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Liz Strauss wrote about the leaves and the trees and that got me thinking of the Social Media autumn. It’s the time of the year when everyone gets back to work after summer and they no longer have as much time to be sociable, whether online or offline and as the trees remains so the leaves are gone. Of course in this context the trees are the social networks and the leaves are the users. How many of these trees are deserted? Kosso was wondering whether people will keep using phreadz in the same way. Loic Lemeur was questioning how people would keep using Seesmic. At the same time we’re going into what will probably turn out to be a recession and we get repetitive news. One of those stories is about how Yahoo is getting rid of ten percent of it’s work force. That’s hardly new. They’ve had a few purges recently. That’s what you get for being one of the top three companies in search (or has it changed since then?). One person recently wrote that the advantage of the recession is that it gives you an opportunity to get rid of those that are not as productive as they should be. It’s an opportunity to streamline the company and find new ways of being more productive. You see that’s the advantage of silence, of time apart, of a little time to think. It’s the time when those in the social media, but it applies everywhere. How long will the recession last. Which networks will remain and who will stay. Why will they stay and what collaborations will thrive. Now is the time to see which ideas have the most potential. How will the social media look covered in snow?

Warzabidul - Oct 4, 2008

Test

It’s no longer the time of year to see this. I’m just playing with flickr integration into the blog, to see the result.

In 1999 I decided that I would spend 21 days without touching a computer once. That’s because I was in Tanzania for a trip during which we helped to build schools for children in the area. I had decided to do that because so many spoke about the illness of spending too much time online, of internet addiction. I came back from that trip realising one thing. It’s a way of life, not an illness or an addiction. It’s also based on how easily you can meet people and how open the community is. Look at the university environment. Some people would come to university for the lesson and leave straight after that. They would never once take advantage of the social elements that university would provide them with. As a result they would be isolated and to some degree solitary. Other people would come and participate in everything, go to the student theatre, participate in the student theatre, help post grad with their work. These people would gain a lot from university. They would learn about team work, they would see who has which skill and more to the point they coul go out at any time and meet so many people that they could spend five hours chatting to one person after another without difficulty. That’s what you get from social media, especially in a place like London or if you’re ready to travel. Join myspace and it’s all strangers with unusual nicknames so it’s daunting. Go a little further and you find facebook. That’s a nice place. That’s a place where those from an international or certain age group can find all their peers. That’s the case for people like me. As a result the community which they had known in the physical world is also online. It’s an extension of the social scene, come there as much to discuss past events as to plan new ones. it’s a place to share all the material from a night. That’s what student magazines and radios attempt to do, to bring the community to you whilst you’re “alone”. You’re social without being social. Of course there’s another dimension. That of social networks like twitter or seesmic. Both of these communites are interesting because you start off not knowing anyone, either in the physical or online word. As you spend more and more time chatting to these people, via text with twitter or video with seesmic personality comes through. Some people always joke and are fun. Others are serious, always into their work and showing their innovative ideas. Occasionally the “meetup” occurs and to some people that’s a daunting idea. If I speak to some friends they would never ever think of meeting someone from the online world because of all the negative stories that are blown out of proportion but as long as you’re wise enough those online friends you meet online may become good friends in the real world. That’s what happened for me after meeting many social media friends at tweetups and podcams, seesmeetups and more, even bloggy fridays to name a local event. Those people that I had only seen or read were now there in person “with feet” as some joked, “in 3d” as others would joke. Finally it’s possible to chat with them, to share a drink and a meal. With some people you find that a strong and enduring friendship will form in the physical world. That’s when you know it’s a community worth being a part of. In particular I’m thinking of what twitter used to be and what seesmic is. It’s a way of meeting people around the world before you travel. I really enjoy it, that’s why i spend so much time in this world. It’s not about being at a computer. it’s about having a conversation with people I hope to meet in the physical world for real friendships and real “vécu” as it’s called in French. I’m in social media for all those fun meetings in the physical world. The more time progresses and the more I enjoy this lifestyle. That is in fact why the mobile web is so important to me. I like it, I think it’s going to expand. How about you? Do you feel the same about social media. Are you using it the same way? Is it just a business tool? Think about it because what you get out of it will be affected.

richard - Oct 5, 2008

I asked a friend how to get the invite so I’m not sure how to do it but when I find out I’ll let you know.

Richard, you’ll have to tell me how to join Phreadz. It’s quite Mission:Impossible ! Do you have invites ? Am i not francofou enough? Too young to know how to fly?

The Francofous are part of the seesmic community and can be differentiated by their ability to speak french and their avatars. Originally formed around Seesmic and twitter they are now migrating to both plurk and phreadz, two services I have talked about in the past. What is nice about this community is that it’s a core of 20-30 early adopters who move and try new communities as a group rather than individuals. What this means is that whereas in previous years we would jump from one community to another, start without knowing anyone and over weeks and months get to know people here we have a core of people moving with the times. Of course I speak about the Francofous this way but they’re not the only ones. Many of my English and international social media friends are doing the same thing, moving from one fesh community to another to see what the strengths and weaknesses are. They’re also testing out the sites, seeing what works and what doesn’t. They’re illustrating how many of you will use these sites once the barriers to entry have come down. There’s another factor that’s important to take into consideration. Those who are early adopters are used to using twenty to thirty sites several times a day from google reader to plurk, to seesmic, to phreadz to gmail to flickr, youtube, dailymotion, vimeo and many more. At the same time most of my university friends are happy with facebook and gmail. They’re lucky, everything they want can be found in one place ;-). How far are these communities from the mass of mid to late adopters? Quite a few months to a year ahead of the pack.

Phreadz is a multimedia sharing site from the comfort of where you’re sitting right now. It allows for the sharing of multimedia files straight from your mobile phone to a website where each media content is added to a thread, hence the name phreadz. There is a simple idea behind this site. Conversations are now more and more multimedia rich. Some people converse via video as on seesmic and others converse on the topic of photographs, for example Flickrs. More people speak to each other using Utterli. Combine all of these together and you’ve got phreadz. Each post has a code and this code is the key behind what makes phreadz so intersting. If I watch a video and comment on it then I answer to that video. If someone then posts a photo associated to that video behind my own post then that’s part of the thread of conversation I’ve continued. If someone answers to the source video and another after that answers then a second stream of conversation occurs. In other words we’ve got two sub topics. Expand this by several hundred posts and you’ve got a nice way of keeping track on the directions taken by these conversations.

Whilst at a number of concerts I had to type fast, very fast on a mobile phone keyboard. Within a very short time I began touch typing. I can type whilst looking around. That’s a useful feature of certain phones. It’s useful because it means the keyboard is well designed. Are there many mobile devices that you use and can you touch type on them. Do you touch type on your blackberries, iphones or other devices or do you see that as the preserve of computer use?

Attempt two. Hoping it works

posted using Phreadz by warzabidul

John Cleese on Seesmic Tuesday 7th at 12am Pacific TimeSo it’s 21h00 in France, 8pm in the UK, 3pm East Coast. John Cleese will reply your questions. See his biography here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000092/[](http://seesmic.com) Next week on Seesmic we can look forward to seeing John Cleese and asking him questions. If you don’t have an account yet familiarize yourself with the site. Looking forward to this moment :-)