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The social media living room is great because it’s really any device that you can connect to the web with, whether a simple mobile phone or a full spec desktop computer. Some of us look at the computer first thing in the morning and last thing at a night. This is as much as part of a technological expansion in the form of broadband. Just today an article by the BBC described how people are more and more wired with 90% using broadband, or some similar number. What this means is simple More hours spent therefore more conversation. With twitter it’s more overheard conversations. That’s not where it stops. Twitter, seesmic and similar websites turn a private discussion into a public one where the “overheard conversation” is a key point. It’s an evolution back to the route of internet chat. 10 years ago I spent 13hrs in a row online and I saw the shift from Australia to Japan, India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, NEw York and more. The difference is that at that time there was no meta data and the initiator to conversations was ASL. Now it’s reached maturity for those of us early adopters. Many of our friends are middle adopters and when they start using it they will not take full advantage. Look at how people use facebook. When asked by @leisa on twitter during a meeting in real life how often I checked facebook I answered as much as my e-mail. A lot of people do. What is not talked about is how middle adopters use it. They are far more limited. They don’t add rss feeds because they have no blog, few pictures if any on flickr and in general do not create content. They’re lurkers. Almost all of my friends are facebook I’ve been to parties with, studied or a combination of more. As a result it’s a personal network of IRL friends who have links to each other as well as through me. These people don’t use twitter, jaiku, tumblr, Pulse plaxo or more. I surprised a conversation on facebook where after seeing someone comment on their post one facebook user asked the other how dare they comment. They didn’t understand the principle of the forum. That’s something all of us are familiar with as early adopters. We are not technological determinists. We believe in the need for something and create a technology to cope. Look at Seesmic. It’s video. It’s twitter with video. One person commented on how it was based on time consumption. He said that although he would love to see everyone’s video and listen to what they have to say that because it’s time based it would take too long. As a result he’d follow just the friend’s timeline. This brings me back to twitter. How many friends do you have. Do you still use the public timeline or is your friend’s timeline filled with more than enough conversations not to need this? I think it’s a really interesting conversation. How does the social media living room integrate into your daily activities.

There is a move away from desktops and laptops towards ultra portable devices like the ipod touch, HTC phones and more that enable you to connect to the web whilst on the move. As a result of this a new breed of services have come into being. Facebook and gmail are two of the better known ones. Yesterday whilst watching the twitterstream I saw wphone mentioned. It’s a plugin for wordpress that, once installed, gives a simple intuitive user interface so that you can work on your website on the move. There are a number of screens of which the main ones are; write, manage, comments, plugins, users and latest activity. Each of these has an individual page and you have a nice amount of control over the content of the website. It’s a great little app and I think it would be useful to anyone that finds there are two or three quick changes they want to make to the site whilst on the move.

this is a post typed from the iPod touch to see how easy it isto use. Aside from not having a proper keyboard it seems to work fine. Great for blogging on the move.

Twittervox, a show which I do under the name Warzabidul with the help of Loudmouthman of Loudmouthman.com now has a facebook page which I created earlier in the day. The point of this facebook is to bring together all those that have participated in the show so that they may discuss past and future program topics, from social media, through twitter rules and regulations and towards related topics like seesmic and Second life. If you’re on twitter or seesmic and have a facebook account then come and join the conversation. We’re waiting for you.

The way we’re consuming information has changed completely. i see the freesheets as doomed and look forward to the day when more and more people have ipod touch like devices. I want to see a world where you select the news and information you consume as you’re on the room rather than before setting off. Already I’ve got a taste of the future (although to the occasional few it’s the present). Apparently google is looking at an advertising model that would see kiosks print out magazines with adverts tailored specifically to  the reader’s needs. Personally I don’t see the interest anymore as this seems like an old media strategy within a social media future. Most of the media I consume is in portable form, whether it’s a podcast, video content or other. It’s fed to me via RSS for processing at my own speed. Where is the relevance of such a patent when print is becoming less and less relevant?

Quarterlife is a show about what life is like for those at the quarter life mark, in their mid twenties. Last week their first episode came out and already they’ve signed a deal with NBC for it to be broadcast on NBC. That’s an interesting development.  When you read the article you understand why the show has been successfully pitched and purchased. Tomorrow is the next episode of the show.

David Fisher - Nov 4, 2007

It’s really not a glorified phonebook, as much as a fairly public little black book. Phonebooks can actually be almost decent places to put ads. The way I see facebook being, is that it’s an ’end of the road’ site for me. Meaning that asides from my friends posting outbound links, I’m not going to go anywhere from there. The opposite of Google. I go to Google to go elsewhere. 99% of time when I leave Facebook it’s just by closing the tab.

For one of his campaigns, out of 10,080 impressions there were only 8 clicks. The average cost-per-click for Fred was $0.08 and the average CPM was $0.06. This is a less than stellar performance. (source) Of course people don’t click and there’s a really good reason. They go to facebook to see what their friends are doing, what funny pictures of friends they can find and more. Facebook is and will remain a glorified phonebook. People aready want to move away because of all the zombie biters, vampires and many related pieces of rubbish. Keep it simple (stupid).

Last night Hill & Knowlton organised a Social Media club event in central London to discuss a number of aspects surrounding blogging, marketing and PR. The Event started with a quick introduction to how certain bloggers have voiced their intense dislike of being pitched to by PR companies whilst others are more relaxed about the whole thing. A number of conversations took place as sub groups were split to discuss specific topics. The group I was in discussed Pull factors and how to encourage them to come to see your message, how to generate interest and take advantage of the social media and what they’re good at. A few case examples were given and discussed by this group. People from a variety of PR firms joined in the conversation. Two key things that were talked about in the debrief to the whole group found that no one knows how to deal with the social media and that at this moment in time it is about experimentation to find what is most effective and with whom. Blogging and social media were seen as a hard thing to quantify because conversations don’t have any concrete measurable effects until later. This led on to the point that at this moment in time it’s a challenge to value how you are attempting to raise awareness of what the company would like people to know about. It was an interesting event and i hope to go many more of this type.

David Fisher - Nov 4, 2007

It seems that the iPhone is very different there in terms of service contracts. My service contract includes 900 ‘daytime’ minutes, but is a two year contract. Data and texting is included. It’s about 90USD/month after taxes and all. I would honestly rather have one device to charge than 2-3 devices (PDA, MP3 player, and phone). Being able to charge over USB (which most other devices don’t) is another major plus. My Treo needed a USB cable to sync and a DC cable to charge. Bother were larger than the iPhone usb cable, and it was only USB 1. The keyboard is more than able for typing. I can’t type while driving anymore, but 1) I no longer drive in Boston and 2) That sounds like a safety feature to me. I don’t think I’m really any slower on this than I was on my Treo 650. Neither could really be used well with gloves (treo due to inaccuracy, the iphone due to the screen). Someone needs to make gloves with fake skin on the fingertips for iphone typing. The iPod Touch is a nice alternative. I’m waiting for someone to crack a VoIP/SIP phone onto it.