The EFF, ACLU and others are asking for even more control to be given back to users when it comes to sharing their info on Facebook, but my guess is this will never happen.

I’m suspecting that we will have to pay Facebook and other networks for privacy in the future. If they can’t monetize our information with targeted communications from companies willing to pay for them, then they will need to turn us into paying customers by some other means.

But it will take a new social networking service to pull this off. Facebook and others who began with the promise of privacy will encounter too much backlash if they attempt to change the original ground rules for how they handle their customers’ information.

It will take a new network clearly stating that privacy will cost whoever joins. Of course, they will need to package the offering in a way that makes it useful. Maybe this theoretical site (or perhaps it exists) becomes a manager of individual’s information streams and the sale of them to other entities. Maybe data stream broker is a job of tomorrow.

This HBR article targets managers looking for techniques to retain top talent, but I thought it could be applicable to individuals trying to manage their own big ambitions.

Reading the article online requires a subscription, so I’ll just cite the few points from the (gasp!) print magazine I have sitting before me.

The article says three attributes best define rising stars:

1) Ability: technical, intellectual and emotional skills.

2) Engagement: level of commitment employee feels toward firm and its mission.

3) Aspiration: the desire for recognition, advancement and future rewards, and degree to which the employee’s wants align with what the company wants for her.

My point is to test your own three answers to these questions against the needs and requirements of your ambitious goal, your dream job, relationship, adventure or whatever it is. Do you have the skills to pull it off? How committed are you? Can you follow it through? And are you committed to how this dream opportunity will move you ahead? Will it fulfill your aspirations?

No, I meant this one:

Via influx insights

“As a general rule, the more complex the organism, the less autocratic and more democratic the biological networks appear to be, researchers report.”

Michael is upset:

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the campus of Penn State University, a rivalry between a rogue campus blog and the official newspaper has become a fascinating mirror of the strife between old and new media.

Don’t look at old and new media, look at old and new media customers. What does each want? Are they distinct? Can one organization provide everything? Oh, and why is the blog described as “rogue”?

Onward State happily promotes a competitor’s story with direct links, while The Collegian questions the very logic of such a strategy. …  A symbolic move which tells readers to “go read our competition” would be devastating to the trust they’ve worked for over a century to gain, according to The Collegian’s editor.

This represents an attitude toward people’s attention. On one hand, “old media” sees attention as something to be captured, exploited and isolated, even to the information disadvantage of the person supplying the attention. “New media” sees attention as something to direct to the greatest information advantage of the person supplying the attention. I believe an information service that best meets a customer’s needs, even at a short-term sacrifice of its business interests, will prevail in the competition for attention (but getting people’s money is a whole other problem; advertising is a business built on failures that in large part no longer exist).

“Money making is not something that we’ve really embraced yet,” said Davis Shaver, founder of Onward State.

Via

In case cookies evaded your understanding, this gizmo simplifies your control of them when it comes to an encounter with a paywall or registration request.

The journalism business was never the content. It was the distribution; it was the channel. Media companies had a road and a dellivery van to people’s minds that nobody else did. Now there is a plethora of roads and the customers are the ones doing the driving; they visit a business whenever they want. Information is easy now. Meaning, always difficult, is even harder.

Via Journerdism

There is a reason Steve Jobs kept saying the iPad was like the Internet in your hands. Implied in the statement is a reduction of operationally infinite medium into a discrete package, and businesses sure like discrete units because they fit into neat revenue formulas that don’t require an endless chase after page views in an infinitely expanding advertising space (though, interestingly, Google would seem to like this). The only problem with treating digital goodies like real-world ones is that you rip a good chunk of the Internet’s power right out of its guts. I suspect we will look back upon this era of remarkably free information with envy and awe in the coming decades. Bummer.

What do you know: Give people freedom to manage their schedules and work load, and they not only get the tasks done, they get them done more efficiently.

Overall, the connection between time spent and value produced needs to be severed. Just because you invest 40 hours (or more) on something does not mean it has worth, but quantity holds a powerful sway. I still hear “I put in 80 hours this week” spoken with pride. I could spend 80 hours making my breakfast, but the result of satisfying my hunger would be the same if I took 10 minutes to do it.

The program is called results-only work environment, or ROWE. The group’s site describes it as “a management strategy where employees are evaluated on performance, not presence.”

One of the program’s founders said, “80 percent of companies’ lost productivity is from ‘presenteeism’ — when someone is physically in the office but mentally somewhere else.”

Business Week wrote about the same thing. From that article, a sociology professor says, “most companies are stuck in the 1930s when it comes to employees’ and managers’ relationships to time and work. .. ‘Our whole notion of paid work was developed within an assembly line culture. Showing up was work. Best Buy is recognizing that sitting in a chair is no longer working.’”

As soon as:

> I can turn a stream of digital coupons on and off with 1 press.

> The coupon’s value is significant.

> I can share the coupons with friends. 

Nice, big-picture overview of how the Internet has affected the music industry:

> Previous business structures made sense when production, marketing and distribution of music were prohibitively expensive and difficult, and when sales were in the millions of $15 units.

> Want a recording studio? Invest a few thousand dollars for software and hardware.

> Want to market? Hit the blogs. Post your tunes on the Web. Open an online store.

> But some musicians don’t want to deal with the business side of their careers, so opportunities still exist for managers and labels.

> Labels still offer a suite of centralized services and (in some cases) reputation enhancement that are useful.