Social Media
The Next Social Step: Emotional Context Part 2
Jan 25th
Continuing from the blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago the rampant march of “emotional data” continues.
Path, the ‘limited’ social network that only allows you to keep 50 contacts in your network at any given time, have updated their app to version 1.3. The latest edition lets users tag posts with one of five smiley faces to denote how they feel about the image (or video since Path 1.2). Users get to choose from happiness, laughter, surprise, sadness or love. To get an overall picture of how much a photo is liked it’s a great update, but the lack of choice might render the system a little redundant. Time will tell. It’s certainly interesting to see emotional context being used in a mainstream and well-funded social application.
Another new start-up using emotional context data for social software is the rather odd and left-field “She Chooses“. This one is aimed squarely at the female gender as it markets itself as;
She Chooses™ is the social network application that taps the power of feelings to assist women in making choices.
The site is similar in many ways to Twitter. You post updates that are tagged as questions, updates or tools, and other users reply or empathize (which appears to be the equivalent of Facebook’s “Like”). The app’s selling point appears to be something that the creators have deigned to call “The Tool”. It’s an emotionally sensitive “expert system” where you choose the way you feel and what you’re after and it returns a list of people’s updates who might assist you. I’m not sure how useful it’ll be.
My only reservation about “She Chooses” is the “I am a woman” checkbox on the registration page. I ticked it, but I suspect you’ll be kicked out if you don’t. That’d be a step backwards in terms of equality if you are. Who knows? It’s a long way from launching; perhaps that’s just an alpha software quirk.
The Next Social Step: Emotional Context
Jan 13th
Watching Amber Case’s recent TED talk, “We are all cyborgs now”, I learnt about the fascinating concept of “ambient intimacy”. As the self styled ‘digital philosopher’ explains;
“It’s not that we’re always connected to everybody, but at any time we can connect to anyone we want.”
How intimate the relationship we have with our social networks is governs the way we operate when we’re living our lives – those of us who use social networks for solely for business aren’t likely to be permanently glued to their mobile phone even when they’re out with friends. Similarly, those people with a very close and intimate relationship with their social network friends might sit in the pub with their “real world” friends and ignore them, preferring to talk on Twitter, Facebook or an instant messaging client. Neither is wrong per se, so long as you’re striking a healthy balance.
Some start-ups are beginning to pick up on the fact that the emotional connection that users have on social networks is strong but often difficult to broadcast to your friends. I recently blogged about a new social client called “Vibefeelr” that enables you to post messages to your friends with an attached “vibe” that approximates to how you’re feeling at the time. This sort of thing is likely to become more common. There are a huge number of Facebook apps that do the same thing, and once Twitter’s ‘annotations’ enable users to attach metadata to tweets I imagine it won’t be long before there’s ‘emotions for Twitter’ too.
In the mean time there’s another new social tool for Twitter called smood.it. Smood.it lets you post an emotion to Twitter with a few attached hashtags to tell people why you’re feeling the way you are. Further to that those, smood.it will watch your tweets and catalogue how you’re feeling based on which emoticons (smilies) you use. It’s quite a clever approach because it means you build up a history of feelings without having to leave whatever Twitter client you use. Unfortunately, in my case anyway, it’s woefully inaccurate because I use happy face smilies far too much. With some tweaking, maybe a hashtag like the “Selective Twitter” Facebook app uses, it could be a powerful tool for people who want to track their feelings.
I imagine the next few years will see an increased use of ‘augmented’ social networking, with additional data coming from options we choose when we post. Who knows, perhaps our current state of mind might be captured from a camera, or even from an analysis of the post itself. It’ll be interesting to see what people come up with.
Two Years On…
Jan 5th
January 5th 2009: I joined Twitter.
It was when Twitter was just beginning to hit the media in a big way. Stephen Fry and Jonathon Ross were busily evangelising the service on BBC1. Every newspaper was carrying stories about it. My friends both on- and off-line were beginning to talk about it. So I signed up.
Since then the journey has been pretty incredible. I’ve made many new friends, met hundreds of people, found work, discovered events, and forged relationships in a series of more than 22,000 messages limited to 140 characters. Thinking back on it now it’s a little bizarre.
It’s great fun, and it’s very useful, for a consumer like me, but the most fascinating thing about Twitter is where its value lies as a business. Recent estimates (and investments) have put a figure of $3.7billion on it. Twitter has been going 4 years and it’s never turned a profit so that sounds ludicrous at first, but there’s a vast amount of as yet untapped potential in the service. Assuming just a quarter of its 175million strong userbase is active the current estimates place a value of $84 per user. That’s rather high in terms of standard advertising reach cost, but Twitter has the advantage of knowing exactly what each user is interested in. That sort of intelligence makes the users very valuable indeed. $84 sounds almost cheap.
It’s no wonder Twitter’s directors turned down a $500million offer from Facebook back in 2008.
Vibefeelr
Jan 3rd
Continuing the delightful trend of new web apps* with daft names, I’ve been trying out the beta of “Vibefeelr”. Vibefeelr is essentially the same as Twitter but with added feelings (the “vibes” in the site’s name). Each short post is limited to a whopping 421 characters and comes tagged with a particular vibe from a selection of hundreds.
Everything works as you’d expect it to. There are lists (called ‘circles’), there’s DMs (sending someone a vibe), and there’s an odd horizontal rainbow thing that tallies up the percentage breakdown of the vibes logged on the site in the previous 24 hours. That particular aspect of the site could be very interesting once there are a decent number of users – any global ‘feeling’ based on a significant event should show up very noticeably. Whether or not they’ll ever get to that number of users is debatable though. The site doesn’t really offer a great deal more than Twitter. Indeed, it offers a good deal less if you factor in Twitter’s phenomenal userbase. Vibefeelr does connect to both Twitter and Facebook to automatically post on those sites if you want it to though, so it’s something that you can use alongside the usual social networks.
This is the first in a number of new social networks/microblogging tools that are popping up in 2011 that are augmented with features that go beyond simple messaging. There are already photosharing networks (Path, Instagr.am, etc). Mood/feeling/vibe sharing is the next step. I wonder what’ll be after that.
If you’re interested in sharing your feelings, check out http://www.vibefeelr.com/, or email me for an invite. When you’re there, feel free to add me (http://www.vibefeelr.com/onion2k/) as a contact.
Group hug!
* When did we stop calling them websites?
Cupcaking.us
Dec 30th
Cupcaking.us is a slightly strange idea for a photosharing social app. You can share photos, videos, text and audio. But there’s a catch. You can only share with one other person. It’s essentially taking the idea that Path has pioneered in a social app with a concentrated network audience, and taken it to it’s logical conclusion – a network of 2 people.
It’s not live yet, but it’s makes you think. What sort of people would use that? Not me, certainly, and not just because I’m single. It’s just so unnecessary. Facebook gives you everything that Cupcaking gives you, plus a huge amount more. You can easily set pictures, videos, and updates to be visible to just one person. You can set that to be the default. Facebook can essentially be Cupcaking if you set it up right.
Perhaps there’s going to be more to Cupcaking than they’re advertising on the beta sign up page. There needs to be.
Plus, Cupcaking.us is a very silly name. Not as silly as honeybuff.com, another “social network for couples”, but pretty silly nonetheless.
Path adds Facebook. Instagr.am adds FourSquare.
Dec 21st
In a new update Path have attempted to fix the problem of needing to know everyone’s email addresses by adding Facebook Connect integration. It’s a wise move. When I first registered on the network the difficulty of adding people was my main complaint, and I imagine it was other people’s too. Good one Path.
That’s not all the update brings though. There’s a new web interface now (www.path.com/chrisneale) although it lacks any update feature so it’s strictly for consuming Path pics at the moment, and there’s things for viewing photos fullscreen and looking at who’s been looking at them. Minor updates, but nice to have.
All that aside, I still don’t quite ‘get’ Path. The limited number of contacts on there is it’s selling point, but with so few people in my social networking circle actually using Path that number actually seems quite high. An artificial limit is pointless if no one is hitting it.
Much more interesting in the social-photo-sharing-app space at the moment is what’s going on with Instagr.am. People are definitely using the app that gives you a variety of quick effects that you can apply to pictures you share with friends, to the point that they’re achieving 3 photos uploaded per second. Plus, with Facebook, Flickr and Twitter integration, and yesterday’s announced FourSquare check-in feature, there’s much more reason to use Instagr.am over Path. Rumours abound that they’re looking to raise more money in a second round (Instagr.am raised $500k in their first round).
Between the two Instagr.am looks like the clear winner, but the social photo sharing space is growing fast with apps from Treehouse, Clixtr, picplz, Pegshot, Shutterfly, Steply and many more hitting the marketplace this year. To call the race won already would be somewhat premature.
Facebook in 2010
Dec 16th
It’s been a pretty good year for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Not only did he win Time Person of the Year* and sign up to give away half his fortune, his company generated some pretty staggering numbers:
Facebook in 2010
Pageviews = ~ 2.7 trillion
The number of page views on Facebook.com is a bit complicated given the nature of the website. There’s a lot of background loading of additional content, apps etc. According to Alexa, Facebook serves 7.4B pages per day at the moment.
Adverts served = 1 trillion
Facebook’s ad platform is very successful, but it’s not the only string to their bow. Facebook Credits (the virtual currency used in apps and games) is generating vast sums of money. FB rake in a 30% commission on every dollar spent in games like Farmville. That’s a lot.
Peak company valuation = $35 billion
Putting a value on FB is tricky, as demonstrated by the reports that fly about the place with number anywhere between $12B and $50B. Shares are actually being traded (eg, people are actually paying real money) based on a valuation $17B.
Company turnover = ~$2 billion
Facebook’s reported revenue was $800m in 2009. They’ve well and truly trumped that this year with a more than 100% improvement. Given the popularity of the site though, that’s not really surprising.
Users = 550 million
Facebook’s userbase is essentially a snapshot of the internet itself. Every demographic, almost every country, slightly more women than men. What’s more, more than half of all those users use the site on a daily basis. And they’re adding about 700,000 new users every day. That’s 8 every second.
Sources: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics; http://www.insidefacebook.com/; https://www.google.com/adplanner/; http://mashable.com/; http://venturebeat.com/
* The criteria for “Time Person of the Year” is “for better or for worse, the person who has done the most to influence the events of the year.” Past winners such as Hitler, Stalin (twice), and Ayatollah Khomeini, and runners up such as Osama Bin Laden, weren’t necessarily picked because they were good people. Whether Zuckerberg won for better or for worse is a matter for debate. 
The ads are coming.
Dec 15th
Twitter has updated it’s business website to include a form to register interest in buying adverts promoted content. The make up of the form makes it clear that that, for the time being at least, Twitter are targetting major advertisers and brands. The lowest option for “Monthly Budget” is “< $10,000″. Another interesting point of note is that the registration of interest form expects you to have an existing Twitter account specific to the brand you’re promoting. Generic accounts that promote lots of things don’t appear to be welcome. As a user I think that’s a positive sign.
Whether the shift to a monetised Twitter timeline changes Twitter significantly only time will tell. It’ll depend on how obnoxious the ad content is, and whether or not it’s pushed out to the third party apps. I’ll be watching with interest.
Twitter’s new ad registration form can be found here: http://business.twitter.com/advertise/start
Threadspotting
Dec 8th
Location check-in websites have started becoming pretty popular over the last year or so. Most of us have at least heard of Foursquare and Gowalla, and perhaps Facebook Places and the Google backed SCVNGR. Where you are is an obvious thing to catalogue. Those sites work*.
More recently other sorts of check-in sites have cropped up too. There’s the strange GetGlue that let’s you check-in what media you’ve been consuming, and Foodspotting that combines photos of what food you’ve been eating with which restaurant you’re at.
Foodspotting is an interesting idea. It almost works. The problem, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that I don’t eat out enough to make it worthwhile checking in and uploading a photo when I do. Who wants to spend time looking to see where I’ve been out if I’m only updating every month or so. I imagine that’s more to do with the fact I fall a little way outside of the target group that Foodspotting is aimed at (affluent 20somethings who eat in fancy restaurants a lot). The idea is sound, it’s just not for me. But it has got me thinking.
What do we all do, everyday, that we might be interested in sharing with our friends? The answer I’ve come up with is “wear clothes”.
The idea of sharing your “look” with your friends is far from new. Lookbook.nu has been doing it for years. Fashism.com started quite recently (with money supplied by the likes of Ashton Kutcher). People are interested in fashion. By combining the location-awareness of a photo sharing app people could take snapshots of items they’re seen in their favourite store to ask their friends if they like the look. For businesses that’d be a good thing – it’d drive people to the stores where they’ve seen things their friends have shared. A discount or special offer could be given to people who share enough pictures in store. News about items and offers could be sent directly to people who have checked-in to the store’s location (with the added advantage that no personal data would need to be passed from the user to the business owner).
I’m actually rather surprised no one has launched anything like this already. It’s that obvious.
* Or worked if the latest stats are to be believed. Their popularity appears to be waining.
TwitTip: The right reply.
Dec 6th
It’s lovely when we get a nice complimentary message on Twitter, and lovelier still to say thank you to whoever sent it. But next time you do, take a moment to craft your tweet for maximum impact.
There are 3 levels of messages on Twitter. There’s the DM (Direct Message), public reply, and public message. A DM is straightforward. It’s a message between you and the recipient. No one else can see it. They’re intended for private messages. As a rule, they’re not much use for promoting things but they’re great for conversations.
The other two sorts of messages are very similar but with a single very important difference. A public reply is a message to someone that begins with their twitter username (prepended with an @ symbol). Here’s an example. Twitter user @usrblog tweets;
“@onion2k Thanks for popping in today. Come back soon!“
This sort of message will be highlighted in my Twitter stream as it’s directed at me. The only other people who will see it will be followers of @usrlab who are also following @onion2k. In the form of a Venn diagram that would be:
The second sort is a public message. Using the same account as before, @usrblog might post;
“Thanks for popping in @onion2k. Come back soon!“
This message will have the same effect for me; it’ll be highlighted in my timeline like any other public reply, but it will appear in the timeline of everyone who is following @usrblog. If you’re posting a particularly positive message that’s a big win.
