Steelso vs Real Life

Social Network Funnel

The three main networks that I reckon I’ve engaged with are MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. In the year that I’ve been on it the amount of people that I’ve friended has gone down with each one that I’ve joined. Currently I stand at 85 friends on mySpace, Bebo has around 25 and Facebook has 32.

What’s interesting (sort of) about this is how few friends actually cross over on these three.  And the fact that I’m adding less and less. And how I’m using them.

I am loving Facebook to catch up on friends and on with interesting people that I like to read about. I am definitely more picky about friending on Facebook. I want it to have a value rather than a collection of people.  I suppose the novelty of social networking is wearing off and now I’m wanting to have some real worth and engagement with those that I add to Facebook.

I still can’t be bothered with 99.9% of the apps on Facebook. For Facebook to be a real platform for me I’d like to see integration of some online tools such as Google Docs, Spreadsheets, etc. Then it becomes a platform that could have a use for outside just catching up with people. It’ll be interested in what Google have to offer when they start making their big push against Facebook.

Social

I’m at waiting Langs for a meeting so while I’m waiting and slurping on a nice coffee I’ll fire out an ill-conceived and badly thought out post. Bless.

So. Social networking. I am a member of at least 10. At least. I find it tricky to keep up with all of them so I’ve looked at how I’m interacting with them and seeing what’s got to go and what’s to stay.

• MySpace. Meh Still pop on from time to time but mostly for music. It’s still number one for that. I love the ugliness, I like the wild frontier of it all. It was my second network I indulged in after MySpace and it blew my mind with the design anarchy. “You can’t put green next to pink”, I said. “Can’t we old man?” answered 1 million high school kids around the world. Good on them.
• Bebo: This is my fun time. My friends that I see each day are on here. I like the style, I like the individuality and it’s not as eye wrenching as MySpace. Though I do enjoy the ugliness of MySpace.
• Friendster. I never go there anymore though I do get emails from them every so often reminding me that it’s a friend’s birthday. The friend in question died two years ago. I do find it a comfort that he’s still reminding me of himself. It’s odd. A dead person is the only reason I interact with a social network. That’s not a strap line they’re going to use.
• Facebook. I’m enjoying it more. I think that’s more about the applications that you can add and that it feels a little more grown up than Bebo. Which isn’t a bad thing. I think that’s due to the fact that the design is uniform throughout. I like Bebo’s profile individuality. I also enjoy Facebooks uniformity and range of applications that seem to be built because they could rather than they should. It’s nice to be involved.
• Twitter. Pointless. Great, but pointless. The service is a bit up and down. But I like reading snippets of people’s life. Twittervision blows me away. I twitter, i like it.
• Pownce. Hrmmmm. If it’s Twitter vs Pownce then Twitter wins. At the moment it reminds me of the cool new bar. It looks great but no-one I know is in buying a drink.
• Linkedin. S’ok, useful sometimes. Pop in around once a month. I know people that use it very, very well. Sometimes offers connections that scare the shit out me.

More, more, more. These have all fallen by the wayside. It’s not that they offer anything bad it’s just a matter of mass. If I want to be involved in a social network it has to have a network that I want to be social with. So many just don’t at the moment. In saying that though I’ve not been to many (any?) where I’ve met new friends. You can be social in your ghetto but it’s tough to break out and meet and interact with new people on a network. However that may be saying more about me rather than the websites.

So I have a lot that I’m involved with. I use them and I find the ones that I’ve mentioned useful. I don’t feel any pressure in any of them to keep up with them. They are like pubs. Some I’ll visit as it’s cool, unusual, my friends go there. Then maybe I’ll get bored or another twinkly place will pop up and we’ll go there.

Yes.

Listening

I’m listening to the music. I like this little gadget and I’m enjoying last.fm is helping me broaden my musical tastes. It’s a cool little music social networking app thing. Me like.

I’m tired today, met Roger from EQSN last night for a drinks, ran off leaving him to pay the bill. My bad. Sam and I ran off to Gamba for the best fish soup in the world. 50% of the people at our table agreed with that.

Won a pitch for creating the website for Glasgow Community and Safety Services. i pitched yesterday and given that all my kit failed and my presentation felt a little shoddy I was bowled over that I won the pitch. I’m looking forward to working with GCSS. Magic!

Tonight: Beer! With Mulvey! And Shea! Et al!

Sally, I’m up a tree! Still!

Missed

Wee thing i was asked to respond to. Not sure why it missed a deadline but I’ll post it here for fun. The questions I was asked is in bold…

How is new technology and innovation leading the growth of online communications?

If you want to find out just go on-line. Over the past year we’ve been invited to participate on various websites. From entertainment sites such as YouTube, social networking like MySpace and news sites such as “Comment is Free” section on the Guardian website we’re asked to contribute our thoughts and ideas. This was always the goal of the Internet, to share and expand information and with infrastructure costs becoming cheaper it’s becoming a reality.

Viral films, blogging, SMS messaging, digital TV, intranets, email marketing and online advertising have all contributed to the revolution in communication. How important is it that a full spectrum of platforms are utilised in a campaign to gain the full benefits of the online medium?

There is no point creating a fantastic website if no-one knows it exists. Alternatively you can’t create a brilliant SMS campaign that directs people to a below par website. Converting people from visitors to customers means looking at the entire spectrum of digital and traditional marketing and ensuring you’re using the right mediums to them.

With technology driving effectiveness and accountability, are they still key to online¹s growth as a communications platform or is it now proving to be the internet¹s widescale appeal that is the medium¹s pulling point?

The beauty of the medium now is that widescale appeal and accountability can work together, I don’t see it as an ‘either/or’ situation.

With the introduction of better web technologies the “Page View” metric will reduce which will force agencies to be even more accountable. The only metric worth noting will be “Visitors Converted”. This will only be for the good.

Is new technology making the web more effective?

Yes, but we won’t see the benefits until at least 2008. The web was originally designed to share academic papers, not perform complex shopping interactions or display huge amounts of video. With more and more Internet experiences becoming more and more complicated, the experiences will have a more “software” feel rather than done on a webpage. You’ll be able have more sophisticated interactions with a website without a crazy amount of mouse clicks and page jumping.

With new innovation increasing the webs functions, how important is the issue of accessibility online?

Accessibility, which also includes those accessing via dialup, is always important and the main players in the next phase of web technologies are certainly keeping it at the forefront of development. The issue is going to be with digital agencies implementing accessibility standards into their online projects.

Is technology being held back by the speed (or lack of) consumer¹s uptake? Ie unable to meet the high-end specifications?

Adoption has always been an issue for digital agencies. We’re always hoping that the end user will have the higher spec PC’s or the best broadband experience in the home and workplace and that they’re thinking about upgrading to the latest web browser or mobile phone so that we can share with them the best Internet experience possible.

That’s always been the case and one of the challenges for digital agencies; gauging the tipping point from when a technology becomes mainstream enough for the majority of users to enjoy and engage with.

It’s one of the reason’s boo.com failed all those years ago. The design and functionality was far in advance of the average user’s setup and so turned off all but the most technically advanced user.

Are clients now investing more in their online strategies, rather than just building a website and hoping that an audience will arrive? What examples are there of this? How have you helped develop clients online strategies?

The “build it and they will come” approach is thankfully fading out. Most of our recent clients are looking at their website then working out the best way to get people to there. Each client is of course subtly different. For certain clients press can be the best way to drive traffic, others natural search engine optimisation, others may need a cheeky wee viral to grab user’s attention. At GRP we’re looking at not just building a great website for the people our clients want to talk to but a compelling “garden path” that leads them to the website in the first place.

Viral Ads: It’s about the conversation

Interesting point I heard yesterday from Rocketboom (I love you Joanne, not in a really bad stalkery way, more in a geek love way, we could be happy. I’ll stop now) from a guy called Jeff Jarvis on how content isn’t king, design isn’t king, delivery isn’t king but the conversation is king when it comes to on-line marketing.

That is also backed up by this CNN article on Viral Marketing. My take on it is that the experience is king. If it’s not well written, well designed, well executed then no converstion will start. I totally agree with the conversation being hugely important but people have to have something they feel compelled to talk about first.

World Feels?

Found an amazing site today, We Feel Fine. It’s both very beautiful and very compelling. It’s like I’m getting a small insight to the human race and it feels odd.

See what you think.

Ugly?

At the moment I’m loving the zefrank show and it’s a highlight of my day. Sad, still…

His last vlog was all about MySpace, the uglyness and the good. You can watch zefrank talk the talk here but I’ve posted the transcript below…

S-s-s-something from the comments.

Varion writes, “Having an ugly Myspace contest is like having a contest to see who can eat the most cheeseburgers in 24 hours… You’re mocking people who, for the most part, have no taste or artistic training.”

Varion, thanks for telling me what I was doing. I didn’t even know I was mocking people.

For a very long time, taste and artistic training have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive; same with tools like printing presses; even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family.

The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was good taste or bad taste. These designers started giving each other awards and the rules they followed became even more specific. All sorts of stuff about grids and sizes and color combinations — lots of stuff that the consumers of this media never consciously noticed. Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. For very little money, anyone can create and distribute things like newsletters, or videos, or bad-ass tunes about “ugly.”

Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! And when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. For example, throughout most of the history of movies, the audience didn’t really understand what a craft editing was. Now, as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second-guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.

As people start learning and experimenting with these languages authorship, they don’t necessarily follow the rules of good taste. This scares the shit out of designers.

In Myspace, millions of people have opted out of pre-made templates that “work” in exchange for ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool.

Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your Myspace page ugly are pretty sophisticated. Over time as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it’s possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability.

Happy Ugly. This is Ze Frank, thinking so you don’t have to.

I love this. I love this. I can’t wait to see what happens. Any thoughts?

Not in

Currently obssesed with Animal Crossing: Wild World on my DS. It’s eating my life up and my hugely expensive 360 sits feeling unloved. Poor soul.

If you want to venture over to Sweeters (my town in AC:WW) then you’ll need my friends code which is 459631174449. Add yours below. Freckles is going around my town saying ‘Ya Pump’ to everyone he meets, the wee scamp.

Bless.