Social Dying
The Way It Was Then
8:00 AM
Celebrity sent to hospital
10:00 AM
Celebrity pronounced dead
6:00 PM
Local TV announces death
Next Morning
Story printed on page 9 of the local newspaper
The Way It Is Now
8:00 AM
Celebrity sent to hospital
9:30 AM
Celebrity news site announces celebrity death
9:31 AM
Traffic on Twitter begins to explode with suspicions of drug related cardiac arrest
10:00 AM
Celebrity pronounced dead
10:30 AM
Rumors of other celebrity deaths spread on Twitter and other sites
10:45 AM
Celebrity tributes to dead celebrity begin
11:35 AM
Cable news networks announce death on network
12:00 PM
Cable news networks announce death on their web sites
RIP Rocky Mountain News
I’ve never held, in my hands, a copy of the Rocky Mountain News. I’m a tree-hugger and happy to watch the disappearance of more printed materials. BUT…I love media, and more importantly, I love people. Today we mourn the loss of an online publisher as well, not just a printed paper. And more importantly, we empathize with even more people who have lost their jobs.
If you haven’t had a chance to watch the video and slideshow on the website, http://rockymountainnews.com, you must. It will tug at your heart strings. The video is hosted by a couple now unemployed, with young children. The slideshow includes photos of employees who brought their kids to work, getting the bad news with their children on their lap. It really hurts.
While printed newspapers are definitely on their way out, digital news has hit an extreme lack of innovation, with many of these news sites turning into complete commodities. They all look the same. Header, standard banner ads, list of news, maybe some video, disappointing search, and maybe some links out to other sites. The content is largely the same as the content available on competing sites. The holy grail of local continues to be elusive. I hope the news industry gets innovating, because we need to save real journalism. UGC is taking off, but it’s no replacement for news bureaus with real journalists.
Rocky Mountain News and rockymountainnews.com, rest in peace.
News in 2015
Will newspapers still exist in 2015? Here are my predictions:
- Printed newspapers will be virtually gone.
- About 35% of newspapers will still be available, but primarily as content providers, rather than print distributors.
- The majority of news will be consumed on a handful of social news portals, platforms similar to Facebook but specializing in news, allowing layout flexibility and hyper-localization. It will not be Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft.
- These portals will monetize with a combination of advertising and subscriptions.
- Subscriptions will come in different forms: All content, all content from certain content providers (formerly known as newspapers), and subscriptions limited by usage quotas (# of articles, etc).
Your thoughts? Am I on track? Is my timing about right? Am I way off base? Please post your predictions, and feel free to post links to your posts on the topic.
Best Human-Powered Uses of Twitter
Twitter is a great tool, still lacking business model. What I hate about Twitter is that a huge percentage of tweets are about Twitter. What I love about Twitter is that it’s an open canvas; a new medium for creativity and USEFULNESS. I’ve seen Twitter used as a platform for news, customer service, “interactive” PR, and even an author’s new medium. What is the best human-powered use of Twitter? Please send your nominees, and we’ll hold a vote. As you comment, I’ll bring the nominee list up here. Please recommend. And please share this link to get as many quality nominees as we can.
PLEASE nominate a use, and if possible, a tweep:
140-character short stories / @arjunbasu, @twirledview @mrichtel
Breaking news situations / (If you have a list of accounts, comment and I’ll link)
Why I'm Late to the Blog Party
I’ve been in the web publishing industry for a dozen years, and yet, I hadn’t started blogging until…well…a couple weeks ago. Sure, I thought about it. I even dabbled with LiveJournal as a personal open journal, but stopped abruptly when I realized my ex-girlfriend shouldn’t have been reading my outpouring of pain from losing her.
As a software development manager and product manager, I had plenty to blog about, but I chose not to. I’m not the best writer (although I’m far from the worst), but that didn’t stop me. Why did I wait until now?
It’s simple. Who would want to read my blog? And if I got a ton of readers, would I just be duping them? Could I live with that? Sure, I felt that I was very good at what I do. But was I an “expert,” and wouldn’t blogging be inappropriately declaring myself as one? How much experience did I have? Was my opinion or experience relevant?
But in this new age of social media, loaded with blogging, microblogging, user-generated content, social bookmarking, etc., I’ve finally realized I missed a very important point. It doesn’t matter if I’m an expert or not. The beauty of this world is the ability to spur conversation and thought. It doesn’t matter so much whether my opinions or “right” or “wrong,” but instead it matters that it triggers thought.
This is why all of these Twitter ranking services make me a little ill (although I’ll admit that I always know my Grader Twitter grade). Self-proclaimed experts are the worst kind, and unfortunately, the most common kind. So, while I certainly believe that I’m great at what I do, I’ll let you decide whether or not I’m an expert. And if you follow me on Twitter, thereby increasing my Twitter Grader or twitterrank, does that make me an expert?
No, it does not.
But should that stop me from blogging?
No, it should not.
And so, here I am. Please send me your non-expert blog links, and I’ll be happy to add you to my blogroll. And please, let me know what you think about what I’m saying here. That’s the whole point. Waiting for your comments…
On Twitter, Everyone Knows You're a Dog
I’m feeling inspired, after ready Marty Cagan’s “Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love.“ Marty describes some clear best practices for success when creating a new product, or updating an existing product. He references segmentation, and points out the importance of using personas when planning features and releases. I finished the book last night, and I immediately started to think about whether or not I truly know my user base. Truth be told, I don’t know as much as I need to about the users who come and quickly leave. But new tools such as Twitter and Facebook make it possible to understand your users better than ever before.
Peter Steiner created a famous cartoon, captioned “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Well, this is simply not true anymore.
Copyright Image from New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner.
Take Facebook, for instance. I know more about my real life friends than I ever did before. Just the other day, on Facebook, I got notified with what must be quickest spreading Facebook content ever; “xxxx tagged you in the note 25 Random Things About Me.” I read, in awe, that years after being the best man at his wedding, I still didn’t really know him. And here I was, learning more about a real life friend.
Twitter has a tremendous amount of following. People follow complete strangers to get them to follow back. People follow others they think might be interesting, and yet others that are accepted thought-leaders. If you analyze someone’s posts, you can quickly learn a great deal about them. And some tweeple’s fingers are like loose cannons, allowing you to even learn about their personalities. Take this rant from a well-followed Tweep, for instance. With some tools doing some basic analysis on a user’s tweets, you can learn an awful lot about this user.
This is where social media and social networking start to close the gap between a publisher and it’s users. With new features such as Facebook Connect, site publishers are gaining a lot more access to this valuable insight available based on users’ contributions to your site, and to others as well. This insight will really help to identify one or two of the personas you will undoubtedly need to create to ensure you’re building your product for the audience.
Truth be told, on the Internet, everyone knows exactly who I am.
Heard of Inbox Zero? What about Twitter Zero?
If you’re like me, you’re not in the top 5% of Twitter users (regardless of which system you decided is the best at rating you). Most likely, you follow more than you’re followed. Perhaps you follow @scobleizer, @davewiner, @skydiver, @mashable, @guykawasaki, or any number of tweeple that have 10,000 to 50,000+ followers. Have you tried keeping up with the tweets? I check every half hour or so, and realize that I still can’t keep up with everything that’s been posted despite following only about 150 tweeps. @scobleizer follows over 20,000.
I remember the Inbox Zero project; epic fail for me. But what would be the equivalent for Twitter, rather than just missing all the tweets I simply can’t keep up with? Well, my honest and disheartening opinion is that I have no alternative.
Not today.
But, perhaps, there is some hope? Let’s take inauguration day as an example. At least 60% of my friends’ tweets were about the inauguration. If my Twitter client could group tweets on similar topics, perhaps this would have saved me from having to read tons of similar posts. Sounds simple, although I know in practice it’s quite challenging. Wouldn’t it be a great start, though?
In the meantime, here are some tips:
- Continue to follow people who follow you. It’s not social media if it’s not social.
- Use an application like TweetDeck, that let’s you create groups. I have one group for people I actually know, another group for news, and another group for social gurus.
- Perhaps you can’t keep up with all of your friends’ tweets, but make sure you read replies and direct messages.
Want to know how to be interesting enough for people to follow you? I can’t help you there 
But perhaps the @scobleizer and these other folks can.
