microblogging massive ideas
This conversation didn’t actually take place but it could have.
Last week, friends and I were discussing µblogging in the pub. Well not µblogging exactly but two ladies had recently discovered Facebook and were talking about the pros and cons of this wonderful social network.
One lady said: ‘Oh and another thing - I really don’t like the ‘Jenny is…’ status update. I just don’t get it.’
The other lady replied ‘Yeah - that bit is stupid. I am hardly going to write down ‘Marilyn is…just off to Asda for the weekend shop’.
I then interjected: ‘But you don’t have to put down minutiae after the ‘is…’ part’. You can put anything. For example, I might choose to write
‘Norman is….seriously considering jacking his job in, pursuing his dream and opening a record shop’.
They looked at me as though as I was mad. My mate sighed and said ‘Right - who’s up for another ?’
Jenny stared at me as though I had two heads and said ‘What ? You’re going to open a record shop ? In these tense and difficult times. Are you serious ?’
strategies for making friends on social networks
Early Jurassic - Mum takes you to playgroup, kicking and screaming and your friends are forced upon you. Free milk at 11 am.
Cretaceous - Primary school. You go round to Robert's for tea and Robert comes round to your house for tea. Painfully shy in female company.
Middle Monolithic - Secondary school - you hang out with the kids who play football and avoid those who threaten you with knives at the bus stop.
Triassic - Football, gigs, pubs. The best time of your life. With the best friends of your life. None of them will ever do FaceBook but that doesn't matter.
Late Mesozoic - University - no real strategy here. If someone stands their round, then that's good enough.
Web 0.1 (alpha) - Usenet, flame fests, email using elm on an amber VT100. Avoid people who use VMS at all costs.
Web 1.0 - IRC is just like a Friday night in the pub. There will be fights at closing time.
Web 1.0 - surf the internet, send large attachments (amusing photos) to colleagues every Friday afternoon.
Web 2.0 - social networking. Accept blindly absolutely any friend request. Approach complete strangers and ask them to be your 'special friends'. Friendship isn't friendship - it's a bragging contest.
Web 2.0 (beta) - Follow Scoble's example and be slightly more selective. Cull thousands of so-called 'friends' in futile attempt to avoid information overload.
Web 3.0 - Twitter - the endless, interminable byte stream of inane drivel. Until Stephen Fry signs up which makes it all alright. Stalk celebrities.
Web 3.0 RC3 - Finally it dawns on you.
- People on Posterous mainly like talking about Posterous
- People on FriendFeed mainly like singing the praises of FriendFeed.
- People on Twitter mainly like talking about Twitter. Repeat ad infinitum.
- People on identi.ca love identi.ca and open source and despise the evil borg.
- People in UK tend to have more friends in the UK
- You are on first names terms with the developers of Disqus and they fix stuff - just for you.
- If you're a keen photographer, try Flickr.
- If you like football, seek out people who like football.
- If someone Like's a post/tweet you wrote, it's possible (but not certain) you will like their outputs.
- If someone lives on your road, it doesn't mean they're your friend. There's a good reason you haven't had your neighbours round for coffee since last Christmas.
- If people actively dislike your output, it is less likely they will be a good friend.
- If people say 'Great, interesting, thought provoking post', it's likely they are trying to sell you a 'Penis Enlargement Kit' (or worse).
Web 4.0 - The end of the world. Social Networking dies and we all adjourn to the pub (again) and play board games.
the death of Open Micro Blogging
It's fair to say it took me a while to fully 'get' microblogging. In fact, initially Twitter left me as cold as a corpse in a deep freeze.
Inevitably, things change and like an old woman, I reserve the right to change my mind more frequently than my underpants, and in 2008, I started using Twitter to post a continuous bytestream of inane drivel in less than 140 characters.
Last July, when identi.ca launched, I immediately signed up for the open source microblogging service. I even built my own Laconi.ca instance - not necessarily because I intended using it but just to see how easy (or hard) it was to install and configure the software.
As a controlled experiment, I set myself the task of participating fully on identi.ca to see how long it would take me to acquire 100 friends on identi.ca. The answer, surprisingly, was 14 days.
Since then I have really enjoyed the sense of community on identi.ca, I have met lots of interesting people and enjoy the technically oriented focus of the folk over there. identi.ca isn't Twitter and the majority of my 'friends' steadfastly continue to use Twitter. This is understandable - Twitter gets all the media coverage. Twitter is where most people live and freedom is all about the freedom of choice.
I have continued to be a keen user and advocate of the identi.ca service as I think it offers several advantages over Twitter and it has genuinely made me consider the role of open source software versus proprietary systems with lock-in and closed data silos.
identi.ca has continued to be actively developed and it's exciting to follow developments and build each new version as it is released. Evan Prodromou and the identi.ca team actively participate on identi.ca and are genuinely responsive to honest, constructive feedback from users.
However, this week has seen a couple of developments that have sowed the first seeds of doubt about the future of identi.ca (not Laconi.ca) and raise a nagging concern.
The announcement of a hosted, off the shelf microblogging service - status.net with premium features costing undisclosed amounts of money.
Obviously, Evan (and the identi.ca team) can't exist and feed their families on the many plaudits, thanks and congratulations of 60,000 identi.ca users and he was always going to have to monetize the service to pay his mortgage. However, the provision of a paid for service with premium features raises a few issues. In all the congratulatory coverage, sensible, intelligent people seem to have conveniently overlooked this particular 'elephant in the room'.
There is an obvious potential conflict of interest. If Microsoft are paying $50,000 for a hosted microblog and demand tight integration with Outlook which Evan fundamentally disagrees with, will he yield ? Will the development of other OpenMicroBlogging (OMB) functionality be delayed due to the demands of paying customers (large or small) on status.net ?
Obviously, identi.ca is built on Laconi.ca which is Open Source so anyone is free to fork the code and develop the software independently from Evan. For example, I could theoretically extract all my data from identi.ca, import it into my own Laconica instance and microblog away in the federation of Laconi.ca instances until my heart's content.
Today, we get another far more worrying piece of news - identi.ca obviously have more funding than I thought. My worries about Evan and his family living in a Montreal hostel, eating beans on toast and children with no shoes were clearly ill-founded.Identi.ca have announced the acquisition of Twitter.com with the following immediate results:
- identi.ca now has a Twitter like theme - urgh !
- We are already starting to see the inevitable influx of Twitter celebrities (Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Guy Kawasaki, Guy Cashmore, Jonathan Ross).
- The 'Featured' tab on identi.ca used to feature interesting individuals and long standing identi.ca advocates. Now it is consumed with Twitterati.
- It can only be a matter of time before the spammers follow
This reverse takeover of Twitter is rather like applauding The Clash's resolute refusal to play of Top of The Pops and then turning on your telly to see the band performing 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' with Tony Blackburn as your smiling host.
To use another musical analogy, do you remember the very last song on the very last tour by the Sex Pistols in America and immortalised in the film 'Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle' ? After the last song, John Lydon squats down on his haunches and sneers at the audience.
'Do you ever feel like you've been cheated ?'
Well, Evan, yes - I do.
identica poised to pounce on Pownce
Pownce (a microblogging service) has been sold to SixApart and decided to close the service on December 15 which is a nice early Christmas present for all their users - both freeloaders (like me) and 'Pro' users who pay $20 per year.
Although I have a dormant Pownce account, I don't actively use the service. However, I find it odd that Pownce have decided to close the service and provide all their users with just two weeks notice to extract all their data and find another home.
The Pownce blog claims that:'we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009'
However, that 'belief' must be pretty weak and the date in 2009 must be a long way away. Otherwise, why on earth would Pownce and SixApart force all the existing Pownce users to evaluate and migrate to alternative services if a viable, better alternative was being planned.
Will those users really come running back to SixApart after being kicked out ? When they're already been forced to move once ? After the way they've been treated ?
Surely, it would have been better to do what Google did with Jaiku. Absolutely nothing. Leave the service exactly as it is with no fixes, no improvements, no additional services or functionality. That way, the hardcore, diehard users will remain on Pownce and, at least, you have a hope of getting those users converted onto the new SixApart product (whenever it is available).There are a few obvious choices for Pownce users:
- Twitter - more stability and increased uptime recently but limited to 140 characters (unlike Pownce) and inferior support for file sharing.
- Tumblr - probably the closest match in terms of functionality (no 140 character limit, support for media posts (images, links, audio, videos)
- FriendFeed - includes most of Pownce functionality.
- identi.ca - micro-blogging service but OpenSource so the opportunity exists to run a separate Laconica instance for Pownce users and potentially support the Pownce API (and hence all existing desktop Pownce clients).
- Posterous - supports MP3, photos, audio files and posting by email.
In fact, identi.ca have already responded to the imminent demise of Pownce and started work on the ability to import Pownce feeds into identi.ca and are actively looking for developers to assist with providing a Pownce compatible API.
However, I suspect the main issues here for disillusioned Pownce users aren't purely technical and won't necessarily depend on the advantages and disadvantages of the alternative services. The key factor will probably be the 'community' which has now been suddenly and forcibly broken up.
I suspect most Pownce users are on Pownce for a reason - they like the Pownce service and they like the community they have forged on Pownce. Consequently, I suspect a significant number will simply migrate wherever the majority of their friends go to or maintain multiple presences.
I also suspect that most Pownce users may well have already considered (and rejected) alternatives that were around (Twitter, Tumblr, FriendFeed) when they originally chose to sign up with Pownce which may be another positive factor in identi.ca's favour.
why Reddit is useless for bloggers
Yesterday was 1 December and an innocuous post on identi.ca about an Advent calendar immediately reminded me of an amusing (and completely true) blog post I wrote two years ago.
This, in turn, prompted me to write this short note on identi.ca and the post on identi.ca subsequently appeared on my FriendFeed stream.
Normally, when I post a new blog entry, the post gets visited by a handful of people - presumably a subset of those subscribed to this blog. In this case, this wasn't a new post so regular RSS readers wouldn't see this content so any visitors had to come from identi.ca or FriendFeed.
Despite having over 150 subscribers on identi.ca and 21 'friends' on FriendFeed, only a couple of people clicked through to the 'eat your own dog food' post when it appeared on identi.ca and FriendFeed. This isn't unusual (for me, at least) - the same pattern happens with any new blog content.
My very good friend and Oracle colleague, the right honourable Emperor of Ontario (possible pseudonym alert) had recently signed up to reddit.com and was curious about the viral effect of reddit and how it might be used to help generate traffic to a blog.
Ontario Emperor kindly submitted my humble blog post to Reddit under the category 'Funny'. When I became aware of this, I monitored the Web server logs and immediately saw a lot of traffic generated from reddit. At one point, the post reached No. 15 on Reddit's 'Funny' page and 6 people 'liked' the entry.
The traffic spike was short lived (similar pattern to getting a post on StumbleUpon). However, although the increase in traffic is interesting and briefly satisfying, it is really not that useful for a blogger because:
- Reddit generated visitors are almost always 'one-hit wonders'. They visit one page and immediately leave.
- Reddit generated visitors are unlikely to linger on the site and explore other content.
- Reddit generated visitors are unlikely to comment and resurrect conversation over a two year old post.
- Reddit generated visitors are unlikely to subscribe to your blog.
- Reddit generated visitors are all new visitors to your blog. Consequently, they don't understand the context, the author, the history, the sense of humour or the writing style.
As a brilliant example of the last point, a solitary comment was left on the blog post by a Reddit visitor. The comment was so superlative, so funny, so brilliant, I have chosen to reproduce it here in all its glory to save you all the trouble of a time-consuming, pesky mouse click.
why r u so cruel to your own children?
can u not be a little more sympathetic?
You shouldn't need to explain yourself. You shouldn't have to put sign posts up everywhere. You shouldn't feel obliged to use the tag 'Humour'. You shouldn't need to insert a plethora of emoticons just for passing visitors idiots.
And that is why Reddit is completely useless to bloggers.