I mentioned the word 'public domain' in a tweet at the weekend. This was the automated response I received:
I guess he thought I wanted a Domain?
No he didn't. His algorithm did. I'm sure HenryKhan (should he be a real live human being) could spot the difference - and avoid spamming me.
Doesn't that kind of illustrate the point about what's wrong with those who auto-message, auto-follow or auto-dm on twitter. Try as you might, you keyword matching and alogorithms are just no match for peer-to-peer humanity.
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?
So why don't I have Adsense on my blog? Google keeps pushing it at me. Why don't I take this free money?
The first reason is simple and mercenary. The payment I may receive via Adsense is too low to tempt me. The return on my time not sufficiently rewarding. ( I know, I've tried in the past).
That may be because there are insufficient advertisers for the Adwords related to the stuff I blog about. And that means the ads served seem rather less like the helpful content that Adsense promises and more like the spam it seeks to avoid. (image courtesy)
And I don't want to put you off, dear reader. I value our relationship more than I value a few cents from Google.
A lot more actually, which is where RoI comes in. Or perhaps we should call it RoR - return on reputation and/or relationship?
By allowing advertising which could sell you something I have not tried myself, I can't give it my endorsement.
I can't recommend it to you. In fact an ad may pop up for a product or service I will actively recommend you do not use. Each time this happens our relationship is damaged and my reputation with you is diminished.
Adsense takes no account of the value we both place on this.
I'd like to think the niche nature of this community is such that should I recommend a product, service, event etc you will give it quite serious consideration.
Our conversations can be – and regularly are – one to one. And this is the reality of the future online as more and more we become The Eighth Mass Media - the publishers, advertisers, marketers, distributors, connectors.
You'll give me the time of day because over time you have come to learn from experience that we share the same thirst for knowledge about certain things, have similar problems to solve etc. We are one of my favourite things - a community of purpose.
In short, we have a relationship in which we exchange trust to build reputation.
I described a simple model previously which could value reputation using something like Adsense. It may be worth reviewing again.
I think if a model could be devised and implemented which raised the valuation of reputation and therefore of our recommendations, one to another, it would kill the incumbents.
Who would stick with the few cents of Adsense if instead you had a way of being rewarded for the recommendations you give freely to those you know will value them?
It’s a micro-relationships model, but not a micro-payment one. Car manufacturers have been know to pay up to £300 to large media outfits for a lead which results in a test drive. We as individuals will come to expect equal returns in our niches.
That’s mostly because our recommendations come with our reputations and micro-relationships tightly bundled to them.
We don’t give our recommendations lightly. False recommendations are taken personally. We lose friends. Your recommendations would become ultimately worthless. And we understand that recommendation is in the eye of the perceiver – and we don’t want to lose face by giving friends something they perceive as ill conceived. (Yes, I do think my recommendation to you is more valuable than a recommendation from some form of mass media broadcasting at the lowest common denominator of its audience.)
We know our friends (our communities of purpose) in ways advertisers – even Google – can’t touch.
The future is not in-context, related, targeted. It is in conversational flow (with all the real-time that suggests), peer-to-peer recommendation and consistently and constantly validated reputation - otherwise known as human relationships.
Any form of automated messaging has the potential to be spam. Most of it fulfills that potential extremely well.
For example. At the weekend I was followed by someone on twitter. I got my email alert (a lowest common denominator one from twitter, which the guys are working to make more bespoke through displaying follower counts etc... but still a way to go).
Anyway, the person looked like they were interested in the same things I was. Follower/followed count was pretty even - usually a good sign. The recent tweets looked human and interesting enough.
So I followed back.
And then they let themselves down.
With an automated direct message back to me.
It said something like: "Jeez, I'm just so busy with all these new followers at the moment I can only send you this (poxy - my addition) automated tweet. Sorry and that."
Hang on a minute mate. You followed me! If you're too bloody busy to have a conversation with me don't bother following me. Simple.
Maybe they are hoping that at some point in the future they will have time to have a conversation with me. I'm sure they will.
And that's really the point about lowest common denominator messages. The automated, one press-release-style-email-fits-all approach creates not contact, but resentment.
I said this in the previous post on this blog, but I think it's worth reiterating: When your purpose is to communicate with humans, don't massage the humanity out of your communications.
Automated Direct Messages have no place on twitter as far as I can see. If you get one, you have discovered someone who likely also wants to use you as a channel.
Lowest common denominator (one-size-fits-all) messaging = broadcast = spam = inappropriate for twitter - or any form of peer-to-peer activity.
I hereby urge twitter to make a stand on this - and ban automated DM messages.
Perhaps we could start with a #banautodm hashtag. Your suggestions very welcome
Interesting, because if there's anyone with the volume of advertisers required to make a business model work in Twitter, it is Google.
Interesting too, to imagine how a half-way house to the fourth dimension of marketing (co-creation with real-time adhoc communities of purpose) could be delivered with something very similar to google adsense.
Think of conversational marketing, think of people being rewarded for recommending products or services where-ever they (digitally at least) talk about it.
Think how we are all advertisers and all marketers now. How the only way messages are passed on in social networks is peer to peer.
If I spam my friends, if I fool my friends, if I fail my friends - then pretty soon they aren't my friends any more.
And if the value of your recommendations are ranked by the reach of your social graph - that should keep the spam down: Lie to make a quick buck if you like. But trust is your currency in this world - and you've just blown yours.
Mechanically how might this work? Perhaps I register with Google Conversation Sense (tm!) and I pick out a series of brands and products I actually like, use and would recommend to peers.
After this if and when I do recommend these in digital p2p communication, I get a micropayment. The size of payment depends on how many people follow/read/interact with me online (which correlates with trust, of course).
There are details to be overcome, for sure. For example, should your use of a specific term become a link whenever you use it - to a particular vendor, depending on bids of the kind used in adsense/adwords.
A simpler proposition would be that you get rewarded for the mention - those receiving the recommendation will use search (likely google) to find a vendor for themselves anyway!)
And I'm thinking beyond single networks. Google could track the conversation across all open networks - and reward participants where-ever the conversation is happening.
Which explains why Facebook (with its conversations beyond the reach of google) is seen as such a rival for them.
Ultimately that may mean that Facebook is the more glittering prize for Google to go after - since they can get at the conversation in Twitter anyway.
I want to thank Farhan Rehman for the thinking around adsense and conversational marketing.
"... when people go online they know what they want and how to do it... This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them."
... all the rest is spam.
Users don't put up with being interrupted or distracted. They find a way around the control you would impose. It's a network, not a one-way street, stoopid.
And Scott says: "Online advertising must create value for users or it will create little or no value for advertisers."
See that big black button in the picture (left)? What would you expect to happen when you press it? 'Get my change' would be a reasonable answer to that question. Look, even the little diagram shows where to put your pennies, then which button to 'press for ticket' and then where to look for your ticket to be dispensed. And the final step in the diagram leads you to that big black button, with its illustration of change being dispensed. Neat UI. Except, that in very tiny writing somewhere on this picture are the words 'no change given' (too small to spot at this scale).
...as Sean Warwick delicately put it in the original headline for this post on MediaLifeCrisis (retained in the link name). Really powerful analysis of how seo is the art of disappearing up your own arse. I knew there was good reason for why I think of SEO as the new spam. Sean nails it. Deserves a wider audience - so please go read and comment.
It's worse because if I receive some god-awful missive about penile disfunction via email I can simply delete, block sender etc. It is annoying because I've been broadcast at.
SEO is worse because it targets me and makes me part of its deception. I perform the act that brings the spam to me when I enter my search terms.
It's another example of what I call pseudo engagement.
How so? If I mention the I-phone on this blog (apologies I-phone wannabees...) I will receive a certain number of additional visits to this article from people who are interested in the I-phone - not on my tirade against SEO!
So SEO helped you find what you wanted, how exactly?
SEO of the machine kind may deliver increased traffic but if it's gathered in a mercenary 'acquire-at-all-costs' way it's really just a poor man's broadcast - another way of acquiring eyeballs that just aren't interested.
Irony: I tried searching for this article to reference in this post. I used almost the exact title of it "google doesn't know what you're looking for". It took me three search attempts on google and on this blog's google-powered search! Only when I changed the term 'you're' to 'you are' did I find it.
Facebook's SocialAds have great promise. But I hope for their sake they have overcome an issue that seems part of the fabric of this particualar social network.
The default mode of every application I use on Facebook is that as soon as I sample it I am presented with a pre-filled series of tickboxes against my friends - whom it's all to easy to infect with whatever I fancy. It is this which has played a huge part in driving facebook's exponential growth.
This is all good for SocialAds when/if I am selective. But the default is not to be. In other words the balance is in favour of spamming all my friends. SocialAds will be making a dangerous assumption if it believes all my friends want the same things.
Spam is initially ignored, moves on to annoy, and ultimately inspires an angry backlash. So the very thing that has driven the exponential growth for Facebook is exactly what could crush its potential for financial success - indeed kill it as a platform. Look at the growing annoyance with vampires and zombies on facebook, for example.
Of course, we have to assume that facebook have worked this out and that the touch will be lighter, that segmentation will be driven by friend interactions and selections. But there are signs the viral imperative is endemic in facebook's build.
For example, I sent a message to the Friends of Faster Future group on facebook yesterday. And then I had to send another - apologising. It seems many of the group received my first message five times - an error entirely created by the facebook machine (update - I note my facebook ID stopped working this morning [10.10am], turning the friend badge on this blog into a simple link to facebook - and preventing me from accessing my facebook account altogether - not a good time for the tech to go belly up is it Mr Z?). Annoying enough if it's from a friend and relevant to you. Imagine if either of those conditions isn't met?
Did Facebook open the viral throttle only so it could grow to this commercially viable scale and is now ready to close it in the interests of actual commercial success? The balance between the needs of its users and the needs of its commercial partners will be a tricky one to maintain.
Apologies for the delay... Google's (blogger's) spam-prevention robots decided to lock my posts until I'd proved I'm a human being.
Apparently the process of proving this, involves a human being taking a look at my blog and making a judgement on whether or not I'm one, too.
Therefore, if you ever get to read this post you should regard it as compelling evidence that I am in fact human.
I blog, therefore I am. What would Descartes make of this, I wonder?
Hurray for humans. A computer programme couldn't possibly deal with this as well... could it?
The voice of Blogger tells me:
"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What is a spam blog?) Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy and we sincerely apologise for this false positive.
"We received your unlock request on 20 July 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologise for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs."
That's the message I'd clicked to read. Blogger appears to me to be saying that the simple act of responding to the message, that I've been locked out, is a pretty good indication that I am indeed human.
So how about giving us humans a break, Blogger? How about releasing my posts from draft purgatory the moment I clicked to respond.
And if you wanted to double check - how about auto-generating a message to your bank of humans that maybe they should come by and check my blog just in case ( the less likely scenario, by all accounts) my blog is actually spam-tastic.
Google/Blogger, please, repeat after me: "humans are your friends... spam blogs are not".
Now start that customer service excercise again. Thanks.
Came across offertrax today (here). It's a bit of 2.0 tech which allows you to seek the things you want to buy and then lay back and wait for the right price to fall into your lap. Essentially you save the site into your favourite links and click on it when you're on the page offering an item you want. You then get RSS feeds updating you every time there is a change in that offer. The theory is that when the price or offer reaches a level you're ready to accept, you hear about it swiftly and can then go do the deal. This is a powerful notion. You are putting part of the control of the process back into the hands of the buyer. "Gone are the days when customers simply land on a merchant page and expect to only see a Buy Now button," says Ben Carcio, co-founder and COO of Offertrax. "As customers grow more sophisticated, so must the sites that serve them." (more here)
I've tried this and found it a bit flaky so far, but the idea is neat and it is only in beta at the moment. There are others offering similar ideas.
The article includes: "As Offertrax's Carcio points out, e-mail has been so badly abused by spammers that RSS, blogs, opt-in offers and other "user-controlled technologies" will soon become the most effective way for sellers to reach out to interested buyers. Putting the user in control might be the fastest route to online sales success, says JupiterResearch's Evans. "These new sites are a great opportunity for consumers to get into the game and get information themselves rather than relying on the retailer for that information," she says.
The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
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