Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution, INFO 290A-3 (http://weigend.com/teaching/ischool)
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012 (http://ischool2012.wikispaces.com)
Class2
This transcript:
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012/weigend_ischool2012_transcript_2.doc
Corresponding audio files:
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012/weigend_ischool2012_audio_2_TMP.to.b
e.compressed/0910_155700.WAV
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012/weigend_ischool2012_audio_2_TMP.to.b
e.compressed/0910_172102.WAV
Containing folder of the whole series:
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012
1
Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Andreas:
Sorry I was late. My car wasn't working and then trying to find Dr. Lifs (ph.) living
in San Francisco took me too late to get here. What did you do so far today in
those 25 minutes?
Student:
Went over video tasks, the Facebook page on Social Data Revolution, and Jerry
and Carl went over –
Andreas:
Wonderful, there's no much left for me to do. Here's a plan for today. First I want
to summarize what we did last class. I realize standing here for a couple of
minutes how bad the acoustics are in this room. I had a couple people say it
doesn't really carry well, so I'll try to do my best to speak as clearly as I can.
After the summary I want to talk a bit about how many details you had about the
different areas and get your input, your votes. Divya kindly prepared a Google
form where we have twelve areas where each of you is asked then to vote
tonight so I know how to prioritize who I will get to the class.
In our usual tradition, the last half hour we have a guest come. Today it is a
journalist, a woman how works for Marketplace. Not sure who of you knows
Marketplace. It's (indiscernible) out of Los Angeles, and it was a great honor for
me to be on it a couple of years ago, in the summary they had about that year.
The last hour of the year, they took the favorite quotes of the entire year and they
picked one of my which was a quote on privacy. "Privacy started with cities, and
ended with Facebook." Anyway, we have a journalist come today at the end of
the class, the last half-hour.
The reason for today is that as you probably know the new iPhone will be
released later this week, on Wednesday. We want to investigate together here
how the DNA of Apple differs from the DNA of a Google differs from the DNA of
Amazon when it comes to data. After we get your input she's going to take me to
some quiet room and I'll produce a couple of minutes, and that will be our
summary on the radio on Wednesday on (indiscernible) show called
Marketplace.
Divya, did you explain to them the colors here? You all should be able to do a bit
of origami and fold this thing you have in front of you. Why? We talked about
interaction last class. We talked about communication as one of the main pillars,
remember? You came up with the wonderful dimensions of communication and I
emphasized that dimensions are more important than the specific points in
space. I care in teaching much more that people understand the space than
knowing where things are.
One of these communication dimensions was feedback. In most classes, people
don't have a feedback loop. I can see you nod. I can see you doze off, and as
you know about after half an hour half of the class has fallen asleep. Maybe the
other half is having sexual fantasies.
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
So in order to improve that feedback loop, Divya kindly prepared these cubes. I
asked her to fold them in front of you so that I can see the same color you see. If
I'm seeing green in the room and you're seeing green in the room, then
everything is going smoothly. If I'm not sure what's happening, then you put on
yellow and when you have no idea what I'm talking about, then put it in red and
I'll reboot.
I basically would like to look at the room of green. If I see a bit of yellow
somewhere I know I may need to ask the person what's not clear. If I see a room
of red, then I know I lost everybody. Does that make sense? Low tech, but it
works because you can see the same from the back as I see from the front. Any
questions? That's the purpose of the origami exercise.
Student:
Do we have a pair of scissors that's handy?
Divya:
There's one, that one, and there's a piece of paper –
Andreas:
I know that I will walk you in an hour or so through the different things of the wiki
but I wanted to get started with a summary of the last class because content is
important. Let's get started. What is social data? Now all the cubes are turning
into yellow and red. What's social data? Social data comes in two flavors. One is
data individuals socialize, typically data that they actually create. I sometimes say
data we create and share. To share is to care, as we learned in kindergarten.
What it means is we express our humanity, who we are through sharing: what
the best noodle shop is, or our favorite pictures, etc. Creating data, we contrast it
against social media.
My geolocation for instance, if anybody knew that on weigend.com/itinerary, you
know exactly where I was and you could exactly triangulate when I would be
arriving at class here today. That's an example of social data. I share my
geolocation, weigend.com/itinerary. The second meaning of social data is the
connectivity between people, sometimes called the social graph. An example for
the social graph is who is my friend. I this case, mutually confirmed.
Student:
Just to clarify, you're talking about geolocation, does that mean – your
geolocation wasn't actually your data (indiscernible)?
Andreas:
If only I know why I am, then I think using the term social is not the right term for
that. We compare and contrast a few kinds of sharing. In the case of geolocation
for instance, and that's something that I'll get back to at the very end of class
today, in the case of geolocation why would I share that with a company? So far
I've talked about peer-to-peer sharing or peer-to-word sharing. But why would I
share my geolocation with a company? Any ideas?
By the way, Divya made the wonderful point that if you put your name tags in
front of you, then I don't have to say the dude over there with the beard, but I can
pretend that I know your names. Over time I'll actually be learning your names. If
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
you have those things with the name, or if you don't but you have an extra sheet
of paper?
Divya:
I just have the cubes.
Andreas:
Be creative, borrow a piece from somebody. So I'm putting names to faces and
faces to names. Sorry about that. If you don't have a nametag just say your
name.
Omar:
So companies based on location, companies in your area, for example Yelp.
Andreas:
Yes, one thing I really want to get across is that in many cases there is a tradeoff
you need to make. It’s not that one thing is good and the other thing is bad; one
thing is divine and the other thing is evil. The world is not black and white. If you
want to get, for example in the Yelp example Yelp mentioned, if you wanted to
find a restaurant nearby you have to tell the website, the app where you are.
Otherwise, how would the poor website know what is nearby to you? So that's an
example why we share geolocation with a company. Any other examples why
sharing geolocation with individuals might be useful?
Student:
You might be able to hang out with others around you.
Andreas:
Absolutely, discovery.
Student:
If you go mountain biking in the hills of Napa and you don't come home, people
will know where you are.
Student:
There was a movie last year (indiscernible), that movie was about a person who
got trapped mountain biking. The person was stuck. (indiscernible) He had to
amputate his one hand to get out of the place. (00:10:45.0 to 00:10:58.9).
Andreas:
Any other examples why sharing can be beneficial to you?
Student:
People might to it for intangible reasons, such as showing off or sort of social
hierarchy. If they'd gone to a very exclusive club or something like that, they want
all their peers and people in their social group to know where they've been so
they can get a boost in the social hierarchy.
Andreas:
One other example, and I am waiting – after we went through the different topics,
I'm waiting for your feedback to decide on what we want to do. One example
here is dating. I've been on the board of a dating site, dating app, and I already
put an assignment up which is called data and dating, or data and desire or
something like that, at the bottom of the homeworks page. What that is, is an
example of analysis, a site called OkCupid is doing on their data.
There's a company in San Francisco called Skout and they had a marvelous
media event five months ago where the CEO made it to the front page of the
New York Times. Who doesn't want to be on the front page of the New York
Times? It was a bit of an unfortunate situation. People hooked up on Skout but
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
one of them was below 16 and all kinds of bad things happened. So sometimes
maybe there are pros and cons about sharing your geolocation. You might have
known about the site, I think robme.com, where people from the ACLU, the Civil
Liberties Union made the point that by sharing information about where you are
and where you're not, you make it easier for people to actually break into your
house. The site is pleaserobme.com.
We'll get back to that at the end of class when we talk about the different data
sources and what the pros and cons are, and boiling it down to two minutes for
Marketplace. Those are our definitions of social data. Any questions? The
second point was revolution. What's the story about that revolution thing? Why is
it a revolution?
Student:
It's one of the only exponential technologies in the world right now.
Andreas:
By the way it's good to see you in person. Poor Ben. Every two hours he got an
email from me that somebody dropped, or there was a typo in an email address
you provided. It's good to see you in person again. Thank you trying to be on top
of the class this year. The discrepancy by the way between the email list I
downloaded from bare facts and the registrant list I downloaded from bare facts
was about 40%, so it's pretty amazing we need a human being to manually check
and I hope by the end of today we're pretty clear about who's in class and what
people are doing. Back to the point you made.
Student:
I was just saying that's why it's revolutionary. It's exponential technology.
Andreas:
Yeah, it's one of the few things that does grow, doubling every one and a half
years, which prompted Peter Hirschberg who used to work at Apple with me, last
year when we talked to the United Nations to say data is the new oil. What we
meant by that was like oil, data is a raw material. Actually, the word economic
forum in (indiscernible) was called the most important asset class that we have in
this day and age. It is a raw material. So if you find raw oil in your backyard, it's
probably not doing you much good. It's probably making a lot of trouble. On the
other hand, the world we know wouldn't run without oil. You have to refine oil,
you have to refine data.
One of the conversations I had with Carl here is what does a data scientist do.
Think of him or her as a refinery dude, who takes this raw stuff coming in and
then he puts actions out. He pipes actions out. That's basically what data
scientists do.
Dave:
Does that complicate the issue of social data though? I took a data science
course last semester. A lot of what you're doing is analyzing data which is not
social with (indiscernible). It's like access logs to a server. It's not necessarily to
do with my interactions with another individual or something that's even really
being rendered access. It's different in some way. Two pieces of data you're
putting together and analyzing it in the end.
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Andreas:
I snuck in the UN General Assembly speech that social data is the new oil. If you
really think about where the data comes from, where the exponential growth is, it
is maybe access logs but primarily data that is produced in the context of people.
Sensors I carry around, geolocation being an example, so it's not really machineto-machine data, some refinery, some traffic light talking to another traffic light. It
could be my car telling me that it's out of battery ahead of time. That would be
cool, wouldn't it? It's really data people create where the exponential growth
comes.
Not only things like geolocation, which is one example, but think about photos,
think about videos. Every day – how many pictures get uploaded a day on
Facebook? Think for a moment but don't call it out. I want you to get an order of
magnitude of feeling. How many pictures get uploaded a day? Just write
something down.
Max:
I guess it's ten million if you don't count Instagram.
Andreas:
Ten million.
Ray:
900 million.
Andreas:
More on this side.
Student:
Are you talking just in the U.S.?
Andreas:
Ray how did you come up with your number?
Ray:
I was estimating there are one billion Facebook users in the world. And then not
everyone would upload a picture, not everyone is apt to, so we should be slightly
below that.
Andreas:
I like the way he thinks.
JJ:
Eighty million, because there are 800 million Facebook users, I would think 400
of them are active users, that they check their Facebook daily and maybe only
20% of them actually post a photo, an average of one photo per day, so that
gives me eighty billion.
Andreas:
How about those people who paste pictures of every single meal they have? We
all love those pictures.
JJ:
That's why I'm saying it's an average. Average one, so only for the people who
like upload.
Andreas:
Do you know the number?
Student:
Yeah, (indiscernible), the reason is like you said; there are a bunch of people,
25% of the user rate.
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Student:
(00:20:22.9 to 00:20:45.8).
Andreas:
I think it is not about the specific number, it's how you think about it. And the way
I think about it is most like Roy who says it's roughly a billion people, and I think
it's between one out of ten or a tenth uploading ten pictures a day, something like
that, so any number between 100 million and a billion is good enough. That's
how I want you to think about this. Don't worry JJ specifically whether it's 20% or
22% or maybe 23%. Just worry about it's a billion people, roughly a picture a
person, so it's roughly a billion photos a day. Or you could argue it's roughly one
picture every week, so it's 100 million.
Pictures in terms of bits are a pretty important part. Video is even more important
if you count the bits, than just simply geolocation, longitude, and latitude which is
quite informative data for the number of bits you have. Any other questions or
comments on social data? Any other questions on the revolution?
Student:
(00:22:21.6 to 00:22:32.9).
Andreas:
Why do I call it a revolution? Because it's a billion people who think about it
differently now compared to ten years ago. A billion people make a revolution.
Think how people make purchasing decisions. They look at social data. They
look at reviews other people posted. They didn't do that ten years ago. Think
about information. Could we live a week without Google or Bing or Yahoo? It
would be hard. Think about who we are. Think about who our friends are. Think
about how we get information. I think it really is that a billion people do things
differently from the way they did ten years ago.
Student:
You say the number gives the power to the Social Data Revolution?
Andreas:
It's a phase transition, that basically the norm has shifted. The norm used to be
you keep your pictures private. Whereas now, the norm is it's really weird if you
don’t have a Facebook account. Who of you don't use Facebook at least once a
week?
Student:
I used it two weeks ago.
Andreas:
Welcome to the revolution. It's the mindset of people which has shifted. Who
would take argument against that this is a deep shift, a cultural shift, what I call a
revolution? It doesn’t impact your grade, so I welcome dissent. Dave.
Dave:
I know this class is about social data and our purpose is that, but there are so
many other revolutions that are happening at the same time that are causing
huge shifts in our own everyday practices, toward how we use technology, how
we apply information. I think it's difficult to focus in on that individually, even the
devices themselves become carriers of information and radically shifted that
relationship we have. For example, I can think of lots of people in my own life
that haven't been affected by the Social Data Revolution, like my parents for
example, and even many of my siblings. We live here in the Bay area and we're
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
really interested in tech. It has affected them in some way but I don't know if it's a
revolution for them. I can think of other more significant things, like even email is
very significant in the long term and how they're able to keep in touch with people
that were previously inaccessible to them. Maybe email is social data, I'm not
sure.
Andreas:
Actually not in my definition. You can extract a social graph out of email, by
knowing who communicates with whom. And Xobni is an example of a plug-in
into Outlook which tries to figure out, by your communication patterns, of whether
you should pay attention to somebody's email or whether you should deprioritize
it. There are a number of ways to try and get to a social graph through email. But
by very nature, email is not necessarily social. However, the former chief scientist
of British Telecom, who now works at Salesforce did an experiment. He open
sourced all the information, all the emails he got, within British Telecom. Indian
dude, gets lots of emails, who was I think VP. He said, "Well just to be clear,
everything I get anybody in the company can see." He said the amount of
bickering immediately disappeared, dropped dramatically from "He didn't do what
he was supposed to do," to nobody wrote those things anymore. People just did
their job.
We very much have a philosophy in class that we basically do things in the open.
I think it's just a philosophy that we share things that pretty much these are all
Word readable documents. I'm a bit careful with the editing because I don't want
to be chasing if there are mistakes. People make mistakes all the time. Last
night – was it last night Jeremy when we figured out that if I give people access
to a Google folder on Google Drive then people can move stuff around on my
Google Drive and that's so confusing. If you knew you put it there and it's not
longer there. The only reason I'm clamping down every now and then on
permissions is I don't want chaos to happen.
A revolution does mean everybody is involved. Arab Spring, the Twitter
Revolution, some people say is a big deal. I'm actually not sure how much of it
really would have happened without Twitter. I don't know. But the fact is that the
world is a different place from what it was before Facebook started. It's only been
eight years.
Dave:
Are there other revolutions they could point to, the internet revolution maybe, a
bit broader, or something around devices? I'm not saying it's replacing this
definition but I'm wondering if there are other things that are concurrent or at a
certain point are these revolutions?
Andreas:
Good point, I think the main thing is that we live in the cloud. We access
information whether it's ours or other peoples'. We access it somewhere in the
cloud. The phone is only a smart phone because it connects to a pretty smart
cloud, not because it's particularly smart itself. I think that for me, as Kevin Kelly
said it, I think nobody has said it better than him; we live in the time where the
world got connected, irreversibly so. For me, that is ultimately from which
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
everything else flows. That's why we had at the first pillar in the last class
connection, communication, and interaction as the building block of why we have
the whole Social Data Revolution.
Michael:
I guess my counter argument to that would be then why isn't SMS perhaps the
revolution (indiscernible), it was the first thing that connected individuals, around
the world globally, and still today is one of the most prevalent (indiscernible).
Andreas:
That is precisely why last class we created that matrix and let's look at it. It's
always ischool2012wikispaces.com. Then we go to Class1. If anybody doesn't
know what I'm doing you're in trouble now. It's pretty straightforward. Here are
the dimensions people had. Is this big enough or should I make it bigger?
Student:
It's a bit blurry.
Andreas:
What we had here is these number of dimensions, so what makes SMS
different? First, SMS is a one-to-one, very different from the broadcasting, from
sharing with the world. It's sharing to one person. Second, and I think that shows
beautifully the difference in different countries, how the pricing works. Germany
SMS is quite expensive. China is quite cheap compared to voice calls, so lots of
people use SMS in China. But now SMS in turn is getting pushed out by data
services, like WeChat where you now don't have to pay anymore, and you can
also have a broadcasting ability. SMS was a very simple person-to-person – like
a letter substitute. Maybe a similar price in Germany from sending a letter,
maybe half the price – to Twitter, which is a transportation channel, which the
world can listen to or not listen to. Who asked about SMS? Does this make
sense that we didn't have an SMS revolution but we do have a Social Data
Revolution?
Michael:
I understand the differences in the actual protocol, and the actual underlying
communication differences between broadcast and one-to-one or one-to-group
as opposed to one-to-many that Twitter or Facebook offers but I don't necessarily
want to cut the importance of SMS short. I think for many reasons it has
implications on how people communicate and use their mobile devices. So I
guess my question is why one and not the other; why was one so important and
the other one not so important.
Andreas:
One important difference I think is that SMS also changed the way people
communicate. For instance, if you want to ask a date out for dinner, I think you're
probably more likely to text them than to call them up because by texting them
you give them the space that they might want to check with somebody else
they'd rather go out with and if that other person can't go out tonight they will say
nothing more important for me than having dinner with you. Otherwise they could
say sorry I have a prior appointment. That was not a possibility in synchronist
phone calls. You can always say hello, and pretend the call got interrupted, but
that only works every so often.
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Michael:
The changes with it, the idea that because of physical limitations with keyboards,
you had new language evolving around SMS usage, new lingo. It's the same with
chat and similar synchronist communication online. I guess my question would
be SMS may have been the first step in broadcasting and social data may be the
second step, but perhaps there's a third step, and that's the bigger revolution. I
guess why are we calling one a revolution and the other not?
Student:
I think this is pulling elements out of a set. The set is the revolution and SMS
would be an element of the revolution.
Michael:
For that to work then we need to consider email and SMS and those modes of
communication as elements of social data, but we're saying by his definition that
email and SMS are not social data.
Student:
You can extract social graph from email.
Michael:
You can from snail mail too but we don't consider it social data.
Andreas:
Actually that's a good distinction. Snail mail is actually very different because the
one thing we want to do today is to look at the various and sundry traces we
leave. The traces we leave, the bread crumbs we leave, and I just started when
we talked about geolocation and we got a bit sidetracked; that is not the case
with physical mail. That fact that you have to tell Amazon what page you want to
see, as opposed to sitting in the bathroom at home and flipping through the
pages and looking at the stuff, without anybody knowing what you're looking at.
That is qualitatively different that you actually must make your desires known.
You can of course pretend to have many desires, so the machine gets fooled, but
in principle, that is really significantly different, that snail mail doesn't leave
traces, versus any electronic communication leaves traces. A letter in the mail, a
check in the mail is a good example of not leaving traces.
Michael:
And if I send a letter it leaves a trace. If I send a letter to you, and there's also
startups now like Outbox that are digitizing snail mail and moving towards that.
So perhaps those will be the next (indiscernible).
Andreas:
So there are always edge cases, but the fact is that physical stuff tends to not
leave trails, whereas electronic stuff does leave trails. I talked in Aspen at
Renaissance Weekend last weekend. I talked to Nick Patterson, who is one of
the most famous cryptographers the world ever had. Nobody really disputes that
all the emails that are coming into the countries, and probably also all the emails
that are sent within the country are stored somewhere. That wasn't possible, to
make copies of every single letter, just in case you catch somebody who does
something which you don't think is a good thing; that you can actually track down
who they get letters from and who they send letters to. Whether it's desired or
not, civil liberties and all that, are a totally different question. After all, we're at
Berkeley here. There was another question.
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10
Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Brendon:
I had a lot of things I just wanted to jump in at this point. To me the Social Data
Revolution is taking – we've been generating social data forever. It's the
interaction between people that in the past because of the lack of technology we
had to capture this, so any form of capturing social interaction is what the internet
and Facebook and SMS has allowed us to do, and it's taking advantage of this
increased communication and ability for – if you look at groups trying to interact
and do stuff, it's only worked in smaller scales and trying to scale up becomes
exponentially more difficult in this technology. And taking advantage of the data
has allowed larger groups to function in a distributed way. So that's why I feel it's
a revolution.
Andreas:
Yes, and I think one could argue that people have not been creating data all their
life. It is actually a fairly new thing that we create that amount of data. When we
were living in caves or our ancestors, we were very sparse in what we created.
Maybe communicated where the berries are and where the bears are.
Brendon:
I claim that even something simple as a facial gesture is a bit of data that is
created and then lost in the past. Now with something like videos recording –
(indiscernible) facial recognition, people could analyze the facial expressions and
keep that and turn it into a usable, tangible piece of data. I guess I would be
more general in what I concern is data.
Student:
(00:39:05.0 to 00:41:22.9).
Student:
I have two things to say about why we find it is a revolution because this is active
content. What I mean by active content is this content is not only (indiscernible)
something now to the specific sender or receiver, but it's also generating some
footprint that can be analyzed or (indiscernible). So it's like an ID. Every
interaction (indiscernible) active content that can be used or analyzed for
different reasons which was not possible before now.
Coming to the second part, what he was mentioning about the market
(indiscernible), I see that as a huge thing because of the central thing of like
beforehand, the way the public opinion and everything used to be controlled,
through the power centers like big newspapers or the government or someone,
now every newspaper has a (indiscernible) on that news, (indiscernible) how
useful you find the news is. So that factor of the fundamental structure of
peoples' power structure is getting more democratic in this way, and I feel that's a
huge thing about the revolution because the democracy, that thing that we all
want (indiscernible).
Andreas:
So you do exist as opposed to what the registrar is claiming. He sent in screen
shots, sent in pictures, and he still didn't appear on the list. Are you sure it's you?
Who are you?
Student:
I (indiscernible) the definition of and looking also for this revolution, I just want to
go back to the previous question which I think (indiscernible) asked. Is a
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revolution something which is affected by numbers? What people are seeing is
about change and you mentioned something like billions of people thinking
differently (indiscernible) the definition is, even with the billions of people you
have a good amount of people who are thinking in a particular direction. So it's
actually the numbers, right?
Andreas:
It's the shift in mindset for me, what Anno here calls institutional norms or what
other people call social norms. It is that flipping which I think is really exemplified
by do you trust the person who is not on Facebook? And it's not just an age
thing. A couple of days ago as I was driving in San Francisco on Market Street, I
saw an Indian restaurant, and I told people this story that about a year ago I was
walking with the bureau chief of The Economist, and I said, "I know that place. I
love that place. I always get delivery from there," and I go in and there was a guy
with a turban. I told him, "I love your food." He looks at me and says, "Why are
you talking to me? Talk to your Twitter. Talk to your Facebook." That's when I
realized how the world had changed.
I think it's a shift in mindset, including the guy who runs the Bombay Cuisine, or
Bombay Kitchen, or whatever it's called on Market Street. Let's move on. What I
want to get through in the next 40 minutes or so is I want to get through the
space of data sources where we leave stuff. There are two (indiscernible)
approaches to this. One is the list Jeremy and Carl showed you earlier, which is
this Our Data thing, where there are people. And there's the list which Divya
produced, the Google Form. Have you (indiscernible) them where the form is
yet?
Divya:
No.
Andreas:
We'll do that at the end of the class. Each of you has ten points and you get to
distribute those ten points across the twelve categories we see here. This
spreadsheet is a people-centric spreadsheet, because ultimately we want to get
a couple of people in like we had Quentin Hardy in the last class. We have Ms.
Kim coming today's class.
Now I want to do a category or a topic-centric view. Here is how we came up with
that perspective. The people do the – who is doing today's wiki? Is it you Dave?
Dave:
(indiscernible).
Andreas:
The three of you, awesome, so you'll get this file at the end. So don’t panic about
it. But do panic about writing stuff down which is not on the file which you think is
important.
Fields, I want to have a discussion with you about fifteen fields or categories I
have here. The first one, in random order pretty much, is DNA.
DNA, some people socialize their DNA. For instance, Esther Dyson socialized
her DNA. She came to class two years ago and when people said, "Wow, why
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did you do this?" She didn't really have an answer. Why not? Then she asked
people, "Why would you not do it," and all kinds of fears about potentially health
insurance would cause problems down the road if something is in your DNA
which doesn't look good.
DNA is one thing where we don't leave much in terms of traces, but it certainly is
data about the person that can be socialized, but not so much in the sense of
traces.
The second field is sickness, and I compare sickness to fitness. So sickness or
medical data are in some degree data which are socially constructed. Diabetes is
socially constructed, or obesity. Somebody says he is a certain weight or certain
ratio between height and weight, and you're obese if you're beyond that ratio.
The problem is that sickness is not really the goal. I don't know whether it's true
or not, but I've heard that in China in ancient China, doctors got paid very
differently from the way doctors get paid now. How do doctors get paid now?
They get paid if they do something for you, like chop you up or something,
surgery. Apparently in the Xiang dynasty it was the other way around. You paid
your doctor for not doing stuff to you. If you're healthy (indiscernible), then your
doctor gets paid and you're healthy. Great deal. If you're getting sick, then your
doctor doesn't get paid, something like that. Does anybody know more about
this? Makes sense, pretty cool.
What doctors do, if you actually pay them to chop you up, what do they do? They
chop you up. The example we had last class on call centers, if you pay people for
completing calls, they complete calls whether they're really done or not.
There's one element in sickness which patients like me is an example where
people form communities. People share data about themselves, share what they
do in order to get healthy again. One of your earliest examples are people share
who are waiting for organ transplants, like where do they find somebody in
China. You know the story about the bathtub, waking up with no kidney. That is
the sickness and medical data.
More interesting I think is the fitness or health data, wellbeing data.
Student:
Back to DNA and no traces, what do you mean by that?
Andreas:
Best I think done in contrast. What I mean by this is if I wear a Fitbit or do
geolocation, if I use my phone, I constantly create interaction data. However, my
DNA I'm born with is not really creating anything on the road.
Student:
I would beg to differ, being that I'm a (indiscernible) in my previous life. Whenever
you go anywhere you leave traces of your DNA. Just by entering this classroom,
hair drops. If there was someone coming in and sequencing that all the time,
you're leaving traces of your DNA around. It's a form of geolocation that's more.
It's just not being captured much currently so it's not something to be worried
about, but as the DNA sequencers get to the point where it costs 100 bucks to
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sequence this, the cost of the human genome sequencing has been dropping
dramatically in the past three years.
Student:
(00:51:43.1 to 00:52:00.9).
Andreas:
I think there is the perspective which actually I really wanted to push, the
perspective of economics for pretty much everything. When we talked about
communication last class, I talked about the economics of communication, the
fact that it's now free basically to communicate with anybody in the world
anything, versus it used to be expensive or the fact that the communication costs
used to reside for the sender, and now it's mainly the consumption costs which
decides.
The same is true here for yes, somebody could be going around here and trying
to find some hairs I dropped, or some skin flakes that I'm dropping, but it is still
costly to do it. Besides, it’s not the social norm. You think these are cleaners who
come in the evening? What they're actually doing is checking out whatever
they're checking out. Of course now, that would be really weird. How would you
feel about that?
Student:
I would feel I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without wearing a heavy layer.
Andreas:
Look at him, he already wears a cap.
Student:
And I shaved this morning.
Andreas:
Yes, it is possible. We talked two weeks ago about discovery in a legal sense.
Something might be discoverable so here is – they call it discovery in law. You
could go through big databases and find some shit, that you're violating
somebody's patents and that's where the patent trolls make their money. But
normal people and the revolution is really about us and not about the tail of the
distribution, normal people tend to not do DNA analysis of the hair which is left on
their table.
Brendon:
Are you wanting to focus on the current data revolution where it is at now, or
where it's going to be in a generation from now?
Andreas:
I'm fully with you Brendon. I love going forward, so let's play with that. Let's play
with we're all carrying our DNA analysis with us. Here I'm grabbing some skin
flakes from you and hair from Ben. What will that world be like? Let's go with
Brendon.
Brendon:
One possibility is if I really care about who I'm going to choose as a mate, I could
decide – I have a specific gene. If I (indiscernible) gene, it's going to cause birth
defects. I ask them if they have a gene so I can know whether or not to even
contact that woman in the first place.
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Andreas:
You mean right now you're not requiring your potential mate to also do 23andMe
and look for compatibility?
Brendon:
No, because of the ease of access, which is going to increase. It's not feasible or
likely something that was done much now.
Andreas:
I think a good number of couples actually do that, that they find out what's the
risk of – I'm not an expert in this but I've heard about it years ago. People do get
checked on the probability of having children with problems based on DNA.
Brendon:
My mom did. She carried a gene – she wanted to make sure her daughter didn't.
Student:
There is actually a California state law that covers – (indiscernible) offered
genetic counseling when you're pregnant, as a parent.
Andreas:
Good point, I like it. We potentially could not only sniff the digital exhaust but also
sniff the DNA exhaust and based on that make decisions.
Brendon:
That's where the fear of insurance companies rejecting you based off of having a
likelihood of having to (indiscernible).
Andreas:
That's why ultimately social norms and laws that follow the shifts in social norms,
that tell insurance companies – for instance in the United States it is not legal to
determine the fee for car insurance based on the zip code. You might think how
random is that. A zip code has so much information on probability of your car
getting stolen and stuff like this. The reason is that some people who made laws
decided that the zip code is so highly correlated with race that essentially it is
racial discrimination, or it could be interpreted as racial discrimination. Somebody
who lives in a neighborhood with more break-ins is likely to be of a certain race
and they don't want that.
From a pure decision-making perspective it's the right thing, you could build
better models, if you take that into account, if you take more information into
account. However, from a regulation perspective, people decided this is not what
they want. I'm not taking a side here but it's an interesting fact of showing there is
data; if you objective function solely is to make predictions about your car getting
broken into, then you would take other things into account which are highly
correlated with race. But likely I think in this country we don't want that, so
insurance companies are forced to make sub-optimal decisions from a risk
prediction profile modeling perspective.
Student:
I was thinking potentially people may leave insurance companies and go to funds
that are specifically set up, for example, your newborn child has a risk of getting
cancer at the age of 40. You have 40 years, would you like to invest in a fund
that would be invested for the next 40 years and we'll see how we can offset the
risk and cost you might have to take out to deal with the cancer. That's one.
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On the other hand I was thinking with the DNA example, DNA essentially at this
point we can't modify it. On Facebook someone could say (indiscernible) is a
creepy guy, but I could share cool posts or share cool pictures saying no I'm not.
I'm a really cool guy. People may change their opinions based on that, but when
they look at DNA, if someone sees I have some sort of disease they'll say you
can't cover that up, you have a disease. Of course there will be people for
example who are (indiscernible) or will not be able to mate at all. Then you would
have services that would be able to modify your genes to say that when I was
born I had all these diseases. Now I don't, so you can disregard my previous
DNA. Look at my current DNA and see who I am.
Student:
DNA also adds implications, not just to you but to the people related to you.
Andreas:
Very good point.
Student:
My son has inherited half of my DNA. If I have brothers and sisters, by
implication I may have DNA publicly available (indiscernible) be traced in way
potentially that they have no control over.
Student:
All this (indiscernible) DNA of social data, the point Brendon mentioned of the
fact that there (00:59:42.5 to 01:00:22.5).
Andreas:
I want to make you a deal. I want to spend one minute on each point and then we
have one discussion. Otherwise I worry about our time running away. Is that
okay?
Fitness and health, I've been wearing devices which recorded and broadcast how
much I'm walking and stuff. Fitbit I heard has a 9-digit revenue this year. That's a
huge amount of money. I don't know, millions of devices which people wear that
counts how many steps you're taking.
Massive Health, I just met with Andrew who is their chief-something officer last
week. Massive Health has an app called "The Eatery" which allows you to take
pictures of your food and then you rate your food: fat versus fit. And other people
rate your food. People tend to systematically over appreciate the healthiness of
the food they eat and under appreciate the unhealthiness. 90% of all Americans
think that they're better-than-average drivers. In France it's the other way around.
Location, we talked about enough. Interactions, we clearly leave an amazing
number of interactions data. We talked about email, phone, SMS, IM, etc.
Purchases, we've talked surprisingly little about purchases. Just as you said,
your child has the right – I'm not quite sure about genetics but your child has a
50% overlap with you. In the early days of Amazon, we thought we were really
smart by aggregating purchase circles. Aggregating and showing the aggregate
of what people buy with a certain domain name. Like the people at Microsoft all
bought Java books and Microsoft didn't like Amazon socializing that aggregate
information. They felt it was not something they wanted other companies to
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know. Purchase data, there's much to be said. Any commerce and purchase –
one-minute discussion of purchase data? As you can imagine I can talk about it
for ten hours.
Michael:
Can you draw a distinction between payments and purchases?
Andreas:
We lump them together. Payments, you make the distinction because payments
can also be for services.
Michael:
PayPal is more payments, not focused on purchases, whereas (indiscernible),
Amazon, you make purchases and they have your purchases but that's it.
There's definitely overlap between some of those. Mint is not about purchases.
Andreas:
Mint is not social, we just threw stuff in here and as I said I give it to you in the
hope that it will grow by what other people add.
Michael:
You listed e-commerce payment platforms. That should be under payments
because it's just a protocol for making purchases. One is a directed goal versus
the means that you make the directed goal happen could be different. Payment
systems and payment platforms are the way you actually make purchases.
Andreas:
Good distinction, thank you. Consumption, sometimes we use the term
collaborative consumption and it means different things for different people. What
I mean here is you share your consumption. For instance music, that it goes all
the way: Turntable, .FM where somebody curates stuff for other people listening
to it, or just passively sharing with the world on Skype or Facebook, what you're
listing to now on Spotify.
Links consumption and sharing, and of course video, where video is probably the
least social of the three. These are what we call sharing platforms in the list of
companies or what you're voting on at the end of the day. Comments on sharing
or sharing platforms?
Student:
Maybe something about the newspapers or those things because that's also
consumption of (indiscernible).
Andreas:
Let me jot this down here. It's really more about creation – blogs, if I write some
stuff then it's not primarily about the consumption but it's more about the creation.
Is that what you mean?
Student:
(indiscernible) so then it's a consumption from my perspective.
Andreas:
There used to be a site which was bought by Yahoo, which showed you who
either currently or within a certain time window is on a given page or who has
visited that page before. I'm not sure what happened to them.
Student:
MyBlogLog.
Andreas:
Who said that? Yeah, do you know what happened to them?
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Student:
(indiscernible).
Andreas:
Too intimate.
Student:
(Indiscernible).
Andreas:
Photos, all aspects are there, from creation, sharing, the social sharing,
consumption, tagging meaning metadata. Photos is a good example, I think it hits
pretty much all of the things we're talking about. When you write the notes for
class, let me star Photos because I think that's a good one to start with since
everything is involved there.
Michael:
Consumption sharing platforms seems more like entertainment. The reason I
bring it up is because you have Hotels and Airlines, which is really maybe a
(indiscernible) category like travel. Where does something like (indiscernible) fit
in with a sharing platform, but it's focused on the travel space. There's clearly
overlaps.
Andreas:
Yes. TripAdvisor is reviews.
Michael:
It's reviews and they do other stuff now too.
Andreas:
The way we sliced it up is Hotels – in particular with the examples we have here,
like Airbnb, which is a social business model applied to something which
traditionally was not social. Hotels were not a social thing. Airbnb, you now
import the reputation of somebody. Similarly Couchsurfing, Gogobot is Menlo
Park based. I forgot exactly what they do.
Michael:
I guess I bring it up because I kind of heard someone say it's not just airlines, it's
airlines, cars, hotels.
Andreas:
The margins on hotels is much higher than the margins on air travel for instance,
however airlines is a different animal because it's more like you go somewhere
else. This is not the perfect characterization but I think it's a good starting point to
make you think about all the traces you leave. Again, what are we talking about
right now?
We're talking about the data people leave more or less knowingly and willingly,
sometimes less knowingly and willingly. If you're staying in a hotel, if you're
taking an airplane, if you take public transportation, Fastrack for instance.
Fastrack, every month emails me by the minute, by the gate, when I crossed the
Bay Bridge. Taxis, the Uber cab I took today I can probably pull up on Uber the
exact route the dude took. That's typically what Uber provides you with. There
are car markets, buying cars. Then there is not only the buying cars but also just
buying space in a car, like Relay Rides. Relay Rides you rent a car from
somebody else, or these car-sharing models where you offer somebody to share
that personal space of yours, the car, day after day.
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Then of course parking, 30% of all the traffic in Los Angeles people are looking
for parking spots. Those are all data people leave. How should you act on them?
Parking, should you have demand price-based parking? If there's only one
parking spot left in a one-kilometer square radius, that parking spot would be 200
bucks for the next hour. That sucks right, unless you're the one who does get
one.
These are all things where we leave traces of movement, of airlines, highlyverified information that it's really you on that passport and so on. Make sense,
about creating social data?
Dating, I want a weight of what your interests are, but I want to show you that I
did put out in the homeworks tab what I think I would like you to do in one of the
next weeks. The tab here on data and dating, that's the background and
assignment, then a deliverable. Basically, having you read some stuff on the
OkCupid blog. OkCupid was bought by Mash.com last year. Come up with some
ideas about how you would analyze the data people create on dating sites and
dating apps.
Financial, it goes sort of with payments kind of. These are not mutually exclusive
and collectively exhaustive categories. We leave transactions as we go to our
ATM machine. Of course with our picture being taken, with the patterns of how
we enter our code, with personalization – you wanted 500 bucks the last time. Is
that what you want to do this time as well?
Jobs, BranchOut being my favorite here, a half a billion people if you go for the
friends of people who have the app installed. Knowing what they're interested in,
knowing social behavior of them on Facebook. Are they ones who organize
meetings, are they ones who show up, are they ones who don't show up?
The last example here is real estate. Zillow in Seattle, Trulia in San Francisco,
others taking public records, records everybody could have and socializing them.
Now people make their decisions differently on what house they buy, how much
they pay for it, than this previous nonsocial world where some real estate broker
says I have a good deal for you. But you were basically blind. You didn't know
whether you overpaid or not.
Those were some examples here which we came up with. What are we missing?
The next ten minutes if people we can take a quick bathroom break. At 5:20 we
will start again. I would like you to have a conversation with your neighbor, or if
you don't like your neighbor, with somebody else, on trying to figure out
something you think is missing in this list. Where did we not come up or simply
miss stuff about data people create, data people share? This is just a couple
people thinking about it. What did we miss? Then at 5:20 we'll spend about ten
minutes on complementing this list and then we'll get ready for our lady from
Marketplace who will come here at 6.
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Class2 – September 10, 2012
(Break)
Andreas:
All right, as promised the rest of today looks like this. Ten minutes where we
collect things from you which were missing, from 5:20 to 5:30. Then since a
couple of people asked about the wiki, I will spend fifteen minutes – I've probably
spent more than fifteen hours to set it up. I want to make sure we're on the same
page and that you understand why I did things the way I did them. And by now I
think you know that if you think some things can be done in a better way that
what I had, then I'm more than happy to hear that. Then at 5:45 I will tell you the
questions and we'll talk maybe fifteen minutes, and then our lady from
Marketplace will join us for a half hour of her telling us what she wants to do and
us discussing with her.
Let's go back online here. 5:30 what's missing; 5:45 wiki; 6 is data etc. for
Marketplace. What's missing? You were so eager to tell me in person and now
nobody wants to talk in public. Acoustics in this room really sucks.
Student:
Government would be an interesting one. The White House has where you can
sign a petition and if it gets past a certain mark the White House promises they'll
respond to it.
Andreas:
Very good, the traditional – the oldest one there was a site where people could
report their potholes, and put pressure – not what people at Berkeley think about
pot. There's a hole in the street and people were saying it still isn't fixed, and they
bubbled it up. There is in this Government 2.0 this Code for America,
governmental code for Jen Pahlka (ph.). She gave a very good talk at TED, Jen
Pahlka, Tim O'Reilly's girlfriend. She has a beautiful example about people in
Boston taking ownership of fire hydrants. It makes sense that what's the big deal
of you checking out the fire hydrant like once a week when you walk by, and how
much does it save us from somebody being paid to walk the streets and checking
out fire hydrants. You need to have the coordination and communication problem
but whose fire hydrant is that?
By the way, these are yellow right now. Are you okay? It's red now. Green, okay
because after break I think everybody should be green. Government, Jan Pahlka
Code for America.
Student:
Another one is Votizen. It's about socializing the democratic process.
Andreas:
I heard, is it Change.org I think is a very good example of providing a platform
that makes it trivially easy for people to get a petition done. If you don’t like the
opening hours of the local corner store, and you want to create a petition,
change.org. If you don’t like the way the iSchool does their tea hour, change.org.
It's very interesting how technology, how collective intelligence – we're missing
the collective intelligence part here, that enabling of collective intelligence
through data and collaboration.
Student:
Sunlight Foundation is good.
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Andreas:
Do you want to say what it is? Best disinfectant.
Student:
Their ultimate goal is to make government more transparent, so some of the
really cool projects they've been working on is they'll take news stories and
analyze them, and basically point out bias, so it's not one particular group or
candidate. They do lots of things around tracking spending patterns, so where do
campaign funds come from and what organizations are actually contributing
those funds, so you can start to realize bias and why certain candidates might be
for or against certain issues.
Andreas:
What else are we missing about social data, about trails, traces, bread crumbs
people leave?
Student:
(indiscernible) for example the instant feedback (indiscernible) now or even
people who have become reporters like on YouTube (indiscernible).
Andreas:
Okay.
Student:
I don’t know what category this falls under but things like (indiscernible) which
uses crowdsourcing or (indiscernible).
Andreas:
Here's a story I heard in China, that people take captchas, those letters that are
blurry that you have to answer, and put in front of something which people want,
like porn. Now you have people solve the captchas for you so you can give them
not necessarily copyright paid material, and you get all the captchas of the world
captured, so interesting business models there. Collective intelligence.
Student:
One would be reviews and (indiscernible) IMDB chart of things you see
(indiscernible).
Andreas:
How come we don’t have reviews yet, or do we have it implicitly somewhere?
Student:
It's under shared (indiscernible) I think.
Andreas:
The way to look at this is this is explicit data people provide in addition to the
implicit data they have by via Spotify, sharing what song they're listening to.
Student:
Another thing, like the big places like (00:10:30.1 to 00:10:55.4).
Andreas:
It goes like the potholes, restrooms, things that are broken.
Student:
Crowdsourcing in general should be probably (indiscernible).
Andreas:
Crowdsourcing is often used in an active way, that you have a question you want
to know how heavy is that (indiscernible) versus here we mean you provide a
pipe that will make it trivially easy for people to contribute stuff that is broken:
dirty toilets, holes in the street.
Student:
(00:11:30.1 to 00:11:42.0).
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Class2 – September 10, 2012
Andreas:
Say this again, it's a hard mix between accent and acoustics here.
Student:
The active storytelling (indiscernible) that also has a danger of crowdsourcing
because people are (indiscernible) in picture.
Student:
The Big Brother stories.
Andreas:
I have no television but tonight at 7 o'clock – I did an interview this morning with a
public television station in D.C. and they posted something on the Facebook
page. I never know what they eventually take. I forgot even what they asked. It
was about price of privacy and about how you would frame that Kindle if you
wanted an ad you pay more or equally well, if you're willing to see ads then you
pay less. Should that depend on the situation you're in, and stuff like that. I have
no TV but at 7 o'clock tonight on whatever this TV station is called here, KQD I
think, you can watch something interesting about privacy and price of privacy and
Kindle and whatever he's doing. I haven't heard from you yet.
Student:
You already mentioned about the (indiscernible) but I think maybe (indiscernible)
because they not just provide (indiscernible) but it's more about product
information. They don’t want to just share your kind of information of products.
Andreas:
Is it different from reviews?
Student:
Review is more about the activity after purchase, but the thing is the – the
different thing is (indiscernible) is more about the activity before purchasing.
Andreas:
I'm down with that. It is really how social data informed different stages in the
decision-making process in this funnel as traditional marketing has it, that
eventually leads to purchase or not. It's interesting, it always shifts from one side
to the other. Everybody on the right side now.
JJ:
We talked about the online marketplace.
Andreas:
Craigslist, absolutely.
JJ:
Maybe the AppStore as well, like Android and Apple (indiscernible) reviews.
Andreas:
Lots to be said about it.
Jeremy:
We touched a bit on this in the spreadsheet, but social analytics so based on the
idea of social capital and (indiscernible). We use Clout (ph.) as the primary
example for (indiscernible) online influence.
Andreas:
All I can say is the CEO of Clout this week is going to talk to Bill somewhere in
the Seattle area. Interesting isn't it, some Bill. Don't know which Bill. Social
capital.
Student:
I just want to follow up on Nikki (ph.). I thought it was interesting that
(indiscernible) and all those guys, social data actually is increasing exposure
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
(00:15:54.8 to 00:16:22.6). I was thinking the other day that if you walk into a
(indiscernible) you will either see (00:16:26.7 to 00:17:36.6).
Andreas:
Actually word of authority here, physical stores and online stores have almost
nothing in common. The action space is entirely different. What you see as an
experienced store manager walking into a physical store is quite a bit – I'm not an
experienced store manager, but I hear that if some dude walks in there and sees
how things are arranged in the shelves, they have a good feeling about what's
going on. Secondly, comparing different stores with each other tells them again
pretty much what's happening. They have no idea when just looking at the bits in
the database at a place like Amazon.
On the other hand, at Amazon and other ecommerce companies change prices,
inventory, ranking within milliseconds, whereas in a physical store that's a lot of
work to change the prices, so you don’t. So physical stores and online stores are
more different than most people think. We have three more remarks and then
we'll move to the wiki. Let's do Brendon, Michael, and then Ben.
Brendon:
Education, like (indiscernible).
Andreas:
Kickstarter, so education is interesting because one of the best examples I know
about Kahn Academy (ph.) is that in a school in the Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los
Gatos school district, by observing, by measuring, by instrumenting the students
and their progress, they had the kids who were slightly ahead of the class teach
those who already were in the red zone. So helping understand by instrumenting
who is slightly ahead of the curve and can explain something they just got to
somebody who is not quite getting it yet is where the whole Kahn Academy
revolution really sits.
Some other time I'm happy to talk about the vision I have for academia or the
vision I don't have for academia. But here two more people.
Michael:
I was going to also bring up things from agriculture and things like that. That in
turn (indiscernible) social data. For instance, they sell these little things now from
Athomeplants. You put in your plant, it reminds you when to water your plant via
Twitter, via social networks and things like that. I think maybe that's on instance,
but I think a broader concept is the emerging of physical spaces (indiscernible).
Andreas:
Our bridging the physical and digital which we were dwelling on after the second
bottle of wine. Final word from Ben.
Ben:
I was going to mention, it would probably fall under location; the website like
Opentopia which has thousands of webcam feeds on it. These are some of them
are security camera and some of the public webcams. Obviously you're
unknowingly leaving that information. I know there's one in my hometown in the
center square of downtown.
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Andreas:
How many of you think that when you rent a room on Airbnb that they in what
looks like a motion detector have a webcam installed where they can remotely
see what's happening in their bedroom while somebody else is there? Roy is
laughing.
Roy:
Hopefully not.
Andreas:
Why not, my bedroom. It's interesting, we negotiate this boundary between
private and public space. In Singapore by the way, hotels are public space. You
should not be doing anything in a hotel room you wouldn’t do out there in a public
space. Isn't that interesting? Singapore hotel rooms count from a police
perspective as public space. If everything was recorded in your house, it's still
your house, even if you're renting out an Airbnb. What does that mean? Who do
you share it with, etc.
Now ten minutes where I'll show you the wiki and why I did it the way I did things.
Home page here is everybody in class should have write access to the wiki. If
somebody doesn’t have write access, talk to me after class, or send me an email
tonight. You edit by clicking on "edit". It's not good for many people to edit the
same page, unlike Google Docs. Don't use it while you're bringing up the page in
the next couple of days, which I'll look at on Thursday evening at 10 p.m. Don't
use it contemporaneously because it doesn't really know how to lock files well.
It's amazingly good for everything else.
At the bottom of it is the grading policy, the middle of it. I said I'd discuss this in
class too, so I'll do this now. 30% is the class wiki. Everybody as you're aware is
responsible for form a team of two to three people and take ownership, bring the
stuff up, so the first couple days after class, by Thursday at 10 p.m. it is up. The
first week was hard. Where is the person who did it the first week? She's not
here? It was hard for her because one dude didn't respond and the other
dropped the class. I think it's the responsibility if you sign up, do it because
otherwise it's hard on the person who thinks you're there and then you're not
there for them.
Everybody gets the same grade, and that's 30%. 30% is a task like the ones
Sean outlined in the beginning. Or you can do a project or do a blog entry. It's
negotiation with me. I'll evaluate this November 15. 25% are the homework
assignments. They're not big deals. I used to call them dog food. The homework
assignments are for you to reflect on something which is going to happen in the
class. For instance if we have a guest speaker then I'll assign, for instance if it's a
dating site I will assign you to spend some time looking at that. If we have the
guy from Clout come, if that's of interest to you, then you should look up a couple
of his Clout scores. It’s not a lot or work, maybe an hour or something like that.
The purpose is to make the class more productive for you. 50% is the fudge
factor for class participation. I want people to participate. We're in good shape on
that. That's the home page.
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
FAQ, given we have no TA if you figure out something you didn't know at the
beginning of class, maybe asking me, maybe asking somebody else, put it on the
FAQ so the next person doesn't have to start from scratch but can look up things
on the FAQ. My responsibility is I will create with Ben's help the Google group,
iSchool2012, Googlegroups.com. That is the mailing list which we should be
able; it's a finite piece of work in front of us, to get it harmonized tonight. I will
create this by tomorrow morning. If you want to email the class, then that's the
email for the class.
The task list is growing. I'm not really in charge of it. We see that you are
interested in the survey responses, so we should be talking about that and I'll
give you some pointers. I'm happy to see that people are signing up for this.
Sean introduced the video tasks. Jeremy used to do videos in his high school
and knows all that stuff. He got my spare video camera and is willing to show
people or share stuff with people to help them out. That is Jeremy. Tasks are
being added there.
We have Ben – as the course list. Catherine is not in the class but she's willing to
help us. She worked at NBC before with some interview (indiscernible) stuff.
Shreyas, where is he? Shreyas slaved over getting the wiki structure done and
Guarav who is here despite other evidence, is helping with the coordination with
iTunesU.
Announcements, when I send out an email, and I'll try to do it reasonably well; I
put a copy of what I sent out here on the announcements page, reverse
chronological order so if you miss something or your spam filter eats it, this
should be the relevant stuff. So far I've sent two emails, one before the first class,
and one before the second class.
Classes, you know how it works now. Thursday evening the three people who do
the wiki should get together on Tuesday or Wednesday and figure out what the
main thing is. What I didn't get to review today which I meant to review was the
identity part and the recommendation systems part. Good job to the people who
did it. It was not so good at the beginning but now it's very good. That happens at
each class.
Dinner signups, so instead of office hours I think it's more fun to have dinner
together. We have figured out that tonight we have JJ, Divya who helped with
class2, and Shohay (ph.) coming out for dinner, and Cory (ph.) you didn't put
your email down so we can't reach you. It's sort of the backdrop of not having the
email down. Four people is more than enough. Just sign up for the next week.
We have Rachel. Who's Rachel? She's not here. Rachel is the only one for next
week so far. You get the idea. Any questions about the wiki?
Student:
When can we anticipate the schedule will be finalized? Several classes coming
up have two different dates.
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Andreas:
Very clear logic, tonight after you had time today to digest the topics, you vote
having ten points in twelve categories. Here is what the form looks like. Divya,
why don’t you, in the spirit of sharing, post the link on the doc. Fill it out tonight,
distribute ten points. Let's not waste time on it now. You'll post it under Class2.
Based on that, I will look at the people who I have in mind. I really want to do
what you're interested in. And then we'll figure which dates. We have two
Mondays where I have either this one or that one. I could do any of the days, but
if you really want a person and they can only do that day, then that's the day we'll
do. I think by next week, give me a week to figure this out. By Week 3 we should
be done, knowing which dates. That's the price of flexibility we pay to get the
people we want. Is everybody okay with that? For the moment, there's nothing
besides the Monday 3:30 to 6:30 time slot, and there's no other class in that time
slot, so it should be a finite burden for people to not know exactly for two classes
when they will happen.
Student:
Follow-up question, if we're bringing speakers will the speakers be invited to
dinner as well?
Andreas:
If they have time absolutely.
Student:
What's the probability of Reed?
Andreas:
I've had dinner a bunch of times with him. It's a question of whether you think that
Netflix is an interesting company or not. I think it's a clear procedure. You post
the link, you guys vote, you get everybody else's vote reflected after you voted,
and then I'll look at it, go to the spreadsheet and make my calls and see whether
I can find some matches.
I put a bunch of readings up. These are ideas mainly from the students last year.
I put a page up called "insights" which came again from last year's class. I had
Tom Glocer, the CEO of Thomson-Reuters and the CTO of Thompson-Reuters
come to class last year. They said why don’t you ask the students to put up what
they learned, which they wished they'd know at the beginning of the quarter. So
those are the insights. It's a wiki, so if you want to add stuff add stuff. If you want
to add other stuff, add other stuff. If you want to throw something out because it's
totally superseded, throw it out.
Last part of today's class, switch gears. I have the following thesis. I would claim
that in the future there will be different ways people think about the data they
create and share, about their social data, about what we might call our data.
People will vote with their clicks, with their wallets, of which country in a sense
they want to live in, whether they want to live in a country that makes it very
difficult for them to take their data out; whether they want to live in a country
where all their data is public; whether they want to live in a country where they
can look through other peoples' – poke through their living room, rifle through
their drawers and figure out what they have and other people can do that with
them; whether they want to live in a country where all information is sort of
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
heavily taxes, where if Carl wants to get my number that is possible but he has to
pay somebody a dollar for that.
I think people will make choices. These choices are largely determined between
how companies look – when I say countries of course I mean companies – how
these companies or countries deal with information. I want to give you four
examples.
Apple – Apple, clearly credited to have built the first app ecosystem, clearly has
no idea what to do with the data they collect. They have our phone number, our
email address, our apps, our access patterns, amazing amount of data but very
little comes out of it.
Facebook – brilliantly engineered to provide incentives again and again for
people to create and share data. It's the only thing people do on Facebook, and
of course consume, looking at the friends' pictures and stuff. Facebook's attitude
is a brilliant communication platform, making it trivially easy for people to share.
Identity provider – do you want to live in that country?
Google – Google, it's brilliant how engineers – not social engineers but computer
scientists – scrape every bit of information in the world. How when you want
something you need to tell Google, but then you get amazing information back.
Not so at Apple.
The Android phone is amazing. I did bring my three phones here. The Android
phone tells me how far it is home. It probably knows today that took Uber and
probably will tell me that I'm cheaper by so-and-so dollars to take BART tonight,
and will probably tell me when BART leaves after we're done with dinner,
because it knows that I paid for dinner. That's the data universe that makes life
amazingly simple. Of course, they know everything about us.
We already talked about the iPhone. Then there's this messaging device called a
Blackberry. Some of you might remember that from museums or something, but I
use it every day. Those are different worlds here, and they different by how they
treat data. It's fundamentally different. If you don't have an Android phone, I really
invite you or am happy to give you some demos. It is amazing. I search for a
flight number and next time on these Google Now, it will simply tell me when
those flights are leaving, whether they're on time or not, and that stuff. It's
amazing.
Amazon – which I think is way underestimated by people – powers the
ecosystem. I don’t have the exact numbers for Amazon Web Services, but the
Kindle discussion I started about the primitivity now of giving people discounts if
they're willing to look at ads, or charging people premium if they want an ad-free
experience.
What I want to invite you to do is now think with me about what those different
worlds or countries or universes will look like. These different universes with the
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
different attitudes towards data, how do people interact, what data do they
create? That's one discussion I want to have.
Apple of course is one example of trying to build an ecosystem on one hand and
on the other hand not having data DNA. What's difficult for others, for the
Googles, the Facebooks, for the Amazons of the world?
The context of this is I would like to introduce Queena Kim. We met at the
iSchool at the Big Data event. Big Data girl Queena, she works for Marketplace
where there's a radio show that airs on public radio, it's American Public Media. I
love (indiscernible), is one of the most empowering people, when he focuses and
asks you a question, you come up with answers which you never had though he
would come up with. I think maybe you spend a couple of minutes telling us what
you're thinking about in terms of the context of the new iPhone launch on
Wednesday. Then we'll have a discussion and at the end I promised to go to a
quiet room with her and talk into a microphone as I do all the time. And produce
something which (indiscernible) will think is good enough to have on the air. Give
us a bit of context.
Queena:
I think you did a breakdown. As you guys know, the iPhone 5 is supposedly
coming out on Tuesday. I think we've been seeing a lot and hearing a lot about
the ecosystem. Apple is the most obvious in the way they've done this with
iTunes store and your phone being compatible with only their universe of content
and sort of devices in a way, although it syncs to the PC. Anyway, the point is
we're trying to think of an interesting way to cover the iPhone coming out that's
beyond just it's got this new feature or that new feature.
One of the things we're trying to wrap up and I'd love to get your examples here,
is there's all these little fights that are happening to create the ecosystem and I
think there are all these little streams that are happening and nobody knows how
it's going to come together. For example it looks like the new iPhone will not have
Google Maps on it because they want their own map. They want their own data.
They want to be able to sell whatever it is that they want to sell that data back to
you, and they don't want Google to be a part of this. Now Google has Android
and they've got that universe, and now Google has Android Play, Google Play,
and they're trying to create this iTunes-like atmosphere.
Then you hear a little stream the other day that Kindle is going to start sending
out advertisements on their Kindle because they're very heavily subsidized.
Amazon is eating the cost of what it takes to make the Kindle, with the idea that if
you buy it you'll start clicking on things to buy things from Amazon. That's how
they'll make their money back.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around when you buy these things, five
or ten years from now, what is this world going to look like? Is it going to be – do
you remember back enough with Microsoft and Apple. At one point Apple never
really talked to Microsoft and Microsoft would never get away with it because it
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
would be considered monopoly but because Apple was small enough they
wanted to stay very sealed off. It sort of backfired on them because corporations
were like if you're not going to talk to anybody then how are we going to use you?
Maybe these walls will disappear at some point. I called Andreas to sort of wrap
my head around what will this world look like. We see it from Apple's point of
view, that's the most obvious, but then Kindle introduced something interesting.
Is it going to be more like networks where we all have these devices and Kindle
is now ABC? And it'll give you content for free, or let you surf the web but now
you've got to look at all their ads, like a TV model? I'm grappling with this too.
Maybe a good way to start is where do you see these wars starting to happen?
Student:
I think a big difference, an unacknowledged difference between a lot of these
tech companies is that essentially Apple is a hardware company. Google is an
Advertising company, and Amazon is a media company.
Andreas:
A media company? Bezos would kill you. It's a tech company.
Student:
It's a tech company but I don't think that the products people are going to them
for are technology. I use Amazon Web Services as technical underpinnings but if
that disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't say oh my God Amazon is no longer there.
Student:
What about the fact that advertising companies also (indiscernible). Google is an
advertising company, but it's actually a media company. (indiscernible)
subsidizing their advertising and it comes back the same way.
Student:
The difference (indiscernible), people say this all the time. On Facebook if you're
not a customer you're the product. When we're thinking about the futures of
these products and services, really who is generating revenue is really significant
in terms of where (indiscernible) in the future.
Queena:
So how you make your money is going to determine how – what this universe will
look like.
Student:
But you're talking purely from a business model perspective.
Queena:
I don't know what I'm talking about. I feel like this is something that's going
around a lot, and it seems like at some point these companies want you to make
a decision. Are you Apple and are you going to go for the iTunes and is that
where you're going to get all your media and movies and is it going to replace
Netflix and sooner or later because you buy an Apple device does that mean
you're going to get all your media through Apple? I'm brainstorming too. I don't
know.
Student:
I feel like each of these companies, and it's also Microsoft plays this game as
well, where essentially it's about owning the user experience from one end of the
spectrum to the other. Essentially vertical integration where you own every touch
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
point that a user interacts with your products and services. Essentially they view
it as another opportunity to cash in.
Queena:
Will that be an exclusive relationship? Does that mean once you buy a Microsoft
phone you can – they want to make it so all your touch points are Microsoft and
you won't be able to –
Student:
Which is essentially what Apple has popularized, this closed system. Now
everybody is rushing to build their own closed system because Apple proved it
could work. Then I think there's always an ebb and flow with these things, where
you have really desperate siloed things and then there's some standards, and
people talk, and then things become less siloed and then more siloed. There's
always ebb and flow back and forth between those.
Student:
Economically speaking, I think the most realistic picture of what this is all going to
look like in the future from the dynamics of how the R&D expenditures have been
greatly cut down; I believe more they're going to – these players try to polarize
themselves and make subcategories within the industry, that they're going to get
a lot of pushback from consumers. And also because of those economic
dynamics our (indiscernible) is shrinking and business models all over the place
across the globe right now have to adopt more open innovation, more open
business models, that it is actually going to – instead of looking really
segregated, as they inch towards this polarization will get a lot of kickback from
the (indiscernible) and the consumers and eventually have to reconcile business
models in some way to where it is very integrated. The Google Maps returns to
the iPhone for example.
Queena:
The swing back and forth. It's funny, I remember a time when everything was like
the promise of Web 2.0 was that everything was we're going to share, we'll all be
friends, and we're all going to let each other see things and use our open source.
To me, it's almost like the Wild West is becoming ranches. Maybe it's just a
pendulum.
Student:
I think one of the fundamental changes of R&D is that it's going to be virtually
impossible for them to return these vertically integrated structures. The business
model is going to be obsolete. They won't be able to function.
Student:
Probably one of the biggest influences is going to be the legal aspect of software
patents and copyright. With Kindle being a closed format, (indiscernible) I think
the social revolution is going to give people a voice they really haven't had to
pressure businesses to become (indiscernible) and I think companies are
latching onto the social media without totally understanding or realizing
(indiscernible). I think it's going to force change in the business model. We're
going to see lots and lots of changes, experiments of different business models,
like Kindle with advertising, it might stay or it (indiscernible). Like most
predictions of what the future is going to be like, particularly the iPhone or
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
iTunesUniversity and these other things, I think we're going to see lots of
experiments (indiscernible).
Queena:
I have a question. Do you feel if you use Apple iPhones or Androids, do you feel
like you're too closed off with your music?
Student:
On that point, Mozilla is coming out with really open sourced mobile platform.
(indiscernible) next year and then (indiscernible) so in terms of – people call
Android open source but it’s not. Mozilla is actually pushing a really open source
platform.
Queena:
Does it need to have a manufacturer to go behind it?
Student:
I don’t remember who they deal with but they are – they're pairing with carriers. I
don't recall what manufacturers they said they're working with.
Student:
(indiscernible) going open source and so is the Eagle platform, which is owned
by Intel now (indiscernible) Nokia's secondary platform.
Student:
I think the point is here that all these companies expect or calculate that they're
going to make more money with content, not the device. The content and how
the content is going about, that will make the companies sustainable in the
market. That’s how (indiscernible) integrate all the companies together. The
content market and the (indiscernible) assumption, the content market will take
over the phone's usage for any other purpose like texting, calling, or using as a
(indiscernible). It still has not been proven (00:52:02.9 to 00:52:15.5) Next thing
is I think we need to understand that what are the revenue models, especially
after the Facebook thing, like Facebook (indiscernible) people starting saying that
no one (00:52:27.8 to 00:52:36.6). How does this Mozy Lab make revenue?
(00:52:40.6 to 00:52:56.3). What is the sustainable revenue model for open
platforms? That's what we need to understand.
Queena:
What the future is going to be since the revenue hasn't been sorted out; you're
saying it's hard to figure out what the future is going to be.
Student:
Maybe it will be useful to start looking at the three companies that we have now
and look at where the revenue comes from. Apple has this huge ecosystem built
around apps and services. Hardware is where the revenue comes from. They
make nothing, the developers, even though they (indiscernible) they don't make
any product (00:53:32.2).
Queena:
I think it makes pretty good money, app market.
Student:
I think from Apple's perspective overall, it's about the integrated experience with
their product and of course software and services come along with that. It's only
in so far as selling more hardware.
Student:
That's what I'm saying (00:54:07.7 to 00:54:12.0).
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Student:
I don't think Apple believes that. For instance Amazon and Google might say that
content's king but I think Apple –
Queena:
Although now Amazon is making hardware. Google is going to be making
hardware with Motorola, one assumes.
Student:
(00:54:30.9 to 00:56:32.8).
Student:
(00:56:34.7 to 00:56:45.0). Apple for instance has a really small R&D budget
compared to Google, so if that's important or not. You could also measure a
certain culture of the company is, maybe indicative of how the things are going
forward. For instance, Apple's very focused on producing a few things done really
well, as opposed to Google which releases lots of things. Microsoft will do lots of
market surveys and understand where the market's going and what products
(indiscernible) and then from that they'll build things and sort of (indiscernible).
The culture and design process (indiscernible) and also obviously (indiscernible).
Student:
Just some further interesting things, I watched the Jeff Bezos keynote of the
Kindle Fire last week. Part of (indiscernible) distinction between technology,
devices, media and advertising was because of that keynote, where he was
discussing we're cutting the price of this and how can I give this to you for so
cheap. He said that if we were to sell you an expensive device that would just sit
in the drawer it would be (indiscernible). We want to make our profits not from
selling you the device but by selling you all the additional things that you'll do with
that device, which I think is a very cool mindset. (indiscernible) to do that. But I
think it relates to this kind of mission of (indiscernible), whether not vertical
integration is something that matters for them.
Queena:
That's the question, if they're going to go out for everything, but it seems more
and more they are. Everybody is bleeding into each other's territory. The most
obvious example is Apple getting the maps. That was Google's space. Bing and
Google now are like who's going to be on Kindle. It seems like there's all these
little areas where they are starting to merge and yet trying to stay separate at the
same time.
Student:
I think that speaks wonders about the (indiscernible) so all these guys that
explode all these things and ideas, and now there's nothing more (indiscernible).
Now there's only one thing left, and that's going to the market – the other guy's
market space. One of the reasons I think Kindle makes (indiscernible) is the
manufacturer (indiscernible) for example if you make – the first Kindles may cost
you 400 dollars each, but the next thousand Kindles (00:59:58.0 to 01:01:09.9).
Student:
(01:01:14.5 to 01:01:26.5) because of the success of Mozilla, Apple, and Internet
Explorer and Microsoft and there people, they were forced to act, to open their
own standards and make it (indiscernible) so whenever I say this is a start of this
technology, what we are seeing is that even (indiscernible) which eventually is
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
going to trickle down to (indiscernible) for the collective good (indiscernible)
Mozilla, they would have to open up. If Apple were to (indiscernible).
Queena:
I'm also curious about – everybody (indiscernible) Apple, obviously they're more
hardware. Other people have different strengths, but if everybody's going to be
integrated, does that mean we all have to carry around five devices? If Kindle is
putting everything on – if Amazon is putting everything on Kindle to sell and
Google has Android, and Apple has iTunes, at some point does that mean we
carry around five devices, or does that mean at some point maybe all these
devices become more (indiscernible) like a TV? And it really becomes about
content.
Student:
I think something we haven't discussed yet is cloud (indiscernible). Apple has the
iCloud, Google as the Drive, and Amazon has Cloud Services. At the end of the
day, when it comes to (indiscernible) we want what we want when we want it. So
I'm going back to this openness. I think the winner in the space is going to be the
company that is going to be able to (01:03:23.7 to 01:03:35.3) that's something
we need to consider as we often have this content identity we want to access.
Queena:
(01:03:40.2 to
Student:
(... to 01:04:04.2).
Queena:
Does it feel like they're trying to do the opposite then? They're trying to push you
into the products they're selling or that they want you to see. Does anybody feel
that way at all?
Student:
I guess my first comment would be even cloud services, there's a huge
distinction between how these companies manage those things so in Apple's
ecosystem there's no such thing as a file essentially. Everything is derived in
what you do in the application and it's only present within that application. It's
very distributed as opposed to Google Drive is essentially taking what you have
on the desktop, what you're familiar with, and putting it on the cloud. It's a really
different architecture and the jury is still out on what is better and what customers
prefer.
The secondary thing I was going to bring up was I guess when you're looking at
these companies, what the landscape is going to look like is really determine by
the choices we're making today.
Student:
(01:05:12.6 to 01:05:42.8). People want to be able to take music they've
purchased and put it on a different (indiscernible). You're going to have the same
battle again over movies and books. If you look at where music is headed, they
end up taking the (indiscernible) management and getting rid of it because
customers don't like that. It's the same – so many has taken this approach of
designing their own hardware to be different so they can control the accessories
and make more money off of it. Customers in general, especially with the social
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Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
media are going to push back more and more and say I want to read my book on
this new device, but I can't because it's locked into Amazon Nook or whatever
Andreas:
I have some questions too. First one is what is the price of attention? How do
people price their attention like for ads? Equally well what's the price of
convenience? You can always find somewhere where that .mp3 sits but maybe
you would rather buy it from Amazon where you can get it. Who really makes the
decisions? Consumers often say or we often say that consumer decide, but how
much do they really decide? Very few people do carry five devices with them.
The cloud question is interesting. There are a number of questions. How easy is
it to get stuff back out?
Queena:
If often feel that way about iTunes. I don't really buy stuff off iTunes because it's
too much of a headache to figure out how to put it in whatever device it is, and
somehow I always lose it and I can't find it in the other computer I wanted it in. I
don't mind buying music, but I sort of don't because it's more of a pain for me to
figure out iTunes. It's gotten a lot easier and I may be a bit retarded in terms of
figuring out how to really work it, but it's not as easy as downloading something
online and putting it on whatever I want to put it on.
Student:
Did that cause you to switch to listening to Pandora?
Queena:
It caused me to not use iTunes very much. And then just download stuff.
Student:
I listen to Pandora now because I get so pissed off at the whole –
Andreas:
Let's get a feeling here. What do people do to organize their .mp3s?
Queena:
Who buys off iTunes as their primary way of getting music?
Andreas:
These are two questions. One is how do you buy the stuff and the other one is
how do you manage to navigate your 50GB of music you acquired in some way
or other? What do people use?
Student:
Pandora exclusively.
Student:
I use Pandora and if anything really stands out then I'll go into iTunes and buy it if
I want to listen to it again and again.
Student:
Could you ask that question again; how many people actually buy off iTunes?
Andreas:
Who has spent more than 20 bucks this year from buying music?
Student:
On iTunes or in general?
Andreas:
First of all who has spent more than 20 bucks buying music? Who has spent
more than 20 bucks buying music on iTunes? You bought on Amazon?
Student:
So no one is buying music now.
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012
34
Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Andreas:
Next question, every month I pay 14 bucks for Rhapsody. Rhapsody is a service
which runs well on my solar system at home. If I want to listen to the North
Korean broadcasting station I can.
Student:
But you don't own –
Andreas:
On the Android phone Rhapsody has some hack where they cache stuff and you
can download it.
Student:
You don't own that music. That's a distinction because Apple – when they
invented iTunes that was a huge thing. People want to own their music. They
don't want to rent their music. They don't want to stream it. They want to own the
files.
Andreas:
Let's make a couple distinctions. One is I personally don’t care at all about
owning anything if I can listen to something on the plane for instance, when I feel
like it. I don't know if I were to ever lapse my Rhapsody subscription, would all my
music disappear, evaporate like be nuked off my device? I don't know.
A couple of comments, for Facebook, Facebook is deep in data and deep in
social.
Student:
It seems like a whole different generation likes buying stuff. The younger
generation doesn't. iTunes sales are actually high. In this classroom nobody buys
it.
Andreas:
I think people want to listen to stuff and they want to listen to stuff in decent
quality. Sometimes the quality you have on Rhapsody is just super sucky. It's the
worst recordings.
Student:
Is the reason why the other population prefers to own – do they conceptually
understand the difference between owning and streaming and sharing?
Andreas:
I think they have a more refined taste. No, I have no idea.
Student:
If you think it's free versus paying for it, why would you pay more? Is it a quality
thing?
Queena:
I think it's convenience. I find myself doing that. I used to rip stuff all the time but
now that I've got a job I don't want to spend the time looking for the song that I
want. If it's on iTunes I'll pay for it. I can now. But there was a time where I
couldn’t so I would do the searching and look and try to figure it out, but I don't
know.
Andreas:
I think we have one minute left. What am I going to tell her? Irrespective of what
you ask, one thing you learn when you deal with reporters is you just tell them
irrespective of the question whatever you want to tell them. But I have no
message I'm pushing here, so I'm asking you; what is it that you want the world
via Marketplace to hear? What do we have that we want to share with the world?
http://weigend.com/files/teaching/ischool/2012
35
Andreas Weigend (www.weigend.com)
The Social Data Revolution (SDR), INFO 290A-03
UC Berkeley, School of Information, Fall 2012
Class2 – September 10, 2012
Student:
The Social Data Revolution is just getting started and we want to (indiscernible).
Andreas:
We want open devices.
Student:
I think more importantly the concept of open because I don't think users actually
care who made it or who's selling it to them essentially. It's more about the
perceived interaction with it. They want to be able to buy a song and message it
to (indiscernible). To them the concept of open or who made it doesn't matter. As
long as there is the interoperability between things is what matters.
Student:
It's the open concept that you can migrate from one device to another.
Andreas:
If you're looking into this classroom, we only see Macs. JJ and I are the only two.
Basically the perception is because of this Apple thing and the glowing of the
back. It's interesting. So much for open devices.
Student:
I wanted to use the key term compatibility because I think a lot of people bought
Windows as opposed to Macs in the '90s because Macs didn't have a lot of
software you could use that people were using on Windows. I think that goes
back to the concept of openness. It doesn't matter what book or what format you
buy it in as long as you can use it on a Windows and Mac, or on Kindle and on
other devices, so compatibility.
Queena:
I agree with you but it's interesting that it's going the other way. It feels like it is at
least. Maybe not entirely now but the thing is you can't read your Kindle book on
your iPad. I guess you can now because you've got the app.
Andreas:
As you know, even if I was super late today, and I want to apologize again for my
car problems, we should end on time. We're having dinner. If you are free for
dinner after we have our little chat, we would love to invite you. Any questions?
Any stumbling blocks? Then Ben if anybody is not sure about his identity, Ben is
our identity czar. Make sure you're on the list. I'll upload the audio. Thank you,
see you next Monday at 3:30.
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