“Your future employer is watching you online”

Please don’t stop with these two paragraphs from Michael Fertik’s excellent post on one of the Harvard Business Review blogs. It’s not overly long and filled with interesting nuggets. To wet your whistle:

“Using today’s technology, an employer can search 1,000 submitted resumes for keywords such as university name, previous employer name, and specialty. The computer can serve up the three people who fit the employer’s criteria. The employer reaches out, interviews them, and hires one. More than 99% of candidates didn’t even get at bat. No human evaluation — for subtlety, interesting career paths, etc. — was needed or utilized to get to the top of the pile.”

“Let’s imagine what this looks like with tomorrow’s technology. The computer knows the digital profiles of top employees at the employer’s company. It knows their backgrounds; their reputation on the internet for professionalism, hard work, and achievement; their previous patterns of work history and tenure; their collaboration styles; what the internet thinks their personal interests and habits are; what their friends are like; what their family lives are like, etc. The employer tells the machine that she’d like to get a terrific new employee for the Customer Service department. The machine then researches the million people who live closest to her office, surfaces three names based on their digital reputations and how similar they are to top employees at the company, and she reaches out to them. She and the candidates are mutually delighted with the result.”

I think I’ve always (since I got online) known we were headed here and (subconsciously?) conducted myself accordingly. But then, I was sort of an adult by the time the net came along, with youthful indiscretions confined to some fading photos (which I put online).

I know some will be disturbed by the this post and perhaps I should be, but I’m not.

When experts don’t seem so “expert”

This is an excerpt from a post by Terry Heaton, one of the handful of thinkers I look to first for an understanding of what’s happening in the world. The link to his post is below, but the following paragraphs can stand on their own.

Our culture is based upon hierarchical layers of “expertise,” some of it licensed by the state. This produces order, which Henry Adams called “the dream of man.”

It also produces elites, the governing class, those who call the shots for others not so fortunate as to occupy the higher altitudes. This is the 1% against which the occupiers bring their protests, their dis-order.

We used to think that elites and hierarchical order were necessary for the well-being of all, but that idea is being challenged as knowledge — the protected source of power (and elevation) — is being spread sideways along the Great Horizontal. It’s not that we’re so much smarter than we used to be; it’s that the experts don’t seem so “expert” anymore, because the knowledge that gave them their status isn’t protected today. Anybody can access it with the touch of a finger.

This is giving institutions fits, and each one is fighting for its very life against the inevitable flattening that’s taking place. Medicine wants no part of smart and informed patients and neither does the insurance industry. The legal world scoffs at the notion that they’re in it for themselves as they occupy legislatures and create the laws that work on their behalf. Higher education increasingly touts the campus experience over what’s being learned, because they all know that the Web has unlimited teaching capacity. Government needs its silos to sustain its bureaucracy, but the Great Horizontal cuts across them all.

I added the emphasis in graf 3. For me, this is The Big Idea of the early 21st century. The high-speed smart phone in my pocket means you don’t necessarily know more than I do, so why the fuck should you be in charge?

What an exciting time to be alive. And sure to get exciting-er.

 

“Google+ is a bank”

Dave Winer believes Google+ wants to “move money around the same way Amazon does. They need your real name because it’s a business.”

“Google-Plus is their integrated communication system. Over time, it’s going to be at the core of everything they do, from auctions, to paying for things with Android phones, to their groupon and yelp clones. They’re going everywhere, and this is the system that will tie it all together. So, at the outset, of course they need real identities. That Google-Plus account you’re playing with today is going to be your bank account next year.”

“Why the impossible happens more often”

Kevin Kelly is one of the brilliant thinker/writers I look to for hope (along with Scott Adams, Clay Shirky, William Gibson and a few other). Following are from a post on why the impossible happens more often these days:

“Collectively we behave differently than individuals. Much more importantly, as individuals we behave differently in collectives. This has been true a long while. What’s new is the velocity at which we a headed into this higher territory of global connectivity. We are swept up in a tectonic shift toward large, fast, social organizations connecting us in novel ways. There may be a million different ways to connect a billion people, and each way will reveal something new about us. Something hidden previously.”

“Most of what “everybody knows” about us is based on the human individual. Collectively, connected humans will be capable of things we cannot imagine right now. These future phenomenon will rightly seem impossible.”

“My prediction is that in the coming years our biggest surprises — the ones that aren’t predicted — will be the result some new method of large scale social interactions. While we will get good at predicting the next advance of technological innovation, we won’t get very good at predicting what happens with the hive mind. And exploring the hive mind — the thousands of ways in which we can connect and reconnect ourselves — will be the chief activity of our civilization in the near term. If I am right then we’ll have to get better at believing in the impossible.”

Is the party moving?

Been a while since I went five days without sharing something here. Most of Friday and Saturday in Tulsa with family. Busy at work. But the real culprit is almost certainly Google +, the new social “project” from Google. I’m spending a lot of my online time there, and less all other places (here, Twitter, etc).

I won’t try to explain it. I learned that lesson with Twitter. If I have to explain it, you probably won’t use G+.  And I’ll be very surprised if it “kills” any of the other social sites. But for those who like and use Google products/services, Google + is fun.

Like most users, the Circles approach to following and sharing is the big thing for me. I have a circle of friends & family; work; and interesting people who I don’t know but like to read. This is pretty close to how my life works.

So what about smays.com. That’s a good question. Some of the Cool Kids have already shuttered their blogs and moved lock, stock and barrel to Google +. Unlikely I will do that. I have almost 10 years invested in this blog and I like having my on place to park things. But I do expect to post less.

I’m thinking I’ll share something here here when I have something “original” to contribute. All of the the “did you see this?” stuff will get posted to my Google + stream. That’s got to be a 10-to-1 ratio. Maybe higher.

As for Twitter, who knows. I really like the Twitter format. And the people I follow on Twitter. If many/most of them migrate to G+, Twitter becomes that much less interesting. We’ll see.

Revisiting Picassa

I’m a long-time flickr fan. Have a couple of thousand photos in my photostream. Shoot, I’m paid up until 2013. It’s a great service. And yesterday I downloaded (copied) all of those photos and posted them to my Picassa account.

The geek-o-sphere is buzzing (wait, no good)… is all atwitter (uh, that won’t work)… talking about Google+, the new social initiative from Google. If you haven’t followed this, it’s not important, except to explain why I’m exploring another place to put my photos online.

I’m a big fan of most Google services (Gmail, Reader, YouTube, Calendar, Maps, etc etc) and all of these will –eventually– be tightly integrated with Google+. It dawned on me that photos was about the only thing I was not using Google for.

No one knows if Google+ will be a success but I’m hoping that it is and decided it made sense to bring my pix under the Google tent.

And if you have an invite…

Juice, stroke, Klout!

Interesting article in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times (I think I used the last of my 20 free accesses for the month). It’s about the growing importance (?) of online influence.

“If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account, you are already being judged — or will be soon. Companies with names like Klout, PeerIndex and Twitter Grader are in the process of scoring millions, eventually billions, of people on their level of influence — or in the lingo, rating “influencers.” Yet the companies are not simply looking at the number of followers or friends you’ve amassed. Rather, they are beginning to measure influence in more nuanced ways, and posting their judgments — in the form of a score — online.”

Yes, I check my Klout score from time to time but it’s never gotten above 40. 39 as of a few minutes ago. But 40 suggests “a strong, but niche, following.” Niche being the operative word. And the average Klout score is in the high teens, so…

“After analyzing 22 million tweets last year, researchers at Hewlett-Packard found that it’s not enough to attract Twitter followers — you must inspire those followers to take action. In other words, influence is about engagement and motivation, not just racking up legions of followers.”

Is there any sort of analogue to this in the world of traditional advertising? Do we even care about the influence of someone hearing our radio ad?

“Industry professionals say it’s also important to focus your digital presence on one or two areas of interest. Don’t be a generalist. Most importantly: be passionate, knowledgeable and trustworthy.”

Half the fun of checking your Klout score is comparing your score to your friends and acquaintances.

My pal David Brazeal is off on his own now and needs as much Klout as he can get. He’s something of an expert on “weather, lightening & tornados.” Jonathan Brownfield should be higher given his access to beautiful, large-breasted young women.

My plan is to stand outside Hooters and wait for a bad storm.