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Which do you take to bed, laptop, mobile phone, both or other

Byrichard

We’re living in a permantly more wired world and our conversations are no longer reserved to the workplace, bar or ski slope. As a result electronic devices are making their way into the bedroom more and more frequently. How many of you are on twitter. Is twitter the first person you say good morning to. Are you a Seesmic morning person or a seesmic goodnight person.

Here are the answers I got within a few minutes.

melissah melissah @warzabidul Laptop for me. 08:14 AM December 01, 2007 from twitterrific in reply to warzabidul Icon_star_full 

Rupert ruperthowe @warzabidul if i take a laptop to bed, i get threatened with a red card. phone just feels a bit creepy. so i just stay up through the night. 09:02 PM November 30, 2007 from web in reply to warzabidul

Documentally Podcast Documentally @warzabidul i am more a book/notebook and ipod touch in bed man. 09:02 PM November 30, 2007 from web in reply to warzabidul

sizemore sizemore @warzabidul: Every night I take to bed with me a girl, a laptop, an archos, a book and occasionally a cat. I don’t get much sleep. 

Maggie MaggieConv @warzabidul I take both! 03:56 PM November 30, 2007 from txt in reply to warzabidul Icon_star_full 

Neil Simmons dungeekin @warzabidul: laptop/WiFi devices don’t go upstairs with me. Phone does, but only as an alarm clock. 09:19 PM November 30, 2007 from web in reply to warzabidul Icon_star_full 

So if you thought you were the only one taking your laptop, ipod touch or mobile phone you’re not the only one. There are many of us doing the same.

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38 tweets an hour

Byrichard

Yesterday I decided that I would track how many tweets I receive within a 24hr period. The result is not that bad. Over that period 917 tweets transited through my timeline. These tweets are sent according to the time of day. Some of them are sent during the Australian morning, European morning and goodnight time for America. As a result there should be some visible peaks at certain times of day.

It’s an average of 38 tweets an hour, not to bad when you consider that reading a hundred and fourty characters takes only a second or two to scan over. Out of those tweets the vast majority are in English although I get Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch and Swedish to name those I remember off the top of my head.

The topic of these tweets is quite diverse from people’s project progress to websites they enjoy as well as to their daily lives. It’s an interesting aperçu of what all these social (new) media people are doing. Many friendships are built up as a result of this social network. It’s still interesting and I look forward to getting a higher average than a measly 38 messages an hour. Add me on twitter and I’ll follow you too.

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Posting about friends

Byrichard

When people write about friends should they post their twitter profile page or the websites their friends are working on. I’m asking this question because whilst reading a post today I was interested in the ability to follow these friends and see what they’re up to rather than read the website.

Reading a twitterstream is quick. 140 Characters are read almost instantly and adding someone that sounds interesting is instantaneous. As a result  I’m far more likely to follow and read a person’s blog if there’s a consistant reminder both of what they’re doing and who they are as a person.

It’s about time. I’m a scanner. I scan through content rather than trudge through it. If you’re linking to twenty people and you link to twenty blogs then there’s no way I’m going to have the time to read all this content. I’d saturate extraordinarily quickly.  Following another person on twitter takes seconds to do and I’ll track these people. Point me to a blog and there’s a chance I won’t take the time to look.

Has anyone had a similar reaction to twitter vs. blogs? Do you write about a group of friends, all of whom have twitter accounts? If so have you linked to their blogs or to their twitter profiles?

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On the Importance of understanding what you are writing about

Byrichard

Nick O’Neill needs to do more research. Most of what he writes is speculative based on two or three months of research rather than sociological research. He goes after trends and gut feelings. As a result whilst his content is interesting to keep a track of it’s not relevant to the type of content I am looking for.

Podcasters and social media people need to take a more academic approach to their writing. I’ve found myself angry with what Leo laporte and other podcasters have said. Some of them are really pro certain technologies and boasting about their advantages without taking a media tech and society view.

What I mean by this is that technology and communication are cyclical. What was really common in older media is going to become common in new media as more people come to use it. Radio and letter writing are what podcasting and e-mail are to their contemporary period.

It’s the same with the iphones being bricked. There was such an outcry within the early adopter crowd that you’d think technology has never evolved. We all know that more apps would be created for the Ipod touch and iphone for example.

It’s interesting to see how things are evolving and how by looking at previous technological trends we can see how the future will take place. Those who write about technology need to have a media studies background for a proper, well based understanding of their topic of conversation.

If you want historical information you want to find professors and their PhD thesis, the same should be true about technological writing.

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why RSS feeds should be complete

Byrichard

When you’re creating web content that’s fed please think about those that are reading your feed from a device that is disconnected. here I am on a train and I’m captive to the content that you make available on your feed. Some feeds have the full article but others don’t.

The result of this has a simple consequence. There is no use for your feed on my mobile device since there is no content. I would thus urge anyone with a feed to make sure to make all content available so that people may access it on the move, especially since Wifi is not yet ubiquitous.

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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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Last night’s Social Media Club event

Byrichard

Last night Hill & Knowlton organised a Social Media club event in central London to discuss a number of aspects surrounding blogging, marketing and PR. The Event started with a quick introduction to how certain bloggers have voiced their intense dislike of being pitched to by PR companies whilst others are more relaxed about the whole thing.

A number of conversations took place as sub groups were split to discuss specific topics. The group I was in discussed Pull factors and how to encourage them to come to see your message, how to generate interest and take advantage of the social media and what they’re good at. A few case examples were given and discussed by this group. People from a variety of PR firms joined in the conversation.

Two key things that were talked about in the debrief to the whole group found that no one knows how to deal with the social media and that at this moment in time it is about experimentation to find what is most effective and with whom. Blogging and social media were seen as a hard thing to quantify because conversations don’t have any concrete measurable effects until later. This led on to the point that at this moment in time it’s a challenge to value how you are attempting to raise awareness of what the company would like people to know about.

It was an interesting event and i hope to go many more of this type.

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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.