There’s More Free Stuff Out There Than You May Know

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

May 8, 1977. The setting was Ithaca, New York; Cornell University’s barn-like Barton field house, specifically. On that particular Sunday evening, for the princely sum of $7.50 – $6.50 for students – you could buy one general admission ticket (assuming you could find any for sale) to hear a performance by the Grateful Dead.

For the Dead it was just another gig on an unending tour; the Ithaca stop was sandwiched between New Haven’s Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum and Buffalo’s War Memorial Coliseum.  Fairly to form, the band played 20 songs that night, starting with “New Minglewood Blues” and wrapping with the classic “One More Saturday Night.” Along the way they hit a number of fan favorites like “Fire on the Mountain,” “Not Fade Away” and “Morning Dew.”

At the time, May 8th was just another performance by the Dead, an enduring American band that had long attracted it’s own rolling culture of scruffy fans, hippies, dope-smokers and assorted others who followed the band from show to show. But for true “Deadheads,” it’s much, much more than that. For Deadhead Nation, May 8 is forever known simply as “Barton Hall.”

35 years later to the day, the Dead’s spring 1977 tour is now the stuff of legend, with the Barton Hall show the most celebrated performance of the band’s career. “I started hearing from other Deadheads that the Barton show was famous,” Brad Krakow tells the Cornell Chronicle. One of the lucky attendees that night, Krakow characterized the Dead’s performance as “tight, no mistakes and inspired. It is funny now when friends ask if that is ‘The’ Barton Hall when visiting. It is an icon.”

But don’t take Krakow’s word for it. Download the entire concert and decide for yourself. In fact, why not download every concert the Grateful Dead ever played to compare and contrast? Go ahead – you can do it all for free, and without any copyright worries, thanks to a website called “The Internet Archive.”

A Virtual Library of Alexandria

Founded in 1996 in San Francisco, the Archive is a digital warehouse of just about everything. Photographs, drawings, texts, recorded audio and video, the Archive storehouse is too vast to ever fully explain or explore, and it’s getting larger every day.

Logo for the Internet Archive

Want to see outtakes from the interviews from Glenn Greenwald’s 2004 movie “Outfoxed”? You can find them here on the archive for free. Want to download author Richard Willard Armour’s 1963 memoir “Through Darkest Adolescence”? You can get text, Kindle, .pdf or just about any other version with one easy click. Old movies, live concerts, classic photographs? They and much, much more are stored in the memory banks of  the Archive.

Founder Brewster Kahle says he wanted to create a virtual Library of Alexandria online; a place where much of the stuff of our daily lives could be preserved for future generations, and not lost forever, as much of the content of the ancient Alexandria library was so doomed. Kahle calls himself simply a “digital librarian,” but there’s nothing simple about the Internet Archive or Kahle’s ambitions.

In essence, Kahle wants to build a one-world library: one place where web content of all types can be sorted, stored, and accessed for free. Says Kahle:

“The web is ephemeral. About every 100 days a webpage is changed or deleted. So keeping up with the web is important. Next we started doing television, then movies, and now books.”

Take books, for example. If you want to share a book you own that isn’t int the Archive, you can scan it yourself and upload it, or just take it to one of the Archives hundred-odd scanning locations, where they’ll do it for you. Of course, at least some of those books are still under copyright, but due to special legal provisions regarding the blind and dyslexic, the Archive can store and even ‘lend’ these books, too.

The same is true for other forms of media. IA archivists work to ensure copyright protections where they’re are legitimate, but with the wealth of material that’s fallen out of (or never protected by) copyright, the Archive’s holdings are vast. The items may be mundane, but that’s no matter to Kahle. The more, the better.

One of the most popular features on IA is something called “The WayBack Machine.” Starting sometime in 1997, Archive engineers began trawling the web and grabbing screenshots of millions of webpages. Want to know what VOA’s webpage looked like – and what was news – back on, say, November9 2000? The Archive has it (and boy, have things changed a LOT since then!)

Preserving the Forgettable

Grateful Dead on May 8, 1977 (archive.org)

A lot of the stuff on the Internet Archive may be momentarily interesting, but one could ask about their long term value. For instance, do 100 newsreels from 1940′s America say anywhere as much important as just one classic book like “Death of a Salesman” or “For Whom The Bell Tolls”? Probably. But like with everything, context is all important, and what the Archive is saving is much of the ephemeral context that just ends up in history’s dustbin.

That said, there’s very little forgettable about many of the Archive’s holdings, such as the Dead’s Barton Hall classic. Years ago the band made a decision: rather than block crowd recordings and file thousands of copyright lawsuits, they agreed to make all of their concert recordings taken from the mixing board copyright clear. In other words if you had the right equipment, you could plug into the main soundboard, record any show, and do with it whatever you wanted.

That’s exactly how Barton Hall, May 8 1977 ended up on the Internet Archive; it and over 100,000 other live concerts.

It may soon be forgotten that 35 years ago today, the day of the concert, a freak snowstorm hit Ithaca, leaving hundreds of Deadheads nowhere to go but to break into a nearby dorm to warm up (and for other activities.) But thanks to the Archive, what happened during that concert will live on for decades, or longer.

Thoughts On The Strange World Of Online Ads

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

I’ll admit it. As an organization, we here at VOA can be a rather starchy bunch. Which is usually fitting, given the very serious issues we cover on a daily basis. Still, in general there’s not a lot of laughs to be had on our site.

And that includes this blog. Over the last few weeks we’ve contemplated the hazards of a cashless society, considered the possibility of a cyber-war with Iran and fretted over how much of our lives the Internet is stealing. Whether it’s a crackdown on free speech on the web in Vietnam or a continuing erosion of online privacy, our coverage has tended to see the Internet in serious, if even threatening, terms.

But the web is at least as much about humor, or just plain strangeness, as it is ponderous issues. With few exceptions, it’s a near certainty that any random “cute zoo animal” video or juvenile humor site has more traffic and Facebook “likes” than the most serious of stories from the most august of news organizations.

At times it seems that the Internet was built with funny and weird in mind. Odd and humorous go over well in small doses, which the web readily provides, and they want to be shared with friends, which is what social networks do best.

Correction: Brett Erlich, mid-snark

People hunt the net for this kind of stuff, for that next weird thing poised to go viral. Those that do it well can become something like kingmakers. Take Ray William Johnson for example. A one-time history major and future lawyer at Columbia University, Johnson began recording short videos, offering amusing (at times) commentary on other short videos – the odder the better.

But what started as a knock-off has grown into “Equals Three,” one of the most popular channels on YouTube, generating over 2 billion views. When Johnson (and his staff of writers) mentions a new video these days, its view numbers skyrocket.

All this came to mind while watching Erlich’s’ most recent video, where he spotlights an odd online ad hawking a rather dyspeptic-looking product, the “Crown Crust Pizza.” Less a pizza and more a garbage plate, the CCP is essentially 12 mini cheeseburgers encircling dough with cheese, meat, tomato and “special sauce,” whatever that may be.

But as unlikely as the product – which is under test in several Middle Eastern markets – may sound, the commercial itself is just strange. “May I have the cheeseburger?” asks one young patron, eliciting snorts of laughter from his fellow patrons. That’s immediately followed by what looks like a 14th-Century royal footman bringing in the CCP through blasts of regal trumpets.

For this viewer, it’s not a very effective way to sell food. But this ad has received millions of views online, and led this writer down a rabbit hole of weird online ads, some for food, some for politicians, and some that still have me scratching my head.

For example, the Burger King corporation recently released an online advertisement for…well, we still aren’t sure:

So, OK. Huh?! doesn’t even begin to describe this ad. The unicorn, the dachshunds, the dancers in tutus on the counter? Is this what makes mouths hunger for flame-broiled beef in Russia? We think this is something that would have left even the late director Ken Russell confused.

Speaking of confusing, there were a series of online ads released in 2008 by the campaign of presidential aspirant Sen. Mike Gravel. A former U.S. senator from the state of Alaska, Gravel waged a long-shot campaign against the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama the only way he could: through eye-catching, if incomprehensible online campaign ads.

Take, for instance, and ad simply titled “Rock.”

Now just in case you thought you made a mistake, the ad is literally just Mike Gravel silently staring at the viewer for over a minute, uncomfortably close to the camera. Then, without a word, he turns, picks up a rock, tosses it into the nearby water, and walks away. Andy Warhol couldn’t have done any better. But in spite of, or perhaps because of, the weird factor, the ad received millions of views and boosted contributions to Gravel’s campaign.

In fact, some online marketers increasingly believe that if you want to catch eyes on the Internet, you need to give people a jolt of something: humor, shock, or as above, oddness. But there are still limits, as Carly Fiorina learned in 2010.

A republican Senate hopeful from the state of California, Fiorina was locked in a tough primary battle with opponent Tom Campbell. Fiorina’s campaign turned to veteran ad-man Fred Davis, who for pennies put together an ad that’s infamously known as “Demon Sheep.” Take a look:

At 3:22 in length, it’s sort of the “Gone With The Wind” of campaign ads. Except that is isn’t very good. In fact, the red-eyed demon sheep, which is obviously just an actor wearing a bad sheep costume on all fours, was so strangely over the top that it became the subject of great mockery, and contributed to Fiorina’s ultimate loss to incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer. Going viral, it turns out, is not always a good thing.

But fast food and politicians by no means have a corner on creepy online. Recently, in a larger story about the erosion of privacy on the web, we spotlighted an online ad featuring Bill Oberst, Jr.; a talented actor who has grown rich by playing creeps. Viral marketing director Jason Zada wanted to create something that would raise awareness about the sometimes hidden ways Facebook uses personal information, so he fashioned a customizable ad featuring a sweaty, disturbed Oberst obsessing over your very own personal Facebook page:

Everything about this online campaign is designed to make people feel queasy, which Zada says was exactly his intention. Yet somehow it was, for a moment, the most popular thing online. (For his part, actor Oberst says he was genuinely pleased by how “icky” the ad made people feel, and for some strange reason, his on-the-edge portrayal of a stalker won millions of “likes” on Facebook. Go figure.)

There are countless more examples; our most recent find is the “dating site murderer” meme, which takes a threatening looking picture and scenario and turns it on its head, with arguably questionable humor. But however you look at it, marketing executives are clearly getting paid lots of money to craft Internet ad campaigns that touch not on the serious, but on the weird, funny, or just plain creepy.

Is Hard Currency Becoming A Thing Of The Past?

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Daniel Suelo is a man who has figured out how to live without money. Making his home in a high cave near the desert outpost of Moab, Utah, Mr. Suelo lives, eats, sleeps, scavenges and does just about anything else he likes, all without any money. (Yes, he even blogs.) In the fall of 2000, Suelo says he took all the cash he had in the world (about $30)  and left it in a phone booth. He’s been walking away from money ever since. “Money represents lack,” Suelo writes in his journal, kept at the Moab Public Library. “Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present.”

Daniel Suelo (Hyoung Chang, AP)

Few of us may have the desire to live as simply, or starkly, as Daniel Suelo. But according to a new report by the Pew Research Center, a growing number of Internet & economic theorists believe the idea of actual physical money – banknotes and coins and such – may be going the way of the typewriter and the buggy whip.

Imagining Money

“There is nothing more imaginary than a monetary system,” writes Harvard professor Susan Crawford in the report. “The idea that we solemnly hand around printed slips of paper in exchange for food and water shows just how trusting and fond of patterned behavior we human beings are.”

In the truest sense, Crawford is correct.  Money itself is imaginary. It can be anything two or more people agree that it is, and it’s worth nothing more than what others are willing to exchange for it. Our paper notes and metal coins are, in fact, just symbols that societies collectively use to represent a complex system of debts, payments and wealth transfers. And being symbols, money can change and evolve. A signed check is a form of contract guaranteeing a future monetary exchange, or a symbol of a symbol. Credit or debit cards are just another, electronic form of that – a digital symbol of a symbol, of a symbol.

The Pew report, “Smartphone Swiping in the Mobil Age,” explores the expanding use of mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets to make payments or transfer funds. This, says report author Aaron Smith, goes far beyond logging in to your bank accounts or making electronic fund transfers. Think of your phone more like your credit or debit card: electronically holding a certain amount of “money” inside that you can use at a store with just a swipe.

A person tries a smart phone loaded with Google Wallet.(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

There are a variety of ways this can be done. Kenya’s M-PESA system has been around for years, allowing users to text payments directly to each others’ accounts. It’s low-tech but highly successful; money totaling 20% of  Kenya’s GDP annually flows through M-PESA. On the other end, Google has been experimenting with its “Google Wallet”, which uses a tiny radio signal – called near field communication or NFC – to “talk” to other nearby devices. Ideally, using NFC, a smart phone user could type in a code or just wave their phone near a merchant’s register and the sale would automatically be logged.

Officials in Sweden have begun a public push for the national adoption of just such a program. Proponents argue a cashless society reduces robberies, limits illegal activity and is just more convenient for everybody. Says former ABBA singer and cashless advocate Björn Ulvaeus, “I can’t see why we should be printing bank notes at all anymore.”

Even with the many understandable security worries,  NFC or ‘smart device’ payment services are rapidly expanding in other places, such as Canada, South Korea and other advanced economies. So fast that in the Pew survey a healthy majority – 65% – of participants agreed with the statement:

“By 2020 most people will have embraced and fully adopted the use of smart-device swiping for purchases they make, nearly eliminating the need for cash or credit cards.“

As surprising as that may be, some even consider that timetable too slow. “This trend is already overwhelmingly clear in many parts of the world,” says David A.H. Brown of Brown Governance, Inc. “Virtually all purchases will be made by hand helds and it probably won’t take ten years to get there.”  Echoes Jerry Michalski, founder of Relationship Economy Expedition, “Cash and credit cards as we know them are on their way out. Automation is here and will keep rushing in.”

Cash, Credit or Crock?

If all this sounds a little too much like science fiction, there’s good reason. For decades, writers like Isaac Asimov in his classic “Robot” series imagined a future where cash didn’t exist; instead people earned “credits” that were traded electronically. In a June 1991 article, writers for Omni Magazine claimed “…cash and credit will soon be obsolete.” A few years later author Joel Kurtzman in his book “The Death of Money” asserted:

“Few people realize that money, in the traditional sense, has met its demise. Fewer still have paused to reflect on the implications of that fact.”

Sounding familiar? Yet, two decades later, cold hard cash money is still very much with us, for a variety of reasons.

Some of it may just be habit: we use cash because we’ve always done so. In our minds we all probably know that banks don’t actually have tiny cubicles where they physically store all the cash we have in our account, but in our hearts we may still wish that it were so. Physical cash, except in times of hyper-inflation, is secure, while NFC technology – we are continually reminded – is less so. A few high-profile instances of people having their bank accounts wiped out, and people would likely shy away from adopting it.

Another reason may have less to do with who loses money than who makes it. At present in many nations, there is a highly complex system of fund transfers in which banks, retailers, manufacturers, customers and electronic networks all try to make a penny or two off every credit or debit purchase.  (In the U.S. this used to be the province of the Federal Reserve Bank, which still has sole authority to clear written checks, but technology changed all that.) In the Pew survey, Microsoft’s Jonathan Grudin opined “The driver here will virtually 100% be whether or not the credit card industry decides it can make more money through changing technologies.”  Flinders University researcher Paul Gardner-Stephen agrees, saying smart-device purchases “introduce(s) costs for retailers that will slow its adoption, especially in light of the lack of a compelling problem for NFC to solve.”

Distrust of banks or technology may be wax and wane, but it hasn’t stopped the relatively rapid adoption of technologies like the ATM, the credit card or the debit chip, embedded in a variety of devices. Radio frequency ID technology like NFC is fairly widespread, monitoring everything from the groceries we buy to our train tickets. Says Microsoft engineer Christian Huitema, “We have already witnessed the transition from cash to debit/credit cards.  The electronic wallet is not much more than a ‘virtual card.’ ”

Perhaps. Yet there’s still something cash can provide that electronic ‘credits’ can’t: anonymity.

There's nothing like cold cash money

My Money, My Life

Björn Ulvaeus may not see the need for cash any more, but many still do.

Think for a moment: in a world where every monetary transfer is logged and recorded and stored in the cloud, anonymity disappears. Every thing you buy or sell, from a car to a gallon of milk, will be marked and recorded. And critics worry that same system that logs and records your every financial move could also, potentially, have the power to block them all. Argues San Jose State University’s Ted Coopman: “This is especially true in the United States where fear of the government has always been part of our political culture.”

Will smart-device purchases made with NFC ultimately replace cash money? Did the Internet replace newspapers, or radio? Not so much. It’s probably less a matter of all or nothing, and more of introducing a new technology living side-by-side with a very old one.

Ultimately, it’s probably impossible to eliminate cash, as anything two people agree upon can become ‘money.’  Says Robert Ellis of Peterson, Ellis, Fergus & Peer LLP: “Cash will never disappear because there will always be a demand for it – for anonymous transactions, illegal transactions, and transactions in far-flung areas where the non-cash technologies haven’t been implemented.”

Daniel Suelo hasn’t had any money in his pocket for years by choice. In the future, we may all soon have the same option. Hopefully, we’ll have the choice.

Are We Spending Our Time Online Wisely?

What the Internet gives, the Internet takes.

There’s little question that the web has made our lives more productive. We can work at the office, at home or even on a park bench, so long as there’s good WiFi access. We can Skype or text someone instantly, rather than hoping someone picks up the phone or bothers to transcribe lengthy voice mails. If you need to look something up – say the population of the city of Astana, Kazakhstan – you don’t have to track it down in a library book but just ask Google (the answer is 708,000, by the way.) Like they say, the Internet puts the world at your fingers.

But all that instant global access may be coming at a price. If you can work anywhere, then you can work everywhere, and people are increasingly expecting exactly that. If you always have a smart phone at reach, you can never really turn the phone ringer off for an hour or two of peace. And knowing thousands of new facts is not the same thing as learning, or understanding what they all mean. Once you get a taste, it’s difficult to sip from the fire hose that is the web.

Which makes one wonder: if the Internet gives us freedom, does it take our time?

All this came to mind recently riding home on the Metro, Washington’s subway system, after a day’s work. There was a lot that was unfinished, and the twenty or so minutes of doing nothing but riding the rails helped clarify what needed to be done and how to prioritize it all. Then again, I didn’t really have a choice, because I don’t have a smart phone.

If I did, I might have been like the majority of my fellow passengers, checking emails, updating my calendar, reading the latest headlines or just twiddling time away on a touch screen. Metro cars have always been fairly silent, but these days that’s mostly because everyone seems preoccupied with their little corner of the Internet.

It may sound odd coming from a journalist, but by and large there is very little that can’t wait 20 minutes. Of course there are exceptions, but if we’re being honest, those are fairly infrequent. Ask yourself: do you really need to check your RSS newsfeed before you get home, or reply to that email before you can think about your answer? Is this really how you want to be spending your time?

That’s exactly the question Robert Matuksy wants you to answer every 20 minutes while you’re online. Matusky wrote a simple bit of computer script – you can copy and paste it right here – that, once installed, pauses everything you’re doing on the computer three times each hour with the question “Consider if this is really how I need to be spending my time. Continue?”  Answer “yes” and the clock starts over again; answer “no” and the program exits until you start it up again.

It may not sound like a lot, but as pesky programs and irritating message boxes go, this one is pretty smart. As anyone online knows, it’s easy to get lost on the Internet, losing track of tasks, questions and time while hopping link to link to link. Before you know it, an hour of your life can vanish with very little to show for it.

Journalist Nicholas Carr previously discussed with us how the web can act as a giant distraction machine; emphasizing speed and skimming while de-emphasizing deeper thinking and learning. “Things like multi-tasking, hyperlinks…they tend to reduce our comprehension, reduce our learning, reduce our understanding,” says Carr.

Certainly others disagree, but it’s an idea worth considering now and then. As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, it’s also becoming more invisible, stealing bits and pieces of our time and attention…perhaps without our even being aware of it. Think for a moment: if you can’t remember what you were doing thirty minutes ago online, it probably wasn’t all that worthwhile.

So the next time you click on a link, or open your email, or even browse a blog, stop a moment and ask yourself: is this really how I want to be spending my time?

The Internet’s Love/Hate Relationship with the Day of Love

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Question: if someone texts “<3″ to you, does that count as a Valentine?

I pondered that this morning when I noticed my mobile phone blinking, warning me I had a new text message. “<3″ it read, the Internet-speak version of a heart. My real-life sweetheart sent it this morning, and while I smiled on receiving it, it didn’t quite feel the same as, say, finding a card in a red envelope on my pillow.

Sweet expression of affection, or mawkish display? (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

In fact, as the Internet and mobile communications continue to invade our lives, holidays like St. Valentine’s Day are changing, and not always to everyone’s satisfaction.

To be fair, V-Day (as it’s abbreviated) is a mixed bag in various parts of the world. For example, for many centuries the holiday was unheard of in India, a culture with its own pantheon of love spirits (such as Kamadev, who – like Cupid – shoots lovers through the heart with a bow of flowers.) But with cultures mixing and globalizing through the web and mass communications, swelling ranks of  young, amorous Indians are embracing the holiday, emulating Western-style traditions of giving flowers, sweets or jewelry.

Not soin neighboring Iran, where religious authorities scowl at what’s considered a gaudy, over-commercialized ritual from the West. Valentine’s Day is a very big day in Japan, where modern tradition has women giving men gifts, but almost nonexistent in Uzbekistan, where authorities actively suppress any celebrations. It isn’t because the Uzbek’s don’t like love, it’s just they would rather their citizens mark their own cultural homage to affection, known as St. Zaxiriddin’s Day.

There have always been critics of St. Valentine’s Day, such as people who consider it to be a manufactured celebration by retailers to use guilt to prod couples to shop.  Witness “The Simpsons” parody of “Love Day“ – a summertime holiday created by merchants merely to boost sluggish sales. And the Internet, with its emphasis on easy cynicism and off-color humor, has only amplified those criticisms. These days you can advertise your celebration of “Anti-Valentine’s Day” on Facebook, or send your friends some decidedly anti-loving sentiments with heavily marketed email cards. “I want to grow old and disgusting with you,” reads one of the tamer greetings.

As digital texts and emails have proliferated, traditional ink-on-paper mail and cards have greatly decreased. That goes for general mail as well as holiday cards, and sales of St. Valentine’s Day greeting cards have plummeted. True, candy and flower sales surge in many countries, and in the U.S. restaurants fill up with couples on this day. But increasingly, the days of opening a Valentine’s card envelope are falling by the wayside, as digital greetings become commonplace.

Like many, I have a love/hate relationship with the holiday dedicated to love. Flowers and a kiss are always preferred. But if I’m to co-exist with our new, digital world, a “<3″ text on my mobile phone will do.

And Other Surprising Findings From a New Facebook Study

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

“Facebook was not originally created to be a company,” wrote founder Mark Zuckerberg in a letter this week. “Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.”

A not-so-subtle request (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Those familiar with the story of Zuckerberg’s rapid rise from mischievous hacker to CEO of the globe’s most popular social network might find his claim a bit altruistic, but not unexpected. The letter was just one part of Facebook’s official request to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in support of its bid to begin selling stock publicly. The entire filing is massive, and analysts have been combing through its 150 pages (not counting index and associated documents) for hints about Facebook’s market value and economic potential. Billions of dollars are at stake.

But the real measure of its long-term viability may not be lay in balance sheets and profit statements, but in the little bits of time some 840 million registered users* spend every day updating their status, catching up with friends, or just “liking” something they’ve found on the web.

And so Facebook’s SEC filing begs the question: is it building “real value for the world,” or is it little more than a website for selling ads and wasting time?

More Social, Emotional Support and Companionship

“Facebook looks like a social good,” says Rutgers University researcher Keith Hampton. “People who use Facebook tend to do better on average than other folks.”

Hampton is the lead author of a new analysis, released by the Pew Internet Project, exploring how people actually use Facebook.  Titled “Why most Facebook users get more than they give” the study tracked a sample of users over the course of a month, exploring patterns of use, behavior and interaction.

What they learned was in parts expected and surprising.

“Facebook users are just busy,” notes Hampton:

“We see the majority of them are moderately active on any given day. But there’s a group of users, about 20 to 30 percent, who are very active in doing a lot of different things. And it’s really interesting to see that those 20 or 30 percent, on whatever metric we’re using, really drags along that group of other users, and makes them more involved.”

These members, dubbed “power users” in the study, post, comment, like, friend and play on Facebook significantly more than most other users. And, consistent with previous studies, it’s these users that provide much of the “real value” that Facebook members experience.  They’re the ones more likely to comment on you rather than the other way around. In other words, these are your friends who give more than they get: the ones who walk into a room and everyone notices.

All fine and well, in the digital sphere. But researchers constantly wonder whether the online “friend” experience has any relation to real world, flesh-and-blood experiences. According to Keith Hampton, the line between cyber and life is becoming blurrier:

“The overlap, and what we’ve found in the past, is that not many of these people are actual strangers. These are people you encounter in your everyday life, and our work shows that those people using Facebook a lot, they’re getting more social support, emotional support and companionship. They’re also more politically involved, and they tend to have more friends in the real world, and more diverse friends. We don’t see any tendency for people using Facebook, or really any Internet technology, be more socially isolated, or more cut off from a diverse set of people, or even having fewer close relationships. We see the opposite.”

So those who spend a lot of time online in social networks tend not to be of the classic, introverted dude-in-the-basement scenario. At least, on average.

Surprising as that may (or may  not) be, there are what Hampton calls paradoxes in the study. For example, the finding that your Facebook friends, on average, have more friends than you do.

Af first glance, that finding seems mathematically impossible, in the long run. However, says Hampton, it’s really an expression of the asymmetric relationships people have in the real world. In other words, if you think about it, it’s more likely you know someone who knows lots of people than someone who has a very small friendship base:

“If you think about it, very few people are socially isolated; very few people have a very small number of friends. And naturally, those people show up in your friendship networks less often. But people who have a lot of friends, they show up a lot in your networks. And when you look at these averages, these people get counted more than once. So as it works, you see that your friends tend to have more friends than you, and the magnitude of this fact is real. So for the typical Facebook user, as they look out over their Facebook friends, their friends appear to have on average about twice as many friends as they do.”

Other findings: women update their status significantly more often than men; people who are active online tend to be more politically active, and while your Facebook “friends” may have little connection with each other,  users who are active – for example, “tagging” real-world photos of their friends – tend to have more robust real-world (or “offline”) social networks as well.

It would seem, at least according to Hampton’s study, that by and large people who are more engaged in their offline social friend network are going to be more engaged in their online one as well.

And this, frankly, should surprise no one.

“A Success So Far”

So big shock: people who are popular in the real world tend to be popular in the online one as well. So what?

Despite the blurring of differences people may feel sharing a coffee with a friend at a cafe and sharing messages online on Facebook, there are, says Prof. Hampton, still real differences between our real-world experience and that online – particularly when it comes to friendships:

“This is a very unique thing about Facebook and social networking websites, in that they provide networks that are persistent and pervasive in ways that we never had before. We used to go through life with various stages where we would lose friends – we would go off to college or start a new job. That’s no longer the case. These people stick with us forever, and we get these little tidbits of information about them on a regular basis on our Facebook feeds. That I think is very powerful, and it really reduces the separation between using this technology and what happens in what we call real life.”

“Pervasive” is another term for “sticky” – one that Internet financial analysts use to describe how long a user stays on a website, and how often they come back, to evaluate its financial well-being. If Facebook is successful in keeping people “stuck” to its site and services, its financial future looks fairly bright.

You can read the entire report online at the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

*Ed. note: We noted before the various debates about the actual size of Facebook’s user base. The company asserts over 840 million registrations; however that number hasn’t been independently verified, and would also include individuals with multiple accounts (something Facebook discourages) and those users who have simply stopped using the network. The independent ranking firm Alexa estimates that for February 2, 2012, 640 million individuals visited the website. By either measure, Facebook would be the second-most visited website in the world, far behind rival Google.

A Cautionary Tale Of Hashtags

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

It’s become commonplace to hear people praise the virtues of social media. Facebook and YouTube are replacing radio and TV as the first stop for new movie previews and political advertising. Anyone who’s anyone has their own Twitter page and RMS feed. News outlets all but beg readers to “Like” and retweet their posts (as we hope you’ll consider doing for us!) and well-heeled businesses pay consultants handsomely for advice on promoting products and bolstering brands. Whether you’re a blogger, a businessman or a government, if you want to influence the public discussion, you’re using social media.

But everything has its risks, especially things that are relatively new and haven’t been tested for years. Things like hashtags.

Witness today’s entrant: the McDonald’s corporation. Purveyors of everything fast, McDonald’s quickly moved into social media, using digital tools to help build customer loyalty and counter negative public image. But this week they’re learning how rapidly that social media can turn ugly.

“#McDStories” is a Twitter hashtag the global giant recently launched to market a softer, more wholesome image, asking readers to submit their own happy, wholesome McDonald’s memories and experiences. What they got was neither happy nor wholesome  In fact, the idea backfired horribly.

“I like to chomp into a nice juicy McRib after a long day of shopping for dialysis machines,” wrote Nelo Taylor.   “Just saw a guy blow 2 snot rockets right in front of mcdonalds. He must be the chef,” tweeted another.The #McDStories hashtag has become a repository of bad jokes and downright insults about the burger chain, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

Let’s just say McDonald’s is not loving it.

“This is what happens when the campaign is not authentic!” says self-described “social media observer” Alison Emerson, and she may be partially correct. While social media errors have largely been of the “individual saying something stupid” vein – such as the Chrysler marketing executive who tweeted about his hatred of Detroit drivers – there have been other examples of a company losing control of its carefully crafted social media campaign. Just last year, another fast food chain, Wendy’s, began its “#HeresTheBeef” twitter campaign, trusting that people would say pleasant things about their hamburgers. What they got was a hashtag that was quickly taken over by users making raunchy jokes.

But now that #McDStories is a rapidly trending item on the Internet, it’s a guarantee advertising executives will more closely scrutinize any social media campaign that depends on user input. The lesson: it’s much harder to control a message when you trust the Internet to take ownership of it.

Why Are So Many Teens Spilling Their Secrets on YouTube?

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

They go by titles like “Secrets and Confessions.” “If You Really Knew Me.” “Notecard Confessions.”

Their form, by now, is fairly standard. A young person sits silently in front of their computer webcam, cards in hand. Music plays in the background: maybe a pensive solo guitar, or a bittersweet song about love and loss. One by one they flip their cards down, each with a sentence, an idea or just a few words and a sketch, all while staring soulfully into the camera.

Take, for instance, NatashaMarrie‘s video titled “a confession.” Seated in what looks like her bedroom, she smiles shyly, waves at the camera, and begins turning over cards one after the other. “I’m truly a happy person…” reads one as she nods, “even with all the hardships I’ve been through…” reads the next, her sad expression suggesting what’s to come.

We quickly learn that her parents’ divorce has left her lonely, that her grandmother didn’t think she was “2 good”, and that she says she has been abused “physically and emotionally.” With each new card she tells us something very personal about her life, all while the singer in the background croons “I’m wearin’ my heart on my sleeve, ’cause girl I need you desperately…” Three minutes and forty seconds later her cards are gone, her secrets laid bare, and NatashaMarrie smiles and waves a sweet goodbye. Fade to black.

Welcome to the Note Card Confessional.

Blame Bob Dylan

In 1965, film maker D.A. Pennebaker was making a documentary of singer Bob Dylan’s tour through England. To open the movie, Pennebaker and Dylan cooked up an idea. Shot in black and white in the alley behind London’s Savoy hotel (and featuring a confusing cameo by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg) Dylan silently shuffles through a stack of large cards with words or phrases from his song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” while the music plays in the audio track.

It was an instant hit, becoming what some call the first modern music video. And it established a visual language that was appealing, easy to reproduce, and highly adaptable. Enter YouTube, cheap video processing, and a culture that’s more accepting of individuals sharing personal secrets and troubles, and you get the note card confessional.

But where Dylan’s video was lightly amusing, these note card confessions draw from deeper, and sometimes darker, wells of human emotion. They hold little back, and watching such earnest young faces silently recount traumas isn’t always easy.

One curious aspect of these flip card confessions is the consistency between videos. Never do the confessors speak their transgressions aloud, instead letting the cards do their talking for them. Emoticons – like  : (  for a frowny face – and doodles of flowers or hearts punctuate emotional peaks of the story, with the music underlining it with an overall mood or message. Through it all, we the audience look the confessor directly in the eye, watching their face for all those human nonverbal cues that text alone can’t convey, while reading their secrets.

If the numbers are to be believed, these note card confessions are strangely watchable. And they are exploding in popularity, which has some professionals concerned.

A Different Approach

“Confessions are especially tied to feelings of guilt; feelings of guilt about a specific behavior,” says Dr. June Tangney, professor of clinical psychology at George Mason University. “And they’re especially unlikely in cases where people feel shame.”

Tangney’s research specialization is in what she calls “moral emotions,” notably shame and guilt. Often used interchangeably, they are, she says, very different emotions. In short, shame is something one feels about their entire being; guilt is something one feels about a particular act. “When people feel shame they’re inclined to want to hide, to escape the situation, to sink into the floorboards,” says Tangney. “It’s feelings of guilt about a particular behavior that’s likely to motivate confessions, apologies and attempts to repair.”

Psychologists have long known these emotions don’t only come from what one does (or fails to do) but from what happens to others close by. A war veteran may feel guilt about comrades who died; a victim of abuse may experience debilitating shame. Confessing – documenting those things you regret – can be a powerful tool in healing a bruised psyche.

But should such confessions be public, especially from those so young? “I would counsel a different approach,” says Tangney:

“You have to wonder, particularly about young people who are in distress who are looking for some relief to that distress, whether they’re able to make good decisions about who and how they share this information, and how there are ways it may be harmful to them.  I’d be concerned about people…finding out about this and using it in a way that could be perceived as bullying or stigmatizing. I don’t think young people can fully grasp just how public these confessions are likely to be.”

“I Just Wanted To Tell My Story.”

There are literally thousands of these videos online. If you’ve never seen one, just go to the video share site of your choice, such as YouTube, and search for “note card confession.” Nina, Dwight, Ashlee, Jayce; they’re all there and many more, note cards lined up, just waiting for you to click on their video and learn of their secret heartaches and longings.

Among them is Emmanuel Perron. A high school student in Rockland, just outside Ottawa, Canada, Perron initially seems happy enough, flashing a broad smile as he sits at a kitchen table.  But it becomes clear that the French-Canadian senior is also wiping tears from his eyes as he flips through his cards, recounting stories of being bullied and his response.  “I’ve cut (mutilated)” reads one card; “I’ve wanted to (commit) suicide” the next.

“I was sick and tired, and got the motivation to post the video on my story,” Emmanuel tells us from his home. “It’s seeing reality of the effects that bullying has on others. They would see what bullying causes to its victims. It impacted me very badly; caused me anxiety and depression, which led to suicidal thoughts and cutting.” (Cutting is slang referring to intentional acts of self harm, such as cutting the skin, often in response to extreme anxiety and stress.)

The morning his parents first saw the video, he says they cried for an hour. “My father was actually kind of shocked it was affecting me that  bad, and it kind of opened his eyes to how bullying had affected me.” In a way, says Perron, his father never heard him as clearly as when he sat silent on YouTube. “I just wanted to tell my story,” he says.

His story now has over 19,000 thousand views, and Perron says he’s heard from hundreds of people from around the world, offering support, good wishes, and sometimes looking for a little help. “One girl in particular, she was kind of feeling depressed one night and I was able to convince her to go to the hospital because she was thinking of committing suicide. She said I was the only person she would listen to.”

Since changing schools, Perron says he’s still taunted by bullies, although now mostly online via Facebook or other networking sites. But he’s also heard from old and new friends who say they’re inspired by his story, and hopes his confession continues to go viral. “I’m definitely much happier now,” he says, adding that he hopes to study photography once he graduates. It’s an encouraging story: young person overcomes adversity and finds happiness. Unfortunately, these note card confessions don’t always have a happy ending.

“I Believe Jonah.”

Seeing Ben Breedlove on his YouTube videos, you would never guess that the Texas teen had a bad heart. He seems healthy, happy and optimistic – everything you could want for someone starting their life. But Breedlove suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a serious heart condition, and by the age of 18 had already survived several close-call heart attacks. On December 18, 2011, he posted two note card confession videos in which he offered thoughts on his life and his flirtations with death, including most recently when his heart stopped for three minutes. Breedlove recalls being in a place of peace. “I didn’t want to leave that place” one card reads. One week later, on Christmas Day, Breedlove died in Austin, Texas.

Even if you didn”t know this, Breedlove’s note card confession videos are difficult to watch. Once you’re aware he was just a week away from dying…well, this writer, for one, can’t watch them. But others do, and of the nearly 7-million views (as of this writing) they’ve received, many have left thanks, thoughts, condolences, or personal stories of their own in the comments section.

Earlier last year, Jamey Rodemeyer, an openly gay teen living in Buffalo, posted a video where he discussed the incessant bullying he received at school. In it he’s candid – he doesn’t sugar-coat his experiences – but also encouraging, telling viewers that “it gets better – I promise.” Shortly after on September 18, at the age of 14, Rodemeyer hung himself; his lifeless body was found by his sister.

Jamey Rodemeyer

Then there’s the case of Jonah Mowry. To the strains of Sia’s “Breath Me”, Mowry holds his arms to the camera showing scars from his cutting. As he prepared to begin 8th grade, he put together his note card confession, tearfully recounting his struggles with suicide, mutilation, bullying and other painful travails. Millions saw his video, re-posting it on sites like Facebook and turning young Mowry into an Internet sensation. “A lot of people hate me” reads one card as tears stream down Mowry’s face. It’s a heartbreaking story…but is it true?

Shortly after, Mowry posted a second, non-confessional video. In it, he’s lying on a bed with a friend, and the two are talking animatedly, laughing with seemingly few cares (he’s since taken it down but others have re-posted it.) It didn’t take long before someone else posted “HAI DAIR Jonah Mowry admits he lied” on YouTube, igniting a fierce debate over whether Mowry’s first confessional video was true or not. Supporters and detractors began publishing their own note card replies, and “I Believe Jonah” became a rallying cry that attracted the support of celebrities like Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga. Much of the commentary was, frankly, ugly. Whether or not Mowry had challenges before posting his confessional, challenges found him soon after. For the record, Mowry has apologized for any confusion, but insists the first confessional was true.

Privacy? Who Needs Privacy?

So what would motivate someone taking to the Internet to spell out in detail their secret pains and private anguish for public view?  Why memorialize it on YouTube, with your own face and in your own words, where it will last forever?  And why do so many other people watch?

Emmanuel Perron says he was inspired by Jonah Mowry; he posted his video because he wanted to help people. Kaitlin Brand agrees with that sentiment, although the two have never met, and her story is very different from that of Perron.

A high school sophomore in Grand Rapids, Brand begins her note card confession in a style similar to many others: she’s seated by herself in what looks like a quiet room in her house. “My name’s Kait” reads one of her earliest cards as she smiles and waves. The only hint of what lies ahead comes from the title of the song by The Band Perry, playing in the background: “If I Die Young.”

At 1:17 into the video she pauses, breaths deep, and reveals her secret. On October 5 of this year, Brand’s mother committed suicide. It was, in fact, 16-year-old Kaitlin who first discovered her mother, hanging in the woods behind their home.

“Yeah, that was pretty shocking…” says Kaitlin’s father Pete Brand, understating the obvious. But just three weeks after this trauma, Kaitlin – without telling anyone in her family – posted her note card confession video on YouTube; a video that is surprisingly optimistic and free of bitterness. She smiles brightly as she kisses a picture of her late mother. “You’re probably wondering why I’m smiling instead of crying” reads one card. “It’s because my mom would want me to be Happy : D” reads the next. For father Pete Brand, that’s no surprise:

“I think what you see in the video is that she clearly understands life, and she knows how to put things in perspective. The video talked about the fact that a lot of her friends thought she was the strongest girl in the world, she doesn’t feel that way. But it also shows that she wants to smile even though she really wants to cry. And the reason she wants to keep a smile on her face is because she knows that her mom would have wanted her to be happy. And she doesn’t believe that she is alone. Even though her mom is gone, she believes she has a guardian angel looking over her shoulder. And she knows that her mom is in a better place, because she’s no longer suffering from anxiety and depression.”

Brand is proud of his daughter and what she put together. But the digital marketing executive also understands the Internet can be a dangerous place, especially for an emotionally vulnerable teen. “There’s good and there’s bad,” he says, noting that with thousands of people now contacting Kaitlin from around the world, he handles her electronic communications for the time being.

“The very act of putting that video together and out on the Internet – that act alone is strong enough, and it doesn’t have to continue. She had no idea it was going to go beyond maybe just a couple hundred views.  But once it really started to take off, at some point, she realized she was helping people. Then one day she said to me ‘Dad, I know what I want to do now; I want to help people.’  And she’s already doing that.”

Helping people, reclaiming the past, clearing your conscience; these are all reasons so many teens may be posting note card confessions. Another reason may simply be that so many before have done so, making it less of “a big deal” among their peer groups.

For Professor June Tangney, one of the principal benefits to the confessors may just be the feeling of fixing what feels broken. “People really benefit from writing about past traumas in their lives, that by telling their story they’re able to make better sense of it, they’re able to get more of a sense of control of it.”

Still, there’s a wide difference between writing something in a private journal, or telling those closest to you, and throwing it all out on the Internet where anybody can view it and respond to it. Tangney questions whether young people, in particular, can fully evaluate the potential risks of that along with the possible rewards:

“They’re not necessarily thinking about future employers or other important people in their lives having access to this kind of material. There are some things that are really important to share with other empathic individuals…   It certainly attests to their need for relief from distress and closure, but I think that maybe young people don’t think through how long things, and how broadly things, are posted on the Internet.”

And the Campaign Against “Breaking The Internet”

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1: What’s With The “Weirdness” from China? There’s been a tremendous amount of web news coming from China lately. Perhaps the most eye-grabbing headlines have been regarding the online campaign to defend artist Ai Weiwei against possible charges of pornography. What to do when your favorite artist is investigated by the government for earlier nude photography he released? Release your own nude photography. Ai Weiwei’s supporters have flooded the web with unclothed pictures: some of them as infants, some with discreet obscuring images, and some just unclothed. So far, the artist has not been charged with any offense.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (AP)

However, submerged by the nude photos story are disturbing reports that some Chinese ISPs might be testing out new tools to shut off encrypted communications. Forbes’ Andy Greenberg has this item about curious data traffic coming from computers in China attempting to access encrypted “web tunnels” such as Tor, Freegate or UltraSurf; all commonly used by individuals to cloak their online activities:

“In recent months, administrators of services with encrypted connections designed to allow users secure remote access say they’ve seen strange activity coming from China: when a user from within the country attempts to reach a server abroad, a string of seemingly random data hits the destination computer before he or she can connect, sometimes followed by that user’s communication being mysteriously dropped.”

“We see weird things all the time,” Tor’s Andrew Lewman tells Greenberg. “But this is a semi-consistent weird thing, and it’s only coming from China.”  It is unclear if Chinese ISPs, or the government for that matter, are trying to probe encryption differences between traffic like that of financial transactions, and private networks like Tor.  What is certain is that developers at Tor and elsewhere are aware of this “weird thing” and are already responding. Full disclosure: VOA’s parent agency, the International Broadcasting Bureau, has working relationships with Tor and Freegate, among other encryption services.

#2: “Don’t Break the Internet” Members of the U.S. Congress are currently discussing several pieces of legislation that could significantly alter the web landscape in the United States, and potentially around the globe.

The two bills – the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (or SOPA) in the House, and the “Protect IP Act” in the Senate – both target copyright violators (i.e., “pirates”) in other nations by giving the U.S. government greater control over shutting down web access and traffic to specific cites, among other tools. Proponents such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America argue online pirates cost copyright holders billions of dollars each year, and that the bills’ provisions are balanced by protections for ISPs and website owners.

But that hasn’t stopped the swelling ranks of critics from arguing, with some effect, that media monopolies are trying to “break the Internet.” Groups advocating greater online freedoms, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, the Free Software Alliance and others were first in line calling for the bills’ defeat. Then came heavy-hitter Internet service companies like Google, Zynga, LinkedIn, Mozilla and more.  Now, this week, the influential Business Software Alliance, which represents giants such as Dell, Microsoft and Apple, has also weighed in opposing the measure.

As policy fights go, this one is a long way from over. Action on the bills isn’t expected until 2012, giving supporters and opponents plenty of time to build momentum and lobby members of Congress. We’ll detail the issues involved in the near future. In the meantime, Washington Post tech columnist Cecilia Kang offers “Five Things to Know About SOPA,” which provides a concise overview.

#3: Four Degrees of Facebook? In his 1929 fiction collection “Everything is Different,” Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy set two characters to wondering about our increasingly urbanized planet. The world was “shrinking” they said; people were getting closer not just physically but socially:

“One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth—anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.”

Thus was born “six degrees of separation” – the idea that any human is only six social connections away from any other human. For decades researchers like Stanley Milgram explored this idea and, despite its unlikeliness, found there’s actually considerable merit to Karthiny’s game. Despite obvious problems like isolated populations, it’s become something of a maxim among social scientists that as people’s social networks have grown, so have the connections between us. So, in fact, your humble author may in fact only be five or six hops from everyone reading this.

Or, would you believe, four? Researchers at the University of Milan, working with Facebook researchers, have been exploring the “six degrees” idea as well, and this week published new findings suggesting six may be too many:

“We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops). And as Facebook has grown over the years, representing an ever larger fraction of the global population, it has become steadily more connected. The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74.”

Shockingly, those numbers are even smaller for same-country pairs; for example, any two U.S. Facebook users are only about 3 or so degrees from each other. Meaning that every one of Facebook’s 700+ million users, with a very high statistical likelihood, is only a small number of social connections away from everyone else. Small world, indeed.

Postscript: “Everything is Different” is long out of print, and a web search suggests that English translations of this book are simply lost.