to strangers online because they are your closest friends? Course you're not, that would be ridiculous.

Heralded by some parents and purists as the antithesis to real friendships, social networks have had their fair share of criticism from the old guard.  But does the claim that the likes of Facebook simply creates a large network of 'nobodies', rather than a tight knit group of 'somebodies', have any truth in it at all?

A recent series on BBC Radio 4 looks at the 500 years of friendships and it has found that, like generations before us, the newest ways to form and build friendships, simply nurture and add value to the relationships we already have.  Friendships haven't always been the same, in the 18th century it was unusual to have friends outside your family group and those which were could be considered dangerous.  In the 19th century this changed with smaller families and widespread school enrolment resulting in more people building relationships outside the family group.  With the most recent move online, the BBC suggests that this is just another way of deepening existing friendships and widening your net.

As someone who has recently reconnected with some old school and uni friends, I can't agree with this more.  Social networks are a great way of creating a trail of breadcrumbs back to friendships that perhaps life got in the way of, and of enhancing friendships that are already in full flow.  Long gone are the days where you 'grew apart' from friends.  Generation Y, with social media at the end of its fingertips, isn't going to let that happen (unintentionally, at least).

While social networks have the potential for random relationships and connecting with people you don't know, so too does life.  The scope for strangers to coincidentally become friends isn't any more of a culture in the digital world than the non-digital.  Apart from the fact that there are likely more people within reach, and therefore a greater number of potential relationships to be formed.  And, let's not forget, this all depends on how you want to use social networks – the vast majority of people do so only to solidify existing friendships.

In fact, if we have more friends, know more about our friends, and interact with them more, could the answer actually be that our generation just has more 'somebodies’?

Can you really have an anti-social social networking tool?

By Claire Ayles

The world of social media turned full circle this week with the launch of an app that lets you hide from – rather than interact with – your mates and colleagues.  The developers of this new ‘Cloak’ app told the BBC it allows you to "avoid exes, co-workers, that guy who likes to stop and chat - anyone you'd rather not run into" by giving you real-time information about which of your social media contacts are close to your current location. 

With Facebook now in its second decade, we’ve had a whole ten years of people spilling the beans online about every single little thing they do or think, so it’s perhaps no surprise that we’re beginning to see a wave of innovation designed to improve rather than jeopardise our privacy. But surely Cloak is flawed.

To start off with, it takes information from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, etc. to work out which people are close by.  So if you want to give that annoying bloke or girl a wide berth, you first need to be their online ‘friend’.  Talk about sending out mixed signals! 

Indeed, it seems to me that Cloak’s nifty little map will help the stalker just as much as the person being stalked. After all, if you know someone’s location, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to find them.

Who knows if or how people will use this app, but I’m sure we’ll see a lot of similar innovations spring up over the coming months.  The cynic in me says they’re not really being developed in order to protect your privacy, but to make their inventors rich beyond their wildest dreams.  And with Facebook parting with an eye-watering £11.4bn to get its hands on private-messaging service WhatsApp (Jamaica’s worth less than that), who can blame people for jumping on the privacy bandwagon? 

 

Berners-Lee did not invent the internet

By Mike King

I have to get this off my chest; Tim Berners-Lee didn’t invent the internet.  I don’t know if it is overenthusiastic patriotism or just poor journalism, but this week the British media has been full of stories about how Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet 25 years ago. 

Tim’s been on a media tour talking about the future of the Web and his belief that there needs to be a ‘Magna Carta’ type bill of rights to protect individual freedom and curtail government backed online snooping; all very laudable and interesting.  His media tour has been timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of him inventing the internet, at least that’s what large sections of the British media would have you believe.  But they are wrong.

For the record, the origins of the internet go back to the late 1960s (long before Berners-Lee’s involvement) and a US military funded research network called ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Networks) that was used to connect research teams at universities and research laboratories across the US.  ARPAnet was the first network to use TCP/IP and one of the first to use packet switching, key concepts that define the modern-day internet. 

What Tim Berners-Lee did was develop the first World Wide Web server in 1989, a development that enabled the internet to be used to access and link between websites. He played a lead role in defining HTML (the language behind the creation of web pages) and the technologies that enable the Web to operate (hyperlinks and the like).  So, Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web, which runs on the internet but isn’t the internet itself.  In fact, if the internet hadn’t already existed there would have been no need for the World Wide Web.

In simple terms, the internet is the network, the Web runs on it.  I feel better now.

The Digital Woman Day 2014 – #JFD #DWD

By Morgane Leonard

“I love technology, and I don't think it's something that should divide along gender lines.” Marissa Mayer 

As I was going through the news and checking my twitter feed, I found out that « Digital Woman Day » was to take place on the 7^th March with the theme of “Change the future”. My first thought was “why do they need to dedicate a digital day to women?”. Then, later I read this article about the 40 French women below 40 who will drive the French economy and it all actually made sense. In France, even though it’s a constant work in progress, our government is more and more keen on letting women make decisions: Fleur Pellerin as our Minister of Digital Economy, or Anne Hidalgo and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet running for the mayorship of Paris…. These women are just a small sample of many who undeniably contribute to growing businesses in very original and creative ways.

Former president of the United States Woodrow Wilson declared more than a century ago, “We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this”. Today, we are more than ever aware that we ALL are citizens of the world and we have to make the most of it. That’s what these kinds of events are designed for.

This conference is launched by two French entrepreneurs: Delphine Remy-Boutang (@DelphineRB), founder of The Bureau agency (Paris & London) and Catherine Barba (@cathbarba) founder of several companies since 2003 (Cashstore, Malinea, Leetchi, SoJeans…). This second edition of the Digital Woman Day, which will also take place simultaneously in San Francisco and London, aims at stimulating the French entrepreneurship spirit through inspiring stories, projects and innovations of French business women. This year will be the year of women who’ve made change happen within their companies on a digital level. Three contemporary topics will be addressed during keynotes: Happiness at work, a priority; How to deal with failure and managing it in a positive way?; The future of digital and the evolution of economic models

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present
are certain to miss the future.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The 2014 edition, will address female entrepreneurs and will focus on innovation and how to welcome change in a society where change makes people uncomfortable. Indeed, as Spencer Johnson simply explains it in his motivational business fable Who moved my cheese?, the world is all about “change” and we need to embrace it in the best way possible. That’s what women try to do here. Being among minorities for generations, their voice was never really listened to. Today, women are leaders, entrepreneurs, digital influencers and most of all they are respected for what they do. That’s what it’s all about, respect regardless of one’s gender. There’s always going to be Marilyn Monroes to maintain the dream – had Twitter existed when she was still alive, I bet she’d have mastered it – but today women all over the world have found a way to turn digital into a business ally and spread their messages, defend their rights, and strongly contribute to build and reinforce our international community through social networks and technologies. “You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms.” Marissa Mayer.

 

Message delivery failure?

By Aislinn Collins

Unless you’ve spent the last week under a rock, you’re probably aware that Facebook has purchased Instant Messaging (IM) platform WhatsApp for an almighty $19bn (£11.4) – the largest sum Facebook has, to date, paid to pave the way to world domination acquire another company.  Facebook is clearly making a big push in the mobile market and in fact, following the acquisition, it announced that Facebook Messenger for Windows and Firefox would cease to exist from 3^rd March, indicating just how hard and fast that push is.  This is where WhatsApp comes in – it will provide Facebook with millions of mobile users across the globe – 465m in fact.  When you think about it, WhatsApp really is phenomenal.  It has 320 million daily active users; 19bn messages are sent on the platform each day and 34bn are received.  Not only is this a pretty magnificent feat in only 5 years of existence, its PR and marketing budget is $0, so it’s purely been advertised through word-of-mouth. 

It is clear why Facebook wanted it, why wouldn’t it? But could the move prove to be a turn-off WhatsApps current user-base?  I, for one, am a big WhatsApp advocate – the only people I text now are my parents and even that isn’t really necessary as they both have WhatsApp, it just feels weird.  Facebook and I, however, do not get on terribly well anymore and it has crossed my mind to get rid of it altogether.  So I’m torn.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It appears I am not the only one pondering this conundrum – rival messaging app Telegram signed-up 1 million new users within two days of the announcement being made.  A lot of this will be to do with the fear that Facebook will do the usual and push advertising across the platform in order to monetise it.  But a lot of it will also be to do with contempt for Facebook.  In 2013, while most social networking sites were seeing a pretty healthy increase in users, Facebook saw a 3 percent decline.

Everything that can be done on Facebook can also be done elsewhere, but on separate platforms.  One would assume that in a constantly moving world consumers would want a single platform by which to conduct all of their social networking, but it appears this isn’t the case and users are, in fact, drawn to different networks for their different needs.  If this is the case, then it would probably be best for Facebook to leave WhatsApp well alone and avoid integrating it into the fabric of the social network.  I, for one, wouldn’t be using WhatsApp in quite the same way if it became embedded in Facebook, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. 

Heading to the Brit Awards? Don’t forget to tweet!

By Gemma White

It is the much anticipated Brit Awards this evening, and while the event has certainly caused some controversy in the past – for example, with Adele’s outburst when her acceptance speech was cut short in 2012 – this year has proved to be no different, and it hasn’t even started yet.    

My Twitter feed was bombarded this morning by angry and frustrated journalists who had received an email from the PR company for MasterCard – the Brit Award’s official sponsor – which asked them to agree to a number of conditions in return for tickets to the event.  The email, which has been published in full on the Press Gazette’s website, asked journalists to tweet from both their personal and publishers’ Twitter accounts throughout the duration of the event.  It had even gone to the effort of drafting the tweets that the journalists could post (how kind):

“Pre event – e.g. Really excited to be heading down to @BRITAwards tonight with @MasterCardUK #PricelessSurprises”

Journalists were understandably annoyed by this latest PR blunder, not least because it shows absolutely no understanding of the ethics behind social media campaigns, which not only need to be timely and reactive to what’s going on in the world, but also need to be authentic.  Used in the right way, social media campaigns can create excitement around an issue or event, but used in the wrong way, the buzz they create might not be positive at all.  For MasterCard it was certainly a PR #fail and, indeed, a #PricelessSurprise for the organisers of the Brit Awards.  

We can only hope that the event goes according to plan tonight, sparing itself from any further controversy, although I don’t have my hopes up given its history.  Let’s all sit back, relax and not tweet about it.

 

Game over for Flappy Bird

By Charlotte Martin

I have a number of colleagues to thank for my Candy Crush Saga obsession.  (You know who you are.)  A few months and 130 or so levels later and I’m still well and truly hooked.  I’m certainly not alone in this, much to the delight of its creator – mobile games maker, King – as the enormous and unprecedented success of Candy Crush has reportedly geared the company for an IPO later this year. 

So news of the latest addictive mobile game, Flappy Bird, caught my attention.  However, it was not long before the next big thing in addictive gaming was all over.  The creator of Flappy Bird, Vietnam-based Doug Nguyen – who created his hit game in just two to three days and was making as much as $50,000 a day in advertising revenue – recently decided to withdraw it from Android and iOS app stores.  By which point, Flappy Bird had been downloaded more than 50 million times and was the most popular game of the year so far. 

In an exclusive interview with Forbes, he explained his reasoning:  “It happened to become an addictive product.  I think it has become a problem.  To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird.  It’s gone forever."

Ironic really, given the amount of people who dream of having a eureka moment that will provide the inspiration for the next lucrative app or gaming craze.  But it seems, for this creator, the pressure of responding to fan comments and complaints was ultimately too much, and Mr Dong took to Twitter to announce his decision:  "I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down.  I cannot take this anymore...”  Cue the inevitable backlash from its fans, who tweeted their dismay with hastags #RIPFlappyBird and #SaveFlappyBird – or in the case ofsome, even sent Mr Dong death threats...  Perhaps not the quiet demise he had hoped for, but Flappy Bird certainly has provided another reminder of the addictive power of mobile gaming.

 

Tech investment to solve UK’s productivity puzzle

By Mike King

With the UK economy showing signs of healthy growth, the days of doom and gloom seem to be behind us.  Important indicators such as headline growth (the UK economy is predicted to grow by 2.5% this year); growth in the UK job market (unemployment is now down to 7.1% and will drop below the Bank of England’s 7% threshold in the next few months); and rising UK house prices all point to prosperous times ahead.

However, there has been much in the media about the UK recovery not being as straightforward as these figures suggest and there are some interesting and unusual factors coming into play.  In particular, while employment is up and the job market looks to be very much in recovery, productivity is down. 

In other words, there are more jobs but, on the whole, we are producing less per worker.  This so called ‘productivity puzzle’ is baffling many economists as, in a recovery, the opposite should be happening and productivity should improve. 

Worryingly, these figures indicate that the UK is becoming less competitive internationally, with levels of productivity in the UK now on a par with Italy (a country in recession) and way below those in Germany and France.

One theory is that companies have been employing more people rather than investing in technology and this lack of investment in technology has meant that productivity has fallen.  This is partly because wages have remained relatively low – predictions are that in real terms wages are still at 2004 levels, and will not rise above their 2009 peak until 2019 or 2020.  It is also linked to difficulties companies have had in borrowing money or, for those with money, a tendency to hold on to what cash they do have. 

In the long run, if the economy is to continue to prosper something needs to change and, thankfully, there are early signs that business investment is starting to increase.  Given the position we are in, it is more crucial than ever that this investment is channelled into the right areas.  Making the right technology decisions now is critical to our future prosperity. 

Even the church is online

By Nicole Melzer

Although I am not very religious, I still love to visit old churches and experience the history as I walk around the buildings.  There are a variety of nice buildings in Munich, including the Church of St. Peter or the Cathedral Church of Our Lady - which is well known for its ‘onion’ domes.

The Gothic cathedral and city parish church is better known as “Frauenkirche” where the legendary devil’s footprint appears on the floor in the church entrance.  According to the legend, the architect Jörg von Halsbach made a pact with the devil in order to finance the construction of the church.  He had agreed with the devil not to include windows.

Seeing that the church had in fact been built with stained-glass windows, the devil felt entitled to von Halsbach’s soul.  But, when he got inside, von Halsbach led him to a spot where no windows could be seen and, in anger, the devil stamped his hoof so hard that he left an imprint in the floor of the cathedral.

I love to hear about these creepy old stories.  But in times of modern technology, even demon fighting is becoming digital.  The latest craze is to exorcise demons by using Skype Voice over-IP connection.  The idea came from a Scottsdale reverend Pastor Bob Larson.

Finding out that such a service exists shows me that the church is speeding up its acceptance of modern technology.  Gathering believers via the Internet is not, however, a new phenomena, but it seems to be a growing one.  Today, a rising number of individuals are experiencing church online.  There are various platforms such as Church Online Platform to help launch an online ministry.  The largest one is LifeChurch.tv, an American evangelical multi-site church started in 1996 with campuses including one that meets entirely online.  In 2008 they also developed a Bible application for mobile phones.

I wonder how the church will continue to implement technology to reach its communities in the future?

 

Fraud prevention: the good, the bad and the ugly

By Richard Scarlett

Recently, I experienced a very real instance of life imitating art. For all the years that I have been writing, speaking and strategising over all things cyber security, I became a victim of fraud not once – but twice – during the past fortnight. Aside from the usual stress of having to deal with ‘ongoing investigations’ and delinking debit cards from my Amazon account, the whole experience has demonstrated some pretty worrying differences between how various businesses treat security breaches.

My particular case concerns a big name retailer (not Target) and a high street bank, both of which will remain nameless.  Starting with the bank, I was informed last week that there had been ‘suspicious activity’ on my debit card. These calls always strike fear in my heart – as I usually have to admit that those embarrassingly extravagant indulgences were indeed genuine – but it turned out that it was indeed a case of ‘proper fraud’ this time. Upon inspection, it emerged that my details had been cloned and (while I wish it were me spending hundreds in Milan), I informed the bank that the transaction was indeed illegitimate. The point here is that the bank had the appropriate measures in place to immediately spot the obvious problem with me buying a Snickers in Southwark and then using the same card ten minutes later to buy fine tailoring in Milan, realise that something was up and alert me right away. Having established that the transactions were fraudulent, I was promptly reimbursed and the card stopped. Sorted.

Moving onto the more painful experience, I contacted a certain retailer to report a gift card that had been used fraudulently – suspiciously dropping in value while being sat in my bedside cabinet untouched.  The occurrence of fraud was clear, there was no doubt in my mind that it had been scraped or cloned. However, from my conversations with customer services, you would have thought we were collectively trying to answer the Billion Dollar Question. Despite countless calls over a fortnight, nobody had a clue what happened, where to start with the investigation (hint, CCTV or transaction records?) or how the situation will be resolved. Each call to the head office struck palpable fear and panic in the clueless employees who lack an adequate ‘fraud prevention’ point person. In short it is as if these guys had never heard of fraud or that cyber crime was a far off concept they had neither encountered nor planned for, which is both surprising and worrying.

It is my misfortune that the two incidents happened in such close proximity, but it has only improved the juxtaposition between good IT security and bad IT security. The lesson that I have learned is that there are some organisations – even large retail chains – that are so behind the times when it comes to fraud prevention and cyber security that it is disturbing. For all of the Government speeches and calls to become more ‘cyber street wise’ – not to mention all of the tech PRs like myself relentlessly shouting about the need for next-generation cyber security – you would think that businesses would be leading the way and making it safer for consumers. At the very least, with cyber crime and fraud pretty much inevitable in today’s society, I would expect a much better understanding of the risk and clear policies to deal with consumers who are in fact the victims here.