Google Street View: an apparently useless feature

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Google Street View: una feature apparentemente inutile

Per un pò vorrei fermare la mia analisi sui social network perciò in questo articolo mi soffermerò su altri argomenti.

Questa volta lasciamo Facebook ai suoi problemi (come contare i soldi?) e ci concentriamo su un altro gigante di Internet: Google.

Parliamo di Google Street View, il servizio utilizzabile tramite Google Maps che permette di osservare delle foto panoramiche di molte città intorno al mondo.
Nonostante sia una curiosa feature, ci viene naturale chiederci perchè Google mandi queste macchine in giro per il mondo: hanno davvero tutto questo denaro da sprecare?

Qualcuno potrebbe pensare che l’obiettivo principale sia quello di pubblicizzare i propri servizi, dal momento che queste macchine hanno appiccicati sulla carrozzeria diversi adesivi che indicano chi le sta mandando in giro. E questa è senz’altro una ragione, ma di certo non la principale!
Non credo spenderebbero tutto quel denaro per quel motivo, sembrerebbe un pò eccessivo. Lo fanno per convincere le persone ad utilizzare di più Google Maps? Penso che verrebbe utilizzato ugualmente.

La cosa che più mi piace di Google è forse la furbizia nelle scelte, perchè nella maggior parte dei casi vediamo che c’è una ragione dietro la gratuità dei loro servizi. Basta prendere una qualsiasi delle Google App, è presente una versione disponibile al pubblico che è una sorta di demo dei servizi più dettagliati che vengono in realtà venduti alle aziende (gmail e google docs ad esempio).

Perciò allo stesso modo c’è una spiegazione anche per Google Street View. Queste macchine hanno a bordo delle speciali antenne Wi-Fi/GSM/3G grazie alle quali Google può creare un database di ogni access point e ripetitore della rete cellulare che si trova sulla strada che percorre la macchina.

Con le informazioni raccolte grazie a questa campagna ora possono offrire un nuovo servizio agli utenti con telefoni cellulari: Google Mylocation.
Questo servizio di fatto permette alle applicazioni sui telefoni cellulari di avere un modo per ottenere informazioni di posizione senza aver bisogno di usare il GPS, questi dati sono disponibili sempre qualora ci sia campo (se il telefono prende allora questo servizio funziona, è come dire che sono sempre disponibili). Queste informazioni si ottengono con tecniche di trilaterazione e non hanno bisogno del supporto satellitare, perciò sono più veloci ed affidabili (soprattutto nelle grandi città).

In questo modo Google ha costruito l’infrastruttura dietro i loro servizi di navigazione rendendola potenzialmente indipendente dal GPS (anche se tuttora si appoggiano ai satelliti), basandola quindi su strutture preesistenti ed affidandosi ai dati mandati automaticamente dagli utenti per mantenere aggiornato il data base degli access point.

Google Street View è solo un effetto collaterale di questa grande operazione. Le cose non sono mai quello che sembrano, vero?

Andrea

ps: se volete potete seguirmi su twitter (tag @scambione), lì troverete i link ai nuovi articoli quando ne posterò!

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I'd like to stop for some time my social network insight so I'll talk about different matters in this article.

This time we leave Facebook to his problems (how to count their money?) and focus on another Internet giant: Google.

Let's talk about Google Street View, the service you can access from google maps which provides panoramic photos of cities around the world. 

Besides being a curious feature, it sounds natural to ask ourselves why Google sends those little cars around the world, do they really have all this money to spare?

Someone might think that the main purpose could be advertising their services, in fact those cars have many stickers indicating who is sending them around. And that is indeed a reason, but it is not the main one.

I don't think they would spend all this money only for that motivation, it sounds a little excessive.They do it in order to convince people to use more google maps? I think people would use it anyway.

One of the things I like about Google is its subtlety, because in the majority of the cases we find that there is a reason behind the free nature of their services. Take any Google App, there is a free version available to everyone which is a sort of demo of the more detailed services which are sold to the companies (gmail and google docs for example).

So there is an explanation also for Google Street View. Those cars have also some special Wi-Fi/GSM/3G antennas on board, so Google can create a special database of any access point and cell phone tower which was on the way of the car. 

With these informations they gather in this campaign they can offer a service to mobile users: Google Mylocation.

This service in fact provides mobile applications a way to know position informations without relaying on GPS, and those data are available when cell phone coverage is active (that's like saying that they are always available). This is obtained with trilateration techniques and does not need satellite interaction, so it is faster and reliable (expecially inside the cities).

This way Google built the infrastructure behind their navigation services making them potentially GPS independent (they still use satellites though), actually basing it upon existent structures and using the data sent automatically by the users to keep their access point database up to date.

Google Street View is only a side effect of this great operation. Things are never what they seem, aren't they?

Andrea

ps: If you want you can follow me on twitter, I'll put there the links to my new articles! my tag is @scambione 

SN analysis: Facebook (money making trap)

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Analisi social network: Facebook (trappola per far soldi)

Il Web 2.0 e i contenuti generati dagli utenti hanno cambiato radicalmente il modo in cui le persone vivono la navigazione in Internet. Persino la possibilità per voi di leggere questo articolo è possibile solo grazie a questo concetto.

Anche se sembra così naturale ora, c’è stato un tempo in cui creare un sito come Youtube era una scommessa incerta, nessuno sapeva se le persone avrebbero accettato il ruolo di generatori di contenuti.
Ora sappiamo che chi ha deciso di fare quel salto ha fatto una delle scelte più proficue di sempre!

Non penso che Zuckerberg e i suoi colleghi quando decisero di creare la prima versione di Facebook avessero un’idea della quantità di denaro che avrebbero guadagnato.
Ma una volta che hanno realizzato che avrebbero pututo guadagnare moltissimo lo hanno trasformato in una sorta di trappola per far soldi.

In uno dei precedenti articoli ho mostrato come l’utente medio di Facebook non sia in realtà un vero generatore di contenuti, ci sono poche persone che creano contenuti e molti che li condividono. Perciò per molte persone Facebook è una sorta di trappola temporale, dove si ritrovano la maggior parte del tempo a guardare la loro home ricercando qualcosa da condividere.

Possiedo un account di Facebook da almeno due anni e il sito è cambiato molto da quando mi sono iscritto. Ciò è normale nel web 2.0, è il concetto di open beta. Le persone usano software che cambia costantemente, e non possono sapere come sarà il sito che stanno visitando il giorno successivo.

E’ vero che principalmente Facebook è usato per condividere foto e per dire agli altri cosa pensiamo o proviamo in un certo momento, ma spesso nuove feature vengono aggiunte e penso che il motivo della loro introduzione sia spingere le persone a passare ancora più tempo sul sito in questione.

Perciò quando non si cercano notizie sulla home ci si ritrova a giocare a poker oppure a lavorare nella nostra fattoria virtuale.
Il risultato è che passiamo ancora più tempo sul sito e più tempo ci si sta più è probabile che saltino all’occhio le pubblicità e che ci clicchiamo sopra. Questa può sembrare una piccola cosa, ma se moltiplicata per più di 500 milioni di utenti attivi genera davvero una grande quantità di denaro.

Queste osservazioni non sono vere per tutti i social network, per esempio lo staff di Twitter non ha guadagnato niente fino all’introduzione dei “promoted tweets”, e sembra difficile credere che aggiungano qualcosa di diverso da questi per guadagnare, visto che Twitter è ridotto all’osso e consente solo di generare tweet.

Congratulazioni Mr Zuckerberg, brindiamo alla tua trappola per far soldi!

E al nostro spreco di tempo.

Andrea

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Web 2.0 and user generated content have radically changed the way people experience their Internet surfing. Even the possibility for you to read what I think is possible only thanks to those concepts.

Even if it sounds so natural now there was a time where creating a site like Youtube was an uncertain bet, no one knew if people would have accepted the role of content providers.

Now we know that who decided to make that leap has made one of the most profitable choice ever!

I don't think that when Zuckerberg and his mates decided to create the first Facebook release had an idea of the amount of money they would have earned.

But once they realized the fact they could earn a lot of money they transformed it in a sort of money making trap.

In one of my previous articles I showed how the common Facebook user is not a real content provider, there are few people who provide content and a lot who share content.

So for many people Facebook is sort of a time trap, where they finds themselves most of the time watching their home in search for something to share.

I have a Facebook account since almost two years and the website changed a lot since I first joined. This is normal in web 2.0, it's the concept of open beta. People are using software which is constantly changing, and they don't know how the site they are browsing will be the following day.

It's true that basicly Facebook is used for photo sharing, and to tell people what do we think or feel in one particular moment, but often new features are added and I feel that the purpose of their introduction is to push people to spend more time on the website.

So when you are not browsing for news in your home you find yourself playing poker or working in your virtual farm.

The result is that you spend more time on the site, and the more you stay on it the more you are likely to see advertising and click on it, which might seem a simple little thing, but if multiplied for more than 500 million active users produces really a lot of money.

These observations I made are not true for every social networking site, for example Twitter crew was not earning money until the introduction of "promoted tweets", and it is hard to believe that they will add something different from that in order to make money.

Congratulations mr. Zuckerberg, let's drink to your money making trap!

And to our waste of time.

Andrea

SN analysis: Facebook ("see friendship" button)

EDIT: I have actually found that there is a sort of search engine in order to access the details of your friends' relationships, so all the advices contained in this article are useless. Some reflections are still interesting, so feel free to go on reading!

You may have noticed that the "see wall-to-wall" button has recently been replaced with a new one: the "see friendship" button.

Previously the first let you see all the wall posts that two of your friends sent each other, now the second shows many more aspects in the interaction between them.

With the new one you can see the events they attended together, the photos where they are both tagged, the things they both like, and so on!

The only way to access this feature is to be friend with both of them, you can find it under a wall post that one sent to the other and it works also with old wall posts, so you can search an older one and watch all the past interactions between them.

Is it really necessary to make a list all of the privacy problems that could rise because of this simple button? Just try to think to some possible scenarios. We could talk a lot about this matter, but this is not the purpose of this article. I would like to point out some ways to avoid revealing our private informations with this new feature.

This is only the latest instrument that Facebook provided to us in order to snoop in our friends lives, but it seems to be the most effective, also because I haven't found yet a way to get rid of it.

There are two things that could be done in order to avoid the most damage possible from this feature: delete your account or disabling wall posting by your friends and delete previous wall posts you made on your friends' walls.

Since I don't think most of you want to delete your accounts, the second solution looks like the most fair.

In order to do this you have to go to your privacy settings and disable the "friends can post on my wall" checkbox. You'll have to delete the previous posts you made on their walls by yourself.

I know that many of you use the wall in order to send small messages, but luckily Facebook provides many other instruments to do that without compromising your privacy, for example their custom mail (which apparently is the only one thing that keeps me from deleting my account), the chat and link tagging.

An alternative could be to spam Facebook's support center with requests of providing an option to disable the button, but until then (if ever Facebook crew cared of user feedback) you would be uncovered.

This instrument seems to be the ultimate social engineering tool.

Don't you know what am I talking about? Stay tuned for more on this blog.

SN analysis: Facebook (creating or sharing?)

This time I'm going to make some considerations about posting and sharing in Facebook.

Everytime we access to our home page we are presented the latest posts by our friends, which could be of many different kinds.
Those are the ones I would like to analyse:

- statuses (someone actually thought what to write and how to write it)
- links (our friend might have found something in the Internet or shared it from another friend on the social network)
- notes (these are more like extended in length statuses that can be shared by anyone on his own profile)

A link or a note can either be created or shared by who put it in his wall, instead a status is completely original and reflects an actual thought by who posted it.
When I was talking about our friends lists I mentioned the "hidden technology influence", and I would like to bring back that concept for this matter, because I see it very neatly in the way some of my friends use Facebook.

This influence in the way we interact is strongly determined by the simple "share" button. The way we are presented posts and these sharing instruments change most of Facebook user's attitude to think and create by themselves in a less creative and more passive sharing attitude.

Isn't it easier to click and share a thought than actually think and write a personal one? Indeed it is, but according to how much time people (especially the young) spend on this platform, it might end in changing people's way of living and interacting with themselves in real life.

Think about it, isn't it just happening these days? Some people I know in real life don't make many original thoughts, thay just say things they have heard from someone else (maybe on the television?) and that they seem not to have reasoned on.

What appears to me as the most dangerous factor in these process are notes. There are groups or fan pages which can be used to publish notes (for example there is a spreading of pages where the notes that are published cover sentimental matters). The fact that I noticed since the introduction of these "group notes" (let's call them this way) is that some people, especially the younger, don't post any status anymore and instead their wall is full of these "pre-packaged-simple-thought" notes!

Now you see what I mean with wrong and potentially dangerous use of a powerful instrument?

I will be glad to answer any question, and also to hear your point of view, so feel free to leave a comment!

Andrea