social media

Chaos

POSTED IN future web, social media | TAGS : chaos, communication, consultation 3 August 2010

When chaos runs slowly enough it can look like calm. But it’s still chaos.

There has been chaos within the methods of communication used between authority and those it claims authority over for hundreds of years — but until recently you could only see it with the scale of hindsight. There hasn’t been a transition from calm to chaos, merely a speeding up of that chaos.

Stop thinking that it’s about to calm down any time soon, or ever.

Is Flipboard that ‘just good enough’ RSS reader?

POSTED IN future web, social media | TAGS : flipboard, rss 27 July 2010

A few posts ago I postulated that for most people, for most types of ‘news’ algorithms based around attention and the social graph may well be almost good enough to replace the idea of subscribing to RSS feeds of content directly.

And then Flipboard came along.

Flipboard is a news reader for the iPad with an exquisite interface that’s just right for the touchscreen interface — it’s all page turning and large buttons. So far so Reeder (my favourite iPad RSS reader), but Flipboard does a couple of things that make it stand out, and doesn’t do a couple of things that make it on the way to being the sort of thing that will make RSS feeds as user technology scarcer:

It presents curated bundles of feeds ‘FlipNews’ or ‘FlipStyle’ — editorially picking the major (ie mainstream, “just good enough”) feeds for subject areas.
It allows you to sign in with Twitter and Facebook, pulling in links and content linked to by people you’re in contact with.
It doesn’t mention (or it seems actually use) RSS, it just grabs the content and shows it to you.
It doesn’t let you add your own feeds.

There’s no attention profiling that I can see, but there’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be an addition that the makers are working on. No, it won’t replace an RSS reader — but it’s not trying, and in many situations it’s better for that.

Some work to do to implement something similar that works on other sorts of devices (a conventional computer would need a very different interface), but for iPad it’s good enough.

The public/private problem

POSTED IN future web, social media | TAGS : Gazza, media, politics, private, public 15 July 2010

People in difficult situations have always relied on dark humour to get them through, police, doctors, solders are well known for it. Private grief or impotent horror at public events produces jokes or thoughts that are not always palatable. It was always thus, I’m sure you can remember school-yard jokes about major disasters, I’m sure that psychologists could point to research about why we do it and why it helps.

Last Friday night Twitter, the only special media form I use often enough to have been checking on a weekend evening, was alive with comment on the Raoul Moat case and the rolling TV news coverage of it. Rolling news, particularly the Sky version, is an easy and oft used target amongst the (mostly liberal, mostly educated, mostly cynical) people that I come into contact with there. The repetitive nature of 24 hour news, the lack of actual happenings — it’s easy meat for the sort of “social satire” that Twitter does around major news events.

A difficult, horrific and scary, situation was made mundane by the coverage. That’s what rolling TV news does.

And then something really odd happened. Paul Gascoigne turned up.

It was sad, Gazza has had well publicised mental health and addiction problems for some years – but there is no denying that the event provided all the essential ingredients for comedy: juxtaposition, recognition, shared nervousness, mundanity (in his shopping list of things brought, and in his use of unimaginative nicknames).

It would be, and I’m sure will and should remain, unthinkable for mainstream comedians to do Gazza/Moat material — but in private most people would have been comfortable to share in the darkly comic aspects of the story. And laugh, because there’s nothing else you can possibly do in that moment to change anything.

Here lies the collision we’re about to see (or are seeing) between that with the media can show as acceptable reaction and what we now know about the actual reaction of huge numbers of people. We may have in the past heard ‘sick’ jokes at work or in the pub, in recent years my SMS inbox has filled with them from those a generation above me (and it has too this week) but it’s only now that the public sphere has communication tools that allow this to happen in ‘public’.

Cue media (and political, in politics’s role as a branch of media) outrage.

So we have a problem — there seems that there is no way that the media or those courting it for political purposes can take anything but the outraged position. If anyone in that sphere were to step out of line then they would swiftly become the story, and they have power, influence, and money to lose.

We saw this in the General Election campaign, potential candidates were hounded out after using the social web to express opinions that everyone would have expected them to hold in private. Maybe they should have known better (in fact, they of all people — in the game where leaping on signs of unconformity is to conform — should know most of all), but it’s a regimented and dull World we’re being forced to live in, one where no-one can make a mistake however small.

Imagine if Princess Diana died again tomorrow, how far would the media’s reaction (which would no doubt be the same as it was them) be from the public (or at least public space online) reaction? If I’ve read one think piece, years later, about how the “public outpouring of grief” wasn’t shared by anywhere near to all of the public I’ve read hundreds. Now people might well be brave enough to say so.

What happens in online social interaction isn’t, for most, a truly public space — it may be open to all but it is intended to be read by those who are connected to them. Hence we get a false dichotomy; all utterances on the social web are public, but some are more public than others. We have to move to a way where all media, social or otherwise can cope with that.

Clay Shirky and the Cognitive Surplus

POSTED IN future web, good practice, social media | TAGS : class, clay shirky, Cognitice Surplus, representation, revolution 7 July 2010

George Orwell said, in an essay of fulsome praise of the man and his work, that Charles Dickens “was not a revolutionary writer”. He didn’t mean that Dickens wasn’t capable of or responsible for revolutions in prose, but that despite the image as a champion of the downtrodden he didn’t wish for systemic revolution — everything would be better, Dickens thought, if people were nicer.

That almost sums up what I think of the work of Clay Shirky, in his first book Here Comes Everybody and now in the new Cognitive Surplus he gives example after example of positive ways that the social web has altered the way people behave and organise, but while talking about revolution he is offering not too much more than the idea that the rules can be as simple as “be nice”. Like the first book it’s a great read, it’s enthusing and Shirky explains the ‘why’ better than almost anyone else — he even, surprisingly to me as it’s the first time I’ve read or heard him touch upon it, has a belated go at the ‘how’.

The cognitive surplus of the title is the comeback to the question “how do people find the time?” often asked about people who are active on the social web — Shirky’s (rather glib, he admits himself) answer is “they stopped watching television”. You can get the gist of this from some of his recent talks like this one in Bristol (thanks Pete), but to sum up and very much paraphrase: ‘economic circumstances since the 1940s have given people more free time and they now have tools to use that time on a wider collaborative scale’.

Where I was uncomfortable with Here Come Everybody where the examples where it seemed as if an educated, connected, class could use these tools to produce pressure even if that was exerted on a lower class. I’m unsure as to whether Shirky doesn’t see these issues, doesn’t see them as a problem, or, is merely pointing out facts without editorialising. It may be due to my own thoughts around class and digital inclusion, or it may be due to the American perspective on class issues being different. Where Cognitive Surplus falls down for me is not just this, although problems do seem to be on the radar, but the way civic actions formed from this surplus are strictly divided from the merely communal.

POSTED IN future web, good practice, social media | TAGS : minidisc, QR code, skip-tech, technology 5 July 2010

I’ve have three separate conversations about QR (Quick Response) codes, which lead me to wonder if there were at last reaching some kind of mainstream use or at least critical mass. If you’ve not come across them, they’re a two dimensional bar-code (conventional barcodes are only one dimensional, the width of the black and white stripes represent numbers — the length is only so that they can be seen) that is meant to allow readers to be sent straight to a web page.

QR codes were invented in Japan and have seen very heavy use there over the last ten or so years: a friend has been over and brought back some odd mushroom-chocolate sweets and even they had a code prominently on the box:

I wouldn’t have been able to use it though, as I was in a pub with no wifi or mobile reception. Even if I had that I’d still need to: know what a QR code is, have a mobile device that can use them (common in Japan, not quite so common in the UK — for example even iPhones don’t come with an app built in, older ones don’t have a camera hi-res enough to take the shots), be able to take a good enough photo (i.e. not see the code from too great a distance, in low light, on the move etc). Try and often as not you get something like this:

QR Codes were invented to solve a problem, the problem was that it wasn’t easy to display URLs in a usable way — in Japan the display of URLs was complicated by the use of western characters in web addresses (steps are being taken to even this out), but in countries using western characters the URL has to be pretty long before it isn’t quicker and easier to type the address into your browser. As someone interested in technology I was excited to see one on a pop bottle last year, took a while to find an app, and take a photo that worked — only to be directed to pespi.com.

The codes are even now starting to fade out in Japan — it’s becoming more usual now is for adverts/packaging to say “search for A COUPLE OF KEYWORDS” rather than use a QR or a URL. This has been the case in South Korea for a while, and is starting to catch on in the UK too (if you see a trailer for the new Leonardo DiCaprio film you’ll see that after tiny references to its website URL and it’s Facebook page you get a full screen caption asking you to ‘Search for Inception movie’). In my mind this is because we’re skipping QR Codes in the UK — not because they were bad technology but because other pressures have combined to overtake them before they have become mainstream. In this case it’s a combination of the lack of a direct problem to solve and the realisation that vast numbers of people will search even when given a URL (yes, they type the URL into Google). The ‘search us’ method is becoming even more common as it’s easier to own a search term than to buy a memorable and usable URL.

If you were trying mass communication you’d have wasted any time invested in QR Codes (luckily they’re cheap/free, educating people as to what they were might not have been) — they’re “skip-tech”: technology that is overtaken too quickly to gain a foothold.

The more you look, the more you can see it — skip-tech isn’t failed technology like Betamax or HD-DVD that had direct competition and lost out in a format war (although both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray look like becoming skip-tech to cloud or hard drive storage), it’s tech that while it does its job doesn’t fit in with the way people use technology.

MiniDiscs are the ultimate skip-tech: the first consumer digital recording format, they offered the sound quality and convenience of a CD, with the record-ability of tape. Despite working well and finding favour amongst radio people, the advent of recordable CDs (that could be played on the same systems even if recorded elsewhere) soon afterwards killed it as a format.

It’s not always so direct as a format change, but a change in behaviour. DVD recorders to use with your TV were quickly overtaken by easier-to-understand (what was all that “finalizing” about?) PVRs and online catch-up services, not to underestimate the sheer number of ‘opportunities to see’ (er, repeats) most programmes and the trend to watching whole series in box-set size gulps.

Online there’s more chance for this to happen more quickly, as with most things. The proliferation of photo sharing services backed by camera companies, processing companies and even printer firms was quickly overtaken by Facebook becoming the place to share photos. Facebook has millions more members than much better photo-specific services such as Flickr, as the sharing of photos has become something that you do within your social graph much more than with the “whole web”. The sharing of photos has become both more communal (i.e. people mostly do it in the same space) and less open (generally) than people were expecting — the branded photo-upload site is skip-tech.

If the technology is quick and cheap enough to be treated as disposable it needn’t matter if you back a piece of skip-tech — nor will it if your aims are to reach the early adopters or for a short time — but it’s dangerous to base longer term strategy on technology where the use or the community hasn’t started to form a little.

Be quick, be agile, look out for new things — but always back the social use over the flash new tech.

What a Social Media ‘Expert’ needs to know

POSTED IN social media | TAGS : b3ta, monkeon, social media expert 21 June 2010

Another amusing bit of backlash against ‘social media experts’ from b3ta’s monekon who’s ‘day job’ is as a web developer. It’s funny, even if I wonder where he’s getting the money bit from, it aint like that round this way.

As I see it we (web developers and social web types) work on the same platform in the same way as TV transmission or electronic genius and a programme maker, or a printer and a graphic designer or perhaps even more pertinently a car designer and a road designer.

A good social web person will understand how websites work (although like me perhaps, with neither the drive or the skill to build large scale ones oneself), but more importantly how they enable people to communicate with each other.

You get people, very rarely, who can do both — but they’re two big jobs on any more than the simplest level — you’re better off with close collaboration between the two. Get them both right and you can leave out the SEO part.

Globalisation? Hmm

POSTED IN Conferences & Talks, social media | TAGS : birminghamuk, debate, jon hickman, Pete Ashton, what's on 25 May 2010

This Thursday (27/5) at 7:45pm at the wondrously refurbished Midlands Arts Centre, I’m taking part in a debate on — breath — social media and globalisation.

It’s billed as:

“Expert Jon Hickman (Birmingham City University) chairs a lively debate with guests including Pete Ashton… assessing lifestyle changes implied by new technological tools in the new wave of social media.”

an interesting, if potentially unwieldy, topic. Chair (and ‘expert’, he’ll hate that) was worried that Pete, him and I would ‘agree violently’ on most aspects. I’ve not written by talk, or really fully considered my position, yet but I think I may be able to get away without agreeing with either of them.

Current thoughts is that I might deny globalisation exists at all.

Come along and see.

New York, New Politics

POSTED IN Conferences & Talks, my projects, social media, twitter | TAGS : civico, democracy, innovation, Rhubarb Radio, streaming 25 May 2010

I’m off to the city that never sleeps next week for the PdF (Personal Democracy Forum) Conference — a conference on how social technology changes how politics operates. Very much looking forward to seeing Clay Shirky, Jimmy Wales et al speak and also to giving the Civico platform it’s first major test.

Civico is an offshoot of Rhubarb Radio, which I’ve been a member of for about 14 months. Rhubarb is an online community radio station, and Civico is an extension of that platform to cover democracy and events. Last year we covered the PdfEU conference in Barcelona, with what was little more than the streaming audio and a whole lot of hard work.

For this conference we hope to be able to use the newly developed Civico player. This has two great developments, one is that it integrates with the Twitter API to capture tweets alongside the audio or video. The second is much more exciting (and proud to say, developed from my original concept).

Once the audio, video, tweets (and more in development) are captured then users can share any fraction (or all) of the coverage — highlighting the best line, the biggest laugh or the most damming miss-speak. In other words it makes it easy to share the bits that you want to share. And share them by link or by embedding wherever they like.

Here’s an example from a recent conference in London, by link and by embed (this is still a beta, excuse any foibles or downtime as the player is worked on):

POSTED IN blogging, my projects, social media 7 May 2010

Birmingham is currently bidding for the UK’s first City of Culture title (this is a dreadful out-of-date link, but DCMS don’t seem to be hot on explanation), we’re down to the final four and the bid has to be in very soon. I’ve done some consultancy on the bid’s web and digital presence, more of which perhaps when the results are in early in July, but one quite public and interesting piece of work was the ‘Big Culture Blog‘.

Birmingham Big Culture Blog - Birmingham City of Culture 2013

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

It came about as an idea to make sure that culture from around the city, and from the grassroots, was showcased — we worked on the idea of helping people in the city create a cultural snapshot of whatever they were doing. Put simply, the idea was to allow people to blog about their activity within one 24-hour period (12noon 23rd April to 12noon 24th April).

I chose Posterous for the platform of the blog – it’s ability to automatically convert images, video, audio and documents made it simple to offer one easy point of entry for the public. They were asked to email whatever they liked, and it was a technically easy job to moderate and publish – although it meant me being available for 24 hours straight to do that.

To make sure we had a good spread of content there were a team of social reporters engaged, with whom I did a short training session (as well as being in contact over the blogging period) — but in the end there was a huge wealth of content created from all sides of the city. Over 5,000 visitors to the site and around 350 different cultural experiences blogged and mapped made it a really successful exercise, showing — I think — that online engagement doesn’t have to be anything too complicated.

We’ve won a Webby (almost)

POSTED IN my projects, social media, social media work, twitter, writing work | TAGS : award, birmingham hippodrome, jon bounds, thanks, twitpanto, webby 14 April 2010

While it’s not made the final shortlist of five, there’s still a bit to be proud of as Twitpanto has been made an Honoree (US spelling) in the 2010 Webby Awards in the Net Art category.

As that shortlist includes big budget projects like BBC Blast, I don’t think we’ve done badly seeing as it was one crash hot web guy (that’s Matt, not me) and 20 odd (very) Twitterers on a cold December afternoon (which you can relive, of course, here).

In speech mode, we couldn’t have done it so well without the support of the Birmingham Hippodrome — or the hundreds of people that joined in during the play. Sincere thanks for going along with it.

Quite interesting timing as the RSC’s Twitter Shakespeare project launched this week with much fanfare, in some ways it’s a logical step on from Twitpanto and it’ll be interesting to see how it’s sheer scale affects the experience (a slight overreach of scale was one of the problems I felt with this second panto).

To read all about both Twitter panto experiences there are a couple of long and detailed posts here.