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First it was "Like or +1" anything you like. Don't worry, it's all private.
Then it was, everytime you "like or +1" something, we'll tell all your "friends".
Soon, the definition of friends was enlarged to mean "people who you may know or are in some circles", effectively broadcasting your "likes and +1s" to tens of thousands of people.
Finally our "likes and +1s" are now considered public endorsements, and fair game for being portrayed as advertisements (minus any compensation to us of course).
I stopped using Facebook "likes" a year back, and deleted my Facebook account a few months ago. As for Google+, I signed up briefly when it launched but then promptly closed it. I've never +1-ed anything, and never will.
> Today we’re taking that a step further, enabling you to share recommendations with the world right in Google’s search results. It’s called +1—the digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” To recommend something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful. These +1’s will then start appearing in Google’s search results.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right-recommendati...
> 1 is as simple on the rest of the web as it is on Google search. With a single click you can recommend that raincoat, news article or favorite sci-fi movie to friends, contacts and the rest of the world.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/1-button-for-websites...
Unfortunately, the crux of the issue may lie in consumer protections. While you and I may know exactly what we're endorsing, the average consumer probably does not. The average consumer probably also does not understand that their friends also do not. Otherwise, we wouldn't see so many "FREE $500 COSTCO GIFTCARD - CLICK HERE" posts on Facebook.
TL;DR: While I haven't formed a cohesive opinion about this, the problem with endorsements lies in the average case--not in the best case.
So I opted out.
I assume that what I +1 is public and act accordingly.
But for those that don't, which is surprisingly a lot of young people, nice that this option exists.
Partly it's the backlash against all the privacy invasions recently.
People realised that all the minor privacy creeping leads to a situation where you can't do anything without it being very public.
They should have been making a fuss when the systems were being set up, but they dismissed the privacy-advocates as tin foil hatters and conspiracy nuts.
Some people are saying they are opting out and never plus one anything. That's fine. I'm going to do the opposite and plus one everything. I might even find a Firefox plugin to do it for me. Every page I'm on, click +one for everything. Spider pages linking to those pages ad plus one those too. Spider pages from popular news sites and plus one those as well.
Okay, this is an argument that could resonate with me, and an angle I hadn't thought about. However, I still struggle to see how a public expression of liking something (a +1 is just that, as are reviews) is a bad thing. It's only shared with people you permit too.
It's well known that these are not private notes to oneself and I really can't see how this could be inch-by-inched to something egregious.
I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around the uproar. If I've +1'd something or written a review I can't see the problem with that being used next to an ad. If I were an advertiser I'd be quite happy for +1s and socially relevant positive reviews to be displayed next to my ad because I know they'd increase click-thru rates, and possibly even conversion rates too.
Generally, I actually really like the idea of this. If I saw something that said ronaldx and 77 others +1'd this and I thought you had good taste, I'd probably be more likely to check it out. Conversely, if I thought your taste sucked I'd also be grateful to know that you liked it!
There's one hitch in this ride though: I have a Google Plus account but I don't use it and don't tell people about it, so I'm not going to be seeing these recommendations.
For this reason I'm actually surprised that significant advertising value can be mined from data about +1s and likes.
I wonder if we need more expressive "single-button" social interactions, like some kind of hybrid between tags and likes. At the very least, some kind of way to express to the computer, and to friends, that you want to promote some piece of content (or censor it) while simultaneously disagreeing/agreeing with the idea presented in the content.
The value might be just to get the person to click on an ad, and pad up this quarter's revenue, right before Christmas. Of course if ad clicks go up, unpaid traffic from unbiased Google goes down even more.
There is no context, zero, wherein I want to share anything with everyone; and I'm certainly not going to categorize contacts into "circles" etc.
FTR, I think I've clicked on +1 buttons perhaps three times, and all of them were in Google Reader. That also had a sharing feature, which is the thing I used when I wanted to share the article. Mostly I used the +1 to add to the existing like count for any given article - and as I said, that wasn't often.
In so far as +1 is for sharing, that's how much I don't use it.
Let's say you are famous person X. Would you want Google giving out your endorsements to people and making money from doing it? Probably not. So why is it okay if you're just some schmuck?
Our opinions and thoughts have value. Online providers are feasting on our thoughts and actions and turning it all into some kind of version of a radio promotional spot. If your life is a piece of merchandise, then maybe it doesn't matter. Or perhaps you're not that important. But many others have done the math and it is important to them.
So I guess the real question is: how much do you value your thoughts?
I appreciate other people can make money from my reviews and endorsements and really I have no problem with that because in theory I get value in return by way of my friends' recommendations. 9/10 it's the reviews that make or break my decision to buy something or go somewhere, and I give as freely as I receive even in the knowledge that some third party is profiting too.
Nobody's up in arms about Amazon or GoodReads profiting from reviews on their site. I don't see why this is any different.
I think you need to decide whether or not you want your opinions to be a product for somebody else to sell or not. If you're happy being a Google/Amazon/Facebook/Yelp drone, go for it.
Do you really need explicit endorsements from your friends in order to buy things? Or does getting them just make it easier for merchants to sell to you? Who is getting the benefit here?
I personally don't believe it's an even trade. Other opinions vary.
* Google provides me with a very valuable service that simplifies my life (I profit) * my friends recommend things they've loved which makes my life better (I profit) * businesses that are good and recommended also profit (great! I love seeing good people succeed) my friends profit when I recommend stuff Google profits as a result of being value (also good -- they get to stay in business)
I have absolutely no problem with businesses and other people making money. I'm quite surprised that on a site mainly for entrepreneurs that there'd be such a backlash against a feature that benefits everybody involved.
I don't need explicit endorsements to buy something, but I highly value them. For example, I buy from Amazon because of the reviews. These reviews reduce risk of disappointment, and this is one of their USPs because they do it so well. Granted, not everything that's highly rated turns out to be to my liking but I'm dissatisfied far less frequently with my purchases.
Look, people consume differently. When I was younger I used to look at my friends to tell me what their opinions were. Now that I'm older I form my own opinions. That means I value people who take the time to create and publish their thoughts. If those people do it all for free? I still value it, but the quality of the transaction goes down. See, for instance, all the Yelp problems, the fake Amazon reviews, and so on.
Google pays about .000001 for you to post your opinion on something. It makes about .0001 from it. I don't have a problem with this math. I'm much more concerned with what it says about the human species than people making money. Are we so lost that we need constant reassurance from others on how to live, what opinions to have, what things to buy? As Schmidt said, do we really just want Google to tell us what to do?
I really don't need 99% of the crap online. I need food, shelter, and medical care. That's about it. The rest of it is all discretionary crap. I'm not sure we have to monetize discretionary spending advice. The web is mostly free. Why not just allow people to publish their own opinions using their own hardware and have protocols to share it all? Why do I need all these third-party services just to communicate?
You either draw the line somewhere or eventually you end up with cranial implants produced and owned by Apple sharing your every emotion and opinion with the rest of the world -- while they make money from it. That's not a future I'm willing to work towards, although others seem so fascinated by the tech that they don't care about the rest of it.
Just wanted to make sure you understood me. Thanks for the chat!
> Are we so lost that we need constant reassurance from others on how to live, what opinions to have, what things to buy?
Well, yes. We're social creatures and we look to what the rest of the tribe is doing. It's really been quite well studied and it seems humans (and other social animals) behave this way naturally. This tendency can be beneficial (if the rest of the tribe is staying away from those berries, we ought not to eat them lest we get sick) and detrimental (e.g. the bystander effect). This social behavior is also something that's exhibited in the marketplace in many forms. That empty restaurant is probably no good, but the one with the line out of the door is probably doing something right -- at least to our tribal brain.
I'm not really sure what argument you're making. Are you making an argument against materialism, or against the centralization of services? (Perhaps this is a false dichotomy and you're making both arguments!)
If you're arguing against the centralization of common information services, well, this I can partly agree with. Such centralization makes it easier for data to be leaked, snooped, etc and in an ideal world we'd all be running FOSS on our own hardware. In the real world though, it's next to impossible to make money from FOSS and software developers gotta pay their bills too. (Just as a side note, I use FOSS as much as possible and think that it's made the world a better place.)
If you're arguing against materialism, I'm not sure where to go from there. You're free to be as unmaterialistic as you wish but I (and a lot of people) love doing things that are entertaining and incidentally cost money. I accept that not everybody is like me, but I've been very unhappy when my life has been bare bones and just-the-basics. I want to do stuff, go places, sky dive, and experience new things -- usually with other people too. I enjoy buying new technology and other tangible stuff, but mostly experiences that I suppose could be considered a luxury in terms of survival and only serve as entertainment. All this costs money, but these things bring me pleasure that a tofu lifestyle doesn't.
> You either draw the line somewhere or eventually you end up with cranial implants produced and owned by Apple sharing your every emotion and opinion with the rest of the world -- while they make money from it.
That was a good South Park episode!
If at any stage it becomes involuntary I'm going to be right there with you saying it's a problem, but I don't care if someone's making money from me so long as I'm receiving value in return.
The only thing that makes all of this okay is the fact I have a choice not to +1 something. Larry Page doesn't come to my house every day at 5am to make me endorse businesses against my will.
> Just wanted to make sure you understood me. Thanks for the chat!
Likewise!
You +1 a company, say HP, because you bought Laptop XYZ. Now Google has been cutting unpaid traffic to everyone with their gimmicks http://i.imgur.com/mhJhc5W.png and Google's own spam so many more are forced to advertise. HP advertises on Google, Desktop ABC and since you +1-ed them, your friends will click on it, thinking you bought that desktop (about half are unlikely to know they clicked on an ad, they'll think it's an unbiased Google result).
Now there's absolutely no reason to believe that Google or HP care if your friends got the best computer for their money, Google wants their ad money and HP is in the business of selling computers at margins as high as they can. In essence, you are helping Google scam your friends.
Why isn't Google letting your friends see the websites you ranked but only ads? To make them more likely to click on ads. Almost always advertisers advertise the product they make the most on, and the cost of advertising is tacked on to the price.
You seem to be convinced that all business is just one big scam. I wonder what you do for a living?
>Why isn't Google letting your friends see the websites you ranked but only ads? To make them more likely to click on ads.
Well I certainly think they wouldn't add this feature had they thought it will drive down the click rate but immediately approaching this as if it were a conspiracy to get some extra clicks while users figure it's a scam is just that, a conspiracy. In the long run it just doesn't make sense for google to display results that are not relevant to visitors and they know that.
I don't care for what Google says, I look at what it does. You should too:
http://ho9od35yvs05ejqn.zippykid.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/u...
http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it%E2%80%A6or-maybe-no...
http://moz.com/blog/mega-serp-a-visual-guide-to-google
Trying hard to drive clicks to the best sites, right ?
>major penalties on websites to cut their unpaid traffic.
That is just a conspiracy theory on your part. Maybe you are butt-hurt that your site is not ranked how you would have liked. I worked in SEO for a few years and I've seen Google time and time again improve the results and weed out the scammy and "made for google" sites with real relevant content. How many sites are there that sell HD monitors? Thousands? Not all of them can be included in the top 10 results and I guarantee you that each one of them truly believes that their site deserves a spot on the top 10. Well guess what? Not all of them can be right.
I find it funny that you undermine the credibility of your whole carefully constructed argumentation with a nasty little ad hominem at the beginning.
Of course If you want to build a virtual profile of your self, and you are afraid that the people discover how you really are, I can understand, but on that case, the problem is yours, not google's.
But it disturbed me. I feel like it's a way to shut off the protest (a small small minority of interested persons)...
It feels like it's a choice now, but the reality is not really... my sister, my parents, will never go on the options, and will never defaulted it. The choice is disconnected with the impact, thus making it kind of invisible. "By default" is a small, but commons dark patterns.
The benefits, incidentally, after I thought about them carefully, could be classified as "chewing gum for your mind". Neither social network enriched my life in any meaningful way. Both consumed a lot of time that could be much better spent elsewhere (for example, in this Hacker News discussion... oh, wait).
I still have this voice in my head from Eric Schmidt "With your permission ...", "If you opt-in".
So they start to abandon the opt-in ship and we now have to keep up with every sharing/ad-feature they add throughout the whole Google ecosystem to keep the little privacy we still have?
"The changes to the Terms will be effective as of November 11, 2013. If you do not take any action, the Shared Endorsements setting will be turned on."
I imagine many people won't read the email.
With endorsements, it's more likely that I'll get advertised products that suit my needs, because I'll get more advertised products that people who are similar to me have endorsed.
It still doesn't remove the marketing budget factor, but it may more strongly correlate the things that are advertised to me with the things that best fit my needs.
It's just a symptom, though. The whole modern conception of "social networking" can't die soon enough.
I agree, however, that my screenshots shows the checkbox checked. The reason is that I want to mark the line for clarity. By double-clicking the line in Chrome, the checkbox got checked.
Without the line marked, the checkbox was unchecked:
“Based on your domain's current settings, your name and profile picture will not appear in shared endorsements paired with ads. If your domain administrator changes this in the future, your choice here will be honored.”
where's my cut?