Ah the magic of social networks, where a click can make a difference between “sending world peace” and shameful blindness to the global issues of this planet.
Can Facebook really save the world? The Send World Peace application is at least trying, and makes me wonder what is the impact of such labeling on users behavior. Is the ignore button harder to press in that context?
Back in 2007, when Evan Williams (the brilliant and no bullshit founder of Twitter, Odeo, Blogger) took the stage at Leweb3, the host asked those with a Twitter account to raise their hand. Around 90% of the audience did, giving the impression that the whole planet was being twitterized despite recent reports that the service has only 1 million users.
This latest “demonstration” left me with a bitter sensation. I was getting increasingly worried by the growing distance between the web 2.0 community’s perception of the world and the reality I see on the “field”. Twitter is used by the community of influencers (who gather around this service because it allows them to update the world about their oh-so-important whereabouts) and they, as we all do, succumb to the temptation to generalize and say “if me and all my friends use it, everybody uses - or will use - it”.
Problem is that Twitter is really not making it to the masses (as the one million users proves) and anybody doing a quick and informal survey will find. Kara Swisher from All things D tried:
I conducted a little experiment among more than 100 folks […] all of whom were quite intelligent, armed with all kinds of the latest devices (many, many people had iPhones, for example) and not sluggish about technology. […] And so I asked a large group of people–about 30–and here is the grand total who knew what Twitter was: 0
FriendFeed: 0
Widget: 1 (but she thought it was one of the units used in a business class study).
Facebook: Everyone I asked knew about it and about half had an account, although different people used it differently.
In other words, confirming for me what I wrote last week about the intense obsession with the hottest new services like Twitter and FriendFeed, in the echo chamber of Silicon Valley, and how no one else cares yet.
Early adopters come across two kinds of products: those that are not yet known, have a universal twist, and will make it big. Then there are the products who will remain confidential because they address the needs of a community that functions differently from the masses, a community that communicates more, that is looking for more social feedback (how many followers do I have?), that has different priorities than the day to day internet user.
I feel like Twitter is an early adopters tool more than a mass tool. Time might prove me wrong, but after using it for a few months - forced by the frequent posting on blogs and remarks of friends - I still have a hard time finding a point of being on the receiving end of an unfiltered brain-dump.
As I try to come up with a theme for the first Asian edition of LIFT, I am somehow getting a strong intuition that we are leaving the revolutionary phase of the Web industry, and about to enter a more boring and less innovative period (Bruce Sterling won’t disagree with me). A number of weak signals seem to be announcing the end the cycle of hyper innovation that marked what will one day be remembered as the early days of the web, or the 1994 - 2006 period.
At Kinnernet, I jokingly told Thomas Mygdal that the Silicon Valley is facing Detroit-a-zation. What were once innovative and agile startups are increasingly becoming pachyderms hampered by overgrowth, internal politics and shareholders pressure. The big CEOs - once mavericks celebrated and envied by the whole business community - are becoming bus drivers. Eric Schmid’s days probably look more and more like the ones of Marcel Ospel or Carlos Ghosn, and with each hour passing Google’s organization inches closer to the IBM model rather than the edonistic company proned by the Zentral Intelligenz Agentur. Web companies employees have too much work, need to stay later than their bosses, have to raise their profiles to get good reviews, etc.
While in Korea, I systematically asked my interlocutors what they thought were today’s “hot” topics. Their answers: ubiquitous computing, urban technologies, robotic toys, green technologies, open source objects, etc. The web? “It was interesting seven years ago!” It is now a commodity, and this has a deep impact on the industry and on its culture. What happened?
I am sure I could come up with more reasons but let’s hear your opinion first. Do you feel like it is the end of a cycle? Why? Is the web just another industry where success depends more on having an MBA than a revolutionary idea and a taste for risk?
Update: ChangeWaves says the Infotech sector is not yet geriatric. We can resume normal breathing.
The Swiss TV (probably one of the country’s most advanced organization when it comes to multimedia, and I don’t say that because they are partners of LIFT but because theirs shows are available online a few minutes after they have been aired) is launching the second edition of the Pacte Multimedia, a national contest to promote the best multimedia projects in the country. Who will succeed Mixin? Maybe you, enroll and you might win 50′000CHF to pursue your vision!
[…] any sufficiently advanced read/write technology will get used for two purposes: pornography and activism. Porn is a weak test for the success of participatory media - it’s like tapping a mike and asking, “Is it on?” If you’re not getting porn in your system, it doesn’t work. Activism is a stronger test - if activists are using your tools, it’s a pretty good indication that your tools are useful and usable.Ethan Zuckerman’s Etech talk on Digital Activism
Nice rule of thumb ;)
Ken Burns, an American director who produces documentaries on wars, speaks about the power of images in a Telerama interview:
“Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, during the first gulf war. Late September, PBS [The remarkable American public channel] aired my movie on the American civil war - eleven and a half hours of black and white images, only Americans killing other Americans. Before the broadcast, 90% of viewers surveyed said they were supporting the war against Saddam. After, the appetite for war had diminished by a quarter.”
That is one good reason to root for TV. I am not sure he would get eleven hours to make his case on YouTube. I hear his new piece, The War, is a must-watch documentary on the second world war - the “good war” - with dozens of veterans telling their intimate stories and suffering.
Search, social networks, blogs, and RSS […] are driving more and more users deep into today’s Web properties. Now, the majority of consumers bypass a site’s home page completely. […] Every page is a home page.
Avenue A Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report (via Guy Kawasaki)
Quite an interesting report, concluding (among other things) that pay walls are finished, convergence is not happening, and digital “has become the darling of the media and advertising worlds”.
It is funny to see the web’s oldest buzzword - “home page” - disappear after such a long life. Time as come to say good bye, and the clock is ticking on other terms like “blog” or “wiki” as every single site seems to open up to two ways interactions with visitors.
Biiiiiiiiig breaking news this morning: Facebook loses 400,000 UK users in a month
Facebook has suffered its first drop in numbers in 17 months of successive monthly gains. That’s according to online usage research firm Nielson Online, which claims the number one social networking site experienced a 5 per cent drop in unique users between December and January from 8.9m to 8.5m.
Facebook’s biggest rival, MySpace, also experienced a 5 per cent drop during the same period, with a unique monthly user figure of five million. Third-placed and teenage-focused network, Bebo, suffered a 2 per cent drop between December and January, with figures of 4.1 million unique monthly users.
Now the whole “I told you so” and other “the end of social networking is near” can start. Truth is Facebook is getting boring, and now that we all have our 500+ friends it is getting harder and harder to find a reason to go and visit that site. But a big question remains: where do all the bored workers go next?
I was on TV yesterday (video here, be nice) talking about Google’s domination, and came up wondering who is still clicking on ads these days. Conventional wisdom used to say that “new users click on ads”, but now that we are all turning into savvy internet veterans with years of surfing under our belts, who still thinks that the results on the right ARE the non-sponsored results?
A new study released this morning came up with a few interesting findings about ads-clickers and tells us that “heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad click”.
The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers. Further preliminary Starcom data suggests […] shows no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked.
If the other 50% are indeed fake clicks then we are headed towards a nice crash of the current Internet monetization system.
Interesting discussion during Dave Brown’s Generation Y workshop at LIFT08. It seems asking a few teenagers how they use the Internet is always going to produce a few findings like these:
We need such a panel on stage one of these days.
