Social networks

With just about everyone weighing in on the Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed, I thought I’d add to the noise and toss in my riveting insight (or lack thereof).

First of all, I’ve no idea what it means. But then, no one else does either — there is interesting speculation, however. One of the first notions that was tossed out there on the Internet was that it had less to do with Facebook getting FriendFeed itself and more to do with getting the talent behind it. As one story (PC World) puts it, “… the team behind FriendFeed has quite the impressive collective résumé.” Many of them are former Google employees and worked on things like Gmail and Google Maps. So, yes, I could see why Facebook would want them.

And according to a BBC article, “As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and the company’s four founders will be given senior roles on the social networking site’s engineering and product teams.”

From a user perspective, given how awkward, clunky and user bewildering much of Facebook is, I’m hoping this will be a good thing.

This morning the thinking appears to have shifted from yesterday’s and appears more focused on the challenge this acquisition poses to Google and Twitter. (See that BBC article, for example.) The business-tech world loves nothing more than to see these things in Stanley Cup playoffs terms.

I can, however, see this as an accurate assessment. For example, from that BBC item:

“Google is the king of regular search. FriendFeed is the king of real-time search. This makes the coming battle over this issue much more interesting,” Mr (Robert) Scoble told the BBC.

For me, someone who uses these social networks and the tools but who doesn’t spend much time understanding the technology, only enough to know it works, I’ve always seen these networks this way:

Size: Facebook biggest, Twitter smaller, FriendFeed smallest.

Theoretical usefulness: FriendFeed most, Twitter a bit less, Facebook least.

Practical usefulness: A crapshoot between Facebook and Twitter (for me), FriendFeed least.

Put another way, of them all, it’s FriendFeed I like most, though it’s the one I know the least about. Maybe I just haven’t used it enough to see all its flaws and maybe it does things the others also do, but I’m unaware of them. The problem with FriendFeed, however, is the old retail thing about location, location, location. So far, Facebook keeps winning not because it’s best but because that is where the most users are and most users means most useful (to me).

There are really two things about FriendFeed that I like: 1) the interface, which I find cleaner, easier to read and understand (overall) than either Facebook or Twitter and, 2) it aggregates all my other feeds so, for example, my Flickr photos show up without the need of using Facebook’s incredibly slow and frustrating photos tool or some clunky third party app.

Currently, however, no one knows what the real impact of the acquisition will be. One thought has been it’s the end of FriendFeed. If that’s the case, it brings up an interesting issue, one that hasn’t received much attention that I’m aware of: Data portability, as discussed here. What happens if, for example, Flickr were to end for some reason or other? What happens to your account? Where do your photos go?

Or, what happens if you no longer like Facebook and decide that’s it, I’m going elsewhere (maybe even drop social networks altogether)? What happens to your content? How do you get it, download it to your own computer or some other storage device?

How are you protected from data loss? Or are you protected? That’s a lot of data to just let it go “poof!”

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I had lunch in downtown Fredericton yesterday and while I had my laptop with me and a wi-fi connection I didn’t do much with them. The day was beautiful and I just wanted to sit and watch the world. As I did, I noticed a few things. For lack of a better phrase, let’s call it old school media and communication – not what we call social media.

There were signs in windows and posters on poles. In the restaurant/pub where I sat, I saw a person or two come in asking if they had anything like a bulletin board where they could post something about an event.

I also saw one of the servers, missing the beautiful day outside, ask people what tomorrow’s weather was expected to be like. She could easily have asked me to check online using my laptop or any of the many other customers with their handhelds, all of whom could have connected and found out quickly.

She didn’t. She asked people. The information passed verbally.

She didn’t check for their bona fides either. She didn’t ask them if they worked for Environment Canada or if they were meteorologists. She just asked and took what they said as what tomorrow’s weather would be.

All of this reminded me that as seemingly ubiquitous social media appears, and more generally the web, they don’t operate in isolation. There are still people, including ourselves, who read papers and posters and talk to one another. All things work in concert. And that reminded me of what Peter Morville talks about in one section of his 2005 book Ambient Findability.

Despite huge investments in information and communication technology, we still rely heavily on person-to-person networks known as ‘the grapevine.’ And we often trust this ‘unofficial news’ more than the ‘official story.’ Of course, we’ve co-opted the technology infrastructure, extended the locus of gossip from the water cooler to cyberspace — email, instant messaging, cell phones, text messaging, listservs, weblogs — at the heart of many of today’s killer applications lies the power and prevalence of gossip. It may not be ideal with respect to ethics or efficiency, but it’s the way people are wired, and the blueprint is ancient and immutable.

I had a friend years ago but over time lost contact with him. One day, also years ago, I heard that he had died. I only vaguely remember this, but I recall it was in conversation. So for years I’ve been believing he was dead. Imagine my surprise when I got a friend request from him recently on Facebook.

The point is that I believed he was dead based on what I heard in conversation (gossip) and never questioned it. It never even occurred to me to question it.

An example of gossip in social media is the recent Amazon brouhaha, which I’ve gone on about too much already. It’s enough to say that using Twitter it developed with little or no real information, just people saying, “Did you hear what they did?”

Is gossip a good state of affairs? Probably not but, as Morville says it’s, “…the way people are wired, and the blueprint is ancient and immutable.” In other words, it’s a reality. And also why Facebook, Twitter and all the others succeed. We can talk about news, communication, utility and all the possibilities these tools represent but one of the primary reasons they achieve mass popularity is gossip.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we’re all just standing in line at the grocery store chatting with one another. What distinguishes us as individuals is what we choose to chat about.

(But really, who can resist good bit of juicy gossip?)

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On his Broadcasting Brain blog Mark Dykeman recently posted I like print media just fine thanks in which he talks about how easy it is to miscommunicate, particularly in the truncated world of Twitter. I commented and afterwards thought the comment was worth posting here as well. So I grabbed it and here it is:

With Twitter, it’s a bit of a no-win situation. There are three things that affect communication as it applies to Twitter. The obvious one is the 140 character limit. The upside is the emphasis on brevity, the downside is the difficulty in achieving clarity.

The second thing is the way we read online, emphasized even more so with Twitter. We don’t really read, we scan. So it is very easy to misread a tweet’s intention and meaning.

These two aspects stress the importance of being careful about what and how we write. It stresses the editorial function. But …

Number three pops up, real-time communication. Where something is immediate, taking time to fashion a tweet so it says exactly what you mean and does so in a way that minimizes the chance of misinterpretation, is difficult at best.

I don’t think there is away around this problem other than to be aware of how easily we can miscommunicate and to do our best to be clear within the limits imposed. (I often use smiley’s like or an lol, although I hate them, simply because I worry someone might misunderstand what I’m saying.)

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I’ve been looking everywhere in Fredericton for answers to some questions I have about the “free wireless network,” Fred eZone. Couldn’t get them – anywhere. But I got them right away on Twitter from a tech guy in Moncton.

I couldn’t figure out why so many organizations etc. in Moncton were called Codiac. I searched and searched online, all I got was Codiac RCMP, Codiac Transit and so on. On Twitter, I got the answer right away – from a guy in Toronto.

I also just saw an item from a guy named Jay Rosen (in New York): “You know, the notion that Twitter truncates everything to 140 characters is crap when 17 of those characters are hypertext.” Exactly. (Also why Facebook is more Twitter-like now.) (Note: When he says “hypertext” he’s referring to the fact that tweets often contain links.)

btw … Codiac and Moncton? Codiac more or less means “bend in the river,” which is a reference to the Petitcodiac River, a bend that occurs at Moncton. (I knew you wouldn’t sleep until you learned that.)

(Once last thing … if you look at the Fred eZone page you may get the same sense that I did which is that it hasn’t been updated since about 2005, four years ago. At least, that was the latest date I could see referred to on the pages. On the main page there is a reference to a planned maintenance but, as there is no date, that could have been years ago. I just don’t know and I don’t think anyone else does either.)

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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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There’s a good answer on the question of Twitter, blogs etc. as news. From Susan Chira, foreign editor for the NY Times, answering reader questions March 30-April 3, 2009. Via @jayrosen_nyu (btw … the link at the end of this quote goes to the page it’s taken from but you need to scroll down to get to the questions. This answer is from the first question.)

So let’s take citizen journalists, bloggers, or even in some cases, Twitterers. I think for professional journalists the information they provide is great raw material. But before we can print it as fact, we usually have to sort through it and try to figure out how to verify it. Let’s just take a few of the very charged conflicts we cover: say, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the war between Russia and Georgia. How do we know someone sending us information over the transom is accurately reporting what he or she witnessed, or whether the information is being slanted or even fabricated to suit an ideological point of view? As reporters, we can weigh statements from witnesses we interview personally, and cross-check them with other sources. We are still learning how to do that in a warp-speed Web world. But it’s great to have the opportunity to figure out how to get more information, and the new tools to enable us to broaden and deepen our coverage using the resources of the public.

from: Talk to the Newsroom: Foreign Editor (NY Times)

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If you follow discussions about social media, journalism, “Web 2.0″ and all that other related “stuff,” a number of terms pop up over and over. Content. Value. Monetization.

There is also a lot of “what if” that goes on. I kind of like that sort of thing. It’s fun to imagine how change will be manifest. (I grew up reading, and loving, science fiction and that’s all about “what if.”)

But as with all things, sometimes you want to call a timeout because it becomes excessive. Sometimes you get so caught up in imagining and speculating about one thing, you forget to think about another. In this case, I think the thing that’s missed is meaning.

Content

We refer to content but, when we do, we refer to it as a product. As if it is a number in a column in a spreadsheet that will be in a formula (probably the formula that allows us to determine “value”). While for cost purposes I suppose that’s a good way to look at it, that isn’t what content is. The term “content” is probably not a very good one to use because it is one that is, psychologically and emotionally, divorced from what actually constitutes “content.” As terms go, it is a kind of dispassionate third party.

Content is meaning. Sometimes as a film, sometimes as a song. Sometimes as a news story, sometimes as an image. Be it a painting, movie, song or whatever – even software – content is always meaning. When we like these things, it is because they mean something to us, even if we can’t articulate it. And vice versa. When we don’t like something it can be because of its meaning or maybe the fact that it has no meaning to us. It’s gibberish. Lack of meaning is itself a kind of meaning.

Value

When we refer to value, it usually concerns how much we (or some group) want something. The demand side of the supply and demand scale. Once again, we speak of it as if it’s a number in a column in a spreadsheet waiting to become an input in a formula. (Or maybe it’s the output of a formula.) As with content, we speak of it dispassionately, as if we can separate it from ourselves and consider it objectively. But like content, value is about meaning. It is not itself meaning (that’s content) but it’s the significance of the meaning to us. If something means a lot, it has a high value. If it doesn’t mean much, it has a lower value.

Value is the significance of something’s meaning to us.

Monetization

The third term, monetization, is related to content and value and is also about meaning, though in a somewhat different way. It’s the conversion of meaning into money. In this context, monetization is what we will pay for meaning based on its value to us.

Monetization is meaning as money.

Meaning

A problem I see with all these terms is their dispassion. Content, value, monetization … they all seem to separate us from the core of what they are about, which is meaning. If you’re like me, you probably feel one way when discussing content and quite another when discussing movies or books or journalism. There is an emotional attachment to the latter; there is an emotional disconnect with the former.

At times this is good but there are also times when it is not very good. I think, currently, when I see these many discussions in blogs and Twitter, it’s not very good because we are so focused on that word “monetization” that we forget what we are talking about monetizing. (All things are already monetized – the discussions are really about monetizing “content” differently.)

By discussing content almost exclusively in business and marketing terms we lose sight of meaning and focus almost exclusively on the money.

Questions

It may be true that the value of content, the significance of its meaning to us, has lessened but, if that’s the case, shouldn’t we wonder why and also wonder about the consequences of that? The current discussions often remind me of discussions of style versus substance (meaning). It strikes me that we are currently heavily focused on style, by which I mean we’re caught up in the means of delivering content, almost to the point that we’re indifferent to what that content might be.

And, oddly for a pretty secular world, we seem to have a blind faith in the idea that “things will work themselves out.” It’s the argument that the market will correct itself. That may be true but we say it and believe it as if no other possibility exists, that that’s simply how it is, end of discussion. Blind faith.

Content will always be generated. Human beings have an infinite capacity for it. That has been an idea behind much of the thinking behind Web 2.0, bloggers and evolving media. The generation of items of meaning is endless. But what happens to the monetization aspect when the value goes down because meaning no longer means much to us anymore? When algorithms and findability (ease of locating content) and cost dilute the significance of meaning?

The money aspect aside, what happens if or when the value of meaning approaches zero and we’re largely indifferent to meaning or, perhaps, lose the capacity to distinguish the value of something because it doesn’t matter anymore?

Put in a vernacular way, what happens when content that might have great significance to us is lost in a haystack of meaningless crap?

I’m not suggesting we install some old school custodial approach to managing content, to preserving someone else’s idea of what has value and place it behind some secure, walled city of “preserved meaning.” I think all protectionist approaches to what is occurring are, to put it bluntly, idiotic.

I am saying I believe we need to spend time discussing what is occurring from something more than the delivery/money side. We should revisit the style vs. substance argument and think equally about both (the delivery of content vs. the significance of the content). How something is said (delivery) is as important as what is said (content). Focusing on one without attention to the other risks conclusions that are unbalanced.

(An aside: With the way Internet technology is evolving and particularly with the way we are using it, could it be that content is no longer about depth but about breadth? And if so, what does that mean? What’s gained; what’s lost?)

Maybe the question I’m asking is, how will we value content in a world where there is so much of it? How will we distinguish what is of value to us and what is not? And how will we ease the nagging problem of not knowing what we don’t know, of never having any sense of assurance that what we have found is what we needed or wanted?

And where will art live in all of this?

My own guess is that old professional classes (journalism would be a good example given the current discussions) will be replaced. But replaced doesn’t mean arbiters will be gone. It means we will have new arbiters. Maybe they’ll be Google algorithms. Maybe it will be “the wisdom of crowds” via various social networks.

Whoever they are, in some quarters there is an assumption they will be better. In other quarters, there is an assumption they will be much worse. Myself, I’m undecided on this. One minute I think one way, the next I think another. While not cynical, I am a skeptic and my worry is best expressed by Pete Towshend:

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

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If everyone is on a soapbox, what’s the point of a soapbox?

I was thinking about branding, people, social network tools and blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on. The point of a soapbox is to be elevated so people can see you. Notice you. You want their attention.

If everyone is on a soapbox though, you need a taller soapbox. But soon, everyone has a taller one. And now you need an even taller one. And so it goes.

After a while, a secondary industry crops up – ladders so you can get on your soapbox. And that goes on too – even taller soapboxes, longer ladders.

What if you have a problem with heights?

It strikes me that this is how marketing has evolved over the years, and continues to evolve, especially now with social networks and so on.

If so, it argues for being an early adopter and figuring out how to make the latest tall soapbox effective fast.

On the other hand, if this soapbox metaphor is accurate, doesn’t it sound a great deal like a bubble? And like other bubbles, one that inevitably must burst?

I don’t know. I’m just musing out loud and online.

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