Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category
Wednesday, December 19th, 2012
Media Consumption Curiosity
No matter what anyone says, current generation Second Screen Apps are barely Remote PLUS! However, the future could be far different!
As Seinfeld says we use Remote Control to find out “what else” is on TV while we watch a show.
In early days, viewers sat very close to Cathode Ray Tube (CRT Boob box) so they could turn the channel knob to see “what else” is on other channels – an era of Remote less TVs.
One of the innate human behavior patterns is always to wonder what else is out there and what else is of interest; that same curiosity or natural born instinct drives most of our decisions or indecisions or actions in general; same instinct drives the need to have a gadget – a Remote Control or otherwise in our hands, while in front of TV.
The Rise of Remote Control!
It was major leap from Remoteless TVs to an infrared Remote Control for TVs.
Initially, viewers used Remotes to change channels while consumed physical magazines such as TV Guides, other weekly publications and newspapers – for “what else” is out there in the world other than what’s on TV.
Some of the interactivity such as pause Live Broadcast (thanks to Tivos & DVRs), instant replay, picture in picture (PIP) & Fast Forward crept into later generation remotes.
Universal TV Remotes saved us from drowning in dozen of Remotes to control our VCRs, amplifiers, speaker systems and so forth.
In short, Remote Controls helped us with what else is on TV & other physical media helped us with what else is going on in the world.
I call our need to find out “what else” is going on as Media “Consumption Curiosity”!
The Fall of Remote Control!
Remote Controls have also evolved from basic “buttons” to “touch sensitive” versions in late 1990s and early 2000s.
Remote Control lost its cache right around this period. PC and Internet revolution has ushered a new era that inadvertently takes on the Remote Control usage habits.
This period was the start of emergence of emails & unlimited content on the web. TV Viewers started to use Desktops & Laptops while TV is on – downgraded Remote Controls to stepchild status. Physical magazines & newspapers have also been nudged aside.
Right around this period, TV Viewers started to “tune out” TV but tuned into web and email with occasional & brief interludes from the Tube media.
This period marked the first phase of personal media and personal communication. Even though Remote Control is still needed to change channels, mobile devices helped TV viewer consume their personal media (emails, SMS) and the Internet.
Access & control to personal media has actually increased the viewer base – regardless whether they actually consumed what’s on TV with full attention.
Consumption Curiosity has entered a new paradigm at this stage.
Future? End of Universal Remote! Enter Universal Smart Phone
By early to mid 1st decade of 2000, first generation Smart Phones (Blackberry) and advanced feature phones with Java and unlimited Text (SMS) options entered the foray.
Smart phones with 3G, unlimited email access & Text followed the “laptop” + Remote phase. Email, Browser & Text completely put mobile devices at the center of “what else is going on” curiosity of the TV viewer.
By 2005 most of the Japanese mobile operators offered IR blasters in their mobile phones to control TV instead of traditional Remote Controls. Teenage kids in Japan change channels using their mobile phones while the remote control is in their parent’s hands.
With the advent of iPhones, Androids, & Tablets, TV viewers have many choices wrt Second Screen Social TV Apps. Mobile devices get you what else is – on TV, on Internet, on personal content stream & on personal communication. Social Media Sharing via Facebook & Twitter quenched some of the curiosity.
Once the current generation second screen apps can do advanced interactive features such as Change Channels, Trick Play, Zoom, Pinch and so forth, TV Remotes become appendage. Oddly Eugene Polley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Polley) the inventor of Remote Control died this year (2012) – heralding the change that is about to come upon us.
In summary, Second Screen Apps have to address the Consumer’s “Consumption Curiosity” to be relevant!
Second Screen Apps thrive if TV Viewer can get “what else” is out there – across content & communication – personal or otherwise.
@vsistla
Posted in Apple TV, Apps, Attention, blackberry, Broadcasters, CE, Channel Surfing, Consumer Electronics, Convergence, Facebook, Focus, GetGlue, HDTV, Home, Information Age, Internet, iPad, iPhone, iTV, Mobile TV, Multitask, Remote Control, Second Screen Apps, Smart Phones, SMS, Social Sharing, Social TV, Television, Texting, Tivo, Twitter, Web Browsing, What else is going, Yap.TV | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
As many of the active LinkedIn users are aware, LinkedIn’s latest feature – social endorsement of “Skills & Expertise” – is in later stage of its beta release and growing like rapid fire in the past few weeks. What’s interesting is LinkedIn brought social validation by your network to this feature they started testing since Feb of 2012 – a social proof for your skills and expertise.
After studying this feature for a few days, I decided to do few social experiments & surveys and my past few weeks of results have been nothing short of eye openers – with respect to user behaviors. While my data set is only limited to my own network, I am quite certain these results would be very akin to majority of LinkedIn users.
While most people endorse as a social convention – “you scratch my back and I scratch your back” – very much similar to how most of us used LinkedIn Recommendations, unlike LinkedIn “Recommendations”, skill endorsements can be removed any time you want after you endorse.
Similar to tweenage kids, I am already seeing immature behavior – where people endorse skills and delete the endorsements if you don’t endorse them back or if you don’t endorse them as many as they endorsed you.
Also, from a sheer value standpoint, an individual’s recommendation for you will always be more valuable than that individual’s endorsement, even though in the long run, # of credible endorsements speak a lot about you than recommendations.
Here are some of my thoughts and conclusions around this social experiment -
- Reciprocity seems like an unspoken rule – This seems to be an overwhelming expectation – with my own direct experience as well as with people I spoke with regarding endorsements. Times when people solicit you to endorse them in return for their endorsements and other times they straight up harras you. This is very much akin to some of the spammers in the world of Twitter – You follow me and I will follow you.
- When it comes to Endorsements, huge egos are at play – I have purposely ignored to see what would happen if I didn’t “endorse back” someone who deserves some endorsements. To my surprise, their original endorsements have been removed after few days! This is a big shocker for me.
- Mutual friends & partiality in endorsements don’t get along – When you rate two peers inconsistently on skills they both pride themselves (like endorse Product manager to only one even though both of them are equally good and skilled at Product management), you start a pissing contest – most of the time without any straight confrontation.
- That’s not a skill I am proud off – re-endorse me! – Thanks to LinkedIn’s auto recommendation of skills based on your profile, most of the people I spoke to were unhappy about some of the skills that were automatically chosen for them. I heard one person contemplating to contact all the people who endorsed him on a particular skill to re-endorse for some other more relevant skill. Another wished he could change the skill text without losing the endorsements for that skill.
So, how can LinkedIn make these endorsements more credible and experience less controversial/painful? While it is too soon to conclude where the crowd sourced endorsements could go for LinkedIn, here are some recommendations -
- Endorsements are not same as Follow! – People should not be endorsing others and then remove them the next day. If they are not sure about endorsing someone, they should not endorse to begin with.
- If you insist on leaving “undo” feature, then at least insist on getting rational feedback on why someone wants to undo their endorsement just a few days after they endorsed that person.
- For Credibility, lets focus on Quality than Quantity- LinkedIn can make these endorsements more credibility by offering rich data around individual endorsements and individual motives behind endorsements. Such as -
- Displaying # of endorsements given vs # of endorsements got will give you some understanding of the value of endorsements.
- Publish like an Endorsement Gradient that is calculated based on – # of endorsements given by those who did not get an endorsement vs # of endorsements given by those who got an endorsement.
- Maybe an infographic about who (as in relationship – professional or personal) actually endorsed to learn why they endorsed – if all your endorsements are coming from your family members or close friends who never worked with you, then we know how valuable your endorsements are.
- Percentile the endorsements by skill or overall – When you crowd source people to endorse, some kind of percentile for individual skill endorsements or total endorsements – based on industry, education qualification, # of years of experience, etc – would be very useful.
- Educate your users that endorsements are not social convention! – This is very important. When someone on the street says hello to you, you say hello back to them – that is social convention. Endorsements should not be social convention. Period! Educate your users with proper “coach marks” and alerts.
As per LinkedIn users, to create more credibility for your endorsements, stick to following principles -
- Tell your endorsors to only endorse if they feel strongly about it. You do the same.
- Tell your endorsors that you will not be reciprocating them back. Reiterate that endorsements should not fit social convention. If they try to obligate you, be polite and say that you don’t know enough about them on that particular skill to endorse.
As per endorsing me, take a wild guess!
@Vsistla
Tags: Facebook, Linkedin, Online Communities, Skill, Skills & Expertise, Social network, Twitter
Posted in Anthropology, Attention, Crowd Sourcing, Customers, Endorsements, Follow, Gamification, Influencer, Innovation, Linkedin, Motivators, Professional Connections, Psychology, Relationships, Social Capital, social networks, sociology, Twitter, User Behavior Data, Wisdom of crowd | No Comments »
Thursday, August 16th, 2012
Gamification methodologies such as “Leaderboard”, “Reputation”, “Badges”, “Rewards” and “Points” are very commonly implemented by startups just to encourage certain user behavior,virality, & increase activity – but not all users respond to these techniques homogeneously.
Gamify at your own peril!
Most of the time, these so called incentives deliver undue results to startups; they are like slow poison – kill user growth; you won’t even know the cause of your user’s dissatisfaction and disengagement;
Many wrong incentives happen to right users.
Let your product and its features become inherent rewards and badges for its users.
Let your user community organize around who gets benefited by the ecosystem and who gets sidelined rather than you implementing fake badges and fluffy leader boards.
For example, on Quora, many reputed and highly successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders volunteer their time and effort in enriching the content for millions of its users.
If that is case with tangible rewards, do you think they would actually get motivated by leaderboards, points and credits?
Lets take Twitter as another example. Look at the behavior patters of highest influencers, thought leaders and game changers. If you study those Twitter accounts, few things are very consistent -
- These individuals have huge twitter followers. They don’t have followers because they are actively using Twitter. They have followers because of what they have done outside/before Twitter ever came into being. For example Beyoncé Knowles has over 5 millions followers but she has only tweeted once so far. J.K. Rowling Twitter has over 1 million followers but she has sent less than 20 tweets.
- These game changers are not motivated by # of followers they can gain in Twitter. In fact some of them don’t even know that they have a huge following on Twitter.
- People who follow them – follow them for that one rare opportunity to hear what they are going to say. Millions of followers follow these “no tweet game changers” because of what they have done outside the Twitter sphere.
In the interest of higher user activity and in the name of gamification if Twitter forced its users to take an active role in their platform – by making all its users to “tweet”, Twitter would lose 50% of its user base, especially most of the “no tweet game changers”.
Twitter allows its community of users to inherently reward and gain value from other users while still not forcing any particular behavior on them.
User behavior accountability is very important for all startups and exposing/displaying some of that data with the community has many benefits to the startup as well as to the community.
Exposed user behavior data should actual benefit the community rather than spam, distract and pollute the environment.
Examples of such pollution including publishing user activity to everyone in your community and share with all social networks without explicit permission from your users.
On the other hand, there is a role for sharing some of the user behavior and profile data. For example Twitter exposes other user’s # of Followers, # of Tweets and other valuable information. Similarly Quora exposes # of Followers, # of Questions and # of Answers. Such data is useful for following reasons -
- Ability for active users to get/gain more visibility.
- Ability for other users to gain from people who are contributing to the ecosystem.
Neither Quora nor Twitter expose/display user data that humiliates or insults any particular user in front of the community. Not only that they never package or repurpose such data to show in a different form like leader board or badges.
Finally they never deprive their users of certain functionality because of such untoward activity. Remember this – when you limit product functionality based on user behavior, realize that many genuine/valuable users might get pulled in this group and that might piss off genuine users who could have otherwise become long term users.
In summary before you define your rewards, reputation points, leaderboards, badges, and or leverage user behavioral data, think of the following -
- Do Not force yours to “act” certain way to increase virality of your user base or promote your brand or increase activity in your platform. I am not saying a rule less community. Criteria for rules should not be to promote your brand(aka virality) and increase fake activity in your platform.
- When exposing your user activity to other users, in the interest of virality, please keep in mind of your user’s privacy. Most common of these is activity feeds and time lines which are common place in most of the consumer apps/platforms.
- Most of the virtual denizens do not need policing – most of the communities figure out a way to reward right behavior without the platform provider needing to police by fake incentives/rewards/leader board. Baring criminal and grossly unsavory situations, most of the time, this rule of thumb applies. Let your community deal with it.
- Not all your users will respond to incentives with same interest. Your incentives, tangible or intangible will dictate the type of users you will attract in the long run.
- Once again, your product, product benefits, its features, the value created by your users to other users should be the core incentives and motivators.
- Never ever tie your “product feature” access to user behavior data. I would use this as a general rule excluding exceptions/fringe cases/unique circumstances.
Tags: Beyoncé Knowles, Data, Facebook, Gamification, Incentives, Leaderboard, Mahalo, Motivators, Online Communities, Quora, Rewards, Social network, Twitter, User Activity, User Behavior Data, User Timeline
Posted in Badges, Customers, Gamification, Incentives, Influencer, Leader Board, Mahalo, Motivations, Motivators, Personas, Quora, Reputation, Rewards, Social Capital, Twitter, User, User Behavior Data | 2 Comments »
Saturday, May 26th, 2012
I love Twitter but I always felt it could do better …..lot more useful if it continued to innovate – and here are my thoughts -
Image via CrunchBase
- Tweet an Email & Email a Tweet: More clearly, I would like to be able to send tweets to an email address and vice versa. Why not? If anything, that seals Twitter’s long term viability. Twitter has built a tremendous platform where its users within the platform are able to communicate one to one, one to many & many to many. Now its time for Twitter to expand their reach into the juggernaut of communication – email!
- Quite a few Real time communication platforms – PubNub, Pusher and like have emerged and are going to create new business opportunities for Brands and Platforms that want to control and maintain their own real time communication platforms. This, while might not impact Twitter’s primary user base or market, Twitter could make some strategic movies in either integrating with these platforms or encourage these platforms to collaborate – so that users from their branded ecosystems could communicate to and fro with Twitter users.
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Image via CrunchBase
On the entreprise front, Yammer, Chatter and like are making big strides and creating new markets. Twitter should not ignore these networks. Deeply embedding with these platforms is in the best interest of Twitter.
- Lastly,Twitter is really a real time LinedIn, in my view. When it comes to relationships,I feel Twitter is creating more value than LinkedIn; Its time for Twitter to start thinking beyond being a broadcast/communication platform. Brand pages concept should be expanded for Twitter users to create a details social profiles – potentially opening opportunities within recruiting space as well.
This blog post is motivated by Chris O’Brien’s comment about Twitter not being a Business ……Thank you, Chris.
Tags: Email address, Facebook, Linkedin, Online Communities, Salesforce Chatter, Social network, Twitter, Yammer
Posted in Chatter, Linkedin, PubNub, Pusher, Real Time, Recruiting, Relationships, social networks, Talent, Tweet, Twitter, Yammer | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
We all live different lives in the eyes of the people around us ….putting up different personas and vibes based on the company we keep at any given time. This is not only true in our real world interactions but also in our virtual worlds. For example, we are lot more laid back in our interactions on Facebook versus on Linkedin. We try to keep those personas to their respective companies/groups – to have some kind of semblance to the relationships we keep and maintain. For example my care and affection toward my family is different from friends which is different for colleagues. We verbalize certain emotions and reactions based on the person and group we are interacting with – and this is same regardless of the medium – virtual or real! So, in real world, we are able to do this judo of keeping our relationship based groups superbly (except for George Costanza in Seinfeld – <a href=”http://youtu.be/uPG3YMcSvzo” title=” -World’s Collide ….” target=”_blank”></a>). We are also to expose those relevant personas to the right set of people. We have been doing this for hundreds and thousands of years.
Thanks to hugely popular micro blogging (Twitter and Tumblr to some extent), each of us have voices to share with the world but how can multiple personas survive in such a ecosystem without an ability to limit our messages based on the groups those voices should reach. For example, I blog about technology, innovation but also care about Cricket, rampant Indian Corruption, macroeconomic conditions, Rugby and on and on. Twitter or Tumblr doesn’t give me an option to limit my commentary to the right groups and people.
Here is the challenge – When you say the same thing to all the people, the value of what you say is diluted based on what you say. Not only that, it impacts the perception and ultimately your relationships (professional, personal & casual).
Google Circles is an amazing way to create the groups based on the personas and your personal criteria for your contacts.
Most of the Social Network Applications such as Hootsuit and the like allow us to “post” to multiple social networks but don’t give you the ability to “limit” your message to certain groups within your social networks.
Most of the specialist social networks such as #Hashable and #StockTwits offer us the ability to “post” just to those communities without posting to Twitter or other networks. This is very good but those comments and conversations are limited in those communities and don’t reach others who are in my network who also care about that space.
I am yet to see a product that marries Google Circles with Microblogging with Hootsuite.
Google Circles + Twitter+ Hootsuite
Is there one out there yet?
@Vsistla
Tags: Facebook, George Costanza, Google, Hashable, Linkedin, Microblogging, Seinfeld, Social network, StockTwits, Twitter
Posted in Facebook, Google Circles, Hashable, Innovation, Microblogging, Personas, social networks, StockTwits, Tribes, Tweet, Tweeter, Twitter, virtual world | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
When Space Shuttle Challenger burst into flames quarter century back, it took 21 minutes for the stock market to dump shares of all the suppliers to the shuttle and Morton Thiokol stock took the biggest hit by the end of the day. All the investors – amateur and pros have dumped Morton Thiokol stock within that trading day but it took months for the investigators to conclude the same. Crowd knew it before the experts could figure out – way ahead.
Enter Wisdom of Crowds!
Wisdom of Crowd is one of the most counter intuitive concepts out there. I revisited this problem when Leigh Drogen (@LDrogen) pitched me his super awesome startup - Estimize – to disrupt sell side research for publicly traded firms.
Just because Morton Thiokol stock took a hit doesn’t mean that all the individuals who avoided to buy its shares are smart or well informed. Chances are many of the traders might have “followed the leader” or in some cases the trend. After all that is the wisdom of the crowd!
We start to question the wisdom of crowd when we pay close attention to each of the individuals in a crowd. The argument goes like – if majority of participants in a sample are not smart enough to make the right decision, even with few smart well informed individuals the average outcome of the crowd decision can be skewed by the “not so smart” lot. This argument assumes that average members of the group do not get influenced by their surrounding in making their decisions such as why is everyone selling this stock, why is there is a trading halt on the stock, etc. Such arguments are based on the individual merits and do not take into account individual decision making acumen regardless of their domain knowledge or Intellectual Quotient (IQ).
For example, members in a crowd making decisions based on their friends, other experts, trend/sentiment, could actually tilt the average towards the right decision. So, one could generate more accurate results if members of the sample know what the previous members have chosen and their reasoning behind their decision.
What’s more important? The individual member’s IQ/domain knowledge or their individual motivations?
I would argue that their motivations are as important as individual’s domain expertise/IQ in a crowd assessment.
Of course the above argument assumes that individuals in a group always make rational decisions and all the true individual motivations are apparent to the rest of the group members. That is a very big assumption but in a very controlled experiment or system, one could turn such assumptions (at least some) into reality.
For example, if we take a sample of traders in stock market – their individual motivations to estimate future stock price is based on following -
(note am only talking about motivations)
- Do they already have a position in that particular stock?
- Is that long or short position?
- If neither, what is their incentive to make an accurate assessment?
- What information do they have and how they can benefit from that information versus other members in the group, and so forth.
* If motivations are aligned, group’s decisions have lowest variance. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it would lead to most accurate decisions.
Each of the group members have their own individual motivations. Aligning the group’s motivations would get you results that are much closer – and with right motivations, average estimate could be accurate or close to accuracy. For example, traders in Morton Thiokol stock all had the similar motivations – to make money and avoid loss. Traders who own the stock want to reduce their losses and the traders who don’t own the stock want to put their money to work somewhere else. Of course some of the traders got into the stock assuming it is a bargain and hoped to make a quick buck the very next day.
* If individual motivations are apparent to the rest of the group members, rest of the group might make rational decisions.
If individual motivations are apparent to other members of the group, individuals can make the most rational decision – but depending on the individual motivations, someone of the members might not make their true drivers apparent with the rest of the group. Such behavior is the pulse of Stock market – since a trader needs another trader to sell off the losing stock and sellers need to conceal their true motivators to buyers of the stock.
For example if traders who are already in Morton Thiokol stock are trying to reduce their losses by selling, other traders who might be aware of such motivations decide not be on the other side of such trade.
Individual motivations dictate their individual actions which will ultimately impact the crowd sentiment about the assessment.
What are the types of motivations within the members of a group?
At a broad level there are group motivations as well as individual/more dispersed motivations.
Individual Motivators -
Within individual motivations, there are at least five types -
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Vanity (intangible benefits) -
An individual could be motivated by vanity of being accurate and correct in crowd experiments. Such intangible motivations could be provided by the system in which such experiments are conducted such as leaderboards, badges, points and so forth. Even if the system doesn’t provide intangible benefits, building a consistent and successful pedigree would also result in future intangible perks and that could become a motivator for some of the individuals.
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Tangible Benefits -
Group experiments and crowd sourcing when tied with tangible benefits could become major motivators for individuals. For example, in case of Jellybean Jar, if the instructor promises to give the entire Jellybean jar to the individual or individuals with most accurate estimate, the quality of estimates will be much higher. Of course, it would help to know the demographic of the individuals to assess the impact of such motivators – for example – the older you are, the less you are interested in winning a Jellybean jar; you might not care for it if you are diabetic or don’t have children; etc – in short – knowing what such tangible motivators mean to the individuals within the group might help rest of the group members in making informed decisions.
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Could careless -
As I was saying in the previous point, motivators should mean sometime to the members of the group to have act on them. For example if the motivators are not attractive enough, the members in the group might not respond to them. So it is as important to know what motivates individuals but also the impact of motivators on individuals to understand the crowd and its decisions.
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Pain versus Profit -
Not all motivators are equal. For example, if a system offers rewards for most accurate estimates the impact of such motivators is far different than when a system punishes the individuals for inaccurate estimates. Also, individuals respond differently in systems that reward accuracy and punishes inaccuracy versus systems that only reward accuracy and doesn’t punish inaccuracies.
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Good denizen -
While hard to find, there are always members in a group who are just passionate to make rational decisions without any external motivators.
In case of stock market and traders, knowing about individual motivators and the impact of those motivators on individuals will help the system assess the crowd estimates and hence present the data in a most informed manner to rest of the users of the system.
Group Motivators -
Now if we move on to group motivations, if groups of individuals are pitted against other groups, and the group’s actions are tied to tangible benefits, “co-operative” and “collaborative” thinking will produce accurate assessments from the group.
Ideally any system or platform that taps into wisdom of crowd should make sure that individual motivators should not counter group motivators lest all motivators will cancel out the group actions.
PS: I limited this blog post to motivators within wisdom of crowd. I will try to address other aspects of wisdom of crowd in future blogs.
Opinions expressed are my own ….
@Vsistla
Ps 2: I have not read book Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki – so, this blog is not a reflection of that book.
Ps 3: I have not done any scientific analysis or research in any of the thoughts – open to debate and suggestions on these thoughts.
Tags: Business, Crowd Sourcing, Decision making, Incentives, Investing, Morton Thiokol, Motivations, Motivators, Stock market, Stocks and Bonds, Thiokol, Wisdom of Crowds
Posted in Analytics, Attention, Business Intelligence, Competition, Crowd, Crowd Sourcing, Information Age, Innovation, Motivations, Stockmarket, Trading, Twitter, Wisdom of crowd | No Comments »
Monday, May 9th, 2011
Image via CrunchBase
Every Twitter user has a specific role, goal, objective and purpose in the Twitter”o”sphere.
Not all Twitter users have same motivations and goals. Some user’s objectives fit “hand in glove” with other users while some other’s conflict with others. Regardless everyone contributes to the Twitter”o”sphere – even those who have not sent a single tweet out into the ether!
At the end of the day, every Twitter user – hopes and seeks to gain something from the Twitter”o”sphere. Some try to gain influence, while others try to show that they are in the know. Some try to beat the establishment in breaking the news, while others try to read that same breaking news. Some try to engage in one word conversations with thought leaders while others be bystanders and enjoy the repartee’ …..
Twitteronomics!
Similarly each of these users have their own motivations and not all the motivations are aligned or equal. They are very subjective to their own roles in the society and goals/objectives. While a student beat’s the news media in tweeting a breaking news, rest of the beat reporters tweet only after they can drive traffic to their publishing properties. While a stock picking guru with a large following will only tweet about it after he took a (stock trade) position, another day trader will tweet to artificially pump their picks. Political party A tweets to smear party B and party B tweets to clean up the mess.
What’s important about all this is to learn about underlying objectives and motivators of Twitter users – before you act on the message. Make sure their underlying objectives and motivators are in alignment with yours before you respond to the message. For example, you should know if a stock picking guru is tweeting about a trade because its a good buy or because he took a position and trying to get the whole world to pump the stock up; if a watchdog group is spreading smut about a political candidate based on facts or because they have been funded by the opposing political party.
Motivators also change based on content and context. For example – messages that are newsworthy – are typically shared right away where as messages with specific individual actionable benefits are tweeted only after the user benefited/acted on them. For example a tweet about a hot airline deal to Hawaii is only shared after the user consumed it or cannot get any more marginal benefit from that news;
There will be times when you might not be able to tell the Twitter user’s underlying motivations and objectives. Its best not to act on such messages until you get similar directions/guidance from other users.
I would define Twitteronomics as the study of Twitter users, their motivators, objectives & goals based on their individual subjective forces, content being shared and the context.
Opinions expressed are mine own ….
@Vsistla
Tags: Influence, Online Communities, Reputation, Trending and Popularity, Tweet, Tweeter, Twitter
Posted in Attention, Customers, Influencer, Motivators, Real Time, Social Capital, Tweet, Tweeter, Twitter, User | No Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Every time we stumble upon a new concept, we extrapolate its use cases across everything we can imagine only to realize that it doesn’t work in every instance! While some other times, we bring those use cases to market much sooner than the market is ready for them. Whether it is the most advanced hard disk drive – Kitty Hawk- from HP in early 1990s, or video streaming in the mid 1990s or online adv supported dot.com ventures in late 1990s, we have left a trail of such untimely ventures in the past.
Welcome to Social TV!Social TV is in its infancy and its good to understand the rules of Social TV based on current market conditions, limitations and end user’s expectations. These rules might not be relevant once the market matures with a different ecosystem than the early days of Social TV.
I define Social TV is an interactive television viewing experience with one or more individuals who are not co-located.
These groups of viewers can not only interact with each other via Television but also with any other devices. In case of certain genre shows such as reality TV or live competition, active social TV viewers can easily influence others in their voting/sentiment.
TV watching has been a fairly lonely experience until now. With connected TVs hitting over 40 million sales by the end of 2011, it doesn’t have to be a only experience. That was also one of the reasons why more youth are spending majority of their time Online rather than watching TV – despite good quality and compelling content.
- When you are in the theater
Social TV is akin to going to movies with a bunch of your friends without Shhing …..and turning off your cell phones while watching.
At least a “pinch hit” substitute for going to movies.
That said, these are the basic rules of Social TV.
- Social TV is not for everyone – Social TV is a very interactive and passive experience unlike traditional TV viewing. Most of us are accustomed to this passive experience and might not take to Social TV experience as some of the younger generations might. So, there will be some significant parity between how each generation approaches Social TV. Industry should be mindful of such generational parities in building their Social TV platforms.
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- Social TV is not for every type of content/show/movie – Just the way not all types of content evokes similar/same reaction and engagement, Social TV is not for every time of content. Social TV is ideal for content that is inherently debatable, passionate with high emotions and opinionated.
- Social TV is most compelling when it gives a strong enough reason for the audience to change their viewing patterns and behavior! – Social TV is not just about chatting and interacting with other viewers. Social TV should be able to change the user behavior – at its fundamental level. For example- People who are fans of a show who watch the show in “time shift mode” should find compelling reasons to watch the show “live” along with thousands and millions of other fans. That would dictate the success of Social TV.
- Social TV with well-thought through privacy options is very critical. Privacy will be one of the cornerstones of Social TV. Your entertainment viewing options would have profound impact on who wants to be your friend and how close they want to maintain their friends with you. Social TV adds another source of information – about you – to your friends. Your reputation, persona, personality, priorities, values and principles get re-evaluated in the eyes of the world. So, privacy becomes that much more important.
- Social TV should be non intrusive – should not spoil the experience of watching the show or movie. Done right, Social TV should not negatively impact the viewing experience. If anything, it should enhance it.
- Social TV gets interesting when there are two or more sides/teams/parties – aka – Sports is the most apt genre for Social TV. Yes – Social TV thrives when there are sides, teams, emotions and passions. Sports content is most suitable for Social TV interactions.
- Social TV is not just socializing while watching TV ….its also bringing TV to social networks and online communities. Social TV brings conversations from online/web to your living room. Your Online communities enter your living room.
- Conversation is the engine between social TV – content is just a topic at hand! That’s correct – Social TV enables the conversations, heated and passionate debates in real time instead of waiting until the Water Cooler moment the next day morning.
- Image by dennis -Nothing to talk at Water Coolers – via Flickr
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- Social TV thrives on the principle that we often look to others when we make media consumption decisions. We are less hardwired about these decisions than life changing/serious decisions
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- We are heavily influenced by the people in our physical space than remote. So, your social interactions vary based on who and how many are around you while watching TV. You might interact lot more with your remote buddies when you are watching TV alone versus with someone in the room. As George Custanza from Seinfeld would say, the “World’s Could Collide” that might lead to interesting scenarios - based on type of conversations and your company in the living room.
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- People care deeply about how they look to others! Social TV is no different – if users don’t have appropriate tools to control how they are perceived by others, Social TV will die. Humans self-censor and we cannot live without it ….
- Social TV is most suited for Sporting Events, Live Events and Reality Television – Based on above rules and scenarios, I feel Social TV is most suited for Sporting, Live and Reality TV Content - in that order.
Tags: Arts, Conversations, Interactive, Interactive television, Privacy, Reality Television, Seinfeld, Social network, Social TV, Sports Content, Streaming media, Television
Posted in Apple TV, Apps, Attention, Broadcasters, Customers, Facebook, Home, Influencer, Information Age, Innovation, Internet, iTV, Over the top, Privacy, Real Time, Reputation, Social Capital, Social Grooming, social networks, Social TV, sociology, Twitter, virtual world | 1 Comment »
Friday, August 20th, 2010
2nd generation Social Network – Facebook (I consider Friendster to be first generation) is acquiring a tiny little start up which only tracks what you are doing at this moment ….. I wonder if this is FB’s way to hedge against growing popularity of Twitter by building some in house tools and resources in case Twitter becomes too hard to deal with …..or a precursor to launching their own micro blogging feature that is not so tightly intertwined with FB site?
Regardless – activity and stream have become such an important aspect of online and virtual communities – proving that being in the know and sharing are such important aspects of your existence! Gone are the days when you call or visit someone to find out what they are up to, I guess!!!!!
http://blog.hotpotato.com/post/982892868/weve-moved-to-facebook
http://hotpotato.com/
Tags: Hot Potato, Microblogging, Status
Posted in Attention, Facebook, Information Age, Internet, Reputation, Social Capital, Social Grooming, social networks, sociology, Twitter | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Inspired by Steve Masur’s (@masur) Tweet -
This is true for individuals as well as companies and businesses. This will be the fact in any environment where there is freedom of thought, democracy and capitalism are recognized and rewarded.
Peaking a bit into our own history,
There were 1000 Printers within 15 years of Gutenberg Printing Press discovery -
According an archived article by New York Times, there were 448 Car Manufacturers in the US and about 40 companies have folded from 1912 through 1916.
Within 2 years of iPhone AppStore, almost a dozen companies have announced their own versions of AppStores from the likes of Qualcomm, Verizon, Intel, Blackberry, and Nokia.
This is very similar to classic idea filtering we all go through as part of ideation. The only difference is, in this case, true entrepreneurship, determination and execution gets tested during the filtering process. No one should get discouraged by their competition or first movers in any space. Had it been the case Facebook wouldn’t have existed in the light of Friendster, Google in the shawdows of Yahoo! and Linux in the trails of Microsoft.
As Geoffrey Moore says in Dealing With Darwin, “Free-market economics operate by the same rules as organic systems in nature”.
—-
Opinions expressed are mine own.
Tags: Darwin, Entrepreneurship, Evolution, Geoffrey Moore, ideation
Posted in Anthropology, Entrepreneurship, Google, ideation, Innovation, Twitter, Yahoo | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Thanks to my friend Colin Crawford’s (@ccoc) RT of @ramblingman, I caught up on this article about disruptions Telegraph has brought to Newspaper industry in 1845 and how the newspaper industry built their relevance in the changing communication landscape of Telegraph in mid 19th century.
If I were to build analogous comparisons between both innovations – Telegraph and Internet – and their impact on Newspaper industry, this is how it would look.
Unlike the Economist editor, I think the News paper industry will also survive along with news business – just in a brand new form with new rules. I talked about the threat of substitutes in my previous blog. I think that threat can be turned into opportunity for news publishers.
I think the biggest threat to the news paper industry can be turned into their partners and promoters – in the world of Twitter, Search and Internet in general.
PS: Opinions expressed are my own.
Tags: Google, Innovation, Internet, News, Publishing, Real Time Analytics, Telegraph, Twitter
Posted in Competition, Digital, Google, Innovation, Internet, News, Publisher, Real Time, social networks, Substitute, Telegraph, Twitter | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 14th, 2009
I wonder how many of you have caught the Op-Ed piece by NY Times in January of 2009 on turning Newspapers into non profit institutions.
and now, this ….
Excerpt -
Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp, and Time Inc. said they plan to jointly develop a common software standard that will be used as the basis for delivering highly interactive versions of their products to a range of digital devices, such as e-readers, smartphones and laptops.
They also plan to launch a digital storefront—Apple-style–from which consumers can purchase and download titles.
End Excerpt -
What’s stopping all the studios to take on the Internet – mainly to thwart Youtube and its clones? Why aren’t they creating similar platforms or devices? (In fact many studios from the likes of Disney have tried this route in the past – but failed)
What’s stopping all the record labels and music artists in banding together to create similar platforms and devices? (Is Vevo shaping to be one such effort?)
Are these the signs of Internet and WWW being devoid of any valuable content for free?
While I leave those three questions for my future blog, if established businesses choose to wall garden their valuable content, won’t substitutes crop up?
I can imagine in the early days of kings and royalty, if a musician or a magician or knight banned from offering their services in the royal palace, they would seek other kings or cities far away from the royal influence to continue their passion and skill. Similarly, since not everyone gets to attend the royal opera, rest of the country found ways of entertainment in street corner theaters and local talent.
Fast forward by 1000 years …..
Black tie Operas and Symphonies have made way for …… On Broadway …..that paved way for Off Broadway …..
Horse riding made way for mule riding …..
People didn’t choose Off Broadway or Mule riding by choice. When brands and institutions offer services and products that are not in line with a broad spectrum of customer base, substitutions pave the way for those unmet customers.
When something is in scarcity, substitutes always fill the needs of the larger demand ……
Critical question for publishing industry is – will their market return or grow from the abysmal state by this new approach …..it all depends on the intrinsic value of the content these premium publishers provide versus what’s available for free.
When a company denies an option to a potential customer – by creating pricing barriers, the customer has only two choices – cough up the dough or live without.
Substitutes – can provide a third choice!
If cheaper alternatives exist, customer will choose the substitute.
When Newspapers thrived, they thrived because of the exclusive content their editorial and reporting staff produced. In that era, only the reputed journalists are given first hand exclusive access to breaking news and the respective journals monetized their brand cache and exclusivity.
In the Twitter world, one premium journalist is competing with 1000 Twitter Users, 10,000 Tweets and 1,000,000 retweets!!!!
For Newspaper industry, Google is not the threat but the millions of Twitter users.
While this new strategy might certainly help the Newspaper industry to some extent, I am willing to bet that the cash cow left the barn!
No use trying to step into the same river twice as its not the same anymore …..
Opinions expressed are my own.
Tags: Google, News, Publishers, Retweet, Retwits, Substitute, Twitter
Posted in Google, News, Pricing, Publisher, Substitute, Twitter | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 14th, 2009
If you have not read Cory Doctorow’s fascinating book – Magic Kingdom – and/or Tara Hunt’s run away hit book – The Whuffie Factor – you must be thinking of something uncouth when I say “How big is your Whuffie?”
Whuffie is a brand new currency ……..well, you might not be able to buy your next Latte ….at least not right away ….but certainly in a few years ……..
Whuffie ….is your online reputation …..your influence …..your social capital …your clout …and your personal bling bling……
Want to know your Whuffie? Just go to thewhuffiebank.org and check it out.
TheWhuffieBank.org just launched few months – is one of the 50 TechCrunch finalists – is a non-profit venture started by – Santiago Siri, Martin Anazco, Martin Mac Donell, Diego Meller, & Emiliano Kargieman.
If you want to know more about Whuffie enthusiasts and its activities via Meetup, please join this brand new group http://www.meetup.com/NYC-Whuffie-Group/
Already, there are over 5 million people checking their Whuffie and I am currently ranked somewhere in between 2 Million and 3 Million.
May your Whuffie grow by leaps and bounds,
Vamsi Sistla
NOTE: Opinions expressed in all my blogs are my own and not of anyone else including my employer.
Tags: Attention, Cory Doctorow, Facebook, Influence, Reputation, Retwits, sms, Social Capital, Tara Hunt, Twitter, Whuffie
Posted in Attention, Facebook, Influencer, Reputation, Social Capital, social networks, Twitter, Whuffie | No Comments »
Monday, October 26th, 2009
In geek speak, I am saying that Dunbar # has less to do with # of Social Network Connection one might have to generate meaningful relationships ….
When I read Seth Godin’s blog about Dunbar number this morning, it got me thinking ……
Seth’s blog
Dunbar postulated that the typical human being can only have 150 friends. One hundred fifty people in the tribe. After that, we just aren’t cognitively organized to handle and track new people easily. That’s why, without external forces, human tribes tend to split in two after they reach this size. It’s why WL Gore limits the size of their offices to 150 (when they grow, they build a whole new building).
Facebook and Twitter and blogs fly in the face of Dunbar’s number. They put hundreds or thousands of friendlies in front of us, people we would have lost touch with (why? because of Dunbar!) except that they keep digitally reappearing.
I am not qualified to comment on Dunbar’s reasoning with respect to human “neocortex” limitations to maintain social relationship, but I feel Dunbar was trying to say something else and has less to do with number of (useful and productive) social connections one might have in the 21st century. Somehow his core research on tribal formations and groups got dragged into the current generation social networking paradigms.
Going along with the assumption that Dunbar’s # can be used in the context of current generation Social Networking ……. here are my thoughts.
According to Wikipedia, Dunbar got to this number with this kind of research/analysis, amongst others …
Dunbar’s surveys of village and tribe sizes also appeared to approximate this predicted value, including 150 as the estimated size of a neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements; 200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline’s sub-specialization; 150 as the basic unit size of professional armies in Roman antiquity and in modern times since the 16th century; and notions of appropriate company size.
Regardless of whether an individual is able to build a cohesive relationship with all the 500+ Linkedin or Facebook connections or not, lets analyze Dunbar’s analysis.
1. 150 is the mean number concluded based on historic tribal group sizes – from the hunter-gatherer societies.
That is fundamentally a flawed argument – because the limitations, challenges and ways of life are so different between the hunter-gatherer society and the 21st century.
- In that era people got out of their beds (realistically patches of grass in their caves) for survival and sustenance and current generation human to grow up the Maslow’s pyramid.
2. Dunbar is talking about 150 as the size for the groups to have incentive to “remain together”.
- Current generation social networkers are not planning to “remain together” when they add their friends. Eschewing the real motivations and reasons for someone to “add” new friends(maybe in another blog), I am certain it is not to “remain together”.
3. Dunbar concludes that 42% of an individuals time is spent towards social grooming and nearly all the people in these tribes are physically close.
- While being physically close was a must in the tribal era, but it is not necessary in the 21st century to build and maintain value add relationships. Thanks to technological innovation, social grooming should not take 50% of your day’s activity.
4. Dunbar does conclude that “language” as one of the tools for early humans to do social grooming. In fact he concludes that because of language, humans have a bigger Dunbar number than primates. This again proves my point that – on top of language, we have many other tools – that let us build “valuable” social relationships – albeit virtual – potentially increasing the Dunbar limit of 150.
PS: Please note that above data points about Dunbar are taken from Wikipedia.
PS: I have not read Dunbar’s book – Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language.
Disclaimer – Opinions expressed are my own and not of my employer.
Tags: Anthropology, Dunbar, Facebook, Groups, Linkedin, social networks, Tribes, Twitter
Posted in Anthropology, anti-social, Dunbar, Facebook, Influencer, Linkedin, Social Grooming, social networks, sociology, Tribes, Twitter, virtual world | No Comments »
