Things worth reading for December 28th through December 29th:
“The Future of Privacy: How Privacy Norms Can Inform Regulation” – Important October 2010 talk by Danah Boyd: “I’m not going to solve the definitional debate, but I do need to give you a sense of how I conceptualize privacy so that you can understand where I’m coming from. I focus on people’s ability to successfully manage a social situation and the flow of information that helps define that situation. Privacy requires that people can meaningfully interpret the context and that they have agency over how information flows. Privacy isn’t about controlling functional access to content as much as knowing what to share when and how it will flow. While spaces and moments are marked as private, privacy is experienced over time. Most importantly, privacy is networked. It’s not just about the information that an individual shares; it’s about what can be interpreted about someone based on their relationship to others and their everyday interactions. Privacy is fundamentally about both context and networks.”
How to Change the World: How to Kick Butt On a Panel – An oldie but a goodie. If more panelists and moderators did this I’d hate panels less.
Year in Review: 10 Trends in Mobile Technology – WSJ.com – “The momentum in technology is now with devices that can easily be carried around and the applications that sustain them. The Journal runs through the defining moments of that transition this year and look at what to expect in 2011.”
Can Premium VOD Make Up for Losses at the Box Office?: Video « – “BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield notes that ticket sales over the last 10 days are down some $140 million, or 28 percent from the same period last year. With a blizzard keeping many on the East Coast bundled up inside, we can expect sales to continue to decline in the final week of the year. Sales are down 8 percent quarter-to-date and could finish down 9 percent if the trend — and the blizzard — continue. But more disappointing than the weak ticket sales is weak attendance; according to Greenfield, at the same time, that attendance is down 12 percent in the quarter so far. It’s clear that even with higher ticket prices due to the premium placed on 3-D movies, studios aren’t able to make up for the drop in attendance.”
The New Capitalist Manifesto • Netflix’s Big Mistake – “Advantage in the 21st century is constructive, not just competitive. There are five sources of constructive advantage (each discussed in detail in the Manifesto): loss advantage, responsiveness, resilience, creativity, & difference. Netflix’s overlords aren’t just failing to strive for a single one of these—reading Reed Hastings, it’s pretty clear that they’re not even beginning to think in 21st century terms. Rather, they’re reliant on brand, scale, and market share—all of which are already starting to limit them from creating thicker, more enduring value (as real costs rise, and marginal returns diminish). When a boardroom can’t even perceive the contours of the competitive landscape, achieving superiority becomes something less than a game of chance. My prediction’s simple: a player like Apple, laser focused on resilience and creativity, will be able to disrupt this ponderous, info-poor, coordination-intensive, diminishing returns-focused model with ease, grace, and fluidity.”
Dating Sites Try Adaptive Matchmaking – Technology Review – “Joseph Essas, vice president of technology for eHarmony, was lured to the company from Yahoo three years ago. Since then, he has developed and implemented a new layer of predictive matching algorithms that are based on Yahoo’s system for targeting advertising to specific users who have revealed preferences and behaviors over time. The matchmaking software gathers 600 data points for each user, including how often they log in, who they search for, and what characteristics are shared by the people they actually contact.”
Move Over Michael’s: Lure is New York’s New-Media Power Lunch Spot | TheWrap.com – ““You’re going to see more faces you know at Michaels,” says Dan Abrams, NBC News’ chief legal analyst and the web entrepreneur behind Mediaite. “But at Lure, you are going to see the people you’ll have to know five years from now.””
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