Email’s Changing Role in Social Media: Digital Archive, Centralized Identity

Alex Iskold wrote a great post recently, Is Email in Danger? This quote lays out the premise of the post:

From the 20th century mail was a fundamental form of communication. The invention of electronic mail (email) changed two things. It became cheap to send mail, and delivery was instant. Email became favored for both corporate and personal communication. But email faces increasing competition. Chat, text messages, Twitter, social networks and even lifestreaming tools are chipping away at email usage.

When it comes to email, there are some parallels to what happened to snail mail with the spread of the Internet and email. The biggest thing is this:

Snail mail found an unexpected opportunity for growth with the rise of the Web.

Email will lose out on some of its uses, but there are some interesting possibilities that will emerge.

The Disruption of Snail Mail

The diagram below depicts the disruption that occurred to snail mail.

I’ve kept the disruption focused on the effects of the Internet. In other words, no fax machine or FedEx in here.

Back in the day, the mail system was the way you got a variety of important communications to other people. Our grandparents wrote letters. L.L. Bean mailed us the stuff we ordered via their catalogs. All our bills came through the mail. We were notified of things like jury service.

With the arrival of the Net, a good portion of snail mail’s portfolio was assumed by other technologies. And it’s had an effect. Here’s a quote from a 2001 General Accounting Office report on the future of the U.S. Postal Service:

Although it is difficult to predict the timing and magnitude of further mail volume diversion to electronic alternatives and the potential financial consequence, the Service’s baseline forecast calls for total First-Class Mail volume to decline at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent from fiscal years 2004 through 2008.

Pretty bad, eh? Electronic alternatives were evaporating the revenues of the post office.

But something else was out there which would help offset these losses in first-class mail: e-commerce. With the growth of the Internet, people got more comfortable shopping online instead of going to their local mall.

Those packages had to get to shoppers somehow. That’s where the U.S. Post Office shined. It already had the infrastructure to get things from a centralized place to multiple individual residences. What got disrupted were the trucking companies who moved merchandise from manufacturers to retailers.

Sure enough, the U.S. Postal Service saw a rebound thanks to online purchases, according to Web Designs Now:

In 2005, revenue from first-class mail like cards and letters, which still made up more than half the Postal Service’s total sales of $66.6 billion, dropped nearly 1% from 2004. But revenue from packages helped make up for much of that drop, rising 2.8%, to $8.6 billion, last year, as it handled nearly three billion packages.

And the dark mood at the U.S. Postal Service headquarters brightened quite a bit:

“Six years ago, people were pointing at the Web as the doom and gloom of the Postal Service, and in essence what we’ve found is the Web has ended up being the channel that drives business for us,” said James Cochrane, manager of package services at the Postal Service.

There is a lesson here for email.

The Disruption of Email

Email is undergoing its own disruption:

Again, similar to the previous diagram, I’m focusing on the web here. No mobile texting as an email disruptor, even though it is.

As Alex outlined in his post, the easy messaging of social media is supplanting the email messages that used to be sent. I haven’t seen any surveys that show the decline in person-to-person communications because of email. But my own experience reflects the migration of communications to the various social media.

• LinkedIn messages
• Facebook messages
• Twitter
• FriendFeed comments

As Zoli Erdos pointed out in his blog post Email is Not in Danger, Thank You, wikis are growing as the basis for sharing documents. They provide better capabilities than does email: wider visibility, versioning and searchability.

But it’s in notifications where email’s future is bright. Many of us are members of social media sites. As we go through our day, it’s hard to stay on top of activity in each one: new messages, new subscribers, new friend requests, etc.

Where is the central clearinghouse of my multiple social media identities? Email.

Email is the permanent record of what’s happening across various sites. This is actually a very valuable position in which to be. Here are two examples where email helped me:

• After I wrote a post about nudity on FriendFeed, I lost some FriendFeed subscribers. I know this because my number of followers went down. There was one person in particular I wanted to check. This person wasn’t on my list of followers, and I thought, “maybe wasn’t subscribed to me in the first place?” Checked email, and I did indeed have a follow notification from this person a few weeks earlier. So I knew I’d been dropped.
• I inadvertently deleted a comment to this blog. On wordpress.com, once deleted, the comment is not recoverable. I was in a bind. But then I realized I get whole copies of comments to this blog emailed to me. So I went to Gmail and found the comment notification. I was able to add the comment back by copying it from my email.

As snail mail had to adjust to the rise of email, so too will email adjust to the rise of social media:

As the number of social media sites and participation in them expands, email will find new growth and value in being the centralized notifications location.

Email = Centralized Identity Management

Much has been written about email being the ultimate social network. The basis for this is your address book and the emails you trade with others. But might there be another opportunity for email?

If email has all these subscription and message notifications, doesn’t it potentially have a role in helping you manage your centralized identity? Gmail could map out my connections across various sites. Find those that are common across the sites. Gauge the level of interaction with others.

Even add APIs from the various sites and let me send out communications from email. Suddenly, email’s back in the communication game as well.

I’m just scratching the surface of what might be possible here.

What Do You Think?

Email’s primary role as a communication medium is diminishing. Many of us are enjoying the easy, contextual basis of communicating via the various social media sites.

But like snail mail before it, email has interesting possibilities for what it will do for us in the future.

What do you think?

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See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Email%E2%80%99s+Changing+Role+in+Social+Media%3A+Digital+Archive%2C+Centralized+Identity%22&public=1

What Interactions Do You Want from Social Media?

Mapping the different social media interactions to human anatomy:

Now…where to go to get those interactions? An incomplete list follows.

Ideas, opinion, information:

• FriendFeed
• Twitter

Share photos, videos

• Flickr
• SmugMug
• Zoomr
• YouTube
• Facebook
• FriendFeed

Music you like:

• Last.fm

Chit chat

• Twitter

What are you feeling?

• Facebook
• Twitter

What are you doing?

• Twitter
• Facebook
• FriendFeed
• Upcoming

What are you eating?

• Twitter

Where are you?

• Brightkite
• Twitter

Personally, my interest is in ideas, opinions and information. But some photos and chit chat are also nice.

How about you?

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See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22What+Interactions+Do+You+Want+from+Social+Media%3F%22&public=1

Smart Workers Will Figure This Out: Social Media = Career Advancement

Do you think you’ve got more to contribute to your organization than you’ve had a chance to show? I’ll bet you do too.

There have been a fair number of posts about the adoption rate of web 2.0 inside companies. In my previous work doing enterprise 2.0 product marketing for BEA Systems, I can confirm a growing interest out in the corporate world.

But interest from the higher-ups is one thing. What makes the employees actually want to wiki/blog/tag/comment/tweet?

I came across this comment on an old Nick Carr post, Web 2.0’s Numbskull Factor:

Successful adoption [of web 2.0 inside companies] is likely to be driven by the usual three support cycles involved in effective change: achieving personal benefits from using them, seeing peers achieving the same benefits and continuous management support over the 24-36 months required to embed them in business as usual.

Graham Hill, PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Graham’s three elements are spot on. In this post, I want to discuss the first two cycles he discusses. The third cycle is for another post.

Personal Benefits Come in Two Flavors

In a company setting, personal benefits mean one thing:

How will it improve my career?

I know that’s a bit crass. But I think it speaks to what energizes us to work. You want recognition that you can “bring it”.

Two ways such an outcome occurs with social media/web 2.0:

1. Makes me better at my job and strengthens relationships with colleagues
2. Others with the power to advance my career start to form a good impression of me

In terms of improving your work, web 2.0 apps offer a variety of benefits. That’s actually going to be future post.

The second benefit is one of reputation.  I think all us who work in big companies know that reputations are vital to career advancement. You form impressions of others, which frames your view of their work. And most assuredly, others form impressions of you.

In the typical work environment, you interact with others via email, phone, team meeting. Contributions are made, but not recorded. Knowledge of your effort is silo’d and much of the good stuff we do is invisible.

Social media changes the game. As projects run through wikis, a permanent record of your contributions is created. Your comments are visible and searchable, greatly increasing their value relative to verbal contributions or email. A blog post with a good idea is accessible everywhere, at any time. It also can be shown as the spark for that killer product the company introduced. Your tagging of internal data is like Louis Gray sharing posts from Google Reader. People love your tags.

You also get to step outside of your assigned duties, and weigh in on the big issues facing the company. Always felt like you’ve got a good bead on areas the company needs to address? But your manager and peers aren’t really interested? Blog about it. Tweet about it. Comment about it. Establish your cred. If your thinking pans out, you’ve got a basis for demonstrating your contributions.

The other thing is this. Your contributions via social media need to help others. As you offer insight, decisions and ideas, others will find value in your contributions. Well beyond the normal four walls of that cubicle you’re sitting in. You can build relationships with geographies, business units and departments that are not normally in your work sphere.

To recap the benefits of social media for you:

• Work better
• Get beyond relying only on the annual review, create an electronic trail of your work
• Show you can contribute to larger issues affecting the company
• Establish relationships with people outside your daily social circle
• Build - better yet, control - your internal reputation

Peers Getting the Benefits

This one is pretty basic. You know those mass internal emails calling out an individual or team for doing something really outstanding? Don’t you love those?

Well, social media will have some of that. You’ll be on the company portal or wiki, and you’ll see a complimentary message for someone’s work on it. If it’s anything like what I see on FriendFeed or Twitter, there will be several of these messages. A great way to give the “atta boy” or “atta girl” to someone’s work.

And everyone else seeing these complimentary messages will start to get the hint. My colleagues are starting to have an impact. I’d better participate.

Final Thoughts

Workers already have a host of channels with which to establish their reputation: project teams, emails, meetings, water cooler. For some, adding web 2.0 apps is just another thing they have to worry about.

Smart employees are going to see things differently. These tools offer the chance to better contribute, to get a better read on the pulse of the company and to better control one’s reputation. A chance to change the rules for career advancement.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Smart+Workers+Will+Figure+This+Out%3A+Social+Media+%3D+Career+Advancement%22&public=1

Social Media Effect: Improve Customer Service Before It Hits Twitter

Customer service is the new marketing and you have to Engage and Respect your customers.

Joseph Rodgers, Filter 2 Evangelist, Joseph Rodgers’ Internet Marketing Blog

The above quote actually has two meanings in my mind. The first meaning is to find customers who are having problems with your product or service, and engage them out in social media. Smart companies are doing it more and more, with great examples from Louis Gray, Colin Walker and Sarah Perez.

The second meaning for me is this:

Social media puts more power in consumers’ hands than ever before, and companies need to recognize that the messages their customers post will in time become as valuable as TV commercials, online ads, and magazine and newspaper ads.

Customers should not have to make a complaint on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or other social media. Rather, companies need to become more aware that the way they treat their customers is going to be broadcast, with positive or negative effects on their brands.

In my previous jobs, I know that customer service tended to be that backoffice operation.  Some guy somewhere worked on that. Not something into which many in the organization invested a lot of thought. The function is not considered strategic, and many companies figured they could outsources the work.  A 2006 article from Business 2.0 pointed out the problems with outsourced customer service.

A 2005 Gartner study predicts that 60 percent of organizations that outsource customer-facing processes will see significant numbers of frustrated customers switching to competitors.

And that was before the rise of social media. Now a customer that is dissatisfied isn’t just switching to a competitor. They’re going to tell their social networks about it.

What this means is that companies need to realize that their operational cost-center approach to customer service needs to change. A couple examples tell the tale.

Adobe Customer Service

Adobe makes some killer products. The Adobe PDF is everywhere. Photoshop continues to be quite popular. Adobe is keeping the photo processing at the leading edge. Adobe Air is the new technology for rich Internet applications. All good stuff, and clearly Adobe is maintaining its market leadership position.

Which makes it such a shame that its customer service is so weak. Here are the most recent six tweets on Summize.com for “adobe customer service“:

Now when you’re producing kick-ass products, perhaps you can get away with bad customer service. But if viable competitors gain traction and deliver comparable products, what people say about your company will make a difference. Who wants publicity like that above? And those 5 different users have 637 followers on Twitter.

Let’s look at a company that has more favorable than unfavorable publicity.

Amazon Customer Service

Amazon seems to have a particularly good (not perfect) focus on customer service. Here are the most recent six tweets from Summize.com for “amazon customer service“:

Amazon.com does this as a matter of course, and has seen the benefits. The New York Times’ Joe Nocera related his personal experience with Amazon’s customer service in January 2008. Money quote:

There is simply no question that Mr. Bezos’s obsession with his customers — and the long term — has paid off, even if he had to take some hits to the stock price along the way. Surely, it was worth it. As for me, the $500 favor the company did for me this Christmas will surely rebound in additional business down the line. Why would I ever shop anywhere else online? Then again, there may be another reason good customer service makes sense. “Jeff used to say that if you did something good for one customer, they would tell 100 customers,” Mr. Kotha said.

Final Thoughts

Customer service has not traditionally been sexy. It reflects imperfections in the product, service or in the explanations for how to use it. Who wants to deal with that?

But as companies start to see their customers talking about them in various social media, it will become apparent that all customer touch points are chanves to burnish or tarnish their brands.

Customer service groups…please step into the spotlight.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Social+Media+Effect%3A+Improve+Customer+Service+Before+It+Hits+Twitter%22

Knowledge & Innovation: The Journey Is as Valuable as the Destination

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a pretty traditional background in terms of product management. I was an assistant buyer for a retail chain, I marketed as an investment banker, and I’ve had over seven years in the software world. From that work, I’ve gotten a good feel for the process that occurs in producing an end result.

1. Start with the idea
2. Bounce it off your boss and peers
3. Write it up
4. Email it around
5. Sit down with people
6. Re-work the idea
7. Produce the final version (PRD, white paper, pitch deck, etc.)

For most of us, step 7 is the prize, the definition of what’s valuable. All else is a pain in the ass.

But having spent some time on FriendFeed, I’m starting to recognize the value of steps 2 - 6. The conversations and debates to get from Point A to Point B are actually incredibly valuable.

The problem isn’t the work of getting from Point A to Point B. The problem is the methods we typically have inside the workplace. I suspect few corporate cultures are set up to make the journey as rewarding as the end result.

What do I mean exactly? Well, take the iteration process for a given initiative. You send an email, get single replies back from several folks. You sit in a meeting, and there’s this vague group meeting dynamic where someone with the most passion (right or wrong) ends up controlling the meeting vibe. Maybe you do a series of one-on-ones.

The problem with these methods is that the conversations are limited. Debates take the form of comparing the feedback of different people. I know this. I’ve lived it. You ever try to coordinate the Outlook Calendars of various people? In a series of meetings? It’s a nightmare.

So what has FriendFeed taught me? That there is a way to improve this process. That the journey to  Point B can actually be fun and engaging. And that it has value. Companies should take heed.

Here’s what I would love to see. Companies adopt ways to enable asynchronous conversations around ideas that are searchable, engaging and radiate greater benefits than just producing a final result. Wikis are good, but they too often have an emphasis on maintaining versions of documents. They lack the vital conversations that go into the various versions of a document.

What are the benefits of companies than can figure this out? Plenty! Here are three that come to mind:

• Context for the end product
• Other ideas come out of the process
• Deeper understanding of others’ views and knowledge

Let me break these down a bit more.

Context for the End Product

When consuming the content after it is completed, all someone knows is what they read. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The document says that System A will do Action 3 after receiving Data #. It’s a straightforward recitation of what people are supposed to know.

But if you have context for why things are spelled out the way they are, I argue you’ve got much more informed workers.

I’m personally not satisfied with only reading something. I always want to know why something ended up the way it did. Especially when you’re reading something new, that background is vital context.

But too often, all workers have is the end product. Which means they end up with half the story, and not enough background to really grok the content.

Other Ideas Come Out of the Process

A rich conversation and debate around ideas and projects can become an innovation jam. As people jump in the fray to discuss something, inevitably other tangential ideas come flying out.

In an earlier post FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Compatibility Index, good discussion erupted out on FriendFeed (here, here). If that post was Point A, I’ve already written about Point B, which was an app built by felix to automatically calculate your likes compatibility index.

But there was another idea thrown off from the discussions: how well represented are women on FriendFeed and social media? Mark Trapp wrote Friendfeed Like Factor and the Gender Divide which put some numbers and thoughts to this question. Which got its own discussion going.

I’m quite sure an energetic conversation by engaged employees has the same effect - unplanned ideas come out of them.

Spread some innovation jam.

Deeper Understanding of Others’ Views and Knowledge

It’s funny to say, but I feel like I have a better read on some folks through FriendFeed than I did on people with whom I actually worked.

Why? Because work in some companies is fairly isolated. You may trade some emails, do some calls and attend status meetings. But the fertile soil of engagement is lacking. Aside from missing the benefits described above, employees miss the opportunity to learn more about one another.

Why does this matter? The better you understand your colleagues, the easier your job becomes. People develop instinctive ways of working, and a shorthand language built from prior interactions emerges. Long time employees do this, but it takes while. And new employees have to pick up the signals as best they can.

What I like about this approach is that employee social networks just emerge naturally via the interactions. A more formal social network approach isn’t needed.

Gimme Some FriendFeed Inside the Enterprise

If I could get a FriendFeed-like experience inside a company, I’d be thrilled. For all the reasons stated above. Plus it would just be fun.

I’ve said before that FriendFeed is a social network built around ideas. And the typical work for a lot of folks is also around ideas. Seems like there’s potential.

There would need to be some new features to make it the experience more pertinent to work versus play. But that’s a follow-up post.

Final Thoughts

As stated earlier, I’d like to see companies adopt ways to enable asynchronous conversations around ideas that are searchable, engaging and radiate greater benefits. Things like wikis are a good start as collaboration vehicles, but they lack the interaction aspect that has emerged as the killer feature of social media.

The nice thing is that new start-ups are popping up all the time. I look forward to seeing the ones that take in the next wave of innovation.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Knowledge+%26+Innovation%3A+The+Journey+Is+as+Valuable+as+the+Destination%22&public=1

Weekly Recap 061308: Social Media Exposure

Social media means exposure…exposure of your life…exposure to people interested in and knowledgeable about subjects you like…exposure to things that might offend you…exposure for your company…

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Had fun this week with my post Nudity on FriendFeed: What Are Some Sensible Rules?…I wrote it for two reasons…(1) to get a temperature check from FriendFeed members as to where they stand with regard to nudity in their streams…(2) to point out that users have some control over their exposure to such things…

Michael Hocter, whose Flickr Favorites entry prompted me to write the post, reports that he gained a lot of new FriendFeed subscribers…and he’s sticking with the nudes (NSFW)…

I also learned that showing a topless model in your blog post will drive site visits better than anything…usually, my posts have a greater number of subscription views than site views, but this post was the opposite…a lot of click-throughs to the blog…

One concern…the word nudity in the post will get me some unwanted attention from odd spammers…thank goodness for Akismet…

*****

Interesting development…FriendFeed now has a ‘block’ feature…as I write this, the FriendFeed guys haven’t posted anything about it yet to their blog…but here’s what the text says when you use the ‘block’ feature:

After blocking this user, you won’t see any of their posts or comments on FriendFeed, and they won’t see anything you post. If they’re subscribed to you, that subscription will be removed.

Here’s how Bret Taylor describes the philosophy of the feature: “Blocking is not a filtering mechanism, but an abuse prevention tool.”…this is going to come in handy…

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NBC News’s Tim Russert passed away today, from a heart attack…I enjoy following politics, and when I lived in Washington D.C., I couldn’t get enough of it…Tim Russert served up outstanding questions, a respectful demeanor and a tenacious pursuit for answers to his questions…I also enjoyed his book Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons…

Amazing array of items related to Tim Russert on FriendFeed…blogs, direct posts, news articles, tweets, photos, videos…

*****

Jeremiah Owyang asks Does the President need to know how to use a Computer/Web?…NO!…there are so many things that go beyond our technology world, why would we stress this?…give me an authentic leader, who can surround himself with a talented team, who has positions with which I agree, and who can drive an agenda at home and abroad…computer user is pretty low on my list of requirements…

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How FriendFeed has altered one of my behaviors…I often share only three items at once in Google Reader…three is the maximum number of shares that display with titles in FriendFeed…do more than that, and you get two blog titles visible, all others relegated to the dreaded “[N] more” link…

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Caleb Elston released new features this week for his company Toluu…those are great, but I thought an equally cool story was how Caleb leveraged his blogger relations and presence on FriendFeed and Twitter to spread the word…

I added up the Technorati Authority of the eight blogs that covered the new features…the combined Authority of 872 is the equivalent of getting a Top 5000 blogger to write about you, but even better…those eight different posts were bouncing to the top of FriendFeed over and over for each blogger’s set of subscribers, meaning the exposure was not dependent on one blog post getting traction…something to think about for future marketing…

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If you haven’t yet, make sure you check out Louis Gray’s post this week about The Five Stages Of Early Adopter Behavior…my favorite is Stage #4 “Sense of Entitlement, Nitpicking and Reduced Use”…I’m not an early adopter type (I still have a mini-brick Sprint cell phone), but I’ll have to watch myself for these stages…

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Weekly+Recap+061308%3A+Social+Media+Exposure%22&public=1

Smart Social Media Marketing: Caleb Elston and Toluu

Interacting with bloggers called vital for business

Brice Wallace, Deseret News, June 7, 2008

Toluu released several new features on Wednesday. The features are cool, and are covered in another post on this blog. Which leads to the point of this post…

Caleb Elston did a masterful job of getting coverage for his fledging company Toluu. By himself, with no PR firm. How?

Caleb is a participant in social media. He’s established relationships and credibility with bloggers, and with others on FriendFeed and Twitter.

In a recent post, I asked Will Brands Figure Out FriendFeed? The idea is that rather than rely only on standard press releases and marketing campaigns, companies should look at engaging customers out in various social media, with a focus on FriendFeed. Establishing these deeper relationships pays dividends:

• Reliable audience for updates
• Viral distribution of company information
• Customer advocates
• Feedback from the market, with the ability to follow-up on questions/comments

Caleb has all of these advantages through his efforts in social media. How involved is he? On FriendFeed, he subscribes to 278 people, has 248 Comments and 244 Likes. On Twitter, he’s following 479  people and has 734 updates. In other words, he’s involved. Which is actually pretty amazing considering he has a day job on top of building out Toluu.

Yesterday, his involvement paid dividends. He reached out to bloggers the day before to let them know of an upcoming release for Toluu, and asked us if we wanted to cover it. Well, since I know him already, saying ‘yes’ was easy. He got eight different bloggers to write about the new release:

The combined Technorati Authority of those eight blogs is 872, which is like getting a top 5,000 blog to write about you. Many of the bloggers are active on FriendFeed, which combined with their existing subscribers, meant that a lot of people saw the news about the new features.

Caleb describes the payoff:

All I can say is wow. Yesterday was an amazing day for Toluu, you helped us shatter every metric we track. We had a record number of pageviews, visitors, signups, new feeds, connections made, invites requested, and time spent on the site. All I can say is thank you.

He even picked up technology celebrity Leo Laporte as a user. Said Leo, “I’m in dire need of a feed reset!”

Admittedly, as a small start-up with limited resources, this is all he could really do. He can’t crank up the PR, marketing and advertising machine.

But that doesn’t devalue the accomplishment. Caleb managed to get people interested in his company thanks to his active involvement in social media.

Big companies…are you listening?

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Smart+Social+Media+Marketing%3A+Caleb+Elston+and+Toluu%22&public=1

Nudity on FriendFeed: What Are Some Sensible Rules?

An interesting issue cropped up on FriendFeed. Nudity. Specifically, some of the Flickr pictures that come through on FriendFeed contain topless or fully nude models. It’s an interesting tension between user generated content and community norms.

This is an issue that has been raised numerous times in the United States, where community norms are more conservative. Europe seems to have been celebrating the human body since the Renaissance.

On FriendFeed, there’s a good discussion around a (not safe for work) set of Flickr favorites by Michael Hocter. The set includes pictures of topless and nude models.

There were several people applying ‘Likes’ to the set, including me. Hey, I liked the pictures, what can I say? They are artistic and beautiful.

The way FriendFeed works is what has caused some discomfort. If you subscribe to Michael Hocter, you’ll see his photos come through your feed. If you don’t subscribe, you won’t see his pictures initially…

Until someone to whom you subscribe Likes or Comments on them. Then they hit your FriendFeed stream via the friend-of-friend feature. As Michael Hocter himself says:

I photograph nudes, so I tend to favorite nudes on Flickr. A lot of them don’t show up here because most of us nude photographers mark our photos Moderate or Restricted. But sometimes when the photographer doesn’t do that, they end up here. I’m sure the majority of people who subscribe to my feed are aware of it and don’t mind, but the friend-of-a-friend feature is problematic.

This problem is somewhat unique to FriendFeed. You can publish photos on Facebook, but only people who are your friends will see them.

One female FriendFeeder who is subscribed to me, edythe, had this comment with regard to the photos:

yeah, i have some mixed feelings about the topless women. we had a discussion a couple of weeks ago about nudity appearing in flickr favorites. no one liked it when it was male nudity. I don’t object to this. i just have mixed feelings about it. (yes, i know i can hide it. )

Being an adult means you get to see things that you wouldn’t have when you were a child. I don’t want Victorian winds blowing through the feeds on FriendFeed. But I also recognize that there are sensible guidelines that govern the type of pictures that are appropriate.

A Few of My Own Guidelines

So I propose a few guidelines for nudity on FriendFeed:

I know it when I see it. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about hard-core pornography, “I know it when I see it.” Both content submitters and those who Like or Comment need to use some common sense as to what constitutes porn. It’s particularly incumbent on those who Like and Comment to be reasonable.

Artistic vs. exploitive. This is one that probably varies by person, and really good arguments can be made on both sides. Here’s one way of thinking about it. Michael Hocter photos = artistic. Penthouse photos = exploitive. Playboy pictures = in the eye of the beholder. Want a better description of artistic? Here’s female photographer Dawn M. Armfield:

I don’t photograph nudes (obvious to anyone who follows my photography), but I really appreciate great nude photography, male or female. The contours of the human body are just as beautiful as any other shapes we photograph.

Sexual acts. Nope, don’t go there. Over the line.

Gender. Male or female models.

Anatomy. All normally visible parts of the human body (e.g. no goatse).

Frequency. Oh, this is a good one. If you’re an originator of content (e.g. Flickr favorites), I don’t think there should be any restrictions on how often you add content. Fire away as much as you want. If you’re a Liker or Commenter, use common sense in your frequency. Your subscribers probably aren’t looking for a high volume of nudity. If they want that, they can subscribe to the originator.

Don’t Be Afraid to Like or Comment. One of the great things about FriendFeed is you can give feedback to content submitters. I just said that Likes and Comments shouldn’t be overly frequent. But don’t stop giving feedback altogether…that would be another form of censorship.

Use the Hide function. Those who are offended by nudity should make good use of the Hide function. Assuming folks follow some of the guidelines above, the initial view of the pictures hopefully won’t cause cardiac arrest. After the initial shock, click that Hide link. No more of the offending pictures.

Final Thoughts

The hell if I know whether these make sense to others. I’m not a First Amendment public policy expert. I’m not a professional photographer. I’m not a woman who might feel excluded or offended by interaction around these pictures. But they make sense to me, a regular dude.

What do you think?

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See this item on Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22nudity+on+friendfeed+what+are+some+sensible+rules%22&public=1

Will Brands Figure Out FriendFeed?

No one wants a relationship with their mustard.

NeoAtOgilvy COO Greg Smith, via Kara Swisher at Boomtown

Two posts caught my attention. Kara Swisher has a nice post titled Social Ads Not Cutting the Mustard? In the post, she breaks down the issues that brands have in being part of the social media world. And Jeremiah Owyang hypothesizes about How Brands Will Use FriendFeed.

The two pieces do a good job of highlighting the challenge of social media for companies. Social media is authentic, it emerges from everyday people, it’s governed by its own community rules, it’s random and it’s an ongoing conversation. How do profit-oriented companies requiring measurable results and consistent formats deal with this?

The general thrust of companies’ social media efforts is to create enthusiasts who will turn around and do viral marketing on behalf of the company. Word of mouth (WOM) marketing. It is a big deal, and it would be wrong to suggest it doesn’t exist. It’s quite powerful when it happens.

But a problem with most WOM marketing is that it’s too dependent on big hits that catch the imagination of people. The fantastic YouTube video. The funny widget for Facebook and MySpace. The imaginative web page.

Those types of mega-hits are incredibly important, and are a requirement for every marketer’s toolkit. The problem is when a company’s social media strategy only relies on the big hits.

Jeremiah talks about how companies should engage users on FriendFeed:

The one caveat is that brands will need to be part of the discussion that happens among these social tools, as what’s really important is the people that are talking, debating, and discussing what your company is announcing. For those that get it wrong, no one will subscribe, no one will talk about it, no one will ‘like’ it and spread it to their network. So be active in the comments, conversations, and an open manner.

He lays out a good philosophy that companies should follow. Don’t simply rely on the big hits. Get out there and engage people. Become part of the community.

I’m wondering what exactly does a company’s participation on FriendFeed look like? Jeremiah points to Ford Motors as a company with one version of social media press releases. So how would Ford use FriendFeed?

To Do’s for Brands on FriendFeed

Create a Ford Motors room: Every company should have a destinaiton on FriendFeed. As an individual, my presence on FriendFeed is defined by subscribing - both by me and to me. A company should have a more permanent home than just being in a list of subscribers.

Find your initial audience: The everyone search is a good start. Start with people who are talking about your company, good or bad. Search on ‘mustang‘. Search on ‘F150‘. Search on ‘Ford Verve‘. Subscribe to these people.

Like and Comment: If Ford comes across someone’s interesting content, throw a Like their way. Jump in with some comments. Here are a couple examples.

First, there’s this Tweet:

Going to test drive F150 tonight. We must be crazy. Prius won’t pull horse trailer though.

Great opportunity for Ford here. In this case, someone from Ford could add a comment like, “Yeah, we made the F150 pretty powerful for those big jobs. I can get you set up with a special visit at your local dealership if you want.”

I’d also avoid laying the smack down on the Prius, tempting as it is for Ford. Criticism based purely on a profit motive is a fast way to undermine authenticity.

Next, here are some Flickr pictures of a ‘67 Mustang:

Ford occupies a unique place in Americana, and this picture taps into that. Ford would definitely want to Like these Flckr photos. Add a comment too: “Those 67’s were classic cars. Takes you back to a different time, doesn’t it? We have several of them here in the Ford museum. One thing we’re realizing here is that people still love that style, and look for the new 2009 model to reflect a lot of what made that car great.”

See? Ford has engaged a person. The interaction caused the pictures to pop into others’ streams. And Ford got to plant a seed for what’s coming out later in the year.

Engage on topics that fall outside pure product: Establish a presence beyond just talking about specific products. It will help the company’s social media ‘cred’, and make it more interesting for people to follow. The downside? Your critics will find you, and you can get stuck in a nasty throwdown. So choose your topics carefully. Rising gas prices are a recurring topic on FriendFeed and other social media. A lot of people would want to know what Ford is doing in terms of gas-powered fuel efficiency, as well as in gas alternatives, such a hybrids.

This is a chance for Ford to blow it, or to shine.

Here’s what blowing it looks like: “We continue to believe that California’s efforts to enact higher gas mileage requirements are wrong.” Say that, and you’re just itching for a fight. People will no longer focus on Ford the car company. They’ll focus on Ford the antagonist.

Here’s what shining on FriendFeed looks like. “We see the market segmented into those for whom gas mileage is important, and those for whom capacity and power are important. And our view is that the fuel efficiency segment is growing fast, and we are responding to that.”

Stick with it: This type on engagement is a long term play, with benefits that will be realized over years rather than a quarter. There will be direct benefits as consumers learn more about companies. And companies will get a lot of publicity for their efforts until it becomes mainstream and everyone is doing it.

Final Thoughts

I’m no brand expert, but these are my thoughts on how companies could use FriendFeed, and other social media as well. Done right, this type of marketing could emerge as an important part of  companies’ engagement with the market.

What do you think?

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See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22will+brands+figure+out+friendfeed%22&public=1

Three Big Questions Facing FriendFeed

I write about FriendFeed. A lot. Someone told me they wondered if I was employed there. Nope, just really enjoying the service.

Then I see a couple of bigger names in the online world, Robert Seidman and Steve Rubel, expressing their view that FriendFeed feels like it’s going to be the next big thing.

And I realize I’m not the only one with great enthusiasm. It’s growing.

As FriendFeed continues to acquire new users, innovate and roll out new features, it’s inevitable that some big decisions will need to be made. I want to discuss three of them here. Shall we?

1. How Will FriendFeed Balance Signal, Discovery and Noise?

This question really hits on two fundamental elements of the social media experience:

• Distribution of information
• Consumption of information

Managing information is a BIG deal. It’s hard to get the balance right - when do users really need a piece of info, when are they in the mood for a bit of discovery and at what point do they tune out because of information overload?

Google’s success was in recognizing the need for better information access, a process they continue to refine and improve. The thing with Google is that you search when you have a defined need. User intent is known. It’s what makes Google’s advertising so successful.

FriendFeed has a bigger challenge. Intentions vary by person. By hour. There’s time the river of content needs to deliver a hard dose of signal. Other times, you need a break from some work you’re doing, and you want a bit of discovery. But above all, please recognize what I consider to be noise!

So FriendFeed has to figure out the user intention, a burden that Google doesn’t have.

They’re off to a great start with these:

• You choose the people to whom you subscribe, providing the first cut on topics you’ll see
• Excellent Hide function
• Rooms to isolate discussions around topics
• Ability to view top content by likes, comments and other signals

This will be an ongoing war for FriendFeed, particularly as the service grows beyond its information junkie user base.

2. How Much of a Social Network Does FriendFeed Want to Be?

FriendFeed states their mission as follows:

FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

A simple goal. And yet, early users of FriendFeed are finding the social network aspects of FriendFeed to be compelling. I personally have established a completely different network of people on FriendFeed from what I have on Facebook or LinkedIn. I didn’t just port over my friends from those services, I established new connections.

When I was training for my first marathon back in 2003, I regularly participated over on Runner’s World message board. A group of us were running the California International Marathon in Sacramento, and an online bond formed. We conversed on the message board, and decided to meet up in Sacramento. How’d we do it? One guy posted his disguised email address, and we all emailed him. We then did the email thing to coordinate.

FriendFeed is above that level of social networking right now, but not by a whole lot.

FriendFeed has the potential to be a very powerful social network, one rivaling Facebook and LinkedIn. Why? Facebook is your network from school. LinkedIn is your network from work. FriendFeed is your network based on stuff that interests you. That’s what makes it so powerful.

Remember the interest in felix’s FriendFeed Likes Compatibility Calculator? People were really curious about who they match up with based on shared interests.

A few things come to mind as “best of” elements of social networks:

• Direct messaging (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all provide this)
• Profile page - express yourself, complements your content, Likes and Comments
• Status - for those times when you’re just not around or you need to get personal

Want to take it further? I can see FriendFeed becoming a more robust professional network than LinkedIn. You like all those comments and content? Maybe you’d look at that person as a potential hire. How about calendaring? Coordinate events, and it’d be a real nice complement to the Rooms.

How far does FriendFeed want to go in social networking?

3. How Will FriendFeed Make Money?

Ah, the money question. It’s inevitable and ultimately must be addressed to justify the venture capital.

I can see two possibilities for making money at this very early stage in the company’s history:

• Advertising (duh…)
• Business uses

Social media advertising has potential, but is not without its issues.

FriendFeed has a a few things to address and going for it when it comes to advertising. Users’ affection for the Refresh function means a lot of page views, but how much time will they spend on the ads. There’s a field of white space off the right, so real estate for ads won’t be a problem.

But FriendFeed does have two good weapons in its arsenal when it comes to advertising:

1. A search function with a ton of potential (and search is the killer advertising feature)
2. A mountain of data about what users’ interests are

As for business uses, my first thought when I saw the Rooms feature was that it could be a great thing for companies to use. Employees can trade thoughts on ideas and projects via Rooms. In fact, that’s how the FriendFeed guys use Rooms:

It started when we wanted a better way to share feature ideas and product plans with each other here at FriendFeed

I can also see media companies adding Rooms functionality to their sites. A much richer way to let readers discuss content than the current commenting systems.

Final Thoughts

I’ve written plenty about FriendFeed, and I’ll probably write more in the future. Partly because it’s such a compelling site for me. As a full participant, I can see a lot of stuff going on. And it doesn’t hurt that the site is getting hot in the blogosphere.

But there’s something deeper here as well. In FriendFeed, you can see some of the bigger issues that all social media have to deal with. For instance, I’d written a series of posts about the noise issue on FriendFeed. My most recent post stepped away from being FriendFeed-specific, and took a look at the broader issue of signal vs discovery in social media. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb took it a step further with a great post Why Online “Noise” Is Good for You, pulling in scientific studies on the value of noise and discovery.

FriendFeed is tackling some meaty issues, as described above. Since they’ve got traction, a talented team, an innovative spirit and an attentive audience, their efforts to address the big questions will be a terrific study of the larger social media realm.

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See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22three+big+questions+facing+friendfeed%22&public=1

Weekly Recap 060608: Ferris Bueller Was Right

The week that was…

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“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Ferris Beuller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Consider that line in the context of the recurring demand for more signal…

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FriendFeed rolled out a new feature to let you see the content that has risen above the noise…Personalized recommendations let you see the stuff that has the most likes and comments, but only for content provided by your network…actually, upon closer inspection, there’s one other component to the ranking…from the blog post: “based on your friends’ comments and ‘likes’ and other signals”…other signals?…hmmm…wonder what those are…

It’s a very cool feature, with some real potential…early benefit seems to be finding the good stuff missed during extended time away from FriendFeed (like more than 2 hours)…it also gives you a personal meme as well…

Robert Seidman has a good post describing potential pitfalls…

What winds up happening is that people are finding “best of” items so easily that they naturally are and adding more “likes” and comments to them which causes them to jump to the top of my regular FriendFeed stream (even outside of “show best of”). I don’t love this.

I noticed this too…older posts with lots of likes/comments suddenly were showing up in my stream again…because people using the “best of” feature were liking and commenting…let’s see how the dust settles once people get used to it…

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Robert Scoble, on the value of noise…

If you don’t have noise, how can you tell what is signal?

Stop and think about that for a little while…

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I’ve been harping on the noise and filter issue for a while…I was really stoked to see ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick pick up the issue with a beautiful blog post Why Online “Noise” is Good For You…a few good points Marshall brings up…

• Scanning quickly over large quantities of roughly relevant information can turn up invaluable resources, opportunities, context and contacts.
• The ability to recall passively collected information that was gathered purposelessly in the past and put it to use in the future is a particularly powerful form of intelligence.
• Some people worry that being exposed to too much information will lead to not remembering very much of it. Scientists say that’s not necessarily the case, though.

There’s a lot more there, you’ll kick yourself later if you don’t read it…

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Plurk “karma“…gonna wait on this one…

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Had a chance to visit the FriendFeed office this week during their open house…if you’ve seen Robert Scoble’s Qik video, you’ve got a good sense of their office space…big, spacious, plenty of room to grow…they actually share the space with another company…

Paul, Bret, Kevin, Casey, Ross, Dan, Ana (bios here) were all just as nice as can be…I’ve actually never gone to one of these start-up open houses before, is this some sort of Valley tradition?…one thing I got from talking with Paul was his interest in the distribution and consumption of information, which is what FriendFeed is all about…

Got to meet a few folks I’ve seen online…Ginger Makela, Adam Lasnik, Adam Kazwell…Louis Gray was there, and he had this awesome shirt that has his blog graphic on it…it actually made it easier to identify him if you’ve never met him before…as Chris Brogan’s been writing, you need to establish your online brand (even in offline meetings)…

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See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Weekly+Recap+060608+Ferris+Bueller+Was+Right%22&public=1

Social Media Consumption: You Want Signal or Discovery?

In yesterday’s post A Definition of Noise, I talked about two types of social media consumers. Those who have a strong desire to receive only signal (signalists) and those who are looking for stuff outside their own interests (discoverers).

I thought it would be interesting to explore this a little further. Shall we break it down a little more?

Where are you on this table?

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See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22social+media+consumption+you+want+signal+or+discovery%22&public=1