The Robot Co-op

If internet 1.0 was mostly about making the internet work for business, internet 2.0 seems to me to be more about making it work for people - and part of that shift means some tectonic changes in the relationships between individuals and the corporations that earn their custom. The Cluetrain told us this was coming: markets are conversations. So, I’m interested in adding to a conversation around the shift from privacy to publicity and hearing from you what you think about the idea of a “publicity policy” that helps inform users how sites like 43 Things operate.

A great example of the shift I’m thinking about can be seen in comparing the first generation photo sites (Ofoto, Snapfish, etc) vs. the second generation photo sites like Flickr or Fotolog. When Ofoto debuted, the experience was 95% commerce and 5% community. The focus was on ordering prints, with a secondary user experience that would let your friends and family see your photos online (and of course, order more prints). The site was built around private transactions - your photos and your credit card. The onus was on the company not to share your information with anyone you didn’t authorize and “privacy policies” became de rigeur on commercial sites.

Flickr stood the Ofoto model on its head. The site is organized around public displays of photos and the emergent community of enthusiasts who admire, congratulate and encourage each other. The site isn’t built around keeping your photos private (though the option is there) - it is built around helping you make them public - and in doing so, publicizing who you are and what you care about. Through the emergent interactions of tags, comments, profile pages and social networks, publicizing your photos can lead to finding other people who are sharing their photos and a meaningful sense of community can emerge. The first generation concern about safeguarding private transactions has largely been transformed into a second generation invitation to meet the neighbors.

This pattern can be seen all over Web 2.0. Is there a privacy concern at Meetup, Audioscrobbler or 43 Things - where people can actually meet you in the flesh, learn what you are listening to and even discover your personal goals? I don’t think any of these sites are about privacy - they are about publicity. They are about how when you disclose bits about your personality and interests, you can start to connect with others (in person or virtually) who share common experiences and interests. Part of what is happening on the web today, through folksonomies, blogs, social networks, link sharing and photo sharing are new ways for people to disclose their personalities in public and new ways to develop a digital identity that might augment who we are as people, offline.

There’s an old New Yorker cartoon that shows some dogs at a computer with the caption “on the internet, no one knows you are a dog”. It’s a Web 1.0 joke about privacy and anonymity. But today, with the rise of blogs and websites like Flickr, del.icio.us and 43 Things, the joke is, “offline, no one knows you are a talented photographer, that you want to learn Italian, that you discover great links or know some great people”. For now, “The Real World” still requires you to check your virtual aspirations and accomplishments at the edge of the internet. You can’t convert your whuffie just yet. But millions of people are building online identities and reputations that are accumulating meaning and value. That value gets created as we build an online reputation, as we move our private knowledge into the public domain. The issues that this brings up get lost when the only policy folks have to reference is a “privacy policy”. Perhaps we need a “publicity policy” for 2.0 websites.

A publicity policy could make clear that information on 43 Things is public: that the site is about sharing your goals with others; that using the site is voluntary and that you shouldn’t use it if you don’t want to; that by sharing information on 43 Things, you aren’t sharing anything private that we promise to safeguard, but rather you are making your information public and it will show up in the Google index, cache and internet archive.

Privacy policies focus on what happens to your private information. But a publicity policy could make clear what the implications are of sharing information in public. Maybe it needs to be pointed out that you don’t have to use your real name or that you can get a free email account to separate your pseudonym from any other account? Maybe we should scrap the email requirement so that no personal information is required at all to use 43 Things? Maybe we should add Creative Commons licenses to all the content to make it remixable with attribution and do away with the idea that the data is “owned” by anyone in an exclusive sense?

Now surely a part of this concern about privacy is about the fact that The Robot Co-op is funded by Amazon.com and that the facts of that funding emerged in some sensationalist press before either company had issued a press release on the deal. Live and learn on that front. But perhaps we could put the matter to rest by making it clear that no personal information is required (or desired) to use 43 Things and that Amazon.com would have no access to any information that isn’t already available to the rest of the world, through an individual’s decision to publicize that information.

It’s kind of crazy to think that people want to publicize their goals but maintain complete privacy, but we are willing to help! We are kind of into kind of crazy. What I do think we need is a new awareness about how publicity works in an era when sharing what was previously private can lead to new forms of identity, reputation and community.

What do you think?