Why are so many culling their follow counts?

I thought it time to trim out the deadwood among those I follow on twitter today:: Those who have stopped tweeting, or who have shifted channel, or turned out not to be the interesting folk I thought they may be initially, etc.

image via http://www.charlesstone.com

In the process I spotted a disturbing trend. Using one of the many twitter management tools I found several people who I follow and quite regularly engage with, who don't follow me.
I'm not talking about the 'too much attention to cope with' folk, the @stephenfrys  or @bbcbreakingnews of this world (for example), I'm talking more the moderately interesting or those who may have done a lot of conference speaking, or (heaven forfend, and trust me, I'm aware of the risk in every word of this, those who have puiblished a book). It's not that they aren't simply following me back (quelle domage), it's that they appear to be following almost nobody.
I mean if you are following sub 500 and your follower level is closer to 50,000, well something seems to have gone wrong there.
For a start, that doesn't happen organically. You take the decision to cull.
Some may do it for ego and aesthetic reasons - look at the ratio on that!
Most would wrap this in the reason of 'signal versus noise'.
Which is just so much bs unless you happen to be using twitter 24/7 and have text alerts pinging on your phone each time you get an @message. I need back up in case I miss the thing that's important to me being tweeted or retweeted. 3000 folk gives me that cover. Always has so far.
It also gives me diversity. If I don't open up to outliers, how will I see the extreme moments that often have the most impact on our world (the Black Swans for those of an Anti-fragile bent).
I've always tried to follow back pretty much everyone who follows me. But even  in this I have started to hit a limit. Mine is around 3000. If I start following more than that I go seeking to clear out some deadwood - the folk who are not, or hardly ever, contributing to my time line.
And this is where I find it odd that folk with big follower numbers to feed (for surely their's is a broadcaster-audience relationship) feel that they can learn enough about their world from following less than 500 folk to provide a credible curation.
I salute their ability to select. I salute their trust in those they choose. I salute the trust their audiences confer on them.
But I can't help thinking they are helping to accelerate Twitter towards being the place where broadcast and self-promotion dominates rather than a place where adhoc communities of purpose form to get things done (which remains its promise).
Culling those you follow is - in extremis - like limiting your view to that from a prison cell. Why volunteer for that?
I would be delighted to hear from people who have taken this radical approach (culling those they follow) to reduce their exposure to noise or for whatever reason they have, and how it'
s working for them.
But until I hear a very good case I'm going to stick with the theory that one extra node on your network doubles its value: and that this 2n proposition can only happen if the connection between nodes is two-way.

It is done! My book is complete - and here's 20 per cent off

Last night, just before midnight, I hit a major milestone. I sent the manuscript for The 10 Principles of Open Business to the publishers.

We're still finalising the cover - though there is a draft in circulation. When I get an update I'll share it here to get your views. The preface is still to be done - but we've set a word count. Matt Atkinson, the CMO at Tesco PLC is planning to oblige. But that's pretty much all that's left.

I completed the last part of the last chapter late last night - after finally bagging an interview with Alan Rusbridger, the editor in chief at The Guardian, on the theme of open data and open journalism.

So, like all deadlines (mine was to deliver 60,000 words by July 31) there was a rush to the end. But the job got done.

Working on that chapter last night - which encompasses Open Data (with an interview with the CEO of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Institute, Open Government (with an interview with Tom Watson MP) and Open Journalism (with Alan) allowed me to finish on a real high.

I'm really happy with the result.

It's been a long journey - not least the journey to formulating and formalising the 10 Principles in the first place - but also the actual process of writing the book.

Writing a compelling synopsis won us three keen potential publishers in the summer of 2012. At the time Jamie Burke (with whom I founded 90:10 Group where the principles were forged in the white heat of direct experience) and I were to be co-authors. Thanks to their enthusiasm and very complete international marketing plan for the book, we went with Palgrave Macmillan.

Our paths have taken us in different directions since. Jamie has founded a new business based on the principles and that left him with pretty much zero spare time.

I have stayed in consultancy - with The Social Partners - and have had to use pretty much every day off, weekend, evening, train and plane journey in between to write, arrange, interview, transcribe, edit, seek permissions, chase, herd cats etc.

Now that it's done I can reflect on how lucky I've been: Lucky to meet and connect with amazing people over many years as the ideas behind the principles were shared, challenged and gelled; lucky to be granted access to so many brilliant and usually extremely busy people; lucky to have worked with both colleagues and clients with imagination and belief; lucky to have so many great connections prepared to take a look at early drafts for me.

I really hope I've done you all justice.

The book is due out in January next year in the UK and February in the US.

I will be chairing a panel on Open Business during Social Media Week London in September with some of the contributors on the panel, so please keep an eye out for that.

And for a limited period there is a 20% discount available on the book if you use the following link (note the blurb you will find there is a little out of date. For a full and up to date contents list go here:

To get the discount, go here: http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=685457 and quote "WORLDPALGRAVE20"

Second Update: I've just tested this myself and it worked (Aug 1, 4pm BST)

UPDATE: One kind early adopter has reported this route is failing for them. I have raised with the publisher and hope for a very swift resolution.

Expectation and reality

I spoke with my publisher this morning about (among other things) the cover of my next book: The 10 Principles of Open Business.

I've seen a draft cover - which I had no input into - and in the next day or two I'm going to share it with you for your thoughts.

But before we get to that, I wonder what your pre-conceptions might be? The book's full title is The 10 Principles of Open Business - Building Success in Today's Open Economy.

The full contents listing is available here.

What would expect the cover to look like, what kinds of colours, fonts, imagery. What wouldn't you expect, what should it avoid?

I'd be really pleased to hear any thoughts formed before you see even a draft. (Post them below or tweet them @davidcushman #10OBCover or email the address found on the full-web version of my blog.

Many thanks

My new book available for pre-order now

My new book, The 10 Principles of Open Business (Building Success in Today's Open Economy) is almost complete.

I finished off the final chapter today. I have one extra piece I'd like to add should Alan Rusbridger (Editor in Chief at The Guardian) find himself with the spare moment he's been seeking for months, in time for my July 31 deadline. I know Alan is keen to be included - we have a chapter on Open Data which suits his story very well. (UPDATE: Alan did indeed make the final deadline I'm pleased to say).

The preface is yet to be written - which Matt Atkinson, the CMO at Tesco PLC has kindly agreed to do.

It has taken pretty much all of my spare time for the last nine months or more. But, I am excited to say, it's almost there, does what I set out to achieve and is now available for pre-order on Amazon, I believe the launch date in the UK is the end of January 2014 with the US launch following toward the end of February.

The first edition is hardback. There is a small discount to be had from ordering in advance which I urge you to take advantage of (Update: No longer available as of August 19, 2013, but you will find other discounts available on this blog)..

When I last looked on Amazon the cover hadn't been added yet, and the about the author part was a bit out of date (which I'm in the process of getting updated).

So what is the book about? The 10 Principles of Open Business, of course.

Here's the draft contents list:

Preface:

Introduction:

i Starting from a different place

ii Defining Open Business and its Benefits

iii Tesco PLC – An Open Business

The Principles

Chapter 1: Purpose

Chapter 2: Open Capital

Chapter 3: The Networked Organisation

Chapter 4. Sharability

Chapter 5. Connectedness

Chapter 6. Open Innovation

Chapter 7. Open Data

Chaper 8. Transparency

Chapter 9. Open Data (Open Journalism and Open Government)

Chapter 10. Trust

Summary and Next Steps

About the author

Acknowledgements

It includes interviews with examplars including MP and former defence and cabinet minister Tom Watson, the CMO of Tesco PLC Matt Atkinson, Mark 'Herdmeister' Earls, the FT's Associate Editor Andrew Hill, The Guardian's Editor in Chief Alan Rusbridger, CEO of GrowVC Jouko Ahveneinen, CEO of NearDesk Tom Ball, CEO of Blur Group Phillip Letts, Collaboration Strategist at Fluor Jeff Hester, IBM VP Carol Smillic, CEO of giffgaff Mike Fairman, CEO of the Open Data Institute Gavin Starks, CEO of Fairphone Bas Van Abel, CEO of Paperight Arthur Atwell, CEO of Anglia Regional Co-op John Chillcott, President of Avis Budget Group EMEA Larry De Shon and SVP Gina Bruzzichesi, CEO of Grey (London) Chris Hirst and Founder of The Social Partners (yep, my lot) Ivan Palmer.

Each makes a fabulous contribution to shaping the story of the book.

In the coming weeks I'll be able to share a little more.

In the meantime, my apologies for prolonged absence from blogging. I am now back.

Big Data: 98 per cent as good as gut feel

The Human Face of Big Data.Via Brian's Books

Not so long ago I was given a demonstration of a very clever bit of kit to analyse big data. By gathering evidence about your expressed preferences shared through social media it could make predictions about the preferences you don't articulate.

Scary clever.

The person presenting proudly told us how their analysis had identified the right kind of music to attract the target market to a new energy drink.
Let's say they picked Artist X as the ideal brand amabassador.

Funnily enough, Artist X was exactly the person the product's brand manager had come up with from their own 'analysis'. I'm sure they had some evidence. Some charts with brand positions. Some brand truths. All that malarky. But they had much more. They had stuff no one had written down, no one could easily define. They had what they felt.

And where was all this processed? In the 'gut' of the brand manager - someone living and breathing and believing the brand.

The vendors of the clever big data cruncher marvelled at how Artist X could be proven to be a 98% fit with the requirements of the brand.

I fear they may be wrong.

I suspect the brand manager was 100% right and that the dimensions of data captured by the tool has gaps - gaps that only guts can currently fill.

You process big data every day - with staggering accuracy. When you drive a car or walk along a crowded street you are processing huge amounts of information and making decisions on it. In real time. If only big data could do that? It's getting better. Our weather forecasts are one example. But it's not 100%. There's still room for your gut - and it's important room.

One final example. When I started out as a local newspaper man, my first sub-editing job was to go through what were called the village columns. We'd call it user generated content today. Reports from local correspondents of village fetes, whist-drives, bowls matches, bring and buys, church services - that kind of micro-local news. It was mostly hand-written (semi-scrawled) and often on unlined paper. And it was my task to correct, amend, headline, and guestimate. I'd mark it all up with instructions for the guys who would set the pages (using ems and picas, font names and point sizes).

And then I'd have to estimate how much I needed to cut or add, what depth I should set images to (for example) to fill the number of pages I had been allocated, accounting for the adverts booked on them. It was a task that was not unlike estimating the number of individual straws in a decent sized haystack.
Yet, within a few weeks, I could mark up all that separate, different-looking, miscellaneous copy and have the output fit within 5 or 6cms of the final column each week. All done without the aid of any big data analysis.

Big data has a hugely important role for organisations (and for governments) moving forward. Who controls it and to what ends it is used will occupy us for years to come. But throughout that process let's not forget the extra value that something human adds.