Showing posts with label social network. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social network. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Trouble with Twitters

I must confess, I am a twitterer. But you probably already knew that, and possibly wandered here from my twitter profile in the first place. I find I get a lot out of twitter, from useful information, social connections, news about events local and virtual, and more. The challenge is in taming the flow of the information.

Way back when I started using twitter I followed the basic policy that as long as someone who follows me isn't a bot, a commercial, or way too offensive I follow back. That was great at the beginning but once exceeding around 200 people being followed it became hard to follow the tweetstream as so much information and so many people are twittering. Sometimes the things I wanted to hear about just got missed in the rapid scroll of tweets. Some people only follow select people I can completely understand that policy, the nature of twitter changes significantly when the number gets large. Some people consider this elitist, I just consider this a different way of handling information flow.

I have considered cutting back the number of followers, but how do I pick. Once I went through a winnowing process and the next day got into a really interesting @ discussion with someone I had just unfollowed, who was promptly refollowed.

I tried setting up a second account with a "short list" but I usually ignored that stream, and keeping it up to date with new connections of people I do want to hear just proved too much bother.

The other problem is it isn't like I have one list of people I want to listen to. I'm involved in many different groups and activities and different people speak to different focuses. What I have wanted for a while was a way to group friends and be able to chose which group to look at. Twhirl's searches came close, but Tweetdeck really seems to have hit the nail on the head. I think that tweetdeck may be the start of a new breed of twitter clients.

For the first time in ages I can actually catch the conversations I was missing, and that also means I catch the main timeline more often too because I am getting value out of twitter again. It isn't enough to just "read what's current when you have time" because not all tweets are equal - I wanted the volume up higher on some tweets, and now I can have that. Thanks tweetdeck for giving me my twitter back.

Friday, June 6, 2008

It's not a Fishbowl, It's a Habitrail

In a lot of places I hear people talking about how we are in our little echo chamber, or fishbowl. I get that concept. I have talked with people who have written (and had published) books on film who when I talked to them about video on the net said "Oh yeah, my husband sometimes sends me funny videos from YouTube." Yes, there is a huge digital divide, no question about it.

Lately though I've been thinking it is less of a fishbowl and more of a habitrail. I have been working on building connections in Colorado and trying to create a network where those of us creating and involved in this new media/social media/web2.0 stuff in Colorado can start to meet each other and know about each other here in Colorado rather than finding our neighbors at some conference in Las Vegas.

What this means is that I am meeting a lot of people who are in the "fishbowl" who only know about some small segment of the fishbowl. Some of these people are well connected individuals yet when I mention people who I think are incredibly visible, like Loic Lemeur, Chris Brogan, Cali Lewis, or Gary Vaynerchuk they respond with a blank look. They have no idea who these people are.

After curbing my initial self righteous response I realize that chances are some of their big name people are unknowns to me. Yes I blog, but I'm not "a big blogger" my focus is video, so yes I know people who are visible in video. For those into audio there may be a whole other group of "must knows" that I may be ignorant of, and then music - who are the connectors there?

I may know a few people in each of these groups through twitter but really I swim in the social media tools, video and virtual worlds areas. Furthermore, even though I treat these areas as contiguous really each is its own area. Rather than being a big fishbowl it is more like we are in a habitrail. These worlds all connect through those tunnels but each section is mostly aware of the room they are in.

So I would say, yes we should ask, "How do we get out of the fishbowl or echo chamber?" But perhaps a first question is "How do we communicate across the habitrail?"

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Social Connection Across the Virtual/Physical Border

What an exciting year this is turning out to be. My official work has begun to pick up, and I'm pushing personal project internally. In the social media/startup/podcasting/tech sphere I've started to meet up with people in person. Very exciting and interesting to watch.

Online social media is an interesting phenomenon. In a sense it is like the old forums/read news and text based chats in that there is enough distance that a person who is perhaps a bit more shy can feel comfortable speaking in the virtual environment. The interesting twist is that with the addition of video and virtual worlds you begin to feel that you are interacting "for real". While this is true to some extent, real friendships and relationships are created, it has been somewhat startling when you transfer that to the physical realm.

I suppose it is a bit more startling for me. I spent about a year homebound with very little personal interaction beyond the online medium. For that time who I was in groups in online reality (whether virtual worlds or twitter or chats on blogtv etc.) was how I interacted.

The real shock came when I could finally walk well enough to go to a meet up where I knew no one and I found myself feeling uncertain and shy. (This was complicated by the fact that I wasn't sure how to introduce myself, my resume has one name, my public presence has another.) I was shocked at the way I reacted.

Then I thought of how I had acted before my convalescence. Sure I'd join in discussions in groups where I knew people but when it wasn't strictly work based I was on the shy side. Walking up to someone I didn't know and introducing myself was not really something I did.

Here I was expecting myself to act as my outgoing online self, but that hadn't been my modus operandi in the physical world. The contrast is probably why I skipped the meet up for the following couple of months. But I also reflected on my reactions (and got some combo/business cards that make introducing myself much easier.)

Today I went to the Boulder Open Coffee at The Cup. It was a great meet up. I also decided that I was going to embrace my online style and make it my in person style. It was a bit scary at times. I could tell I'm still getting the hang of it but it was promising. And I'm hoping to make it to the New Technology meet up this evening, this time with more confidence.

What I have found is that although the online networks are incredibly powerful (and can cause a person to grow) it is important to go try it out in the physical face to face world. The interaction is different. The combination of the two realms is awesome.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

The Trivial Nature of Life

The past couple of weeks I have been amazed at the dynamics of communities within the Social Media Sphere. Both the Frozen Pea Fund and also the nature of debate, such as the debates in Seesmic that have spilled out into blogs has been fascinating to watch. In a sense these things have existed in online forums and the like long before online video, but the nature of the current trivial communication mechanisms, such as Twitter and Seesmic, I think have broadened who we would encounter and how we can communicate, and in the case of video by providing tone of voice and body language.

Now I realize that in person meetings and gatherings convey a whole new level connection and people can just waste time that could be spent otherwise. That said, I have found it fascinating that these tools that enable us to easily communicate the trivialities of our lives give us more of the sense of a community or a tribe - where we might go beyond simply words and move to actions - such as raising funds for someone we've only met through 140 character snippets.

Here is a video where I talk more on the subject:

Friday, December 21, 2007

Frozen Pea Friday

So much to post about and so little time on winter-time Friday's but before I go, a quick post. Please check out the FrozenPeaFund.

This is an incredible example of how our online communities and "tribes" come together and support each other. It is more that talk, it really is connection. More on that later.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Friends, Romans and Countrymen

lend me your ears. Oh wait...that was another post but a useful opening line.
It seems that the matter of friends, especially those made in the virtual context, has been on the minds of many. I suppose some of this is spurred by the 10,000 post threads (here) and (here) to start with. But it is a topic that has come up a few times, perhaps spurred by the fact that the social media sites tend to call connections "friends". Even gtalk has joined the bandwagon.

So what is the matter of digital connections. Are there such things as digitally made friends, or are we really more "Romans" and "Countrymen" to borrow the quote. I think of Romans being a bit like the "tribal" concept that was put forward in a New York Times article this week. To some extent we are creating our "tribes" or our social circles. In each "country" we join, be it Twitter or Seesmic or Facebook. I think that the idea is an interesting one not without merit. We all, on some level, seek to belong - whether our belonging is in that of the questioner and the one who rocks the boat, or whether we just want a crowd that we hang with.

I think we can see this tribal nature in the way we chose the tools we use. Twitter I think is a classic example of it. Twitter goes down, lags, does weird stuff - we all talk about going to Jaiku or some other service, but we keep coming back to Twitter because that's where our "friends" are, or as I would posit where our "tribe" or "community" is.

In a sense it is no surprise that we have this need for gathering. In many places the concept of "neighborhood" or local community is gone. We drive away from home to our jobs and our meeting places. We live distributed across miles and miles of our daily life. We travel from one end of the country/world to the other. For many of us there is no time or space where we can have that "place where we live". And if we don't travel then it is our neighbors who do. Humans are social beings. We tell stories, we desire to connect with others, we look for our place to belong. These digital worlds and countries give us a "place" where we can exist. We can find our "Roma" or our "tribe" even as we traverse the world, we have a "foundation of community" to base ourselves on, to take with us through our cellphones and laptops.

But wait, how solid is this foundation? Is this a false hope we pin ourselves on? Is our identity slippery enough that we can make and remake ourselves again? I think that the answer is that lifetime communities, and the attendant challenges of changing our identity are a thing of the past for much of us. We can be as slippery as we'd like or as real as we like virtually or in physical space. I think these social media tools are merely where we find our need for community met for now.

So I think that many of our "friends" are more members of our tribe. That said I think that there are real friends to be made out there even through this digitally mediated medium. Real conversations do happen, and people do form connections. There are some people who I have met only over the net who I do consider friends. And I think that this makes sense too. What sense of belonging would we have if we had no friends within the medium? What kind of an audience would Brutus have had if he had called out to Romans & Countrymen. For a community to become real, for the "tribe" to exist there must be more connection than just causal acquaintance or ones attention will wane with their needs unmet and they will move on to the next digital country.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Voices and Volumes - What do You Know About?

Continuing on the local thread, I just accidentally found out about a Denver area Podcaster meetup. It's been around for years. I've searched on "denver podcast" and "boulder podcast" many times before and have not found this site before. I've even poked around on the Meetups page and reviewed more than a few weeks of the upcoming events and not seen anything on this. Only now when I've wandered over to a local seesmicer's blog, have I found out about this event.

Meanwhile, I know about Jeff Pulver's social media breakfast in Boston today. I also have heard other tweetups and social media gatherings in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and parts of the UK. All of this makes me ask why?

The only answer that comes to me is that some places have better spokespeople than other places.

Chris Brogan and Jeff Pulver are big connectors, verbal, regular posters on blogs, twitter and video venues - so we all hear about whats going on in Boston, New York & Israel.

San Francisco has its share of big names - Robert Scoble, Loic Lemeur and many others.

The UK has Loudmouthman (Nik Butler) and Phil Campbell and again, many others.

These people are verbal, visible in a global sense, and actively doing stuff. Even if I missed a tweet or two their blogs and videos and various media expressions - and the echoes on other blogs - all make sure I hear about the events that they are part of. In a sense this is the regional elitism that Eric Rice was talking about a while ago. (Yeah, which I said was really the fault of the local folks.)

So the question is, how do we address this? I imagine for people who are plugged into the local networks there is no perceived problem as they know what is going on. But what about the newly transplanted or the newly interested? How do we hook in and and how do we find out about these things. And judging by the varied attendance of some events it seems even the plugged in would benefit from more visibility.

So who do you think of as a voice from the Boulder/Denver area? Am I just not following them? How to do small local areas improve the "volume" of their local news and events so that people find them as easily as I find the "big center" events? Or even so that when I search for such events in Google they come up somewhere towards the top?

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Public, Private and Otherwise

As most of you probably know I am active on Twitter and Seesmic and Facebook and other web 2.0y sites. One of the themes that have been coming up a lot is about how we build relationships over these mediums. Loic Le Meur compares Seesmic to us all living together or being in the same room. Jeff Pulver calls it his social media living room.

I will admit I have some of those feelings. With these instant communication mediums we see into people's lives: Moments with their children, questions they have in life, ceremonies and celebrations, issues they think are important, what they are having for dinner or when they are drinking coffee. We develop a certain intimacy while never really being there physically. I mean, the ideal is that I will meet my Seesmic and Twitter friends but so far I have not.

That said, these living rooms, and bedrooms and kitchens we see are being shared on the public internet. Each tweet gets indexed by Google and our visages and words are easily brought up in a search. So that begs the question, how much do we share in public, even as we have the feel of a private space?

Last night, while my internet was down, I wrote up a post explaining why I haven't been posting which included the personal story of my past year, and ending with basically "I've been thinking lots, still have questions, am not satisfied, but time to get posting again." As you might note that post is not here. That might change, but putting those details down in my blog seemed to be too much of an exposure.

Now there are a a few points that make a blog differ from a Seesmic post or a tweet. My blog is, in a sense, where a person would go to find out more about me. Sure they might check my tweets or videos, but those sort of stream by. It is a public statement, but with so much volume as to make the information a bit of blur - at least for a human reviewing the data. So a statement here is a bit more permanent and likely read. Also, other than bits of data that slip I rarely share my questions and doubts and challenges with others, so perhaps I am just a bit less likely than most to share.

But I wonder how much people chose to show of their inner side. What makes someone comfortable to share the information? When is it appropriate? Is this sense of "private" and "public" a generational thing? a cultural thing? Do we become less sensitive to that boundary as we share more often, more consistently and more in private public areas? Or do we, in our minds, come up with our personal boundary - that we many not be aware of - and share freely on one side, and keep private what is on the other? And how do these boundaries, and the ubiquitousness of the social milieu affect how we interact in our actual private lives and relationships?

Right now all I have are questions, but I thought I would share them with you. Let me know your thoughts.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Regional Elitism & Web 2.0 - A Video Response

A video response to the thread that Eric Rice started on regional elitism.
(Scobleizer's rejoinder to Eric can be seen here. Other parts of the discussion are scattered about the web)

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Podcamp XL

Ok, I should be going to bed, but instead I'm thinking about Eric Rice's blog post about Podcamp XL. You see, when I first heard about podcamps I thought "That's cool I want one here". And the thought that usually pops into my mind shortly thereafter is "well you could arrange one." Of course the counter to that was "But I've never been to one, I hardly know what happens at one..." Now I'm thinking about it again, and when I mentioned it to my husband he thought it sounded cool. Ruh roh...

So before my "top of my head" ideas fade I thought I'd quick blog about this and share the initial thoughts.
1) Talk with the Boulder Weekly and get them involved.
2) Have the event at the Boulder Theater (I've never been in there but a lot of discussive/disruptive events seem to happen there.)
3) Boulder County Council of Arts...sponsorship? Promotion?

Other ideas will go here as they come up. Anyone in the general Boulder/Denver area interested in joining in on this? Let me know what you think. I think I'd best go sleep on it.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Tools and their Use

This past Monday I decided to poke around Linked-in and find people that I knew that I hadn't connected with. I sent out more than 20 link up requests. What I thought was interesting is that a good half dozen or so wrote me back and say "Hey how are you doing. I was wondering what you were up to." Now I'm in Linked-in by the name they all know me by, (with a couple of exceptions of people who knew me by my maiden name) and I'm the only one in Linked-in by that name, yet we hadn't made contact even with all the "Here are people you've worked with" features of Linked-in.

It just made me think, how well do we really use these social networking tools?
Are we using them to their potential, and do we see their potential? Of course, I must admit it wasn't until Monday that I actually went through my address book and added people in. Perhaps my playing with social networks has increased the value that I see in them. So what is a network worth to you?