Priv-Note: An Explosive Web 2.0 Concept in Service of Privacy

Sooner or later, it had to happen.

You know all those scenes in Mission Impossible where an envelope or tape-recorder has played its vital message and immediately begins to ignite? Ed McMahon or someone gravely intones, “This message will self-destruct in 10 SECONDS. 10, 9, 8….”

That’s the concept behind Priv-Note — notes that self-destruct after being read. Post a note to someone anywhere. Send them the link.

Once your recipient clicks on the link, you (the sender) get a note that the message has been read.

And then, minus Ed McMahon — or any cool voice, really — the message self-destructs.

There are obvious applications — love notes, one-time offers. I’m wondering if it’s enough for a business model? But regardless, in this era of debate over unauthorized surveillance, I’m sure they’ll win fans just for their pro-privacy messages.

What would you use Priv-Notes for?

Over 30 and Web 2.0 Test: Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” video

Watch this video — Weezer‘s “Pork and Beans.” How many YouTube celebrities can you identify? And what do you think this video is trying to say? I’m thinking in particular of the scene where the band member seems to be just munching on cereal, idly watching the NumaNuma guy — but right inside his apartment.

My question: What do you think is the (tongue in cheek) point of this video?

Here’s why I’m asking: a few months back, I was at a WebGuild event at Google featuring Jia Shen of RockYou, Jonathan Abrams, a co-founder of Friendster, and another Google developer.

Someone asked, mildly, their thoughts on the future for Web 2.0 in the enterprise.

I thought they’d make some comment about the Enterprise catching up with the tools its workers were bringing in, at least. That’s a big “duh” — from Cisco to BEA, the enterprise has been figuring out how to make social networks and the interactive web work for them.

But to my surprise, Jia Shen said, “No. I don’t see it. I mean, web 2.0 is about ‘hot or not,’ right? I don’t see older people getting into it.”

Glancing around the room, fully half the people there were over 40. Just because Jia Shen can’t imagine that anyone over 40 would have a life, let alone a SecondLife, or be using Web 2.0 mashups behind the firewall — doesn’t mean that we don’t get it. Leaving “Hot or Not” aside for the moment, the technology behind that site is simple voting; several present and former clients use similar code to rate the content inside their companies (for usefulness, among other things).

I live in the Web 2.0 world fairly constantly. And what’s more, I have teenagers. My hip factor increases exponentially just because I knew all about the Numa Numa guy two years ago; I rolled my eyes at “These Shoes Rule! These shoes SUCK!,” and watched Chris Crocker’s tearful pleading on behalf of Britney, and the witty Evolution of Dance, all at my kids’ behest.

So when I saw Weezer’s “Pork and Beans,” I cracked up. Thought it was really clever — a nod to this generation’s celebrities, as well as a wink (or maybe a jab in the ribs) to our inertia-bound scrutiny of other people’s Web moments.

Then I shared the video with a few friends and colleagues.

No giggles. No guffaws of recognition. Nada. They gave me those understanding smiles you reserve for people who are just a little bit crazy.

Most of my peers hadn’t seen the videos to which “Pork & Beans” refers. Made me wonder whether a) I have no life — but not in the way JiaShen imagined; b) I had slipped into the ranks of the very, very immature; c) whether there might be any truth to this Web 2.0 generation thing. Like, by having teenagers I’d essentially slipped past the bouncer — but it’s all over as soon as they’re out of the house. Suddenly, I won’t be able to tolerate anything newer than Fleetwood Mac or maybe MC Hammer, pre-Dance Jam.

What do you think? Is Web 2.0 a “generational thing?” Can anyone partake? Or will they have to make a YouTube specifically for people who were born before 1979?

Does Google Make Us Stupid? Let me count the ways

Much has been made about a piece in the Atlantic — a good piece, mind you — where Nicholas Carr posits that Google specifically, and search in general, is making us stupid.

Basically, he points out that we are no longer able to handle large blocks of text; we are losing our powers of recall and concentration — that our brains are actually changing.  He wonders if we may in fact be getting… stupid.

I’m thinking he’s right. Not only are we stupid — we’re stupid about being stupid. We don’t know what to do when information isn’t delivered to us.

On second thought, cancel that “we.” Make it “many people.”  Specifically, many people who might — or might not — be my children.

Recently, my youngest had to finish a paper on the Renaissance, and the Internet was down. He was stymied. Panicked. The grade, as far as he was concerned, was already in the toilet.

I had to point out that probably, he could use this thing — made of paper — called a book. I said, “before there was wikipedia there was an encyclopedia.” He protested that a book was so… primitive.  It couldn’t possibly be up to speed.

“I need the latest information, Mom!”

“You need the latest information… on the Renaissance? Believe me, it hasn’t changed that much.” The Internet’s chief attraction is they can play games or watch YouTube videos while theoretically doing homework. No wonder we have the collective attention span of a paper plate.

He was uncertain, but I showed him how to open… the… Big Encyclopedia Book… to… the … right… letter. R=Renaissance. See?”

He was impressed. “They have pictures, too?”

I think he was expecting stone tablets.

And that’s not the only way we’re getting stupid. Like Nicholas Carr, I am finding myself less patient with long stretches of text unless it’s really interesting, beautifully written, or informative. This is a huge change for me; I read constantly. Constantly!

I recently tried to re-read “Atlas Shrugged,” because I remembered liking it as a teenager and thought my middle son would like it. OMG. Here’s this 1000-page book, with speeches that last — I am not making this up — for 50 pages or more. I kept popping in and out of paragraphs, saying, “yeah, yeah — get on with it! Get to the point!”

Now I’m quite sure that Ayn Rand fully intended everyone to read every word.

I couldn’t do it. Maybe *she* was stupid. Or maybe I am, for ever thinking I liked a book with 50-page speeches in the first place.

Dear Merredith: Fake Personalization FAILS

Have I mentioned I love ReadWriteWeb? Okay, I do. If I ever write a disclosure page, that’s gonna be on it, because those bloggers get Web 2.0 beyond just the news of widgets; it’s like they look under the carpet, and pull some thoughtful and interesting little insights out where others had simply swept them aside.

But I digress.

RWW today has yet another of those “confirmed” studies. This one: that fake personalization — as practiced by spammers, mass marketers and nummynuts — backfires.

Again: should this be news? I don’t like people pretending to be my best friend in real life — let alone in some fake way online. So in theory, this is one of those studies that spends money to confirm what should be common sense. But still, IF this study reaches even 1/20th of the people who would normally ignore it, then they would have done some good in the world.

CONFIRMED: Craving is Better than Getting (?!)

Scientific American today is citing a new article, in which UCLA scientist Joshua Freedman claims to prove that a monkey feels maximal reward when he is actually getting a grape — but just before he eats it — rather than when he actually eats it.

And apparently there are other studies confirming what SciAm calls “this trend in brainpower” — that the mind controls how we anticipate the future, more than the reality itself.

(Okay, time for a plug here: read Stumbling On Happiness, if you haven’t already, for a pretty damned interesting look at how our imaginations and minds can limit happiness, and where we actually find it vs. where we think we will).

I can’t decide whether this should be news.

Hello, UCLA scientists, did you ever shop for a big “event,” like prom or a wedding?  Or wedding night, for that matter?  Wait, this is men I’m talking to here.  Not to stereotype, but there must be a comparison: have you ever anticipated great seats to a ballgame, or a date with someone incredibly special/hot/smart, etc?  There must be some kind of scientific algorithm for when the actual pleasure equals the anticipated pleasure.  Anticipation is at least half the fun:

Where x= anticipation, x>most of the times it never works out.

It’s all in the expectations.  In fact, I often have the best time when I have no expectations.  When I go see a movie I know nothing about.  Or find a restaurant that turns out to be great, but I didn’t expect it to be a Michelin 4-star.

When I first joined The Hoffman Agency, their excellent CFO, Leon Hunt, gave this great talk on expectation management and I’ve never forgotten it.  He just said very simply that everything we do hinges on the expectations we set.  That doesn’t mean we should go around lowering the bar, telling people — “hey, don’t expect too much ’cause I’ll disappoint ya.”

It probably does mean, don’t tell a tiny start-up with no customers in its first round of funding, that they’re going to get an above-the-fold story in the WSJ, or be featured right away in TechCrunch.

But mostly it means: be accurate, so that people know what reward to anticipate — they’re not anticipating a grape when all you have this time around is a raisin, know what I mean?

Ethics: Where’s Your Line in the Sand?

Professionally… where’s the line you cannot cross?

I was either really lucky or really unfortunate — depending on how you look at it — to discover that line early in my PR career.

At the time I didn’t even think I was doing PR as a career. I was helping out a friend while she was off backpacking in Tibet.

I had been starting to do freelance writing, and I had also worked in marketing and PR. I figured I could help my friend and also make some money to supplement my freelance work.

So I skipped into her agency and dug in. I was 27. She had some great accounts. I was enjoying myself.

But then, there was a crisis. I can’t tell you what it was without revealing all the companies involved, and honestly, I have no idea of the ramifications of calling them out on a blog. So for the moment, let me just say that it would be filed under the insurance clause, “Acts of God:” many people had lost their lives, and crisis communications were called for. For the most part, it felt as though everyone came together — well, and thoughtfully — in a time of great need.

The worst of it passed. I felt good about my work and that of my colleagues. While that one account was serious, intense, and sometimes draining, the others were fun and usually pretty interesting. I was making friends with the beat reporters — men and women who worked at the same papers like the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, where my father had written for 40 years. I took some pride in assessing what a journalist would want to know, and trying to deliver that creatively.

Until the day my boss asked me to spy.

Now, at first, it sounded just like research — pose as a college student, ask some questions. I didn’t mind that.

But later, he asked me to do it again — this time, for a union connected with the crisis I mentioned.  As in, pretend to be a member of the union.

And I realized, he wanted me to spy. SPY-spy. Not research. As in: get admitted to a place under false pretenses and get people to trust you — and get information from them that they otherwise would never give you.

Mind you, my boss gave me this assignment with a warm, confident smile; sure that I’d accept this latest exciting little bone they’d tossed me. They weren’t trying to do anything bad, he assured me. He just wanted to keep his finger on that union’s pulse.

I thought about it. I’m a pretty good actress. Really good, or I was once. And suddenly, I felt like Peter frickin’ Parker — “use your powers for good? or evil?”

And y’know? I couldn’t do it.

I literally found myself staring in the mirror, in my then-studio apartment, with only my cat to keep me company. And for me — trained at Northwestern, daughter of a newspaper editor, pretty much a center-left person, and just a person-person amidst this whole mess… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lie — not to those people in the union, not to my parents; and certainly not to reporters whom, whatever they thought, I still considered my brethren. If it ever came out that I had impersonated someone in this union… I just couldn’t do it.

So I went in the next day and resigned.

I walked away.

This meant walking away from what was, for me, a fortune at the time. I hadn’t been doing my freelance work for a couple of months, so there was nothing else coming in.

I upset the Agency that had been taking very nice care of me. My boss was incredulous. Then angry.

I surprised the (big) company to whom my boss had apparently promised my spying abilities.

And it wasn’t like I had a bunch of savings in the bank.

But it was still with a huge shrug of relief that I walked away from that office.

I had found my line that I could not cross; and it was like opening a door in myself: this is who I am; it was what they tell you about boundaries: that, paradoxically, they can be very freeing.

And I figured that somehow karma would take care of me.

(It did. One of the accounts followed me: the local business for Anheuser-Busch — which I had for several years, and had a total blast. And other work. And marriage, and kids, and a couple of series on TLC and Discovery.)

Nothing that anyone’s going to give me a standing ovation for — but it was priceless to learn, so early on, that there were some things I wouldn’t do, lines I wouldn’t cross — places where no amount of money, no threats, were worth my integrity.

And knowing that — knowing that I absolutely can and will walk away if my integrity is threatened — is probably the most powerful weapon I have in my arsenal. People ask me what my “secret” to media relations is; it’s not really a secret. But knowing that I’m not for sale — even if it’s just me knowing that — allows me, I think, a degree of clarity that not everyone in my business shares.

Where’s your line in the sand?

The Wrong Kind of Friends

My teenage daughter — we’ll call her Franny– caught a friend in a lie tonight.

The kind of lie where the friend was actually blowing Franny off to spend time with someone else, but couldn’t just say that (the way my daughter would have), and instead gave some lame excuse that she couldn’t because, um, “my Mom is being weird.”

Frankie found out because, of course, a different friend posted on MySpace that she was waiting for this same person to come over. So, duh, this girl is not grounded because her Mom was being weird.

Now, this post isn’t about how easy it is to catch people in a lie, thanks to social media, though that’s still true. (My favorite one of those stories is still the Bank Intern and the Fairy Wand).

Nope. Apart from the easy slander on Moms — crazypersonblamecatchers that we are — which I’ll ignore for the moment — this is really about the lifelong process of growing and culling your friendships, and finding those people who are strong enough to tell you the truth. The big huge truths, and the little stupid ones (“Uh, Dude? Is that the same shirt that Chris Farley wore in Tommy Boy?”). And you know what, Franny’s in high school — where people are organized by AGE, for heaven’s sake — so it’s hard for her to understand that there is a world out there where she’ll be able to find and recognize friends because they have things in common beyond the year they were born and whether they’re willing to have lunch together.

Mind you, Franny’s hurt and furious. “How could she lie like that?,” she asks, rhetorically. “How could she not think I’d find out?”

See, at Franny’s age, and the age in which she’s living, friends are literally and figuratively a currency. How many do you have?

But soon, I hope — and I hope that social media stretches to help — her understandings of friends will deepen. It’s not just about who will go to a party with you, or who shows up with a bright smile, posed in your Photobucket.

It’s about finding the people who will appreciate and forgive you when you’re not perfect. Who will be straight up when they have to disappoint you, knowing they’ll be forgiven — but in a way that meets you as an equal, and takes responsibility for errors, not that careens into you and leaves the scene of the accident.

Franny is stronger than she knows, and she’s going to be “one hell of a woman,” as the saying goes — because she’s so, well — frank. It may cost her some friends, and her lesson may be to occasionally learn when to turn up the tact and turn down the honesty.

Tonight, Franny wanted me to tell her she was right, that this girl was terrible– that she should just cross her off her list of friends.

But I wasn’t going to. There’s a place for that kind of friend — you don’t make that kind of person your best friend, because she’ll never be strong enough. She is what she is, and you know it. Franny should sigh, shake her head; maybe say, “that was stupid,” and let it go. And then go on, looking for the right kind of friend — which is, actually, just as hard to find sometimes as a lover. Someone who is fiercely honest, funny, smart, opinionated — and who, just like Franny, will occasionally need to be forgiven.

It’s not your imagination: Organic Milk Tastes Sweeter, Keeps Longer

Some of you may know that my DH works for a natural grocers chain — oh yeah, and that I give him a certain amount of grief about it, too (See: Baby Mama and its hilariously fictitious “Round Earth” natural foods chain).

But y’know, some of the coolest developments in technology are coming from people determined to change what we’ve done for the last century or so, just because it’s not working out so well for our or the planet’s wellbeing.  And today I came across a cool little article in Scientific American — that organic milk keeps fresher longer than non-organic milk because it uses a different sterilization technology, called UTH, instead of pasteurization.  Why?  Because there’s fewer organic farms, and thus the trucks have to travel longer to take the milk farther.  Also — the process used for organic milk doesn’t translate well to cheese.

Who knew?

Science: Hot? Or Not? The case for PR

I was browsing Friendfeed when I came across an incisive little post, “Does Science Need a Celebrity Makeover?”

Of course, there’s a dark side to it — or at least a stupid side. That would be when celebrities spout pseudo-science and their utterances transform myths to reality by virtue of being repeated endlessly via the Internet and video.

In essence, some part of the “celebrity makeover” for science is what I do: try to find the stories inherent in tech and science that may actually be news, and find a way to make them accessible to regular people. Well, more than accessible. Interesting. Cool. Sexy, even. Because some of the things I come across in my work ARE hot. Pupils-dilating, pulse-quickening hot — some of my clients could seriously change the world for the better.

I essentially translate them from uber-geekiness to something where a journalist (and that includes citizen journalists) could say: hot? or not?

So yeah, I think science does need PR. I heard a radio show asking why we were spending any money investigating Mars — or any money on NASA, period. 

Where is the sense of wonder? Of intuiting that the more we understand, the more there is to know? Or that we are just one piece in a huge food chain? Can it be fixed with more celebrity-coolness, if that is the current coin of the realm?

With the war in Iraq, the economy, hurricanes and gas prices — well, science may not seem like a high priority. Mars is an extreme example of scientific inquiry, literally and figuratively miles away from the forces weighing down on us.

But that’s why it’s up to scientists — and the media, and the PR peeps that help feed the media — to do that “celebrity makeover” on science. By all means, keep out the disinformation and misinformation — but somehow, science and tech need to communicate the same glamour and “gotta talk about it” urgency as the latest news on Rihanna‘s bag, Brangelina’s twins, Barack Obama’s flag pin, or whatever else is in our collective face that day. And with apologies to Bill Gates and Bill Clinton — maybe we need Brangelina’s oomph to get actual, accurate scientific excitement going again.

But until then — here’s to all the people who see the sexiness in science — and their efforts to discover and show the amazing and incredible joy in it.

Cuz that’s hot.