Facebook: Life After Death: Continued Our Digital Footprint

In 2007 a young man died without leaving a will. Although the family were given access to his offline possessions with a death certificate, getting access to his online assets remained unresolved two years later, when the story went to press. His digital assets became inaccessible to his family, potentially leaving funds locked in his Paypal account. My knowledge and journey through the digital communications world throughout this unit made me think about the entirety and impact of a person's digital footprint: email, digital photographs, finances, social network profiles, blogs, twitter feeds and so on. And as new technologies emerge this list is only likely to grow and continue. This began my thinking of what the implications our digital assets would have in the future and what they mean to each individual person.

Richard Banks mentions in his talk about “digital heirlooms” that we are logging our lives online on an ongoing basis, and that somebody else will have to deal with all of this content once we’ve passed away. Having accumulated a very sizable digital presence, we will be leaving behind a digital footprint that is also far more considerable in size and has a much longer lifespan than the heirlooms of previous generations. But the question is: what happens to all of this when we die?

The general rule for online service providers is to protect their customers' privacy. The only way for the next of kin to access their data is for them to legally declare themselves executors of the deceased's estate. Whether or not to give access to or delete the deceased’s digital content seems to vary; providers like Facebook allow for a ‘memorial state’ profile freezing the content but allowing access to it, others like Yahoo delete the entire account. (wikidot.com, 2011)

Exley wrote a paper on how cancer patients negotiate their after-death identities. She argues that as long as the individual has an active effect on people, that person is socially alive. Exley states: “Social life is the obverse of social death and depends on the social continuation of the particular person, whether or not that person is biologically living" (Exley, 1999) If we remain active through our blogs, emails and social network profiles, then we remain active agents in others’ lives, even after our biological death. We are therefore able to leave a social impact one we are gone.

Giddens describes self-identity as 'something to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual’ (Giddens, 1991:52). Digital assets, as a means for us to log our activities, become a key part of how our identity will be preserved. But as we are also not the sole authors of our identity, our digital audience approves what we have authored online, and that is what builds our identity: ‘The wall posts left by friends on a user’s profile or page contribute as much to the individual’s identity as the information the user to display’ (Brubaker, 2010). So a memorialised Facebook profile remains our socially alive identity, as long as friends are continuing to read and post on it.  

Digital Social outlets, according to Gangadharbatler, (2008) reflect a basic human need to belong and form significant relationships.He also suggests that there a 3 basic needs which underlie social behaviour which can all be related to involvement in digital communication: ‘inclusion’ to belong in a circle of acquaintances or friends on facebook; ‘affection’ the need to be loved by others or posting a blog or video and asking for feedback and ‘control’ exerting power over others, or creating a group or forum.

The more we use digital in our daily lives, then the bigger our footprint becomes and the more it becomes part of sustaining who we are. Furthermore, since some of this activity such as blogging or Tweeting, is very public, it becomes part of how we are understood by others. This is what Giddens describes as the “Narrative of the self." (Giddens, 1999)

This narrative accumulates over time to become a biography which plays an important part in the legacy or footprint we leave behind. Exley argues in her research that cancer patients being aware of their imminent death, knowingly write the last chapter of their lives with this digital legacy (Exley, 1999).

Our digital footprint is therefore not only an important record of who we are but one that survives after our biological death. It is ironic then that we currently have very little understanding of our rights and limited control over what happens to our digital assets after we die. The first generation that have accumulated a digital identity is getting older. There are no set rules and regulations on how the digital legacy process should be managed. The only approach we are familiar with is the approach to offline assets and is not applicable to the breadth of information our digital footprint holds. It is also unclear who has actual ownership of these assets. These are the repercussions of our obsession with digital.

The majority of digital communications are still in their infancy but through studying this unit I have been able to study how much they have already impacted our lives and advertising execution but also how little we know about the future. Boud et al define reflection as ‘Those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage and explore their experiences in order to lead to new understanding and appreciation’ (Boud et al 1985). My blog posts have explored the social side of digital communications, the ramifications digital media has had on mobile development and how advertising has adapted to this; as this was  something I took great interest in and believed to be most relevant to now and digitals future. I feel that the underlying social reasons for why social media has become so popular is very relevant, whether it is inclusion in a Facebook group or living out a fantasy in second life.

References

Boud, D., Keogh, R., Walker, D., 1985. Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. USA: Nicholas publishing company.

Brubaker, J. R., & Vertesi, J. (2010). Death and the Social Network. To be presented at the CHI 2010 Workshop on HCI at the End of Life: Understanding Death, Dying, and the Digital, Atlanta, GA, USA.

Exley, C., 1999. Testaments and memories: negotiating after-death identities. Mortality, 4(3), 249-267. 

 

Gangadharbatla, H., 2008. ‘Facebook Me: Collective Self-Esteem, Need to Belong and Internet Self-Efficay as Predictors of the iGeneration’s Attitudes toward Social Networking Sites’, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Available from: http://www.jiad.org/article100 [Accessed on 15th April 2011]

Giddens, A.., 1991. Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge: Polity.

Pearson, C., 2011. 285,000+ US Facebook Users Will Die This Year. Available from: http://blog.entrustet.com/2010/03/14/285000-us-facebook-users-will-die-this-year/ [Accessed on: 12 April 2011]

Wikidot., 2011. Facebook. Available from: dealingwithdeathonline.wikidot.com. Available from: [Accessed on: 12 April 2011]

Facebook: Life After Death

I have recently come across a rather disturbing idea or mindset, debate, whatever you want to call it. Can Facebook Make Me Immortal?

I was quite shocked yet curious after discovering a story amongst my peers about a father who was unable to delete his daughter’s Facebook page. The father had continued to receive emails regarding his daughter’s Facebook account weeks after she had passed away. After contacting Facebook with regards to deleting her account he was informed that Facebook were unable to do so without the account holder’s permission, once the situation was explained Facebook proceeded to say that an account was never deleted from their archives.

Users discovered that it is nearly impossible to be removed entirely from Facebook setting off concern and controversy among the social networking community. While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information from those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network.

The technological hurdles set by Facebook have a business rationale: they allow ex-Facebookers who choose to return the ability to resurrect their accounts effortlessly. According to an e-mail, a spokeswoman for Facebook, “Deactivated accounts mean that a user can reactivate at any time and their information will be available again just as they left it.”

But it also means that disenchanted users cannot disappear from the site without leaving footprints. Facebook’s terms of use state that “you may remove your user content from the site at any time,” but also that “you acknowledge that the company may retain archived copies of your user content.”

Facebook’s Web site does not inform departing users that they must delete information from their account in order to close it fully — meaning that they may unwittingly leave anything from e-mail addresses to credit card numbers sitting on Facebook servers.

Only people who contact Facebook’s customer service department are informed that they must painstakingly delete, line by line, all of the profile information, “wall” messages and group memberships they may have created within Facebook.

After finding this out I proceeded to research the matter further and subsequently found forums on the web with people discussing that Facebook meant Life after Death. This, in my opinion is a pretty controversial subject and an odd thing to discuss on a forum and yet there are many places on the net where people a suggesting this same idea. Facebook have recently changed their rules that they will keep a persons profile after they have been informed of their death but will turn it into a memorial site where people are able to leave messages etc commemorating the deceased. So your profile can carry on after you have died but only in the loosest of terms does it make you immortal.

Faceless Friends

Since the internet first came about it has changed the way in which the world interacts and digital media has set in place new developments in social relationships.

Chat rooms have played an important role in the evolution of digital interpersonal communication. E-mail came first in 1972, then came USENET, an e-mail based newsgroup started in 1979. Newsgroups became bulletin boards and some bulletin board users wanted to interact with the group in real time instead of waiting to reply to an ongoing message thread. In the late '70s and early '80s, several small bulletin board communities incorporated chat and IM into their networks and so followed the faceless friend. With the invention of chatrooms came a shift in the social paradigm and assumption that you had to know someone to talk to them. Chatrooms allowed strangers to interract, innocently but anonnymously.

This was a huge change in the social paradigm and the idea of internet pals or faceless friends difficult to comprehend for some people. Not all chatroom communication was with strangers. MSN developed an IM service which enabled you to add your friends and reject those you didn’t know, however you could add random strangers if you wished.

With the number of chatrooms growing and the amount of people using them also increasing they started to become surrounded with bad press in regard to the dangers that the annonymity presented. Chatrooms supposedly became haunts for peadophiles and perverts and so without surprise their popularity decreased and it was something frowned upon.

Now chatrooms are virtually dead and social networking sites are now a big part of modern interraction. Facebook, Ebay, Windows Live Messenger and Google are the top 4 visited sites on the web (Neates, 2008) 3 of which are social sites with Facebook having over 500million users (Facebook. 2011).

With social networking growing and growing without anyone battering an eyelid is it really that different to chat rooms? In all fairness you can add or reject friends and identity is a big part of your social media profile but anonymity is still possible, so is interaction with strangers. They may not appear to be ‘faceless friends’ or as risky as talking to a username in a chat room but it’s quite easy to take on a fakeidentity.

The dangers of online communications are vast; hidden identities, cyber bullying, hacking into accounts etc. With online communication becoming a big part of social interaction the dangers shouldn’t be overlooked. Especially seeing as it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere…

The Age of Openness

With my generations fixation with online profiles, blogging, photo sharing and email, has our obsession with broadcasting ones self to the world resulted in a loss of respect for the privacy of others, as well as own? 

A status written by someone can often reveal some quite personal information. In reality, who really thinks about who is going to read the status when it is written.

I for one certainly forget that out of my 450 friends, I actually only talk to about 80 of them and when I write a status I only ever think about them reading it, not some boy from my primary schools sister who now lives in another country.

From the ‘limited’ Facebook profile of mine the minimum a stranger can find out is: my date of birth; what university I am at; where I am currently living; who I’m in a relationship with and my current profile picture. This amount information may seem normal but as a member of Facebook it is the minimal amount of information you can reveal. I can’t chose to reveal any less information which I personally find quite worrying.

Mark Zukerberg (for those of you who haven't seen 'the social network' he is the mastermind behind Facebook) stated that "openness is the new social norm".

This all sounds well and good and I’m sure it would put many a persons mind at ease with the thought ‘well if everyone is doing it…’ But that flippant attitude is with regard to what we know we are revealing.

Facebook as a company can access your information, which is quite obvious due to the fact you entering it onto their site. But many are unaware that if you fail to tick or untick certain boxes, which are hidden amongst a load of technical and notoriously complicated legal jargon, your information can be passed on to other sites and organisations.
Facebook cleverly changes its privacy settings regularly so that unless you chose to customize them, you will automatically be given the default settings which are convenient to them. The smart part of this is that this information will pop up when you log onto Facebook, and the majority of people simply cannot be bothered to spend the time changing these settings. People are therefore unknowingly giving away personal information and unwillingly loosing their privacy.

Search Engine Marketing: Has Yahoo Gone Too Far?

If you mention the term 'search engine' to someone the first thing that will pop into their head is the infamous Google which is used over 200 million times a day world wide.

The majority of people, myself included, wonder what on earth they would do without it. In my day to day life, if there is ever anything I want to know or do I will depend on   Google to find it. If not Google then it will be Yahoo!, Bing or Ask: the wonderful group of know-it-all websites that have created a world where no question goes unanswered and no image is out of reach and where knowledge is endless.

It is no surprise then that Google smartly created Adwords and Adsense: A form of ‘paid search advertising’ and now 40% of online advertising expenditure is spent on search advertising (Klassen, 2008). This works by advertising websites by the side of the natural results, Google separates them so that the user is aware of the natural results and the ones which have paid to be there.

Adwords (by Google, Yahoo! And Msn also have versions) is when advertisers choose a set of workds or phrases which relate to their product or which will positively associate with the brand. If such words are entered the website willl appear. The service is ‘pay-per-click’ so the advertiser will only pay when the service works. Adsense is different because it is contextually targeted.                                                                                             

Every time I enter a search in Google I rely on it to produce a vast amount of websites and possibilities but I very rarely click past the first ‘o’ and more often than not I will settle for the first 3 results. This is due to a multiple of reasons, one of them being that I’m too lazy to traipse through the thousands if not millions of results but mainly because I believe that the results on the first page are normally the most reliable genuine and closely linked to my request. Yahoo! Have now created a form of paid ‘search advertising’ which takes advantage of this trust and embeds its advertisements in with the search results giving the illusion that they were natural. In 2009 Google were thinking of using interest based advertisements which were specific to each user by gathering information from the users’ cookies.

Although both of these alternative methods of Search Engine Marketing may produce better results, are they fair? They do not ask the consent of the search engine users, are producing misleading results and are beginning to become an invasion of privacy.

Innovative Products = Innovative Media

‘Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything’ said Steve Jobs in his keynote when Apple launched the iPhone. In innovation theory there is a term for such a rare product. It’s called ‘dominant design' and was introduced by James Utterback. In his innovation classic, ‘Dynamics of innovation’ (1992), his definition is: “A dominant design in a product class is, by definition, the one that wins the allegiance of the marketplace, the one that competitors and innovators must adhere to if they hope to command significant market following” and the Apple iPhone has done just this. Just by looking at the aesthetics of mobile phones... They all tend to fit the same mould.

Apple’s been very fortunate as it has introduces a few of these dominant designs into the world.  In 1984 they introduced the Macintosh, the iPod in 2001 and then the iPhone in 2007.

To quote Jobs some more, he said, "I have been looking forward to this for two and a half years", and that "today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone." Jobs introduced the iPhone as a combination of three devices: a "widescreen iPod with touch controls"; a "revolutionary mobile phone" and a "breakthrough Internet communicator". This is why the iPhone was truly innovative. It pushed the boundaries, created a product people didn't know they needed and yet it is a product which they now cannot live without and which many other mobile phone manufacturers have copied. Welcome to the take over of the smart phone.

The development of the smart phone has made a massive impact on the advertising world in particular. A mobile phone is a person’s number one possession and it is certainly mine. I cannot leave the house without it; I compulsively check it ever 15 minutes; it has all my contacts on it; my photos; my videos and is now a means of internet access. My phone is practically my life.

To advertisers, the mobile phone is a dream. If advertisers can successfully communicate via a mobile then they have hit the jack pot and this is why innovative advertising is taking place. The fact that your mobile is so personal is also a disadvantage. It is somewhere that people do not want to be bombarded by offers deals and messages. Overstepping the mark could be the death of a campaign. Simply sending a text to someone isn’t going to be effective; neither is a banner advertisement on a mobile website.

New ways of communicating through the mobile phone are being thought up all the time. QR codes, which I have previously discussed, are just one of the brilliant methods to connect an audience to a company through the use of the mobile. Hundreds of advertising agencies have popped up all around the UK. Specialising in things like augmented reality and app development.

QR Codes Continued

After my pervious post on QR codes I discovered these little gems:

A QRcode that a fashionista would appreciate!

Theses QR codes have been adapted by fashion brands, keen to gain some geek points. Tokyo based creative agency SET developed this for Marc by Marc Jacobs which can be used to his access his new mobile site.

The agency also produced one for Louis Vuitton, collaboratiing with Takishi Murakami (the man behind the famous art work on the LV bags) to come up with this good looking code.

These little codes look more appealing than the standard QR code and because they work they also have the same function and benefits!

The Next Big Thing

In this post I'm going to be commenting on the genius that is a QR code. They are the new piece of technology similar to a bar code, which turns a little square into a URL.

According to: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ this is the QR code (below) for my blog: pretty cool! If only I had something to read it...

QR Codes, AKA Quick Response Codes are part of the new advertising and media possibilities linked to and focussed on the mobile phone! These codes can be scanned by a smart phone, a URL will appear and then you can be transferred to that website... pretty smart right?

There are a few problems though…

Most people are probably thinking that this is rather pointless and just technology for the sake of technology. Why scan this on your phone when you can just go on the website via your home computer?

Well... Although the QR codes may be used very rarely at the moment here in the UK, in other places such as Japan they are already massive with loads of businesses using them in their advertisements as a direct link to online information. They are also set to become big in other, poorer countries.

One of the most brilliant uses of the QR Code is the tracking capabilities. An advertising agency could place an advert in, for arguments sake, 5 different magazines, each with an individual QR Code on (the magazines name would be embedded into the URL). The implications of this would be that the agency would be able to see from which magazine the online traffic came from and therefore would be able to see which magazine was the most effective means of advertising. This is one of the specific uses of the QR Code in the western world however the QR Code simply as it is, is useful in countries such as India, South America and Africa where fixed internet isn’t readily available.

In these places, most people can’t have a home computer internet base with broadband. The only means of internet access is through a smart phone. In these places the QR Code is a direct link to a website via a mobile phone and it is pretty much the only way to get customers to access it.

Although at the moment they aren’t that popular in the UK, one of the main reasons being that you have to download an App to be able to read the QR Code. Adding that hassle into the equation along with a misunderstanding of the technology means that people just wont have the motivation to do it. At the moment, because the technology is in its infancy here in the UK advertisers don’t know how to use it effectively. What needs to be recognised by traditional advertising agencies who are sticking to ‘old’ media, the QR code is a way of using digital technology but still using print or TV advertisements. You can have your normal ad using traditional media but by including a QR Code it means that it is keeping up with digital world at the same time.

Give it a few years and advertisers will have got the hang of it, most phones will have a QR Code reader built in... I think it’s the Next Big Thing.

A Blog on.. Blogging

Seeing as I am new to blogging, I thought that this week I would write about it..

The idea of blogging was at first rather irrelevant to me. In my opinion it was an open diary; a means of attention seeking; a way for people to gain popularity through posting dramatic monologues about themselves or other things. I now realise that this was a naïve view of the whole concept and after contemplation and by looking at a few of the millions of blogs that are online, I’ve changed my mind. I can now see the method behind the madness and that blogging is used for hundreds of things that I never considered and not just the self centred means of getting your whining heard.

Blogging has managed to make news personal. We know longer have to hear opinions or stories from experts, it means that pretty much anyone can become a writer, editor or have their own website. It took me about 20 minutes to create this blog site. I probably could have done it even quicker if I hadn't messed around with the layout and personalised the colour scheme, but even that is relevant to my point. It is a way of delivering your own opinions, your own personalised means of communication to the masses in a fast and easy way. And with just as much ease, the masses can communicate back, reciprocating with their very own take on what you have said. Whether or not they are a friend or a stranger, from this country or the next doesn’t matter. The interactivity of blogging is revolutionising the idea and pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech.

A blog can create a massive stir amongst online communities and one comment can make or break a business if posted by the right person at the right time. One Blog I read featured a man who had a well followed blog and was receiving bad customer service from a certain company. He e-mailed the company, simply threatened to negatively blog about how unhelpful they had been; the company automatically responded and were happy to help in any way possible.

Most businesses, brands and influential people have blogs now, which update their ‘followers’ on the latest promotions, products, press and goings on. Popular blogs by ordinary people can now be ‘monetised’ by gathering enough followers and then selling advertising space on the blog site. Philadelphia is not going down as a great city to blog. The city has begun to request $300 from those with a blog website. The city calls it a "business privilege license." Proving that blogging is an easy effective and currently free (in most places) way to make money through the interaction with others!

Second Life verses Real Life

Until now I was unaware that a website called Second Life existed and I'm finding it difficult to get my head around. For those of you who are still in the dark, it pretty much does what it says on the tin; it is a website which allows the users to create a second, virtual life.

According to my Digital Advertising manual I am rather behind and some computer generated, virtual communities have been around for longer than the internet; second life began in 2003.

The design of these virtual worlds vary with not all of them mirroring real life: some ignore all conventions of the real world and try to avoid depicting things like walls or doors, in contrast others intend to mimic the physical world in every detail, or bend the rules only slightly. Second Life, known as a Hybrid Space (Kallay and Marx) focuses on the latter by creating a mix of the real and ideal, familiar yet fantasy.
Common misconceptions are that it is a game, this is wrong, second life even has its own currency! This is known as the Linden Dollar and can be changed to and from real life currency. This is where Second Life becomes relevant within the world of digital media…

Where money exists, products do too; therefore there are marketing opportunities within Second Life. The virtual customers within second life are real people and so, in theory, should respond to similarly to advertisements and marketing ploys within second life as they do in day to day life .

Currently some companies do use second life, for obvious reasons: if they want people to see 3d versions of their products; virtual BMW cars are sold, however I think that second life has a different use for online media. I believe that it could be used as a simulation of real life. If a new product is about to be launched then it could be created and launched within second life or other virtual realities and then sales and its reception can be monitored. If the product works in second life, then it is likely that people will react similarly in reality. The same thing can be done for advertising campaigns, if advertisements work in virtual realities then one would assume they would work in real life.

Purpose

The intention of my future blog posts will be to take a subject from my lectures and discuss it.. sounds easy enough but I guess we'll just have to wait and see..

Blogging

Oh Wow, this is all very new to me, I've never really thought about writting a blog.. just read others and criticised from afar. However I am now in the position where I have to write one for my course (Advertising with Marketing Communications) so I thought I would get started before being given my first assignmnt. In all honesty I'm not finding much enjoyment in this whole 'New Post' malachy, how are you supposed to know what to write? Atleast next week I'll be given something to write..
I always wonder about how people read things that I write. Like, texts or emails or IM's and now this. If they know me does that mean they read it in a voice like mine? The way I write can often mean entirely different things if read wrong, so I tend to take extra care when reading things written by others. Even if I don't know the person. I tend to make assumptions about how they would speak, gathering clues from the style of their language; the way they spell, their punctuation... In that case I wonder what assumptions would be made about me??
I tend to be a huge fan of exclamation marks, (I've held back seeing as this is my first post, don't want to scare anyone) I just like the way they look and what they imply. Things just seem more exiting with a '!' after them, even the dullest of sentences (or posts)!