Social Not Working

Last night I dreamed that I found a way to reanimate dead people such that they could perform their normal functions as Zombies.  It became rather popular with (American) Football players -- high school and up -- because it allowed them to play-through all injuries. When they got too old to continue their sports careers they became (David Chalmers should be proud of this thought experiment) Life Insurance Salesmen.

Which introduces my real topic:

Social Networking

Because our recent rain, sleet, snow, and dark of night conditions did not interfere with the USPS's delivery of my latest New Yorker -- somewhere else -- I am reduced to catching up on the IEEE Spectrum magazines littered around the house. The one I read before my dream was devoted to Social Networking in many of it's myriad forms, mainly focused on the two powerhouses of Google and Facebook (but no mention of Wikipedia?). After reading from cover to cover I have to admit: I just don't get it...

From the 10K level the two companies have similar business plans:

1. Provide ostensibly free information that people want;
2. Collect data about those people;
3. Sell advertising based upon that data;
4. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I do understand Google's search service since I use it for all kinds of stuff every day. Funny(?) aside: I met Larry Page at SFI once and congratulated him for providing such a valuable service to everyone. He squinted at my name tag and asked, "What's a Reverse Engineer?"

But I don't understand social network services. I've used email for 30 years, run a website for 15 years, and have this very blog for my random thoughts. The number of responses I get is asymptotic to zero. Would doing all that on Facebook change my accessibility? At the price of having to sort through thousands of Farmville activity updates?

I can see the point of a social network when organizing, say, a Revolution. And I do somewhat understand that I could use it find new "friends" -- through I have some trouble even finding old friends -- if I wanted any. I'm not sure it would work any better than the old-fashioned newspaper personals (approximately zero responses) or online-dating (one response, who turned out to be someone I'd gone to college with). But why do I need to tell my "friends" what I ate this morning? (For the record: Envirokids Panda Puffs with added raisins and walnuts and a large Atomic latte.)

To hammer home the information leakage issue, one of the Spectrum articles was about a (very attractive, young, female) doctor who had to define various Trust levels for her "friends" to prevent her inner-circle personal information leaking into the political realm: Her Mother was kept strictly at Level 0... Do I even want to "share" stuff that is that sensitive? Or conversely, since my Mother is dead and the Department of Homeland Security is focused on cupcakes, maybe I don't even care who knows what?

I dunno....


Now, maybe, to the point: Advertising

This whole Internet thing is monetized -- what a lovely coinage, eh? -- by selling targeted advertising. Advertising which attempts to get us to buy things that are, mostly, made elsewhere, and to pay for them with credit that is, mostly, backed by the full faith of the US Government's printing presses. Faith that is being purchased by the same folks who are making the things in the first place. This process seems to be consuming the best and brightest 1% of our young engineers and scientists, who are rewarded with free gourmet food (sour-grapes-contrast with my waning experience at The Company).

Until recently I have been a Very Bad Interzen. I never bothered to look at all those Ads cluttering up my online content. But I read an article about the New Thing being targeted campaigns, rather than just targeted products. For example, they figure out that you respond to bargains and then they offer you coupons. So I started looking at the ads to see what they know about me.

Thank God they were not so sophisticated years ago when I spent a month trolling for ball screw nuts in order to rebuild my milling machine -- I can't even think about the advertising that would generate. But now, on every page, I have an ad for the Ryobi Lithium power tool batteries that I looked up a week ago -- and rejected because, at 4x the price of the old Nicads, I could find no explicit indication, anywhere, that they are compatible or last any longer.

Thus, so far, they have not discerned my preferred campaign style...

ARE YOU LISTENING GOOGLE?

...I respond to ads that tell me:

• What something is;
• What it does;
• How well it works;
• How long it lasts.

And please stop sending email asking me to join the latest wunderkind networking site.