Ryan Brymer › Likes

I noticed that you wrote "when we realize that the world doesn't care" instead "if". Perhaps many of us do drink the KoolAid more than we should but... it's hooked us for a reason.. - Mark Dykeman

Perhaps I should have qualified it with "in the same way we do" but the gulf between early adopter and Joe Public is huge so crossing that boundary is an enormous challenge. Can we do it? - Colin Walker from fftogo

Colin - an area I think about is the application of social media to solve problems. For me, that includes social media in the workplace. For Fred Wilson, it's how social media can solve hunger, etc. Social media as a facilitator of personal relationships is also quite valuable. Looking at all the kids texting one another and hanging out on MySpace and Facebook. That's a gateway to the world of social media. Older generations may not participate. But the next ones will. - Hutch Carpenter

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

http://blog.kingsley2.com/2008... - Kingsley Joseph from twhirl

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

Interesting post, and it's good to see some balance, after all the huge amounts of FF-hype... - Iain Baker

It's not so much a case of balance but more a warning and not just for FF. - Colin Walker

It's surprising how quickly things can change but we don't realise it as we are going along for the ride. - Colin Walker

I like hearing such level-headed commentary regarding building a service primarily for early adopters, and how communities can change the original intent of a service. Good stuff, Colin. - Nathaniel Payne

Thanks Nathaniel. I think we need to rethink where this is all going and then once we're comfortable we can move on to really making the distinction between what we can do with it all rather than what it does. - Colin Walker

Great stuff Colin - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

This is also good advice for those of us who are 'evangelizing' social media to build community in groups who have NOT YET tried. I know that I will take this perspective into account as I do so! - Thomas Ho from fftogo

That's the whole idea Thomas - setting out the stall correctly from the start. - Colin Walker

stall? is that some British figure of speech? - Thomas Ho from fftogo

Julian, or perhaps this is the way to deal with it. - Colin Walker

Serendipity is a good thing. What's hot when you log in. I do go back and check some things after I've been off for a while. But I'm comfortable with only seeing what's going on periodically. - Hutch Carpenter

Hutch, that's where things like Google Reader come in - rather than have to deal with everything in real time you can go back over your feeds at your leisure as all the unread stuff is just waiting for you. - Colin Walker

Downright philosophical, Colin. I think your idea of abandoning Twitter as a conversation tool (as opposed to a broadcasting tool) is a good one. Meanwhile, the conversations are ready and waiting for you to jump back in. - Mark Dykeman

Mark, I've just come to think that Twitter is now being used 'incorrectly' and perhaps this is what's causing them so many problems. My focus is firmly on FF - at least until another proper communication tool comes along ;) - Colin Walker

This was an excellent post. I've been harping on how social media is supposed to be enhancing our enjoyment of the web - not becoming this addictive thing we "have to" do. Unplugging, whether temporarily or periodically, is really great for gaining perspective...It's also great for getting fresh air, seeing the sunshine, spending time with family and friends, and so much more. My dogs seem to like it, too. :) - Sarah Perez