Tags: Attention, Beth Kantor, Buzz, Collaboration, Conference, Google, Live Tweeting, Noise, Nonprofit, Press Conference, Real-Time, Social Media, Social Web, Talking Points, Twitter, Ustream, Web 2.0, Youtube | Edit
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Phenomenon Web Design
Client projects and tech blog posts about Phenomenon
Tags: Attention, Beth Kantor, Buzz, Collaboration, Conference, Google, Live Tweeting, Noise, Nonprofit, Press Conference, Real-Time, Social Media, Social Web, Talking Points, Twitter, Ustream, Web 2.0, Youtube | Edit
Over on the New York Times, an article about a new Nickolodeon-created website for parents
Categories:
Practical 2.0
now in the final stages of beta testing.
In a nonpublic test of the site over the summer by about 1,000 recruited participants, executives learned that these users wanted to blog; now, every user with a profile can, Ms. Reppen said. Through the beta test, which is now open to new members, Nick is learning that parents want spaces to sell their crafts, a separate Christian home-schooling discussion and bigger type on the Web site. Local discussion boards will also be added, as will user-generated video.
They also quote a Nissan marketing executive, who says that "community sites are one of the big phenomenon happening on line this year."
There is a big shift going on.
It's startling to realize that my three year toddler is almost the same age as Myspace and older than Facebook. In just a few short years they've come to dominate much of the online world, especially with under-25 users. The kind of independent blogs that dominate a sites like Livejournal and Blogspot don't have the web of cross-connections--what I called the "folksonomic density"--of the new social networking sites. It seems appropriate that Myspace was founded by spammers: who knows more about sucking people in?
The question: will the net have room for independent niche sites? Myspace is changing its architecture to disable key linking features of third-party embedded plug-ins like the from the popular video site Youtube. The big search sites also want a piece of this market--new features on Yahoo local and the geotagged maps on Yahoo's Flickr are impressive). It all reminds me some of the debates about local food co-ops versus enlightened supermarkets: is it a good thing that organic produce and soymilk can be purchased at the local Acme, even if that cuts into the independent co-op's business? Don't we want everyone to have access to everything? In the end, philosophy won't settle this argument.
Tags: Beta, Facebook, Myspace, New York Times, Nick, Nickolodeon, Nissan, Parents, Phenomenon, Wikipedia | Edit
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Beth Kantor's nonprofit blog has an good article asking about the possibilities for real-time web interaction and asks whether it's possible for the web to let someone be in two places at the same time:
For me, the eye-opening moment of real-time collaboration came last winter when I was planning a conference with two friends. The three of us knew each other pretty well and we had all met each other one-on-one but we had never been in the same room together (this wouldn't happen until the first evening of the conference we were co-leading!). A month to go we scheduled a conference call to hash out details.
I got on Skype from my New Jersey home and called Robin on her Bay Area landline and Wess on his cellphone in Los Angeles. The mixed telephony was fun enough, but the amazing part came when we brought our computers into the conversation. Within minutes we had opened up a shared Google Doc file and started cutting and pasting agenda items. Someone made a reference to a video, found it on Youtube and sent it to the other two by Twitter. Wess had a secondary wiki going, we were bookmarking resources on Delicious and sending links by instant messenger.
This is qualitatively different from the two-places-at-once scenario that Beth Kantor was imagining because we were using real-time web tools to be more present with one another. Our attention was more focused on the work at hand.
I'm more skeptical about nonprofits engaging in the live tweeting phenomenon--fast-pace, real-time updates on Twitter and other "micro-blogging" services. These tend to be so much useless noise. How useful can we be if our attention is so divided?
Last week a nonprofit I follow used Twitter to cover a press conference. I'm sorry to say that the flood of tweets amounted to a lot of useless trivia. So what that the politician you invited actually showed up in the room? That he actually walked to the podium? That he actually started talking? That he ticked through your talking points? These are all things we knew would happen when the press conference was announced. There was no NEWs in this and no take-away that could get me more involved.
What would have been useful were links to background issues, a five-things-you-do list, and a five minute wrap-up video released within an hour of the event's end. They could have been coordinated in such a way to ramp up the real time buzz: if they had posted an Twitter update every half hour or so w/one selected highlight and a link to a live Ustream.tv link I probably would have checked it out. The difference is that I would have chosen to have my workday interrupted by all of this extra activity. In the online economy, attention is the currency and any unusual activity is a kind of mugging.
When I talk to clients, I invariably tell that "social media" is inherently social, which is to say that it's about people communicating. The excitement we bring to our everyday communication and the judgment we show in shaping the message is much more important than the Web 2.0 tool de jour.