Adaptive Path Blog

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Designing Tomorrow the Day Before

I just got an email from Reunion.com, one of the many online alumni services/directories, telling me that by joining their premium service, I can see which of their users has looked at my profile page there. Never mind that I don’t ever recall having a profile page there or that only, sadly, one person has looked at it, I’m stunned that users’ undisguised browsing behavior is being sold to other users, probably without their knowledge and consent. Their user agreement has this to say:

By posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication through this website, you are granting Reunion.com and its affiliates permission to: use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, publish, sublicense, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any such communication.

Does simply using the site as it was designed count as “inputting data” even if I am not aware that I am doing that simply by browsing?

For old friends, sure, seeing that I had looked at their profile might not be a big deal. But perhaps I want to see what an old girlfriend or even an ancient, sworn enemy is up to. Do I want them to know I’m checking up on them? Of course not. It would be personally embarrassing to me.

Unless I am specifically told (and can thus alter my behavior accordingly) that my personal data (including my individual usage patterns) can be used to identify me, it’s become an ethical standard that web sites will protect my privacy by only using it only in aggregate or anonymously. I know for certain I will never use Reunion.com again—at least not as freely as I otherwise might have.

I’ve been quite happily subscribing to the New York Times’ Sunday edition for years—despite the hilariously weak journalism of some sections and the paper’s boneheaded refusal to include the Metro section in West Coast deliveries. That said, I note with amusement the schizophrenic coverage the online Grey Lady receives from bloggers. The paper’s site is either an absolute paragon by virtue of its design and reportage, or a bad web citizen due to foot-shooting “features” like the TimesSelect pay wall.

The TimesSelect debacle began over a year ago with the paper’s announcement that it would be charging explicitly for access to some of its most widely read, e-mailed and blogged editorial columns. In that year, the overall success of the experiment has been questioned, but it should be pointed out that none of the truly dire predictions made early on have come even close to bearing out. The Times is still a relevant, contributory source of well-reported hard news—the same core fluency that enabled it to spawn generation after generation of influential op-ed writers. Whether the influence of the current generation (or the ability to draw attention to the next) has been damaged by the pay wall is a question best left to Sunday morning talk show bookers.

Despite the ongoing annoyance of TimesSelect to many bloggers, the addition of “Most Emailed/Blogged/Searched” article promotion (among other changes) in the latest redesign of nytimes.com had largely put aside questions about whether the Paper of Record understood its place in the larger conversation going on around it. Or so I had thought, at least. This weekend, TechDirt pointed out a recent tiff between GM and the Times over a Tom Friedman op-ed (handily hidden behind the TimesSelect pay wall), and the paper’s attempt to over-edit the auto manufacturer’s letter to the editor defending itself from Friedman’s assertions.

GM’s response? They went ahead and posted not only the entire text of the letter the Times refused to print, but offered a compelling story of the paper’s seemingly arbitrary guidelines for responding to op-eds. Both of those are great fodder for blog coverage (I’m writing this, aren’t I?) and have probably drawn a lot more readers to the GM blog than would probably ever visit in a given week. The Times missed a golden opportunity to host and participate in a furtherance of conversation it had kicked off. Now, an op-ed that many readers didn’t even get to see is being savaged and fact-checked far away from the letter col of the Times, and the paper’s missteps have acted as a multiplier of not only the audience, but the negativity of the episode’s coverage.

So how to categorize this? Is it more backwards progress for a newspaper that wants to embrace blogs while acting like it expects exclusive control over conversations about its protected content? Or an unexpectedly savvy move on the part of GM? I’m leaning towards the latter, but the whole kerfluffle emphasizes a point we’ve been making repeatedly of late to organizations that have a healthy fear of blogs and conversations happening online: there is tremendous advantage in being aware of your place in the larger cosmology of the web. Avoiding accusations of being a “bad actor” online means knowing that communication is neither one way, nor about blindly capitalizing on the intellectual property you produce.

I’ve had to deal with some head-scratching the NY Times has caused me as it exhibits both awareness and ignorance of its role online—perhaps blog coverage of the Times is schizophrenic because the paper is just that. Thinking about it, though, there has been a larger lesson in all of this for me. I believe now that it’s possible to evaluate the maturity of an organization’s online strategy by the overall “awareness” its actions betray; a truly mature communications strategy conveys awareness that the greater value lies in contributing to, rather than attempting to own or manipulate the conversations it engenders.

By that rubric, the Times still has a ways to go.