Fishbowl

by Matthew Glass

  From there it had been a relatively short step to the persona of an enthusiast of a prophet – randomly named Edgar Allen Vander – and his religion of four random tenets. He had worked the Fishbowl Schools, seeding them with tantalizations to visit the Edgar Allen Vander School page and its links to the tenets of the faith and the biography of the prophet. It turned out that the simplicity – if not total vacuity – of the four commandments that he had invented was a stroke of genius. People could read anything they liked into them, and they did. Before long, the School page was alive with what Chris perceived as sad, damaged, needy, searching people, seriously discussing his empty aphorisms and mining them for meaning. Articles on Vander appeared in online encyclopaedias. He had planted the seed, then sat back and watched as the tree grew. Yet the success of Vandernarianism had taken him by surprise. It was far in excess of anything he had anticipated. To Chris, it was awe-inspiring.

  But he wished now that he hadn’t started the meeting by talking about Vandernarianism. That was one for Kevin. The yoga foray, on the other hand, was a straightforward Cooley experiment – Chris hadn’t known just how important an experiment until the conversation a month earlier, when Andrei had told him about his doubts over whether Fishbowl would last. Chris had said to Andrei that Fishbowl had established a new model of advertising, but afterwards it had struck him – that wasn’t true. Fishbowl merely offered a better version of the existing model that tried to identify people’s interests from their online activity and aim advertisements at them that seemed to match those interests. What Fishbowl was doing was more powerful not because it was different but because in Fishbowl people identified themselves by the one or two things that were top of their list of interests, and an advertiser could be reasonably certain that they would be interested in what they had to sell them. In other words, it was only the old model more powerfully applied.

  During the month that had followed since then, the number of people signing up for the Bali resort had shot up from two to eight. Chris had thought he would be doing well if he could get three. He had also had the idea of seeing what would happen if he announced a Vandernarianism conference – and found 200-plus people eagerly signing up. He realized then that a new model of advertising really was possible – not merely the old one better applied. A new model that, because of the quality of Fishbowl’s targeting and the ability of a constructed personality to enter the discussion flow, gave them a unique advantage.

  ‘This isn’t serious,’ said James again. ‘You’re saying we hire people to make personalities—’

  ‘Palotls, James.’

  ‘Palotls?’

  ‘That’s what these personalities are called.’

  ‘Aren’t they avatars?’

  ‘No, an avatar is an online incarnation of a person who exists in the real world. A palotl is an individual who exists only in cyberspace. From papalotl, the ancient Mexican word for butterfly. The Aztecs thought butterflies were the souls of dead warriors. A palotl is a fragment of our soul brought to life, as it were, in cyberspace.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Kevin.

  James looked at him in distaste. ‘I don’t care what you call it. We’re not going to have people creating these things and then trying to sell stuff.’

  ‘That’s not how I’d put it.’

  ‘I don’t care how you’d put it. We’re not doing it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not?’ James looked at him in disbelief. ‘Do I have to tell you? OK, there are about a thousand reasons. For a start, you’re not telling people you’re advertising.’

  ‘So? When a celebrity goes on TV and says he uses a product, does he announce that he’s advertising it?’

  James stared at him in disbelief. ‘Everyone knows he’s advertising it.’

  ‘Really? Do children know? He doesn’t say, “I’m advertising, kiddies. I’m being paid so ignore every word I say.” There’s no announcement that says, “This is an advertisement.”’

  ‘People know.’

  ‘Do they? Look, this is legal. I’ve checked it out.’

  ‘No, Chris. It’s not illegal. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Oh, are you going to pull morality on me, James? Listen, you think a kid in the inner city watching some basketball star advertising sneakers thinks, This is advertising, I won’t pay any attention? If you want immorality, start there. What I’m talking about here is high-end goods. These are people who have the ability to make an informed decision and plenty of disposable income. I’m not talking about pushing sneakers at kids whose parents can’t afford to put food on the table. If you want to get on a high horse, James, get on your high horse about that.’

  ‘We don’t push sneakers.’

  ‘Don’t we? It’s going on all the time under our noses. You ought to spend a little time on the Schools pages once in a while. Every corporation is in there doing it, getting people to boost them. Unidentified, as it happens. Recruiting kids and tossing them a sneaker or a download if they’re lucky. It’s called viral marketing, James. Maybe you’ve heard of it.’

  ‘But we don’t do it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Chris. ‘That’s our problem. With the data we collect, we can do it so much better than them.’

  James shook his head in disgust. Chris stared right back at him, smiling at his discomfort.

  ‘So what you’re proposing,’ said Andrei, ‘is that we … hire a bunch of people to create palotls and sell that service to advertisers?’

  ‘In a nutshell … yes.’

  James snorted in contempt.

  ‘What?’ demanded Chris.

  ‘What about our reputation?’

  ‘We’re providing information. I told you, I told no lies. And I don’t propose that we would. Factual information only.’

  ‘But biased, partial, selective.’

  ‘Whose information isn’t? At least it will be factual. Have you ever read any of the stuff on the Schools pages, James? Most people are talking out of their ass. What’s better – partial but factual information or complete nonsense?’

  ‘This is not about Deep Connectedness.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion. I happen to think it is. Does it make the world a worse place?’

  ‘Obviously it does.’

  ‘Really? Obviously? Those eight people who are going to Bali didn’t think so. Five have already been and you should see what they said when they came back. The people who had jobs at that resort because of them didn’t think so. So in exactly what way was the world worse because of this, James?’

  Langan threw up his hands in the air. ‘This is not about Deep Connectedness! This is not about any of the things Fishbowl is here to do. Andrei, this goes against every single thing I believe in. It goes against my faith. It goes against the way I do business. This idea isn’t worth the time we’ve already spent on it.’ He looked at his watch and got up. ‘I’ve got a wife and kids. I see too little of them already to waste my time with something like this. You guys can keep talking about it as long as you like. In case you’re wondering, I’m a no on this. No, no, no, no, no! This is not happening while I’m COO. Not on my watch.’ He left, not quite slamming the door but closing it a little too loudly behind him.

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘You know, the weak point in all this,’ said Kevin, as if James had never even been there, ‘is that you’re using people’s faces in your home page – images you’ve taken off the net. Doesn’t matter how much you Photox them, we still couldn’t do that.’

  ‘True. Ideally, we’d use computer-generated images.’

  ‘I don’t know of any software that’s good enough to create images that will stand up to scrutiny.’

  ‘I don’t either.’ said Chris, relishing the changed atmosphere in the meeting room. With James gone, it suddenly felt as if they were back in La Calle Court, throwing around ideas for whatever merit they might have without consoring themselves because of what a guy in a suit would say. ‘If
we did this, the people we hire would have to agree to have their images used. But we could manipulate the images so they wouldn’t be recognizable. It’s an issue, but we could get over it.’

  ‘I’m not sure this is about Deep Connectedness,’ said Andrei.

  ‘I dispute that,’ said Chris. ‘You’ve always said we need to have a broad conceptualization. I think this fits that envelope. At the moment, we have a broad conceptualization of what Deep Connectedness can be but a relatively narrow one of who it can be between. You guys started off thinking of it as connectedness between two unique and irreproducible individuals who exist physically in the world. OK, Kevin already pushed us beyond that with palotls, which were his idea – and Andrei, you backed that, rightly, because a broad conceptualization required you to do that. So you expanded the idea to connectedness between as many manifestations of one self as an individual wants to project into cyberspace. And I’m saying, let’s expand that further into connections that include corporate entities, multi-person entities, if you will.’

  ‘Companies,’ said Ben.

  ‘In this case, but it could also be other entities. It could be charities trying to get you interested in the cause. It could be consumer groups trying to inform you of your rights. Other social networks allow corporate entities on.’

  ‘We’ve never done that,’ said Ben. ‘We’ve always said no.’

  ‘And I’m saying we should reconsider. Not because others do it – because it’s a way of extending Deep Connectedness.’

  ‘So that companies can sell stuff.’

  ‘In the case of the example I gave you, but it won’t be in every case. But even if it is, we already do that. We already have advertising. Guys, let’s be honest. We wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t.’

  ‘When we have Sponsored Baits,’ said Ben, ‘people already know it.’

  ‘Does that make a difference?’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘Why?’ said Chris. ‘And how do you know that’s not a bad thing? We know that some people won’t click on a Bait simply because it’s sponsored. What if that’s depriving them of seeing stuff they actually would want to see? Wouldn’t they be happier if they didn’t know it was sponsored, clicked on it, and then did see it?’

  ‘That’s their decision.’

  ‘How can they make that decision if they have an irrational bias against Sponsored Baits? In fact, the very fact that we identify them as such means that we’re recognizing this bias and encouraging it.’

  ‘Chris, come on …’

  ‘No, seriously, Ben. We don’t require any other Bait to have an identified motive, and, let’s face it, a lot of people’s motives are exploitative. Some people will click on a Bait because they think the person looks hot and they want to hit on them, or because they want to get some kind of information they might use to their advantage, or because they want to see if they can sell you something, or because they want to convert you to a religion … It’s only advertisers where we say, you’ve got to identify your motive.’ He looked at Andrei. ‘Singling out advertisers is not consistent. Let’s go back to our principles. If we do what I say, does it make the world worse?’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Andrei?’

  Andrei was silent. Instinctively, he would have said that it did. But as Chris had reminded him, it was one of his principles to be open to challenge on the scope of Deep Connectedness. ‘I’d have to think about it,’ he said eventually.

  Chris nodded. ‘Let me add one thing. Companies like us, we all survive through advertising. That’s reality. We allow advertising and that gives us the money to keep building the great services we want to build. And you know what? The way I see it, the advertising we do is a form of Deep Connectedness as well.’

  ‘That’s a new one,’ said Ben.

  ‘No. I’ve always thought so. We enable companies to connect with their customers in a way no one else can. And to me, if you have a broad conceptualization of Deep Connectedness – both of what it can be about and who it can be between – then that’s a form of Deep Connectedness like any other. But the truth is, however good we are now, the most efficient model of advertising will always win. At the moment, we target better than anybody else, which is why our advertising revenues have always been so strong. But the way we do advertising, that’s already yesterday’s model. The model I’ve described, that’s tomorrow’s model. If we don’t do it, someone else will. And I would hate to see that happen. Not only because of what that would do to the value of the five per cent that I own of this fine company, but because I think Fishbowl does and will do Deep Connectedness better and more efficiently than anybody else will ever do it. I think we’re more honest and more transparent. I don’t think anyone else would have had the cojones to write the Mea Culpa statement, Andrei. That was a Stakhanovite thing to do. But if we don’t lead, if we don’t develop the model of tomorrow, someone else will take our place. To me, that’s another perspective on thinking about why this is about Deep Connectedness. It’s about making sure we’re the ones still here to provide it.’

  ‘We’re doing pretty well with what we’ve got,’ said Ben.

  ‘Ben, this model of advertising will carry us through some way yet, I grant you that. But not in the long term. Of course, you could ask people to pay – we don’t have to be a thirty or fifty billion dollar company. We could be a five billion dollar one. That would be OK, right? All we’d have to do is ask the five hundred million users we’ll have in a year’s time to pay, say, ten dollars each year. Ten bucks. How many would do it?’

  ‘Some would,’ said Ben.

  Kevin smirked. ‘You and your grandmother.’

  ‘Some would,’ said Chris. ‘Maybe once. But you know what else would happen? Someone would come along and provide our exact same service for “free”, by doing exactly what we’re talking about tonight, and create the thirty or fifty billion dollar company we could have been. And not even the ones who were prepared to pay their ten bucks first time round will pay it the second year, and then we’re nothing. That’s human nature.’ Chris grinned. ‘Never fails to disappoint.’

  ‘I don’t care about how much we’re worth,’ said Andrei.

  ‘What I’m saying is that if you’re not worth a lot, you’re going to be worth nothing.’

  Kevin grinned.

  ‘Forget that,’ said Andrei. ‘Let’s say this is a way of extending Deep Connectedness – I need to think about that, but maybe it is. Why do we do this now?’

  ‘Why would we wait? We want the most Deep Connectedness, in the broadest sense, don’t we? We’ve never waited before.’

  ‘Maybe James is right. Maybe this will kill our reputation.’

  ‘Andrei, James is dead wrong.’

  Everything Chris had ever seen had convinced him that people couldn’t care less what use was made of them or their data on the internet, as long as they didn’t have to pay for it. They wouldn’t care about this either, he was sure, or at least not enough to do anything about it. But he didn’t put the argument quite that bluntly.

  ‘People don’t like change, even when it’s bringing them even better Deep Connectedness. It’ll take some time for them to see its benefits. So, yeah, there’ll be people who scream, but after a while they’ll stop.’ Chris paused. ‘Let’s do an experiment. Let’s sell this concept to a couple of advertisers, do it for a while – four, five months – see if it works on a commercial basis, then leak the fact that it’s been happening. There’ll be a shitstorm. We’ll say we don’t know how it happened, we’re shocked, we’re going to investigate, yada, yada, yada – then let’s assess where we are a couple of months after that. If there’s been a sustained impact on the user base, I’ll concede. I still think this is the future, but I’ll accept we shouldn’t be the first mover and we should wait for someone else to blaze the trail.’

  ‘Dude,’ said Kevin, ‘no way James is going to let you do that. You heard what he—’

&n
bsp; ‘James doesn’t make the decisions!’ snapped Chris. ‘Kevin, James is the COO. He executes what he’s fucking told to execute.’ Chris looked at Andrei. ‘James doesn’t get it. This is start-up mode, Andrei. This is trying something new and radical. Come on. You and I both know James doesn’t get that stuff. But this is what Fishbowl is for. To do the big stuff, the groundbreaking stuff. Look, we don’t need to use anyone from the commercial team. We don’t even need to tell Ed Standish. I’ll find someone to help me and I’ll do it from LA. I’ll keep you informed. You’ll have a veto over the decisions. And I won’t tell any lies. I didn’t tell any lies about Bali – you’d be amazed how little I had to say. Guys, this is legal! And we can do it totally the Fishbowl way. Don’t make the world worse – don’t tell any lies.’

  Andrei watched him. To do this without James knowing went against everything the headhunter had told him when he had hired the COO. She had urged him to make sure James was included in all the important decisions, even the technical ones. There was no way to undermine a business operator more quickly in a tech company, she said, than to cut him out of those.

  And Chris had been there when she had said it.

  ‘You’re not even making a decision,’ said Chris. ‘It’s just an experiment. Even if it works, you can still say you don’t want to do it.’

  ‘And if it goes wrong?’ said Ben.

  ‘Blame it on me. We’ll say it was a rogue act and the company is severing its ties with me. Andrei, come on.’