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.
