social media – Page 34 – Richard's blog

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The friendship Wheel

Byrichard 31 December 2007

Whilst looking at another person’s Facebook profile I noticed something. Two thirds of the people were connected to each other yet one third had no connections. It made me think about the nature of the friendship wheel and how it demonstrates how you use facebook.

If you use facebook for real world friends and connections then the friend wheel will show that the connections are many and diverse. Everyone knows everyone else and there is a real sense of community. In contrast take a look at the friendship wheel of someone who adds people they have never met and the nature of the friend wheel changes entirely. Everyone appears isolated.

I like seeing that there are so many connections between my friends on Facebook and aim to keep it this way for as long as possible.

The year the Internet lost the cloak of anonimity.

Byrichard 31 December 200731 December 2007

This has to be the year where I have met the most people online before meeting them in person, which is quite amusing. It’s also the year that warzabidul as a nickname became a person in the physical world to more than two or three people. It’s the year an online person become a nickname for a real person.

It’s the year where, at least for early adopters, Twitter and Seesmic both helped create opportunities for people to meet and get to know each other online before taking it back into the physical world. It’s the year I went to a Podcamp, some tweetups and some seesm’up. It’s the year many of us stopped hiding behind avatars and nicknames and moved towards creating a brand or identity, depending on whether your point of view is that of marketing or personal fun.

I’ve enjoyed learning about the “social media” and all the new possibilities. I look forward to 2008 when many more such networks and events will be organised. It’s been a fun year to be introduced to the “Social Media” and I’m happy to have met so many people.

The Seesmeetup

Byrichard 29 December 2007

It’s taken no more than a few days from the time I first saw Fred2baro on seesmic to our first meeting with Deek in London for the first Seesmeetup… so called. In fact it was both Sizemore that had the first meeting although more private in nature.

One of the questions that one of Fred2baro’s relatives asked was why would you want to be part of Seesmic? Aren’t people pretend and fake? Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?

My answer was the following: When you go to a bar or you meet people face to face rather than via twitter or Seesmic you’re quite often in a bar under the influence of a drink or two. As a result you’re not as genuine as you’d be if you met in another place. In other words Seesmic and twitter are a way of getting to know people before you meet them in the physical world.

What this means is that you can generate some great friendships, some strong ones. It’s also a new contemporary method of networking than the bar. We’ve got too many distractions at home. Whether it’s from the computer, the phone or the television to feel the absolute need to go out to bars where we’d sit and be bored anyway.

The point is the following. To me the social media, especially twitter and seesmic are a great way of creating new friendships in the physical world where limitations of time and travel distances are cancelled out. If’ we’re part of an international society why not meet people online and bring it to the physical world rather than the other way around. How many times have you been sad to see a friendship disintegrate because of distance?

I have, many times. Time to enjoy these new toys.

seesmic | social media | social media living room | twitter | Uncategorized

Social media girlfriends

Byrichard 15 December 2007

I like the social media and I spend a lot of time with them. Occasionally i meet the people involved in real life and so the social media are no longer quite as interesting, although of course I still have fun with them. One of the things I’ve been thinking is the term social media girlfriend.

What would require for a person to be a social media girlfriend? What does it require in the physical world? Conversation for a start. It would entail many conversations and discusssions, so far Twitter and seesmic both provide that. I wake up in the morning, hardly able to open my eyes yet I open up the laptop and type “good morning world” to which i get a good morning back.

There are currently two social media girls that wish me a good morning. Melissah in Australia is one of them. Maggieconv in the US is the second. The three of us are in different timezones but we wish each other good meals, nice evenings, good mornings and sweet dreams. We’re friends in the same sense that flat mates may be but with one big difference. We are not within the same physical space. We’re separated by distance, over a thousand kilometers when we’re lucky, over 20,000 when we’re not.

That’s unimportant. It’s the idea that we share our daily lives through text messaging, data access on phones, websites, blogs and even facebook. To some people this is an abstract idea. Why would you want to meet people online in such a way. Well in fact chatrooms were like this a decade ago. IRC is like that today. There’s one major difference. We’re not anonymous. We know how the people look, we know how they sound. We know when they’re happy and we know when things are going well. We also know when they’re going badly.

If both physical and virtual friends are both inhabiting the same spaces nowadays then what discounts those whom we don’t know from another context? If I meet you at the cinema and we become friends then everyone would accept that. Online though people wouldn’t. Of course that is changing. For me the distinction is fading since I have met so many of these people in real life, occasionally quite a few at once.

Anyway part of the reason for this post is that I was called a flirt online, told that half my seesmic videos answering one girl’s posts were flirts. It kicked off a conversation about flirting and that’s fun. we’re using the social media and we’re flirting. That’s a great idea. The idea that we’re flirting with people across a new medium. That’s where the idea of a social media girlfriend came into place. I saw two friends flirting across both seesmic and Twitter and I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to come out with the idea.

Anyway to cut a long story short I was meaning to type @melissah but started to write @maggieconv instead. Would she be more likely to be a social media girlfriend? We added each other on Facebook so there’s a chance she c0uld be a social media girlfriend.

facebook | social media | social networking

Why i dislike how people use Facebook.

Byrichard 14 December 2007

Facebook was a great idea. It was great because it was an online method by which to meet people within your network and to get to know them before you drop by the bar. It was especially good for those who are shy. As more people started using it though something bad happened. Mid and late adopters started using the website.

In itself this is a great thing because it means that you can find man friends and communicate with them. It was a way of re-creating connections with people you haven’t seen in a decade or more. The drawback comes when people are used to it and have added their friends.

They want something new and they go to applications, they want more features and so the api mentality was applied hence the fun wall, zombie biting and more. The drawback is that when you’ve got twenty friends you might reject the same request twenty times. When you’ve got five hundred you may reject it five hundred times.

Another flaw is how people use facebook’s funwall and other wall application like they used e-mail before that. These people are sending out a huge amount of junk and it’s a problem. A problem that’s meant I use facebook far less.

Why are people using a new form in such a bad way, Why are people using a social networking platform for nothing more than spreading rubbish? Is facebook no more than an advertiser’s paradise for giving us junk. Beacon generated a large quanitty of negative press as a result of what it was doing with user’s data.

In some ways it’s as bad as television advertising and the freesheets. It’s got great potential but due to the lowest common denominator it’s no longer as interesting an application as it used to be.

How long till we start getting spam via these networks. Is there a place for advertising on social networks. Are consumers not active seekers of information?

I’m a blog reader. I skim through over four hundred rss items a day and I get a lot of information this way. I’m an active seeker of information that relates to my interests. As a result is there still the need for old media style advertising. Would not narrow casting and conversation generation become more interesting propositions. That’s what Chris Brogan writes about. It’s what Nik Butler of Loudmouthman is doing.

That’s what Danacea of Forbidden Planet has to explore, along with many other companies. How, in an environment where people are reading more and more articles a day do you create brand awareness?

How do you allow people to find out about your interests? Groups are one good way because they’re passive. You join a group, your friends see it and they may decide to join that group too, without you having to ask them to.

The whole concept of inviting friends to open applications is counter productive to an enjoyble user experience on fa(r)cebook. Why use a network that generates more work than pleasure?

Here’s a continuation of the discussion by Anne Zelenka of GigaOm.