…as the number of streams continue to increase and as the flow rate of each stream picks up, people will grow tired of having to subscribe to, having to join yet-another-stream phenomenon (YASP). Does the Web truly need additional stream providers each with their own data silos? Is there a user-centric solution to this rapidly growing, overflowing-stream issue that puts YASP to rest once and for all?

This article answers these two questions in great detail but the succinct preview version is as follows:

1. The Web does not need additional stream providers each who exert significant control over a vast number of individuals, each who require their users to have a separate new user account (a new digital identity)
2. The Web does not need additional closed data islands (data silos)
3. The Web does need a means with which each individual can create, maintain, and control their own identity, efficiently and effectively manage stream conversations, and therefore not be beholden to a few, large data-silo stream providers
4. The only way to accomplish point three is for the emergence of a distributed, decentralized, Open Source microblogging ecosystem that leverages the power of the Semantic Web

Table of Contents

Since some of the following may be too generic for more advanced readers, I’m providing this Table of Contents to help readers navigate to those parts with which they may have the most interest. The first four sections are a general review of the problem and solution. The rest of the article provides my detailed thoughts on this issue.

• A Web of Damned Streams
• A Flock of Twitters
• Why Decentralized?
• Why Semantic?
• Evolving Nova’s Stream Concept
• A Drop of An Idea
• Channeling Your Stream, Seining Your River
• The MicroBlogOcean
• Social Web Versus Social Network
• Anatomy of a Drop
• Some Technical Thoughts
• Some Early Players in This Space
• Conclusion

Although you should feel free to skip ahead, doing so might result in missing a crucial connection.

A Drop of An Idea

In keeping with the metaphor of a flowing body of water, I envisioned a water-cycle like flow from a single idea to an ocean of open discussion. Therefore, I call my model of a decentralized microblogging ecosystem the Meta-Hydrological Model.

With that concept in mind, you can think of a single idea posted by a user as a drop. Just as a user of Twitter adds to a conversation by posting a tweet, and a user of FriendFeed or Facebook makes what is generically called a micropost, a user in this new conversation ecosystem posts a drop. So a drop is equal to a tweet is equal to a micropost.

Here is a simplified, graphical representation of the Meta-Hydrological Model (also called the Meta-Flow for short).

Click to see full size

The aggregation of all of a given user’s Drops is that user’s Stream. Viewed in this way, if a Stream is what a single user produces, then the River is the confluence of disparate users’ Streams. I’ll describe this in more detail later.

Within each user’s Stream, ideas might coalesce into specific topics. I call these Channels (Stream Channels). Channels are Drops that are grouped under a specific topic to form substream categories.

The final part of the Meta-Hydrological Model is what I call the MicroBlogOcean (MBO). The MBO is the sum total of all microblogging activity in the global conversation ecosystem. It is all the conversations, represented by all the Rivers.

Below is a natural, visual representation of this model as seen from space.

Satellite image of the Amazon River delta from NASA's Landsat GeoCover Program

The MicroBlogOcean

As mentioned above, the totality of all microblogging activity is called the MicroBlogOcean (MBO). In this global conversation ecosystem, Drops are constantly being pushed to and pulled from the MBO cloud.

To provide and manage the myriad MBO services, a new type of SaaS model needs to be created. I call this software-based service a Confluence Hub. A confluence is the point where two or more bodies of water meet. Therefore, a Confluence Hub is the place where Drops sent by various users meet up, are processed, and wait for further action.

Notice User has only subscribed to User 3's Channel. Click for full size

This is how the process works. A user’s client sends a Drop to the closest Confluence Hub where an amalgamator combines them for transmittal to all that user’s subscribers. The Drops are organized by Channels, if any, and cached. If a Confluence Hub (CH) is down, then the Drop is automatically rerouted to the next closest hub.

An aggregate is a collection of items that are gathered together from different sources. The role of the client-side aggregator then, is to poll, to query the primary Confluence Hub Server (CHS) of each user Stream to which a user is subscribed, pulling the resultant dataset into their River on a predefined, regular interval.

Only the content the User wants gets through. Click for full size

So, whereas a user’s Drop is pushed to the closest, active Confluence Hub, the Drops of each user that they follow are pulled into their River from the MBO cloud.

Using our hydrological-based metaphor, Drops are created and stored on each owners’ site. This means any Drops that are de facto responses to someone else’s Drop are contained within disparate sites across the Web. Whereas the user’s client would cache all incoming Drops (in their River) and the application might even have an option to save a discussion to disk, the original Drop remains located in the owner’s Stream.

The Meta-Flow concept is not a perfect analogy to a natural hydrological flow. Whereas Drops do travel to Confluence Hubs, copies of those Drops are pulled into each subscribing-user’s client to form their unique River. The MicroBlogOcean therefore contains multiple references to the same original Drop and the Rivers actually flow out of the MBO rather than into it.

Although I personally believe this hydrological-based metaphor does a sufficient job of breaking down and describing the component parts of the overall decentralized microblogging ecosystem, for purposes of user understandability, the terms may need to be replaced with a more generic, globally-recognized nomenclature. Although, what is more globally recognizable than the water cycle?

Social Web Versus Social Network

When talking about the Semantic Web, it’s important to differentiate between social networks and the Social Web. These terms are not synonyms. In fact, the Social Web is not even the sum of all social networks.

Why is this the case?

Today’s social networks are nothing more than the famous walled gardens of the Web—as was previously discussed.

With their closely-guarded data silos, social networks are not full participants in the Web, they are not participants in the interconnected data ecosystem. So, unlike an ecological web (think of a food web), the Web-based Internet is not as much of an intact web as it is a land of social network islands that punctuate an ocean of truly connected websites.

The Social Web, on the other hand, is a fully functioning and healthy ecosystem were all data is globally connected. In my view, the only way to bring to fruition the promise of the Social Web is to embrace the Semantic Web.

The term Social Semantic Web is often used to differentiate between the current social-network based Web and a truly connected Web of Data. Since I believe that the Social Web requires the Semantic Web, I view the two terms as synonyms.

What might a truly connected Social Web look like?

I use this image as a graphical representation of what an open, fully linked, global Social Web would look like (see the caption for the actual description of the image). Imagine that each end point is a user creating their Drops that freely flow down their Stream, into their River, finally ending up in the MBO cloud. Each node, the point were multiple Streams converge, would be a Confluence Hub Server.

This image is a tracing of all the Internet traffic circa late 2006. It is licensed under a Creative Commons License (by-nc-sa/1.0) and created by http://opte.org/

Where would the big social networks appear on this graph?

Twitter would be a single point in this image with a few tenuous tendrils extending out representing the limited access that Twitter allows to their data silos via their proprietary APIs. There would be no lines representing conversations between users as the totality of conversation all occurs within the walled-off Twitter space.

The same holds true for Facebook, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, and many of the other social networks. The lines connecting these services would be nothing more than gossamer strands representing the brute-force pushing of limited duplicate content between these data silos.

You might be thinking that conversations regularly occur between users of these platforms. For instance, I can choose to show my latest tweets on Facebook or LinkedIn, I can choose to display my latest Facebook or LinkedIn status updates on Twitter, and so forth. But these are not conversations. They are just snapshots of conversation that are occurring within other data silos.

Anatomy of a Drop

A Drop contains more than just the visible content, more than just the human-readable layer. A Drop is a packet composed of several layers, each providing additional metadata that makes the management and discovery of data more feasible.

Click to see full size

Content Layer: that part of the Drop that is actually intended to be seen by humans; also referred to as the droplet

Metadata Condensate: when the Drop is being assembled, different metadata layers are aggregated together, which are then deposited into a super-metadata layer. This layer encodes all the supporting data that makes extensibility, management, delivery, and discovery of the user’s Drop possible.

The Metadata Condensate layer is composed of five sub layers:

Rich-media Layer: pointers to associated audio, video, or picture files

Semantic Layer: the machine-readable, semantically-marked up metadata

Rights Layer: the granted usage rights for the Drop

Using the proposed Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data as a model, Drops, Channels, and even entire Streams could be marked with usage rights

Security Layer: WebID to tag Drop to specific user; whether Drop is public, private

Stream Management Layer: unique Drop ID; time stamp; GIS metadata (location-based tagging for mobile microblogging); Channel tag for grouping Drop content (allows filtering by other users); whether Drop is to be broadcast to all, a specific user group, or to one specific user; Drop broadcast delay; Drop time decay (a finite lifespan for Drop if desired); client metadata (whether Drop was sent via Web client, desktop client, via a CHS service, etc.)

Semantifying the Drop addressees several key issues that hinder current microblogging platforms. First, by providing a mechanism where machine-readable metadata can be effectively and efficiently associated with Drops, this unlocks each micro data silo, opening it up to outside services to access via query. Second, organizing, grouping, classifying Drops into Channels allows for meaningful filtering of users content. Third, by using a FOAF+SSL backed WebID, privacy and identity management across the MBO becomes possible.

Whereas users can still add tags (via micro and nanoformats) when composing each Drop–and maybe even some basic html markup, like the “a” link tag–the real benefit accrues from the automatic encoding of semantic metadata into the Drop.

Additional ontological encoding could occur on each Drop via a Semantic Interface Options box on the Drop composition panel.

It’s important to note that although each individual user will have the right to determine how much of their microblogging content is shareable across the Web and even with whom it can be shared, in concept, if a user is wishing to participate in the global microblogging community, it is assumed that they will wish others to see what they have to say.

This is just an initial concept of the structure of a Drop. It may be that one or more of the Metadata Condensate layers (or parts of a given layer) should be included under the Semantic Layer.

Since I’m basically working through Nova’s article archive in reverse chronological order, it may very well be that in the future, I’ll scribe thoughts on some of his even older ruminations. So, if that occurs, please pardon this information time dilation.

The Stream

I read Nova’s article, Welcome to the Stream – Next Phase of the Web, with great interest. With all the buzz about Google Buzz over the past eight days or so, this article made me think about the yet-another-stream phenomenon (YASP). *1

What is YASP? It is that somewhat exciting but ultimately frustrating realization that there is yet another social networking, microblogging, threaded-conversation service that you might have to join so that you don’t get left behind.

The idea of user streams is interesting. As I read Nova’s article, the imagery of a kayaker navigating down world-class rapids came to mind.

There is a qualitative difference in streams. Some streams may drizzle like a gentle shower, while others furiously flow like class-5 rapids.

Unfortunately, a higher flow rate does not necessarily equal higher quality. In my experience, there is a noticeable decrease in the signal versus noise ratio as the flow of each stream increases. This is why it is crucial to follow only those people with whom you are genuinely interested in hearing their thoughts. Simply following someone (or following them back) to build your follower numbers is a sure-fired way to increase the noise in your stream.

High Flow Is Not Always Healthy Flow

As users begin to tap into more streams, those streams usually start flowing faster. As Nova states, we need to create filters, or gates, that can discriminately select the signal from the noise, that can help to slow the flood of information.

Look at Twitter. As you follow more and more people, the rate of flow increases. In turn, you must work harder to fish the nutritious data from the swollen data stream. Eventually, the stream can become too treacherous to navigate. So, you either drop a number of people, thereby reducing the flow and hopefully increasing the signal to noise ratio, or you portage on over to another stream with more gently moving data.

This is exactly what some people did last year when they tried an experiment, switching from primarily using Twitter to only using FriendFeed. Of course, that stream quickly became a fast moving torrent as well. So, what’s next? Will these users jump ship once again, looking for the next, best, newest, and maybe calmer body of data to sail?

Well, we already have a new test underway with the introduction of Google Buzz. Many Twitterers have Gmail accounts and many of them activated their new Buzz stream. However, the early consensus from Buzz users is that Buzz is a Twitter-FriendFeed hybrid.

I tried using Buzz for several days but found that it was too much information being shared by too few people. It was a lot of noise and not enough signal.

Of course, my impression could also be the inevitable result of information overload. When you have too many concurrent streams to navigate–Twitter, Facebook, Skype, iChat, an IRC channel or two, email, and Buzz–it becomes a little too much to take in. So, what’s the answer?

Taking a Break From and Portaging Your Streams

The key to navigating successfully and safely in any fast moving, constantly changing environment is to get out of the flow every so often to rest and reassess the situation. Let the flow pass you by and take a break. The stream will continue to flow without you.

Even the best world-class paddlers have to get out of the rapids periodically and take a break. When they return to the stream, they concentrate only on what is ahead and never worry about what has already passed them by.

Sometimes, though, you have to take your kayak out of the water and portage to another stream. That’s an important lesson to us all. You cannot successfully navigate every stream at the same time. Pick a few streams to monitor at a time. Then portage on over to another stream or two for awhile, taking a break from the others.

What does this mean for Google Buzz’s future? What does this mean for other microblogging service providers that inevitably will come to the party, trying to get you to put another kayak into their stream?

Well, as the number of streams continue to increase and as the flow rate of each stream picks up, people will grow tired of having to subscribe to, having to join yet-another-stream phenomenon (YASP). Does the Web truly need additional stream providers each with their own data silos? Is there a user-centric solution to this rapidly growing, overflowing-stream issue that puts YASP to rest once and for all?

There is, which is the subject of my next post coming tomorrow this Friday—A Flock of Twitters: Decentralized Semantic Microblogging.

NOTE

1. YASP: Yes, I just made this phrase and acronym up. Feel free to spread it around the Web, turning it into yet-another-disgusting buzzword (YADB).

So, here are three sources to get you started:

1. My blog post, The Hot Air About Global Climate Change
2. A timely, short recap of the affects of global warming on global climate
3. A humorous, but poignantly true, report from the Daily Show

As I sit in my office looking out at a gorgeously sunny day–where I live, it’s an unusual treat to have 7 days in a row with bright sun in the winter–and pondering the fact that our average snowfall is almost 15% below for this time in February, I think how odd it is that states to our east and to our south are having an exceptionally severe winter. But, then I think about the science and realize that global climate change does not mean hotter and drier everywhere at the same time. So, if you are in the global cooling camp, please cool down your hot rhetoric and learn more about the science.

I was planning to post an article this morning about the Semantic Web and Web 3.0 but this gnawed at me as I just ran into these phrases once again. So, I decided to write a quick rant. I’ll post the more serious stuff in a week or two.

Okay, my rant is now officially beginning…

«rant»

I Am Not an Animal

Contrary to the Elephant Man’s insistence, he was indeed an animal. So was his mother. So were all the people who mocked him. So is every human being that has ever lived or is currently living.

People–our species, Homo sapiens–are in the Kingdom Animalia. We are animals just like the birds and squirrels outside my window; just like the butterflies that I enjoy watching in the summer; just like the mosquitos that I don’t enjoy nearly as much as the butterflies; just like the fish I had for dinner last night, which I enjoyed more than the mosquitoes who seem to enjoy me.

Get over it people. We ARE animals. If you think otherwise, then go back to school and take a basic science class.

People = humans = Homo sapiens = animals

animals = {people; fish; flies; gnats; beetles; cats; dogs; mice; lions; aardvarks; sloths; worms; snakes; frogs; turtles; sharks; bees; and many more species}

So, the next time you want to write about the difference between humans and animals, instead think about writing about the difference between people and non-human animals.

Case closed.

Universe in a Vacuum: It’s Chemical Free

We’ve all seen advertisements for chemical free skin-care products, or all “natural” chemical free laundry detergent, or chemical free organic lawn products.

To these amazing claims, I ask, Oh really?

Chemical free. Contains no chemicals. These are idiotic claims that many “natural” products companies use in their marketing copy. (Now, before you think that I’m against natural, organic products–I am not, I use them all the time–please read on.)

To make my point, let’s look at two simple examples of everyday chemicals.

• Water: Yep, it’s a chemical
• Oxygen: it’s one of the 117 (or so) known elements, also called atoms. But guess what? It’s also a chemical just like the other 116 (or so) elements

That’s right. Even the base elements–those funny little guys that comprise the Periodic Table of Elements–are considered chemicals, although they are often referred to as chemical elements. Why do you think it’s called Chemistry Class?

Speaking of water, not only is it a chemical, it is also a molecule composed of two different bonded species of atoms—hydrogen and oxygen. Thus, it is composed of two different chemicals and is therefore often referred to as a chemical substance.

So, when I buy a product that is claimed to be chemical free, I expect to have just purchased something that contains absolutely nothing. No, that’s not sufficient.

NO CHEMICALS are used at any time. Really? Aren't enzymes chemicals?

When I buy a product that is claimed to be chemical free, I demand that it contains absolutely nothing. It better not contain a single atom of anything or I will sue for misleading advertising.

When I buy a product that is claimed to be chemical free, I want a tube, a bottle, a jar, a box whose contents are guaranteed to be absolutely void of any matter whatsoever. It should be a microcosm of the vacuum in deep space.

Of course, deep space is not even a perfect vacuum. The vacuum of deep space is not even chemical free. So, how do these “natural” products companies create a chemical-free product? You have to wonder. It must be magic.

It’s “Natural” and Organic, So It Must Be Good!

Have you noticed that I keep qualifying the word “natural” by putting it in quotes? Why is this?

Well, natural means absolutely nothing special. It simply refers to something that occurs in nature, is naturally occurring, or is produced by natural processes.

Well, plants growing surely must be a natural process; so peppermint oil is natural. Bees building their hives surely must be a natural process; so beeswax must be natural.

What about people–in particular chemists–who create unique chemical substances that are highly toxic to insects? Is that natural? Well, sure.

Since people are animals, we are part of the natural world. Therefore, everything that humans do is part of the natural process and all of our creations can be considered natural. I know that aliens consider us as puny little, natural organic animals messing up the rest of nature.

What? Are you kidding me?

Not at all…Oh, you’re not asking about the aliens, are you.

Natural is not the appropriate word for separating humankind’s activities or creations from the rest of the ecosystem. Instead, manmade, human made, or artificial should be used.

I prefer people remember that they are part of the natural world instead of abstracting themselves from it. That way, they are less likely to get swollen heads and think that they are separate from all the other animals, that they are not part of the ecosystem. (NB: That is why I think that the phrase anthropogenic climate change is brilliant. It keeps humankind in the climate as part of the ecosystem. See my other rant, The Hot Air About Global Climate Change.)

Okay, what about organic products?

Wow, now this is just becoming too long of a rant. But, since you asked.

The phrase “organic” is another co-opted word used by product marketers. Why? Because most chemical substances can be broken down into two categories—organic and inorganic.

If a chemical substance is primarily comprised of carbon and hydrogen atoms, it is usually classified as being organic. Thus, DDT is organic and, by the way, since it is a human creation, it is also natural. But that does not mean it is safe to eat DDT. It is also best classified as being a highly toxic, artificial chemical substance.

How about plant-based chemicals? Surely they must be safer to use than human-made chemicals. Not necessarily. Some plant-based chemical substances are highly toxic to human animals.

How Can This Get Better?

Well yesterday, when I was looking for a healthier alternative to petroleum-based lip balm, I came across this description on a “natural” products company’s website. I just about lost it when I read this:

Our all natural chemical free lip balm… is not tested on animals.

Holy Cow! I got to get my some of that!

The second thought that came to mind is that I actually should avoid that product at all costs. Why? Because when I use it, I will be the first person to have ever tested the product. I will in fact be the company’s guinea pig. I mean, if it has not been tested on animals, then it cannot yet have been tested on any person.

But then I realized that they might actually be telling the truth. Since the product is chemical free, it contains absolutely nothing. So, it cannot be tested on anything—animals, plants, protozoans, fungi, bacteria, inanimate objects. You get the point. There is nothing to test because they are selling a product which has had all the chemicals removed. So, they can’t even test it on us human animals.

It’s Just a Marketing Message

I realize that phrases such as “chemical free” and “not tested on animals” are meant to convey the message that the products are natural, safe to use, and politically correct to purchase because no non-human animals have been forced to use the products. But, let’s be clear. Natural does not imply safe anymore than organic implies edible.

Lead, arsenic, and benzene are all naturally-occurring chemicals that are quite toxic to people. I don’t know about you, but I try to avoid using any of those natural chemicals when washing my hair. Water, a natural essential chemical substance for all life (as far as we know), can even be lethal under certain uses.

Here’s an interesting article about the toxicity of avocados to some non-human animal species. Once again, “natural” does not necessarily connote edible, healthy, or safe.

Finally, the uninformed usage of the word animal occurs in more that just marketing copy. I see it all the time in news reports, popular articles written by scientists, and many times in letters to the editors. Every time I see someone removing humans from the animal zoo of life, it irks me just a little.

Am I being unreasonable? Well, of course I don’t think so.

In our science-illiterate culture, expressions such as “chemical free” and “not tested on animals” simply add to the disconnect between science, nature, and our view of humanity’s place in the world. I think it is inexcusable and irresponsible.

Okay, end of rant.

«/rant»

I bet you are now entirely confused about all natural, organic, chemical-free products that have not been tested on animals. I’m glad I could help.

Disclaimer: This natural rant is chemical free and has not been tested on any animals (other than organic humans). However, a few plants of multiple species were severely masticated as I sat at my computer writing—yummy all natural organic rolled oatmeal with locally-grown organic blueberries, organic raisins, freshly-ground organic flaxseed, and local genotype native, organic pecans. Oh, I also imagine a number of organic-based bacteria lost their natural lives as well.

It is interesting how some people quickly jumped to conclusions and made sweeping assumptions based on a single blog article, or worse yet, blog title. Although the majority of people who have taken the time to comment or tweet about this post have been positive about my efforts, a small minority (across the age spectrum), have been negative, even seemingly offended.

I’ve concluded that this latter group must not have read the post in its entirety. In fact, it is very possible that they got emotionally thrown-off guard by the title and didn’t bother reading the post at all. The other likely scenario is that they only read the first half of the post and found it disagreeable so they did not finish reading the rest.

Either way, it is a shame when people make accusations–are prejudiced–based on a few words. It is an unfortunate fact that some people will judged you on little more than a few words or sentences. They will not take the time to learn more about who you are before rendering an opinion.

Now I have thick skin. When you’ve been through a life-threatening illness, not sure whether you would live another year, you learn what is truly important and are able to filter out most impacts of personal attacks, illogical drivel, and emotionally-charged, incorrect assertions.

Marketing Message

Although the title of my post was somewhat sensational, it did speak directly to the issue of ageism in the VC-funding of web startups. This is a real issue.

But, my article only used that issue to build a bridge to the larger point—that what matters in startup founders in not age, but their experience, skills, and maturity. In fact, near the end of my piece I state this:

Now, I am not an ageist by any stretch of the imagination. So, if you’re an exceptional under-35 year old who is interested in this opportunity, send an email convincing me that you’re the one I should pick. You will still be required to meet all the requirements except age.

So, when it comes to my search for exceptionally-talented startup partners, this post is really not about age. I’ll gladly consider anyone, regardless of their age—although when choosing a founder, the experience-bar must be set higher.

Rash Decisions Are Not Good Decisions

The fact that someone tweeted today calling me “utterly pompous” for my statements in that article, does not surprise me nor upset me. Whenever someone sends a negative tweet about something I’ve said or written, I always engage them in respectful debate. Some will reply, a few simply ignore my tweets. My purpose is to better communicate my original message and learn what in particular set them off.

When I received that tweet this morning, I sent off three, quick tweets encouraging him to read the whole article and explaining that the major point of that piece was that I’m looking for two experienced people with the skills to be founders. I told him that it was really not about age at all.

He eventually sent another tweet back but has not yet recanted his remark. That’s fine. He’s entitled to his opinion. I have big enough shoulders. If I’m ever in need of the services his firm offers, I’ll fully assess the firm’s strengths and weakness. I will not jump to conclusions based on the little interaction that I’ve had with one of its partners.

This experience made me realize another essential quality of a great leader—to be slow to judgement. If you are too quick to judge, then you are likely a person that misses key information that could make a difference to your business’ success. You may be prone to letting emotions influence your judgement too much. Instead of making a rash assumption about a person, project, or opportunity, do your homework. Properly assess the situation so you know as much of the truth as possible before making your decision.

During the chat, Andy Peatling (lead BP developer and Automattic employee), presented an idea about breaking up development work into component teams:

I’d like to start breaking BP down into chunks, and find people that are really interested in specific features…so for example if you really love the activity stream functionality you could focus specifically on that, and stick to patching just this area…so the long term goal is to get teams on components and have that transition into core commit teams.

This has merit. As the complexity of the BuddyPress codebase expands, it will be increasingly difficult for a one- or two-person team to do all the core lifting. BuddyPress is a complex suite of plugins. It is a social-network-creating ecosystem full of hundreds of functions and classes. Breaking the workload into project teams is a sensible approach.

More Hands to Watch

But, this notion of modularizing BuddyPress core development made me realize that a single guy–that would be me–cannot effectively continue to maintain and update the BuddyPress Privacy Component. It is impractical.

As you already may know from my very successful fundraising drive for my BuddyPress Privacy Component, keeping the BP Privacy plugin up to snuff with each new release of BP is quite challenging. In effect, I have to be an expert on all the BuddyPress components.

If there will be project teams managing the future development of the BuddyPress suite of components, that means two things: 1) there will be too much information created by too many hands on which I need to stay caught up; 2.) there’s an opportunity to streamline privacy filtering.

Enter the BuddyPress Privacy API

Privacy should be a core feature of any social network. BuddyPress is no exception to this rule. So, I’m now thinking that the best approach to privacy in BuddyPress is via a Privacy Layer that provides a basic Privacy API which any and all components can access.

I’m now investigating how practical and possible it will be to create a Privacy Layer using my current privacy codebase. If it is something that can successfully be created without a significant amount of additional work, I will switch my efforts toward creating the BP Privacy Layer.

This means, that going forward, it will be up to each BuddyPress component development team to utilize the Privacy Layer (if they choose to), to tie their component into the Privacy API, and provide privacy filtering. That way, providing privacy will become a team effort and not just one guy playing catch up, running behind Andy, jjj, and all the component-team members who are furiously evolving the BuddyPress codebase.

Do you think a BuddyPress Privacy Layer is the best way to ensure that privacy becomes a core element of each component? Do you think a BuddyPress Privacy API is a desirable feature?

Whereas it is clear that a person who can be classified as a reluctant leader is currently a bad fit for the position, the brunt of the responsibility falls on the shoulders of that person’s immediate superior. Should they have been hired or promoted to project manager in the first place? Did they receive proper guidance and training? Were clear expectations and responsibilities proactively communicated?

Project Manager versus Managing a Project

In smaller firms, a person who is called a project manager may actually be a single person working on a single project. In that case, whereas they are managing a project, they are not truly a project manager. Project mangers usually oversee more than one project at a time and have a team of people whom they lead.

When a company’s backlog grows large enough, it is crucial to appoint a few, results-oriented project managers. Each project manager leads their own team of people. Each project team is tasked with handling a number of the firm’s overall projects in the backlog. The project manager will delegate various chunks of a project’s workload to the team, only keeping a small portion of the project work to his or herself.

Signs of a Reluctant Leader

To me, one of the telltale signs of a reluctant leader is that they would rather be doing the “real” project work and not that “other stuff”. How is that desire communicated? In different ways, but often like this.

When sitting in a meeting discussing a project issue, that project manager seems uncomfortable, maybe even frequently looking at their watch. They finally get the guts to say, “I need to get to work on the project,” or “can we end this discussion because I have to get back to work.”

It is not uncommon for reluctant leaders to assume that all the other duties of a project manager are subordinated to the project work itself. What they fail to realize is that successful project managers have many responsibilities that must equally be performed. Their share of an overall project’s work is just one of many duties.

Successful Project Managers

Successful project managers need to be proficient multitaskers. They need to accept as well as give constructive feedback; proactively communicate with clients and employees; build motivated, results-oriented project teams; sell their vision to their team, to clients, and to recruits; have a passion for leadership; and derive a good portion of their energy from coaching team members and helping each member reach their potential.

In addition to these basic requirements, successful project managers need to manage project chargeability (if measured), organize and lead team meetings, and oversee their share of an organization’s strategic plan. They also need to be results oriented, handle difficult employee issues, and oversee project QA/QC.

A project manager needs to respond in a timely fashion to all team-member inquires—even if it is uncomfortable to them based on his or her communication style. It is imperative that project managers provide clear guidance and direction, effectively delegate the work load, and, finally, perform their share of the project work—what reluctant leaders call the “real” project work.

What Makes a Project In Itself Successful?

Well, that depends on the overall goals for a given project. But a general definition is as follows: hitting the profitability goal, completing the project on time and on budget, and achieving more than satisfactory results for all parties.

In the end, it is up to a project manager’s superior to hold them accountable for project successes and failures. By doing so, it increases the success rate of future projects and can help mold a reluctant leader into a successful project manager.

Since I am not hiring employees, I am not breaking anti-discrimination laws. I am not making job offers. I am searching for business partners with whom to start a business. So, I can use whatever criteria I want in selecting my startup partners.

In the days that followed that post, Dave brought up more issues of ageism—in particular venture funding in the realm of tech startups. On Wednesday, January 13, 2009, Dave tweeted this quote, taken from an article about Douglas Leone, a partner at Sequoia Capital:

“Sequoia focuses on younger entrepreneurs because people over 30 aren’t innovative.” http://r2.ly/red7

Wow! I guess Pablo Picasso, Richard Feynman, Steve Jobs, James Cameron, and hundreds of thousand of other post-30 innovators, never realized that their creativity and innovative spirits had dried up once they hit 30. Shame on them. They all should have been sent to the Soylent Corporation’s processing plant once they hit 30-years old.

If you read the article linked to in the tweet, you’ll get the full picture of what was being said. But the point is, that when it comes to web startups, especially those in the social media space, ageism is an issue.

( N.B. If you have made it this far in the article and your blood is beginning to boil, read this newer post for a sneak peek at the message behind the headline.)

Fifty is the New Forty; Thirty is the New Twenty

So, why am I looking for founding partners 35-plus years of age?

In my two previous jobs, I managed teams of people; I managed managers who managed teams of people. It was a rare exception when I found someone under the age of 30 who was sufficiently focused, task-oriented, dependable, experienced, and knew what they wanted. When I did find someone like that, I knew that I had a potential project manager and someone who might be able to be mentored to become a possible future executive.

Now that does not imply that most people over the age of 30 have what it takes to manage projects, to lead a team of people, to start a company. Most of them do not. It is simply that my empirical evidence convinced me, when it came to a professional life, most people under the age of 30 still had some growing up to do—and some of those had a long ways to go.

All under-30, professional-level employees have fewer than 10 years of work experience. Most are still very green and have much to learn about work ethos, teamwork, project management, and leadership. The other big issue is that many under-30 employees have yet to perfect an effective, proactive communication style. Finally, experience comes with discipline, hard work, learning from mistakes, and age. And experience is more valuable than raw, young talent in my book.

Don’t get me wrong. Young employees are important to a healthy, vibrant business. But a company full of only young employees is a company that is most likely inefficient and prone at making mistakes that a business with a diverse, well-seasoned workforce would never make. This applies to old firms as well as new startups.

The Company, The Opportunity

My startup is in the Publishing 2.0 space. That is all I will say for now.

I have an detailed concept paper describing the underlying vision and functionality. It is not a business plan. At this stage in a startup’s life, business plans are not necessary. If you don’t understand that statement, or understand why, then this opportunity is not for you.

You must know the differences between working at a startup and working for a small business. Whereas all startups are (usually) considered small businesses, very few small businesses are startups. If you do not clearly understand the differences, then this opportunity is not for you.

Each founder is required to provide their own hardware and software. As we will be using a number of Open Source tools for designing, coding, implementing, managing, and running the platform, the need for proprietary software should be limited.

The earliest stages of this startup will be self-funded. It should not require much initial infusion of capital beyond what is needed for hosting and membership in a few select collaborative services. I plan to run a very lean startup. The mid-term goal is to bootstrap the startup, thereby not requiring any angel or venture funding. However, I am not opposed to either if it makes sense down the road.

As this is a startup with zero outside investment and will initially have zero cash flow, founders will not receive any salary or benefits at first. You must be able to meet adequately your personal financial responsibilities and have a sufficient savings cushion to live in this way for at least 6 to 12 months. If that is not possible, if that concerns you, then this opportunity is not for you.

Founders will be owners of the company. Percent ownership will be negotiated with me on an individual basis. Stock options will also be made available.

Our company will strive to determine as quickly as possible the right fit of functionality and service for our intended target demographic. We will do this through analyzing metrics and customer development data obtained over a series of incremental launches (iterations of our platform). The initial goal will be to get a minimally viable service built as quickly as possible so that we can begin this process. We’ll then scale up our platform and service, leveraging our learned intelligence.

What I’m Seeking

In particular, I’m looking to create an energetic team that will function as generalist. We will build the initial, working technology platform, and create the business foundation.

Whereas each member of our team will have a specific, unique skill set that complements the overall startup process, there will be necessary overlap in the area of coding knowledge. This means that each team member must have sufficient Web coding experience, although only one of us truly needs to be an expert-level developer.

In the earliest stages of a Web-based startup, generalists often perform better than specialists. But, as we begin to successfully acquire members and bootstrap the business, we will hire (additional) specialists.

Here are the basic requirements (not listed in any particular order of importance):

Required of all Founders

• Must be 35-plus years of age
• High energy, positive personality
• A killer work ethic (days will be long)
• Ability to work independently
• Adept at creative problem solving
• Proven creative, innovative, independent thinking
• Ability to work initially for zero salary or benefits (this could last 6 or more months)
• Sufficient comfort level with back-end PHP coding and front-end design
• Project management experience
• Must live in the contiguous United States—for travel purposes
• Must be a citizen of the United States—for legal purposes
• Must have a computer with a video camera and high-speed Internet access
• Thrive in taking measured risks
• A healthy savings from which you can survive off of for at least 12 months
• Respectful, proactive communication style
• Easy to communicate with and a good, active listener
• Understanding that there are no guarantees of success
• Must be willing to travel to meet in person a few times in the first 6 months
• You cannot be in arrears with local, state, or federal tax institutions
• You cannot be a defendant in any pending or active lawsuit
• Founders will share corporate risk and liability
• Founders will sign shareholders’ agreement
• Must be results-oriented, focused, tenacious, and driven

More Specific Requirements—Coder, lead-developer

• At least one coder with significant experience in OOP MVC Python-based frameworks (PHP considered as well)
• Experience and knowledge of DB design theory and practice—ERDs, normalization, sharding, etc.
• Experience with PostgreSQL
• Experience with Web security
• Experience with agile development

More Specific Requirements—Designer

• CSS and HTML guru
• Ability to resolve browser-specific rendering issues
• Keen eye for clean, uncluttered, Web-2.0 style design
• A stickler for designs that validate
• User-friendly UI/UX maven

Not Required but a Plus (one or more)

• Previous startup experience as a founder
• Previous early-stage startup experience as an employee
• Extensive, high-level contacts in the New York book publishing Industry
• Understanding of Semantic Web and experience with semantic technologies
• Past P&L responsibility
• Previous position as CTO
• Law or MBA degree
• You are a Mac person

Not An Issue

• Married/unmarried with kids
• Desire not to relocate
• Desire to get some sleep each night
• It’s okay if you’re a PC person

I spent years in the PC world designing custom database solutions for big companies, I now prefer Macs. In fact, I have three Macs that I use for development. I no longer own a PC—which I have found to be a nice relief.

Now, I am not an ageist by any stretch of the imagination. So, if you’re an exceptional under-35 year old who is interested in this opportunity, send an email convincing me that you’re the one I should pick. You will still be required to meet all the requirements except age.

If Interested, Here’s What you Need to Know and Do

If you are not a highly-motivated, creative, driven, risk-tolerant, tenacious, tireless worker, then this opportunity is not for you.

This is not a job posting. It is a potential opportunity to become a startup founder.

If you are interested in being considered for a slot as one of three founders, ping me here no later than February 6, 2009.

In the body of your (brief) email tell me why this opportunity intrigues you and what experience and skills you bring to the table. Please include a link to your “About Me” page on your website (I prefer that over a digital resume). Include your Twitter and LinkedIn usernames. Finally, include your Skype or iChat contact details so that, if I think it desirable, we can have a video conference.

I will seriously review each potential candidate and make a short list of those with whom I wish to have a video conference. I retain the right to make the final decision on selection of partners. I do not guarantee that I will select any of the candidates who apply. I will not add another founder until I’ve found the right fit.

With the recent meltdown in the global-financial system, it became apparent that risky-trading behavior is a rampant, real issue in financial markets. Whereas requiring strict disclosure and transparency may help ameliorate risky trading in general, a new study explains a possible genetic link to risky economic behavior. Taking measured risks in business are necessary. But it is never wise to make financial gambles. This is exactly what happened and continues to happen today.

How can corporations accrue some of the advantages of the open market while better insulating themselves from banking and insurance firms that literally game the system? I believe that the current two-part equity system–private or public–does not currently make that goal possible. The two-part system does not offer corporations–who choose to take advantage of the benefits of “going public”–a sufficient level of fiduciary control over their capital structures.

What if another option existed? What if corporations could decide the terms with which their stock would be publicly traded?

I propose that the SEC create a new type of stock market—the semi-public market. In this market, corporations would decide the listing terms of their stock from a SEC-predefined list of market-trading options.

Options might include:

• Whether or not the stock would be allowed to trade on the derivatives market
• Whether or not the stock could be shorted
• Whether or not the stock could be bought on margin
• The number of days the stock had to be held before it could be sold: (zero – ?)
• Whether the stock traded on a third-party market or on the corporation’s own, regulated trading platform
• The maximum percentage ownership of the float allowed to various entities: institutional investors, private equity, hedge funds, individual investors
• The terms of their IPO

In summary, I propose that companies are offered three structures for issuing their stock:

1. private
2. semi-public
3. public

Allowing corporations the ability to customize the market environment in which their shares trade offers three obvious advantages to stakeholders. First, potential shareholders will have a wider selection of investment options that better suit their risk profiles. Second, corporations will regain an acceptable level of fiduciary control over their capital structure while still having an option to go public. Third, some of the market manipulation that publicly-trade companies currently face can be alleviated which will result in increased insulation from some forms of systemic risk.

What do you think? Should corporations have three options for issuing their stock instead of the current two?

Here’s why I ask. Over the past several years, whenever Facebook has made a change to its privacy policies, it has caused great uproar—not only with civil liberties advocates (as you would expect), but also with Facebook’s user base.

The recent brute-force change to the privacy settings of all 350 million of its users is just the latest in a series of moves that exposes more of Facebook’s users’ information.

According to the above linked article, here’s what Zuckerberg said about the recent change:

Doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner’s mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.

That last statement, “we decided that these would be the social norms,” is the telling truth. It is not that lack of privacy has become a social norm. It is that Facebook believes that it should be.

It is as if Facebook issued a decree to its global citizens. Privacy is no longer something you should request. Privacy is not in the best interests of our society.

Exposing more of its users’ data to the world is, of course, attractive to Facebook’s business alliances. It offers a number of new opportunities for profit. To a company rumored to be heading toward an IPO in 2010, new revenue streams and growing profits are a good thing.

But open data and opening up of personal data are two different issues. What pieces of your data should be open? Where do we draw the line? In general, as long as they are not breaking any laws, I believe it should be up to individuals to decide which pieces of their personal data are made public.

In a free society, we should strive toward letting individuals, not governments or corporations, be in control of their personal data. Collectively society should “own” the data with individuals given control over a subset of their personal data.

There are compelling reasons why opening up personal data to the world is desirable. But it should not be up to governments or corporations to make that choice on behalf of their citizens and users. In a free society, it should be the citizens who drive the push toward more open data, not a few elite power players who force the issue.

What do you think? Is Facebook engineering the expectation of lack of privacy? Are they forcing the issue and making it become a social norm by brute force? Is this truly what their users want? What rights should individuals have to control their personal data?

It means that you must disclose any financial relationship that you have with a product, service, company, or industry that you tweet about.

To make disclosure easy on Twitter, I’m proposing a set of Twitter-disclosure slashtags.

First My Disclaimer

I disclaim any liability. I am not an authority on this matter. I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice. I am only proposing a possible approach in this article. It is up to each individual or entity to understand fully and to follow properly the FTC’s new disclosure guidelines. You should review the new FTC guidelines and this proposal with your attorney.

Now, the Background Stuff

The newly-revised FTC guideline, “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” is dry and not really a great read. It applies to all forms of advertising, not just online media.

In a nutshell, the FTC’s new guidelines require disclosure when you mention in any online medium:

• any product or service you’ve received as a free gift which you review / test / endorse
• any product or service you’ve been paid to review / test / endorse
• any company for which you work
• any industry in which you work

All of these constitute some sort and degree of financial relationship which you must clearly disclose on any blog, tweet, forum post, or any other social media format that exists.

Hey, I don’t make the rules. You can choose not to follow them at your own peril—up to $11,000 in fines for each infraction.

Examples, Please!

Here are two examples.

Yesterday, Google held a big media event to unveil officially their Nexus One phone. Soon after the event, Robert Scoble tweeted this:

.@gruber everyone at the Google Android event was given a choice. Either take a loaner phone for 30 days or take a free phone.

He then followed that with this tweet:

.@gruber I took a loaner phone because I’m not paying $300+ to cancel my Verizon account that I just bought just to switch to a nicer phone.

Anyone who attended that event and received a free Nexus One is required to disclose that fact if they make any type of comment about that product in any online medium. It does not matter if they were given a “loaner phone” for 30 days. The point is that they were given a product from a company for free. Even if it is for a limited time, there is an implicit assumption that they’ll derive some benefit and their views may be influenced by the gift.

Like Robert, a number of people openly tweeted that they were given the Nexus One at the event. I assume his disclosure should be sufficient in meeting the new guidelines.

Here is another example. Last week, Twitter was aflutter with reports that Kim Kardashian may be getting paid as much as $10,000 per tweet for product endorsements. I missed that because I do not follow her or bother paying attention to entertainment gossip. She has disputed this claim, so take the claim for whatever its worth.

The point is that if she gets paid any amount or is simply given free product or service, then she needs to disclose that fact in her tweets whenever she mentions the product or service.

Now, as tweet real estate is limited, I do not think that every time a person tweets about the company or industry in which they work, that they have to necessarily mention this fact. Although I could be wrong.

I would think it matters how well a particular person is known by the community at large. For instance, if you are well known in the industry, if most people know where you work, you can probably skip disclosing that fact each time. Only use it for new announcements. However, if few people know you, then it is wise to use the appropriate disclosure slashtags when talking about your company or industry. But again, it is up to you to verify this with your attorney.

More Details

I’m sure that you’re wondering which rules specifically apply to your blogging and tweeting. The part of the FTC’s new guidelines that appear to me to be the most relevant to this discussion is Section 255.5—Disclosure of material connections (see Examples 7 and 8 under that section).

Also, these three links discuss the issue in more detail:

• Boston.com article on bloggers and product placement
• New FTC Guides: disclosure comes to the social media masses
• What do the “FTC Guides re: the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” mean for Social Media Marketers?

Disclosing in a Tweet-tight space

For purposes of our discussion, we will use the two example-disclosure statements suggested in the body of the post of the second link:

I work for Acme Widgets

and also

I’m an Acme Widgets customer. Acme Widgets has paid for my travel to attend this conference and golf tournament.

The first sentence is 23 characters long. The second, more verbose sentence, is 112 characters long.

Obviously, this is unacceptable for Twitter usage. You can’t afford to waste most of your tweet’s space with a disclosure of that length. With character space at a premium on Twitter (140 maximum), the first example is 16 percent of allowable message length, the second is 80 percent.

There needs to be a better, universally-recognized way to minimize character count while communicating a disclosure.

Enter the Twitter-Disclosure Slashtag

This set of proposed Twitter-disclosure slashtags is designed to be clear and concise, using only six characters each. The “$” symbol in the slashtag indicates that you have some type of reciprocal, financial relationship with the company, organization, industry, or product about which you are tweeting.

1. /$empl –> I’m an employee of this company / organization; I work at the firm that manufactures this product; I’m in the industry being discussed
2. /$exec –> I’m an executive at this company / organization; I manage the firm that manufactures this product; I’m in the industry being discussed
3. /$paid –> This company pays me to review / test / endorse their products; the company that manufactures this product paid me to review / test / endorse it
4. /$prod –> This product was given to me to review / test

Examples Using the Proposed Twitter-Disclosure Slashtag

Here are three example tweets:

IMO Xbox is the best gaming platform in the universe.

and

Apple just announced this game-changing product that will …

and

I love Stringy’s String Cheese. It’s the best!

In the first example, if you were given the product to test and review, then you should qualify your tweet with the appropriate disclosure slashtag like this:

IMO Xbox is the best gaming platform in the universe. /$prod

In the second example, if you worked as an executive at Apple, you should do this:

Apple just announced this game-changing product that will … /$exec

In the last example, if you were paid to endorse, or review, the product, you should do this:

I love Stringy’s String Cheese. It’s the best! /$paid

Making a Twitter-Disclosure Standard

As Andy Sernovitz states in his blog post:

Disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous”—understandable to the “average consumer.” This has always been the FTC standard. That means that hidden or unclear disclosure doesn’t count, and may even be interpreted as an attempt to evade the rules.

In other words, the use of these proposed Twitter-disclosure slashtags, while arguably conspicuous, may not be sufficiently clear in meaning to the average consumer.

The solution to this potential issue? I’m not sure.

However, there are many idiosyncrasies with Twitter that at first confuse all new users. If enough people blog about, tweet about, and actually use these proposed disclosure slashtags, then I think it could be argued that the FTC’s “clear and conspicuous” requirements would be satisfied.

When using Twitter, the average consumer already is required to learn the rules, quirks, and lingo. So what might confuse a new user should not be viewed as “hidden or unclear disclosure.” It is simply their lack of experience with the platform. A new Twitter user is not the average Twitter consumer.

To help push this proposal to the forefront of Twitter-disclosure debate, please tweet and blog about my proposal.

My Disclosure

For full disclosure on my part, I was not paid by anyone to endorse this proposal. I was not given free slashtags to test or use. I am not associated with the slashtag industry nor employed by any of its member companies.

What do you think

Will the new FTC guidelines change the way you blog, tweet, or participate in social media? Do you plan on following the FTC’s new disclosure guidelines? Do you plan on using these new, proposed Twitter-disclosure slashtags?

Global climate change has two, basic components:

• Global warming
• Greenhouse effect

These terms are often incorrectly thrown around on news reports, in political discussions, and on talk radio. Sometimes they are intentionally misused to mislead the general public. However, these three terms should never be used as synonyms.

The terms global warming and climate change are also sometimes used interchangeably by some scientists and politicians (like Al Gore). By mixing these terms in such a way, I believe they do a disservice to the understanding of climate processes.

What is Global Climate Change?

In short, global climate change is the accelerated change and alteration in Earth’s natural climate cycle. This change is brought about by an increase in average temperatures within the lowest layer of the Earth’s atmosphere—from which the term global warming is derived. Global warming, in turn, is the result of an increase in trapped heat energy caused by a build up of certain gases–both from natural and human-made sources–within the lowest two layers of the atmosphere. This is the greenhouse effect.

This is climate change in a nutshell. Without the solar-heat-trapping help of the greenhouse gases in the lowest two layers of the atmosphere, the Earth would be too cold to support the level of life that currently exists. But, as the concentration of key greenhouse gases increases as a result of human activity, the lowest part of our atmosphere warms faster than would be the case if just naturally occurring and produced greenhouse gases were the solo cause. This results in Earth’s natural climate cycle being thrown out of whack.

It’s Global Cooling, You Know!

Non-scientists who have an agenda–for example, certain radio talk show hosts–ignorantly (or irresponsibly) misuse the term global warming for their biased political purposes. The problem with their razor-like logic is that they do not know what they are talking about—or they are selectively choosing their data and terms to misled the public.

By focusing on the term global warming, they can then refer to all sorts of “evidence” that xyz has just had a record-cold winter, or that abc’s average (surface) temperatures have moderated over the last decade. So obviously, the Earth is not warming. It is getting colder. It is global cooling!

Up Above More Than Down Below

When scientists speak of global warming, they are not directly referring to the changes in surface temperatures over the decades (or millennia). Instead they are referring to overall changes in the temperature of Earth’s lowest atmospheric layer, the troposphere—where most of the planet’s weather occurs.

The troposphere has an average depth of 7.5 miles (ranging from 4 miles to 12 miles in thickness). It begins at our planet’s surface and extends above the altitude of commercial jetliners. Scientists studying global warming measure the temperature in the troposphere at many different places around the global. The measurements come from higher up in the troposphere and not from the surface—although land and water surface temperatures are useful for other reasons.

There are some researches who have claimed that anthropogenic global climate change is not real since the average temperature increase in the troposphere is not as great as the average rise in surface temperature. They say that satellite and weather balloon data backs this up.

However, that research has been peer reviewed and fatal flaws discovered. Here is a layperson’s article on the subject. If you are a scientist, you can search out the sources yourself and read the actual research.

The Scientific Process Has No Agenda

Those against the preponderance of scientifically, peer-reviewed evidence are simply ignorant or have ulterior motives. The scientific process has no agenda. It has worked very well for decades, bringing us many wonderful advances in medicine and technology.

Although the scientific process does not have an agenda, it is clear that some scientists (on both sides of any issue) do. All fields of study experience this unfortunate phenomena. This is inevitable. Some proponents of a theory, a belief, become so fervent in their world view that they act in unethical ways.

When it comes to the politically-charged issue of climate change, unethical behavior on both sides not only hurts the inexorable crawl of the scientific process, but also confuses the general public who has little understanding about the science behind the claims.

But, the scientific process itself is sound. The best discernible truth, at a given snapshot in time, is eventually determined. It is not necessarily the final truth. It is the best fit to the collected body of data given the then current understanding of all the numerous variables. As current processes are better understood, and new ones discovered, the underlying framework in a given scientific field improves. Here is a great example.

Hotter, Colder, Wetter, Drier

As the global climate changes, areas of the Earth will be affected in different ways. Some surface areas may experience colder than usual temperatures for a time. Some areas hotter than usual. Some may be drier, while others wetter. The weather patterns may become more erratic, sometimes even more severe. The affect of global climate change may be more pronounced in some years, and not apparent in others. So, just because there are stretches of time when hurricane activity or intensity does not live up to the hype, as an example, does not mean that the science is incorrect.

Over time, though, the climate will become more unpredictable as a result of the affects of the increase in tropospheric temperature. Those increases will impact the average surface temperature, causing it to slowly rise. Change may continue to occur in all directions, although the general trend over time will be an increasing average surface temperature.

Global climate change is simply about the rate of natural climate fluctuations being exacerbated by human activity. If we do not successfully ameliorate the impact that human activity is having on that rate of change, then the climate will continue to change at an accelerating rate, causing all sorts of potentially undesirable impacts to our planet and society.

You’re Grounded

Global warming is not something that is directly discernible by assessing the changes in surface temperatures over the decades. That is because global warming is a phenomena that occurs in the troposphere, not on the surface of the planet. But global climate change–the combined impact of the greenhouse effect and global warming–is something that can be measured in part by changes in surface and water temperature.

Science can discern a lot about the rate of global climate change by studying surface phenomena—ice cores, lake sediments, carbon content in ancient soil layers, and ocean temperatures and acidification. These studies can help to establish the previous rate of climate change and the natural fluctuations of our climate in the past. The study of air trapped in ice cores and of ocean acidity can help establish a reasonable picture of carbon dioxide concentrations over time.

I’m Not a Scientist. How Am I to Know the Truth?

If you are a trained scientist and can take the time to understand the underlying climate processes and theories, I encourage you to do so. You should read select research papers, assessing the studies’ methodologies, quality of data sets, analyses, and conclusions.

But if you are not a trained scientist, then reading peer-reviewed research papers will be of little help. So, the question is, How can the average citizen with poor scientific literacy know the truth?

That is a difficult answer. The best advice I can give is to not listen to politicians, general news reports, or radio talk show hosts. You need to listen to the real experts. You need to have faith in science.

Consider this thought. You wouldn’t go to your local congressman or radio station to have a medical issue diagnosed. Nor would you go to your local church or political rally to have your computer fixed. Medicine and technology are the happy outcomes of sound, scientific research. They are not the result of opinion.

The scientific process can never be perfect, but it strives to discern the truth. If the majority of scientists in a given field have determined something to be the probable truth, then it is a safe bet to accept their conclusions.

It is true that there are a number of examples of scientists, considered rogue at the time, whose “crazy” theories have turned out to be true. Those are perfect examples of the beauty of the scientific process.

As technologies and fundamental understandings improve, the accuracy of the body of science improves as well. Outlying theories that have merit can be reassessed, retested. If they turn out to be valid, they will eventually be accepted by the scientific community—although it may not be within the lifetime of the “rogue” scientist.

The Answer is…

The current preponderance of scientific evidence strongly points to a human-induced acceleration in the rate of change and alteration of Earth’s natural climate cycle.

This issue is being thoroughly researched and debated within the scientific community. If the consensus view is that anthropogenic climate change is real and poses tangible dangers to our way of life, then it is wise to accept this as the truth. It is better to be conservative and side with the science than liberally assume that the slim minority opinion is correct.

As a trained scientist, I have taken the time to read enough of the research and to fully understand the processes in question (to the best of my ability). I have decided to side with the consensus view, the view that the natural rate of climate fluctuation is being thrown off balance by anthropogenic causes.

It’s Global Climate Change

So, the next time you hear someone decry global warming, insisting instead that the planet is actually experiencing global cooling, you’ll know the flaws in their logic. And the next time you talk about this issue, please use the correct term—global climate change.

In a recent post, I asked for ideas on how WordPress ecosytem developers can earn a living doing what they love to do—coding great-quality plugins for WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress. This post is my attempt to try the time–honored (but more than likely ineffective) request–for–donation approach for my BuddyPress Privacy Component.

Support Level

Supporter $15.00 Donor $25.00 Sponsor $50.00 Benefactor $100.00 Patron $250.00

But, I’m going to go about this in a slightly different way. This approach is a serious attempt at doing things differently. I hope it does not provoke the ire of my readers.

How is my approach going to be different? Well, I’m going to be upfront and honest about the time commitment on my part to code, update, and support my BuddyPress Privacy Component. Then, I’m going to appeal to your sensibilities. If that doesn’t work, I’m then going to leverage your needs!

Please click the first link above and read that, if you have not already. Then, come back to this post and continue reading.

First a Caveat

Please be advised that the approach I’m about to detail will be controversial. This is my attempt at one possible solution to the question posed in the first link above. It is an experiment at best.

Do I think that this approach will be warmly received? No. Do I think that it will be successful? No.

But perhaps it will stir up healthy conversation and some tangible solutions.

The Ever-Changing BuddyPress Landscape

BuddyPress version 1.2 is fast approaching its public release. However, the underlying codebase has undergone major code refactoring and even significant changes in functionality. So much has changed that it will require a significant amount of time to refactor my Privacy Component codebase to function properly in the newly-overhauled BP platform.

I’m not complaining about the changes. I’m just stating a fact. I believe that BP version 1.2 will be superior to previous versions.

I’ve had discussions with a few other BuddyPress plugin developers who wonder if we’ll see similar codebase changes in future versions of the BuddyPress platform. At this stage, we have to assume that this is a real possibility. Therefore, it is only wise to plan accordingly, to assume that with each major new release, that parts of our plugins may require significant TLC. But again, when the dust settles, version 1.3 of BuddyPress will be superior to previous versions.

It’s Just Time, Right?

I currently estimate that it will take at least 30 to 40 hours of code refactoring and functional code changes to bring the current version of my BuddyPress Privacy Component up to working order for BP v1.2. Of course, not all of this time is for coding. A noticeable amount of this time is studying the changes to the BP codebase and figuring out how key object arrays, actions, and filters have changed. When version 1.3 comes out later this year, it may require a similar amount of effort. This estimate does not even take into account the incremental versions (1.2.x, 1.3.x) that could require fixes here and there. But, leaving the incremental version changes out of the equation, I estimate that this phase of the project will require between 60 and 80 hours of work in 2010.

Along with updating the plugin, support is another time sponge. I estimate that once my plugin hits the mainstream, that I could be looking at at least 5-10 hours a week for support requests during the first two weeks of a version release and then 10 hours a month until the next version is released. With two major BP privacy plugin versions assumed to be released in 2010, that equates to an estimated total of 100-140 support hours in 2010.

Finally, there is at least one big, missing piece of the privacy puzzle—group privacy filtering. Until development of BP v1.2 is frozen, I will not be able to provide an accurate estimate of how many hours it will take to code a full-featured suite of group privacy filters. But, I do know that there is talk of possible, significant changes to the groups component in version 1.3. So, once again, this is my best guesstimate. I’m assuming roughly 80 hours of coding to bring to fruition group privacy filtering.

What does this all add up to? The total estimated time required in 2010 to upgrade, maintain, augment, and support my BuddyPress Privacy Component is 240-300 hours. At my standard, weekly work schedule, that is roughly 4 weeks of my time!

This is more than likely an underestimate of the amount of time that will be required, but I’m using that figure to help me determine a realistic financial support request. Also, it does not include the hundreds of hours already invested in the current version.

An Appeal to Your Sensibilities

Now, of course I cannot possibly donate four weeks of my time on this plugin or any of my other not–yet–released BuddyPress plugins. Can you donate four weeks of your time for anything? Would you give up your vacation time (and then some) to provide free software programming and consulting services?

My goal is to recoup some of the time I’ve already put into developing this plugin, to fund the current and future upgrades and enhancements to this plugin over the course of this year, and to cover some of the support time I will inevitably be requested to provide.

Supporting Development, Developing Support

How is my donate button different than others? Well, it is not a donate button. It is a support this project button. It’s a request for action, an opportunity for you to show your support by buying into the project. If there is not sufficient support, then the project will be discontinued.

Without sufficient financial support, I cannot continue to develop this, or any other plugin. I need to have a reasonable cash flow. I have to contribute to the support of my family.

Based on my above estimates of the number of hours that I will be required to put into my BuddyPress Privacy Component in 2010, I’ve set a goal of $9,000. That adds up to an hourly rate of between $30 and $37.50. This, in itself, is a greatly reduced hourly rate from my previous consulting days. That is okay. I’ll consider the difference as my continued donation to the cause.

What Happens in 2011?

This request for financial support is only for 2010. So, you rightfully may ask, what will happen when 2011 rolls around?

By then, privacy in some form or other should be a core BuddyPress component. It will thus be maintained by the core development team—and I’d be willing to help them maintain it as well.

Of course, it’s possible (but I think unlikely), that privacy will become a core feature of BuddyPress this year. If it does, I very much doubt that it will be the fined grained, fully-featured privacy suite that I offer in my plugin. But Andy and JJJ are very clever guys. So, you never know!

What Happens if You Don’t Raise the Entire Amount?

Since PayPal allows for refunds to be sent within 60 days of receiving a payment, I plan to hold all proceeds in my PayPal account. In 58 days from the date on this post, I will assess the results. If the goal has not been met, I will decide if I’m willing (and able) to provide the entire year’s worth of work discussed above for the amount raised. If I decide to proceed, I’ll withdraw the funds from my PayPal account. If I decide not to proceed, I’ll issue a refund through PayPal.

So, on Monday, March 1, 2010, the final decision will be made.

BuddyPress Privacy and BP Version 1.2

Just to allay any fears, I have already committed to bringing my privacy component up to code to work under BuddyPress version 1.2. That will happen no matter how this little experiment turns out. The real issue is what happens from that point.

Wait, Open Source is Supposed to be Free

Most people expect software to be free these days, especially with Open Source projects. But the spirit of Open Source is not providing free (as in no cost) software. It is in providing freedoms in how you use the software. These two pages on Gnu’s website–the maintainers of the GNU GPL license which WordPress is licensed under–explain it very well:

• Selling Free Software
• The Free Software Definition

So, although it is customary in the WordPress ecosystem for plugin developers to offer their work for no cost, it is not what is intended by the GPL, it is not what Open Source is truly about.

Has the misguided assumption about free (as in cost) software become too ingrained in our community? Whereas designers who offer GPLed–premium themes seem to be accepted into the community without issue, developers who offer GPLed–premium plugins are often treated differently. There should not be a double standard. Both designers and developers should have the right to earn a living from providing great-quality free software.

My Plugins will Always Be Free

I believe in the free software movement, in the spirit of open source. I will always freely provide my plugins to the greater community. I’m truly not looking to sell my code. I am just looking for an acceptable vehicle (besides the consulting route) that provides some financial support so that I can continue offering high-quality (I hope!) plugins.

An Appeal to Your Needs

Now, I’m in no way intending to hold the BuddyPress community hostage. I’m trying to see if this idea will work.

Is privacy something that you think is important in BuddyPress? Is privacy filtering for your members’ data something that you need for your BuddyPress-based community?

If you have read this far, and have not unfriended me over at BP.org or unfollowed me on Twitter, then I am amazed! Actually, it does not surprise me. I assume that you agree that Privacy is of paramount import in BuddyPress, in any social network.

If privacy is something you value in BuddyPress, then I ask that you please help support my efforts. Tweet about this post (you can use the Tweet This! button on top), blog about my post, draw attention to my efforts in other ways, and finally, put a few dollars into the project’s coffers. I’ll then do all the heavy lifting!

Thank you!

Support Level

Supporter $15.00 Donor $25.00 Sponsor $50.00 Benefactor $100.00 Patron $250.00

The bar chart below and at top will update as support rolls in. The question is, will it roll in at all? If not, what are my options?

I think it is not only fair and appropriate, but also necessary for plugin developers to have the opportunity to make a living, or at least part of their living, writing great code that extends the base functionality of the BuddyPress platform.

To be clear, I am not an employee of Automattic. Like the vast majority of BuddyPress developers, I do not get paid a single cent for my contributions. In fact, as a salaried employee of Automattic, Andy Peatling, the lead developer of BuddyPress, is the only one who gets paid for his time working on this Open Source project (as far as I know).

Again, I am not looking to fan the embers of previous debates. I do not have any issue with how Automattic runs the WP plugin repository or care if they never list commercial plugins. That is not my point.

All I’m asking is how can plugin developers exist on an equal footing with theme designers when it comes to the issue of earning a living? Currently, the only three options that developers have, it seems, are to advertise a donate button for each plugin, accept consulting gigs, or accept advertising on their website. But donate buttons rarely provide much support and providing consulting services to clients is not for everyone. Furthermore, for me, I do not care to turn my personal website into a billboard.

The argument that plugin developers benefit by offering their work for free is flawed. It assumes that all developers are looking for consulting work, and two that all developers who offer their work for free will receive consulting work. Whereas it is certainly the case that some plugin developers have built a nice consulting business as a result of their donated work in the WordPress community, that does not mean that this route is for everyone.

What if a developer just wishes to code great-quality plugins like a theme designer designs high-quality themes? What if he or she does not want to provide any other service? How should this developer be compensated for their time?

But, since you asked, I do have a donate-like button for my BuddyPress Privacy Component. You can read more about my version of “donate” here.

I would like to hear some ideas on this topic as I have contributed much time to the BuddyPress community but have not earned a single penny. I am not looking to provide programming services or start a consulting company. I have a significant project that I’m working on so I don’t have time for much else.

Since I am not yet making an money on my project, I need a vehicle to earn some semblance of a respectable cash flow. Just as some theme designers earn a decent income from their premium themes, I would like to think that my income vehicle could be BuddyPress component development.

So, ideas and civil discussion, please!

After learning the rudimentary workings of OAuth, it quickly became clear that it did not offer a mechanism for internal access control, nor was it even intended to be used as an authorization protocol. I’ll discuss this last statement in more detail later.

So, to educate my fellow social media gurus, I decided it would be helpful to jot down what I learned and determined about OAuth, its intended use in any social media application like BuddyPress, and how privacy control needs to be implemented within BuddyPress.

What is OAuth?

From the OAuth Core 1.0 Specifications:

The OAuth protocol enables websites or applications (Consumers) to access Protected Resources from a web service (Service Provider) via an API, without requiring Users to disclose their Service Provider credentials to the Consumers. More generally, OAuth creates a freely-implementable and generic methodology for API authentication.

Therefore, OAuth is a set of rules and procedures that facilitate the exchange of data between websites without the requesting website requiring the user to provide his or her sensitive authentication credentials. This enables a greater level of security for all users.

Imagine if you had to provide your Twitter credentials (username and password) when installing the Twitter Facebook Application in your Facebook profile. Fortunately, Twitter now uses the OAuth protocol so your password does not need to be provided to and stored by Facebook. Instead, a token with defined rights is created and used by the Twitter Facebook Application to gain access to your Twitter data.

How Privacy Needs to be Implemented in BuddyPress

Whereas OAuth can provide access control to a user’s private data, or any URL with a need for access restrictions, it does so only between sites. OAuth is not a protocol used for internal access control; it is not an internal authorization protocol.

(Visit this post to learn more about Authentication Versus Authorization)

Again, from the OAuth Core 1.0 specification:

It is important to understand that security and privacy are not guaranteed by the protocol. In fact, OAuth by itself provides no privacy at all and depends on other protocols to accomplish that.

Therefore, BuddyPress requires its own internal privacy protocol. Enter, BPAz, my BuddyPress Privacy Component

BPAz is a necessary protocol for providing privacy to all BuddyPress users’ personal data. Once a given user’s data is sufficiently controlled by their BPAz access control list (ACL), they can feel more confident in exposing any data they wish to share across the Web.

BPAz is internal to a given BuddyPress install. It provides the mechanism whereby a give authenticated user can establish access rights—via an ACL—to their internal objects. The focus is on allowing users to have fine-grained control over their personal data. OAuth, on the other hand, is a protocol that facilitates the cross-site sharing of user content.

With BPAz, users can compartmentalize their data, to decide which pieces can be shared and with whom. OAuth can then generate tokens based on a given user’s ACL that allow clearly defined access rights to users in outside networks. Without the privacy filtering of BPAz, OAuth tokens would be very broad in scope, potentially allowing access to all of a user’s data with a single token.

Now, it is not as simple as installing my Privacy Component and suddenly your BuddyPress site is ready to safely communicate your users’ data to the outside world via OAuth. WPMU and BuddyPress first need to properly communicate with OAuth. This is on the roadmap for a future version. Once that happens, I will take a look at the code and figure out what, if any, I need to alter in my Privacy Component to properly communicate with OAuth.

So, the take home message is this. Authentication within BuddyPress is currently handled by a few internal core WPMU scripts. Authorization, however, is not yet a core feature of BuddyPress. My Privacy Component is an important first step in molding BuddyPress into a platform that can safely and effectively interact with other social media sites.

Apparently I’ve made 1317 posts on the #buddypress forums. This puts me ahead of @apeatling on 1053, @johnjamesjacoby on 1257. @jeffsayre wins with 1454!
1:08 PM Dec 13th by Tweetie

it made me remember a post on Andy Peatling’s blog from several months ago about giving back to the Open Source projects from which we personally benefit.

Andy’s take was that commercial users of Open Source projects should strive to contribute back at least 1% of their time to the project. You can read Andy’s take on this issue here.

I agree with Andy. Further, I think it should apply to all users—not just those of us (like myself) who are building or plan to build commercial SaaS solutions based on Open Source projects.

BuddyPress is not the only Open Source project from which I and many others derive benefits. BuddyPress requires WordPress Mu and further benefits from bbPress. These three Open Source projects, managed by the corporation Automattic, also depend on other Open Source projects—PHP, MySQL, Javascript, JQuery, and probably a few others.

Also, we all depend on some sort of server operating system and Web server software, more than likely both Open Source in nature. Finally, you might even throw in the Open Source licensing schemes that the aforementioned Open Source projects are licensed under.

But, this post is about BuddyPress. Paul’s tweet made me wonder how much time I’ve given back to the BuddyPress project, the Open Source project with which I am most associated. So, I did a few calculations:

Time spent answering forum questions:
1454 posts x avg. of 7 minutes per post = 170 hours

(N.B. Some posts require twenty or so seconds, but many others I’ve spent 20+ minutes carefully answering. So, I’ve settled on an acceptable average of 7 minutes per post.)

Time spent on forum (reading, moderating, but not answering):
80 hours

(a guesstimate)

Time spent answering private BuddyPress PMs and emails:
40 hours

(a fair guesstimate, but I’ve probably spent a little more)

Time spent on IRC:
70 hours

(These are active, participating hours, not passive hours. That equals about 2 hours a week)

Time spent developing (my Privacy Component, Trac patches, and a few not yet released plugins):
373 hours

(based on my calendar entries)

Total volunteer hours contributed to the BuddyPress project to date:
733 hour

Now, the average number of hours a person works each week in the United States in 40 hours. That adds up to 2,080 total work hours per year. I’ll use this figure for one measure of my contribution. Of course, 80 of those hours are often granted to employees as vacation time (if you’re lucky).

But, is there really a normal work week? I’ve never had a job where I’ve worked fewer than 50 hours per week on average. Currently, and for the past decade or more, I’ve worked at least 10 to 12 hours per day, 6 days a week. Often, it is more like 14 to 16 hours each day. Now, if I’m fortunate, and wise, I might actually take 2 weeks off in a year.

So, to be conservative, let’s assume I work an average of 12 hours per day, 6 days per week, and 50 weeks a year. That adds up to 3,600 total work hours per year. Yikes!

Now granted, since I am one of a handful of active BuddyPress forum moderators, the amount of time I volunteer might be a little higher than most. But, these calculations cover just 8 months of my involvement in the BuddyPress project to date. They also do not count the many non-paid hours I’ve spent via iChat, Skype, or on the phone discussing BP with others. So, I’m guessing my actual, yearly total is higher.

The Results

What percentage of my working year do I volunteer to the BuddyPress project? The results are in:

Using an average American work year:

733 hours / 2080 hours per year = 35.2%

Using my work year:

733 hours / 3,600 hours per year = 20.4%

Boy, I need to go make some money or at least go on a vacation. But, at least I’ve banked a few volunteer hours using the 1% gauge!

There surely are a number of other BuddyPress developers who kindly give of their time to this extent as well. What percentage of your working year have you volunteered to the BuddyPress project this year?

The term “auth” is often used interchangeably for authentication or authorization. But there is significant differences in meaning between these two terms. So as not to confuse people, new terminology has been created to clearly differentiate between one or the other.

Because of this confusion, the process of authentication is now often referred to as A1, or AuthN, or simply Au. The process of authorization is now often referred to as A2, or AuthZ, or simply Az. Since authentication must come before authorization, the A1–A2 ordinality of the terms is evident. This also explains the alternate names of my component—BPAz and BP–Authz.

In brief, the following logic describes BPAz:

1. Authentication is different than authorization. The former must come before the latter.
2. Users are the focus of social networks. They should have primacy when considering platform functionality. They are the super objects that create all content and therefore should have control over that content.
3. Therefore, each object is created and owned by a user
4. Only authenticated objects should have control over authorizations
5. Users are the only object that get authenticated
6. Users are the only object that can set and manage authorizations

This component is the first public Beta release. Please read the future.txt file that comes with the download package to learn about upcoming features and release dates. Instructions for installing and using the component can be found in the readme.txt file.

Click to see settings screen

NOTE: Comments are now disabled for this post. Thanks to everyone who has tested and provided feedback.

The newest version of my plugin is not yet ready for WPMU 2.9.x or the newly-released BP 1.2. I will be releasing an updated version in the near future (2-6 weeks). Since there have been too many people attempting to use the current version of my plugin under WPMU 2.9.x and now even BP 1.2, I am removing the link to the download repository. Once the latest version is ready for BP 1.2, I’ll create a new post with a new download link. If you want to be notified when my new BuddyPress Privacy Component is released, I suggest that you follow me on Twitter so as to get notified as soon as it is ready.

Okay, enough said. You can download my BuddyPress Privacy Component here. Once it is close to ready for an official public release, I will upload it to my WordPress Plugin Repository account.

Installation Hint:

If you read the readme.txt file, you will see that it says, “copy bp-authz.php and /bp-authz/ into /wp-content/plugins/ and activate the plugin.” This means that you need to make sure that you have both the directory /bp-authz/ and the single file bp-authz.php in /wp-contents/plugins/. So, it should look like this:

/plugins/
…/buddypress/
…/bp-authz/
…bp-authz.php

That last file needs to be at the same level as the /bp-authz/ directory. So, instead of simply dragging the main package directory BPAz into plugins, you drag the contents into plugins instead, leaving out the BPAz directory.

Release Notes:

• Requires at a minimum WPMU 2.8.4a and BuddyPress 1.1.1. Preferred environment is WPMU 2.8.6 and BuddyPress 1.1.3
• Although this release is very stable for a beta version, since it is a pre-release version (Beta 1), it should not be used in production environment.
• The component does not come with any theme files. It uses a few custom CSS selectors. If you are using a customized theme (i.e. not the BuddyPress default theme) you may need to adjust your theme’s CSS
• There may be a few issues with filtering out activity stream items. I suspect that the activity object array structure changed in a minor way in BP 1.1.3 and I have not yet had time to see if that is the case.
• Please provide any bug or usage requests in this thread

Do you like this plugin? How about showing your support? You can learn more about what it takes to build, maintain, extend, and support this plugin by reading my Do You Support BuddyPress Privacy post?

Support Level

Supporter $15.00 Donor $25.00 Sponsor $50.00 Benefactor $100.00 Patron $250.00

BPAz levels range from 0 (totally open) to 5 (totally closed) and follow this progession: All Users –> Logged in Users –> {Friends –> Groups} –> Userlist –> Only Me

Please note that the BPAz level “Relationship Mapped” is no longer an option. Instead, it has been replaced with the option “Members of these Groups.”

Yes, I know. You’re thinking, “what great wisdom and humor?”

The point is that this new domain, which I’ve had for many eons, is finally being used—and yes, I’ve actually had this domain for several billion years.

So stay tuned or ignore me. It doesn’t matter. As the days and weeks progress, I will transfer my content from other places into this new digital husk.