The battle is drawn

I started writing this post over a week ago and in that time the argument has sprung up in many different places with advocates on both sides.

Content curation and social sharing is rapidly becoming widely established ranging from casual curation via link sharing on social networks to dedicated services such as Amplify. Its popularity is such that curation advocates are arguing that it is sounding the death knell for RSS readers (as distinct from the format) and traditional news outlets, especially now that Bloglines is bring shut down, but is this really the case?

Personally, I don’t believe so.

Curation is great – you can’t deny that – and has been with us in one form or another for as long as the web. Sharing files or links on bulletin boards, forums, blog posts listing “best ofs” or “top 10 resources”, and more recently sharing items from RSS feeds via Google Reader have all set the scene.

Getting news and links via your social circle allows you to consume things you would probably never find through your own surfing. Consuming social news also means that you don’t have to manage your own news sources.

Should you wish to target your consumption you can use something like Twitter lists but it is not essential to actively play a part in the delivery of news beyond initially following people on your network of choice.

The down side

There are, however, distinct disadvantages, to relying on your social circle for news. Firstly, social news is immediate – it appears in your stream and within no time at all is buried under a pile of new status updates. Recent reports mentioned that the effective life of a popular tweet was only half a day.

Could you imagine it if you could only see emails when they hit your inbox as they would be deleted within 12 hours?

We are not always plugged in to our social circles 24/7 and can even go for days without being connected (rare for us geeks but it does happen). There is, therefore, a high chance of missing items that you would normally like to read unless you are using lists to as your own level of curation to the mix.

It has been said that if news is important enough it will find you but it cannot do so if you are not there.

The second drawback of curated lists is that they invariably consist of mainly links with little explanation or guidance as to what they contain, especially within the 140 character restrictions of Twitter. You are, therefore, constantly forced to jump out to a browser or a different client in order to read the item. You may be able to peruse more tweets in a minute that posts in other places but how much value is actually gleaned from them?

The primary advantage of subscription based consumption is that your feeds are gathered in your reader and retained until marked unread just like your email. We can therefore consume items at our leisure days, weeks, even months after they were written should we want/need to. Providing the feed publishes full text you need not even leave the RSS reader.

The argument that news is just what’s new and anything else doesn’t matter is, frankly, wrong. In the wider context than tech journalism and the echo chamber we consume more than just news. We are not all chasing the latest and greatest. Research around a topic may rely on older information where newer work may not exist. If we restrict ourselves to the hear and now we are missing out.

That perfect blend

Subscription alone means that we are limited to the feeds we have discovered thus requiring a greater effort on our part to search out new sources of information.

The sweet spot is a blend of subscription & curation: discovering sources via the curation efforts of our social circle so that we may then subscribe to those sources that interest us most. Just because one of our friends has shared a particular item there is no guarantee that they will then share further items from the same source (or that we see those shares even if they do) so the ability to then follow those sources directly is still a must.

We are entering a time where our online behaviour is altering but, as with so many other things, it is an evolution and not a revolution and our readers and applications must adapt to match this behaviour.

Perhaps RSS will alter over time but there is plenty of life in the old dog yet.

Image by Lovro67

my6sense recently hired tech blogger and influencer Louis Gray as VP of Marketing and it is easy to see why.

The Android version of the my6sense application was released to the Android market at 8am last Monday (PST) but Louis had given his Google Buzz followers (myself included) the opportunity to download it early and put it through it’s paces. The only condition was that it couldn’t be blogged about or otherwise publicly discussed until after the official 8am release time.

Well, within minutes of launch the blogosphere was littered with buzzes, blog posts and tweets about posts. I couldn’t open any of my social streams without being bombarded by coverage. Good call my6sense – when the Louis Gray engines roll you’d better get out of the way or you’re going to get squashed. Having not had much time to get to grips with the app prior to launch I decided to hold off until I had been able to form a balanced opinion. I fired off some initial thoughts to Louis but didn’t want to make my first impressions public as they would not have been accurate. Also, having my phone die on me and need to be replaced threw an additional spanner in the works.

Back in July 2008 a friend Julian Baldwin coined the term “needstream” – those things we actually need from the web as opposed to frivolous browsing or random consumption. As the social web expands the need for a “needstream” – or personally filtered news – has never been greater. Queue services like my6sense.

This is the news you’re looking for

As you’ve no doubt read elsewhere, and in much greater depth, my6sense is an intelligent feed/stream reader that uses technology and algorithms collectively called “digital intuition” to learn what you like in order to perform jedi mind tricks on your news and social streams (Twitter, Facebook and Buzz) and show you the items you will be most interested in: sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Even though we may be careful with those we follow the chances are that we will not be interested in, or want to read everything those people post; cutting out the irrelevance is, therefore, incredibly welcome.

Patience my young Padawan

my6sense is not for those seeking instant gratification, it takes a while for digital intuition to kick in and even longer for it to really find its feet. The more you use it the better it gets. After using it for a few days I was still only half way up the intuition scale; now I am up to about three quarters.

Fortunately, the app allows you to view your streams in time order (like your traditional news/social clients) as well as by relevance; I personally found that starting out by viewing items sequentially made for faster training in the ways of the digital intuition force. Initially, the application was designed as a news reader with an intelligent consumption engine but, at the behest of Louis and others, there is a push for greater engagement functionality – hence the ability to retweet, share on your social networks and, in the latest incarnation, to comment on Facebook and Buzz posts.

I follow relatively few RSS feeds and people on social networks so probably don’t get the full benefit but, even though my feeds are already very strictly filtered by myself, I can see how digital intuition is altering the way I see things. It does a great job of learning your reading patterns and showing you what is relevant.

I have a bad feeling about this

As I have privately expressed to Louis, my main concern with an application such as my6sense is that it creates a division of labour between itself and whatever application you use to participate on your social networks – in my case this, whilst mobile, is Tweetdeck for Android. my6sense is not intended as – or probably ever will be – a full social client so you need to weigh up what it is you will be doing and whether the application fits in to your daily routine. Personally, I can’t see it replacing the current blend of Tweetdeck and Google Reader but that is just my preference, if you consume a lot of feeds and have a large number of people in your social circle then I would highly recommend that you give it a try, especially if you consume more than you create.

As with any beta product my6sense has its share of bugs and niggles but the team are working hard to get these ironed out. Currently my biggest frustration is that items are brought in inconsistently; sometimes there is full text, others not. Even if the original item is published as a full feed I find that I am frequently jumping out to my browser in order to get the whole story. It also appears to be a bit of a lottery as to whether there are external links to the original item. These problems will no doubt be corrected in upcoming releases.

Rule the galaxy

We all have differing usage scenarios so what works for one may not work for another. To say that products such as this will take over and make other forms of consumption irrelevant is impossible – they are not a one size fits all offering and, therefore, not always applicable even to those who advocate their use. There is a sweet spot between subscription and curation – but that’s for another post.

We can say, however, that relevance engines by whatever name are becoming increasingly important as we are more inundated with information.Without some form of order, the more we try to tighten our grip the more news will slip through our fingers.

It’s been a while since I first wrote the 5 C’s of Social Media and the social web has moved on. At the time I said “social media is all about people” and the focus was very much on empowering people to contribute. I was very keen that business should be adopting social media to better communicate with their customers and not just by using it for the hard sell.

Well, businesses are now utilising social networks to the full and some even have the social web as a business model. While the 5 C’s are still just as relevant the focus has shifted and, perhaps, the way we interact can be viewed in different ways based on the way we are now using the social web.

I recently wrote “At the most basic of levels the value of the social web could be as simple as A, B, C, D, E: Attention, Broadcast, Connecting, Discovery, Engaging” in order to bring things a bit more up to date. So, in the broadest possible terms to match that simplicity, here is a quick overview:

A: Attention

Whether we are bloggers looking for traffic, businesses looking for customers or just private individuals looking for conversation we are all fighting for the attention of our prospective audiences. Social channels are ideal for these purposes now that many are investing more and more time in their network of choice. It is often said that you should go where your customers are so where better than the likes of Facebook, Twitter or YouTube – viral marketing is the ultimate attention grabber.

B: Broadcast

While social media is “not about the hard sell” it is still an incredibly effective way of getting your message across. Traditionally, advertising is the route taken but - while it has been shown to be effective - many resent the intrusion of advertising. Using social networks to broadcast your message is, essentially, stealth advertising that allows an instant response from your customers. It is most likely this ability to respond that makes it more palatable and leads us to…

C: Connecting

Rather than being faceless organisations social networks afford companies the opportunity to connect with their customers in a way never previously possible. Using a social network as a customer service channel is genius; empowering customers by letting them connect directly with a company representative comes so naturally now that we dismiss those not participating.

D: Discovery

The social web has taken discovery way past the functionality on offer by the search engine (although Google is trying to catch up again). Services such as Stumbleupon, recommendation lists and links curated by our friends all combine to make it easier than ever before to discover interesting new content or people. The phrase “the world is shrinking” has never been more apt. 

E: Engaging

Just connecting with each other is not enough; as I said before, the real social currency is the relationships we forge when using social networks be they personal or business. A social network without engagement is just an empty space and achieves nothing. One full of conversation, however, gets people better invested in whatever it is you are selling whether it’s your personality, your blog or your business.

Easy as…

The social web need not be difficult and is often over complicated by some claiming it can only be manipulated by those with seemingly mystic powers, although it is often easier to outsource due to lack of time, knowledge or experience. Social networks are there to be enjoyed – even if they are being used for business.

Build a brand, build a following, build relationships.

Image by Gloson

I don’t own any Apple devices, haven’t use a Mac since OS7 when you had to have a 3rd party TCP/IP stack just to get on the web, have never installed iTunes and probably never will so am looking in from the outside, experiencing Apple’s Ping vicariously from the comments of others.

It would be fair to say that it has come in for quite a bit of criticism from many including being called non-intuitive, not a social network, and merely an underhand ploy to generate sales through iTunes.

The basics

Ping is currently a fledgling network, a version 1.0 in every sense. We are spoilt by the current state of Facebook and Twitter et al so any new offering coming to market that is not all bells and whistles seems incomplete. We need only look back a few years and remember how our current favourite networks behaved when they were young and we can draw instant parallels.

Holes in the service leading to a plethora of third party applications helped growth but also caused fragmentation and inconsistencies in the Twitter ecosystem – some of which Twitter is now trying to resolve. Facebook is more like Apple in that it has a much tighter grip over what happens with its service but, obviously, still comes nowhere near having the element of control that Apple has over its whole domain.

Many have said that the fact Ping only exists inside iTunes is a big failing – the obvious parallel here is Google Buzz only existing within Gmail. This obsessive control, however, will mean that Apple can grow Ping exactly as it wants with little outside interference, although the comments of its users would be the most valuable tool to ensuring a happy camp. Giving people a sense of investment in your product is a sure-fire way to breed loyalty – the “I made this” factor is very powerful (Microsoft have been using it for years with their beta testers) and should not he ignored.

Perfection

Apple, and specifically Steve Jobs, is a perfectionist and will not take criticism of Ping lightly. Over time we will see Ping run through a number of iterations with features being revised, completely re-written, added and even removed in order to transform the network into the most effective social music platform it can be. After all, the better the network and the more comfortable iPod/iPhone/iPad users are with it the more likely they will stick around, share their suggestions and – most importantly – make new purchases based on the shares of their friends.

As some have suggested, it is most unlikely that Ping will sit on its laurels but instead it will morphine and grow to encompass other areas of online life in the Apple sphere. Music, video, games and applications, even Apple hardware itself could become a topic of conversation.

Apple may have fallen out with Facebook just prior to launch over the “onerous terms” the latter wished to impose but the two won’t stay mad at each other for long. The two will most likely become bed-fellows as some point in the future. As Ping grows Facebook will realise it is missing a trick and make further advances to Apple but more on the latters terms. Apple was obviously keen to have a connection in the first instance but balked when faced with possibly the only other arrogance on the web to equal its own.

Linking to Facebook will be the first step to getting a wider platform for Ping so that it is available outside of iTunes. A separate client for the various Apple mobile devices would be a good start – the larger iPad would be an obvious first choice. Being inside Apple’s walled garden whilst, not being ideal, would not be the death of Ping on its own as long as Apple let you discuss and recommend items you already have rather than revolving around new purchases; better tie-ins between Ping and iTunes are a must.

As the service grows “taste profiles” will no doubt improve – they have to, as do building more accurate recommendations based on what you already like and the likes of your friends. As one of my friends on Twitter put it:

“It would make more sense if it actually compiled tastes from your entire collection & listening habits and didn’t suggest Katy Perry”

There will no doubt be promoted albums and artists, new releases and popular items across the board but the distinction between social recommendations and promoted ones will need to be made. Apple will quickly realise this and move to appease their customers or risk a backlash and reduced sales – cash is king.

The bigger conversation

It is understandable why Apple have not opened up Ping to additional conversations and updates outside of the current experience – they are no doubt concerned that the banality of conversation from other networks may dilute the goals of ping in getting customers to part with their hard earned but, without the ability to enter into a wider dialogue, users may become disillusioned.

I feel it is, therefore, inevitable that Ping will widen both its scope and remit in the coming months after an initial period of bedding down. Apple invests itself whole heartedly in its products and is not prone to admitting failure; because of this Ping will be made to work, by hook or by crook.

There are some arguments that won’t go away and that over the value of social media seems to be one of them.

Sarah Lacy over at Techcrunch has suggested that those complaining about how the social web does or doesn’t work are actually using it incorrectly. She has received a varied reaction and, while I may not see eye to eye with the full post, I would be inclined to agree that some have lost sight of what they set out to achieve on the social web.

As I posted recently, the value you get from social networks is very much determined by your usage scenario. To all those who say that the social web does not work for them I would say that the 500 million people happily sharing, updating and playing games on Facebook don’t seem to be complaining. What have they achieved that others have not?

They have found themselves.

It may sound a bit zen and esoteric but your average user on Facebook is there for a specific purpose and the service itself fits that purpose perfectly. They are there as a private individual sharing photos and updates, catching up with their friends or playing games. Usage is casual and many are actually following their “flesh and blood friends” and relatives.

The complications occur when social media is used for business and those involved are not differentiating between business use and their personal activity. We need to decide who we are and why we are using the social web. We need to ask ourselves which hat are we wearing at any given time as our goals and expectations will differ.

Personal or business

For the vast majority, personal use is just for fun – there is no pressure. Conversations are purely ad-hoc and genuine, there is no pretention or sales pitch distorting how they communicate. Value is quickly achieved under these circumstances as expectations are simple and easily met.

Business users will also not have problems when a specific purpose is defined; be it brand management, monitoring the competition or a customer service channel. The goals are set and results clearly identifiable.

Ideally, we should be in a position where we can segregate our usage based on the role we are undertaking – the easiest way to achieve this would be to create a different account for each purpose. Separate accounts, however, are not always possible especially for those in startups or for those people whose persona IS their work - this is why the announcement of the new group functionality in Orkut caught the imagination.

Too much

Those crying foul tend to be the new media revolutionaries, the mavens, the gurus who are trying to do everything and be all things to all people. It is impossible for these people to separate business and private use as the two are intrinsically woven. By necessity they are spreading themselves across the social web – an all ecompassing brand – but are being spread too thinly. The ability to interact efficiently can be lost; the balance between broadcast and engagement skewed until, eventually, the audience can become embittered.

Constantly riding the crest of the social wave can only be achieved by allowing the avenues of least effect to ebb away. Attempting to maintain the flow across all services will only result in the wave crashing beneath us.

Image by m kasahara