Back in 2006 I was working on a venture I called SocialNet (MySocialMap), based largely on research by dinah boyd and the Vister application she and Jeffery Heer put together. The idea was to build a icon based visual map of relationships across multiple social networks and layer this with a Taste Fabric styled algorithm. Users would be able to visualize their relationships across social networks (something still not done well) as well as discover their networks propensity to like anything from brands to movies. After a couple of successful beta applications the initiative got bogged down in a bunch of issues from vendor management to time constraints (not to mention SocialStream). I had to shelve it late last year after a ton of work and a couple grand in expenses with only a barebones prototype to show for it.
Fast-forward 8 months and the web is full of amazing websites that are mining the data from the traditional social networks as well as the many newer social media applications like Twitter, Britekite and many others. These experiments are showing how large groups of people feel about particular topics or events, (the mood of the web). With time, and not that much time, these experiments will continue to evolve getting both deeper (more information about specific groups, emotions, memes) and wider (more sources and types of data).
WeFeelFine.org A couple of years ago while working on an aggregated commenting project at Turner, I was putting a few Huge inc. salesmen, through the wringer to access if they were actually users of social media or mere observers of it. They pointed me to WeFeelFine as an example of what they considered important projects in the space. Needless to say these guys were not just mere observers. The site scans the post on sites like Live Journal, Blogger, Myspace, Typepad and many others for post that include the words “I feel” or “i am feeling” followed by any one of about 5,000 emotions, from aware to zanny. It groups these social utterances by age, gender, weather, location and date using a number of different visualization methods. The site combines loverly infographic porn with enough soul bareing voyeuristic goodness to keep even the PostSecret crew happy. the
Twistori This one is a little bit rougher around the edges then WeFeelFine and the visualizations arent as stunning but the concept is just as thought provoking. Here rather then the huge volumes of data from across social applications, the information is limited to posts from Twitter. The emotional range is also a bit more constrained, with only Love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish as options. However I think the limited number of emotional choices adds to the usefulness of the application. The implications and uses for brands (both personal and commercial) is pretty huge. Imagine tracking the global conversation around your brand using a twistori type tool paired with WeFeelFine styled reports.
Last week I got a request from Dr. Kay Beck, asking me to sit in on a panel at the Digital Arts Entertainment Lab’s Symposium at Georgia State. If Kay asks you for something, the answers is Yes. So yesterday I found myself sitting on a stage at Georgia State with Jim “the face of corporate America” Distefano, Mark Wynns and Chad Eikoff, talking about how content creators might best navigate the choppy digital waters.
It’s been a while since I’ve done any public speaking, Turner kindly asked me to decline a number of invitations during my tenure there, and this was a great chance to get back in the game.
It was a small group in a very large auditorium and the following list outlines some of the things I learned while listening to other speakers or just chatting with folks:
- meta-tagging is a actionable legal issue, for which your new venture could be dragged into court to defend your use of certian trademarked meta tags. I had no clue.
- keyword advertising could also be something that requires legal representation if one wants to avoid litigation.
- i speak to fast, quote random papers no one has ever read and ramble on!
I spotted this on the Ad Land blog under the caption ” ‘ah, that’s subtle’ award of the day.” Its an ad for the Manix condom brand, which is sold in Europe. It took me a while to figure it out and when I did I was disappointed. Then again I spent at least 5 minutes trying to figure out the ad and another 10 talking about it so maybe its been successful.
There are some folks, Andrew Keen comes to mind, who are easy to dismiss not because of the sensational and contrarian nature of their ideas but because of the lack of thought and discussion that surrounds them. Contrast this with Kevin Kelly who wrote 1,000 True Fans back in March and ignited the the echo chamber we lovingly call the Blogosphere with his suggestion that with a 1,000 true fans supporting them an artist could live exclusively from their craft.
The idea is not without its detractors, Jaron Lanier of Digital Moaism fame (summerized back in ‘06), being the most prominent. However, unlike Andrew Keen who goes into Fox News styled apoplectic fits (more) when there is disagreement, Kevin Kelly has opened his blog to highlight the arguments against his meme. In posts last week and again today, Kelly has highlighted variations of and arguments against his meme. While remaining steadfastly committed to the idea of a 1,000 (or perhaps 5,000) true fans, Kelly is has taken up the challenge of proving his ideas right. He is on a quest to find 3 artist that make a “predictable income sufficient to raise a child.” If he cant, then the 1,000 true fans meme will be declared officially dead and Jaron Lanier, Andrew Keen and the terrorist will have won.
Hip Hop veteran and habitual scowler, Harry Allen, has an “exclusive” video of literary sensation Margaret B. Jones on YouTube, she discuss her upbring on the mean streets of LA and her new book Love and Consequences. The video is excellent as it is one of the few were we get to see Margaret Seltzer in full ghetto mode, using authentic street slang straight from BAP’s and Colors. The book can still be purchased at amazon and carries the description below, made all the more funny by the controversy surrounding the book: A stunning memoir of a mixed-race girl growing up in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles, where she followed her foster brothers into the Bloods before she hit puberty: what she witnessed, how she survived, and-against all odds-thrived.
Last week the RIAA was cheering the destruction of million CD and DVD taken from flea market vendors and church swap meets across the country. This week it put out the numbers of CD’s shipped from its client record labels to music stores and they arent good. The ailing music industry shipped 17.5% fewer CD’s to record stores in ‘07 than it did in ‘06. Of course, much of what was shipped to the stores is still sitting in discount bins so the actual sales decline is surely much worse. Across all physical formats, CD singles (up 50%), Cassettes (down 41%), LP’s (up 36%) etc… shipments were down 16.9% Y/Y.
Despite this news, record labels still seem intent are keen on destroying any company, site or individual foolish enough to build a service that makes online music discovery and playback simple and painless. The four major labels, though nine of their subsidiary companies, have filed suit against Project Playlist, a site that aggregates music from around the web into one simple interface. According to the label’s, Playlist.com enables “massive copyright infringement” by pointing to files on other websites (ie blogs, artist pages, fan pages etc…). Despite common sense and the generally accepted business maxim that your customer can not be your enemy, the luddites at the major labels seem to relish finding novel ways to destroy shareholder value and drive customers away.
I’m not the sharpest tack in the marble box but if I wwas an exec in a failing $10 billion industry that had shrunk by more then $2 billion in the last year with shipments down 19%, the last thing I’d do is sue a company that lets my customers discover and buy my product. Call me crazy.
Over the last few weeks I havent taken the time to put mention any of the research reports I pilfer from various and sundry sources. That ends today. Here are a few of the more interesting reports I’ve read in the last couple of weeks as I boned up for different client assignments.
Apple’s ubiquitous iPod was built to ensure that listeners could not easily pass their music between devices. The iPod and iTunes combination leads to a very solitary musical experience with users only able to share music by jumping through technical hoops. The annoyance factor with sharing digital music was intentionally high. However, where ever there are digital roadblocks, there is an entrepreneur ready to remove them (for a small fee).
Enter MiShare, a nifty little device that came out late last year and allows users to transfer music, pictures, videos and even playlist between iPods. DRM infected music is transfered but must be reauthorized for use on the receiving iPod. But since your reading this blog you know that the vast majority of music on any given iPod is ripped or downloaded MP3’s and so we can assume that music reauthorization wont be much of an issue. The cool little device got good reviews from the NYTimes and the Chicago Tribune. Itis available from the Mishare site for $99.95.
Last year marketers and many web pundits were buzzing about the potential of Second Life to change everything from education to brand development. Much ink was spilled on the transformative value of 3-D avatars and millions to be made within the Second Life ecosystem. Alas, the buzz didnt last and Second Life receded into relative obscurity (only 500K active users), behind Twitter, Facebook and an onslaught of Web 2.0 services.
In an effort to revive their dwindling fortunes the company has hired digital prognosticator Mark Kingdon to be its new CEO. Mark is a former Pwc consultant who most recently headed up the interactive agency, Organic. Mark will bring a wealth of ad industry relationships and marketing knowledge to the engineering focused company. Does this mean that Second Life will become yet another purveyor of ad network solutions for marketers? Lets hope not.
No Comments » | 
Innovation, Research, Web 2.0, social media, social networking | Tagged: social graph, social media, social mining, twistori, wefeelfine.org | 
Permalink
Posted by Siddiq Bello
