Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
I read a post earlier this week explaining why the average person can’t figure out Twitter, narrowing it down to:
- Following people who aren’t interesting enough
- Following people who aren’t creating enough value (as opposed to “individuals that can create the most engaging media”)
- and that “Any individual who isn’t “hyperconnected” is not going to benefit equally and I would argue is much more likely to eventually leave the site.”
I don’t outright disagree with these points (although I feel everyone joins Twitter with little to no followers and is far from “hyperconnected”), but I think if you distill it down to one single thing: they’re people who aren’t willing to invest the time to get the results:
- They don’t bother finding out who’s talking about the topics they’re interested in (or for the companies, who’s talking about their brand)
- They don’t bother finding the niche who is interested about the type of value they create.
- And they certainly don’t spend the time to cultivate enough relationships to be “hyperconnected”.
I cross-reference this to a very important point from Christopher Penn’s video: Building Blocks of Social Media: Social Media Prerequisites: if you’re not used to spending time talking and listening to people (or if your company isn’t), then social media is not for you.
Maybe that’s why it’s okay to hire someone for your social media firm if he’s demonstrating an understanding of Twitter. It’s the right fit as opposed to those wanting instant results, instant relationships and instant ROI.
ps: I’m using Twitter for this post because that’s the context of the post I linked to, but it could easily apply to Plurk, FriendFeed or any other tool that requires a lot of communication and interaction.
Tags: building blocks of social media, christopher penn, friendfeed, hyperconnected on twitter, Plurk, social media prerequisites, why some people don't get twitter
Posted in Plurk, social media, twitter | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
How lifestreaming is transforming the internet has been quite well documented, and this week on ReadWriteWeb, the future of blogging has been revealed. And yes, it’s in the form of lifestreaming.
Three thoughts:
1) Does it work?
I’d always thought of the “other” stuff that goes on in lifestreaming as a complement to blogging. They fill in the gaps but they’re not always the main content. Snacks in between meals, if you will. But in this day and age, who really has time to read a 700 word post anymore? Even a 500 one? Especially when it can be done in 140 characters. I fell ill a week back and didn’t have the energy to blog about it, but I did Plurk about it. By the time I was well enough to punch a blog post out, I realise everyone knew about it via microblogging, so it didn’t serve any purpose.
There will be “long form” bloggers as Sarah mentioned who will need to blog just as a way of capturing the content. But how about the average personal blog? If you look at the examples on RWW, my gut feel is they could work.
2) Is there a culture difference
Friendfeed is the epitome of lifestreaming. I know it’s hot, I know it has its’ uses, but it hasn’t caught on here in Singapore yet. Without any proper research, I’m going to guess that culture has a part to play. As a society we’re not that voyeuristic yet (some are, but it’s a small sample), which maybe accounts for some of it.
There’s also the element of privacy and collectivism that exists here which might result in self-censorship when it comes to lifestreaming. For example, it may not be the best thing to flag a certain controversial book you’re reading because it may not be socially acceptable in this setting.
3) It’s already happening
Prior to publishing this post, I asked aloud on Plurk (not that you could ask silently) what people thought about the article and got varied responses. In a sense that’s what lifestreaming is about isn’t it? Come across something in your life, share it quickly, get short 140 character responses back and then everyone moves on to the next item.
It’s all very interesting. I don’t know if it truly replace blogging per se, but it definitely will be exciting to see where this fits in in the next 6 months to a year. And more importantly, if everything (blogging, content, attention spans) are getting shorter, how do companies engage and connect?
Tags: culture differences online, friendfeed, lifestreaming, lifestreaming and the internet, long form blogging, microblogging, Plurk, readwriteweb, shorter attention spans, the future of blogging
Posted in Blogs, Plurk, Singapore, community, social media | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Without doubt the podcast of the month for April goes to For Immediate Release which I usually have problems keeping up with (it’s released twice a week, one hour each), but the content for April was excellent and I found myself listening to it first among my podcasts.
- #336 highlights: Using Twitter/Friendfeed differently for business, conducting proper blogger outreach
- #337 highlights: Facebook tools that can really help you
- Live call in show #5 highlights: How should companies reach out in social media without offending the people in it? Great analogy of standing at a party table and interjecting about insurance while they’re talking about something else.
- #338 highlights: Kami Hyuse Seaworld case study and talk of the virtual internet
- #339 highlights: Dan York & Sallie Goetsch take over. Lots of Twitter news and I have a comment left via Twitter!
I have to say, hands down, if you’re doing anything in the digital/social media space, you need to be listening to this podcast.
Other notable listens this month:
- Inside PR #106 - Live episode with a great question “Who owns the social media space?”
- Managing the Gray - Manic Mummies episode, great case study on GM and how to do sponsorship in social media.
- Marketing Over Coffee - “Captcha and Turk“, lots of stuff on startups as well as a whole slew of Wordpress plugins I never knew about.
- Shill #6 meandered a little this month, but still a worthwhile discussion about whether there’s any value in re-posting news.
- Six Pixels Of Separation #98 (interview with Collin Douma), #99 (very interesting, almost counter-intuitive information regarding online reviews) and #100 (long conversation between Mitch, Brian Eisenberg and Avinash Kaushik).
Did you listen to any of these podcasts? Are you listening to different podcasts? I’m always on the lookout for great social media related podcasts, recommendations always welcome.
Tags: avinash kaushik, blogger outreach, brian eisenberg, collin douma, facebook, for immediate release, friendfeed, inside pr, managing the gray, marketing over coffee, podcast of the month, podcasts worth listening to, reaching out in social media, shill, six pixels of separation, social media podcasts, twitter
Posted in Podcasts, social media | No Comments »
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
The topic of “influence” has appeared a number of times, generated out of the “Why social media struggles in Singapore” post. I was writing that post from the corporation’s point of view, and questioning whether a certain factor (size) may be a factor that has hindered social media’s growth.
But let’s look at this from the point of view of the consumers: Are we really influenced by bloggers?
What The Research Says
Result summary: People trust “people like themselves” the most, an “bloggers” the least. Okay wait, before you stop reading this right now and say “Okay, let’s cancel our blogger relations initiative”, read on.
Are Bloggers Really Trusted The Least?
When I saw the findings, my first thought was “But, what if a blogger is someone like me?”. This is something lacking in the research, and is brought up by Jason Mical and Jeremiah in the comments:
[By Jason]I believe about marketing and the direction it’s going in the digital space, and you have a proven record of posting insightful things that I find useful in thinking about this as well. So I would classify you as ’someone with my interests’ before I would classify you as a blogger in this regard.
[By Jeremiah]I agree, I wish I had more insight to how the questions about “do you trust blogs” were done. We need to see the context, as it could be broken down to:
“do you trust bloggers with similar opinions, that you read frequently”
or
“do you trust random blogs you stumble across”
Perhaps the questions could even be posed a different way: “do you trust the opinions of bloggers?”
I don’t think the lines between “people like me” and bloggers are as far apart as the research shows. And I definitely do not think the results are as disparate as the research claims.
I have a couple of case studies I thought of off the top of my head, tell me if they make sense to you, and keep in mind this is written from the point of view of a consumer.
Case Study 1: Xiaxue
I don’t read her, definitely don’t identify with her, to me she’s a “blogger”. But how about the 20 thousand people who read her blog daily? Does she have no influence over them? From the amount of comments generated in her defense whenever someone slams her, I’d say she has considerable influence over them.
Case Study 2: Kenny Sia
I had the privilege of meeting Kenny at the IDC Conference and he blogged about it, linking me. That one post generated almost 1,500 traffic to my blog, the next closest being tomorrow.sg with about 500. I’m not sure how you want to classify tomorrow.sg, but looking at the data, clearly 1,500 people think Kenny is not “just a blogger” but someone who influences them and makes them think “I identify with Kenny, he thinks Daryl is worth putting a link to, so that might probably be interesting to me too”, and hence the clicks. I can’t speak for everyone, but that’s definitely my personal thought process when browsing blogs.
Case Study 3: FriendFeed
FriendFeed is growing in popularity in North America. The level of activity after it opened from beta is exponentially higher than the level of activity before. Let’s look at the other categories from the research. Review on tv? Review on retailer site? I don’t think so.
Friendfeed was spread via word of mouth online from people who follow the early adopters and advocates like Louis Gray. Certainly I don’t know Louis personally (though we’re mutual readers of each others’ blog), but neither is he some anonymous blogger online. He’s someone I know covers a great niche in the social media space on rss aggregation, and I’m interested in all things social media, hence I definitely trust and believe his opinions. In fact I also signed up for LinkRiver, AssetBar and Yokway based on his recommendations. Admittedly I only use LinkRiver with any frequency, but I think that’s attributed to the product rather than the medium (Louis).
This post has gone on a little longer than I thought it would and I have a few more thoughts on reach as well as “weak” links or influences which I’ll try to post this evening. In the meantime, what do you think? As clear cut as the research suggests? Or are there intricacies at work that are unexplored? Do you classify bloggers in the same category as “people like me”? Or are they clear and distinctly separated?
Tags: are bloggers influencers, edelman research, forrester research, friendfeed, influence, influence research, jason mical, jeremiah owyang, kenny sia, people like me, social media, social media research, social media singapore, xiaxue
Posted in Blogs, Research, social media | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
I’m a huge fan of Twitter, but it’s been wonky since Saturday and today it just got too much.
I was happy to take it as random downtime, and wait for it to get back to normal by tomorrow. Until I read something from Bryan Person:
My friend Jack Hodgson is convinced that Twitter’s death is coming, and that we should start preparing for it now. It’s nights like tonight that I really think he’s onto something.
What? Twitter’s death? Life without Twitter? No way!
Death or no death, people around the blogosphere are beginning to notice. Dan York also weighs in on how we have come to rely on Twitter, while Frederic and Paris Lemon approach the issue the same way I do. For the tool that enables conversation and for people to stay connected, Twitter sure isn’t communicating much about what is going wrong.
It does make you think how this affects organisations who have invested time into Twitter like @downingstreet (for the British Prime Minister’s office) and @deltaairlines as a means of keeping in touch with the public? A loss of faith in Twitter? Migration to another platform?
If Twitter does go down, who will you turn to? Scoble thinks it’s FriendFeed. I’d go for Facebook Chat, if only they’d implement it for me already.
Tags: @deltaairlines, @downingstreet, bryan person, facebook chat vs twitter, friendfeed, friendfeed as an alternative to twitter, friendfeed to replace twitter, life without twitter, no twitter, twitter, twitter down, twitter downtime, twitter's death, what would you do without twitter
Posted in Blogs, social media, twitter | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
FriendFeed has been getting quite a bit of coverage lately, but SocialThing! is slowly but surely creeping up on users. I finally got my beta invite and after playing around for awhile, I have a slight preference for SocialThing! (damn I love that exclamation mark)
Here’s a screenshot from my SocialThing! page (click for larger view):
What I like about it is that it brings whatever your friends are doing to you. If I wanted to, I could ignore Twitter and Facebook all day and just rely on SocialThing! to give me the updates I need. Google Reader can do the rest for blogs (which is a function FriendFeed essentially duplicates).
Two other benefits of SocialThing!:
- My friends don’t have to be on it - That’s why FriendFeed isn’t attractive to me at the moment (yes I know you can add them as imaginary friends, but it isn’t quite as fun)
- Less worry of information overload - If 5 friends save the same post on del.icio.us on FriendFeed, I see all 5. With SocialThing!, just one post.
The one advantage FriendFeed has over SocialThing! is the ability to comment and interact directly on the FriendFeed interface, like this (click for larger picture):
However whether or not you want to have two separate conversations going on at the same time (comments and FriendFeed) is something I’m struggling with personally.
I’d argue that SocialThing!’s job is to let me know what my friends are up to, then if I want to, I can head over to Facebook to comment or reply to Twitter directly from SocialThing!. Pretty cool, no?
If you’re on either/both platforms, let me know what your thoughts are. If you want an invite to SocialThing! let me know and I’ll pass on one to you if I can.
If you want to know more, there’s much more coverage of SocialThing!:
Tags: aggregators, beta invite socialthing, centralisers, centralizers, facebook, friendfeed, friendfeed conversation, friendfeed vs socialthing, socialthing, twitter
Posted in social media | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
I subscribe to so many new blogs a day it’s crazy. On one hand I feel like I should stick to just a few, on the other there is so much good material out there, it seems like I’m never following enough.
So I decided to come up with an experiment:
- Put all new blogs in a monthly folder on Google Reader
- Star great posts from the respective bloggers
- Take a look at the end of the month who’s worth keeping (I mean if they haven’t gotten a single star post in 30 days, I probably don’t need to subscribe to them)
The result? About 30 blogs stayed on my subscription list, of particular mention (in no particular order):
- Adam Stiles (of LinkRiver) - I’m admittedly not using LinkRiver a whole lot these days, but I do still follow what Adam has to say on his blog. I actually think LinkRiver has good functions, but just needs a little bit more critical mass.
- CC Chapman - Heard of CC for awhile from Six Pounds of sound, but a recent post which highlighted CC on Second Life talking to some students, as well as a great musical pick by bill last month really made me sit up and take notice. The man takes great pictures too.
- Claud Talking - I think I was randomly searching Tweetscan for “Singapore” and came across Claud. It’s nice to see a local blog know and “get” social media, without just being a Meepok blog.
- Tony Hung @ Deep Jive Interests - I probably first picked up this post on Twitter from Tony, and since then have been following him both on Twitter as well as FriendFeed.
- Tiffany Monhollon @ Personal PR - I first found Personal PR by a post on 27 secrets to linking like a master networker and then later came across 5 comments not to post on blogs which came in very useful for a project of mine. Instant subscription.
- Rex Hammond @ Rexblog - Twitter is something you’ll never understand, so stop trying. ‘Nuff said.
- Chris Clarke @ Student PR - I can’t even pick out one single post that’s more deserving of attention than other posts. Read everything.
- Frederic @ The Last Podcast - Picked up for How I Use FriendFeed, been following via RSS and FriendFeed ever since.
- Jeremiah Owyang - A lot of stuff flies over my head because I’m not a practitioner like he is. But there’s still a load of good stuff in there and he does try to write for the newbies as well, so credit there.
I’m following most (if not all) of these bloggers in Twitter as well, look for them via my Twitter page if you like. (And follow me too!)
More blogs to share? Drop your URL and/or RSS feed into the comments below. I’m always on the lookout for new, interesting and educational stuff to read, absorb and most importantly, share.
Tags: adam stiles, blog subscription, cc chapman, chris clarke, claud talking, critical mass, deep jive interests, friendfeed, google reader, how i use friendfeed, jeremiah owyang, last podcast, linking secrets, linkriver, meepok blogs, new blogs, personal pr, rex blog, rex hammond, second life, Singapore, six pounds of sound, student pr, tiffany monhollon, tony hung, tweetscan, twitter, understanding twitter
Posted in Blogs, Singapore, social media | 5 Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Picked this up from ReadBurner (hey another social aggregator), it’s fav.or.it which is integrates commenting with rss “river” feeds. It’s still on closed beta right now, but that’s no reason for you not to pre-register and jump right on the bandwagon once it opens up!
Check out the original article and some screenshots on Mashable.
If you’re deciding between this and FriendFeed which I just blogged about, why not go with both and see which you prefer in the long run? I’ll be uniquefrequency on both.
Tags: friendfeed, mashable, readburner, rss river, social aggregator
Posted in social media | No Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
FriendFeed is no longer in beta, so that means anyone can sign up!
Why should you?
FriendFeed is another of those social aggregators, and it’s cool because you can actually “track” what your friends like and are sharing. For example, if you’re following me on FriendFeed and I favourite a YouTube video, when you logon, you’ll see the video that I favourited, and can check it out, if you choose. It extends to blog posts, shared items on Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm and many more.
For a visual display, you can check out how my FriendFeed looks like.
Also, check out 10 ways to get more out of FriendFeed as well as advice on how to use it. Both are great articles that influenced the way I’m using FriendFeed right now.
Tags: 10 ways friendfeed, friendfeed, friendfeed advice, share google reader, social aggregators, tracking
Posted in social media | 2 Comments »
