DeadHeads and Retweeters: Crowdsourcing Influence

Last week the New York Historical Society opened the first large-scale exhibit of material from the Grateful Dead Archive. The archive will be managed by the University of Santa Cruz with special access to four decades worth of videotapes, recordings, fan letters and even a note from President Obama. What is surprising about the archives and the band itself, is that this classic group of rock icons is being touted as one of the first businesses to take an active role in viral marketing and brand influence building. Sponsor Beyond the iconic imagery of the Uncle Sam skull, the dancing bears and the jester, the Grateful Dead are so well known for their viral influence on fans that entire academic careers have been spent studying the band as a sociological phenomenon. In a recent article entitled, Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead , writer Joshua Green outlines how the band’s willingness to allow its music to spread via taped concert recordings is similar to that of many of today’s startups. Said band lyricist John Perry Barlow, “What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then–the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes…The Internet doesn’t behave that way…If I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced.” The freemium model was implemented with the assumption that merchandise and concert sales would follow. Although the band sought legal action for commercial bootlegging, the group knew that attempting to hold back regular fans from making personal recordings would not only be foolish, but it would be impossible. Instead, an open recording policy for concerts not only pleased Deadheads, but it paved the way for some of the band’s best advocates to recruit others. It’s estimated that recordings for 2,200 of the 2,350 Grateful Dead concerts exist and many of them are available online. Given the fact that all of these recordings required no overhead from the band, it was a great way to crowdsource distribution and increase influence. The group even went so far as to reserve an on-site spot for tapers in a special section behind the soundboard. This reserved space can be likened to a consumer-facing startup community’s willingness to offer viral tools such as blogging buttons, bookmarking widgets, Facebook fan pages and Twitter integration. The idea here is that a company reserves a space for free distribution in order to gain mindshare and find a conversion funnel for paying customers. In the startup world, the point of conversion has always been up for debate. Said investor and entrepreneur Dave McClure, “There is a role for freemium, but unless you missed the TPS report the FREE part is only a loss-leader for the MEE-YUM part — it’s a test-drive before you buy something. If your users are just kicking the tires then you need to kick them to the curb eventually.” That being said, as proven by the Grateful Dead, freemium content and permission to redistribute can trigger a mechanism for broad influence. Because influence generates perceived value, startups may find it easier to overcome barriers for customer acquisition by offering limited teaser content. After all, if the Grateful Dead can overcome wallet friction from more than 40 years of psychedelic drug users, surely a groundbreaking experience can rally loyal (and paying) fans. Photo Credit: Jim Marshall from the Grateful Dead Archives Discuss

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DeadHeads and Retweeters: Crowdsourcing Influence

Tags:archives, Business, dancing, facebook, find-it-easier, Grateful, grateful-dead, internet, jester, Joshua Green, Legal, president, startup, Startups, university

Always Be Closing: Ink the Deal and Do It Quickly

Just because you’ve been in talks doesn’t mean the deal is done. Entrepreneurs need to remain diligent about timelines in order to ensure that the deals they’ve set in motion actually come to fruition. If you’re negotiating a term sheet, building a partnership or on the verge of an acquisition, get the papers signed. Legendary GRP VC investor Mark Suster has seen his fair share of successful deals, and he writes, “don’t pop the champagne until the ink is dry on the contract and the money is in the bank.” Sponsor Suster wrote a great post on the need to close deals in a timely manner. While it’s important to negotiate well, he’s seen firsthand how deals can go up in smoke if given too much time. Suster raised a round right before a market crash and is convinced that if he’d waited even a month, his offers would have been rescinded. He explains that market crashes, deal fatigue, complacency, or losing your deal sponsor could mean the difference between a banner year and a missed opportunity. Some suggestions to expedite the deal process include: 1. Don’t Over Shop : Although a healthy interest from a number of players is important for leverage, shopping around too much has its downside. Says Suster, “There is a fatigue factor.  If deals drift, people start whisper campaigns.  It is a tight-knit industry.  Like it or not everybody knows each other. ” If you haven’t closed a deal in a timely manner others may assume something negative is holding you back. 2. Don’t Grind Every Detail : Know the important points that you want to negotiate and stick to them. He writes that you shouldn’t get caught up in inconsequential details as they’ll potentially add weeks to the legal process and you’ll risk creating ill will with your newfound partners. 3. Don’t Be Complacent : Suster suggests that you hold all those involved to their deadlines and ensure that lawyers get the documents out when promised. If someone is behind, call them and let them know you are both interested and that you’re willing to fly out and meet them or take calls in the middle of the night to acommodate them. 4. Get People In Person : Put yourself, your negotiating partner, both sides of lawyers and the other party in a room to hash out the details. Suster stresses that it’s important to create goals for what you want to accomplish and take breaks to gain consent from any higher authorities. Discuss

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Always Be Closing: Ink the Deal and Do It Quickly

Tags:authorities, Deal, deals, difference, important, Legal, person, Startups, suster

An In-Depth Look at Microsoft’s Spy Guide

We recently reported that a watchdog site, Cryptome, was removed from the Web for refusing to take down a copy of a Microsoft document. This document, called the Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook , or “spy guide,” gives details on how law enforcement can grab user data from a wide range of Microsoft services, from Windows Live ID to Xbox Live to Hotmail. Microsoft holds and can reveal a huge amount of data on individuals through their social networking and file-sharing services, too. These data include IP addresses, credit cards, chat logs and much more. How does a large corporation balance end user privacy balance with the need to cooperate and comply with law enforcement? Read on to see how Microsoft handles this issue. Sponsor On the Surface After a quick read-through of Microsoft’s guide, everything initially made sense. They’ve got a lot of data – IM logs that can help find missing kids, gaming records that can help return a stolen Xbox, emails that can help track down terrorists. There’s an emergency hotline for urgent or life-threatening incidents, “situations like kidnapping, murder threats, bomb threats, terrorism threats, etc.” The full list of services includes email, authentication (Windows Live ID), IM, social networking (Windows Live Spaces and MSN Groups), custom domains, online file storage and gaming (Xbox Live). For each service, data is accessible through a series of web interface that allow law enforcement to browse through relevant data in tables or forms. And there are procedures for accessing all this information, too. Law enforcement can’t simply ask for the information, according to the document. They have to have a subpoena, a court order or a warrant to gain access to data such as usernames, linked accounts and email address books. Digging Deeper But after talking to a few sources who have worked in law enforcement (LE) and government agencies – none of whom wanted to be quoted, for obvious reasons – these procedures are a far cry from the day-to-day realities of data access. In other words, there’s a reason it’s called a “spy guide.” For one thing, federal and LE officers tend to have a much easier time getting access to user data than their corporate conspirators might let on, our sources told us. In ticking time bomb scenarios, this can be a good thing, as quick and unobstructed access to data can save people from imminent harm. Where Are All Those Warrants? However, we’ve been told by people who have handled such issues that government and LE often request and are given data without having to go through the proper procedures, often because of corporations’ fear of government retribution. For example, not too long ago, Sprint was revealed to have complied with 8 million LA requests for GPS data in 2009. This figure doesn’t include any other type of data from anyone other than LE for any network other than Sprint – this is just for LE GPS data requests from Sprint. The implications of this are staggering, but the most confounding of them all is that there could not possibly be enough warrants to justify the sum total of requests that digital companies are handed by law enforcement seeking user data. Our sources all confirmed that without question, LE and government officials are often given user data by companies such as Microsoft without having to provide any kind of justification – not legal documents, not proof of criminal activity and not evidence of guilt. What About the Fourth Amendment? And then, there are the less widely known reasons that LE or federal agencies would gain access to user data – programs such as government data mining or Project Carnivore (which is essentially the wiretapping scandal of the digital sphere). Again, our sources confirmed that LE’s desire to see user data is often the only reason a digital company would need to turn over information – warrantless wiretapping all over again. In conclusion, Microsoft’s spy guide does state that certain steps much be taken for law enforcement to access data – steps that require law enforcement to prove that their searches and seizures in the digital world are legally justifiable. Whether or not anecdotal evidence supports this claim we will leave to our readers to judge. What the document does show us, however, is the extraordinary breadth and depth of information that Microsoft has and is willing to give to government and law enforcement agencies. And that alone is enough to make us put on our tin foil hats. Note: We have contacted Microsoft’s Rapid Response media team with several questions and are awaiting a response. Discuss

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An In-Depth Look at Microsoft’s Spy Guide

Tags:digital, document, Legal, Microsoft, online, services-global, social-networking, sources, windows-live, words

UK Nixes Internet Ban for P2P Infringement

In November, we told you about a move in the UK to monitor P2P sharing and permanently ban users who infringed on copyright from using the Internet. In our reporting on P2P issues , it’s rare these days to get wind of some good news; today, we’ve learned that this plan to ban would not, in fact, apply to most file-sharing fiends. After one ISP stood up to the government’s proposals by circulating a petition, the government responded favorably, saying , “We are not requiring ISPs to monitor for unlawful file-sharing. Nor are we proposing that ISPs look at what users download in order to combat piracy… We will not terminate the accounts of infringers.” Sponsor The fear, uncertainty and doubt about the UK’s policy on illegal file-sharing stems from the introduction of the Digital Economy Bill , published on November 20, 2009. The bill “sets out in detail our proposed legislation to tackle on-line copyright infringement, including unlawful peer to peer file-sharing,” according to the government. However, UK ISP TalkTalk vigorously objected to some of the measures laid out in the bill and drafted and circulated an e-petition to abandon the idea that illegal P2P file-sharing should result in a permanent ban from the Internet for guilty users. “If citizens are innocent until proven guilty,” the petition reads, “ISPs would be forced to monitor internet usage to ensure that no copyrighted material is being transferred. This flagrant disregard for privacy is comparable to forcing the Post Office to search through parcels for photocopied documents or mixtape cassettes. Such requirements would place enormous strain on ISPs whilst failing to prevent the distribution of copyrighted material… “Who is punished in the case of shared family connections? The increasing role of the Internet in access to society should not be underestimated. Cutting off households deprives families of education, government services and freedom of speech. We do not see this as a fitting punishment, nor do we believe the breaches in privacy involved to be justifiable under copyright law.” The government’s full response states that officials are working with rights holders and media companies to find a balanced and equitable solution to illegal file-sharing – one that includes attractive, legal options for end users to access content, as well. The Digital Economy Bill will require ISPs to notify users whose accounts had been flagged by a copyright holder as having been used for illegal file-sharing. “In the cases of the most serious infringers,” reads the response, “if a rights holder obtains a court order, the ISP would have to provide information so that the rights holder can take targeted court action.” As a last resort, the Bill provides for ISPs’ taking technical measures to stop illegal downloading, ranging from bandwidth restriction, daily downloading limits and temporary Internet account suspension. All in all, the government hopes to see a 70 percent reduction in illegal P2P downloads. It’ll be interesting to see how various national laws and regulations hold up if something like ACTA ends up being passed. In a nutshell, a U.S.-drafted chapter of this treaty on Internet use would require ISPs to police user-generated content, to cut off Internet access for copyright violators and to remove content that is accused of copyright violation without any proof of actual violation – a far cry from the more lenient proposals we’re reading from the UK. Let us know what you think in the comments. Discuss

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UK Nixes Internet Ban for P2P Infringement

Tags:digital-economy, distribution, government, internet, Legal, Office, p2p, rights, strain-on-isps, the-government, under-copyright

On Facebook, You’re Really You

Are people are who they really say they are online? Conventional wisdom tells us that social networking sites, blogs and other social media outlets have allowed people to carefully craft online “personas” – essentially idealized versions of who they are in real life. Are you wittier online? More outgoing? More social? Friendlier? For those hiding behind the keyboard and computer screen, personality traits like these are easier to fake. Or are they? According to a recent research study , maybe not. Psychologists found that “faking it” online is tougher than previously imagined. In fact, the results of the study show that people are much more likely to reveal their true personalities online and not the idealized image of who they want to be. Sponsor Idealism? Not on Your Online Profile To conduct the research, the psychologists examined the social networking profiles of 236 U.S. and German students ages 17-22, both on Facebook and MySpace. They also had the same students take multiple personality tests in order to determine both their actual personality and their idealized personality. Prior to this study, if you had to guess, you may have suspected that the online versions of the participants matched up more closely with the idealized personalities, not the real ones. In fact, that assumption is shared by modern-day psychologists – it even made its way into psychology journals where it was dubbed as the ” idealized virtual-identity hypothesis.” However, the researchers conducting this new study thought that this was a hypothesis that needed testing. “There has been no research on the most fundamental question about OSN (online social networking sites) profiles,” notes the report. “Do they convey accurate impressions of profile owners?” As it turns out, yes. The surprising conclusion uproots the previously held assumption that we are our idealized selves online. Instead, we are displaying our real personalities. “There was no evidence of self-idealization,” concludes the report. “These results suggest that people are not using their OSN profiles to promote an idealized virtual identity. Instead, OSNs might be an efficient medium for expressing and communicating real personality, which may help explain their popularity.” On Facebook, We’re All Real People Although the researchers in this study looked at both MySpace and Facebook profiles to come to this conclusion, we suspect that Facebook is home to even more genuine personalities than MySpace. Instead of allowing its users to set up accounts using fake names or internet handles, Facebook only allows the use of your legal name, a policy that has led to some occasional mistakes when oddly-named real people were caught up in a Facebook purge. This up-front requirement that you “be yourself” on Facebook has had a trickle-down effect on how people use the network. Active users typically only connect with friends, family and other real-world acquaintances as opposed to strangers and other pseduo-friends as was done back in the MySpace days of “he whoever collects the most friends wins.” In addition, the privacy controls Facebook had in place at its beginning (now completely eviscerated, but that’s another story …), provided its users with a sense of safety, security and comfort – they could be themselves – their real selves, flaws and all – without the world watching. The end result was the web-based equivalent of the user’s offline social network where no one is all that different than they are in real life. But What About the Older Social Networkers? The one complaint with have with this latest research study is that it focused only on the youngest demographic of social networking users – those aged 17-22. While this digital generation may have grown up accustomed to openly sharing online, those belonging to the prior generations – especially the baby boomers and older – may be a bit more guarded when it comes to posting to Facebook (and assuming they use it, MySpace). Although the study does reveal some interesting findings about Gen Y/Gen Z and their use of the Internet, more research is necessary to determine if the conclusions span all age groups.

Tags:digital, internet, Legal, MySpace, network, online, people, report, research, Social Media, social-networking, user