thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

Until very recently the trade-off between richness and reach with media and communications tools on the internet has seen mixed results but we are very close to some exciting breakthroughs.

This means news is old when it gets through the media process as savvy consumers have already engaged to some extent in a myriad of ways (mostly online) and this alters the secondary ripples and impacts as well.

The difference between a one to many message and a conversation will continue to be endlessly debated across a range of media and platforms.  It has become much clearer that the overlap between micro-blogging (clogging ?) tools, mobile phones, other user generated content and mainstream media is now producing social dividends and all kinds of unintended and positive consequences.

Social capital has its own momentum and we see everything from instant tweets on earthquakes and elections to a scary washing machine with 15 thousand fans on facebook. Most mainstream media is filtered by the editorial process to become more of a news product. This is good for manicured medium but for a real-time news ticker social media tools are raising the stakes and in a very good way.

Twitter, Facebook blogs and other instant commentary now allows real time crowdsourcing for the equivalent of a live cross on camera – only better online for the most part. I was reminded of some of this when I heard a news item on radio about how Twitter had delayed a crucial update so as not to interrupt the flow of news from Iran.

That this was a news item is interesting in itself but ironically the Twitter maintenance had been and gone by the time the news got on the radio and that was very stale news to the Twitterati who had all moved on hours before.

There were three insightful perspectives I took notice of this week regarding the rise of social capital in these ways.

David MacGregor captured some of these dimensions reproduced below: (Thanks David)

“The social media phenomenon really does change my perception of the way forward. I have less and less regard for brand messages that are virtuoso – you know the kind I mean – the spectacular set pieces of yesteryear, film making fetishism in microcosm. Today I am more like to be receptive to messages that have far greater relevance and, oftentimes, utility – which might be expressed by the facility for me to understand more or engage more with the message personally.

The scale of my engagement is relative. The simple facility to comment or offer and opinion is sometimes sufficient and demonstrates the thought that I, like other people, want to be heard and acknowledged, rather than simply being yelled at or sung a silky siren song by spruikers.”

David writes very well on this an many other related topics. He also notes that all of this discussion is much less compartmentalized than it used to be. And that is a good thing in my view.

“I find it difficult to separate marketing, advertising and brands from society as whole. A challenge for business is surely to overcome the ‘them and us’ model of mass communications to really open the way for more inclusive dialogues.”

Nat Torkington on National Radio caught my ears with his comments on the role of Twitter and other micro-blogging formats in Iran. What was particularly good was the way he managed to make “secure open web proxies” sound interesting and also kept the listeners from being distracted by the mechanics in that wonderful mellifluous mode of his.

Less mediation is also highly attractive to celebrities. Micro blogging of tweets via re-tweeting has helped make a difference and we will continue to hear about the ramifications of all this.

TN: Technology with Nat Torkington from Thursday Technology expert and  Nat Torkington discusses online dating scams as well as Twitter’s role in the Iranian election protests.(duration:14mins 28secs)

The impact of these new technologies on groups and individuals is sounding a bit more like the second wave of alternative media as foreshadowed all those years ago by Noam Chomsky. In a sense we have now the tools to manufacture dissent.

Clay Shirky manages to summarise many of these key points about the rise of social capital and media activism over at TED Talks.

Clay says:

“New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere, as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting.

In his writings and speeches he has argued that “a group is its own worst enemy.”
Shirky is author of Here Comes Everybody.

One point Clay makes is the increase in professional amateurs – something we wrote about some time back and was a topic for another great TED talk by Charles Leadbeater which was  called “The rise of the amateur professional” see the 19minute video on TED. Charles said

“Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can’t.”

If the video embed doesn’t display on your device try this TED link for Clay Shirky.

As Clay notes we are watching “The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.” How to cross pollinate conversations and mass media in real time. We now have a “many to many”  communications channel.

Note: Local TV stations has all improved their websites recently as they finally begin to understand they are less TV and multi-channel amplicasting is bigger ironically just as viewership on their broadcasts drop – their website traffic is going up and changing the business.

Amplification of tweets gives rise to far more authentic news sources than we have seen – ever!  Citizen reporting has flow on effects and when those stories follow the news we begin to see social transformation.

Asynchronous media and the amplification of all the surrounding content eco-systems is a big deal and we should be using this for good connections. Consumers are producers are consumers. The network itself is ubiquitous and omnipresent.

There are no single messages any more and media participation is higher than ever. Media revolution is here.

What do you think ? My twitter ID is @dialogCRM feel free to tweetback.

As always you can tweet this below and leave a comment or reply to the tweet for this post on Twitter. You can also engage directly with the three / four sources I have used today.

• To follow and engage with David on Twitter go to @joegreenz
• To follow and engage with Nat on Twitter go to @gnat
• To follow and engage Nat on Twitter go to @CShirky
• To follow and engage withTED on Twitter @TEDchris

Looks like you have visited before, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks again

Here are three great post insights on how twitter is changing the game for all businesses.

The three featured writers are Andrew Dubber, Dr Mark Drapeau and Laurel Papworth. 

Andrew Dubber has just noted that this is one of the top posts on his site this year. Read Andrews full post here. Adding context and interest. It has special interest for musicians.

“Steve Lawson, one of my top must-read music business thinkers, wrote a blog post today that explains Twitter in the face of some terrible journalism. I caught up with him for lunch in London and we had a chat about it.

Quite predictably, I made a video.” (Note: Included below)

Steve Lawson from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

 
Dr Michael Drapeau made some comments over here on on a post by Brian Solis. It is a long comment but deserves a good long read. Brian Solis is also worth checking out – THis comment was in response to a post by Brian Solis called “Is Twitter a Converstaion or Broadcast Medium”. 

“When I wrote “Expand Your Twitter Base” I commented that people should look at their last 40 tweets to see if they’re generally interesting. 

People can use Twitter however they please. But many people using it for “conversation” are speaking 1:1 with someone, and saying things that are not generally interesting. (@myfriend OMG so funny!) There’s no context, no proper nouns, no generality. There’s nothing compelling that makes people want to follow you in that example. 

Twitter is used *most successfully* as a broadcast medium within which some content can be discussed in a general way. This is like a radio talk show host making statements and interviewing a guest, and then taking a few questions. If all he did was take phone calls from his friends and have brief “conversations” that would not be a hit show. 

Brands and popular people alike do not need to converse with everyone who asks, nor reply to every comment made about them. It’s not clear that this approach has help Comcast any – they get some good blog stories and their hardware is still the source of heads banging against walls. 

What is far more valuable is for brands and people to provide information that they think is interesting and adds value to some audience, who can then comment on it. No one can effectively control who follows them on Twitter; thus, people will high followed/following ratios tend to be “popular” by definition. Unless they are truly famous, they are generally adding value to the mix, unlike many, as the statistics show (who have few followers and/or even ratios). 

Clay Shirky describes Wikipedia as “co-creation without collaboration.” There, as with Twitter, very few people are responsible for the overwhelming majority of content development. While a wiki and microsharing are different, on Twitter maybe the 10% of people that contribute 90% of the tweets can be thought of as subject-matter experts who would write an entire Wikipedia page. Sure, some edits are made, some discussion ensues, but they are the “knowledge broadcasters” and the other 90% of people are the gardeners and readers. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. In theory, everyone is getting something out of the complex system.”

Mark’s earlier post on HOW TO: Win Friends and Twinfluence People is also an evergreen type of article which has a top 10 list and concludes with this advice below.

“The Bottom Line

There aren’t any secrets. You get out what you put in. Work hard, add value, and don’t rest on your laurels. Note what’s happening in the news, and in life. Always evolve; adapt to your environment. Embrace trial-and-error and a spirit of lethal generosity. Take risks. Be surprising. Be awesome.”

Online reputation management by Laurel Papworth. Laurel is based in Sydney and is clearly a star writer and marketing evangelist. There are many great posts on her website – however a good place to start is here.

What I like about Laurels posts is that she often uses diagrams so the visual element is there as well.

“Reputation
Reputation is the long tail of your content. Have you been naughty or nice. Asking questions – or answering them? Asking for stuff – or offering? Giggling with a great sense of humour or snarking off with rude words? You want a bad boy rep? YA GOTTA EARN IT. Anyway, you get the general idea. One blog post, one tweet, one facebook status does not build your reputation. It accumulates over time.”

As always your thoughts are welcome here. 

• To follow Andrew on Twitter go to @dubber
• To follow Mark on Twitter go to @cheeky_geeky
• To follow Laurel on Twitter @silkcharm

One of the developing trends I have been noticing is the big rise in uber-connected people leveraging their social and business networks for a common cause. I support this but wonder if some of the media ripples from the all of this activity are being somewhat discounted?

This used to be called cause-based marketing but the “m” word has slipped into the background a bit as many now just assume that Facebook, Twitter, Ning and all the other social media tools are part of the scenery.

In the early days on LinkedIn there was a kind of magic number for most people around 250 connections beyond which the social coherence became a bit misty. What I mean, is that the noise to signal ratio gets way out of kilter and a natural re-balancing starts to occur.

An endless stream of consciousness type “pulse” stream as it is called on Plaxo can be very annoying. Something I was reminded of when I connected my Twitter account to a Pulse stream for testing purposes and forgot about it resulting in far too much noise for sensible enjoyment.

Twitter is just the latest example of the arms style race for big numbers.

It used to be MySpace or StumbleUpon that had the big numbers and soaring traffic flows now its Twitter, FriendFeed and Ping.fm. There is something slightly disconcerting about all of this though. A kind of constant reinvention of channels where people shout at each other when that kind of thing only gets so far.

I heard the LongNow foundation described as kind of Slow food for Thinkers in a post called Slow Thinking and Fast Tweeting. I think (no pun intended) it  should have said Fast Thinking and Slow Tweeting

I can just hear one of my first employers favourite refrain at this point saying “What’s the action Point here. ” Words into deeds and all that.

Then later on – learning that action is no substitute for direction and vision and how to make sense of all the activity that passes for action. They are not the same things.

Vanitis vanatatum or Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas is putting is a bit too strongly but using a network to amplify communications does not amplify the sincerity or purpose of what we are about. 

The Long Now Foundation, which fosters long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. The Long Now is like the slow food movement for thinkers. It’s about thinking about the long term, and it’s also about slower, better thinking. Obviously they intend to be around for a long time.

They’ve got a bunch of interesting projects and wide-ranging seminars, including the option to place bets and vote on predictions about the future. At the moment, it’s Kevin Kelly’s prediction that “By 2060 the total population of humans on earth will be less than it is today.”

CEO Evan Williams of Twitter made these comment in response to a thoughtful post over at RRW. Titled:How Twitter’s Staff Uses Twitter (And Why It Could Cause Problems) This is under the section subtitled “What Does Twitter HQ Have to Say About This?”

“As you know, there are lots of different ways to use Twitter. Many people fall into the trap that you should follow all or most people back out of a sense of politeness or so-called engagement with the community.

But the fact is, having more followers does not give you more time in the day* (as much as I’d like to sell that). At a certain point, you’re not actually reading any more tweets by following more people — you’re just dipping into the stream somewhat randomly and missing a whole lot of what people say.

That’s fine, but I believe people will generally get more value out of Twitter by dropping the symmetrical relationship expectation and simply curating their following list based on the information and people they want to tune in to.

I follow almost 1,000 accounts.”

* my emphasis

Social data dipping, conversation mining  or random data mining may be useful for trend spotting and I’ve been using Nambu‘s tag fields to see what appears in the tag cloud styled rear window view.

And there is no doubt that exponential number stacking is far to watch but how does it really help with leveraging communities for social purposes besides gossip and chit-chat.

One idea I rather like is The NZ Centre for Social innovation uses WordPress (and Ning) to “bring together public, private and community partners to create new solutions to New Zealand’s most pressing social needs.”

The NZ Centre for Social Innovation programme also uses a Camp concept to leverage web technology over an extended period for social good projects.

“We’re bringing together a mix of social entrepreneurs, web developers, business specialists and creatives to propose and vote on our top 3 ideas to innovate out of recession.

Later in the year we’ll hold a full weekend SI Camp to develop the top ideas into working web prototypes, with prizes including cash, mentoring and web development assistance.”

Way back in the early days of MIS (what we called IT back in early ’80′s) there was a progression idea for leveraging systems through 3 stages.

• Stage 1 was Simple transaction processing. The part where people scramble to get technology that works.
• Stage 2 – Reporting and Analysis which leads to process mapping and re-engineering
• Stage 3 – Competitive Advantage. Better practices over time as the insights are leveraged into better outputs.

I’m probably mis- remembering this esp. stage 2 (hat tip to Grant Furley.)  I’m sure there are other cycle or learning curve metaphors that could also describe this journey.

The point is in the early days its all about getting the basics right. Then absorbing the learning and adapting overall to new paradigms or Not (in some cases.)

Humans love patterns and we should relish the opportunity to drink from the firehouse of the internet but there is no substitute for actually getting together in person to solve problems over a cup of tea or other beverages.

I applaud the work of the Centre for Social Innovation in starting to move to the third circle / 3rd stage by extending the social networking tools to incubate and develop useful outputs for communities.

I also declare an interest here in helping to seed and develop dozens of blogs and online networks mostly by assisting with my WordPress expertise including WordCampNZ in Wellington on August 8th and 9th.

Very much looking forward to meeting some of the online collaborators who are indeed leveraging communities for good.

This morning I was one of several thousand people who crossed the Auckland Harbour Bridge by foot and cycle.

There was everyone from babies to grandparents waiting patiently until about 9:45 when 8 break away cyclists crossed from Shelly beach anyway.

Very good to meet @rowsell who is cycling from Bluff to North Cape to raise awareness and funds for the Spinal Unit.  Good luck for the trip Vaughan. 

@ksuyin and @gnat were also there. Apparently Rod Oram and David Slack also. At one point I walked alongside ARC chairmain Mike Lee.

@rowsell on Auckland Harbour Bridge

Here is a photo of Vaughan Rowsell on the bridge from his twitter stream.

Seems like the official words was NO. Which predictably promted the opposite result.

“Wayne McDonald, the Auckland regional director for the New Zealand Transport Agency had repeatedly told those gathered they would not be permitted to cross the bridge, but …”NZ Herald

In my view the NZTA mismanaged this and ended up blocking 4 lanes when they could have kept everyone on two.

If I remember my reading of “The Prince” correctly this could have been so they can say they were outnumbered and keep face as well as hoping that the blowback from annoyed motorists might cause some friction.

Of course I couldn’t possibly say that but considering the smart thing was to say YES it does seem like a natural consequence that might benefit more debate.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge is 50 years old. Despite plans for rail, cycles and foot traffic it has been cars only all the way. Despite reports no progress has been made and so perhaps todays protest might help.

I first crossed Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1985 and most visits I am then I walk or cycle across. It is never crowded but when petrol hist $2 per litre again it will be sorely needed.

The Transport Agency should drop the “Road” part from their name. Might help them find out what their “mission” is. They think it’s roads for cars.

We think otherwise. It was a nice day for a Sunday morning walk.  Thanks to the organisers and the police who for the most part were very helpful.

Update 25th May: I did tell one official telling a child that they’d have something to talk about for morning report. Despite the potential for upsets most people seemed very sensible and restrained all things considered.

Like most of the people there I was unsure if they were an official NO or not.

I assumed that when people moved forward that permission had been granted.

The really big surprise was the way in which most media have reported on a historic event which for everyone there was a celebration of people power and possible change.

I just watched a TV presenter from TV1 here attack the protestors rep, the police and the RTA representative. That kind of reactionary behaviour might make a news programme more drmatic but it is also a key factor in why mainstream media is losing its grip.

Considering estimates of people on the bridge range from 2,000-5,000 there was no shortage of people who could have been asked about their morning walk.

I rather preferred this view in Burn Fat – Not Oil – As David Slack writes

“What we asked for was the chance to ride and walk across the bridge and remind everyone that there are other ways of moving Aucklanders around their city.

We say our way is healthier, cheaper, and kinder to the planet.

We say that it’s time to do some fresh thinking. Time and time again, the only mode of transport that gets the lion’s share of public funding is the almighty car.

Even though it costs a fortune. And even though the oil is running out.

Cycle lanes could do us so much good, and make so much economic sense in the long run, it’s remarkable, really, that we’re having to argue over the soundness of them.”

Thanks David.