As a part of an event I have coming up, the organisers asked me to do a litte future speculation on the direction the cultural and technological aspects of social networking are taking. Here’s what I put together for them.
Since late 2008, Australia and NZ have seen a significant spike in awareness in the general public and business of social networks. A lot of those people are only now getting their heads around the potential value these tools can offer to their lives and organisations.
Growth of social network use, especially networks like Twitter, will see an explosion of users (we’re already seeing it), and an explosion of usefulness when people and particularly governments and politicians realise it can be used as a near-instant clearinghouse and coordination point for things like policy formation, service delivery and canvassing of opinions. It’s perhaps even possible we’ll see it being used for things like coordination of disaster management information.
Of course, we’ll continue to see the shouty marketers and the get rich quick types proliferate, but they’ll get filtered out by the community of users as they prove to add no value to the conversation. On Twitter, as with any social network in the physical or online world, it’s about the value of the network, not the number of people you’re connected to.
In a world where we’re busier all the time and our circles continue to expand well beyond local, the cultural shift apparent in society to a point where people want better connectedness (and I’m not just talking about online) in a real, human way, means the importance of social networks will continue to grow. It’s only a matter of time before their use becomes normal rather than something of a curiosity to large parts of the world.
As one of just 15 Australians (of 2000 attendees) at TED this year, I was able to witness first hand a group of people for whom this shift has already taken place. Wildly disparate – doctors, musicians, artist, scientists, philanthropists, journalists and more – this group of relatively early adopters are empowered and empowering thanks to the cultural and technological shift they’ve made. There’s nothing they believe can’t and won’t get done with enough willingness and they use the power of their connectedness to make amazing things happen.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
@Stephen
two issues I’m struggling with at the moment (esp with twitter) is
– the time taken to be involved: every morning there’s a couple of pages of tweets to wade thru and catch up on. Twitter seems to work best when the conversation is reasonably fresh. A reply can be pretty pointless a day or two later. The “best” value out of Twitter (because it’s mostly blocked here at work – another issue) is to have it working/alerting all the time – and if you’re busy it’s precious time to divert towards it.
– profile: because Twitter (or Facebook) is a personal thing, that means it reflects “me” – and “me” is made up of a very diverse combination of interests that’s not for everyone’s tastes. I sometimes think I’m getting followed for mostly (but not entirely) the wrong reasons. I’ve been toying with the idea of multiple twitter profiles (for lack of tagging) to try and be a bit more “on topic” for those that follow.
thoughts?
Barry, interesting insights.
First, I don’t try to go back over any tweets. The volume is too high and the time would be too great. I watch the stream flow past out of the corner of my eye and catch the gems as they go by. I think any other approach ultimately leads to overload and a decrease in network use value. It’s not just Twitter, it’s blogs, Facebook or whatever else.
In terms of online identity, my online and offline identities are very much the same. And I want them to be. The variety of stuff I do and post is reflective of the real me. Not everyone will care about all of it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. If someone connects with you on a social network because they think you’re going to be about just the thing they’re interested in, that exhibits a naivete that will soon have them disconnect. At least that’s my experience.
Barry B.
Interestingly I am struggling with this multiple online identity thing too… I toyed with the idea of separate profiles, but after discussions with @kcarruthers and @silkcharm, I now agree with what @trib is saying here… I am me. I am interested in a lot of very very diverse things. One tweet will be about Construction, the next tweet will be about SharePoint, the next about who knows what! People will ignore what they don’t want to know about, and focus on the things they are interested in, and they will unfollow if the majority of stuff you say does not interest them.
Basically, it is their problem, not yours – just be yourself, otherwise you will trip yourself up and post the wrong thing in the wrong online identity.
@Jodie
I understand what you and @trib are saying, but consider this:
one of the more powerful aspects of Twitter is not following people, it’s being followed back.
eg: if I’m actively following people who have, say, a strong education/T&L focus, they may be really reluctant to follow back if my tweets are full of totally unrelated topics (to their core interest) – motorcycles, music, the intricacies of software development, Microsoft Vs Adobe, etc…
I may be me but I ware a lot of hats, and truth be told, the more noise to their signal, the harder it is to justify following even more people – I’ll just get even more noise.
drop the really noisy ones? but their gems can make it all worthwhile. At least if I had multiple profiles and needed to concentrate in a particular area, I could ignore the others for a while.
but having it all mashed into one noisy mess? hmmm…
Because, unlike Stephen and others, I’m not on Twitter all day, I reckon I’ve hit my limit of followers: approx 70. I’m really reluctant to add others because of the increase in noise that’ll accompany it.
I mean, we use different folders or tags for the different mailing lists we’re all on … yes?
Barry B.
It’s a tough one… and I’d like to hear how you go with it…
With follower numbers, you tend to hit limits and then grow from there… I was under 100 for a long time then it grew by chunks of 50 or so at a time, each time I’m thinking that 150 is not so bad, 200 is not so bad. Now I’m at 450 and am starting to think about a serious cull…
I don’t know how @trib does it with the 1500+ that he is following. You really need to use tweetdeck to categorise followers when you have that many, and I’m not a great fan of tweetdeck yet.
But tweetdeck is great to categorise followers into your different groups.
I may start using it soon and see if it makes a difference for me.
Tweetdeck may yet be an alternative solution, but one of the problems comes down to twitter usage. Because of the slowness or reluctance of the organisation I work for in embracing these lines of communication, I’m having to do crazy things to access Twitter when not at home, and installing an AIR app is going too far. That “Luddite-ness” is a whole other topic in itself but is a reality I have to live with.
the hardest thing in setting up multiple profiles… coming up with a good username…