on twitter, friendfeed, flash bulbs, and lunch rooms
(caveat empor: writing this post on 5 hours of sleep after 20 hours of flying from Mallorca to Pune with 3 connections along the way)
Over the weekend I tweeted the message: "Blog=long rants. IM=chit-chat. Twitter=flash bulbs. FriendFeed= lunchroom table."
As if to prove my point, this tweet took on a 2nd life on FriendFeed, with 41 people "liking" this tweet and a number of people commenting on it.
And, further proving my point, prompted by a friend who asked me to explain (in a blog post) what it means, I'm now sitting down to write a long form blog post to explain it all.
Let's start with email. email basically made it darn simple easy for anyone to send someone else (or several people) a letter. Reply-all enabled threaded discussions. Like long form letters though, emails are expected to be (relatively) well thought out.
IM made it darn simple easy for anyone/anywhere to have an instant chat with another person. Less formal than an email, IM took off as a way to short-text message back and forth -- sort of like talking on the phone without having to actually talk to the other person (which by the way, also enables multi-tasking and multi-chatting on IM, which was never possible via phone).
SMS/Texting is basically IM by mobile. Send a short private note instead of dialing each time.
email, IM, and SMS were always intended to facilitate private conversations.
blogs marked a major milestone in the evolution of public conversations. Got something interesting to say? let the world know about it! Share it publicly.
The problem with blogs though is that like emails they require a lot of thought (and time). This blog posting, for instance, was 2 days of thinking in the making and took me about 20 minutes to write.
Twitter came along and enabled anyone to easily post a public one to many note via 140 character micro-blogging notes. Like millions of flash bulbs, people tweet what's one their mind and others tweet replies or follow on a prior tweet. It's less of a discussion and more of a series of lights flashing. I like this! I like that! Me too! I saw this! Wow, @someone saw that too!
FriendFeed reminds me of the school lunchroom in that the conversations that may have started elsewhere are picked up and rehashed, commented on, and amplified. FriendFeed (thus far) isn't a place for deep thoughts and debate, rather it's an easy interface/platform for anyone/anywhere to chime in to say they like something or to leave a short note in reply. It's the lunchroom, not the senate floor. It's also the lunchroom in that part of it's early appeal is that it enables people to have a seat at the cool kids' table. Thus far, the "cool kids" sit at the tech geek table and part of the allure is that anyone/anywhere can saddle up to the cool kid's table and -- provided they don't make instant fools of themselves -- participate in the lunchroom discussion.
there's more to this story (of course), as facebook, myspace, flickr et al have made the world increasingly a very public bulletin board.
Where does socialmedian fit in all this? we'll see.... still figuring that out.
Over the weekend I tweeted the message: "Blog=long rants. IM=chit-chat. Twitter=flash bulbs. FriendFeed= lunchroom table."
As if to prove my point, this tweet took on a 2nd life on FriendFeed, with 41 people "liking" this tweet and a number of people commenting on it.
And, further proving my point, prompted by a friend who asked me to explain (in a blog post) what it means, I'm now sitting down to write a long form blog post to explain it all.
Let's start with email. email basically made it darn simple easy for anyone to send someone else (or several people) a letter. Reply-all enabled threaded discussions. Like long form letters though, emails are expected to be (relatively) well thought out.
IM made it darn simple easy for anyone/anywhere to have an instant chat with another person. Less formal than an email, IM took off as a way to short-text message back and forth -- sort of like talking on the phone without having to actually talk to the other person (which by the way, also enables multi-tasking and multi-chatting on IM, which was never possible via phone).
SMS/Texting is basically IM by mobile. Send a short private note instead of dialing each time.
email, IM, and SMS were always intended to facilitate private conversations.
blogs marked a major milestone in the evolution of public conversations. Got something interesting to say? let the world know about it! Share it publicly.
The problem with blogs though is that like emails they require a lot of thought (and time). This blog posting, for instance, was 2 days of thinking in the making and took me about 20 minutes to write.
Twitter came along and enabled anyone to easily post a public one to many note via 140 character micro-blogging notes. Like millions of flash bulbs, people tweet what's one their mind and others tweet replies or follow on a prior tweet. It's less of a discussion and more of a series of lights flashing. I like this! I like that! Me too! I saw this! Wow, @someone saw that too!
FriendFeed reminds me of the school lunchroom in that the conversations that may have started elsewhere are picked up and rehashed, commented on, and amplified. FriendFeed (thus far) isn't a place for deep thoughts and debate, rather it's an easy interface/platform for anyone/anywhere to chime in to say they like something or to leave a short note in reply. It's the lunchroom, not the senate floor. It's also the lunchroom in that part of it's early appeal is that it enables people to have a seat at the cool kids' table. Thus far, the "cool kids" sit at the tech geek table and part of the allure is that anyone/anywhere can saddle up to the cool kid's table and -- provided they don't make instant fools of themselves -- participate in the lunchroom discussion.
there's more to this story (of course), as facebook, myspace, flickr et al have made the world increasingly a very public bulletin board.
Where does socialmedian fit in all this? we'll see.... still figuring that out.
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July 8, 2008 7:22 AM | Score: 0
Nice analogy Jason, I think socialmedian comes into the category of Library conversation where you have different categories of topics choose the one and start discussing!
Cheers!
Anupam