The Mirror of Twitter

A few weeks ago – as I was sprawled in front of my computer in the early hours of the morning, busily scrolling through the hundreds of RSS updates I had yet to read – I received notification that I had a new mention on Twitter. It seemed innocent enough at the time, and I complacently command-tabbed to Tweetie to see who had mentioned me in a new Tweet. Amazingly enough, this was not a reply to one of my previous messages, nor was it even from one of my followers; it was from one of my favorite bands, Bear In Heaven. It turns out my account had recently mentioned their name via the Last.fm iTunes plugin for Twitter, which automatically tweets my most-listened-to iTunes artists every week. Bear In Heaven had evidently searched for other Twitter users who had mentioned their name and, upon finding that I had listened to their songs 180 times that week, added their own two cents:

Next week try and break 200?

Not only had I just been put in contact with an artist whose work I greatly admire, I didn’t even consciously make an effort to connect with them. 

This kind of interaction typifies what’s seemingly revolutionary about Twitter. Becoming somewhat of a phenomenon in recent months, no one would have guessed that a simple service which provides 140-character text-only messages aimed largely at no-one would be successful. If you’d asked me of my opinion of such a concept five years ago, I’d probably have said it sounds downright boring, if not useless. Why would I want to talk to a faceless community of strangers thirty words at a time? Haven’t we moved beyond text-only communication? Do I really want to know what my friends are eating for breakfast?

Yet here we are, at the dawn of a new decade, and Twitter continues to flourish. Yes, it’s true that Twitter provides the ability for strangers to communicate in new and exciting ways – such as Bear In Heaven encouraging me to play their music – but in reality, Twitter is driven by a far more basic human trait: narcissism. Instead of encouraging users to edit and consider their online output via the creation of long blog posts or lengthy photo-uploading processes, Twitter encourages the immediate, the basic, and the banal. 

Nowhere else is this more evident than in the way which Twitter displays every new Tweet, regardless of content, with a monotonous uniformity. Nicholas Carr provides a poignant example in his Roughtype.com post Twitter Dot Dash:

my dog just piddled on the rug! :-) [less than 10 seconds ago]

Seventeen killed in Baghdad suicide bombing [2 minutes ago]

Oh my god I cant believe it I just ate 14 double stuff Oreos [3 minutes ago]

Thanks to Twitter, breaking international news is now given the same media attention as a pet’s bladder issues. Social media supposedly embraces the power of “we”, but in reality, it’s far closer to embracing the power of “I”. Every moment of every Twitterer’s life is now glorified. As Carr argues, Twitter is likely to act as a repository for those who desperately feel the need to connect with others, even if that connection is merely shouting into a digital void.

If this is the case, why does anyone actually use Twitter? Ironically, its also this lack of connection which makes Twitter’s iteration of social media so addictive. While eating dinner, I can see what sixty of my friends – real or not – are doing, what band they’ve just discovered, or how many hours they slept last night, all without saying a word. In effect, I can know all about someone without ever having talked to them. It’s a bizarre method of interaction, but one which – as evidenced by the millions of users who sign into Twitter every day – is oddly pleasurable. 

While this duality of disconnection is at the heart of most of the Tweets sent every day, there have been a few glimmers of promise amongst the noise. The recent protests in Iran proved the service invaluable; when government censors prevent traditional news media from functioning effectively, Twitter’s sprawling network became a lifeline to those in need of information. Just the other day, I was notified of a tornado warning in the Los Angeles area by one of my followers, an alert which I likely wouldn’t have received otherwise. Bear In Heaven’s rather unexpected reply was an uplifting encounter between artist and fan, both of whom had never – and likely will never – meet in person.

Above all, Twitter has the power to surprise. No one would have guessed such a service would create the landslide of public interest garnered in the past few months, let alone become a useful news-media tool for those around the world. While it’s true there’s a lot of garbage on Twitter, its real promise lies in its open-endedness; most likely, its current uses have only scratched the surface of its real power. Likely, it will continue to change the world in even more surprising and significant ways, 140 characters at a time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an RT to attend to.

Social Bookmarking Soulmate: Minnesotajones

It’s surprisingly difficult to find a social bookmarker who seems interested in the social implications of Web 2.0. After wading through a swamp of bookmarks pertaining to the latest Facebook application crazes and how to amass a following of Twitter users, it’s apparent that many users of social media sites are engrossed in this new technology. In fact, there only seem to be a select few who are interested in examining the way these social media are changing our lives. After much searching, however, I unearthed a de.licio.us account by the moniker of Minnesotajones, a user who seems to be an invaluable resource with regards to emerging internet technology and how this change will affect its users.

Jones seems to be a power user on de.licio.us, having bookmarked nearly 2500 sites since 2006. His interests seem to focus on Web 2.0, social media, and advertising, which dovetails nicely with my own area of focus; he has roughly 1000 tags pertaining to social media alone. Jones’s tags are also nicely organized, employing a consistent tag language throughout that creates a distinct hierarchy of bookmark topics. Clearly, this user is web-savvy, and consequently I had no trouble finding provocative editorial commentary to inspire my own writing.

One of Jones’s most recently bookmarked posts, entitled How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation, takes a rather unusual look at how the advent of Web 2.0 has changed the way IBM operates. At 114 years old, IBM isn’t exactly a new company, yet new forms of social media are helping it stay abreast of current trends, helping employees from around the world communicate and interface with one-another. In fact, IBM has gone so far as to create its own company-run versions of many of today’s social networking websites, creating a rhobust internal network of communication for IBM and its affiliates.

Internally, 100,000 employees have registered on the blogging platform to rate and comment on posts across 17,000 blogs. […] An internal wiki serves as a hub of information, drawing well over a million page views every day. Additionally, downloads in the company’s user-generated media library now total 11 million. An IBM tool called Dogear functions like Delicious, a social bookmarking site. Blue Twit mimics Twitter. A tool called SocialBlue acts like Facebook, helping employees stay connected with former colleagues and get to know new ones.

Clearly, IBM recognizes the power of online social media, helping it transform its own company culture to embrace these rapidly developing technologies. Such a change for a corporation founded in 1896 has surely had a great impact on the way it functions, a rather unexpected outcome for technology aimed squarely at consumers.

Another post tagged by Jones, a Harvard Business Review opinion article entitled Welcome To Vancouver, the World’s Largest Social Media Experiment, provides an eye-opening view of how the Winter Olympics in Vancouver will also operate as one of the first large-scale social media experiments. While Web 2.0 was around for the advent of the Beijing Olympics, this is the first time such an environment that encourages – let alone permits – a full-scale implementation of social media technologies during such a large-scale event.

The Vancouver media has been covering the Games since the first inkling of a possible bid, but social media has dramatically shifted the media landscape over the years in ways that affect both local and international coverage. At the Vancouver Sun, which is the city's leading daily newspaper, Managing Editor Kirk Lapointe has had to reckon with the impact of online media. "Everyone is a journalist because of the tools and platforms now available and accessible," Lapointe told me, "And that is bound to change the dynamic of content and audience....I don't think it'll be unruly or chaotic, but the environment for new voices will certainly mean a larger public sphere for content."

These two articles are just a small sample of the wealth of links which Jones has amassed relating to the internet and social media. He’s a great resource for those interested in the social implications of Web 2.0, with a proven track record of finding interesting articles on a daily basis relating to the ever-changing face of the internet and Web 2.0. I’m looking forward to seeing what other information Jones is able to uncover in the future.

Trifecta Post

Hello, world!

Though somewhat cliche, such a title feels oddly appropriate for the first post of a blog on the subject of Web 2.0. I’m interested in examining the social and cultural implications of the landslide of content and information associated with this second coming of the internet, one which puts its emphasis in “the power of we”. Indeed, Web 2.0 has revolutionized how we access information, connect with our friends, and go about our daily lives. Many of us take this change for granted, but is it necessarily for the better?

I spent the majority of my childhood in the 1990s, and was fortunate enough to grow up using some of the latest technology available for accessing what was commonly referred to as “the phenomenon of Internet”. Even while that “latest technology” referred to a towering beige computer with a dial-up modem, the internet – operating in Version 1.0, as it is now known – made a lasting imprint on me. Computers became a part of my daily life, and I soon began checking online news feeds more often than I read the newspaper. In the years following, however, the internet has blossomed and transformed; its current iteration stands to fundamentally change the way we view the world.

While early websites were static and one-dimensional, often involving hours of coding in darkened rooms by haggard programmers, Web 2.0 recognizes that the style and content of webpages can be viewed as distinct entities. The creation of Web 1.0 websites was slow and laborious; Web 2.0 offers the ability for new content to be automatically formatted based on a relatively small amount of pre-written code. Indeed, it is this autonomous intake of new content which proves most pivotal to the success of Web 2.0. Using these technologies, websites appear that begin to reform the internet into a communication powerhouse. Everyone – including myself – can start a blog, upload photos of friends, and become a part of online communities, all without so much of a shred of knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, or CSS.

In recent years, several notable companies have begun to capitalize on the successes of Web 2.0 and the many advantages this technology offers the public. Websites such as Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr offer users the ability to easily upload and share unique content, which in turn can be accessed via a multitude of applications and devices. Wikipedia’s content is generated solely from the anonymous and unpaid contributions of millions of unique visitors. Twitter relies on nothing but one-hundred-and-forty-character ‘Tweets’ to generate an intricate network of trending topics and user relationships. New services such as Google Wave seek to redefine the traditional notion of email through an interactive and collaborative method of message creation and modification.

I’m an avid user of many of these applications, and have experienced a startling shift in the way I communicate over the past decade. Naturally, this piqued my curiosity: how exactly has the phenomenon of Web 2.0 altered the way we view the world and communicate with our friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers? Is a reliance on Facebook healthy? Can I solidify relationships through a social bookmarking website? Is Wikipedia truly a reliable source for any form of information?

Consequently, what this blog seeks to focus on are the social implications of Web 2.0, and how it continues to transform the way we communicate, learn, and perceive the world. Over the course of the next fifteen weeks, I’ll analyze these new forms of communication and question the benefit and validity each brings to the platform of social media. How will this new content-driven approach to the internet alter the way in which we communicate? How has it already done so? Who stands to benefit from these changes, and who may be at risk? Keep reading to find out.




Profile: Roughtype.com

Looking for ideas for my own writing, I stumbled across Nicholas Carr’s blog Roughtype.com, which provides insightful commentary on contemporary technology and its social, economic, and cultural implications. While there are many blogs devoted to the subject of technology, what really struck me with Roughtype’s content was the insightful analysis of how these newly unleashed technologies stand to change the way we live and interact with one another.

Mr. Carr isn’t without his credentials, either. He’s freelance writer who gained notoriety with his publication of The Big Switch, a Wall Street Journal bestseller which discusses the shift to contemporary media, cloud computing, and the concept of Web 2.0. He has also published numerous essays, among them the brilliantly-titled Is Google Making Us Stupid?, which discusses today’s reliance on internet search engines. He also lectures frequently, speaking at such notable institutions as MIT, Harvard, and NASA.

Clearly, Mr. Carr has a firm grasp on the complexities of technology and how they threaten to change life for nearly everyone in the twenty-first century. Roughtype.com was started in 2005, and has been updated by its author on a seemingly weekly basis. Its focus has shifted from early posts relating to the identity and geography of the internet (which feature fascinating visualizations of its layout) to more recent updates discussing how Apple’s iPhone App Store has erased much of the progress made in universal application creation in the last decade.

One of the best posts I found to exhibit Roughtype’s strengths is entitled The Amorality Of Web 2.0, a topic of conversation which dovetails nicely with my own blog’s focus. Carr writes that while Web 2.0 inarguably presents numerous benefits to society, there is also a counterargument to be made against the seeming perfection of this new technology. As he writes with regards to Wikipedia:

In theory, Wikipedia is a beautiful thing - it has to be a beautiful thing if the Web is leading us to a higher consciousness. In reality, though, Wikipedia isn't very good at all. Certainly, it's useful - I regularly consult it to get a quick gloss on a subject. But at a factual level it's unreliable, and the writing is often appalling. I wouldn't depend on it as a source, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to a student writing a research paper.

Carr illustrates his point in poignant way by citing a portion of Bill Gates’s wiki, which contains nothing but a jumble of confusing factoids. Like a game of Tetris gone wrong, each snippet of writing is unordered, full of chronological holes, and is utterly bewildering to the reader. If this is the quality that Web 2.0 has achieved after a rather lengthy gestation – nearly five years in Wikipedia’s case – can we truly believe that it will develop past this mediocrity?

The promoters of Web 2.0 venerate the amateur and distrust the professional. We see it in their unalloyed praise of Wikipedia, and we see it in their worship of open-source software and myriad other examples of democratic creativity.

It’s a fair comment, one which I often think about while wading through piles of poorly-worded Wikipedia entries. Keep in mind that Carr is writing this from his blog, a facet of Web 2.0 which is a part of the very machine he is criticizing. Carr is clearly not afraid of challenging the status quo or questioning the means by which he expresses his own opinion. It is this careful dissection of technologies which many of us – myself included – have started to take for granted which serves as great inspiration for my own writing. Carr’s careful analysis and thoughtful editorial creates a blog that is both engaging and eye-opening.

Roughtype.com also explores a varied range of internet-related topics, among them the phenomenon of the avatar, wherein Carr writes about the phenomenon of completely virtual identities.

To hear that people are vain, even obsessively so, is not surprising. Still, though, there's something sad about this - funny-sad, anyway. Your online self ... is entirely self-created, and because it determines your identity and social standing in an internet community, each decision you make about how you portray yourself - about which facts (or falsehoods) to reveal, which photos to upload, which people "to friend," which bands or movies or books to list as favorites, which words to put in a blog - is fraught, subtly or not, with a kind of existential danger. And you are entirely responsible for the consequences as you navigate that danger. You are, after all, your avatar's parents; there's no one else to blame. So leaving the real world to participate in an online community - or a virtual world like Second Life - doesn't relieve the anxiety of self-consciousness; it magnifies it. You become more, not less, exposed.

What is consistent throughout many of his posts is Carr’s elegant and informative critique of each topic at hand. He consistently sets a high standard for both quality of writing and uniqueness of subject, while at the same time giving his blog a reasonably informal and approachable atmosphere. This is exactly what I hope to do in my own writing, and to probe yet deeper into the way Web 2.0 has changed our lives. How has our perception of the world changed? Can this new technology be used to promote interactions we’ve never seen before? Stay tuned.




Voice analysis: Soshable.com

What makes a great blog post? It’s a great question, and one that many bloggers still seem unable to answer. Part of the equation of any successful blog is surely the voice and tone of its writing, and consequently I’ve decided to analyze the voice of a well-known social media and internet blog, Soshable.com. Written by J.D. Rucker, Soshable focuses on opinion-based articles about social media and Web 2.0, offering finely-crafted analysis of the ways social media affects our lives. The blog assumes a professional, visually-oriented voice throughout, giving readers a concise and thoughtful commentary of the topics at hand.

One of Soshable’s posts that immediately caught my eye is entitled The Twitter Paradox: Why It Will Likely Fail Sooner Or Later. The post outlines why Twitter, the well-known social media website which allows users to communicate via 140-character ‘Tweets’, is ultimately bound to fall from the public eye. The post is content-heavy; there is little room for extraneous diction or irrelevant commentary. Each sentence in stripped to its essentials, which places emphasis on content while simultaneously making for a relatively easy read. 

The “real-time web” and the data within is a paradox of its own that companies are racing to control, but the data available on Twitter is a goldmine of behavioral marketing and search engine data-boosting firepower that everyone recognizes.

It’s obvious that the diction used here is fairly high-level; Soshable is clearly looking to attract a more informed readership base. What’s more, we see the author using key words and phrases that are both descriptive and illicit a visual response from readers. 

Racing to control […] goldmine of behavioral marketing […] firepower that everyone recognizes.

It’s apparent that Rucker himself is a proponent of the internet and new social media, and he uses a careful choice of visually-oriented words to communicate his opinion. The visual aspect of his writing helps the post come alive, forming vivid images in the reader’s mind. The phrase “firepower that everyone recognizes” is especially potent, in that it visualizes the supposed power of Twitter, while simultaneously implying that this is a de facto statement, as everyone recognizes it.

Other posts are somewhat more comical in their nature, and it’s here that the author’s voice really shines through. The following is an excerpt from the article 15 Most Annoying Types Of Twitter Users, which, as the title implies, paints a picture of the  types users every Twitterer loathes.

I know. Everyone loves Oprah. You can’t say anything bad about her because she is perfection boxed up into human form. Still, what are her 2 million followers doing? She doesn’t talk to any of them. She rarely tweets at all (going on a month of inactivity).  It reminds me of the people who followed Forrest Gump on his runs across the country. They were there, waiting for him to say something magical, and it never came.

In contrast to the voice of the last post, this seems a lot more personable and intimate. Rucker begins with a short phrase, “I know,” which immediately cements a level of understanding between the reader of the author. Again, he follows this introduction with visual imagery, “… she is perfection box up into human form,” which forms a somewhat comical image in the mind of the reader. Rucker then asks a question of his audience, which again constructs a personable atmosphere with his readership, inviting readers to contemplate their own opinion before reading the ensuing commentary. This combination of techniques actively engages the reader, creating an intimate relationship with the author of the post.

It reminds me of the people who followed Forrest Gump on his runs across the country. They were there, waiting for him to say something magical, and it never came.

This classic film reference, while not obscure by any means, shows the author targeting a specific audience with his writing, and again reinforces his intended message by reference to an image. The thought of a crowd of running through the barren desert chasing after a bearded Tom Hanks is sure to evoke a smile from readers. Moreover, the connection between this desolate scene and Twitter users clinging to Oprah’s every Tweet serves to give the author’s commentary a visual component, which adds interest and depth to his writing.

We can also see in this paragraph how punctuation is used to establish a rhythm in a relatively short expanse of writing. Sentences increase in length and complexity, first acting as a “hook” for the reader, then expanding to flesh out the point which the author is trying to make. This serves as an effective method of provoking readers when at the beginning of a paragraph – if they become interested by the intriguing and relatively concise introduction, they’re much more likely to read the rest of the post.

While Soshable’s posts can vary considerably in terms of tone and voice, what remains consistent throughout is that each is effective in communicating its intended thesis and tone. Most notably, there is an abundance of visual imagery, which helps the Rucker’s words jump off the page and create a strong impression on the reader. I think this is a great way to engage readers and add depth to blog posts, and I will hopefully be able to incorporate these techniques into my own writing. Maintaining a professional voice is important to me in discussing my subject matter, but sites such as Soshable provide an example of how to inject personality into a relatively formal discussion of the topics at hand.

Voice Analysis: Soshable.com

This week I’ve decided to analyze the voice of a well-known social media and internet blog, Soshable.com. Soshable focuses on opinion-based articles about social media and Web 2.0, offering atypical analysis of the ways social media affects our lives. The blog assumes a professional voice throughout, giving readers a concise and thoughtful commentary of the topics at hand.

One of the posts that immediately caught my eye is entitled The Twitter Paradox: Why it will likely fail sooner or later. The post details why Twitter, a social media website which allows users to communicate via 140-character ‘Tweets’, is ultimately bound to fall from the public eye. The post is content-heavy; there is little room for extraneous diction or irrelevant commentary. Each sentence in this post is relatively short, which places emphasis on content while simultaneously making for a relatively easy read. 

The “real-time web” and the data within is a paradox of its own that companies are racing to control, but the data available on Twitter is a goldmine of behavioral marketing and search engine data-boosting firepower that everyone recognizes.

It’s obvious that the diction used here is fairly high-level; Soshable is clearly gearing itself towards a more informed readership base. What’s more, however, we see the author using key words and phrases that are both descriptive and illicit a visual response from readers. “Racing to control … goldmine of behavioral marketing … firepower that everyone recognizes.” It’s apparent that the author himself is somewhat of a proponent of the internet and new social media, and he uses a careful choice of words to communicate his opinion. The phrase “firepower that everyone recognizes” is especially potent, in that it visualizes the supposed power of Twitter, while simultaneously implying that this is a de facto statement, everyone recognizes it.

Other posts, however, are somewhat more comical in their nature, and it’s here that the author’s voice really shines through. The following is an excerpt from the article 15 Most Annoying Types Of Twitter Users, which, as can be seen in the title, is a largely editorial in nature.

I know. Everyone loves Oprah. You can’t say anything bad about her because she is perfection boxed up into human form. Still, what are her 2 million followers doing? She doesn’t talk to any of them. She rarely tweets at all (going on a month of inactivity).  It reminds me of the people who followed Forrest Gump on his runs across the country. They were there, waiting for him to say something magical, and it never came.

In contrast to the voice of the last post, this seems a lot more personable and intimate, largely because of the way the comment itself is structured. The author begins with a short phrase, “I know,” which immediately illicits a level of understanding between the reader of the author. Again, he follows this introduction with visual imagery, “… she is perfection box up into human form.” The author then asks a question of his audience, which again reinforces a personable connection with his readership, inviting readers to contemplate their own opinion before reading the following commentary. 

It reminds me of the people who followed Forrest Gump on his runs across the country. They were there, waiting for him to say something magical, and it never came.

This classic film reference, while not obscure by any means, assumes the author’s readership is well-connected to popular culture, and again reinforces his intended message by reference to an image. The thought of a crowd of running through the desert chasing after a bearded Tom Hanks is sure to evoke humor, and his connection between this and a host of people following Oprah serves to give his commentary a humorous note.

We can also see in this paragraph how punctuation is used here to establish a rhythm to the relatively short paragraph. Sentences increase in length and complexity, first acting as a “hook” for the reader, then expanding on the point which the author is trying to make. This serves as an effective method of provoking readers when at the beginning of a paragraph – if they become interested by the relatively short and provoking introduction, they’re much more likely to read the rest of the post.

While Soshable’s posts can vary considerably in terms of tone and voice, what remains consistent throughout is that each is effective in communicating its intended message or tone. Most notably, there is a strong emphasis on visual imagery throughout, which helps the author’s words jump off the page and create a strong impression on the reader. I think this is a great way to engage readers and add depth to blog posts, and I will hopefully be able to incorporate many of the techniques seen here into my own posts. Maintaining a professional voice is important to me in discussing my subject matter, but sites such as Soshable provide an example of how to inject personality into a relatively formal discussion of the topics at hand.