In Q3 and Q4 of 2012, Twitter saw increases in information requests (1009, up from 849 in Q1 and Q2) and removal notices (42, up from 6), and a slight decrease in copyright notices (3268, down from 3378).

Twitter’s two reports are now hosted on a specific site dedicated to government transparency, and the company wrote in a blog post that it would be providing “more granular details regarding information requests from the United States,” as well as adding sections to track removal requests and copyright notices.

We believe the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact. To that end, it is vital for us (and other Internet services) to be transparent about government requests for user information and government requests to withhold content from the Internet; these growing inquiries can have a serious chilling effect on free expression – and real privacy implications.

Google has been providing transparency reports since 2009, and the company released its most recent set of data last week. My colleague Jeff Roberts explained the significance behind the data release and the stats Google provided, which applies to the Twitter data as well:

What this means in practice is that authorities in the United States and other countries are regularly demanding that Google hand over the keys to user accounts like Gmail or YouTube. In many cases, the government may have a legitimate reason to ask for such information, such as solving a crime or stopping a spying operation. Other times, though, governments may simply be fishing for data in a way that flouts citizens’ right to privacy. Such fishing expeditions, unfortunately, are relatively easy in the U.S. thanks to the sprawl of so-called administrative subpoenas — a legal tool that lets agencies demand data without first proving to a judge that they have a right to get it.

While Twitter has followed in Google’s footsteps in releasing surveillance data so far, Facebook has so far declined to provide the info, although it noted it’s working to promote transparency in other areas of its site. The company just launched an “Ask Our Chief Privacy Officer” feature on Monday to replace the voting system for privacy changes that it recently abolished.

Here’s the chart from Twitter showing the overview of government requests for 2012:

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Web workers, too, have to deal with these kinds of requests, but I personally find that people are even less abashed about asking for advice and help related to blogs, social media, networking and other web work because they don’t regard it as a specialized service the way they do with medical and legal expertise.

I’m not saying giving away freebies is always a definite no-no, but I do think that as web workers we need to start reinforcing the value of our work by drawing a line between friendly advice and working for free. Here’s how I’m trying to create that demarcation.

Parry When Possible

I’m mostly of the opinion that the easiest way to deal with most conflict is to avoid it, and free advice is no exception. Most of the time, when people ask me to do something like set up their blog, write their cover letter/resumé introduction, or otherwise give away what I normally require a fee for, I either respond noncommittally or agree to talk to them more about it later on. It avoids unpleasant scenes with close friends and relatives, and nine times out of ten, you’ll never hear about it again.

Role Reversal

It’s hard to keep this tactic from sounding too snarky or sarcastic, but as with most things, asking someone to see things from your perspective can help curb friendly requests. Avoid the “Do I ask you to help me remodel my kitchen for free??” knee-jerk response. Instead, exercise some tact and take the time to fully explain real parallels between what exactly you do for a living, and how it is you do it. Often, people don’t think anything of asking for web working advice because they don’t see the work behind it, since the process can be fairly opaque to outsiders.

This One’s On the House

Refusing to give away advice or help isn’t always the best course of action. If, for instance, your mother wants you to help her set up a travel blog (sign up for Blogger and pick a theme), looking to make some money off the deal would probably be pretty callous of you.

Even in less clear-cut situations, the advantages of giving something away might outweigh the downsides. Always examine whether or not you might be able to work out some kind of barter arrangement in exchange for other service, or for future consideration, if you know the person you’re dealing with to be dependable and have a solid sense of fair play.

Convert the Lead

If you’re an optimist, then you won’t see requests for pro bono help as an annoyance. You’ll see them as viable sales leads, and therefore a valuable source of potential income. This is another tricky bit of business, since many people will immediately become disinterested in your services when they find out you won’t be performing them free of charge. But that actually makes it a doubly-beneficial solution, since you’ll land a sale if the person you’re dealing with has a genuine need and you’re a good salesperson, or you’ll dissuade them from coming calling on you in the future when they’re looking for free advice.

Being asked about your job is great, especially if you love it as much as I do mine. I love the opportunity to talk about what I do with people who are genuinely interested. What I don’t love is being asked to do something by someone who couldn’t care less about the how and why of web work, just so that they don’t have to do it themselves. People will only respect what you do for a living if you respect it first, and part of that means not cheapening it by doing for free what you would normally do for a fee. Plus, shouldn’t your buddy from college learn to write their own cover letter at some point?

Do you find that people often ask you for free advice/work? How do you deal with these requests?

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Him: “What are you doing on Friday afternoon? We want to bounce some ideas off of you before you go to Beer and Blog at 4pm.”

Me: “Sure, let’s meet for lunch”

After we disconnected from IM, I noticed that I never even bothered to ask him what he wanted to talk about, and I realized that this is a recurring pattern with this person. He has introduced me to so many great people and projects over the years that I’ve stopped asking what and why and started skipping right to when.

Maybe this is how some people handle requests for meetings, but it’s not my usual strategy. I get many requests for meetings, ranging from people wanting to discuss my consulting services, to people wanting to pick my brain about some online community topic, to those who want to talk to me about one of my many side projects. I get more requests than I can reasonably handle, as I have a chronic calendar problem of having too many events, meetups and meetings with random people, while not having enough time for paying client work. As a result, I normally try to avoid extra meetings, and I have a few meeting avoidance techniques that I use.

I combine efforts whenever I can. I try to get people to meet me at existing events that I am planning to attend anyway, and this works great for those first meetings where someone just wants to talk to me about a new project. If we are going to need a little more time, I schedule meetings with people for right before or after events like Beer and Blog to combine activities into blocks of time.

Diversion is another good strategy. I tend to grill people with requests for details about why they want to meet while secretly hoping that I can make an introduction to a better person for them to meet with about their topic. I avoid the meeting, and they still get to talk to someone about their project. It’s not that I don’t want to meet with interesting people, but I can only allocate a certain amount of time to meetings and business development activities without jeopardizing my client work.

Just say no. This one is the hardest, but sometimes you just need to tell someone that you can’t make the time to meet with them. If the topic isn’t interesting to you or if you can’t make the time, sometimes you just have to let people know that a meeting isn’t going to work. In this case, honesty really is the best policy. Let them know that you aren’t passionate about the topic or that you don’t work on the type of projects that they want to talk to you about. If you don’t have any time to spare and are on a tight timeline, you are better off letting them know rather than avoiding their email or phone calls, which can make you seem unresponsive or unprofessional. I don’t use the “just say no” option often enough.

I suspect that this is a common problem for many web workers, especially those of us who rely on consulting or other freelance work as our primary source of income. I love meeting with smart people where we can both share information and learn from each other, and it’s a great feeling to walk out of a good meeting with a potential new client. Spending time meeting with new people is an important step toward finding new clients, and it is a fantastic way to stay energized with new ideas.

How do you handle requests for meetings? How do you “just say no”?

Image by sxc.hu user Avolore

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The BBC’s iPlayer is nothing short of a digital revelation — providing viewers in the United Kingdom with online access to an ever-changing (and free) selection of the BBC’s internationally-revered quality programming.

For an increasing number of us Brit’s, BBC.co.uk/iPlayer is the site we surreptitiously visit on our lunch-breaks at work and the destination for catching up on missed TV in the evenings. Yet upon its initial beta launch back in 2007, the iPlayer was a national disappointment; exclusively for Windows and with more bugs in it than an entomologist’s cupboard.

While iPlayer downloading may have been refined somewhat — Windows users can grab DRM-ridden episodes for play in Windows Media Player – it’s still not an option for Mac users. However, Erik Huggers is the man set to change all that. He’s the BBC’s verbosely-titled Director of Future Media and Technology and a veteran of Microsoft, having spent nine years with the Apple-competitor.

Speaking to Guardian.co.uk earlier today, Huggers talked about the different platforms used to access the iPlayer, “The situations we’re seeing are interesting – mum and dad are watching linear TV in the living room but kids are watching it in a different way … on the iPhone, iPod touch or laptop.”

The statistics for non-Windows platforms are indeed promising. Wii and Linux users account for 1% of the viewership, iPhone and iPod touch owners make-up for 3% and, notably, one in 10 viewers are Mac users. The intention is that by the end of 2008, the iPlayer will feature a native download manager for viewing episodes on the Mac.

Of course, the episode files are sure to have some kind of DRM embedded within them — the BBC has an awful lot of red-tape to go through and that can make for clunky solutions to simple problems. It’s also not clear as to whether the download manager application will have an embedded video player, or if there will be some kind of Quicktime/iTunes support.

Now here’s the really exciting thing for non-UK readers of TAB: Huggers also talked about opening the iPlayer up to international viewers, ”… today we are artificially blocking international access to the iPlayer. That’s a problem, in my mind, and a big challenge for the industry.”

Although Huggers hasn’t outlined a time-line for opening the international flood-gates as yet, the suggestion is that at some point in the future you’ll be able to grab your fix of Doctor Who, Little Britain, Spooks and all the other fine programs by the Beeb, regardless of your global location.

Stay tuned for more iPlayer news in the future, we’ll be keeping an eye on the BBC as they develop the service.

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