Originally posted in May 2008...
Just caught up to this post by Steve Gillmor and his take on the role, scale and reliability of Twitter as a communication/information switching platform. Two things caught my attention. First, positioning Twitter as a relevance-aware conversation soft switch... and second, defining a signal-to-noise for relevance of Twitter Flow as a function of who you follow, what topics you track and how you filter. " At its simplest (its true power) Twitter is a phone switch for routing information flow. Those who control the flow control the price for the information. In a virtualized platform, the hardware is the razor and the software switch is the blades. The software switch is an affinity-based construct that manages the signal-to-noise ratio of the information flow based on the contouring signals (gestures) of the members of the group. In the language of Twitter, it’s who you follow times what you track divided by how you filter. So, managing the signal-to-noise ratio for (twitter) Flows based on user or group gestures starts to define a relevance-aware flow of conversations or... Relevance-Aware Flow = f( Following * Topics ) / Filter One could imagine a number of different user-defined filters (think social, project, functional, process or other variables) used to identify and channel important conversation streams from within the Flow. While the question of decentralizing Twitter as a method to improve scalability and performance is important, we shouldn't gloss over the need and value of filtering Flow into specific streams of relevant conversations and making them discoverable and social.
Bo Peabody, Facebook and Twitter Will Always Be Crappy Businesses
Back in 2006, as I started to realize how consumer oriented innovation was leading enterprise innovation and could serve as a proxy for future enterprise applications, I started a habit of replacing the word "computing" with the word "communications" when reading new announcements and visions of the future for computing.
You know... "cloud-computing" became "cloud-communications"..."virtual computing" became "virtual communications"... "social computing" became "social communications"... you get the picture.
Where am I going with this?
I found myself repeating this habit when reading Steve Frank describe an interesting way to think about the difference between "Old World Computing" and "New World Computing" when reacting to the recent Apple iPad launch:
"The bet is roughly that the future of computing:
So, take out the word "computing" and replace it with "communications" and we have a rough draft vision statement for the future of communication applications... driven by the emerging computing model.
"The bet is roughly that the future of communications:
For me, this New World vision for (consumer + enterprise) communications implies a number of important user experience, user interaction, device and web application design choices for new products that need to be considered and tested with users.
Do you agree with this view for new world communication applications?
"Getting rid of phone numbers means that we can just connect with someone by a unique ID. And that ID should be able to float on top of various networks, applications & services and protocols."
Bijan Sabet, General Partner, Spark Capital
How do you communicate and stay connected with your most important and valuable family members, friends and colleagues?
In many ways, you could call this group of people at the center of your life, the core of your social network.
I created a quick survey on the topic and hope you'll take a few minutes to answer the 10 questions.
"Communicating with the Core of Your Social Network"
I'll summarize and publish results after collecting everyone's feedback.
In response to Edge.org question "How has the Internet changed the way you think?":
"The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is. Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally."
David Dalrymple, Researcher, MIT Mind Machine Project
(image - Jason Taylor)
I recently read two posts --- one by @StoweBoyd (The False Question of Attention Economics) --- and the other by @JohnBorthwick (Charting the Real-time Web) --- that had me thinking (again) about the challenges of information overload and real-time streams in the enterprise.
Here are a couple of quotes from each post that I found interesting.... first from Stowe:
"I suggest we just haven't experimented enough with ways to render information in more usable ways... the only ones that will benefit in the next ten years will be those that expend the time needed to stretch the cognition we have, now, into the configuration needed to extract more from the increasingly real-time web."
Stowe Boyd, The False Question of Attention Economics
"As interactions online shift to streams we are going to have to figure out how measurement works. I feel like today we are back to the early days of the web when people talked about “hits” — it’s hard to parse the relevant data from the noise."
John Borthwick, Charting the Real-Time Web
Both posts highlight the need for better tools to measure, manage, filter and render the streams of information being generated as user interactions shift to the Real-time Web or Live Web. I agree.
In some ways, we need to apply to the real-time web a management maxim from the industrial economy attributed to a number of people including Deming, Grove, Drucker and Kaplan:
"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it"
There are a number of social monitoring and analytics solutions from companies like Crimson Hexagon, Radian6, Chartbeat and others. For example, Chartbeat is focused on monitoring, measuring and analyzing real-time interactions across the web. This video provides an interesting demo of real-time activity on Fred Wilson's AVC blog:
Yet, Chartbeat is a solution focused on monitoring, measuring and analyzing streams of attention from other people to my content / website / service. It helps me understand certain (not all) flows of attention to me... and to my content.
If we're to improve management of our attention allocated to the flood of information overload, we need a "personal" chartbeat-like service focused on monitoring, measuring and analyzing streams of attention coming in to ... and going out from ... me
To try and manage the real-time stream of information... of conversations... of how I allocate my attention, I will need better tools:
- First, to measure my individual incoming and outgoing real-time interactions, and
- Second, to manage the most important and relevant real-time streams created from my two-way interactions with my most important personal/work/commercial relationships.
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"Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet."
Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Google
I went back to see what topics were the most active on this blog and seemed to resonate with you and other readers during 2009.
So... here are my "Top 5 Posts for 2009" along with a key theme cloud.
#1 - Guiding Principles of Innovation at Apple
If you had to summarize the guiding principles of Apple's Design and Innovation Strategy what would they be and how might you embrace them to drive new product designs and create new revenue streams from new markets?
With the help of Chris Morrison, Bruce Nussbaum, Owen Linzmayer, Umair Haque and Daniel Turner, I've summarized a draft list of 11 guiding principles that appear to be important to Apple's innovation strategy.
#2 - User Experience for the Business User in 2009
Four fundamental forces of change are driving the evolution of the user experience for the Business User in 2009:
(a) economic recession and its impact on the enterprise IT budget
(b) enterprise governance, security and business policy requirements force "hardening" of consumer apps
(c) new sources of value and revenue continue to be found at the Enterprise Edge
(d) consumer innovations influence and shape business user expectations
#3 - Social Enabling Voice Conversations
The people we call and engage in voice-based conversations, in our personal and work lives, represent our active - and in many cases our most relevant - social graph.
To build a resurgent voice industry, consumers and business users need a new user experience that helps them unlock the value of their active, relevant social graph by social-enabling their voice conversations.
#4 - The Future of Games @ Work
To engage business users in a compelling and continuously productive collaboration experience, enterprise apps need to tap the user's individual motivation, unleash the user's curiosity and align the user's incentives, unique skills and social networks.
Are there proxies for this type of engagement? Yes; in multiplayer gaming applications.
A powerful example of users who are engaged in self-motivated, aligned, collaborative efforts can be found in massive, multi-player on-line games.
#5 - The Live Web of Interaction Signals for Business Users
The enterprise is shifting from a space/file software model to a time/stream based software model where the real-time interactions of business users have a past, a present and a future.
New value for business users - and revenue for enterprises - will come from aggregating, analyzing and filtering these interaction signals enabled by the Real-time Web.
At a Nov 2009 Ted presentation, Pranav Mistry of the MIT Media Lab provided an update on the status of his Sixth Sense Project and his vision for integrating our interactions between the digital and real world.
As you watch this, consider the possibilities of an open platform that changes how we experience and interact with digital information to augment our work and personal transactions, conversations and relationships.
"...publishers have to stop seeking simply the most controversial opinions. They're abundant: every talking head can churn one out, and faux "news" of every kind is already chock full of 'em shrieking at one another. Instead, successful opinion arbitrageurs must seek the most informed opinions, gooey with expertise, thick with real value for readers.
Those opinions are worth the most — and they're what readers will pay for" Umair Haque, "Why Controversy Won't Power Next-Gen News"
"The more players participate and interact with WoW's knowledge economy, the more valuable its resources become, and the faster players increase their rate of performance improvement.
Said more generally, the more participants--and interactions between those participants--you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up." --- @jhagel John Hagel, Introducing the Collaboration Curve
(an interesting follow-up to "The Future of Games @ Work" )
[ I believe ] that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati—and it's all about harnessing supply and demand.
"What's ubiquitous and cheap?" Varian asks. "Data." And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data.
Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google , Wired - May 2009
"Designers versed in data may uncover trends or insights that not only yield better products but new product or business ideas as well."
Luke Wroblewski, Sr. Director, Product Ideation & Design, Yahoo
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