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August 08, 2007
Leveraging Real-Time Social Communications
In using the status function of Facebook and twitter, I am seeing a reflection of a past Internet experience.
Internet Relay Chat (“IRC”) was the first platform I used on the Internet to chat with people, mostly whom were strangers to me. One feature that I liked about IRC was once I entered a room, by default had the opportunity to “shout out” to the entire room as well as send a direct a message to an individual.
As Internet based Instant Messaging networks evolved, the default feature shifted to one-to-one communication with people whom I was friendly with (a Buddy, not a stranger) and I no longer had an easy way to send a group message to everyone on my buddy list.
And this is the way it has been for me, and many others until recently.
There is a transformation going on in real-time social communications, and I’ve discovered that I can now get the same effect as a group “shout out” by simply changing my status message on Facebook. This also happens when using Twitter. This is yet another thing which is just not possible to do on LinkedIN – unless you plan on sending what may appear to be email spam to everyone in your LinkedIN contact list.
Case in point: yesterday afternoon, I was in a meeting working on the name for a new startup and I needed to find someone who knew Latin. I posted my request on both Twitter and by updating my status message on Facebook. Within fifteen minutes, I received three messages from friends on Facebook with offers to help and four messages from friends on twitter. The end result was I was able to get my question answered. And what I realized is I once again could do a global “shout out” to my friends…and they could communicate directly back to me.
As social media continues to evolve with features and functionality expanding and growing, one thing I enjoy looking for are the unintended (positive) consequences of leveraging one technology to get a result not anticipated by the creators of the platform. This isn’t about putting one platform vs. another. It’s more like trying things out and finding out what works best for YOU.
Tags: twitter, Facebook, Social Media, twitter, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on August 8, 2007 12:55 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Hi Jeff,
I've used twitter on one occasion in the past to respond to a friends' questions on LinkedIn and understand what you're referring to.
However, as Justin says, one of the challenges is the time sensitivity on messages sent via twitter and not all my friends are monitoring twitter 24/7. Another challenge is the quality of expertise that you're seeking and how many of your connections can provide an answer within any given category.
For quality of expertise, I'd definitely recommend a service like LinkedIn Answers, since it allows you to broadcast a question within the category you're asking the question in as well as to a select number of your connections, rather than spam everyone within your network. I recently posed a question on marketing that received almost 50 high-quality answers in a week (http://tinyurl.com/253jts). Also, here's another LinkedIn Answers thread on differences among LI users' social networking practices: http://tinyurl.com/ytmdlx (Disclosure: I work at LinkedIn, & would love to talk to anyone about questions they may have on using the site effectively)
Mario from LinkedIn
msundar@linkedin.com
Posted by: Mario Sundar at August 16, 2007 05:09 PM
Hi Jeff,
I've used twitter in the past and I've actually helped Steve Rubel and David Berkowitz address specific questions about LinkedIn through that medium. However, this morning I sent a shout-out asking who's attending this weekend's BarCamp and I didn't get a single response :(
I think what's equally important is the quality of expertise or responses you're likely to receive. Not always does my immediate network have the range of expertise I may be looking for. But more questionable is how many of my friends are monitoring twitter feeds 24/7, while at work, and as Justin mentions "Twitter is only as useful as who's reading RIGHT NOW."
(Disclosure: I'm LinkedIn's community evangelist) So, if you're looking for specific, targeted expertise on any professional category, as you probably know LinkedIn Answers allows you to selectively send out messages either to your immediate professional network or broadcast questions to a targeted category, without spamming users. Just FYI.
Posted by: Mario Sundar at August 15, 2007 10:55 PM
Ah... the good old IRC, it's like a Virtual Cheers and when you enter the room (or change your Status from @Work to @Home) everybody shouts "Norm!" :)
I still hang around a specific channel, some of my best friends in life are there, even though we seldom meet in RL, they are somewhat more involved with what's going on with me than my "Non-Virtual" friends.
Posted by: Hagai Jacobson at August 9, 2007 01:51 AM
i totally agree.
"ShoutCasting" to your friends is revolutionary.
it allows great freedom, and change some basic premises of how we can communicate inside a social circle.
Have you ever been with someone, when he has something dramatic to share?
I remember when I lived with my brother, how we talked on the phone when he had something dramatic to share (broke up with someone, lost/made money, got in a fight with the landlord, that sort of thing), each friend that called him, he'd go over the whole story again. Some sentences he used worked well, so he kept using them in the later conversations, the rest, he rephrased each time until it was perfect. I asked him why does he do it, and he told me "otherwise, it's so !@#$ repetitious". you don't have the same emotional drive when u have to express yourself over and over again (some singers grow to hate their most popular songs for that reason).
Shoutcasting status messages eliminates this. After all, why should we have to talk to our friends in different times and locations? It's just a bug in how we cope with time and space. We physically can't speak at several places at once, so we don't do it. Radio and television brought it a long time ago, but only for a 'selected few', and u usually had to leave the house in order to broadcast.
Conference calls have been with us for years, but for some reason, even today, via a handheld device, they're not so reachable to us (well I don't have an iPhone ). We do it when we have to, for work or other reasons, but most people rarely do it just for kicks.
We are much more easier to track and spy on now, of course, but even without paranoid(?) thoughts of lurking terrorists and child molesters, wrong people can be exposed to information at any given moment. Even from within our social circles. You don't always want all your friends and colleagues to know about the same fact at the same time. sometimes you just don't want them to know that you are online. you can use sorts of filtering techniques, I guess, but it requires high maintenance, which kinda goes against the whole idea of instantness and togetherness.
So while we evolve socially and gain these communication superpowers, our overall social filtering, is getting somewhat weakened (if not 'gone out the window all together').
Usually, in evolution, the traits that get dropped down the generation line, are discarded because they have outlived their usefulness. But then again, sometimes a vital thing is lost along the way. That's how species perish.
(Oops, that's kinda long for a comment, isn't it? sorry for getting carried away. I do that sometimes... :)
Posted by: Robot55 at August 8, 2007 10:26 PM
Spot on, Jeff. I have been using Twitter as a real business tool and am getting real results:
http://www.ckwebb.com/social-networks-and-media/social-communications/
Posted by: Chris Webb at August 8, 2007 09:47 PM
i like it:) the more the merrier
Posted by: yael at August 8, 2007 06:03 PM
When I first used chat rooms on the Web in the 90s, I found them extremely useful for just this type of thing. Often I would saunter through a few chat rooms, mostly on the old WBS system, and quickly get all kinds of help in terms of information, advice and travel tips etc. (come to think of it now, it was so useful that I'm not sure why I stopped using chat rooms entirely - there must have been a reason). But sites like Facebook would only serve this purpose if you have a large and diverse network using the same site, whereas chat rooms provided "instant networks" which could be easily segmented by geography, interest area and so on. In other words, it seems to me that with Facebook there's more work and time involved in building the active online network rather than having an instant resource through which to contact hundreds and thousands of people. So I guess that for people who have these large networks, it works.
Posted by: Stephen Minton at August 8, 2007 05:21 PM
Jeff, I had a similar experience back in May when Twitter and Facebook postings helped me get a new pair of boots while traveling:
http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2007/05/of_cowboy_boots.html
The ability to post questions to your "network" in a way that is just part of their normal workflow (i.e. it doesn't intrude but is just part of something they already monitor) is a powerful thing.
Thanks for sharing your story. (And now I know why you were looking for someone who spoke Latin! I saw your tweet and FB status change and did wonder *why*.)
Posted by: Dan York at August 8, 2007 02:40 PM
Yes, but keep in mind: Twitter is only as useful as who's reading RIGHT NOW. It's not always an accurate aggregator of the wider POV.
Posted by: Justin Kownacki at August 8, 2007 02:09 PM
"It’s more like trying things out and finding out what works best for YOU" - Now this is starting to be interesting. Telling everybody what is good and what is wrong, takes you to places of strageling.
Sharing with people what is your experience, it is sharing of knowledge and with knowledge comes the power of each one of the readers. And each one of the readers that gain power give you the power back.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Posted by: Yosi Dagan at August 8, 2007 02:09 PM