Social barriers on the social web

As the reach of social networking and social media continues to expand, developments such as Facebook Groups come as no surprise. Online or offline, social relations can be very similar – whether the connections are fleeting, accidental, weak or whether connections are closely meshed in everyday life or work – there can be little to differentiate many offline and online relationships. So it makes sense for users to have similar controls over their connections online as they do offline.

As this Gigaom posting reveals, users (when given the choice) may prefer to restrict their availability and presence  to after-work friends or other selective relationships according to their context. Some users have multiple profiles to focus on specific interests. Having personal and professional profiles on Twitter seems to be a more commonly practised now. Over the last year or so social media guidelines have been developed or refined to keep pace with social media and government 2.0 developments.

I’m in two minds about this. Like many others, I’ve found the open nature of the social web to be engaging and insightful. I have connections with people who I would not have dreamed of having seven years ago. More generally, opportunities for innovation and creatively enabled by the social web have been game changing everywhere.

However, what concerns me is that the trend to having social gateways in place is likely to be a limiting force in terms of forging new social connections. I can see that gaining more control over who you want to see what you are up to at any one time is clearly a good thing in terms of privacy. It’s likely to help build more confidence and trust in making use of the social web.

So having the choice to be open or closed is a positive development. Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel that the ease in which users can move from open to closed relationships online is likely to be of significance in shaping the future direction of the social web.

Mobiles and Social Web over the next 10 years: five megatrends

Having gone through some 22 forecasts about mobiles and social web from 2010 to 2020, I’ve collapsed them all into five transformative trends:

1. Mobiles will be used for more things, dominating other networks

Mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops, netbooks) are not only set to come much more important for communication and broadband connectivity, there will be more content generated and distributed, more digital marketing, financial transactions, health care services and environmental monitoring over mobiles.  The cost of powerful smartphones will fall…and handheld form factors become old hat. Advertising revenues may exceed TV and the Internet by reach and by revenue.

2. Mobiles will change our reality, through augmented/mixed reality and location/person/object aware applications

New applications will be used for search, discovery, entertainment, gaming, healthcare and retail. In time, nearly every user interaction with mobiles might be location-aware. Advanced augmented reality and location-aware applications will become mainstream and core revenue earners.

3. The Social Web matures

The era of experimentation with social networks will end with users, businesses, governments and civil society embedding social networking and social media into everyday lives and business activity. User sophistication develops as filtering tools and techniques are applied and the relevancy and utility of connections improve. Collective intelligence helps to filter and respond to what is worthwhile to users. More control over what is created and done online is placed with individuals and their trusted intermediaries.  Porting data will become easier.

4. The Social Web transforms

Social networks online change the nature of work and generate new economic value and social benefits. Companies will function on social networks. Online reputation drives work and personal relationships. Most people expect social network connectivity and interaction to be real-time and available anywhere.

5. Applications re-shape the value-chain

The applications market continues to grow internationally, with more stores and more uses, within an open and innovative environment for applications development. Underlying networks and platforms provide utility access and connectivity.

Morgan Stanley Web 2.0 Summit Presentation

After noting good comments on the Web about Morgan Stanley (MS) Internet analyst, Mary Meeker’s Economy & Internet Trends presentation, I had a look at it. It’s worth a flick through. For those not so interested in financial data, can I suggest you start on slide 28. Main points of interest are:

• Mobile Internet usage is and will be bigger than most think (i.e they agree with Cisco’s forecasts).
• Telcos will face serious challenges in managing incremental traffic.
• The mobile applications development ecosystem has disrupted the walled garden carrier portals.
• Improvements in social networking and mobile computing platforms are fundamentally changing the ways people communicate with each other and ways that developers/advertisers/marketers reach consumers.
• Location information changes everything: where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go – they all change once we merge location and the Web.

Eric Schonfeld’s posting on TechCrunch is also worth a read. Worth noting in particular is that “She [Meeker] singles out the mobile industry as the one where both the most opportunity will be found and disruptions will occur over the next five years. Moreover, she suggests that the U.S. is poised to lead the transition in mobile to a Web-centric model. (I totally agree). Interestingly, she points to the introduction of the first Android phone by T-Mobile, not the launch of the iPhone, as the key inflection point for the coming era of the mobile web.”

While I agree that the mobile ecosystem in the U.S is moving to a Web-central model, I am not sure that the U.S. can claim leadership in that transition. For example, Japan is about eight years ahead of the rest of the world in mobile commerce (slide 48).  Australia is also a witnessing a similar transition to a mobile Web era, particularly in the way people communicate with each other.

Trapped girls call for help on Facebook

Interesting news item from yesterday – two girls from Adelaide who were trapped in a drain called for help by updating their status on Facebook using a mobile phone. Some say this one comes in the category “you could not make this up”‘. Others – like Don Tapscott – would probable say this comes under “digital natives think differently”.

Now, as I understand, the two girls (aged 10 & 12) opted to seek out help from their social network instead of going straight to the authorities (eg. phoning ’000′) because they wanted to avoid getting into trouble with their parents. Still, there are some important messages here, this one from Laurel Papworth:

“Incredibly important today is understanding how social networking protects our children. There is stuff they can’t tell a parent or a teacher or the police but they can’t bottle up any more. So they tell their friends, they tell people they play online games with, they write anonymously on websites full of emo-angst and they tell forum moderators and game GMs, who understand and ‘get them’. Expect to see lots more “we should’ve seen it coming” from adults waking up to teens pushing out warnings on online communities. It keeps them safe in the absence of an understanding adult”.

From my perspective – and drawing on Don Tapscott’s knowledge of these things – the girls had trust in their social network, more trust than in dealing with authority figures. Seems to me like another indicator of the central role that social network services play in the lives of digital natives.

Looking at this from anther perspective, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo all have age restrictions that limit access to those aged 13 or 14 and above. Such policies no doubt reflect the concerns that many have about social network site risks. Thing is, the reality is different. According to a UK study reported in August 2008, age restrictions do not stop many children from participating. A spokesperson for the UK research outfit said that “Children are at the vanguard of the social networking phenomenon, using sites such as Facebook and Bebo in the same way other generations used the telephone”.  True for Australia too. The ACMA’s Click and connect: Young Australians’ use of online social media 02:Quantitative research report found that:

• the internet is a regular part of everyday lives of children and young people aged eight to 17 years
• both frequency and length of use increase with age
• young people of high school age (12 to 17) years used the internet on average 6.3 days per week for an average of 2.9 hours per day
• the use of social networking services increases dramatically between the ages of eight to 17.

Plenty of room for thought here, not only about what digital natives do now that is so different, but what implications lie ahead for institutions and social interaction.

Twitter is not about text messaging, it is much more than that

A couple of recent developments prompted this posting. One was this New York Times piece on why teens are not attracted to Twitter. The other was to share with you another positive Telstra experience on Twitter that I had last week, and to share some other observations about Twitter.

I’ll start with my own experience, with a little background first. I have some history now, having signed up on Twitter as @conem just over a year ago now. In that time Twitter has grown about 10 fold from an early adopter crowd to almost being a mainstream social media service. As of this morning I am following 767 tweeple and 772 are following me.

Readers of this blog may recall I had a positive experience with @BigPondTeam some time ago. I was treated to a similar experience last week. I found an odd item on my latest Telstra bill, a charge of $2.28 for “Dial-up Internet Calls Telstra”. The thing is, we have broadband, not dial-up…I was left scratching my head. It just did not stack-up. While it was not much money, I decided not to let the matter lie. So I tweeted about it. About one hour later (6.37 pm) I had a response from @BigPondTeam agreeing with me that the charge looked odd and asking if they could help out. They surely did.

@BigPondTeam managed to find out the calls were to subscription TV operator Foxtel number to order Box Office movies. Eight calls were made between 4 am and 5 pm over the same day. In my response to @BigPondTeam I said that it was weird on two counts – we have never ordered a Box Office movie from Foxtel, and there was no one awake or at home when the calls were made! Anyway, @BigPondTeam said that was all they could do. We would need to contact Foxtel to resolve the matter they said. Still, got to be impressed with @BigPondTeam!

I tried @Foxtel but while they had some followers they had not posted any Tweets. I thought, why be on Twitter and not tweet? So I rejected that move. Then I shuddered. The next step was to make a phone call and go through the hassle of computerised directions in the hope that I could find a human to talk to. Actually, as it turned out I managed to speak to a human at Foxtel without any drama and got the matter resolved quickly. The problem with the dial-up calls put down to a software problem. A refund will be made the man said. Still, I wonder how much dosh Telstra has made overall from software-glitch dial-up calls for Foxtel movies?

Now, back to the teenager thing. There are teenagers on Twitter. Some follow me. But there is a rule of thumb when it comes to teenager communication preferences – literally. As the NYT’s piece noted, “Kristen Nagy, an 18-year-old from Sparta, N.J., sends and receives 500 text messages a day. But she never uses Twitter”.  At 500 texts a day, who would have the time to do anything else? I’ve managed 1684 tweets in 14 months and I am one of the power users.

It is common to have text-like experiences on Twitter – conversations flicking back and forth. They are often good fun. The relationship side is important. Some personal, some professional, some that are weak ties. One-to-one communication is available through a direct messaging option. But the main benefit for me in using Twitter is tapping into and contributing to the rich information stream (mostly about communications and media trends). Oh, and getting my Telstra problems sorted out. I put up comments and links about seminars I’m attending or blog posts or news items online I have read or viewed, or photos or videos just taken or viewed and so on. The thing is, so do many others that I connect to on Twitter. I can track particular topics or events by hash tags that are used (eg. #gov2au for the Government 2.0 Taskforce). The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Question and Answer show uses #qanda for real-time Twitter interaction. Nothing beats Twitter for real-time information.

I use a third party application called TweetDeck to categorise my Twitter stream into everyone I follow, mentions of me, most interesting or core groups and favourite hashtags. I have TweetDeck on my PC and on my iPhone. I have columns for links to status updates of my friends on Facebook. My tweets show up in my Facebook and FriendFeed streams, as do others I’m connected with.

Bit.ly is a service that lets you shorten, share and track your links on Twitter.  I can track how many tweeps (people with a mutual following) have clicked in the links I put up.

There are third party applications that measure Twitter influence. As Ross Dawson has said, influence on Twitter is not just a matter of how many tweeple are following you. Influence is measured by the frequency that you tweet and retweet others postings, the replies and direct messages that you send, and your use of hash tags to help others track stuff.  Influence is about your reach – how many people is it possible for you to reach, say if you take all of the connections with others you are connected to into account. Check out your Twitter influence on Twinfluence.

Here is a link to a good article in the New York Times by David Pogue  about tools for Twitter that a colleague passed on to me.

In short, I can understand why teenagers prefer text messaging. They mainly just want to interact with their mates. Whereas Twitter is about being in the information stream…and for getting excellent customer service.

Largest increase in expressing capability in history

Clay Shirky’s latest presentation is inspirational.

How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history

What is changing is that the people formally known as the audience (in broadcasting terms) or the user (in telecommunications terms) can connect to one-another to talk and ‘do media’. It’s these networks of inter-personal connections that is the driver of change.

The ‘Telecommunications Age’ was one of one-to-one communication. The ‘Broadcasting Age’ was one of ‘one-to-many’ content distribution. The ‘Networks of Inter-Personal Connections Age is ‘many-to-many’.

Those institutions that were in control are no longer. They can convene groups of networked people but cannot control them. Adapting to that change involves a mature realisation of that social phenomenon.

Identifying New Influencers

As time goes by there is more research published on social media and social networking use. Here are some examples on identifying and measuring influence.

Research firm Sysomos has released some interesting data on Twitter use. In round numbers,10% of Twitter users make up 90% of the activity and 1% of Twitter users update more than 10 times per day. Approximately 90% of Twitter users post less than one update per day. Only 1% of Twitter users follow more than 1,000 people. About 90% of twitter users follow less than 100 people. Now this is all consistent with Dr Jacob Nielsen’s 90.9.1 rule:  “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a littel, and 1% of users account for almost all the action”. As I’ve mentioned before, the 90.9.1 rule is a well-established pattern in social groups.

There are a couple of observations here. One is that the term “hyperconnectivity” needs to be taken in the context of how much attention is paid to “followers” or “friends” on social networks. Facebook’s own analysis shows that, while the average Facebook user has 120 friends, people maintain regular contact with only about five or six those. The rest are “weak ties” as it were. Those people who are highly active tend to have more connections (eg.1% of Twitter users are most active & 1% follow more than 1,000 people). The two may not be the same set, but based on my own use of Twitter I would say that they are the same. Sysomos data backs this up too: once someone has 1,000 followers the number of tweets/day rises from three to six.

Here is another piece about Twitter, this time as a leading source of real-time information. Time and again Twitter has demonstrated its strength as a source or real-time eyewitness news, heading off  the big media brands, this time in Iran. But there is a downside. To quote Inquisitr “When recognizing Twitter as the best outlet for the latest on the ground, you can’t ignore that the data coming from Twitter is raw, unfiltered, and at times difficult to follow”.  This is where adding value comes in through channelling attention to particular content. According to the Inquisitr article, that is exactly what the Huffington Post (an online newspaper) did to good effect in using data on post-election Iran that had been distributed over Twitter.

Nielsen has reported that time spent on Facebook in the US increased from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion minutes by April 2009, a growth rate of 700%.Time spent on the top 10 social network and social media sites increased by 212% over the year to April 2009. Interestingly, time spent on MySpace was down 31%. Some previously popular sites (such as Friendster) are no longer in the top 10. The assumption is that users find it easy to migrate from one site to another. I’m not so sure that it’s as simple as that. Facebook now has the largest number of photos of any site and there is no easy way for people to take their data with them right now.

MySpace seems to be more popular with teens, and more popular for viewing online video. Nielsen reported that: “In April 2009, visitors aged 25 to 34 and 35 to 49 were the highest indexing age groups on Facebook, being 27% and 23% more likely to visit the site than the average user, respectively. In contrast, the highest indexing demographics on Myspace.com was people aged 18 to 24 and 12 to 17″.

Identifying social media influence looks like it will be no trouble: focus on the top 1% of users (by activity and number of friends or followers).

The hard part is in measuring influence. According to the Sysomos sample, ‘Twitterfluence’ (as I call it) adds up to about 120,000 people. Time spent on sites is another measure of influence, a more straightforward task. Demographic analysis is another way of measuring influence. For example, tracking teenager social activity would involve more analysis of MySpace relative to Facebook. Tracking the use of social networks like Twitter by other media brands and by individual bloggers of note would also be another measure of influence.

Social self-regulation

There have been some interesting issues around social media/social network self-regulation over the last few days. 

In the UK right now there is pressure on Twitter to lift their self-regulatory performance. As far as I can see, Twitter gets rid of users that post harmful or illegal content. Maybe not as fast as they could though.

I think it was Facebook (FB) that recently got rid of some 5,000 sex offenders from their site.

However, in an interesting twist, FB has gone social in developing a new set of self-regulatory controls. FB has proposed a set of principles and rights & responsibilities on their site and invited users to comment on them. I’ve copied the draft Rights and Responsibilities statement on safety to illustrate what is being proposed. There is clearly a significant burden of responsibility proposed on users.

3. Safety

We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help in order to do that, which includes the following commitments:

3.1 You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications to users (such as spam).
3.2 You will not collect users’ information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.
3.3 You will not upload viruses or other malicious code.
3.4 You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.
3.5 You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
3.6 You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
3.7 You will not promote alcohol-related or other mature content without appropriate age-based restrictions.
3.8 You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
3.9 You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of this Statement.

The question is, will self-regulation be effective? Where should the onus lie – on the service provider or the user: social self-regulation?

People-centric media

I agree with Sean Howard, this presentation byJessica Clark rocks!

View the full presentation here: Public Media

There is also a great quote from Doc Searls, “The customer is the new platform”.

Main take-aways for me are that:

• Organisations and institutions are still important, but are not central to public media
• Public media is networked, not centralised

Transparency, participation and collaboration in Government

On 21 January President Obama issued a memo to the US federal heads of departments and agencies on the subject of transparency and open government. I know this direction is confined to the USA, but the principles have applicability in all democracies.

The aim of the initiative is to strengthen democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government through transparency, participation and collaboration. The memo acknowledges that knowledge is widely dispersed in society and that public officials benefit from having access to dispersed knowledge (as well as better access to information and knowledge held by other departments and agencies).

In summary, the consequences for departments and agencies are to:

• disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use
• offer increased opportunities for the public to participate in policy-making
• use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organisations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.

An Open Government Directive to implement these measures will be developed over the next four months. You can view the memo here.

As well as improving the quality of information and analysis to support evidence-based decision-making, I can’t help but feel this initiative by President Obama has the potential to transform government processes and restore public confidence in democratic processes. The Participative Web has arrived in Washington DC.

I have not seen this memo mentioned in mainstream media, but the blogosphere has latched onto it. Interesting in itself. Maybe that is a sign that the watchdog role of the media is now going social?

In any case, President Obama’s initiative is bound to support and foster social networking and social media. As to the establishment: here comes everybody!