I’ve been spending a great deal of time thinking about relationships lately due to a great week I had with my whole family over spring break. It was one of those classic vacations where all of us - Kevren, Dijouri, Prescott, Hadrian and Emily were able to revitalize ourselves and develop even closer bonds. I also missed the opportunity this week to catch up with couple of folks who I only see a couple of times a year and missed an introduction to another - so this week was just chock full of relationship stuff.
With near misses and great successes this week, I thought I would jot down some concepts which I have been bouncing around the evolution of a given social relationship.
Not all social relationships are created equal and neither are all interactions.
Yup, Captain Obvious is back! While a fairly simple observation, it was punctuated with some great social content which found me this week thanks to the great folks that I follow, share and interact with. This week had escalating Shel v. Loren action, Sarah’s FAQ, Christina’s milkshake and @rabeidoh’sfive levels of social media relationships - each of these folks demonstrated varying levels of investment for evolving active social relationships. The key takeaway this week from my network for me is that each person has different expectations and these change over time based on your interactions, for good or ill.
While I really don’t want a Social Media Antagonist or think that anything such as a social media Ninja exists, I do think we are ALL attempting to generate meaningful relationships which evolve towards their natural end state, what ever that is. Ultimately whether you are just a feed voyeur, a follower or a personal friend you will ultimately find the shared value equilibrium in each social relationship you engage in.
The Interaction Evolution
We all bring our own quirks and expectations with us when we start building social relationships, this includes or preferential biases for communication. I use different tools, mediums and response requirements based on where I am with a specific relationship or topic I am covering. Think about it - What access do you provide to a twitter random? Who get’s your REAL email? Who get’s your phone number? Who gets added on twitter?
No simple feat to qualify a mutual connection for mutual investment and evolutionary access. Mutual contribution and participation will ultimately determine what level of interaction happens and access is provided. Dopp’s recent post demonstrates how access expectations vary and what qualifies as a valuable interaction via email for her as an individual:
If you have my phone number, the best way to get my attention is a text message. If I’m following you on Twitter, you can have the same effect with a direct message. Email is the next best thing, and “info at sarahdopp dot com” will get you past my spam filters if you’re not already in my address book. I read every email I receive but I’m not always the best at responding, so please follow up if you’re not getting what you need from me. (Tip: I tend to respond to short emails faster than I respond to long emails.)
Appears to be an expectation gap in some of Sarah’s relationships, but now everyone has the ground rules which is a good thing. It is something to build on. What are you going to GIVE your connections to build on?
The Evolution of Social Relationships
We all have to start somewhere and any given social relationship hopefully will evolve towards greater access, trust and value over time or it won’t and you are 1 click away from something else. No specific state of a social relationship is any less rewarding or beneficial for the participants, just different exceptations, access and interactions. It sorta has a “deal-with-it” undertone, but facts are facts. To go even further cliche on this - you get what you give from a social relationship.
The Connection: Sharing and Learning
Some of the most rewarding social connections I have are centered on the sharing of information and experiences of people I have no other connection to than a random twitter add. Most social relationships start with an innocuous add and may ultimately stay a voyuer for both parties, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a valuable relationship. When you are sharing ideas and time with your network you are investing in the relationship which provides for new opportunities and interactions with your connections.
Your Social Colleagues
Over time and with work, you will be able to identify folks you interact with who you would consider a colleague. You meet at conferences, grab coffee and catch up at other geek social events, but you probably just show up at their house in 20 minutes. This is however where your investment continues to evolve and provides initial returns for both folks through shared experiences and increased trust.
Social Friendship
There are plenty of business colleagues I interact with which represent some of the most rewarding relationships I have which are steeped in shared successes and interests, but don’t evolve into “friendship”. Just like in business, social relationship can develop to become personal relationships that transcend your typical business relationship - mutual respect, mutual learning and continued investment in share goals and values, but it requires more than just shared experiences. Shared goals, ideals and investment are central to developing and maintaining social friendship.
Social friends are definitely good stuff when you can find it and the social relationship is now just a just a primordial hop out of the sea to borrowing tools or going into their refrigerator uninvited.
A Personal Friend
This should be self-explanatory, you have real friends right? Yup, you can borrow stuff now. This is also the part in which any relationship becomes wonderfully unpredictable, interactive and enjoyable. This is the “best of luck” part of the evolution, as from this point on it’s not 140 characters or dodged voicemails - they are showing up at your house uninvited and eating your food. Time to food theft varies by person, but it’s worth the wait and the effort.
The Homo Sapien Complexity
Social relationships evolve very much the same as any other relationship. The main anomaly is the candidate pool is so much bigger for finding cool folks that you can’t possibly develop each and every connection to the same level at the same time. Even though you have exponentially more access, it doesn’t mean you have exponential time or value to add, so do what you gotta do to evolve the right relationships.
No matter the path a given social relationships takes, each interaction provides the opportunity to drive shared value and extend/change what the evolutionary equilibrium is.
To that end… @shelisrael go ahead and block….. @Film_Girl I have my fingers crossed! And don’t be that guy…
So I started my little tool initiative last week with a little help from Kevin Shea of Twing. This post’s tool is Sphinn, I was reminded of it because of a Twitter post which lead me to Social Media Mom. As an aside, Twitter does in fact make blogging just a little more fun and generally improves the conversation.
Social Media Mom (SMM) is a fun little blog, which taunted me to Sphinn for several articles I read, but not being a user I didn’t. SSM’s header is peppered with tools including Mixx link and Propeller, so I now have 3 posts because of 1 tweet. Mixx and Propeller are in currently in progress - a little more complex and extended content. Sphinn’s content is a considerable more narrow - focused on the SEO and SEM segment, with a dash of social media and news. Sorta news, kinda like Reno is sorta like Vegas - both have gambling. Yup - Sphinn is the Reno of social news, it has voting just like Digg. That’s my metaphor and I’m sticking to it! Sphinn has ads too, just like any good SEO oriented site, one of the better ones was a Ninja ad.
Yes - a SEO Ninja! That IS a lofty goal. Question: Just how much content do you have to consume to become a ninja? I clearly would like to be all stealthly and DEADLY while killing it with ad based revenue. I spent the better part of the week experiencing social media through the Sphinn lens, mainly because of that ad. Phinn is essentially what you would think from a content perpective being kin folk of Search Engine Land and all. This is essentially where social media tweekers hang to get thier next fix of tips, tricks and search algorithm updates. There is one BIG twist - a fully engaged conversational community.
Despite the extremely limiting taxonomy, the community is an engaged and passionate group of folks. Quality of the content is managed by an actively engaged community, example conversational comments below from a single post around fake articles:
What’s more annoying? A story is submitted to Sphinn and the story may not be true? Or readers assume that the person who submitted the story is the one who created the untruth? Don’t shoot the messenger….
or
So its ok for people to submit a bunch of junk on Sphinn and waste my time by lowering the signal to noise ratio? Submitters’ reputation on Sphinn depends in part on a submitter pushing quality content.…
It is this very core community value which essentially provides all the relevant headline content for SEO in an easy to reference list of top Sphunned articles. The popular Sphinns for a segment are more or less quintessential nuggets by category. There is one interesting thing about the “optics” of the community’s content; there seems to be a challenge to get to 300 sphinns, two digit rankings are the norm. The highest Phinn, Seattle SEO John Andrews challenges Sphinn to top 300 Sphinns, has not yet reached the elusive 300 since August. I find this a little odd with such a search engine optimized title (place, category, name, keyword and keyword pluralized), but not when content is limited. You can just put your content into the big watercooler bucket.
Net-Net, I have learned a great deal from the community and the content over the last week, but the value just appears to not be sustainable over time for me. Is Sphinn a victim of it’s own specificity? It IS a capable social news platform that is easy to use. I hope Sphinn take the opportunity to leverage a vibrant community to provide more diverse content with extended categories. With extended content it’s possible 300 will no longer be a relevant number.
So I continue to just be amazed with the increasing value of Twitter for me as a person. Twitter is helping me be less verbose, although you can’t tell from my posts and it continues to expose me to new folks, ideas and online resources I would have never known about without Twitter. That being said, the Big Bang of the Twitterverse continues to expand the population at an amazing rate, it is increasingly becoming a the platform of choice for communication for many folks.
Twitter-centric content is everywhere! I am easily able to find posts on Twitter which are rewarding and provide for a better understanding of the value of the platform, but there are increasing number of ideas around effective Twitter management which is an interesting twist. The growing number of how to better manage the stream recommendations are not only interesting, but confirmation that the community is evolving. Perhaps the most honest piece on managing the stream I have read is Dopp’s. (If you haven’t read the Juice you should, the content is amazingly honest and insightful - not the kinda stuff you will find here.) Tips, tricks and how to’s are becoming a staple when it comes to Twitter references online.
Despite the Twitter land grab underway, the utility of Twitter is still non-trivial. With the recent increase in reliability and the platform stabilization of late, which is much needed with the increasing visibility; there is a growing need to understand the use of the platform by new folks. The community does self-monitor and reject poor form, but it will take some time for users to push back against the over crowding, so anything that help improve the usage hopefully is a good thing. So how can you use twitter as a tool for more effective communication? Below are 5 areas for consideration to improve your Twitter experience:
Listen and Participate: People are on Twitter to connect. No, really… use twitter to express and share. If someone in your group asks a question and you have input, respond - that’s sorta why they asked. You may want to listen for a while until you participate, your call.
Use it for a Place to Get Ideas: The people in your stream will amaze you with their creativity and insight in <140 characters. Actively use the information and the links shared to understand more about what interest you and your followers. You just might find a topic or two which you can share with others or even blog about.
Meet New People and Develop Relationships: You will find people on Twitter who will expand your network and your understanding of a topic or a region - it will also expand others views of you and your region.
A Place to Find Stuff: This could be content you are looking for or other stuff, such as restaurants or other things to do. I’ve been reminded I need to go see a movie and how much fun an afternoon at a museum can be.
People Watch: Sometimes passive is good. More than likely there will be many folks in your network that you won’t engage, but just watch. That’s ok, just because I don’t play with some of my kid’s toys, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching them play with them.
Need to understand a little more about twitter? Here’s a brief little video for you:
Have fun with your new shiny toy and find a way to make it useful and productive for your and your friends.
So I was reading the latest Inc. Magazine online, because of some random content a friend of mine was able to do a quote for mediaTemple, which is how I found the article, “Anything Can Happen” a interesting little history lesson on Ev. After reading through it I was somewhat amazed a the naivety of the author’s assertion that Twitter may be built to flip or at least passing on others might think this. On some levels, so what if it’s a exit focused start up, that being said Twitter’s micro-use case for business, public safety and personal communication are almost limitless, except for the 140 character thing. Below is Max Chafkin’s thinly supported concept by “many others”:
Although some technologists think Twitter could one day be a billion-dollar company, many others say it represents the worst of Web 2.0: a company that is built to flip, that does little of value and has no long-term prospects as a standalone enterprise.
So relationships, information and minimalist technology may have little value in some circles, but it is quickly becoming the favorite channel for real-time communication for many. It is essentially a platform that levels the messaging playing field for people, businesses and potentially the government.
People
Twitter provides insights into where and what. Not an overly complicated use case - share where and what is going on RIGHT NOW in under 140 characters with your followers and keep in touch with the people you are following. Twitter allows for a voyeuristic view into random folks’ lives and friends alike. It also services as an up to date new source with crowdsourcing of content and pushed content from legacy media outlets, such as the BBC.
Businesses
This technology could be seen as best for a marketing channel, but I think it better suited for the service channel and effectively keeping your customers aprised on support issues, service availability and general FYI information without the requirement of going to a website with it being delivered to your phone. I mean think about it - an elevator pitch in <140 characters. Maybe a new product launch artifact will emerge called the Twitter Pitch, but in essence once you’re done, your done; unless of course every day has a new pitch, which might be a fun spoof profile.
Public Safety
Amber Alerts might be useful on twitter, reminders of an election day or severe weather alerts. Twitter represents a broadcast communications platform which could have many uses for an eGovernment initiative. I actually think the civic uses are endless.
I’m not sure where I was going with it, but in principle if Twitter can represent the worst of what is Web 2.0, then bloggers and technologist are all doomed since it would imply community, relationships and content has limited/no value.
So I spent some time understanding a little more the impact of social media over the holidays, basically in response to the online norm piece and a comment on art from gapingvoid guy, Hugh MacLeod. People who interact online can impact online markets and untimately offline concerns as well. O’Reilly had a Bill Janeway, from investment banking firm Warburg Pincus, quote on the Money:Tech conference which is fairly relevant in context of human interaction’s impact on financial activity:
The timeliness of this Conference is NOT only because “web 2.0″ technologies and business models have reached critical mass in the financial markets. It is also because, as driven by the web more generally, the frontier between human and machine-decision making has become radically problematic. First, quantitative approaches in trading, pricing, valuation, asset definition vastly expanded the domain for machine decision-making. But then the humans struck back, by refusing to act like the mindless molecules that the models driving machine decision-making required. The self-reflective, behavioral attributes of human market participants is now driving back that frontier, requiring innovations in every aspect of financial market processes, beginning with techniques of risk measurement and risk management. When price is an inverse function of liquidity and liquidity is an inverse function of price certainty, the recursive loop can only be broken by human intervention and action
Wow - what a mouthful and insightful - people impact markets. The significant investment in optimized algorythm based business models online may have a challenger - human interaction as it relates to online advertising.
Changed search models, content availability and pervasive shared content may ultimately make Feedburner’s (Google) adverpublishing platform which best serves as a sliver markets to a high value market channel at some point in the future? While not necessarily the mainstream population, active online human decision makers continue to collectively impact markets, one might say communities. Facebook, Twitter or others represent segments of market influencers and makers. Most Facebook valuation discussions all essentially acknowledge a significant market segmentation asset.
Communities as Market Makers
The current underpinnings of the global social media infrastructure (Xobni, Utterz, Twitter, Plaxo LinkedIn, Flickr, Flock…) are establishing market definitions, definitions of buyer classes in their highly attributed/user extended data model. So that begets the question as to how does a collective commonality define a market? Are there bookmark markets? Blog markets? “Group” Markets?
It’s reasonable to infer this is in fact the case. Sites/Platforms such a Digg, writing cabals creating content and individuals bring together friends and randoms around a common set of attributes which should they sustain overtime may in fact create micro-markets. Not a believer? Go to Gizmodo - That IS a Gizmodo market.
Sure advertising is inherently audience biased and to that end the delivery vehicle has just changed, but can the vehicles actually begin to deliver value add services - access to branded public information, focusedcontent and web service community tools across an interoperable network. Imagine it - share attributes (friends, content, services…) could be managed through a unified market based UI - the Facebook user who likes cooking, the Truemors reader who looks up his 401k balance on the truemors interface - there are all kinds of abstract concepts and extensions. Once the social media markets mature from their currently narrowly banded spiky reality, these may be the only advertising markets - community focused views of online commerce, communication and service consumption.
So now on to the the abstract thought to end the article. Does an individual define the market or an individual’s relationships? If it’s the latter, Facebook may be under valued and the usability race has begun!
So I’m back to that Bob book again – I’m another 15 pages in or so. I’ve got a 2 yr old, 2 dogs and a newborn – so not a lot reading time at home. I was able to bring the books bench metaphor into play, mainly due to a post on how to be a digg power user. After reading the post and seeing the number of diggs, 1224, I got to a wonderin. What is genuine in this whole social media thing and how do you filter through the content and self-promotion. So I thought about the Bob book. I actually started thinking about this post a couple of weeks ago when I read John Scalzi’s post on How to Annoy and Irritate People in the Name of Blogging.
The book uses the bench outside of the Royal bank in this small Ontario community as essentially a ranking system of where you are in the scale of things in the community. Being on the bench represents making it essentially. The concept of qualifying for the bench is being legendary and legendary is not so much a legend, more like do you have a Don Quixote thing going on. A passion, some stories and some friends who respect your passion and stories.
So I went to thinking about – what is the online bench? Where is it that the cool people hang and do so out of earning the spot. I quickly realized I don’t know where that is, so I started thinking about personal or social network benches. I also realized the inclusive nature of social networking and social media almost makes it impossible for a bench to exist, but I’m an optimist – so I keep thinking about it.
So is it google hits in a query? Pageviews? People following you on Twitter? LinkedIn connections? Feedburner readers? Gosh I hope it’s not feedburner readers, because my 23 readers are probably not that interesting. These seem like benchmarks, more so than benches, so I would offer that it’s none of the above. Why?
Let’s use 21st citizen as a use case. 21st century citizen on Twitter who is following me and now out of courtesy, for now, I’m following him. I did go to his blog - nice ads! Everywhere! It’s the low bar of “click and add” which makes it difficult to justify the stuff of legends. This creates just a real noisy twitter environment, so here are 21C’s metrics:
• Following 7,568
• Followers 6,666
I have a sum total of 16 people I’m following and just can’t keep up, some folks just have too much time or people posting on their behalf. My checking on twitter 3-4 times a day is becoming like that first IM sign on after vacation. You sign on Sunday night and get the deluge of all those offline messages, which are no longer important. So what do you do with 7569 people worth of tweets?!?! I’ll acknowledge that it is possible that 7569 is the stuff of legends and could qualify for the bench. Just need to figure out where the bench is.
There are similar “friend flewsies” on nearly every network I’m on – so if links, views and metrics don’t do it, what does? I think it’s the transition to the real world. Who calls you and who do you call? I had originally thought email might be the winner, but I audited my outlook address book and I have numerous people I have never talked to, but sent email and many people who are contacts, not friends. So your phone address book seems as close as possible from a metric driven bench.
So maybe I’m doing this this whole social media thing wrong. Maybe I should just link, add, nudge and poke as many people as possible or whatever a given network kitsch action is. Nah, just doesn’t feel right. I’ll just continue to attempt to post fairly meaningful stuff, not so meaningful, things of interest and just see what happens.
Then again, maybe the real benchmark is the number of Viagra emails I get, if that’s the case I think I win and have found the internet bench and earned my right to sit outside the internet Royal – guess I have to sign up for second life and create a bench.
