Social Software Explored

I told a friend today that if TweetDeck were to be bought by Twitter and subsequently killed (http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/18/five-reasons-why-twitter-will-kill-tweetdeck/) that it would symbolize the end of my use of Twitter.  I would like to redact that statement (if I may).

I am not a huge fan of the twitter.com interface. I welcome the improvements made in the #newtwitter interface (which surprisingly just went “live” last week) however they usability of twitter.com (at least for the way I use Twitter) is very poor.  I have sung the praises of TweetDeck for many months (or years not quite sure how long its been) and I was very disappointed when I downloaded the iPad app.  So much so that I hardly use Twitter to view status updates on my iPad (read never).

Then I got to thinking about a few things.  One was why do I even use Twitter.  The days of using Twitter to keep up with how many times (or what) a person eats a day have long been gone for me.  Using Twitter to talk about how your day is going and you won’t make it into any of my TweetDeck columns.  Currently I have 6 valuable TweetDeck columns:

1.) Friends – the only column that I care about when it comes to how your day is going or what you are doing.
2.) Mentions – if you aren’t tracking tweets that mention you (and getting depressed when 12 days go by without a mention – and conversely psyched when you get 2 in one day) then why are you on Twitter? Twitters about cool man.
3.) CommonSpot – mention the word “CommonSpot” in any of your tweets and I will find you
4.) Using-CommonSpot – I have compiled a list of 95 people (and counting) that use CommonSpot and are on Twitter
5.) Social Media Experts – when I first got into Social Media these people were the ballz (most still are). Most of them have a Follower to Following ratio of thousands to 1. Red carpet SXSW ballz.
6.) DM’s – gotta make sure you don’t miss out on the private messages from your followers – like Mentions this is all about conversations

I also have an “All Friends” which is basically all of the people that I follow but rarely do I even look at this column.  And today this is Twitter to me.  Its how I make sense of the mess and what helps me keep on top of the world.

Facebook vs. Twitter

I don’t want to spend too much time on the Facebook vs. Twitter topic here but I think there is a small value in understanding how I separate the two.  Its kind of simple and it became clear to me early on why I needed the two.  Facebook is about me.  Me as a person.  Who I am, my thoughts, actions and experiences outside of work.  I try not to talk to much about work on Facebook.  I tried once but I got a lot of feedback about “speaking greek” and “what the hell are you talking about”.
It was clear from me at an early stage that the two brought different meaning to me and I follow some people on Twitter and Facebook and I believe most of those people share the same sentiment I do.  Twitter is for learning, sharing knowledge, starting ideas and keeping up with technology (work in my case).  Its not about my checkin at the movie theater with the boys.

Social Reading

I purchased an iPad so that I could “force” myself to read more.  In school, reading was the last thing I ever wanted to do.  My reading comprehension was horrible and I would often have to re-read a page 2-3 times to make sure I knew what characters were interacting and who was saying what.  Not fun. While I don’t read as much as I would like my reading has certainly increased (which I think is a direct correlation to my writing improving – which is my ultimate goal here).
So back to my statement – “If Twitter buys TweetDeck it will symbolize the demise of Twitter for me”.  TweetDeck IS Twitter for me.  Without TweetDeck I wouldn’t read half the tweets I do today.  Twitter is freaking firehose and without TweetDeck its useless.  AND I only follow 261 people.  I see some people that follow 3K people and I am like – really? How?   Well if you read the following excerpt from the Twitter Platform’s Inflection Point message posted by Twitter and you think about the fact that a company called “Flipbook” (sounds like a comic strip maker) just received $50M in funding and is valued at $200M you start to see why I will probably still “use” Twitter:

I think there are a number of non-obvious places, like desktop publishing was on the Mac, where something entirely new will be built on top of Twitter.

What that statements means to me (combined with the advent of Flipbook) is that Twitter is ready for the next phase (if it can handle it).  We all use Twitter for different reasons but one thing is for sure we all use it share links.  If it wasn’t for Twitter and the shortened text framework we would have never seen the rise in popularity of sites like bit.ly, tinyurl.com and goo.gl.  It was so easy for people to share a link with many people at one time.  It became so common that one of the requirements of the Twitter client was that it not only had to automatically shorten the link you pasted it had to offer multiple site options to do it with.  To put it into perspective, all major social media publishers and service providers all have their own URL shortners: 4sq.com, on.mash.to, rrw.to, youtu.be, meetu.ps – its crazy.

What I believe Twitter is saying is that we need to think beyond the Twitter clients that produce traditional interfaces to view tweets and links.  We need to start to go one layer up where Twitter is the driving force behind a product but you may not know it.

Enter: Flipboard

There are many products like Flipboard but there is only one Flipboard.  I was told that once I used Flipboard my view of how we will use social media services like Twitter would change.  He (@brosnaro) was correct.

I believe that social reading will begin to take form when the tablet reaches critical mass (possible cellphone style critical mass).  For me, the tablet presents the best method to read.  Although in their 2nd coming, I feel they are still an infantile tool with many subpar applications.  I also believe that it is this subpar status which makes companies like Flipboard so tantilizing.  Unfortunately, IMHO the only real value Flipboard brought to the to table of social reading are the posibilities and some of the features that I would like to see (and I think we need to see are not quite there).  However, I don’t want to turn this into a discussion about the app but more a discussion about what is changing.

There is a LOT of content on the web

Where I think products like Flipboard will help us is discovery of new content.  Here are the facts:

1.) I will never be an expert on more than a dozen or so topics.
2.) It is very difficult for me to find trusted sources for information on the web (Especially, if I am trying to find information about a particular topic outside of my knowledge comfort zone)
3.) I know a lot of people that are experts in fields that I am not an expert in
4.) We can only become more knowledgeable if we read and sculpt our thoughts through conversation

Take these basic four facts and apply them to Twitter.  Hopefully, the people that I know which I deem to be experts in their respective fields are connected with other people within their field (or at least follow other respected individuals within their field). Additionally, you have to hope that those people who use a tool like Twitter have discovered that its impossible to drink from the fire hose and have devised plans like I have to trim down the info into logical buckets (read: Twitter lists). In summary, if I think a person is an expert in a field than wouldn’t the Twitter lists they create in the proposed field be that much more valuable to me as real source for information?

Question: If I think my dad is smart and he reads the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t I then too have an opportunity to be smart (or at least hold an intelligent conversation with him) if I read from the same sources as he did?

The obvious answer here is: Yes!

So now plug in Fliboard.  One of the best features of this product is to be able to take a Twitter List and “subscribe” to it.  The revolutionary aspect of Fliboard is in how it presents the information.  It presents the information in the form of a magazine.  With article headings, by lines, dates and a simple means to “read more” without leaving the app.  In fact, I think that some of the social features of the application are lacking and could add even more value to the product.  For instance, it isn’t as easy as you would think to “subscribe” to one of my followers’ list.  Or to see the Flipboard sections for someone that I follow.  Heck, you can’t even “connect” with another Flipboard user so I don’t even know how many of my “friends” use it.

Google has been rumored to be building a “Flipboard Killer“.  I know that some of the ventures undertaken by Google fail but their reach is big and the fact that their entry into the tablet market is a full year behind (maybe more) the iPad it points to a key fact: social reading will be a large part of our future and sites like Twitter will be engine underneath these apps (and most people may not even know it).

Recently my mom not only asked me to join her on Facebook (or maybe more likely she asked to join me on Facebook) she also created a Twitter account and posted “@notronwest I lost your number can you call me?” (as her first post ever) She recently took down her Twitter account when I told her not to follow me there cause she wouldn’t understand a word I said but, I think she is pretty serious about Facebook.

Facebook and Mom - matched made in ??

Not unfamiliar territory for most of us but I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the expectations a mother should have should one of her offspring decide to connect on social media sites (like Facebook)

1.) Don’t expect to understand everything that your offspring says. We are in a different world now and for some of us the language is different. I am not talking about words like “wicked” or “phat” or other social slang – I am talking about Doppelganger, Pandora, Hipster … words that have real connotation but are best described to those that don’t understand with a role of the eyes.

2.) Don’t pretend to understand everything that your offspring says. Nothing worse than a “hip” mother sharing their favorite 60′s Pandora radio station link on your Facebook wall.

3.) Don’t take anything that your offspring says or does personally. What you get on Facebook is sometimes easily taken out of context. This is a relatively new medium for most of us and we ourselves are trying to figure out the right way to use it. We may (and often do) say something that isn’t quite politically correct or goes against the morals you taught us. Remember that sometimes we drink before we update Facebook and therefore can’t be held completely responsible for our actions. Unconditional love – right?

4.) Keep your distance. Let it come to you (and it will). Eventually, over time, you will understand that less is more. Again you are gaining a unique view into your offspring’s life. One that you were never afforded before. Imagine what you would have thought should you have bugged the bedroom when I was 10 and had my friends over for a sleepover or gasp when I was 16 and my girlfriend and I … well you get the picture.

5.) Get involved but don’t offer advice (not online anyways). We are past that stage in our lives (most of us anyways) where we don’t want your advice. We get it – your smart – you’ve been there and done that. Most of us don’t want our friends to see that we are still attached at the hip – I mean were in our 30′s for goodness sake – if we can’t demonstrate that we have figured it out by now we will never make it.

6.) Don’t be surprised if we call less and post more. We are creatures of the net. Our jobs and home life have equal parts human contact and digital contact. If we feel we can get our point across or have our questions answered online – that’s where it will happen. It doesn’t mean we won’t call – ever – just not as much.

7.) This is a huge opportunity – don’t blow it.

Oh – and by the way – we love you!

I am very fortunate in many ways but, one of the fortunate things I get to do is to meet cool people. All of the people that I meet add a lot to my life and the combination of their knowledge feeds my own thoughts on a daily basis. I share with you today a conversation that I had on Twitter with a very intelligent marketing person at Seton Hall (Rob Brosnan – @brosnaro).

He posted the following:

Facebook Showing Worth?

Being that I don’t know a ton about marketing I replied (ignore the “tweet so rarely” dig – just trying to get more frequent posts out of him :)

What is 18 30d?

And the answer is:

First Click from Facebook is more valuable than same source Google view

Essentially, what Rob is saying is that you can’t always count on “same session” information to tell you the story about a conversion and that what he concludes is that Facebook as a lead in or introductory source, is becoming more successful.

Do you count “30d first click” information on your conversion rates? What are you seeing?

Bill Gates is on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/billgates) . Yay! (really?) I find it quite amusing that in the first 3 hours he demonstrated the real power of Twitter – Open Connections in a Real Time World.  Take a look at his second post:

RT @RyanSeacrest: Just got a call from cnn. here are the final numbers raised from last nights show.. for unicef + american red cross $8 … about 6 hours ago from web

RT @RyanSeacrest: here are the final numbers raised from last nights show for unicef + american red cross $8,944,956

RT @RyanSeacrest: here are the final numbers raised from last nights show for unicef + american red cross $8,944,956 [double it - call me]

When I think about what Twitter has done (and continues to do) I can’t help but think about XML and what being "Standards Based" means to the evolution of our human (and non-human) communication.  What XML has done for the Web I am in no doubt convinced Twitter (or something similar) will do for communication.

Another way to look at it is to think about SMTP.  It is just a protocol.  When I was in college we could plug-in to our VAX system and send e-mail to other people in the world.  That quickly evolved to desktop clients like Netscape 2 and Eudora (I know that there were many others).  Eventually, we saw a growth in servers that could handle millions of E-mails a day and what we are left with now is essentially Free E-mail for everyone (thanks Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the like).  All on top of an agreed upon framework – SMTP.

Twitter is a framework.  Twitter is not: IMing, Texting, Friending, Linking, Time wasting.. its a framework. And frameworks let us build bigger and better things easier.

The beauty of Twitters the framework is quite simple:

1.) All messages are routed through a single server, or in this case a cloud of servers.

2.) Discovering, connecting and communicating with individual people is stone simple.

Conversations are open

Since everything goes through a single point of entry and there are ample API’s you get an amazing effect.  Take a look at Monitter.  Type in any three words and you get a glimpse of every conversation in the recent past and present where those words exist.  What is amazing here is that you don’t have to know any of them.  You hear conversations going on around the world.  The US government paid millions (maybe billions) for a similar service – it was called Carnivore.  Twitter enabled this for far less and in far less time.

Framework is key to growth

Twitter started out as a simple website where you could go and communicate.  It really wouldn’t have grown to where it is now without a strong API.  In a short time (about a year and a half) hundreds of desktop and mobile applications sprung up.  Allowing you to post, read and connect on Twitter.  You can equate this growth with the same growth of e-mail after Netscape 2 launched.  Not surprisingly, most people didn’t do to well interfacing with green screens and the desktop interface that Netscape 2 provided allowed more people to send e-mail easily.

We see the same thing happening now with applications like Digsby, TweetDeck, Twirl, iTweet (and many, many more).  Without these applications – Twitters proliferation into the mainstream would not be possible.  Look at it this way.  If Twitter were to try and develop a single interface into Twitter that satisfied every user – they would go broke.  They would need 100′s of developers and it would take forever to release new versions.  Undoubtedly, they would never provide just the right interface.

With a published API Twitter does what they do best – manage Twitter and provide framework enhancements (in the form of API’s and services).  With those API’s developers can develop many different applications that allow people to communicate on the Twitter network.  Each application slightly different then next.  Each providing a unique experience which is capable of capturing many different users’ desires.  So in effect what Twitter gets is an army of developers guaranteeing that Twitter stays alive.  Without Twitter and its framework – TweetDeck dies.

Where is this going?

What we are seeing now is that intelligent entrepreneurs are beginning to extend the framework of Twitter to offer services on top that were not part of the initial Twitter framework.  Take TwitPic for example.  Twitter is only a text based system – there was no thought in the design (or at least in the first iteration of the service) for external document support.  However, since Twitter has published an API websites like TwitPic can piggy back on top of the service and provide easy integration between Twitter and a Photo hosting solution.

No one really knows what is going to happen with Twitter but if you think about some of its quintessential qualitie s it is nothing more than a protocol. An open conversation protocol which will be stretched beyond its limit someday – just like e-mail is today.  The defining moment in Twitters place in history will be when applications available to the mainstream public offer services on top of the framework and the users of consumers of the services are ignorant to the fact that Twitter is the underlying architecture.  Much like most mainstream people today couldn’t even tell you what SMTP is or what it stands for or that they should curse it.

And I doubt anyone made any money from the development of SMTP.

There is a bit of buzz this morning over a rather suspicious twitter post that was posted by @foxnews:

Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay

It has since been removed.  If you missed it here it is:

One of the largest complaints a majority of citizens here in the United States have today is that for whatever reason they don’t really have the opportunity to make a difference.  Especially when it comes to the political actions of the very government which is designed to serve us.

During Abe Lincoln’s great Gettysburg Address – he stated that our government system is a one that is

… of the people, by the people, for the people …

Today the “by the people” really can only occur during election years (theoretically).  I know that I can write a letter to my congressman or go door to door to get signatures on a petition – I am fully aware of the chain of command.  The problem is – that not only does this type of message take long to deliver (unless you are personal friends with a congressman) the message is a one way message.  No one but my congressman (and probably not even the congressman but rather a deputy director or associate) will see this message.

If that congressman is supposed to make decisions based on his/her constituents then this current system needs a boost.  Especially with over 300 million people equally guaranteed a voice.

In comes Social Media!

With Twitter, Blogging, FriendFeed, SocialMedian or any of the other Socially aware sites out their today (and coming in the near future) we are hopefully seeing a radical change to this paradigm of communication.

I have been turned on by a rather amazing phenomon which was started in late September/Early October by the makers of Twitter.  They created a special site called Election 2008 (http://election.twitter.com) which gave site visitors the ability to view real-time Twitter “conversations” happening all over the world.  It was truly remarkable and has lead to some more open sites like Monitter and TweetGrid which allow you to monitor the conversations on any topic.

So while I sat there yesterday listening to the 3 CEO’s of our great auto industry grovel for cash to withstand this economic downturn – I couldn’t help but notice Senator Dodd flipping back and forth between ‘auto industry’ and ‘auto bailout’ on www.monitter.com with his iPhone – tilted oh so slightly as to “pause” the stream when an interesting question arose from the community.

We truly do live in an amazing time.  Truly historic.

Ok, I think this subject has been beaten to death in the past whatever months but I want to throw another idea out there that I am not sure has been thought of.

What if there was a way to Monetize clicking on links from within a Tweet?

One of the hardest thing to do is to get someone’s attention – especially on Twitter.  I only follow 50-60 active users on Twitter and get more than 20 pages of tweets everyday.  I don’t read all of them – can’t.  It would take forever.  On Twitter you are forced to be clever or in a sense “market” their tweets in order to get someone to even read it.  And this is coming from someone with 50-60 active users – what about those people with hundreds if not thousands…

Here are 3 links that appeared in my stream today which exemplify what I am talking about:

@blakespot: Change. That’s what’s up. http://tinyurl.com/59resq about 22 hours ago from TweetDeck

@georgedearing: http://ping.fm/p/PrFjH – This is the crappy part of the trip about 4 hours ago from Ping.fm

@sfsmaus: Bugger all… http://snipr.com/4tqwo about 4 hours ago from digsby

Each of these Tweets was a promotion.  More so than posting it to their Del.icio.us accounts or to FriendFeed etc…. they posted to Twitter because it was something that they wanted to share.

In most cases (these three tweets as examples) I would have never stumbled upon (hee hee) these links and  would have never been subjected to their sites advertising.  Never.  Twitter is a crucial network for sharing information like this and if there was some way to monetize this I think it would help.

At some level most of the early adopters on Twitter – the one’s that are active – are all mavens.  Maybe not like a Blogger is but in a different way.  We are all promoting something – us and how we think and see the world.  In most cases that includes products.

I don’t know how many people I have turned on to Digsby.  I found out about Digsby on Twitter from @tonyk – else I might still be using that other crappy program – Trillian.  Goodness gracious.  So glad.

Maybe if we could track our influence similar to those silly pyramid schemes like Amway and Herbal Life – we could put a dollar sign to it.

Just a thought.

Work has already begun to do this (see the Microformats site for more) and infact if you view the source of my WordPress blog (for those posts with comments) you will see that it has already in place.

If you were to think about the Internet like a Librarian thinks about the Library you would go nuts. Not only would the amount of information out there scare you into submission, but you also have to consider the types of information.  If you went into the local library and grabbed an index card from the Microfiche catalog and placed it into the Microfilm catalog the librarian would quickly and quietly escort you to the door and ask you to not return again.

The organization of information by type is just as important as indexing content by topic.

The Conversation
We are now having conversations everywhere.  Some popular places that I have conversations are:

• Blogs
• Forums
• Twitter
• FriendFeed
• Facebook
• SocialMedian

And if you go onto FriendFeed you will see that there are millions of places to have conversations.  Yes, Millions.

Today a friend of mine posted a link on Facebook.  The article outlined how people are being misinformed by mainstream media.  The content of the link prompted a conversation between myself, the user who posted the link and one of his friends.  The new Facebook design allowed us to have this discussion inside each of our News Feed Home pages.  This was great but in about 2 days this conversation will be all but lost and no one outside of our small group will ever be able to offer their opinion or reference the conversation.

A little later on I read a post by Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter asking users to answer the following question

Debate: should the debates continue this Friday? #debatedebate

Being newer to FriendFeed than Jeremiah’s closer friends, I decided that I would reply via Twitter.  After a visit to FriendFeed (which automatically aggregates information from many Social Networking sites like Twitter, Google, Flickr, Blogs etc…) I saw that everyone responded to Jeremiah’s post there.  FriendFeed also provides an easy “comments” section for almost any type of aggregated content.

As conversations move from the traditional Blog Post, Forms and even Twitter – how can we capture that content in a useful way?

Microformats

Are Images Any Different?

If you told the 10 year ago me that I would be able to type text like “American Flag” into a search engine and find all of the images that have something to do with an American Flag, I would have told you were crazy.  In fact, I might have even asked you to quietly leave.

When you think about what an image is – at some level it is a perfect Microformat and provides all the information needed to be fully indexed by most intelligent search engines today.

I think that if we implemented a common Microformat for comments (or conversations) we could begin to track conversations on any platform and treat them like a type of content (or information).  We could then aggregate this content in special search engines.

The result would be a glimpse into the conversations going on at any given time.

I know that I don’t live in the time of the Minority Report or iRobot and I also know that I have a pretty big imagination but I kind of thought that computers were here to serve us.  While we are pretty far away from a central computer in our house asking us if they can turn our favorite music on or prepare some popcorn for the movie viewing time we have scheduled, I think we need to re-establish expectations.

Computer = No Help

Maybe I am being cynical but today my computer really only asks me to do things

• There are 150 e-mails waiting for your input in your Unread Box
• You have 24 meetings today you need to attend
• There are 12 tasks outlined as “High Priority” due yesterday
• AVG 7.5 needs to be upgraded (oh and by the way it is no longer free)

Rarely can I say to my computer: “Hey why don’t you get started on organizing those tasks in the project plan” or “When are you going to convert that Statement of Work to a PDF – the customer needs it tomorrow”.  Ok not even “rarely” – never.

I often wonder what it would be like to be totally connected to my computer.  I know that they are doing some cool things up the road at MIT and other Biotech companies related to integrated mind computers.  Mostly now these projects are isolated to paralysis victims or those hindered with MS – but I think I am ready.

Ok, so that won’t happen anytime soon.

Pattern matching

So there is one thing that I also think about a lot which I think could be quite possible (e.g. the technology is available – but it would require some work).  Ever get caught doing repetitive tasks? As an occasional programmer and administrative assistant to myself I find times where a pattern matching program might be nice – and totally possible.

Take the following situation:

I often miss a complete day of Twitter (remember the number of meetings/emails outlined above – only a slight exaggeration).  Unfortunately, today the interface for  twitter does not accommodate the occasional missed day – you see – the timeline display for Twitter runs descending and they only display a certain number of tweets on a page.  In order, to read the tweets you missed (while you were off doing oh you know work) you have to go backwards.  Which means if a conversation took place where someone asked a question – you would see the answer before you saw the question – dumb.

So, what I do to solve this problem is to add Firefox toolbar bookmarks to my Twitter pages backwards.  Starting with the URL: http://www.twitter.com/home?page=10 (um – yeah it only goes to 10 pages so if you wait to long you miss everything – which is another story) and working may way back to http://www.twitter.com/home.

The task for doing this is quite repetitive and would go something like this

1. Create Twitter Folder on Firefox browser toolbar
2. Navigate to ?page=10 and drag to Twitter Folder
3. Navigate to ?page=9 and drag to Twitter Folder
4. Navigate to ?page=8 and drag to Twitter Folder
5. (Could use the pattern matcher right now …)
6. etc…

Computer = Help

What I would like my computer to “say” is this:

Ron, I see you are entering into a boring pattern related data entry task (and i would hope that this starts right after step 2 from above).  Should I copy multiple bookmarks stopping at ?page=1?

Where I would reply

Why thank you that would be great.

And now my computer would be doing tasks for me.  After taking with our development teams about our Automated QA program – where servers check in with a central QA management server to pick up their next set of QA test cases – I know that this possible.