Author Archives: zephoria

Why Snapchat is Valuable: It’s All About Attention

Most people who encounter a link to this post will never read beyond this paragraph. Heck, most people who encountered a link to this post didn’t click on the link to begin with. They simply saw the headline, took note that someone over 30 thinks that maybe Snapchat is important, and moved onto the next item in their Facebook/Twitter/RSS/you-name-it stream of media. And even if they did read it, I’ll never know it because they won’t comment or retweet or favorite this in any way.

We’ve all gotten used to wading in streams of social media content. Open up Instagram or Secret on your phone and you’ll flick on through the posts in your stream, looking for a piece of content that’ll catch your eye. Maybe you don’t even bother looking at the raw stream on Twitter. You don’t have to because countless curatorial services like digg are available to tell you what was most important in your network. Facebook doesn’t even bother letting you see your raw stream; their algorithms determine what you get access to in the first place (unless, of course, someone pays to make sure their friends see their content).

Snapchat offers a different proposition. Everyone gets hung up on how the disappearance of images may (or may not) afford a new kind of privacy. Adults fret about how teens might be using this affordance to share inappropriate (read: sexy) pictures, projecting their own bad habits onto youth. But this is isn’t what makes Snapchat utterly intriguing. What makes Snapchat matter has to do with how it treats attention.

When someone sends you an image/video via Snapchat, they choose how long you get to view the image/video. The underlying message is simple: You’ve got 7 seconds. PAY ATTENTION. And when people do choose to open a Snap, they actually stop what they’re doing and look.

In a digital world where everyone’s flicking through headshots, images, and text without processing any of it, Snapchat asks you to stand still and pay attention to the gift that someone in your network just gave you. As a result, I watch teens choose not to open a Snap the moment they get it because they want to wait for the moment when they can appreciate whatever is behind that closed door. And when they do, I watch them tune out everything else and just concentrate on what’s in front of them. Rather than serving as yet-another distraction, Snapchat invites focus.

Furthermore, in an ecosystem where people “favorite” or “like” content that is inherently unlikeable just to acknowledge that they’ve consumed it, Snapchat simply notifies the creator when the receiver opens it up. This is such a subtle but beautiful way of embedding recognition into the system. Sometimes, a direct response is necessary. Sometimes, we need nothing more than a simple nod, a way of signaling acknowledgement. And that’s precisely why the small little “opened” note will bring a smile to someone’s face even if the recipient never said a word.

Snapchat is a reminder that constraints have a social purpose, that there is beauty in simplicity, and that the ephemeral is valuable. There aren’t many services out there that fundamentally question the default logic of social media and, for that, I think that we all need to pay attention to and acknowledge Snapchat’s moves in this ecosystem.

(This post was originally published on LinkedIn. More comments can be found there.)

TIME Magazine Op-Ed: Let Kids Run Wild Online

I wrote the following op-ed for TIME Magazine. This was published in the March 13, 2014 issue under the title “Let Kids Run Wild Online.” To my surprise and delight, the op-ed was featured on the cover of the magazine.

Trapped by helicopter parents and desperate to carve out a space of their own, teens need a place to make mistakes.

Bicycles, roller skates and skateboards are dangerous. I still have scars on my knees from my childhood run-ins with various wheeled contraptions. Jungle gyms are also dangerous; I broke my left arm falling off one. And don’t get me started on walking. Admittedly, I was a klutzy kid, but I’m glad I didn’t spend my childhood trapped in a padded room to protect me from every bump and bruise.

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” But parents can’t handle it when teenagers put this philosophy into practice. And now technology has become the new field for the age-old battle between adults and their freedom-craving kids.

Locked indoors, unable to get on their bicycles and hang out with their friends, teens have turned to social media and their mobile phones to gossip, flirt and socialize with their peers. What they do online often mirrors what they might otherwise do if their mobility weren’t so heavily constrained in the age of helicopter parenting. Social media and smartphone apps have become so popular in recent years because teens need a place to call their own. They want the freedom to explore their identity and the world around them. Instead of sneaking out (should we discuss the risks of climbing out of windows?), they jump online.

As teens have moved online, parents have projected their fears onto the Internet, imagining all the potential dangers that youth might face–from violent strangers to cruel peers to pictures or words that could haunt them on Google for the rest of their lives.

Rather than helping teens develop strategies for negotiating public life and the potential risks of interacting with others, fearful parents have focused on tracking, monitoring and blocking. These tactics don’t help teens develop the skills they need to manage complex social situations, assess risks and get help when they’re in trouble. Banning cell phones won’t stop a teen who’s in love cope with the messy dynamics of sexting. “Protecting” kids may feel like the right thing to do, but it undermines the learning that teens need to do as they come of age in a technology-soaked world.

The key to helping youth navigate contemporary digital life isn’t more restrictions. It’s freedom–plus communication. Famed urban theorist Jane Jacobs used to argue that the safest neighborhoods were those where communities collectively took interest in and paid attention to what happened on the streets. Safety didn’t come from surveillance cameras or keeping everyone indoors but from a collective willingness to watch out for one another and be present as people struggled. The same is true online.

What makes the digital street safe is when teens and adults collectively agree to open their eyes and pay attention, communicate and collaboratively negotiate difficult situations. Teens need the freedom to wander the digital street, but they also need to know that caring adults are behind them and supporting them wherever they go. The first step is to turn off the tracking software. Then ask your kids what they’re doing when they’re online–and why it’s so important to them.

What’s Behind the Free PDF of “It’s Complicated” (no, no, not malware…)

As promised, I put a free PDF copy of “It’s Complicated” on my website the day the book officially launched. But as some folks noticed, I didn’t publicize this when I did so. For those who are curious as to why, I want to explain. And I want you to understand the various issues at play for me as an author and a youth advocate.

I didn’t write this book to make money. I wrote this book to reach as wide of an audience as I possibly could. This desire to get as many people as engaged as possible drove every decision I made throughout this process. One of the things that drew me to Yale was their willingness to let me put a freely downloadable CC-licensed copy of the book online on the day the book came out. I knew that trade presses wouldn’t let a first time author pull that one off. Heck, they still get mad at Paulo Coelho for releasing his books online and he’s sold more books worldwide than anyone else!

As I prepared for publication, it became clear that I really needed other people’s help in getting the word out. I needed journalistic enterprises to cover the book. I needed booksellers to engage with the book. I needed people to collectively signal that this book was important. I needed people to be willing to take a bet on me. When one of those allies asked me to wait a week before publicizing the free book, I agreed.

If you haven’t published a book before, it’s pretty unbelievable to see all of the machinery that goes into getting the book out once the book exists in physical form. News organizations want to promote books that will be influential or spark a conversation, but they are also anxious about having their stories usurped by others. Booksellers make risky decisions about how many copies they think they can sell ahead of time and order accordingly. (And then there’s the world of paying for placement which I simply didn’t do.) Booksellers’ orders – as well as actual presales – are influential in shaping the future of a book, just like first weekend movie sales matter. For example, these sales influence bestseller and recommendation lists. These lists are key to getting broader audiences’ attention (and for getting the attention of certain highly influential journalistic enterprises). And, as an author trying to get a message out, I realized that I needed to engage with this ecosystem and I needed all of these actors to believe in my book.

The bestseller aspect of this is the part that I struggle with the most. I don’t actually care whether or not my book _sells_ a lot; I care whether or not it’s _read_ a lot. But there’s no bestread-ed list (except maybe Goodreads). And while many books that are widely sold aren’t widely read, most books that are widely read are widely sold. My desire to be widely read is why I wanted to make the book freely available from the getgo. I get that not everyone can afford to buy the book. I get that it’s not available in certain countries. I get that people want to check it out first. I get that we haven’t figured out how to implement ‘grep’ in physical books. So I really truly get the importance of making the book accessible.

But what I started to realize is that when people purchase the book, they signal to outside folks that the book is important. This is one of the reasons that I asked people who value this book to buy it. For them or for others. I love it when people buy the book and give it away to a poor grad student, struggling parent, or library. I don’t know if I’ll make any bestseller list, but the reason I decided to try is because sales rankings – especially in the first few weeks of a book’s life – really do help attract more attention which is key to getting the word out. And so I’ve begged and groveled, asking people to buy my book even though it makes me feel squeamish, solely because I know that the message that I want to offer is important. So, to be honest, if you are going to buy the book at some point, I’d really really appreciate it if you’d buy a copy. And sooner rather than later. Your purchasing decisions help me signal to the powers that be that this book is important, that the message in the book is valuable.

That said, if you don’t have the resources or simply don’t want to, don’t buy it. I’m cool with that. I’m beyond delighted to give the book away for free to anyone who wants to read it, assign it in their classes, or otherwise engage with it. If you choose to download it, thank you! I’m glad you find it valuable!

If you feel like giving back, I have a request. Please help support all of the invisible people and organizations that helped get word of my book out there. I realize that there are folks out there who want to “support the author,” but my ask of you is to help me support the whole ecosystem that made this possible.

Go buy a different book from Yale University Press to thank them for being willing to publish me. Buy a random book from an independent bookseller to say thank you (especially if you live near Harvard Book Store, Politics & Prose, or Book People). Visit The Guardian and click on their ads to thank them for running a first serial. Donate to NPR for their unbelievable support in getting the word out. Buy a copy or click on the ads of BoingBoing, Cnet, Fast Company, Financial Times, The Globe & Mail, LA Times, Salon, Slate, Technology Review, The Telegraph, USA Today, Wired, and the other journalistic venues whose articles aren’t yet out to thank them for being so willing to cover this book. Watch the ads on Bloomberg and MSNBC to send them a message of thanks. And take the time to retweet the tweets or write a comment on the blogs of the hundreds of folks who have been so kind to write about this book in order to get the word out. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to all of the amazing people and organizations who have helped me share what I’ve learned. Please shower them in love.

If you want to help me, spread the message of my book as wide as you possibly can. I wrote this book so that more people will step back, listen, and appreciate the lives of today’s teenagers. I want to start a conversation so that we can think about the society that we’re creating. I will be forever grateful for anything that you can do to get that message out, especially if you can help me encourage people to calm down and let teenagers have some semblance of freedom.

More than anything, thank *you* soooo much for your support over the years!!! I am putting this book up online as a gift to all of the amazing people who have been so great to me for so long, including you. Thank you thank you thank you.

PS: Some folks have noticed that Amazon seems to not have any books in stock. There was a hiccup but more are coming imminently. You could wait or you could support IndieBound, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore.

want a signed copy of “It’s Complicated”?

Today is the official publication date of “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens”. While many folks have received their pre-orders already, this is the date in which all U.S. book stores that promised to carry the book at launch should have a copy. It’s also the day in which I officially start my book tour in Cambridge.

In many ways, I’m thinking of my book tour as a thank-you tour. I’m trying to visit as many cities as I can that have been really good to me over the years. Some are cities where I was educated. Some are field site cities. Some are places where there are people who have been angels in my life. But I sadly won’t get everywhere. Although the list of events is not complete, I have discussions underway to be in the following cities this spring: Cambridge, DC, Seattle, Austin, Nashville, Berkeley/SF, Providence, Charlottesville, and Chicago. After that, I’m going to need to take a break. But I’m really hoping to see lots of friends and allies in the cities I visit. And I want to offer a huge apology to those outside of the US who have been so amazing to me. Given my goal of seeing my young son every week amidst this crazy, I simply can’t do an international tour right now.

I know that I won’t be able to get everywhere and I know folks have been asking me for signed copies, so I want to make an offer. Buy a book this week and send it to me and I will sign it and send it back to you signed. You can either buy it from your favorite bookseller and then mail it to me or have it shipped directly from your favorite online retailer.

Address:
danah boyd
Microsoft Research
641 6th Ave, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10011

When you send me the book, include a note (“gift note” for online retailers) that includes your name, email (in case something goes wrong), snail mail address for shipment, and anything I should know when signing the book.

If you have a local bookseller that’s selling it, start there. If you’d prefer to use an online retailer, my book is now available at:

Thank you soooo much for all of your amazing support over the years! I wrote this book to share all that I’ve learned over the years, in the hopes that it will prompt people to step back and appreciate teens’ lives from their perspective. My goal is to share this book as widely as possible precisely because so many teens are struggling to get their voices heard. Fingers crossed that we can get this book into the hands of many people this week and that this, in turn, will prompt folks to spread the message further!

Can someone explain WhatsApp’s valuation to me?

Unless you were off the internet yesterday, it’s old news that WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook for a gobsmacking $16B + $3B in employee payouts. And the founder got a board seat. I’ve been mulling over this since the news came out and I can’t get past my initial reaction: WTF?

Messaging apps are *huge* and there’s little doubt that WhatsApp is the premier player in this scene. Other services – GroupMe, Kik, WeChat, Line, Viber – still have huge user numbers, but nothing like WhatsApp (although some of them have even more sophisticated use cases). 450M users and growing is no joke. And I have no doubt that WhatsApp will continue on its meteoric rise, although, as Facebook knows all too well, there are only so many people on the planet and only so many of them have technology in their pockets (even if it’s a larger number than those who have bulky sized computers).

Unlike other social media genres, messaging apps emerged in response to the pure stupidity and selfishness of another genre: carrier-driven SMS. These messaging apps solve four very real problems:

Carriers charge a stupidly high price for text messaging (especially photo shares) and haven’t meaningfully lowered that rate in years.
Carriers gouge customers who want to send texts across international borders.
Carriers often require special packages for sending group messages and don’t inform their customers when they didn’t receive a group message.
Carriers have never bothered innovating around this cash cow of theirs.

So props to companies building messaging apps for seeing an opportunity to route around carrier stupidity.

I also get why Facebook would want to buy WhatsApp. They want to be the company through which consumers send all social messages, all images, all chats, etc. They want to be the central social graph. And they’ve never managed to get people as passionate about communicating through their phone app as other apps, particularly in the US. So good on them for buying Instagram and allowing its trajectory to continue skyrocketing. That acquisition made sense to me, even if the price was high, because the investment in a photo sharing app based on a stream and a social graph and mechanism for getting feedback is huge. People don’t want to lose those comments, likes, and photos.

But I must be stupid because I just can’t add up the numbers to understand the valuation of WhatsApp. The personal investment in the app isn’t nearly as high. The photos get downloaded to your phone, the historical chats don’t necessarily need to stick around (and disappear entirely if a child accidentally hard resets your phone as I learned last week). The monitization play of $.99/year after the first year is a good thing and not too onerous for most users (although I’d be curious what kind of app switching happens then for the younger set or folks from more impoverished regions). But that doesn’t add up to $19B + a board seat. I don’t see how advertising would work without driving out users to a different service. Sure, there are some e-commerce plays that would be interesting and that other services have been experimenting with. But is that enough? Or is the plan to make a play that guarantees that no VC will invest in any competitors so that all of those companies wither and die while WhatsApp sits by patiently and then makes a move when it’s clearly the only one left standing? And if that’s the play, then what about the carriers? When will they wake up and think for 5 seconds about how their greed is eroding one of their cash cows?

What am I missing? There has to be more to this play than I’m seeing. Or is Facebook just that desperate?

(Originally posted at LinkedIn. More comments there.)

“It’s Complicated” is dedicated to Peter Lyman

As people start to get copies of my book, I want to offer more context to the brief dedication at the front of the book.

“It’s Complicated” is dedicated to my beloved advisor, Peter Lyman, who passed away before I finished my degree at Berkeley. It was Peter who initially helped me conceive of this project and it was Peter who took my limited ethnographic training and helped me develop deep reflexive instincts. As much joy as it brings me to see this book born into the world, it also saddens me that Peter couldn’t get to see the project completed.

After I left MIT, my undergraduate mentor and friend Andy van Dam sent me to Peter, confident that we’d get along like a house on fire. I begrudgingly agreed to meet Peter but when I showed up in California, he had been sent to jury duty and was unable to make the meeting. So he invited me to his home where he was hosting a dinner for graduate students. There, I got to meet a kind, gentle soul who not only inspired me with his intellect but revealed the beauty and pleasure of nurturing junior scholars. I was sold.

Once at Berkeley, Peter and I devised all sorts of plots to collaborate and, more importantly, to play institutional good-cop, bad-cop. In my spastic, obnoxious way, I would throw a fit at some injustice, inevitably piss off someone, and then he’d intervene and negotiate a truce. When we realized how effective this could be, we started scheming.

Peter’s illness was devastating. Always a brilliant orator, his cancer ate away at his ability to communicate. Even his serene peacefulness was tried over and over again by the frustration he felt not being able to express himself. And, for all that he adored and supported his students, his love of his children – and sadness in not being able to get to know his grandchildren – were what really weighed on him.

It’s been over six years since the world lost an amazing man. Nothing that I can do can bring him back but I wrote this book in part to honor him and all that he taught me. Peter showed me that there’s more to being a scholar than producing important works. Always gracious and warm, Peter did more to cultivate others than to advance his own career. He always said that, at Berkeley, he was paid to attend meetings so that he could keep up his hobby of teaching. His brilliance emerged through those that he empowered. I can only hope to have as much impact on those around me as he did on me.

Every time I look at my book, I smile thinking about Peter’s influence on me, my work, and my sense of what it means to be a scholar and intellectual. We all build on the shoulders of giants but sometimes those giants aren’t so visible to others. Peter was a huge giant in my life and I hope that others reading this book can see his influence in it.

Email Sabbatical: December 13-January 10

I call this year my year of triplets. Over the last few months, I had my first child, finished my book, and kickstarted a research institute.

In planning this year, one of the things that I promised myself was that when Ziv was giggly and smiley, I would take a proper holiday and get to know him better. That time has come. Ziv, Gilad, and I are off to Argentina for a month of trekking and rejuvenation.

Those who know me know that I take vacations very seriously. They’re how I find center so that I can come back refreshed enough to take things to the next level. 2014 promises to be an intense year. It’ll begin with a book tour and then I’ll transition into launching Data & Society properly.

Before I jump into the awesome intensity of what’s to come, I need a break. A real break. The kind of break where I can let go of all of my worries and appreciate the present. To do this, I’m taking one of my email sabbaticals. This means that my email will be turned off. No emails will get through and none will be waiting for me when I return. I know that this seems weird to those who don’t work with me but I’ve worked hard to close down threads and create backup plans so that I can come home without needing to wade through digital hell.

If you’re hoping to reach me, here are four options:

Resend your email after January 10. Sorry for the inconvenience.
If you want it waiting for me, send me a snail mail: danah boyd / Microsoft Research / 641 6th Ave, 7th Floor, NY NY 10011
For Data & Society inquiries: contact Seth Young at info [at] datasociety.net
For “It’s Complicated” questions: contact Elizabeth Pelton at lizpelton [at] gmail

The one person that I will be in touch with while on vacation is my mom. Mom’s worry and that’s just not fair.

I’m deeply grateful for all of the amazing people who have made 2013 such a phenomenal year. With a bit of R&R, I hope to make 2014 just as magical. Have a fantastic holiday season! Lots of love and kisses!

Data & Society: Call for Fellows

Over the last six months, I’ve been working to create the Data & Society Research Institute to address the social, technical, ethical, legal, and policy issues that are emerging because of data-centric technological development. We’re still a few months away from launching the Institute, but we’re looking to identify the inaugural class of fellows. If you know innovative thinkers and creators who have a brilliant idea that needs a good home and are excited by the possibility of helping shape a new Institute, can you let them know about this opportunity?

The Data & Society Research Institute is a new think/do tank in New York City dedicated to addressing social, technical, ethical, legal, and policy issues that are emerging because of data-centric technological development.

Data & Society is currently looking to assemble its inaugural class of fellows. The fellowship program is intended to bring together an eclectic network of researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, policy creators, journalists, geeks, and public intellectuals who are interested in engaging one another on the key issues introduced by the increasing availability of data in society. We are looking for a diverse group of people who can see both the opportunities and challenges presented by access to data and who have a vision for a project that can inform the public or shape the future of society.

Applications for fellowships are due January 24, 2014. To learn more about this opportunity, please see our call for fellows.

On a separate, but related note, I lurve my employer; my ability to create this Institute is only possible because of a generous gift from Microsoft.

how “context collapse” was coined: my recollection

Various academic folks keep writing to me asking me if I coined “context collapse” and so I went back in my record to try to figure it out. I feel the need to offer up my understanding of how this term came to be in an artifact that is more than 140 characters since folks keep asking anew. The only thing that I know for certain is that, even if I did (help) coin the term, I didn’t mean to. I was mostly trying to help explain a phenomenon that has long existed and exists in even more complicated ways as a result of social media.

In 2002, I wrote a thesis at the MIT Media Lab called “Faceted Id/entity” that drew heavily on the works of Erving Goffman and Joshua Meyrowitz. In it, I wrote an entire section talking about “collapsed contexts” and I kept coming back to this idea (descriptively without ever properly defining it). My thesis was all about contexts and the ways of managing identity in different contexts. I was (am) absolutely in love with Meyrowitz’s book “No Sense of Place” which laid out the challenges of people navigating multiple audiences as a result of media artifacts (e.g., stories around vacation photos).

Going back through older files, I found powerpoints from various talks that I gave in 2003 and 2004 that took the concept of “collapsed contexts” to Friendster to talk about what happened when the Burners and gay men and geeks realized they were on the site together. And an early discussion of how there are physical collapsed contexts that are addressed through the consumption of alcohol. In a few of my notes in these, I swapped the term to “context collapse” when referring to the result but I mostly used “collapsed contexts.”

Articles that I was writing from 2005-2008 still referred to “collapsed contexts.” (See: Profiles as Conversation and Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8, and my dissertation.) My dissertation made “collapsed contexts” a central concept.

In 2009, Alice Marwick and I started collaborating. She was fascinated by the arguments I was making in my dissertation on collapsed contexts and imagined audiences and started challenging me on aspects of them through her work on micro-celebrity. She collected data about how Twitter users navigated audiences and we collaborated on a paper called “I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience” which was submitted in 2009 and finally published in 2011. To the best that I can tell, this is the first time that I used “context collapse” instead of “collapsed contexts” in published writing, but I have no recollection as to why we shifted from “collapsed contexts” to “context collapse.”

Meanwhile, in 2009, Michael Wesch published an article called “YouTube and You: Experiences of Self-awareness in the Context Collapse of the Recording Webcam” that goes back to Goffman. While we ran in the same circles, I’m not sure that either one of us was directly building off of the other but we were clearly building off of common roots. (Guiltily, I must admit that I didn’t know about or read this article of his until much later and long after Alice and I wrote our paper. And I have no idea whether or not he read my papers where I discussed “collapsed contexts.”)

When I refer to context collapse now, I often point back to Joshua Meyrowitz because he’s the one that helped that concept really click in my head, even if he didn’t call it “collapsed contexts” or “context collapse.” As with many academic concepts, I see the notion of “context collapse” as being produced iteratively through intellectual interaction as opposed to some isolated insight that just appeared out of nowhere. I certainly appreciate the recognition that I’ve received for helping others think about these issues, but I’m very much hand-in-hand with and standing on the shoulders of giants.

If others have more insights into how this came into being, please let me know and I will update accordingly!

danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed