Use the Cloud to Get a Clue Page

Use the Cloud to Get a Clue

Abstract

An analysis of an open communications philosophy, a distributed computing model, andsocial networking, which could change the way you use the Internet. by Colin McAllister email: colin.mcallister@ymail.com blog:http://cmcallister.vox.com/

About the Author

Colin McAllister is a Physics Lecturer at Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak,Malaysia. He graduated from Queen’s University of Belfast and Dublin City University. He workedas a Software Engineer in the USA before moving to Malaysia to work in higher education.

Introduction

A thirst for openness and access to the Internet is driving the evolution of personalcommunications. The Internet has revolutionised how people communicate, using email, instantmessages (IM), blogs (web logs), and social networks. I investigate the importance of openness tothis revolution by focussing on one declaration of openness: The Cluetrain Manifesto, one model of computing: Cloud Computing and one application: Social Networking.Cluetrain is a revolutionary approach to open communications, which insists that businessmessages be more personal and less formal. Cloud computing is data processing that is distributedover a network of computers. How can you employ cloud computing to get aboard the Cluetrain?Answer: By using social networks.Social networking supports communications between individuals and groups. It has evolved beyond email, static web pages and groupware. It uses modern scripting frameworks, e.g. Ajax(Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) to provide two way communications and a rich user interface.I argue for the necessity of openness in developing communications technology. Themethods of openness are the diametric opposites of: closed standards, proprietary technology andDRM (Digital Rights Management).I wish to encourage you to experiment with more openness in your communications, whileremaining aware of the risks involved. I mention about twenty social networking services andapplications, some of which you might choose to try out for yourself.

Openness and Freedom

Openness is the mission of Internet companies, but that depends on what the meaning of theword “openness” is. Google wants to make information "universally accessible and useful."Facebook wants to “make the world more open and connected" (Farber, 2008). Most socialnetworking systems are proprietary, and not open like the Internet or open-source software.Openness, in the case of the Internet, is a suite of protocols that are in the public domain.The specifications are published as RFC 1122 and RFC 1123 (Requests for Comments) by the IETF(Internet Engineering Task Force). The Internet is an open system. RFC 1122 states: “Finally, thegoal is full 'open system interconnection': an Internet host must be able to interoperate robustly andeffectively with any other Internet host, across diverse Internet paths. Internationalisation andLocalisation (support for multiple languages) are no small part of openness (W3C UK, 2002).

Use the Cloud to Get a Clue Page

2Openness is “networked person-to-person conversations” as defined by Cluetrain (thesis 18).It is “open access” or “open knowledge” that you are free to use without restriction (OKFN, 2004).It is “open content” that you are free to share and remix, e.g. a creative work to which the author hasassigned one of the Creative Commons licenses (CreativeCommons.org).Openness is software that you are free to modify and distribute, under an open-sourcelicense, such at the GPL (GNU General Public License). GNU’s new Affero licence (FSF, 2007)has been designed for server software, because of the trend to move applications from the desktop tothe server. Mozilla's Firefox browser (Mozilla.com) is open-source software, runs on the MicrosoftWindows, OS/X and Linux operating systems, and competes successfully with Microsoft's proprietary Internet Explorer.Six Apart released their Movable Type blogging software under the GPL in 2007. To quoteAnil Dash, V.P. of Six Apart, “With a name like 'Movable Type', we've always been keenly awareof the importance of freedom, as that name echoes both the birth of the printing press and thecreation of independent media that an individual can control” (Dash, 2007).There are counter-examples to openness. Apple Computer has successful proprietary products; however it makes use of public domain standards (the Internet) and open-source software(BSD Unix) when necessary. Most social networks are proprietary (dot-com), and control whichadd-on applications are permitted (Ling, 2008).

The Cluetrain Manifesto

The Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine et al, 1999) is a list of 95 theses, which define an approachto marketing communications that is open and trusting. It advocates that business messages should be more personal and less “corporate”. Corporate web sites become irrelevant as employees andcustomers become more connected. “The best [Intranets] are built bottom-up by engagedindividuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable” (thesis 45).We can use the first thesis, “Markets are conversations,” to identify the relevant Internetservices; those that support conversation: email, instant messaging, chat, blogs and multimedia.These are the services that social networking integrates.The manifesto promotes a network of human contact that could be described as organic,web-like, rhizomatic or even chaotic. It is an appropriate business model for analysing socialnetworking. It has its critics, (Dvorak, 2002) for example. It is a dot-com era echo of the advice inE.F. Schumacher’s classic 1973 book “Small is Beautiful”, reminding us that the industrial worldhas moved on from the era of the mass production line.Much of the Manifesto is descriptive, observing the changing state of affairs in business. Ittakes on the voice of the customer: “We are those markets.” (thesis 63) and of the employee: “We'realso the workers” (thesis 66). Both of these groups want to talk to each other without bureaucracygetting in the way. The second half of the Manifesto becomes more prescriptive: “They [companies]need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked conversations” (thesis 47).The Manifesto is not a document to be adopted as company policy, because it is not the business of companies to tell their employees how to communicate. The document will have valuewhen it is discovered by individual employees and customers, who may be inspired by it, or not, asthey choose.There is a clue as to why social networking succeeds: “our new-found conversation is moreinteresting” (thesis 90). Faced with today's avalanche of information, people will naturally focustheir attention on what is interesting. Finally, there is a reference to the tools of social networking:“networked conversations may appear confused” and “we have better tools” (thesis 94). The socialnetworking revolution (Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy - thesis 7) is already happening (We are notwaiting - thesis 95).Cluetrain is a useful reference point, but I draw on a variety of frameworks for open

Use the Cloud to Get a Clue Page

3communications, e.g. the Creative Commons (CreativeCommons.org). The Internet itself is built onopen standards (RFCs), as is the World Wide Web.Wikipedia is a good example of Cluetrain-style communications in action. The low-budgetfilm, “The Blair Witch Project”, was successfully promoted by viral marketing (Delana, 2008),which is exactly the “Markets are Conversations” formula of Cluetrain (Searls, 2001). Not everyone prefers Wikipedia to Encyclopaedia Britannica or YouTube to Hollywood. In his book “Cult of theAmateur”, Andrew Keene argues that user-generated content, the lifeblood of the social networking business, corrodes the quality of culture and knowledge (Keene, 2007). The online encyclopaediaCitizendium aims to restore some quality to our knowledge base by having experts oversee theediting of articles (Assignment Zero, 2007).The manifesto is an online and printed book (Locke, 1999). Chapter 4 says “The Net is areal place where people can go to learn, to talk to each other, and to do business together.” That is agood definition of social networking. Chapter 4 also quotes Metcalfe’s Law, “the value of a network increases as the square of the number of users connected to it.” Therefore, social networking becomes much more useful as it accumulates more users, which it does rapidly by viral extension of membership to friends and friends of friends (Schofield, 2004).

Growth of Personal Communications

The Internet and the World Wide Web have expanded since the release of the first Web browser (Mosaic) in 1993. More people are connected via broadband, wireless laptops and mobile phones. Innovations in semiconductors, as described by Moore's Law, enable increasingly complexcommunications services. New services like video telephony (Skype) and peer-to-peer networks become commonplace. In the data centre, databases can be scaled across multiple servers to supporthigh volume traffic. Virtualization lets one PC host many virtual servers, providing cheap web sitehosting.Commercial services can be offered for free, by including in-page advertisements, and usingmetrics to calculate their effectiveness. Search engines like Google and Yahoo are an essential partof this calculation, and many web sites employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to get better ratings. Anyone can register for webmail, blog hosting and social networking, without theinconvenience of paying for membership. Social networking adds the dimension of multicasting; broadcasting your messages to your network of friends, and broadcasting targeted advertisements.It is not clear if the past growth of social networking will continue. The number of socialnetworking users in the U.S. levelled off in April 2008. Advertising estimates by eMarketer for U.S.social networks in 2008 were lowered from U.S. $1.6 billion to U.S. $1.43 billion (Malik, 2008).

Cloud Computing

A service is “cloud computing” if the user has access to distributed computing resourceswithout needing to know where the data is processed. It must be scalable, as it has to support manyusers around the world. Social networks fall under this general definition.Internet companies like Google, Amazon and Yahoo (Grid Today, 2008) are reorganisingtheir businesses to provide cloud computing as a product. Their customers are pioneers in a newmodel of business data processing. A Gartner report, “Assessing the Security Risks of CloudComputing.” advises any business considering the use of cloud computing to get a securityassessment of the provider (Brodkin, 2008).Amazon.com provides EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), which offers three levels of servicedepending on how much data processing you need (MyTradeDomain.com, 2008). Google offersApp Engine cloud computing as a free preview release (Google App Engine 2008), which can bescaled up to 5 million page views per month.Mozilla’s Weave 0.2 environment for the Firefox browser synchronises your browser