Social Networking Hits the Genome

Article published at Technology Review by Emily Singer

If you've ever wanted to know just exactly how much DNA you share with your ridiculously tall brother or doppelganger best friend, you'll soon be able to find out. 23andMe, a personal genomics startup in Mountain View, CA, is about to unveil a new social-networking service that allows customers to compare their DNA. The company hopes that the new offering will encourage consumers to get DNA testing, potentially creating a novel research resource in the process.

"I think the idea of social networking has untapped potential," says George Church, a pioneer in genomics at Harvard Medical School in Boston and a member of 23andMe's scientific advisory board. "The idea has precedence in patients like me, people who have been enabled to find one another by their disease. Here, people can find each other by their alleles [or genetic variations]."

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Privacy & Social Networks

Video generated by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart. http://www.privcom.gc.ca/

www.yourstreet.com : mapping news

Text Source: TechnologyReview by Erica Naone

A new startup called YourStreet is bringing hyper-local information to its users by collecting news stories and placing them on its map-based interface, down to the nearest street corner. While there have been many companies that combine information and maps, YourStreet is novel in its focus on classifying news by location. (See "A New Perspective on the Virtual World.")

When a user opens the site, it detects her location and shows a map of that area, stuck with pins that represent the locations of news stories, user-generated content called conversations, and people who have added themselves to the map. The user can zoom in or out of the map or look at another location by entering a place name or zip code into a search bar. CEO and founder James Nicholson says that what sets YourStreet apart is its extensive news service: the site collects 30,000 to 40,000 articles a day from more than 10,000 RSS feeds, mostly from community newspapers and blogs. "We're not relying on the users to provide us with articles," Nicholson says. The stories featured on the site aren't of a specific type, and users will find the locations of murders marked alongside the locations of upcoming music shows. Stories featured on the site are teasers, and, if a user clicks to read further, she will be directed back to the source of the information.

Read the full article at Technology Review

Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World

Text & Image source: OCLC Website

Founded in 1967, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. More than 60,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials.

The OCLC has elaborated a report that is based on a survey (by Harris Interactive on behalf of OCLC) of the general public from six countries—Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States—and of library directors from the U.S. The research provides insights into the values and social-networking habits of library users.

The practice of using a social network to establish and enhance relationships based on some common ground—shared interests, related skills, or a common geographic location—is as old as human societies, but social networking has flourished due to the ease of connecting on the Web. This OCLC membership report explores this web of social participation and cooperation on the Internet and how it may impact the library’s role, including:

- The use of social networking, social media, commercial and library services on the Web
- How and what users and librarians share on the Web and their attitudes toward related privacy issues
- Opinions on privacy online
- Libraries’ current and future roles in social networking

More info:

Social networking was also discussed at the OCLC Symposium “Who’s Watching YOUR Space?” at ALA Midwinter 2007, while property law and privacy rights were discussed at the OCLC Symposium: “Is the Library Open?” at ALA Annual 2007.

Social Networking – How to avoid a digital hangover

Source Text: ENISA Web Site

ENISA is launching its first Position Paper on Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks at the echallenges conference in the Hague, 25 Oct. Social Networking is like a ‘digital cocktail party’: a powerful mixture of human social instincts and web 2.0 technology which is revolutionising the Internet. ENISA emphasises the many benefits of Social Networking but identifies 15 important threats. This leads to 19 recommendations on how Social Networking can be made safer.

ENISA’s Position Paper emphasises the commercial and social benefits of a safe and well-informed use of Social Networking Sites (SNS). “Safer Social Networking is ‘win-win’ for all: both users and SNS providers” says the Executive Director of ENISA, Mr Andrea Pirotti.

Several SNS are now among the top 10 most visited websites globally. The commercial success of the multi-billion Euro SNS industry depends heavily on the number of users it attracts. Combined with the strong human desire to connect, this encourages design and online behaviour where security and privacy are not always the first priority.

Users are often not aware of the size or nature of the audiences accessing their information and the sense of intimacy created by being among digital friends often leads to a ‘digital hangover’ – disclosures and digital “memories” that cannot be forgotten the morning after.

For full list of threats and recommendations, please refer to the Position Paper http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/deliverables/enisa_pp_social_networks.pdf

Privacy and Public Policy Challenges of Social Technology

Privacy and Public Policy Challenges of Social Technology

Mar 5 2007 - 12:30pm

Stanford Law School Room 280 A

Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook


The rise of social technology through sites like Facebook empowers users to model their connections with other people in the real world and allows them to share information more effectively and efficiently with their friends. Most of this sharing is unquestionably socially beneficial. But fears that some of the sharing can be harmful lead to regulatory and other efforts focusing on privacy, safety, and asserted illegal use of material protected by copyright and other intellectual property regimes.


http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/5173

The Privacy Myth

Jeremy Wagstaff, is a technology columnist, author and journalist, and writes for The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. He asks over at his Loose Wire blog whether we have overcome our concerns about privacy.

I can't speak for the younger generation, having been kicked out of it some years ago. But if we're talking more generally about folk who have embraced the Net in the past 10 years, I'd have to say I don't think it's that we don't care about privacy. We just don't understand it. In that sense nothing has changed. I think what is happening is the same as before: People don't really understand the privacy issues of what they're doing, because the technology, and its liberating sensuality, are moving faster than we can assimilate to our culture. (Jeremy Wagstaff)

J. Angelo Racoma analyses it in this post As The Media Becomes Social, Do We Really Still Care About Privacy? at BlogHerald.

Do we really care much about privacy? Most would probably consider privacy to be important. But I would agree with Jeremy Wagstaff that it’s because of the “liberating sensuality” of technology that many have preferred to go the easy way. (J. Angelo Racoma)