technoculture314-09

Just been listening to Evan Williams, Founder/CEO Twitter who was guest speaker at the Online News Association Conference on now in San Francisco. It's a bit rough but you can livestream his session. Williams talked about Twitter's future plans and they seem to involve a lot of data collection from its users. The company wants to build more "authenticity and trust" into the network. Williams acknowledged that although anonymity was a "big factor" for the Twitter community, it was an impediment to fostering trust. Traditional media know all about fostering trust. The public have a democratic right to be well informed and the ethical standards underpinning traditional media ensure that journalists reveal the source of a story. But are you going to believe a tweet on a news issue from an unidentified source? Ever the optimist, Williams believes that it's possible to combine anonymity and trust in the one tweet. He didn't reveal any trade secrets, but he did tell the audience that Twitter is looking at ways to check out people and determine their level of trustworthiness. Presumably the Twitter community will have the tools to single out those with a five-star rating and be reassured that the author is telling the truth. And that's important if audiences want the correct facts about a breaking news story. Williams also mentioned that every tweet will now be titled with a location, which allows followers to filter through tweets to a specific location around the globe. There are no plans to start charging for API but the content people create "may be used in other ways". The upshot is that Williams and co will be collecting a lot of useful data about the Twitter community. Google already knows a lot about its users. As one journalist from PoynterOnline noted: "The company's servers hold data that identifies the contents of e-mails, names of contacts, physical and IP addresses, location, contents of shared documents, records of searches and ordering of priorities, blog profiles and information entered into blogs, Google Voice call recordings and voice mails, google Analytics data on pages visited and paths taken, credit care and purchase information (through Google checkout), even, potentially, what ads have been viewed and clicked on non-Google sites. " So how are you supposed to protect yourself from the prying eyes of Google. I do my best by deleting cookies and sometimes using different logon names. I'm seriously thinking of ditching my gmail account. Trying to outsmart Google is a pain and now we have to think (harder) before we Tweet.

trustworthiness