Humans and machines have been intertwined for as long as anyone currently reading these words can remember. Recently though, the discussion has turned to whether this relationship affects our mutual memories. In essence, do we remember things? Or do we, as a collective human race, simply remember to google them?

The study publicized this week by the New York Times comes was spearheaded by Dr. Lindsey Sparrow and the Psychology Department of Columbia University. They tested people on 40 different bits of trivia, entered by the subjects into computers. The catch? Half of those tested typed the questions believe they would be able to call those bits of information back from the computer. The other half were told the information entered into the computer would be deleted. The study found “Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read”. Your mind knows now, in these trying times, when to focus and remember, and when to not pass “go” and head directly to Google.

The other major example of this memory erosion shows a lapse in so-called “transactive memory”, which the Times defines as “the notion that we rely on our family, friends and co-workers as well as reference material to store information for us.” We count on landmarks, images, scents, smells and people to remind us basic facts and logical connections. Thanks to the internet, the study finds, we no l longer place memory information with these familiar tools in our brain; instead, we simply remember to use the technology at hand to retrieve the information. The take-away at the end of the article? Dr. Sparrow’s bombshell: “Human memory is adapting to new communications technology.”

This is not news. Take for example the demographic of people who accessed this article via tweet, blog post, or even the online edition of the paper. They wouldn’t even have read those words if their brain hadn’t adapted, at some point, to each one of these information transmission systems. Acclaimed author and journalist Jonah Lehrer writes at Wired: “for most of human history, the only other reliable source of information were other people. What these experiments reveal is that we treat the search engine like a particularly clever friend.” Our buddy Google has always got our collective back. Lehrer, the author of “Proust Was A Neuroscientist” explains that this is easier to understand if you think of the human mind as a computer. “Although we like to think of our cortical hard drive as infinite in capacity, it’s actually pretty constrained” he writes, “which is why we’re always looking for ways to not remember stuff”.

To put the limits of our mind in context, it’s important to remember how much information is thrown at us daily. Google recently announced that the new Google + network transmits 1 billion items of information per day. Facebook? They say 4 billion items of information. Twitter countered with their own staggering statistic: 350 billion pieces of information (if you could call most tweets actual information) per day. Divided by the number of “real” Twitter users as determined by Business Insider, 56 million, that means each twitter user absorbs 6, 250 pieces of information daily.
Is it really that hard to believe that we can’t remember anything?

Like many, I’ve spent the past few weeks playing around with the new social network Google+.  The most interesting aspect of Google+ is Circles, the tool for organizing contacts (social graph) on the network.  Here’s a quick video overview:

So why does Circles matter?  It differentiates Google+ from Twitter and Facebook.

On Facebook, to have a relationship with someone you both have to opt in.  You have to become “friends”.  Due to this restriction, most interactions on Facebook are private.

On Twitter, you follow people and people follow you.  While there are ways to figure out if someone reciprocates your follow, it isn’t critical to the use of the service.  The primary point of Twitter is to find interesting people to follow.  The service is primarily public.

With Circles, Google+ has sort of split the difference between Facebook (private) and Twitter (public).  They have left it to users to decide how they want to use the service.

When you decide to add a contact on Google+, you are automatically asked to put the contact in a circle.  By default, Google has a a few predefined circles.  Some of the predefined circles imply intimacy (Family, Friends), while others imply only loose connections (Following, Acquaintance).  You can also create custom circles.

When posting an update, you decide which of your circles to share information with.   And that’s it.

This is a really elegant solution for a number of reasons:

• Adding someone to a circle is less of a commitment than adding someone as a friend on Facebook. Circles just doesn’t have the drama associated with Facebook “friendships”.  At the same time, the inclusion by default of circles such as Family and Friends makes it possible for adding someone to to be more of a commitment than simply following someone on Twitter.
• Circles lets you define your relationship with someone in private. While you are notified when you are added to a circle by another user, you have no idea which particularly circle you are included in.  So someone that has added me to a circle called “BFF” will never know if I’ve only added them to a general circle called ‘Following”.  While this sort of grouping is possible to do in Facebook, it is not nearly as fundamental to the experience as it is with Google+.
• Circles forces you to categorize contacts. To add a contact, you have to put them into a circle.  You have to make a choice. This requirement forces you to think through how you want to categorize your contacts, which ultimately makes you think through how you want to use the service.

As a result of all of this, Circles allows people to use the service publicly, privately or through some hybrid model determined by the user.  Scoble can use the service to amass 40,000+ followers in a week while at the same time my college buddy can use it to post photos from his wedding only viewable to three people.

The sharing flexibility of Google+ allows the service to fill a nice little void between Twitter (public) and Facebook (private). If Google+ succeeds, I think it will largely be because of the elegance and flexibility of Circles.

What do you think?

Social fundraising is on the rise and these 5 sites are a great place to get your feet wet:

Earlier this week, I got a mass e-mail from a friend asking all of us to vote for one of her food blog recipes (which looks delicious, by the way) in a competition.  In the past, I have gladly voted for her blog and recipes, but in those cases, I did not have to add an app to my Facebook account or provide any personal information.  I would have gladly done so now, but voting required working through a Facebook app.

In the past, I have indicated that Facebook app developers can access demographic information; that is what helps make these apps and social networks so valuable.  However, is it worth divulging my personal information to some app developer to help my friend win a poll or contest?  In this case, I am not voting. 

While her friendship and her hobby that brings her much happiness are important to me, they are not worth more than safeguarding my personal information.  If her invite was for a cause that I cared about and for a trustworthy organization that did a lot of good, I might agree to add the app to my account so that I could participate.

I would not mind giving my name, e-mail address, and similar information to many organizations.  That is why it is important for such organizations to transparently collect such information even when it is through polls and contests, and this can help them explain their mission and value.

Having said that, I just don’t divulge my information to anyone – even if a friend issues such a request.

Feel free to chime in the comments about when you are willing to divulge your personal information online and when you are not.

Social media is a powerful tool that often allows users to spread ideas and help make the world a better place. But what about the medium’s power to affect national (or personal) security? The US Department of the Army recently released a handbook that provides helpful hints and warnings about the dangers of social media to employees and soldiers. The 39 page document aims to reach the newcomers to social media as well as the tech-savvy .

From the operational security standpoint, this sort of guide makes perfect sense. When a 19 year old soldier has grown up with the internet and has been sharing facets if his or her life online for over a decade, it becomes important to set slight boundaries on what information should and should not be shared during wartime. The guide focuses on helping users of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and blogging software be better aware of the data that they are putting online; as this information may compromise things like unit location and personal safety while deployed.

Some tips from the document include:

• Be careful with geotagging pictures on Flickr or Picassa
• Do not reveal sensitive personal information about yourself on social networking profiles
• Talk to your family and make sure that they also follow good operational security online
• Do not violate copyright or trademark

The US Army is not forbidding free speech, nor is it prohibiting its soldiers from using social media to connect with their friends and family across the globe. Rather – the Department of the Army is educating against accidental information leakage (like GPS coordinates or personal information) and making sure everyone is keeping up with good operational security practices.

To read the entire document go go –

http://www.slideshare.net/USArmySocialMedia/army-social-media-handbook-2011

What do you think of the US Army 2011 Social media guidelines?

In the U.S. 60% of Internet users have Facebook accounts.  In Japan, only 2% of Internet users have Facebook accounts and services like Mixi, Gree and Mobage-town are 10 times as big.  According to a recent New York Times article, one of the primary reasons Facebook has failed to catch on in Japan is its insistence that people use real names when signing up for accounts.  Japanese Internet users fiercely guard their privacy, and, according to the article, even popular bloggers prefer to use nicknames or pseudonyms when socializing on the web.  It is interesting that even as technology makes the world a little smaller every day, there are still some very fundamental differences in how people choose to use the tools we now have access to.  The full article is worth a read. 

2010 has been a big year for tech innovation and the social media world. Facebook hit 500 million users, and the midterm elections meant that our elected officials were tweeting en masse. This is part one of a two-part Bivings Report end-of-the-year recap of the top 10 biggest trends in web 2.0 in the last year.

Have your own ideas or think we missed an important development? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below!

1. Location, location and location

This year saw the explosion of Foursquare, Gowalla and the launch of Facebook Places. With a consistently growing number of web and GPS-enabled phones on the market, geolocation-based social networks really took off in 2010. A number of major retailers utilized ‘checking in’  to offer discounts and promotions to their customers (particularly on Black Friday).  The competition amongst rivals Foursquare and Gowalla has also been intensifying over the course of the last twelve months – with Gowalla enabling Fouraquare check-ins through it’s application, and Foursquare allowing users to upload pictures when they check in.  We firmly believe that this particular web 2.0 tend will continue to flourish as more and more of the world’s population gains access to the internet via web-enabled phones.

2. Trend toward mobile + Cloud continues

More and more of the world’s cell phone customers are gaining access to web-enabled phone. Subsequently, a greater number of people is able to access a larger amount of information while on the go and removed from their computers.

Cloud computing is anther technological force that isn’t going away any time soon. More and more corporations, government agencies, and small businesses are beginning to utilize the efficiencies inherent in cloud computing to help their employees be more flexible and efficient. With companies like IBM and Microsoft throwing major publicity campaigns for the cloud – we predict that this technological innovation will continue to gain ground.

3. Websites making increasing use of social networking

While one would assume that by this point, there would be few, if any major media, corporate, or university website nowadays that does not feature at least one link to an online social network; we were surprised to find that many Fortune 500 companies still have not adopted social media. According to a 2010 study "The Fortune 500 and Social Media" by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth: 

23% or 116 of the 2010 F500 companies have a corporate blog. Of the top ten F500 companies, only Bank of America does not have a public facing blog.  Compared to 2009 in which 22% of F500 companies had a blog, this aspect of online engagement appears to have become stagnant.

60% or 298 of the 2010 F500 companies have corporate Twitter accounts.  While this is up dramatically from 35% in 2009, one would expect that with the recent economic recession and a tougher competitive environment, more corporations would have jumped on the social media bandwagon.  Of the top ten Fortune 500 companies, Wal-Mart, Exxon, Chevron, General  Electric, Bank of America, ConocoPhillips, AT&T, Ford and HP regularly update their Twitter accounts.

56% or 280 of the 2010 F500 companies are now on Facebook.  While Facebook was not studied in the 2009 report, this number is again much lower than one would expect given Facebook’s growth and earned media attention.

4. Nonprofit and Charitable Giving: Be Strong and Innovate

While the economic recession took a major tool on fundraising for  nonprofits and charities in 2009 and the first half of 2010, two recent studies by Guidestar and the Network for Good indicate that not only is the worst over, but that also by adopting a strategic approach to online giving, it is possible for non-profits to succeed even in hard economic times.

In GuideStar’s 2010 Fundraising Survey which polled 2,356 public charities and 163 private foundations:

36% said giving rose and 37% said giving fell, while the other 26% reported that total giving remained the same. International organizations were the most likely to report an increase in contributions, reflecting donations made for disaster relief.  The larger the organization’s size,  the more likely the organization was to report an increase in charitable receipts in the first nine months of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009.

Taking a specific look at online giving, the Network for Good examined $381 million in contributions and found that:

The online giving experience has a significant impact on donor loyalty, retention, and gift levels. The more intimate and emotionally coherent the giving experience, the stronger the relationship between donor and nonprofit appears to be.

Personality matters. The loyalty factor for donors acquired through generic giving pages is 66.7% lower than for donors who give via charity-branded giving pages.

Recurring giving is a major driver of giving over time and should be strongly encouraged in the giving experience.

Online giving spikes during the month of December and large-scale disasters. During disasters, donors are more likely to consider new giving options, while in December they are more likely to give based on relationships with the charities.

For some additional reading we recommend: How to Donate IRA Distributions to Charities as well as  Mint.com’s “Charity: Who Cares?”

5. Apple and Facebook threaten the end of the web as we know it?

Will Facebook messages replace our personal email inboxes? Will we all become salves to the iPad OS (complete with a lack of flash and tightly-controlled apps market)? Consumers are going to be made keenly aware of the walled gardens inherent within the Apple apps market – as certain applications will continue to be denied for posing threats to the business models and profit margins of cellular carries and mobile internet providers.   This holiday season marked a widespread embrace of the iPad in many American homes, and the policies enacted by Apple will thus begin affecting a growing number of consumers. Likewise, with Facebook reaching 500 million users and not stopping its growth anytime soon, the walled gardens policies of both Apple and Facebook will continue to impact the social networking and online interactions of millions of people all over the globe.

A few days ago Facebook released a study that showed that in most cases the candidate with the most Facebook fans won the election.  Specifically, they wrote:

“The Facebook political team’s initial snapshot of 98 House races shows that 74% of candidates with the most Facebook fans won their contests. In the Senate, our initial snapshot of 19 races shows that 81% of candidates with the most Facebook fans won their contests.”

Folks a lot smarter than I am have deftly pointed out the problems with the concept that you can predict election results based on the number of Facebook fans.  We have no idea how many of the fans actually live in the district of the politicians they are fans of.  Tea Party and colorful folks tend to attract more fans that more straightforward candidates.  Etc.  Etc.

However, I did want to add one small point to the discussion.  For politicians in lower profile races (Congress in particular), the number of Facebook hands is more an indication of how hard they have worked to recruit fans than it is of voter enthusiasm.

These fans don’t just appear out of the blue – campaigns work hard to actively build their fan base using a variety of tactics.  Do they have a prominent Facebook link on their site?  Do they include their Facebook address in email communication?  Do they post compelling content?  Do they run Facebook ads in an effort to promote their page?

Politicians with national profiles can simply put a Facebook page up and watch the numbers grow.  But your run-of-the-mill Congressional candidate has to work to grow their supporter base.  If you put in the time and spend some money you can make your numbers go up.  If you don’t, your numbers will stay pretty flat unless you are a sensation like Christine O’Donnell or Sharon Angle.

Since our 2006 report on the quality and content of campaign websites, we have seen a marked improvement across the board in sites that incorporate multimedia content, personal fundraising, the Spanish language, and of course, candidate presences on social networking websites. With the 2010 midterm elections just a week away, one would assume that given the wide praise and success of  President Obama’s 2008 campaign website and social media presence, that senior members of his own party in tough campaigns would be the most adept at online communications and social media.

Surprisingly, one only need do a quick Google search for “Harry Reid” to find out this is not the case,  as Angle supporters own the keyword “Harry Reid” on Google AdWords.  If you do manage to find Senate Majority Leader Reid’s website, with the exception of the splash page, his official website is almost exclusively devoted to Sharron Angle.  Conversely, Angle’s website splash page and Facebook fan page are all about President Obama. Call me “Old School” but I find this strange. When you spend more time attacking your opponent than pitching your case, perhaps voters can be forgiven for selecting “none of the above” on their ballots.

Given that the majority of polling fails to account for voters who only have cell phones and the general fact that membership in social networking sites is younger, we conducted some brief research into the quantity and quality of online support for five very competitive Senate campaigns. Although the raw number of a candidate’s Facebook fans and Twitter followers is a quick and easy metric that is useful for gauging momentum (see the Facebook Ratings: Election 2010 post on AllFacebook), we used Slurp140 over the last 7 days to track activity on Twitter and combined the results with Facebook’s ad targeting tool.

By The Numbers
In examining the closest five Senate campaigns in which the Democrats have to win at least two to remain in control of the Senate: Boxer vs. Fiorina, in California, Murray vs. Rossi in Washington, Kirk vs. Giannoulias in Illinois, Raese vs. Manchin in West Virginia, and Reid vs. Angel in Nevada; our team came up with the following results:

Facebook- Most in-state supporters:

• Boxer with 20,560 over Fiorina’s 9,320
• Murray with 15,460 over Rossi’s 3,460
• Giannoulias with 10,520 over Kirk’s 6,020
• Manchin with 3,140. (Stats for Raese N/A- Manchin’s total count is 1,710 higher)
• Angle with 8,780 over Reid’s 6,880

Facebook- Most out-of-state supporters:  Of Sharron Angle’s 87,880 fans over 18, Only 8,780 claim Nevada as home on Facebook. Perhaps this race is getting some national attention? While Harry Reid isn’t doing much better, he is benefiting from a flaw in the algorithm as Facebook’s Ad Manager shows 22,020 supporters for Reid, 6,680 of whom list Nevada as home.

Most Educated Supporters: Those who self identify as college grads prefer Boxer, Murray, Giannoulias, Manchin and Reid.

Most Engaged Supporters: Sharron Angle, by a landslide. Since 10/18, things posted to the Angle campaign wall have attracted an impressive 24,841 total ‘likes’ or comments. Otherwise  Fiorina (3,686) tops Boxer (2,716) Rossi (4,713) over Murray (3,578)  Giannoulias (1,629) over Kirk (1,377) and Raese (984) over Manchin (846)

In terms of how Facebook statistics correlate with presence on other social networks, for whatever reason the GOP seems to be more adept at Twitter as:

Most Twitter Followers: Fiorina, Rossi, Kirk and Angle are all ahead. In West Virginia, neither candidate has put much time or effort into their accounts.

Highest Volume Twitter: On October 20th we set up Slurp140 to track all mentions of official candidate accounts in California, Illinois,  Nevada, Washington and West Virginia. Here both the total volume of tweets and number of people tweeting is generally in line with national media coverage. Given that since October 20th, only 950 people have referenced the WV Senate campaigns, perhaps the candidates there can be forgiven for not devoting time or resources to this medium. While there are certainly a large number of anonymous accounts and trolls, a quick look at the leaderboards indicates that with the exception of West Virginia, those on the  leaderboards are predominantly against the Democrats.

1. Nevada: 11,490 tweets by 3,292 people.
2. California: 10,838 tweets by 4,365
3. Washington: 9,595 tweets by 2, 253 people
4.  Illinois: 4,390 tweets by 1,166 people
5. West Virginia: 2,795 tweets by 950 people

Most YouTube Views: Perhaps due to the intervention of some Demon Sheep, Fiorina is way ahead of everyone with 857,007 total views. GOP also seems to be winning the YouTube war as with the exception of Manchin, Angle, Rossi and Kirk are all ahead of their opponents.

Conclusions:

1. While all politics may be local, modern campaigns are now national.

2. Many campaigns, despite having substantial resources are failing to follow the basics.

3. As we noted in our 2006 report- challengers, regardless of party affiliation are still the most adept at using new and emerging web tools. While the Democrat’s strength on Facebook in these specific races might be the exceptions that prove the rule, overall when you compare the national party committees candidates, the GOP is proving to be the most versatile producer of social media in 2010.

Should your company advertise on LinkedIn?

The social network boasts a largely professional user base, and is functions vary gratefully from its distant cousin Facebook.However,

Much like Facebook – LinkedIn Direct Ads allow you to target specific demographics (age groups, gender, location). They also allow you to upload a company logo or otherwise relevant picture to accompany your ad. In this way, LinkedIn sets itself apart from competitor Google – who offers only a string of keywords with which to find your target audience.

The biggest concern that we have with the ability of LinkedIn to generate a Facebook-like revenue stream is that that users simply spend less time on LinkedIn than they do on Facebook. Unless a company is looking to hire individuals, or you’re a new user who is setting up their profile – the likelihood that you’ll spend more than a few minutes a day on the site is pretty minute. Thus, a company looking to advertise for a particular event or product is better off reaching the same audience on Facebook with a cheaper cost-per-click rate and a larger possible audience.

According to Nielsen, LinkedIn’s monthly viewership is a small fraction of Facebook, MySpace, and even Twitter’s. Social media advertising dollars would therefore be more useful if spent on mediums on which a greater number of users spend a larger quantity of time (ie. checking out vacation photos on Facebook or refreshing your page for new tweet on Twitter). The professionalism of LinkedIn means that companies advertising job openings may have greater success on that site that any of the other social networking portals – however, if you are not advertising a position, your advertising money could be better spent elsewhere. As with most advertising, it’s important to pick your advertising channel properly, and tailor your message (and medium) to your audience.

The Bivings Report official answer for whether or not you should advertise on LinkedIn: NO