I’ve been exploring the new Facebook timeline feature and surprisingly (as I’ve been less than enthusiastic many of the recent FB interface changes), I quite like it! However, the caveat to that statement is … as long as I can remove from view a couple of the posts and photos that have now surfaced. I’m well aware that there’s almost certainly a record on a server somewhere of everything I’ve ever said online, but in practice previous Facebook statuses had tended to slip from sight and mind quite quickly.
You can fairly easily customise what appears and to whom, and there are numerous sites, including “14 Tips And Tricks To Make Your New Facebook Timeline Awesome” which give an overview of how. Looking at my unedited timeline, a couple of immediate questions spring to mind about my future use of Facebook:
Will I be less spontaneous with those ‘throw away’ status updates now that they’re going to be hanging round on my timeline ‘forever’?
Should I be worried about the number of photos in which I appear to have a drink in my hand?!
With regard to the second point (and I’m not the only one who this applies to, as apparently “British Facebook Users Are Intoxicated in 76% of Their Photos”) I’d suggest this is an obvious consequence of almost all of the photos being taken in social situations, which tend to involve a drink or two - festivals, parties, nights out etc, rather than necessarily indicating my level of alcoholism!
Responding to criticisms of the way in which Facebook in particular treats our privacy, in a recent article for the BBC, Cindy Gallop, suggested that we should forget about our privacy and instead, work on controlling our image.
“Everything we do and say today, whether we are a person or a brand, business or company, is potentially in the public domain … if you identify exactly who you are and what you stand for, what you believe in, what you value, and if you then only ever behave, act and communicate in a way that is true to you, then you never have to worry about where anybody comes across you or what you’re found doing.”
But do I want Facebook to become a self-concious and contrived window into my world?
Personally I feel Gallop’s approach over simplifies the privacy issue and fails to recognise what many people want from a Facebook. I’m happy to keep LinkedIn as my professional network, whilst attempting to maintain some control over Facebook privacy, and keep it purely for interaction with friends. However, new apps are coming along, such as BranchOut and BeKnown, which attempt to add a professional layer to Facebook. The rising popularity of such apps show how some are perhaps more comfortable than me with a less-than-complete separation of the professional and the personal.
And the accessibility story gets ever worse …
Finally, I can’t finish this post without mentioning how the timeline, and recent ‘improvements’ to the interfaces of other popular social media sites, have further compromised accessibility. The inaccessibility of social media has been a theme of several previous MediaGeek posts, but this time I’ll leave it to someone else and recommend the article “Social networks and accessibility: A rather sad picture” on Marco’s accessibility blog. As Mozilla’s accessibility QA, and a screen reader user, Marco is very well placed to comment.
Boudreau provides a breakdown of how major social media platforms perform against the various WCAG 2.0 success criteria which, if met, allow web content to be consumable by those with physical impairments, who may use assistive technologies such as screen readers. The results are poor. For example, out of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+, only two (LinkedIn and YouTube) provide descriptive page titles and none (of those it’s applicable to) provide text alternatives for non text content.
I appreciate there are inherent problems in making social media accessible - with user generated content, some responsibility for adding text descriptions etc. naturally falls to the user, the majority of whom neither know nor care much about accessibility. But the fact remains that much could be done to improve how the platforms themselves input and render content. Like labelling form fields correctly - an easy win you might think, but one which, according to Boudreau’s research, only YouTube have implemented.
Boudreau rated overall adherence to WCAG 2.0 recommendations as follows:
LinkedIn - 29%
YouTube - 18%
Google+ - 9%
Facebook - 9%
Twitter - 0%
I have no knowledge of the methodology he employed to carry out this assessment but, based on my own informal observations, I’m reasonably sure that the picture he paints isn’t overly pessimistic.
In the social media “utopia” many of us now inhabit, real people can, and are, getting left behind. From the research presented here, it seems likely that this group includes a large percentage of those with a physical impairment (but not, the marketing agencies should note, any impairment in their ability to exercise consumer choice when spending their cash!).
The major social media players need to get their houses in order and fully address inclusion and accessibility requirements, principally for the sake of their users, but also on behalf of the businesses who increasingly rely on these channels as a marketing tool.
I suggest the rest of us, including the PR and marketing companies, sure in their assertion that social media is a magical way to include everyone in the conversation, must make some noise in order to push this issue up the agenda. However, as lamented in a previous post from almost a year ago, “Is accessibility being overlooked in favour of sociability?”, I suspect that most still don’t even understand there’s a problem.
I think it would be safe to say that the NHS brand is one of the most well known and trusted in the UK. Despite constant media battering - waiting times, hospital infections, staff shortages, patient records etc., the presence of those three white letters enclosed in their blue rectangle (the NHS lozenge as it’s known), still stirs strong, generally positive feelings in the majority of people. It’s an institution that, apart from offering free, accessible health care to all, generally stands for professionalism and expertise. Indeed, many NHS consultants are amongst the foremost experts in their fields.
And the NHS fully appreciate the trust that their brand evokes and are highly protective of it - the NHS logo is sacred and woe betide anyone who messes with it! The NHS Identity Guidelines, a hefty piece of documentation covering the branding of everything from letterheads and signage to uniforms and websites, states that:
“The NHS is recognised spontaneously by over 95% of the public, and carries high levels of trust and credibility. … [it allows] people to distinguish NHS services and communications from those of commercial companies or charities.”
But Tory plans to introduce market-based healthcare to the NHS in England (which basically equates to it being privatised and dismantled, IMO) are going to vastly change the landscape in which the NHS operates. Services will increasingly be provided by commercial suppliers, independently or “in partnership” with what remains of the NHS. So how will these services be branded?
It certainly walks like an NHS website and talks like an NHS website (the only real giveaway is that it doesn’t sit on an nhs.uk domain), however, it is in fact owned by Cambridge Healthcare which seems to be a commercial spinoff from the East of England SHA. They appear to have private funding, although their postal address is Papworth hospital …
Regardless of the ins and outs of their ownership/governance etc. (I merely use this as a branding example), my point is that this is potentially misleading for the end user who sees NHS branding so naturally expects this to be an NHS owned and managed service. With the Governments’ love for private IT providers and “NHS innovation partners” more and more of these quasi NHS websites will be appearing. Research shows that very few people pay attention to a site’s URL [1] so, no matter whether the NHS Addressing team continue to restrict and police commercial access to .nhs.uk domains, healthcare suppliers will increasingly appropriate NHS branding for their own websites. However, these sites won’t necessarily provide the high quality, authoritative and accurate information, that people expect to find where they see the NHS brand.
A colleague recently hit the nail on the head when he said:
“Clearly in future it is going to get much harder, maybe impossible, to easily differentiate between “safe” official web sites and services, vs. “safe-ish” commercial partners, and maybe at some point “totally unsafe” non-UK scam sites.”
I wonder what, if any, plans the DH branding team have to tackle this issue? Having worked so hard to protect and build the NHS brand for all these years I truly hope they’re not going to sit back and allow a free-for-all.
Like a metaphor for the NHS as a whole, I fear that the future state heralds the erosion and dilution of the NHS brand into a no longer trusted, no longer nurtured, shadow of it’s former self.
———
[1] The NHS Digital Communications Review, circulated by the DH internally in May 2010 (although later leaked), and based on research carried out by Precedent, found that:
“Users were largely oblivious to the URL or any branding (other than the presence of NHS branding)”
Over the last few days I’ve seen a load of posts from my Facebook friends warning “to ALL …PHONE NUMBERS OF ALL are now on Facebook!” and hey, when I checked, sure enough they were!
So I set about removing them and ensuring that they stay removed and don’t keep syncing back whenever I use the Facebook app.
To do this, you take the following steps …
On your iPhone:
Go to “Friends” from the main menu screen of the Facebook app
Hit the icon in the top right of the screen
Go to “Sync Contacts”
Make sure both settings are set to “off”
Click the big red button “Remove Data” as in the image above
The instructions Facebook gives on how to do this are somewhat incomplete I notice, which is mainly why I decided to post this.
On Facebook:
Click on “Account” in the top right of the screen
Click “Edit Friends”
Click “Contacts” on the left
Follow the link given to a page for removing your mobile contacts on the right of the page.
Although many, including myself, are unaware of this behaviour it’s old news really, as it seems this ‘feature’ has been in place since January 2010. On the face of it, it doesn’t really seem so bad - after all, others can’t access my phonebook - unless they hack my account of course.
However, the thing that riles is that this information (and I don’t consider other people’s phone numbers to be my data to share anyway) was uploaded to Facebook’s servers without my knowledge or consent. Yes, I choose to use Facebook and share certain information but there was no choice or transparency here!
Given Facebook’s track record on privacy, and their habit of making decisions about opening up your data without telling you, it’s not at all clear what might happen to this contact information in the future so I just don’t want them to have it.
Yet another example of Facebook failing to understand (or care about) the privacy concerns of their users.
Cisco recently published an infographic illustrating some key points about the “The Internet of Things“, that is, a visual representation of the increase in “things” connected to the Internet and what this means.In principle, this sounds fantastic - imagine a world where the “things” in your environment seamlessly interact with one another to make your life easier.Your car tells your coffee maker to switch on when you’re 5 minutes from home, all your favourite TV programmes are automatically recorded without you lifting a finger, etc., etc.
The phrase “Internet of things” has been around since 1999 but the concept is fast becoming, and in many cases (like the TV example) has already become, a reality as RFID and similar tecnologies become widely used.The recent move to IPv6 protocol, which allows billions of possible internet addresses, would seem to have made the sky the limit when it comes to connecting anything and everything that you can dream of.
A few things have been bothering me though … (not least that I’m at risk of sounding like a luddite!).Firstly, the infographic states that by the end of 2011, 20 typical households will generate more Internet traffic than the entire Internet did during 2008 - even cows will be connected, transmitting messages about their wellbeing to the farmer.Ok, that’s progress you might think, but is there an inevitable environmental impact of all this additional connectivity?Obviously extra power will be consumed when absolutely everything is internet enabled, but perhaps that’s negligible compared to the energy savings that can be made by more intelligent buildings, devices and objects that adapt better to their surroundings and how they’re used?
However, there’s also the impact of increased raw material extraction, parts production and assembly of the actual devices themselves.Plus the well known negative environmental effects associated with the disposal of all these electronic components, as documented by the National Geographic, amongst others.
Secondly, I do wonder how well all these Internet enabled appliances will degrade if a connection isn’t available?Apart from the possibility that parts of the Internet could go down in extreme circumstances such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster, my broadband has been known to be extremely flaky on occasion.If I lose my Internet connection in the future, how will I survive?Will my freezer go into meltdown?Will my car have a total breakdown?Will I actually be able to do anything?
Without doubt the “Internet of things” offers some exciting and quite mind blowing possibilities, and a lot of very smart stuff is happening already.However, apart from environmental impacts, I think there are some implications that I haven’t heard much discussion around. Like who owns all this data concerning the intimacies of my life and routine (privacy debate anyone?) and how much could these “things” potentially be used by governments and corporations to spy on us and increasingly control us in the future?Do I want every aspect of my life to be logged, regulated and managed like this … not sure.Do I, and future generations, have any choice in the matter … probably not.
The Government ICT Strategy published the other week was, on the whole, a pretty uninspiring rehash of previous ideas and initiatives (standards, shared infrastructure, single government domain etc, etc) and no brainers (e.g. greater use of Open Source, interoperability, sharing and reusing solutions). However one thing that caught my eye was action 30 which states that organisations need:
“To embed social media as a mainstream channel used routinely to engage with citizens, business and internally” (Cabinet Office, 2011).
Again, nothing too earth shattering on the face of it, but this does represent another step towards “mainstreaming” the use of social media tools within the public sector. Of course, many organisations are already embracing it. The Department of Health (DH) for example make use of Twitter, Flickr, blogs and YouTube. And, when appropriate, are using Facebook to support public information campaigns, as in the case of the long running “Change 4 Life” initiative. This approach can create an engaging, wide reaching and joined up digital presence, although there is sometimes room for improvement in the execution, as some detractors point out. But at least the DH are enthusiastically putting themselves out there.
Specific inclusion in the Government Strategy suggests that public organisations which persist in keeping their corporate heads buried firmly in the sand, who believe that if they ignore social media and (unwisely) try to ban their staff from using it, it will go away, are going to have to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. Whilst I don’t think this position is realistic or sustainable, I’ll concede that it’s possible to see why the attitude persists. Presumably the reluctance to engage with the social web is partly due to embedded culture but largely down to fear of the unknown. Social media is still seen as new and gimmicky in some quarters. Despite what those who “live it” may believe, there’s still a huge lack of knowledge about how to use the tools and the benefits they can bring, but also a fear that engaging directly with stakeholders via the likes of Facebook and Twitter could ultimately bring them to the attention of media scandal mongers.
If the Government really intends to “embed social media as a mainstream channel used routinely to engage with citizens” then it needs to do more to raise awareness and sell the benefits. It also needs to produce detailed guidance rather than the piecemeal offerings that are currently available. This has to relate not just to specific channels but also cover strategy and project management considerations. Before embarking on a the social media element of a communications campaign, or even using it for day-to-day engagement, it’s imperative that those involved understand the time and resources needed to implement it, the editorial and approvals policy, evaluation processes and timeframes, risks and issues, the exit strategy, and above all, stakeholder needs and how this activity links to the overall business plan.
Unless this support is in place, and the Government proceeds to push the use of these channels on people who don’t have the skills or experience to use them well, the reputational damage that some organisations fear so much, may well become reality.
So the exciting news this week is that Barbie and Ken got back together for Valentines day (I’m obviously out of touch as I didn’t even know they’d been split up for the last seven years, but hey!).
Although the story of Barbie and Ken’s romance has endured over the last 50 years, the intensive, consistent and well integrated use of websites and social media channels over the last few weeks, has ramped it up into a saga worthy of Hello magazine. In a press release yesterday, the toy’s manufacturer Mattel announced that:
“… over the past month, their complex romance has played out on Facebook and Twitter with Ken® posting about his romantic gestures to prove that even though he is plastic, his love is real. Early this morning, Barbie® officially changed her status on Facebook to “in a relationship” and the couple even merged their Facebook pages.”
The campaign really ticks the popular culture boxes, using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube and Match.com to build a story by reporting events from different perspectives through realistic, believable character profiles. The campaign appears to have succeeded in encouraging high levels of user interest, engagement and involvement with Barbie (being the established social media veteran that she is) having 1,736,121 Facebook “likes” and 38,560 followers on Twitter but Ken (a relative newcomer) managing a respectable and fairly active following of 38,357 on Facebook and 8,043 on Twitter . There is even a tie-in reality series, produced by Hudsun Media, - “Genuine Ken - the search for the great American boyfriend” in which real life “Kens” compete for said title, and various offline events including an outing аt New York’s Fashion’s Night Out event.
This is all certainly entertaining and a good example of how to create a buzz and engage users by perpetuating a story through online channels, but it does make me wonder who it’s really aimed at. At first glance, it might appear from the tone of the campaign that it’s targeting a somewhat older demographic than your average Barbie-loving little girl (interestingly the campaign also seems to contain elements that make some efforts towards appealing to men/boys with Ken’s tweets about hіѕ favourite sports team, thе Lakers, and what he’s been reading in Men’s Health and Esquire).
However perhaps this is just a sign of the times as, at the end of the day, whatever you think about the message it conveys, it seems to me that the world of Ken and Barbie has always served to prepare pre-pubescent girls for the environment they’re about to fully enter into - ever increasingly one concerned with boys, fashion, gossip and the cult of celebrity. Perhaps an inevitable extension of this concept is to give them the opportunity to follow and interact with Ken and Barbie as though they are flesh and blood celebrities, or even just the boy and girl next door - particularly glamorous school friends who are active members of a kid’s extended online peer network.
Personally, I’m just holding out for the news that Bert and Ernie have set up profiles on Gaydar …!
This Christmas I was one of the thousands of people who received a Kindle and, despite being initially dubious due to it’s lack of paper, lack of need for bookshelf space and decidedly electronic whiff etc, etc, I’m rapidly becoming a fan. This is partly down to the attributes of the device itself, but I’ve also been enjoying exploring the many non Amazon sources of content that are available to me.
According to Amazon more customers purchased Kindle titles than physical books on Christmas Day (hardly surprising perhaps with so many people wanting to play with their new toy). However, Peter Kafka, writing for cnet news, reports that 64 of Amazon’s top 100 Kindle titles cost nothing, and speculates that people will just read whatever’s put in front of them if it’s free. On the one hand this could imply that a) people are tight, and b) Amazon are actively manipulating consumers into reading what they want us to read (although both online and traditional offline bookstores have been doing this for years with their “bestseller” lists and discounted titles), but it also has more positive implications. Perhaps the rise in popularity of ereaders and book download sites are doing for literature what the MP3 player and MySpace did for music and musicians?
You could argue that the mainstreaming of ebooks increasingly liberates struggling authors from the traditional publishing process and that it’s getting easier and easier for readers to sample new writing without having to make the financial commitment that goes with buying a book. Of course you could, and I’m sure many will, equally argue that established authors and the publishing industry are being damaged by sites offering “pirated” copies of books for download. However, Sites like bibliotastic allow authors to showcase their writing by giving away books for free and this is surely a healthy thing for everyone. It helps new authors get a foot in the door by enabling people to get a free taster of their work and, if they like what they read, I’d suggest most would be willing to pay for subsequent works.
Further, with most authors receiving just 8-15% of a “traditionally” produced book’s cover price why bother going through a publisher at all? Why not just self publish, retaining full control over your work and pocketing 100% the profit? Obviously authors choosing this route wouldn’t benefit from the full advertising, reputational and commercial clout of the big publishing houses, but I can envisage self publishing working well for some, especially those Internet savvy authors who manage to gain something of a cult following. Someone who falls into this category is blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow who has released his novels in paper form but, has also made a point of simultaneously making them available from his website under various Creative Commons licences.
So, in answer to the headline question I posed - does the rise of the Kindle spell the beginning of the end for traditional publishing models? I’d say not. Not yet at least, as the majority of both authors and consumers will still need and want to take advantage of the infrastructure provided by the publishing industry. In addition many will continue to prefer their printed word to be printed on paper rather than a screen. However, for those of us who want to publish ourselves, or explore the unpublished, it frees us up a little from the dictatorial practices of the mainstream.
As ever, it will be interesting to watch how this area develops. I’m sure we’ll be hearing plenty from the “industry” over the coming months about all those same copyright and DRM issues that we’ve heard applied to music, but I really believe that ultimately, as Doctorow commented back in 2004 before the “ebook revolution” really got underway, “giving away ebooks sells more books“.
A few ebook resources I’ve been exploring:
bibliotastic - publishes free ebooks from a variety of independent authors, allowing new authors to get their work out there, and allowing readers to give them direct feedback.
Calibre - I’m currently using this free and open source ebook library management application to manage my growing ebook collection and finding it a pretty spot on so far.
Free Book Spot - a few thousand free ebooks for download, divided up into categories. I found a couple of things I’d been unable to find on Amazon (e.g. most of China Mieville’s books) although I’m pretty sure much of the content hasn’t exactly been made available legally. If this doesn’t bother you then fill your boots!
Getfreeebooks - A collection of ebooks which are legal and free.
Tech books - More technical books than you can shake a stick at, covering a wide range of subjects from Apache to XML. A good resource although I’m not convinced that a book on Photoshop is going to render particularly well on my Kindle!
A couple of weeks ago I attended a workshop/brainstorming session, run by a certain well known, London based, “social media strategy consultancy” (which, for the purposes of this post, shall remain nameless), around using social media to better promote one of our services.
The discussion turned to YouTube and I explained our policy of making transcripts available on our website alongside video content and mentioned we were looking at utilising YouTube’s closed captioning functionality. This was met with silence and blank stares, so I asked, “what do you guys advise your clients on making video content accessible, you know, to those who may have a disability or use assistive technologies?” More silence and blank stares. When it eventually came, the answer from one of their senior consultants was as follows: “Well, er, um, we advise them on making content accessible in that should be interesting, engaging and fun …” I was unsure at this point (the point having been well and truly missed) whether to laugh or cry, especially considering some of the high profile clients in this company’s portfolio.
A few years ago much was being made of web accessibility both on and offline. It seemed for a while that pretty much every web related conference was dedicated to, or had an item on web accessibility - at least outlining why it is important, even if they were generally a little light on the detail around how it’s achieved. These days, in a similar way, the subject of choice is very much social media. So all this got me wondering whether accessibility considerations are falling by the wayside as organisations are pushed, willingly or not (especially by those PR and marketing agencies who are now positioning themselves as social media gurus), more and more into using social media.
Regardless of the chanel used, organisations still have both a moral and legal responsibility to provide information in accessible formats but social media sites have received criticism in the past for their failure to work with assistive technologies and:
“… issues which can decrease their effectiveness with a disabled market segment” (Dolson, 2010).
It’s true that some sites have taken steps to improve accessibility and counter these criticisms. As previously mentioned, YouTube’s adoption of closed captioning, Twitter’s provision of a text only version called “Accessible Twitter” and Facebook’s introduction of audio captcha and a text only version of the site.
Whilst the accessibility of too many websites is still appalling, those of us who paid attention a few years back, did make some headway in promoting the issue to managers and developers. But, and I guess this is my point, if the so-called expert consultancies (who’s opinions, in my experience, are generally held in higher regard than in-house web staff) neither know nor care about making content accessible to those within their target audience who may have a disability, we have a whole new problem. I guess it’s time to start evangelising all over again, *sigh*.
Btw - the irony of moaning about the accessibility of social sites on a Wordpress blog with (ahem) less than perfect accessibility, is not lost on me!
CORRECTION: As per the comment below, please note that Accessible Twitter is not affiliated with Twitter but is:
“an independent third party application who is filling a major accessibility gap with the Twitter service on the web.”
I’ve been exploring the new Facebook timeline feature and surprisingly (as I’ve been less than enthusiastic many of the recent FB interface changes), I quite like it! However, the caveat to that statement is … as long as I can remove from view a couple of the posts and photos that have now surfaced. I’m well aware that there’s almost certainly a record on a server somewhere of everything I’ve ever said online, but in practice previous Facebook statuses had tended to slip from sight and mind quite quickly.
I think it would be safe to say that the NHS brand is one of the most well known and trusted in the UK. Despite constant media battering - waiting times, hospital infections, staff shortages, patient records etc., the presence of those three white letters enclosed in their blue rectangle (the NHS lozenge as it’s known), still stirs strong, generally positive feelings in the majority of people. It’s an institution that, apart from offering free, accessible health care to all, generally stands for professionalism and expertise. Indeed, many NHS consultants are amongst the foremost experts in their fields.
Over the last few days I’ve seen a load of posts from my Facebook friends warning “to ALL …PHONE NUMBERS OF ALL are now on Facebook!” and hey, when I checked, sure enough they were!
The 
So the exciting news this week is that Barbie and Ken got back together for Valentines day (I’m obviously out of touch as I didn’t even know they’d been split up for the last seven years, but hey!).
This Christmas I was one of the 
A couple of weeks ago I attended a workshop/brainstorming session, run by a certain well known, London based, “social media strategy consultancy” (which, for the purposes of this post, shall remain nameless), around using social media to better promote one of our services.
Find me here too ...