FreshNetworks Blog

Listen, Understand, Act (Photo credit: highersights)

According to Altimeter, 42% of businesses in the US are prioritising Social Media Listening in 2013 – putting real focus on how they sift through and learn from the conversations in social media. But a recent study of US consumers found that 51% of them do not want brands to be listening to what they say online. As a greater emphasis is placed on social media listening and big data, the tensions with consumer privacy will also rise.

The report, by Netbase, is based on a survey of 1,062 US consumers and highlights the challenges brands will face as they increasingly listen to and act on conversations in social media.

• Most consumers (68%) realise that brands are listening to what they say online
• Just over half (51%) want to be able to talk to their friends and contact in social media without being listened to in this way; 43% would go further, saying that being listened to is an invasion of their privacy
• Finally, 64% of consumers only want companies to respond when they are directly spoken to

These numbers are confusing and difficult to interpret, and when you add in the data about what consumers do think brands should do in social media they become more so:

• 48% of consumers say that brands should listen in order to improve products
• 58% say that brands should respond to negative comments online

The numbers are all over the place so what can we learn from this?

The data is confusing which may be a result of poor research, or indeed may (also?) reflect the fact that understanding of social media listening is confused for consumers. That brands can listen in to conversations they are having with friends and contacts online can feel intrusive, but when the potential benefits of this are explained, more consumers are willing to accept this.

This is probably the best way to understand this data and to begin to understand how consumers will react to social media listening: they do not like it, but they like the benefits that they may get from brands listening to them. So for listening to be really effective, brands will have to make sure they have worked out the consumer value proposition before people make it more difficult for them to access their conversations online.

Locks (Photo credit: m thierry)

Having attended the Westminster eForum’s keynote seminar recently, which looked at preparing for the new European Data Protection Framework, here’s a quick summary of what the new regulation includes, and what people at the seminar were saying about it.

Summary of the new regulation

• An updated definition of personal data, which now explicitly mentions online identifiers, locational data, and genetic data.
• Consent will have to be explicit.
• Organisations must actively report data breaches.
• Some organisations will be required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO).
• Abolishing the fee (max £10) which organisations can charge for subject access requests.
• New “right to be forgotten”, whereby in some circumstances individuals can request that an organisation erase all the personal data it holds on them.
• In some situations, national supervisory authorities will be able to take action against organisations in other EU Member States.
• Supervisory authorities will potentially be able to fine up to €1m or up to 2% of a company’s annual turnover.

Pros

Largely as expressed at the seminar by David Smith of the ICO

• Necessary modernisation – there was general consensus from all the speakers that the current framework is now out of date, and doesn’t adequately protect people’s privacy rights – especially their online privacy on account of significant technological developments in recent years, including widespread use of social media networks.
• Enhanced rights for individuals.
• Legal obligations for data processors.
• Businesses will be held accountable for having the correct systems and practices in place.
• Improved consistency (as opposed to harmonisation) across the EU.

Cons / challenges

• How to strike the right balance between better protecting people’s online privacy and use of people’s personal data by companies, and not putting overly onerous data protection burdens on businesses (especially SMEs), and potentially stifling technological and business innovation. Certainly, there has been an unprecedented number of suggested amendments made (estimated to be a record 5000!), and these will take some time to be processed and resolved.
• How to strike the right balance between using data for good (e.g. Lord McNally gave the example of helping identify and work with dysfunctional families), and not overstepping the privacy mark.
• Many of the speakers said that the “right to be forgotten” was an overstatement, with the title proving a problem. In reality it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to be totally forgotten everywhere online. However, the main point is for individuals to be able to say they object to their data being processed.
• Clive Davenport, of the FSB, was particularly concerned about the potential burden the new regulation would put on SMEs, and in general the feasibility of complete compliance was questioned throughout the seminar.
• Nick Stringer, of the IAB UK, spoke in favour of including the “pseudonymous data” subset to provide a reasonable and legal basis for businesses to process information. He further highlighted the need for striking the right balance between safeguarding online privacy and providing consumer benefits (e.g. data enables more effective marketing), and promoting business (data drives the digital economy, and digital advertising also drives many SMEs and start-ups).
• Mina Mehta of GSK also called for the balance between prescription versus proportionality

One clear message was that the framework is still a work in progress, and therefore people can and should act now in order to try and shape and amend it. Negotiations are expected to commence in June 2013, with results expected by the end of the year and the final version in place for summer 2014. So there is still time to act to try and make changes. However, the ICO also pointed out that there’s also time to get your house in order.

Forget-me-nots (Photo credit: churchofpunk)

After just a few days in the job, the UK’s first youth crime commissioner, Paris Brown, resigned over some of her past Twitter postings. There are no doubt many posts that she wishes could be deleted, forgotten forever, and she is not alone. As we leave more and more behind us in our digital exhaust there will no doubt be Tweets, photos, comments and the like that all of us would like to be forgotten. And not just because they were misjudged in the first place, as was the case with Paris Brown.

Social media will provide a continual record of our lives – of the detail of what we did and what we said at a particular time on a particular day in the past. Some people liken this to a diary, but it is different in two fundamental ways:

1. A diary is always written after the event, reporting something we did in the (near) past; our social media records were composed in the heat of the moment, in real time
2. What we write in a diary is selective, we think about what it is from the day that we want to record; our social media records are less so – our posts and photos often go through fewer filters

So social media is leaving behind us a very different set of records – records that are written in real-time, are less filtered, and tend to discuss the detail of what we were doing or thinking at a particular point in the past. And, in many cases, they can be seen by anybody – without us there to explain where this particular record fitted into our lives at the time; without context.

These new records present a number of potential challenges to us in the future, not least to how we remember and think about our past.

• We tend to forget detail – except for the most special of memories. Rather we remember events at a macro-level – we know broadly speaking where we were and when, what we were doing at different stages in our lives, and the things that happened to us. Our social media records are only the detail – they provide no context and no structure to our memories. Just a set of detailed comments that we will not be able to escape from.
• We think of the past through the lens of today – we interpret what we did and said based on our current experiences, beliefs and moral compass. This is why even reading diaries from your childhood can be cringe-worthy. Our social media records will come with no interpretation; there will be no escaping what we said or thought in the past.

So, our social media records will provide a different view of our own pasts (for ourselves and for others) than we might currently want to portray. And this is why we might want to explore a right to be forgotten online, a right for our posts to be removed or replaced and for us to curate our own pasts. Not for that odd ill thought-through Tweet, but because social risks changing the way we make and store memories of our lives.

Facebook Home

Facebook Home, announced last week, is the social network’s latest bid to expand its social web over mobile devices. The Facebook Home app, available on Android phones, integrates the phone’s operating system with the Facebook platform by taking over your home screen with your Facebook news feed  and making SMS messaging look like a Facebook chat. This integration also gives Facebook the potential to mine vastly more information about its users than ever before.

What data can Facebook Home mine from your phone?

1. GPS: According to Gigaom, Facebook’s integration with the Android operating system allows Facebook to receive constant information about the phone user’s whereabouts via the phone’s GPS. From this Facebook could potentially work out things like where you live, based on your phone’s GPS location between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
2. The phone’s accelerometer: The phone’s accelerometer could tell Facebook whether a phone user is walking, running or driving.  Adding this to the data Facebook already has about you, it can build a much better profile of its users, such as the places you shop, the restaurants you dine in and where you might spend a weekend pursuing your hobbies.
3. Chat Head: Facebook Home will bring together Facebook chat with SMS messages, so that your messages will get Facebook-ified and potentially, through the Android launcher, allow Facebook to read your messages sent outside its service.
4. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol): Facebook has already been inching into this space for a while, but Facebook Home could bring internet calls via Facebook front and center to a user’s mobile experiences and bypass phone calls altogether.  Facebook calls would mean you wouldn’t have to look up someone’s contact details (Facebook already has them) and you wouldn’t have to pay international rates, giving many incentives to use a Facebook VoIP service. Although Facebook is not likely to actually monitor your calls, it would be able to get a lot of information such who you call, and how long you talk them.

What might it do with this data?

David Jacobs of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) suggests that the increased information available to Facebook via the new app, will help it to monetise your personal information through advertising. Advertisements won’t be in the first release of Facebook Home, but future versions will include an ad feature which gives Facebook an unprecedented opportunity to aggressively push commercial messages at its users.

However, there have been more and more news stories about a potential privacy backlash, as users are trying to weigh up the benefits of sharing increasing amounts of information with the risks of losing their privacy, and the potential damage caused by personal data getting in the wrong hands. As Jan Dawson, senior telecoms analysts at Ovum points out, “users don’t want more advertising or tracking and Facebook wants to do more of both”.

green for sale sign (Photo credit: Diana Parkhouse)

As we discussed in a recent posts, we are all leaving increasingly large data exhausts behind us online, as we perform searches, visit websites, execute transactions, use apps on our mobile phone, connect and share on social media. The vast volume of data that businesses are building up on us is a treasure trove for marketers, enabling them to better understand us, predict our preferences and behaviours, and take actions to bind us closer to their brands and encourage us to purchase their products.

When these actions are done effectively they can surprise and delight us, but a miscalculation can soon make us question what data businesses are holding on us, and how is that data being used.

Is a privacy backlash coming?

There is much debate as to whether a major privacy backlash is looming just round the corner, or whether a much more permissive attitude towards openness and sharing of data will prevail as new digital native generations grow up. Some people are also starting to recognise the value of their own data and the next logical question is to challenge who is currently making money from my data? Why not me?

Who is making money from my data?

The answer to the first part is easy, it is currently the platforms – notably Facebook, Google, Twitter, but also app providers. For example, consider the data set that Nike is accumulating through its Nike+ ecosystem of products. It knows exactly how often you run, for how long, at what speed, in what places, and with whom. It could know how well your heart is performing during your exercise. This is interesting and valuable information for you as a consumer as it can help you set goals and track your progress. It is also a goldmine of data for Nike. At its most basic, Nike now knows when it should be subtly recommending that you replace your worn out running shoes. Hypothetically, I wouldn’t be surprised if the data could be used to predict your probability of suffering a heart attack. I am not suggesting that Nike do this, but given sufficient volumes of data you can start to pull out the patterns and predict future outcomes. What if your life insurer had access to that same data?

Personalisation is therefore a double-edged sword; it can deliver valuable tailored products and services that we love, but it can also feel intrusive and even exclude us from things that maybe we would have had access to in a less data rich environment. So do we lie back, log out, or try to take control?

Data-lockers and how consumers could profit from their data

European legislation currently being debated would significantly increase the regulation in this domain, preventing companies from using your data with 3rd parties without your explicit consent. It seeks to force much greater transparency on what information is being collected about you, and what it is being used for. The internet titans are waging an unprecedented lobbying campaign (linked page in Spanish) to prevent this legislation from seeing the light of day, as it would probably force a radical shift in their business models.

Numerous start-ups are trying to find opportunities in this landscape with services such as “data lockers” – where you can deposit your personal data and grant access to businesses to selected areas. This opens up the possibilities of services such as reverse price comparison, where you invite companies to give you the best offer on the data that you opt to share. Maybe you could even receive direct remuneration for opening up your personal data – the more comprehensive it is or the more interesting your profile is to businesses, the higher the rewards for you. The UK’s midata initiative, which gives consumers a portable copy of their data so that they can take it elsewhere and try and get a better deal, also falls into this space. These are exciting ideas, but the question is – who is positioned to deliver these services? Would you entrust your data to a small start-up? A lot of the most valuable data is currently sitting on the servers of the huge corporations, whose value is directly linked to how many consumers are on their platform and how well they enable third parties to use that data.

Trust and transparency will determine who the winners are that emerge from all this. As companies seek to explore and expand big data projects these are critical areas of consideration.