Social Media is a form of currency.  It’s a Social Currency.  It works based on the exchange of information, in exchange for your attention.  If I give you my ears, I let you tell me something, and equally, I will only listen to you, if I value your contribution.

For the longest time ever (perhaps as early as 2004) I’ve been actively using and advocating social media as a tool, or mechanism to build ever stronger relationships with the people you know and trust, as well as start screening across the many people who you know, to discover potential business relationships, potential customers, friends, and peers.

Pretty quickly the online space is starting to fill up, and it becomes increasingly difficult to start finding “real” value in exchanging meaningless messages in the ether we know as the Internet.  Slowly, for me, I’ve been starting to wonder just what does it matter, or how useful is it to just “talk” with, or exchange messages with completely random people who I hardly know?

In actual fact, it doesn’t.  It doesn’t matter one bit.  And then it hit me.  “Social Media”, unlike traditional online presences are not about hiding behind an anonymous identity.  Instead it’s about amplifying the presence we have in real life.  It’s all about being more of who you really are.  Which means that if in real life, you’re generally anti-social, or prefer to be introverted, and keep yourself to yourself, the moment you start to use Social Media, that doesn’t somehow magically change.  It doesn’t suddenly make you a public extrovert.  It does however allow you to stay more visibly connected to the people who you know, and meet, and want to engage with.

Since using Social Media, I’ve come to find many interesting and wonderful people, who I definitely would never have met in person, in real life, in the same way.  Common interests, mutual recognition of other colleagues in the same field as me, and also just generally people who I work with are all visible and present on the Social Web.  The difference is, that on the social web, what I say can be picked up, and can be left unnoticed.  There isn’t any necessity for everyone in all of my communities online to read every word that I post, blog, tweet, email, or communicate online.

There is however, something in having people’s attention online.  That I give mine, and in exchange receive other people’s attention in return is already starting to bring up questions of quality over quantity.  Given that the number of hours in a day are finite, that there’s only so many people I can reply to, and that there’s only so much I can do, until my primary motivations of income, survival, and relaxation/chilling kick in.  So far, I’ve been “playing” on this merry-go-round of Social Media, joining upto new services, and new sites, that are popping up, a dime a dozen.  But now, I’m starting to get “saturated”.  Saturated with noise, with media, with messages, with adverts, and with stuff that I don’t want to have to deal with.  I have to manually filter through all of this noise, before I get to the stuff that matters to me.

This has a cost associated with it.  It’s my time, it’s my energy, it’s my effort.  I don’t want to sound harsh, uncaring, or ungiving, but I only have so much time and attention to give. The same is true for everyone else.  Sooner or later, when you hit rock bottom on that bank account, you feel depleted, and drained, and you step back from it all.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand what I’m talking about just yet.  You could still be in the “oohh, shiny new toy” phase when it comes to Social Media.  Which is great! Enjoy it while you can.  It’s just sooner or later, it get’s old.  Sooner or later, you hit a low, or a bottom, or your account runs out.  This account, this balance, is the Social Currency I’m talking about.  It’s what happens when you give, give give, and get nothing back in return.

It’s a part of learning and growing… You stretch beyond your limits, you go as far as you can, you look everywhere with an enthusiastic, zestful gaze.  And then, one day, it hits you.  Or slowly, it starts to dawn on you, that as much fun as it is to just give, give give, and as much as you enjoy just “hanging out” online, with all these thousands or hundreds of cool friends, you actually have a life to live.  You actually have “real work” that you want to get done.  You have dreams, you have aspirations.  Things you actually want to accomplish.  And when that moment comes, suddenly you start questioning the real value of Social Media.  What have you been building up? What have you been putting all this time, and energy into?

Is it really all just a popularity contest where it only matters how many people are following you on twitter? Is it all about just blogging, and getting hundreds of comments?  Or is it really about regular people just talking with regular people?

Sooner or later, once the realisation kicks in, that relationships as great as they are, don’t put food on the table, keep a roof over your head, or keep you warm, and clothed, you may start to look at it all very differently.  I could be wrong.  It could be that Social Media is a great way to escape the world that provides you with your sustenance, and lets you look onto the world that you would love to work in, if you had the means to support yourself, or a job taht paid enough.  But for me, that’s not the case.

Looking at “social media”, and making sense of what it really is, and what it really means to me, has really been put into perspective recently.  I’ve realised that I’ve actually put a lot of time energy, and attention into my online social network.  I’ve built up my social capital.  I’ve earnt currency and favour with many people on line.  Some I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with in person too.  Not everyone is necessarily the type of person I would want as my best friend.  But then that never was or is the point.  I’ve built up this pool, this reservoir of a network or community, and occasionally, I can tap that with some of the social capital that I’ve built up in that community.  For those times when I feel a bit low, or just need some moral support, I can find friends to confide in, or peers, to encourage me on.  It’s a tight knit community, in my mind, in that I feel tight with many of them, and hope they feel the same with me.

Now, that social capital that’s been built up is a bit of a nebulous, unclear currency.  Something that doesn’t have a clear boundary, or delimitation at present.  Typically, you can tell your generating value, and contributing more into your online community when you start to draw more attention, and people into the conversation.  Likewise, the reverse is true too.  When people start dropping away, or stop following, or unfriend you, more often, than not, then you are clearly milking your Social Capital more than you’re contributing into that pool.

It seems I’m actually a bit slow with my thinking and ideas, since there’s already people out there who had understood this social capital as something of value, before I had gotten to it.  Eiso Kant (@eisokant), and Mac Taylor (@macwind) had already figured this out, and put into motion the beginnings of a tool or mechanism to help capture, and measure this inherent social capital that exists in our communities.  Their project Twollars, is a “gratitude currency”, that helps to start capturing some of the gratitude and thanks that people feel towards someone in their community.  At present the system works only on Twitter, and all you do is send out a tweet, using certain words, in a certain order, and the Twollars platform picks up your message, and adjusts the balances of your and your recipients twitter account accordingly.  Try it out say “Give x twollars @USERNAME [give reason]” where X is the number of twollars you want to give, and USERNAME is the twitter ID of the person you want to give twollars to.  By default, everyone starts out with a balance of 50 Twollars, and there’s no need to register to start using the service, since it is listening to the twittersphere stream of conversation all the time.

The idea behind twollars is that when someone is grateful, or want to show their appreciation to someone else, they can show that appreciation by giving twollars.  Then, companies can sponsor a charity, who can then receive twollars as donations, from people, and the sponsoring company would then buy the twollars, and give the charity $1 for each twollar they buy from them.  The idea being that then companies can gain some kudos in the community by making a positive contribution to the charity, and gain access to some of the social capital within the online sphere.

Of course how those companies then use twollars, and give them out to people will affect any real success they have with their social media campaigns.

It’s interesting, given that this week is the Charity SmackDown, where celebrities are competing to get as much money raised using social media tools as possible.  It’ll be interesting to see the fallout, and where the social capital that these celebs have built up, will land.  I’m gonna hazard a guess, and say that most of these celebs have all established such a strong bank account of social capital and goodwill with their communities, that they’ll have no trouble getting people to fork out, and participate, and contribute in the causes.  If anything, their requests, and appeals to their communities will build an even stronger bond, and make them even more liked, and loved by the people already following them.   It’s times like these that everyone’s social capital becomes a positive asset in it’s own right.  Of course, if someone with hardly any community were trying to accomplish something as simliar, it’s still entirely possible.  Look at Amanda Rose (@amanda), organiser of the Twestival fundraising event that happened globally.  Whilst her personal following isn’t more than a few thousand followers, her social capital and the social capital that was built up around Twestival made a readily available pool to tap into, and build upon.  This pool of social capital allowed the Twestival team to generate a tremendous amount of potential social good, with all the money that was raised (at least $250k) from just a single night of events, happening around the globe, on the same day..

I think Twollars is an excellent way of starting to calibrate some of the social capital that we take for granted, and never really appreciate, and will help us, in days to come help put some baby training wheels on brands and big business, as they start to tip toe their way through the minefield of social media faux pas, and start using their own money to buy some social capital to start building some of that trust for themselves.

Obviously translating this social capital into a currency, like Twollars, isn’t going to remove the need to learn the basics of Social Media etiquette, and it certainly isn’t going to be a substitute for real relationships.  But now that there’s a way to measure and give away Social Capital on Twitter, perhaps now people will start accounting for their time in terms of real value that gets generated for them, or that they contribute back, rather than engaging in mind numbing conversations, just for the sake of talking.  Only time will tell, I guess.

Disclaimer: I am currently being paid by Twollars to help them raise awareness around the Twollars concept, and whilst these ideas, and thoughts are my own, I do want to declare that I am being paid to write this content.  That being said, I do firmly believe in what I’ve written, and were the Twollars guys just good friends, I would probably still write something very similar to what’s been written here.  The thoughts insights, and ideas, shared here are all my own, with the exception of the concept and implementation of Twollars, which remains the product of Eiso Kant, and Mac Taylor, the founders of Twollars.  I have also drawn upon my experiences of my Twitter community online, without which these insights and thoughts through reflection would not have been possible.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I recently changed my main twitter ID.

I used to be known as @magitam, and now I’m known, as @farhan. I got tired of having to introduce myself as both myself, and my twitter alter ego.

It all started, back at the first ever twestival in London.  If I remember correctly, I got asked by @matthagger how my twitter ID of @magitam related to my name?

It didn’t..

Magitam was a legacy reference to something I’d come up with when creating my “yahoo” account, back somewhere around 2001, or perhaps it was before that, when I first discovered IRC in 1997.  Either way it was my “handle”.  It had been something I’d been using to identify myself, anonymously when I first started to go online.  This is long before facebook, and myspace, and twitter.  This is going back to the days before gmail, when you might have had AOL as your main email account, and yahoo and hotmail were just getting started.  Days when you would hang out in IRC, because that’s where all the cool people online would be.. and this is back in those days when you would use “newsgroups”, to find stuff out, instead of RSS feeds from blogs, and news sites ;)

Back then I wanted my identity to be pseudo anonymous.  There weren’t enough people on the internet to ever think that I would ever be meeting in real life the people I’m having conversations with.  It just wasn’t something that you ever thought would happen.

Besides, you would put people through a vetting process, of getting to know them, of engaging and interacting with them virtually, and given enough time, you would start to have a familiarity with someone, you would know them, and be able to distinguish their personalities, and respective identities, as being synonymous with these anonymous tags, or handles that everyone used.

It wasn’t an internet that was meant to be real life social, or allow you to actually meet real people, it was an internet that was a refuge for the people who felt alienated and alone, or wanted to find friends with similar thinking to their own, or with common interests, who they could turn to, knowing that these were a crowd you could trust, and say and share pretty much anything, and there would be no serious repercussions.  It was a store of information, an online library, with talking in the corridors, and disused corners.  In some ways, it was a place where people would practice being themselves, with no pretense, and no barriers to being themselves, unless they chose to have them.  The worst repercussion could be that you’d be ostracised or alienated by your community, but then you would always be able to find a new group of people to connect with online.

Fast forward to 2008, and the Internet is a very different place. Now it’s a world of greater transparency, and visibility.  We now use the internet to stay connected with people we meet whilst travelling the globe.  We manage to make friends, all around the world, and now as we all travel globally, we actually try to meet the real people we made friends with online.

This is a very different world.  This is a very different internet..

Whilst I wasn’t consciously thinking about it I had actually assumed and brought forward the traits from the old internet with me to the world of Social Media.  It was cool.. My “identity” in this online world was “MagiTam” – and as I met more people, IRL (in real life), I started to build this brand and identity of MagiTam.  It was my online twitter persona, it was how people knew me.  It was all about creating this brand, this identity, associated with this label, or term, of MagiTam.  I was creating my own international brand, just like Nike, only with a team of 1 at the helm, and my logo was my profile photo of me.

Well, it finally dawned on me, that perhaps my “identity” of MagiTam just complicates things.  Having to introduce myself as @magitam and Farhan, was just double effort.  I didn’t really care to “hide” the person that I am.. And to be fair, I have my full name on my profile on Twitter, so it wasn’t like I was trying to hide my personal identity.

Then, it just clicked that perhaps I should see if I can get hold of @farhan.. and lo and behold, I asked Farhan Mannan, if he would mind terribly if I could have the twitter name of @farhan, since it was an integral part of my work, and if he wouldn’t mind terribly I’d like to be able to brand myself with that name..  Well, he kindly agreed, and a few hours later, I had set up a new account with the twitter ID of @farhan ;)  Thanks @farhanmannan!

Once I’d secured this identity (I already had @farhanrehman, in a seperate account), I realised that I wasn’t quite sure when or how to switch the name across, and if I should just switch it, or start tweeting from the new account, and re-start my twitter life. 

I happened to read recently about how @jimconnolly had just re-set his twitter account having inadvertently become a bit of a celebrity in the twitterverse, and mistakenly found himself following many internet marketers that were all asking him to tweet their websites, and share their products, or offerings.  Eventually, out of desperation, he decided to re-start, and just follow people who were clients, or actual friends.

I was going through one of these moments of desperation myself recently, where because I’ve reached a 2k limit on twitter, I can’t follow anymore people, until more than 2k people follow me back.. Which is quite annoying.. But my solution around it right now, is that I go to Twitter Karma and just unfollow people, based on who isn’t following me back.  Some people like @amanda or @paulwalsh I stay following, regardless of whether they follow back or not.  They appear to be staples of the london tech community, and so worth keeping an ear out for.  But others, who I don’t really know or recognise too well, and generally are based some place outside of the UK/London, are people who I start to unfollow, just so that I can start to follow more people who I’ve actually connected with in person, in some way shape or form.. 

The thing is, these are “real” connections, with real people, around conversations that I would actually have in person with them, if I were in the same locality.  In fact, thanks to tools like twitter, it actually makes it ever more likely that I will be able to actually meet more of these people that I engage and interact with on Social Networking platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.

With this much transparency, and this level of real world visibility, to the point that I can sometimes tell where people are, based on their tweets, and reference to events happening in and around London, I actually am looking for ever more opportunities to connect with people in person.  Especially people who I’ve spoken with, or exchanged messages with on platforms like Twitter, and Facebook.

This means that unlike Improbulus, who consciously chooses to maintain a certain level of anonymity and privacy, with regards to her real identity, I’m actually interested in being as open, visible and transparent as I can be.  Perhaps too much so, but given that my identity online is intrinsically woven into the persona of me, even if someone wanted to steal or imitate me, it wouldn’t last very long, at least I don’t think it would be.  But I guess, I just don’t go there. 

Perhaps I believe a little too much in the innate goodness of people, but one thing that I’ve found, especially more so since using twitter, is that people want to talk with people.  They want to interact with the person.  They don’t really want to speak to an “identity” without knowing the person behind it.  Those days of virtual identities, and anonymity online are starting to be of a bygone era. Now we look at ever more increasingly effective ways of using Social Media to amplify our voices, and throw our messages out into an ether, that connects it to the right people at the right time, and brings us back, so much of what we need, when we need it.

With this current day internet, and world of Social Media, you want your name on twitter to be representative of you the person.  Some people might be happier being a brand, or a product, but I think unless you happen to embody that brand or that company, you’ll probably find it easier to just be yourself.  Think of a name that you want to be known as, in real life, when you meet with someone, who you might already know really well on twitter.  Will you have to introduce yourself as something other than your twitter ID?  Do you want to or care about that?

I guess for me, especially being a Social Media Consultant, I’m often advising people and learning myself about what works.. My name works best for me.  I’m happy to be known as Farhan in real life, and now that I’m also known as @farhan on twitter, I don’t have to worry about trying to explain who I am.  Even better, when I meet people who follow me, instead of them wondering what my name is, if they recognise me from twitter, my twitter id will be enough for them to remember who I am.

I sometimes find it a challenge, when you meet someone who doesn’t have their actual name in their twitter id, to remember or figure out who they are.. Like the girl with a one track mind (@girlonetrack).  Fortunately, I’ve seen her at events enough times, that I finally figured out her name as Zoe Margolis (though sneaking a peek at her twitter profile kinda helped ;)

I guess it’s always going to be cool to have a “label” or a “cool” twitter handle, when you’re using it amongst your friends, and people who know you, but then when joe bloggs starts using it, then it may or may not be as useful, or helpful to still have the same cool, “in” joke of a nick name.

I guess in some respects, it’s not really any different to having a nickname, versus your real name.  In my case, because I use twitter with people who I would want to do business with, as well as friends, and generally just want to be remembered, I choose to now use my actual name as my twitter identity.  At least now when people come upto me and ask me if I am my twitter ID, the answer will be a resounding yes, without having to then say “and also, my real name is…” ;)  Now I just have to sort out new Moo Cards, for the new Twitter handle…

Next I have to figure out what to use for my custom flickr url, since the magitam reference doesn’t apply anymore :(  Suggestions welcome below ;)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Jim Connolly (@jimconnolly) managed to build up an impressive network of followers, and people following him, on Twitter, with over 20,000 people in his twitter network, and discovered that he had drawn the wrong kind of attention.

He was being plagued by Internet Marketing “spammers” asking him to promote their website, and blogs, but who were very disinterested in having “real conversations”.  He wasn’t being followed by people who were necessarily interested in him, or his conversations, but were just looking to be promoted, and were DM’ing him to say so..

He’s since had to “reset” his Twitter account, in order to be able to start from scratch, and start re-building his following, and, more importantly, the people that he follows…

It’s raised an interesting conversation, in my mind, around this virtual community that can emerge, or be dissolved around your electronic identity.  Just by deleting, or closing an account, you can find yourself disconnected, unplugged, and separated from everyone else in that virtual space.  And just as easily, re-opening your account, you can quickly re-establish your identity, or be re-discovered by the friends, and familiar faces you come to encounter in these virtual worlds.

It starts to beg the question, of what defines our identity in this virtual space?? How are we truly connecting, or relating to each other, if with the flick of  a switch we can make ourselves invisible, or disconnected from each other??

Is it the conversations, and encounters we have with people that shape our use of the tools and services we use? Or are we innately just the sum product of our responses, and replies to others, on these social networks?

I’ve long been a firm believer in the power of personal connections, and meeting with people in person.. Taking the time to physically meet with people.  Take the time to talk with them.  Take the time to have real meaningful conversations, and connect with the person on the other side of the table.  But do social networks like twitter, dilute that down, or enrich the experience further?

I can see that connecting with a few thousand people in person might be less than possible, if I’m not someone like Thomas Power (founder of Ecademy), or Roger Hamilton (founder of XL Networks), people in large global social networks, who are visible advocates of their networks, jetting around the world, looking to make connections with people, and encouraging participation, that leads to them, eventually turning a profit.

But what kind of connection can you possibly have with a few thousand people? What about a few hundred people??

If it’s about quality, not quantity, then indeed, there has to be some discrimination, on each individuals part, as to who they add to their network and who they don’t.  Jim Connolloy, after his learning experience, has decided to only add people who he engages with, or who are clients, or contacts..  I think that’s an excellent approach to take, and an excellent idea, in principle… Of course, if Jim’s anything like me, and always out there looking to find new and interesting people to follow in conversation, he may happen across more people than he can reasonably follow.  I for one can’t actually follow any more people, until my following catches up with my interest in others… (there’s a Twitter imposed limit of 2k people that you can follow, until your number of people following back increases beyond that).

Nevertheless, I’m sure having gone through the hoops with Twitter once over already, @jimconnolly is already pulling in the conversation and reigning it around people, and things that interest him or engage him directly, rather than trying to cater to the masses.  Sooner or later, a message has to relate to your personal interests, to the things you like to do, to the people that you want to talk to, and less about who you think might be interesting to have those conversations with.

I wonder how long it will be before it’s going to be about having the conversations themselves, that matter, and less about the people having those conversations?

Or perhaps that would make it just too impersonal??  What do you think?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

– What Does the New Year Hold in Store for the Web?

I decided I was going to take a stab at what’s going to be hot and what’s not, in 2009 with regards to the Web, the Internet, Social Media, Social Networking, etc. etc.

Most people, these days have heard of Social Networking giant Facebook.  What most people probably don’t realise, however, is that Facebook is not generating any real Value for money, for it’s advertisers.  As a once frequent customer of Facebook, I used to spend countless hours on Facebook, discovering old school friends, uncovering the past, and reconnecting up with those people, but now that that’s done, and we occasionally communicate with each other, it seems like all that fuss has just gone away..

Instead, it’s been taken over by Twitter – that provides more immediacy in the conversations, more instant engagement, and more real feedback, and sense of community…  It’s like blogging, in short form – but even Twitter has yet to monetise – and therein lies the challenge…

In 2009 – I predict we’re going to start to see a number of self-monetising startups.  Built on the back of services like Twitter, and Facebook, they will increase user engagement and provide a platform for real conversations to take place, that lead to tangible results.  Peer to peer marketing,  and WOM marketing, is going to slowly start creeping into the marketplace, replacing the traditional CPC and Keyword based advertising.

Online/commercial advertising is also going to slowly start to change.  With metrics, and measures for ROI on social media, and community impact assessments starting to emerge, people will be able to directly see the difference in a pound spent, buying keywords, vs. a pound spent, thanking a vocal supporter of a brand/product.

With all this public display of conversations around brands, and products, consumers will start to get a real life line into the companies they consume from, and through concerted peer pressure, and publicly mocking, and naming and shaming those organisations with bad practices, and unsustainable models of business, there will start to be a greater shift towards companies publishing more openly and more transparently what they consume, produce, and re-sell.  Consumers will also more strongly advocate, and support companies, and examples of people doing things “right”, so the early adopters will get additional kudos, as well as experience significant positive gains, from being ahead of the curve.

Equally, this lifeline will allow companies to understand more accurately, what the clients are looking for, and prepare them to share useful information, about their work, or their services, or their products, which will then get translated into a sale.

One of the biggest changes that will come about during 2009, will be the rise of the educated, empowered consumer, who, armed with the right knowledge, connected to the right friends, can co-ordinate and organise mass rallies across the country, and internationally, whenever a wrong is enacted, or some organisation acts in a way that is inappropriate or uncalled for.

Video will see a downturn, whilst mobile micro blogging services will become even more mainstream, and start to be offered as integral to the package, as SMS, or Data.

Advances in micro-blogging will extend into the developing world, where more people with cell phone usage will be able to communicate using a hybrid blend of asynchronous communication, via a twitter like service, something akin to SMS, and a mobile handheld device.

We may also start to see more handheld devices, that act as “internet” gateways, providing access to services like Qik that let you stream audio, or video directly online, for all to see, and also permit the easy access to email, social networks, and status updates.

There will also be a clear convergence in the market place between online social networks, and messaging/email platforms, that will mean people will log on, in once place, and from there, they will be able access all their rich conversation streams.

Information will start to be referred to as flows, with different streams of information providing information about different topics, and subjects.  Individuals will start to be trusted as sources of reliable information, and their streams will be more publicly in demand, whilst people with polluted information streams will start to be more openly ignored, and blocked.

Managing information streams, and selectively filtering and distributing information flows, will become an art unto itself, and experts in various fields and different disciplines will generate these information flows, and start to publicly publish them.  As a consequence, not only will these experts be known for the quality of the work they produce, but also the quality of the information streams they generate.

Marketing, and advertising budgets will slowly start to be spent increasingly on cultivating communities around the customers, and people recommending products, and services, will start to see incomes being derived from referring, and recommending products and services, based on genuine experiences, and real authentic recommendations.

So in 2009, keep an eye out for services like SocialMedian who allow you to crowdsource your news from your peers.  Any service that can tap into your networks wisdom, and share with you the “best” wisdom as determined by the people you choose to associate with, will definitely be a time saver, and a crowd pleaser, in a world where increasingly information overload is the order of the day, watch out for more crowdsourcing tools rising to the fore in 09.

Also, watch out for services like Gist, and Xobni – who purport to save you time, in your inbox, and help you create context around, the chaos that is “email”, and messaging.  What they do, is start from your inbox, and help you find and organise, and sort the people you’re talking with, allowing you, to an extent to start to identify either other useful information about a person, or to start to help you find more of what a particular person you’ve spoken to has said.  I think these tools will have a limited shelf life, as they mature, since they aren’t necessarily tackling the problem of email in the most elegant of ways, but props to them for attempting to engage with such a behemoth of a challenge ;)

What will really start making a real impact in 2009, will be services that start helping you navigate your social graph, across social networks.  There’s potential in services like PeopleBrowsr who are looking to start bringing some of those information streams from different platforms, through a single service, and then tagging and grouping information streams, and republishing them..

But the real winners in 2009, in my eyes, are going to be the services that can help you effortlessly navigate your social graph, across any platform, and keep the information flowing, without relying on you having to set up the context of groups, and people you know in each platform.  A single login screen, that brings you all your content, in one place, and lets you see all the content from your friends in one place.

Friendfeed sort of works, in that in theory you can bring all your content into one place, but it’s interface, and usability leave a lot to be desired.

2009 is going to be the year of the “Social Browser” – helping us organise, filter, and co-ordinate our information streams, regardless of where they come from, or how they are generated.  When we want to know what people are upto – we’ll be able to find out.

So watch out 2009 – “Surfing the Web”, is soon going to become a thing of the past, and people will increasingly start to “Surf their Communities”..  Now let’s see how the year plays out..

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’m an avid enthusiast of Twitter. I frequently tweet a few updates throughout the day, and often will reply to people’s tweets a few times each day too. Nothing extravagant. I’m not tweeting a hundred times a day, or anything ridiculous like that (at least not yet!). Without a bit of Twittering, I would feel a whole lot more disconnected, and really wouldn’t know what’s happening in the world around me, especially with my Twitterverse of Tweeple (Translations: Twitterverse=Twitter + Universe= All people I know on Twitter and Tweeple=Twitter + People= People who use Twitter!)

Now since using Twitter, and seeing how much time I spend on it, I’ve started spending less and less time on Facebook. So not wanting to be completely ignored by all my Facebook friends, I decided to link my Twitter Updates, to my Facebook Status Updates. At least that way people can see what I’m upto, and occasionally comment on thing I’m doing, or get a flavour of my life. The only problem is, most people on Facebook don’t really use the “Status Update” feature. Which means that my status updates, could potentially end up flooding other peoples Facebook Updates Stream.. Terrible I know! After all, who wants to know everything about you, all the time, on Facebook?? Yeah, not quite the same as Twitter..

So, if you, as a Facebook user, choose not to use Twitter as much, and really don’t want to see all your Twitter friends in Facebook pollute your news and updates stream, then here’s a solution for you.

Log into Facebook, and go to your feed preferences page : http://www.facebook.com/feed_prefs.php

Below the Volume Mixer type controls you’ll see the “Less About These Friends” box. Start putting your friends who use twitter too much, into this box.. That way, you’ll only see updates from your twitter friends, if nothing else is available.

Of course, if none of your other friends are doing anything, then it may still fill up with just twitter updates from your twitter friends, but hopefully that’s not the case :) Alternatively, just “de-friend” that person on Facebook, and join up twitter, to stay in touch with them :)

Hope this suggestion gets to the heart of your Twitter woes, you Facebook only users :) and if not, feel free to comment your feedback below this article, and I’ll see if I can find a better solution for you all!

Ok, back to Twittering I go!!

P.S. = Twitter hating Facebook users – feel free to share this article judiciously amongst all your fan clubs on facebook, it may help calm some of the Twitter Haters!

twitter, facebook, integration, status updates, facebook user twitter hater

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Heading home on the tube last week, looking over someone’s shoulder, I briefly caught a glimpse of an Evening Standard article talking about Twitter, and it possibly replacing Facebook.  It then went on to describe the authors failed experience of trying to use Twitter, and his rejection of it because he couldn’t get it to work.

It reminds me of my experience of when I first heard about Twitter, and what happened, when I first decided to take a look.  My first response was, I’m not going to tell everyone about my personal life, and chose then and there not to use twitter, and that it was for other people.. Heck, I didn’t even update my Facebook Status updates, why would I use a tool where I would just be updating my status all day?? It really didn’t make any sense, and I saw no reason to even begin to engage with this foolishness..

How little did I know..

Many months later, I happened to attend one of London’s Geek Dinners, where Moo were presenting, and happened to end the night, standing in a conversation with a group of people that were all friends. They shared their experiences of meeting people they had been in conversation with, over twitter, and the whole experience of having online friends, who they started to meet in real life.  It made me reminiscence of my youth, when watching TV, I would imagine what it would be like being a “geek” and having friends who knew me by my handle (my online nickname), and here I was meeting people in real life, who lived that dual personality.

So, spurred on by the thought of being able to at last have my online persona (of magitam) come to life, and knowing that there were people who I now knew, who I could connect with through Twitter, and start to stay connected with them, I started to use Twitter.. ..

That evening I left that event, with the contact details of those few friends I’d made, inspired by the conversation, and the idea of meeting people in person, who you already knew online.

Fast forward, 6 months, and I’m a firm advocate of Twitter… Not only do I believe it to be of great use, I think it’s invaluable, in sharing thoughts, disseminating information, and also to just gain a “loose” awareness of what friends, family, colleagues, associates, and your general twitter community are upto.

Whilst it might seem trivial to fill twitter with what you ate, or what you did, it’s strangely satisfying to be able to share what you’re doing with people who know you.  Equally it starts to become the start of “conversations” that allow you to find others that share similar ideas.. It lets you reach out and connect to more people.

Most importantly, it gives you an extension of the “Office Water Cooler”.  The informal conversations that happen spontaneously in passing.. Those chance encounters where you can never foretell or predict what might be said, or what choice piece of information might be communicated!  It’s these “choice” encounters that make for really interesting, unplanned, unexpected, but potential synchronicities for me that make it all the more worthwhile.

Aside from the water cooler effect, Twitter also has become a solid bit of support, and community for me.. As much as it would be great to have a diverse, and varied group of friends, who had similar interests, and were a mixed and varied group, sometimes I just don’t have the physical time to spend with people interested in each of those different areas.  It’s now possible to have many of those interactions in my virtual world, which helps re-inforce my interests, and means that me in person conversations are already a step further along, than they would be otherwise..  It’s great to be able to know about what folks are upto, and be able to stay current, interested and engaged with many people, without having to be always calling them and asking them!

So now turning the tabkes for a second onto you the reader, I’d like to ask you to answer the following question: – Why do you use twitter?  What do you get out of it?

If you don’t yet use twitter, then why don’t you use twitter?

Do share your thoughts, and insights in the comments below, or write your own blog post about why you use twitter, and be sure to trackback to here, so I know about it :)

twitter, why twitter, community, twitterverse

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’ve recently been invited to a few “no-twitter through your status update” groups on Facebook by a dear friend, who’s been getting increasingly frustrated by my use of the twitter app integrating on Facebook.

The complaint is that my updates on Facebook are drowning out the updates from his other friends on Facebook.

Given that I have very different circles of friends, and acquaintances, as well as tweeple(twitter friends) I know online, and that I engage with random conversations with any one of potentially 1k+  different people, it’s entirely possible to anyone listening in on my twitter stream to find it all a bit overwhelming, compared to the the average status updates of a user on Facebook.

I guess if I were using just Facebook, and were being so pro-active, and engaging with people through Facebook, I would just as quickly fill up other people’s status updates with my activity.  The problem, whilst seemingly connected to my twitter profile and facebook status updates being linked and connected, goes significantly deeper.  It is what lies at the source of my quest for the “ultimate tool”.  For a way of broadcasting information and talking with others that I know, in an ever increasing “intimate” and “direct” manner, through all the electronic mediums that are popping up all over the place, providing increasingly more valuable content to engage and interact with.  Of course, it’s only a matter of time, before my attention gets completely saturated by it all, and then I have to start making a choice to wean myself off of all the potentially wonderful sources of electronic goodness, or die being sucked in by it all.

The problem is that right now I have to pay attention to the medium through which I communicate, as well as to whom I’m communicating to.  It’s a double effort..  When really, what I want to do is focus on the people I want to talk with, and get the message across to just those who are interested.  I don’t want to have to figure out who’s on which tool, and who I have to include or avoid where, for each topic of conversation.

For me, the solution lies within understanding the Social Graph, that lies at the heart of our virtual and physical lives.  Finding tools to piece together the fragmented pieces of our lives, as we start to create a semblance of wholeness and completeness, through being able to express ourselves freely, find like minded souls, and share adventures, and ideas, with friends the world over.

The internet is not simply for “connecting” people, it’s creating an infrastructure of sorts.. A communication gateway, that will eventually allow, or give access to anyone who wants to speak with anyone.  For now, cost, access to people’s details, and the choice to remain public or private play a large part in how available people are to each other.  But slowly, as more and more people start using tools and technologies like Twitter, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and other tools that “connect” people together, and show each other in different lights, the more increasingly challenging it’s going to get to stay disconnected from everyone else.

Even in the most remote regions of the world, cell phone penetration means that you can reach pretty much anyone, anywhere, as long as you know that access code, and phone number, and have the means to fund the connection..

Soon that will change..  Soon everyone will be able to connect to anyone.. Unless they choose to not communicate with certain people.

For now, the gatekeepers are clearly helped, with the failings of integration of these communication mediums, and our fragmented social graphs, but as we start to put the pieces together, we’ll start to get ever more access to the people we meet, or the folks that they meet…

It’s entirely possible, that we, as a generation have become the most enabled citizens of the world, with voices, and messages that can be amplified to any part of the world.

“We will leave a digital legacy behind us that will be larger than any previous generation” according to Benjamin Ellis

[source http://redcatco.com/blog/communication/we-are-amplified/ as at 28 Nov 2008]

I have a feeling he could be right.  It may not happen straight away, it might take us some time for us to learn to sing like a choir, in harmony with one another, but give it enough time, and once we figure out how to sing in tune with each other, we most definitely will be able to amplify each others voices..

For me, the biggest challenge facing us, is the disparate nature of technology and the web as it stands.  I believe the solution is going to emerge when we stop putting technology first, and start looking at, and then solving the human needs that exist.  Only then, can we truly be able to pull together the “solutions” that will make a difference.  For I still remember, in the late 80’s and early 90’s how as part of our studies, we had to cite examples of how people were “afraid” that computers and technology would take away their jobs, and make them redundant, and unnecessary.

That may be the case in more mechanical processes, but unfortunately, most people, especially those working with information, and services, will probably agree that now we’re spending more time with these tools than ever before.  Instead of being liberated, and having more spare time for ourselves, we end up wanting to consume ever more, and ever more, until perhaps it’s consumed us, or we have nothing left..

The only way to change that is to start with our daily habits, and look at ways of getting more focussed, more disciplined, and starting to cut out the things that are irrelevant and invaluable.. How? I don’t know.  But I know that it’s something that will require us as a society to start relying upon each other and supporting each other in new and different ways.  Because fundamentally, I believe there to be real power in synergy, and real untapped potential in the space that exists when two or more people come together.

Perhaps that’s why it’s generally taken teams of two’s and three’s to create the great powerhouses of technology that exist in our world today.  I look forward to seeing, these systems, software, and machines of old start to crumble, and be recycled into a world that finds ever more efficient, synergistic and meaningful ways of getting things done, with a clear desire to bring the basic essentials of life to everyone, and then be able to choose one’s life path, not be thrust into it through necessity of our most basic human needs, of food, clothing, shelter, family, and community.

Now it feels like we have to pick up the fragmented pieces of our 20th century society, and start to figure out how, together, we can map out a new, uncharted social graph, that ultimately will connect all the dots, and create a new picture for all that choose to be in it.

amplified08 amp08 facebook twitter social graph

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.