The Ecology of Twitter

What’s the cost (i.e. time) of following someone on Twitter? What is their “grade” and just how popular are they and how many people have blocked them or not followed them and well, who cares? Is it relevant at all? More than anything, these questions may point to some growing trends in Social Media usage and services. The ecology that Twitter has spurned begs some interesting questions and sparks some thoughts on the evolution of Social Media.

Why do we need to understand this evolution? Because understanding the evolving Social Web is critical to understanding global economic shifts, consumer spending and saving and political changes. The Social Web is the enabling technology  that will have an impact on our society even greater than the first Social Media tool – the printing press; which lead to the Christian Reformation. I point out Twitter simply as a reference point, and this topic could go very long and very deep.

Taking a look at what one might call Twitology (or spin-off apps leveraging Twitter that form a transaction economy of information) we can see that Twitter, the service  pundits only a year ago pondered it’s worth on, has now grown an ecology just like the iPod, only in the Social Web, with no apparent monetization plan. So what is the ecology of Twitter?

Without compiling a whole list (some of which can be found here) in this entry, suffice to say we’ve counted over 30 different spin-off applications that feed off of Twitter. Other microblogs like Plurk and Identi.ca have not seen this kind of uptake spin-off. Clearly Twitter has become a phenomenon. Services range from seeing your own and others ranking, feeds to Smart Phones, tracking topics, graphing trends and sentiment ranking. Whole conversations take place with Twitterers using the “#” sign followed by a letter/number sequence which can be followed in real-time or later.

We see this as an indicator of how we’re still learning a new set of communication skills. We marvel at the stories of Twitter on saving lives or as a terrorist tool and a social safety net. These are all small and early indicators that Twitter and similar tools are playing a role in an evolving style of community the world hasn’t quite seen before. So it’s not the technology – that is just an enabler – it’s how we’re using that technology in our daily lives and how services like Twitter will hekp us shift how we organize and foment change locally, regionally and globally.

How do you think Twitter will evolve?

(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Partner)

Who’s Analysing Who?

There are over 80 (at least) Social Media analysis tools on the market, perhaps closer to 150 worldwide. About 95% are focused on marketing and PR usage. So that’s agencies and companies monitoring  Social and Traditional Media for buzzwords, trends and reputation management. Such monitoring is becoming increasingly valued by businesses and governments – some call this Big Brother.

But even as participants we’re watching each other as well. Take Twitter Grader for example. People seeing where they “rank” in terms of popularity with Twitter. Plurk awards Karma Points based on your participation. Then there’s tools like MyBlogLog from Yahoo! Friendfeed gives you Stats and Posterous tells you quickly how many people have viewed your posts. You can put a widget on your blog for RSS feeds so others can see how many get your posts via RSS (whether they read them or not seems to be irrelevant.) I’m sure there are others I’ve left out.

So we’re all watching each other. We’re looking at each other to determine how popular a blogger or microblogger is. Blogger and social media researcher Dan Zaralla discussed this to some degree in a recent blog post calling it Social Proof – essentially proof of who you are and the “value” of your content. We call this Social Value with our clients.

So why all this analysing? Does it matter? The why is easy for businesses and government; to understand what’s being said to make better marketing, PR and HR decisions on their reputation and brand efforts. For consumers or individuals, as Dan points out, it’s Social Proof that others think you know what you’re talking about, that you’re relevant to the topics at hand. This is a form of social acceptance behaviour, validated through the number of tools that quantify participants. Essentially this two-way monitoring is akin to how we behave socially in school, at work or at parties and other social functions. I’m sure much more can be covered on this topic, but for business and participants in Social Media, it shows how the Social Web is evolving and developing peer recognition, and there are implications.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)

How Will The Slowdown Impact Social Media?

Will the economic slowdown impact the Social Media space? Certainly. One respected writer, Rafe Needleman has already put his picks in on who might fail in the coming months. There are bound to be failures as investors look for gain, not pain. But is that such a bad thing?

Our initial take at MediaBadger is that as the economy was overheated, many stocks overvalued and the housing market way overvalued, so are many Social Media applications overhyped and underserving. Media channels have become extremely fragmented in the past decade and even more so in the past two years, with the plethora of Web 2.0 applications. There’s just too  many services in certain segments; over 350 blogging services, over 200 social bookmarking applications, over 700 community services, 500+ ecommerce apps and hundreds of fil sharing, video sharing and photo sharing services. Somethings gotta give as they say.

While Web users may have breached 1 Billion, that doesn’t mean all are using or need Social Media tools and services. What we’ll likely see is a culling of services. Some will be bought out at fire sale prices by the larger players, others will just shut down and some will limp along.

We expect that microblogging like Twitter and Plurk (who’s Karma will that hurt?) may suffer sooner, along with video and photo sharing sites that aren’t under the wings of a Yahoo! or Google. Many a Social Media service have been struggling to find their ideal revenue model and falling up short.

An upside for Social Media though is that people tend to “cocoon” in harder economic times; spending more time at home and consuming entertainment media, including the Web. We expect to see a rise in Social Media use (sales of home electronics outpace other consumer products still) as this cocooning occurs. This may help some start-ups on the verge and others that survive to do better than might be expected.

We still don’t know where we’ll end up in terms of recession and for how long, but a culling of Social Media services isn’t so bad. The best will survive and may survive well, marketers will have an easier time reaching their target audiences and consumers will dictate what they want while learning to say “no” to more frivolous services. Either way, the next 12 months will pass quickly and it will be an interesting time.

What do you think will happen?

Can Social Media Tools Catch A Killer?

On Saturday afternoon of September 27th, a 14 year old Canadian girl, popular daughter of a Pastor was horrifically slain walking in the woods near her house in Edson, Alberta. It is believed there may have been two boys as witnesses who ran for help. Sadly, help arrived too late to save her.

The towns residents, understandably, are in an uproar. Many are speaking of tracking the murderer down themselves – vigilante justice. The RCMP are urging the residents to wait and let them work. In an interesting move, the kids have engaged a Social Media tool to try and scare the killer out of hiding. Text Messaging.

Text messages via mobile phones have been traveling around the teens network within the town, according to a story on CBC national radio this morning. The kids are using TXT SMS messages to hopefully scare the murderer with warning messages that the killer would be safer to turn themselves in than be caught by any of the parents on the hunt.

Could a Social Media tool play a key role in catching a killer? Perhaps. It may not be the only way, but it shows that as a society, we are continuing to find innovative ways to use Social Media services to advance our lives and society. Such action is purely ad hoc with no formal organization. A common purpose united a group to use a device and service that didn’t exist 10-20 years ago to participate in a collective action supporting their small community. These teenagers would have had serious limitations on their ability to help in solving the case. Now they are applying peer pressure in the hopes of playing a part in bringing a murderer to justice. Once the killer is caught, perhaps we will learn if this application of Social Media helped?

The Fragility of the Social Media Economy

Recently, Facebook changed it’s UI design. So did Twitter and FriendFeed. These are 3 of the top Social Media tools. All have developed an ecosystem around them, and none more so than Facebook. This shows a serious fragility in the Social Media Ecosystem – that one popular platform can have profound economic impact on the many businesses building off the primary in that ecosystem.

Just like auto makers that have begun to shut down and re-tool plants from trucks to smaller cars, there is a profound residual impact on suppliers to those big auto makers. A good article in All Facebook (an unofficial blog about all things Facebook) shows the surface of the impact of a UI design change in a popular Social Network. Apparently there are mixed reviews where some application developers and advertising engines have seen an increase in traffic/impressions while others have seen significant decreases.

Regardless of the nuances of the changes and traffic impacts, what is clear is that the Social Media economics remain fragile and reflective of any emergent industry. A similar set of occurences happened when Google first started changing its search algorithms and Page Rank rules.

While we have little doubt that Social Media and the Social Web will continue to see significant growth, a key challenge ahead will be how the economics will work. Just like the real-world, a major “manufacturer” can have a profound impact on the attendant companies building services and products off the back-end.

Unlike the real-world however, changes in Social Media services can be extensive and destroy business models overnight, while creating whole new ones. This creates some serious concerns over business model sustainability when it comes to adjunct services and products relying on a key player. The overall impact is still less than when an auto maker closes a factory putting thousands out of work, but there is still an economic impact.

Those providing consulting and advice on leveraging Social Media services will have a challenge to constantly understand and adapt to the quickly evolving economics of the Social Media ecosystem. Stability is unlikely to occur in the short term and we anticipate increased volatility as some services collapse in the coming months with monetization pressures. This issue also shows the power of a popular Web service. With Facebook making such arbitrary changes with little warning and forced compliance like Google, how these issues can be better managed will also be interesting. But that’s another blog entry.