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The year the Internet lost the cloak of anonimity.
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.
A “Transcribe this” button for seesmic videos
Something I would love to see on Seesmic, and which would encourage me to use it more is a “transcribe this” button for when I record certain videos. The logic is simple. Sometimes we discuss things that we would like to see discussed but not everyone wants to listen to us explain our idea. That’s why it would be a nice feature.
As an add on you could then add that video to your blog, with a transcript for quick and practical reference.
A nice streaming surprise
The month is almost over and I’ve got fourty megabytes of streaming left to play with so I’m going to take advantage of that with my mobile phone. Since cities around Switzerland are covered by 3g you may find that I’m using Qik, Bambuser and Flixwagon to stream what I’m doing.
Today I actually got Flixwagon to stream live over wifi which is better than i got yesterday and I found that streaming via qik works well on 3g.
In less than a hundred days you’ll have big crowds of people in the streets and that’s going to be for the European cup. If enough bars and squares have wifi then you could get the fans streaming their reactions live from the pub.
It’s the Vertovian vision, the All Seeing eye, and it’s a reality, no longer just a 1920’s eutopian vision.
The Social media Misnomer
This morning I spent three hours chatting to people in Australia, Sweden and France via both twitter and plurk and it felt great and the reason for this is that it was personal. We hear so much and read even more about the social media and the social web but there is one fundamental flaw and oxymoron in this vision. That is that there is an utter lack of the social aspect.
Everyone is here, trying to promote their work, their brand, their friends and everything. They re retweeting what other people say and do to promote work. They are promoting things that they think can promote a person’s value. The trouble is that how many of these people do you know as friends. Do you know anything than their marriage, their recent hirings or their job. Do you know where they’ve been out with friends?
I could name a hundred locations where podcamp have been, where tuttle have gone and many other things but I couldn’t tell you where more than two or three people like to go for drinks or good food. That’s because the social media are hidden. Everyone is hiding their real identity, their real friendships and their real passions. That’s why some of them have a public twitter account and a private one. That’s why there is so little conversation left on twitter. That’s also why you want to have 20,000 followers.
The truth is that if you use the social media as a professional tool, as a branding tool then you might find work, and you may find those who provide you with an increased profile but is that what the web is really about? How many of you will send more than two tweets to anyone except for work? How many of you will spend an hour just chatting?
You see for most of the people I follow on twitter it’s about work and nothing else. Sure there’s the charity for breast cancer and the organ donation drives that give good results but what about the mondane conversations? That’s lacking on twitter. That’s why plurk is more fun at moments.
In reality if what you called the social media were truly social then I would have had nothing to write and dream about in my nanowrimo effort. That’s why I lampoon most of you. You haven’t understood the social nature of the social web because for you it’s a work tool, not a play thing. Learn to play with the social media and you will get a lot more out of it. You will build friendships and the transparency will result in some positive things.
I’ve seen the Francofous community, how it grew, how it meant there were many meetings and how they talked behind closed doors. i’ve also seen the consequences of the lack of openness and what it can do to people’s involvment in the communities they’re part of. How many francofous still use seesmic for example. Of those I follow I see just one person still on seesmic.
Plurk at the moment is more social, you see conversations between friends and they have fun. it’s about funny images, it’s about night shifts, it’s about waking up, or going to sleep. In general it’s just a convivial social space where no one is using the network as a professional tool.
I’m not saying that you should be social all the time, what I’m saying is that you need to think about how to give time to the communities you’re part of. Ping.fm, hello text and others provide no value to those that are listening. Engage with your audience on a personal level. SHow them that you’re interested in the individuals, not the professionals.
Paris Seesmic seemeetup fun
Being in Paris to meet Seesmic friends once more today. we went to Dune, cafe/bar where we spent many hours eating various types of meat, drinking wine and seesmicing from laptops and mobile phones. Many photographs were taking. We could see each other without the intermediary of the webcam. It was good. 🙂
I’ve met a few new people and made more friends. Vinvin was there, Fred2baro, xtelle, Beatrice,
The event started when i met fred2baro at paris Gare de Lyon. He told me Keziah Jones was playing at one of the metro stations. He’s one of the artists i saw at the Caribana a few months ago. Djamel wasin the crowd for a short moment 🙂 Once i get to a proper laptop it will be easier to find the relevant videos and upload my own.
Re: @seesmictable : Le Bar est ouvert! …. et pendant ce temps la…
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Excellent catch Richard one the mos interesting i’ve seen and a real proof of concept for qik + seesmic