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Lawrence Liu › Likes
Stuff We Like: Nuclear Grade Duct Tape - http://lifehacker.com/5159500...
Lawrence Liu liked this
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- M3 Sweatt
Homework project: how many followers on social networks are "real?" My initial findings are astounding, participate here as we discover what's going on:
polymath22, Nicholas James, Lorin Olsen and 115 other people liked this
Visit http://twitter.com/TechCru... and now click on each follower. How many messages have they written? I just visited about 100 and only two had written more than a single message.
- Robert Scoble
Now you know why I say followers don't matter. If I fake 100,000 accounts and follow myself with them do those accounts matter to anything? No.
- Robert Scoble
But I didn't understand just how bad the spam account problem is. On friendfeed I only follow accounts that are putting content into the system. I am only putting people into my ultra special lists (ie, the ones I read first thing in the morning) if they participate. Those are the high value accounts that make being part of this fun. But how many of those accounts do each social network have? That's what matters, not whether a blank account was produced.
- Robert Scoble
Who is a bigger fan of you then yourself. :) So if your not following yourself then why provide any content? :P </sarcasm>
- CW™
They matter because other twitter users think that you are popular because you have been followed by 100,000 users. Thus, in result will entice new followers.
- charles
this is in line with participation stats from other communities like Open Source or UGC - online a thin minority contribute (in the 5%/15% range) - but it doesn't mean they're fake - just shy or dumb
- Marc Brandsma
Beau: I wish I had a tool to delete everyone who hasn't posted at least 10 Tweets from the list of people I'm following.
- Robert Scoble
I have found that a lot of people who are on social networks like Facebook or Twitter are not really there to participate but to be the voyeur (to borrow a term). They are more interested in what others are doing but rather not share their selves. It is not an uncommon social trait to be curious to what others are doing but not want them knowing what you are doing. It's small town living on the internet as I like to say.
- Christopher Mercer
Marc: I don't agree. After visiting a few hundred of these accounts now, they sure look fake and "spammy" to me.
- Robert Scoble
Christopher: that's interesting, but is very weird. Why would you want to watch what people are saying if you don't want to participate? I wonder if anyone will cop to having such an account here?
- Robert Scoble
What's your definition of 'real'? There's a difference between spam accounts (let's say created for SOE or to get you to click on a link to just 'blast' marketing) and passive accounts, where someone is happy listening. They don't *have* to participate, most are perfectly happy just watching.
- Rachel Clarke
There are 3 types of followers - real people, PR accounts and special like you :-). On my personal twitter ( http://twitter.com/michalblaha ) I prefer real people. On my project's twitter ( http://twitter.com/ontheroadto ) I prefer mix of them. I got severel very usefull contacts for http://www.ontheroad.to from my twitter followers . Its reason why I never (rather) block any of my followers.
- News from ontheroad.to
Rachel: you make a good point, but lots of these have weird names, look like spammers, and don't participate. What value are they?
- Robert Scoble
I don't know if I really understand the problem here. Granted, if you have a lot of fake followers that makes you look bigger than you are. But otherwise, who cares? I personally follow (and follow back) people based on the quality of their posts, not on how many followers they have.
- Matthias Catón
Special followers like you are real people with unbelievable number of accounts they follow - not for PR, not for spam, but to be informed. Strange think on it (for me) is how you can handle so much unstructured information together. You know some magic which I don't know ;-)
- News from ontheroad.to
Interestingly, the few I've found so far that have posted real content have had photos on their bios/accounts. I think that's a good way to filter out spammers. "No photo, no friend." :-)
- Robert Scoble
I think the major difference between me and TechCrunch would be the people who look for me and whom I add on facebook are people I actually know. I have some very close friends who are not active users of social networking sites but use them to keep up on their active user friends. As for twitter, yes a lot of accounts follow for the purpose getting follow backs. I subscribe to the the idea that just because you followed me does not mean I will follow you.
- Christopher Mercer
There are a lot of people, at least in India, who are in strict readonly mode. A lot of them just follow interesting people and read their tweets and shares. Its almost like a substitute for Google Reader. So judging by just the tweet count would be unfair. If there were a last login time in the twitter api, it would make more sense.
- Ritesh
Matthias: well, I have been getting more and more spam into my DM column, so there's the danger of that. Yeah, there really isn't too much harm other than if you are in this to just game your follower count that people will figure out that you really don't have an engaged audience there. That will catch up with you eventually. I know I'm more likely to follow someone who has a really great set of friends/followers. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
- Robert Scoble
I think that you are most likely to follow a person who is in the field of your interest, much the same way you subscribe to a feed. I, for one, follow many of the social media geeks since the subject interests me, but I very rarely participate in discussions. I enjoy reading what others are saying and shared news and links. So I guess I am a social network voyeur (@Mercer) :)
- "Jazzperous" Isaksson
Robert - agree with you about the spammers. I block them all. I also block those who aren't automated spammers but still doing the same behaviour. They have no value for you, or me. I'm wondering what value they have for themselves, if they are like spam email where they get enough interaction to make it worthwhile.
- Rachel Clarke
I was followed last night by someone, who it took me 6 pages of back tweets to find 3 actual tweets that did not say 'thanks you for following me' targeted at followers, looks like a real person, but boy so little content, not worth following back.
- Carl Grint
I think its the amount of posts is the give away. Even if people are just taking it in I do not like the idea of passive tweeters. You have to get in and get your hands dirty.
- Sam Philp
Techcrunch has a lot of inactive followers recently because they're listed in the recommendation box for every new Twitter user. But I agree with other commenters, who follows you and how active they are is irrelevant. The real power of Twitter and all social media is in the conversation, not in the lurking.
- Stuart Dallas
On twitter I always page back through recent tweets before following someone back. Generally speaking if I find at least one message or link that's interesting I follow them. I'm not hugely bothered if I'm not followed back. It's not always bidirectional, what you get out doesn't always correspond to what you put in and that's why I find it useful.
- John Samuelson
from BuddyFeed
I think reasons to why I don't interact more, is that 1) my English is limited 2) I feel I don't know enough about the subject, but still have a great interest in it 3) I am a quiet person... Would you guys block me?
- "Jazzperous" Isaksson
"No Photo, No Friend" Sounds like a good qualifier. I can't help thinking though that there is a ton of people who try something like twitter just to see what it is, don't get it in the first 3 minutes and then give up. Shame.
- Jay McCormack
I try to participate as much as possible but being just a happily married regular "Joe" with a nuclear family may not be very interesting to most. That said, I have received benefits in the form of personal and professional growth as a direct result of participation in social networks.
- Mattb4rd
Sam, Stuart, John, Carl, bing, bing, bing. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Interesting how you can classify users based on who they are following and who is following them. The amount of interaction I'm getting here and on Twitter about this (despite it being 3 a.m. in the morning) tells me that people are finding this a real problem.
- Robert Scoble
A bunch of ghost followers can make the difference, that's for sure. Stupid as it may seem, as a presentation card when you first check someone's tweets, it works. You say, hey this guy has 10000, 20000, 60000 followers so that must be for a certain reason spammers included. But still I wonder what the use is except for a bunch of extra work. It is clear that many will hold on to your tail just to feed on the hosting tweeter but they count too. I suppose that a proper balance is ok.
- Carlos Lorenzo
Jeppe: I think it is a mixture of things. On facebook you'd never get friended because I use it for friends and family. On twitter you just would not get a follow back. Since everyone uses these applications differently it is really a contextual issue. Following me is much different than following Robert, Mike A, Doc Searls, etc.
- Christopher Mercer
Mattb4rd makes an interesting point... problem is I don't think there's such a thing as a regular 'Joe'. Everyone has something to share, a passion, a hobby, a special knowledge of some sort. It's getting beyond the 'what i had for breakfast' posts that provide the real value.
- Jay McCormack
Christoper: Yes, think you are right.
- "Jazzperous" Isaksson
Carlos: well, now that the number of followers people have has no integrity I am looking under other rocks too and finding no integrity elsewhere. Some people really try to keep their accounts clean. Others, including me, let all sorts of muck in. I think I will clean that out. Why? Because now that I'm looking at other people's followers I see that having lame followers around isn't good at all.
- Robert Scoble
Christopher: it's interesting, now that I stuck my foot in my mouth over the weekend on the Twitter suggested friends issue people who work for big brands have been talking to me about what they want on social networks. "Real" is a word I hear over and over again. Why? Because users who participate and push the brands are much more important than users who sit there and do nothing. They've already learned that, so why do we feel so compelled to gather up do nothing followers? I'm going to change that.
- Robert Scoble
John: That's exactly the approach I use. Someone follows me? I will check out his tweets to see if there's at least a few that interest me - then I will follow back. The number of followers is of secondary concern to me. As for the number of tweets, I go for the opposite: I prefer less.
- Matthias Catón
I don't follow anyone new back. Too many of them were flooding my timeline with no participation. If you want to follow me that's fine, but it's only with @ replies that you'll get me to pay attention to what you're doing. I might however drop by the blog.
- Richard A.
I found a new algorithm: the quality of your follower count is totally dependent on how many accounts have non-default pictures. The problem is that if you actually wrote that algorithm and implemented it then the spammers would quickly figure out they better put a new photo on the account.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: In my case I work according to a different algorithm. I unfollow anyone that hasn't replies a single time. I don't follow anyone new until they've exchange a few messages with me. If I want to listen to a monologue I simply go to their blog ;-)
- Richard A.
Robert: This 'particular' influx of masses of spam accounts into Twitter is relatively new. Leo Laporte spoke about it recently. As Twitter gains more and more media coverage, it becomes a more attractive place for people to produce these spam accounts. I got an email through http://thetechnewsblog.com from one of my readers, to say she had been told that they controlled my a few users, who are planning some kind of mass attack on Twitter. Who knows?
- Jim Connolly
Robert: I have been slowly coming to the same conclusion; it is not enough to be careful who you follow, you should also care about who follows you... But doesn't this mean Twitter should change the behavior of the Follow button to Ask Permission To Follow ? (or at least provide it as an option for those who want to filter their followers)
- Antoine Bertier
Does it matter whether it's a picture (like of a human) or just non-default?
- Jay McCormack
Twitter should forget about celebrity accounts and encourage dialogue. What makes any social network work is dialogue. Without conversation twitter would be gathering dust as a home server somewhere.
- Richard A.
Robert, I think in your case the nothing followers are people who have decided to user twitter (in the example of twitter) to follow your activities. In my case they likely just want to spam me (hoping I follow back) and in the one case someone used @<username> to spam me, I blocked them.
- Christopher Mercer
Jim: but look at the accounts that are following TechCrunch. Then compare to the accounts that are following me. Mine have pictures on them. Techcrunch's don't. Mine are participants who Tweet. TechCrunch's are not. It's very strange.
- Robert Scoble
Christopher: I disagree. Some accounts are gathering a lot of these "fake" accounts than my account is, for instance. Why is that?
- Robert Scoble
Robert: That's because Michael doesn't speak with his followers - just broadcasts TC posts. It's easy for spammers to 'follow' him without him noticing. You would notice it AND make some noise.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: maybe, I'm not sure that's true. But it does seem to have something to do with the new Twitter suggested friends list.
- Robert Scoble
A lot of posts are very helpful links to interesting things - which I appreciate. However it's seems really difficult to engage anyone in a real conversation or get an answer to a question.
- Breck Stewart
Robert: If a spammer follows one of those 'suggested friends', they get MORE followers themselves. These accounts are super-active right now. By being seen on those follower lists, people follow the spammers too. It's only a small percentage, but if Veronica or Michael can get 60k new followers in 14 days, the numbers these spammers can get is higher, than if they followed me. On my list, very few people would 'see' them.
- Jim Connolly
Finally some traction on this as I only brought it up on the 14th Feb ;) http://twitter.com/styleti... , as I commented on thetechnewsblog its not just about the fact they are fake and bolstering the numbers think what chaos or hram these 10's of 1000's could do to Twitter if they all started spamming or tweeting at once!?
- roger byrne
You know, there is a website that lets you unfollow inactive users and users that never posted a tweet. Twitter Karma! http://dossy.org/twitter...
- Gloson Teh
and if you look into it further the 'Norm' for these accounts is one update and all following 20-22 of Twitters suggested followers!
- roger byrne
what Christopher Mercer said, on my personal id I only follow people who I think have something interesting to say or whose info I want to see, this also includes friends and family. On my projects id I look at every follower and as long as I don't think its a spam follower I follow them also, but I don't read the posts apart from the first page when I first sign in. There I'm providing info for others. I will reply to any questions of course.
- Tina Clarke
Beau: no, thanks, I hadn't seen that yet. @ev is full of crap. These accounts are totally different than the average Twitter account. Look at my followers. Then go and look at the followers on any of the top 20 accounts. Totally different behavior (no icons, no posts). Personally I don't mind. Twitter has now corrupted itself and I really have lost all caring I used to have over that service. It's why I'm putting my friendfeed likes into Twitter now. I really have no incentive not to push everyone here.
- Robert Scoble
I bet that by the end of March that Twitter goes through and deletes all sorts of accounts. Just watch. These accounts don't help the system out. They look lame because they are lame.
- Robert Scoble
I'm real. I may be boring, but I'm real. ;) I block spammers and I don't automatically follow non-spammers back. I only follow people I am already friends with or new people I find interesting. A particular pet peeve of mine is being followed by self-gurus and social network marketing "experts". Ironically, after complaining about these "Tony Robbins types" on Twitter I was followed by the director of Robbins' films. ;)
- Eric Williams
Eric: no doubt YOU are real. But here's one of the lame accounts: http://twitter.com/Serious... -- following only 20 people. No followers. No messages. Only standard icon. This was created by a computer, not by a human being. Now, go through any of the 20 people he's following and look at the follower accounts. They are all lame! I love it, create tons of fake accounts and make your numbers higher and higher.
- Robert Scoble
"This was created by a computer, not by a human being." - As a categorical statement, I think this goes too far. It could easily be the equivalent of discussion forum lurking.
- John Craft
John: sorry, I disagree. The pattern is out of wack. I'm sure there might be a few people who exhibit this pattern, but not thousands among thousands. Also, the pattern changed a few weeks ago. Explain that.
- Robert Scoble
@john craft Bull and you know it ;) check through pages of followers in fact pick page 200 of any of the ppl and you can see how many accounts this really is that we are discussing here, you ever saw 100,000 lurkers before because this is what this amounts to! Now opposite to Robert I believe these people have no responsibility for this but also the fact there has been no action against it beggars belief why? This could seriously screw up their service!
- roger byrne
And, John, let's say you are right, that these are real humans who created on their own the same kind of account. Follow just the same 20 people. Don't change your icon. Don't post a Tweet. Etc. Etc. Are they as valuable as, say, the people who are following me who actually post, actually have attractive icons, actually follow more than just the defaults? No way, no how. They aren't "real" to advertisers. Why not? Because they exhibit no behavior that will turn into sales. THAT is what advertisers want.
- Robert Scoble
the pattern changed for all accounts at the same time chk twitter counter its 9th -11th of Feb for all these accounts...
- roger byrne
"They aren't "real" to advertisers." That, I agree with.
- John Craft
Roger: Twitter is now corrupted and we are just starting to understand the beginnings of what happens when you corrupt your community. Luckily we have a non-corrupted community here to contrast with Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Thank Robert I love Twitter and it HAS changed my life so I have no plans to leave or to accuse people of wrong doing but if it was my baby I sure would be taking care of it much more!
- roger byrne
roger: me too, but they don't listen to their real users. I guess I should have just been a user like TechCrunch. In fact, I'm starting to understand just how right Mike Arrington is when he pointed out to me that I should blog more on a service that I can control.
- Robert Scoble
This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. If I'm twittering a robot then I'm wasting my time!
- Captain Jack
Captain: nah, I've learned over and over again that blogging/twittering into the wind actually can be useful. I've Twittered things just to get them off my chest, for instance. I've also blogged things just to get them into Google so I can pull them out later. On Twitter I could get readers just by having fun with http://search.twitter.com -- no followers needed.
- Robert Scoble
Captain: it's a serious issue because this, and the very lamely developed suggested friends feature, demonstrate that there's something Rotten in the State of Denmark. But we already knew that because of how many times we have seen the fail whale over past two years.
- Robert Scoble
I find myself checking to see if someone has a blog in their profile also. So for me it's photo+blog=friend.
- Jay McCormack
As the government is so keen to do when there is wrong doing, they call for an investigation. I think its time to call for an investigation and demand answers. I for one don't want to use a system that inflates its number for personal gain. I have discovered that having control is better when social networking. Twitter reminds me of those networking lunches where everyone is expected to give 2 referrals.
- Russ Jackson
And all of these "followers" follow exactly 20 people... I'm enlightened. I was wondering what was happening to my modest Twitter account when it suddenly started attracting all kinds of unlikely followers recently - but it's probably the same thing, machines, and not a sudden burst in popularity. Oh, well. Thanks for reminding me of my FriendFeed account via Twitter.
- Terje Fjelde
Jay: that certainly works for me. Russ: I don't worry too much about it. If I can figure this out with 15 minutes of poking around so can everyone else. I am sure a bunch of these accounts will disappear soon. Twitter doesn't want to be embarrassed by this because it won't help them monetize anyway. Unless they are charging per thousand views and then advertisers will figure out the accounts aren't real very quickly anyway.
- Robert Scoble
Playing devil's advocate: Isn't it also possible that many of these "lame" accounts belong to people who just recently joined? They haven't spruced up their profiles, haven't had the courage to tweet, only follow recommended twits, and are generally feeling their way around the service before getting fruitfully involved. Of those, I bet a large number decide Twitter isn't for them and leave their accounts dormant.
- Eric Williams
Eric: it's possible, but very unlikely (it's also possible I could win the lottery four times in a row). After all, this was NOT the behavior of lurkers BEFORE Feb. 6. Why would it change on that date? You really think there are lurkers out there who'll behave exactly the same in groups of thousands? I don't. Not possible, because of how people get pulled into Twitter. You get pulled in by your friends. So, there will be some variability there.
- Robert Scoble
Robert I agree if you can figure it out in 15 minutes than everyone else can too. I was saying it tongue and cheek. It says something about those who have to inflate there numbers though. Perhaps they are lacking in something or in an area. LOL
- Russ Jackson
Sounds like you're really letting this nonsense get to you. Relax. The free market of ideas that is the net will sort it out before long. If Twitter sucks, it won't survive. Then again, I'd have expected MySpace to die a horrible death long ago. Hmm...maybe Twitter won't die, but it'll become an internet ghetto for the terminally lame (like AOL). ;)
- Eric Williams
my app works on its own as well as as the frontend for the twitter team themselves. Instead of having to report @spam and then go through all your friends to find the bastard to block.... it would auto-parse out 'potential and known' spammers into a group.. one click and your account is clean, meanwhile any new ones are sent off to a convenient way for the twitter team to once-over the account to see if its legit or if its spam.
- Brent Terrazas
Eric: online communities have been getting to me since 1985. You're right, just because something sucks doesn't guarantee its death. In fact, it can easily get much more popular, even with these flaws. That said, now I have something new to think about. It's not the end of the world. Just the end of the importance of followers. :-)
- Robert Scoble
In the last month there have actually been close to 7 full blown twitter mass account creation and/or twitter mass account spammer apps released. Some cost over $200. Regardless, everyone i Affiliate marketing is going ga-ga over this... this is literally the beginning of a new era of twitter spam..
- Brent Terrazas
I never gave a rat's ass how many people followed me anyway. As long as I have enough followers to maintain interesting conversations, I'm happy. :)
- Eric Williams
Eric: you don't need any followers to have interesting conversations. Friendfeed proves that. :-)
- Robert Scoble
This is my first real FriendFeed convo. I'm still not entirely comfortable here. Keeping track of conversations feels like too much work. Either I have to visit the web page and manually reload or use something like Twhirl and drown in a flood of data. Am I just really dense? Is there an easier way to keep up without being overwhelmed that I just don't know? Is the learning curve less steep than I think?
- Eric Williams
Are followers following someone else's follows just because they deem that person to be an influential tweeter?
- Mark Fletcher
Eric: I just use the web page and refresh.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: I don't think so. Three weeks ago I was on Twitter's top 10 list, so should be getting nailed if that's the case. I'm not getting nailed that way.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Excuse my ignorance, but surely you know someone with connections at Twitter? Ask them. There's something seriously weird going on.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: I'll ask Biz when I wake up.
- Robert Scoble
Still trying to get my head round friend feed. as far a Twitter goes, I follow a few "celebrities" and interesting people but most of my actual "tweets" are intended for my family and real life friends. I guess most people who don't know me personally won't be interested that I've just walked the dogs or I'm going to bed, but friends and family will be as they will know if it is ok to phone or visit me. My facebook is really only intended for my family.
- Andy
Robert, you and I think a lot alike so there's really nothing more I can add. It. would be nice to have some sort of threshhold setting that a person has to have nnn posts before you can follow them. But then, that could be gamed also.
- Keith Barrett
they're building them like you build blog farms.... at first while amassing quantity, you don't spam outsiders, u link up and spit out aggregated comments, then at somme point boom.. all 5k go off and spam.... onto the next 5k...etc..friending a top 10 would=ban
- Brent Terrazas
I don't twitter a lot but that is because who would find my changing nappies and going to pick up the kids from school interesting? Okay maybe one day of that but everyday the same tweets? I'm one of the ones that find other lives more interesting than my own at the moment until things start to get interesting in my own!!!! and no I'm not embarrassed to admit that.
- May
A large chunk are just people that are hoarding contacts.
- Gerard van Schip
Beau: the main goal of a private account seems to be to make the tweets private (they are do not appear in everyone, or in search for instance). The interesting side effect is that you get to filter your followers, but there is no reason to limit this feature to private accounts. The issue is not to prevent valueless accounts to get my updates (since they are meant to be public) it is rather to prevent them from polluting the list of followers that appear on my profile.
- Antoine Bertier
Almost every time I "tweet" I get several notices that so and so is now following me. when I go through to their accounts, twitter have usually deleted them or they have nonsense tweets about this or that product that i "need" to enhance my life
- Andy
What is real? I have to remind you, Robert, that we met online. And now we are real. I met @stevegillmor, @karoli, @mobilejones, and so many more people online and they are as real to me as @chelseahardaway, my daughter, who is now also my online friend. It' a blur. I know tons of my Twitter and FB friends personally.
- Francine Hardaway
from twhirl
Where's the white paper on this? You should be writing it.
- Francine Hardaway
from twhirl
I seem to have added about 50-60 followers in the last day or on Twitter, which is unusual for me. Honestly, I wonder why as I am not a heavyweight twitterer...nor do I think I post anything particularly profound or even useful. The only things I changed recently were putting a bio, blog link and headshot in, so I assume that this is what many people look for...I think the human factor is sometimes lost with the proliferation of social networking.
- John Samuelson
I have a number of accounts in places where I participate by observation. Seriously. We all pick and choose what we do with limited time and endless choices of what to do with that time. I've only been "twitter-active" for the last week or so, "twitter-dormant" for a year or two. The point is that I don't recommend writing off the silent majority as spammers or of no use. They contribute by being the audience for much of what goes on, via Twitter and other channels.
- Colin Wheeler
Are you going to blog your numbers? That would be cool if you did.
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
Also, an analogy I like using - swimming in the sea; some folk are OK to jump in where it's deep, others want to slowly inch their way into the waves, others will stand still and wait until the tide reaches their chest ... but they are all getting wet! And probably all will end up swimming to one degree or another. Well, it sort of explains my point ;-)
- Colin Wheeler
It's amazing how many fake accounts I see trying to connect with me. I'm still a small Twitter user and getting everyday a couple of spams, is way too much.
- Zack Brandit
Robert, are you trying to fight with Turing test? :)
- A.T.
Speaking only for myself: I follow a lot of people because in my position (someone who teaches new media journalism) it is a potentially valuable way of keeping up with thought leaders (like you, Robert!) ... and is increasingly replacing my use of RSS feeds. While I would also like to accumulate my own cadre of followers, at this point in time I still prefer to spend my time on longer, more thoughtful items (i.e., blog posts) than tweets. That may change in the future.
- Rich Gordon
i'm real.... just real quiet :)
- todd
I am a human :)
- Joe Dawson
I like to follow Twitter conversations from my iPhone but often don't like to type out a response if I'm away from a keyboard. And it just feels odd responding to a tweet that's been up for a while. So not sure if that makes me one of the odd ones that watches more than comments, but it works for me :)
- craterdweller
Have you seen Brooks Bayne's post on this subject: http://brooksbayne.com/post... - seems to confirm what you're saying Robert. I've been thinking of zeroing my twitter followers and asking the real people to re-follow. Bet I'd lose 50% or more.
- Leo Laporte
Maybe I should start working again on my little web app, that lists your followers and the date of their most recent tweet. I guess it's also possible to get the number of updates along with this time/date...
- Holger Eilhard
Last summer I took a look at the full feed from Identi.ca, and found that around 25% of all registered users had posted only once. Only half had posted more than 5 times, and IIRC, the 80/20 "rule" applied and ~80% of the traffic came from the top 20% of users. I'd be surprised if Twitter's stats were much different (chart: http://kshep.posterous.com/more-id...)
- Ken Sheppardson
I think there's a lot of dormant accounts. Join, use the service for a bit, then fade away. Takes too much work to maintain a lot of networking sites.
- Barry Biddlecomb
from twhirl
I think there are only 5 real people out there. :)
- mikepk
I think real <> volume. Isn't the value of this technology many frequent intersections on many different threads...Is there a map that shows the frequency of those people's interactions elsewhere? We (I) don't all have time to trawl through the feeds alll the time. It's an attention economy and we (I) split it between about 7 sources on average every day..?
- dromologue
mikepk: I'm convinced there are ~101,000 real people, as I've seen that many in one place at one time in person (Michigan Stadium.. Go Blue). The rest is all CGI. Of course there's no reason you should believe me, as I'm just part of the plot to deceive you.
- Ken Sheppardson
I'm real . Blip beep zip <CR> <LF>
- Ken Pruett
I'm real, at least I'm pretty sure I'm real.
- Aram Zucker-Scharff
from twhirl
Far better of an argument is how much traffic is truly real.
- Patricia
I think active users who are authentic = real. I have been getting lots of phonies following me lately. Get real!
- Jeremy Campbell
from twhirl
wow, such a long and winded thread discussing phenomena of followers and following. it is very simple, really. follow whom you think is interesting to you and with whom there might be possible exchange of information and life experience. I do find Robert and some of his friends quite intersting. I do however not follow the A-lister bloggers or entrepreneurs whose feeds are prevalently twitter insider info. Fake followers? That happens, it is inevitable with FF- and Twitter-like architecture. Live with it.
- Hayk H.
I find twitter is just a entertainment tool. It's better served for popular people to make fans feel like they have a live channel to their idol. Marina of hotforword.com uses twitter for such purpose. She doesn't even follow me on twr and I'm her assistant on her website. Micro blogging just waste too much time when one could spend it on adding more content to your master blog.
- Captain Jack
I'm real. But I must admit that I do a lot more following on twitter (and here) than posting. And I only follow informed people. Don't care for the silly stuff.
- lolise
This thread proves one thing, Robert: your friendfeed followers certainly are "real." :) The number of comments on this thread are a bit overwhelming.
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
It's not about "how many" - it's who, in what context, and by what percentage. Check out http://twitter-friends.com for a glimpse of the social network analytics that addresses these questions.
- Lawrence Liu
Greetings Robert, some of us use the social channel as our news source. We do not input a lot however we are consumers of the feed. Does that make us not real?
- James Tallman
James: you're real, I wouldn't worry. Here's the deal, though. "Real" people always exhibit random behavior. Always. Whenever you see 10,000 people who sign in, add the same people, don't do any posts, don't customize their icon, don't add any random friends, that can be demonstrated to be fake. Why? Cause everyone hears about Twitter from someone else and there's variability in the friends they add. At least there was before February 6. What happened after that date? Twitter's community was corrupted.
- Robert Scoble
I'd say based on recent twitter experience about 25%. I'm a relative nobody, and my followers quadrupled. My guess is they are all REAL nobodies.
- jcunwired
The challenge is that many tools use the number of followers to "rank" you and make you an influencer. Is it right? No, but we have to play with the rules we have.
- Julio F ~ @SocialJulio
For us newbies on twitter and friendfeed, it's pretty challenging navigating all the comments. A lot of interesting stuff out there but it moves so fast you almost have to be plugged in 24/7 to catch the conversation that most interests you. That's tough when we all have lives outside the Internet ;-) I'm wondering if there are unwritten "rules" I missed somewhere...How long can we be silent (attending to other business) and still be considered "real" followers?
- Donna Horne
Julio: bing. Which is why the integrity of Twitter is now gone. Advertisers might be fooled, but not for long. This world passes info around so fast it'll make your head spin so anyone who buys advertising (or hands out access or something else like review units) based on Twitters follower numbers is lame and deserves to be ripped off.
- Robert Scoble
I believe twitters integrity is being challenged by its own success and spamming, hopefully this opens up the market for friendsfeed and 3rd party filtering applications.
- Carl Plant
Carl: Twitter's integrity is being challenged by its own stupid decisions and lame algorithms. But they probably will just arrogantly write off this as the ranting of someone who was punished by them. Which is true.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - bingo!
- Susan Beebe
I'll only follow if people have made the effort to upload a photo, sent at least a few messages to show me they're going to give me something to follow and most of all - dont proclaim they are the best at anything / use their twitter account as a billboard..
- Matt Randles
also, a tool to go through existing contacts and see those who have less than 10 updates or say no updates in the last 90 days ... with intention of removing would be cool, unfortunatly the twitter api limits mean running it would have to be low process and could take a long time..
- Matt Randles
Qwitter: Find Out When You're Offensive ( http://mashable.com/2008... )
Lawrence Liu and Mark Dorgan liked this
Seattlians: What's a good, not too expensive sushi place in the area?
Mike, Lawrence Liu, Brian Daniel Eisenberg and 3 other people liked this
um - not too expensive? what is your budget?
- InPerpetualMotion(Gina k)
Are you downtown? Check out Shiro's (first link on my map: http://maps.google.com/maps...)
- Lindsay
And time. If after 10 pm, I have a suggestion- Dragonfish. before... well, seattle has disappointed me in the past, there is Wasabi bistro in the downtown/ beltown area, but its more on the expensive side.
- InPerpetualMotion(Gina k)
My favorite is Chiso! http://www.chisoseattle.com/chiso...
- Rochelle
Alex, are you in Seattle for a couple of nights? Might I recommend Zigzag Cafe, a great place to go and explore fine spirits that you might not get elsewhere? One of the best bartenders to have crossed paths with in my lifetime. Website: http://zigzagseattle.com/
- jcunwired
Akiva also likes Village Sushi: http://www.villagesushiseattle.com/
- Rochelle
I can be anywhere in Seattle area. And I don't want to spend more than $80 for two people. I'll take a look at the suggestions so far, thanks!
- Alex Scoble
Dang...sushi in Seattle is expensive. $5 for yellowtail nigiri? Ouch...
- Alex Scoble
I can't think of the name of it but there's a sushi bar across the street from the Dix Burger near the Key arena....the Blue Water Taco is right close to it.. That's a good place.....
- Live4Emma (L4S)
If you can manage the long jaunt to Tacoma, Fujiya is quite good, and very reasonable. http://www.fujiyatacoma.com/
- Bren, Not Grinchy
Wasabe in Belltown has pretty cheap lunch combos and is TASTY
- Jason Preston
That place at 1st street- think it is Shiro's. Amazing. And Seattle sushi is *the best* anywhere. Seriously, you get a higher quality than what other cities pass off.
- anna sauce
I think we are going to try Kiku Sushi http://maps.google.com/maps... Prices are OK and it's very close to my friend's house in Bellevue. It also seems to be getting good reviews.
- Alex Scoble
Anna's right. Our sushi is second-only to Japan. I heartily recommend Chiso and Village. Haven't been to Shiro's but it's supposed to be good. Also, Kisaku in Tangletown is supposed to be good and is also cheaper than the others.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Bellevue has some not-bad sushi places. Little hole in the walls. I used to go to a place on 148th that was unassuming at best.
- anna sauce
Tangletown?
- Alex Scoble
Wait a minute... 'Seattlians'? Your bro lived here for how many years? It's 'Seattlites.' ;) If you'll be in Bellevue, you have to go to Seastar. 108th and 2nd.
- Christian Anderson
LOL, anna..."some not-bad sushi places"...now that's what I call a glowing recommendation, hehe.
- Alex Scoble
OK OK. You can see I spent a lot of time eating sushi in seattle. My fave was the Saito's, that's the one, out on 1st ave. in Belltown. The head chef of Nikko hotel's wife's spot. It's down-home but *really* good. The story is that Japanese immigrate to Seattle more than any other US town because Rainier looks like Fiji.
- anna sauce
Where's Belltown? Why does the Seattle area have all these funny names...Tangletown, Belltown, etc.
- Alex Scoble
it's slightly north of downtown along 1st ave - re: names, because they're this sprawly city with lots of natural coastlines dividing up the place, which makes odd little islands of township areas
- anna sauce
http://www.yelp.com/biz... it's on 2nd between lenora & blanchard
- anna sauce
OK, I take back my recommendation. I think sushi restaurants change too quickly and it's been too long. This yelper recommends some east-side ones, and you really shouldn't drive downtown for something you could get out there... Kisaku or Izumi. Also, Saito is good but I consider Shiro's better.
- anna sauce
When we were in Seattle over the summer, we tried this place in Tukwila, not too far from Southcenter Mall, called Miyabi. It was great. Very authentic Japanese atmosphere, the food was fresh and yummy, and it seemed to have many Japanese patrons, which is a key factor that I consider when finding new sushi restaurants. If we ever go back to Seattle, we'll definitely go to Miyabi again. I don't think they had ramen, though.
- Cheryl Jones
BTW, if you've never been, go to Uwajimaya in downtown Seattle. It's a Japanese supermarket with a big food court and an awesome Japanese bookstore. I spent lots of money in the bookstore, and could've easily spent much more if I hadn't restrained myself.
- Cheryl Jones
Also - Panama Hotel- old Japanese sento bathhouse and has a quirky history. Still a local place, near Uwajimaya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... and http://www.banane.com/2008...
- anna sauce
We have an Uwajimaya here in Beaverton.
- Alex Scoble
You can't beat Mashiiko: http://www.sushiwhore.com/webcam... in west seattle. Plus they have a live webcam!
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Yeah, I've been to Mashiko with my brother, Robert. It's good but too expensive.
- Alex Scoble
I Love Sushi in Bellevue is pretty good, unassuming... hole in the wall for sure, but good and reasonable. NE 8th & 118th or so http://bellevuemain.ilovesushi.com/
- Bren, Not Grinchy
Also been to one of the I Love Sushis, but it wasn't a hole in the wall. Sushi there was also good.
- Alex Scoble
Chiso's is one of my favorite places to eat in town, period. Saito's on 2nd (I think) is also pretty good.
- Deepak Singh
Second on i Luv Sushi or Rikki Rikki in Kirkland
- Ryan
We ended up eating at Kiku Sushi in Bellevue which is right next to the Uwajimaya in Bellevue. It was pretty good.
- Alex Scoble
Excellent!
- anna sauce
@Ryan totally +1 on Rikki Rikki & i Luv Sushi
- anna sauce
im burning out.
Lu Tao, peter corbett, Roberto Bonini and 7 other people liked this
feeling the same way but must keep on like @garyvee said at web 2.0 keynote ....passion
- Wayne Sutton
rest...rest...rest
- Susan Beebe
Take Friday off.
- Louis Gray
Reduce your Twitter and FriendFeed usage, and engage more at that trampolin place in Santa Clara.
- imabonehead
Yup...been there. With my bipolar, I see hardcore burnout about every two years.
- Stephen Pierzchala
imabonehead. I have, look at my activity and on my blog --I'm barely here compared to previous
- Jeremiah Owyang
Definitely can relate. Do what Louis said! Heck I just might!
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Twitter-free Fridays, man
- Jesse Stay
Been there. Done that. Many times over. You really need to stop and take a break for at least 3 days being totally disconnected. The world will still be around when you return. :-)
- Lawrence Liu
I am in the opposite rhythm. I am working my butt off but having a ton of fun with new ideas that - if I can execute - will really have an impact.
- Steve Rubel
It depends on what part of what you do, but usually burn out comes when reward doesn't outweigh the work. Maybe you're secretly not happy with something? Or something is too much? Take a day and talk with a good trusted advisor or friend. It'll help.
- Patricia
my blog: Is social networking as pervasive as we think it is?: Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed .. http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_...
Lawrence Liu liked this
Zdnet responds to my post on the future of CMS and Social Software, wow they're fast http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL...
Kawika Holbrook, Eric Schlissel, John Cass and 18 other people liked this
Large CMS vendors are similar to message board vendors (Propsero, Web Crossing) who have run out of customers and find their market vaporizing. They have no CHOICE but to retool and add "social" to their offerings. This is all part of "bringing social to software" the repercussions will reverberate throughout the software world. In the beg of Aug we'll be able to put the Facebook F8...
more...
- Marc Canter
Good points Marc, I agree that it software should be socialized. This statement is not true however: "who have run out of customers and find their market vaporizing."
- Jeremiah Owyang
Large CMS vendors are actually doing very well. New CMS projects are being driven by companies looking to better use content to improve the customer experience. This includes adding targeting/personalization capabilities, website optimization, RIA, etc.
- Tom Wentworth
Good post (http://is.gd/J7x) - couldn't agree more! :-) I recently theorized "ECM+SocialComputing=KM 2.0" but now I see it as SICA (Seamlessly Integrated Contextual Awareness) - http://friendfeed.com/rooms....
- Lawrence Liu
for goodness sakew - what makes Jeremiah think he' that important?
- Dennis Howlett
from twhirl
Oh Dennis, you always make me smile, you were the first to anoint me on Zdnet (and prob not the last), an excellent rebuttal by the way. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett...
- Jeremiah Owyang
The only way I am likely to anoint you is...OK - let
- Dennis Howlett
from twhirl
You didn't complete your thought Dennis, eh? In either case, welcome back from your long deserved vacation. I found the best way to come back to work was to ease back into it.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Sarbanes Oxley is preventing many companes from going social
- paul mooney
you forgot the wealth of open source cms solutions out there, much easier to extend social features within those - as for desire for enterprise to add social to the toolkit offered to employees, desire yes but resisting due to ignorance, fear and risk tolerance - needed though to provide better collaboration - think of something as simple as ff for those you work closely with
- mike "glemak" dunn
Good point Mike, thanks
- Jeremiah Owyang
your welcome jeremiah - good post btw - i think this is a critical need for enterprise it relevance on a go forward basis especially as gen y enters workforce - they work differently, expect toolkits similar to what they get personally - to many it practitioners are blind to this requirement - if you're on ff reading this i assume you're not btw ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
We all know that there are values embedded in software. The values in a traditional CMS are straight out of the industrial era. These are in direct conflict with the embedded values of social software. I see a huge disconnect, and think that attempts to blend such "different" types of solutions is like trying to combine oil and water.
- Kevin Gamble
Clickability, a CMS SaaS vendor, has a bunch of media and enterprise clients. They offer social media tools: http://www.clickability.com/product... . Also, their "Print This, Save This, Share This" tool you see on most news media sites may have been the first example of "social media." (disclosure: I work for their PR firm).
- Kawika Holbrook
Mail2FF is cool. http://friendfeed.com/share...
GlennIsaac, Dave Dugal, Jonathan Higgins and 33 other people liked this
If I weren't in my jammies right now I'd try sending a picture.
- Leo Laporte
from email
Don't let that stop you. You could also send an attached graphic to test. It's a great product.
- Louis Gray
Louis, what makes it even greater is that the idea is "atomic" simple and very handy
- directeur
from NoiseRiver
It works like a charm. Keep in mind, though, 1.5Mb filesize limit. Those raw 8Mpx pix just won't make it. ;-)
- Jim Stanger
very nifty indeed
- maxim shevertalov
from twhirl
Leo, I think you could really make a strong push for people moving to FF.
- Ryan Cates
I've thrown myself on those rocks before. I keep wondering how long before people start wandering away from Twitter. I've gradually phased it out and phased in FF myself. But I still use Twitter to broadcast - I have 6x the followers there. The two are really symbiotes.
- Leo Laporte
I like the support for attached images very much!
- ※Fu※
symbiotes. i like that. mutually beneficial. totally agree Leo.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
I've wandered away from Twitter. They've could have rebuilt it from scratch by now. What gives?
- Dan Lovejoy
We need to crowd source the TWiTnation for something on the Mac to bring our Twitter follows over to FF.
- Ryan Cates
:-)
- Mitchell Tsai
try twshot as well. twshot.com. feed to twitter with short URLs from your browser. :)
- Goktug Okan Oguz
oh.... my.... this is really nice.
- Jason Calacanis
“Make sure and grab the updated Content Rating for MOSS 2007 from MSIT http://is.gd/GMI” - http://friendfeed.com/e...
Joining Dots and Lawrence Liu liked this
J Allard - Chief Experience Officer: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecl...
Lawrence Liu, Sprague D and Alan Cheslow liked this
J = cool dude! I had privilege of spending a day w/ him at an offsite mtg earlier this yr. He said, "Be angry/intentional!" :-)
- Lawrence Liu
MashPoint Demo - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Kanwal and Lawrence Liu liked this
Nice! Was looking for a summary for what this tool can do, and found this by accident. Looks like it could be a potential alternative to the BDC.
- John Ferringer
This is a good demo. Would love to check this out one of these days
- Kanwal
Office Zealot - http://www.officezealot.com/Pages...
Lawrence Liu liked this
Man, the new site redesign built on SharePoint looks great!
- John Ferringer
Higher !nnovation: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server May Be The Last Server You'll Ever Need For Business and Learning - http://higherinnovation.spaces.live.com/blog...
Lawrence Liu liked this
Wow, very illuminating review of SharePoint's capabilities for higher education.
- John Ferringer
SharePoint Team post How We Did It: Christian Children’s Fund extranet powered by .. http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepo...
John Ferringer and Lawrence Liu liked this
Seriously good read. One of the best HWDI guest blog entries that I've had the pleasure of posting.
- Lawrence Liu
Why Microsoft Should Bring Facebook-like Look to SharePoint | Advice and Opinion - http://advice.cio.com/c_g_lyn...
Lawrence Liu liked this
If you could change or introduce one thing for SharePoint, what would it be?
Lawrence Liu, Urs Bertschy and John Ferringer liked this
synchronous collaboration on documents and the ability to pull a single RSS from an entire site....via feedalizr
- Angi Lundy
Master page / stylesheets are horrendously complicated looking and scared our web designers so much they wouldn't touch it and we had to do it ourselves. ;-) Definitely some improvements to be made there. And buy Telerik editor and put that in the CMS editor instead of that clunky one that ships out of the box. Would be a killer then.
- Pete Gilbert
Oops, that was two things - sorry!
- Pete Gilbert
Simplified admin interface. The Central Admin site has so many things stashed in so many places (search admin is so convoluted!), its next to impossible to keep everything straight. Not to mention the other items that you have to find in the Site Settings for a site collection.
- John Ferringer
"single RSS from an entire site" - Angi, NewsGator's Social Sites currently provides that. :-) You can also try a free open source tool at http://www.codeplex.com/SPRSS.
- Lawrence Liu
SPRSS: nice - thanks LLiu, you are always a fount of information.
- Angi Lundy
ditto on the synchronous collaboration on a doc. I wanna see word/excel/ppt completely interactive.
- Jeff DeVerter
Only one? How 'bout a few. Make rolling-up information from multiple sites easier. CQWP was a great start on this, but it needs to be so much more. I know, CorasWorks has great solutions in this area, and relying on partners to provide some "advanced" functions is a solid strategy. But I think this should be more of a core capability. How about make RSS reader work without requiring...
more...
- Mark Arend
All templates should be changed from a <table>-based to a <div>-based layout with well structured and clean sytesheets (there's a lot more but this is the first that came up to my mind)
- Urs Bertschy
Well if you're going for more than 1 feature, a good exercise is ¨if you had $100 to spend...¨ 1$ on 100 features vs $100 on 1. I used this approach in my ol' MS days :-) great way of getting a customer down to 3 things they most want to see in a product and the money split indicates how big a difference there is between each feature that makes the final cut
- Joining Dots
BTW, my one thing? Classification, preferably with Auto- in there too. SharePoint had it in the past and lost it due to perf issues. Would be great to see it come back, without needing to begin with F and end in T.
- Joining Dots
Intranet Articles — Prescient Digital Media - intranet consultant, intranet consulting, intranet planning and Internet planning. - http://www.prescientdigital.com/article...
Lawrence Liu liked this
Check out the author's comments in the "THE UGLY" section. The perspective is, quite frankly, stunning & comes across as out of touch to me. Are they sure they're discussing MOSS 2007?
- John Ferringer
Yes, whilst MOSS would deserve some commentary under 'Ugly', the comment ¨I’ve yet to see an effective implementation of SharePoint as an enterprise intranet platform for a medium to large-size organization. It’s simply not a mature enough or robust solution…yet.¨ is not an issue I would have picked.
- Joining Dots
Can DataPortability.org become any more irrelevant? - http://tommorris.org/blog...
joergkurtwegner, Francesco Levorato, Earle Martin and 11 other people liked this
I am among the crowd that was excited about the effort when it started. Became very clear quickly that it was not going anywhere. As many have written, lots of smart, cool people were involved (e.g. Tom Breslin) but there was just too much cult of personality and the goals and efforts were far from what I was hoping for.
- Deepak Singh
Like I said sometime ago, DP.org is just a cluster-you-know-what .. from what I can tell as an outside observer. What matters is actually implementations of data portability, and many companies have already done that and will continue to do more of that because .. well, their users (not some A-list hypesters) are demanding it.
- Lawrence Liu
Speaking of data portability, WHERE THE F*CK is the permalink for each FriendFeed item??? [Update: Ah, found it .. under the "Move" drop-down menu. My bad. :-)]
- Lawrence Liu
Lawrence: you can link to the entire comment cluster, not to individual comments. Use the "More" menu to get a permalink.
- Robert Scoble
Thanks for posting this kind of things! I am no A-Lister, and what's sad is whatever I do here to promote these kind of things it just doesn't work... Why? Go figure... I posted an invitation on the DP ML to join a room here, I still wonder who joined, who will, and who will not :( [EDIT] If someone sees Chriss Saad, tell him to avoid promoting contextual ads with attention profiling, please do it for me :)
- directeur
I was involved with DP back when it was launching but have slacked off a bit once it grew beyond my scope. It's a massive topic and now the big players are waging DP warfare (Google, MySpace, Facebook, etc). DP isn't irrelevant, it's just that it will take lots of time to implement. Interesting, FriendFeed came out of nowhere.
- Mike Reynolds
@directeur - I've signed up for your DataPortability room here on FF - http://friendfeed.com/rooms...
- Mike Reynolds
DP is going to make a comeback. I've learned some stuff is happening behind the scenes that's very positive.
- Robert Scoble
@Mike Reynolds: Thanks! And yes, you're right! DP is so big to be seen as a monolithic subject, I for one, am (a bit) specilized in APML, I like it :)
- directeur
@Robert: Why don't you share the love? :)
- directeur
@directeur - APML is a very interesting topic to me too.
- Mike Reynolds
I wish for all the criticism of DataPortability, we could instead channel that energy into actually contributing to the cause <sigh>
- Elias Bizannes
@DaveTaylor I'm not all that interested in people who are "marketing themselves". Much more interested in people doing great things.
Noah Carter, Thomas Knoll, Phil G and 6 other people liked this
So, what great stuff have *you* done since Technorati, which hasn't one anything great for a long while?
- Lawrence Liu
Lawrence: you missed that Dave started a new company making personalized travel guides which are great: http://www.offbeatguides.com
- Robert Scoble
Ending Her Bid, Clinton Backs Obama - NYTimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/2008...
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Kim, Lawrence Liu, Atul Arora and 3 other people liked this
"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton formally threw her support behind Senator Barack Obama on Saturday, clearing the way for Mr. Obama to head into the general election with a plan to challenge Senator John McCain in typically Republicans states."
- Mario Olckers
I actually got the Silverlight BluePrint for SharePoint samples to work - http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild...
Lawrence Liu liked this
Why noise will be tackled by scaling down the social media conversation - http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2008...
Mitchell Tsai, Steven Hodson, Glenn Batuyong and 25 other people liked this
It ties in with a theme Scott O'Raw hit earlier today on FF http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Alexander van Elsas
Well said as always. As I said before, the global conversation won't go away but we will learn what is important and only focus on what we need to.
- Colin Walker
Just posted on your blog but will copy/paste here: Excellent post (as usual, damn you ;) ). Thanks for the mention. I totally agree that following people for the sake of it is an exercise in futility. Brand Scobleizer will, no doubt, thunder along regardless of what you or I say, however.
- Scott O'Raw
agreed, but the problem is that there are too many good people to follow
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
from twhirl
@Sprague, Google fits in just like any other filtering system. It'll help you to find answers to straight forward questions like "Who is Barack Obama". But it will be much more difficult to get to a place where politically engaged people are discussing their personal views regarding the vision of Obama. Filtering or search won't help there as the amount of hits increase dramatically.
- Alexander van Elsas
Scott thanks (I think ;-) ) Actually, the point isn't that we must follow less people, that is a personal choice. Robert Scoble wouldn't do that and that is fine. But in general I'm inclined to think that as millions start to participate the concpe tof having many people to follow in order to get enough signal (or noise, whichever you want) will be a strategy we can't keep up. Add the mobile aspect to the equation and we get smaller more immersed communities. Am I right?Heck I can't look into the future ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
@Dobromir that sounds like a luxury, not like a problem to me. If the people are good, the quality is good, then you would probably not experience an overflow of useless stuff right ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
whats a "social media conversation"? is it different than a "conversation"?
- Jeremy Toeman
Alexander: you define yourself by who you follow. If you only follow your family, that defines you. If you follow a crowd, like I do, that defines you too. One is not necessarily better than the other, you just gotta decide for yourself what kind of inputs you want.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, very true. But I'm not really talking about who to follow, that is a personal choice indeed. I just think there will be less following, but more targeted. If 1 Bln people are engaging, then there will be just too much great stuff around. Everyone, even you Robert, then will have to scale down a bit and try to reach that critical point where you can still engage meaningfully, and at the same time get the good stuff to you asap.
- Alexander van Elsas
Robert, I do like your view that you define yourself by who you follow. I am guessing when the conversation becomes as big as predicted, people are bound to stat making choices and limit to some point both their own input and the "noise (love that word)" of others. Maybe our own profiling will be much more targeted, because we are then forced to make choices ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Jeremy The biggest potential difference is the scale they can reach. Social media overcomes time and space boundaries we normally have in the Physical world. Try having this conversation with 1000 people at your home ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
I already do exactly that. I don't follow everyone. Just early adopters who are interested in Tech. That is why 12000 follow me here but I am only following 2700.
- Robert Scoble
Aha, someone was already asking if there were limits to the information you can handle Robert. I said I'd ask ;-) But the interesting question is, what if about 10.000 early adopters join in from China, 20.000 from India, another 10.000 from Russia, etc,etc. What would you do then? Can you elaborate on that?
- Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander - will they be posting in a language Robert can read?
- Hutch Carpenter
@hutch Sure, and if they don't, Google will have figured out automatic translations by then. There will be more, no matter what language
- Alexander van Elsas
Pretty obvious stuff -- people at the "head" of social media (those who subscribe to hundreds of feeds and/or just the "talk show hosts" like Scoble and Pirillo) get a lot of noise while the people at the "tail" (those who subscribe just to their core circle of friends and/or trusted colleagues) get much less noise and relatively higher percentage of insight.
- Lawrence Liu
Lawrence, you may be right. But that equation might not hold when millions join in. The numbers would be amazing. We all need to watch out where to join in by then. But it's certainly a much bigger problem for the early adopters.
- Alexander van Elsas
It's difficult for me to contemplate FF or some other service with a billion users. But let's say it can happen. The first thing I'd think about would be the filters: they'd have to let me cut the universe of users and content pretty finely. I think you're right that we'd have to scale back. At the same time, though, I like finding unanticipated useful information in my stream. A fancy, robust filtering tool might provide both.
- Tom Landini
Nintex Reporting 2008 Launched - http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r...
Lawrence Liu liked this
I'm interested in seeing how this useful this tool is. Joel's certainly right, the current admin reporting story for SharePoint leaves a lot to be desired.
- John Ferringer
I wasn't allowed past airport security at Heathrow Terminal 5, as my t-shirt had a picture of a gun on it. It was a picture of a transformer holding a gun. - http://reddit.com/goto...
arty, Kreg Steppe, Robin Barooah and 41 other people liked this
id say "arrest me" and make money off the interviews and media attention
- Tyler Gillies
Was the transformer looking menacing at the time?
- Damien Franco
This is what happens when you put poorly defined rules in the hands of an underachiever with a double-digit IQ and an inferiority complex. What's next? Requiring passengers to be fully anaesthetised when they fly?
- Andrew Terry
no matter what I wear ... my full name always gets me SSSS on my boarding ...
- Raza
from Alert Thingy
dont mind them, just transform away!
- Alemsah Ozturk
from Alert Thingy
*ashamed to be English at this point*
- Slippy "WildBeard" Lane
this sounds like USSR in last years of its existence... tho, for me all *Western world* in general looks as "USSR in last years of existence" -- all this crisis from mil overpsending, problems with wars abroad, domestic idiots en masse, etc
- A.T.
In the UK now, a picture of something is the same as the thing itself. It's the law.
- Michael Randall
from twhirl
@michael, what have we become?
- Tyler Gillies
Next time come to acquire the tickets wearing a t-shirt with money. A picture of money.
- 9000
Maybe because it was Optimus Prime.. If it had been Bumblebee, Britain's favorite and most fuel-efficient Autobot, you'd be OK...
- Chris Reed
Whoah. The British government is getting more retarded with every passing day. This makes the James Bond movies even more unreal than they were.
- Raoul Pop
I wouldn't want you on my plane- your clearly a dangerous terrorist who is going to take us down with your shirt gun.
- Chris Hollander
Well first they have to make the thing illegal. Then they have to make a fake representation of the thing illegal. Then they have to make talking about it illegal. Then they have to make a picture of the thing illegal. Only THEN can they make the picture in your head illegal. You can't expect to implement thoughtcrime overnight, people!
- Karim
Some bits of the UK system are a bit weird at the moment, we've got councils 'spying on individuals right now' - http://is.gd/oLt
- Andy Davies
Actually, if I'm honest, something about that story screams "made up"....lol
- Slippy "WildBeard" Lane
Now covered by the BBC and more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2... http://news.google.co.uk/nwshp...
- Simon
More than meets the eye...
- Clare Dibble
Anesthetizing travlers pre-flight would solve all sorts of problems. Plus you could stack 'em up like cordwood, get lots more passengers on each flight.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason: Cory Doctorow once suggested the same thing on a podcast (TWiT, or Mac Break Weekly, maybe) He called it something like Ninja Airlines. A ninja would shoot you with a tranquilizer dart, pack your stuff, and put you on the plane. Once you arrived, he'd give you the antidote and slip out the window before you completely came to.
- ha3rvey (needs soup)
Cory++
- Jason Wehmhoener
that is ridiculous, will post to http://tcritic.com
- karl
Yah, covered by the press and the BBC now, so I revise my earlier declaration of shenanigans. Still, it's not policy, it's just one officious, ignorant, jumped up little oik with a rule book and the power to tell people what to do. We call them "jobsworths," as they can be identified by their cry of "it's more than my job's worth to let you through with that on."
- Slippy "WildBeard" Lane
omg You got to be kidding me
- john conroy
NASA Phoenix Lander Finds Water On Mars! [Mars Phoenix Lander] - http://feeds.gawker.com/~r...
David Cook, martin english, Ted and 19 other people liked this
I wish when you re-share on Google Reader it would show that you liked it on FriendFeed
- Jesse Stay
Cool! Proof that Mars has a 7-Eleven and the Slurpee machine is leaking....
- Chris Reed
That's where the extra-terrestrial life has been lurking, in the Slurpee machines! I had a suspicion.
- Shellee
The state of Enterprise 2.0 and why we need new stories - http://thenextweb.org/2008...
Lawrence Liu liked this
New York Times Foreclosures Graphic - http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mi...
Mitchell Tsai, Richard Shulman, Lawrence Liu and 6 other people liked this
Interesting graphic but sub prime is really just the start of the dominoes.
- AJ Kohn
What AJ said.
- Anthony Citrano
of recovery. There will be no huge disaster.
- Soulhuntre
from twhirl
@Soulhuntre: ARM-Reset doesn't look bright. Lull in late 2008, then nasty in 09-10.
- AJ Kohn
There will be issues and problerms, no doubt whiel things adjust - but the nightmare scenario of a large scale recalibration doesn't seem int he cards.
- Soulhuntre
from twhirl
@Soulhuntre: I'd agree that a large scale recalibration likely won't occur (a good deal of that has already happened.) But a 2-4 year slightly negative to neutral home value trend is a good possibility.
- AJ Kohn
this will be a very-regional phenomenon. the next wave 09-11 will be nasty as it will be more investment properties and second homes bought by people with good credit using Alt-A loans like option arms and interest only loans. people just let go of these properties when these loans adjust. at least with subprime the homes are mostly owner occupied which give people a reason to fight to hold on to them.
- Morgan
So so SO glad we moved outta there (2005) before the crashed started!
- Lawrence Liu
Agreed - things will get sticky for a while. I can't help but feelt hat many seemed to want a full on collapse so they could scream "I told you so!" :)
- Soulhuntre
from twhirl
"Silverlight to shine in NBC's Olympic's coverage" on News.com - http://on10.net/blogs...
Lawrence Liu liked this
Battered Yahoo Admits It Overplayed Hand; Open To New Microsoft Talks - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008...
Lawrence Liu liked this
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