In other media coverage, Newsweek Magazine recommended Freedom as one of “31 Ways To Get Smarter In 2012, and ” Mashable included Freedom and Anti-Social prominently in the article 6 Apps That Block Online Distractions So You Can Get Work Done.

I was also extremely pleased to see Margaret Atwood tweet about Freedom.  All in all, a wonderful way to start the new year!

The knee-jerk reaction the announcement of these tools is to contrast them against “traditional” models of social software, such as the profile-centric ego network embodied by Facebook.  “+,” much like Twitter and post-2007 Facebook, thrive on activity streams within a set of bounded networks; these tools move beyond a profile-centric notion of sociality and into content-rich activity streams.  “+” treats these streams holistically – they could be comprised of links (e.g. Circles) or real time conversation (e.g. Hangouts).  In a way, this next-generation “social networking” is somewhat of a return to roots, leveraging technologies and modes of interaction that are well-worn and comfortable rather than new and challenging.

The natural question for Google’s “+” is: Will it succeed?  To consider this question, we must define success.  One definition of success is displacing Facebook; I do not believe this is Google’s goal.  Google’s long-term viability depends on social in the sense that search must be made social; to do this, Google must — through one way or another — discover our social networks and employ this information in relevance judgments.  Google’s definition of success, I believe, is the creation of a technology that enables the enumeration and active maintenance of each user’s weighted social network going forward.

The maintenance of a network going forward implies long-term vibrancy – for “+” to be central to Google’s social reinvention, we must keep a copy of our up-to-date social networks in “+.”  The logic here is simple: Google must be able to adapt to network dynamics to stay socially relevant.  If you move to a new town or job and fail to update your “+” then the relevance of social search will suffer.

Over the years, I’ve thought and written about a few successful models for social networks.  Sites such as Last.fm or Flickr depend on social objects around which we construct shared experience.  LinkedIn succeeds because of latent value in networks; you probably don’t check LinkedIn a ton – but when you are in need LinkedIN may contain very powerful ties.  Curation has emerged as a powerful model – think Tumblr other sites where highly selective sharing is the norm.  Finally, the traditional model of social is that of the ego network, in which a site overlays your social networks with a technical infrastructure.  Facebook or Myspace are canonical ego nets, and Google’s “+” fits squarely in this mold with promises to “bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software.”

As Google and countless other companies have discovered, the development of an ego-centric social network site is challenging.  Getting past the standard UX/UI challenges, we must be motivated to use the software – and I have argued a key factor for success is that the site addresses a situationally relevant information need.  Facebook was so successful because it captured a population in the midst of life change; the software was immensely useful for addressing the information needs of students.  Perhaps my greatest worry about “+” is I can’t figure out how the software is situationally relevant.

At this stage, it seems that “+” attempts to differentiate based on privacy.  That is, Google feels that monolithic models of sharing are “awkward” or “broken” – and the definition of sharing groups solves the problem.  I have worked in privacy long enough to know two things.  First, privacy is not a market differentiator for privacy-inelastic populations.  Second, privacy is not a feature – it is a process.  My work with Woody Hartzog on boundary regulation shows that privacy is just one of many motives for disclosure regulation.  danah boyd and Alice Marwick’s latest draft on teen privacy practices highlights the practice of finding privacy in public.  While I appreciate Google’s nod to the problems of boundary regulation, I am skeptical of the feature’s actual value.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to drive interest to a social site.  Designing something intrinsically cool is one.  Designing something intrinsically valuable is another.  Making a process less expensive — in terms of capital or labor — also works.  I look at the Hangout product and I see something that I had to pay for from Skype or Adobe.  But what I don’t see is a clear informational advantage to motivate use of the service, and that worries me.

With the launch of “+,” Google has demonstrated facility and creative thinking.  Google has also clearly been chastened by Buzz, which was nothing less than a dangerous, brute-force attack on our social graphs.  Google’s social search strategy requires our networks, and it requires networks that we maintain over time.  To construct a vibrant social place, Google must move beyond cool design or cost displacement, it must create a product that is valuable, that truly betters our lives.  That is Google’s challenge, and I will be interested to see how “+” rises to the challenge.

Over the past few years, a number of influential studies have explored the relationship between Facebook use and social outcomes – with no work being more prominent or influential than the body of work constructed by Ellison, Lampe, and Steinfield.  Over a number of studies, the MSU team has robustly identified both main and interaction effects in the relationship between Facebook use and social capital.  One of the most prominent findings from this work concerns the relationship between Facebook use and bridging social capital – the idea that Facebook effectively brings you closer to your extended group of weak ties.

Building on this work, Christian decided to explore this relationship in more depth – by focusing on the relationship between Facebook interface element use and bridging social capital.  Since we know that Facebook use is associated with bridging social capital, we wanted to understand what types of uses are associated with bridging social capital.  Christian devised and implemented a survey that measured intensity of use of Facebook wall posts, status updates, direct messages, and chatting, and explored the relationship between these types of uses and social capital.  We found that wall posting, in particular, was associated with bridging social capital – which conditionally supported our hypothesis that “third party visible” communication (a unique affordance of SNS) is critical to the production of social capital.

You can read more about the precise details of the study, including the methodology and measurement techniques, by downloading the pre-print or viewing the slideshare of Christian’s talk.  A key take away from this research is the importance of publicly visible communication – for all of the criticism Facebook has taken over the way it handles the News Feed, the ability to broadcast to a bounded public proves inherently useful.  A secondary take away is the fact our gender control was significant, which indicates that males, who may feel more comfortable disclosing information publicly due to different attitudes about privacy, gain more from public disclosures than females.  NB: All limitations apply – self report, study done at one college, etc.  We welcome your comments and feedback!

A big thanks goes out to both Jane Brown and Paul Jones, who mentored this work as thesis advisors.  The work was supported by a grant from UNC’s Office of Undergraduate Research, and Christian’s travel was made possible by the UNC JOMC Knight Chair.  Thank you!  Finally, I’m happy to add Christian’s paper to a growing list of my students that have been published.  In January, work on social networks and privacy by my undergraduate student Jamila Thompson was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.  Earlier, Brett Bumgarner’s excellent work on motivations for Facebook use was published in First Monday.  I’m very proud of all these students!

Download PDF  (Large file)

Abstract

This study explores the supportive and informational uses of social network sites that facilitate adaptation to transition. Adaptation to transition is a complex process contingent upon the management of stress associated with transition and general integration into the transitional environment. This study focuses on the transition to college, a major life event requiring integration into new settings, the negotiation of informational challenges, and the mastery of new roles and identities.

Social network sites represent a connective infrastructure within personal networks. Because social network sites are inherently connective, they afford a location for provision and receipt of social support during transition, and a site for the acquisition of information necessary for integration into the transitional environment. Drawing on data collected directly from a social network site that describes the networked activity of a freshman class over the course of their first semester at college, from a sample survey of freshmen with 1,198 respondents, and from 15 semi-structured interviews, this research has two primary components.

In the first component of analysis, I explore the structure and dynamics of socio-technical networks during transition. Using exponential random graph modeling, I identify the role and magnitude of preference, socio-demographic, and configuration factors in structuring socio-technical networks during transition. I then use an econometric framework to demonstrate that certain types of information sharing and profile change are associated with socio-technical network growth.

In the second component of analysis, I explore uses of social network sites that facilitate adaptation to transition. Using multiple regression and structural equation modeling, I demonstrate that supportive and social-informational uses of social network sites in transition exert a direct and mediated positive effect on overall adaptation. I then draw on interviews to explore supportive and informational uses of the social network site during transition, finding that social network sites are useful in pre-transition preparation, for social adaptation, and for academic support throughout the transition. Upon evaluation, I demonstrate that a social network site is a useful place to turn for the social and informational support that facilitates adaptation to transition.

Nielsen, the media research firm, calculated that one in every 4 1/2 minutes online is spent on blogs and social networking sites.

So, Fred Stutzman, a software developer, created an application to combat all of this time wasting. It’s called Anti-Social.

The idea came to him after he fell into the Wikipedia trap: “You’re doing some writing, you’re doing some research, and you want to look something up and you find yourself at Wikipedia,” Stutzman says. “And, as it always happens, one page on Wikipedia turns into to two to five to 10, and then you spend an hour learning about things but not necessarily getting work done. So by having a simple barrier to keeping yourself offline, it’s very effective in terms of productivity.”

You can listen to the story, “Stop Me Before I Facebook Again,” here.

In the wake of the story, I’ve received a number of requests for a Windows version of Anti-Social.  First of all – yes, a Windows version is coming.  It is a little tricky to produce, but one is in development.  Second, now that I’ve completed my dissertation, I hope to find the time to push the beta of Anti-Social for Windows soon.

• Dr. Gary Marchionini, SILS, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Dr. Deborah Barreau, SILS, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Dr. danah boyd, Microsoft Research
• Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman, JOMC, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Paul Jones, JOMC and SILS, UNC-Chapel Hill

It was a great honor to work with my committee, and I appreciate their guidance in my work.  There are still a few edits remaining on my dissertation, and I will post it when I submit the final copy to the graduate school.  In the meantime, I’ve posted the slides from my talk as a Slideshare.

CHI 2011 workshop: “Privacy for a Networked World”: Bridging Theory and Design

http://networkedprivacy.wordpress.com/

As our lives are more commonly mediated by information technology, an interactional perspective to how people find and construct privacy in socio-technical interactions has proven effective as a starting point for theoretical and empirical studies of privacy in everyday life in which online interactions have a significant role.

Yet, there remain important open questions regarding how to translate results based on this perspective into design practice. Addressing these questions requires a greater sensitivity to when interactional privacy is applicable, a better understanding of suitable research methods, and more effective means for communicating results to the researcher and practitioner communities. The goal of this workshop is to bring privacy theory and design together.

We seek participants from various domains for a multidisciplinary workshop to share their knowledge and views of both the theory and design of interactional privacy.

Position papers are invited on the following topics:

1. Theoretical and empirical study of interactional privacy.
2. Ways of designing for interactional privacy.

Submitted position papers will be peer-reviewed by a workshop committee. The organizers will disseminate the results at the CHI conference and plan to submit a proposal for a special issue in a relevant journal in response to an open Call for Papers.

Interested parties should submit a position paper of 2-4 pages, in the CHI Extended Abstracts format, to the EasyChair submission central at http://tinyurl.com/networkedprivacy by Jan 14, 2011. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the workshop and for one or more days of the CHI 2011 conference.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Submission deadline – Jan 14, 2011
• Notification of acceptance – Feb 11,2011
• Workshop at CHI2011 – May 7, 2011

ORGANIZERS

Airi Lampinen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, Finland
Fred Stutzman, School of Information and Library Science, UNC-Chapel Hill, USA
Markus Bylund, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden

If you have any questions or would like to learn about this workshop, please contact the organizers at networkedprivacy[at]gmail.com.

I’m happy to invite you to my dissertation defense, December 8 at 10AM, in Manning 014. This is a small room so seating might be limited. Full information is available on the SILS website.

I hope to post my dissertation in a few weeks. I will share it here when it is ready for public viewing.

Last weekend’s Financial Times magazine also contained mention of Freedom.  The author Katie Roiphe describes an experiment spending a week offline.  Roiphe writes:

A man I meet at a party tells me about a software program called “freedom”. It asks you how long you would like to be offline (i.e. free) and you tell it, and then it disables your computer so you can’t get on to the internet for that time – or, in its words: “Freedom locks you away from the internet.” If you should suddenly need to go on the internet, you can restart your computer and disable the program, but it offers that extra bit of resistance; it is the superego, the self-control that you don’t quite have, or in its own slightly Orwellian terms, “Freedom enforces freedom”.

I’ll refer you to the article to see how the week offline goes.

Title:
Socio-Technical Support Networks During Life Transition

Abstract:
Modern life is characterized by transition.  Completing education, moving between jobs and residential relocation are examples of the transitions that challenge us, enable personal growth, and facilitate the construction of our life stories.  Successful adaptation to transition is a function of social-informational processes.  During a transition, individuals are challenged to make sense of their transitional environment, while developing socially supportive resources that aid in transition.  Large-scale adoption of social media, and resultant tightly-coupled mediated sociality has the potential to facilitate life transition; through social media, individuals are able to answer situationally relevant information needs, while drawing on extended support networks.  Using observational data collected during one such transition – the transition to college – this project explores social network site information practices during life transition.  In particular, I explore the dynamics of network configuration during the early stages of transition, identifying factors relevant to the assemblage and growth of socio-technical support networks.  I then explore the outcomes of social network site use during transition, identifying information behaviors associated with adaptation to transition.

I believe the talk will be at 3PM.  I’m looking forward to visiting the Department of Informatics, as well as meeting with faculty and students.  I’ll update the post with location information as we get closer to the date.

Although only a couple of months old and a few post posted, the blog is already chocked full of useful approaches to personal #noemail issues.

Beginning with “The sickening realisation that email was bad for me” (note spellings and Rich are British) which includes a very nice panel from The Oatmeal’s Email Monster sequence, Rich describes how he has come to look beyond email and how he has found a strong support community including the videos of Luis @elsua Suarez and Claire Burge and one of their guests in particular (me).

Rich’s most recent post, “Getting Started with #NoEmail – 10 Top Tips To Slay The Email Beast,” offers excellent leads, succinctly presented for getting into the world beyond email. Admittedly these leads are so succinct that they beg for expansion and detail, but that exactly what Rich promises to do in future posts. His unpacking of his first lead, “Accept You Have A Problem,” at the end of the 10 Top Tips is a strong downpayment on that promise.

Looking forward to more posts and more expansion on his good leads in the near future.

What these apps have in common is that they address most if not all of the driving forces (technical and social) toward #noemail (greater reliance of open collaboration, mobile rather than stationary work spaces, the untamable nuisance of spam replaced by whitelists and other controls, quick and terse interchanges often while in motion, many brief highly interactive exchanges constituting a conversation stream, context appropriate messaging, and highly customizable communications alerts and streams across all devices as desired. in case you’ve forgotten)

Or as Quartz writers creatively describe the situation:

About 25 percent of all life forms on Earth are some kind of beetle. In the App Store, messenger apps are becoming just as prodigious, with new species appearing en masse despite the popularity of Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Skype, and WhatsApp. Nearly 20 successful venture-backed messaging apps hit the market in the last 12 months to acclaim. Some of these­—like “text concierge” Magic—have been properly recognized for their ability to challenge legacy communication giants and blockbuster upstarts alike. The industries and messaging apps at the heart of the disruption battleground are visualized here.

Why?

Email, as we have known it, is changing because of identifiable forces:

1. greater reliance of open collaboration
2. mobile rather than stationary work spaces
3. the untamable nuisance of spam replaced by whitelists and other controls
4. quick and terse interchanges often while in motion
5. many brief highly interactive exchanges constituting a conversation stream
6. context appropriate messaging
7. highly customizable communications alerts and streams across all devices as desired

While there is strong indication that these changes are driven by age-related demographics, there is no reason that better communication should be the sole property of young people texting or older folks Skypeing with their grandchildren or middle schoolers collaborating with Google Docs or software developers with IRC open in several windows and posting commits to Github.

Several attempts to replace email have come onto the scene and several have gone or faded in promise. Google Plus seemed like a great solution for a while and now seems less so. Diaspora looked like a challenger to Facebook’s walled garden. ello came on quickly and almost as quickly became a footnote.

Others aimed at work groups were more sticky: Slack is by far the leader, but it shares that space with Asana, Glip, Hipchat, Yammer and Chatter or just old-fashioned IRC.

New email interfaces and enhancements from Google seen in Gmail and in Inbox as well as IBM’s Verse attempt to conquer the problem by using analytics, integration of other streams and more complex interfaces.

Of course, new apps are appearing on mobile devices (see point 2 above) almost daily and the ability to manage their alerts and to integrate their communications streams is stronger as mobile platforms evolve to support more integration of cross app interactions.

It is much easier now to say “I just don’t do email anymore” than it was four years ago. And I expect that #noemail will continue to make more sense to more people in the coming year.

Claire Burge @claireburge and Luis Suarez @elsua have build up a nice series of interview and discussions on their YouTube channel now up to Episode VIII. The shows cover a range of topics and feature interviews with some very experienced #noemail folks to add color and additional insights.

An even more dynamic, and talkative, group is active at a Slack instance called #noemail managed by @elsua. Meeting a lot of good folks from all over the world and learning quite a bit from then them and their @epicstories and #hintstips (more on how to be involved in this later on)

In the meantime, I’ve embarked on a little writing project. More news on that as November approaches.

Email doesn’t spam people. People spam people (but as with guns, absence of the weapon causes a decrease in the crime) #noemail

Neil is not the first to ask us to behave civilly, sanely and considerately when we use email. And he is not the first to believe that posting some guidelines will lead us to a better world.

I was not the first, when in the 1980s, is wrote an article for our university as Ms. Mail Manners called “An excruciatingly correct guide to email behavior.” I see echoes of my 30 year old document almost every day. In conversation. In business press articles. In blog posts. Even in a special Slack group on #noemail.

Nerdly twists along the same line are occurring, even as I write this, at Y-Combinator’s Hacker News discussion that begins:

Email is probably one of the the oldest (and most used) services of all time. Email killed the Fax and Letter Writing in general. Today, it is the de facto communication tool for businesses.
In recent years were born hundreds of services that have tried to make email less painful.
In your opinion what will be the future for email?

As you might imagine, hackers are promoting their favorite hacks to deal with email and their favorite emerging substitutes, but even technologically focused people still post things like:

Gustomaximus 11 hours ago
I think the problem is not so much email, but teaching people how to use email correctly. My company recently sent the entire office on a full day Outlook course. Going in everyone was thinking how this was such a waste of a day. Going out everyone was so greatful.

Besides Gustomaximus’ overtrust in Outlook as a solution to anything and his misspelling of “grateful,” he shows a naive trust in the stickiness of corporate training. Perhaps age and experience will correct these problems, but as the evidence shows neither aging nor experience much changes the commission of email sins.

Look at your inbox, or don’t. The ages and experience of the worse email offenders make no difference. What does make a difference is that those — often “born mobile” as opposed to merely “born digital” — who don’t even bother to send email are the more efficient, productive and frankly happier.

Email. It’s not a people problem; it’s a technology problem that expresses itself in bad human behavior.

Of course my eyes scanned through the document stopping at “THE CAUSES OF WASTED TIME: Three reasons why admin work takes so much time.” Reason 2 (of the three, the center piece) stopped me.

First I saw:

Then I saw exactly what Outdated and Inefficient technologies that they had identified:

After registering (no cost but a bit of contact info which could result in sales contact hopefully not by email), I browsed the report in full It’s here (PDF) and yes there is much more on the ways that email and spreadsheets waste your time and patience and how the choice of unstructured communications and clutter combine to cost your enterprise greatly. Good survey here from a survey of 915 managers in the US and UK.

“Evolution of Conversations in the Age of Email Overload” [pdf] from Farshad Kooti, Luca Maria Aiello, Mihajlo Grbovic, Kristina Lerman, and Amin Mantrach found at ArXiv.org (via Jeff Pomerantz aka @jpom):

…found that users increased their activity as they received more emails, but not enough to compensate for the higher load. This means that as users became more overloaded, they replied to a smaller fraction of incoming emails and with shorter replies. However, their responsiveness remained intact and may even be faster. Demographic factors affected information overload, too. Older users generally replied to a smaller fraction of incoming emails, but their reply time and length were not impacted by overload as much as younger users. In contrast, younger users replied faster, but with shorter replies and to a higher fraction of emails.

Among other findings in general is that younger, especially male, emailers tend to be more mobile, faster and more terse in their replies (pointing toward messaging behaviors rather than email behavoirs as noted here as among the reasons why email must and will die).

In the meantime, you can learn more about #noemail from Luis @elsua Suarez and Claire Burge @claireburge on their bi-weekly video Vodcasts Life Without Email on YouTube. Now up to Episode 6.

And you can take a planned email break on May 5, 2015 for #noemail Day.

Do concepts like designing with the user, understanding ecosystems, and using all things open (source, standards, data, innovation) around the world excite you? They excite the international development community too! Join us for a discussion about the Digital Development Principles (www.ict4dprinciples.org) – the product of a global groundswell to capture lessons learned and guide future donor investments in information and communication technology for development (ICT4D). Together we will explore how the Principles help create new opportunities and synergies, driving us beyond simple technology solutions to true transformative change.

A photo posted by switchpoint (@switchpoint) on Apr 11, 2015 at 5:29am PDT

Founded by Paul Lancaster now of SageOne in UK after his issuing of the No Email Day Manifesto (a great slideshare read which I recommend), No Email Day offers a chance for companies and individuals to take a break and discover better ways of communicating — better than email which is pretty much any other way at all.

For some deeper viewing and good insightful conversation about #noemail and alternative communications strategies, catch up with Luis @elsua Suarez and Claire Burge @claireburge on their bi-weekly video Vodcasts Life Without Email on YouTube. Now up to Episode 5.

Follow #noemail, #noemailday and @noemaildayhq for breaking No Email Day news and join the No Email Day Facebook Page