Twitter

How many of you have a wifi enabled laptop. How many of you have a wap enabled phone. How many of you have msn messenger. The reason I’m asking you this question is the following. I’ve been using twitter for several months now and it’s whilst working on my dissertation that I wrote the most. Now I’m trying Loic Lemeur’s new video website, Seesmic. It’s based off the twitter principle, that you leave a short video clip, no more than a minute in length about anything, or at least that’s my impression. You can add content in one of three ways. Record it straight from the laptop, link to it from youtube or upload a pre-recorded segment. The two latter options aren’t that interesting but the first one is for one simple reason.  It’s about snippets. When you talk to someone you usually say a sentence or two and then the conversation switches back to you and there’s that back and forth of a lively conversation. In so doing there’s little or no chance of you switching off and going to find something else of interest. It’s also a dialogue between people in different countries and timezones, reflective of the new media landscape as seen by those on the cutting edge of social interaction. What’s so special about this site is that it’s visual and auditory. With twitter you can read twenty tweets in twenty seconds whereas with seesmic you’re condemned to listen to a person go at their own speed. That’s why less than a minute is more than enough for most conversations. Everyone that’s a member participates and in so doing creates their own social group with a difference. Mainly you can see and hear whether they’re happy, lonely, tired or bored. It mans that you can see that little twinkle in their eye, that relaxed stance or their accent. It’s personal. It’s most of what you get from meeting someone in person in other words and that’s what makes it great. I’m looking forward to all the conversations I’m going to have with the people I’m meeting at the moment, whether exclusively online or living in a mixture of both as I am. I’m enjoying this.

Loudmouthman, amongst others was expressing his desire for a means by which to aggregate all our online data through one central account. I though of Freebase and Openid and how they could work. Google though had other thoughts. Whilst Facebook behaves like a portal opensocial helps agggregate content. Facebook assumes thatyou come to their website, spen an hour there and then disconnect. Opensocial assumes that you are an active participant of the new socialmedia landscape on several websites at a time. We currently have a growing number of people that spend more and more time using new technologies to communicate with others. Most of us have flickr accounts, joost accounts youtube and more but for our friends to keep up is a challenge. Getting them to sign on to any social network is particularly hard. Myspace was the key website for a while before facebook overtook. In the past two days I’ve joined Lijit and Open Social. Both work the same way. They take your user id. in my case warzabidul and you tell them which networks you’re part of. The content is then aggregated to a central pag. As more and more friends join open social and lijit so you should get a greater sense of what they are up to. It’s a convenient way to keep up to date with what friends around the world are doing. Look at the sidebar to get an idea of how Plaxo Pulse is using the opensocial idea. Florian Seroussi also pointed me to this article that should help you understand what it’s about. I’m looking forward to more people using it and I love the great flexibility that it will give it’s users. If you’re using it them write a comment and I’ll visit your site to see your social media presence.

dannyObanny - Dec 2, 2007

Nielson/NetRatings has issued a study showing that the top 10 social networking sites saw traffic grow 47% over the last year, with MySpace seeing the biggest growth (367% increase) and MSN Spaces (286%) seeing the biggest growth. Hosted blogging systems were included in the study. One thing to note about those numbers is that while Classmates had one of the lowest positive growth rates at 10%, they spend loads on advertising while MySpace, Youtube, and Facebook haven’t spent a penny. If I recall correctly, a couple years ago Classmates.com was one of the 10 largest spenders on online advertising. There are plenty of new social networking sites poping up but what get’s me why can’t myspace there instant messenger working. $580 mill and can’t afford to fix instant messenger BAD myspace. There are so many better ones how about http://cubiclelife.net for example has all the features of myspace plus quizzes, polls, webchat with audio and video oh and hey they have instant messenger. You have a long way to go myspace. http://seekingalpha.com/wp-content/seekingalpha/images/socialnetapr06.jpg

Twittervox is back on the air and there will be an episode at some point this afternoon, probably around 4pm GMT. During the most recent episode we were discussing Podcamp Boston 2 and one of the people that joined the conversation was Sara Steeler of Pygmae and NewBcamp. Her ideas are interesting because she wants to involve more people into using current technology on a daily basis rather than produce content for people to hear, read or watch. What makes the NewBcamp interesting is that it’s about creating an event where non creatives can meet and learn about the possibilities of new technology. She describes it as NewBCamp… I am designing it especially for people new to technology, I welcome people to suggest topics they would like to hear presentations on, as well as presentations they feel qualified to give. It differs from podcamp and barcamp events because it’s goal is to get more people to take advantage of all the content that is being provided. I want to get other people involved, people like the students in my classes, like my mom, like random people I know who have a thirst to know about how to do computer stuff. One of the things that frustrated me as a university student is that radio students, of all people, did not understand the purpose of podcasting. They want to do radio and to be on the well known broadcasters. They do student radio but how many of them took advantage of creating podcast friendly content. How many of them would create content that could be put on an RSS feed and downloaded for convenient listening? For a short period they had podcasts but that stopped quite quickly. It’s a shame because whilst I love the idea of listening to a friend’s content whilst on the move I hate the idea of having to be by the computer listening to a live stream, especially when it’s non time sensitive audio discussions. NewBcamp could help change that attitude, help develop awareness of what podcasts are and what you can do with them. It’s also about awareness. What podcasts are out there and what audience would find them interesting. At the moment we find technology geeks, current affairs and more but what about other programs. I’ve seen a few snowboarding podcasts, a few history podcasts, several environmental shows but the problem is that their audience lacks familiarity with the medium. There are a few universitites that have audio podcasts, there are a few radio stations that offer additional content. Through projects such as NewBcamp I hope that a new audience will discover and enjoy the pleasure of listening to a new form of distributing content and that the will experiment with it. I’d like to see a diversification in the type of content offered whilst including a broadening of topics covered. If you have some thoughts on the topic then don’t hesitate to come up with suggestions and participate in the conversation.

TedC - Oct 1, 2007

Exactly…!

Twittoholism is seeing the world through twitter. Rather than reading newspapers, books and other intellectual adventures you see the world through what others are twittering about. It’ a bit like a chatroom but you take this one with you wherever you go, from your bedroom to the living room, across town on the bus and even to your computer. As you get a greater diversity of people so your twitterfull existence progresses exponentially.

Today’s news is as follows. Having seen that Bill Palmer of the Iprong podcast and website would add the 300th friend on Facebook I decided I would take this opportunity to add him. His podcast is “for the ipod generation so take the time to listen to it. It’s mainly about iphones and ipods but mixes in quite a few artists in the process. The second event was becoming the 3000th person to use twittermail. I saw someone mention that they were up to three thousand and I decided to be the 3000th. Now that’s done it’s great. It’s twice as great since it helps to emphasise that I have reached over three thousand tweets since becoming a twitter member. The last bit of news is that it’s blog action day tomorrow. The topic is going to be the environment so right anything with an environmental conscience for your blog and share it with the world. That’s it for tonight.

Documentally - Oct 2, 2007

wow.. you were quick defining the word twitterstorm.. Not quick enough to buy the dot com though.. ;)

The Twitterstorm is a description of an event where hundreds of 140 character messages are sent at the same time. The most recent example of this occurrence is the one that took place when news of Jaiku being swallowed by google broke. Both Twitter and Jaiku are similar. They both give you 140 characters to express yourself and they can both be taken with you.

When Jaiku was sold to Google the Twitter community has been wondering what’s next for them. That is true, at least for those who are not heavy users of twitter. For the more passive user Jaiku is more appealing because it’s got more bells and whistles. Twitter relies on your ability to express what is on your mind exclusively through text. Tinyurl does make the task a little simpler.

In today’s Twittervox episode we had Nik Butler talking about his idea of the flatlister. The concept is based around the idea that when someone is promoting themselves and building their own persona they are a flat lister. In other words they are in charge of their own persona and their own reputation. This carries on from a topic that was discussed by Jeff Pulver when he asked whether we prefer to use our real name or a nickname. There is one school of thought that believes that you should turn yourself into a brand whilst another school of thought believes that you should create a nickname as your brand can be sold off should it become successful enough. That’s just scraping the surface though and here is a short description of how others and I are attempting to use new media and social networking to promote our skills. A few months ago I got a message from a documentary producer asking whether I had more footage of an event they were interested in. They had seen a short edit either on youtube or my site and thought that this would be of value to their project. I said that I had more footage and so over a period of time I sent over the material which they looked through. They decided to use my footage and as a result their documentary will be broadcast sometime in Springtime of 2008 on Arte. That’s great news for me and I’m really happy. There’s going to be a screening of the documentaries and I’m going to do my best to get there to meet these people in person. Any opportunity should be taken to meet new people. In today’s media and cultural landscape any job that’s advertised is seen by thousands of eyes. What that means is that you’ve got a lot of competition and sending your CV is not enough. One job I recently applied to had over a thousand people apply to it. With such great numbers of people applying there’s little chance of finding work through as passive a method as sending an e-mail and electronic cv to find work. One person in Geneva said that you’ve got to stand out, after all those sorting through applications have a pile of several hundred cv on their desks to sort through. I’ve been using Linkedin recently, adding all those people whom I have had contact with to see whether there are any of their contacts that could help me find people whom have a need for my expertise. Jemima Kiss recently made a comment about Linkedin asking why people don’t put their full CV on the website. As a result of that comment I added a few of the more interesting experiences I have had. When you’re at Podcamp every single person has a website. Everyone is their own brand. If you listen to them introduce themselves they will all say who they are and what their website is. Some will even wear the T-shirts that promote either their site or that of the software they use as work tools. They also have twitter accounts. Twitter is one of those tools that’s great for entrepreneur and freelancers because it makes it so much easier to judge the quality of character of those you are working with. You get an idea of their lifestyle, of their work ethic and more. if you’re awake by 7 or 8am then that shows through. If they’re working on one large project or several smallers ones you see it as well. In brief you know when is the best time to contact them for working on current or new projects. We are now living in an era where everyone has access to the same information around the globe and as a result we have a great deal of competition. It is up to us, as individuals, with the tools we have available to demonstrate that we have the required know how. How do you use the tools currently available to us and do other people in your circle of friends also use them? Has it changed your way of working? I’m looking forward to Nik Bulter’s Flatlister article and your feedback.