But I’ll get to the point of this post, I just read in the New York Times that Equifax, one of the larger consumer credit reporting agencies in the United States,  is developing an “i-card” service that will let you create and then assert an online identity, backed up by them. Yes, they’re hardly the first to offer some kind of online identity validation, but their being a major offline player may make them different than OpenID or similar services. Then again, the article suggests that the service is complex to use, so it might just fall under its own weight.

In any case, I hope that the blogosphere takes these efforts seriously. As I’ve noted in the past (e.g., here), it strikes me as oddly antisocial that anonymous publishing is the norm in social media, at least for commenters. Yes, anonymity makes sense for whistle blowers, political dissidents, and anyone else who fears retribution. But it is hardly necessary for your average TechCrunch commenter. Instead, it makes it easy for people to post vitriol–or just nonsense–without any risk to personal reputation. I don’t see the social value.

Moreover, just imagine how easy it would be for someone who didn’t like you do start posting embarrassing comments and signing them with your name. Or perhaps someone might pursue a more subtle strategy, such as posting reasonable-sounding comments in order to advance an agenda. Less speculatively, we’ve seen how anonymity can be troublesome for the integrity of Wikipedia editing.

Given the growing role of social media, we’re going to have to cross this information accountability bridge sooner or later. I hope it’s sooner. Would it be nice if we developed a cultural norm that people stood proudly behind their online words?

Review Sites

Many of us may have had a good laugh to discover that a Belkin employee was using Mechanical Turk to pay reviewers $0.65 per positive review. In contrast, people were less amused by the allegations that Yelp was blackmailing the merchants reviewed on its site. And some question whether the business model of Get Satisfaction is inherently deceptive.

If there is a moral, it is that user-generated content assumes a social contract that the users and their opinions are sincere. We may all claim to be skeptical and cynical, but the repeated outrage at violations of trust suggests otherwise. Let’s not feign shock to discover that human beings are corruptible. But our systems should be less easily manipulated. A movement against excessive online anonymity would be a good start. There’s a trade-off between privacy and information accountability, and we should expect publishers to err toward the latter.

Social Media

Some might say I’m a bit overzealous on the subject of transparency in social media. But, as it turns out, I’m not the only one. Netezza, a data warehousing appliance company, operates a delightfully funny blog called Data Liberators. I commend them for a very perky social media marketing campaign. Except…they don’t make it especially clear that the site is operated by Netezza, and someone slammed them for it. I don’t think Netezza was trying to be sneaky. But transparency is a burden that falls squarely on content producers, not consumers–especially on marketers who aim to persuade. To his credit, Netezza’s VP of Marketing says that he intends to (but has not yet) put an About page on the blog, clearly indicating who runs it.

As it turns out, even the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking an interest in transparency in social media. They’d like paid endorsers to disclose their sponsors, and for both to be accountable for adhering truth in advertising. Legally enforced or not, that strikes me as a good principle for companies that have a long-term interest in their brand equity.

Site Search

I almost feel sorry for Amazon, given the PR fires they’ve had to fight in the past weeks. First, there was the simulated rape game that they briefly carried in their catalog. Then there was the girl-scout-cookie-gate, which still isn’t quite resolved. But this past weekend was a true PR inferno: even now, #AmazonFail remains the top trending topic on Twitter because Amazon apparently started excluding LGBT books from “some searches and best seller lists” on the grounds of their being “adult” materials. (Just learned: Owen Thomas at Gawker claims “well-known hacker has come forward and claimed the whole thing was his prank” and that he exploited the feature that lets Amazon users flag books as “inappropriate.”)

I actually don’t have strong feelings about what Amazon chooses to sell on its site, or how it chooses to present it. If Amazon offends me enough, I’ll shop elsewhere. If they break the law, I trust the authorities to step in.

But surely their marketing department cares about the damage that recent incidents have been inflicting on their brand. Moreover, it seems that they are a victim of their lack of transparency–possibly even to themselves!  If they could clearly and convincingly explain what appears on their site and why, consumers would surely cut them a lot more slack.

In short, be transparent…or FAIL.

But apparently Belkin may have read Ben Kunz’s “Modest Blogging Proposal” and not recognized it as satire. According to The Daily Background, a Belkin employee used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to pay people to write positive reviews of Belkin’s products–65 cents for each review. The scandal has received wide coverage through a post by John Biggs on CrunchGear.

I can’t say I’m shocked (shocked!) to find out that there’s payola going on here. And, by way of an “I told you so,” a big part of the problem is that reviews are anonymous, and anonymity doesn’t play well with information accountability.

But I am disappointed that people’s integrity is so cheap. Even Esau was able to swing a mess of pottage, which by my best guess would go for $5 in 2009 dollars.

The story is still evolving, but it looks pretty bad for College Prowler. Social networks, whether offline or online, are built on trust, and, as we’ve learned recently from the Madoff scandal, networks of trust are vulnerable. Perhaps universities should have been more proactive in establish their own Class of 2013 Facebook groups, though that feels like blaming the victim.

In my view, this incident argues in favor of discouraging online anonymity, at least in contexts where we need to build trust. This is the one aspect in which Knol got it right.

I maintain, as does Udi Manber at Google, that anonymity is overrated. All else equal, I’d like to know whose writing I’m reading. Author–or, in Wikipedia’s case, editor–reputation is a valuable signal, and Wikipedia all but obliterates it. In fact, reader can track a non-anonymous editor’s contributions to Wikipedia. But Wikipedia hardly facilitates or encourages readers to pay attention to identities of editors.

Still, Knol does not appear to be a credible alternative to Wikipedia, let alone a competitive threat. From all accounts, Wikipedia offers not only much greater quantity, but also higher quality. Why?

Here are my speculations, mostly borrowed from the conventional wisdom:

1. First-mover advantage. Much of the information in Wikipedia is good enough and is easily found. Even if you write a better article elsewhere, few people will care. And those who do might suggest you could have improved the Wikipedia entry instead.
2. Non-financial motivations. According to Manjoo, most Knol authors are financially motivated. In contrast, Wikipedia authors have no hope of obtaining direct financial benefit from their contributions–and Wikipedia strongly discourages contributions that reflect a conflict of interest. As a result, those who have contributed to Wikipedia have done so from non-financial motivation, and there are numerous studies suggesting that non-financial motivations trump financial ones.
3. Ease of collective editing. Wikipedia makes it easy–perhaps too easy–to edit an entry. In contrast, on Knol, an edit must be accepted by the original author before it is effective. I know from my own experience with moderated comment threads, that the delay is often sufficient to quash my initiative to contribute.

Perhaps it is premature to write Knol’s obituary. But I agree with Manjoo’s conclusion: “The problem is that we don’t need the next Wikipedia. Today’s version works amazingly well.”

It’s a nice idea, since anonymous authorship is a a major factor in the adversarial nature of information retrieval on the web. Not only does the accountability of authorship inhibit vandalism and edit wars, but it also allows readers to decide for themselves whom to trust–at least to the extent that readers are able and willing to obtain reliable information about the authors. Without question, they are addressing Wikipedia’s biggest weakness.

But it’s too little, too late. Wikipedia is already there. And, despite complaints about its inaccuracy and bias, Wikipedia is a fantastic, highly utilized resource. The only way I see for Knol to supplant Wikipedia in reasonable time frame is through a massive cut-and-paste to make up for the huge difference in content.

Interestingly, Wikipedia does not seem to place any onerous restrictions on verbatim copying. However, unless a single author is 100% responsible for authoring a Wikipedia entry, it isn’t clear that anyone can simply copy the entry into Knol.

I know that it’s dangerous to bet against Google. But I’m really skeptical about this latest effort. It’s a pity, because I think their emphasis is the right one. But for once I wish they’d been a bit more humble and accepted that they aren’t going to build a better Wikipedia from scratch.