Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond

Monday, September 28, 2009

Afraid to ask about social media? See you Friday

On Friday this week (October 2, 2009) I'm speaking in my home town (Huntingdon, Cambs) for the first time.

My seminar 'Everything you ever wanted to know about social media but were afraid to ask' will cover the basics of the 'media' part of the label - messaging; transmission; how content is created and distributed etc.

But it will also open a door on the 'social' side of the label - how the formation of groups, communities of purpose, has the potential to disrupt and reconfigure everything we do - from processes within organisations to politics, education, economics and beyond.

Really quite chuffed to say it's all-but a sell out with people attending from my local authority, business organisations, retail, training, a local engineering firm, marketing and pr teams, seo specialists and a global mobile tech company.

There's a handful of tickets still available so if you know someone who may benefit, please point them at http://everythingfaster.eventbrite.com

Tell them to use the discount code 'fastercommunity' and you earn them 33% off.

Tickets with that code are limited to just 6, so... well you know the drill.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Two mass media mistakes Twitter is making

Twitter is a great environment for adhoc communities to form around common purposes. Groups form for every niche. So why does it remain fascinated with mass media-style editorialising?

Here's two mistakes I think it's making:

1. Trends.
Showing what is most talked about by everyone isn't 'taking the pulse of the planet' - it's just broadcasting spam at the majority of us (and I don't just mean the spammers who take advantage of our interest in the trending topics to spam us).

The effect of seeing what is 'most talked about' is to surface the lowest common denominator and that, by definition in a world in which we can organise around things we care about, is spam for the vast majority (think of the long tail, folks).

It's not even a tyranny-of-the-majority model. It's an imposition by the biggest single group on all the rest of the smaller groups (which collectively make up the true majority). Tyranny by a small elite.

More valuable would be trends among friends: ie what is being talked about among the group of people you follow.

The things you consider useful and good would still be surfaced - the irrelevant (to you) avoided. This would work for everyone - not just those in the small elite.

2. The suggested user list:
A further expression of the mass media thinking at Twitter HQ is the Suggested User List, brought to my attention by a Twitter tirade by Robert Scoble this morning.

That's editorialising by the team - them making lowest common denominator suggestions for people to be broadcast at by (a lot of the SUs are not particularly conversational).

I would much rather be on my followers' suggested user lists than Twitter's.

You will make the intros and connections that are most relevant and therfore of most value to all parties because we know what matters to each other.

Twitter (no centralised authority) knows me like my peers.

The image used here is from the National Library of Scotland's Flickr account. I'm shocked to say it's there without a creative commons licence. I took a screengrab anyway. A National Library that doesn't share?

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Lessons from the mass media wars

There are those in print media - newspapers/mags etc - who cling to the idea that they can 'do a cinema'.

When TV arrived as the latest mass media many predicted the demise of cinema.

They didn't count on its:

Ability to adapt with experience-enhancing technology (colour, stereo, Dolby, 3d etc)
The power of that experience being shared.

If I was in a media company right now I'd be looking at how what cinema did could translate to shore up my properties. To start with. (image courtesy rivalee)

And then there's the elements that kept radio in the game when first cinema and then radio rocked up:

Convenience

Portability

Currency.

Print shares convenience and portability - but scores zip for currency against anything post radio. It's ability to enhance shared experience ain't the greatest, either (though this can be enhanced through events and digital communities, of course)..

Media properties need to adapt. And the obsession with print has to be questioned long and hard.

Those cinematic and radio survivors of the mass media wars give a guide.

Cinema uses technology to enhance shared experiences, radio is convenient, portable and current.

Combine all these and you have a proposition to take you into the age of the eighth mass media - us.

From (We are the eighth mass media)

I don't just mean that we create the content in a UGC vs Professional Content Creators kind of way. I mean WE are the distribution, the content, the 'user journey', how messages are transmitted... WE are the medium and the media carried within it.

We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.

In the age of the eighth mass media, organisations must understand that serving multiple and ever increasing numbers of niches is the route to sustainable scale.

Those who wish to remain part of our lives must provide value to the adhoc self-forming communities of purpose our digital selves can't help but participate in.

We have already adapted. We are creating a new landscape. Are you fit for it? Are you prepared to become so? I wonder how this 'Twitter: The newspaper of tomorrow? matches up.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Mixcloud goes public

The London-based outfit who have been working on a 'YouTube of radio' for the past long time have moved out of invitation-only to everybody-welcome.

Yes folks, welcome Mixcloud to the big scary world.

I've been talking to co-founder Nikhil Shah about the model, and how it could be developed, for what seems the best part of a year now.

We shared BETA invites on this blog back in March, too.

So I'm hoping you enjoy how it's shaping up and recommend you give it a go if you haven't already.
Nikhil says: "Mixcloud is democratic – anyone can upload to the site and the listeners decide who get exposed. It is social – with lots of great features to share and discover radio through friends. Finally it is personal – the team are busy in the lab working on cool radio recommendation algorithms that help users find shows they love."

Mixcloud places value on the quality of expert curation individual people (presenters) can bring - a role the media industry is desperate to continue to play.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

20 per cent of tweets are brand-related

Brands play a huge part in our everyday conversations, we are always querying each other about the products and services we buy or should consider buying.

So it should come as little surprise that 20% of tweets are brand-related. That's what the academics at PennState discovered and reveal in this report.

Twenty per cent of the tweets contain requests for product information or responses to the requests, according to Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State.

"Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services," adds Jansen.

So true. And my best bet is that both the volume and percentage of this will only rise and rise.

Send an email to a company and it's usually a long wait before you get a response. Shout out load on twitter and wise brands get back to you real fast.

It's because it's an open network. The fact that no email comes back for hours is between you and the company. When you follow up the email, when your expressions of angst deepen and colour, it all remains between you and the company.

But when no one answers your cries on twitter, all your followers (and anyone else who conducts a relevant search) gets to see your increasing anger and frustration - the negative customer experience transmits so much faster.

The wisest people always were the best listeners...