DISQUS

SeekGround · 8 months ago

Awesome post which speaks to my own experiences. I would go one step further and state that most of the main, main street will have difficulty with the more nuanced settings and the rest will not engage in a meaningful way due to privacy concerns.

felix · 8 months ago

I agree with you completely - it's a balance between a UI that caters to the power users v one that caters to the mainstream. You can already see this happening on most of these sites who are engaging in redesigns.

Matt Soreco · 8 months ago

Excellent post. I feel the exact same way. I've flip-flopped back and forth trying to get engaged with twitter many times. The thing is... I shouldn't really have to but that much of an effort to "get" it. That probably means twitter isn't for me, which could be because my real life network isn't on twitter.

freeryan · 8 months ago

you're referring to @scobleizer I believe? :)

Eyebee · 8 months ago

I recently had a friend get quite cross with me, because I didn't save her a seat at a local music event, which was first-come first served.

What happened was this. Although I'm not a really big Plurk user, I use my Gmail Chat bot to send messages to various services, one of which is Plurk. I send a message that my wife and I were going to this event. My Plurks end up as status messages in my Facebook. I only log into Facebook itself one a day or so. I don't find it very useful, so I don't use it much.

She didn't realize this. She saw the status message, and replied back to it - on Facebook. As I didn't log in, I didn't get the message.

In the end, all worked out, as we found her a spare chair.

The point of the tale is this. Personally, I find, Twitter and Friendfeed to be most useful for me. Easiest to use, interesting output from those I follow.

My friend prefers Facebook. Once I explained what Twitter was, and how it had good portability (no, she didn't need a smart phone, she could follow some Tweeters via SMS), she joined Twitter.

I follow her, and added her into my small SMS band too. She knows now, that if she wants to get my attention, to send me a Tweet, as my phone will beep.

Funny side to this though is that she told me last evening, that she's taken me OFF her SMS list, as I tweet so often her phone never stopped beeping all day for very long.

So, should social media function like IM, for instant contact, or should it be more email, to read at your leisure, when you have time after dinner in the evening, perhaps?

My view is that it's not only a mixture of both of those things, but it also depends on who you are and what you want to use it for.

There is no 'right' or 'wrong' way of using any of these services, but simply in the way that suits you best. Just don't expect everyone else to agree with your viewpoint, and don't be pressured into agreeing with theirs.

felix · 8 months ago

I also hate it when people try and seriously suggest a right or wrong way to use the service. People will use them in the way that makes it useful to them, period. Or they'll stop using it - you can say how *you* use it and maybe that would be helpful, but to say that if you use it this way, you're doing it wrong... well, that's just annoying.

(also, I'd never set up twitter to send to my phone - I barely get any but all the SMS buzzing would drive me nuts. Heh!)

Jason Nelson · 8 months ago

I couldn't agree more--great post. This reminds me of Mrs. Kutcher and the suicidal Twit. Because of the social investment Demi has made in various forms of media, she has an active following. I like to think the same response would have occurred for 99% of the rest of us, but I think that's naive--especially as these networks grow and there's more competition/noise.

Scoble and many other geek celebrities are out-of-touch if they believe the social functionality they experience comes close to the average user. That doesn't mean Scoble isn't leading in the understanding of future value for the masses; I certainly agree metadata and relationships in FriendFeed are a gold mine. But for that value to be realized by mainstream users, a combination of automation, integration and simplification must occur.

Scobleizer · 8 months ago

I understand very well that what I experience is not even close to mainstream. But, the only real action is in early adopter land. That's where you'll see who will win tomorrow and why.

felix · 8 months ago

Here's the thing - while I agree early adopters are important to success, in things other than social media, say google search or web based mail or e-readers - the essential experience that early adopters had were largely the same as what the mainstream would experience. In social media, I feel the experience is radically different. Yet, often when I hear the experts expounding the virtues they speak as though their experience was typical.

This isn't to negate those experiences or to say that the sites they are discussing aren't in fact great and worthy of mainstream attention - I love a good few of them myself - but I think they need to factor that in when thinking about the future success of the service.

Marco Fioretti · 8 months ago

One of the most sensible pieces I've ever read about the social networking craze. Thanks.

AdamSinger · 8 months ago

That's true in any network or anything in life - you don't get the value out of it until you put in the effort. Don't pigeon hole it to social media - music too. I wrote music for many years before I was able to create something aurally pleasing. There's no instant value to anything truly worthwhile.

felix · 8 months ago

Adam, I definitely didn't mean to imply that there was no value in social media. My point is that, the value that those who put in a lot of effort is not at all the same value as those of more casual mainstream users. There's still value for casual users, plenty of it, but it's qualitatively different than that of heavy users - yet when they blog about how this site is going to take over the mainstream they blog as though their experience is going to be typical for most users - which it simply is not.

At times, I think they may actually be doing social media a disservice - telling people a value proposition for using a particular site that is just not going to be what they get. They sign up expecting a certain thing which they don't get and give up - whereas telling them a more typical user experience would have them finding the real value that most people will pull from it.

AdamSinger · 8 months ago

I see your point. On the other hand, perhaps it makes for more interesting networks because it weeds out the people not really, really interested in the content there. For example, I still belong to forums and boards from the late 90's / early 00's because the communities were so interesting. Social media sites are the same as those, there's no real difference between those old tools and our new ones with rounded corners and pastel colors. I sort of like that many are weeded out and don't break through that don't want to commit the time - it ensures we get content interesting to the network.

felix · 8 months ago

There's definitely good value in keeping a community small - it maintains the essential character that the early adopters valued in it, basically as a rule of thumb, the smaller the community the better the signal to noise.

But, the purpose of the social media postings on these is not to encourage said smaller community - often they are to encourage or wonder at the inevitability of mainstream acceptance. To that end, I think their postings are - to some degree - detrimental to that goal. Of course, it's possible I've read them wrong! :)

Larry Greenberg · 8 months ago

As your interesting post suggests, social media is very much a work in progress.

HubSpot recently reported that those who tweet between 10 and 50 times per day tend to have the most followers, suggesting a high level engagement is necessary to build an audience (http://bit.ly/K3yfN). Of those followers, how many are actually listening and how many interact? Brands and businesses want to know that answer from an ROI perspective, because although Twitter and other platforms may not require a great upfront investment of dollars, it does involve the valuable time of paid staffers.

As an individual, I find Twitter to be a good news filter. I follow those who share my professional and personal interests and demonstrate a track record of providing useful information. As an oracle that sources the wisdom of crowds, you are quite right that Twitter seems to work best for those individuals who engage frequently (social media devotees) or are established celebrities -- i.e., Stephen Fry, journalists, politicians, etc. -- who actually do their own tweeting (authenticity is key).

Finally, Gordon Crovitz, former WSJ publisher and current writer of its "Information Age" column, recently said this at a Fordham University media industries conference: (paraphrasing) we tend to over-estimate new technologies' short term impact -- and underestimate its long-term impact -- on consumers.

Just because some social media platforms seem over-hyped now doesn't mean they won't have a unforeseen, paradigm-shifting impact in the more distant future.

Jeremy L · 8 months ago

Totally agree. I really enjoy Twitter, and I've had some cool experiences with it, but I also receive ZERO response to any random questions I've asked my followers. If I do receive a response, it's from somebody who is watching for keywords and chooses to respond in order to sell their service.

My problem with social media is explaining it to those who aren't yet acquainted. Different people use it in different ways. It's hard to tell somebody what their 'way' should be!

Baxter Tocher · 8 months ago

Now *that's* a good post.

Garin Kilpatrick · 7 months ago

I'm not partial to any particular community, and though I have problems with social media (like Twitters suggested follow list) I don't have a problem with Social Media as a whole. I've got love for anywhere active conversation is going down. Early adopters get to conversations early and can potentially command it as Scobleizer does, especially in FriendFeed. As long as your plans are not for total domination of a Social Network you don't have to be an early adopter and you can still get plenty of real action out of Social Media.