I’m enjoying the beta of Google+ that a friend, and Google employee, recently invited me to. I am usually more quick to check out new stuff than hesitant to get freaked out by privacy policies. But my own personal experiences with Google have left me more concerned with Google than with Facebook from a privacy perspective. Primarily because of the vast trove of information Google already has access to. I just don’t think they should have access to so much.

My first real heart-jump was when I bought a Google-powered Android phone and ‘registered’ it with my gmail address. All of a sudden all my voicemails suddenly got routed to Google Voice, as opposed to my usual wireless carrier voicemail. And I wasn’t given a choice in the matter, or able to undo it. My conversation with customer service went something like this “Oh, you entered your gmail address, yeah, all your voicemail goes to Google now, you can’t change it.” I also realized that since I used Google Chrome as my web browser(which I login into with my Gmail address so that it remembers my passwords), now it was possible to link all of my online web browsing activity to my phone usage, including locations/movements around the world, and potentially to my email usage and now to any personal information I give to Google +. This is a lot!  Too much, I think.

I couple these concerns with recent reports that Google (and Apple) keep a log of all of our locations via our cell phones, indefinitely:

• http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/22/tech/cnettechnews/main20056472.shtml

Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s statement that if you don’t want other people to know about what you do online, then you shouldn’t do it online:

• http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

So what? Well, Facebook and Google both make nearly all of their money from online advertising. And when I say nearly all, I mean this is pretty much where all of their revenue is derived from. Google doesn’t exactly rake it in on their phone business. Online/mobile advertising has been my vocation for the past 12 years and I’m keenly aware, as Google is, that the more you know about a person, the better you can deliver that person relevant advertising. The more relevant your advertising, the more advertising money is going to come your way because you’ve done a good job of getting your client’s message in front of their target consumer. Google is very good at this. One might argue that they are the absolute best at delivering advertising to consumers and getting them to respond. That is why in the midst of a recession, they are hiring 4,000+ people in a single year, including no less than 6 other close friends of mine have gone to work for the Goog in the past 6 months. Google is ‘crushing it’ with their online advertising business.

It strikes me that Google+ is not just another fun Google product, but an attempt to head off the massive advantage that Facebook has gained with their treasure trove of personal information on 500 Million + users. Note that likewise, Facebook, is trying to head off Google’s advantage on having access to internet browsing habits by offering websites ‘like’ buttons and other widgets to put up on their sites, like ‘login into this website with facebook’ so that Facebook can also collect information on your browsing habits outside of Facebook. These widgets turn Facebook into a much bigger ‘website’, where they can ‘see’ you on all the sites where they have their hooks. Keep in mind that Facebook recently passed online advertising behemoth, Yahoo, in total advertising revenue.

The stages are set: Facebook and Google are now doing battle for online advertising dollars as the two dominant forces in selling and delivering online advertising. “Do no evil” aside, these two companies are online advertising companies first and foremost and our own personal view of what crosses the line in terms of privacy is being pushed and challenged by them because they have a revenue-driven incentive to challenge it.

I am not a crazy privacy advocate, I placed the very first ad on a social media site years ago, when I struck a deal with Jonathan Abrams at Friendster. Back then, advertising on social media used to be a bad word, now every company’s brand manager is scrambling to understand it and to spend there. This desire to ‘get in’ to social media advertising has been driven by the huge amount of personal information we’ve all become accustomed to sharing with companies in exchange for fun online services, primarily with Facebook.

Will I use Google+ ?, definitely! Especially if it’s fun and my friends are using it. But I returned my Google/Android phone because I felt creeped out by the “you have been assimilated into the Borg” experience, and I’d frankly prefer it if Facebook continued to dominate social media. At least that way I can keep some of my personal information with three distinct and independent advertising companies: my location logs are with Apple, my online browsing habits are with Google, and my social interactions and personal info might stay independently with Facebook.

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I was 11 years old when I got my first 1200-baud modem. Shortly after realizing what a computer geek I had become, my parents asked for my opinion, “Scotty, do you think it’s worthwhile to get a CD-ROM for our computer?” “Naw,” I said, “That CD thing is just going to be a big fad, like those tape-backup drives.” That was 1988 and yes, every computer still has a CD-ROM as a critical part of its operation. I was similarly prescient when blogs and RSS technology first came on the scene. By then, I was a moderately-respected online media expert and my comment that blogs were nothing more than “…easy to update homepages and would never represent a valuable advertising opportunity.” Were thankfully never recorded, *ahem*, until now.

Now this RSS thing has really taken off. I was wise enough to poo-poo it only to myself. And sure enough, my life has become as inextricably linked with RSS feeds as it is with CD-ROM’S and making blogs into excellent advertising opportunities.  My particular set of tubes (feeds) are all interwoven and networked and run both directions. I can text message an update to twitter from my cell phone, Twitter then updates my facebook status, and the twitter feed you see in the sidebar of this blog, the mytwitter on my iGoogle homepage and of course the twitter app, back on my cell phone. It updates all my friends apps and their RSS feeds and then it displays a peanut butter and jelly sandwich pieced together from my Flickr photo feed. Okay, not really, but it sure distributes a one-liner in a lot of different places in a lot of different ways.

RSS stands for really-simple-syndication and is literally turning how people read and digest news on its head. Two companies, Feedburner and Pheedo have managed to make a business out of RSS feeds but it still feels like early days, especially for the twitters of the world whose user base almost assuredly does not want their one-liners broken up by even a one-word advertisement. Good thing for RSS it was a technology I thought little of it when it first came out, which absolutely ensures its success.

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From, Stuff White People Like:

“The number one reason why white people like not having a TV is so that they can tell you that they don’t have a TV…though these people often fill their time by talking with other friends who don’t watch TV about how they don’t watch TV, looking at leaves, cooking, reading books about left wing politics, and going to concerts/protests/poetry slams.”

I was at a BBQ last night listening to a friend relate how she’s just finished watching every episode of Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and is working her way through the 1st season of Heroes. But then finished up her enthusiam for Heroes (which I share) by mentioning that she doesn’t own a TV (I gave her props, “Oh that’s great…me either!”)…so how does she consume her favorite media? She watches it all on her laptop (via iTunes).

A-ha! How fantastic is it to have technology provide us with an ability to continue to claim not owning a television but still reap all the benefits of keeping up on your favorite shows?! Brilliant. Only drawback? It’s a small screen…so I rig my lappy up to a projector…that way it’s still not technically a TV and I retain my non-TV-owning bragging rights.

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In Buddhism, the term “Samvega” means, a sense of urgency or passion for spiritual or life practice coming from knowing the preciousness of life and the constant nearness of death.

With a powerful sense of Samvega, I’ve decided to join the Obama campaign. I’ve always followed politics closely, but I’ve never been inspired to get involved with a political candidate before. While I write this, there are over 700 wildfires burning in Northern California because of a (mild) drought, a war rages in Iraq while oil companies and commodities traders make record profits on $5/gallon gasoline. Granted, my life, other than the smell of smoke in the air, is relatively unaffected. I can afford the gas…but I wonder how the yard-maintenance man can. I know that it is on his back that those oil executives and futures traders just had a great 2nd quarter.

I believe that climate change is at hand.  That economic and political forces have become grossly corrupt such that the poor are getting much more hopelessly poor while the rich shore up their wealth in a world on the brink of dramatic and alarming change.  I know first-hand how horribly wrong our private health insurance system has become. Health insurance companies pay their employees bonuses to reject claims and I’ve personally had claims for medication, and time in the hospital rejected by Blue Cross for bogus reasons. But oddly, it was the news I heard at an upscale San Francisco restaurant that struck me: I learned that salmon fishing has been stopped for the summer because the fish have all but disappeared from the pacific coast. No one really knows why, but it’s likely overfishing, runoff from logging and pollution of the waterways and ocean.

As Americans, I see us losing touch with the values that made us great and see us cowering in fear while economic forces weaken our dollar, force home foreclosures and make us hopelessly less relevant on the world stage. Our best hope for drastic and lasting change is electing Barack Obama as President. I believe that a President Obama, with a democratically-controlled congress will help our country drastically alter course, develop a new era of world leadership and re-establish goodwill and community contribution as 21st century American values.

Yes we can.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqTItdUlJPk

“Going Postal” has never been so well illustrated than in the recent “Insane Office Worker” video that’s making the rounds on YouTube. I found the official explanation for the event in a Russian newspaper and translated it using Google translator, viewable here. The video depicts an ad sales rep in a Russian yellow pages office. According to the article, he was sent over the edge when his colleague made a comment about him not receiving his sales commission and joked that he would now have to spend his vacation in the less-than-enticing Krym (Russia) instead of in Thailand. The article goes on to say that no-one attempted to stop him, despite a number of men present in the office until he was tasered several minutes later by a security guard. It did point out that plenty of the men quickly whipped out their camera phones.

I’ve heard it said recently that bringing more emotional expression to the office is a good thing. On first glance you might say that this is an example of bring a little too much emotion to the office. But it’s clear that this guy had it pent up…and I’d argue that when we don’t express how we’re feeling in the moment, it can build up in dangerous ways and eventually finds its way out…like in turning you into a real-life version of the Hulk. So, if you’re pissed off that you didn’t get your commission…tell someone right then and there, it will save you jail time…and a tasering.

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