Posting is one of those things you just need to do
Be thankful that I’ve not been vociferous on this site…
I try to maintain a high quality here, adding quality ideas as they arrive. I don’t always get as much time to write as I’d like, but as work is subsuming my attention these days I thought I’d post an experiment here. This image was loaded, then Twittered recently. It was sent using an experimental process that we’re developing.
Filed under Web 2.0 | Comment (1)
Why the socially networked are simply a crowd of noticers
we organize
we track
we recognize patterns,
we aggregate
we correlate
we disseminate,
we seek channels
we create channels,
we generate a bow wave
we surf in the search wake,
we curve space time with topical focus
we frame drag with our observation of the observations,
we plan, strategize, accumulate and postulate
and we say
Filed under Diatribe, Web 2.0 | Comment (0)Your Twitter Wake & Bow Wave
As you pass through the Twitterverse you create a bow wave and a lifestream wake.
The larger your Twitter follower network is, the longer and more powerful your Twitter wake shall be.
Your bow-wave is represented by your incoming followers. You get noticed through the public timeline and by the downstream of your followers, then others start to “follow” you, forming the bow.
Your wake is the ripple of tweets and new followers that may fractal off of your own individual tweets.
Filed under Microcrowds, Web 2.0 | Comment (1)Rights to First Contact or When Does “Social” Become Spam?
First Contact
When does a “friend” have the right to make first contact with you online?
If I want to contact you in a social network like Pownce, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, should I be required to already know you? If I’m restricted from contacting you before you recognize me, how can I get your attention? On Twitter I can follow you like a stalker without you even acknowledging me. On Pownce anyone can contact me with an initial ping.
What Gives You the Right?
This is not a “pick on Pownce” post, I think the team has created a great system, as has team Twitter. In fact I think Pownce is a far more beautiful site than Twitter… and… there are significant differences between the two sites “first contact” user experiences. These differences spawned a question in my mind. I asked myself, “when does another person have the ‘right of first contact’ with me?”
Social Spam
Recently I received an email based ping sent through Pownce from someone on mySpace, asking me to follow their band on mySpace. I didn’t know them. I’d never heard of their band, yet there they were in my EMAIL inbox. That’s right, Pownce let’s people email me with band spam before I know who they are. But wait, Twitter allows people to contact me before I know them also, what’s the difference? On Twitter I don’t need to do anything, except delete an email from my new follower. Due to the highly specific nature of the Twitter service I know immediately what the email is for, it’s either a “new follower notification” or a direct message meant for my eyes only.
On the other hand the email from my example Pownce user was not even a request for friendship, someone simply sent me band spam under the guise of inviting me to an “event”. I then had to mentally process the email and make a decision about what to do with the request. I had to visit Pownce before I even realized that the request was truly spam and I received absolutely no personal gain from the effort. At least with unsolicited “follower” emails from Twitter I receive value because my personal brand (such as it is) may be expanded with a new follower, even if I choose not to follow the other person in return. Pownce has a similar “follower” feature, but again upon receipt of an email request I’m required to visit Pownce to see if I know the person, or care about interacting with them. For some reason I get many more “junk” requests through Pownce. For each one I need to make a choice about it. I physically need to click a button in Pownce, where in Twitter I can simply ignore the request if I choose to. Pownce requires me to mentally and physically process each new request.
But Wait, We Can Control Our Interactions, Can’t We?
Yes we can turn email notifications on and off for the various networks we participate in. But I believe part of the point of social networking should be that we can interact with one another in a low touch manner. We should be required to put as little effort into the act/methodology of interacting as possible in order to focus on the context and content of the communication. Especially since there are hundreds of social sites we can now use, with more launching every day. I’ve heard more than one person complain about tying to keep up with their current networks, so we need to work on making things easier, not more difficult. The rules of interaction and first contact should not be uniquely obtuse to each network.
On my old school business network, LinkedIn, the method for first contact has been well thought out and has served them well for many years. I must first know the email address for a person I want to contact, or I must go through a trusted third party who serves as a quality filter for my inbound contact request. Before I can bother someone with my email in their inbox I need to establish my authority, my right to make first contact. Due to the nature of the LinkedIn network, social pressures influence me to not spam people who I don’t know with unreasonable requests to connect within the network.
On Jigsaw the right of first contact has been taken to an opposite extreme. I can BUY your contact details before you know who I am. I pay for the right to gain access to your phone, email and mailing address details. Now Jigsaw isn’t a social network, but the point is that my first contact rights are being sold to people who I don’t know. This puts me at a disadvantage should the purchaser of my contact details decide to use my information in the wrong way. Yes I can request to be taken out of the Jigsaw database, but again this requires effort on my part to opt-out of the process.
Today I logged into InviteShare in order to add myself to a list and try to get an invite to dznr.org. To my surprise I actually had mail waiting for me in my account. Hmm, that’s odd…. upon reading the “mail” that term is really the wrong word to use. The better term is “invite spam”. The note reads:
Hi XXXX…I’m looking for some invites, I have…
August 21st, 2007
from sonicxboom
Hi xxxx…I have got an excellent (if not the best) under-ground site for you…
- Every & any tune from new to old…rare to popular, ( all free, of course ).
- Millions of p2p users with full D/L speeds…always!
- 10,000s of users to choose from to get your tracks / albums.
- Simple search bar user-interface to find all tunes.
- Pure p2p…No Ads…all shareware, no fees…( just donations, if any ).If you’re interested…I woule like to trade you the details of this site for any invites…like:
Supertorrents… Oink… TL… or HDBits…if you’re interested.
This site only does Music and I mostly download series, films & Pc games.
I always keep the best ratios i can 1:1 +
Please message me if you want more details…Many thanks & kindest regards,
Sonic x Boom.
Do We Need a CAN-SPAM act for Social Interaction Permissions?
in my mind the question over “rights of first contact” in social networking is exactly the same debate that we had several years ago regarding opt-in and opt-out for email lists. At that time the debate was somewhat resolved with the CAN-SPAM act.
Do we need to legislate the right of first contact or can our industry solve this burgeoning problem of social spam before it gets to the point where lawmakers take notice?
Filed under Microcrowds, Scams, Web 2.0, social spam | Comments (4)Captology and Microcrowd Influence
I learned a new word the other day, Captology, and it helps me define an area of thought of particular interest (thanks to my buddy Crosby!) I was talking with him about some of my recent posts covering geo-temporal and microcrowd concepts and he suggested that I check out a particular Stanford University website. According to the description on the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab website, the definition of Captology:
Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors.
And they have a nifty Venn diagram that I’ve borrowed so you can visualize the concept.
At the moment I’m thinking of how captology interacts with microcrowds. Specifically microcrowds on Websites, Mobile Devices (iPhone), the desktop, in Virtual Reality (SL), and where this crosses over into in-person interactions with geo-temporal implications.
Definition of Microcrowd (s): noun. A group of people in which members are passive, active or aggressive participants. A Microcrowd member may influence other members with their participation.
Example: When I saw my acquaintance Justin Kan during a Citizen Agency party the other day, our discussion led me to consider some new thoughts about geo-temporal tracking. Justin has no idea, but the conversation and my active participation within a specific microcrowd of people altered some of my evolving thoughts around this type of tracking.
In addition to interacting with this example group in person, I also interact with many specific members online. Twitter, chat, email, blog comments and many more points of distributed contact form my networks within the microcrowds that I interact with. Blackberry and MacBook Pro are my primary connection tools, but within email the browser and other applications I also connect with asynchronous video (live: justin.tv recorded:viddler.com) and more.
I might log into the justin.tv website in order to “watch the content”, but because he lives in my city I might log in to see where he is, or to see if the party I’m going to is worth getting into a cab for (Justin tends to hit the same party scene I do so I can “preview reality”.) This seems like the ultimate in technology impacting me, influencing my decisions, yet this decision is also influenced by the wisdom of the microcrowds because if I didn’t travel a similar SF party circuit as Justin and could not “preview the party” then my party-going decision making would be influenced by other microcrowds. If I find out that the Extra Action Marching Band will be at the party, my passive participation in the microcrowd centered on this band would tip me towards attending the party, even without a “reality preview” through Justin.tv, because I love watching this band. Knowledge of their attendance tipped me into going. Once I’ve made this decision, I might Twitter or email about the party to get friends from my other microcrowds to attend. And so it spreads.
At the Citizen Agency party I might have learned something that changes important parts of my life, or I might learn somebody had a birthday. At a Giants baseball game I might be influenced to care more that someone had just hit a homerun, or I may learn that someone that I know had a heart attack. The information conveyed is not important to this particular post as I’m focused on how information waves spread through and among microcrowds. How the information is relayed and the influence applied from within the community and the technology that is in the hands of community members during the conveyance of the message is important, impacting persuasion and human behavior.
I’m participating in many microcrowds in many different ways; in blogs, with family, on social websites, at parties and general assembly events, on handheld devices, in school, on music and video players. Each touch point that I have with the technology tools or in face-to-face meetings will generally influence what I think about and how I perceive “it”.
This appears to be like memes moving virally towards a tipping point, but I believe it’s also analogous to neuron pathway development, influenced by the volume and type of connectivity and communication of participation.
This post has been languishing in my drafts folder for some time, so rather than sit on it longer, or draw any conclusions, I’m just going to put it out there for discussion … hopefully this spurs some new ideas for you.
Filed under Mashups, Microcrowds, Online Advertising, Tagclouds, Web 2.0, Web Marketing | Comments (2)Pandora Everywhere Platform - Prototype Wifi Device
As a long time member of the Pandora listening community I had the pleasure of participating in a Pandora town hall meeting / press event last night at the SF MOMA where the company made a number of significant announcements. I had a front row seat, with Michael Arrington sitting right behind me as he pounded out TechCrunch coverage of the event on his MacBook Pro.
The event kicked off with CEO Tim Westergren providing some really detailed background about how the roots for Pandora are deeply embedded in the Music Genome Project, which Tim and two others began working on roughly 7 years ago.
The town hall meeting format allowed a large number of questions to be asked and answered by Tim, to the delight of the crowd. Some of the answers hinted that changes at Pandora will continue apace, including a discussion about some of the recent music licensing issues faced by online radio station operators as well as potential enhancements to the Pandora service. Recently the company was forced to shut off access to the Pandora service for non-USA listeners, but it sounded like the team was hard at work trying to find a way to provide the Pandora service for rest-of-world audience, potentially with the UK being the next country to regain access. One member of the audience asked about using proxy servers to bypass the new IP filtering that Pandora has put into place, and while Tim spoke to their fiduciary responsibilities to the recording industry, requiring them to attempt to block access until a legal solution was in place, it sounded as if this could be a solution for those outside the US to regain (illegal) access to the Pandora service.
The main announcement of the night focused on the unveiling of the Pandora Everywhere Platform by CTO Tom Conrad. The new platform has been in development for a year as a secret project and will provide the basis for a slew of new possibilities that Pandora can capitalize on in the future.
The Sonos partnership is interesting, but I’ve been streaming Pandora to my home stereo using my Apple Airport Express wifi for months and it works really well for me in my little apartment. The ability to stream Pandora through phones from Sprint was a welcome addition as well, but Techcrunch and others have covered all of the specific product announcements, so go there to read more.
My main interest was with the pre-announcement of a new wifi enabled portable mp3 player that is being developed in conjunction with Zing and Sansa. This rocks and I cannot wait to get my hands on one of these suckers. The product is aimed at the burgeoning metro-wifi services provided by Google and others. It will also take advantage of the coming Wi-MAX services - “WiMAX can provide broadband wireless access (BWA) up to 30 miles (50 km) for fixed stations, and 3 - 10 miles (5 - 15 km) for mobile stations”
After the presentation I asked Tom about the possibilities that a peer-to-peer system might provide to Pandora’s new wifi systems and he was cagey about this, but admitted this might help them reduce their huge bandwidth bills. So let’s all keep an eye on this. If a peer-to-peer system was implemented there are several scenarios where the Pandora music discovery system could be enhanced and I’m going to keep my fingers crossed. Anyone care to speculate about this?
Filed under Internet Audio, Tech Devices, Web 2.0 | Comment (0)
