cybersoc.com

she likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on...

Toronto based fashion and shopping blog I want - I got picks up on a rather strange advertising campaign for Calvin Klein's new in2u scent.

“We have envisioned this as the first fragrance for the technosexual generation,” said Mr. Murry, using a term the company made up to describe its intended audience of thumb-texting young people whose romantic lives are defined in part by the casual hookup.
Last year, the company went so far as to trademark “technosexual,” anticipating it could become a buzzword for marketing to millennials, the roughly 80 million Americans born from 1982 to 1995. A typical line from the press materials for CK in2u goes like this: “She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.”

I never thought I'd live to see the day when txt sex was deemed to be cool enough for an advertising campaign, even if Beckham does it.

In a NY Times article about the advertising for the fragrance, Lory Singer at marketing agency Coty, says that "technosexuals" are open to marketing messages that other age groups wouldn't respond favourably to by explaining that technosexuals:

"... are much more empowered, but they are unshockable. They have seen everything from 9/11 to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears without underwear. They see everything instantaneously that goes on in the world.”

Well, if you've seen Britney and Paris without knickers...

Now I've got to try to crowbar this post back into cybersoc.com... The NY Times article doesn't just quote people from established marketing agencies and Calvin Klein fragrances, but goes to several bloggers and presents them as experts:

"Youngna Park, 24, a freelance photographer, would seem to be just this kind of individual and consumer. She has been interviewed by companies looking to tap into the millennial mind-set (though not by the researchers for CK in2u). Ms. Park moved to New York two and a half years ago and began taking pictures in restaurants and writing an online food column for Gothamist, a blog for urban markets. Her network of friends and professional contacts was forged partly through the Internet, and she has occasionally dated people she met online.

She would seem an ideal candidate to illustrate the term “technosexual,” if the idea did not immediately turn her off. “That’s such a weird phrase,” she said. “I just imagine kids putting on cologne to sit behind their computers. That’s really weird.”

They also interviewed Zach Klein (no relation) who was a partner in CollegeHumor.com. He told the New York Times,

“What’s most interesting about our generation is that it is very obvious when brands are attempting to market down to us when they use our own vernacular or types of personal technology. It’s very transparent, and I tend to shy away... abbreviating in2u like that is lame,to put it simply.”

It's nice to see the NY Times using blogs and bloggers as a source of content and context within their articles.

Calvin Klein, however, has fallen back on that old build, manage and own model:

"To seem more authentic, Calvin Klein is trying to reach consumers on their own turf by creating an online community, whatareyouin2.com, patterned after sites like MySpace and Facebook. The company has invited students at film schools around the country to submit shorts addressing the theme of “what are you into?” and their clips can be found on the site."

Instead, they could axe a few of those hardcore web developers who like to build complex social software systems and instead use their site to showcase and link out to third party services like myspace, facebook, youtube and flickr - along the way giving users the tools they are used to using and that work, embracing the audiences of those service, and reducing technical, editorial and moderation costs too.

casual encounters participants exposed

If you're seeking a no-strings attached sexual encounter - and thousands of people are - then there are worse places to look than the casual encounters section of sites like Craigslist or Gumtree.

They offer anonymous users to post and respond to ads and, one gathers from the huge number of ads looking for the widest range of partners, pairings and "activities" imagineable, are quite popular. It also seemed like, up until last week, quite a safe and discreet way for people to pursue their sexual fantasies, affairs and casual encounters.

What changed? Last week, Jason Fortuny started an "experiment" of posting ads as bait then republishing the responses he gets, along with email addresses, contact telephone numbers and photos. A number of the people who emailed him in response to his ads are married or in relationships and most of the others I'd suspect don't really want their friends, families, and colleagues knowing they were posting or replying to sex wanted ads.

And there's the rub - most of the people that Jason has exposed for whatever reason it is he did this (looking at his LiveJournal site, I reckon it's simply to get some attention) are likely to be completely innocent of any legal or, so long as you're fairly liberal and open minded about the idea that people can and do have casual sexual encounters, moral wrongdoing.

What Fortuny has done is attack the trust between users that is necessary for sites like craigslist to function as a community. It will be interesting to see how the casual encounters communities defend themselves against what they probably view as unfair attacks like this in future. [Meanwhile... Craigslist saw it's traffic increase by 99% on last year.]

(There's more on this story at waxy.org)

bookmark this post: del.icio.us l Digg l Furl l ma.gnolia l Newsvine l reddit l Yahoo MyWeb l Track with co.mments

online dating, murdoch on future of newspapers, wifi hotspot chat

I knew that a lot of people were meeting on internet dating sites but, in all honesty, I had no idea exactly how huge the numbers have become. EHarmony, but one of the main US dating sites, reckons that "over 33,000 members" got married over a 12 month period. Now that is a lot. See Mark Brook's post on Online Personals Watch for details.

Speaking of Mark, he's also posted about Rupert Murdoch's belief that the future of his newspaper businesses depends on their successful integration with myspace.

And for those of you who use wifi hotspots, why not have a chat with other people using the same hotspot? Mark's got details of that too...

guest blogger Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org

Craig Newmark started Craigslist.org over 11 years ago. Since that time, it's emerged, almost by stealth, to become one of the 10 busiest websites on the internet. Craigslist's 10 million unique users a month post 5 million, generating 2.5 billion page views. The site currently has a presence in 175 cities across 34 countries. Not bad for a quirky site that's still based on a functional, all text design and run by a team of 19 from a livingroom in San Francisco. Craig's blog can be found at http://www.cnewmark.com. [this guest post is also available as a podcast]

Bad stuff on the 'net: it's there, but greatly exaggerated

We're seeing a lot of buzz about problems on the 'net, like scams and predators of different kinds. It really happens, but it's a very small part of what you see on the 'net. The Internet is a microcosm of society, extremely beneficial, but sometimes abused. We need to be careful not to overreact.

I've been doing customer service for over eleven years on craigslist.org, and I've seen a lot of stuff. Overwhelmingly, what's on the 'net is a combination of people just doing their job, or doing what they need to do to get through the day. Sometimes people sell their stuff, or buy more, or maybe they just have something to say, and can't get heard elsewhere.

However, the bad guys got onto the 'net pretty early, to run scams or to advertise illegal activities where they had previously used other media. For example, scams involving fake goods have always been around, and are as much of a problem, or more, for traditional media. However, there are far more citizens than crooks, and more citizens are getting online, driving the percentage of crooks very low.

On the 'net, however, you tend to leave trace evidence, and people can work together to find and stop many of the bad guys. On our site, people flag away most of the bad stuff, and that works pretty well. In persistent cases, people send us tips, and then we track 'em down and reason with them, and block them as necessary. We also spend a lot of time educating people and working with law enforcement.

Sometimes it means that people in law enforcement need to work together with people in the community to solve problems. For example, we'll work with ISPs, and sometimes the cops, to deal with problems that we can't solve ourselves. In some cases, we'll get them all to work out specific problems with each other. Even the biggest ISPs have understaffed abuse departments.

However, there are bigger problems that get no buzz. Perhaps the biggest predators on the 'net are people who post disinformation, particularly swiftboaters, using that term in the generic sense. We have a significant problem with 'em, which will hit a peak in October and early November. Even Jimmy from Wikipedia has a similar problem, citing the occasional situations with "jerks".

We don't know how to solve this yet, working on it, but this is the priority.

(thanks to Ed Wes and Jim Buckmaster for suggestions!)

Craig

online dating market - down in US, up in EU

isJupiter Research has released the results of two studies of the online dating industry.

While the online dating market in the US appears to have saturated, with the value of the market actually declining by 1% in 2005, the European market increased by 43% in 2005. That's less than in 2004, when the European online dating market increased by 80%, but there is still significant room for growth: whilst in America 20% of internet users used dating sites, only 4% in Europe did.

The author of the studies told BBC News Online that social networking and community sites like myspace "don't have the tools or the right audience" to help people find a date (Instead, he points to high subscription charges as the key barrier to users becoming members.)

Really?! So posting a photo, having a profile, joining groups and finding other users who share your interests, making friends, meeting up with other users, etc - none of that helps people find a date? Sure, it doesn't say "online dating" at the top of myspace or flickr or craigslist but the tools are there and surely people are using them.

No matter how many times we hear about a couple meeting on an online dating website, or read industry press releases telling us how normal it is to meet on one, the fact of the matter is that many still feel there is a stigma attached to online dating sites. Less so for online community and social networking sites where dating does happen but more discreetly - and it's those users who aren't quite sure about online dating, but who are at ease with sharing content and being a part of online communities, that dating sites need to attract to continue the market growth of recent years.

Belarus outlaws "online dating" sites

The Parliament of Belarus has reportedly outlawed online dating in an attempt to stop human trafficking in the former Soviet state. Although the media is likely to call this a ban on "online dating", it seems to me that the legislation is primarily targeting websites offering women as brides for Western men and other forms of human trafficking.

itv buys friends reunited

UK independent broadcasting company ITV has reportedly bought Friends Reunited for £120 million in cash with a further £55 million bonus possible based on performance to 2009. Friends Reunited allows people to find and make contact (if they pay the membership fee) with former classmates, workmates, etc.

This is, on many fronts, a surprise. ITV, the company created when Granada and Carlton merged, is currently struggling financially. About two years ago Granada all but closed it's online division where I had formerly worked. The area that Granada Broadband was profitable in was developing and managing online communities for third party clients and a group of former Granada staff working in this area left Granada to create a successful moderation company, Tempero . In addition to working in the community department, another part of my role at Granada was to look at developing local websites for each of the ITV regions but there seemed to be little interest and no money from the regional companies at the time. Now there are starting to be rumours of a new local push to take place online - possibly broadband local TV at a time when the BBC is trialling a similar service in the West Midlands.

Now it would seem that ITV, which closed it's programme websites as well as it's online community department just 2 years ago, has become interested in the net again. [Granada and Carlton were also investors in AskJeeves.co.uk a few years ago but the corporate website seems to indicate that they have returned their interest to AskJeeves Inc in the US] They've paid a huge amount of money for a website that, it could be argued, is based on a format copied from the earlier (1995 vs 1999) US website Classmates.com . Is this a smart move? Is this purchase somehow connected to the rumoured "ITV Local"?

match.com lawsuit: is this a photo of Autumn Marzec?

A couple of days ago I blogged about the lawsuit filed against match.com, the online dating site, alleging that the site used employees as "date bait". This story seems to have exploded onto the web with google showing 94,000 results to the search string "match.com lawsuit".The AFP News site is one of many that outlines the case: Matthew Evans, a match.com customer, had a few dates with Autumn Marzec (incidently, "Marzec" is the Polish for the month of March... and perhaps a surname). Evans alleges that, after a few dates, Marzec confessed to being a match.com employee. If nothing else this is bad practice and something that smaller players in the online dating industry are known to do but not something, according to Mark Brooks at Online Personals Watch, that the top ten dating sites have been known to get involved in. [Please note: these are simply allegations and haven't been proven in any court - match.com may very well be innocent and there are people blogging to that affect.]

In Marzec's defense, how many of us, were we single and working for an online dating website, would have used our employers service to get dates? I'm betting quite a few of us. But the lawsuit alleges that, rather than simply dating members in the same way as a health club instructor might date his or her trainees or a night club bouncer might take someone home at the end of the night, employees were actually SENT on dates with customers - something totally different. When I read the accounts of what had happened, I started to wonder how they did this. Did the employees simply set up an account, using their own name and details but omitting the fact that they worked for match.com? Were they given aliases or asked to create aliases? [Some news sites are even reporting that the people sent on dates were actually hired for that purpose. Match.com denies these claims.] Curiousity got the best of me and I found myself googling for "Autumn Marzec", just as many users of online dating websites would have done had they encountered her online.

It wasn't long, on the first page of results in fact, before I found this post on a Yahoo Group about Volleyball in Southern California. One click away from that page and you'll find a photo to go with the profile (age: 24, occupation: dance instructor since you asked) of the user. Could one of the two women in the photo to the left be the same "dark-haired, buxom twentysomething Autumn Marzec" that went on a date with Matthew Evans? The email I found using google was sent on Mar 11, 2004 so it would seem that, if the post and photo are part of a deliberate attempt to build an online identity then this started at least that long ago. It might be that, as I suggested above, Marzec was simply a dating website employee taking advantage of the easy ability to meet men through the service and, let's face it, if you work for a dating website you wouldn't go pay to use a competitors service. Or Marzec may have posted this profile innocently for personal use. Of course, it could be a photo of a totally innocent Autumn Marzec, or person of another name, who has never worked for match.com or any other online dating agency.

I have no answers to these and other questions but it does seem to me that, if Marzec is really a match.com employee and isn't, or wasn't in 2004, a dance instructor, that the whole purpose of this profile has something to do with creating an online identity - perhaps just for fun and perhaps for online dating. Anyone who has ever used an online dating site knows that users can and do check each other out by googling the names, usernames, and email addresses of people they meet online. Anyone that Marzec would have met online at match.com (or elsewhere) is likely to have found, like I did, this yahoo profile. The yahoo profile clearly doesn't say anything about working for an online dating site...

Technorati: blogs talking about match.com right now.

------ update 22 November 19:09 ------

All the evidence at my disposal yesterday seemed to verify that the yahoo profile I found, and the photo I posted above, were those of the same Autumn Marzec identified by Matthew Evans, the claimant in the match.com lawsuit. To verify this I emailed the person holding the Yahoo account, who at the moment I sent the email was shown as being online. I also emailed the claimant's legal representatives who have confirmed that:

* the woman depicted in the photo posted here on cybersoc.com is the same woman who appeared in photos on the match.com profile of "Autumn Marzec"

* a search of public records confirm that a woman of this name lives in West Hollywood, which is the same area given in the email I found posted to a publicly accessible Yahoo group and which is also consistent with information given to Evans by the woman who identified herself as Autumn Marzec.

I don't think there is much hope in Marzec, or whoever posted a profile with her photo on it, responding to my request for an interview. I'd like to know more about what happened but, with a lawsuit looming, and the rights to a 'made for television movie' likely to be on the minds of many, it seems unlikely that she'll respond.

----- 23 November -----

Match.com have hit back by demanding that the case against them is dropped: "The woman named in the lawsuit as a Match.com employee has confirmed in a sworn statement that she has never been an employee of Match.com, nor was she ever paid to go on dates with any members or subscribers."

----- 24 November ------

Gelf Magazine has, as well as an excellent article about this story and a .pdf of the allegations against match.com, a copy of the above mentioned sworn statement from Autumn Marzec.

online dating agencies sued for fraud

Match.com , one of the largest online dating sites, has been accused in a California lawsuit of using their staff as date bait. The service, which charges about £17 a month, guarantees you'll "find someone special within 6 months". And if not? Well, if match.com really did send staff on dates as the lawsuit alledges, there probably aren't many users getting refunds in the vicinity of match.com's headquarters.

But it's not just Match.com that's been named in an online dating related lawsuit this week. Our familiar friends Yahoo ( Yahoo Personals ), who have had all sorts of negative press recently, are also being sued in a seperate California lawsuit alledging "breach of contract, fraud and unfair trade practices".

(Thanks BBC News Online)

cybersex study

I've always been rather proud of the fact that my website is the #1 link for cybersex on google. I'm not sure why I stay at the top of the google page considering that I don't have any porn here or a chat room. Anyway, in a nod to all those users who find themselves staring at this page over the weekend wondering where the cybersex is, I bring you this humourous report from the Radish about a "Harvard Study" linking cybersex to masturbation.