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Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, Steve Rubel any many others on the web are chatting over the a)  benefits of going back to blogging, b) changing the way they blog or c) twittering less as its more noisy.

Well I have been a fan of their blog and follower of their tweets and across all their other social footprints on the web and this is my take on the “method in the madness”. I am a pathetic blogger & have maintained this status successfully from a long time. I consume so much content on a daily basis and I enjoy it so much. Most of the time I consume or curate but creation is very less. I have also worked on the social web – portal, social networks & community qna and some more social sites as a product manager. Here, I go now.

SuperNovas experiences are not consumer experiences – all of the guys mentioned above are the supernovas of the social web. Through their journey of social web they discover something, but that doesn’t mean that those experience would also be happening with their followers. Robert Scoble may get 10,000 answers to his 1 question and he still complains that he can’t sort or archive those. Person like me following him, may post 10,000 questions on twitter and receive absolute zilch. On the other hand a closed group of 10 friends on twitter must be partying hard.

Size of the network Vs The Circle of Intimacy – While Supernovas enjoy the size, spread and reach of the network. The fans are not necessarily within the circle of intimacy. While I continue to get excellent updates from Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter, he is getting all kinds of spams from me. And I don’t even want to get into how Robert Scoble manages and filters his tweets. Does he have a life ?. In short intimacy is the function of the value in the conversations and exchanges and not in the number of followers.

Mr. Robin Dunbar follows us everywhere – I had mentioned this before and you can find more on Economist – about the magical number 150. From his studies Mr. Dunbar had concluded that the cognitive power of the brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. And for humans it was 148, rounded off to 150. If this is true and proven, then it’s going to follow you everywhere – facebook, orkut, feedreaders, twitter, friendfeeds and any “social web joint”. So while Supernovas are going to like 150 to 1m500 to 15,000 to 150,000 to 1,500,000… connections on social properties, they are going to invest a lot of time in lifestreaming maintenance and saying “Hi”. They do enjoy some traffic to their blogs or boost to their overall social reputation, personality, career and business but the Signal Vs Ratio noise is surely overwhelming & flooding.

Social web geeks do not live a simple life and as early adoptors they have to pay the higher cost – Why are we even discussing this, there will be thousands of examples of people enjoying the social web in their life, career and business. These not so hot or not in A, B, C list of the blogosphere or tweetsphere are enjoying the social web and not writing on/for the social web. They live a very simple and humble social web life and would be happy about it. To blog or to tweet or to lifestream is not the question a commoner will face. Geeks and early adopters of the social web have this big Q in front of them because their engagement levels and quest drives them to pay a bigger price for attaching or disengaging with the tools.

 

This was about the problems supernovas face, now some issues with the social web

The problem with the  social web – It’s not that the web in the previous avatar was anti-social. It’s just called social web because it’s really getting crowded in here. In the past we went to our emails, clicked on the names we liked, read it, replied for forwarded. There were some too social friends / business people who spammed us but it was still some what controllable. We went to more open and social environments like Forums, messengers and chat rooms on a need basis or to find some cool ASLs in the neighborhood, but still some what controllable and manageable.

Now the social web properties like facebook and twitter allows you to do much more and with plethora of rich control options, but man that’s some work. Common how good can you be good at housekeeping if there are 2000 friends, 20,000 followers and 20,000,000 @mentionsofmyname.

Lifestream flow catch up and flooding – Everyone social web site is introducing lifestream feature and gazillion ways of managing it. My fav Steve Rubel has already turned his blog into a lifestream. Now he is not a 10 posts per day person so I can still manage, but imagine if more people, like him turn to lifestream. Steve Rubel has a day and may be one or two posts to publish, but his users are consuming more such content through feedreaders, aggregators, twitterers and facebookers. How much lifestream can a average person catch up with. But at the same time I really like the value he will be creating for himself, it will become his true journal – a mass archive of his wonderful thoughts and that has both personal value and the social value. Even if no one visits Mr. Rubel’s blog, still it cannot be undervalued as it has a “personal value” for him, as anyone else would have with a personal diary. But again if more people take to lifestreaming it’s not going to solve the problem; for their users at least.

See my point of view as a user – I may follow you through twitter /facebook /feedreaders but I am still “following you all” – You + All are the two words which make big difference when they come together. As a user my life can only be easy if I follow Mr. Dunbar’s circle, but the moment I cross it, I am in a mess. And yes you all are important to me. I love to visit you to all your presence points.

So how do we all manage our social presence and be more useful for us and for our social circle

Divide and rule – you can’t be talking the same stuff on twitter, facebook, linkedin, youtube, blog and so on. Segment your audience or for that matter your publishing activities.

Adjust your speed – become a slow blogger, do not make twitter your delicious, do not make facebook your twitter and do not make linkedin your facebook. The thought of “speed” should give you an idea of which road to take.

Real world scenario – I should not miss what you said last month when I am on your blog, I should not be at a loss if I miss you for a day on twitter, what you curate and spread should be delicious and interconnected, you should guide me a little where should I follow you on facebook/linkedin/twitter/friendfeed.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Clickable #hashtags - now on Twitter.

Wow !!! I request @ev to make the #hashtags on twitter to be clickable on 29th June and on 2nd July it’s available. It’s just the timing or Twitter was really listening to me :).

Popularity: 1% [?]

We have all moved from just web presence to commenting, liking and sharing everything online – from users to curators. Social web helps us become the keepers of our culture, trends, create photo galleries, bookmark fun stuff, pass on knowledge, popularize hit videos and more. Whenever we click on comment, like or share on facebook or RT on twitter we are becoming content specialist slow and steady.

This is our primal instinct to hunt and collect things. We pride ourselves to showcase our collection to the world, spread our ideas, seek comments and appreciation. This is what the social web enables us.

Lighspeed has an interesting post on Social Media’s 3 classes: Creators, Curators and Consumers. This article goes on to explain the 3 classes and here’s what it says about the curators.

Curators tie these two groups together (Creators & Consumers). Not all content that the Creators create is of equal quality, and the Curators perform an important filtering function to bubble the best content to the top, hence keeping the Consumers happy, engaged, and coming back. Curators use the mouse. They click to vote/digg/rate. These actions are what give the Creators the attention and affirmation that they are looking for.

It’s important to make it very easy for Curators to give their feedback. This means making the feedback process as close to frictionless as possible. The feedback mechanism should be immediately adjacent to the content that is being rated. Such clicks should be part of rich internet application, and not take you to another page – there should be no “wait time” penalty for providing curator feedback as they wait for a page to load. Ideally, it will not require registration, or registration will be kept as light as possible. Since Curators use the mouse, avoid them from having to touch a keyboard as much as possible.

In an another piece from Steve Rubel "The Digital Curator in Your Future", he talks about how the digitial curators work in the digitil realm

Much the same, the digital realm too needs curators. Information overload makes it difficult to separate junk from art. It requires a certain finesse and expertise - a fine tuned, perhaps trained eye. Google, memetrackers such as Techmeme and social news sites like digg are not curators. They’re aggregators - and there’s a big difference.

The call of the curator requires people who are selfless and willing to act as sherpas and guides. They’re identifiable subject matter experts who dive through mountains of digital information and distill it down to its most relevant, essential parts. Digital Curators are the future of online content. Brands, media companies and dedicated individuals can all become curators. Further, they don’t even need to create their own content, just as a museum curator rarely hangs his/her own work next to a Da Vinci. They do, however, need to be subject matter experts.

There’s also a suggestion for MSM "Journalists need to stop thinking exclusively like content creators and start acting also as content curators" - Tim Windsor .And more such recommendations from  JP Rangaswami and Scott Karp

 

Crowdsourced Curation : Comment | Like | Share – RT #tags and more…

The common tools on social web platforms is already helping us become the curators. We may not be expert curators but collective activities of crowd or mass surely helps in bringing up the best of the collection and connect creators with consumers.

On social web it’s infact the switching of roles which makes it even more interesting, the consumer becomes the curator unknowingly. Sometimes just by forwarding it to the right person or adding a very important meta data and enhancing the original creation.

If you browse through the profiles of friends and professionals connection on facebook, linkedin, twitter and so on, you also traverse through the massive collection of their likes, dislikes, environment, society, country and the industries that they represent. That’s also the reason why time spent on these properties is increasing and would continue to do so.

The best example of this would be the blogosphere where a) blogs and blogrolls and b) blog post, inter links and trackbacks exhibit this mass collection, filtering and curation. Microblogging made it more easy with with easy 140 character posts, RTs and hashtags. Trending topics on Twitter is precisely this.

The Status Updates or Tweets is all about “Hey, Look at my collection”. User doesn’t have an investment in your property or content, whereas the curator is almost showing the ownership and takes pride in it.

From MSM point of view we really need to think hard are we allowing the users to become the curators.

• Are we allowing them to collect our content or media and make their own sense out of it
• Is the content valuable enough for them to care and share
• Are there enough transport mechanism for them to share it with the world
• Are they volunteering for you, are you allowing them to graduate beyond readers/consumers to fans/caretakers.
• Remember they act as the connectors and bridge between creators and consumers. How many bridges have your created ?

The platforms are already there, are you participating ? There’s walled garden, no more…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Congress will win for sure ! My 14 year old nephew predicted this some 2-3 months back when he was at Bangalore to spend his vacation time with us. I was amused, but I was also impressed by the clarity of his thoughts. His comments and observations had a strong backing of his analytical mind. We blame consumerism to affect the minds of this generation, but in some cases consumerism has also helping the  generation next in being clear with what they want and decisive.

Here’s the insights from the long chat we had over all things young and Indian.

Social Networking

Trend: I have my own private social network.

This guys is a social networking fanatic, 100 friends on Facebook. Mostly his classmates and at any point in time at least 10 friends online. Late nights, at least 5 for sure. Why ? Is he into poking, wall posts, apps, quizzes and things like that. No, he is on Facebook messenger, chatting online or commenting on his friend’s photos. I could see his school picnic photos, holiday albums of his and his friends. And remember, this is not a fully public *will network for friends count* thingy. These guys are re-living their social and private life out there, no one to watch - parents / teachers / headmaster. My other nephews and cousins are also on the Facebook, but no one is invited to his circle of trust on Facebook.

Activities: Mafia war & similar games, chatting, sharing photos

Micro Trends & observation:

Cos I have my own digital camera, (shared) home computer and personal and private USB stick. I comment on things, I strongly express my likeness and I share things online and offline.

Personal Possessions

Trend: From Shared devices to personal possessions

I strongly believe that mobile penetration success in India is also because, it’s the first device to be personal possession item in India. Your calls are private, SMSs are private and that’s a big big luxury in an Indian households and the youth is enjoying every personal moment he can, through these devices.

What he possesses : Sony digital camera and a mini-dv camcorder. Game Boy SP - now handed over to his younger brother. USB drive.

What he wants:

Nokia N85 - why because its gaming and music together. This guy is price conscious and thinks iPod just for music will be a waste of money and it will be an extra thing to carry around. Mobile will be 3 in one - camera, phone and music.

Pulsar 220 - Now he shows that he is specs person. Digital speedometer, sporty look and good suspension.

Micro Trends & observation:

Kids are the ‘influencers’ - they will decide for their parents - electronics, automobiles, gadgets. BTW they are already deciding the brands on your shopping carts in the super markets, but this guy has handed over this to his younger brother. Now he consults his parents on highly technical matters only - gadgets, automobiles and computers. Biscuits and chocolates are for babies, I mean literally. He is already brain washing his parents to go for a SUV (of his choice, of course)

The sphere of a personal possession is also growing. Unlike our generation where our introduction to perfumes, deodorants and shaving creams was from an elder bother or father. This generation is clear, “That’s for you Dad, where’s the Axe effect ?

Brand Conscious Generation:

Trends: Will pay premium for trust, go for specs and hunt for deals

What he and his friends prefers in various categories

Shoes - Converse, Reebook & Adidas. Nike is too showy and pricey. The best is Puma and they have the best styles in whites.

Clothes - "No brands that I prefer. Whatever I like from the shelf". This was really strange from me, as he was not able to associate himself with Lee, Levis, Pepe and so many other brand choices. Is it only because, this segment has not reached this age group in a proper way. Are the brands polarizing their brands to either kids or youth and the teens are left out.

Electronics & Computers: Sony, Nokia & Microsoft. Mostly strong and established brands like these.

Micro Trends & observations:

The consumption habit is totally category driven & do not follow a fixed and personal psychology model. Will buy Sony and Microsoft because their categories are driven by trust. Ready to pay premium for Puma shoes which has got style and range, but not for Nike which he consider pricey.

On the opposite he is comparing Nokia with Apple. May be they are at the similar pricing but different categories (media player vs. phone). He surely wants to have the best of specs, convenience and price - camera, phone and music.

Internet & TV consumption

Trend: Parents still rule, timings at least

Work related Internet : Google & Wikipedia, because it works for the homework !!!

Chat: Messengers and emails are out, social networking is in.

TV consumption: 2 hours a day on weekend and about an hour or so on weekdays. Cartoons are slowly out and reality-TV fast moving in.

Micro Trends & observation:

Kids are pressed to perform  in schools, they also appreciate parents hard work in bringing them up. The socio economic divide is quite apparent to kids also and they know what they need to do to stay ahead. They are not killing their time as their previous generations did.

The activities are mostly inside the house. Parents are totally controlling kids time, they won’t mind paying up for tennis coaching but won’t appreciate their child wasting time in non goal oriented play activities with friends. Hide and seek with neighborhood kids is not OK, but I will drive you down 20 KMs for swimming / horse-riding is perfectly OK with parents.

Favorite People

Trend: Less Indians, absolutely zilch social, ideological or political leaders

He likes Ronaldho, Frank Lampard, Ballack, Dhoni , Yuvraaj, Timberlake, Sean Paul, Eminem, Linkin Park, Beyonce, Rihaana, J Lo, Kati Perry.

Micro Trends & observation:

People are brands and I like brands. Strong consumerist trends. Fall of ideological symbols and leader. He may not realize this but it also shows that there are no world leaders for the next generation. The society has failed in charting a social or an ideological roadmap for people.

Entertainment & Media

Trend: I am not a dumbed-down generation. I give you my eyeballs, but I think. Think whom shall I replace you with.

Media beware, while you are spreading your reach and TRPs there’s a section of people who are re-thinking about you. If you are new channel are sensitizing stuff and cooking up a 20 minute story with 20,000 loops of a 2 sec clip, even my 14 year old nephew knows it and that’s why he has picked up Times Now as his news channel, because there’s a less repetitive stress injury there and more journalistic looking anchors. He watches MTV roadies for fun, but that’s it nothing more on MTV India.

Marketing works for him too but too much marketing doesn’t. Liked Ghajini, but feels Amir Khan doesn’t respect Indian public. How can he take some awards and boycott the others. Liked Om Shanti Om but feels SRK is so everywhere, not exclusive anymore and over exposed as a brand. His monies surely go to Hollywood as he feel they represent perfection in movie-making.

Micro Trends & observations:

Bollywood celebrities are no longer simple and just entertainers, they are the brands now and they should behave as one. Indians think global and act local. They would wear Armani suits in their weddings but would still dance bhangra. Indian television & movie industry has failed miserably in creating the long tail of the entertainment categories. Channels are still able to create the blockbuster programs, but rest of of the programming is dud.

Last 2 topics, my favorites:

Indian Politics:

Trend: Market the right product

While he thinks that Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan Singh do not have punch in their talks, thinks that Rahul Gandhi would be a better PM. Only this time in all through our discussion he was not able to cite the reasons for this stand, but believes firmly that no one else but Rahul Gandhi. BJP he thought, spoke only of religion and they talk too big but not concrete.

Micro Trends & observation:

Marketing works and congress’s campaign which is actually about posing Rahul Gandhi for future, worked for current elections too. Advani’s campaign which was the biggest online, still didn’t connect with youth. Youth wants youth, simple. The other BJP propaganda, which was showing Mr.. Mammohan Singh as a weak leader didn’t work. Indian understand that for PM they don’t need a wrestler and more than the tone, volume and pitch of PM’s voice - his intellect required.

Privacy & Copyright

Trend: I respect my privacy, but not your copyright. Period. The End.

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Siliconindia is organizing Startup City 09 on June 6th in Bangalore. There will be 100 most promising technology startups showcasing their products.

- Watch live product demonstrations
- Get a peek into cutting edge technologies
- Lay hands on the best-of-breed solutions
- Meet young, energetic, passionate geeks
- Experience the culture of innovation in small companies
- Visionary Keynotes
- In-depth Panel Discussions

Check the Agenda, Exhibitors, Investors and Venue details. Register for free; limited seats available.

Hope to catch up with you there, I will be available at twitter: @santoshmaharshi

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is the list of (now 79) Indian brands and businesses on Twitter. However, the ownership of these brands is not verified. For example, satyam computers which is a news update account for the company and not by the company. Some of the media brands are actually extending their services through twitter and not necessarily communicating with their users. Some of them can also be bots. Enjoy the list and please feel to add the ones that you come across in the comments section.

• Airtel Broadband @Impatient_Ones
• Acer India @acerindia
• AOL India News @AOL_India_News
• Appu Online @appuonline
• Alertrix @alertrix
• Bangalore Mirror @BangaloreMirror
• BBC India Train @bbcindiatrain
• Big Oye @bigoye
• Bike India @bikeindia
• Bixee job search @bixee
• Book My Show @bookmyshow
• BusBus.in @busbusin
• Hindu Business Line @businessline
• CapGemini @capgemini
• Carazoo @carazoo
• Career Builder India @CareerBuilderIn
• Deccan Chargers @ChargersHome
• Cleartrip Travel Search Engine @Cleartrip
• Color Television @colorstv
• Cricinfo News @Cricinfo_news
• Cricket Next @cricketnext
• Delhi Dare Devils @delhidaredevils
• DNA India @DNA
• DNA India @DNAIndia
• e.l.f India @elf_india
• Fastrack watches @fastrack
• FHM India magazine @FHMIndia
• Kingfisher Airlines @FlyKingfisher
• Kingfisher World @kingfisherworld
• IBN Live TV @ibnlive
• India Today @india_today
• India FM @indiafm
• India Golf @indiagolf
• India PR Wire @indiaprwire
• India Times News @IndiatimesNews
• Infosys @Infosys
• inTrends @inTrends_
• iXiGO India @iXiGOIndia
• Tata Jagriti Yatra @JagritiYatra
• Keep Relations @keeprelations
• Kotack Cards @kotakcards
• Kotak Inc @KotakInc
• Kings Eleven @kxip
• KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd @kpit
• Live Journal India @LiveJournal_Ind
• Live Mint @LiveMint
• Manpower @manpower
• Maruti Suzuki Astar @mar_suz_astar
• Mathrubhumi @mathrubhumi
• MSN India @MSNIndia
• MTV India @MTVIndia
• My IRIS @myirisdotcom
• My Playwin @MyPlaywin
• Naukri @Naukri
• Niyati @Niyati
• Penguin India Books @PenguinIndia
• Pitchh Magazine @Pitchh
• Radio Verve @radioverve
• Red Bus India @redBus_in
• Rediff Local Ads @rediffLocalAds
• Rediff Shopping @RediffShopping
• Reliance World @relianceworld
• Reuters India @ReutersIndia
• Satyam Computers @satyamcomputers
• Shiksha @Shiksha_com
• Slideshare @slideshare
• Sulekha @Sulekha_com
• Teknopoint @teknopoint
• TCS @followTCS
• The Hindhu @the_hindu
• Virgin Mobile @ThinkHatke
• TiE Conference @TiEcon
• TravelGuru @TravelsGuru
• Trident Hotels @tridenthotels
• Web Chutney @webchutney
• Wipro @wipro
• Zapak News @Zapak_News
• Zookin @zookin
• Zoom Television @zoomtelevision

More…: Twitterville Pitch: Indian Businesses Using, Twitter, Indian brands on twitter, Twitter India Audience Profile

Thanks for the tips - @neverclever

If you know more such Indian examples, please send me the names via tweets @santoshmaharshi

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hugh Pickens on Slashdot writes:

Unpaid Contributors Provide Corporate Tech Support

"The NY Times writes about Justin McMurry of Keller, TX, who spends up to 20 unpaid hours per week helping Verizon customers with high-speed fiber optic Internet, television and telephone service. McMurry is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies, and venture capitalists are betting will transform the field of customer service. Such enthusiasts are known as lead users, or super-users, and their role in contributing innovations to product development and improvement — often selflessly — has been closely researched in recent years. These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. ‘You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that’s where the magic happens,’ says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon. The mentality of super-users in online customer-service communities is similar to that of devout gamers, according to Lyle Fong, co-founder of Lithium Technologies whose web site advertises that a vibrant community can easily save a company millions of dollars per year in deflected support calls’ and whose current roster of 125 clients includes AT&T, BT, iRobot, Linksys, Best Buy, and Nintendo. Lithium’s customer service sites for companies offer elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges and kudos counts. ‘That alone is addictive,’ says Fong. ‘They are revered by their peers.’ Meanwhile McMurry, who is 68 and a retired software engineer, continues supplying answers by the bushel, all at no pay. ‘People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it.’"

This is not new, in fact the foundation of Internet collaboration was laid through such online communities who used to answer all your queries on operating systems, drivers, browsers and how to’s of fixing software usage and issues.

The availability platforms for creating online communities makes life much more simple. Wordpress, Drupal and Dotnetnuke are few such platform, that you can count on and deployment is really a breeze.

It’s not that these communities are working in islands and businesses are not taking a note of it. Besides Lithium mentioned in the article, getSatisfaction is one more such example of people powered customer support and then there are companies like HP driving the global online customer support community initiative on their own. Even social networks like  facebook and twitter make good platform for offering customer service and support and where customers help customers. 

Recommended:

[pdf] Online Customer Support Communities – Customer helping customers - Top 10 Rules and the best practices followed by successful companies

[pdf] Turning Love into Money: How some firms may profit from voluntary electronic customer communities, 2001 but old is gold

Popularity: 2% [?]

Trust means having confidence or faith in someone and a friend is a person you know well, have regards for and trust. Does this same apply to the people who are your friends on a social network.

In real world, you have friends but you share you life with them on a meet or need basis. That is, during a natural conversation or when you get a chance to meet them.

What social networking brings to you is the facility to share the life constantly with people around you. Few years back this phenomenon was not at all available to you.

Well, how does it matter to you. Well it of course matters to your personal "circle of trust". You keep on adding people to your social network, sometimes he/she is a person you have met before, plan to meet in future, friend of a friend, just an acquaintance, a person you would like to connect with, a colleague, person trying to sell you  or just some random person trying to reach you for a reason or no reason.

Remember the random person that you add become available to your friends and your networks. Thus to infiltrate a network of millions, you just need to be friends with one weakest social networker. This is how nastiest things happen to people in the real world and it’s no different online. In fact it is easier and faster online.

There are some filtering options provided to you on a social network to classify these people. But for most of us, these people land up as "friends". We do want our private moments and when ever we think of it and we do some housekeeping of the friends list and organize them. But almost all of us have a unmanaged and unsorted list of people as friends.

When you are broadcasting your life on a social network, you never think twice, it is almost at the spur of the moment. Every action has it’s reaction and bang these days it is on social network.

It’s not within the circle of trust. A news/pic/video which only friends should see and comment on.

It’s not something that your friend will understand, respect and keep private.

You just did it on Air, recorded on the net forever and never to be deleted. To spread is the only destination of your last update.

"The more I grow my network, the less comfortable I feel to share my life on facebook" - a friend’s status message on facebook.

How to keep your Network Clean & Broadcasts safe

• There are many distinctions in your life – personal-private, friend-stranger, friend-enemy, friend-colleague. But as a human you are tuned to respond them in real life situations, social networks are a different world and your natural responses in natural environment doesn’t apply here. E.g. a happy face on a profile pic doesn’t reflect the present mood of the person. You might be trying to connect with a person who just committed suicide.
• Respect yourself, respect your circle of trust and keep your network clean. If you are there to network and as an open networker, don’t share the updates that you would hate  it in future for going public
• Respect your friends too, whatever that you do with your friend on social network is available for your “network” to see.
• Don’t share an a highly opinionated message containing anger or hatred. It would be like stamping it with seal of proof and justifying in the court that yes you said it. And forget the world not even you can deny it.
• If you are in doubt, think again before befriending someone. Don’t add random anonymous people with malicious intent to infiltrate your network.

 

Last but not the least.

Privacy is a myth, don’t carry it when you are online. Someone in this world, definitely knows (or can know) what you did on your computer.

Image : SEOUL MAN66 on Flickr

Popularity: 2% [?]

@Keith Kliner talks about a very interesting phenomenon ‘tweetbomb’,  some future tweet on twitter which has the potential to reach 100 million people, mobilize them and cause an ‘act’. Something very similar to flashmobs, but much more faster and at a very large scale. And not necessarily for good.

What Keith Kliner talks about may be actually in the making and we have seen this mass hysteria or the collective obsessional behavior in many shapes and forms. For example, the recent hashtag #amazonfail; explained here and here

Evgeny Morozov is showing a similar concern in the post from hashmobs to DDOSMobs. He cites the example of recent Pirate Bay’s attack on IPFI. BTW the pirate bay leaders have denied any involvement and termed these attacks as pointless.

The Pirate Bay attacks show that pouring one’s rage on Twitter and marking it with a hashtag could be a precursor to "DDOSmobs", which I define as groups of angry Internet users who prefer to take their anger beyond Twitter and other social media and organize "denial-of-service" (or DDOS) attacks. DDOSmobs are as toxic as hashmobs, but they actually have the capacity to cause real damage. DDOSmobs could be driven by nationalism (as was the case of cyber-attacks on Georgian web-sites last summer), hatred of particular minorities (as was the case with cyber-attacks on LGBT sites in Russia), or outrage over issues like piracy (as we now see in cyber-attacks on IPFI).

The worry is therefore, bomb or no bombs or for that matter even if few rounds of bullets. Can a certain amplified human behavior, cause a greater outbreak or harm.

Yes, and more than anyone twitter is the best candidate for acting as ‘transporter’. There are bots, but still many of it’s user are humans. And humans are like that.

"Mass hysteria is never that far beneath the skin, I suppose. A human being is a thinking animal, but crowds don’t seem to be."
-Father Marco, "Escape Velocity" (p.115)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Image Courtesy : Sugree / Flickr

Social Networking has become a loose term to define any kind of online connections and not the social relationships. Social Network term was in existance much before the advent of first online social network and we all need to blame Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to trigger the wave of online social networks. This interesting experiment was may be an inspiration behind many online social networks. If you remember the first implementation of online social network “ Friend of a Friend” was a big thing and it was all about computing the shortest path to particular person whom you wanted to add on to your network.

This true nature of social networking, path display and shortest path computation still exists in LinkedIn. Many others, found out later that this is the most CPU & DB intensive task and also that people are not just here to connect but also to do many more things. But it was a novelty then and the social networking fever was picking up.

But as we network and think that we are growing our groups and getting into never ending friending. That’s where we hit the wall and realize that one Mr. Robin Dunbar is trying to stop us by tying around us with the magical number 150. From his studies he concluded that the cognitive power of the brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. And for humans it was 148, rounded off to 150.

There was also this study by Peter Marsden of Harvard University that found that Americans still maintain a very few handful of individuals with whom they can discuss the important matters.  And this trend was exhibiting a dip even when Americans are great at socialising. This was similar to "dunbar circle" and we was termed as "social core". You can download the paper as “Core Discussion Networks of Americans (pdf)”

The Economist through their in-house sociologist Cameron Marlow found that we are still the same primates on facebook, twitters or any other SNS, bounded by the same networking limit. From the article:

Dr Marlow found that the average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 120, consistent with Dr Dunbar’s hypothesis, and that women tend to have somewhat more than men. But the range is large, and some people have networks numbering more than 500, so the hypothesis cannot yet be regarded as proven.

What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable. The more “active” or intimate the interaction, the smaller and more stable the group.

Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

This basically means that you are not networking or adding friends on social networks.

• You are still within the “Dunbar Circle” in terms of your actual friends on the social networks
• You are still within the “social core” in terms of actual conversation and social transactions.

So what actually you are doing is that you are broadcasting your life to a outer tier of the acquaintances.

As the article sums it up well:

Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.

Once you have given a read to The Economist article “Primates on Facebook” you must also go through Cameron Marlow’s blog overstated and read “Maintained Relationships on Facebook” where he explains the approach, the data and the analysis and also to answers some questions raised through Monkeysphere (which is also a nice read / twist)

Happy Friending !!!

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