Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

The Value of The Value of Social Networks

Chatter and talk about the value of social networking platforms abounds. Can Twitter scale up to satisfy users? Will Facebook open up? Recent moves look like they might. Pownce opens the floodgates. Did it matter? And of course the inevitable question-will they be able to monetize the whole thing in order for the utility to succeed in the long run?

Some of this centers on the value proposition, and rightly so. Facebook and Twitter have taken their praise and their lumps. I'm not paying that much attention to Pownce. I'm just wondering if the value proposition isn't being looked at from the wrong angle. On a personal note, both Facebook and Twitter offer me tremendous personal value. Facebook allows me to reconnect with some folks from my various past lives, and on that platform, that is all that matters to me. Twitter is a never-ending (except for service hiccups) stream of what's going on out there with the people I enjoy hearing about and from. I'm sure others derive equal pleasure for both similar and different reasons. I curiously watched Hugh MacLeod on Twitter this week ask how to terminate his FaceBook account, but then realize his presence there had too many "friends" to do so without causing some disruption. The Gillmor Gang/NewsGang resurgence started as what looked like a Facebook only  thing and then has opened up a bit, in what might have been a clever bit of exclusivity first strategy.

My question is this: Is anyone trying to figure out the value proposition really exploring how users use these tools, or are they just trying to figure out how to make them pay off with a revenue model? I'm not sure they are the same thing. Both have pissed me off at various times, but I keep coming back to them because they've become excellent tools for me. Indispensable? No. Valuable? Yes.

An analogy keeps popping up that I'm not sure holds. Both Facebook and Twitter remind me of the neighborhood tavern I used to frequent in my days in Chicago. This was the place that I would have a drink or two on occasion, enjoy the Chicago Bulls playoff run(s), and catch up with neighborhood chums. It was also the place where our theatre company would gather when we had a reason to celebrate something and invite our friends to join us. It was always there, (although it changed owners a couple of times) and always familiar, and always valuable. It has so many different constituencies (customers) coming in and out that is was a fantastic mix of humanity.

Another local tavern opened up across the street from our store front theatre, primarily because of our store front theatre and the traffic we brought in. They did a booming business for awhile, (offer actors free drinks and discount food and they'll pour in) but then failed. When we had a huge commercial hit that we transferred to another theatre in another part of town, our traffic (friends) followed us there and drank at a local hangout adjacent to that theatre. When we wanted to celebrate something special though, we went back to the original tavern, and not the new guy across the street from our storefront theatre. When our theatre outgrew the storefront and moved to another part of town, we'd make the drive to the original when we wanted to hang out with each other or do something special. When it was just a quick drink, we'd hit a local pub after the show. The original survived (and still thrives) and the new guy failed after about 18 months, before we moved locations permanently.

I'm not sure what that means, if it applies, or like I said, if the analogy holds, but it keeps bubbling up from the surface as I watch the social network conversation continue.

 

Technorati Tags: Social Networking,Twitter,Pownce,Facebook

You Gotta Have Friends, But What Kind?

Since scrolling through my feeds I can't get Bette Midler out of my head singing You Gotta Have Friends. I guess it was only a question of time with all of the friend and follower adding and subtracting that is happening on Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, and the like.

Rule of thumb. Once any Internet fad attains quasi-mainstream acceptance, it will soon be dissected on blogs.

There is now a discussion starting up about what exactly makes a friend and how the web might shift how we use that word.

Steve Rubel says The Web Changes How We Define Friendships and Rex Hammock is saying that When The Word Friend Means Anything, It Means Nothing.

 My opinion? The whole web friendship thing is big, messy, full of gray areas, complex, still evolving, and perhaps troubling. Just like friendship.

Sooner or later, a social site will start using the term neighbor instead of friend. And then where will we be? Talking about how virtual fences make good virtual neighbors. It'll happen.

Blogging, Micro-Blogging, and More (or less)

Steve Rubel blogs some interesting thoughts that are on quite a few minds these days with the advent of Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, and other social trends. Is micro-blogging on these platforms the wave of the future? Who really knows. As I keep saying, it is way too early to tell.

Using a sports analogy Steve says he now has a short game and a long game when it comes to writing and sharing his thoughts and I find that occasionally I feel the same way. Although truth be told, the micro-blogging platforms are still the first thing that I don't pay attention to when I'm crunched with work. But that's not entirely true. Through Twitterfeed, I'm able to send feeds to Twitter whether I blog here or on GBM. I'm also able to send Pownce feeds through to Twitter as well, so there is some sort of quasi-long/short game thing going on there.

The real test of this in my case will be after the first of the year when I do my traveling. We'll see how that plays out. In the mean-time, I'll keep both parts of my game in practice as best I can.

How Many Friend and Sharing Apps Can a Soul Have?

Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, the list goes on and on and those are just the ones I've subjected myself and my friends to. Are each of these (and the ones that will be released in the next period of time) just another web flavor of the month, or will any of them stick and be truly useful? Of course the Web 2.0 crowd treats them as movies these days and if they don't see a way for them to make money they get dismissed and passed over. Check out Dave Winer on this and check out more after the jump.

A Twittergram Future: Emergency Response?

Rex Hammock thinks Dave Winer's Twittergram will one day serve to connect individuals in an emergency situation. It is an interesting thought and proposition. Dave Winer has basically created an short burst broadcast (podcast?) system that can be relayed to a large group quickly. But Twitter will eventually need to set up groups (similar to Pownce) in order for this to really work. Or will it?

Powncing Around

Finally got an invite to Pownce, yet another social network/tell all your friends what you're doing kind of thing. And I'm giving it a try. Some fundamental differences from Twitter and Jaiku, and hey it comes with its own desktop client. Well see how it works out.