Odds and Sods

Must say I am enjoying the Pronouncements of Chairman Schmidt, we have been following them ever since the Repeal of Privacy:

"if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"

......last year. This is of course the same Google that refused to speak to CNET journalists for months after they published stuff about Schmidt - obtained from Google searches. And then there was the contretemps about a certain lady.

More recently there were the glorious pronouncements on serendipity being calculatable, and various other things.

But now, we have two more - firstly, the removal of free will with a free (albeit Ad supported) algorithm:

"We're still happy to be in search, believe me," Schmidt told the Journal. "But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type....I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Secondly, the best way to avoid the Googleworld of zero privacy is:

that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.

I haven't changed my name yet - but I have changed my router ID and WiFi net name to confuse those snooping little StreetSneaks. Next step is camo-netting and WW2 false building to confuse Google Earth....

Personally I favour legislation telling Google to cull the data after a while instead, as the EU proposes. But my favourite is:

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he says

They do actually - its called the Singularity - its when all that stuff happens, and you plug your brain into the matrix, and it knows serendipitously what you want next.

But what the Singularity lot don't realise, as they march off to their next Great Mind Meld, is that Google is planning on running it. Well, what other logical conclusion can you take from these pearls?

You heard it here first.......

Update - never mind Google, watch your Soap Powder (hat tip @socialtechno)

Yet another early Facebook stakeholder has crawled out the woodpile, this time claiming 50% of The Face Book - SAI:

The first transaction, which appears undisputed at this point, covers web-development work Mark was to perform for a Paul Ceglia company called StreetFax. No issue there.

The SECOND transaction (and this is the key part) calls for Paul to PURCHASE (yes, it says "purchase") a 50% interest in a project that Mark is already working on--an online yearbook for Harvard students known as "The Face Book". There are also penalties for late completion that increase this ownership percentage over time.

The reference to "The Face Book" transaction is repeated many times, in separate sections of the contract.

As SAI is quick to point out, there are a few things that need sorting first:

Where is the original contract (and has a judge seen it)?

The document we have all now seen appears to be an electronic copy of paper-based contract. Electronic documents are vastly easier to forge or doctor than paper-based documents. The first order of business, therefore, is for both parties to examine the original contract to assess whether it is genuine. This analysis will eventually likely include ink testing and other forensic analysis.

Why did Paul Ceglia wait 7 years to make this claim?

Facebook's vast value has hardly been a secret for the past few years. In 2007, Microsoft invested in the company at a valuation of $15 billion. It seems beyond bizarre that, if Paul Ceglia remembered this contract existed, he would wait until now to file this lawsuit. The most plausible explanation might be that he forgot about the contract and then stumbled upon it. But "why now?" would seem a simple and reasonable question for him to answer, especially in light of the fact that he and his wife were arrested for grand larceny last year for allegedly defrauding customers of his wood-pellet company. (That doesn't mean he's guilty of defrauding customers or that he's now trying to defraud Facebook, but it certainly makes this a reasonable question.)

Where is the payment-trail evidence?

If Paul Ceglia gave Mark Zuckerberg $1,000 to fund "The Face Book" in exchange for 50% ownership in the entity, there is presumably a simple payment trail we can follow that proves this. This would take the form of a canceled check, perhaps, or a wire transfer. It is presumably possible that Ceglia made the payment in cash, but this would be highly unusual, even for a payment this small (normally, when you make an investment in a company, you WANT a payment trail).

In other words it is pretty clear cut that we don't know enough yet to know if the document is genuine, never mind whether there is a case or not. Of course this hasn't stopped every TV and Blog lawyer (and non lawyers) jumping on the bandwagon.

However, two things that do make this curiously more credible:

(i) This is not the first time Mark Zuckerberg has paid other people who claimed similar, (in a strictly no-fault way you understand)

(ii) So far the strongest denial from Camp Zuckerberg has been that "I think we were quite sure that we did not sign a contract that says that they have any right to ownership over Facebook,"

Being non-lawyers and not on TV, as yet we refuse to prognosticate on the validity of the document. But on past form, we're offering 3/2 odds on a payoff

The Faebook Story - its somethin you just couldn't make up - no one would believe it!

Researchers at the Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Sciences, along with researchers from Harvard Medical School, set out to determine how happy or sad Americans are at different times of the day and week by looking at happiness indices implied in Twts - NYT

Some of the results are more obvious than others. For example, during the workweek people are happier in the early morning and late evening, before and after the daily grind.

Researchers also observed interesting geographic results. People sending Twitter messages on the West Coast seem happier “in a pattern that is consistently three hours behind the East Coast.” Over all, judging from a video the researchers created, when Twitter users are upset, the most negative areas appear to be the middle of the country and the East Coast.

The research also found that people are much happier on weekends; the peak of happiness on Twitter is reached on Sunday mornings. The unhappiest moments are on Thursday evenings, before the last day of the workweek begins.

To visualize the data the research team created maps called cartograms, in which the sizes of states are based on the number of Twitter messages originating from them.

They looked at 300 million twts over a 3 year period. Overall report is over here

As the NYT notes, Twitter is becoming the Digital Anthropological equivalent of Rwanda and Uganda'a Gorillas and Chimpanzees.

I was in South Africa - my home country - last week (hence the lack of posts on Broadstuff). Now, as many of our readers may be aware, there is a small matter of the World Cup in South Africa at the moment. No doubt by now you are inspired by the undoubted current and future (all we have to do is beat France 4-0*....) success of our national team (Bafana Bafana - The Boys! The Boys!) to find their inner South African.

So, here are 10 points that you should memorise so that people will think you are the "Real Thing"

1. Flat Vowels (or Vaals, as we would pronounce it). No self respecting South African will ever use more than one vowel sound to join two consonants, no matter how many letters the word has. And of course if we can dispense with the vowel altogether, even better. So, Yu paak yor cah in the grudge.

2. Rrrrolll Yourrrr Rrrs - you know that Arrrrrr pirate sound you make once a year - well we do it everrry time that a worrrd has an rrr.

3. The glottal acceleration - many of the African languages have clicks etc, we don't use 'em in SA English, but do pronounce some words starting with vowels as if your breath was a sprinter coming out the blocks.

4. Yes is always "Ja" pronounced "Yah", except when its "Yebo".

5. No South African does things "in a minute", or "presently". Everything is done "just now". And we mean everything, except of course the things we will do "now now".

6. In SA to say you could "murder a Bagel" will bring understanding nods - Bagel is the word for a particularly irritating species, the male equivalent of the Jewish Princess, except being Jewish is totally optional. The female equivalent is a Kugel.

7. Being the "Rainbow Nation" there are naturally terms of endearment that the races use for one another - as an interesting experiment you could try randomly calling various fans of the beautiful game "kaffirs", "Klonkies", "goffels", "rockspiders", "rooineks" and see whose face lights up in delight at the realisation that you are "tuning them grief" and thus an opportunity to give you a "snotklap" (look it up) has arisen

8. For going to the Soccer (we call it soccer, not football) matches.....

9 .....ensure you have your Makaraba (hard hat festooned with all the symbols of fandom), take your Vuvuzela (very noisy trumpet), tank up on Dop (booze) before the match and yell Laduma! when your team scores and Eish! (with glottal accelleration) when they hit the post 5 minutes before the end of a 1-1 game.

10. Conversation in the game (when you are not blowing your vuvuzela) can be started with your neighbour by using the all time favourites:

- "The Referee is Blind" translates roughly as "Daai Fokkin Blinne Referee".
- "That gentleman is playacting for a foul" is (roughly) "Fokkin Moffie/Moegoe/Mompara/Mompie"
- "By jove - the referee has handed the South African goalkeeper a red card for an accidental collision, thereby ensuring they lose the game" is untranslateable on family blogs like this....

As to the necessary technology content, SA emains an enigma lght years ahead in many sevices - easpecially mobile ones - yet basics like broadband access and wifi are a rarity

*Sadly France were only beaten by 2-1 by The Boys and Uruguay failed to do the gentlemanly thing and score 4-0 vs Mexico to put Bafana Bafana through. Still, thinking about Bafana Bafana stats - win, draw, loss vs the 9th, 13th and 12th best teams in world is not bad when you're ranked 83rd! And if that fokkin blinne referee hadn't given the red card.....

So, today Israeli Commandos boarded a ship running a blockade into Gaza in international waters and managed to shoot a bunch of the crew who attacked them with chairs and bits of metal. Now this episode raises some fascinating issues - legality of blockade running vs storming a ship in international waters, whether soldiers are the best guys for this sort of thing, the advisability of shooting civilians when the media is watching (remember Sharpeville?), never mind the bigger issues of what is required to run Gaza as a viable state.

So, I was quite curious about what the Social Media scene would do in reaction to these events - to wit, what colour would who paint their avatars? (if previous events are any guide). This one promised to be interesting as its not quite a simple good guys/bad guys story.

On Memeorandum the issues seem to be resolving into two camps throwing stones from their respective high grounds..... but political wonks are known to be that way, and the rational middle ground is always sparsely populated in social media. And so it has proved here - it was only the "quality" Main Stream Media that seemed to make any vague pretence at dispassionate analysis.

Would the Tech crowd would be more sanguine?

No, this time on Techmeme the major obsession seemed to be whether #flotilla (the Twitterstream covering the event) was censored or not when it dropped off the Twitter trending radar*. (The comments resemble memeorandum's stone throwing though.)

This blog aims to be pretty much apolitical, but re social media responses, bear in mind that many pundits believe Social Media is both the New Media and the best way to Government 2.0. May just be me, but I don't think that this episode so far has been a great advert of its capabilities - not exactly wisdom of the crowds at its finest.

To me the big debate is what is required to run something like Gaza as a viable state (or not), and everything follows on from that.

(But while we are getting all social meta, to me the most interesting lesson social media wise was the Israeli Defence force chose to put videos of the event on their website first, rather than waiting for the world's media to distribute it.)

*By the way that's not a criticism of the article, its a critique of the audience......

Queues started down Regent Street outside the Apple store from yesterday afternoon for today's launch.....FT:

....The lengthy queue outside - elongated perhaps by Apple’s policy of allowing buyers in only one at a time - attracted attention from passers by. Not everyone was as excited as those who emerged grinning from the store, one besuited chap calling the people lined up “saddos” while another lady was baffled when she found out what all the fuss was about: “I thought it was something important,” she gasped.

........

Many of the people I spoke to in the line seemed unaware that branches of Currys and PC World were also selling the iPad just a few minutes’ walk away, with no queue. Their face crumpled in anguish as they balanced leaving a queue to which they had already dedicated up to two hours of their morning....

And by tomorrow you'll be able to walk into the Apple store and get one too no doubt.....

Google's Sergey Brin at a press conference, as reported by Search Engine Land

At a press briefing at the Google I/O developers conference today, Google cofounder Sergey Brin didn’t mince words about his company’s accidental collection of wifi data. “We screwed up,” he said.

He was asked about the incident, where last week Google admitted it accidentally gathered data from private wifi networks around the world over the past three years.

“We screwed up, and I’m not making excuses about it,” Brin said.

He went on to say that while Google did have internal contols in place, the mistake “obviously” meant more needed to be done, and that more tools would be put in place.

“Trust is very important to us, and we’re going to do everything we can to preserve it,” he said.

"Accidentally" gathering data for 3 years? These are not dumb people, one assumes that after a few weeks it was clear what was happening and they could have decided to stop. Or even not have had WiFi sniffers in the cars in the first place. Or turned them off so they didn't pull data off people's WiFi. Or told people when they knew and immediately deleted that data. Thats's the sort of thing a "don't be Evil" company would do, you'd of thought.

No, we have to wait 3 years before the news comes out, by accident, it is initially denied, and then only when the various regulatory agencies get involved do they promise to delete it. I think that should be prevented, as I'd be fascinated to see what they were up to.

There has been a lot of hand wringing in the UK press about a Conservative (US: Republican) party with 47% of the seats getting together with a Liberal Democratic party (US: Democrat-ish) with 9%, but as the above chart shows the game theory of the situation shows there is only one situation which has a good outcome.

In essence this coalition means that c 60% of the seats and c 60% of the voters are in its camp. A Liberal/Labour coalition would have been 52% of the vote and 48% of teh seats, which means a minority government. A Tory-on--its own (largest single party) minority government would have c 1/3rd of the voters and c 48% of seats - again an unsustainable minority.

There is a question about the Liberal Democrats being better off going it alone, but its hard to see how they could have carried on in that position as the press would have hounded them to form an alliance, as they have done over the last few days

So Google is planning to remedy its strategic Achilles Heel......... GigaOm:

Google says it’s willing to accept its shortcomings on the social web and bring in a “Head of Social” to set it on the right course. The company has hired an executive recruiter to fill the position, and is currently in the process of casting its net as widely as possible.

Though competition from Google sends shivers down spines in just about every sector — from news and book publishers to phone makers to venture capital — the company’s dominance has a gaping hole on the social web. Google has tried to introduce social sites, from Orkut to Buzz, but they’ve had limited appeal, hampered by a misunderstanding of user needs. In recent months Google has added a social layer onto its existing products, like search and maps. And it does have powerhouse publishing and communication properties in Blogger and Gmail on the outskirts of the social web. But there’s no formidable master plan to speak of.

Acquisition is no answer either. From Dodgeball to Jaiku.... the list of leading products it has bought is a litany of opportunities missed (YouTube being a - very expensive - success but still loses millions), and Buzz's introduction was a trainwreck in slow motion, and an object lesson in how to design antisocial media. Also, the list of Social Media Luminaries who nosily enter (and then later, quietly leave) Google is measured in revolving door revolutions. Still, a start is to admit on has a problem.

Question is, will a "Head of Social" have the necessary clout to get stuff through an algorithmic culture, which is - we have been told - just a tad arrogant. This probably won't fly without some top down air cover.

In a way its a sign that Google is all growed up, as now they are having to deal with changing themselves to face new and dangerous competition. Evidence from companies that have been here before (Fixed Line Telcos for example, who had to develop Mobile and Internet businesses) is that what works best is to:

- Carve the Social operations out to one side and let them report in to one of the most senior people in the company (or else they will be squashed politically).

- Best if they are even on another campus to develop their own culture and attract the sort of people they need

- Give them a Serious - and we mean Serious - budget to run their own thing (otherwise the Big Battalions that run the infrastructure and the money making services will just nix any project that threatens their hegemony.

Of course, one option is to acquire something successful, but here Google faces the problem that the proven successful ones are hugely overvalued and they tend to break what they acquire - but if it was bought, added to, well funded, and largely left alone (see 3 steps above) it may work.

One of the fascinating things about Social Media (of all types) is you can see theories about how humans work being played out in highly numerate (ie measurable and thus calculatable) ways. Take the game teory of "dating". Sociobiologists long ago cracked the theoretical maths (to universal opprobrium from more sensitive but less numerate "ology" disciplines) - and game theorists have now descended into the details of sperm war - but actually seeing it in play (as it were) from dating site data is fascinating - here is OKCupid's analysis.

The key slide is the one above - relative attractiveness potential of men and women as they age - in essence women are far more attractive than men in their 20's but then their attractiveness declines while men's rises and then declines more slowly. This drives nearly all the game theory of the "battle between the sexes"

The reason, as evolutionary and socio biologists and various similar disciplines will tell you - is the whole issue of reproduction - younger women are more likely to bear and be able to bring up healthy kids, older men more likely to have the resources to pay for them. I won't get into the functions of infidelity here, go read sperm wars instead

The key analysis on what happens because of this disparity is this piece of game theory - the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox

If we imagine the search for partners as an auction, some of us are more confident of our long term prospects than others. People with brains, looks, social capital, money, or any combination of any of them can afford to be selective. Men and women who are traditionally thought of as desirable partners can be thought of as strong bidders. People who are less confident of their prospects are known as weak bidders.

In the marriage market, there is an enormous incentive to get it right the first time. Consequently, weak bidders will move into the market very aggressively, while strong bidders stand pat, looking for a really good deal. Those who are most confident of their prospects are most likely to prolong their search for the perfect partner.

Our traditional model, where the male makes the marriage proposal and the female gives the thumbs-up or thumbs-down, places most males in the position of a weak bidder (especially when young - see above graph). If his proposal is rejected, his social capital is devalued, especially if word gets around, and it certainly will. Therefore, more men are weak bidders than women. For a suitor, success is defined as getting a positive response, and he would rather get an acceptance from a marginally desirable prospect than a rejection from a very desirable prospect.

In short, the outcome is that the pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable "strong bidders."

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

Incidentally, Robin Dunbar (he of the Dunbar number) has also been looking into this area, and here is a BBC writeup of his worK:

Dunbar found that the vast majority of words used by people to describe themselves in ads could be lumped into five different categories.

He asked 200 university students to rate the appeal of ads containing different categories of words. When Dunbar analysed the results, he found that men and women attached very different levels of importance to the five categories:

Men's preferences Women's preferences

1. Attractiveness 1. Commitment
2 Commitment 2. Social Skills
3. Social Skills 3. Resources
4. Resources 4. Attractiveness
5. Sexiness 5. Sexiness

Far from being conditioned to regard these things as important, Dunbar argued that men and women had evolved these preferences over millions of years of evolution. These were crucial qualities that enhanced the fitness of children, and, lest we forget, children are the key to the survival of our species.

As to the all important quesion of "when to put out" consider this:

The research in the Journal of Theoretical Biology uses game theory to analyse how males and females behave strategically towards each other in the mating game. The mathematical model considers a male and a female in a courtship encounter of unspecified duration, with the game ending when one or other party quits or the female accepts the male as a mate. The model assumes that the male is either a ''good'' or a ''bad'' type from the female's point of view, according to his condition or willingness to care for the young after mating.

The female gets a positive payoff from mating if the male is a ''good'' male but a negative payoff if he is ''bad'', so it is in her interest to gain information about the male's type with the aim of avoiding mating with a "bad" male. In contrast, a male gets a positive payoff from mating with any female, though his payoff is higher if he is "good" than if he is "bad".

The study looks for evolutionarily stable equilibrium behaviors, in which females are doing as well as they can against male behavior and males are doing as well as they can against female behavior. It shows that extended courtship can take place, with a good male being willing to court for longer than a bad male and the female delaying mating. In this way the duration of a male's courtship effort carries information about his type.

By delaying mating, the female is able to make some use of this information to achieve a degree of screening. Because bad males have a greater tendency to quit the courtship game early, as time goes on and the male has not quit it becomes increasingly probable that he is a "good" male.

But leave it too long and they are in Eligible-Bachelor Paradox territory, and risk being passed on.....

One of the things I've been wanting to see is the impact of female economic emancipation, as that changes the game hugely and is very recent in earth's biology - ie if a woman no longer needs the resources of the man to bring up the offspring, her choice of optimal male will change (did someone say Cougar.... ?). I haven't seen much data analysis of that game, apart from this piece arguing that men enjoy marriage and women don't.

Still, the OKCupid article is still a very interesting article, give it a read. (Hat tip Hadley Beeman for the pointer)