Rethinking CAPTCHA: The Power of the Human Computer

Each day we humans (yes you) collectively waste more than 550,000 hours decrypting slanted CAPTCHA text in order to prove to our innumerable web services that we are not spam-bots (I still prefer the nostalgic simplicity of: “Are you a robot? Check one: Yes / No / Maybe”). Why? Quite simply, computers are savants — incredibly adept (Wopner!) at particular tasks, while inherently incapable of interpreting non-contextual information in the manner and speed which we take for granted. It takes an average of 10 seconds for a human to “decode” a CAPTCHA gate, but a quick search of Google images will affirm that we’re still light-years ahead of our binary counterparts when it comes to making sense of abstract information, especially visual media. Escalate the challenge to, say, defining the emotion of a human subject in a photograph or the content within a YouTube video and that gap widens further.

But what if all of that uniquely human processing power could be harnessed? What if the powers of each — the human and binary computer — could be tethered to achieve new heights? Enter Louis von Ahn: the inventor of CAPTCHA, who hopes his creation can be the tool in transcribing the world’s decaying wealth of hard-copy information in ways that computers, even with advanced optical character recognition (OCR), simply cannot.

Above in an example of the expanded new system in action (in this case as part of the registration process on Twitter).  Louis von Ahn provides further detail in the video below:

When I first encountered The ESP Game (and it’s Google spin-off), I was amazed at the simple brilliance in its design: utilize ordinary people across the world (read: free labor) to interpret and categorize a vast collection of images within the inviting construct of a casual game (for arbitrary points, no less)… Brilliant. Furthermore, they’ll even recruit their friends to join them, thereby exponentially increasing the power of the collective human machine.

Though CAPTCHA is a necessary annoyance in its current form, the potential of leveraging the simplicity of to derive a social benefit is truly inspired thinking.

[via Search Engine Journal]

Lying is Bad, Posing is Criminal

Self-proclaimed “viral marketing agencies” be warned: the days of anonymously trolling blogs, seeding message boards and otherwise posing within the community of social media is coming to an end. That is, at least in the UK, which later this month will enact legislation under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations aimed at regulating the use of such clandestine, faux word-of-mouse tactics.

Specifically, the following will now constitute a criminal offense:

Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making it clear that the message has been created by, or on behalf of, the brand.

Using “buzz marketing” specialists to communicate with potential consumers in social situations without disclosing that they are acting as brand ambassadors.

Seeding viral ads on the internet in a manner that implies you are a simple member of the public.

Does this sound familiar? While I highly doubt the efficacy of government regulation to cure the problem, it is interesting that such measures have become necessary. According to Nielsen’s Online Global Consumer Survey (April 2007), 78% of internet users viewed word-of-mouth recommendation as the most trustworthy form of “advertising” (61% also cited online opinions, recommendations and reviews: effectively a genre of the former). Backed by the relative anonymity of the internet, it’s little little wonder then that some marketers (and/or their agencies) have overstepped common sense and good practice in their desire to influence the conversation around their brand while deluding themselves into the belief that such tactics can actually achieve real results.

In reality, clandestine and intentionally misleading tactics are not just bad practice… it’s poor and shallow strategy. In the worst of cases — the ones which likely and often motivate such thoughtless emergency intervention — anonymous rebuttals are as futile as spitting on an inferno. And in favorable cases it’s a missed opportunity. I’m not quite sure which is worse.

The rise of YouTube has been a particularly detrimental catalyst due to the site’s ambiguous URLs (which coincidentally was the enabling force behind the passé Rickrolling craze) and tantalizing, but prematurely counted, “views” metric. Armed with these two inherent devices, so-called “viral marketers” can deliver tens/hundreds of thousands of views for their client’s half-baked concepts simply by “pounding the pavement” and increasing the link base across the web.  But there is a vast difference in the resulting growth curve — evidenced by an expanding spiderweb of connections — of truly viral content (the kind that actually merits, and is driven by, the desire to share) versus fooling 100,000 clicks that are effectively dead on arrival. Companies that intentionally mislead to spike the numbers, or hire unscrupulous henchmen to do it on their behalf, do not understand this essential distinction… and YouTube is really just one of many outlets for this behavior, fueled by baseless hopes for instant viral success.

It seems to me that the problem requires marketer education much more than market regulation — the market will eventually root out the bad and ineffective peddlers, assuming marketers care enough to properly screen the standards and practices of their brand ambassadors as they should.  They need to better understand the data and community, define more useful benchmarks for success (in advance) and realize that there is tremendous value in openly listening to, participating in — and in some cases facilitating — the collective conversation.

[via WebInkNow]

Social Surplus and the Sitcom

If you’re looking to define the “critical technology” of the 20th century, Clay Shirky might suggest the sitcom. A counter-intuitive suggestion, to say the least, considering that the last century began without powered flight, the transistor, or even sliced bread. In his speech at Web 2.0 Expo this past week, Clay remarked upon the cultural evolution which catalyzed, if not necessitated, the structure and ubiquity of the media landscape we know today… as well as why (and how) that model is evolving once again, and forever:

Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened — rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before: free time. And what did we do with that free time?

Well, mostly we spent it watching TV. We did that for decades. […] And it’s only now that we’re starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We’re seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody’s basement.

This is something that people in the media world don’t understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race — consumption. […] But media is actually a triathlon, it’s three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

While I’m not convinced that the introduction of “I Love Lucy” trumps, say, the internet, antibiotics or the modern bikini, the analysis of social surplus’ effect upon the next wave of evolution in media demands attention. So put down the remote and go check it out.

UPDATE (4.29): You can also watch the video at Blip.TV 

The Hollywood Reporter Gets a Facelift

Today The Hollywood Reporter unveils its new face with a comprehensive redesign of its print and online properties, and a renewed focus on leveraging the numerous data sources of its Nielsen Co. brethren, including: Nielsen EDI, Nielsen Mobile, Net Ratings and SoundScan.

Backed by key partners within The Nielsen Company, such as Nielsen EDI, the comprehensive changes we are introducing — from cover to content to approach — reflect the changing needs of our audience and will allow us to drive the discussion about the business of entertainment for the 21st century. […] The transformation is devised to uniquely position THR to super serve a wider range of today’s global entertainment markets, which are increasingly technology-savvy and data-driven

Beyond the digital makeover (the second in 18 months), the effort marks an important strategic shift focused more on addressing the business of Hollywood, which remains one of the nation’s largest and most powerful exports. “None of the publications to date really represent that. It reaches out to the finance [and] technology community,” says publisher Eric Mika “but it does not forget the core readership on Wilshire Blvd., New York City and London.”

The new web strategy will introduce four new video channels (Boxoffice Tally, News, Exclusive Interviews, and Festival Dailies), a dedicated technology section, and a new daily blog dubbed “Hollywood Live Feed”.

Clearly, and to their credit, The Hollywood Reporter has seen the writing on the wall: as general “bread and butter” entertainment news has increasingly become a staple of the blogosphere (which frequently does a better job with it anyway), its premium value has diminished considerably, if not entirely. There is far more value in delivering insightful, business-driven analysis targeted to a community which has already been trained to pay for such information. As with the WSJ, Mika acknowledged “once we have enough real exclusive data … that sort of area will go behind the wall.”

[via PaidContent] 

Summer Blockbusters Get Not-So Rotten Potatoes

Amidst the hype and anticipation leading into this summer’s slate of action-packed blockbusters, Ash at MrPotatoMash.com has unveiled a new batch of custom Mr. Potato Head creations that pack some serious superhero starch! (I’m still partial to the Deniro-esque “Spud Driver”)