iCloud Reality

This post is a follow-up to both the WWDC 2011 keynote and my previous post, in which I used iCloud as inspiration for some “cloud computing” dreams.

“Whoa!”, you say, ”two posts about iCloud within 24 hours? This guy must really about iCloud!”

Actually, I don’t care about iCloud itself. Now that it’s been announced, I can say that I’ll welcome it, as a replacement for MobileMe and enhancement to the “iTunes ecosystem”. But it’s not that major a thing, in my mind.

Point is, I don’t blog because I really care about specific things. I blog because it’s fun to do.

In this case, it’s pretty easy to do. Nothing groundbreaking in this blogpost, but it’s a neat context for blogging, in my mind. Almost like a writing exercise. And a placeholder for further thoughts on “cloud computing”, Apple, and mobile devices. I do “care” about all of these things in the sense that I’m curious to see what might come out of them. But my universe probably won’t collapse if these things all take an unexpected turn.

Why don’t I blog about Android? Well, mostly because I don’t have an Android device and don’t plan on getting a smartphone or a new tablet in the foreseeable future. I do follow Google news (especially through TWiG but also through some generalist tech blogs, like TNW) and there are some things I find interesting, in what Google offers. But that’ll have to wait for another day. (I do have a blogpost in mind for “What I Like about Google”.)

So… iCloud, eh?

Well, pretty much as rumours predicted, overall. Which is neither awe-inspiring nor so disappointing. I’m looking forward to some features which made it in and somewhat lukewarm about several of the things they announced. Not overwhelmed but not really underwhelmed either. So I’m “whelmed”.

An announcement about which I have positive feelings isn’t about iCloud: Mac OS X Lion will be available for download in July, at a reasonable price (30$). Since my 2006 Mac mini doesn’t support Lion, the news may not impact me that directly but it does mean that I’ll be able to install it on the MacBook of the person about whom I really care. And it might mean that we’ll see updated Mac minis in July. So, timing should be good, for me, in terms of getting a new computer before the semester starts.

Speaking of Lion, I’m rather puzzled by the announcement (rumoured a few days ago) that the server version will come at an extra cost. Guess I had misunderstood a previous announcement that Server was included in the normal version of Mac OS X to mean that it would be included at no extra cost. During the keynote, it was announced that Server would be an App Store purchase, though no price was mentioned. Looking on Apple’s site as I’m writing this, I find out that Mac OS X Lion Server will cost 50$. Not free, but not as bad as I feared, until a minute ago.

Now, about the iCloud and iOS5 announcements…

One thing I find remarkable (and which also applies to Mac OS X Lion) is how precisely rumours end up matching the actual announcement. For a company which is known as being so tightly sealed, it’s kind of unexpected. What’s more awkward, though, is that it doesn’t seem to have that much effect on dulling down audience reactions. Almost everything which was announced today has at least been rumoured yet the crowd was very enthusiastic at some points. Now, it’s a very specific crowd, which comprises a number of die-hard Apple enthusiasts (after all, their business may depend on Apple, to a fairly large extent). But I must admit I was surprised by some of these reactions, especially pertaining to iOS5. I can understand that the new notification system may be a big “wow factor”, to many of these developers. It might help them make their apps more useful. But I was genuinely surprised that tabbed browsing got such a positive response. I personally don’t miss tabbed browsing on iOS4 and almost wish we could keep the current approach to switching between preloaded pages. But members of the audience seemed quite happy about the change. Of course, their reactions are shaped by many factors, as in a tv show. But I felt like one who didn’t get the joke. “So, y’all wanted tabbed browsing, all this time? Ok…”

The announcement of a PC-free feature of iCloud was quite similar. I understand that it’s pretty neat, and it does correspond to a lot of things Gruber has been saying for a while. But how big of a deal is it, for developers? What am I missing, here? I’m sure I’ll be told, soon enough. Or the audience reaction was exaggerated because of other factors.

Speaking of Gruber. A statement of his, made before the keynote, got some people thinking (including myself):

Don’t think of iCloud as the new MobileMe; think of iCloud as the new iTunes.

I’d say it’s a bit of both. While iCloud does make iTunes optional in some cases, it doesn’t completely negate any need for it. On the other hand, iCloud will officially replace MobileMe.

What’s happening to MobileMe?
Effective June 6, 2011, if you had an active MobileMe account, your service has been automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After this, the MobileMe service will no longer be available.

What will happen to the content I have on MobileMe?
Apple has announced a new service called iCloud which will be available this fall and free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users.

Sounds to me like as direct a replacement as possible. And it makes all the sense in the world. No news on “Find My iPhone”, but I’d be surprised (and disappointed) if it were abandoned, the way eCards were abandoned in the transition from .Mac to MobileMe.

Not that Gruber was wrong or that his advice was misleading. It’s just that MobileMe users are directly impacted. As one of those rare people who purchased a MobileMe license since the iPad came out, I do welcome the news. If this hadn’t been announced, I probably wouldn’t have renewed my MobileMe license (due at the end of this month). So the timing is right, for me. While it was expected, based on rumours, it’s a “classy move”.

It must also mean that Apple isn’t finding much value in selling MobileMe, anymore. One might say that iCloud is more valuable as a selling point for iOS5 and OS X Lion devices than MobileMe was as its own revenue stream. We’ve heard from Apple Store employees (and I heard from other people dealing with Apple retail) that Apple was pushing MobileMe whenever it could. In this sense, the change is clueful.
In fact, there’s something about free, in this case. Now that MobileMe is free, I might actually start using it more.
As mentioned in my last post, I haven’t been making intensive or extensive use of MobileMe. I did use the “Find My iPhone” on occasion and the synchronization has been somewhat helpful, despite the fact that I use Gsync. But I wasn’t really using the other features, including email, gallery, and iDisk. Now that I know how it’ll fit in the coming year, I find it somewhat easier to “invest” in these tools.

That’s the rational argument, and it might not actually hold so well. For one thing, we still don’t know how seamless the transition to iCloud will be. And some MobileMe features have been left undiscussed. So, counting on the MobileMe to iCloud transition might be ill-advised.

There are some less-rational motivations behind my possibly-intensified use of MobileMe. One is that I feel almost an obligation to give free services a chance. And, though MobileMe itself hasn’t changed, doing more with it might give me a taste of what’s is likely to happen with iCloud.

Although some MobileMe features have not been mentioned in terms of iCloud.

One glaring omission is iWeb. As mentioned before, the web publishing application hasn’t been updated along with other parts of iLife (most notably, iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand). Unlike the other pieces of the iLife suite, it almost requires MobileMe to provide significant value (although you can also publish via FTP). I was daydreaming about iCloud becoming a webhost and it’s conceivable that Apple might follow that route at some point in the distant future. But, right now, it sounds like iWeb’s value proposition has become less interesting than it ever was. It’s possible that iWeb-created sites maintained through MobileMe will continue to be supported beyond the transition to iCloud. But it sounds unlikely.

And there might be a missed opportunity, here. As is often the case, with technology companies, iWeb sounds like an afterthought, for Apple. Maybe it’ll be like Apple TV and go from a “hobby” to something closer to the central strategy. But I doubt it. In part because iWeb doesn’t really fit in the “Digital Hub” vision which, as Jobs finally reminded us, has been central for Apple for the better part of the last decade.

Speaking of the digital hub… In a way, it was a very telling part of today’s presentation. It does demonstrate a clear vision for something which been carried out through iLife and the whole “iTunes ecosystem”. The picture of a Mac surrounded by PDas, digital cameras, and other peripherals requires some adjustment, to accommodate for iOS devices and wireless connections. Bul the idea has remain relatively unchanged, as we prepare for the so-called “post-PC era”.

Yet this “digital hub” notion shows some weaknesses, in terms of imagining the future of “cloud computing”, the alleged target of the iCloud announcement. Not that I have any idea whether or not Apple will succeed “in the cloud space”. I wouldn’t bet either way. But Apple’s “digital hub” shows a few signs of constraining the imagination.

For one thing, hubs are a rather specific way to organize things. The laptop or desktop computer is now “just a device”, and there’s a lot of insight hidden in this conception of “devices”. But it’s also more hub than spoke. Regardless of how important Apple products have been for road warriors, the notion is still that users have specific places where some devices remain. Several parts of the iCloud announcement make it possible to overcome this model, but I’d argue that the model remains dominant in the minds of many Apple employees and customers.

A better way to put it, perhaps, is that Apple is transitioning away from the digital hub model into a much more fluid structure. Addressing the digital hub model might have been a way to pave the road to an ethereal future, with “cloud computing ” and seamless integration of multiple devices. But I have my doubts. For instance, description of WiFi iTunes Sync in the iOS5 video has a mention of physical proximity to a machine running iTunes. It confuses me a bit, since it also sounds like it’ll be possible to use iOS5 devices without any access to a machine running iTunes, It might be that the description is inaccurate (you can sync your devices through “iTunes in the cloud”, wherever you are). Or the two types of synchronization are different, in that one pairs your iOS5 device with a given Mac or PC while the other lets you use your iOS5 with iCloud content. But I tend to link my confusion to a clash between two models. It’s more likely that I just “don’t get it”, and it all makes sense in the grand scheme of things. I’m fine with that.

In other words, feel free to disagree. Maybe the iCloud announcement means that the “digital hub” era is over and that what comes next bears only limited resemblance to the Mac surrounded by peripherals. Or the restrictions are more important than I imagine and the “cloud” is but a surface enhancement to what remains a decidedly “hub-centric model”.

Time will tell.

One part of the iCloud announcement that I find positive is about document sync. I recently started using iWork and iWork.com as a significant part of my workflow. Several things are missing from this, including an easy way to synchronize documents across iOS and Mac OS X devices. Unless I misunderstood, it sounds like iCloud will make this process seamless. I have my doubts as to how it might work in practice (synchronization is a relatively difficult problem, when there are multiple instances of the same context). But it might still be a time-saver, for me. In a way, it’s almost like taking away a pain point.

At the same time, no mention has been made of collaboration, in any way, shape, or form. As it stands, iWork.com makes it possible to share documents but collaboration is extremely limited in that case. In fact, unless I’m mistaken, it’s not even possible to allow public downloads of these documents. Unlike, say, Slideshare. In this sense, GDocs is very likely  remain a much more desirable solution for any form of collaboration. And since GDocs doesn’t handle iWork documents so well, sharing document for further collaboration will long remain a sticking point,in my workflow.

What’s more promising, though, is document sync as a replacement for some uses of Dropbox. I’m sure the GoodReader developer(s) have been giving iCloud a lot of thought. After all, the app can already use iDisk, Dropbox, WebDAV, GDocs, and other “cloud services”. I also hope that Jesse Grosjean at Hog Bay Software will add iCloud to TaskPaper sync, along with Dropbox. And I’m guessing that other apps will spring out, making good use of iCloud’s document sync. The WWDC crowd sounded fairly enthusiastic about this. And I’m sure advantages over iDisk are painfully obvious to several people. I’m mostly glad that it’ll be available for free to all iOS5 and OS X Lion users.

(By the by… I’m assuming that iCloud will be free to iOS5 users without Mac OS X machines and to OS X Lion users without iOS devices. It’d be very surprising but also very frustrating if it weren’t the case. Official mentions I’ve seen didn’t address this and I’ve learnt to be wary of assumptions about that which “goes without saying”, in Apple announcements.)

(Also by the by… Is “OS X Lion” the official name of the OS? Sounds like it. Not sure it’s significant but it could make sense in a “post-PC era”, with the Mac as “just another device”.)

Something iCloud doesn’t do, in this context, is completely replace Dropbox, in most use cases. For one thing, with documents in general as with iWork documents specifically, no mention has been made of collaboration and it sounds like it won’t really be possible to use iCloud to share documents efficiently.

This is where I would have let my mind wander, despite the fact that Apple has a spotty track record in collaboration. Basically, iCloud makes me wish for an integrated solution which combines: real-time collaboration in document editing (GDocs), seamless document sharing (Dropbox), online identity (Twitter/Facebook), and fluid group formation (Apache Wave, née Google Wave). Apple wasn’t going to create this, but the iCloud announcement was a context for me to think about such things.

Google is much more likely to do something like this. GDocs already has many of the required features, and we keep hoping that the “social Web” projects grouped under the “Google Me” label will benefit Google products more generally. But there seems to be an arbitrary separation between work collaboration and “social features”, for some reasons. So I’m not holding my breath. I’m just dreaming of an openly available solution making it even easier to collaborate with diverse people in diverse contexts.

Anyhoo… Back to the keynote.

An intriguing announcement during the iOS5 section was News Stand. It sounds like it’s mostly about the distribution mechanism but I wonder if it may not also mean that Apple is giving publishers some tools to make it easier to create iOS content. Apart from Apple’s relationship with publishers (which sounds more lovey-dovey than some publishers’ rhetoric makes us believe), there’s something about content creation that I really wish could be put in the hands of normal individuals.

In a way, it goes back to the iWeb issue. The rest of iLife can be quite useful, in terms of “user-generated content”. But given the number of professional, amateur, and would-be developers using Apple devices, one might expect some content creation tools, especially in terms of Web content. Tumult Hype is a neat example of an app which could be part of the content creator’s arsenal. But I could just imagine some Apple-crafted software app to handle Web content the way other contents are handled in GarageBand and Logic Studio; iPhoto and Aperture; iMovie and Final Cut Studio. iPhoto is the only one of these which was addressed in the keynote. But they could all be part of a broader strategy, helping people get creative and share their creativity. Given that something as basic as WYSIWYG HTML is very difficult on iOS, the lack of Apple-built Web tools becomes something of a thorn.

Speaking of “user-generated content”… Photo Stream was announced, as part of iCloud. Apart from “iTunes in the Cloud”, it’s one of the biggest sections of the iCloud feature set. Problem is, it’s pretty much a blindspot, for me. I might not be the only one, judging yet again from audience reactions during the keynote. But I’m specifically immune to enthusiasm about photo-related features.

I mean, I’m sure Photo Stream can become very popular. It’s almost stereotypical as the kind of feature which gets “normal people” excited. And by “normal people” I don’t mean non-geeks. I mean people who react positively to pictures. I just don’t have the same relationship with anything visual. I rarely use my phone or iPod touch’s cameras. When I do, it’s mostly about documenting something (à la Evernote) or scanning a QR/barcode. So Photo Stream is wasted on me.

The one feature I was possibly most excited about is one which wasn’t mentioned but that I still think might be part of the iCloud reality: OTA podcasts. I listen to a number of podcasts and synchronization remains an issue. It’s the main (though not single) reason I connect my iPod touch to my Mac mini. I’d really benefit from being able to synchronize podcasts while “on the road”, using any reliable WiFi connection. To be honest, if it’s not included in iCloud/iOS5, I’ll be disappointed. Not to the point of abandoning the platform. But I admit that my expectations are that it’ll happen, and I see it as relatively important.

Much of it is a convenience feature, as I won’t have to go back to my “home base” just to get updated podcasts. But it may change my relationship to said podcasts, as I’ll be getting them more regularly, the way I’m now able to follow a large number of blogs using Reeder and Instapaper. Problem is, podcasts aren’t the type of content iCloud will host and it’s possible that the omission from the keynote was purposeful. Five years after transforming iTunes into the dominant “podcatcher”, it’s possible that Apple may be marginalizing podcasts in a rather serious way. I sure hope the opposite is true, and there’s a lot which could be done to make podcasts (and iTunes U) shine in the iCloud ecosystem.

But, again, I’ve been learning not to get my hopes up.

iCloud Dreams

Got lots more to blog, including something about “received knowledge”. And a list of things I love about Google. (I’m also getting started on “logical punctuation”, as you may already be noticing…)

But, at the risk of attracting trolls and Apple haters, I thought I’d post some notes from a daydreaming session. In some ways, it’s easier to write than the rest. And it’s more “time-sensitive”, in that my thoughts will likely sound very silly, very soon.

But I don’t care.

So, yes, this post is about iCloud, which will be officially unveiled in a few hours. No, it doesn’t mean that I expect anything specific from iCloud or that I trust Apple to deliver something awesome.

Contrary to what some people seem to think, I’m no Apple fanboi. I use a number of Apple products and I find several of them to be close to the ideal in my workflow, but I don’t have any sort of deep involvement in “the Cult of Mac”, Apple Inc., AAPL, or even Apple-focused development. I use the tools and like them, but I don’t think Apple will save us any more than will Facebook, Dell, Google, Amazon, Twitter, HP, or Microsoft.

[Automattic, on the other hand… 😉 ]

So, back to iCloud…

According to many, “cloud computing” (whatever that means) is a domain in which Apple has been relatively weak. I tend to share that opinion, despite the fact that a number of tools that I use have to do with either “the cloud”, Apple, or both. What might give trolls and haters some ammo is that I do have a MobileMe subscription. But there’s a lot I dislike about it and the only features I really find valuable are “over-the-air” syncing (henceforth “OTA”) and “Find My iPhone”. And since I use GSync on my iPod touch, MobileMe’s OTA isn’t that incredibly important. Depending on what iCloud may be, my MobileMe renewal (which comes up in a few days) could be a very hard sell. I don’t regret having it as it did help me retrieve my iPad. But it’s rather expensive if it’s the only thing it does. (Then again, so is insurance of any kind, but I digress…)

So, I’m no MobileMe poweruser. Why would I care about iCloud?

In some ways, I don’t. Or, at least, I didn’t. Until very recently, though I saw rumours about Apple’s new “cloud services”, I was only vaguely intrigued about it. I did think that it might solve my MobileMe issue. But I treated these rumours with a lot of skepticism and a rather low level of interest.

Yet, today, iCloud has been giving me a drift-off moment. Like Android did, at some point.

It’s not that I have predictions to make about iCloud. I’m not even speculating, really. But it got me to think. And, I admit, I enjoy thinking.

Without further ado (about nothing), my fanciful thoughts stemming from a short daydreaming session about iCloud…

The main thing people seem to be expecting  (based on rumoured negotiations with music publishers) is a music streaming service similar to Music Beta by Google or a digital file storage service similar to Amazon Cloud Drive. Both of these are quite neat and I could see myself using something like this. But it’s not exactly what makes me dream. While iTunes integration might make Apple’s version of a music streaming service somewhat more useful than the others. Besides, rumours have it that, through agreements with the recording industry, iCloud might sync music without requiring long uploads. It’s quite possible that this only works with tracks purchased on iTunes, which would upset those whose expectations are high, but could already be useful to some.

Where I’m beginning to drift off, though, is when I start thinking about OTA for podcasts. It’s been high up on my wishlist, as a feature, and you might say that it’s a pet peeve with iOS devices for podcatching. Having to sync my iPod touch to my main desktop just to have my podcast list up-to-date is a major hassle. Sure, there are apps which sync podcasts OTA. Problem is, they can’t add podcasts to the native iOS media player, which is a dealbreaker in my case. (As absurd as it may sound to others, one reason this is a dealbreaker is that I now listen to everything at doublespeed. Hey, it’s my podcast library and I listen to it as I want, ok?)

So, OTA podcasts would constitute a significant enhancement to my experience. Nothing absolutely required and possibly not that significant for others, but it’d really help me in more ways than one could imagine.

Thing is, syncing my iPod touch isn’t just about podcasts, even though podcatching is my main motivation to sync. After all, I don’t listen to podcasts yet I still sync my iPad. So, what else? Well, backing up is the main other thing, and it might be one of the core reason for Apple’s implicit insistence on syncing. That’d be classic Apple. Data loss can be such a big problem that they’d “do what they can” to prevent users from losing data. Far from perfect, in my experience (I ended up having some problems when I lost my “iTunes Library” file). And quite annoying when it meant that the sync would take a very long time to finish at precisely the point when I’m trying to leave home. But a classic Apple move, even in the way Apple haters may mean it.

So OTA synchronization of the whole iOS device, and not just podcasts or music, would be a definite plus, in this perspective. If it does end up coming with iCloud, it’d provide support to the idea that the tethering of iOS devices to desktop computers is really about ensuring that users back up their devices…

…and stay up to date. Firmware updates aren’t that frequent, but they’re probably a major part of the equation for Apple.

But not so much for me. If OTA podcasts were available, I’d still sync my iOS devices on occasion, through whatever means necessary. In fact, were I to use an Android device, a backup app would be essential, to me. So still not much dreaming from the backup aspect of iCloud.

Although… Sync is much broader than preventing device-specific data loss and making sure your device has the latest firmware.

For one thing, it does encompass some of the aforementioned OTA functionalities in MobileMe. Useful, but still not dreamworthy.

We get a bit closer to a “dream come true” if we talk about Xmarks, a bookmark-sync service originally meant for Firefox.  Sure, it sounds incredibly prosaic. But OTA bookmarks would open up a wide range of possibilities. This is about a qualitative difference from going OTA. In the case of backups, it’s about avoiding an annoyance but, arguably, it’s not really about changing something major about our behaviour. (Then again, maybe it is, with people who don’t back their devices up.) Point is, with something as simple as bookmarks, OTA is “disruptive”. At least, it gets me to daydream. One reason is that:

…no matter how fundamental they have been for the Web, links and bookmarks have yet to find their full value.

Hmm… Ok, perhaps a bit hyperbolic… So let me rephrase…

There’s still a lot to be done with URLs and, as simple as they are, I love thinking about links. Maybe I’m just obsessed with URLs.

As it so happens, I have a full list of thoughts about “link processing” and I’ve already blogged about related topics (on more than one occasion, in different contexts, going back to relatively early blogposts). And I even think social science can help.

I mean, think about it! There’s so much you can do, with links! Much of it is obvious, but I’d argue, rarely discussed. For instance, it’s very clear that we can post links pretty much anywhere. Doing so, we’re sharing their “content”. (In a semiotic sense, links are indices. I wish we can move from the “semantic Web” to the “semiotic Web”. But that’s another issue.) Sharing a link is the basic act of the social Web. It’s so obvious and frequent that it seems not to require discussion”.

Another obvious thing about links: we can measure the number of times they’re followed. In 2011, more than thirty years after hypertext has been introduced as a stable concept, much of the Web’s finances still relies on “clickthroughs”. Seems important.

And there’s a lot of processing which can be done with URLs: shortening them, adding them to “to do” lists, checking them for validity, keeping them in link libraries, archiving their “content”, showing them as external or internal links, preventing them from “rotting away”, showing the wordcount or reading time of the item they “target”, display them as QR codes, abuse them, etc.

As you can notice, it’s easy to get me on a tangent simply thinking about URLs. What’s this have t’do with iCloud, you ask? Probably not much, in terms of the actual service which will be announced at Moscone. But I’ve been dreaming about iCloud as a way to integrate Diigo, Instapaper, Delicious, reddit, digg, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Spurl, The NethernetXmarks

Hey, I told you I was dreaming! Something as simple as managing, processing, sharing, and archiving links in iCloud could lead to just about anything, in my imagination.

And speaking of Xmarks… It’s now owned by Lastpass, a company which focus on password management. IMHO, some Lastpass-like features could make their way in diverse products, including iCloud. Is this far-fetched? Possibly. But secure handling of passwords can be a major issue in both of Apple’s new operating systems (Mac OS X Lion and iOS5). From “keychains” to SSO, there’s a lot of work to be done which relates to password management, in my mind.

Which leads me to think about authentication in general and the rumours about “deep Twitter integration in iOS 5”. (Not directly related to iCloud, but who knows?) Again, something which can send me (and others) on drift-off moments. What if this integration suddenly made iOS devices more useful in terms of social networking services? Something to ponder, if one has a propensity for pondering.

At the same time, given the relative lack of activity on iTunes Ping, I wouldn’t bet on Twitter integration having that major an impact by itself. Not unlike Google, Apple has a hard time making a mark on the social Web. Now, if Twitter integration does connect to everything else Apple does, it could lead to interesting things. A full-fledged online identity? Access to contacts for not only messaging and photo sharing but for collaboration, group management, and media sharing? Not betting on any of this, but it could be fun. Again, not specific to iCloud, but quite related to “The Cloud”. If Twitter integration is deep enough, in iOS 5, it’d be possible to use iOS devices for “cloud computing”, getting further into the “post-PC era”.

An iCloud feature which is expected by several people, is something like an OTA version of the “iTunes file sharing” feature in iOS. Several apps (especially Apple’s own apps) use iTunes and a USB cable to share files. It was a welcome addition to iTunes 9.1 but it’s rather inconvenient. So many other apps rely on Dropbox for file sharing.

Which leads me to dream about iCloud as a replacement for Dropbox. Sounds extremely unlikely that it’ll have the full Dropbox feature set, especially if one thinks about the “Pro 50” and “Pro 100” plans on Dropbox. But I dream of the day when Apple’s iDisk will compete with Dropbox. Not that I’m convinced it ever will. But it’d make Apple’s devices all the more useful if it did.

Something similar, which isn’t frequently discussed directly, in connection with iCloud rumours, but which would rock: Mozy– or Carbonite-style backup, for Mac OS X machines. Sounds very unlikely that Apple will ever offer something like this but, as crazy as it may sound, the connection between Time Capsule and iCloud would be great if it went that far. From a user’s perspective, the similarities between Time Machine backup and “backing up in the cloud” (à la Mozy/Carbonite) are quite obvious. The advantages of both are clear. And while no hardware announcement is supposed to make its way to the WWDC 2011 keynote, I’d give the Time Capsule some consideration if it provided me with the equivalent of what I currently have with Mozy. Not to mention that Mozy has already sparked some drift-off moments, in me, before they announced their new plans. What if I could have a single service which combines features from Mozy, Time Machine, Dropbox, and YouSendIt?

I even think about the possibilities in terms of web hosting. As it stands, MobileMe does allow for some Web publishing through the iWeb application in its iLife suite. But iWeb has never been a major effort for Apple and it hasn’t been seen a significant update in quite a while. What if iCloud could become a true webhost just like, say… iWeb.com? (Semi-disclaimer: I won a free account with iWeb.com, last Fall, and I host some sites there. I also know some of the people who work there…)

Yet again, I don’t expect this to happen. It’s not speculation, on my part. It’s a daydream.

The reason this makes me dream is that I find all these things to be related and I wish they were integrated more seamlessly. Something about which Apple haters may not care much is the type of integration represented by iTunes. As clunky as iTunes may be, in some respects, it’s quite a success in terms of integrating a lot of different things. In fact, it probably overextended its reach a bit too much and we need to replace it. Apple needs to replace iTunes and we should also replace iTunes in our lives.

Like Gruber, I end up thinking about iCloud in relation to iTunes more than in relation to MobileMe. But I also dream about the ideal cloud service, which would not only sync and backup files between iOS devices, hundreds of millions of iTunes store accounts, and Macs, but replace several of the services for which I’m paying monthly fees.

Here’s to dreaming…

Other parts of this crazy, iCloud-infused daydream, in notes form:

Espace social et innovation ouverte

Présentation pour le panel « Innovation ouverte et living labs, la divergence cohésive par les réseaux sociaux ?» organisé par Patrick Dubé dans le cadre de la dixième conférence internationale webcom Montréal.

[iframe frameborder=’0′ style=’width:460px;height:375px;’ src=’http://public.iwork.com/embed/?d=Espace_social_et_innovation_ouverte.key&a=p1081389799&h=768&w=1024&sw=458′]

Trusting People: Tummel Edition

Tummelvison 56: Howard Rheingold on crap detection, collaborative learning, and online community | Tummelvision

Reminds me of my own blogpost about “Trusting People” from five years ago, but with more emphasis on the political aspect. There was also some notion of reciprocity involved, which connects to well-known anthropological concepts.  Most directly, Rheingold alluded to Marcel Mauss’s approach to gifts (which also influenced Austin Hill’s idea about the social economy as a gift economy). And, as he did last week, Marks described the cultural dimension of the ultimatum experiment (which also has to do with reciprocity). All of which reminds me of my own little pun about the “attention economy”:

To get attention, you need to pay attention.

(I know, it’s overly simplistic. But, sometimes, I like to play with buzzphrases.)

Anyhoo…

It’s nice to hear much of this. Makes for conceptual connections which can, in turn, make for human connections.

The segment about couchsurfing was particularly interesting, in this respect. Including the acknowledgement that it may be gendered (like most things in social life). Mostly heard about couchsurfing from men so it was useful to hear a woman share her perspective on it.

The more I listen to TummelVision, the more I feel like tummlers are “my kind of people.” (No, not in an exclusive sense. In an inclusive sense reminiscent of communitas, sense of belonging, in-group, etc. Sure, there’s an out-group, an eventual sense of exclusion. But the feeling involved is about sharing, connecting, accepting, welcoming, opening…)

CVAP Training: Representations of Africa

Some resources for a training session I’m giving for the Concordia Volunteers Abroad Program.

Going Meta: Actively Reading Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

What follows is my annotations on a blogpost by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon (aka Alex Gagnon, Zoetica, JonasThanatos, etc.). I’m having fun and it sounds like Alex does too.

To recap:

  • Been following Alex’s Posterous blog for a little while. Not sure how we “met” but it probably had something to do with Twitter.
  • Alex had a blogpost about quality content: the Web, culture, art, and beauty. For diverse reasons others might guess, I just couldn’t leave it alone. Especially since I’ve been giving some thoughts to what Alex, it turns out, calls “the Search Society” (YouTube)
  • When I tried to post a comment on Alex’s “Google Paradox” blogpost, I had a technical problem and my comment wouldn’t go through. It stalled at “submitting,” probably because of some issue with the way Posterous handles these things (it’s a bit like Intense Debate).
  • I decided to make my comments into my own blogpost. I took the opportunity to add a few links along with a bunch of categories and tags, but the comment itself was left intact.
  • Alex and I interacted through Twitter. Sounds like Alex will Storify that interaction, in which we actually talked about how “meta” it was to respond to responses across diverse media.
  • Alex then followed the conversation through a new blogpost, in which he honours me by focusing on specific points I had made.
  • In the interest of playing even more with these different media, but also as something I like to do, I decided to use Diigo to annotate Alex’s new blogpost with direct comments. Reminds me of some email conversations I used to have, with “interlinear replies.”
  • Via Ping.fm, I posted the link to my annotated version of Alex’s blogpost.
  • What follows is the content of these annotations.
  • I’m assuming Alex and I will follow this up with a face-to-face conversation in a café, so there might be something on Foursquare.
  • I might also edit this blogpost later, to add metadata.
  • 😉

Without further ado (about nothing):

On Truth and Beauty and Other Things part I – Marc-Alexandre Gagnon
http://zoetica.posterous.com/on-truth-and-beauty-and-other-things-part-i 

  • riposting
    • I guess my blogpost may have sounded like a salvo.
  • a harangue on High Culture and Low Culture, or High Art and Lowly art
    • It could bring us closer to Adorno and the rest of the Frankfurt dudes.
  • no general theory of culture with principles that apply to all cultures.
    • We’re getting closer to agreeing, here. Which is ok.
  • I see culture as an artist, as a creator of cultural artefacts
    • Quite so. And this is where there might be a tension. On one hand, you associate your craft with the more restrictive notions of culture. But, on the other, you perceive something interesting in cultures. They’re not incompatible, but they create a kind of tension, as with consonance/dissonance.
  • I am not a cultural anthropologist.
    • And you don’t have to be one. Sorry if my claims about notions of culture made it sound like cultural anthropologists hold the key. The opposite is more accurate: cultural anthropologists spend hours on end arguing about the more than 300 definitions of culture which have been enumerated since 1871… (Tylor’s “Complex Whole” definition, followed by a catalogue of definitions…)
  • I can’t say that I really spend all that much time taking a theoretical standpoint on the phenomenon of human culture
    • You really don’t have to. There’s a division of labour, here. But there’s some fluidity involved in that division. You’re allowed to delve into cultural theory as I’m allowed to spend time in “cultural industries.”
  • fluent in a great number of cultures,
    • Which can get us to cultural awareness…
  • I create works of art, there are specific requirements I must fill, very strict guidelines
    • This one is a bit surprising. Or it represents the major point of disjunction. Perhaps because of my Jazz training, I see guidelines and requirements as emergent, fluid, negotiated, conversational.
  • thrilled that you took the time to write
    • All the thrill is mine. I felt an impulse to do something like this.
  • I have a problem with the idea that we can infer the intention one has to convey a certain meaning,
    • So do I. In fact, that’s the major insight people seem to have gained from Barthes’s Mort de l’auteur, and I find it very useful as a starting point.
  • I love semiotics and it’s something I need to consider often when painting or writing music, but to me it’s merely a means to an end, and end which is analytical
    • Agreed. And I was just talking about the fact that I prefer not to be too analytical about things I enjoy, for instance in literature. That’s partly why my comments are usually not about analysis of specific works but about broader ideas. As an ethical hedonist, I don’t want to destroy enjoyment.
  • But analysis is secondary.
    • In more ways than one.
    • Oh! Will have to read this! Especially since I’ve been trying to imagine the post-Web Internet. I understand it’s not just about what’s online, in your case. But I like the notion that there can be multiple worlds involved and the online one is, though real instead of “virtual,” but one of these worlds.
  • information foraging,
    • Very anthropological a concept.
  • I’m not  just singling out Google
    • Some things are still specific to Google. Especially those related to their ethos. In this case, “algorithm or nothing” is very Googley.
  • mise-en-abŷme,
    • We’re back to meta.
  • Quality as a social construct.
    • It was originally my key point, in response to your post. Because of my background, I feel the need to make sure we’re on the same page about this. Sounds like we are, though we’re reading this page in different ways. Perfect for me.
  • Concepts are tools for understanding things, levers for our own sensemaking in the world.
    • Sig!
  • qualities can be defined by the possession in an object of objective traits which make it “beautiful” or “qualitatively of higher grade”
    • Thanks. That’s what I needed. I just don’t conceive of things in this way, but I fully respect your approach. To me, quality is an interplay between “(human) subjects and (art) objects.” Contrary to Molino (and then Nattiez),, I don’t think there’s really a “neutral level” associated with the object itself. I prefer Schutz’s social phenomenology to the version Dujka Smoje tried to push in her musical æsthetics course, back in the day.
  • I have no problem with aesthetic judgments.
    • Fair enough.
  • I have no problem with telling you why such and such a work fits the universally accepted criteria of Truth and Beauty.
    • I do. It might be a matter of «déformation professionnelle» but I do take issue with claims of universality. Nothing personal about people who make such claims but, as a culturalist, I find some deep problems with the claims themselves and, as a person, I just don’t think this way.
  • I’m just a working man, working at his craft,
    • Again, fair enough. And I wouldn’t have said anything about your perspective on quality if you hadn’t opened the door. I’m not attacking your views or claiming that you’re a snob. In fact, I was mostly thinking about the Adornos of this world.
  • my blog called Beautiful Signals,
    • Added to my Google Reader.
  • made much more sense in the 1980s,
    • We’re probably in agreement, here. To me, though, we’re currently going through a significant transition. All these “post-” things are about a shift which has been “waiting to happen” since “Late Modernism.” It’s already happened in anthropology, architecture, and art. It can still happen in xenophobia and zoology.
  • All that is solid melts into air..
    • That works. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that we get a Sisyphus/Buddhist cycle, The same matter may go through gas and solid phases, but there’s a point at which we may get a different compound.
  • I have a lot to say about Marx,
    • Sounds like fun. He’s so misunderstood…
  • I don’t think it’s a bad thing for some people to have authority,
    • Neither do I: as you may guess, I don’t believe in absolute bad or good things.
  • anarchism would ensue,
    • «Je suis anarchiste au point de toujours traverser dans les clous afin de n’avoir pas à discuter avec la maréchaussée.» [Georges Brassens]
  • Some structures are necessary.
    • This is probably where we disagree the most. But it’s ok.
  • It depends on what you are trying to do.
    • And this is where we probably agree the most. But that’s ok.
  • immanent feature of the art object”
    • That quality comes from the object itself, in the abstract, and transcends it. I find it very close to essentialism. Because existentialism had a deep impact on me since adolescence, I have some difficulty with this notion. It just doesn’t jive with the rest of my world.
  • I think most people misunderstand the role of an artist in society, and that hasn’t changed since the beginning of civilization.
    • If you haven’t, I’d encourage you to read Attali’s Bruits, especially the part about the birth of the artist as a figure. There’s been a tremendous shift between Bach and Rembrandt. But I agree that there’s not much of a shift between Rembrandt and Lady Gaga.
  • the plague called Modernism,
    • See, I wouldn’t call modernism a plague. It was ok, at the time. And it still dominates contemporary discourse on all sorts of things (like political science and engineering). It’s just that we’re going somewhere else, which fits more with our current conditions as a species. In other words, modernism wasn’t wrong. It’s just tired.
  • Beauty is what it is regardless of judgments.
    • This is what I mean by “immanence.”
  • take you up on that coffee date
    • You probably know where to find me.
  • I’m working on what I call Nouveau Kitsch,
    • Sounds like something I might enjoy, especially with the context provided by your blogposts.
  • What do you want us to do, abandon language altogether?
    • Coming from a linguistic anthropologist? Very unlikely. 😉
  • logocentrism
    • Overemphasis on discourse.
  • Our thoughts are logocentric
    • That’s where Russell and Wim Wenders agree with Radiolab. It’s also where Davidson may have hit something. When I play music, I’m not thinking through language. Given the complex relationships between music and language (per Feld, instead of Kristeva, Pinker, or Lerdahl), I can’t just subsume musical thinking to language-based cognition. Also, as bilinguals, don’t we both notice times when we’re not thinking in a language?
  • We signal.
    • There’s a significant difference between signals and language. And, yes, I use “significant” in a specific way.
  • Cultures are at war with one another in a global marketplace.
    • Wow. Where did that come from? I, I’m… Where to start… Ok, let’s just say we’ll bring that one up later.
  • techno-ethnography”
    • It’s also something I do and it does connect to the ethnography of communication in neat ways. But there are differences. Yes, “significant” differences.
  • anthropology of the senses”,
    • aka “sensory anthropology,” covering everything which has to do with what Howes called “the varieties of sensory experience.” Deemphasizing the visual/aural emphasis in Euro-American (“Western”) contexts. Paying more attention to olfaction, flavours, and tactile sensations, among many other things. They probably have someone working on proprioception but I get the impression that the focus on the “five senses.”
  • Evolutionary Aesthetics.
    • Let’s not go there. A major advantage of that EO episode is that they only talked about this for a few minutes so I didn’t cringe that much. I still had a hard time listening to it, but at least it wasn’t “for crying out loud” impossible.

Reply to Alex Gagnon’s Google Paradox

[Tried adding a comment directly on Alex Gagnon’s Posterous blog, but it kept stalling. So I’ll post this here, which may make for a different kind of interaction. Besides, I’d like to blog a bit more.]

The Google Paradox – Marc-Alexandre Gagnon.

We seem to be finding very different answers to rather similar questions. So I sincerely hope we’ll have the opportunity to meet and discuss these things in a local café.

But still, a few thoughts, in no particular order.

Let’s be clear on what we mean by “culture.” Sounds like there’s a tension, here, between the ways the concept signifies in: “cultural industry,” “Minister of culture,” “pop culture,” “our culture,” and “nature vs. culture.” As a cultural anthropologist, I tend to navigate more toward the latter contexts, but there are significant connections through these diverse conceptual frames.

Speaking of significance… It can be a useful concept, with some links to “relevance.” Especially if we think about Relevance Theory as defined by Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber. Their theory is about communication and cognition, with some strange claims about semiotics. Significance can bridge the gap between their notion of relevance and what insight semiotics may provide.

Chances are, you’re not really singling out Google, right? Blekko and Bing are providing similar results for similar reasons. Google may be the target of most SEO, but current search engines share a fairly unified notion of “quality content.”

Speaking of quality… As mentioned on Twitter, we might think of quality as a social construct. Especially “now.” The modern era had a lot to do with tastemakers, which were given some “authority/influence/power” through a rather specific social process. Similar to what @ChrisBrogan and @Julien call “trust agents.” In sociology, we talk about “gatekeepers” in pretty much the same way. And Duchamp woke a few people up in showing the effects of museumization. We had similar things in music, though my courses in musical æsthetics paid relatively little attention to these.
The basic insight from most “posts” (postcolonialism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, postnationalism, postindustrialism…) is that rigid structures may crumble. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, of course, but also the very idea of the Nation-State with “checkbox democracy” focused on the representation of predefined “interest groups.” Self-labeled arbiters of good taste, of course, but also the notion that “quality” is an immanent feature of the art object.

And speaking of art objects… People still talk about masterpieces, great works, and cathedrals. But we may also talk about the bazaar, “the eye of the beholder,” and “life as an art form.” Life is too short for everyone to be looking at the same old “artworks.” After all, “Life, sex, and art aren’t spectator sports.”

As for our logocentrism (“language media”), it’s difficult but possible to get beyond this ethnocentric bias. Part of this was prefigured in much 20th Century philosophy (from Russell to Davidson) and popular culture (Wings of Desire). But we can have a broader approach. In anthropology, we work on several things which are directly related to this, from linguistic anthropology and the ethnography of communication to cognitive anthropology and the anthropology of senses. We may live in a “visual” society but our obsession is with language. Which has a lot to do with the fact that the Internet was set in a Euro-American context.
But “our culture” isn’t a prison. We can adopt a broader worldview.

Intimacy, Network Effect, Hype

Is “intimacy” a mere correlate of the network effect?

Can we use the network effect to explain what has been happening with Quora?

Is the Quora hype related to network effect?

I really don’t feel a need to justify my dislike of Quora. Oh, sure, I can explain it. At length. Even on Quora itself. And elsewhere. But I tend to sense some defensiveness on the part of Quora fans.

[Speaking of fans, I have blogposts on fanboism laying in my head, waiting to be hatched. Maybe this will be part of it.]

But the important point, to me, isn’t about whether or not I like Quora. It’s about what makes Quora so divisive. There are people who dislike it and there are some who defend it.

Originally, I was only hearing from contacts and friends who just looooved Quora. So I was having a “Ionesco moment”: why is it that seemingly “everyone” who uses it loves Quora when, to me, it represents such a move in the wrong direction? Is there something huge I’m missing? Or has that world gone crazy?

It was a surreal experience.

And while I’m all for surrealism, I get this strange feeling when I’m so unable to understand a situation. It’s partly a motivation for delving into the issue (I’m surely not the only ethnographer to get this). But it’s also unsettling.

And, for Quora at least, this phase seems to be over. I now think I have a good idea as to what makes for such a difference in people’s experiences with Quora.

It has to do with the network effect.

I’m sure some Quora fanbois will disagree, but it’s now such a clear picture in my mind that it gets me into the next phase. Which has little to do with Quora itself.

The “network effect” is the kind of notion which is so commonplace that few people bother explaining it outside of introductory courses (same thing with “group forming” in social psychology and sociology, or preferential marriage patterns in cultural anthropology). What someone might call (perhaps dismissively): “textbook stuff.”

I’m completely convinced that there’s a huge amount of research on the network effect, but I’m also guessing few people looking it up. And I’m accusing people, here. Ever since I first heard of it (in 1993, or so), I’ve rarely looked at explanations of it and I actually don’t care about the textbook version of the concept. And I won’t “look it up.” I’m more interested in diverse usage patterns related to the concept (I’m a linguistic anthropologist).

So, the version I first heard (at a time when the Internet was off most people’s radar) was something like: “in networked technology, you need critical mass for the tools to become truly useful. For instance, the telephone has no use if you’re the only one with one and it has only very limited use if you can only call a single person.” Simple to the point of being simplistic, but a useful reminder.

Over the years, I’ve heard and read diverse versions of that same concept, usually in more sophisticated form, but usually revolving around the same basic idea that there’s a positive effect associated with broader usage of some networked technology.

I’m sure specialists have explored every single implication of this core idea, but I’m not situating myself as a specialist of technological networks. I’m into social networks, which may or may not be associated with technology (however defined). There are social equivalents of the “network effect” and I know some people are passionate about those. But I find that it’s quite limiting to focus so exclusively on quantitative aspects of social networks. What’s so special about networks, in a social science perspective, isn’t scale. Social scientists are used to working with social groups at any scale and we’re quite aware of what might happen at different scales. But networks are fascinating because of different features they may have. We may gain a lot when we think of social networks as acephalous, boundless, fluid, nameless, indexical, and impactful. [I was actually lecturing about some of this in my “Intro to soci” course, yesterday…]

So, from my perspective, “network effect” is an interesting concept when talking about networked technology, in part because it relates to the social part of those networks (innovation happens mainly through technological adoption, not through mere “invention”). But it’s not really the kind of notion I’d visit regularly.

This case is somewhat different. I’m perceiving something rather obvious (and which is probably discussed extensively in research fields which have to do with networked technology) but which strikes me as missing from some discussions of social networking systems online. In a way, it’s so obvious that it’s kind of difficult to explain.

But what’s coming up in my mind has to do with a specific notion of “intimacy.” It’s actually something which has been on my mind for a while and it might still need to “bake” a bit longer before it can be shared properly. But, like other University of the Streets participants, I perceive the importance of sharing “half-baked thoughts.”

And, right now, I’m thinking of an anecdotal context which may get the point across.

Given my attendance policy, there are class meetings during which a rather large proportion of the class is missing. I tend to call this an “intimate setting,” though I’m aware that it may have different connotations to different people. From what I can observe, people in class get the point. The classroom setting is indeed changing significantly and it has to do with being more “intimate.”

Not that we’re necessarily closer to one another physically or intellectually. It needs not be a “bonding experience” for the situation to be interesting. And it doesn’t have much to do with “absolute numbers” (a classroom with 60 people is relatively intimate when the usual attendance is close to 100; a classroom with 30 people feels almost overwhelming when only 10 people were showing up previously). But there’s some interesting phenomenon going on when there are fewer people than usual, in a classroom.

Part of this phenomenon may relate to motivation. In some ways, one might expect that those who are attending at that point are the “most dedicated students” in the class. This might be a fairly reasonable assumption in the context of a snowstorm but it might not work so well in other contexts (say, when the incentive to “come to class” relates to extrinsic motivation). So, what’s interesting about the “intimate setting” isn’t necessarily that it brings together “better people.” It’s that something special goes on.

What’s going on, with the “intimate classroom,” can vary quite a bit. But there’s still “something special” about it. Even when it’s not a bonding experience, it’s still a shared experience. While “communities of practice” are fascinating, this is where I tend to care more about “communities of experience.” And, again, it doesn’t have much to do with scale and it may have relatively little to do with proximity (physical or intellectual). But it does have to do with cognition and communication. What is special with the “intimate classroom” has to do with shared assumptions.

Going back to Quora…

While an online service with any kind of network effect is still relatively new, there’s something related to the “intimate setting” going on. In other words, it seems like the initial phase of the network effect is the “intimacy” phase: the service has a “large enough userbase” to be useful (so, it’s achieved a first type of critical mass) but it’s still not so “large” as to be overwhelming.

During that phase, the service may feel to people like a very welcoming place. Everyone can be on a “first-name basis. ” High-status users mingle with others as if there weren’t any hierarchy. In this sense, it’s a bit like the liminal phase of a rite of passage, during which communitas is achieved.

This phase is a bit like the Golden Age for an online service with a significant “social dimension.” It’s the kind of time which may make people “wax nostalgic about the good ole days,” once it’s over. It’s the time before the BYT comes around.

Sure, there’s a network effect at stake.  You don’t achieve much of a “sense of belonging” by yourself. But, yet again, it’s not really a question of scale. You can feel a strong bond in a dyad and a team of three people can perform quite well. On the other hand, the cases about which I’m thinking are orders of magnitude beyond the so-called “Dunbar number” which seems to obsess so many people (outside of anthro, at least).

Here’s where it might get somewhat controversial (though similar things have been said about Quora): I’d argue that part of this “intimacy effect” has to do with a sense of “exclusivity.” I don’t mean this as the way people talk about “elitism” (though, again, there does seem to be explicit elitism involved in Quora’s case). It’s more about being part of a “select group of people.” About “being there at the time.” It can get very elitist, snobbish, and self-serving very fast. But it’s still about shared experiences and, more specifically, about the perceived boundedness of communities of experience.

We all know about early adopters, of course. And, as part of my interest in geek culture, I keep advocating for more social awareness in any approach to the adoption part of social media tools. But what I mean here isn’t about a “personality type” or about the “attributes of individual actors.” In fact, this is exactly a point at which the study of social networks starts deviating from traditional approaches to sociology. It’s about the special type of social group the “initial userbase” of such a service may represent.

From a broad perspective (as outsiders, say, or using the comparativist’s “etic perspective”), that userbase is likely to be rather homogeneous. Depending on the enrollment procedure for the service, the structure of the group may be a skewed version of an existing network structure. In other words, it’s quite likely that, during that phase, most of the people involved were already connected through other means. In Quora’s case, given the service’s pushy overeagerness on using Twitter and Facebook for recruitment, it sounds quite likely that many of the people who joined Quora could already be tied through either Twitter or Facebook.

Anecdotally, it’s certainly been my experience that the overwhelming majority of people who “follow me on Quora” have been part of my first degree on some social media tool in the recent past. In fact, one of my main reactions as I’ve been getting those notifications of Quora followers was: “here are people with whom I’ve been connected but with whom I haven’t had significant relationships.” In some cases, I was actually surprised that these people would “follow” me while it appeared like they actually weren’t interested in having any kind of meaningful interactions. To put it bluntly, it sometimes appeared as if people who had been “snubbing” me were suddenly interested in something about me. But that was just in the case of a few people I had unsuccessfully tried to engage in meaningful interactions and had given up thinking that we might not be that compatible as interlocutors. Overall, I was mostly surprised at seeing the quick uptake in my follower list, which doesn’t tend to correlate with meaningful interaction, in my experience.

Now that I understand more about the unthinking way new Quora users are adding people to their networks, my surprise has transformed into an additional annoyance with the service. In a way, it’s a repeat of the time (what was it? 2007?) when Facebook applications got their big push and we kept receiving those “app invites” because some “social media mar-ke-tors” had thought it wise to force people to “invite five friends to use the service.” To Facebook’s credit (more on this later, I hope), these pushy and thoughtless “invitations” are a thing of the past…on those services where people learnt a few lessons about social networks.

Perhaps interestingly, I’ve had a very similar experience with Scribd, at about the same time. I was receiving what seemed like a steady flow of notifications about people from my first degree online network connecting with me on Scribd, whether or not they had ever engaged in a meaningful interaction with me. As with Quora, my initial surprise quickly morphed into annoyance. I wasn’t using any service much and these meaningless connections made it much less likely that I would ever use these services to get in touch with new and interesting people. If most of the people who are connecting with me on Quora and Scribd are already in my first degree and if they tend to be people I have limited interactions, why would I use these services to expand the range of people with whom I want to have meaningful interactions? They’re already within range and they haven’t been very communicative (for whatever reason, I don’t actually assume they were consciously snubbing me). Investing in Quora for “networking purposes” seemed like a futile effort, for me.

Perhaps because I have a specific approach to “networking.”

In my networking activities, I don’t focus on either “quantity” or “quality” of the people involved. I seriously, genuinely, honestly find something worthwhile in anyone with whom I can eventually connect, so the “quality of the individuals” argument doesn’t work with me. And I’m seriously, genuinely, honestly not trying to sell myself on a large market, so the “quantity” issue is one which has almost no effect on me. Besides, I already have what I consider to be an amazing social network online, in terms of quality of interactions. Sure, people with whom I interact are simply amazing. Sure, the size of my first degree network on some services is “well above average.” But these things wouldn’t matter at all if I weren’t able to have meaningful interactions in these contexts. And, as it turns out, I’m lucky enough to be able to have very meaningful interactions in a large range of contexts, both offline and on. Part of it has to do with the fact that I’m teaching addict. Part of it has to do with the fact that I’m a papillon social (social butterfly). It may even have to do with a stage in my life, at which I still care about meeting new people but I don’t really need new people in my circle. Part of it makes me much less selective than most other people (I like to have new acquaintances) and part of it makes me more selective (I don’t need new “friends”). If it didn’t sound condescending, I’d say it has to do with maturity. But it’s not about my own maturity as a human being. It’s about the maturity of my first-degree network.

There are other people who are in an expansionist phase. For whatever reason (marketing and job searches are the best-known ones, but they’re really not the only ones), some people need to get more contacts and/or contacts with people who have some specific characteristics. For instance, there are social activists out there who need to connect to key decision-makers because they have a strong message to carry. And there are people who were isolated from most other people around them because of stigmatization who just need to meet non-judgmental people. These, to me, are fine goals for someone to expand her or his first-degree network.

Some of it may have to do with introversion. While extraversion is a “dominant trait” of mine, I care deeply about people who consider themselves introverts, even when they start using it as a divisive label. In fact, that’s part of the reason I think it’d be neat to hold a ShyCamp. There’s a whole lot of room for human connection without having to rely on devices of outgoingness.

So, there are people who may benefit from expansion of their first-degree network. In this context, the “network effect” matters in a specific way. And if I think about “network maturity” in this case, there’s no evaluation involved, contrary to what it may seem like.

As you may have noticed, I keep insisting on the fact that we’re talking about “first-degree network.” Part of the reason is that I was lecturing about a few key network concepts just yesterday so, getting people to understand the difference between “the network as a whole” (especially on an online service) and “a given person’s first-degree network” is important to me. But another part relates back to what I’m getting to realize about Quora and Scribd: the process of connecting through an online service may have as much to do with collapsing some degrees of separation than with “being part of the same network.” To use Granovetter’s well-known terms, it’s about transforming “weak ties” into “strong” ones.

And I specifically don’t mean it as a “quality of interaction.” What is at stake, on Quora and Scribd, seems to have little to do with creating stronger bonds. But they may want to create closer links, in terms of network topography. In a way, it’s a bit like getting introduced on LinkedIn (and it corresponds to what biz-minded people mean by “networking”): you care about having “access” to that person, but you don’t necessarily care about her or him, personally.

There’s some sense in using such an approach on “utilitarian networks” like professional or Q&A ones (LinkedIn does both). But there are diverse ways to implement this approach and, to me, Quora and Scribd do it in a way which is very precisely counterproductive. The way LinkedIn does it is context-appropriate. So is the way Academia.edu does it. In both of these cases, the “transaction cost” of connecting with someone is commensurate with the degree of interaction which is possible. On Scribd and Quora, they almost force you to connect with “people you already know” and the “degree of interaction” which is imposed on users is disproportionately high (especially in Quora’s case, where a contact of yours can annoy you by asking you personally to answer a specific question). In this sense, joining Quora is a bit closer to being conscripted in a war while registering on Academia.edu is just a tiny bit more like getting into a country club. The analogies are tenuous but they probably get the point across. Especially since I get the strong impression that the “intimacy phase” has a lot to do with the “country club mentality.”

See, the social context in which these services gain much traction (relatively tech-savvy Anglophones in North America and Europe) assign very negative connotations to social exclusion but people keep being fascinating by the affordances of “select clubs” in terms of social capital. In other words, people may be very vocal as to how nasty it would be if some people had exclusive access to some influential people yet there’s what I perceive as an obsession with influence among the same people. As a caricature: “The ‘human rights’ movement leveled the playing field and we should never ever go back to those dark days of Old Boys’ Clubs and Secret Societies. As soon as I become the most influential person on the planet, I’ll make sure that people who think like me get the benefits they deserve.”

This is where the notion of elitism, as applied specifically to Quora but possibly expanding to other services, makes the most sense. “Oh, no, Quora is meant for everyone. It’s Democratic! See? I can connect with very influential people. But, isn’t it sad that these plebeians are coming to Quora without a proper knowledge of  the only right way to ask questions and without proper introduction by people I can trust? I hate these n00bz! Even worse, there are people now on the service who are trying to get social capital by promoting themselves. The nerve on these people, to invade my own dedicated private sphere where I was able to connect with the ‘movers and shakers’ of the industry.” No wonder Quora is so journalistic.

But I’d argue that there’s a part of this which is a confusion between first-degree networks and connection. Before Quora, the same people were indeed connected to these “influential people,” who allegedly make Quora such a unique system. After all, they were already online and I’m quite sure that most of them weren’t more than three or four degrees of separation from Quora’s initial userbase. But access to these people was difficult because connections were indirect. “Mr. Y Z, the CEO of Company X was already in my network, since there were employees of Company X who were connected through Twitter to people who follow me. But I couldn’t just coldcall CEO Z to ask him a question, since CEOs are out of reach, in their caves. Quora changed everything because Y responded to a question by someone ‘totally unconnected to him’ so it’s clear, now, that I have direct access to my good ol’ friend Y’s inner thoughts and doubts.”

As RMS might say, this type of connection is a “seductive mirage.” Because, I would argue, not much has changed in terms of access and whatever did change was already happening all over this social context.

At the risk of sounding dismissive, again, I’d say that part of what people find so alluring in Quora is “simply” an epiphany about the Small World phenomenon. With all sorts of fallacies caught in there. Another caricature: “What? It takes only three contacts for me to send something from rural Idaho to the head honcho at some Silicon Valley firm? This is the first time something like this happens, in the History of the Whole Wide World!”

Actually, I do feel quite bad about these caricatures. Some of those who are so passionate about Quora, among my contacts, have been very aware of many things happening online since the early 1990s. But I have to be honest in how I receive some comments about Quora and much of it sounds like a sudden realization of something which I thought was a given.

The fact that I feel so bad about these characterizations relates to the fact that, contrary to what I had planned to do, I’m not linking to specific comments about Quora. Not that I don’t want people to read about this but I don’t want anyone to feel targeted. I respect everyone and my characterizations aren’t judgmental. They’re impressionistic and, again, caricatures.

Speaking of what I had planned, beginning this post… I actually wanted to talk less about Quora specifically and more about other issues. Sounds like I’m currently getting sidetracked, and it’s kind of sad. But it’s ok. The show must go on.

So, other services…

While I had a similar experiences with Scribd and Quora about getting notifications of new connections from people with whom I haven’t had meaningful interactions, I’ve had a very different experience on many (probably most) other services.

An example I like is Foursquare. “Friendship requests” I get on Foursquare are mostly from: people with whom I’ve had relatively significant interactions in the past, people who were already significant parts of my second-degree network, or people I had never heard of. Sure, there are some people with whom I had tried to establish connections, including some who seem to reluctantly follow me on Quora. But the proportion of these is rather minimal and, for me, the stakes in accepting a friend request on Foursquare are quite low since it’s mostly about sharing data I already share publicly. Instead of being able to solicit my response to a specific question, the main thing my Foursquare “friends” can do that others can’t is give me recommendations, tips, and “notifications of their presence.” These are all things I might actually enjoy, so there’s nothing annoying about it. Sure, like any online service with a network component, these days, there are some “friend requests” which are more about self-promotion. But those are usually easy to avoid and, even if I get fooled by a “social media mar-ke-tor,” the most this person may do to me is give usrecommendation about “some random place.” Again, easy to avoid. So, the “social network” dimension of Foursquare seems appropriate, to me. Not ideal, but pretty decent.

I never really liked the “game” aspect and while I did play around with getting badges and mayorships in my first few weeks, it never felt like the point of Foursquare, to me. As Foursquare eventually became mainstream in Montreal and I was asked by a journalist about my approach to Foursquare, I was exactly in the phase when I was least interested in the game aspect and wished we could talk a whole lot more about the other dimensions of the phenomenon.

And I realize that, as I’m saying this, I may sound to some as exactly those who are bemoaning the shift out of the initial userbase of some cherished service. But there are significant differences. Note that I’m not complaining about the transition in the userbase. In the Foursquare context, “the more the merrier.” I was actually glad that Foursquare was becoming mainstream as it was easier to explain to people, it became more connected with things business owners might do, and generally had more impact. What gave me pause, at the time, is the journalistic hype surrounding Foursquare which seemed to be missing some key points about social networks online. Besides, I was never annoyed by this hype or by Foursquare itself. I simply thought that it was sad that the focus would be on a dimension of the service which was already present on not only Dodgeball and other location-based services but, pretty much, all over the place. I was critical of the seemingly unthinking way people approached Foursquare but the service itself was never that big a deal for me, either way.

And I pretty much have the same attitude toward any tool. I happen to have my favourites, which either tend to fit neatly in my “workflow” or otherwise have some neat feature I enjoy. But I’m very wary of hype and backlash. Especially now. It gets old very fast and it’s been going for quite a while.

Maybe I should just move away from the “tech world.” It’s the context for such hype and buzz machine that it almost makes me angry. [I very rarely get angry.] Why do I care so much? You can say it’s accumulation, over the years. Because I still care about social media and I really do want to know what people are saying about social media tools. I just wish discussion of these tools weren’t soooo “superlative”…

Obviously, I digress. But this is what I like to do on my blog and it has a cathartic effect. I actually do feel better now, thank you.

And I can talk about some other things I wanted to mention. I won’t spend much time on them because this is long enough (both as a blogpost and as a blogging session). But I want to set a few placeholders, for further discussion.

One such placeholder is about some pet theories I have about what worked well with certain services. Which is exactly the kind of thing “social media entrepreneurs” and journalists are so interested in, but end up talking about the same dimensions.

Let’s take Twitter, for instance. Sure, sure, there’s been a lot of talk about what made Twitter a success and probably-everybody knows that it got started as a side-project at Odeo, and blah, blah, blah. Many people also realize that there were other microblogging services around as Twitter got traction. And I’m sure some people use Twitter as a “textbook case” of “network effect” (however they define that effect). I even mention the celebrity dimensions of the “Twitter phenomenon” in class (my students aren’t easily starstruck by Bieber and Gaga) and I understand why journalists are so taken by Twitter’s “broadcast” mission. But something which has been discussed relatively rarely is the level of responsiveness by Twitter developers, over the years, to people’s actual use of the service. Again, we all know that “@-replies,” “hashtags,” and “retweets” were all emerging usage patterns that Twitter eventually integrated. And some discussion has taken place when Twitter changed it’s core prompt to reflect the fact that the way people were using it had changed. But there’s relatively little discussion as to what this process implies in terms of “developing philosophy.” As people are still talking about being “proactive” (ugh!) with users, and crude measurements of popularity keep being sold and bandied about, a large part of the tremendous potential for responsiveness (through social media or otherwise) is left untapped. People prefer to hype a new service which is “likely to have Twitter-like success because it has the features users have said they wanted in the survey we sell.” Instead of talking about the “get satisfaction” effect in responsiveness. Not that “consumers” now have “more power than ever before.” But responsive developers who refrain from imposing their views (Quora, again) tend to have a more positive impact, socially, than those which are merely trying to expand their userbase.

Which leads me to talk about Facebook. I could talk for hours on end about Facebook, but I almost feel afraid to do so. At this point, Facebook is conceived in what I perceive to be such a narrow way that it seems like anything I might say would sound exceedingly strange. Given the fact that it was part one of the first waves of Web tools with explicit social components to reach mainstream adoption, it almost sounds “historical” in timeframe. But, as so many people keep saying, it’s just not that old. IMHO, part of the implication of Facebook’s relatively young age should be that we are able to discuss it as a dynamic process, instead of assigning it to a bygone era. But, whatever…

Actually, I think part of the reason there’s such lack of depth in discussing Facebook is also part of the reason it was so special: it was originally a very select service. Since, for a significant period of time, the service was only available to people with email addresses ending in “.edu,” it’s not really surprising that many of the people who keep discussing it were actually not on the service “in its formative years.” But, I would argue, the fact that it was so exclusive at first (something which is often repeated but which seems to be understood in a very theoretical sense) contributed quite significantly to its success. Of course, similar claims have been made but, I’d say that my own claim is deeper than others.

[Bang! I really don’t tend to make claims so, much of this blogpost sounds to me as if it were coming from somebody else…]

Ok, I don’t mean it so strongly. But there’s something I think neat about the Facebook of 2005, the one I joined. So I’d like to discuss it. Hence the placeholder.

And, in this placeholder, I’d fit: the ideas about responsiveness mentioned with Twitter, the stepwise approach adopted by Facebook (which, to me, was the real key to its eventual success), the notion of intimacy which is the true core of this blogpost, the notion of hype/counterhype linked to journalistic approaches, a key distinction between privacy and intimacy, some non-ranting (but still rambling) discussion as to what Google is missing in its “social” projects, anecdotes about “sequential network effects” on Facebook as the service reached new “populations,” some personal comments about what I get out of Facebook even though I almost never spent any significant amount of time on it, some musings as to the possibility that there are online services which have reached maturity and may remain stable in the foreseeable future, a few digressions about fanboism or about the lack of sophistication in the social network models used in online services, and maybe a bit of fun at the expense of “social media expert marketors”…

But that’ll be for another time.

Cheers!

Buying Apps

Been mulling over this for a while, now. Before the Mac App Store was announced, I was thinking about “mobile apps” (mostly the iTunes/iOS App Store, but also Android Marketplace). Since the MAS announcement, though, I’ve been thinking about something which may be a broader shift. And because the MAS is opening tomorrow, now might be a good time to put some of these ideas out there.

The following blogpost, by Markus Nigrin, provides important insight from the perspective of some iOS developers.

Mac App Store – Sneak Peak

I tend to agree with the underlying idea: “traditional” Mac OS X developers run the risk of missing the boat, with the Mac App Store.

This point is made even more graphically by David Gewirtz on ZDNet.

While I do care about the fate of Mac developers, I’m really thinking about the users’ side of the equation. And I’m not really caught up in the Manichean “is it a good thing or a bad thing for us” kind of thinking.

Now, I do still think about the business side of things. Not that I have “a dog in this race,” but I do think about the business models, including app costs and “Free As In Beer”/No-Cost Software. Partly because, until recently, I rarely bought applications.

A few things changed, recently. One is that I’ve been able to allocate more money to my computing needs (partly because I do freelance work, much of it related to online stuff). Another is that I started paying more attention to software bundles like MacUpdate Promo and MacHeist. Yet another is that (very recently) I started buying games on Steam. And, finally, I’ve been getting a rather large number of iOS apps on the App Store, including some paid ones (despite my frustrating experience, initially).

One thing I notice is that there does seem to be a distinction between mobile-style “apps” and “traditional software packages.” While “app” is short for “application” and there may not be a very strong distinction between the type of software distributed through the Mac App Store and other applications, “apps” may be emerging as something of a new category. Partly in terms of business, partly in terms of development models, partly in terms of users’ expectations.

It may be a bit confusing, especially since Apple itself is selling pieces of software on both sides. For instance, they will distribute their iWork productivity suite (Keynote, Pages, and Numbers) through six (6) different ways.

  1. You can buy it as a productivity suite.
  2. You can get it through an education licensing program.
  3. You can get it as part of a box set (with Mac OS X and iLife).
  4. You can get it preinstalled on new hardware.
  5. You can buy iPad versions of individual apps (through the iOS App Store).
  6. And you’ll soon be able to buy Mac versions of the individual applications on the Mac App Store.

There are significant (and frustrating) differences between the Mac and iPad versions of these three programs. But Apple still markets the iPad apps as directly equivalent to the Mac applications. It might work as a marketing strategy, but it can be quite confusing. For instance, it can be difficult to find information about features which may or may not be present in the iPad version, such as the ability to change master slides (was looking for this just last night).

In mind, there might be a distinction between apps and applications in terms of user behaviour. When I get something from the (iOS) App Store, it’s usually a matter of curiosity. Sure, there are occasions where I look for and get a very specific app for a very specific need. But, most of the time, my behaviour is “impulsive.”

If it’s a free app, I don’t think twice about it, it’s almost on the order of a reflex. If the app is inexpensive (or if AppShopper warned me that it decreased in price quite significantly), chances are that I’ll buy it even if I’m just vaguely interested in it. If it’s more expensive, I may add it to my AppShopper wishlist, look for cheaper equivalents, or make a headnote to look later in that category.

In my mind, free and inexpensive apps need almost no justification. But, after a certain threshold (which may be as low as 5$ in certain categories), I need a rather strong incentive to invest in an app.

In many ways, the same is true with (non-mobile) applications. The threshold might be different, within the same category. But there’s a point at which I go from “sure, I’ll download this” to “do I really need it?” And cost isn’t the only factor. I won’t download a no-cost application if I get the impression that it’ll be difficult to use or take too much disk space.

Apparent simplicity is important, here. Even if an app merely looks simple, I might get it, just to explore and experiment. If, at first blush, an application looks unnecessarily complicated, chances are that I won’t g

Thinking about this, I’m predicting my own behaviour with the Mac App Store. I’ll probably start trying out all sorts of free and low-cost “apps” if they look like they can provide me with instant gratification. (Especially if I can use an external hard drive to store them.) And I’ll probably buy a few “apps” that I can justify, in terms of effort and cost. But I might give up quickly on these if my initial experience isn’t optimal (if the apps in question aren’t worth the cost or effort). And I’ll try different things associated with these apps I do enjoy.

Which, in a way, is my main thought: apps aren’t really like applications, in this case. They’re a “hook” for something else.

There are useful examples with Web applications and services. Especially things like Foursquare, Twitter, and ToodleDo. I wouldn’t spend fortunes on apps for use with these services. But I do spend a fair bit of time using these services. Mixed models like those for InstaPaper and TaskPaper are also important to keep in mind.

I actually have a lot more to say about all of this, but it’s probably better if I post it now. We’ll see how things go, tomorrow.

A bilingual blog on disparate subjects. / Un blogue disparate bilingue.