famebook™

Google Vs. Facebook - Response to Michael Arrington's TC Articles!

See Original Article here! & Follow Up Article here!

...Apart from thinking that Facebook like cigarette co's should have a Govt. health warning words to the effect of 'what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, unless we decide to change our TOS's and use that information we now have on you'; I think it's ironic that the overwhelming majority of people commenting on tech publications like TC are negative on Facebook and ambivalent at worst on Google. This seems to be increasingly at odds with the publications themselves who seem to me at least to slant in the opposite direction. Is the rising prevalence of FB Connect pure coincidence?

Perhaps Facebook are playing neatly into Google's hand, because when push comes to shove the deal was we built our 'private' digital identity on Facebook's free platform in return for having adverts adjacent to our data. The subsequent and abhorrent 'opt out' rape of our privacy and implied ransom of our own data by Facebook's lack of an export function, has done nothing to create any brand loyalty and it seems to me Google has the aesthetic higher moral ground with the all important users. Should they overcome the simplicity, style, integrity, portability, longevity and privacy issues in a new social product under wraps or support/ invest in another start up version, I think the latent bad feeling Facebook seems so complacent about, could be catastrophic.

A persons' digital identity is their currency not Facebook's or Google's or any other providers either. Continued reliance on a business model or political ideology which trys to sustain a value out of ransoming that asset is both morally suspect in my view and simply not logical in the long term. The old adage that if you love people set them free, rings bells with me especially and I've been saying for some time (see blogs) that if each individual controlled their own digital identity, got paid for the ads on their pages and on a user-generated basis chose what categories those adverts should be to suit their social graph and to ensure maximum relevance, then noone would have to rape your privacy to achieve that by stealth and under the spurious excuse of 'failing forward fast'. Everyone would share freely and the social graph would be trustworthy and free in the spirit of the internet. I also think a platform provider like Facebook would increase revenues tenfold and the Kirkpatrick assertions of altruism might start to be believable. Everything else is just further evidence to the contrary.

Plus afterthoughts:

If I were Facebook and not forsaking the above, I would really question the Microsoft like approach to its corporate reputation. Even at its most greedy or arrogant, the prospect of Linux or Apple for most people was too much of a hurdle, but in Facebook's case, if a viable alternative arrives, Google or otherwise, you're really only talking about a refresh of your contact lists somewhere else. I keep a note of all my email addresses anyway, but if you don't, then as sites like Foursquare etc. demonstrate, the people most keen on communciating with you socially, will follow you werever you go.

I'm not frightened of sharing stuff and would love to embrace the social graph more freely. But it's my stuff and if anyone is going to make money from it, it's me. Likewise, it's noone's place but a parents to decide what private information their child, may have uploaded to the internet based on one set of privacy principles, should or should not be shared without notice by the host to that information. If you as the host abuse that trust then I look at you as I would any abuser, with a certain contempt and anger. If you don't understand that, then you really need to learn to, if you want me to respect you or your brand because in the abscence of that I just assume you don't care and certainly won't encourage my child anywhere near your platform.

If you genuinely just want the world to be more friendly and connected and that is your core philosophy, I guess it's time to prove it. Don't hold my digital identity and social graph to ransom, whoever you are! It's mine, not yours...and always will be!

Increasing Brand Value Through Honour - A Case Study (DFJ Esprit)

A while back I was reading one of my favourite European blogs THE EQUITY KICKER and Nic, the Writer and Partner at DFJ Esprit was asking for some ideas for taglines for their new website. I had a few moments so I gave it some thought and ventured a few modest ideas to the pot. Others too responded with their ideas and to be honest I thought nothing of it afterwards. I'm often generous with ideas and as long as they don't compromise my own ring-fenced business ideas and asset value, enjoy keeping my creative brain alive by contributing to other people's projects.

On many occasions, I've come up with book titles, song titles, band names, movie titles and they've ended up in lights without so much as a mention or note of appreciation. Every time that happens, I mentally write off the people or companies concerned and look at both their ethics and simple good manners with a sense of resigned disappointment but comfort myself that they have lost any opportunity for further value and at least I will go to my grave knowing I've always been original and have never had to 'steal a line'. In some cases especially where that omnipresent spectre of corporate passing off goes unabated, I know myself and many like me (and increasingly these days), look at some big brands with a sour taste in our mouths and the impression that if they can steal the smallest thing, then the overall company integrity must be suspect.

Sometimes though one stumbles across an honourable person and all the negatives described above are transformed to opposite effect. (At the risk of being seen to seek mileage for my efforts which I can honestly say I'm not, I am though seizing the opportunity to demonstrate the point to those individuals and corporations who've benefited from my contributions in the past without so much of a thank you, or worse, lied about the origin of those assets.) So here's my big up for Nic;

Nic Brisbourne is a gentleman and no we haven't even met in person yet. His blog is impartial, engaging and erudite. He publically crowdsourced his call to action for the strapline from the outset, kept his followers up to date and didn't attempt, like Governments tend to, bury the bad news. Some months later, Nic sent me a note asking for my address without explanation and within a couple of days a very nice present indeed arrived at my door, with a note thanking me for my coming up with DFJ Esprit's new tagline of 'fuelling global ambition'. I'm an old fashioned sentimentalist and I was genuinely touched. Now that action alone 'had me at hello', but I have just noted today that Nic also posted a new blog post thanking the contributors to his website and namechecked me as well which he similarly didn't have to do.

And so I find myself, not only further warmed to Nic as an individual, but with a massive feel good factor for DFJ, both in Europe and as part of the wider network. It's the little things that count and this one little thing has prompted me to break my blogging drought and perhaps further contribute to their ongoing success by sharing that good will.

Maybe in this age of increased sharing, one of the eventual net benefits is the ironic fact that the ability for corporations or some of the people who work there, or individuals with a lack of moral fibre, to plagarise without being called to account is diminishing to the benefit of those that originate ideas in the first place. In Nic's case I contributed without expectation, in others more close to my own ambitions, my ideas are just those and have a price or are just not for sale. Either way and without implying we have any other connection currently, I would prefer to be surrounded by the Nic's and DFJ's of this world than the alternatives and to my fellow morally intact entrepreneurs and potential investors into DFJ, both with 'global ambitions' I hope this strikes a cord!

To Nic, I hope this is not presumptuous and put more simply, 'it was my very great pleasure!'.