Written by Clarence Smith, Jr. and Chris Brogan
It all started out with a problem: Chris wanted to better use and see the data inside Twitter. He started an IM conversation with Clarence, asking about some Linux commands, but then we found that it was something bigger, something more involved, and definitely not related to the original problem we started to solve. What follows is a mash-up post by Chris and Clarence about some of what we came up with talking about Twitter and data in general.
Twitter is a Haystack
Technically, you can use Twitter in two forms: as a big fat IRC chat room, or as a tiny, laser-guided way to stay in touch with a select few. What Twitter doesn’t do well at all is let you do both. (This comes from Chris, who follows 2,500 or so people so far.) Twitter is, in this case, like a big fat IRC channel, and the benefit is that you can opt-in everyone who gets access to that room. The negative is this: conversational flow doesn’t mean always following every single thread of conversation. Imagine it this way.
You’re at a party with, say, 50 people. 10 of them are talking about software. 10 are talking about something local. 10 more are just enjoying each other’s company. 10 are reading a newspaper together and sharing what they find interesting with everyone. 10 more are just all over the place.
In real life, you, as a party-goer, might LIKE all these people, consider them your friends, think they’re swell. But you’d only be engaged in one of those five activities at any one time. Sure, you’d thread in and out of them, and sometimes, there’d be a conversational crossover, but overall, you’d sample each of those discussions one at a time.
That’s not how Twitter (and by “Twitter,” we mean *.* social network) works.
One Problem: Friends
That pesky word “friend” again. It messes up a lot of this experience. Because what if we consider you a friend, but don’t want to interact with you on Twitter or Facebook, or whatever? What if the things you like to Twitter about (your dog, your car, your dining habits) aren’t something I find interesting? I like YOU, but maybe don’t have much connection to your tweets. There are symbols here. If I drop following you, am I dropping you as a friend?
The whole notion of friendship as it relates to online social networks is fascinating. If friendship equals making a connection via networking, then conceivably everyone is your friend! The loose weak ties we initially establish online are valid connections that are made by relating on our varying flavors of interests (or oftentimes recommendations based on our perceived interests). Everyone, however, places a different weight and expectation on friendship, so our perceptions may not match perfectly when you consider the nature of social networks (like Twitter).
Follow the Yellow Brick Road (and not “Dorothy”)
The interesting-ness of any social network (and the usefulness of the network) is more obvious when there is a solid flow of interesting conversations happening around you. The problem arises when the people you follow are initiating and participating in conversations that you do not find interesting at all. Is it really important to follow the friend (Dorothy), or to follow the conversation (the Yellow Brick Road)? Or both?
The social impact that the common word friend implies can quickly skew the signal-to-noise ratio when you consider the fact that even if you are appreciative of someone as an interesting person overall, following them (for the sake of following them) will not always lead to a conversational value add. Said another way: I might like YOU, but not be into every little thing you are into.
Interestingness Gates
One thing we talked about in our IM conversation was that there are situations where each of us become interesting and relevant to others, and we want to be part of THAT conversation, but might want to skip following other conversations. The term Clarence and Chris came up with were “gates.” How could we “open” our gate for when we’re at the same conference and don’t want to miss out on that talk, but then “close” the gate when you’re back home in Mudville talking about your cats? How can we catch your tweets about social computing but skip the tweets about being stuck at JFK for a 3 hour delay?
It’s not that YOU should have to twitter differently, but rather, we should have a way to adjust the lens on what comes through our “interestingness” gate. And of course, this is all relative to whatever you’re interested in, who, and often times where. For instance, if we’re visiting Seattle, we might want to get MORE about the area around us than less, in case something newsworthy is happening (like avoiding a traffic jam).
Let us stop for a moment and acknowledge that human beings can only handle so many inputs at one time and when it becomes necessary to siphon off the flow of conversations, it is usually other human beings that suffer. Why? Because socially we all want to connect and bond over what we find interesting. Social networks are more useful when they facilitate conversations and the concept of gates allow us to channel only those conversations we would find interesting. Take away the semantics of friendship as it currently stands (i.e. collecting friends in order to remain close to possibly interesting conversations) and you begin to understand why managing inputs through these gates makes sense.
How do we on/off the conversational flow of people in such a way that we receive more of what’s interesting to us (again, very relative), without it signifying anything negative about a person?
Keys to the Gates
In order to sanely manage the flow of interesting conversations vs. conversations that are less so, a social network would need a set of specialized keys to the gates. The most important key is being able to identify conversations that are worth participating in — i.e. those you find interesting. The key is not the friend, but, the subject matter. Secondly, being able to opt-in to the conversation becomes crucial. If at some point the conversation becomes less interesting, you simply opt-out. You may, however, want to keep your eyes on the conversation from afar and that is when threads begins to make sense.
Why can’t we have a system that’s partly like Flickr’s “interesting” and “favorites” system, that helps train Twitter (and other networks) to predict which conversations will matter to us? Something more than keywords. How do we apply this same thinking to the people we currently “follow?” What if Clarence loves when Chris talks about data centers, but doesn’t care about Chris’s current trip to New York City? How could we “gate-on” based on information, and then “gate-off” when the interestingness vanishes?
Clarence said something interesting about this in the IM conversation. He said that following those parts of a person’s stream that you find interesting would probably do more to grow online friendships than following the person specifically. Follow the Yellow Brick Road, not the Dorothy, he said.
Conversations Not Floods
The thing is this: being part of a social network means flooding ourselves with information. We get EVERY thought and idea posted by people. How could we build tools that turn on and off our view of someone’s Twitter stream based on things like: location, context, content? And then once we understand that in the format of Twitter, where ELSE could we put these tools? How do we take the flood of social conversation on the Internet and tune it to be more interesting to us?
[...] can be so cool. Clarence and I got into a conversation about how Twitter presents information, especially the difference [...]
“Something more than keywords” is spot-on. A lot of the people I follow FREQUENTLY tweet things that bore me, or disgust me…but I followed them in the beginning for certain interesting/amusing/whatever things they said.
I’d love to be able to “keyword” certain people so I could avoid all the garbage and still get their “good” tweets.
And PS Chris Brogan hardly EVER @’s me back when I @ him. I thought it was maybe because he doesn’t like me or he thinks I’m boring/uninteresting/whatever.
Maybe it is…but maybe it isn’t. :D
I *love* how you cover the concept of “friend.” I’ve been thinking about that for a really long time (I wrote a somewhat meandering post contemplating something similar) I think users like us, thick in the thick of it, get the concept that the online persona of a real-life friend may not translate well to the digital persona (like the people we love in person who constantly forward those fluffy emails of jokes/memes/whatever we don’t want or need).
It would be very cool if something could be done with the API to narrow the field. I do, however, think much of the filtering begins with people: not to just Follow blindly, but to pick and choose from the very beginning who you follow. Something that could further filter from there would be spectacular.
i hear ya. i’m finding twitter difficult to follow without it impacting my workday. and yes, i too find many of the conversations tedious. i like the feeling of being in touch, but sometimes it is a bit much.
As I was reading this I pictured messages in my Twitter sidebar saying things ike, “@johndoe, @janesmith, and @bobthompson are talking about cheese,” with a link to click if I wanted to follow that thread.
And perhaps Twitter would suggest it to me because I told it that I’m interested in one or more of those people, and/or cheese.
You know, the yellow brick road not Dorothy path is kind of what Faves.com (formerly BlueDot) is centered around. It’s topic-based social news rather than friend based. I submit stuff to it from time to time, but haven’t dived in too deeply. Perhaps they’re onto something before the notion has hit us all?
Fantastic back-and-forth here. Thanks for collaborating on such a topic.
Perhaps the people who created tweetgift.com have a piece of the answer. The service lets you give a gift using Twitter syntax, which is then posted to their site separately. If Twitter could take that and cross reference it, with, say, Twitter’s “track” feature, and/or Twitter Keyword, then put it in the sidebar, and/or RSSify/SMS-enable it. Perhaps?
It seems like following the yellow brick road might, ironically, allow you to develop deeper friendships with people (Dorothies) who tend to share your topical interests…
[...] Keys to the Gates (of Social Media) The term Clarence and Chris came up with were “gates.” How could we “open” our gate for when we’re at the same conference and don’t want to miss out on that talk, but then “close” the gate when you’re back home in Mudville talking about … [...]
[...] and @dykc” to appear more ‘linked-in’ and whatnot?) just posted a collaborative piece about managing the (many, many) streams of information from sources like Twitter (or any [...]
[...] bookmarks tagged interesting Keys to the Gates (of Social Media) saved by 1 others Head1st4Halos7 bookmarked on 12/26/07 | [...]
And remember, we don’t mean just Twitter, but it’s an easy place to consider the problem. We can see clearly the glut problem of following lots of people but not wanting to see their every little tweet, and we can see examples of people using the API to their own needs (ala Club140).
Andrea points it out closer to some of what we were talking about. What if we love Andrea’s thoughts on information technology, but don’t care when she’s on the help desk or not (I care, but that’s only so I can crank call the help desk). See the point? How do we follow the threads, and how do we maintain our digital “friendships” in such a way that we don’t upset people by what we follow or don’t?
That’s another whole thing, not necessarily for THIS post, but think about this: think of all the things you’ve joined, added, or otherwise done, just because you want to be friendly to the inviter. I’ve stopped doing some of it. I don’t join Facebook groups just because I like the person who started it and invited me. Are there other cases where we’re doing things to be nice, but crippling our use of the system?
I do think the problem is global in nature. Consider that all social networks have this inherent problem that is made more salient by the human desire to be heard (by all). What happens when you are heard by right people (and vice-versa?) Being heard by all becomes moot. Marinate.
I’m curious if it is possible that human nature will evolve with the tools? We tend to shape-shift tools to fit our needs (it happened to Twitter, right?) Originally designed to ‘talk at you’ (and keep you in the loop), it has changed to be more conversational. I think it is much more likely that tools will evolve with human desire rather than the other way around. Narrowing the band by opening the gate when the info is a value add for us goes a long way to minimizing negative social impact.
You already belong, by virtue of talking on a subject that you dig. Once it no longer holds value, close the gate and take a divergent path down another road until it syncs up with another shared interest.
Wife, it’s true that this type of gate management on subject matter that is interesting can lead to actual deepening friendships with people (beyond the online). It’s a major component in my lifestyle hustle. The subject leads me to the others on the YBR worth walking further down the path with (and I have a choice to deepen that relationship offline).
i think about this in regards to twitter and SXSWi 2008. If you aren’t attending I imagine it would be very annoying to get a lot of tweets from people at the conference, all day long, from more than one person. You love them, but you’re not too interested in getting all tweets all the time during conference days. Labels, or rooms, or what they’ve done with @PEAple could solve that issue.
What Chris Brogan said.
And, I think it’s important to reinforce that no matter what we can make the technology actually do, it’s what we do and our chosen approach that makes [insert social media of choice] useful to us, and useful to others. So while I can continue to post about my interactions at the library, I know that it’s possible that no one, or a small portion of people, may be interested. If Followers drop me, it’s no big to me, it’s just not their bag, and that’s cool because I’m not playing it as a numbers or emo game. But that’s an approach and a mindset, not a function of the tech.
Being able to further filter who I Follow (on *.* site) using technology would be even spiffier. :)
And what Clarence said (who was typing just as I was typing… *sigh* the eensty problem with real-time comment conversations).
*ponders* … “granularity” … and “modulation”.
“Too much of a good thing”.
I don’t need to see avatars so often (Especially in RSS!!!). And I like to keep connected to some folk w/o seeing everything they tweet.
Soooooo … a quick hack; mousever tweets on http://snipurl.com/1vud5
Wow, nail on the head with this discussion, C&C! Having Jeff Pulver as a “friend” on FB is like drinking from a fire hose. Even the minimum filter settings were scrolling the entire world off the page.
OTH, I do not see how you’d ever anticipate something being interesting with only keywords or any construct other than a personal assistant who (say) reads all of Brogan’s tweets and forwards them on? Even then, s/he might be in a bad mood or find something offensive that I would like to know about.
Right now, all I can do is limit the people I follow on Twitter to those who, like Brogan, would always be a good bet to read if I have time to do so.
I have to admit that one thing I dislike about the social network movement is the way it has watered down the meaning of “friend”; at least for me. I much prefer networks which allow me to set different levels of networking: contact, friend, family, colleague, etc.
I constantly run into situations where I’m asked if a new contact is a friend and instinctively, I think “no”. But I have no choice but to say yes or lose out on any interaction.
I’m also an advocate of some sort of “mute” function that would allow me to continue my relationship with a person online but temporarily turn them “off” when they go on about a subject that disinterests me.
I agree, regularly i am one of those people that twitters about software and cool things to wanting to get some feedback or advice on something a bit more personal. Aren’t friends people that you can talk to about a wide variety of topics and subjects? maybe if i could tag a twitter as being of geeky nature, vrs a twitter of a personal nature, before it goes out to everyone would be helpful. like seesmic people using [seesmic] as a courtesy to others to indicate to others that its a video, but i don’t see ppl doing [youtube], or [blog]. maybe we should get in the habit of putting the subject up front until twitter sorts out some kind of group thing?
[sad] we lost Oscar Peterson and Kurt Vonnegut in ‘07.
[happy] N95 is sweet!
[help] upset / emotional / etc…
There are certainly no rules about what you should and shouldn’t tweet. the rules are set by the people following you.
Compared to the Chris Brogans of the web, my firehose is more of a garden hose, or eveny a silly straw…but it still is sometimes overwhelming. Even then, I see no need to filter based on content or people: I want to feel the flow, see the direction, see the forest of trees blur by.
But, just as we have some 6.5 billion potential users, we also have 6.5 billion potential opinions on how to handle the information, so I will be very interested to see the ways that others choose to filter, to narrow, to alter the stream of their own firehoses. :-) Who knows if one of use is lucky enough to strike upon something monetizable - go for it, keep talking about the possibilities!
..Alex.
The other night I twittered “2007 was about making new connections. 2008 is going to be about quality over quantity.” This is the sort of thing I was talking about. While I really like all the people I’ve connected with on Twitter and Facebook, I need a way to filter them. Something as simple as groups would help, and I see Facebook has a new feature I need to check into, not sure what it does. But on Twitter, if I could at least group my contacts I could filter out the silly stuff during the work day. I like some of the ideas offered here even better.
For whatever reason “silly straw” really made me smile.
As I said in a Twitter, your posts are always inspiring. The concept of “gates” is an interesting one, however, what it does not allow for, which currently is one of the major beauties of Twitter is the absolute randomness of dialogue. I may not know the keywords to absolutely everything I might be interested in following that someone is saying. Someone may drone on and on about their kids normally, but then, one day have a random burst of inspiration that turns around the whole way I’m thinking about a project. To quantify and manipulate the structure stems the organicness somewhat. IMHO.
–Michelle
so timely - I was noticing as I followed tweets over the holiday weekend how different the quality of the Tweets were. More personal, sure, which was good in some cases, and made the interaction (or at least my perception of our interaction) more personal, but I became increasingly uncomfortable with some aspects of the conversation (I’m really not into a running tally of what people’s alcoholic consumption levels are). BUT i love following some of these folks’ other topics and streams.
The visual image that popped up in my head while reading this post was more of a map, that would show what was being discussed, by whom, and what landscapes were being covered as time went on. Different tags would be associated with each conversation, and these would evolve over time as the conversation evolved.
I agree with Andrea Mercado, having people follow me or not is an ego-free proposition, but it would be nice to see what topics/tags led people to follow me in the first place. Might induce me to talk about those topics more often.
Dear Chris (who never @s at me, either…) and Clarence,
At risk of repeating myself (but hoping against hope that someone would have pointed it out by now…):
http://jaiku.com - which is a far more flexible and sociable program than twitter but suffers from a lack of participants.
Check out their capacity for channels, which is one way to bring like minds together.
If you are already signed up for jaiku, check out the way that conversations happen effortlessly there.
-L.
I’ve had the exact same thought, from the perspective though of the poster. Somedays I post about real estate, and I have friends that I’ve connected to about real estate. Other days I post about politics (ie. Presidential) and have friends on that topic area. Once in a while I tweet on travel … where my real life family and friends are the niche.
It’s tough on twitter to tweet on something knowing that 1/3 of my followers really aren’t the right niche that day.
Michelle, ‘preciate the comments! I think you are on-point in saying that you will never know all of the tags and keywords that you would find interesting. I think in terms of our collabo-post, Chris and I felt the need to provide some english on top of the concept. I don’t believe that either one of us think that narrowing your interest down to keywords and phrases would begin to address the issue — it is really just a common format that people can understand (right now).
Thinking outside of the box, there has to be a way to latch on to interesting content that is being driven by someone and be able to participate and weigh-in (on), or just observe. How would we get down with that? What would it look like? Is it a tool? Is it a “learning process” that spans all social media?
At 30,000ft, keywords and phrases are likely just a bulletpoint for a beginning. Being able to target real conversations that you have interest in is really the tricky point. I think, no matter what it is, being able to identify the content, opt-in, and get up to speed quickly (some type of thread-hustle), lends itself to us being able to figure it out.
Dig what I’m layin’ down? ‘Preciate your observations, because they are solid thoughts to get us thinking outside the box.
Here’s how I see Twitter. There can be a lot of big thoughts and lasting value, but individual Tweets are ephemeral. Yes, I know this is not just about Twitter, but for the sake of this meme I’ll stick with it.
When I first got into Twitter and was a bit bewildered, it was Mr. Brogan who said to me “Think of it as a stream, not a “keep on top” task. Just dip in, get the pulse, and get out.”
I would love to see tools to tweak what we want to see and talk about (and not always “who”) but the genius of Twitter and similar social networks is seeing what is going on right now. If I need something more lasting, threaded, specific, findable, whatever, I can easily move it to my blog, Flickr, Facebook, or wherever. We tend to find these things.
So maybe– not change Twitter, but attach the other networks that elp us hone the conversations we want. I love Twitter as a hub, and I promise not to mention my cat too much.
Later on, Chris and I should probably collabo on the social impact of “Niceties”. For instance, there are several people who have commented here, who have added me on Twitter.
I know that I won’t be adding them back — what is the social impact of that (not for me, for them). Am I saying that, “you have nothing interesting to say so I won’t follow you”? Or, am I saying that “I have as many inputs as I can handle”? The impact is how it is percieved.
…you can’t control perception!
When we consider these tools, processes, etc of Social Media, we cannot rule out the human component at all. We are talking about human social networking (i.e. connecting). Possibly bonding. Certainly establishing and building a relationship of some sort, whether close, loose, business related, etc.
Can you differentiate between the niceties and the real? (The real being — I can only handle so many inputs). That is for another blog post — one that I’m sure has been touched on, but, I am of the opinion that for most people it is Niceties for the Win! (and whether or not that is a good thing™). Marinate.
For now, I want to turn the conversation back to the gates. Lets think outside of Twitter and consider social media as a whole. Controlling the flow with gates. How? What does it look like? (we’ve already identified 3 things that it takes to make it happen in the post), so, what does it look like?
Any time there is this “twitter really needs [...]” i get worried. Twitter’s strength is it’s simplicity, IMO. The 140 character limit, no reply for a message, etc. It’s just a stream of whatever people are doing. Remember the original question: “What are you doing?” There are other services that are more “group oriented” I guess. Both jaiku and pownce let you reply to individual messages. Pownce lets you have groups of people and just send content to just those people. I think twitter should just focus on making the current system rock solid and scalable so it’s not going down every few days for more maintenance.
One thing I WOULD like to see is more security in regards to the api access. Having to give your login information to third parties worries me. And nothing is SSL so your login information can be grabbed by any number of man in the middle attacks. Every other major internet application provider has an “API Key”. Whether it’s just a hash of the username and password, or a per application passkey, it’s not your plain text password. The price for an SSL cert should be easily justifiable compared to paying for an SMS shortcode.
So, for me, I’d rather see twitter focus on making the current system rock solid and secure, and then maybe add extra options later on.
But remember, Twitter is just the example here. It’s not Twitter. It’s social networks. We mention that above. Don’t think Twitter. Think.. things you use to keep the pulse.
Twitter allows me to get information easily ! Chris Brogan, Steve Rubel, your self
Michael Bailey and Clarence Westberg are who I watch the most ! I have the option of eliminating any one that has nothing of interest to me ! Twitter has a lot of potential as a Social media Platform for Micro blogging ! Currently it is a scratchpad no more !
Eventually I think Google will go into high gear and Jaiku will dominate! To survive it must generate add revenue business has no heart it exists for profit !
I love what twitter has started and the simplicity of keeping it to 140 characters. But as twitter grows it’s loosing it’s luster (for me).
Trying to follow a topic or conversation on twitter is hard. Twitter is this huge incest of conversations. Is it possible to just follow the road? Can we as users be focused enough to stay on topic per tweet? Maybe the ADD nature of today’s social networking folks is magnifying this difficulty.
[...] is a lot of conversation about Twitter today. Chris Brogan and Clarence Smith Jr have posted an interesting discussion about it over at Do You KNOW Clarence? In this article they propose a concept they have dubbed [...]
I’ve recently had to do an “about face(!)” regarding my online philosophy and persona… the doctor says something’s GONNA give… and it’s not going to be me. So this means that I have to chop stress at the neck… which includes gating everything that isn’t pertinent (Thanks C&C, how did you know?), even the “good” stuff that is normally purged from memory within an hour or so.
The point is, what is the mechanism that i use to determine what is and isn’t important and (most importantly) when? For me the optimal tool would be an api aggregator, something portable (online maybe, kinga Google Reader-ish?), that i could update on the fly and from any device. That way i don’t “kill” Twitter’s twittiness but still retain control over what makes it to my attention.
Glad i stopped by (via Google Reader); wish i had the free time to develop/code up the solution and get rich.
-Coz.
Posit: If C & C remove Twitter from this conversation altogether, how then do you feel about Social Media, managing your daily intake with delicious and nutritious (read: interesting) content?
On the real, I think that some of the comments here are either glossing over that point (or perhaps missing it altogether, no?)
Right now, Social Media dictates that you follow Dorothy down the yellow brick road. What happens, instead, if you follow the road and along the way are meeting up with Dorothy along various stops (shared content that is interesting)?
The concept of Dorothy as your friend lends to symbols (Chris alluded to this in the post) — what happens if you remove those symbols? Yes, you are a solid person. You are interesting. AND you are my friend. Still, with all of that said, does that mandate that I should keep up with your content if for the most part it isn’t interesting to me? How can I ‘check-in’ from time to time? What if I wanted to target content I know we have common ground on?
Again, this is the “Niceties” that I touched on, and what Chris and I will be blogging about in another collabo in the very near future. This is definitely not about Twitter, though, it’s about the flow of information you take in as it relates to your Social Media ties, and whether or not the current model really works (in any of them)!
I think @Annie is right - “Quality over Quantity”. I’m watching closely who and what I add to my network and profiles. It gets a bit overwhelming - all the information and conversations. It’s hard to participate in a way that adds value.
I’m committing to being a better conversationalist in 2008 - whatever channels I choose to participate in (We need an aggregate!).
While it used to be important to subscribe to a ‘person’, that ‘person’ may not always talk about or be into a topic I’m interested in, as an absolute. This is one of the reasons why I have started to like Techmeme, is because it is topic driven.
And also, why the heck is it necessary to always notify someone that I’m following them and why do we need this put on display in public. Just leave me alone, plz?
Hopefully 2008 will bring more anti- or subtler- social behaviors to our tools.
Meanwhile, for the next week, let’s hope we can show off when we have a relationship broadcast to the world. “Guy Kawasaki is now your FRIEND ZOMG!” Heh, showoffs.
We’re just monkeys.
Great post and the comments here are golden!
I agree with many of the comments especially those of jbrotherlove because I would like to distinguish between those who I would like to be in constant contact with and those I just have as a contact.
The “friendship” term is loosely used online and it is a term that I truly cherish because many people FAIL to understand what makes a good friendship, but this is a puzzle and philosophy of life that is different for everyone.
If I comment on your blogs and continue to comment then that means I am interested in what you have to say; however, if I have a zillion people following me on twitter, but they never comment on my page or at least say hey your blog is nice then I am suspect of their true agenda to embrace me.
Quickly you can tell if someone is genuine or not and I know all of our time online is precious. This social media industry has to realize that because it is confusing for some to understand who is truly there to get to know that person and support your work.
There needs to be a twitter etiquette too because sometimes I do not understand many symbols that are used in these twitter sessions.
Thanks for your thoughts as always! Lively post here!
[...] of Do You Know Clarence? wrote (with Chris Brogan): Keys to the Gates of (Social Media) where he wrote: That pesky word “friend” again. It messes up a lot of this experience. Because [...]
I see Twitter as a slightly different variant of social software, because it’s beauty was once in its simplicity (and because the original conversation was framed around Twitter, this might be why we can’t get off Twitter and onto the bigger conversation).
I agree w/Christina Greene, that when there were fewer people, it was easier to wrangle. I see some of the same happening w/Facebook: I know people who have been on FB since it was just 5 colleges feeling totally overwhelmed, like it’s a different world/culture than the one they loved.
I think Twitter may be barreling towards a MySpace paradigm, where numbers and “names” are more important than actual connections, and the majority of users don’t understand the difference between those interactions. However, I see Facebook as having the potential to clean up it’s act and perhaps offer some of the distinguishing features we’re looking for here, since the platform has the tech to support it. Like, say, being able to mark someone as a “colleague” instead of “friend,” or marking a group as “coworkers,” then having that mean that those categories see your limited profile by default, to preserve that difference. Or somesuch.
The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007… (aka Why and How I use Twitter)
How have I learned to use Twitter in my online communication? Let me count the ways… After Chris Brogan posted his “Twitter Revisited” piece last week and on the same day Jeremiah Owyang talked about popularity and Twitter, I put
[...] Clarence just wrote about that - and the challenges - yesterday in their excellent piece: “Keys to the Gates (of Social Media)“. I can see the value in that… and do participate directly in that conversation from [...]
[...] lunchboxes, and occasionally, meaningful points of connection. This continues the conversation from Keys to the Gates of Social Media, only now, look out. Eric Rice is in the mix. This could go anywhere. The gloves, as they say, are [...]
[...] Clarence Smith, Jr, and I took on social media, round one. Today, none other than Eric Rice gets into the conversation, and so you know there won’t be [...]
[...] Chris Brogan and I published a collaborative on the Keys to the Gates (of Social Media). If you haven’t read that post, you should definitely get down with it — a lot of the [...]
[...] Keys to the Gates (of Social Media) [...]
I’m hella late on this one but I think this post opens the door to a much needed discussion of being more transparent in the social media arena. There is still a level of ambiguity (i.e., the word “friend” as a blanket statement)that acts as the pink elephant in the cyber-room and NO ONE wants to talk about it. Once we get it out of the way and really be genuine in our interactions, we won’t realize social media’s full potential.
When I tweet, it’s primarily to launch links to my posts. I scan what’s on my screen (and realize I miss a lot of things) but I have personal connections to select people and I READ their posts though Chris Abraham– I really wanted to know what was going on in that conference you went to.. and would love to know the 411.. but then again, I don’t mind/care/want to know necessarily that you drank too much at the Berlin bar– or whatever bar it was.
(though I do want to know how you are surviving the transatlantic commuting)
It’s a question of topicality and when someone writes something about Facebook or some other topic that I am very interested in, I dig. I even email the person and say what’s up
Stevie
This was so good…and I was about to start following you…you don’t have to follow me though lol I understand!
It’s amazing