Daniel's Place

I recently read an article by Saad Fazil reviewing different location-based social media startups. In essence, the software is suffering less than rapid adoption because of a “I don’t want to disclose my location to people I don’t know” fear. And that’s valid. Props to everyone running these startups, it doesn’t look easy.

But I wonder: is there an theory behind this? Has anyone studied how humans, especially technology first-adopters, cluster, make friendships, judge potential friends, and behave in first-impression scenarios? Some academic armchair sense would suggest so. If it’s not happening already, we should consider the possibility of including and studying these basic interactions before attempting to create revolutionary new paradigms around the age old process of meeting people.

Of these several contenders how many will win out, get acquired, or fail?

What happens when all the world’s a Twitter?

Many folks have heard of an election in Iran, Michael Jackson’s death, and Jeff Goldblum’s fake death. We know that news is spreading virally, spreading faster.

Jeff Goldblum’s death may not have been a mistake. Jeff Goldblum played Ian Malcolm in the movie versions of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. Perhaps his fake death is an allusion to something the Ian Malcolm’s character mentioned in The Lost World.

 …Although, personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species…

…Why is that?

… because it means the end of innovation.This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media-it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity-our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same at the same time. Global uniformity.

Sounds scary. But I don’t think Ian Malcolm’s proposal is coming to life and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are riding into town tweeting on their Blackberries. It just means that in our increasingly connected world, we should view individuality as a more prized commodity.

Why you should present at BarCamp

I recently attended participated in BarCamp Seattle. BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering of folks to openly discuss interesting subjects in the tech field. Sessions put heavy focus on discussion and knowledge sharing. It was my first time and I’m hooked. 

While the BarCamp website has loads more information, the rules of BarCamp struck a note very close to my eastside condo-living heart: 

• 1st Rule: You do talk about BarCamp.
• 2nd Rule: You do blog about BarCamp.
• 3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
• 4th Rule: Only three word intros.
• 5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
• 6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
• 7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
• 8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don’t really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.

The 8th rule I read the night before the event. With plenty of time left over, Matt and I worked until the early hours of the morning on a presentation. We posted our topic on the wall (Matt makes the coolest cards): 

Twitter is Dead (long live Twitter): an open discussion on new directions for social media

With no sleep and a high blood-caffeine content, we stood in front of an audience and gave a sparsely practiced talk about the future of Twitter and social media and how it could become more helpful to our daily lives. Once the talk was over, an open discussion began. 

The results blew me away. 

People around the room diverse in career background, Twitter/social media experience, and opinion began to build on our talk and offer critiques. It seemed that most people in the crowded room had a thought or question to share and the presentation morphed into an open discussion moderated by the presenters. 

Matt and I collected an invaluable pile of thoughts and questions to ponder throughout the rest of the day. I also got in some much needed presentation practice. 

The bottom line: Anyone with a good idea and a chance should give a talk at BarCamp. It’s fun and educational.

Other sessions

I attended other sessions covering social media information overload, user centered design, startups, social media analytics, and the amusing PowerPoint Karaoke. Each session broke into a discussion and some sessions were entirely discussions. I heard the thoughts and experiences of industry professionals, enthusiasts, and casual users. 

Where many conferences offer the speaker a pulpit and too much time, BarCamp gives the audience significant control and participation. The speaker even learns a thing or two. 

Thanks!

A special word of thanks to all of the organizers. You put together an amazing venue, brought a great interactive crowd, and kept us all fed, caffeinated, thinking, and entertained. I look forward to my next BarCamp. 

Closing thoughts 

Go to BarCamp. After the first day we all headed to the Red Door in Fremont to drink for free (thanks Bing!), be merry, and network more. The whole event was a blast and a great way to spend a weekend in Seattle. 

Here’s a list of links: 

• Flickr photos of BarCamp Seattle
• BarCamp website
• Twitter is Dead slide deck

Matt and I recently unveiled yet another Web 2.0 social media thought driver. After much toying with Twitter and recognizing that buzz tracking is important, we have developed what should be a memorable service.

Never forget

Remnd.me is a link shortening service that adds click tracking to your links. Use Remnd.me to track the flow of your ideas as they spread across the internet. Sign up, log in, create links, and watch the buzz grow.

Shorten URL's, track clicks. It's aweomse.

The Scoble Effect has not died, surprisingly, I’ve just been busy. I have a couple new conclusions to make as I wrap up this little research project. I’ll continue using @scobleeffect for necessary twitter networkings, but I don’t intend to totally flatter Scoble with such an endearing moniker.

So checking out the latest statistics, you can see that @scobleeffect’s popularity is on the rise, even though (at the time of this posting) I have neglected to turn the feed into one of thoughtful idea productivity.

Observations

A couple behaviors caught my eye and would like to note them while maintaining a complete lack of empirical thought.

Attrition

Many users were quick to follow me, but they stopped following me after some time. I would assume this is because I was not contributing any tweets during that period. These users have the right idea to proactively filter out potential noise as it becomes apparent.

Lack of Usability

@scobleeffect’s feed is a near useless stream of noise. This promises two things: the person who tweets the most will receive the most recognition in this scenario, and it is nearly impossible to develop a useful interpersonal connection with anyone in this torrent of tweets.

Monetization Strategy

Are you looking to increase your influence in Twitter by engaging many followers at once? Do you need a platform from which to spread your ideas and a guide offering best practices? Is your message time sensitive, or do you need a head start on your grass-roots/viral growth? If so, send me an email or leave a comment and I can get you started.

Remaining Thoughts

Twitter is a great application and its simple API creates a great amount of value for developers and users. As Twitter matures and its user base grows, users will find new ways of leveraging the platform to distribute short thoughts and messages. Demand will grow and popularity will create “The Future of Twitter.”

The Future of Twitter

Expanding buzz and the notion that mutual following creates value in a linear scale will drive Twitter users to follow each other with an almost irrational exuberence (you haven’t seen it happening already?). As the follower matrix increases in size, the amount of noise will increase proportionally as users attempt to extract linear value from Twitter by tweeting incessantly and employing automation whenever possible.

Two things will happen.

There will be a contraction of followers as users switch accounts, dump most of the users they are following, or dump their accounts all together in an attempt to escape the noise.

Demand will grow for filtering software that allow users to follow everyone while filtering tweets by relevance to interest, social relationships (e.g. those defined in Facebook), growth of community buzz (i.e. breaking news), and other important categorization methods. If Twitter is so valuable in the social space, then users would likely pay a nominal fee for such a service. Hey! What a cool business idea!

So if you want to make money on the internet, there are typically two major choices:

1. Charge people for a service that should be free (bad idea)
2. Show people relevant, tasteful, non-invasive ads (slightly better idea)

Since I’m not a genius, I’ll settle for slightly better.

The question: How would you like your ads delivered? Click here to respond to the survey.

Yesterday was historic, we saw the inauguration of a visionary new national executive and @scobleeffect overtook @variables in terms of followers. Like all historical events, the caveat is that neither Matt or I did any work toward this goal. This growth was organic and presumably a delayed effect of @scobleeffect’s followers’ scripts.

It should be noted that @variables has far more useful content posted to his Twitter account than @scobleeffect. A quick conclusion is that many of these auto-follow scripts do not attempt to assess the credibility of those that they follow. The idea for a list is born.

It’s been a while and updates are probably in order. Since the first post, the plans to exploit the API for fast following failed and our research has forked into two separate and competitive threads. Let’s see where things go.

Matt (@variables) has developed his own system for selecting and following people that is largely subjective compared to the original Scoble Effect designs. He also initiated the competitive spirit and was able to pull far ahead with 570 followers as of the time of this posting. Further trend information can be found Twitterholic.

My designs have remained roughly the same though I give myself little time to implement. As of writing this post, we have determined that working in the browser is much more effective (albeit click-intensive) than working through the API (which limits the number of requests). On a side note, the accounts we registered in quick succession all came under suspension and scrutiny as we tried using the API to follow our influentials. Many of those accounts have been suspended and API calls do not work.

Lesson: Don’t abuse Twitter, they’re not totally naive.

As I click through all the names on the list I am finding very many interesting people and projects. Many of these I am noting down and will probably follow on my personal account.

My next steps after following that massive list will be:

• Find and profile each of the major influentials in brief
• Tweet for a little while to add legitimacy to the account
• Come up with stuff to say to the influentials based on profile and context
• Say it
• Watch the stats

Wish me luck!

Matt Crowley (@variables) and I were sitting in our usual Starbucks one day, discussing the implications of tools like Twitter and their ability to influence the masses. Having recently tinkered (documentation coming soon) with the Twitter API, we decided it was time to try doing something useful.

The Idea

A while back, Matt replied to one of Scoble’s (@scobleizer) posts. Scoble then posted an @ reply to Matt. Shortly after that, Matt’s popularity in  Twitter followers jumped by about 20 users. A significant increase in reach and influence. Obviously the effect of having an “infulential” like Scoble take notice and respond has an effect on a person’s twitter popularity. Matt  coined the term “The Scoble Effect.”

An obvious question immediately came to mind: What can we do with existing popular influencers to gain more influence and increase the legitimacy of opinions we post?

Hypothesis: By increasing the number of Twitter followers you have, you increase your influence in the Twitter community.

That’s great. How do we get many followers at once and how do we make our posts more legitimate?

Ever followed one of the twitter bigwigs, the kind with tons of followers (think @scobleizer, @pistachio, @guykawasaki)? They followed you back almost immediately. These powerful and influential figures are using auto-follow scripts like SocialToo and Tweet Later to add an impersonal touch when expanding their influence.

Gaining influence by working directly with the influencers is contrary to Guy Kawasaki’s first rule of Using Twitter as a Twool: Forget the “influentials.” Perhaps we are braving new territory. Maybe we’ll be wrong. Let’s do some research:

Research

There are several questions we think we should address to get this project off the ground:

• Who are the influentials? These are the people we want following.
• Who is auto-following? Which of them will auto-follow us?
• What can we say to these folks? We don’t have to speak to each influential, but we should come up with some well thought out and targeted questions and thoughts that will catch attention and get @ replies.
• How do we measure success?
• How long before we lose interest?
  

Who are the influentials?

Twitterholic is a great place for Twitter statistics. We take the top 1,000 Twitter users with the highest friend count. Follow each of those top 1,000 users.

Who has auto-follow enabled?

Follow the influentials from the above question. Check back a little later to see who is auto-following. Given that these influentials have so many followers, it stands to reason that they would auto-follow instead of manually reacting to each of 10,000 follow notifications.

Follow notifications come through email; so we’ll get an email when their auto-follow bot does its job and follows us back.

What can we say to these folks?

This will require special thought based on the users in question. Look for an update to this post or updates in the next post.

How do we measure success?

If one of the influentials @ replies us and our follower count jumps, that’s success. In short, we’ll consider The Scoble Effect worth more research.

How long before we lose interest?

Given products we’ve created in the past and our historical attention spans: one week. On the Twitter timeline, this is ancient history.