Social networking sites like Facebook and the like were fun when they started.   You could be ensured of a reasonable degree of trust with them.

I don’t know if you have noticed lately, but Facebook have been slowly but surely selling off your privacy, and rights  to the information you put on their site. They are doing this by just changing their Terms and Conditions from time to time.   The changes have been slow and almost calculated.

Upload a photo to Facebook and they own rights to it, or can reuse or sell it as they want.   They also tried to take control of any posts or articles submitted to Facebook as well.

Now with more privacy concerns, it has come the time to take a serious look to social networking services, as Nathanael Boehm suggests, and our business relationship with them.

Responsibility as the Gatekeepers

I know to some sections of the community  think that Facebook is the web and nothing else,  just like with google is the browser.

For us in the technological driving seat, we know that the web is much more than this walled garden.   Just like AOL and other closed sites (requiring a password to see the content) Facebook is just a sub section of the greater content of the open web.

As the gatekeepers of this knowledge we really must use it wisely when directing clients and the general public.   When we advise people on how to use web, we have to be constantly thinking of the bigger picture.

It maybe that we see a certain social networking site as the latest and greatest crazy.   We may see it as a great place for gathering business leads, or maintaining a community.   Still remember  we are not our clients users.  Our experience is not their experience.

Lessons to Learn

We tend to live in a rarefied bubble of the advancing technology of the web industry.   This is not the real world, as I’m often reminded when conducting user testing.

We need to remember:

• Not everyone is on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare or the like.
• Not everyone has access to various social networking site at their main point of access.
• Not everyone wants to be on a social networking site.

Sure, yes we all know that.   So why do we:

• Setup links to events on a closed systems (like Facebook).
• Setup links of feeds or photo galleries on a closed system.
• Post information and articles for customers on a closed systems.
• Use a comment system or publication system that is invite only or closed system (like Dribble, FriendFeed).

Not the greatest experience in the world  - you read about this great article, but the link is to a closed site.  There is a must attend event, but it’s on a closed site for members only.   You don’t have the time to muck around signing up.  So you move on, frustrated.

Sound familiar, it should that’s how some people react.

So when you next organise an event, post an article, link to a video, upload photos, or recommend the like to a client.   How about doing it on the normal Open Web, and linking that to your social networking site of choice.

Towards the Open Web

It’s simple.  use the web that isn’t behind a closed wall.  The web that isn’t controlled by someone else’s Terms and Conditions, that are forever changing.

Use the  Open Web that is going to reach all the people, use the web as it was originally intended.   If I suggested you use AOL as the basis for a client business web site years ago, you would all have laughed at me.  So why use Facebook?

There are alternatives.   I shouldn’t have to point you to them, but they do exist, ones that  don’t make you sell your soul to use them.

More importantly when we recommend the use of social media in a business promotional strategy, make sure the client and you are fully aware of the relevant Terms and Conditions.

You also really need to have a handle on their audience, will the audience to interested in the online social network for the client or not. Winging it on your gut instinct or the clients say so just isn’t going to cut it in today’s business world.

It’s not hard, use the Open Web first over the Closed Web of the walled gardens.  What about you, Closed or Open Web?

You have been to all the networking events, chatted to people, exchanged business cards. Even found a few contacts that would be worthwhile leads in the future.

Still after all this, it just doesn’t seem to be working.

So you go to few more events, you have been really listening to people and you have your opening  networking pitch perfect, it’s all going well.

However still the results aren’t that great. Sound familiar?

The problem is business networking doesn’t stop once you have left the event. It’s about the longer term networking post event. This is often the most important aspect of networking besides the event.

1. It’s Not about Collecting Cards

   Going to networking events is not about collecting business cards. It’s not a game where the person with the most cards wins. In fact if you have a load of cards from contacts you aren’t interested in, then maybe you aren’t focusing on the right people at the events.  It’s about quality, not quantity.

2. Record Your Contacts

   You know that stack of business cards you have collected.  You need to immediately transfer them to your address books (or CRM) and also  write down everything you can remember about the person you met for each card.

   I will often record peoples details, impressions, their specialities and professions along with their details of their business card.  If you do this within hours of an event you will remember most of the points. A lot ore than you will days or weeks later. Don’t rely on your memory as it fades.

3. Make Contact

   The day after a networking event you have to make contact with all the people you met. By doing this you will reaffirm and re-enforce your details with your contacts. You need to go over and summarise any topics that were discussed as well. Making contact gives the person an easier way to add your details to their address book.

   Also if you promised anything, ensure you provide the information immediately.  Any delay just looks like you don’t care.

   Yes I know it’s hard work but it really does help make an impression.

4. Have a Style of Contact

   The style of contact you use to make contact isn’t really important, but the quality is.  Some people send out handwritten postcards, these are a great idea in this digital age. Especially if you possess a good degree of penmanship. A parchment postcard handwritten with say a fountain pen is something to be treasured.

   Mind you an email is just as good, be that a plain text email or rich text one with formatting and pictures. Here it’s the content of the email that is important and will make the impression.  If you are sending out a rich text email (HTML email) ensure that it is formatted so it looks good in the recipients email application.  Otherwise again you look unprofessional.

   What fails, I find, is people attaching product brochures, PDF resumes, word documents, Power point presentations (yes I had one of those the other day) or the like to an email. I’m just not going to open them.   I have just met you,  I don’t feel like I want to exchange attachments… yet.   Get a website, put the details on there.

5. Don’t Spam Me

   Now when someone gives you their business card, it means they are interested in staying in contact.  Not in suddenly being on your weekly newsletter.   You should ask people before putting them on any newsletter at all.  Otherwise you are going to get the reputation as a sleazy serial marketeer.   Remember receiving a business card is an act of trust, don’t abuse it.

6. It’s About Conversion

   Whether you make contact or they do. The best thing you can do is have a small conversation, don’t force it, in the very least  politely saying thank you.  Again having a small conversation remind people that you care at least a little about them.

7. Helping People

   Remember that networking is about paying it forward, helping people. Not making business contacts you can get work from. Yes that will come, but I find the helping people will bring you more work in the longer term.

   You need to leverage your networking of contacts to help your new contacts with anything they need or are looking for.

8. Sometimes it Doesn’t Work

   Sometimes you make contact with people and they are just being polite at the event. It’s okay, sometimes it just doesn’t work out for various reasons.  They may already have a web designer (for example) in their network they refer people too. Or they may just be not interested in your services, that happens.

   Also not everyone gets the paying it forward principle of networking as well.

9. Staying in Long Term Contact

   You need to ensure that you keep in contact with the people who are responsive to your secondary contacts.  You need to be in regular contact with them, say once every six months at least.  An easy way to do this is to email people a link to an article they maybe interested in and sentence summary of it.

   Also I find grouping people via interests helps, to do this I tag people with various interests.  This way your can target your emails with similar information, saving you time.   I also note when I last contacted them and why.  Okay a bit anal, but I do this because I find it’s one less thing to remember.

10. Online Social Networks

    Online Social networks are great. They are also bad.

    Now I wouldn’t recommend using Facebook for business contacts. I know some people do, but I would just steer clear of it.

    I tend to use the business focused online networks like Linkedin (here is my profile) instead, these are made for business networking and have a higher degree of privacy .

    Now social networks can be great for maintaining contact details and maybe the status of what a person has been doing. But they are not good generally for longer term contact generation. You have to do that, the social network will not do it for you.

    For instance in Linkedin, you have to join and contribute to the groups or answer the submitted questions, you’re effectively are paying forward online.  Problem is the ROI in this online world will take longer to achieve.

    However Twitter does break this rule, people you are following and those following you will often be having conversations and build relationships daily via Twitter. But you still have to work at it. You have to put the effort in to stay in contact.

So as you see in a way the real networking starts after the event, this is when the longer term relationships are built.  I know that we all suck at this from time to time.  Yes even I forget or just get too busy to do some of these things.  Still next time you attend a networking event try these suggestions out the next day and maintain that network of contacts.

Also this list is by no means complete, do you have any other suggestions for the morning after networking, please comment below?

I don’t know about you, but I have been to face to face networking events where it’s basically been like pulling teeth to get the people in the room to talk and discuss what they do and the benifits it has for me.   There is nothing wrong with the event itself, it’s just some of the attendees don’t know how to network.

Networking doesn’t come easy, you can’t just expect to turn up to an event and it happens, you have to work at it. You have to build the trust and connections with people.  You have to get people interested in you and vice-versa.

We are all Lazy

When you are talking to someone you have not met before you have about 10-20 seconds to make a good first impression, that will hopefully spark their interest. It’s the first visual and verbal impression that counts. This is why the elevator pitch is so important.

To often people in the web industry do this so wrong, I too have been guilty of this as well. To be really honest you need to kill any techo-babble.

Often people not in your industry just aren’t going to understand the jargon or the like.  No it doesn’t make you look smart. No one wants to have to translate what you have said into something they can understand.  We are all basically lazy and would rather just turn off and stop listening to you.

Specialist job titles are as a no no too. They are just going to be meaningless to the average joe. Basically they are  show stoppers that can and often do stop the conversation dead in the water.

The only exception is when you are networking within your own industry. You can then use your special industry job title, like say “user experience designer”,  but then you have to add on what makes you different from everyone else. What is your speciality, the unique selling point, more on this later.

Giving People What They Want

What you have to so is ensuring the people you are talking to are interested in you, and want to continue the conversation about you and how you can help them.    Sadly you maybe the most knowledgable talented person in the room, but unless you can maintain that interest you aren’t going to get anywhere networking.

The key to doing this is to give people what they want.

We are self centered. Sorry but it’s true. All I really want to hear is what you can do for me.  I just don’t care what you have done or can do unless it pertains to me.  Don’t assme that what you want to say to people is what they want to hear, because in reality  it isn’t!

Therefore it follows you need to make the opening statement count. It needs to focus on the benefits for the person you are talking with, and  in a language they going to understand and relate to.

Saying, “Hi I’m Joe, I design web sites”, isn’t going to get you anywhere, compared to the approach of “Hi I’m Joe, I design web sites that double the sales and productivity of the business, by providing their customers what really want”.

Now it may sound a little bit wanky, but you have instantly told them what you do and how you do it.   It’s now that the magical response occurs, “So how do you do that?”  Getting to this point is what you want.

As opposed to , “Oh, my 11 year old nephew makes websites.” Instantly, you have been placed in the bottom draw, forgotten.

Building Your Profile Pitch

Now we all know how we should be doing it. That’s the easy bit.  The hard bit is working out what people want.

There are a number of techniques you can use here to help you determine  what people want to hear.  My favourite is a little visualisation exercise – first imagine you are in a crowded room, and you can over hearing all the various conversations around you.  Now imagine that you cane here the perfect comments that would make you think, “humm that’s a perfect client, I could help them out”.

Once you have this, you have the basis of an your pitch.   You just have to turn around the context and apply your own information.

Now you just need a good opening statement  for the profile pitch, a statement to sell you. You need to build something succinct that is all about you and what you do. Ideally this should be only a small paragraph, a few sentences.  I find this is best said in your own words as it will flow into the conversation better that way.

Ideally a pitch should be made up of the following elements :

1. Introduce yourself.
2. Overview of your services – a really simple top level overview.
3. Who uses your services – your target market, this would be your ideal client.
4. Demonstrate the way you overcome critical issues – from their business view point.
5. Key business benefits of  your services – what are the benefits to their business.
6. Unique selling point – why pick you over your competitors.

I always find writing a pitch hard.   Generally I  just starting and brain dumping ideas into a word processor, this I find  helps. Then I rework it over and over , refining as I go. Don’t expect the pitch to come easily first time around.  The first few drafts will just be way to long, and possibility way to technical.   Just simplify, condense, calarify and above all present it from the potential clients view, you will get there. This is a bit like writing for a web site.

The final pitch should be such that anyone, yes anyone, even the general public can understand it.  Also when you have one, practice it, practice over and over, but ensure you deliver it in a casual tone.

The Gotacha

Now the issue is you are going to have to develop several layers of pitch.

One for general business, one for semi-business social events, and one for your own industry.   The pitch will vary in techinical detail and presentation dependant on the audience, but the core will still remain the same –  it’s not about you but it’s about them.

That’s my take, what’s your tips for developing a networking pitch?

Does small business really need online social media.   Is it really going to provide those instant  benefits that the media and some experts are raving about.

Online Social networkers (or media)  is now all the rave. It’s the new kid on the block, the dream that some many people in business are now chasing as the quick fix.  Now I have seen this wave of blind business hysteria all before, it’s nothing new.

What’s Old is New Again.

Back in last century when business really discovered that the web had benefits that could help extent and promote their business, there was a wave of businesses one after one all wanting to get online.   The primary reason was, just to be there, online, no real sound business logic was applied to any of the decisions back then.  They just wanted a web site, because it was basically there and other people had one.  It was the cool factor.  The need to follow the sheep.

No consideration was given to the on going costs in time and other resources that were required to run a successful web site.  In many cases they took up the web site challenge , had a web sites developed, placed it out on the web, and that was it.

So they walked away from the young seedling web sites and let them wither and die in the cold wilds of the brutal web.  

There was an expectation that somehow the sites would bloom and grow, flourish and dominate their environs.   The truth as we know it was far from this faerie tale that the business owners were expecting.

Have Things Really Changed.

Fast forward to 2009.  Have things really changed that much.  Sure people take a little more consideration into getting a web site now. Whether this is sign on the maturity of the web industry is another matter, still the fact is that people are considering a web site a serious venture in the most part.

However in the realm of social media, it seems as if every business now wants to leverage the likes of facebook, Twitter, Myspace, corporate blogging, Friendfeed, Linkedin or the like in order to get that edge over their competitor.  

Then the self proclaimed social media experts step up, with 5 minutes experience of dipping their toe into the online social media world (a bit like life coaches – even taxi drivers are life coaches now! – but that’s another story).    This plethora of social media experts is now urging business owners to make that final leap into the social media. Mostly will little personal experience at all in the medium.

All this without any real plan or consideration of the longer term implications that this is going to have on their business and its impact on time and resources.  

Without due consideration of what their customers are doing and if they are in the demographic of the audiences of these social networking sites at all.

Step Back, Smell the Roses.

Basically if you are in a business and you are going down this road or have just done so.
 STOP.

Yes right now, slam on the brakes, hard!

You really have to beware that like running a web site, operating a social media presence is something that will take up full time resources for your organisation. It’s not just about putting out the odd tweet or facebook status update every week or so.

If you are serious about committing to adopting social media for your business please consider the following:

1. Look for the market.

   Is there an existing market demographic or potential one that uses the social media you are looking at.  Not much good doing a social media campaign for “turbo charged motorised wheelchair driving grannies” on a youth social networking site is there.

2. Plan ahead.

   Set out a plan of attack, as you would with any marketing campaign, you need to consider all the following aspects below as well in this plan. In a way it will be like nothing you have done before. This is not like taking out an advert in the local paper or on radio. Social networking is not like traditional media at all.

3. Be Honest.

   Ensure that you are honest and straight with your customsers online,  remember you are building trust and you online reputation.  If you are false and hollow, your customers will see through this immediately.

4. Let go.

   You have to learn that in an online world of a social network you are not in control at all.  Your customers or audience are in control, they will dictate what and when they read your information.   If you try and control them, they will build their own network online behind your back where they can discuss the truth.   Yes that is right the online world is not kind, it does not care about your business.

5. Live it.

   You need to live the social media, don’t just dip your toe in the water of the social media world every few days or so with some statement or status update.  It is the companies that are living the social media that are winning peoples hearts and dollars.  But be warned this takes time and resources, there is no magic bullet here.

6. Be real.

   The person in charge of your presence needs to project their real personality into the social media.   If they are just projecting the corporate public relations and marketing spin the audience will tire of this pretty quickly.

7. Don’t hire a Social Media Expert.

   This sounds silly, but use someone that doesn’t confess to be a  Social Media Expert. There are just too many con artists and quick fix merchants out to make a quick dollar in the market. Hire someone that is already deeply entrenched in the social media world. A person that is across all these issues discussed here and more.

8. Start small.

   In the world of online social media, it is best to start small if you are unsure of the impact or if you even have an audience.  Maybe do some blogging, build an audience. Or maybe use twitter and present a personal approach, or look into services like get satisfaction.   Don’t try it all at one time, test and evaluate as you go, especially if your organisation is learning and new to this,  Nothing worse than you stepping away from a social network when you have failed at it.  It projects to the followers you leave behind that your business has failed or is failing.   Not something you really want.

9. It’s all or none.

   Social media is the type of thing where you can’t have only one division of an organisation embracing it.   You need to have the entire enterprise taking it on board.  By which I don’t  mean just paying lip service to social media – the enterprise needs at an executive level to understand and embrace the outcomes of the use of social media. If you don’t do this then people we see you as just playing at the game and not really that serious.

10. Understand it.

    Even if you do all the above, you still may not understand the basic principles as to why people even use various social networking sites.   Mainly it comes down to the desire to share and communicate, often for free.  As a business you have to truly understand that it is about paying it forward. A social networking site is not an advertising campaign, the ROI will not be the same at all. This is not your traditional world or traditional media.

In summary, the use of social media in business is like your web site, but more of a resource hog, best to start small and be real.   Remember the lessons of the past ignore good  advice and you will waste time and money or worse simply fail.

I don’t know about you but over the last few years I have watched video explode online.   It’s a good thing in a way.  It has served its purpose, even if it has killed the IRC star. I have nothing against video per say.   However sometimes it just isn’t the best medium to present information in.

The Art of Information.

When you are referred to an article, generally you want to scan over it, determine if it is worth reading, and if it is, then  generally you will read the entire article or post.   If you are like me then you will even at this stage scan the article and process it very quickly – after all we all have busy lives that we don’t want to clutter them with information that may not be worthwhile.

So what happens when you encounter an article that has been presented just as a video.   You can’t scan it quickly.   You can’t determine if this 10, 20 or 40 minute video is really worth your time from a first glance.  Sure you can start watching, but if it’s got all the pearls of wisdom at the end, and the early sections are boring, you are just as likely to close it all down and leave.

This leaves you with the choice, do you stay and watch a video and hope it is worthwhile or not.   In general whether or not you watch is  determined by the presenters reputation or level of recommendation that brought you here in the first place, and the amount of free time you have to spare.

The solution here is simple – provide a transcript. This way at least we can all see and read what you are talking about with ease.  You see video is not appropriate when presented by itself, especially when you are looking quickly for information

A Conversation is about Discussion.

Lets take this a step further will general discussion. Sites like 12 seconds and Seesmic, that use video commenting around a video forum format.  Sure they are good for building up short run video  conversations.

However  this is all a little moot for those of us that are time poor.  Sitting down and listening to all the conversations in a video thread, can take forever in comparison to the written words on say a traditional blog or forum.   This time increase with videos can be the make or break as to whether people continue to use these types of services in the  longer term.

But …YouTube

“What of YouTube”. you say.   Yes, YouTube and the like is what you expect it to be, you arrive at YouTube, you expect that you have to wait and watch as you are at a video site.   So you have an expectation to wait or leave if it doesn’t interest you.  So in a way it’s a different beastie to say a blog or general site with an embedded video.

The lesson here is, any conversation or information needs to be quick to able to be absorbed.  I guess video has it’s place, just not in a conversational or information presentation mode, what do you think?

Only way to get the invite code is from an existing member or put your name down on the public request for an invite list.  A list that you just know is going to  be  kilometres long already.   So you sign up anyway, hoping that they will get to you soon.  But you know in the back of your mind that this isn’t going to happen.

Still you wait.

Months go by, your interest in the shiny new site wanes. The site doesn’t really get the traction it should have in your social network.

Then suddenly you get the email.  The email from the shiny new social media site. But now you just can’t be bothered, it’s just another dead walled garden of a social media site that has failed to capture the communities imagination.   You glance over the email, and then damn it to the eternal waste bin of deletion.

This seems to be a trend with new social media sites of late to take up to 3 months to send out invites.  3 months is a long time,  I often find that I have totally forgotten about a site by the time I get the invite from them.

Lessons Learnt

So what has gone wrong for the social media site.  Basically it failed to engage people when there was a buzz, when people where interested.   The solutions for this are very simple:

• flood the market with you beta invites, allow 20, 30 or more of them for each request.
• process the invite request list ASAP.
• don’t take months, web communities are fickle, they loose interest really quickly.
• don’t be too selective on your distribution, A-listed may have more contacts but their true social network is no bigger than most connected people.

So along comes Chi.mp

This week the shiny new social media site is Chi.mp.  Chi.mp is a content hub and identity management platform, can’t tell you much more than that.  I suppose it’s a little of FriendFeed and a little of ClaimID.  I wonder will Chi.mp be tardy in its processing of the public invite requests.

One thing not in Chi.mp’s favour is its very poor home page accessibility, nearly all the page is displayed as images, even the text.  This isn’t 1998, very poor show, if I was at Chi.mp I would be fixing that.

If you think about it Twitter is a bit of a walled garden, a closed system as Sean Carmody has pointed out.  You have to be on Twitter to use Twitter; a little like Facebook or AOL.  Maybe what we need to step beyond Twitter into an open message distribution service, this would help with the load issue if nothing else.

Stepping beyond the walled garden will allow services like Twitter to jump the shark and avoid the problems AOL had. They were popular with the early adopters to start with, then the mob got bored and moved on, the shininess and gloss just waned away.

So are there any other alternatives we can glean a model off:

The Clones

So with Twitter we get the clones (Pownce, Jaiku and Kwippy ), with a few add on features, do they really give us anything new?  Maybe not.  Okay Pownce is a little more, but it’s still a little like Twitter in outlook.  Still they are all closed communities.  You can’t message from one into the other.

Then we have identi.ca, based on the Laconica system.  Still this is very Twitter based clone service.  You can have your own server true, but it’s still closed. We don’t see identi.ca messages in the other services. Edit 2 Sept – I have since been informed you can if you set up your own service.   Okay so that’s a start.

All these services have made some degree of  traction but really nothing major, people have tended to check them out, maybe add them to their distribution services like Ping.fm. But basically people just move on, leaving nothing but an echo.

FriendFeed

People are saying FriendFeed is the next big thing.  Well maybe not, on a personal level I’m beginning to find FriendFeed a pain to use.   There is just too much noise from some A-listers that I’m not subscribed too that seem to sneak in from one friend or the other.  It’s to the point that the normal conversation and feeds from my real network are just being swamped.  This makes the service a little pointless, I just don’t have the time to trawl through the A-list chaff.  So realistically this model isn’t really cutting it, even if it is a little open, in a way.

Plurk

Previously I have questioned if Plurk had what it takes to continue.  Two months later and the service has matured.  It has been busy building a small community. It’s not microblogging at all, more like a thread based IRC than anything.   However again it’s a closed community.  You can’t continue a conversation from Plurk on anything but Plurk.

The Solution

What is really needed is an open API driven Open Messaging service, a true commenting open service that will allow you to have a conversation from one service to another.  For example you can send a comment to Twitter, converse with someone in Plurk, read other comments from Friendfeed all from whatever one you choose.

Realistically that’s going to take a community effort the likes of OpenID or OAuth, and even then you would have to convince the companies concerned that it was in their interest to adopt this type of messaging system. Still it’s a nice idea.

Edit 2 Sept -  There is a protocol in development – OpenMicroBlogger.  I think it needs to get out there and be promoted a bit.

A good 12 months ago you could depend upon a a solid core of your social network to be centralised on several common social networking sites, such as flickr, twitter, facebook, linkedin. Things where relatively stable, well as much as they can be. Comments on one sns stayed on that sns, comments on a blog, stayed on the blog. The core of the sns mob would from time to time go explore a new sns, sometimes integrating it into the group of core sites sometime not.

That was Then

That was then, as Nick Cowie has pointed out with his person usage, online social networking is changing. As more and more and of the sites move out of their early adopters phases and start to experience growing pains  (yes twitter is an example) they can start to loose their appeal, be it from service interruption, gaining mainstream appeal or just lack of the coolness of being shiny and new.  Hence the mob starts to move away, it’s not on mass like rats from a sinking ship, but a slow bleed.

Yes, social networking online has changed. As you would expect it has morph and transformed as the online communities have embraced the changed in the online environment.

Is it Distributed?

With this type of change it’s no longer centralised or decentralised, its more just distributed.  Your community is spread not just over a few services but now four, five, ten when does it end, be them Plurk, Plaxo, Bright Kite, Identi.ca, Seesmic and so on.  You just can’t be expect to keep up with all these aspects.  Can you?   Sure you can use ping.fm, hello.txt or MoodBlast (locally) to pump out your status update with an echoing shotgun across the networks.  But that only allows for the output.

Well as was pointed  out a few years back what we need is a lifestream aggregator, such a Friendfeed or Plaxo.  Both these services offer to republish your existing feeds and allow comments on your lifestream.

So now you recollect the community on these services, but they are not aggregating the comment feeds on these aggregated lifestream feeds.  Although they do promote the use of comments on there centralised location.

Hence the problem remains if you want to get the full picture of the community discussions you still have to visit all the respective sites.  So all the lifestream aggregators have really done is add a layer of complexity to it all, the conversation is still distributed like it was on blogs etc.

Are There Solutions

What we need is a conversation and comment aggregator.  Even so consider the noise level, at present services like Friendfeed aren’t too bad, but if you get the feeds of friends friends activated then it becomes a little overwhelming.  Especially if those people are the usual noisy self appointed A-listers.  That’s what the  block function is for, it brings back the sanity.

Sure you can make your lifestream pretty looking with swurl.  Or you can use interface tools like feedly to make the localised feed aggregation via Google Reader that much more usable.  But still the comments are all over the place.

We need a tool that is going to follow the chain of links to the comments and bring them together in a virtual sense so you can see the conversation in one place. Now maybe idAuth can help to a degree, but like OpenID and OAuth it has to take traction.   As after all it’s about the conversation and community.  What good is a distributed conversation.  Maybe socialthing is the answer. But then it’s more a social network manager.

So what do you think has it changed for you, is it for the better, just different, or are you going to just give up and go sulk in some hole in the ground?

Over the last few weeks the armchair communication developers of the world have been solving the woes of the Twitter infrastructure and communication problems. And out of all this advice Plurk has come to light.

Plurk is interesting, it’s primarily focus is a social networking message service, with a true microblogging conversation, video or image sharing on a timeline.

So in a way it’s an extension of Twitter, but a little like Pownce. It allows you to group your friends into cliques and define posts to be personal (one to one), public or just to the members of a clique. bit like the private feed in Twitter.

It has it’s good points and it’s bad. One of the bad, I still can’t get it to run on FireFox 2, I suspect it is conflicting with one of my many extensions. It works fine in Webkit and Safari.

Timeline at it’s Core

The core of the interface is the message (plurk) timeline, your friends “plurks” are strung up on the timeline. These messages can in turn be commented on. The comments remaining linked to the original plurk like comments on a blog post.

The effect of this timeline interface is that you are constantly mouse scrolling to the right to expose the past elements of the timeline (side point, you can’t use this application with a keyboard alone easily). As the plurks you commented on, build up conversation are back in the past on the timeline they very quickly get moved out of view and take a bit of effort to keep track off.

This has a two fold effect.

• It makes the commented conversations of Plurk are only for the immediate moment in time.
• The use of Plurk as a social conversational tool does work in its favour, as the comments are displayed in an immediate conversational flow (best to date 70 plurks), with the notification being easy to identify .

Whether this has been deliberately engineered this way with a formulated UX remains to be seen.

On it’s downside Plurk is very much a Beta, you will find errors in the interface and sometimes logic of the information flow all over the place. Look for them a few days later and they will be fixed or in some cases made worse. These are little things point towards a product that should have been user tested at least a little bit before release. Also the number of cross browser issue are again pointing towards what you would expect of an alpha not a beta. But that said it is early days.

Karma is not Good

Plurk uses a system of karma points, that reward the user for having conversations, inviting other friends and the like.

The results of the Karma are not rewarded for several hours after you gain them. This is I guess to stop a gamer like cause and effect response. However Plurk by it’s nature doesn’t need to have them. They are really just a waste of time.

Let me explain, sure you unlock little enhancements that you can apply as you progress in Karma points. But for me it was being told, you are a not worthy so you don’t get the extra features until you have wasted time and effort on our little game service. I don’t want to be told I’m not worthy. I don’t want to last time and be rewarded. I don’t need Plurk to force me to invite friends.

It’s interesting within my social network most people joined without invites, just signing up and finding people. No encouragement required. No Karma rewards.

That’s not all, you earn the Karma, but if you don’t constantly plurk you will start to loose points, if you swear you loose points. If you post too many URLs you loose points.

Now that’s is just plain stupid. Give the proven UX rewards, and then take them away because people are finding a use for the product that the designers didn’t think off. Sorry but that is just a total failure, a complete lack of understanding.

The more I think about it Plurk appears to have been written with people experienced more in game play than social networking and general UX.

It gets better, if you really put out a lot of messages on the public feed, and become a top plurker, it will restrict you to only being able to post to your defined cliques. Again a reward for use, is a restriction, not the UX you are really after.

No Trust

Yet again this application like many SNS suffers from the problem of promoting the phishing behaviour reenforcement. To sign up and invite your friends you are encouraged to hand over your username password pairs for your Facebook, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN accounts.

Remember you want those Karma points don’t you. So can you trust the developers on Plurk. Do you know who they are, really? I didn’t think so. So why trust them with these personal details. Again this could have been thought out a little more instead of being the usual SNS developmental sheep.

Not a Twitter

It really isn’t Twitter by a long shot.

With Twitter you can drop in, read the tweets and move on, the nature of the list interface allows this, online, via IM, or the API. Plurk however is locked to the web, with a timeline that requires constant attention. Even in the IM mode it’s just a wave of messages that can be confusing as Plurk attempts (poorly) to link the comments together.

No API , No Luck

There is no API or SMS based service as yet.

This is another major show stopper. As the constant having to go back and forward to the browser is a bit of the pain with Plurk and really goes discourage it’s use during business hours. So in this way it makes it at present a more social “after hours” toy than a gathering of a social network of peers. It’s the drunken social bar of the web.

The Uptake

The surprising thing with Plurk is the level and rate of uptake. It has taken some traction, more than Pownce did. Still I can’t help wondering if this is just because of the flaky service that the overloaded Twitter is offering.

Overall Plurk reminds me of a IRC channel with a Twitter twist. Having an API and desktop applications is the only way I can see that it’s going to last.

I have been watching OAuth and OpenID develop over time, wishing and hoping they would both take root and bloom into something wonderful. Now I think the concepts and ideas behind these two, especially OAuth is a wonderful Idea. What is OAuth (to refresh your memory):

OAuth gives users access to their data while protecting their account credentials via the use of an open protocol of a secure authenticating API.

But then we come to reality. Although a good number of you are not going to agree with me it has to be stated. There is a steady ground swell of apathy that is leading to a number of major problems with web interconnectivity.

Everywhere you turn there is another faceless social networking application vying for our attention. Tempting you to sign up and find or send invites to all your friends. You know the drill all you have to do is just provide your Gmail, Hotmial, MSM, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Flickr ( Ed – correction Flickr is not promoting bad practices anymore ) or Pownce account details. Now surely we can trust these unknown developers and their faceless entrepreneurs. Surely they wouldn’t do the dirty on us. After all they have a nice new social networking application that we can play with.

Yeah, right!

Now if you really do trust, them I hope you are changing the said passwords to the comprised services on a regular basis as you are just opening yourself up for a phishing attack.

It gets worse. Problem is that these bright new shine SNS are in fact getting people to refind or invite their friends on a regular basis via this method. Time and time again.

Sure we as experts in this field can tell people till we are blue in the face, not to do it. But at the end the day they are just going to continue. Why well:

• Mainly because it is easy.
• The lure of belonging, of joining the social gorup is strong, it’s in our nature to be social, to rebuild the online tribe around us.
• Nothing has gone wrong, and the more they do it and the more it is successful, with a positive outcome, the more the user experience in this matter is enforced. Soon it becomes a common practice.

I would say that in fact that we have reached that user experience tipping point. Not one of the more recent SNS has implemented OpenID or more seriously required OAuth, which stops this re-enforced phishing learned behaviour.

So what is the problem. Well it’s really a simple issue, hard to solve. OAuth is great Idea, but to get traction it needs the big end of the web to embrace it. It needs the Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo etc to allow the secure API authentication of OAuth to work within their systems.

Without these players the new SNS can’t tap into your knowledge base of contacts without your passwords. So if there is a lack of an API, developers will use the next best thing. Which is what we are seeing today.

Sure OAuth is being implemented for smaller projects, but these are just minor case studies at best. The development industry is littered with great concepts that failed to gain critical mass that have been discarded by the wayside. Will OAuth be one of them? I hope not!

What can we do:

• Stop using these quick import contact list tools / wizards.
• Tell the SNS that it’s the wrong way to do it.
• Complain, bitch , suggest, make a noise so the big end of the web hears us.
• Developers, don’t do it, think of the moral implications.