Opportunities for interaction around Twitter

What would an F8 application space built around twitter look like? This thought occurred to me as I was pondering twitter this morning. Twitter is still all the talk in social media circles, and the company's recent acquisition of Douglas Bowman (recently ex-Google) suggests that it may have more up its sleeves yet in the way of user experience enhancements.

I'm most intrigued by the notion that in a social space like twitter, which is fundamentally open, might accommodate structure and organization on-the-fly. Twitter's lack of social organization stands in contrast to the contained and persistent presence and relationship structure of Facebook. Facebook not only guarantees a higher level of attention and visibility around user actions, its super social activity-oriented architecture and design allow the company to offer developers templates for social interaction, a means of distribution among friends, and feeds by which to publish activity and participation.

Twitter, on the other hand, is built around asymmetrical, often un-reciprocated member relationships. it's activity stream is organized only by time, not by space or application as it is on Facebook. It has virtually no symbolic languages or gestural systems, and few means of routing and addressing communication, not to mention differentiating it aside from what the user says.

Where Facebook has raised the bar for social actions, Twitter remains primarily a communication space. But in the real world, a great variety of forms of talk exist to organize social relationships and various "kinds of doing" (as Goffman would put it). These have been categorized by sociologists as rituals, ceremonies, pastimes, games, and intimacies. They rely more heavily on unwritten but tacitly understood codes of conduct and behavior. But like social action systems, they involve sequencing, turns, addresing, the distribution of attention, and constraints on behavior as well as speech.

So, could talk-based social action systems be in twitter's future? We've seen hints of this already. Indeed it seems almost inevitable that an open system for talk like twitter would show signs of self-organization, and the emergence of social practices having more structure than the ubiquitous baseline tweet. We would need only twitter apps and services that mine relationships, connect the unconnected, and introduce topical or other kinds of speech-based forms to organize and order activity and participation. On twitter, these might be on the structures designed to work on-the-fly, or to persist over time.

Here's a quick look at how we might approach the field.

The design of social interactions around twitter presents some interesting challenges. We can bundle these into conceptual categories that pertain to the design of openly-structured social media in particular.

• Social organization: organizes participants, defines roles, positions, rank, results, and so on
• Activities: organizes the tweet-based activities, both communication and action based
• Meta: presentation layer for activities, using tweets, twitterers, relationships, data, and content as source material

Social organization

Relationships on twitter can be established without mutual consent (I follow you, you don't follow me back). This means that many are asymmetrical. Asymmetry probably increases the incidence of transient relationships (I follow you for a while, unless you follow me back). Higher transience corresponds to a lower commitment barrier, which might enable passing and temporary relationships with others for reasons other than friendship and genuine personal interest.

This suggests that in theory at least, a relationship could be used temporarily for social organization or activity structure (say, for the duration of a game).

Associative and informal relationships can be suggested by mentioning a person in a tweet. This suggests that passing and temporary relationships of affiliation or association could be used for social organization (say, to create a team).

Groups and audiences. Followers of a twitter @username or those associated with hashtags (categories; see what wefollow is doing) could serve the purposes of transient or temporary social activities. Again, fans and teams come to mind.



Activities

Conversational/Communication-based activities would require users to include terms or phrases required to further a game or social interaction. The possibilities here are endless, from the poetic to the informational, quantitative, descriptive, instructional, normative, and much more. Games or activities could be built around "speech acts" that do or accomplish something, trigger, launch, start, iterate, repeat, or close a run of action, a series of moves, even an operation. (Many ceremonies are carried out by means of following a script.)

Social Action based activities would require not only the saying of things but saying them in order, or addressed to particular "players." The distinction between communication and social action is that the tweet would just be a "move." Tweeting would perform the move. A game would might use a code or set of rules that is played by tweeting. One could play chess quite easily using twitter. Rules of interaction could be designed around the moves, responses to moves, sequencing of moves, who moves, and so on. Again, the possibilities are endless.



Meta

Visualizations could be used to show what is happening across those playing or participating in a twitter-based social game. Tweets might be represented as they are. Or their authors might be represented. They may be shown by attributes, location, historically relevant information, by relation, activity, and so on. Or tweets might be used to control a visualization (much as font sizes are coupled to volume in tag clouds). Real time games could even be played around twitter real-time search results. Data mined from tweets, twitter users, and relationships could be used to bind or constrain games and to design rules of play.

Trends would be very easy to make interactive on twitter, as the timeline is fast participation is easy. Real-time polls and trending lend themselves to twitter. Visualizations could be added to capture results, and also to create interaction systems and controllers. Tweets might be used to create content that is then re-purposed for social gaming. Just think of the many quiz shows, trivia games, and real-time polls that are common on tv and in some online social games...


These are just ideas for how twitter could be used for more structured and organized activities. I thought it might be fun to voice some of this o flesh out the ideas and to delineate some of the structure that is implicit in twitter and in talk in general. I can see these happening, although it's possible that twitter's strong sense of public space will act as a constraint. But it wouldn't surprise me if some brand, some time, creates a hit.

Influence on Twitter

I have little time this morning to write the post this topic requires, but it's been on my mind for a couple weeks and rather than wait, I'd like to put a few things down on the page. The issue of influence on twitter is not as simple as it might first appear. Twitter is becoming an increasingly differentiated social space, as we'd expect, but its lack of social structure and its limited forms of interaction engender a lot of social distortions. If it is the case that a social field exists on twitter, and I think it's clear that ones does exist, then social differentiation is an anthropological and social necessity. People want to know who they are and where they stand vis a vis the rest of the audience.

Influence has been the most popular way of differentiating people on twitter. In its simplest form, influence is just popularity, as measured by total number of followers. But we know that doesn't really say much. It's a kind of "circulation" model, akin perhaps to circ numbers in the print world, or viewers and listeners in tv and radio. Not very sophisticated, we have to admit, and far less than what interactive media can offer. That said, influence as popularity is, well, a popular metric.

So let's try to break this down a little.

For starters, a few observations. Influence is not absolute, but is relative. Power is not absolute, it is relative. And sociologically speaking, influence can be understood as a form of power. There are different kinds of influence.

Some types of influence:
Social influence, as rank or position within a community: the community may be defined as everyone, or a subset of everyone. Some influence metrics for twitter, such as Twitalyzer, measure one's influence against the entire twitter community. Others, like Klout, must lop off the celebrities (with 250k followers, they are outliers and skew results dramatically) and provide a more meaningful influence score. A simple rank of one's position among all twitter users strikes me as meaningless. (Although it must be fun for those at the top.)

Local influence, as rank within a social group or local community: It makes more sense to measure influence within a circumscribed group of people. The question then becomes "which group?" One answer might be: whatever group we can observe and measure. But let's not limit ourselves to what we can observe and measure today. Let's instead consider some different ways of qualifying influence theoretically:

Influence among followers, those a person follows and those who follow, differentiated by reciprocated and non-reciprocated follow relationships. (Note that without going into details, there is a high degree of distortion here, and dirt in the data, for some people deliberately ignore, say using Tweepler, and some ignore inattentively and coincidentally, and some ignore accidentally. A lot is missed on twitter, and not all people manage followers in the same way.

Influence among an affiliative group, the types of affiliation ranging from industry to social or cultural topic and context, profession, place, and so on. This is difficult to determine today, but over time can be extracted using hashtagged tweets, linguistic markers (words, topics, people names, event names, industry terms and so on), retweets (who is retweeted, what associative affiliation does it suggest), @replies (ditto), and twitter profiles. Scraping other social network profiles will help to qualify this. Here, Peoplebrowsr strkes me as a strong contender but one which, if it catches, will change user behavior also.

Influence as social capital, which might seem like social rank but involves more of the person's actual and perceived social capital. What do I mean by this? There's a well-known distortion in the follower influence/rank model on twitter: people increase their own influence by following the highest-ranked people on twitter. The crude version of following, in which a person follows popular people, probably involves associative social ranking.

By association oneself with a celebrity, influence travels back to the fan (in their minds, of course, but this doesn't matter if a lot of people perceive it). It is an act of following that involves mimetic desire perhaps, and is both strategic and indirect: the person who follows john mayer, with nearly 400,000 followers, is possibly benefiting from John Mayer's huge social rank.

As I understand it, social capital is more than simple popularity, is more than numerical or quantitative popularity, but is a qualified popularity. John Mayer, who follows 19 people, cannot have conversations with his followers. His fans are listening to him, but he's talking at them, not with them. Social capital seems to me a measure of influence in conversational media, and thus involves the expenditure of social capital through conversation and social interactions. It is more than perceived value of capital (John Mayer). it is transactional capital. Because the currency of social media is attention, social capital involves a unique kind of influence: it increases as it is spent, and spending it costs nothing. Social capital involves relationships, and increases with reciprocity. It is engaged and participatory, both of which suit the online medium more than they do the broadcast medium.

One question to come out of social capital as influence is whether or not it is transferable. Does it belong to the person, or can it be extended to what the person talks about? Can it be transferred from a person to a role or position? Do people with lots of social capital transfer it to companies or brands they might represent? Because so much of social capital is built on authenticity and integrity, I think these are as-yet unanswered questions.

.....

Moving on then, there is more to say about influence. There are influential practices. Strategies of accruing influence (macro level influence) and tactics for maintaining, spending, and exercising it (micro, or tweets and "conversations" themselves). Influence in conversation, for example, is an interesting one. Who do we trust? Who do we believe? And for what? I'd like to make a couple points about strategic influence before raising some hairy questions about tactics.

Nietzsche, the philosopher of power and force, taught us that there are two kinds of power: power projected and power attracted. It's bi-directional. Similarly on twitter, there is influence projected and extended, and influence attracted. Jean Baudrillard got himself in trouble with feminism with a book called Seduction in which he described the projected force as male, and the seductive force as female. Without getting into a discourse on the politics of power, we can safely say that projective and seductive forces are at play in cultural influence and identity, and are similarly at play on twitter. Twitter is after all real people, and its lack of a clear social field only amplifies some of the strategies and tactics we use to differentiate ourselves from others.

There is plenty more to say on specific strategies and tactics, but I'm seriously running low on time and need to move on quickly to a final set of distinctions.

Personalities on twitter are distinct. Personality distinctions in social media explain differences in how people see themselves, how they see and relate to others, and in how they interact and engage in social activities. Personality types are not the distinctions made by market segmentation, but are psychologically-based insights into how people behave and why, grounded in interests and motives. While personalities can explain what's really going on, however, they complicate the influence metrics that broadly apply to a population at large. That said, influence becomes much more interesting when we view it as something exercised and as a social distinction that motivates participation. Here generalized models of influence fall way short of explaining individual behaviors.

Without getting into details, for a separate post on "How we tweet" will be required, we can highlight a few personality distinctions relevant to qualifying different ways of exercising influence. I have grouped personality types into Self-oriented, Other-oriented, and Relational-oriented types. These correspond to monological, dialogical, and triangulating social behaviors. And to monadic, dyadic, and triadic social organization. Everything social can be built on isolates (one), dyads (pairs), and triads (three). The modes of talk, or in our case tweeting, would be Self-talk (telling, talking at); conversation (beginning with the other person, or replying); and triangulating (mediating a relationship between two other people).

(the following types are mentioned in my personality types presentation)

• A pundit, for example, may exercise influence by building a reputation, following, and in largely talking at that audience
  
• A buddy may exercise influence by being highly responsive, attentive, and reciprocating
  
• A critic may exercise influence by aggregating and distributing content that belongs together (impersonally)
  
• An expert may exercise influence by talking to a topic in which s/he is personally invested in demonstrating expertise
  
• A harmonizer may exercise influence by becoming involved in small group and social runs on twitter, often event-related
  

and there are more....

The measurement of influence on twitter is fascinating, especially when we move from quantifiable influence to strategies, tactics, and practices of influence. At this point in twitter's evolution as a social space, we're going to want to map the social field and begin to locate and delineate social distinctions. It's what we do when social spaces first appear and populate. But twitter is a highly individual social media tool, and an understanding of what we do with it, and how we each relate to its social organization, can really only be understood if we involve the psychology of behavior online. And that requires an understanding of how we see ourselves, others, and social activity overall, and will be expressed in the different ways that personal and social influence can be brought into play through the conversation and social action possibilities afforded by unstructured social tools and communities.

Related
Twitter applications and extensions: a list


Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

Social Media Consulting and Strategy by a Social Interaction Design Specialist

The friendly face of twitter, and the enthusiastic bias

is there a built-in bias towards enthusiasm on twitter? This question was on my mind last night. I was pondering the recurrence of social media fatigue that sets in now and then as a natural kind of recoil against habits of social media overuse. Fatigue is normal experience.

We may each have different thresholds and tolerances for being online, and being in social media — but coming and going is not only common, it's healthy. And we pull back from our social media use often for a good reason: that we have reached a new understanding around what social media engagement means (to us, to others, or culturally); or that we're busy doing something else (and possibly something more productive!); or that the weather has turned.

But there's something else at work in the practices of "status culture," and in twitter especially. Twitter is a very strange form of communication. For reasons of its architecture, its conversational constraints, its character limitations, its tendency to focus on follower counts, as well as the culture that has developed around it, twitter is grossly inefficient at engendering and sustaining conversational runs.

The status update, a version of which is what twitter was designed to serve, grew out of a very small and limited messaging format. It appeared in Friendster and Yahoo 360 as the shoutout. It was then an expression of mood. "How are you feeling?" Blog editors (the software not the person) accommodated the mood statement as an add-on, and it sometimes appeared as an emoticon. One could post something and append a mood to it.

The idea was two-fold: a) to put a face, a more emotive expression, on the written post; and b) to add a facet to the post's appeal to the audience of readers/viewers. Readers or viewers could now respond to the author's statements, or his/her mood or feelings.

Over time the status update was assimilated into other social networking platforms, and has now become a commonplace. It continues to serve the purpose of delivering short and simple announcements. And we vary in how we use or don't use it (expressing our thoughts, location, activity, mood, or telling news, inviting, and so on). And status updates, while being a nearly ubiquitous publishing format, of course take something on from the culture and context in which the site or service resides.

A Linkedin status update is not a Facebook update is not a tweet. Soft and unwritten rules of etiquette, codes of conduct, and cultural expectations govern our expressive inclinations in each "community" or context. These sites have different audiences, and our relationship to those audiences varies also.

Twitter stands alone, however, in having elevated the status update to a form of communication unto itself. The miserly message format originally defined by SMS character limits must now accommodate all types of update, and new practices, and all without the benefit of any meta whatsoever. Given that there's no way to talk about what we're talking about, nor any way to address ourselves to those we're thinking about, writing for/to, or in front of (besides replies and tags), the pressure on tweeting can tend to compress our expressions so that they are quickly and easily skimmed and digested.

One of the reasons for this, and here the bias to friendliness enters the picture, is that twitter cannot easily close the loop on conversation. Even an @reply, which closes the loop with one person, is temporally out of synch. By the time an @reply has arrived, we, or our thinking, may have moved on. Synchronizing is key to good conversation -- as is addressing (the audience for whom the message is intended).

But as all communication, and by that I mean all linguistic statements, contains an appeal (for acknowledgement if not also understanding, agreement, validation, and approval), tweets will appeal more, and to more people, the more simple they are. A greater number of people can pick up and respond to simple statements, friendly gestures, and pleasant declarations than will a negative, angry, or contradictory statement. Banalities on twitter do not indicate that a twitterer is banal -- they are simply a low-risk appeal in a package that can be consumed easily by most everyone.

And that is where twitter's second social bias comes in. Given that so many of us attend to our follower numbers, we will tend towards pleasantries in order not to offend or lose followers. The appeal embedded in the linguistic expression has a social double, is a marker of status and wants to clothe self-presentation attractively.

This is of course not the case all the time, for each of us, with all tweets. But there does seem to be a bias on twitter to the friendly appeal, and a corresponding avoidance of negative or contradictory statements. We use our tweets, sometimes, as symbolic gestures and trade in a social currency and capital that only accumulates as it is expended. And I think that it's for this reason, in no small measure, that we tweet enthusiastically, and rarely when we withdraw.



Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.
Read more: "Social Media Consulting and Strategy by a Social Interaction Design Specialist: Improbability of Communication in Social Media" - http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2009/03/improbability-of-communication-in.html#ixzz0ArxjdBR2

Adhocnium call in blogtalk radio show thursday

Folks this is late notice I know, but I'll be joining Adhocnium founder and fearless leader Chris Heuer, also of Social Media Club fame, BL Ochman of Whatsnext, and Thomas Van der Wal, true social media experts all, and fellow adhocnium network peers, for an hour of social media talk on BlogTalkRadio. It'll be our first social media hour call-in show, but not our last.

Topics on our mind are:

• What are the responsibilities of web services to their communities?"http://www.socialmediaclub.org/2009/03/22/question-of-the-week-responsibilities-of-service-community/
  
• What are the responsibilities a Web 2.0 service has to engage with and respond to the community it serves? And what are the responsibilities of the community**to*the service? (Twitter, Facebook, etc)?
  
• What's on the horizon for social media?
  
• Where do users turn when they develop social media fatigue, can brands see this coming, and how can brands plan ahead?
  
• Is pay per Tweet a good idea for companies?
  
• How can companies know whether a "social media expert" has really got the goods?
  

We promise to do our best to stay on topic, but request your patience and forbearance in advance, should the uncommon experience of a live call-in show turn out to be such a thrill that the wheels come off the bus.

Come pester, poke, prod, and provoke us!

The show: http://bit.ly/v9tDy

You can follow us on twitter: @chrisheuer @whatsnext @gravity7 @vanderwal



Show details:

The new Social Media Hour is a weekly podcast that brings together several of AdHocnium 's Creative Catalysts to share thoughts, insights and opinions on the latest trends, issues and news related to social media. This week we will talk about YASN (yet another social network), the Social Media Club Question of the Week and other issues. In the second half of the show we will take callers seeking advice on social media projects, campaigns and related issues. Social Media Hour will help businesses stay on top of the most important strategic issues of the day and help people inside organizations make the right decisions for their organization and themselves.

AdHocnium is an ad-hoc agency of creative catalysts producing social chemistry between globally focused companies and the markets they serve. We build teams for our client’s specific needs, bringing together some of the best and brightest people from all around the world. Our talented network includes leaders in their fields, primarily communications and technology, with invaluable insights on integrated marketing, public relations, branding, technology, social media and Web 2.0. Each has the ability to holistically analyze your company’s unique situation and provide you with a unique perspective for growing your business and transforming your organization.

Twitter applications and extensions: a list

A list of twitter applications, uses, services and sites. This list is not exhaustive, and I'll try to keep it updated as new services come on line.

I've not had time to annotate the list yet, but i hope to get to that by end of week. I'll be as specific to social interaction design as I can.

Please comment or tweet additions or requests. I won't be ranking anything here -- I could only offer up my own personal favorites. I'm interested in how these apps slice up the twitterverse, create new social practices or utility, measure rank and activity, and so on. For the moment, I'm as interested in that as I am in which are best of breed or which offer the best user experience from a usability perspective, or social practice perspective.

That said, at some point I would like to gather up social interaction design and experience perspectives from you and offer up some "objective" comparisons and identify best practices, along with how they shape use and social behaviors.



aggregators

• PeopleBrowsr
• PRESENCR - one site feeds all
• twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter
• Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networks
• FriendFeed

apps

• 2tweet - Tweet photos and videos by email
• Roomatic
• Twitterchat
• TinyChat - Disposable Chatrooms for the Twitter Generation - ReadWriteWeb
• Mitter - Share Your Video Experience.
• TwitPic / Share photos on Twitter
• Yammer : Home
• Twuffer - Schedule Twitter tweets.
• TweetChat

articles

• YvoSchaap.com - TwitterThoughts
• Information Retrieval on the Live Web > by Paul Ogilvie
• Twitter Search Results on Google for Greasemonkey

clients

• PeopleBrowsr
• twhirl | the social software client
• Welcome to Seesmic

deceased?

• john_erik > Tweeterboard : Conversation Analytics for Twitter
• brabblr.com
• flippedup/twitter
• Twubble
• tweetpeek

directories

• Just Tweet It » THE Directory for Twitter Users
• twibs : Twitter Business Directory - 6,703 businesses and counting!
• Twitter Friend Recommendations | Who Should i Follow?
• Twitter Directory Link Up - Find, Follow & be Followed by the People that Count!
• Welcome :: TweeterTags.com - What are you all about? - Find similar people on Twitter
• Twellow :: Profile Editor
• monitter : real time, live twitter monitor | free live twitter embed widget
• Tracking Twitter
• Twitter ‎(Social Brand Index)‎

extending twitter

• ykyat
• twaction - turning tweets into actions
• TwitterSoap
• TwitterCritic - Film reviews by Twitter users
• TwitterKeys
• FlixPulse: Twitter Tool For Movie Reviews | B.E.T.A. Daily
• Twitter / BeatMyTweet
• Tweetree - gravity7's Stream
• twtvite :: SF Happy Hour Tweetup
• SecretTweet.com - Post your secrets anonymously to Twitter
• Twitlonger - When you talk too much for Twitter
• Get Satisfaction - People-Powered Customer Service

links & urls

• TwitterBuzz - The most popular links on Twitter - URL Popularity

networking, people search

• Tweepler (Tweepler.com)
• Mr. Tweet -> Your Personal Networking Assistant!
• Buzzable
• TwitterFriends - Your relevant network on Twitter
• DoesFollow - doesfollow.com - Find out who follows whom on Twitter
• Twitseeker
• TwitterFriends - Your relevant network on Twitter

polls, social search

• Questions and Answers via Twitter - LazyTweet
• StrawPoll—Tiny polls in 140 characters or less
• Ask500 - Public Opinion Polls for the World
• twtpoll :: a simple survey/poll twitter app.
• Aardvark
• Mosio - People Powered Mobile Search - SMS Search, Mobile Q&A, Text Message Questions, Answers, People, Questionarium, Phone Search, Mobile Social Network, Widgets, WAP, PDA, Mobile Collaboration, Wiki, Enterprise, Mobility, Synchronization, Workforce, Social Mobility
• Twidentify Twitter Search
• ToAnswer » Using Twitter to find answers to your burning questions
• HelpWith: A TweetApp
• PollDaddy Twitter Polls - Send a poll directly to your Twitter stream!
• plusplusbot
• Twitter Answers.
• twittpoll.com - twit your opinion

search & filters

• Cursebird: What the f#@! is everyone swearing about?
• Twitter Spy
• serendipiTwitterous
• monitter : real time, live twitter monitor | free live twitter embed widget
• Twitterfall
• Public timeline - MicroPlaza
• Public timeline - MicroPlaza
• Twitter Venn
• What twitter people are saying near you :: Twits Near Me
• Twithority Search

trends & tracking

• TwitterCounter: How popular is @nickmarks
• Real time Twitter User and Client Stats - Tweetrush Powered by Rush Hour Analytics
• Tracking Twitter Links: Twitter Analytics Tools & More | Get Elastic
• t|w|i|t|t|e|r|m|e|t|e|r
• Tweetrush
• Twist - see trends in twitter
• Tracking Twitter

twitter app roundups

• SXSW: The Figures Behind The Top Web Apps - ReadWriteWeb
• 14 Twitter directories to find new friends | Webware - CNET
• 5 Interesting Uses of Twitter
• The Top 21 Twitter Applications (According to Compete)
• twibs : find the businesses on twitter - 4,814 businesses and counting!
• BIGLIST of Twitter Tools and Third Party Apps | Online Marketing Blog
• Library clips :: roundup
• http://twitter.pbwiki.com/
• New Data on Top Twitter Applications and Usage
• tweeternet - What is Twitter?
• 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe | FlowingData
• Useful Twitter Applications

stats & ranking

• Twitter Quotient for 'gravity7' | web.forret.com
• Twinfluence - Twitter Influence Analyzer
• TwitterHawk - Introducing you to people like you, near you!
• TweetEffect- When did you lose or gain twitter followers?
• Twitalyzer Clout Details for @gravity7
• TunkRank :: gravity7
• Twit or Fit Top 10
• http://www.twitalyzer.com/twitalyzer/engine.asp?u=gravity7&lang=&uri=
• TwitterCounter Stats: The Ultimate Twitter Statistics Provider!
• Klout
• Twitemperature: How hot are you?
• Twithority Search
• Twitterless :: Get Updates When Someone Stops Following You on Twitter
• Twitter StreamGraphs
• Twitter Charts
• TweetVolume : Home
• Twitter Stats
• TwitterFriends statistics for gravity7

tagging

• #hashtags - Popular
• Twitter Fan Wiki / TagChannels
• Twitter Teams :: Main

url shorteners & tracking

• Twitturly - Real-time Link Tracking on Twitter
• BackTweets
• POPrl.com / Shrinking popular URLs since 1973 / What's POPular
• bit.ly, a simple url shortener

visualizations

• Twitter Venn
• YvoSchaap.com - TwitterThoughts
• Twitter Spy
• TwittEarth :: Live Twitts all over the world
• twittervision
• twistori

Twitalyzer, for dwunk tweeting

This is just a short post on twitter analytics tools, not the hefty ones but the lite ones. It's a "get this off my chest" kind of post, combined with a "what do you all think?" To make it clear that I'm not being curmudgeonly or nit picky. Splitting hairs is actually quite fun if done with a group of friends.

Twitalyzer
Inspiration for this has been provided this morning by Twitalyzer, which as its name suggests, is a handy back-pocket device used to detect the blood-alcohol level of idiots. It's been repurposed, however, to find drunk tweets, or is it twitterers? As it works on the basis that drunk twitterers slur their tweeting, the distinction is moot.

Using algorithms described in company literature as "special sauce" and emblazoned somewhat obliquely with the unusually conversational warning label "Contains nuts, made by nuts, is nuts. Well then, nuts it is!" and spuriously marked down to move ("$5 off! Buy Now!" Which is weird, as the product is originally priced at $1.99.), Twitalyzer measures the speed of tweeting, and calculates impact (damage) based on a number of factors.

Results, or the "TUI" index, establishes whether the user has been Tweeting Under the Influence. Unfortunately for some, it is unable to distinguish between those who are truly Influential, those Under the Influence (of said Influentials), and those simply High on themselves. Close semantic analysis of tweet content reveals that there is little to distinguish a slurred tweet from a disemvoweled tweet, and the twitterverse's cultural adoption of license pl8 spelings and abbrvtions has reportedly fubarred an un-discloseable number of supercomputers.



One Twitter, or many?

Ok but seriously folks, just a few points worth making about twitter analytics tools.

Twitter isn't really "one big social network." So let's not measure user "influence" or position against the entire twitter user population.

Twitter tweet "velocity" should not be an absolute number. Tweeting more, or tweeting a lot, is simply verbosity. Quantity over quality. And to count velocity against the maximum theoretical threshold of 1500/wk is just silly. That's like calling an F22 Raptor slow (when compared to the speed of light).

Generosity, which is apparently the meaning of retweeting, should be calculated not by total retweets but by loyal retweets. What's more, retweeting is a mutually beneficial gesture/act on twitter, so let's not cal it generosity. And please filter out self-promotional, PRetweets, and reputational retweeting.

The case for weighting

All twitter tools should weight metrics against the user's follower count, and frequency of use. Users who maintain small follower counts should not be discriminated against. Small followings can be much more attentive, loyal, (and cult-like. no, just kidding).

As a user increases his/her follower count s/he may tweet more - this doesn't mean the tweets are better, nor does it mean they have more weight or influence. The more followers one has, the more one is followed. But many of those followers are following for reasons of their own visibility/twitter profile.

So to provide metrics using absolute numbers makes no sense, unless the goal on twitter is to become the most followed, and most verbose twitter user: a goal very few have ventured to achieve, and fewer still have sought to imitate or compete with. Relative scores beat absolute fools.

Finally, increasing numbers are not the only numbers that matter. There's something to be said about loyalty, consistency, regularity, and which is flat, not increasing.

Let's please not ruin twitter by turning it into a giant distributed high school gymnasium.

Improbability of Communication in Social Media

The floor in front of me is half covered with paper sketches. Blank sheets awaiting diagrams and visuals. Which is in part why they're still there. I have arranged them into short stacks by category. In an attempt to create a series of visual presentations on conversational models relevant to social media, and to flow and talk applications like twitter, I've managed to isolate the elements and need a eureka moment before I can lift them off the floor and start sketching.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Apropos waiting, I want to toss out another concept: probability. Or more specifically, improbability. And to contextualize it to social media, the probability or improbability of communication.

The concept comes out of Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory, in which communication becomes action only when communication by one person is picked up by another. The response to a communication, be it a response to what's said or to the person saying it (person or content), is a form of social action. Social action is how society is reproduced through individual acts and agency, and can include other kinds of interactions (symbolic exchange, money-based transactions, rituals and ceremonies that repeat the social w/o personal claims made).

In the absence of a response, communication is just expression. Online, it's expression recorded as an artifact: a message, post, upload, or other contribution.

Luhmann claims that systems are all about making the improbability of communication probable. A more humanistic view would simply say that we bind through our use of language and interaction; that regardless of whether or not we reach agreements, we can reach an understanding of what we say to each other. And that this alone is adequate to role of communication in having meaningful personal relationships.

All of which is a rather long-winded way of saying that we use social media to connect and to feel connected.

I've noted in this series on "status culture" (the culture of status updates and tweets) that every update/tweet contains an appeal. It appeals to the audience the user has in mind (those s/he follows, those following him/her, or friends -- as in Facebook). Appeals to response, perhaps as an @reply or dm, or Facebook status update comment. Those would be direct responses to the appeal. It may appeal to an indirect response, such as a Retweet, @name citation, or follow (yes, we get followers when we tweet, and we can think of being followed as a kind of response).

The appeal for some kind of response is how communication tries to increase the probability of the Improbable. Time-based applications like twitter dramatically increase that improbability (search will reduce it), for communication flows in time. It is not bound by a container (a Facebook page), nor is it bound by an application (e.g. anything synchronous like chat, IM, skype).

Improbability of communication becoming social action is higher on twitter because we are not in synch on twitter. Each of us is only capable of keeping up with so much of the twitter stream; limits on our time and attention are real, and ever more precious the more people we follow. My mental metaphor of late has been of twitter as a kind of highway in which cars travel in their own lane and at different speeds, and for communication to occur, two or more have to be next to each other. Yes, we can scroll back in time, but only so much. And we all know that we're much more likely to get a response from somebody if they have just tweeted. (Link clickthroughs captured on bit.ly show exactly this -- a near instantaneous peak that decays quickly).

If the improbability of communication is increased in time-based applications because we are not in synch, then that is an interesting design and system feature of time-based talk applications. For the psychological factors, those involved in user motives and behaviors, we might ask: How do we handle communication in systems that make it improbable? What's our feeling about the ambiguity it creates, when so little of what we say is directly addressed and replied to? And what explains our dedication to something like twitter, and our attempts to thwart the improbability of connecting by tweeting more, following more, and seeking more and more followers?

For that we might need to know something about personality and how different kinds of personalities relate to online communication and interaction. A separate article on how we talk is in order for that.

I think the concept of improbability is interesting. It captures the system and market-like features of talk applications, twitter especially, very well. And it raises an important question -- one that is oft overlooked by claims that everyone just needs to join the conversation. It's not conversation and we know it. And yet it's something we do -- and which can be remarkably satisfying.


Related: reading notes on Luhmann
Slideshare presentations on psychology of users, competencies of users, and social interaction design.



This bit.ly graph of click-throughs to this post shortly after I tweeted it demonstrates what I'm talking about here: in time-based applications like twitter, the probability of communication is contingent on temporal coincidence. Communication happens "as it happens."

Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

Southby drive-by... #SXSW tweets for those #notatSXSW

Disclaimer and editorial note -- this is not a rant. I don't rant in public. This isn't even constructive criticism. Or as Joseph Cotten misspeaks it in Citizen Kane, when trying to say "dramatic criticism," this isn't even crimitism. So anybody at South by Southwest (hereafter #SXSW) please don't take this the wrong way. I love you guys and wish I were down there feeding the frenzy with the rest of you.

I've been on twitter this weekend, like many, and following #SXSW as are many others. Now I've not been very disciplined about it, haven't used search #SXSW but figured instead that highlights would fall out of the river of news flowing from friends in attendance -- lord knows they are the uber connected and the best sources and judges of what is gleaming and dull in Austin this year.

But lo, the uber connected are such heavy users that twitter becomes a forum or chat during peak times -- #SXSW being a prime example. And so the tweets I've been gleaning this weekend have alerted me to plenty of the hallroom banter and ballroom backchannel chat, the hotel lobby overheards and happy hour merriment. But I have no idea what's shining this year at #SXSW.

it just seems ironic that the social media gurus in attendance are (of course) primarily talking to each other on twitter this year. This says something about how we use it, and especially when those using it are actually in the same place. Twitter need not then be used to push out to the outside world, but is used by people finding and meeting people at the event itself.

When we're in our own places, twitter helps to thread connections and span the space that separates us. When we're together, it serves as semi-public chat channel and backstage pass. All of which just goes to show that how we use technologies to talk is determined less by the technology, and more by our sense of who we're talking to.

I do wish I were there -- to learn about what's going on though i may have to turn to the blogosphere!

Social media's third law: designing for communication

The third law of social interaction design is that communication is transformed by the medium, which separates what is said from the saying of it. In everyday face-to-face encounters, we say something by speaking.

But in mediated communication, speech is captured and produced only with the help of technology. It is then distributed: as a post, be it text, video, audio, or something else (e.g. virtual worlds, games, etc, which involve a specific kind of communication).

Communication in social media is talk, and social media are "talk technologies." True, updates are written, but writing is the just the form. This is a particular kind of communication, and we need to unwrap it if we are to understand the social media design issues specific to it.

Our first observation is that the communicative form of the status update is that it is always new. It is neither writing, text, nor literature, in spite of how it is captured and published. It is a form of speaking; for each update is a new update. Even a retweet or pass-along is an act of authorship.

Because it is new, it attracts attention. It is attention-getting because we pay attention to new things, and to news of things new.

Updates are made by individuals. As a form of talk, the status update is some kind of self-narration, some kind of telling, telling to and telling about. It is personal, that is, it comes from the person doing the talking. The person posting the update must be able to reflect on him or herself, think of something that can be said online, and then post it. She or he must have a sense for what is worth saying, for what might get attention, responses, and so on.

All of this might seem obvious, but it is important in that it places status updating squarely within a user-centric framework.

This means, first of all, that talk means something to the person who talks. There is a payoff for the user who does the talking. Seen from a design perspective, the user action is: talking. Now, talking in-and-of-itself is not yet communication. Communication requires at a minimum one more user.

If one user says something and no other user catches it, only one user experience is involved (and it's a poor one at that). Still, one user talking who believes s/he is being listened to is still one (somewhat) satisfied user.

Communication is a system of statements and responses using language, or some kind of symbolic form. Because it involves people, it involves what's said and to whom. The statements themselves may be considered the content of communication; the relationship between users can be considered meta-communication.

In face-to-face encounters, meta communication has access to gestures, body language, and more. A lot is accomplished just by looking at and looking back. indeed, a sense of "understanding" is often accomplished not by means of saying things, but by interacting.

We can now make a distinction between interaction and communication, and between saying things with gestures and saying things with words. Here's where things get interesting. Communication doesn't produce its own meta contents or meta communication. Meta is possible only by means of observing the communication. In other words, one cannot say something and also say something about what is being said at the same time.

Unless one were to use body language, gestures, or some other non-linguistic means of expression... Which is of course what we do all the time in face-to-face interactions. "Facework" is the work done alongside speaking and saying things -- and it gives us wit, sincerity, irony, and all other kinds of layered communication.

Recognizing now that the act of saying things doesn't say everything we mean, we can see why communicating online may be neither a) the easiest way to make oneself understood nor b) the easiest way to reach an understanding.

Being understood is not the same as being in agreement. The latter assumes the former; but the former may sometimes be good enough. Both of these conditions, however, are complicated by the use of media. Use of the face, and of expressions, tone, and looking/looking back do seem critical to the kind of being together that is involved in a shared understanding.

To summarize where we are, we now can say that communication online is unique because:

• it is a form of user action
  
• it can suffice as user activity even if nobody responds
  
• it is only truly communication if another user does respond (or take it up)
  
• communication is more than just saying things the medium doesn't do meta communication well
  
• nor does it allow use of facework or gestures, body language, and so on
  
• it creates challenges to making oneself understood and to reaching understanding with another person
  

We are now ready for the next step.

Online communication creates ambiguity. For the reasons mentioned above. Ambiguity in what is said, what is meant, who it is meant for, whether it is understood, whether it is agreed with -- we have seen above how each of these kinds of ambiguity can arise strictly because communication is mediated. (There are more, unique to gaming, dating, and other kinds of coded or ritualized communication).

What is the status of ambiguity? Is it all bad? Is ambiguity the absence of meaning? Noise or confusion? Is it the lack of understanding? Not at all. Ambiguity is the engine of communication -- it is why communication happens. If we understood each other perfectly and at all times, we wouldn't need to communicate other than to instruct one another or express ourselves. Ambiguity is that which we seek to resolve, or sustain, when there is more to say.

Ambiguity, while not providing a clear message, signals that more communication is necessary. Communication, on the other hand, indicates what is an appropriate response. But mediated communication is accompanied by the ambiguity of intent, tone, and feeling. Mediated communication actually creates ambiguity.

Is it possible that ambiguity created by social media might be one of the reasons it is a compelling experience? Is it possible that ambiguity can make it sticky? Is it possible that because communication is the simplest way to create ambiguity, and the only way to resolve it, communication is the engine of all user activity on social media?

Let's consider this, because it could be very important. We have talked about the challenge that online presents to full and rich communication -- as a result of what the medium takes away. But what of all that is added by the medium?

We have focused so far on communication as a form of talk. But communication also includes printed and distributed communication -- as in "the age of communication." We have already mentioned that for communication to become interaction it must be taken up by another person. Online communication may reduce the possibilities of reaching an understanding with somebody; but it also increases the possibilities that communication is taken up.

Linking to a person, @replying to a tweet, is taking up their communication (yes, differently, but still). And communicating online provides infinite possibilities of distribution. Face to face communication, on the other hand, is very limited in space and time (barring use of a megaphone).

The fact that online communication requires some form of recording or reproduction, while decreasing the potential for direct understanding, increases the potential for indirect communication. It may not feel as good, but online, one can communicate without talking. And one's communication can be picked up at any point in time and by anyone who chooses to take it up.

This means that there are two possibilities for understanding the user action of communication: the action of the "speaker," which is to express; and the action of the "listener," which is to act on what's communicated. Two actors who would normally bind in a face-to-face exchange now act separately. Two people are still involved, but not in creating a shared sense of time and presence; rather each acts separately.

The speaker is more aware of what s/he intended; the listener is more aware of what s/he understood. Between the two is a gulf of ambiguity, but it is narrow enough to create both a sense of communication and wide enough to open up the possibilities of what happens next.

As a system, online communication leaves more possibilities open. It is a future-oriented type of communication, aligned to the kind of opportunity that rarely exists in face-to-face interactions. I don't think we yet understand the significance of this: that the online communication system is a kind of communication for future possibilities much more than any kind of face-to-face communication can be. I don't think we understand how important time is to social media.

We relate to the future through anticipation and expectation. I suspect, but don't yet have a theory for it, that social media are a means of organizing ourselves and our relationships in time and in anticipated time -- and that much of what drives our use o social media is a "future pull" as much as a "being here."

(Note: In the interest of space and time, we will cover the corollaries in the next post.)

Related:Paradoxes of social media: Twitter, Facebook, and status culture
Social media's first law: user centric design
Social media's second law: it's a verb, not a noun
Social Interaction Design: Primer



Social Interaction Design Primer II

Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

Twitter's Endgame: Search is Chat?

The recent skittles twitter campaign used a feature in limited testing at twitter. It's called integrated search, or real-time search. You could see it at work Sunday & Monday on the skittles.com homepage, or in the picture here taken from a deck by Fred Wilson and covered recently on Cnet. New search results are posted to the top of a search results page in real-time, effectively transforming search into conversation.

It has the effect of aggregating conversation within twitter, by threading posts around the search phrase or keyword. This strikes me as a potential game-changer for twitter, for several reasons.

We currently hold "conversations" on twitter with followers. We have to search to find non-followers around topics. But there are barriers to bringing them into the conversation. Results are past results, and we have to follow/be followed back before conversation becomes possible.

So conversations tend to happen between people who follow each other. If they are topical, they tend not to mention the topic. And this makes them less easy to find in search. Twitter addressed this recently. If there has been conversation between users (using @replies), it is now visible with the "show conversation" link.

But there are limitations to the usefulness of the "show conversation" implementation:

• to engage in that conversation would require that we follow and are followed back
  
• "conversations" are often off topic, or get off topic quickly
  
• the focus is on the people @replying to each other, not on keywords
  

"Show conversations" doesn't really capture conversations, but captures an exchange between users who have @replied each other. Only the first tweet in the exchange has to contain the search keyword.

Twitter certainly realizes that it needs to searchable. But it also realizes that search results are limited to our use of search words and phrases. And limited by the fact that we have only 140 characters at our disposal. If twitter went after conversationality, it could do so only by aggregating the conversation around an exchange between users who follow one another -- not around topics.

The following-follower model that has made twitter so incredibly viral has been a constraint on conversations. Each of us has only a small window through with to see what a small number of people are talking about. And only a limited means of capturing and sustaining conversation with people around a topic.

The theoretical description of this problem is this: tweets are only loosely coupled. They are loosely coupled between users, and loosely coupled by topic:

• Tweets are not coupled to each other unless they include an @reply or D message. The latter doesn't count for public conversations. @replies only count if our account settings are to set generously (there are three settings).
  
• Tweets tend not to sustain topics because they must be so short, because we tend to initiate and then drop and change what we tweet about, and because the twitterverse serves the purpose of talking about and creating news. In news, we are more likely to pass something along than to engage in discussion.
  

Twitter was designed in such a way to prohibit conversations. Not intentionally, of course, but symptomatically. Conversations require a kind of coupling between statements and responses, and people in conversation, that twitter makes incredibly hard to achieve.

This new version of search could change all that.

First of all, search results couple tweets by topic. That gets us part of the way there -- but is still a threaded view of past tweets. It is not threading of a conversation held between users tweeting to each other. Live search, however, achieves two important improvements.

• It puts us in present tense, which makes it possible to synchronize tweets in time. (Chats work in this way.) Users can tweet to each other in near real-time using search as a way of printing their tweets to a single page. The result is a kind of hacked up chat page (remember web forums?!)
  
• It focuses our attention on a real-time topical "thread." (Skittles used this feature to create buzz. All posts had to contain the word "skittles" to make it onto the real-time search results page.)
  

Real-time integrated search pages would now look like a version of slow chat between people around a topic, and who do not have to be following one another.

There will be consequences -- intended or unintended -- if twitter launches this feature. Some of us will pick up followers we find on the basis of real-time search results. If you and I go a few rounds in real-time search results on a topic, the odds are good that we'll follow each other out of politeness. The unintended consequence would be a dramatic increase in follower counts -- as we add those we have had passing interactions with. And there will be serious consequences for twitter's tweet volume if it becomes a kind of slow chat around topics.

This kind of chat or forum would have some pitfalls too. We would have to continue to use the keyword in order to appear in the results. Twitter might want to glue tweets to results by pre-populating a post made from search results with the keyword in use. Or by some new form of @reply (@topic?).

And there will be consequences for twitter app developers. I would want a tweetdeck chat panel, for example, that allows me to search a topic, see real time results, and post to members of that "chat" window. (Will real-time results be available to third parties?)


Many of us are already using twitter in a much more chat-like form, but among followers. Topical chats/forums would make for an incredibly powerful use of twitter. They would change how we use twitter, who we follow and why, how we pay attention to it, and to whom. And at the same time, it seems that tweet volume would explode -- rendering our current use of twitter nearly unusable. (Those of us who go into burst mode are already creating headaches for low-volume users.)

Thoughts everyone?

Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

The Gift, and the Spirit of the Word

"In the economic and legal systems that have preceded our own, one hardly ever finds a simple exchange of goods, wealth, and products in transactions concluded by individuals. First, it is not individuals but collectivities that impose obligations of exchange and contract upon each other." Marcel Mauss, The Gift

The girl is married to the boy. He receives a gift from the girl's parents. It belongs to him now and to his family. The families, by means of the gift, are bound, as are the girl and the boy. His family, by means of the gift, is bound by the obligation of reciprocity to hers. The gift, given to him, establishes a line of credit back to her family.

The gift anchors the line that will bind the two families, opening a conduit for exchange of foodstuffs, tools, and mutual help. The gift symbolizes a relationship of gift and debt, and of mutual obligations. It is the act through which the tribal economy maintains relationships on the basis of debts and obligations.

The gift belongs to what was called by French anthropologist Marcel Mauss a system of "total economic exchange." It is a system in which all relationships, between men and women, between families, and among objects, belong to one single social system. it is an economy in which exchanges belong to relationships. Ceremonies and rituals of the gift serve to maintain those relationships, and to guarantee their perpetuation.

These archaic societies were bound by tradition. They looked back, not ahead. Past rites and rituals were honored and reenacted in order to preserve social order and cultural identity. And, most importantly, to determine the tribe's relationships and social order. Objects and things were, their utility aside, a means of reproducing relationships. They were truly social objects.

In the tribal gift exchange, it is not the gift that is given but the relationship that is maintained. Giving the gift creates debt, and a debt creates obligation:

"The taonga and all goods termed strictly personal possess a hau, a spiritual power. You give me one of them, and I pass it on to a third party; he gives another to me in turn, because he is impelled to do so by the hau my present possesses. I, for my part, am obliged to give you that thing because I must return to you what is in reality the effect of the hau of your taonga." Marcel Mauss, The Gift



Of course that was then, and this is now. We don't have a gift economy. We have an exchange economy. Capital mediates our exchanges: things have a price, the price is paid with money, and the transaction creates no obligations among those participating. Relationships are not bound by economic exchange, but exist separately, to be maintained or negotiated around opportunities and commitments.

Our culture looks ahead, not back. It chooses to forego tradition for the opportunity and possibility of tomorrow. It is not closed, but open. It uses contracts, agreements, markets, and less formal commitments and norms to negotiate relationships.

And in the age of communication, in which mediated interactions supply enormous opportunities and possibilities for transactions and exchanges, but for relationships, too, conversation itself is becoming the new symbolic form of exchange. Our markets operate today not just on goods and their exchange, not just on discrete transactions, but on open-ended talk, conversation, and interaction.

Talk becomes our means of connecting: to the possibilities of relationships, and to opportunities for exchange. Talk that is not a closed off ritual of ceremonial traditions, but talk that sustains the radical open-ness and very future of our forward-leaning society.

In social media, our talk, too, involves gifts, exchanges, and relationships. But our gifts are an offer, not a debt. And an offer can be accepted, refused, or held open. We use gestures, statements, messages, and symbolic tokens -- all elements of the medium. All media artifacts. Artifacts that capture our individual claims but which can be distributed and disseminated, recognized and acknowledged, and picked up by others.

Our conversations are rich, open, and forever new and renewing. They look ahead, not behind. They contain our appeals, to one another, to peers, friends, to communities, and yes, to the public. They can be found, searched, indexed. And of course, they connect and can be connected. And through them we connect to conversations, to things said and offered; and to each other, for a moment, for a short while, or for a long time.

Our talk is our medium of exchange. it is personal and self-expression, but it is in front of people we know and people we could know. It is an appeal, contingent as all events are in our age, on their acceptance by some other, free, and interested individual.

We talk among friends, and our talk is often friendly. Friendship is the nature of our relationships -- not tribes, cults, guilds, or factions. Not ruling classes, secret societies, or even institutional elites. Friendship is our offer and friendliness our offering. It is open, and it looks ahead. Our conversations are friendly, and we are for the most part kind to one another. And in kindness we find our mutual interest; in reciprocity, our generosity and our commitment to the open, and to the future.

And in social media we organize these relationships of friendship. We find ways to sediment them into a soft social commitment, a face to wear, a software to to socialize relationships and markets around friendship. We are drawn to the ways that best suit us, the audiences that reflect us, and the communities that embrace us. It is our way, our way forward, paths intersecting and traced ephemerally along lines of trust and arcs of friendship.

The gift is open, the gift is everywhere. The gift is our talk, our interest, and our interface. It is what connects when we respond, when our response is an offer, an offer to talk. The gift and its spirit return, and are in our world.

The gift is all. The gift is trust. Our future is open. We must speak and be friends. It is the world. And we must give our world our word.


Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

I Want Candy. Skittles embraces Twitter embraces Skittles

Last night, when campaign managers probably figured it was safe to soft launch quietly, and with the protection of nightfall, Skittles turned its home page into a twitter profile page. "Skittles" was soon the largest tag by far on an otherwise moribund Twitscoop Tweetdeck tagcloud (say those three times quickly) -- and the doors blew off in the twitterverse.

All the talk was skittles, and any talk of skittles, good or bad, intended for skittles or not, wound up on the home page of skittles.com. Skittles had hijacked talk about itself.

Now regardless of how you feel about this little sentimental snack, skittles being a kind of two-bit presence in the candysphere, runner-up to its chocolaty big brother M&Ms, you have to admit that the company had some, well, beans, to turn to twitter unfiltered.

For anything and everything was pretty much running on skittle's home page live last night -- no 7 second delay, no accounting for possible wardrobe or verbal malfunctions, just tweets mentioning skittles, no matter what their content.

It might be that the campaign managers thought they would just ask the customer: What do you think about skittles? Call it crowd sourcing, and invite the market to the brand. Or perhaps they wanted to pull off a different kind of home page takeover, and catch a wave before anybody else did. (It's up for debate whether anyone else can step into the same river without suffering a withering torrent of rot, detritus, and ill will.)

And truth be told, it was a co-branding effort, for twitter clearly lifted some technical limitations on its search engine for skittles. And it was featured, with brand, as a twitter home page look alike, on skittles.com.

I'll skip over what people had to say about skittles -- you can simply go there now, or better, post a tweet including the word skittles, and then watch it appear on skittles.com.

If the company thought they would get a better sense of what people think about them, they misunderstood twitter, and misconceived the whole campaign. Create a public timeline dedicated to a single thing, in this day and age, and it will become a public forum vulnerable to all the heckling, banner-waving, and hackery that a public forum attracts. (Even when it's about a small bag of multi-colored clumps of pressed processed corn starch. Yes, we have to this. The lowest common denominator, it turns out, is a movie-time snack.)

The fact that skittles has given its branding over to the public, and its homepage to its audience, is a gutsy gesture indeed. But people post out of novelty, curiosity, because it's abuzz, because they can see their tweet appear on skittles -- and not really to express their inner sweet tooth, preference for blue, or any other kind of personal skittle-chomping habit.

But regardless of what you make of it, the campaign offers a few social media morsels worth chewing on.

• This was a combined effort with twitter itself. Skittles.com looks like it's twitter.
  
• It's not really a twitter home page -- it's a search results page that pumps results to make it look like a twitter page.
  
• Which makes it kinda nifty. Imagine entering a search phrase in Google and seeing your query in the results. That's how this works.
  
• In some ways it's like advertising in reverse. Because instead of creating a message and then releasing it into the internets, this sucks in advertising from the internets. And we're doing the advertising.
• Talk about "disruptive" (tired and weary phrase for something new we don't know how to monetize yet). The skittles twitter campaign is a twist on aggregation. All your tweets are belong to us!
  
• Skittles has gotten us to endorse it, in a manner of speaking, with our own words. In fact, if there's ever been a better example of feed-based advertising, tell me what it is. This is post-Obama social media!
  
• It is also a form of feed-based product placement. Skittles smartly used the voyeurism, attraction to bright and shiny things, and latent narcissism of the twitterverse to hold a mirror up to twitter and flip the light switch. Twitterers let loose out of curiosity to catch themselves (many if not all) in the buzz of activity that gathers around a well-placed lamppost.
• It was based on trust, and a huge leap of faith. From me at least, hat's off to the brand's transparency.
• And talk about taking Marshall McLuhan at his word. The medium is indeed the message!
  

What the campaign doesn't achieve is affinity marketing -- we are not now a group of skittles fans, I'm sure few of us are following skittles, or following others who took part in this. It probably doesn't deliver on crowd-sourced messaging and branding research: most posts were pretty off the topic of "why do you like skittles?" (Though I spotted a few skittles-inspired 140 character ditties.)

In terms of sales generation, skittles could see offline benefits. In some ways the campaign operates like an above-board subliminal advertising campaign. For now, when we hit the corner store, there's a small chance we'll recall the time that skittles was us. And this is an interesting variation on subliminal. For we're not recalling what skittles said, or arranged into some sort of suggestive arrangement of candies... We're not going to recall even what others said. We're going to recall what we said. And that strikes me as an interesting move, to leverage our tendencies on twitter like that.

And the campaign certainly achieved reach -- for every tweet about skittles there were countless followers who read it.

I don't know if twitter is planning to work with other brands to do the same kind of home page takeover. Odds are that the novelty factor on this was pretty high and that it would wear thin quickly for all but the most hip brand names. Imitators will run the risk of being called out by twitterers for attempting to pull a skittles. As is happening with skittles, for I gather they weren't the first.

But either way, this will surely stand as a test-case, if not limit-case, in social media branding, and will be the buzz among social media experts for as long as it takes to digest it.

Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.