twitter » Dave Jenkins

LinkedIn, You may not like this, but…

Jul 192011

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has gone on the record thinking that Google+ may start to crowd the field, and that social networks are approaching a zero-sum game: people really only have so much discretionary time, and they’re not going to “add” another network unless they start diminishing another.

I agree. However, LinkedIn may not like where things wind up.

We all seem to understand that LinkedIn was the serious older brother to Facebook. LinkedIn carried your full CV and business contacts, while Facebook had your college buddies and pictures of body parts usually wrapped in cotton. LinkedIn allowed us to form groups and networks for the various facets of our careers, while Facebook let us to simply ‘hang out’. Unfortunately, LinkedIn may have overplayed its hand: the groups were so loose, the email notifications so prevalent, and the questions so inane, that I just don’t read them anymore. LinkedIn has a Spam problem: when every possible service vendor out there can figure out that I’m a stakeholder and decision-maker, the spam goes way up. When service vendors start to troll questions in the groups just to get possible sales leads, the spam goes way up.

Let’s face it: if anyone spends serious time on LinkedIn, it’s likely because they’re in between jobs or trolling for a new job. That means they’ve got a lot of time on their hands, and likely aren’t on their game as much as they should. As a result, the discussion topics come across a bit stale, a bit desperate, a bit pumped up. In short, quality of content suffers. LinkedIn discussion groups are like soup in a hotel buffet line: looks good, but you have no idea what’s in there, or who’s been putting their spoon in that.

Google+, on the other hand, got the privacy part correct: people can add me all day long (and I’m already starting to see the vendors showing up when they add me to their circles), but it’s up to me whom I add. In other words, I get to choose who sees the content I publish, and I get to choose who’s content I see. This is the big difference that G+ learned from Twitter, and it’s just the right amount of inoculation that LinkedIn doesn’t have.

So, Weiner’s correct: my time is limited. I want professional updates from my peers and people I admire in the business. I want to connect with them professionally. But guess what, it likely won’t be on LinkedIn anymore…

Early Impressions of Google+

Network, Social Media 3 Responses »

Jun 292011

Yeah, this is pretty much sums it up.

My friend at Google hooked me up with an early invitation to Google+, the new social networking interface from They Who Do No Evil. So far, I like it, if only for the possible catharsis it offers me for starting over on whom I invite/include in my circle of friends. I don’t know enough about the nuances yet to give a full-blown analysis, and the population isn’t wide enough for me to see many of my friends yet, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

Google+ already knows most of the people I deal with. It has all the email addresses from my GMail account, so that makes sense.
The first thing I was prompted to do was add all my contacts into “circles”: friends, family, etc. I could make up my own circles, also: Mishifts, SLC Punks, Tokyo.
Google already has my photo albums on Picasa, and taps in directly to those. The result of this is that the photo quality seems to be quite a bit better than what we are getting on Facebook.
Google+ wants me to create “hang outs”, which are essentially open threads/chats/webcams. This seems to be the most direct successor to Google Buzz, and perhaps the surviving nephew of Google Wave. I don’t see any hangouts yet, so we’ll see.
I can “follow” people that I’ve never met, but are in the system: Robert Scoble, Randall Munroe, Matt Cutts.

That last point may be the most killer point here: Google can quickly subsume Facebook (the interface is almost identical), but then move beyond Facebook’s fatal flaw: Facebook was a response to the aliased teen anarchy of MySpace, and succeeded because of the strict requirement that you had to certifiably know everyone of your contacts. Twitter grew up because it allowed a one-way gate of communication where I could “follow” people but they didn’t have to follow me back. This works well for rock stars and stand up comics, politicians, not so much. Google+ now offers a big step forward: one common place where I can do all that facebook sharing thing with my friends, follow rock stars (like twitter), and chat/interact in real-time like I was supposed to do with Google Wave.

Prediction: Google+ may actually have drawn a winner this time, and Facebook’s $100B valuation is about to take a big kick in the nads. Twitter, you’re going to take a hit as well.

Why Microsoft bought Skype

Good or Bad, Network, Social Media 5 Responses »

May 102011

I made the first version of this graphic in November 2009. At the time, I thought Google Wave was going to be one of the most compelling avenues of interaction on the intarwebs. Oops. The version you see above has been updated: Google Wave is dead. Polaroid film exists only as a rare remnant from “The Before Time”, and we can imagine the coming Mad Max among hispters to see who gets to expose the very last pack.

Red down arrows go out to the following:

Email is only getting more spam-filled by the day. Each new email service vendor that comes online is allowing every company out there more complex ways to bother me and fill my inbox.
IRC, always the bastion of the pure GNU disciples and Anonymous, just doesn’t work for the rest of us.
Blogs (including this one) continue their march toward niche ionization, always sacrificing common-sense discussion for the sake of the sensational political rant or a celebrity nipple slip.

Twitter, as we saw in the aftermath of the Japan Tsunami and the Arab Spring, has really come into it’s own as a quick way to get updates out. For that, it earns a green arrow in the right direction. At the same time, however, we learn that 50% of tweets come from a very small set (0.05%) of the twitter population. OCDs with fast thumbs, I guess. For that, it also gets a red arrow.

The two winners in the communications derby are still face-to-face honest interaction and Skype. Skype is free, it’s the default chat for an ever-increasing segment of the population, the audio quality beats a land-line or cell phone every time, and the video is just icing on the cake. If you use skype a lot, you really start to wonder how much longer the telephone (in its current state) has left.

Did Microsoft pay too much for Skype? Maybe. But when you look at the long ball, probably not.

Quakebook

Japan, Social Media 1 Response »

Mar 292011

See the quakebook at http://quakebook.blogspot.com

Okay, it’s been two and a half weeks since the earthquake and tsunami, and I’ve been slack in not writing something here. First and foremost, Yumiko and I are fine. Her family is fine. All our friends that we’ve contacted (including Yumi’s friends in Sendai) are safe. We were in St Louis when it hit– and for that, I feel guilty.

I feel guilty for not being there, for not being able to help. I feel guilty for not “sticking it out” with all my friends in Tokyo and Chiba that are somehow putting one foot in front of the other and trying to make a normal life again. We didn’t evacuate Tokyo, we had left two weeks before it hit (as scheduled). I would like to think that we wouldn’t have evacuated, but then again, I see my friends who have moved their wives and children down to Western Japan or back to the US, and I honestly can’t say what I would have done.

Living in Japan, one cannot help but confront the older generation that put up with incredible hardships to make the modern miracle. These people endured starvation, bombings, privation, and said nothing, but simply picked up the pieces and worked harder to make an economic powerhouse out of ashes. My own father-in-law tells the story of when he was 8 years old in 1945, and he had to scour the woods near his house for grasses and edible roots to boil over an open pot. He ate grass. For several weeks. This same man went on to work incredible hours at a construction company and ended up retiring just a few years ago in relative comfort. He reminds us of this occasionally, and it pretty much shuts me up for any complaints I may have been entertaining in the back of my head.

Now, we’ve got a whole new generation of Japanese that will 頑張る (“gambaru” – to stick it out, hold on, endure) through their own phoenix-like period. The country is broke. The economy was already wobbly after years of stagnation. The population is in decline. Japanese efficiency is gradually being eclipsed by their Korean neighbors and the cheaper Chinese/Vietnamese/Indians. The government was never really that transparent nor reassuring, aside from Secretary Edano (who finally got some sleep). It will be a tough slog.

I am hopeful however. This is the first large-scale disaster that we’re really seeing unfold in real-time first-hand. My twitter feed has been both a curse and a blessing: a curse because I am not there and can do little but donate to the Japan Red Cross; a blessing because I’ve been witnessing my friends move through various stages of recovery:

In those early hours, it really was all about contacting each other. That’s it. The phone lines were jammed, cell phones turned off. If twitter or Facebook ever proved their worth, this was it. We couldn’t reach our parents for almost a full day, but ultimately, my father logged into Skype, and we were able to talk for 30 minutes (free!). I got twitter updates from all my friends, and the initial panic subsided.
The next few days was a scramble of aftershocks, sleepless anxiety, and the creeping uncertainty of the Fukushima nuclear plant. Here again, social networks proved their value if anything but to keep small bits of information rolling amongst my friends. The most fascinating bit was to see the first-person reactions against the western media– who were getting the situation completely wrong or couldn’t even be bothered to leave their hotel rooms. One more strike against old media, methinks.
Prayforjapan.jp showed a stream of tweets, several of which had me in tears at several points throughout the last three weeks. The selflessness and gratitude of survivors has been covered elsewhere, so I won’t list them out here again, except to say that it’s a shame that many of the best stories were never translated into English.
The adrenaline started to wear down, and my friends began to update the most inane little bits of update on twitter and facebook: “Leaving work, headed to the station now” followed 30 minutes later with “at the train station, walking home now”. It dawned on me that these updates served a couple of roles: it reassured us (friends and family) that these people were still alive, and it probably reassured the writer in some sort of Bill Murrayish baby steps baby steps one-foot-at-a-time way to get through the rolling blackouts and hoarded food.
After a few days, the lightness started to come back. The Kiwis and Aussies in Tokyo started sending twitpics of the pints they were drinking, the Japanese friends started to trade black humor about what the yakuza would do with no pachinko parlours. The rebirth was beginning.

Now, we’re actually starting to see something constructive come together. the Libyan revolt has since eclipsed the western news, and Japan still sweats the Fukushima plant, but these networks are starting to put things together themselves. I still cannot figure out where the money to rebuild will come from, but I know that Japan will be alright. This is an incredibly resilient place, an incredibly warm and resilient people. 日本は回復する！頑張ろ！

If you’d like to help, please donate to the Japan Red Cross. If you’d like to see these stories and find out more about the real time unfolding of this whole thing, check out the #Quakebook at http://quakebook.blogspot.com

Japan and twitter: why such a hit?

Japan, Network, Social Media, mobile 4 Responses »

Aug 132010

Japanese twitter users at a football game. Source: theHindu.com (I see Ricky from "Better Off Dead" finally made it over to Tokyo)

I increasingly hear from people that they are “giving up” or abandoning twitter. Reasons given are the usual suspects: the signal-to-noise ratio is bad, no quality insights are possible in 140 characters, most tweets just look like shallow self promotion, product company spam. Indeed, there was a golden era (that lasted about 6 weeks) where one could tweet about a company, and receive a prompt response. Now that most companies have installed a twitter-monitoring robot, the service level is quickly degrading right down to the same level as the automatic email responders– or worse– the automated telephone system.

Twitter as a viable business tool is limited; as a marketing blurb tool it’s adequate, but as an ongoing small-talk medium it seems to do pretty well.

As I’ve picked up more and more Japanese friends on twitter, I’ve noticed that it seems to be doing relatively well in Japan (compared to the US market). Why is that? Is it just the stereotype of tech-friendly gadget-wacko Japanese? Or are there some other more specific factors in play? I have absolutely NO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH to back this up, but here are my postulations. Perhaps someone out there can follow up with some actual useful information. I’m throwing this out now to get the conversation started.

Possible technology explanations for better twitter penetration into Japan:

Character/language density – One quality of East Asian languages that use Kanji is that many words can become pretty short. In English, “transport” is 9 characters; in Japanese it’s two: 交通. “Tokyo” is 5 characters in English, Japanese is two: 東京. Similar consolidations go for names, places, verbs, etc. Yes, Japanese grammar may get longer, but since when is proper grammar needed in twitter? It seems that the Japanese writing system has an inherent “density” advantage over English.
Input tools – Twitter seems tailor made for mobile devices: short, text-centric, quick input. For a networked society that already preferred the mobile phone-based Internet access, twitter drops right into place, often much handier than email. I’ve discussed this before.

Along with the tech explanations, however, there may be some cultural differences in play. These are kinda squishy, so please squint appropriately:

Inherent public posting – Most Japanese people I know guard their privacy pretty strongly, but no more so than Americans or Europeans, I think. However, there sometimes is a strong tendency to make idle chit-chat items public out to the group. Japanese people will usually not talk with strangers, unless someone breaks the ice with small talk about the weather or some ramen noodles. Then, the mode shifts to everyone wanting to build a connection with others, and everyone will pipe in their 2 cents. Mind you, this isn’t a political debate or anything concrete, just pichiku-pachiku. Twitter seems to facilitate this nicely. Let me put it this way: that signal-to-noise ratio that drives some of my American friends nuts fits in nicely with the low-level buzz that Japanese ping to each other to reinforce their relationships.
ongaeshi 恩返し — My wife (who is Japanese) dislikes instant chat with other Japanese, because of all the built-in politeness requires everyone to say “thank you” and “goodbye” at least 4 or 5 times before closing the conversation. For Japanese, a similar thing looks like it’s occuring in twitter, albeit in asynchronous slow motion: someone follows you, you actually have a bit of an obligation to follow them back. If someone tweets your name, you’ll RT a simple acknowledgement. Taken together, this may push enough people past that critical mass needed to keep a social network flourishing.
Lack of a Mixi / Facebook alternative– Mixi is pretty noisy and cumbersome compared to Facebook, but has an interface completely native to Japan. Facebook, while cleaner, may be a little too “close” for the idle chit-chat that seems to go on in twitter (this is no different than the US: don’t you hate that guy on Facebook that has hotlinked all his tweets to show up in his friend feed?). Taken together, twitter gives a good outlet for quick updates via mobile phone in a text-rich environment (easily consumed on the train).
Son Masayoshi– The great thought leader of Softbank seems to be a prolific twitterer. Along with other leadingtech figures in Japan, Son seems to actually hold ongoing debates and policy discussions via twitter. This openness is refreshing if not counter-intuitive for Japanese business. Put together, twitter looks like the domain of the tech-forward progressives.

Caveat Scriptor: Twitter is Destroying Fame

Good or Bad, Network, Social Media 3 Responses »

Aug 052010

One of Kanye's better tweets, mashed with a New Yorker cartoon

My first brush with fame was shaking an astronaut’s hand when I was fourteen (Robert Crippen). Since then, I’ve spotted movie stars in Park City, seen musicians drinking in bars, and actually discussed golf swings with the Prime Minister of Japan. I mention these not to brag, but to say that my exposure to fame has probably been average.

Online, however, I’ve gotten much closer. Ten years ago I became ICQ friends with Will Wheaton (Ensign Crusher), who had some linux support questions that I answered. We traded geek creds, and that was that. On facebook, I’ve got some famous friends; on Twitter, me and @MCHammer are tight (at least I think so, he never answers my pleading to not hurt ‘em).

The Internet and social media have made flash stars of some people, usually not of their own volition– from the numa numa boy to that idiot crying over a rainbow. The instant connectivity to flash something all over the globe and the proletarian accessability to publishing can make anyone a star for about 15 seconds. No duh.

Social media may be destroying the machine that builds fame, however. If “fame” is the marketable asset that comes from being famous, then twitter is destroying value every day. Here’s my thesis:

Actors used to be poor. They could only impress and perform in front of a few hundred people in a given city, and even then, the theatre was long and drawn out. High quality stuff, no doubt (for acting chops), but weak on the easily-remembered guitar licks. Charlie Chaplin was the first major star, and it was a direct result of the medium of film, which could be recorded and distributed to thousands and millions of people. Actors (successful ones) are rich because of the medium and distribution model which allows for small dollars from many many customers.
As actors and musicians became famous via a remote medium (film is one-way interaction, as is radio, records, tapes, etc.), an entire ‘fame’ industry sprang up to provide that proxy access that fans wanted to make the connection back to their idols. Variety Magazine, Papparazzi, TMZ, et al, are all part of this machine. Performers have a weird relationship with it– they say they despise the machinery of fame, yet they depend on it. The successful navigators seem to balance what information and access they dole out sparingly. Marlon Brando never attended the Academy Awards, there’s no way he’d have a twitter account.
Twitter now gives these performers a direct line to their fans. Wait– no. It’s the other way around: fans now have a direct line to the performers. This circumvents the machine, and some performers are seeing their fame getting eaten away.

While Twitter is still technically a one-way medium (I can follow @JeremyPiven, he doesn’t have to follow me back), the format is stripped down to a degree that allows very little of the fame machine to work its magic: no photoshopping of the photos, no glitzy typeface, no room for a publisher or PR handler in-between the performer and the fan.

Some performers have been able to do this well, mostly comics who are used to the short text of a joke. Some are burning their capital, reduced to endlessly pimping their own book store appearances. Still some others have suffered poorly for it– mostly the good looking ones we suspected were vapid shells all along.

There was a Vanity Fair article I read last week about Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, who seemed to be at the apex of the fame machine in it’s best golden era of the 60s, and when Pacino, Hoffman, and other “ordinary” guys started to fill the roles, ol’ Dick Jenkins (Burton) knew the game was changing, and that fame was past him now.

Known for his poetry, drinking binges, and temper tantrums, @RichardBurton would have been one helluva feed.

@T_S_Eliot and @Ray_Bradbury

Network, United States 4 Responses »

Jan 082009

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” –T.S. Eliot

Many people think back to their juvenile literature classes and remember that Farenheit 451 was a cautionary tale. They then assume to remember that it’s a cautionary tale against oppressive governments that burn books. I would proffer that this ‘oppressive fascist regime’ interpretation is a remnant of post-war public school social engineering. I think that Bradbury might just as much have been lamenting the death of the book as a medium. The populous of his future dystopia voluntarily stopped reading– preferring abridged versions to formal novels, then pamphlets, and finally, a small steady diet of word-pablum from the government.

I am a few days into Twitter so far, and I am starting to think that we may be one step closer: books became articles several decades ago. The web shortened those further to summaries, and RSS shortened the news even further. On a personal level, publishing has exploded; everyone’s an author, a film critic, a technomaven, a pop-diva queen. However, the publishing medium is getting shorter and shorter. Back in the day, we had to code our HTML by hand (dammit). Soon enough, we publi-shit-izens [yes, intentional] realized we could get attention and traffic by simply uploading pictures of our cat, or describing the toast we had that morning. TypePad made this all too easy. Blogs got shorter. Now we’ve come to twitter, and we’re down to a simple 160 characters. Services now can simply ping each other’s mobile phones and tell you if a friend is within 500 feet (physically).

My money is on the iPhone app that can sense your mood from your body heat and movement while it sits in your pants pocket– and broadcasts out to all your peeps when it judges that you’re likely in heat.

Mind you, I’m not passing judgment one way or the other on this. It’s not evil or good– the text is just getting progressively shorter. I am still trying to figure out if it’s because the reader attention-span is getting shorter, or because 99.9% of the masses have anything viable to say beyond 160 characters. I suspect the latter.

This post took me ten minutes to write. I still haven’t said jack that has not been said a thousand times previously. Do you feel smarter now that you’re at the end? This post was really just a way to get my twitter address out: @davejenk1ns

note: that is a real photo of a real book burning in 2007 New Mexico, United States. Some Christians think Harry Potter is evil.

@T_S_Eliot and @Ray_Bradbury

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LinkedIn, You may not like this, but…

Early Impressions of Google+

Why Microsoft bought Skype

Quakebook

Japan and twitter: why such a hit?

Caveat Scriptor: Twitter is Destroying Fame

@T_S_Eliot and @Ray_Bradbury

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