Great article; looking for a third way is very interesting. Neither the bureaucracy of government (at its worst) nor the greed of business (at its worst) will produce best results for end-users. If you think of end-users as digital citizens you start to see the relationship with the IT world in a very different way. Citizens have rights, end-users are only customers with limited commercial rights. I can understand why many IT business people shy away from thinking citizen rather than end-user but we may be approaching a time when we look at ICT tools and services as not much more than utilities. Citizens (generally) expect a postal service, electricity and water wherever they live. Customers take what they can get. If ICT tools and services are a must-have to function in the modern world they have crossed a line which will most likely result in more regulation. Your principles – as above – may provide a way to avoid endless, wasteful big government versus big business wars. Can I suggest though that, to work, these principles will need to be more end-user/citizen focused, so for example: “Think Users” is short and clear, but “Respect the layers” or “Data in, data out” are very technical. Admittedly my focus here is more on end-users/citizens rather than on companies, but my point is that efforts by companies based on a view of the public as consumers rather than citizens tends to encourage self-interested, short-term commercial thinking. It seems that you are trying to get companies to think longer term and about bigger interests. In current circumstances, first company to do this may lose out to rivals. Either government regulation or popular pressure/expectation can encourage/facilitate/force longer-term thinking. Popular pressure from 'citizens' is likely to be more radical than from 'customers'. Though companies do not like thinking of their customers as citizens; in these cases, anything less may not provide a sufficiently strong effective 'framework' that will help to avoid government regulation.

Short version – can we get to where you want to get without thinking about digital citizenship?

David

#1. The question of whether Google or Facebook is more user centric is subjective but let me outline my reasoning. Google tends to launch new services as standalone products, not integrated parts of the core experience of Google.com. There might be an odd link to the service — usually in labs, maybe in an “other menu” — but they dont make the assumption that every feature should be integral part of the core. Conversely Facebook is designed as a single product — and every feature is an addition to the whole.

In my mind Google's approach is more aligned with users than the integrated approach. It doesnt assume that the users want everything to come from one service. I have no idea who does more user testing — that was the intent of the statement. I was more focussed on integration vs. aggregation.

#2. Great question — points to an issue that I never fully resolved in the post — ie: who is the post aimed at users, companies, policy makers etc?? My early drafts of the post were user focussed. But I hit upon issues like the one you highlight — how can users dictate layers?? That was a draft from a year ago (yep, im slow to post sometimes). The post in the form – published is focussed on both users and companies. I was influenced by a book I read this summer — Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (link to amzn page: http://bit.ly/2Kev9p) — it lays out an alternative structure to design what they call decision making architecture. From a user perspective its a question of expectations. I do think there are cases — like w/ Chrome — where you can see a train wreck coming re: layer disruption. As im thinking about your comment its raising a question for me about intent — are the companies in question designing product for their users or to perpetuate a pre-established / incumbent business model. Maybe thats the right litmus test here.

#3. In terms of transparency re; Twitter, Facebook. Let me speak to the Twitter side as Im more familiar with it. I think what we as an industry have seen over the past 18 months is a young company, growing into a pair of shoes that are bigger than its feet. Let me tell you what I know about the firehose. Twitter offered a handful of companies access to the firehose. I think that Twitter could have offered more transparency around the terms of service of the firehose and I would have liked betaworks to have been one of those companies who received the firehose. We weren't — my understanding is that Twitter gave it to a handful of companies to beta test how it would scale *and* what would happen (ie what would the companies do with it). Ironically one of the companies who got it was Friendfeed — an early Twitter competitor. And despite a competitive posture — they didn't produce anything that was worth keeping from it.

In my mind there is nothing mysterious about this — its the early stages of development of something new and the parameters (usage, business rules etc.) are slowly getting defined. Im glad you asked because most people dont — maybe the perception of mystery is more interesting than the mundane facts! I do think that the search deals around the firehose that were inked a couple of weeks ago are an important step towards simple, transparent business arrangements, Im hoping there will be a click thru EULA to the firehose. On the point of relative transparency of Facebook vs. Twitter. I think you are comparing two companies who are in different stages of their life cycles. Facebook in the early days ran its service exclusively in the college community — providing a platform to scale and test. Twitter has been doing all of the above in the public sphere. To wrap on this point — I do have more faith that the business rules are getting spelled out, albeit slowly and fitfully.

4. Agree with the caching point.

On blogging, im a slow blogger, post about once a quarter, will keep up that cadence. And about those bit.ly links — thats my workflow laid bare!! I use the bit.ly side bar to grab a link off a page out of habit. I get your point about hovering. I need to install a bit of js on wordpress that will enable the hovering and show the clicks.

1. it is unclear to me how Google is more user-centric than Facebook. i think Google's launched and failed services over the last few years far outnumber Facebook's – most of FB's stick, I think. you have to wonder how user-centric the planning was for things like search wiki or knol.

2. users should demand clarity around the layers? what would they demand? “please respect the layers as soon as it becomes a problem?” competition seems the best solution to me, and i don't say that to every problem at all. but as you've illustrated, blurring layers can sometimes be wildly useful. i don't feel capable of determining ahead of time when that line will be crossed and the blurring will become a problem. maybe other people could do that.

3. re opaqueness to the biz principles that underlie relationships: access to the twitter firehose and the recent ycombinator deal are two examples I'd add to the list. people have told me “i won't describe my relationship with twitter and no one else who has one will do so either.” in fact, when it comes to opaque business relationships between that very important vendor, twitter, and anyone else – betaworks is generally the first party that comes up when people talk about mysterious connections. presumably when twitter really does open for business, then some clear rules will be spelled out? i don't have a lot of faith in that, to be honest. fwiw, I've been super critical of both twitter and facebook but facebook has been a lot more forthcoming with communication with me. i think twitter is upset that the handful of times they've responded to my email inquires, I end up writing negatively about their responses. Facebook, on the other hand, has been far more open with everyone – down to publishing what they call roadmaps for the next 6 months of the business. (conveniently leaving out the world domination step at month 7!

your write-up here articulated well why this transparency is important but I think we're a long way from it.

4. re facebook data: it's not just about deleting photos from someone's feed, it's about pulling them back from other sites they were syndicated to if your privacy settings change. thus the prohibition of caching in FB connect. I'm super skeptical of FB and an adamant advocate of opening up their data, but I buy the argument that the prohibition of caching is done at least in large part for the benefit of their users.

keep up the blogging, sure is nice to get to read your thoughts. I liked the one about the Notificator a whole bunch especially

ps. the bit.ly links in your posts are making me sad – I'd like to be able to hover over the links, see where they lead and then decide whether to leave this page or not.

In that situation Google is killing innovation, contrary to what most people believe to be true.
Only time will tell. Great post.

I think it fits nicely within the range of categories you have shared for web progress. Thanks for writing one helluva post!