social networking

Facebook is used by shoals of people (to steal a term Kurt Vonnegut liked to use). Twitter’s growth is always “surprising” (although, by now, the real surprise would be if it stopped).

For me, however, what is most interesting is who is using Twitter. It’s older people driving the growth whereas conventional wisdom tells us any technology or tool like a Twitter, “…well, that’s for young people.”

My guess as to the reason for this Twitter growth by this particular demographic is, 1) Twitter seems more work/career/metier related (while Facebook seems to be more friends/family/personal life related), 2) a lot of people in this demographic find themselves out of work now and are doing whatever they think needs to be done to help find work, like “… networking on that new Twitter thing.”

Young people are using Twitter, just not as many. And I suspect young people are off on some other social tool of which the rest of us are unaware – at least, not until it gets “discovered” and becomes the next new thing.

(See article: comScore Releases Surprising Twitter Statistics)

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I had an interesting back-and-forth on Twitter with Andrew Keen (@ajkeen) after he posted a tweet that roughly read, “Blogs aren’t dying – they’re dead.”

I tweeted back something about them not being dead and included a link to an earlier post of mine that sorta, kinda (but not really) touched on the subject. Anyway, the upshot of it all was this tweet he sent,

let’s purge word “blog”. It’s archaic & meaningless. New thing is “real-time communications”. I want to broadcast in real-time

I agree completely. And that’s why this post is titled Blogs aren’t dead because they didn’t exist to begin with. The stereotypes of bloggers and the technology of blog tools are confused with what blogs actually are, and that’s why I say blogs didn’t exist to begin with.

There is a lot of misleading baggage attached to the word “blog” and, I believe, it results in many people not understanding what a blog is, which is a way to communicate. They seem to think a blog differs from a web site. It doesn’t. Yes, there may be some technical features that make it differ from a traditional site, but they’re irrelevant when you think of what a blog does.

It’s a bit like the guy who buys his first barbecue and loves it. “Ovens are dead!” he announces. “Kitchens will change to accommodate barbecues or be replaced by something better!”

The truth is this: be it an oven or a barbecue, both are tools for preparing food. Period. Just tools.

But we hear how social networking tools, like a Twitter, are replacing blogs. “Blogs are dead!” So life, now, must be discussed in 140 characters or less. (The end of civilization! The death of thought!)

Good grief. We live in a world so in love with polarization that everything has to be either/or. The tools can’t support one another. They can’t have complementary purposes. No, it’s this or that. And that leads to ridiculous articles like this one.

Whether it’s a blog post, a web page, an article in a newspaper, a chapter in a book … all are communication. What you want to communicate and to whom should determine the method you use. The most recent tools, social networking tools, are particularly effective at communicating quickly, in “real-time.”

The tools, like a Twitter, aren’t so effective when it comes to long form communication. That’s partly why I say the either/or approach is silly. The tools can and should be supportive. You have something lengthy to communicate? Use a blog. Once posted, let people know about it and where it is using Twitter.

I wish people would stop declaring the “death of everything” and think about what the tools are, what they do, what they best facilitate and – I may be pushing the envelope here – how they might be used to support one another so each is used to its best effect.

Please, no more “either/or.”

In the meantime, I will continue to use Twitter, Facebook, blogs and those most ancient of artifacts, books.

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I’m working with a team developing a new social networking tool tentatively called Crotch. We expect to compete with Facebook and Twitter.

Given the rapid growth of both, and the deep roots each has developed in a short time, you might think it’s crazy to try to compete in the same space. You would be right except we have a unique value proposition.

An aspect of human connection that is absent from all things web-related is the tactile. Everything is virtual; there is no physical aspect to human interaction online. This is where Crotch steps in.

How it works

In the same way as people currently post, tweet, poke etc., with Crotch you also “post.” However, in order to do so, the initiator must grab his or her crotch as they send. Granted, it’s not a physical connection between people, it’s self-contained, so to speak. But it’s a first in that it requires something physical. Eventually we hope the technology will evolve to a point where there actually is something tactile between two or more people online. But it’s a start.

We’ve managed to incorporate this physical aspect to social networking by incorporating software that “sees” the user and can detect whether he or she makes contact between the legs. It simply isn’t possible to send and not make a tactile connection with the nether regions. The software reads (”sees”) what you do.

Known issues

We’re so far advanced in the development of Crotch that our biggest obstacle right now is linguistic. We’ve settled on Crotch as a name for the social network, but what do we call the “send” aspect? Do you “crotch” another user? Does a user get “crotched?” It strikes me that the name gets ugly when you start turning it into a verb with a variety of tenses.

We’ve considered one possibility: pubed. “I’m pubing him,” or “She just pubed me.” The problem here, of course, is laser hair removal. The term may confuse some users.

Many of the other possibilities we’ve tossed around were eliminated not so much on their sound merits (many rolled off the tongue) but by the constraints of gender. I recall one in particular that worked really well but, unfortunately, was too much like “tweet” (a mere vowel away) and was too gender specific a term.

Still, these language issues are minor and should be overcome in short order.

Coming soon

Crotch will also have a mobile aspect so people will be able to use it on their iPhone, or just about any cell for that matter. Our expectation is that it will be launched within six months and, one year from now, given the quick growth of successful social networks, we envision a world where people everywhere – in their cars, on the streets, in office cubicles – will be clutching their groins because they’ll all be using their Crotch!

(Btw, a user’s account will be known as MyCrotch.)

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Two thoughts on the hubbub around Facebook’s terms and conditions and the backtracking on the revised version:

1) What if Facebook users wrote their own terms and conditions and include in it an assertion that not only do they own their own content, they own Facebook? Surely that would be as valid as Facebook’s attempt to own the user content.

2) If all of Facebook’s users started posting porn, and if Facebook makes a claim to own all content posted on the site, could we make Facebook the world’s biggest pornographer?

Okay. They’re rather silly thoughts. But then, the Facebook revised terms and conditions, and the rather sleight-of-hand way they attempted to put them in place, were rather silly too, albeit in a dangerous way.

I confess I’ve never really give a lot of thought to the question of ownership online, so I’m not entirely sure what my position would be, but I think it would circle around this: I don’t think I have a problem with others using whatever content I might put online unless,

a) someone other than me claims ownership of it,

b) someone other than me claims authorship, unless they actually are the author (unlikely since I write everything I post, for good or ill), and,

c) someone is using the content and generating revenue from it.

That last one would be a really big deal, for me. If you’re using content I’ve created to generate revenue, or to support the generation of revenue, I expect to get paid. In the case of something like Facebook, yes, people are posting content and, yes, Facebook is generating revenue. But I think the scenario is different in their case because what they are is a platform, that is what they own. There is an unarticulated assumption by users that they own their own content (pictures, posts etc.) and they are using the platform to share that content with others (their “friends”).

One of the reasons the ownership of content is a big deal is because if someone else claims to own what we create, and they can make such a claim stick, we have no control over how it is used. As for the revenue generating aspect, that’s a hot button for me. On the other hand, I have to admit that content (writing, design, art, film, music etc.) has essentially been commoditized and, in income terms, ain’t worth much any more.

But that’s another blog post.

(Hint: supply and demand applies. Lots of content plus absence of time, attention and critical thinking equals decreased value. You can work your butt off creatively but you’ll give it away for a song.)

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