Internet Web Help

…or maybe not. We have been watching the twists and turns of Craigslists’ – ahem – “adult” classifieds for some time, and in the last week or so various Attorneys General have slapped “do not publish” stickers on. This was hardly unpredictable, they have been threatening this for some time (how about this post of ours in 2008) but of course now everyone is shocked, shocked I tell you.

Jeff Jarvis believes this is a move by an Olde Meedja Not-Quite-Conspiracy, though in my view he spoils his argument a bit by an aside on the Germans vs Google (see asterisk* at end of piece):

So why are government and media going after craigslist? The same reason, I think, that media and government in, for example, Germany are demonizing Google (even as the German people give Google its biggest market share anywhere in the world). They’re going after the disruptors, the biggest disruptors in sight.

Since craigslist and the internet have existed, newspaper classified revenue has fallen by $13 billion a year, leaving that money in the pockets of former advertiser-customers. Since Google and the internet have existed, many more billions have left traditional media as Google offered their former ad customers a better deal.

The New York Times today belittles craigslist’s censorship, calling it a “stunt” and “ploy” and labeling as “screeds” craisglist CEO Jim Buckmaster’s defenses of the service—and of free speech—against attorneys general and against ratings-starved CNN ambushing Craig.

Perish the thought that Craigslist are trying to protect $44m of their own revenue, eh Jeff

And just what has the naughty NYT said – well, they are alleging that Craigslist just might be playing the whole thing for PR, the cads, and may not really be serious about shutting it down – like they did last time (and did we mention the $44m):

Craigslist, by shutting off its “adult services” section and slapping a “censored” label in its place, may be engaging in a high-stakes stunt to influence public opinion, some analysts say.

……..

Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, was more skeptical about Craigslist’s intentions. “Certainly because of the way they did it,” she said, “it leaves an open question as to whether this is truly the end of adult services on Craigslist or if this is just a continuing battle.”

For a site that prides itself on being a neighborly town square, Craigslist has been increasingly pugnacious in response to its critics.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist’s chief executive, has written screeds on the company blog explaining and defending Craigslist’s efforts to combat sex crimes, including manually screening sex ads and meeting with advocacy groups.

So there you have it, gentle reader – and if it all seems a mite po faced and puffed up to you – the bloggage, I mean (The basic issue is simple – do the US citizenry want, or not want, their biggest online classifieds website to pimp pro gals, and that will be fought in court, and as the NYT points out the law is currently on craiglist’s side) then I think you are right – as the great philosopher Tom Lehrer noted the last time this came round in the 1960’s:

Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of Freedom of Speech and stifling of free expression and so on, but we know what’s really involved: dirty books [Ads] are fun. That’s all there is to it. but you can’t get up in a court and say that I suppose. it’s simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the constitution unfortunately.

His manifesto on the subject, “Smut”, is sung in the Tom Lehrer youtube vid at the top. Pretty much says all you need to know on the subject. (As he points out, in teh 1960’s the Supreme Court protected the right to publish, well, smut.)

* Those naughty Germans are after Google because they were sniffing WiFi data without telling anyone, and nor are Google collaborating in removing people’s data according to EU data protection law. These are things that Europeans unreasonably think might be a bit Evil (as opposed to Disruptive)

Update – I would like to say Danah Boyd has written a marvellously insightful piece on the subject, but I can’t get past the issue that she calls craigslist an ISP. And its in HuffPo.

Fanbois FTW

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.

Game theory of UK Election Coalitions

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.

Data from interactions on OK Cupid Dating site

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)

Spot the scooterpodiums and who needs a pee – Photo by @TimMontgomerie

It was quite interesting watching the Twitterstream during the UK’s 3rd debate between the 3 main parties. As always with Twitter it was a chaotic maelstrom of stuff – serious, scurrilous, funny and dull – leading Tweetdeck ’s founder Ian Dodsworth to say:

90% of #leadersdebate search tweets are essentially moronic – this is pointless

My response to Ian is that we need a cr*pfilter to cull 90% of your twtstreams . But I must say it was – as always – a brilliant experience watching the realtime commentary as the event unfolded. We believe this is because it allows a broadcast media process to have a feedback element.

And of course, after the event the Spin Doctors come into the studio to try and tell us their man has won – and as usual the YouGov instant poll showed the Tory leader, David Cameron, in front (please note though that YouGov’s CEO is a Tory MP candidate, but the Meedja never say that….. ) But the Twitterstream was clear – most felt the Mr Clegg (LibDem) and Gordon Brown (Labour) had edged it, typical twts being:

Also, an online poll – @youdecide2010 – “ITV Instant Poll Scores: Who had the best debate tonight?” showed (as of 1 hour after the debate) that was on Clegg 54%, Brown 39%, Cameron 11%.

Poll as of 1 hour after the debate

Update (as of 8.30 am) – in fact, the whole polling question is becoming quite interesting after this debate, as there is quite a wide disparity among the polls. A quick summary looks like:

- The Tory press (ie Tory sympathetic papers , especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, and Sky as well) have Cameron as a clear winner. This is being reported by the MSM media, with little analysis of where the data comes from

- Internet based “You vote” polls like the one above, on Facebook and those in the online sites of the newspapers (eg the Grauniad here) have Clegg a clear winner. These are largely being ignored by the mainstream media

- Most independent “mainstream” polls (and this interesting sentiment analysis) have it shaded between Cameron and Clegg to no great statistical benefit. These are being underplayed by much of the mainstream media – not clear why.

For the record I’m fairly apolitical on all this (I ‘ve voted Green for 20 years fwiw), but it seems as if some sort of concerted effort is going on in the MSM to push Mr Cameron ahead – clearly in the hope that the Floating Voter gets the feeling that that is where all les autres are going. But I think they’ve missed the ark, I think a lot of the Floating Voters are on the Online media and are picking up different messages, or at least seeing the feedback loops o the rebuttals (see my article on this here)

The evidence – from what I can see at the moment anyway – is that the Floating Voters are more strongly Lib Dem in flavour right now, and the MSM organs are pretty much preaching to their own choirs.

Anna Comnena, Princess of Byzantium and a damn smart woman (cover of novel by Tracy Barrett)

Today is Ada Lovelace day when we celebrate, well, female geeks. Tonight is the Finding Ada Unconference, where people talk for about 5 minutes on a heroine of their choice. Mine is the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene (Comnena in Latin), who lived in “interesting” times and was a serious polymath to boot.

Finding Anna

Anna was born in 1085, into the purple (ie into the Byzantine royal family) in Constantinople (now Istanbul, for the real tech geeks among you). To recap, in 1071 Byzantium fought and badly lost the battle of Manzikert, which resulted in them losing most of their Asian provinces to the Turks. To recapture them, the Byzantine Empire decided to take the very risky step of writing to the barbarous (by Byzantine and Arab standards of the time) Western nations for military assistance. Thence starts the Crusades which kicked off in 1091…..

I first met Anna via The Alexiad, the history she wrote at age 55 of the efforts of her father (the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I)’s attempts to rescue Byzantium from the results of Manzikert, reconquer their Eastern provinces from the Turks, and to “manage” the Crusaders to ensure they fought the Turks (Saracens) and didn’t pillage the still wealthy Byzantine Empire instead.

Educating Anna

Although, she was carefully trained in the study of history, mathematics, science, and Greek philosophy, Anna’s parents banned her from studying ancient poetry (whose glorification of lustful gods and unchaste women they deemed inappropriate and even dangerous for a young woman of her class to study). Despite her parents’ attempts to restrict her, Anna furtively studied the forbidden poetry with one of the imperial court’s eunuchs. Thus, Anna received an extraordinary education that undoubtedly made her one of the most educated women of her time. (From Wikipedia)

A Byzantine Plot

In her youth Anna took part in the standard Byzantine plot and counter plot to get her husbands (both of them) onto the Throne as her father aged. Her knowledge of medicine was of a level such that she was choosing the treatments for her father when he died. She was finally sent to a nunnery when her second husband withdrew from one of her plots to depose her brother for him. Anna said that “nature had mistaken their sexes, for he ought to have been the woman.” Today we’d probably say she had balls, whereas her husband….wanted to live (failed emperor pretenders lives were generally nasty, brutish and short)

Get thee hence to a Monastery – Anna as Nun

Take one very intelligent and high energy woman and give her not a lot to do, and what do you get?

Firstly an excellent history of the times – the Alexiad – which is accurate, insightful, gossipy and human at the same time and also gives you an excellent insight into women’s mindset then.

Secondly, in the Alexiad she writes a lot about the technology, science and medicine of her day – it is invaluable firstly as a record, but also its clear she had a very good grasp on how it all worked. Take her views on Astrology (she was very interested in Astronomy ).

The discovery is fairly recent, and the science of it was not known to the ancients. For this method of divination did not exist in the time of Eudoxus, the greatest of all astronomers, neither did Plato have any knowledge of it, and even the astrologer, Manetho, had not brought it to perfection. Now these (astrologers) observe the hour of the birth of the persons about whom they intend to prophesy, and fix the cardinal points and carefully note the disposition of all the stars, in short they do everything that the inventor of this science bequeathed to posterity and which those who trouble about such trifles understand. We, also, at one time dabbled a little in this science, not in order to cast horoscopes (God forbid!), but by gaining a more accurate idea of this vain study to be able to pass judgment upon its devotees. I do not mention this for the sake of boasting, but to prove that during my father’s reign many of the sciences made great progress, as he honoured both philosophers and philosophy itself, but towards this teaching of astrology he showed some hostility, I believe because it tended to make people of a guileless nature reject their faith in God and gape at the stars.

Anna and the Crusaders

Anna’s views on the corruption, depravity and rapacity of the Crusaders is a joy to read and a good counterpoint to received Western views, she was deeply sceptical of the wisdom of involving the West and the Pope in the fight against the Turks. (Though there is a clear subtext that she fancied the Norman leader Bohemond). She was eventually proved right as in 1204, 50 years after she dies, the 4th Crusade decided to sack Constantinople rather than fight Turks, which did far more damage to Byzantium than Manzikert did

There is a very approachable book on Anna Komnene called “Anna of Byzantium” by Tracy Barrett, that’s the picture above.

No sooner do Toyota have an unexplained bug in their cars acceleration, than we get this classic from Wired:

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

“We initially dismissed it as mechanical failure,” says Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia. “We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”

This illustrates another of the downsides of simple mass interconnectness without robust security and risk mitigation systems (a similar example is computer trading systems that go into a downward sell spiral).

I recall reading a Sci Fi story many years ago (70’s) about a “wired” world in which a country guy with an old petrol engined, non computerised car drives into town and is nearly killed by enraged townies who se him as eco-unfriendly, but then something goes wrong with The Grid in a levee flood and all their electric cars stop with them stuck inside, and they get drowned.

The dream is to hook up all cars so they can speed seamlessly along and optimise traffic flows. The reality, unless systems are very secure and resilient, will be massive pile ups and carnage.

2010 SXSW Keynote – Spot the Common Ground Competition

It is clearly becoming traditional at SXSW to have an Interview Keynote that everyone loves to hate, a process that is affectionately known as Lacyration. This year’s tag team were Havas’s Umair Haque and Twitter’s Ev Williams. Just see here and here for the articles – but read the comments for a more balanced view than just the Twitter faithful.

But of course, this one was all predictable, as the chart above shows. Today’s competition is to “spot the middle ground”. Answers on a postcard…..

Update – Umair Haque’s comments over here talks about a bigger picture than you can get in 140 characters.