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Social media girlfriends

Byrichard

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.

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Seesma Forum – Seesmic as a video based forum

Byrichard

When I first saw seesmic I thought of it as a video version of twitter but that point of view has shifted. I now think of it as an online video forum where video messages have replaced both text and pictures. I would expect many more websites of the sort to grow and it will see in a new era in social interactions on the web.

What I question is how long this video chatting website will last. Is there much demand for such a product and will it see itself become a valuable web success or simply another stepping stone in the road towards an increasingly digital lifestyle. What are your thoughts on the topic?

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A social media binge

Byrichard

This weekend I went on a social media binge. A social media binge is the moment when you forfeit sleep and the rest of reality for a few hours as part of the social media.

For the purpose of this particular challenge I set myself two pass times. The first of these was to twitter and the second was to seesmic. If you read previous posts you’ll find out what twitter. As to seesmic that’s another story. It’s close to being instant messaging with videos.

Normal video chats are live. I talk and as I talk you can respond and interrupt me. In seesmic you talk, type a title and share the video. After that another person speaks, presses stop and posts. Over the period of a few hours many more posts appear and as they do so the conversation evolves exponentially. All of these videos is available to every over member so there is a great degree of overheard conversation. This overheard conversation is where the fun begins.

I’ve seen girls dancing, guys act like zombies, discussions about literature and social media. I’ve seen so many things that it feels like the social media equivalent of a music festival. Watch seesmix clips on youtube to get a better idea.

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Two Seesmic evenings later

Byrichard

For the past two days I’ve been monitoring and participating in the seesmic conversations and it’s been a really interesting experience. There are so many different people. You’ve got some people living in San Francisco, others in South East Asia, France, Australia and England and they’re all coming to chat via video.

This chat is different from other chats in that it’s recorded segments. It’s about people speaking about key parts of their day. Both Documentally and Sizemore for example decided to meet up at Sizemore’s place to have a very entertaining evening of Seesmic video posting and discussion. As a result of this Jester joined in although quite timidly, at least for the start. With time I’m sure she’s going to become quite active.

There is a great range in age group from those that are children all the way up to their parents and beyond. As a result it’s a family environment, a community where people joke around and have fun. It’s a place that shows how a community can form without any ties in the physical world, at least initially.

It’s a great place and the best way for you to get a taste of the conviviality for this website is seesmix, the daily show that summarises the hottest conversation for the day. On some days it’s conversations about racoons, snow, a song that sticks into people’s heads and many more topic.

It’s also about the overheard conversation. It’s about someone putting something out there and waiting for people to respond. It’s about individuals talking and for others to involve themselves, community building. As a result of this it’s quite different from the culture and the use of video phones that we had envisaged many years ago.

I really enjoy the conversations on seesmic and I can see how strong a community it can become with the right discussion and time. I can see it as a video version of twitter and I’m wondering whether threading would be that useful, after all the conversations are working fine as they are.

It’s about actuality, about currency. If you want to get something out of this community then you need to participate rather than sit on the side and listen. You’ve got to become part of the storyline, to show your character to encourage others to interact with you. There are apparently about 1000 people currently active although no more than 50 people are trully active on the site at the moment.

As it moves out of Alpha we can expect a lot more fun.

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Twittervox – as seen in central London

Byrichard

The film Juno was screened to a crowd of bloggers of which both Loudmouthman and I were part of. As a result it gave us the perfect opportunity to do a twittervox. The video can be found here for direct download.

After meeting with Nik Butler and others for the screening of the film Juno several tweeters meet up at the Union bar to discuss both the film and other topics

Those present were danacea of Forbidden Planet, Loudmouthman of Loudmouthman.com, Rupert Howe, Beth, Robert Croma, Sizemore, Jess and many more.

I will admit to liking the response I have had so far from my fellow seesmicers and twitter users. It was a good night and I look forward to more of them in the near future.

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The social media living room.

Byrichard

The social media living room is great because it’s really any device that you can connect to the web with, whether a simple mobile phone or a full spec desktop computer.

Some of us look at the computer first thing in the morning and last thing at a night. This is as much as part of a technological expansion in the form of broadband.

Just today an article by the BBC described how people are more and more wired with 90% using broadband, or some similar number. What this means is simple

More hours spent therefore more conversation. With twitter it’s more overheard conversations. That’s not where it stops.

Twitter, seesmic and similar websites turn a private discussion into a public one where the “overheard conversation” is a key point. It’s an evolution back to the route of internet chat. 10 years ago I spent 13hrs in a row online and I saw the shift from Australia to Japan, India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, NEw York and more.
The difference is that at that time there was no meta data and the initiator to conversations was ASL. Now it’s reached maturity for those of us early adopters. Many of our friends are middle adopters and when they start using it they will not take full advantage.

Look at how people use facebook. When asked by @leisa on twitter during a meeting in real life how often I checked facebook I answered as much as my e-mail. A lot of people do.

What is not talked about is how middle adopters use it. They are far more limited. They don’t add rss feeds because they have no blog, few pictures if any on flickr and in general do not create content. They’re lurkers. Almost all of my friends are facebook I’ve been to parties with, studied or a combination of more. As a result it’s a personal network of IRL friends who have links to each other as well as through me.

These people don’t use twitter, jaiku, tumblr, Pulse plaxo or more. I surprised a conversation on facebook where after seeing someone comment on their post one facebook user asked the other how dare they comment. They didn’t understand the principle of the forum. That’s something all of us are familiar with as early adopters. We are not technological determinists. We believe in the need for something and create a technology to cope.

Look at Seesmic. It’s video. It’s twitter with video. One person commented on how it was based on time consumption. He said that although he would love to see everyone’s video and listen to what they have to say that because it’s time based it would take too long. As a result he’d follow just the friend’s timeline.

This brings me back to twitter. How many friends do you have. Do you still use the public timeline or is your friend’s timeline filled with more than enough conversations not to need this?

I think it’s a really interesting conversation. How does the social media living room integrate into your daily activities.

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Twittervox now has a facebook page

Byrichard

Twittervox, a show which I do under the name Warzabidul with the help of Loudmouthman of Loudmouthman.com now has a facebook page which I created earlier in the day. The point of this facebook is to bring together all those that have participated in the show so that they may discuss past and future program topics, from social media, through twitter rules and regulations and towards related topics like seesmic and Second life.

If you’re on twitter or seesmic and have a facebook account then come and join the conversation. We’re waiting for you.

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The new social scene – Seesmic and Twitter

Byrichard

How many of you have a wifi enabled laptop. How many of you have a wap enabled phone. How many of you have msn messenger. The reason I’m asking you this question is the following. I’ve been using twitter for several months now and it’s whilst working on my dissertation that I wrote the most. Now I’m trying Loic Lemeur’s new video website, Seesmic.

It’s based off the twitter principle, that you leave a short video clip, no more than a minute in length about anything, or at least that’s my impression. You can add content in one of three ways. Record it straight from the laptop, link to it from youtube or upload a pre-recorded segment. The two latter options aren’t that interesting but the first one is for one simple reason.  It’s about snippets.

When you talk to someone you usually say a sentence or two and then the conversation switches back to you and there’s that back and forth of a lively conversation. In so doing there’s little or no chance of you switching off and going to find something else of interest. It’s also a dialogue between people in different countries and timezones, reflective of the new media landscape as seen by those on the cutting edge of social interaction.

What’s so special about this site is that it’s visual and auditory. With twitter you can read twenty tweets in twenty seconds whereas with seesmic you’re condemned to listen to a person go at their own speed. That’s why less than a minute is more than enough for most conversations. Everyone that’s a member participates and in so doing creates their own social group with a difference. Mainly you can see and hear whether they’re happy, lonely, tired or bored. It mans that you can see that little twinkle in their eye, that relaxed stance or their accent. It’s personal. It’s most of what you get from meeting someone in person in other words and that’s what makes it great.

I’m looking forward to all the conversations I’m going to have with the people I’m meeting at the moment, whether exclusively online or living in a mixture of both as I am. I’m enjoying this.