With all the talk about early adopters and whether they help or hurt a service I decided to conduct an experiment and try to shed my geek hat for a while and become your average Joe user in order to see what utility I could achieve from my service de choix: FriendFeed.

The aim of the experiment was to sign up a fresh account, completely unrelated to my normal login which would not be subscribed to any of the usual people I converse with on the web. I would then pick some topics of interest outside of the social media sphere and see where the conversation took me.

The obvious concern, as also expressed by others, was whether I would be able to change my mindset and truly behave like a “regular person next door“.

Rather than create an entire new identity (having other services that I can import in to FriendFeed) I decided that a good place to start would be to use FriendFeed as a search engine to see what information was being shared about one of my favourite topics: football (that’s soccer not American) and, more specifically, Southampton Football Club.

A quick search – after taking a little time to look at the Advanced options – revealed a couple of account sharing some Southampton related items as part of generic football and sport feeds – subscribed. Ten minutes in and everything seemed to be going well. Next up – some searches about psychology and sociology. Again, there were plenty of ‘hits’ and plenty of items being shared – as there were for a number of other searches – but…

And this is a big but!

Unlike Sir Mix-a-lot I’m afraid I don’t like big buts, big buts normally mean something not going to plan and this was certainly the case here.

While there is far more be posted on FriendFeed than social media it is evident that social media seems to be the only thing consistently ‘discussed’ and talked about in any depth. Maybe it is the nature of the beast but there is a massive usage difference between those who communicate as a way of life (social media mavens) and those who just USE the tools to chat to their friends.

Do a FriendFeed search on any topic you like that’s not related to social media – go on, I’ll wait. You’ll find that the vast majority of items returned (even on searches for current hot topics like Obama) have very few likes or comments. It seems that a lot of other people are using FriendFeed purely as an aggregator rather than a communication tool – in my opinion they are missing out!

The everyday crowd appear to be focused on doing whatever it is they do at the source (Twitter, Flickr, etc.) rather than within the confines of FriendFeed. They may be talking about things just as much as the early adopters but it certainly isn’t in the same locations.

Even flicking through the stream on the everyone and you notice the same pattern – only those items that relate to social media have any steady flow of comments.

Why is this?

As I have said in the past, your average user generally wants to perform a particular task and, when it comes to that task having a social context, it makes sense to deal with it then and (more importantly) there. I think that many don’t see the need to go beyond the walled garden they are currently inhabiting as it contains their community and _that_ is what is important to any of us. Moving your focus means that – to achieve the required return on investment – you have to take your friends with you and it is not an easy task to achieve.

It is hard enough to get people using a straight social media service in the first place without trying to convince them of the need to gather their threads in to one location when they can be exposed to a never ending river of news; they barely take a sip from their own cups without trying to be shown how to drink from the fire hose.

Early adopters may be useful in working out the kinks of any given service but their usage patterns do not reflect the norm. We cannot, therefore, predict how a service will scale or what the key features may eventually be. Developers may be creating a bassline for us to work from but what happens when that line is set too high for the public at large to reach?

A failure?

On the face of it the experiment could be seen as a failure as there is no way that I can completely switch from one identity to another and get a true insight in to how a non-early adopter will use a service but the apparent patterns have shown a stark contrast in behaviour. If anything it has been a success in highlighting how far the early adopters have advanced in the way they utilise the web and the tools available to them.

A service like FriendFeed will only ever contain what has been explicitly shared by its users and, while this may be enough for such an insular crowd as the social media regulars, simply will not be able to compare with any of the regular search engines that are crawling the web and following link after link. FriendFeed fails as a search engine until you add in the human elements of recommendation and discussion and if these parts of the service are not being used by the world at large then there is little value in the initial share.

More questions

Once we pass a particular point can we ever hope to understand (or remember) how it is for those who don’t obsess over every nuance of online interaction? What is the true benefit of early adopters?

Image by L. E. MacDonald.

…but what you can actually achieve with it.

Yesterday, I looked at how our continuing desire for the tools we use to develop could cause them to lose their original purpose but, while Marco at the Aurelius Maximus blog asks the ‘tech elite’ to continue navel gazing, others are gesturing that it’s all well and good talking about the technology of social media but what they really want to know is how will it affect business? How will it affect politics? How will it affect our lives?

It is argued that what we should really be interested in is moving away from what the technology is and, as I have mentioned in comments on FriendFeed, establishing the distinction between what any social media tool does and what we can do with it.

Honeymoon period

What we now call social media is in its relative infancy so our reaction towards it is very much like an eager child with a new toy who plays with it every waking moment of the day until they either become bored or just accept it as part of their life; the novelty wears off.

I think that we are still very much in the social media honeymoon period especially with new tools and services cropping up all the time; there is always something new for the early adopters to ‘play’ with so, in a way, much of the emphasis can’t help but be on the technology, what the tool is, what the tool does and how it differs to its competitors. It’s an unfortunate circumstance but this is where we currently sit as early adopters and it is a tricky situation to be in.

As I said before it’s not in the interests of services to stay still – they have to move on, offer something new and demonstrate differentiation. Although the tool will be migrating away from its original purpose and possibly sounding its own death knell amongst a subset of users the business of the internet, being what it is, forces services to move on for fear of being dropped in favour of the competition. Those competitors themselves have to provide their own differentiation and so may even be knocking themselves out of the market even at launch - perhaps even before.

How many services can we use? How many should we subscribe to? How many will survive?

It is this constant barrage of tools and services that is taking the focus but part of the ‘job description’ of the early adopter is to look at the technology and the trends, to find out what really works and what just has a short lived novelty factor and will fall at the first hurdle. Here is the key point, however, it is the early adopters who are kicking the tyres and paving the way but if you’re not an early adopter what can you do?

Target your tools

One possibility is to simplify but you can’t simplify the industry. You can’t say to developers to stop creating new tools or services. You can’t say that development should stop on those already available and, in fact, we shouldn’t. We need technology to advance and for those advances to make our lives easier but we should first be focusing on what is important.

Outside of the early adopters we should, as individuals or as groups or organisations, behave as with any other resource in any other industry and reach a consensus to identify a strict set of tools with which to achieve our purpose. Identify those tools we like and feel provide us the required utility: do they offer adequate communication? Do they offer adequate information sharing and distribution? If you can answer yes then move on and de-emphasise the tools. We have to draw the line somewhere and say this is what we have, this is what we know how to use now let’s get on and do some work.

Needs

But the early adopters and evangelists must accept that no single tool will achieve ubiquity – get over it. Different groups have differing needs and there will not be one tool to please them all. Even as our own circumstances change so will our needs so our own choice of tool will differ; this is only natural and should be incorporated into our routine and our normal review process.

We should periodically assess our tools and process and can then, at that point, look at what else is out there; look at the reviews from the foot soldiers (the early adopters) who have been treading the boards then consider if new tools give you improvements, enhanced utility or greater ease of use. Don’t, however, make change for changes sake as you are then distracting yourself from your core purpose and the time you spend re-educating is time taken away from achieving your aims.

We have to be aware of and open to developments and to the reviews and opinions of others but we don’t all have to play the early adopter role, we don’t always need our finger on the pulse. Alexander is right, we will learn to pick out what is important and to focus on that which we actually need to.

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• Are we killing the things we love the most?

The discussion surrounding Mondays post took on a life of its own with some well crafted responses but I am also seeing a trend that could only be likened to growing pains.

While what we currently call ‘social media’ is still in its infancy we are reaching the point where innovation is giving way to a pile ‘em high mentality: duplicate services with little differentiation, or simply throwing more functionality at existing services and hoping it sticks. It is little wonder that individual services are not getting the uptake that advocates expect, or even demand.

“The nazis did propaganda!” (Eddie Izzard)

We are bombarded with opinion, we are told what services we should like and why but the truth is, that outside of a specific subset of internet users, there is little appeal for the functionality offered by any given social networking service.

A number of good points have been made with regards to the concerns that many of the services currently in existence have been designed to cater for the needs of early adopters - that 1% of the internet population that are the thought leaders, the content creators, the “tech elites” who constantly demand more from what they use. Herein lies the problem.

The complaints that services such as FriendFeed are too complicated are perfectly valid for a lot of people. FriendFeed is obviously geared towards the early adopter, those already on a multitude of other services and are looking to pull it all together in to one melting pot with comments. Joe Public doesn’t work, think or behave like this – many just want a simple messaging system which is why Twitter clicks and FriendFeed doesn’t. Service designers and early adopters need to rethink how things are done in order for social media to really appeal to a wider audience.

The problem with duplication of information is only an issue to when you expose yourself to an environment where it will occur, where multiple users will be sharing data via multiple avenues - the average user will just concentrate on one place with ‘their’ community of friends (more normally real friends) – in a single environment everyone is more aware of what the other members of their network post so there is no need for them all to share the same thing. Perhaps this loses out on the possibilities of multiple conversations among different groups but the average user doesn’t want to go that deep as it is more about just keeping in touch and having fun rather than using social networking as a serious discussion tool.

Ne’er the twain

We need a change of mindset to understand how others will use the services we champion or to just accept that fact that different services will attract different people and ne’er the twain shall meet. A service has to identify its target audience and then fully understand it, providing those features that the specific audience demands rather than trying to convince those outside of that demographic that it is the tool for them irrespective of their actual needs.

Where we see value and potential others may just see clutter, noise and complexity. Where others see ease of use we may just see something too simplistic that doesn’t allow us to do what we want.

Even with a target audience in mind the creators of a service set things up and announce their offspring to the world but, like all parents have to stand back and watch their ‘child’ grow up. The growth of social media services are largely dictated by the way they are used not just the functionality they offer; put a completely different set of people on FriendFeed than the the usual suspects who are there at present and you would see the service used in a different way and take a different route in its development, just as Twitter started out as a place for simple status updates but morphed in to a full messaging system because of the demands of its users.

What is acceptable?

A social networking service differs from our real world society in that it is more governed by the people for the people as opposed to having a central body ‘in charge’ but just like any society different generations (read waves of users) change the rules in that society and morality even more so. There will always be a shift with regards to what is acceptable at any given point – the internet is no exception, especially as we continue to use it in ways that don’t fit any current trends or patterns. Just as society itself has to adjust to changes over time so must how we view our actions and behaviour in any given environment. How far do we, or should we even, try to hold back the incoming tide and restrict the tools we use?

And to the post title

The popularity of Twitter has been its downfall. A combination of ease of use and an open, useful API have placed unprecedented strain on a system that has been playing catch-up with the demands of its users for most of its life. Robert Scoble asked “FriendFeed is NOT taking off … why?” and I would argue that it is following a similar pattern to Twitter. It is changing from the original idea that spawned it. The About page says:

FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

This may convey what FriendFeed is at its core level but the users have pushed the service beyond such a simple definition and, as such, the concept behind it is much harder to grasp just as the service becomes more complex than most people would need.

In conclusion

It is natural for things to grow and evolve but by continually demanding more, ever complex options we will alienate the late adopter. We will enter a cycle where new services emerge to cater for the new audience but these too will grow as it is not in their interests to stay static. We make a service undesirable for many by liking it too much and wanting it to expand.

The concept of social media may become a mainstream idea but any given application will only ever have a limited appeal.

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• Take time out – gain perspective.

Having not blogged or been involved in any significant way with social media for a week it’s been interesting to note the way my attitudes have changed, not just while away on holiday but also before that. It has been surprising to see how much can change in such a short time.

I’m no sure if it’s connected to all of the Twitter downtime but my online behaviour has altered recently and my usage on the service has reduced significantly. When you’re on holiday, however, you really notice that you use a service like Twitter as it was originally intended to operate; you find yourself just giving quick status updates rather than trying to use it as a full communication tool – 140 character limitations and all.

Once you strip away desktop clients and the like and are just using a mobile phone then you can’t conduct meaningful conversations in that kind of environment with limited updates and a small screen. It has been interesting to watch how my behaviour has altered and, now that I am at this point, I can’t see myself going back to using Twitter as a full messaging system.

The level of the banality on such a service – even when you are choosing your ‘friends’ carefully – is also driving me away to the point where I will most likely not be using Twitter to interact but just to give status updates including new post notifications – they are after all just something else you are sharing saying “this is what I’ve been up to”.

What is spam?

The nature of what we refer to as spam as the service has evolved has altered and you will be criticised or even unfollowed if all you do is post blog notifications. Because people are now using Twitter differently to how is was envisaged it is almost unacceptable to just give status messages – I can’t help but feel that this is wrong.

As Alexander says, Social Media is about interaction and I now intend to focus my time on tools which allow me to do this more comprehensively; the best of the bunch currently being FriendFeed.

It has also been interesting to observe my opinions to the ‘conversation’. I was only away for a few days – and tried to keep an eye on things using FFtogo – but it seemed as though very little was actually happening whereas I would normally feel like a normal day on FriendFeed could get pretty busy. The only real discussion that caught my attention was around the “FriendFeed Likes Compatibility Index” – using commonalities between FriendFeed likes as a way to identify other users that you may be interested in following.

Now, I’m sure that the few days weren’t as quiet as they seemed but that it is more likely to be due to distancing myself from the conversation. Because the direct participation is limited it could well be that this lack of participation triggers a sense that things just aren’t as important as they would be were you immersed in the conversation. Involvement in something gives a feeling of investment in, and to a degree ownership of, a discussion.

Drift

The further you drift away from the conversation the harder it is to become enthusiastic about the direction it takes and this is the curse of social media: it is addictive in the sense that you need to keep an involvement in order to maintain an overview and monitor the breadth of conversation rather than trying to control it in one location. Conversations will occur wherever there are people – this is not going to change so people just have to get used to it. This distribution of the discussion is what’s really important; you are exposing a potentially greater audience to the conversation and allowing it to take twists that otherwise it wouldn’t take.

There will always be a gulf between those who see social media as a throw-away time killer that you can just dip in to and those who dive headlong in to the murky waters of the social media circus. Those who advocate services like Facebook are just in it for fun – they establish a ‘friend’ list, post on each others walls, play a few games and just provide basic status updates.

Facebook and its ilk, however, does not lend itself to more meaningful conversation. We need systems where conversations can spin out from a central point and take on a life of their own. We need systems with a greater level of interaction between members rather than with the site. We need systems where we can take ideas and communicate them effectively.

What we must always remember, however, is that the conversation will go on without you regardless of who you are. People will still have ideas and discussion will still develop around those ideas. If even Robert Scoble disappeared off the face of the planet for a week Twitter wouldn’t stop, FriendFeed wouldn’t stop – who you are is irrelevant. It may be argued that the exposure of any given conversation may be limited due to Scoble’s thousands of followers not getting to see it and this may be the case but how many of those followers actually get involved in the conversations?

Yes, we appear to have an echo chamber but this is an unintentional circumstance and not entirely the fault of those involved. With FriendFeed likes exposing items to a wider audience via the friend of a friend system the scope exists for a far greater number to get involved but the percentage of those that do is small. Out of Scoble’s thousands of followers you only ever see the same names cropping up as getting involved in the conversation and the same names dominate the FriendZone charts of FriendFeed users. This is not because of any elitist exclusion policy but because of a lack of involvement by others outside of the usual suspects.

Why is this?

Do some feel intimated and not able to participate? Are conversation threads seen as private members’ clubs with a strict door policy? Or is it just that there is only a finite number of individuals who actually want to be involved?

The problems that Twitter has been experiencing and the subsequent rush to Plurk show that a significant number of social media users are only after the quick connections that these types of services offer rather than wanting to become embroiled in deep conversation. Even when FriendFeed numbers increased significantly in recent times it is most likely that those joining did so due to disillusionment with Twitter rather than out of a desire to use the service and consequently will be predominately inactive.

The social media path we travel is determined by our goals – what we want to get out of the services we use; those services will, themselves, also be determined by our needs which is why there is always room for different types of network.

Over to you

What is your path and how often do you re-assess your social media goals?

Image by Natalia Osiatynska.