Category: Social Media

Categories
Connecting Social Media Standards

How far is too far

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Making the rounds in the advertising world is an interesting technique, termed viral marketing: making use of social software techniques learned from spammers, virus makers, and other experts of this nature. With viral marketing, rather than a formal ad campaign, with purchased space in newspapers and time on TV, you create ads or content that is notorious enough to generate a lot of Internet activity, seed them via email or through online groups, and just allow what comes naturally. The recent subservient chicken is based on viral marketing…and so is a new ‘ad campaign’ if you want to call it this, for Ford.

A few weeks ago, links to an online ad for a new car were sent out via email. The ad is part of an ‘evil twin’ concept: Ford is trying to market the car, the SportsKa, as the supposed evil twin of its popular Ka model.

The ad opens showing the car in a driveway, when a ginger cat starts walking past it. The sun roof pops open, and the cat, curious, jumps up on the car and sticks its head through the opening. At this point, the sun roof starts to close on the cat’s head. The cat struggles madly before its head is decapitated. Through the window you can see the head fall into the car, and the lifeless body falls down the windshield and off the car to the back.

I’ve been told that this is computer enhanced, and supposedly no cat was harmed in the making of this ad. I hope so. I sincerely hope so. Unfortunately, it was real enough when I first saw it to have upset me quite deeply. Warning people “not to click this if you like cats” cannot prepare you for this. Especially when you assume that a major car manufacturer like Ford has limits.

Evidentally, there are no limits.

After watching the ad, I started looking around for reactions. If the purpose of this viral marketing campaign was to generate notice in the car, one can say the ad has been successful. But whether it will earn the company customers is hard to say because reaction has been strongly divided.

A considerable number of people believe this ad to be humorous, and that those who are disturbed by it lack a sense of humor, and are taking it too literally. There’s this from a weblogger:

I haven’t had a free moment to blog lately, but this is just too good. You’ve gotta see this. This is MY kind of car commercial.

Surprise. UK’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty doesn’t like it.

By the way, have I ever told you? I love animals; they’re delicious.

However, appreciation is not universal, and Ford has said that the release of this ad was a ‘mistake’ – the one targeted for their viral marketing campaign featured a pigeon being killed, instead:

It was, they say, intended as a “viral marketing” tactic – designed to be sent via the internet from one individual to another – although this idea was subsequently rejected by Ford on taste grounds. A clip costing several thousand pounds and showing a pigeon being catapulted to its death by a bonnet springing open was approved and released last September. However, the rejected advertisement began circulating on the internet last week, at first because of an apparent mistake, and then spurred by black-humoured web users who passed it around.

…black-humoured web users who passed it around. I hesitated to participate in this little viral marketing exercise, except that this ad goes back to a conversation we had about censorship and Howard Stern. At that time, we asked: how far is too far?

According to an Australian ad agent:

“I reckon the line of acceptability has probably been pushed quite considerably by viral advertising because the whole point is to be notorious,” he says.

How far is too far. A month ago, I would have thought decapitating a cat to sell a car would have been too far.

Categories
Social Media

…and then I quit Orkut

Today is a lovely cold winter day, with fresh snow on the ground, sunshine and blue skies. Today is also Primary day her in Missouri, and I think about having to carefully make my way down the hill to where my car is parked, just so I can make it to the voting place at the Seminary, next door. I’m hesitant about walking in snow because I’m still limping with my hurt foot and ankle and more than a bit nervous about falling again. Even if I don’t hurt anything –and knowing me, what’s the odds of that happening?–I’m still going to be very embarrassed.

To add insult to injury, I’ve been fighting some kind of flu lately, and it seems to have won if how I slept last night and how I feel today are any indication. Nasty headache, and neck pain, and every one of my joints hurts. And I’m tired of pain. There was the gallbladder operation, followed by the oral surgery, followed the fall and in each case I’m given nice pain pills that I’m hesitant to take because I like them a bit too much. So I just hurt.

Sure this is a po’me writing, but I’m not looking for sympathy, and if you extend a hand to pat me on the back, with accompaniments of ‘There, there. There, there’, you’ll probably lose it. Anything that’s wrong with me is only temporary, so just let me grouse about it and get it out of my system.

Grouse. Isn’t this a lovely word? There’s a term for words whose pronunciation fits what they represent, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what the term is. I even went the Google route trying to find it, and ended up finding this funny page instead. It’s a discussion forum called “Brunching Shuttlecocks”, and the topic is “Words that sound funny and nobody knows what they mean”. The topic quickly moved into discussions of words that sound naughty, but aren’t:

Mastication is not a dirty word; it is right and proper. Everybody masticates. Men masticate, women masticate, dogs masticate too. King Arthur and his knights practiced circle mastication.

Or:

I always like the phrase “Subduction leads to orogeny.” Sounds SO naughty, but it actually has to do with the movement of earth’s tectonic plates.

Actually, it does sound naughty. And if you think of the movement of earth’s tectonic plates as being an analogy, then…wait, wait–this isn’t the Super Bowl.

Anyway, back to the topic, words that sound like they mean. Someone in the discussion mentioned “Slubberdegullion “, which means “a dirty, wretched slob”. Isn’t that a lovely word? I mean, doesn’t it make you want to find someone who is dirty and wretched just so you could say, “You Slubberdegullion!”

Of course, when I looked up this word online, I was led to the World Wide Words, which discusses it in context of lovely old disparaging words–invectives– that have fallen into disuse. He quotes from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel penned in the 1500’s:

The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously, called them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.

Lovely, isn’t it? I want all of this for my new weblog tagline. I’ll put it into my RSS and Atom feeds. And there’s that word! Rabelais! I saw it used at Language Hat and I meant to look it up, but didn’t. Anyway, Language Hat used the word in the context of quoting another weblogger who goes by the name of ‘pf’, who was recently mugged in Russia. pf who wrote:

Okay, fine, I lost my glasses, I lost my hat. But why did I have to go and lose my Rabelais? What was the point of that?

True, what was the point of that? But I am glad that all he did lose was his glasses, hat, and Rabelais.

But what was the point of this?

All this chasing of words reminded me that Dave Rogers re-started his weblog, except that he now goes by Groundhog Day in honor of his favorite movie, or underground creature, take your pick. It was good to see him back so I thought I would shine my spotlight on him to see if he sees his shadow and if there’s going to be another six weeks of this cold and snow that I can’t walk through easily in order to make it to the polling place and do my civic duty. Perhaps this means others who have been too silent will themselves creep carefully out of their burrows and favor us with a word. Or two. But not Slubberdegullion, I’ve already used that one. That’s my word.

Speaking of pianos–oh, I’m sorry? Did that change in direction hurt you?–I found an online Java-based piano that I tried my haunting melody out on and then copied down what I think are the notes (not really knowing if I have a tin ear or not – and isn’t that a lovely phrase, too?):

E F# G
E F# G
E F# G
E F# G
F# D B

Well, I didn’t say it was a complex tune. Music that lingers as faint wisps of sound, ghostly tunes, never is. That’s why It’s a Small World is such an evil song – there! Now that will go through your mind the rest of the day.

I must find my song. An autographed copy of one of books to you if you can help me identify this song and the singer. Or one of my photos printed on quality digital ink jet paper and signed. Heck, if you live in a place I want to visit, I’ll even hand deliver it. You pay for the plane.

Now that I’ve managed to introduce the topic of photos gracefully into this conversation, I can say, safely without hurting you by another of my segues, we in the northern hemisphere need a warm note about now, so this from my archives.

flowers304.jpg

I used the Photoshop unsharp mask with this photo to clarify it just a tad. I finally figured out how to use the unsharp mask in Photoshop, thanks to suggestions out at the Digital Photography community in Orkut. The best advice came from a man who teaches photography and he knows his stuff because what he said worked beautifully. He also has a very interesting profile and is connected to some other very interesting people and communities such as the polyamory community, which I guess has to do with loving lots of people and I don’t mean shaking hands kind of love.

Though polyamory is not my cup of tea, following people to their profiles did connect me up with several new communities including the Photography community where a member, Randal talked about his …31,000 photos online. It was only when I got a good look at Randal’s picture that I realized it was Randal Schwartz, a luminary in the Perl community.

That became a pretty common experience, running into people I know or know of in contexts completely different from how I know them, which just tickled me at times. For instance, ran into Betsy Devine over at the Travel Tips community where people were giving some great advice to a person heading towards New Zealand.

(I hope that Betsy doesn’t mind that I Orkuted her – outed her as an Orkut member.)

Jeneane started a new Orkut community for those people who write for a living. Wait, isn’t that an oxymoron? (Another lovely word to say, but doesn’t sound anything like what it means, and is overused being the word of the 1990’s.)

I thought what was needed, then, to be fair, was for someone to start a community for those who write but don’t make a living at it. Wait a sec! Already done. It’s called the Blogger Community. (I tried this group out for a bit, but all they talk about is blogging. Made me realize that we talk about blogging too much, like I’m, urh, well, damn, doing here. Reminds me of the author who wrote the book on paper on paper.)

What do you know. By the time I finished with my reading and writing this my headache is better and I didn’t need to use pills, and I found myself chuckling more than a bit at some of the words, and it really is very pretty outside today, and I think I might try and get a new snow picture for those who live in the Southern Hemisphere.

(You realize that if our world wasn’t so screwed up, wobbling about on its axis like a drunken stripper doing a pole dance, we’d shared the same weather. Of course, we’d all be dead, so I guess there is a down side to it.)

I don’t think I have the flu–I think I just have a case of the mopes (see, there’s another one of those words that sound like they mean). Yes, it is a very pretty day today. And I’m going to exercise my privilege and go vote. And I’m going to exercise my lazy butt and go walk. But then I need to come back and work on the book, and my writing, and my photos because I let it all slide last night spending so much time in the Orkut communities meeting new and interesting people and not once looking at their fan rating or their cool rating or the numbers of friends they had (except this guy named Valentin with an afro who everyone seems to know).

However, I already have a use for my extra time and it’s here and out there and I don’t need another Internet time sink, so that’s why I decided to quit Orkut, which is really what this writing was about.

Categories
Social Media

The sidewalk the walkers built

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’ve always been interested in architecture. At one point I seriously considered studying architecture in school, but my interest is and remains more that of a hobbyist than of a practitioner. But I still keep up with stories about innovative design practices.

One of my favorites I read about long ago, was actually used as an example in a book about designing software. It was the story of an architect who built a building without sidewalks. People would have to walk through the grass to get to whatever door they wanted to enter, and though the weather was fine and walking through the grass is pleasant, it did generate complaints–especially from the women wearing high heels.

A few weeks after the building was opened, sidewalks were added during the weekend and people were pleasantly surprised to find them that Monday morning. But they weren’t your usual sidewalks, with straight lines and right angle connections to the building. They tended to meander a bit, as if the sidewalks followed the trails created by people entering and leaving the building.

In fact, that’s exactly what happened: the architect left the sidewalks off until trails had been beaten into the grass by people, and then just followed the trails wherever feasible, literally letting the people define where the sidewalks are going to be.

I was strongly reminded of this story these last few weeks when it comes to this new social network, Orkut. In particular, I was rather surprised to see such vehement pushback against what is nothing more than a mildly interesting exercise in connectivity via software.

First was the invitation thing, which does seem elitist. However, getting invited was pretty easy – just look for any number of weblog posts that say, “If you want to get invited, drop me a note in my comments”. By using this approach, I imagine that the Orkut designers were able to gauge the genuine interest and curiosity of people in being part of this experiment, rather than opening it to the world and having people sign on just to check it out and leaving all sorts of accounts that are not used again. This changes the demographics of the site.

(Considering that Google’s strengths are based on measurement, interpreting patterns, and developing algorithms for them, it’s not surprising that a social network they would develop would start by invitation. )

Recently, there’s been discussion of some sort of ‘jail’ if you abuse the Orkut system. From what I can see, this jail is nothing more than denied privilege to do certain things such as post emails to 12,000 people at once, or to invite another 250 of your closest friends to join.

Then there’s this interesting post by a person named Christopher. He talks about being jailed, but he also talks about his insecurity with Orkut.

Later I find out by looking at other people’s information that this is all completely public. It isn’t limited to just friends, or friends of friends, but instead is prominent. In fact, other then your name and how many “friends” you have, your relationship style is the most prominent thing listed. Do I really want to know that my business acquaintance that I see only at technical conferences 2 or 3 times a year is in an open marriage? Or divorced? Or gay?

Oh good lord. Aside from a few pieces of information, from what I can see from the Orkut sign in screens you don’t have to put down anything about yourself. Tell me, are all of you the type of people that when you walk past a faucet, you have to turn it on?

You don’t list anything you don’t want the world to see. Social networks are just that: social and network, which means that there are a lot of people out there looking at information you put in about yourself and if you don’t like it – don’t put the information in. If you really don’t like it, don’t join.

Danah Boyd seems to have a real thing against Orkut. I’m not surprised folks don’t like Orkut, but I am surprised at the level of animosity that Danah, and others, seem to experience in regards to the service:

1) What the hell is up with the elitist approach to invitation? That’s just outright insulting and an attempt to pre-configure the masses through what the technorati are doing. Social networks are not just a product of technologists. Everyone has a social network and what they do with it is quite diverse. To demand that they behave by the norms of technologists is horrifying.

2) Are trustworthy, cool, and sexy the only ways that i might classify my friends? (Even Orkut lists a lot more in his definition of self.) And since when can i rate the people that i know based on this kind of metric?

And goddamnit CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT. Cool as a techy? Cool as a party kid? Trustworthy along what fucking axes?

I know that David Weinberger considers Danah’s rant to be ‘rational’, but I found it to be extremely subjective and well, frankly, angry – both of which were confusing because all Orkut is, is a mildly interesting experiment in connecting using software.

That’s the point – this is an experiment, this is beta software, this is an attempt to put out raw functionality and let the users define it by useful criticism and suggestions. What’s happened, though, is second guessing from people that runs the gamut from “Google needs Orkut for user information” to “Orkut is developed by the evil Technorati”.

(New bumper sticker: I am the Evil Technorati. I hope David doesn’t mind.)

Bottom line, if people don’t like Orkut, don’t join. Comments were made to this effect in Danah’s posting, and her response was:

I’m glad y’all want to take the time to read my rants, and even better that you post (even if anonymously). But you should probably realize that i’m an academic. I STUDY things. Right now, i’ve been studying online social network services. No one put a gun to my head to join any given service. I do this as a researcher. I write rants for the random folks who want to listen to them (and to vent my inner demons in an unconstrained form since academic papers require a lot more framing of the discussion).

So stop telling me to shut up and stop using the thing. If you don’t want to hear my rants, don’t read em.

Personally, I wouldn’t have responded to Danah’s rant, except that there’s a lot of people who seem to think that she’s got the answer when it comes to Social Networking with that rant of hers, and I can’t see it. I think that AKMA’s got the right answer when he says:

The problem with LinkedIn and that other one I don’t remember is that their systems already knew what I wanted to do with my social network; and they were wrong. The reason I like Orkut so far is that I get the feeling that Google and Orkut are leaving the system unfinished to watch what happens and what people want to do with it. Rather offering us an elaborate, polished network that doesn’t do what we want, they’re offering us a raw beta (it does say ‘beta’ in those white letters on the upper right of the window) so that they can build out what participants demand. That would be Google-like; that would be clued. And although no one inside is talking to me about this, I have a hunch that Orkut has a clue.

I don’t particularly care for social networks because they favor the people already connected. Orkut is no different from the others in this regard.

The Fan thing doesn’t make sense so I haven’t used it (though appreciate those people who say they are Fans of mine, more photographs for you); neither have I used that ‘cool’ ‘hot’ rating thing. I’m not sure how to use that hot/cool rating thing. I’m also turned off by the graphics,associated with the rating – reminds me too much of smileys, and I hate smileys – those little yellow faced things with their little smirks bouncing all over. Makes me want to hurt them.

Orkut also encourages the popularity ‘meme’. When you look at people’s friends list, those friends who themselves have the most friends show up higher in the list than those with the least. In addition, in the graphical representation, “low” friends people drop off the page entirely – that isn’t much more than a Technorati Top 100 using bodies instead of links.

In fact, I have no idea why people who are heavily connected are a part of this, unless it’s to reaffirm their own connectivity – they don’t need it. Something like a social network works best for people who aren’t as connected, to find others of like interests when they don’t know many people. To start building up their own community. And I suppose to connect with ‘more popular’ people, but I don’t think it works that way. Sucking up to the popular didn’t work in high school, unlikely to work online.

No, Orkut isn’t perfect, but I do like how easy it is to find people with similar interests, and I like how easy it is to start new topics or communities. This is particularly important to people who don’t have servers to host this type of software, and who don’t want to hassle with Yahoo and all the ads. More so, this is a nice way for people new to this environment to meet others of same interest. So right out of the box, Orkut does some things good.

In addition, as Gary noted it’s pretty amazing to take a look at the visual diagrams associated with the friends networks, and to see all the white males that make up the friends lists of some of the more prominent members. You should see Tim O’Reilly’s friends network to get an eyeful.

(Not to mention seeing all the photos of the folks I know. There was one of a person who has been on my case for almost two years – I was blown away by his sweet, smiling face. Really generated a lot of conflicting signals. Now next time I tell him to buzz off, I’ll see that sweet, smiling face. How uncomfortable.)

As for the bad things, well, Orkut will learn or it won’t and people will join or they won’t and in the great scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. So I guess I’m not sure why people are angry or disappointed. But then, I don’t think webloggers are going to help elect the next President either, so what do I know?

 

Categories
Burningbird Social Media

Focusing on the social in social software

Yule, who is about the most wonderful kicker of butts I know of, posted a link to my previous entry in a comment at another thread related to comment spamming. Unfortunately, the tone of my post had more impact then the words, which shows the dangers of writing in anything other than the most non-emotive manner. But then, what’s the fun of that?

I am frustrated, and I have no qualms about introducing a frustrated tone into my writing when it comes to comment spammers, and webloggers and their reaction thereof. For a people who pride themselves so much on being social software devotees, I’ve never seen a group of people less likely to recognize brilliant social software in action then webloggers. And yes, it is frustrating.

The comment spammers have met and pushed past any barrier we put up. They do so by listening to what we say, and then acting accordingly. They move past the barriers because anything we do other than a re-engineer of the MT comment system is nothing more than an obstacle, not a closed door to the spammers. What we do, though, is overreact. We put on the most amazingly complicated code that if we’re hit with anything approaching some of the new Script Kiddies MT comment attacks, we’re done because the machine can’t keep up the processing. We blacklist at the drop of a hat, using each others blacklist import lists without once considering that each might have good URLs in addition to the bad.

In other words, we take it personally, while the comment spammers take it professionally, and we’ll never win the battle with odds such as these.

I used to take it personally until I started following the actions of the comment spammers. Now, sorry for offending folks, I’m filled with admiration for them. I still think that Tim O’Reilly should have featured comment, and email, spammers as speakers at the Emerging Tech Conference. These people really do know the concepts behind social software, and we could do well to emulate them. In other words, they learn from watching us? We should learn by watching them.

But I’ve said all this before, and this is frustrating.

Categories
Social Media

I wanna hold your hand

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Networks of friends, or at least people that know each other, seem to be very popular lately – I had two invitations yesterday to two different ‘friends’ networks. While I appreciate the thought and the invitation – I really do – I declined both; not because I don’t care for the people, but because I don’t care for these networks.

(Not the least of which was because of the increased spam email I started receiving after joining Friendster.)

AKMA also doesn’t care for these networks, but this is primarily because he sees them as a dating service; though I’m sure that Margaret supports his explorations into social software, there is a limit to how far one takes one’s explorations.

(That’s also one of my objections, though I’m not married. Since my experiences with online relationships of a tender nature haven’t been very positive, I’m also not interested in anything to do with meeting people online for purposes of ‘romance’. If I’m going to meet a lemon, I prefer to see the peel upfront.)

AKMA has, however, created his own FOAF file, starting out with people he knows already have a FOAF file of their own, such as my own. I’ve also added AKMA to mine, using the Add a New Friend tool.

FOAF, or Friend-of-a-Friend is an RDF vocabulary that allows you to provide some basic information about yourself, such as a a photo and a primary web site. It also allows you to document who you know, and connect with their FOAF files if they have them, in a loose network of associations.

FOAF is one of the older RDF Vocabularies, but one that the creators have been quietly working with for a couple of years. Now, though, as the creators are finding, there’s a whole new level of interest in FOAF. The spotlight is on, time for FOAF to dance.

What are some of the uses of FOAF? Well, Technorati has recently added the technology to incorporate a FOAF profile for your weblog, as you can see from my Cosmos links. If you look down the list you’ll see photos of some folks – these are photosof people who have claimed their weblogs via the new Technorati profile system. However, the photos are not pulled from the FOAF file but must be uploaded separately, which is why you’ll see my photo linked into my FOAF file, but not into Technorati.

Cool use of technology, but what good will it be? Well, that’s the million dollar question now – what good is all of this going to be?

From a technology perspective, the more that FOAF is used to identify a ‘person’ in all of our technologies and vocabularies, the better we’ll be at pulling together information from various sources. Right now, if we add FOAF author information to syndication feeds, we could tie together the syndication feed information for a person in their profile within Technorati or any other aggregator. If we add FOAF information to a person’s comments, we could then pull together a chain of information such as the following:

Shelley Powers

aka Burningbird

Weblog: http://weblog.burningbird.net

Has linked to the following people in the last 48 hours:
Has written the following entries in the last 48 hours:
Has written the following comments in the last 48 hours:

And the list goes on and on – who do I know? How do I know them? What have I said, and where?

If you’re salivating from a pure information point of view, or from a technology point of view, I would hope at this point that you’re hesitating from a purely social and privacy perspective – because the easier we make this information to access, the less privacy we have. There’s a cost to this information being readily available.

When I added Talkback, the feature that allows you to see what a person has said in previous comments here, there was some discomfort associated with this. Now take this and consider the possibility that all comments you make in all online media – weblogs, usenet, Yahoo Groups, even IRC – can be tracked and gathered back to you, in one little spot. All through the innocent device of putting together a little XML into a FOAF file. Think it won’t happen? The implementation of this is trivial – all it will take is for FOAF to be enabled at each spot, and with the FOAFbot, it already exists for the IRC community.

Perhaps this is a good thing, you say. After all, if a person wants to be anonymous in some comments, they shouldn’t use their real name. The thing, though, is that IP addresses are captured with most of this information. If you comment at this MT weblog using this IP address, and this information is included in a syndication feed, then anywhere else this IP address is used that day will be tracked back to you. There is little anonymity on the Net other than that originally provided by fragmentation. Bring out the glue and kiss your privacy good-bye.

Shadows of Ashcroft and the Patriot Act aside – after all, this only applies in the States, and none of us are very important, so nobody cares about us, right? – there are other social implications.

For instance, FOAF has a verb that defines how you are acquainted with a person – knows. The reason the vocabulary only has the one verb is that there is no ‘value’ judgement attached to this, and hopefully no cause for hurt feelings. But new extensions change all that, and add the nuances that may end up biting us in the butt.

How close am I to these people? Who is a ‘good’ friend’ as compared to an acquaintance? Who do I trust…and why? When I say in my FOAF file that I consider a person a ‘good friend’, how do I feel when I read in their FOAF file that they only consider me an acquaintance?

Add a Friend adds friends, but how do I delete them?

Think you can control the FOAF information? Think again. What happens when someone finds an old photo of me online and attaches it to my ‘knows’ record in their FOAF file? How about if they do the same with my phone numbers? My job? My home address? This is perfectly legitimate – I don’t have to be the one to add the information about myself, others can do this for me, about me, and it validates as ‘good’ FOAF, good RDF/XML.

How about if I had a young daughter who goes online and creates a FOAF file. New extensions being talked about discuss adding in age, movements, clubs, and social organizations – want all this information online about your young, pretty, innocent little girl or boy?

Heck with that – do want this information online about yourself?

Remember that FOAF is nothing more than a vocabulary, serialized in XML. There is no gatekeeper with it. None. Then the question becomes – How do I delete myself from all these systems once my information is dispersed far and wide?

(More at Practical RDF.)

Update: Wanna bet I get a ’stop energy’ label attached because I brought up these questions?