Do We Really Need One to Rule All? June 26, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in General, Social Media, Twitter, communication, add a comment Tags: aggregator, community, conversation, friendfeed, Rubel, Scoble, Social Media, socialmedia, Technosailor, Twitter, web2.0.A couple of years ago, I like many others who were joining new sites that seemed to pop up daily in the web 2.0/social media/social networking sphere thought that the way to handle all of this disparate content was to aggregate it.
It seemed to make sense - one place you could go to track all the different things your friends were writing on their blogs, saying in Twitter, posting on Flickr, etc. etc.
Two main competitors emerged in the aggregator space, and while I much preferred SocialThing’s user interface, the power of Robert Scoble’s network pulled more people into Friendfeed and it appears to have emerged victor. But, somewhere along the way, Friendfeed changed.
Image via Creative Commons by Cellach
From Aggregator to Instigator
One of the things I know Robert liked early on about Friendfeed was the way people could comment there on things that others had posted. It offered a much easier to follow a thread of conversation than Twitter and was more immediate interaction than blog comments.
But, after a while, I started noticing people getting bothered if the originator of the post in Friendfeed was not there participating in the commentary. They were beginning to treat Friendfeed as the destination, the networking site, the main conversation, rather than simply as an aggregator of people’s content. It developed a community of its own that could be offended by those who treated is simply as a bedroom community.
I myself rarely visit Friendfeed and mostly do so just to check to see if there’s anything I missed that someone I follow posted. I don’t have time to be there to respond to anyone who responds to something I posted elsewhere that just automatically fed into Friendfeed without any specific intention from me.
I’d been thinking about this a lot lately, but didn’t ever get around to writing about it until today when I noticed that Aaron Brazell aka Technosailor tweeted that he was closing his Friendfeed account. His reasoning was that, like me, he was never there to interact. In the conversation that ensued there on Friendfeed, he also mentioned trolls as a reason, but I got the feeling that the primary reason was the lack of time to interact there (I mean, trolls are everywhere, right?) He’s since posted more about it on his blog.
Cross Posting Crossing the Line
With so many people feeding tweets into their Facebook page, and and blog posts onto Twitter and Flickr photos onto their blog, do we really need aggregators anymore? Have we all overcompensated with the cross posting as SocialThing died and Friendfeed morphed under the spell of the power to hold everyone’s knowledge?
Early on, Scott Karp noted that “Web 2.0 derides the siloed balkanization of traditional media — yet Web 2.0 doesn’t have the wherewithal to figure out that I’ve now seen the same feed item for the fourteenth time in four different platforms.” Simon Salt more recently explained how cross posting is bad for your personal brand.
I’m certainly not going to throw any stones here. I do a lot of cross posting myself. But, I am also aware that some of those different services have different audiences that deserve some tailoring. Early on I quit piping all tweets into Facebook because many of the people I’m connected to there are not on Twitter and may be so due to a conscious choice about how much information they want to receive. My teenage nephews and the mothers of my daughter’s friends probably don’t care about the latest Mashable article I read. So, I update Facebook less frequently and often more personally.
But, imagine when I do tweet about a blog post such as this one and I post a link to it on my Facebook page. Right there, you’re getting the same information twice in Friendfeed. If I happen to bookmark the post in Delicious or give it a thumbs up in StumbleUpon, there are two more. What if I upload the image I use to illustrate it to Flickr? Bam. There it is again in Friendfeed.
And, with Steve Rubel announcing today that he’s moving all his effort over to Posterous, I’ve already gone to revisit my account there that hasn’t been used in almost a year. Posterous also lets you cross post to most other networks, so the potential is there for even more duplication. Will the madness never end?
To Stay or To Go
Aggregation doesn’t seem to be really working like I thought it would, lifestreaming is just more of the same, and too much cross posting can create a negative impact.
But, I don’t think I’ll be closing any of my accounts just yet. Instead I will continue to focus on a few, monitor many and seek to tailor updates to the audience. It’s more work, but hopefully by focusing my conversations and interaction on few (primarily Twitter and Facebook) I can handle it. I’m still not going to be active in the Friendfeed community that has developed, or the ones that exist as well in places like Flikr, but I do still see a use for their services.
What about you? Do you think you will continue to spread across multiple sites or try to aggregate everything in one spot? Or, even better, do share if you’ve found another solution all together!
The Tale of An Early Adopter June 20, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in General, Social Media, add a comment Tags: aol, early adopter, Everett M. Rogers, friendfeed, plurk, pownce, Social Media, socialthing, stumbleupon, su.pr, technology, Twitter.My brother-in-law recently visited and said something to the effect, of “you were really on to something with Twitter” in regard to the fact that he had first heard of Twitter from me some time ago, and now it would appear that everyone is talking about it.
I’ve always liked to be the one “in the know” about something before everyone else. The best bands are those that I liked before the rest of the world discovered them. The best restaurant is the one I loved before it gets so popular you need reservations. So, it was with mixed feelings that I ejoyed the props of being an early adopter of Twitter.
But picking that “next big thing” is less about picking one as it is many, I believe. Since I moved into an online-focused position at work three years ago, I’ve joined way more online sites/services that you’ve probably never heard of than those that you have. StumbleUpon still stumbles along and may see new life with Su.pr; but, there’s not an ounce of time spent in Pownce. I don’t lurk in Plurk anymore, although many still do. And SocialThing, losing the aggregator scene to FriendFeed is retooling as a back-end service for AOL.
Those of us who are early adopters may not always know where our time exploring these new ventures will take us, but it appears that we are needed if the majority of users are ever to learn of them.
Way back in 1983 BI (Before Internet), communications scholar Dr. Everett M. Rogers wrote: “So the role of the early adopter is to decrease uncertainty about a new idea by adopting it, and then conveying a subjective evaluation of the innovation to near-peers by means of interpersonal networks.”
Which might explain why so much of the conversation on Twitter is about social media - all the early adopters are relaying their evaluations of the new tools to their “near-peers.” But, if we’re really going to fulfill our role in the adoption of that new technology we’ve got to get away from the other early adopters and spend more time with the 34 percent of the adopters Rogers identified as the “early majority” and the next 34 percent of the adopters are the “late majority.”
Yes Travis, Virtual Worlds Are Still Relevant June 7, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in Virtual Worlds, add a comment Tags: e3, eightbar, microsoft, offworld, opensim, philiprosedale, playstation, raphkoster, SecondLife, virtualworld, virtualworlds, xbox360.This question from Travis Hines (designer of our This Mommy Gig blog) recently caught my eye in my twitterstream:
I was too busy to respond at that moment, but retweeted it in the hopes it would spark a discussion. Only Pam Broviak responded directly, but with an excellent point:
Game consoles such as Xbox360 and Playstation3 are indeed getting more social and creative with their use of immersive environments. In news coverage of the recent E3 conference it was noted that “videogames once designed as solo experiences are increasingly using Internet connections to link players and immerse them together in virtual worlds where multiple players can be allies or enemies.” So, they’re becomming MMOs; but, the debate on whether an MMOG is a virtual world is for another time.
The announcement of Project Natal at E3 had everyone talking, too. Including comments from Raph Koster and Philip Rosedale in the New World Notes blog post about this new technology that promises to let player control game play with their body movements.
An image from the Offworld blog’s post about the Microsoft press conference for Project Natal and other coming enhancements for Xbox360 certainly looks like something you would see in Second Life or OpenSim - a group of friends watching sports or movies together:
But, if attending the event in a console world’s space, can you walk away from that screen and go hear your friend playing live music or attend a political rally? Or, more importantly, could you be the one playing the music, organizing the rally, or building out the theatre where people gather? I think not. Yet, those are all things that happen today in virtual worlds.
As Ian Hughes/epredator pointed out on the EightBar blog back in 2007 when Sony was talking about creating a virtual world for Playstation3, that would be too much of a challenge to the game makers themselves. Their business is content creation. If they allow the users to not only create, but also own the rights to their creations within those environments, then they hurt their own business.
And that, Travis, is why I believe that independent virtual worlds such as Second Life or OpenSim are still relevant.
Tool(bar)s to Manage Social Media May 17, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in General, Social Media, Twitter, 3comments Tags: facebook, firefox, socialmedia, toolbars, tools, Twitter.I was recently tagged in a note on Facebook that was a departure from the typical list of things about myself. Gene Deel, a fellow Dell employee, solicited my input on his note titled “Defying Newton: Simultaneously Managing Relationships in Multiple Social Networks.” It turned out to be rather thought provoking.
Gene’s post was prompted by a post he read on Mashable called “How to Simplify Your Social Media Routine.” My first thought was that I don’t really do anything to manage social networks. Then, I thought, well maybe it’s that I focus on one; but, I wasn’t sure that was totally true because being here is not that area of focus. Then, I thought I’d take a read of the Mashable article you’d linked.
Turns out, I’m thinking along many of the same lines as that writer. I have, as he suggests, determined which social media network gives me the most value - Twitter. It has become integrated into my life and allows me to quickly connect with people with similar interests.
That didn’t happen overnight, however. I’ve been there for more than two years - longer than I’ve been in any other social network. Some of the people I have connected with there are also connected to me in virtual worlds, facebook, friendfeed, etc. So, we do cross paths in multiple ways; but, the majority I met there first.
One of the hardest things I had to learn is another tip from the Mashable article: “Let go of the need to read everything.” It is still sometimes hard to resist the urge to look back at what I might have missed when I’m away from Twitter, but if I don’t, I spiral into a never-ending whirlpool of twitterstreams of which you can never reach the top.
I did disagree with that writer on one thing, however. He said to “limit yourself to high-impact messages to reduce the time you spend communicating.” If I were to do that, I don’t believe I would have expanded my network as much as I have. Some of this may be due to my social network of choice. If you wait for something “quality” to say in Twitter, you will seldom tweet. Most of us don’t believe we have a lot of quality things to say, and would therefore rarely tweet. Those who do have that high of an opinion of themselves are usually just self-promoting and quickly become boring.
The whole thing that makes social networks social is that you share the mundane along with the impactful. Yes, it means we must sift through a lot of chaf to get the grains of good stuff; but, without it you don’t really get to know the people from whom you are learning. Without that information, you can’t congratulate them when their kid gets a part in the school play. Or send your best wishes and sympathies when needed. Or know that they might be interested in a certain blog post you just read. And without that knowledge you need to have about someone in order to give back to them, you simply use them. That’s not the sort of relationship that lasts, or that I want.
But, I’ve digressed from the original question of what other tips I might have for managing social networks. And my best suggestion for that is toolbars and buttons. Many of the different networks have toolbars or buttons you can add to your browser that allow you to easily share. I use the StumbleUpon toolbar, delicious buttons, the TwitThat button, and a Share on Facebook button.
Grabbing those links, I notice that most of them are Firefox add-ons, so maybe the real Swiss Army knife of social media management tools is Firefox!
[image from Phillip Torrone via Creative Commons License]
Why I’m Not “LauraatDell” on Twitter May 8, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in General, Social Media, Twitter, Work, communication, 4comments Tags: ambassador, brand, communication, personalbrand, pr, Social Media, spokesperson, Twitter, worklife.The blending of work life and personal life on social networks is a topic for long discussion in and of itself. But, today I thought I would try to articulate how I walk the line between the two with my Twitter activity.
If you haven’t read my bio here, or figured it out otherwise, I work at Dell. Dell has become well-known as an active Twitter participant. The DellOutlet account especially has been touted by Dell executives, social media consultants and many mainstream media outlets as proof that Twitter can be used for business. RichardatDELL and LionelatDell are individuals at Dell who blog and respond to blogs that have also gathered quite a following on Twitter.
Brand Blending
When a person adds their company name to their own like that in a social media setting, they more strongly attach their company reputation to their own and vice versa. Or, in popular terms of the moment - they mix their personal brand with their employer’s. Doug Walker at Social Media Group recently raised some good questions about what happens when those two break up.
While I do tweet about things I’m doing at work and things others at Dell are working on that I think are cool, I also tweet on random topics of personal interest, things I’m doing with my family and even the now stereotypical (or useful, depending on your view) tweet about what I’m having for lunch or dinner.
This blending of somewhat professional and personal tweets I think is more easily achieved because I am not as official of a Dell representative as I would be if I tweeted as LauraatDell.
Risky Responsibility
A prime example of how difficult it is to be social when you are the corporate voice happened recently with Dell’s education community manager. Bri Brewer is a great gal whose education tweets under the Edu4U corporate account have been interspersed with light, humous tweets. A teacher/blogger recently expressed fears that those off-the-cuff tweets could diminsh her efforts to have social media or Web 2.0 technologies taken seriously by many in the education profession.
That teacher makes a very valid point about official company interactions online when she says, “What I say may or may not be long soon forgotten. What you say can and may influence the way vast millions of people think about educational technology.” It is a great reminder to all who enter social media on behalf of their companies that they carry greater power with the backing of a well-known brand.
The fear of that sort of responsibility, however, is not the reason I tweet as myself instead of my company. As a corporate communications professional I know well what it means to be a company spokesperson and I’ve been trained and gained many years of experience in dealing with the media and the general public on behalf of an organization.
No, the reason I tweet as LPT rather than LauraatDell is much simpler - I was LPT on Twitter before Dell ever came into that online neighborhood. I’m the one LionelatDell credits with getting him to really engage there; and, then he and I both brought RichardatDell into the fold. So, I had already begun to build my own presence as an individual before my company was there.
But, Lionel was not originally “atDell” either - he later changed his name. Why didn’t I?
Ambassador Spokesperson
While I have been a company spokesperson in the past, it is not something that is currently part of my official job at Dell. I basically get paid to manage the content in the corporate section of Dell.com known as About Dell. In doing that, I work closely with our PR and Investor Relations teams, and I look for new ways to leverage and integrate social media/Web 2.0 technologies. I also get to dabble in virtual worlds to help Dell learn about these environments and how we might leverage them - sorta the way that Google engineers get to spend 20 percent of their time on projects outside of their job description.
I do occassionally have the opportunity to speak to media or at conferences as our subject matter expert on that topic, but I feel that on Twitter I’m more of an ambassador than a spokesperson for Dell. My profile links from there to my bio here that explains who I work for, in keeping with Dell’s Online Communication Policy about transparency. My “bio” on the Twitter profile, however, has not changed since I whimsically dashed it off when I signed up for Twitter more than two years ago. Until today.
To be super clear for those who don’t click-through the web link, I’ve just added “(who works at Dell)” to my profile. If that job status should change, I can easly adjust that without making a major change to my “personal brand” of LPT.
And that, my friends, is the rest of the story. (Rest in peace Paul Harvey)
Something to Sneeze At May 1, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in General, add a comment Tags: CDC, flu, influenza, rant, swine flu, texas.I started this blog a little more than a year ago, not to establish myself as some expert at something, but simply to have a repository for things I wanted to say that wouldn’t fit easily into the 140 characters of my twitterstream.
I restate that simply as a warning that this post serves no great purpose other than to let me get something off my chest: Enough with the swine flu already! I know we border Mexico here in Texas, but it’s getting a bit ridiculus with all the school closings and signs suddenly appearing in our office bathrooms that tell us to “WASH YOUR HANDS.”
I mean, people die from the flu every year and we don’t make this big of a deal out of it. The Center for Disease Controls reports:
“During the 2007–08 influenza season, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) exceeded the epidemic threshold†† for 8 consecutive weeks in the 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System during the weeks ending January 12–May 17, 2008 (weeks 9–16).”
That’s just the regular old flu that we all know and expect and somehow manage to carry on a normal life around. But, go and put a descriptor in front of the flu like avian or swine, and suddenly everyone freaks out.
Yes, we should wash our hands. And, yes, we should avoid contact with those who are displaying symtoms of illness. And, yes, the very young or elderly or otherwise immunosuppressed should probably take extra precaution. But, I really think people have blown this a bit out of proportion.
Get a grip and get on with your life.
And, I’ll try to get back to writing more interesting things here than rants like this. 
Maybe something like my latest Direct2Dell post where I show that Second Life will run on a Dell Mini?
Oh, the People You’ll Meet Via Social Media April 13, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in Austin, Fun, General, Social Media, Twitter, 2commentsWhen I was asked by Austin Woman Magazine “What is the biggest impact of social media on your life?” it didn’t take but a second for me to reply that it was all the new and interesting people I would never have met otherwise. Some have been on the opposite side of the globe from me, and some have been right around the corner.
Austin Kleon is one of those. He is a writer and cartoonist who lives here in Austin, TX, that I met when I saw another acquaintance Tim Walker talking to him at that giant cocktail party known as Twitter. I was intrigued by a tweet about a newspaper blackout poem which is described as “Newspaper + Sharpie = Poems.” By blacking out all but select words in a newspaper article, Austin creates poetry. He has quite a collection of them on his blog that I could pass hours reading. He also recently posted this cool time-lapsed video showing the making of a blackout poem.
While it took Twitter to introduce me to this cool poet and artist in my own backyard, ye old mainstream media is introducing him to a global audience. He was recently featured in the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia:
A collection of Austin’s Newspaper Blackout Poems is forthcoming from HarperCollins in February 2010. I encourage you to check him out! You can follow him on Twitter, read his blog and become a fan on Facebook.
Been Blogging Elsewhere April 1, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in Family, General, Work, comments closed Tags: 3D, blogging, Direct2Dell, movies, parenting, ThisMommyGig.Just a quick note to let you know that while I haven’t posted here in a while, I have still been blogging. Here are excerpts from a couple recent posts on Direct2Dell.com and ThisMommyGig.com:
In 2007, it was anticipated by Slashfilm.com that at least five feature films would be released in 3D in 2008 and that the amount would nearly double in 2009. Those numbers actually came in higher, and it’s no wonder when Screen Digest reports that digital 3D cinema is delivering three times the revenue per screen of its 2D counterpart.
and
Evidently one of those days he too laid down some law that she didn’t like because she left him a note that I couldn’t help but laugh at; and, when I shared it with some friends at SXSW the next day, they all agreed I should share it with you:
From Ada to Aga - Thank You Women of Technology March 24, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in General, Work, comments closed Tags: Ada Lovelace, AdaLovelaceDay09, ALD09, computing, Dell, IT, programmer, technology, women, women in technology.Throughout my career in business communications, I’ve found myself drawn to leveraging new technologies. From early e-mail newsletters to intranets, web sites to virtual worlds, and blogs to microblogs, there’s always something new around the corner to keep things interesting.
And, for the past eight years I’ve had the opportunity to expand my skills and apply these new technologies while working for a company that is a leading technology provider - Dell Inc.
In spite of this, and much to the amusement of my truly technically savvy brother that I call when I don’t know the difference in an appliance and a server, I don’t consider myself a true woman of technology. To me, that title is reserved more for those who dig into the code, understand the backend and engineer the software and hardware.
Today is a day set aside to honor some of those women. Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. The daughter of Lord Byron, Ada made her own way and her own name for herself as the first computer programmer (not the first female programmer, but the first programmer) and therefore the founder of scientific computing.
So, on this day for honoring women in technology, I’d like to call out a few outstanding women in technology that I respect and have had the priviledge to work with at Dell:
Aga Webb - IT Director and CIO for the Asia-Pacific region
I’ve not worked directly with Aga, but have been involved in projects that gave me an opportunity to be in meeting discussions with her. I’ve always been impressed with her knowledge, her command of a situation and her common sense when facing technical quandries.
Kathy Kitayama - Director, Global Online Content Operations
Kathy leads a worldwide team of developers that make miracles happen every day on Dell.com. That’s no small feat for a web site that over the last four quarters had half a billion visitors; but hey, she does have B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard!
Joi Chevalier - Global Online eBusiness Sr. Consultant
Joi got her undergraduate degree in English at Oxford, but she’s way better than I am at understanding the the technicalities of technology. Maybe it’s because of that masters from The University of Texas that combined literature and technology.
Dodie Stillman - eBusiness Consultant
Dodie is the person I refer to as my right arm. She’s a web developer (part of Kathy’s team), an accessibility expert, and often the saver of my butt. And still she finds time to raise two cool kids and bike in nearly every ride that comes around Central Texas.
Without women like these in technolgy today and pioneers like Ada Lovelace, who foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, who knows where we might not be today. Thank you ladies!
Other Women in Technology:
- ComputerWeekly’s Ada Lovelace Day List
- Make Magazine’s List
- The Guardian profiles Jane McGonigal
- Ada Lovelace Day Collection of blog posts
Spring Break in Austin Means SXSW March 12, 2009
Posted by Laura Thomas, ABC in Fun, General, Social Media, Work, comments closed Tags: Austin, conference, film, interactive, music, shallow reign, south by southwest, SXSW, SXSWi, technology, texas.Local schools are about to embark on the week-long recess from classes known as Spring Break and I will be embarking on “five days of exciting panel content and amazing parties” as the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference bills itself.
This will be my third year to attend this portion of SXSW which focuses on emerging technology. It’s been a great way to learn some of the basics I needed as I transitioned from traditional corporate communications to a more online-focused job at Dell. It’s also an opportunity to bring back new trends and technologies that our business can leverage. And, I get a cool new bag to add to my environmentally friendly collection of grocery shopping bags!
“In its 22 years, SXSW has grown from a tiny music festival in the Texas capital into a massive, unavoidable media beast that reflects, discusses and showcases trends in culture and media but also often creates them.” National Post, 3/13/08
While I’ll be attending the Interactive conference, my husband will be more interested in the music portion of the conference that follows the film festival. His band Shallow Reign played showcases the very first and second years of SXSW. Who knew then that it would have grown into what it is now!
I blogged about some of last year’s panels on Direct2Dell and will be one of several Dell employees blogging from the conference again this year. So watch for updates over the next few days on Direct2Dell!
