Is Fungibility a Requirement of Currency?

I’m no expert when it comes to money but an article shared by the inimitable Tony Fish earlier today piqued my interest. In the article by Ross Dawson he discusses
“Why reputation, influence, and attention are becoming central to economies but are not currencies” and in which (in my view correctly) talks about how,

Attention can certainly be used to pay for services, and the value can be readily quantified by comparing the cost of free ad-supported services with their ad-free alternatives. However the value of attention is unique to the individual, and also the context in which it is applied.

But still something about this article just doesn’t sit well with me. I suspect it’s the thought that the nature of currency doesn’t or hasn’t changed and that for something “new” to be considered a currency it must adhere to the old rules, the old definitions.

The notion that a currency must be fungible just doesn’t feel correct.  Indeed a quick hunt around the interwebs shows this question of a need for mutual substitution has been discussed at length many many times but that views are certainly still divided. This article by Venessa Miemis is as good a set of arguments as I’ve read so far.

What is apparent is that Dawson’s characteristics of currency don’t follow the accepted definitions of currency which seem to allow for interpretation as to what constitutes a medium of exchange.  Looking solely at that aspect a great many things have been used over the millennia as tokens of exchange and to the best of my knowledge not all goats are made equal – goats are not fungible.

I do agree with Dawson that to talk about things like reputation as a currency may not be useful, at least when discussing this in traditional terms, however it is clear to me that whilst in it’s infancy reputation, attention (and to a lesser degree influence) are indeed future financial instruments.

Opting In or Opting Out – I Was Confused

Came across the usual “click the box if you want to receive…” signup on OnlyMarketingJobs.com today, except on second reading (you also second read these things right?) the confusion was apparent.

You’re opting IN for more junk by NOT ticking just to be clear.

Has Slideshare Done Something Silly?

Love it or hate it sharing online stuff with other people has become normal.  So normal that there are any number of ways of doing so.  Tweetmeme was one of the 2009 darlings born out of the Twitter-scape.  Really simply Tweetmeme serves up “buttons” which any site owner can attach to a web post, article etc… which allows the viewer to send out a tweet telling the world they’ve read/seen it and want to share.

Today Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead quietly tweeted himself…

dear @slideshare please stop using our trademarked design without using our service

When I asked Nick let me know that Slideshare have started using a re-sharing button on their website that looks… well here it is, have a look for yourself.

Compare that to the “retweet” button top right on this blog post.  So the difference is almost nothing, just the removal of the letters “re” and nothing else that I can easily spot.

Now Nick is a savvy chap.  Whilst I’m sure he has trademarked the button design I can’t really see this getting all legal but honestly I reckon Slideshare has overstepped the mark somewhat.  The intent of “their” tweet button is obvious, by passes Tweetmeme altogether and is sufficiently similar in design for me to call “WRONG!”

UPDATE (23rd March) - As pointed out by “Amused” in the comments, Slideshare were prompted enough to make a change to the retweet button overnight.  You can see it below.  Honestly I don’t think it’s enough.  Sure they’ve made 3 changes; colour is now blue, wording and the little triangle-bit has shifted to the right BUT it hardly shows imagination and kinda sucks of bad-faith to make such minimal changes as to appear different.  Especially so as they have been called out on it.  Come on Slideshare surely you have a graphics person capable of coming up with a button of your own?

The problem though has in no small part been of Twitter’s own making.  Look at the other two buttons.  A Facebook & Google Buzz set.  Those buttons are distinctly utilising the logo’s of the sites.  Surely Twitter should provide a Twitter created logo / button that sites could use – at least that way they would maintain some brand consistency.

Can PI Ever Be Considered IP?

I have my own thoughts on whether or not personal information can be defined as intellectual property but I’d really love to hear some more opinions before espousing my own.

Please do comment especially if you have strong opine that falls one side of the fence or another.

Are Modern HR Practices a Zero-Sum Game?

Today’s article entitled “Half of Employers Reject Potential Worker After Look at Facebook Page” In the Telegraph reports that;

Bosses are now using the popular social networking site as a tool to double check how likely it would be that their new worker would take a sick day for being hung-over or on drugs the night before.

And job seekers were being found out for lying about their qualifications, with employers checking their Facebook pages to see if their online details matched their resume.

No great surprises there.  After all background checks, references and such have been the bread and butter of the Human Resource industry for yonks and let’s be truthful here; business and HR in particular has never been great advocates of treating people as people.  Liri Anderson highlights some of the absurd thinking in her post here.

But the article had me thinking, especially in light of Mark Zuckerberg’s recent Crunchie Awards statements on privacy and sharing.  With open sharing of very personal information rapidly becoming “normal” (at least within a certain and growing portion of society) businesses are being offered up a far greater insight into who people really are, their true identity.

I recently spent a day being psychometrically tested, a practice I have had little respect for in the past.  But this time it was different.  After an hour of online tests prior to even leaving home, I spent the best part of 9 hours being subjected to a battery of tests, exams, questionings all culminating in a fairly probing interview with an industrial psychologist.

Throughout the whole process I was very conscious of the various (seeming) inconsistencies in my responses, my body language, volume, level of language – the whole performance. The psychologist then blew me away by not only articulating back to me all of those traits but painted a picture of me that was so close to my own view that I could not fail to be impressed.

And of course the whole exercise is designed to see through performance, misdirection and untruths.

With the rapid increase in sharing of personal information HR practioners now have the ability to undertake much of the due diligence that would be accurately be shown up by the above process themselves, in-house with no context, response or even the applicants knowledge.

I’m not going to argue the rights and wrongs of this surreptitious behaviour (although I give a nod towards Deep Packet Inspection) but I do want to pose a couple of points;

1) Are we going to see third party agencies now remotely scanning peoples online behaviour in order to offer up a “professional” opinion of that candidate based on nothing more than what is actually shared as opposed to that which is not expressed?  Where will the oversight come from and can these businesses build a credible model?

2) In Zuckerberg’s ideal world we all share more and share more openly.  Given this scenario when will the tipping point come where candidates are equally exposed and deemed inappropriate; what then?  Does this point surely not create a Zero-Sum game for this practice of pseudo-psychology, one where employers realise that the process will not actually highlight potentially “bad” employees but that people are just people.

Does Social Media really destroy hierarchies or silos?

I’ve been back reading through blogs, presentations, articles, tweets and well just about every thing I can manage over the last week to resolve questions in my head as to why so many Social Media “Experts” or “Gurus” seem to think of social media as breaking down walled gardens (silos) and destroying hierarchies inherent in much of culture, business and online systems – and that this is a good thing or indeed what is actually happening?

As yet I am not yet convinced I have a sound argument for their thinking other than to subvert process is human and that many social media tools provide an path or opportunity to do just that. 

Hierarchies are great, they provide control, a sense of order to things.  They have a very sound place in life.  Indeed as do silos of information, segmentation provides a wealth of benefits from privacy to ease of management.

It struck me late last night that I can draw a direct parallel between social media and a lot of the work I have been involved with over the last 13 years in data navigation. Back in the day pretty well all data was stored in some form of relational database modelled hierarchically.  This was, as mentioned, great for control but lousy for integrating multiple and disparate data sources (which led to a whole industry built on assimilation – data warehousing).  Worse still, hierarchically modelled data was a nightmare to navigate. 

Let me provide a simile.

In an organisation built upon traditional management structures with departments and the like, rigid reporting lines often make for poor communication channels and  awkward cross department interactions.  Those very structures designed to provide human resource control actually prevent humans from doing what humans do best – connecting.  How on Earth does one quickly & easily connect to the right person in another area of the company for help when constrained into following hierarchical chains of reporting?  This has been long recognised and working groups, committees and project focussed groups containing staff from across  a number of departments or skill bases are commonplace nowadays.

Dr Karen Stephenson, a corporate anthropologist and lauded as a pioneer and "leader in the growing field of social-network business consultants” (Business 2.0 2006), and her company NetForm have been publishing work on social network (think social graph web peoples) analysis for years which quite clearly shows that no matter how one tries to enforce structure on people informal networks of people will emerge – normally based around a specific context.  Yet the structure, the hierarchy prevails

So back to social media.  Are the tools of which social media experts talk not just enabling this networking behaviour, by providing easier more human, more informal navigation (for a particular task or context) across the hierarchies or silos? This to me makes far more sense than any talk of the structures being destroyed.

The MIR Fallout

Okay so a week or so on and everyone seems to have gathered that Ewan has “sold” the entire content of Mobile Industry Review to some anonymous third party and that from the end of March 2009 they are taking the content into the subscription only space.  You did see this news right?

Now that the dust has settled and my mind is free enough of normal and important things to offer up some attention to this I think I can see what’s been bugging me about this whole affair.

It’s not the move to subscriptions or the absurd £12k a year Ewan wants for it, after all isn’t every site looking to find a revenue stream aside from advertising.

It’s not that taking all the content out of the public eye is bucking the opening up trend.

It’s not even the curious decision to isolate the community of industry geeks (and just plain old interested geeks) who have through their collective efforts voiced opinions, written articles and posts, fed news and offered up comments in order to bolster the content of MIR.

What is bugging me (or at least has been until today) is who on earth would have bought the rights?  What content was it they were actually interested in and at what price?

So I got to thinking who might be an interested party for either a takeover or exclusive syndication of the content.  To be honest I could well imagine many industry news sites wanting the video content but that’s about it.  Most of the useful mobile industry sites have their own hacks and are all on the receiving end of the same press releases.  In other words the only major value I can see in the MIR content is that of the video which is after all the most costly thing to produce.

Given the “deal” was therefore most likely done for the video content (sorry James, Jonathan et al for not overly valuing your written efforts) to whom was this of most value, and again at what price?

But news from Whatleydude on his blog intimates that he is moving on and this changes the questioning substantially for me.

I was kind of under the impression that like so many others James, Ben & Dan had given their time and efforts freely (or at least without being paid) to help create the MIR shows.  If James is moving on does this mean the others will follow?  Is this the end of the MIR show?

Ewan talks about the new subscription model in “we” and “our” terms but will there even be a team to back him up?  Also on the subject of the team – where do they stand on this move? It’s been ominously quiet.  Did they get a pay day, should they have stood to gain financially from the changes, they were of course the creatives behind the content?

Maybe we’ll get a final public swansong from James tomorrow or Jonathan on Thursday thanking the community for the attention and announcing their move to the Caymans on the proceeds.

Personally I can understand a move to a subscription model in part but seriously doubt that in its current form and without the support and goodwill of the community (who if they are like me feel a little deflated) I can’t see the “phenomenal reach” that is promised to would be subscribers.

There are a number of other questions running around my head mostly to do with the viability of the subscription strategy and Ewan’s ability to deliver but that can wait for another post methinks.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mobile Industry Review: The End of an Era (whatleydude.com)
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Media Revolution? Did it hit the mark?

Last night the BBC showed the latest Janet Street-Porter doco, looking at the future for print media – specifically newspapers.

Now I will admit I only caught the last 15 minutes or so and would love to hear from anyone who saw the whole thing.

From what little I did see there seemed to be little acknowledgement that it’s not the internet or expectation that online media should be free but rather the reliance upon out dated advertising models that poses the biggest threat to the printed media industry.

Did it touch on this?

UPDATE:  Doc Searles has just posted a piece on the Project VRM blog about just this.  Importantly he proposes a system called PayChoice which would afford readers the ability to easily pay for content on their own terms not just the archaic one-sided options talked about and lauded by the traditional press.

Differential pricing for video calling – is this a disability issue?

A few days back a conversation on Jaiku in which a comment was made regarding the use by the deaf as a potential driver for video calling.

My thoughts on this are yet to be fully formed but it raised a couple of immediate questions;

1) Does 2-way video calling potential level the telecoms playing field for those with a hearing impairment in that now that can use the service to lip-read (assuming they can)?

2) Has anyone done any research into this?

3) Does the differential pricing for video calls, whereby the operator’s charge more for a video call than a voice call, represent discrimination against those unable to utilise the voice service?

Rather obviously for the deaf SMS, IM and microblogging services are a level playing field already.

Hmmm. This needs more thinking.