Stilgherrian » myspace

Quote of the Day, 22 February 2008

Stilgherrian — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:09:09 +0000

Spam subject line just received: “Voted the most effective male enlargement supplement product by MYSPACE users.” Well, there’s a recommendation, eh?

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Australia’s unwired politicians

Stilgherrian — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:24:16 +0000

In October 2007 I wrote: “The next time someone says we’re experiencing Australia’s ‘first internet election’ or our ‘first YouTube election’, slap them. Slap them very hard.” Now UTS research into the 2007 federal election further illustrates the point.

As ZDNet News reports, only two-thirds of the sitting federal members and senators had a personal website, and only 1 in 10 had a MySpace page — though personally I object to MySpace being the touchstone.

The study also revealed only 6.6 percent had a blog, 5.75 percent had posted one or more videos on YouTube, 3.5 percent had a Facebook site and only 3.1 percent had a podcast, as at 20 November 2007.

But of those that did find their way online a large percentage failed to go beyond traditional one-way communication.

Much more in the full story. Hat-tip to Peter Black.

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Rainy Sunday reading

Stilgherrian — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:20:18 +0000

Nothing better than spending a rainy Sunday reading some thoughtful articles and listening to raindrops and corellas and koels chattering away — in between arguing with Laurel Papworth, of course! I’ve been reading some stuff Mark Pesce has posted recently, including his own essay Unevenly Distributed: Production Models for the 21st Century, as well as The Register saying that people are tiring of social network websites and a piece explaining why Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book The Tipping Point is bullshit. I may reflect upon some of them later.

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2007: Social media goes mainstream (except for business and politics)

Stilgherrian — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 11:36:46 +0000

If 2006 was the year of Web 2.0 then 2007 is the year of social media. For individuals anyway. Australian businesses and politicians generally don’t “get it”.

Social media is mainstream. Two million Australians have Facebook pages and 3.5 million read blogs. MSN Messenger has 7 million users here, and even Ja’mie King says “I’ll MSN u 2nite” without explanation.

But few businesses use social media. Why? I suspect there’s two reasons, apart from an endemic inability to adapt and change. One is about the tools, the other is about business culture.

So far most social media tools have come from start-ups with funny names like Flickr and Twitter and YouTube. Media reports of the Next Big Thing are usually pitched as “look what those weird young folk are doing”. When the Next Big Thing becomes mainstream, the media ADHD attention span has moved on. So the impression is that it’s all a plaything for kiddies.

The second problem is that social media goes against the grain of how most businesses operate.

Back before the federal election, I said that politicians only see social media as a kind of TV, another outlet for their centrally-planned Soviet-style “campaigns”. Businesses have the same problem. They see 2 million Australians on Facebook and want to push their advertising at them. They see the social media websites as just another advertising medium to buy into.

That misses the point. Social media is about conversation.

Businesses are very bad at conversation.

Business usually want to pretend everything’s always perfect, and control all communication so it’s “on brand”.

As a result, when they try working with social media they tend to take one of two fundamentally wrong approaches.

They act like boors at a party, loudly parroting their brand message without actually participating in the conversation. No matter what’s being said around them, they hold up a sign with their logo and shout “Product X will make you trim and sexy.” Or whatever.
They set up their own private conversation forum — and then edit out anything negative.

Either way, people soon stop listening.

The first problem might be solved when social media tools come from mainstream providers like Microsoft. Windows Live Writer, a free blogging tool for Windows, kicks that off.

Interestingly, Microsoft itself is encouraging their staff to write blogs. Their corporate blogging policy isn’t 45 pages of legalese but a simple set of bullet points.

The second problem is harder, because it means businesses themselves need to change to embrace honesty, transparency and authenticity of communication.

Even Microsoft recognises this is a generational change. As one young employee said, “The old guard is highly competitive, the new guard is more collaborative… It’ll be at least another decade before the outside world starts recognizing the change that’s currently happening internally.”

Coincidentally, Hugh MacLeod has written about this very issue only today, in a piece about what’s starting to be called The New Marketing. His key points for me are:

3. The most important asset in The New Marketing is “having something worth talking about”. This makes certain marketing people squeamish. A lot of us grew up in an era of flashy commercials for rather uninspiring products, and something in our DNA makes us believe that’s the proper way to go about things.

4. If I had one big insight from the last year, is how The New Marketing has everything to do with how your product or service acts as a “Social Object“. Kudos to Jyri Engestrom for turning me on to it.

And:

10. Why is it so hard to explain The New Marketing to large companies? Because the people who work there are simply not prepared to relinquish the idea of control. Live by metrics, die by metrics etc.

The “mass media” of the industrial age allowed you to mass-produce your message for… well, the masses. The “social media” of the post-industrial age allow you to hold many, individual conversations, en masse.

Disclosure: Some of the ideas in this article emerged during a geek dinner where Microsoft paid the bill. This is an expanded version of an article originally written for Crikey.

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2007: The (Second) Last TV Election

Stilgherrian — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:11:08 +0000

The next time someone says we’re experiencing Australia’s “first Internet election” or our “first YouTube election”, slap them. Slap them very hard.

Our politicians only see the Internet and the emerging social media as a different kind of TV. YouTube is a place to post commercials, MySpace and Facebook for media releases. Their use of social media is so clueless that geeks attending PodCamp in Perth this Saturday were laughing.

Far from this being the “first Internet election”, it’s more like the The Last Television Election. Maybe the second-last.

Mainstream media was all a-flutter over the recursive TV ad of Howard watching Rudd watching Howard. Why?

It was posted on YouTube. Big deal. Any 13-year-old with a computer can do that.
It was posted within 24 hours of Rudd’s advert. Again, big deal. TV current affairs crews turn around little movies every afternoon.

As of 9am yesterday morning, it had been viewed 20,754 times. The other YouTube videos from LiberalParty07 have around 2,000 views or fewer. Pathetic.

By comparison, Sydney-based Cyrius01’s satire Bennelong Time had 31,702 views: 50% more. An ordinary citizen, with no help from a political party, has a bigger impact than the PM and his team.

The Internet is still a sideshow. The real political hit comes when they’re reported by mainstream media like ABC News with 1.2 million viewers, or even Lateline at a quarter of a million.

The problem with the politicians’ use of social media? They completely miss the basic concept: it’s about conversation.

They’re still locked into a centrally-planned one-way industrial age media model, talking at the public with a broadcast message. Political strategies are still crafted like the Soviet economy of 1948.

John Howard’s MySpace page is a disaster. “About Me” is a copy-and-paste Liberal media release. There are no blog posts, no comments. It’s his presence on the biggest social network site, but nobody’s home. The only personal fact is that he’s 68 — reminding MySpace’s youthful audience that he’s “old”.

Kevin Rudd’s isn’t much better. At least there’s content, but still nothing you couldn’t discover from the ALP website.

The only federal politician who gets it is Senator Andrew Bartlett. He’s been blogging for three years. His MySpace page reveals his music and film tastes. He was a drummer in a goth band. You get to know the man and, like him or not, at least you can form an opinion. A shame he probably won’t survive the election.

[Note: This is a slightly-edited version of an article I wrote yesterday for Crikey, building on a piece I wrote last week.]

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Politicians and Social Media: a catalogue of cluelessness

Stilgherrian — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:03:37 +0000

I’ll be in Perth on 27–28 October for PodCamp, the New Media Community UnConference, where I’m presenting a session on Social Media and the Federal Election.

While my first visit to Perth will be fun enough, I’m also enjoying researching my presentation. Australian politicians really don’t have a clue about this stuff.

Starting at the top of the food chain, John Howard’s MySpace profile is a disaster. The screenshot (right) records how it looked this morning — with a a broken rectangle obscuring part of the photo and adverts for the Labor party. Click for the full-size version.

MySpace is the world’s largest and best-known social media operation. Yet this profile doesn’t have anything to offer apart from a recycled media release. No blog entries. Not even any personal information beyond Howard’s age — reminding MySpace’s relatively youthful audience that he’s “old”.

How could John Howard’s personal profile not even mention cricket? If a profile contains even less information than we already know, why would we bother reading it? Why would we bother coming back?

At the other end of the spectrum — in more ways than one! — is Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett.

He’s been blogging at The Bartlett Diaries since August 2004, and his fresh, personal style provides an engaging look behind the scenes in Canberra.

Senator Bartlett’s MySpace profile is a real profile.

OK, it still looks crap. That’s MySpace for you. But we learn that he listens to Joy Division and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He likes movies like Brazil and Team America: World Police. He’s adding blog entries, some of which are from only a few days ago. He’s making a real connection with people and, most importantly, giving them a reason to come back.

John Howard has 9 MySpace friends — one of whom is “Tom”, everybody’s default friend. Senator Bartlett has 718.

Unfortunately, most Australian politicians use social media like John Howard, not Andrew Bartlett.

I’ll be adding further thoughts over the next week as I prepare for PodCamp. But meanwhile, some questions for you:

What do you think of politicians’ attempts to use social media like MySpace, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and podcasts?
Does it matter to you if politicians reveal more of their personal world? Does it help or hinder their political goals?
Have you seen any efforts by politicians which are either particularly good or particularly bad?
Does any of this affect your vote? No, really.

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iYomu: too late to beat Facebook?

Stilgherrian — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 03:19:04 +0000

iYomu, that “social networking for grown ups” site I wrote about, officially launched today — with US$1M in prize money up for grabs. And I’ve just written an article for Crikey explaining why I don’t think it’ll fly. I also reckon Facebook will win out over MySpace.

My argument in the Crikey article is that the key to success on the Internet is massive, uncontrolled growth. That means attracting a lot of users fast — and then selling out to someone like Rupert Murdoch before it all implodes. The problem is, the very nature of iYomu works against that rapid growth.

iYomu is over-18s only. No feral-keen cyberkids, so the social networks will grow more slowly.
iYomu has left out the “confusing” functions that adults don’t “need”. But they’re the sizzle which attracts the geeky early adopters who spread the word. Those geeks are looking for “cool new toys” — they already have the basics like secure online file storage and an email address. They’ll “get” iYomu but they probably won’t stay.
iYomu is concentrating on 1-to-1 communication rather than 1-to-many. But 1-to-many is exactly what social media sites are about. Sure, the target market is more wary of putting their life online for all to see — but what’s to offer that isn’t already there in Google’s Gmail, Google Calendars etc?
And the key one: Facebook is there already, and growing fast. At 30 million users today, that’s 250% growth in just two weeks!

No-one wants to be the first to arrive at a party. Join iYomu today, and it’ll feel like an empty room. Join Facebook today, as I did on the weekend, and you’re bound to find at least one or two old friends straight away — and all the existing groups give you the sense that something’s happening.

(OK, it was creepy when Crikey’s National Affairs Editor, Christian Kerr asked to become a “friend” even though we’ve never met or even exchanged email — especially since he’s worked for Christopher Pyne and his profile photo shows him in a bathtub. But as I’ve mentioned before, “friend” means something different online.)

Now MySpace is currently the biggest kid on the block with more than 200 million users. But its teenage-bedroom aesthetic won’t appeal to “mainstream” adults. As danah boyd writes in Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace:

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Facebook does have the right look, and it’s already well-differentiated from MySpace. Facebook grew out of Harvard and appeals to the “right” people — in Australian political terms, Howard’s aspirational “battlers” with McMansions.

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honours classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

And as boyd points out:

The division is cleanest in communities where the predator panic hit before MySpace became popular. In much of the midwest, teens heard about Facebook and MySpace at the same time. They were told that MySpace was bad while Facebook was key for college students seeking to make friends at college.

The Sydney Morning Herald tells us about the MySpace man-eaters, the MySpace stalker and the MySpace suicide girls. Wow, has MySpace got an image problem!

So, Facebook is already there, growing fast, and has the “right” image to become a permanent social institution. iYomu has a lot of catching up to do — yet has built-in factors which will slow its growth.

Facebook turned down a $1.6 billion offer from Yahoo! At the time I thought that was astoundingly arrogant. Today, I must reluctantly say I think it’s spot on.

[Update 3pm: I've linked to the article in Crikey, but it's subscriber-only content.]

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World Map of Social Networks

Stilgherrian — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:25:44 +0000

Here’s a map of the dominant social networking websites by country.

I admit, just showing which one has the biggest market share isn’t all that useful unless your worldview only sees things in terms of “the winner” and “all the losers,” but still it’s interesting enough.

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iYomu: “Social Networking for Grown Ups”?

Stilgherrian — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:19:06 +0000

“Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results — a bust. It’s déjà vu all over again. And since this moment in time is only the beginning of the cycle, the best nuttiness has yet to emerge.”

It’s ironic reading those words by John C Dvorak the very day after seeing last night’s demo of iYomu, the “Social Networking for Grown Ups” website to be launched on 13 August. It’s also rather nostalgic.

iYomu is entering an over-hyped marketplace. MySpace is the biggest of the social media websites — pig-ugly and (last time I bothered with it) a tad unreliable. But it’s got 201 million users. If MySpace were a country, it’d be 5th-largest. Facebook is flavour of the month, “only” 11 million users but growing fast. Photo-sharing site Flickr gets 3000 new images uploaded every minute. They’re worth squillions. In theory.

Yet the vast majority of Internet users wouldn’t know what “social networking websites” are — indeed they can barely use email. And for all the success stories, there’s dozens of failures.

So as sharp-dressed Frances Valintine and a relaxed David Wolf-Rooney, both New Zealanders, presented their Vision to a small collection of eminent bloggers (plus me), I couldn’t help but wonder…

Will they become millionaires, or will it all crash and burn?

I also wondered how many times Frances would use the word space. I stopped counting at 15.

I’ll explore iYomu and report daily as it moves from beta to launch and beyond. I think it’ll make an excellent case study. If you’d like to join me and be eligible for the US$5000 prize draw, let me know and I’ll send you an invitation — though I’ll demand that you post at least one useful comment back and, if you win, buy me dinner.

(There’s also a Big Global Incentive to join once the site launches officially, and you’d be in that draw too, but that’s still a secret.)

There’s still one thing bothering me from last night, though. If iYomu is for “grown ups”, why doesn’t it have a grown-up name?

[Update: Check out this more detailed description from one of last night's attendees. Saves me having to repeat the feature list. And also read my thoughts on why Facebook will beat both iYomyu and MySpace.]

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Dot.com madness, round 2

Stilgherrian — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:06:41 +0000

Yes, the Web 2.0 carry-on is starting to get people all excited about making squillions of dollars again. Just three weeks ago someone paid US$115,000 for the domain name — yes, just for the name — refresh.com, which looks like it’s trying to clone MySpace’s success. A shame they didn’t spend a quarter of that on design — though MySpace does just fine while looking pig-ugly.