Personal Media

Why is everything social these days? Where's the revolution in antisocial media! Get rid of those share buttons and lets have a hide button!

Click hide and you'll never see the article again, and if enough people click it, it's deleted of the face of the web...

I don't want to like everything, where's the dislike button? How do I -1 something, less Poke, more Jab!

All this positivity is great, but where would eBay be if you could only leave positive ratings?

Where would the literary and film world be without scathing reviews and critics...

Where are the scathing reviews of content on the web

Ever wondered why there's so much tat out here?

Come on Google, give us our -1 button

we promise to use it responsibly

On all that rubbish out there

we'll clean up the web!

no more kittens

Oh...

You like kittens?

Why Twitter Matters

Bizzarely, at least to me, I seem to spend a lot of time persuading people that there is real business value in tweeting...

I have a couple of standard arguments and I'd like to crystallise those here.

It may be an interesting, and hopefully convincing read if you don't tweet, and useful to people who do, and would like to convince others.

so, why does twitter matter? 

Firstly, Twitter doesn't matter:

The first myth to dispel is that we're talking about Twitter at all here. This post isn't really about the usefulness of Twitter, it's about the usefulness of global, realtime communication and networking.

A lot of people hesitate to sign up to Twitter because it's "just a fad" or it will be "replaced by something else next week" so forget the platform, forget the brand name.

Just ask yourself this:

Can you see the benefit in global realtime communication and networking? Can you see the benefit in being able to network with thousands of people in your field, from across the world, in being able to ask questions of them all in seconds, and get responses near instantly?

I really wanted to get on the recent google plus trial, one tweet and I'm in (Thank's so much Paul) and three hours later, google have shut down invites to the trial! I wouldn't be on the trial unless I'd been using Twitter.

Having a large and responsive network is massively beneficial, and believe me, global, realtime communication and networking is here to stay, what it's called in the future doesn't matter, but trust me, if you build up a network of likeminded people they'll continue to be your network on whatever platform comes next.

That said, Twitter is currently the simplest form of this type of communication, so get started now, build your network, make contacts, friends, mentors & followers.

Short and sweet

So hopefully you can see that twitter is a networking tool, but it's also a valuable educational tool...

One of the hardest things in business is to keep up with the trends, whatever your sector, things change and that pace of change appears ever increasing.

One of the questions I'm often asked is how I know so much about these sorts of tools, or the web in general, "I just dont have the time to keep up with it all" I'm told. It sometimes comes across as a tiny bit offensive, as if everyone else is really busy and I must have loads of time on my hands. Well I don't, I just follow a select group of people who make it their passion to be informed as I make it mine, and between us we all share a lot of information.

What helps this along is one of the joys of tweets, they're short, 140 characters, so many of them are true pearls of wisdom. By following the right people you can skim through their findings and get up to date on any subject really rather quickly, and as they usually post links to more in-depth articles you can choose how and when you want more insight into a particular area.

The impact of being recognised

Once you're on board it's important to realise that Twitter isn't just a virtual tool, you'll meet your followers and the people you follow, they'll recognise you and you'll recognise them.

The image you attach to your profile is crucial, make it large, clear and recognisable. People will hunt you out when you're at the same conference, you'll make valuable friends and strengthen bonds, many people I speak to get a lot of business from Twitter, and putting a face to the name is a big part of effective use of the tool.

Use it your way

The final thing i tell people is sometimes the most important.

You don't have to say anything on twitter.

I know people who use it purely as a tool for consuming information, they've been on twitter for years, and follow hundreds of people, but never tweet at all...

Twitter is a tool, and you can use it however you like, there's immeasurable benefit in getting involved actively, but it can be just as valuable a tool for pure research, it can be a PR tool, a networking tool, a marketing tool, a research tool, a way to attend a conference virtually, keep up on the latest news, the list goes on...

And all in just 140 characters!

Just give it a go... 

Social Media with personality

So what's one of the the biggest challenges facing social media over the next few years?

I think it's all about personas.

We all have multiple personas, we wear different hats, some more than others, but everyone amends their behaviour when in different groups of people, out of familiarity, respect, or necessity.

After some consideration I think I have 4 personas, or attitudes, which are probably the most common 4 in many people.

1 Work ... At work
2 Home ... Relaxed at home on my own / with my partner
3 Friends ... Out with my friends / partner
4 Family ... With my family

I feel that my personas don't differ greatly, but there are things I just wouldn't say or do when in any one of these situations that I would in others.

So how does social media help me express my different personas?

Well it doesn't...

I had to create two twitter accounts, one for business, one for friends / family, but find even this frustrating because again, some things I might say to one audience I wouldn't say to another.

Facebook doesn't help me, I can create groups there, but it's a complete pain to administer these and I can't send one status update to one group and one to another.

Flickr,YouTube, et al, have something akin to folder security, a clunky and unfriendly way for me to try and categorise everyone and then try and keep all my videos / pictures in the right folders.

Some social networks get round this problem by developing their entire business about a single persona, linkedin is a great example of this, it shares much of the functionality of many other social networks, but bases it's business model around solely targeting the "Work" persona.

I feel this has to change, most people get round it by just not adding work colleagues or family to their networks, or separating accounts, or using different platforms, which just doesn't seem right.

Here's my vision of the future,

On twitter, facebook, flickr etc, when I sign up I can create a persona...

Or a few, so I create,

Rob@Work
Rob@Home
Rob@Friends
Rob@Family

Now when people follow me they can choose, which facets of me to follow, except they can't follow Rob@Home Because that's a restricted persona, only me and my partner can see that content.

And when I post on any platform, it checks a couple of things, am I at work, at home, with friends, with family?

And makes an educated guess as to which persona to use, of course I can change it, but as it learns the kind of things I say, it gets better at recognising who I'm posting as, Rob@Work tends to use Squarespace to post long rambling blogs, Rob@Friends tends to post short tweets with geotagging on and often including pictures. You get the idea.

So now I'm not managing multiple accounts, and it's really easy for me to post anything I want without boring / offending / upsetting anyone...

And my followers can choose which part of me they're interested in, without getting swamped.

It's a developing idea, but I think it has merit? Thoughts anyone?

Why i Pad

I feel there are some fundamental misconceptions around the iPad, and many people who still don't understand the device. So I thought I'd talk a little about why I use the iPad and what it has meant to my life, both in business and outside of it.

The single most important feature of the iPad is it's ease of access, not ease of use, but access... The iPad is comparable to a phone, rather than a laptop, it takes seconds to power on, is incredibly light, has 10 hours of battery.

I carry my iPad with me everywhere, literally.

In the morning I wake and take it from my bedside table and check my Facebook, twitter, email etc. It's in my hand when I walk to work, and if I am asked, like I was last week, for directions to somewhere I'm not sure of, I flip back the cover, tap the map app, and present the astounded person I'm helping out with a gps located map...

A work it sits at my desk, sometimes I don't turn on my PC in the morning if email is the order of the day, in meetings it sits on my lap whee I use the unrivalled "evernote" to keep notes and minutes.

On the train it's loaded with the podcasts and shows I watch, and also has the kindle app with the three books I currently have on the go ( including Malcom Gladwell's "what the dog saw" which is great)

If winding down in the pub with friends it sometimes doubles up as a table football game, or we play a multitude of other four player table top games.

Back home and it's the Internet on my lap while watching TV, my cookbook, cocktail aid at parties, and finally off to bed to finish off that book.

I learnt enough Turkish on it to impress the locals and gain their respect while on holiday (I'm sat writing this by the pool in Side, Turkey)

I blog from it, collate, edit and share all my photos from it, write music on it, make movies on it.... The list goes on, but it all comes back to the ease of access, it's not that it's easy to use, though it is, it's that it's easy to get to all those tools within seconds...

Feedback Loop

A couple of times in the last few weeks I've given voice to a theory which I'd like to flesh out a little here.

I feel that human beings are social creatures by nature.

In our natural state we constantly chatter and make noise, giving voice to our emotions and feelings in order that others may react and support us. This is most naturally observed in children in a playground or classroom with no teacher, when we are completely relaxed in our surroundings, say in a restaurant or bar, or when we revert to this state under extreme pressure, for example at the scene of a large accident, or disaster.

We see, and take for granted, this behaviour in primates all the time, and I believe if you were to jump back a short time in our history you'd see it in us.

It's a perfectly natural state and allows us to become in tune with each other, work together and understand each others feelings and needs.

Yet now, for most of the time, it is subdued.

We have built houses, walls to isolate ourselves from our neighbours which limit our ability to casually socialise, and remove the usefulness of this chatter. We have our Victorian values: it's improper to mutter in public, it's dangerous to talk to strangers, it's unhealthy or even illegal to gather in large groups. Our culture dictates we should isolate ourselves at work in offices and cubicles. Talk is idle, productivity is silent.

We've just missed the fact that this is completely unnatural.

And so when opportunities arise for us to break away from these societal shackles, we do. When crowds can form, they will. Stop and listen to that noise in a busy restaurant, that chatter, we've been taught to perceive that as hundreds of individual conversations, and it is, but it's also much more than that, it's a social conversation, everyone is also listening to everyone else, if one table gets distressed, voices change in pitch, people turn, the mood changes. We are all aware.

And so it is with Social Media.

Online, more than anywhere else, we are reverting to our natural state. We're reforming tribes, crowds, muttering out loud, getting feedback from each othe, creating support structures, we're the chimpanzees of the internet. Removing the social and political constraints that stop us from talking to each other, devolving back several hundred thousand years to a simpler time. It's a beautiful thing to witness, everyone is listening to everyone else.

It's one of the single biggest social shifts in history. Power now stems from what you say, from who you are. Your social network will do things for you, they are your tribe, they share your values. We are witnessing the emergence of a new form of society online, with new rules. And those people involved right now are helping to shape it.

Isn't that exciting?