IM Roadmap

Nearly Half of Americans Use Facebook; Only 7% Use Twitter [STUDY].

This one is pretty interesting folks – just illustrates the future growth expected in the social media and virtual world spaces.  From the article:

Currently, PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games, virtual world publishers and social networks. …

As virtual goods becomes a booming business, PlaySpan has reaped the benefits of technology and media companies looking to incorporate virtual goods into their platforms.

via Visa Buys Virtual Goods Monetization Platform PlaySpan For $190 Million In Cash.

Here’s what sounds like a great little plugin for Chrome:  Cortex for Google Chrome Solves One of Social Media’s Big Problems.

Chees,
Eric

Twitter’s Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard | Threat Level | Wired.com.

“… the company successfully challenged the gag order in court, and then told the targets that their data was being requested, giving them time to try and quash the order themselves.”

Interesting article over at the NY Times -  Facebook Wins Relatively Few Friends in Japan – NYTimes.com.  There are several native Japanese social networking competitors, which are undoubtedly undermining Facebook’s attempts there.  But, there’s some belief that the fundamental difference in how privacy is valued between Japan and the US/western European-derived cultures that is creating the wedge.  The article contends that Japanese users place a higher premium on their privacy than is compatible with Facebook’s vision of every bit of our lives visible to everyone all the time.

See this site, also, for more information on other countries’ use.

An interesting trend of new apps in the consumer social web is that of closed networks.  For example, limiting social networks to certain sub-sets of contacts/friends, or to a fixed maximum number, or giving them a shelf-life.   Enterprise collaboration solutions already support this implicitly, with email distribution lists, persistent group chat channels, etc.  Hopefully we can see this supported in a more integrated and pervasive fashion across the various disparate tools used in the enterprise.

In the meantime, check out:

• Path
• Fast Society
• Facebook’s new Groups feature

Cheers,
Eric

Check this out:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/awesome_diy_data_tool_needlebase_now_available_to.php

Cheers,
Eric

This news is a few days old, but have been meaning to put this up online.  A recent study, discussed over at Wired, has shown that seven out of every 10 tweets elicit absolutely no reaction in the twitterverse.  From anyone.  Anywhere.  This was written about in other forums as well, and you could imagine the collective gasps from the twitter fan-boys and fan-girls.  “What?  Twitter is ignored?  It can’t be?!  It might be, wait, no, not that, not …. irrelevant?!?!?!?!”  OK – I’m exaggerating.   But you can get the impression from some of the reporting that there is an element of shock and dismay over the low signal-to-noise ratio of content on Twitter.  However, I think there are some important things to consider:

• Just because it wasn’t retweeted doesn’t mean it wasn’t read.

 

• How much of anything is ignored?  Most of it, undoubtedly.  Let’s face it – most things are just noise to most people.  We only pay close attention to our own favorite sports teams.  I’m not an accountant, so I don’t read accounting blogs.   We only listen to politicians we already agree with.  Etc etc.

 

So, the portion of tweets that are read, but not retweeted, is probably higher.  And it’s not clear how much it actually matters.  For example, is retweet frequency correlated with a stickier twitter experience, thus driving more ad revenue?  I think we should be more impressed that almost 1/3 of tweets are retweeted, etc. – that’s an impressive rate of information dissemination.  Could CNN, FOX News, or the BBC similarly claim that 30% of the news you watch you go and tell your friends and family about right afterwards?  Probably not.  I suspect most media outlets would kill for that rate of free retransmission.

Now – think on this. … What would the retweet/forwarding rate would be for an internal enterprise social hub – such as something built with Jive or Yammer.  Better?  Worse?  What information would you, as enterprise management, want to disseminate that way.  What would be the stochastic models for the likely audience penetration?

Something to noodle on.

Cheers,
Eric

PS – video from the Wired article above – illustrating the retweet behavior.  Explanation at the Wired article – but check it out first and see if anything jumps out at you.

Technorati tags:social media, Twitter

“Social Networks are to socializing what Reality TV is to reality.” – Aaron Sorkin

Later this week, on October 5th, the International Association of Software Architects, is offering an eSummit on collaboration, together with Cisco.   Unsurprisingly, the agenda is focused on the collaboration needs of software architects and developers.  From the Cisco website for the event:

Collaboration is the means by which both formal and informal workflows are achieved, and as a consequence are often very domain specific.  It’d be interesting to hear Cisco’s thoughts on how to shape collaboration tools for software architects in particular.

Cheers,
Eric