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The Future of Twitter: The Public Conversation Backbone

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 03:15 PM CDT

This afternoon I was reading Jessica Vascellaro’s post about Twitter going mainstream. One of the main topics highlighted in the post is how businesses are taking advantage of Twitter. As the question of how Twitter is going to make money has been heavily discussed of the past few weeks, I’ve begun to consider what opportunities lie ahead for the company.

Twitter As the Platform for Conversation

I’ve been thinking more and more about many of the benefits provided by Twitter and what opportunities are available. The most amazing thing taking place from Twitter is the tracking of public conversation. I personally believe that this is amazingly transformational in the globally networked landscape. The fact that I can monitor all the discussion taking place about any given topic instantly is huge.

While there is a value in being able to talk privately, the public conversation which was previously unheard can now be heard by hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals. In terms of the ability to connect individuals, Twitter is extremely powerful for finding others with similar ideas. While we can debate the impact of constantly communicating with like-minded individuals, there is no doubt that the impact of this platform is massive.

What I’ve begun to think about is the power of Twitter as a platform for public conversation everywhere. Just last week I wrote about the CBS social viewing room and one of the largest issues was that there was no conversation about many of the shows that I viewed. What if the service has tapped into Twitter and aggregated all the conversation taking place by users about individual shows?

Currently, that is only one option and much of the conversation isn’t active as users are simply tweeting that they are in the act of watching any given show, hardly a valuable addition to any conversation.

Public Conversation Adds Immense Value

I think what many Twitter users have begun to realize following the initially narcissistic user base is that a lot of value can be derived from quickly sharing information with others. There is a conversational aspect as well as the ability to influence minds. I think that as individuals we are only beginning to recognize the power of social technology.

As I wrote this morning, it has become clear that social networks are still highly inefficient. That’s because we are still figuring out how to use them. The same goes for Twitter but I believe that we will see more integration with Twitter from external media sources. The future of interactive media is already here and among a small portion of the population that interaction is taking place on Twitter.

The company will need to continue expanding its reach including the integration with blog comments, and other forms of media. The more public conversation which is distributed through a centralized, searchable platform provides a lot of value. Once Twitter is assumed as that backbone I personally believe that there are countless monetization option available.

How do you envision the future of Twitter? Do you think it makes sense to use Twitter as the single platform for all public conversation?

Social Networking is Still Inefficient

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 10:20 AM CDT

I was reading an article from last week about how the US military plans on leveraging social networks and I began thinking about the inefficiencies of social networks. Social networks are supposed to connect us in ways never previously available. Just as the internet as a whole is transforming interpersonal communications, so to are social networks.

Social Media is the Beginning

All to often I hear people preaching about the benefits of social media. If you’ve followed much of my writing over the past couple years you may have heard me talk about how advantageous social media can be. For example, I could tweet out (via Twitter), “What’s the best way to get a chocolate stain out of a shirt?” Within a few minutes I’ll probably have received a couple responses both on Twitter and Facebook.

While this is great, the system is still way too inefficient. The only people responding are people that I’m connected to! While for the average day-to-day questions, there is no benefit in having access to specialized experts necessarily. We are just learning how to use social technology to improve our lives. While it’s great that Comcast responds to me when I have a problem, there should be ways to actually improve the world from this new technology.

I’m not suggesting that people aren’t already taking advantage of social technology to do so, but we are still so early in the process of figuring it out. As the Guardian article highlights, ” finding information and expert sources of knowledge quickly within social networks is neither easy nor efficient and valuable information is left buried within online communities.”

The Quickest Path to Expertise

The Guardian article highlights how social networks can streamline the process to accessing experts. Ultimately this is what many of us have been waiting for but there is an inherent problem with all this access: the experts are immediately overloaded. Additionally, experts don’t want to spend time responding to simple questions. A general surgeon doesn’t want to answer every person’s question about curing a cough.

Yahoo! Answers has attempted to solve that by storing all of the answers to questions that are commonly asked and letting the community vote on responses. This appears to be a great way to solve part of the overload problem. Ultimately though, all the quickest path to expertise discussion has some fundamental flaws. One of which is the balance between localized expertise versus global expertise.

There are also many other issues. Ultimately, I think our relationships with social networks will simply become one of coexistence. As Charlene Li once said, “social networks will become as thin as air”. We are in the process of that transition and ultimately I believe that those networks which are less structured and more capable of adapting to change will be better at surviving the shift.

Perfecting Social Networks for Organizations Just Beginning

As the shift toward a invisible co-existence with social networks takes place, organizations are just beginning to leverage the benefits of social technology. Over the coming months and years we will see a massive shift toward leveraging social technologies within companies. So how does your company currently leverage social technology?

Is your company concerned about inefficiencies presented by social technology or is it more focused on the benefits provided by them?

MySpace Tests New Profile & Leaves the Dutch Behind

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 09:30 AM CDT

-MySpace Logo- Yesterday Mike Arrington reported about the launch of a new MySpace profile which integrates a drag and drop interface. The profile is currently under testing via MySpace Canada which can be accessed here. The interface provides users with the ability to drag and drop modules within their profile as well as select custom backgrounds from a simple interface.

This entire push is part of a redesign which started back in June and they are now beginning to test out the new profile interface. One interesting feature is that all applications that you’ve installed will show up in the modules area of the new profile interface. This is not a place for new applications to get your attention though … at least not yet. I’d hope that MySpace would open up one more area that lets you browse through “popular modules among your friends” or something along those lines.

Modifying Design for MySpace Profile

Editing Modules for MySpace Profile
-MySpace Custom Profile Screenshot, Module Editing

One other piece of news regarding MySpace is that they will give up on the Netherlands according to Techcrunch. Apparently the company underestimated the ability of the leading social network to maintain their ground. This is a similar challenge that Facebook has faced in Germany where the company is finding it challenging to compete with StudiVZ. Interesting enough, MySpace is trying to make things a little more complicated for both StudiVZ and Facebook and is now moving their office from Holland to Berlin, Germany.

It’s clear that becoming successful abroad is not an overnight process and that the large social networks are going to have to invest heavily. For comparison purposes, Facebook currently has approximately 325,000 users in the Netherlands whereas MySpace has around 650,000 and Hyves (the leader in the Netherlands) has over 5 million. We’ll be keeping an eye on the international expansion of both Facebook and MySpace.