meish dot org: life, unfolding

I was interested to learn (via Mashable) that Hipster social location game Foursquare is launching in London at the end of the week. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s not in fact the primary school playground game we used to call “Champ”, but a location based social networking game played mainly via mobile apps, which involves players “checking in” whenever they visit a bar, restaurant, event or hangout to receive points based on frequency, pattern of activity, who else checks in at the same time as them and so on (there’s a full breakdown of points awarded in their Wikipedia entry). With enough points, a player becomes the “Mayor” of a particular venue, until someone else overtakes them.

Friends (and family) in the US tell me that it is hopelessly addictive and that it’s increasingly the first thing people do when arriving at an event these days.

I’m not sure that London has enough social butterflies and hipsters to make this take off in much the same way (who am I trying to kid? Of course it does!) but it reminded me a bit of two other things I’ve been engaged with in recent time.

The first is recently-acquired by Nokia social travel tracker Dopplr, which contains strong elements of synchronicity and coincidence built in to the user experience – while no points are awarded, the service tells you when your friends will be visiting your city, or when your scheduled trip will coincide with that of another traveller you’re linked to. In theory, that could mean that you’d be able to drop people a line saying “Hey, Dopplr tells me you’re going to be in Madrid at the same time I’m going to be there – let’s do lunch!” though in practice my experience has been that I tend to know when friends are going to be in the same place as me because we’re going there for the same conference or wedding or whatever.

But another game I’ve been playing recently (and really getting into) is the rather marvellous noticin.gs which is wonderfully simple yet very addictive. The game involves taking photos of things you’ve spotted and then geotagging them on Flickr.

You get points for noticing things
and points for being geographically near someone else’s noticing
and points for being the first noticing in a new area
and points for being noticed within a few minutes of another player’s noticings
and so on.

All you need to do to play is take a photo and upload it to Flickr, tag it “noticings” and make sure it has location data – some mobile phone apps include this on upload, but if not, you can always do it manually later, bearing in mind that points are only calculated on the previous 24 hours of noticings.

It appeals to me partly because it’s a habit I have anyway (spotting interesting things on my daily routine or extraordinary explorations and migrations across town) combined with a delicious frisson of pointy reward but for things which are not to do with effort but to do with coincidence and synchronicity and chance.

In other words, playing the game is rewarding in itself because it encourages you to open your eyes and capture interesting stuff in the everyday; getting points for doing so in a time/place which coincides (or not) with another player’s actions which you couldn’t know about is a delightful, random cherry on top.

The reminder a couple of weeks ago that pioneering blog publishing engine Blogger was launched ten years ago got me thinking.

I’ve been blogging for nearly ten years now – since it began with a W – and being involved with something from the beginning, plus passionate (and sometimes despondent) about its potential and usage in the years since means I’ve had a lot of time to watch and think about how it has matured and been used. There are certain things which we can now look back on and consider milestones in the development and maturing of blogging – like how the media responded to it, how people embraced and used it and how it penetrated mainstream web usage over time.

Likewise, Twitter.

Like blogging (which I started doing in January 2000, and used Blogger to publish my blog from April of that year), I’ve been using Twitter since relatively early on – my earliest update via Twitter was in November 2005. I’d link to it, but
a) it’s in my private/personal account (@megp) and
b) all my archived tweets (pre July 31 2009) have disappeared, as experienced by many others in this thread on the Twitter help forum.

It’s actually that help forum – and the appalling petulant and rude manner in which some users are addressing Twitter staff – which got me thinking more specifically about how, in so many ways, the timeline of the Twitter story mirrors that of Blogger and early blogging. Both have seen similar patterns of early usage and behaviour and adoption by certain functional and social groups, and both have learnt – the hard way, sometimes – about technical and social scaling issues as well as being a playground for emergent behaviours and activities, and all the fun and challenge that comes with that.

This isn’t an attempt to demonstrate that startups and new technologies are subject to many of the same pressures and reception issues – that’s been clearly documented and brilliantly expressed in Gartner’s Hype Curve. Rather, I wanted to explore some of the striking similarities in specific situations, movements and experiences in the early days of both micropublishing and blogging, from the perspective of an early settler and long-term resident of both of these strange and wonderful new(ish) countries.

So here’s something I’ve been working on for a little while: it’s a very approximate timeline of the activities, patterns, behaviours and reactions experienced by both Twitter (/micropublishing) and Blogger (/early blogging) during their first few years.
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The world has been watching events unfold in Iran following the election last week, and – as seems to be the case increasingly around events of global significance – via social media (specifically Twitter), we’ve been able to keep up with the latest info from the street protests and the situation on the ground.

Twitter has become an amplifier of global proportions, turning up the attention on a myriad of distributed facts, opinions, links and updates about any situation – and this is no exception.

But as we follow the situation unfolding on Twitter (and in big media), I just wanted to share this thoughtful article by a former Iraq war and Pentagon correspondent about rumours and the potential for hopeful misinformation, and how Twitter might be stoking or reinforcing them:

None of this is to excuse the behavior of the government after the election results came out. Or to diminish the bravery and courage of the people who are out in the streets in Tehran getting beaten. But what if it’s based on a lie? A Twitter-fueled, mass delusion of a lie? That the one third of people who voted for Mousavi convinced themselves, via a social media echo chamber that selectively picked rumors and amplified them until they appeared true, that they in fact represented two thirds of the country? And then tried to bring down the government based on that delusion? Maybe it’s not the case this time. But doesn’t this entire episode seem to show how such a thing could happen? And then what?

While I’m concerned about the post-election situation in Iran, I’m also cautious about the Twitter effect, partly because of the potential for intentional misinformation being spread via social networks, but also for many of the same reasons that influenced my thinking about Twitter and #AmazonFAIL which I wrote about in a post comparing the virulent, damaging, unrelenting backlash to wildfire and a social media mob.

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But a little information, misassumed, miscommunicated and fuelled by internet attention … can also spark a wildfire.

Information which spreads quickly, explosively and loudly isn’t necessarily reliable, accurate or helpful, and we’d do well to remember that before believing, acting on, or passing it on blindly.

It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, feel the infectious nature of rumour and the thrill of disseminating third(/fourth/fifth/sixth…)-hand experience, and want to feel part of a global movement, but sometimes doing so may actually cause more harm than good.

Today is the 9th anniversary of the very first UK blogmeet, which took place at the Lincoln Lounge in King’s Cross (mere metres from my office nowadays).

Back on Saturday June 11th 2000, a ragged band of early-era bloggers got together and spent a happy afternoon talking nonsense and taking solace in the fact that this weird blogging lark (which everyone else found so weird at the time) was considered completely normal and even interesting by the gathered gang.

Present on that day were:

Dan Hon
Adrian Hon
Tom Coates
Jen Bolton
Katy Lindemann
Giles Turnbull
Luke Martin
Johanna MacDonald
Dave Green (who I remember was wearing a particularly fine NTK jacket that day)
Stephen Reid
and me

And you know the best thing?

I’m still in touch with all the people above, and I count many of them among my closest friends. Plus most are still blogging in some shape or form. The itch never goes away.

We still meet up occasionally for drinks in various bits of the world, even after all this time. That’s the effect of blogging community. Long may it last!

I promise I don’t write about Twitter all the time, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot (for work and fun) recently.

So, celebrities on Twitter. We’ve all heard about them, and we might even follow one or two. But why?

Some simple reasons:

1. Fan of them/their work generally
2. Like getting updates from them about what they’re doing/thinking (e.g. like a direct fan newsletter)
3. Interested in a particular project they’re currently working on (e.g. filming a movie)
4. Like cutting out the filter of gossip sites, news organisations etc and getting insight or news direct from source
5. Like the potential proximity of creating a relationship/conversation with them (albeit one-sided – but it could be more at some point)

But I’ve got another hypothesis: could it be that (potentially in addition to any of the above) having a celebrity’s updates appear in your twitter consumption stream, along with your friends and other contacts, makes them more real/closer/more human because suddenly you cannot fail to be aware that they are sharing a time-context (which they must have before, but all your consumption of celeb updates had previously been mediated through the temporal displacement of publishing, broadcasting or other media)?

Just thinking.

Additional resources:

• Celebrities on Twitter, and why you shouldn’t follow them
• Are celebrities causing Twitter to evolve or devolve?
• Celebrity Twitter overkill

Retweeting (that is, repeating someone else’s tweet, with attribution) has emerged from daily twittering habits and has become part of Twitter’s cultural vocabulary.

The idea of rebroadcasting something interesting/funny you’ve spotted isn’t new, and the custom of acknowledging your sources isn’t particularly revolutionary either, but what is interesting is that not all retweets (RTs) are alike.

In fact, long-term observation of RTing on Twitter reveals that there are a number of different objectives which could inspire a retweet, though of course the actual motivating force can only ever be known by the author of the retweet themselves.

To that end, I’ve identified what I consider to be the seventeen things that people are actually saying when they retweet others on Twitter:

1. “I wish I’d said this.”

Other people say clever/insightful/funny stuff. User wishes they’d said it first.

2. “I was going to say something, but this person said it better/funnier/faster than I could.”

Other people are better/faster with words. This type tends to come up a lot in Twitter memes, where the repetition of someone else’s (funny/clever) response is a way of participating without actually needing to find something to say.

3. “Spread the word/pass it on”

Breaking news and/or requests for help. Often contain an explicit request for readers to retweet the message.

4. “Everyone should see this because it’s important (IMHO).”

News, revelations and links which inform or contribute to a user’s core values. User wants to get this important thing in front of as many people as possible, because not knowing or caring about it is unimaginable.

5. “I found this tweet funny/interesting/clever and want to spread it.”

Not necessarily related to any particular topic, but user liked what someone else said, and want to expose it to their followers in the hope of getting it retweeted further.

6. “This is interesting and I have something to add to it.”

User found something interesting and wants to add a comment to it – though warning: too much editing/addition to a RT can make it significantly different from the original.

7. “This person found this good link, so I’m hat-tipping them.”

Credit where it’s due.

8. “Everyone else is retweeting this, so I am too.”

User wants to be in on a trending rebroadcasting of something interesting or important.

9. “Just in case you didn’t see this, it bears repeating.”

Repeating something which someone else said, because user thinks it unlikely that it will have had sufficient audience from the original author. This also happens over time, i.e. retweeting something that was said earlier on (and someone people even retweet themselves, which shows an alarming level of self-disaggregation)

10. “I’m plugged into a particular network that I don’t think too many of my followers are, so here’s something you won’t have seen.”

Having access to a wide variety of obscure sources makes the user seem like they’re plugged in to all sorts of interesting networks. Repeating something from someone relatively obscure reveals this.

11. “I want to belong to a particular club: retweeting this is our badge.”

Used in conjunction with hashtags, this type is usually sandwiched by a conditional (“if you believe…”) and an imperative (“…retweet this!”). The Twitter equivalent of “Honk if you had sex last night”

12. “I spotted this.”

User retweets as a substitute for having to create anything new themselves. Retweeting is an acknowledgement that something has been consumed. A human RSS reader.

13. “This person said something nice about me/us/project/company, but it would be terribly gauche to say it myself, so I’ll just refer you to what someone else said as a way of introducing a modicum of modesty.”

This is just weird. And it’s still gauche.

14. “I love this user. They always tweet great stuff. You should follow them.”

Trying to increase social capital of another user via retweeting their stuff to a wider audience in the hope that this will gain them new followers.

15. “My followers expect me to bring them the latest stuff (news, gossip, games, insight, links and more), which I source from a variety of places.”

User retweets to provide new value to their social graph. In the old days, this is what blogs were used for. But Twitter is a much more immediate way of thrusting one’s latest discoveries in front of a waiting audience.

16. “My social graph includes lots of great people, like this, and repeating what they said makes part of their greatness rub off on me.”

Reflected glory via mild sycophancy.

17. “I hope the person I’m RTing this from notices and follows me back.”

Slight fawning may produce social benefit to user, but potentially little value to anyone else.

Can you think of any others?

I made this the other day:

In case you’ve stumbled across it somewhere and made your way over here, you should know that this image was originally posted to Twitter with the tag #fauxiology.

While the experience above is based on observation of people using Twitter (including myself) over time, it’s also supposed to be tongue in cheek. There’s no supporting data and this is not intended to conform to rigorous scientific principals of research. It is, however, a pretty accurate hunch and a familiar pattern to many.

I’ve also written some other stuff about Twitter which you might want to look at.

This collage of web 2.0 logos should be pretty familiar to many people by now. It’s been knocking about for a few years, ever since the whole Web 2.0 Koolaid (what’s the British equivalent? Ribena?) started flowing.

During that time, I’ve seen it printed out and stuck up on the walls of companies and individuals, appearing in about a million blogs, and it should almost go without saying that this image gets used endlessly in presentations at events about the social web, or web 2.0 technologies, or the changing face of business in the last few years, or design and UX in the new web.

In that context, it is usually accompanied by sentiments like “Web 2.0 isn’t going anywhere” or “the social web is real and growing” – using the sheer quantity of Web 2.0-type offerings starting up in 2005ish as an indication of how much they were shaking things up and changing the game. Dare I even say shifting the paradigm? ;)

Anyway, having been professionally involved in one of the companies featured on the original logo collage, an avid user of a handful of others and a casual user (OK, I registered a username) for a whole bunch more, I’m as aware that the web 2.0 landscape has changed as you are.

So having recently been confronted with this image in a presentation (used as being indicative of current reality), I thought it was time that it was updated.

I present these updates without reference to or predicting the demise of web 2.0 or social technologies or anything like that. Just to be a bit more accurate.

The image below reflects which of this original set of companies have vanished or ceased trading, via the highly scientific method of searching for their names and clicking about until I could find reliable information about them.

The most reliable method seemed to be to go to the original Techcrunch (or mashable) hyping of the new service in 2005ish, and then follow the link to the company. If the link is kaput, then so is the company.

More than you thought? Or less? Certainly some of the daft names (and business models, and ideas) have dried up, but others remain, and still more have sprung up in their place, no doubt.

It’s also worth noting that there are a handful of others listed as alive on this diagram (or rather, not crossed out) which are, to put it politely, dormant or dwindling if not actually dead.
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I wanted to draw attention to this marvellous article about Twitter by early-era blogger and all round music’n'media maven Tom Ewing.

He’s written the article in a series of tweet-sized chunks, and there’s a lot to ponder on, there. I won’t reproduce the whole thing – you should read it all, in context – but a few of the most brilliant bits (IMO) follow:

There’s a deluge of Twitter hype from media flapmouths. None of them agree on what it’s for, just that it’s wonderful.

Now Twitter’s going mainstream and dipping down the hype curve there’s an equal rush of pieces damning it.

Is it a marketing platform? A news service? A celebrity hangout? A lame Facebook knock-off? A time sink for fools? Yes, yes, yes.

The boring truth is that Twitter is a communications tool, much like blogs or websites. It’s neutral– it simply enables certain effects.

A dip into the “public tweetstream”– the firehosed thoughts of 10 million minds– is indeed a one-way ticket to Moronopolis.

If what you see is idiocy, it’s because you’ve elected to follow idiots. Simple as that.

Depending on how you come at it, Twitter initially seems an idiot’s charter or a deserted echo chamber. The fun is creating your own order.

The good side of Twitter’s license to self-promote: The 140 limit forces you to focus thoughts and directs traffic to where you expand them.

I don’t follow any musicians on Twitter: I prefer my access mediated, ideally by Smash Hits magazine asking what color their socks are.

If musicians are talking about their socks of their own accord it’s not as fun somehow.

But from a musician’s point of view I can see exactly why you’d do it. Aside from being an incorrigible exhibitionist.

Endless disappointment is the cross the early adopter has to bear. As any indie rock fan knows.

Part of the reason I’m addicted is that Twitter reminds me of the internet in the 90s, but in accelerated microcosm.

There’s the same fascination and distrust with mainstream media, the same snobbish defensiveness, the same mix of chaos and excitement.

There’s the same random thrill of stumbling across great content, the same giddy sense that everyone is making it up as they go along.

And just like the old web, in two or three years the way we use Twitter now will seem really gauche and annoying and badly planned.

I think he absolutely nails it. Well said, Tom.

Incidentally, Tom’s Blackbeardblog tumblog is also well worth following if you’re interested in the intersection of social media and market research – full of insight and interesting ideas and links.

(And if you haven’t found it yet, I’ve got a tumblog too – more(ish) which is full of odds and sods and links and pictures and music and stuff)

New product idea:

With using just 16 individual letter badges, you can make a dozen or more popular interweb acronyms, which you can wear on your lapel, or anywhere you choose, to give the world a general message about your current mood or state.

For example:

The badges:
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