Web 101: Communication and Collaboration Online
Topic 3.1 – Your Digital Shadow
Laura's notes
Introduction:
Whilst the information you post to the web purposefully creates your Internet footprint, it is increasingly the case that other people contribute information about you to the web. Whether this is a comment on a blog that mentions you or an image uploaded to a social networking site and tagged with your name, we need to be aware that we are not always in control of how we are perceived.(Curtin, 2010)
Often confused with an Internet Footprint, your digital shadow is a reflection of how visible you (or your company) are to other users of the Internet. Increasingly, digital shadows are being used to evaluate potential employees and by law enforcement agencies. For the most part, this visibility is determined by search engines. At the time of writing, this largely means one thing: Google. (Curtin, 2010)
Instructions:
Follow through the information on this page, stopping to view any videos and performing the activities and readings as you get to them. (Curtin, 2010)
Your Digital Shadow:
Google has become the default search engine for the vast majority of web users. (Curtin, 2010)
Using an algorithm called 'PageRank', http://www.switchit.com/news/improve-pagerank.asp
"PageRank Explained
At the heart of Google, software is a system called PageRank, which gives every site on the Internet a rank from 0-10. So how is this calculated? Well, the page rank of your site is determined by the links to your web site. Each time somebody adds a link to your web site, Google interprets this as a vote for your site. The more links you have to your site, the more votes you get.
Nevertheless, Google also looks a little deeper than just sheer volume of links, and analyses the importance of the web site that has cast a vote for your site. Sites that Google determines are important are those with a higher PageRank. Therefore, a link to you from a site with a PageRank of 6 is better than a link from a site with a PageRank of 3. In fact, 1 link from a site with a PageRank of 6 is better than 10 links from PageRank 3 sites.
Still following? Almost there. When Google is determining how important the link to your site is, it also checks how many other links are on the web page. Take our PageRank 6 page for example. If it has 1000 links on a page, with your site being one of them, Google will determine that the site's 'vote' for your web site is only worth 1/1000 of the PageRank 6 value. If there were only 3 other links on that page their 'vote' for your site will be interpreted by Google as much more important." (Richardson, March 2005)
(and the assistance of Pigeons!)
The technology behind Google's great results
As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders. Larry Page (Google board of directors) and Sergey Brin (Google board of directors) at Stanford University. Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/Home.html ( Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.
Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well
PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutes’ differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.
By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.
When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When one of the pigeons in the cluster observes a relevant result, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.
Integrity
Google searches place particular emphasis on the value of incoming links in ordering search results. For example, in the case of a blog, the more people that link to your blog, the higher it will rank in Google searches. Furthermore, Google ranks the importance of particular websites and assigns a value to them - the more important Google considers a site that links to yours, the higher your ranking in the search results. (Curtin, 2010)
Activity: 'Ego Surfing'
So, let's see how visible you are...we'll go ego-surfing!
Type your name in to the Google search box below to see what (if anything) Google knows about you..
(Hint: Type your name within quotation marks for more specific results and make sure to view at least the first 3 pages)
Laura: Well is seems Google knows an interesting amount about me. At the top of the search page, there are a possible 9,090 results in less than 0.07 seconds. Five hits on the first page, five hits on the second page and a mention in someone else's Twitter list. Page three of the search list has three hits for me and some precarious mentions on other people's pages. Page 4 has another three hits. In the inevitable end, Google says that; 'In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 35 already displayed'. From my perspective this is extremely scary but not a particular revelation, simplified, a search such as the one just completed lays my Web presence wide open to anyone wanting to look at what I have been doing on the Internet. This factor may cause me to rethink what I actually do post to the Internet.
Integrity
Google searches place particular emphasis on the value of incoming links in ordering search results. For example, in the case of a blog, the more people that link to your blog, the higher it will rank in Google searches. Furthermore, Google ranks the importance of particular websites and assigns a value to them - the more important Google considers a site that links to yours, the higher your ranking in the search results. (Curtin, 2010)
Activity: 'Ego Surfing'
So, let's see how visible you are...we'll go ego-surfing!
Type your name in to the Google search box below to see what (if anything) Google knows about you..
(Hint: Type your name within quotation marks for more specific results and make sure to view at least the first 3 pages)
Laura: Well is seems Google knows an interesting amount about me. At the top of the search page, there are a possible 9,090 results in less than 0.07 seconds. Five hits on the first page, five hits on the second page and a mention in someone else's Twitter list. Page three of the search list has three hits for me and some precarious mentions on other people's pages. Page 4 has another three hits. In the inevitable end, Google says that; 'In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 35 already displayed'. From my perspective this is extremely scary but not a particular revelation, simplified, a search such as the one just completed lays my Web presence wide open to anyone wanting to look at what I have been doing on the Internet. This factor may cause me to rethink what I actually do post to the Internet.
Laura: Next search engine: http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ that plays a little game with you concerning blind searching with three different engines. I ended up with bing, Google and YAHOO, hence giving me the same information that the original “Google” search had provided.
Laura: And finally; Spezify http://spezify.com/ which utilises MSN search engine. It's a very intense, in depth searches that view, and reviews your music choices, any particular preference for TV shows that you may have looked at including the types of movies that could possibly been downloaded and enjoyed. There are hits on photos that I have uploaded and mentions in other people MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn sites. I viewed a possible 48 out of 65 items arranged in picture form over the Web page, a nice display but an incredible intrusion into what I thought were my private likes and dislikes."Spezify is indicative of the future direction of the web in that it doesn't restrict itself to text links, but creates a more eclectic series of results that incorporates images and blog posts. As the 'semantic web' draws closer (a shift we'll be looking at in the final week), your identity will only become more embedded (and more easily accessible) online. As data is increasingly tagged and annotated, you may find that you have a presence online that has nothing to do with content you have contributed. If someone uploads a photograph and tags you in the image, you have no control over this. Similarly, if your name is mentioned in someone else's blog, search engines will find it. (Curtin, 2010)
"As you will have seen from the earlier activity, an important issue in managing your web presence is visibility. For example, let's say your name is John Smith (a search that currently produces 4.6 Million Google results!). If you want to remain largely invisible on the web, it isn't going to be that difficult.
But what if you don't want to be invisible? On the other hand, let's say you have a distinctive name. Chances are that as soon as you become reasonably active on the web, information about you is going to appear in a search. By taking control of our participation on the web and by creating an informational 'hub' from, and into which these contributions flow, we can not only increase our visibility but also have a far greater degree of control over our web presence. Whether this be in the form of a static website or a blog, the more that our contributions point back to this centre, the more controllable our digital shadow will be... Assuming that we do not want search engines to arbitrarily decide how we are perceived online, and with the knowledge that anything we contribute to the web is searchable, we need to take control of our own web presence - We need to give Google something to find." (Curtin, 2010)
Readings:
danah boyd (2008) "http://www.danah.org/papers/HBRJune2007.html
Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence.", 14 (1)
Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence.", 14 (1)
feature. Concerned about privacy implications, thousands of users vocalized their discontent
through the site itself, forcing the company to implement privacy tools. This essay examines the
privacy concerns voiced following these events. Because the data made easily visible were already
accessible with effort, what disturbed people was primarily the sense of exposure and invasion. In
essence, the 'privacy trainwreck' that people experienced was the cost of social convergence.
Key Words / convergence / exposure / Facebook / invasion / privacy / social network sites. (boyd,2008)
Solove, D., (2007). How the Free Flow of Information Liberates and Constrains Us, in The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet.
Available: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text/futureofreputation-ch2.pdf
"The Internet allows information to flow more freely than ever before. We can communicate and share ideas in unprecedented ways. These developments are revolutionizing our self-expression and enhancing our freedom. But there's a problem. We're heading toward a world where an extensive trail of information fragments about us will be forever preserved on the Internet, displayed instantly in a Google search. We will be forced to live with a detailed record beginning with childhood that will stay with us for life wherever we go, searchable and accessible from many where in the world. This data can often be of dubious reliability; it can be false and defamatory; or it can be true but deeply humiliating or discrediting. We may find it increasingly difficult to have a fresh start, a second chance, or a clean slate. We might find it harder to engage in self-exploration if every false step and foolish act is chronicled forever in a permanent record. This record will affect our ability to define our identities, to obtain jobs, to participate in public life, and more. Ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet might impede our freedom. How and why is this happening? How can the freeflow of information make us freer yet less free as well?" (Solove, 2007)
boyd, danah. 2007. "We Googled You: Should Fred hire Mimi despite her online history?" Case Commentary,Harvard Business Review, June. Available:
Citation: boyd, danah. 2007. "We Googled You: Should Fred hire Mimi despite her online history?" Case Commentary, Harvard Business Review, June.
This is my response to Diane Coutu's case student. To read the complete case study with other respondents' commentary, you will need to order the June 2007 issue from http://www.google.com.au/Harvard Business Review. Because this case is the firstInteractive Case Study, the case is now online without the responses.
Background: What follows is my response to Diane Coutu's "We Googled You" case study where Fred is trying to decide whether or not to hire Mimi after one of Fred's co-workers googles Mimi and finds newspaper clippings about Mimi protesting Chinese policies. Given the case study, we were then asked, "should Fred hire Mimi despite her online history?" To fully understand my response requires reading the original case (which I'd encourage) but I still felt that it was important to make my response available even if the complete context is missing.
I just celebrated my ten-year blogging anniversary. I started blogging when I was 19, and before that, I regularly posted to public mailing lists, message boards, and Usenet. I grew up with this technology, and I'm part of the generation that should be embarrassed by what we posted. But I'm not—those posts are part of my past, part of who I am. I look back at the 15-year-old me, and I think, "My, you were foolish." Many of today's teens will also look back at the immaturity of their teen years and giggle uncomfortably. Over time, foolish digital pasts will simply become part of the cultural
fabric. (boyd, 2007)
Reference:
Google Australia site http://www.google.com.au/
PageRank, How does Google work - explained. http://www.switchit.com/news/improve-pagerank.asp
Google Pigeon - http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
