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“It has seemed obvious to me for a while that an ideal aspect of a business plan for a social networking service such as Twitter would be to charge partners for premium access to the API, but once you have started down the free path, is it possible, or wise, to backtrack and start charging?”

You can read the full post over at Louis’ blog here.

I was a bit worried about this post as it could have been a potential banana skin; instead it garnered some good responses both in the comments and on FriendFeed so I wanted to follow up on a few issues raised as a result.

“The route to success is recognising that Twitter’s power is as a service”

Jeff Sonstein raised the above point that a successful way forward would be for other services to aggregate the data from Twitter for their own users - much as FriendFeed is doing. Jesse Stay argues that developers may not be willing to pay and go elsewhere such as identi.ca and that, instead, Twitter should consider premium features that they can offer their users for a fee.

As I mentioned in my post, services like FriendFeed are just as guilty as having no clearly defined business plan; the social web is running on venture capital but how close are we to running on empty? It is unlikely that many services will be willing or able to pay for API access and, although, both users and developers may move to a free alternative how then will thatservice support itself - we will enter into a vicious cycle.

Sudha Jamthe suggested that Twitter could “go to traditional media companies to build new services upon their API, similar to what Sphere did with NY Times” but I don’t see the potential for the same kind of relationship here. Admittedly, Twitter has a large body of data but a lot of that is quite frankly useless and banal - even some relatively interesting content is worthless when taken out of it’s original context.

Trend analysis

Perhaps the main use for the bulk of Twitter data is in trend analysis which could, in turn, be used to plan advertising campaigns or for targeted marketing. Is this why Twitter bought the best search tool and has limited the API requests for all the rest? Could they make money by selling their analysis results or by charging for full access to enable companies to perform their own?

The folks at Twitter have never completely ruled out advertising so full trend analysis of your conversations and your friends could provide the only way to effectively target you as an individual and provide ads that you are actually likely to act upon.

Whatever the future brings I feel it will be quite different from the way we are operating now. Users may still get free access and developers might only be charged a small amount (perhaps an initial one off fee to get a licence to use the API) but advertising or data analysis is probably the way way to get most bang for the Twitter buck.

This blog took over from the old Randomelements site which I had self-hosted on one flavour of SharePoint or another since 2003. I was also running my own Exchange Server and handling all my own emails. Initially, these endeavours were useful in that they forced me to learn: managing and maintaining a Windows 2003 based network and the related server applications but, once things were established and I was able to troubleshoot any issues that arose the learning stopped.

While other people were content to have their sites and mails hosted remotely I was dealing with everything locally just for the sake of it; being able to say I could.

I changed ISP and in doing so lost the static IP address I had been using. While dynamic solutions exist - such as DynDNS - managing things became a chore, especially when it became apparent that the IP addresses I was being assigned by the new ISP were on the PBL. Any change of IP address meant that I had to request it be removed from the PBL before emails sent from my server would be accepted by an servers checking the originating IP address. At the same time, SharePoint no longer cut it as an effective blogging platform.

Consequently, the move to Wordpress and remotely hosted email have been made and life has been simplified from a technical perspective. Outlook and my phone are both accessing email via IMAP this keeping in sync and I have been able to shut down the server at home - it is no longer being used so why waste the power.

I was using technology at home just for the sake of it under the misguided impression that it made a difference but I still have full control over my blog and emails so what is the difference? I treat them now as a means to achieve something rather than as a focus in themselves, and this is how I see social media. Social media should not focus on the tool in use but on what that tool allows you to do so we must not get caught up in the trappings of the technology as they will distract us from our goals.

Shakespeare famously wrote

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts

I can’t help wondering if our normal behaviour is influenced by the online communities we join. Do we participate for ourselves or for others? Do we share things we like or things we think our followers will appreciate?

As has been discussed before: do we have an obligation to our followers - the, so-called, implied “social contract” and is the correct way for us to act?

It is readily apparent that some act in a certain way in order to try to fit in to a given group and, despite the openess of the web and social media, clique forming is rife and probably exaserbated by the ways in which we connect.

Extremes

Chris commented that “small focused groups can readily turn into extreme pots of shared interest, and manifest ideological amplification” - a bold statement but a true one. We have the option of who we follow but, on many social networking services, we also have the option to block others which can cause divides between groups if used inappropriately; if you don’t fit in then you can’t be part of the conversation.

We also have the ability to hide behind the technology and deviate from our normal behaviour and intent so we have a responsibility to police our own actions or the internet will just become the playground of cowards.

I moved my focus from technology to social media as I see the potential it has to improve communication and flow of information, to connect people and to break down barriers but when others are reinforcing those barriers you have to question why.

The intersection for most between our online and offline lives is small so our behaviours will differ but, even taking this in to account, what part are you playing?

Related Posts

• Who is our audience and what do we owe them?

She is connecting to people for a reason and using social media as just another tool rather than as the end point and this reinforces the idea that I have been mulling over since my ‘break’ a few weeks ago:

Social media must be applied

Social media must not become a self congratulatory love-in unless there is actually something worth celebrating. The call to arms is for this to go mainstream but if early adopters want to debate the minutiae of service operation from here to eternity then we cannot possibly expect the public at large to see the value in those services. There will always be the industry commentators in any environment but social media seems to be an industry that needs to mature. We already have ‘complaints’ such as this one from Jason Carreira:

What percentage of posts on FriendFeed are ABOUT FriendFeed? 50%? More? Web 2.0 has a collective case of navel gazing…

Obviously, the conversations you are exposed to will be influenced by those people you are following and there is a lot of discussion that is not so self referential but I can see his point. It is up to the early adopters to find worthwhile uses of social media to demonstrate the possibilities it can afford or it is in danger of imploding in a puff of its own self indulgence. As Marco has said: if the early adopters are still working through what role this technology should play in their lives how can we expect the 99.9999% of the other people in the world to readily and easily latch on to something like this?

Boring

Julian Baldwin posted a while ago “Social Media gets damn boring when…” and proceeded to give a few examples. I replied that it becomes boring when “the same topic goes round in circles and, just when you think it’s done with, someone else throws in a ‘me too’ post and rakes over it all again but with no insight or added value.” It also gets boring when everything is the killer of something else - why get too anal about it and spend all of your time comparing services when you could just be using them to good effect? Often, the debate is a huge waste of both time and effort.

Each service has its good and bad points; nothing is perfect and no single service will become all things to all people without becoming over complicated and bloated. We should, therefore, be picking up on the positives of the tools we use and achieving something worthwhile.

Discuss

What will YOU do with social media?

Image by Sam Judson.

Casual users can dip in and out as they see fit – as has been suggested there is no pressure to be involved beyond chatting with your new found ‘friends’ and even then there may not be the expectation for us to invest quality time in these online relationships.

Bloggers and early adopters, on the other hand, have more of a self inflicted need to be involved, to stay current and to keep their profile visible – especially those who cover aspects of the social web. If you are trying to build your exposure levels then time away from the streams is not considered an option.

My recent 3 weeks out lost me about 200 RSS subscribers according to Feedburner and, despite recent regular posts, those figures have not yet recovered. Add to this that social media is inherently addictive and you have quite a heady mix.

Pressure

If we are keen to make an impact then we put pressure upon ourselves to participate, to post, to gain more subscribers or followers – not doing so feels like failure.

As I said in a comment yesterday, investing time in conversations is akin to reading a really good book - you want to know what happens on the next page, in the next chapter, at the end of the story. It is not human nature to just walk away from something we don’t consider to be finished. While we can and, probably should, put the book down we feel compelled not to as we want to see things through to their conclusion.

Drinking from the fire hose

It has often been said that social media addicts do not want to miss anything; they are glued to the services they use 24/7 as they feel they must have their finger on the pulse and be involved in everything and all conversations. This will obviously have an impact on the way the services and other resources are utilised compared to the more casual user.

Steve Spalding has a great illustration in his post “The death throes of feed subscriptions”. He argues that the rise of social media and content sharing services means that we no longer need to subscribe to the RSS feed of a blog as we will be able to find the interesting content collected in those social environments with the added bonus that they are filtered and annotated by our peers.

This scenario leaves us in a quandary when you consider the desire to keep abreast of the flow. On the one hand, consuming our content via RSS means that we can peruse it at our leisure but by doing this we are ensuring that we do not miss anything. Alternatively, using social media to find our content means that we are just skimming the surface of the items available but reacting to them in real time while we are connected.

If the very reason we subscribe to RSS feeds is so that we do not miss anything then to achieve the same result via social media would require us to be always on, always connected – undesirable and unachievable. We must therefore aim to achieve a happy medium.

Balance

How much is too much? If you are not a professional blogger (or maybe even if you are) where do you draw the line and say enough? What is the best way for the addict to emulate the casual user and only dip their toe in the water?

There is no need to continually dive in up to our necks so, as well as our social responsibility with social media, we must address our personal responsibility and not become overloaded. We must become our own social media role model.

Related Posts

• Freedom of conversation vs social responsibility.
• What makes a good social media role model?

Jason Goldberg posted that he saw FriendFeed as a school lunchroom where “conversations that may have started elsewhere are picked up and rehashed, commented on, and amplified”. He also states that FriendFeed “isn’t a place for deep thoughts and debate”.

Social networking services, and especially aggregation sites like FriendFeed, are places to gather information for easier consideration where you can converse with your peers to spark the imagination and gain inspiration. But can deep conversation or discussion really happen in an online enviroment?

Friendfeed rooms initially seemed like they would be the place for the meaningful thought and debate as you would be able to isolate given topics and take them out of the public stream in order to concentrate on the matter in hand; it seems, however, that this usage has not really taken off as expected.

The domain of thought

Blogs are still the domain of thought as you have no limits to what you can say - you are in control. While Friendfeed has a higher character limit per post than, say, Twitter any limit in any service inhibits really deep thought as you are constantly mindful of your words getting truncated. This is not particularly conducive to an active discussion.

Also, we can blog and post comments but often the spark and spontanaiety of a face to face conversation is lost - as Jason says, he thought about his post for two days and it took twenty minutes to type. How often do we plan what we are going to say but things get lost in translation between the brain and the keyboard.

The inherent delay of communicating by the typed word and the impersonality of this type of interaction can create a conversational barrier so when should we be taking our discussions offline?

Exposure

The obvious advantage to social media services are the exposure they offer; a conversation can be played out in front of the watching world and anyone is free to participate whereas an offline discussion (maybe even via VOIP) is closed to the rest of the community. Each may have it benefits and shortcomings so we need to establish when the best use can be made of any means of inteacrtion that we might employ.

So, what are social sites?

Are they hotbeds of active discussion or are they merely facilitators, enabling us to process our data in covenient locations so that we may address the important issues in another. more appropriate forum?

Image by Jason Schultz.

It seems only natural, therefore, that we should conduct ourselves in an appropriate manner for the majority of the time. There are some exceptions who use potentially inappropriate behaviour as a promotional tool but it is rare that this can be pulled off in an effective manner.

Ryan of Tilling the Soil wrote a great series of posts about communicating with integrity and recently commented on an earlier post saying:

Perhaps he has a point. It seems that we do tend to interact with people in different ways depending on the forum for that interaction. Is that only natural or a worrying phenomenon?

Appropriate

Louis Gray has sparked a lot of conversation with his post As I Get Older, Some Online “Friending” Gets Creepier which looks at the issue of age on social media services. Should age be a factor when considering who to accept as ‘friends’ or who to follow?

We live in a difficult age and must be seen to be doing the right thing so do we have to temper our (perfectly innocent) use of social networking sites in order to conform with a sense of social responsibility?

While we may have perfectly good intentions society is increasingly aiming at the lowest common denominator so that even the likes of teachers are fearful of being branded paedophiles should something be taken out of context or a disgruntled student see an opportunity for revenge.

With the increase of people using the internet as a way of grooming children etc. it is natural that this view of society would start to cross the boundaries and self policing this issue may seem an obvious way to avoid future complications. As society itself embraces online life more the divides will lessen and an online community leader will be viewed in the same way as a Scout leader and be equally scared of the implications of their position. We are all being seen as potential criminals.

Perception

we have a different perception of how we act communicate in real life and online - perhaps we have traditionally seen life online as an escape and our interactions not necessarily having to follow the same rules as our offline interactions. It is then rather ironically that we seem to concentrate more on how we deal with people online - is it because our communication is limited so we have to be careful about what we say for fear of misinterpretation?

In real life we have perhaps been more guarded; our face-to-face interactions form part of the daily grind so we are constantly mindful of the pressures we are under so, perhaps, we are less inclined to engage our colleagues (and potential rivals) in the same way that we would an online acquaintance.

Alexander van Elsas agrees that our (expected) behaviour in these different environments differs:

unlike in the real world where we are expected to invest time and effort to keep these relationships valuable, there is no such behavior needed online. We use these friendships for the conversation taking place, but no one really expects you to invest in such a relationship

Are our online ‘friendships’ really this casual and why should this be? Or is it that we are in the early stages of our expanse in to this territory? I would imagine that future generations will become more adept at reconciling both our online and offline interactions as distance ‘friendships’ become more prevalent than at present. We are probably still trying to come to terms with the explosion in global communication.

Impact

Although we use our real names and even our own photo as avatars there is still a degree of anonymity when talking to people on the other side of the planet - we can be more open, more expressive and more opinionated without the fear that it will have a direct impact on our normal lives. Say the wrong thing to your manager and you could get fired but say the wrong thing to a ‘friend’ on a social networking site and you can put it down to a misunderstanding or breakdown in communication. Generally the actual impact is minimal - they may stop ‘following’ you, big deal!

But online communication seems to be a constant contradiction - especially with those of us who are investing a lot of time in social media and blogging. While some may see it more as a ‘throw away’ society our focus on online interactions can be to the detriment of our offline lives.

Perhaps we just have to ask ourselves what is appropriate in any given setting and learn to strike a balance between the two.

Related Posts

• Why do we need social media role models?

Basic needs are “needstream” so mainstream doesn’t necessarily need to include everyone

I commented that as everyone doesn’t need the same thing then everyone’s needstream is going to be different and no one service can encompass everyone.

Alexander says that the future focus will be on smaller, more localised social networks and I think Julians’ quote goes a long way to explain why - the larger the audience the less relevant things will become. As I have said before, the global conversation will remain - and even grow - but there will be a bipolar existence on the web where people will “drift between the global and local conversations as needed”.

Needs and wants

What do we actually “need” on the web? The answer is very little and many, by not even being connected, demonstrate that in personal terms we need nothing. Our jobs may dictate specific needs but once we clock off the internet fuels our wants rather than our needs.

Everyone wants something different - we are the sum of our life experience so have our own individual likes and tastes. These may intersect with those of others at various points but the differences between us are what makes life interesting.

Social bookmarking

Our wants on the web directly reflect our interests and some turn to social bookmarking services to explore those intersections with the wants of others - choose a table, pull up a chair and shout hit me! With only around 20% of the world actually connected and a mere fraction of those using a social bookmarking service the number of available intersections is going to be severely limited.

Social bookmarking is certainly not for the benefit of the content producer. It is designed to assist the consumer in their discovery process but I would argue that it fails. Is this due to incorrect categorisation or tagging, or simply because the social population simply isn’t large enough?

Take yesterday’s post about MooMag for example which was submitted to StumbleUpon. It’s always nice when someone feels a post is worth sharing and it may drive some traffic your way but I have always maintained that this traffic is of incredibly poor quality - those people who hit your site but realise, once they get there, that it’s not really of interest to them. They may not read the full post, will likely not follow any internal links, will not subscribe to your RSS feed and in all probability will never return unless they hit the Stumble button and are sent back at random.

Conversion

The aim of any blogger is to convert the casual visitor to a repeat reader, subscriber or even evangelist but in the context of this post the true measure of conversion would be the number of click-throughs to the MooMag site.

Fortunately, I had been looking at the incoming and outgoing stats recorded by MyBlogLog so knew how many visitors had clicked on the outgoing link to MooMag prior to the post being Stumbled. In the period after there was only one click-through and there is no guarantee that this was from a StumbleUpon user. If we assume that this click was a StumbleUpon user then the conversion rate was only 1.2% - there were 83 visits from the stumbled share.

To me this illustrates that the already limited intersections we share with others are incredibly vague meaning that the percentage of truly useful intersections is going to be minute. We may share broad interests but they don’t bear much fruit when we get down to specifics and makes we question the role of social bookmarking. If the conversion rates are so low when we have a reasonably limited set of people using these services what are they going to drop to once the adoption rates increase?

Your thoughts

What do you gain from social bookmarking services either as a content producer or as a consumer?

Cue MooMag

MooMag - Mums Of Originality Magazine is a new project with a multi-tired approach written by mums for mums and aiming to cover all aspects that can affect a mums daily life from babies and parenting to shopping, budgets and organising holidays and activities. As the About page says:

We aim to give informative advice, answer questions, chat about new ideas and what’s in the news as well as have a whole lot of fun along the way!

The site itself comprises a blog and forum and this more traditional approach will be combined with outreach on a number of popular social networking services such as Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook monitored by the MooMag team rather than just being broadcast accounts (note: they will not be fully live until the launch on August 1st). There will not be a need to hit the site in the first instance.

Today is the pre-launch - MooMag is “spreading the word, asking for contributors and generally letting the world know that there is a new kid in town!”

Social media with a purpose

There has been a lot of talk about using the ideas behind social media to right the world’s wrongs. It is admirable that there is a desire to raise such worthy issues but it is unrealistic to think that social media will succeed where governments and charities have failed.

It is much better to focus on specific, achievable goals and that is just what MooMag aims to do: to makes the lives of mums easier, more fun and less stressful.

If this sounds like you then why not head over to MooMag.net and show your support; you can even apply to be a member of the team.

Divided

Responses ranged from the affirmative such as “Taking conversations private is a great way to further a business relationship” to the complete opposite “Please do NOT add another lame messaging service like the one that Facebook and Twitter have” with some people suggesting a solution where XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) could be employed to hook FriendFeed up to Google Talk.

It is obvious from the divide in opinion that some kind of compromise is needed so I suggested that it might be an idea to use what’s already there instead of reinventing the wheel.

It can be useful to take certain discussions private but it is understandable that people do not want yet another inbox that they need to check. It would, therefore, make more sense to have some kind of ad-hoc system that exists for the duration of the conversation. FriendFeed has its rooms so it seems logical to me to create a temporary, private room on the fly which is destroyed once you are finished.

You would, of course, need some form of online presence system in place (there’s no point trying to start a conversation with someone who isn’t around) and if the person you wish to chat with is not online then - just like instant messaging applications - you could be given the options to fire off an email.

Self contained

Not everyone on FriendFeed uses (or would even want to use) something like Google Talk so why force a third party solution on to them. It is better to keep things in house if possible - one less thing to worry about. An ad-hoc system you only use if you want to keeps everyone happy; those who do not want private messaging on FriendFeed don’t use it - simple.

What do you think?

Is this a suitable compromise? Would it work for you?

Image by Richard Holt.

• the opportunity to contribute - easy sharing of information
• the opportunity to comment - your chance to have your say
• the opportunity of conversation - getting involved in discussions with others
• the opportunity to collaborate - work with anyone, anywhere to achieve a common goal
• the opportunity of community - building relationships online

While social media allows us to do many things it is these five C’s that form the core of what it means to me and affects the way in which I use it.

Contribute

This is pretty self explanatory and, in the current context, would include posting to sites like flickr, blogs etc. - essentially providing some form of content for the consumption of others. Content sharing has never been easier and, with methods of delivery such as RSS, subscribing to those shared items is a breeze.

Now, not everyone using social media is a contributor in this sense of the word but may contribute in other ways as we shall see below.

Comment

Mark Dykeman remarked on FriendFeed that he is “starting to see more users on FriendFeed who aren’t importing any RSS feeds into their lifestream” and asks “Are they just here to talk/comment?”

As mentioned above, social media does not automatically imply that you are a content creator but may still have a perfectly good contribution to make by way of making comments. David commented on my earlier post that comments and conversation could be merged but, as he himself admits, making comments does not necessarily mean that you are entering in to a conversation.

There are a number of scenarios where ‘comment’ is a standalone action and so warrants a classification of its own. A comment is an opportunity to stand up and be counted or to voice your opinion. Real world applications could be voting (political or otherwise) or surveys.

While standalone comments may not be viewed by some as truly within the ’spirit’ of social media they are just as valid and often lead to intelligent discussion.

Conversation

The real bread and butter of social media is the discussion it promotes. While we have always had conversation in one form of another, social media extends the scope of those conversations by increasing the ease with which we can have them with more people in increasingly diverse locations. We are also, therefore, able to expand our own spheres of influence far beyond that which we would be able by traditional means.

While real world applications for what we call social media may be limited there is no reason why we cannot apply the concepts to other areas. Take for example the use of mobile phones. The ubiquity of these devices is without question and we would feel lost without them but in so far as their base function (making calls) is concerned there is so much more that we could do with them.

We take conference calls for granted on the phones in our office but it seems unnecessarily complicated to set up a conference call on a mobile. Carriers do sometimes offer the facility but generally only to business customers. Why not provide this facility to personal contracts? We are encouraged to set up our favourite contacts so that we can reap the benefits of reduced rate calls but why not enable us to configure a group of friends and call them all at once just as we would send them all a text message? An instant social application of existing technology - teens would love it.

Collaborate

As a direct consequence of enhanced conversation and connectivity comes the ability to collaborate more effectively. Collaboration tools of all types already existed before the current race towards making things more social but the social element acts as a facilitator. The business implications are obvious but the reach should be extended beyond the corporate setting - clubs and groups, student projects, volunteer work can all benefit not only from the utility afforded but also be doing away with the need to come together in one physical location

Community

I won’t apologise for repeating myself - social media is all about people. The tools exist because people demand them and those people, and the inspiration they provide, are the most valuable resource that social media has to offer.

While the meaning of ‘friend’ is distorted we can build great online relationships with like minded individuals from all over the world which should supplement (and not replace) our normal face-to-face acquaintances. If possible we should also strive to take these new friendships away from the computer, be it by voice or in person, non-typed communication can extend our connections far beyond that which we can achieve by keyboard alone.

In life we build a circle of friends based on our location and experience, the same applies in a social media context but with the advantage that we are not constrained by those same factors. Not only do we extend our sphere but we can gain additional benefits with regards to our reputation.

New blood

There are a number of users who are not social media mavens already on services such as FriendFeed but these are the tech savvy crowd who would otherwise find alternative means to achieve what they currently can with whatever service they are using. When people talk of the desire to see social media go mainstream these are not the target audience being discussed.

In the first instance I don’t think it’s a case of getting other users on existing services but more a case of identifying where people could benefit from the things social media hopes to achieve. We should perhaps be taking the lessons we learn and using them in other real world applications to improve existing tools rather than try to thrust new ones in peoples faces. Once we see a shift in offline behaviour we may then be able to migrate people but they will not want to use “social media” just because we say they should - it generally goes against what people currently accept as the ‘right’ way to do things.

Social media is a product of the internet but everything we strive to achieve has it’s derivation elsewhere: in what we call life so why draw distinctions between the two. We must employ the same tactics we use online to our daily dealings, perhaps then we will be able to convince others of the utility afforded by online services. We need to be selling social media as merely an extension of what we already do - just another tool to change life for the better. Perhaps then we can add a sixth C to the social media list: culture.

Related Posts

• What brings us to social media?

No doubt, at least in part, inspired by his comment, Mark shared his story detailing what attracted him (and keeps him coming back) to social media and I’m sure his story will ring true with many. However, his or my reasons are not going to be valid for the majority. As Steven says, things may be nice and rosy is out bubble but what about those “who still look forward to a Sunday brunch with their newspapers”?

As early adopters we have a different mindset to Joe Public - what floats our boats will not necessarily float those of others - a rising tide drowns those who cannot rise with it.

Task oriented

A lot of the time we use social media for the sake of it whereas most will only use it if it is task oriented (as I have said before) but even then would still need a lot of convincing before taking the plunge.

For example, take my mother-in-law. She is perfectly happy to use email when it suits a purpose but is still far more comfortable with the phone and mainly uses the web to plan holidays but soon realised that you can’t get the same information, opinion and flexibility as when speaking to an actual person.

You frequently get good deals on price if you book online but without the flexibility - her solution is to get all the details online including the deal but then ring up saying the online booking form wouldn’t work - the travel agent will then generally honour the deal and, at the same time, you can speak to a person and tweak your package in ways that you couldn’t online.

So, would some kind of social media endeavour get her to change her behaviour? Probably not.

Undoubtedly, for many of those already established on the interent it came as a natural progression from bulletin boards, IRC, forums, or Instant Messaging - depending on how long they’ve been around. The ideas behind social media are as old as the hills, what’s new is the ease of use and the scope - it is now a question of scale and simplicity.

For others there will have been a desire to keep in touch with friends who are already using a particular social media service. And finally, there will be those who were attracted to the newest bright, shiny object; attracted by the buzz and hype.

The five C’s

At it’s core social media gives us five base opportunities:

• the opportunity to contribute - easy sharing of information
• the opportunity to comment - your chance to have your say
• the opportunity to collaborate - work with anyone, anywhere to achieve a common goal
• the opportunity of conversation - getting involved in discussions with others
• the opportunity of community - building relationships online

We early adopters willingly embrace these opportunities but many see little or no need to enhance their traditional forms of communication - perhaps rightly so. The internet is not a replacement for face-to-face communication but can certainly facilitate and encourage offline activity so how can we extend the reach of social media and invite in those who would otherwise show no interest?

Over to you

What brought you to social media, and why do you stick around? And how can we use our stories to educate others?

UPDATE: added collaborate to the base opportunities.

Image by Eric Rice.

That was until the crash.

Without effective scalability Twitter has been suffering and drastic measures have had to be taken to prevent the service disappearing in a puff of smoke. I would, however, question some of these decisions that have been made to keep the service running.

One of the most frequently used parts of the Twitter web UI is the replies tab but in times of stress this is one of the first things to get dropped for the greater good. Call me old fashioned but replies, and the conversation as a whole, are now what makes Twitter what it is so who is Twitter trying to keep happy those developers of third party applications or their core user base?

We are seeing an increasing number of people who, like Mel McBride, are having to turn to Summize in order to see their @replies. You can still make them and they are still logged but Twitter just doesn’t show them. Surely, it is going to be far more resource intensive to perform an API searchg for them that it is for them to be displayed natively in Twitter.

Admittedly, API calls have been reduced from 70 per minute to 20 but if the explosion of third party applications has had such a huge impact on Twitters’ performance why have they not been temporarily blocked in order to keep the core functionality intact? Why continue to support others at the expense of your own offering?

I’m sure the community would understand.

In my time away from the blog it seems that very little has changed with the same conversations still doing the rounds. It’s almost like I’ve not been away (or rather than the past few weeks didn’t happen) - almost like those in the social media space have been caught a time loop. Perhaps this is the danger of being an early adopter stuck in the echo chamber - caught in perpetual echoes. Occasionally a new stone gets thrown in the pond but the ripples bounce back off the sides and cause interference patterns preventing us from seeing clearly and moving on.

Looking back

I want to take you back to the conversation started by Alexander van Elsas regarding TV as a social media channel. This was an example of social media at its best but, even then, things can only so far when the conversation is contained within a few early adopters.

It did illustrate how different people from different walks of life all around the world can get together to consider a particular issue. It’s not because they are experts in the field or engineers but because they share an interest and passion for improving the way they communicate with others.

If we use this as an example we can see how social media can translate to a business environment.

There are two potential target areas for social media in a business environment: the internal network purely for employees; and the external - be it for connecting to partners or vendors, or to your customers. A social network established in both of these areas could be used for good effect.

Interest in any given subject extends beyond our normal work hours, duties or opening times and the uptake in social media shows that people like to communicate and discuss issues even on their down-time. We may have great ideas but if they are not written down they are soon forgotten so is it not best to provide a forum where they can be stored?

Many a true word

Imagine if the above conversation was being held on an internal social network by engineers and developers working for a cable company (maybe it already has been). The old maxim says “many a true word said in jest” and often great ideas arise from just chewing the fat and jokingly suggesting ‘fantastic’ propositions. We throw mud at the wall and see how much sticks then, before you know it, you have a viable product idea created by a ‘free’ think tank.

Why limit this process to your staff? As part of your customer outreach why not allow your customers to provide a ‘wish list’ and demonstrate that you are listening and taking valid requests under consideration?

As people, we benefit from having a sense of ownership and inclusion and are more likely to remain loyal both as employess and customers if we feel we are valued especially if contributions are incentivised. Social networks provide an ideal way to facilitate this.

Going forward

It has been interesting to see that, despite me having absolutely no presence on any social media service or the blog, that there have been quite a high number of posts by other bloggers over the past few weeks referencing me or my content - obviously out of sight isn’t out of mind. This is quite refreshing and helps to confirm that quality content can exist on its own without being permanently shoved down peoples throats. But published content is only one side of the conversation.

Sal nailed it in her recent post about social media and mums: do they need it? No! But used in the right way and at the right time it can be incredibly beneficial.

People

The weekend of father’s day (15th June here in the UK) saw me have a great time with the family and it is times like this that make you realise it’s people that are important and this extends to social media. It’s not the tool, it’s not how many ‘friends’ you can gather but it’s the people behind the avatars - what they think, what they’ve got to say and how we can connect to affect change.

It is great speaking to a number of like minded individuals who view social media in a similar way but everything we discuss as early adopters is just speculation until we start getting some real world examples to show that social media can penetrate the world outside our little bubble. It needs this validation or all our positing and gestures are effectively empty.

Chris Brogan asked on Twitter what the early adopters will do once the rest of the world “get’s it”. Instead, I would ask what will we do when we realise the rest of the world doesn’t care?

Image by Peter Dutton.

The simplest answer is this: getting people connected. No matter how you want to dress it up this is what we are trying to do. Whether it be connecting people to information, businesses or each other the connection is at the core of everything we are trying to do.

These connections are not limited to just being online, in fact our goal should be to carry our connections away from the computer and into real life.

Television

Alexander van Elsas wrote a post on yesterday arguing that the humble television is actually the most effective social media channel we have to date. What? I hear you cry! TV doesn’t fall in to our cosy definitions of what a social service should be so what is Alexander going on about?

The act of watching television may often be a very singular and individual pastime - especially with households having more than one TV set - but it is not theat act that we are interested in. Alexander used the example of a major sporting event to demonstrate how television will create a link between people and parts of the community who would not normally associate with each other. Spectator sport is about just that: the spectators. It is the sense of belonging we get when we are involved in something bigger than us that we know hundreds, thousands, if not millions of other people are experiencing.

It doesn’t stop there, however. While gathering in pubs and bars, and even in public spaces when large screens have been erected, to watch an event with your peers is an obvious connected at the time of the event we can also look to the after effects, the water cooler moments that are generated by our normal viewing habits and not just large sporting occasions.

We like to build common ground with our friends, peers and colleagues and television can help us do this. We are social animals and like nothing better than to discuss the minutiae of our favourite soap operas, drama series, or the documentary that just blew our minds.

Building bridges

Ryan over at Tilling the Soil talks about social media building bridges between individuals in order to avoid the need to catch up; if you are communicating online then you already know the “what have you been doing” parts of the conversation so can move straight to the good stuff. This is okay for people who already know one another but it about relative strangers? It is often difficult to engage in small talk without a common interest - television fills the gap and gives us something to discuss where there would normally be uncomfortable pauses.

It may be argued that television is killing the art of conversation - and unchecked there is no doubt that this can be the case - but it can also be argued that that the box in the corner of our rooms encourages different conversations, perhaps not the ones we may have had in the past, but wider ranging conversations with potentially more people (a gathering at work or school instead of a couple of members of the family).

The ability of this medium to act as an ice breaker cannot be underestimated and the real challenge for ’social media’ is how to replicate this type of behaviour. Granted, television has had time to become integrated in to our lives but it too started small with many failing to see how it could be of benefit. What we now have to ask is how can we promote social media in order for it to achieve a higher level of adoption. How can social media penetrate to this degree?

Ryan states that he uses social media to supplement his real life relationships but we should be going beyond this and using it to forge new relationships which we can then continue in an offline setting. Social media needs to be giving us the common ground so that we can avoid the embarrassing silences and dive headlong into fruitful, meaningful relationships and conversations with those people that we may only be meeting in the flesh for the first time.

So what’s new?

Don’t we already do with with existing media? What about the telephone and email and any other means we use to keep in touch and share information? Indeed we do but the speed, ease of use and range of the connections we can make with social media are adding an extra dimension to traditional means of communication.

Still, just talking about the future doesn’t make it happen so saying that social media will be more prevalent in 2,5 or 10 years and change the way we live and communicate isn’t enough - we need to start working out how we are going to reach that point.

Image by takuya miyamoto.

The aim of the experiment was to sign up a fresh account, completely unrelated to my normal login which would not be subscribed to any of the usual people I converse with on the web. I would then pick some topics of interest outside of the social media sphere and see where the conversation took me.

The obvious concern, as also expressed by others, was whether I would be able to change my mindset and truly behave like a “regular person next door“.

Rather than create an entire new identity (having other services that I can import in to FriendFeed) I decided that a good place to start would be to use FriendFeed as a search engine to see what information was being shared about one of my favourite topics: football (that’s soccer not American) and, more specifically, Southampton Football Club.

A quick search - after taking a little time to look at the Advanced options - revealed a couple of account sharing some Southampton related items as part of generic football and sport feeds - subscribed. Ten minutes in and everything seemed to be going well. Next up - some searches about psychology and sociology. Again, there were plenty of ‘hits’ and plenty of items being shared - as there were for a number of other searches - but…

And this is a big but!

Unlike Sir Mix-a-lot I’m afraid I don’t like big buts, big buts normally mean something not going to plan and this was certainly the case here.

While there is far more be posted on FriendFeed than social media it is evident that social media seems to be the only thing consistently ‘discussed’ and talked about in any depth. Maybe it is the nature of the beast but there is a massive usage difference between those who communicate as a way of life (social media mavens) and those who just USE the tools to chat to their friends.

Do a FriendFeed search on any topic you like that’s not related to social media - go on, I’ll wait. You’ll find that the vast majority of items returned (even on searches for current hot topics like Obama) have very few likes or comments. It seems that a lot of other people are using FriendFeed purely as an aggregator rather than a communication tool - in my opinion they are missing out!

The everyday crowd appear to be focused on doing whatever it is they do at the source (Twitter, Flickr, etc.) rather than within the confines of FriendFeed. They may be talking about things just as much as the early adopters but it certainly isn’t in the same locations.

Even flicking through the stream on the everyone and you notice the same pattern - only those items that relate to social media have any steady flow of comments.

Why is this?

As I have said in the past, your average user generally wants to perform a particular task and, when it comes to that task having a social context, it makes sense to deal with it then and (more importantly) there. I think that many don’t see the need to go beyond the walled garden they are currently inhabiting as it contains their community and _that_ is what is important to any of us. Moving your focus means that - to achieve the required return on investment - you have to take your friends with you and it is not an easy task to achieve.

It is hard enough to get people using a straight social media service in the first place without trying to convince them of the need to gather their threads in to one location when they can be exposed to a never ending river of news; they barely take a sip from their own cups without trying to be shown how to drink from the fire hose.

Early adopters may be useful in working out the kinks of any given service but their usage patterns do not reflect the norm. We cannot, therefore, predict how a service will scale or what the key features may eventually be. Developers may be creating a bassline for us to work from but what happens when that line is set too high for the public at large to reach?

A failure?

On the face of it the experiment could be seen as a failure as there is no way that I can completely switch from one identity to another and get a true insight in to how a non-early adopter will use a service but the apparent patterns have shown a stark contrast in behaviour. If anything it has been a success in highlighting how far the early adopters have advanced in the way they utilise the web and the tools available to them.

A service like FriendFeed will only ever contain what has been explicitly shared by its users and, while this may be enough for such an insular crowd as the social media regulars, simply will not be able to compare with any of the regular search engines that are crawling the web and following link after link. FriendFeed fails as a search engine until you add in the human elements of recommendation and discussion and if these parts of the service are not being used by the world at large then there is little value in the initial share.

More questions

Once we pass a particular point can we ever hope to understand (or remember) how it is for those who don’t obsess over every nuance of online interaction? What is the true benefit of early adopters?

Image by L. E. MacDonald.

Yesterday, I looked at how our continuing desire for the tools we use to develop could cause them to lose their original purpose but, while Marco at the Aurelius Maximus blog asks the ‘tech elite’ to continue navel gazing, others are gesturing that it’s all well and good talking about the technology of social media but what they really want to know is how will it affect business? How will it affect politics? How will it affect our lives?

It is argued that what we should really be interested in is moving away from what the technology is and, as I have mentioned in comments on FriendFeed, establishing the distinction between what any social media tool does and what we can do with it.

Honeymoon period

What we now call social media is in its relative infancy so our reaction towards it is very much like an eager child with a new toy who plays with it every waking moment of the day until they either become bored or just accept it as part of their life; the novelty wears off.

I think that we are still very much in the social media honeymoon period especially with new tools and services cropping up all the time; there is always something new for the early adopters to ‘play’ with so, in a way, much of the emphasis can’t help but be on the technology, what the tool is, what the tool does and how it differs to its competitors. It’s an unfortunate circumstance but this is where we currently sit as early adopters and it is a tricky situation to be in.

As I said before it’s not in the interests of services to stay still - they have to move on, offer something new and demonstrate differentiation. Although the tool will be migrating away from its original purpose and possibly sounding its own death knell amongst a subset of users the business of the internet, being what it is, forces services to move on for fear of being dropped in favour of the competition. Those competitors themselves have to provide their own differentiation and so may even be knocking themselves out of the market even at launch - perhaps even before.

How many services can we use? How many should we subscribe to? How many will survive?

It is this constant barrage of tools and services that is taking the focus but part of the ‘job description’ of the early adopter is to look at the technology and the trends, to find out what really works and what just has a short lived novelty factor and will fall at the first hurdle. Here is the key point, however, it is the early adopters who are kicking the tyres and paving the way but if you’re not an early adopter what can you do?

Target your tools

One possibility is to simplify but you can’t simplify the industry. You can’t say to developers to stop creating new tools or services. You can’t say that development should stop on those already available and, in fact, we shouldn’t. We need technology to advance and for those advances to make our lives easier but we should first be focusing on what is important.

Outside of the early adopters we should, as individuals or as groups or organisations, behave as with any other resource in any other industry and reach a consensus to identify a strict set of tools with which to achieve our purpose. Identify those tools we like and feel provide us the required utility: do they offer adequate communication? Do they offer adequate information sharing and distribution? If you can answer yes then move on and de-emphasise the tools. We have to draw the line somewhere and say this is what we have, this is what we know how to use now let’s get on and do some work.

Needs

But the early adopters and evangelists must accept that no single tool will achieve ubiquity - get over it. Different groups have differing needs and there will not be one tool to please them all. Even as our own circumstances change so will our needs so our own choice of tool will differ; this is only natural and should be incorporated into our routine and our normal review process.

We should periodically assess our tools and process and can then, at that point, look at what else is out there; look at the reviews from the foot soldiers (the early adopters) who have been treading the boards then consider if new tools give you improvements, enhanced utility or greater ease of use. Don’t, however, make change for changes sake as you are then distracting yourself from your core purpose and the time you spend re-educating is time taken away from achieving your aims.

We have to be aware of and open to developments and to the reviews and opinions of others but we don’t all have to play the early adopter role, we don’t always need our finger on the pulse. Alexander is right, we will learn to pick out what is important and to focus on that which we actually need to.

Related Posts

• Are we killing the things we love the most?

While what we currently call ’social media’ is still in its infancy we are reaching the point where innovation is giving way to a pile ‘em high mentality: duplicate services with little differentiation, or simply throwing more functionality at existing services and hoping it sticks. It is little wonder that individual services are not getting the uptake that advocates expect, or even demand.

“The nazis did propaganda!” (Eddie Izzard)

We are bombarded with opinion, we are told what services we should like and why but the truth is, that outside of a specific subset of internet users, there is little appeal for the functionality offered by any given social networking service.

A number of good points have been made with regards to the concerns that many of the services currently in existence have been designed to cater for the needs of early adopters - that 1% of the internet population that are the thought leaders, the content creators, the “tech elites” who constantly demand more from what they use. Herein lies the problem.

The complaints that services such as FriendFeed are too complicated are perfectly valid for a lot of people. FriendFeed is obviously geared towards the early adopter, those already on a multitude of other services and are looking to pull it all together in to one melting pot with comments. Joe Public doesn’t work, think or behave like this - many just want a simple messaging system which is why Twitter clicks and FriendFeed doesn’t. Service designers and early adopters need to rethink how things are done in order for social media to really appeal to a wider audience.

The problem with duplication of information is only an issue to when you expose yourself to an environment where it will occur, where multiple users will be sharing data via multiple avenues - the average user will just concentrate on one place with ‘their’ community of friends (more normal