The reason that Facebook struggles so much with its users’ privacy is that ultimately, its users and its customers are not the same people. The users are the people who spend hours every day posting status updates, tagging photos, and tending to their Farmville plots. Its customers, on the other hand, are the people who give Facebook real American money for access to the users. They’re the advertisers who love being able to use your photos in their ads, the app creators who sell you virtual scrip to buy digital cows, and just about anyone else that Mark Zuckerberg and crew can cut a deal with. Since the interests of Facebook’s customers are basically diametrically opposed to its users’ interests (they are, after all, primarily interested in separating you from your money), a conflict is inevitable. Facebook wants the information you trust them with to be as open as possible so that they can monetize it.

Now comes Apple into the social networking fray with Ping, the social network named after a duck. Ping is integrated into iTunes 10, and is centered around sharing and experiencing music. You can be as open as you want to be, or you can hide yourself completely. You can also set up private networks inside of Ping, open to only you and your circle of friends. Apple has recruited artists and personalities to provide content for Ping, and based on your preferences, recommends people and artists that it thinks you might want to learn more about. It’s not as sticky as Facebook is, at least not yet, but Apple is great at refining the user experience and iTunes is already installed on 160 million desktops (according to Steve Jobs during Wednesday’s music event). Ultimately, and most importantly, the big difference between Facebook and Ping is the revenue stream. Facebook exists to sell ads. Ping exists to drive sales to the iTunes Store.

It sounds like a subtle difference, but it’s actually something of a revolution in the social networking space. To put it another way, Ping sells you stuff, while Facebook sells, well, you. Facebook’s intractable privacy conflicts don’t exist for Ping, because Apple is happy to let you have your privacy. They don’t need Google to index all your witty status updates, because they can simply take an automated look at what you and your friends are sharing online and make intelligent suggestions to you about new content that you’ll be interested in buying and downloading, and then you’ll complete the circle by discussing that new content amongst your online friends. Almost every single user action on Ping represents an opportunity for the iTunes Store to sell you more content. For example, I follow KCRW DJ Jason Bentley, host of “Morning Becomes Eclectic”. As I look at his feed right now, there are 10 posts, 8 of which have links to purchase or preview songs or albums. Even so, it doesn’t feel like I’m reading a giant ad, it seems like a natural extension of the content.

Why do I say that this is sowing the seed of Facebook’s demise? Even if Ping doesn’t prove to be the Facebook killer, it shows that there is a revenue model for social networking that isn’t based on selling out your user base. Maybe music isn’t a big enough underlying theme (although I think it is), but what if it was Amazon.com or some other online mega-retailer that created a next-generation social networking platform that revolved around identifying and filling your real-world needs instead of trying to show you ads that sell decorations for your virtual house or clothes for your digital paper doll? There’s nothing to say that Facebook can’t try out this model, but they seem to running headlong the wrong way, and there is a lot of inertia to overcome when you are trying to turn a boat with half a billion passengers.

So what does the next generation social network look like? Ironically, it may be less social. It’s nothing to have 300, 400, or even 1000 Facebook friends (I have a little over 300 friends myself, and know several folks with over 2000 friends), but when you have that many connections, eventually what was going to be a fun hour spent online catching up with your friends becomes several hours hiding application updates and rearranging your privacy settings and friends list. Every time Zygna launches a new app, I have to block its incessant updates and gift requests from my feed. I try not avoid blocking individuals outright, but some people are the digital equivalent of a loud drunk, dominating my News feed with pointless updates and countless game requests. Nominally, these folks are my friends, but I have been forced to banish them to an electronic purgatory where they can see my updates, but I never see theirs. With Ping (and my hypothetical Amazon.com social network), there will be more real-world connections to updates, so they’ll be more useful. I’ll be less likely to block someone, because I’m really interested in what sort of music they’re discovering or what movies they’re recommending.

Some will protest that Facebook offers real-life connections now – you can organize events or set up and join fan pages or apps for products and ideas that you like. The event planning functionality is useful, I won’t argue with that. But Facebook’s fan page system sucks, to put it mildly. There is no centralized control over who is allowed to set up a fan page, so any nimrod can grab someone else’s copyrighted content, slap it onto a Facebook template, and the next thing you know, that nimrod has a direct line into the feeds of thousands of people and access to their personal info (and that of their friends) to boot. There have been several instances where someone sets up a fan page, then uses it as a sort of personal advertising network. One major kerfuffle occurred when the “owner” of a fan page about Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes posted a link to his personal comic art project on over 300,000 individual feeds. People who thought they were following an official Calvin and Hobbes site were incensed, and the fan page was locked by Facebook. Another problem is people who become fans of pages simply because they like the title. Author Gregory Levey was shocked to find that he had nearly 700,000 fans for his memoir about his time as a speechwriter for former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but was disappointed to find that the vast majority of his new online friends were simply reflexively clicking “Like” when they saw the following in their message feeds:

Friend Name likes Shut Up, I’m Talking.

On Ping, it would be clear that “Shut Up, I’m Talking” is the title of a book, not a boorish outburst, because Ping would offer to sell you an electronic copy of the book, or to preview a few pages. Also, because Apple is not about flinging things against the wall to see what sticks, you could be confident that you’re following a legitimate Calvin and Hobbes fan page, not some moron looking to promote his own bad art.

Social networking is at a crossroads. Privacy issues threaten growth, and irrelevant content angers those who should be the medium’s biggest fans. Because its revenue model allows it to serve a single master, the users who create and consume its content, Ping and similar networks (including so-called “location-aware” services, but that’s a topic for another post) will usher in a third wave of social media, one where what you do online has real tangible connections to the things you do offline. Facebook will either adapt or be left behind with those who just can’t seem to quit Farmville.

Special Note: This is my 150th blog post!

Would I recommend the program to others? Well, it’s a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s an AACSB-accredited graduate certificate that is super affordable (less than $3K for the whole program, books and all). On the other hand, ECU’s finance department is horribly understaffed, so the courses you need to complete the program don’t come up often enough. The administration understands this, and has promised to hire more instructors, but I’ve been listening to that for almost three years now. Also, I have some concerns about the workload – I feel like it’s a little too light, and that too much time is spent reviewing basics like time value of money and bond pricing, and not enough time was spent on stuff like derivatives and financial engineering and the more “meaty” topics of finance. Teamwork was generally pretty good, I got to know some of my fellow students well, although there were some terms where I felt like I was carrying three other people on my back.

This was the first program I’ve been in that used proctored exams, and although I was worried about it at first, it proved to be pretty much a non-issue. The UNC system (NC’s public university system, of which ECU is a part) has proctoring down to a science, so finding and utilizing proctors was no big deal – just go to the proctoring website, and point and click till you find someone close by and available.

Overall, it was a positive experience. I didn’t get what I wanted out of the program, but that was more because my life and the economic environment both changed dramatically over the last three years. I had my first child during the program, and the economy went into the toilet, both of which made staying in my current IT job much more appealing that trying to start over again in the world of finance. I did learn a lot, and maybe a little later down the road, I’ll test the waters somewhere else.

What’s next? Well, I think that my wife is ready for me to take a serious hiatus from schoolwork. For basically the entire duration of our ten years together, I’ve been chasing one degree or another, starting with on-campus coursework at NC State, moving on the my BSBA program at Wyoming, through the MBA at Duke, and finally the certificate program at ECU. She’s stood by me the whole time, but I think that it is time that family occupies the center of my life. I’ll continue to be an evangelist for DL, spreading the twin Gospels of CLEP and DSST, but I’m pretty sure I’m done as a student, at least for the foreseeable future.

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal

Simon Singh
The Guardian, Original version published Saturday April 19 2008
Edited version published July 29, 2009

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

–
Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

–V