Pinboard: bookmarks for peteashton tagged 'ash10'

An observation that socialising doesn't scale. I've been thinking this a lot regarding newspaper comments and the like. It all goes back to "small pieces loosely joined".

socialmedia twitter socialnetworking wired socialnetworks conversation scale toblog ash10
february 2010 by peteashton

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What Happens When A Celebrity Links You On Twitter?

Tom Ewing got linked to by the 32nd most followed person on Twitter with 1.5 million people reading his tweets. While he concedes it's a single data point only 0.4% of them clicked through. I thought I'd do a bit of maths on my own account. I have about 1600 followers and when I link to a photo on Twitpic it generally gets 50-70 views. That's around 3-4%. I'd imagine someone with a normal number of followers (50-200) would get a much better percentage. Highly tenuous conclusion - it's all about the relationship between the tweeter and followers.

twitter followers celebrity ash10 tomewing
september 2009 by peteashton

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Online Database of Social Media Policies

99 (and growing) policies from a variety of organisations. I haven't dug into this yet but if you're looking to develop a social media policy for your org you might find a good template here. I'd caution that while some are doing this well it's doubtful anyone's getting it completely right.

policy strategy socialmedia guidelines ash10
september 2009 by peteashton

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Newspapers get the kind of communities they deserve » Nieman Journalism Lab

The money quote here is "many newspapers still see comments as some kind of necessary evil: a bone tossed to readers to help drive traffic, but something that produces little else of value." And they wonder why their comments are a cess-pool?

comments community newspapers ash10
september 2009 by peteashton

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Most comments suck. Discuss

How popular sites deal with comments from their readers is an ongoing debate and one for which there isn't a simple or universal answer, but reading this a thought occurred to me. Maybe conversation simply doesn't scale to these sites. You need some sort of limit or restriction be it numbers or subject or a more nebulous notion of community rules. This might explain why newspapers in particular who are trying to be all things to all people suffer so badly. All people talking about all things is always going to be messy.

comments community moderation conversation ash10
september 2009 by peteashton

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A Brief History Of Social Media

I have a small problem with these articles which say "social media is nothing new - we've been doing this since the Internet was created." Yes, it's true that Twitter is directly descended from IRC but it's the mass adoption of Twitter and Facebook that makes it interesting. It's like me saying fanzine culture was the precursor to blogging. Sure it was, but blogging was much more revolutionary because the barriers to entry tumbled. But, that said, it's good to know your history if you want to understand these tools and this is a nice short introduction to that history

history socialmedia ash10 icq irc bulletinboards compuserve aol phreaking
september 2009 by peteashton

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The internet society – time to get real

Matthew Taylor of the RSA: "The internet is neither neutral nor inherently liberating. It operates in the context of existing social conventions and power structures. Its impact is real but often subtle and unexpected." I think this is a no-brainer. The internet connects society in different ways - it doesn't in itself fundamentally change society and if it can it's not going to do in in a generation. Society has to change society and we're mostly applying pre-Internet thinking to these tools. But while I agree with the views in this post I think it's only looking at the big stuff - the macro, if you like. It's at a micro level where Internet connectivity gets interesting but that's much harder to generalise about.

backlash macro rsa society ash10
september 2009 by peteashton

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Open Source ‘Twitter’ Could Fend Off the Next Twitpocalypse

Wired article that sumarises the movement towards decentralising Twitter-like microblogging services.

twitter opensource microblogging internet ash10 decentralisation
august 2009 by peteashton

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Anil Dash on "the future of new media"

Nice to see the inclusion debate articulated by an Amercian tech person. A number of parallels with efforts going on here with an emphasis on those who make the tools having a responsibility to make them accessible, both technically and culturally. "Culturally" being the important one.

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inclusion digitalinclusion ash10 culture anildash
august 2009 by peteashton

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Why local bloggers may never compete with local media

This issue came to me last week and it worthy of much thought. In fact it's probably the biggest issue facing those wishing to see blogging take off at a hyperlocal level. In short, those producing the blogs are part of the communities they're writing about so if they write something controversial or unpopular this can affect them personally. We haven't spent much time looking at the dynamics of the local communities which we're looking to network in new ways. I suspect they might be more complex and fragile that we imagined. And someone might get hurt.

localblogging talkaboutlocal blogging local community communityblogging ash10
august 2009 by peteashton

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What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way

The difference between how commercial companies think and how the Internet works is something I've been observing for a while recently. It's most obvious with Twitter, Facebook and other centralised services that mimic the distributed architecture of the web but I think it's as much a state of mind as a technical solution. Here Anil Dash delves into the mire using Google Wave as an example. [<a href="http://dashes.com/anil/2009/08/the-web-on-the-web-way.html">Follow-up post</a>]

googlewave technology internet architecture culture ash10
august 2009 by peteashton

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Google News registration is an easy win

Ironically I'm not a fan of websites that aren't traditional news organisations being part of Google News but since Google has decided to open the gates a bit here's a handy guide to getting your site considered for inclusion. Notable that it has to be a team effort.

localblogging talkaboutlocal googlenews ash10
august 2009 by peteashton

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Cosy social networks 'are stifling innovation'

When I was at school a visiting journalist gave a talk. He encouraged us to change our newspaper every few weeks to get a more balanced view on the world. I suspect the same applies to social networks. It's easy to settle into the a cosy, comfortable environment but it's not necessarily going to take you anywhere interesting. On the other hand, your modern social networks are built up of many overlaps so new information does come in. But I've been feeling my Twitter community has become a bit "safe" of late.

twitter community socialnetworks research innovation serendipity ash10
august 2009 by peteashton

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Torchwood Writer Gets Online Abuse: Where social media stops being fun

I meant to write more about this at the time. There's a fine line between fans and fanatics and it's worth remembering that if someone is really, totally passionate about the thing that you do they might just be a little unhinged. Do you really want people like that being your ambassadors online? All sorts of things bundled up in this - giving away ownership and control for one.

vero torchwood fandom audience negative control ash10
august 2009 by peteashton

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Nutshell - Directory for UK Local Blogs

A slightly more ambitious attempt to collate the "blogs about a specific area" that exist. Directories like this are doomed to failure in the long term but do act as a useful bridge to the creation of communities of interest. <a href="http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2009/08/18/utra-local-blogs-update-and-a-new-local-directory-nutshellorguk/">More about the intentions here</a>.

blogging localblogging directory onlinejournalismblog local ash10
august 2009 by peteashton

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Scott Rosenberg: Say Everything: How Blogging Began

Promoting his new book (which I've not started yet) Scott gives a very basic introduction to the origins of the form and dispells a few myths. 35 mintues of talk followed by Q&A. Worth watching.

ash10 blogging sayeverything scottrosenberg lecture talk metapodconnect reading history
august 2009 by peteashton

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Joanna Geary links for 2009-08-03

If you're at all interested in how content providers might make money for their content online (with newspapers being the main focus) Jo's collected a rather good batch of links here summarizing the current thinking and positing some solutions.

ash10 newspapers news online advertising joannageary readers
august 2009 by peteashton

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Nice definition of Social Journalism

Social Journalism or Social Reporting is a term that's been bandied around recently. I was struggling to figure out how it was different to old fashioned blogging and the like. This definition makes a bit of sense - it's the curating of the stuff that bubbles up from social networks.

"What’s Social Journalism? It’s what you do when you gather information in social media channels and then report it to your readers. Watching a Twitter #hashtag for posts related to a critical local issue or big event, then publishing them in a roundup or sidebar on your news site? That’s Social Journalism. Scanning YouTube for the latest video from a protest, county fair, or city council meeting? That’s Social Journalism."

journalism socialmedia socialreporting socialjournalism blogging curation aggregation ash10
august 2009 by peteashton

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Media as a hobby is not sustainable as a business - broadstuff

Great article by Alan Patrick.

"We tend to forget that the reason for profits is unique access to bottleneck resources. In the case of the media it has been production and distribution. The 'Net changed all that of course - production and distribution is now in the hands of anyone with a PC and a 'Net connection."[...] To me the message is fairly clear - the New Bottlenecks will be Independent Thought, Editing & Curation, and Journalistic Storytelling. [...] This to me is the issue that "HobbyMedia" will face - the "Pro" media will find the new bottlenecks and spend all their time and energy in mastering them.

I've long been skeptical of Alan's view on amateur produced media but his position is becoming clear now and I think this could well be applied outside of news journalism. What are your bottlenecks?

journalism newspapers bottlenecks ash10 curation professional amatuer
july 2009 by peteashton

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DRM for news? Inside the AP's plan to "wrap" its content

Nice Ars Technica analysis of how the Associated Press intends to protect news. In short, they can't, it won't and the microformat technology they're planning to use doesn't even do that. One for the "sad death throes of traditional news distribution" files.

AP drm journalism newspapers microformats ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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The Goal of Twitter’s New Homepage? Be the World’s Water Cooler

Articles on Mashable about Twitter are usually so niche as to be uninteresting or coloured by systemic bias around how the Mashable folk use it, but this one is worth a skim. In short, Twitter have changed their front page as seen by prospective new users which indicates a change in business strategy. Or "Twitter’s no longer about updating your friends, but about being THE place for global events." I don't want to read too much into this, and it doesn't affect how the infinite micro-communities function, nor how those introduced by word of mouth will use it, but it registers on my Interesting Radar.

twitter strategy mashable ash10 community broadcast
july 2009 by peteashton

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Lotka's law - Wikipedia

I think I saw this in the distribution of Twitter users over Supersonic. I have no idea what to do with this piece of knowledge though. "Lotka's law is one of a variety of special applications of Zipf's law. It describes the frequency of publication by authors in any given field. It states that [...] the number of authors publishing a certain number of articles is a fixed ratio to the number of authors publishing a single article. As the number of articles published increases, authors producing that many publications become less frequent. There are 1/4 as many authors publishing two articles within a specified time period as there are single-publication authors, 1/9 as many publishing three articles, 1/16 as many publishing four articles, etc. Though the law itself covers many disciplines, the actual ratios involved (as a function of 'a') are very discipline-specific."

twitter distribution longtail data ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Andy Gibson's talk at Ambition Roadshow

10 minute mp3 in which @gandy looks at how we're playing with conventions of audience, power, conversation and more. I aspire to be this coherent and to strike such a great balance between optimism and caution. Highly recommended.

gandy socialmedia andygibson audience metapodconnect reading power ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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It meant that you were a protest singer

Tom Ewing looks at the "United Breaks Guitars" protest video not from it's status as a viral hit but through the novel and more useful perspective of a music writer. In short, the medium - country music - is a potent vehicle for "hard-luck stories and straight-talking". The medium is the message and all that.

tomewing vitral music marshallmcluhan mcluhan ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Social by Social - A practical guide to using new technologies to deliver social impact

Written by some people I respect, but I haven't found time to delve in yet. You may have time. Have a delve and tell us what you think

socialmedia activism book ash10 empowerment surgeries
july 2009 by peteashton

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If the Twitter community was 100 people…

Nice infograph showing how 5% of Twitter users make up 75% of content on Twitter. That sounds about right to me and is the same across most distinct communities. What interests me is how the other 95% are probably making up most of the content somewhere else, offline or on.

twitter stats visualization ash10 community participation
july 2009 by peteashton

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Social Media Is Punk

Nice little video drawing comparisons between the punk movement in the 70 and the blogging, etc stuff happening now. While I think the video simplifies thing a bit I do agree with this. The DIY nature of online participation is what makes it so important. Anyone can play three chords. Anyone can do a zine. Anyone can start a blog.

punk diy socialmedia video fanzines ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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The Future of Search: Social Relevancy Rank

Best read with a "hmm, yeah, maybe" attitude but this hits on something our current social networks are missing out on - finding the middle ground between your "friends" and everybody. Twitter kinda had this with their option to see replies people you follow made to people you don't follow until it was scrapped for performance reasons but that was only a hint, while Facebook sort of does it for discovering new people but, afaik, doesn't play in the search arena. I want to see friend-of-a-friend search. Just as my local community is made up of people I don't know but who are probably connected to me via someone I do know, so my online community works the same way. Being able to query the data in that network would be invaluable.

search twitter friend trends socialnetworking facebook ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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I get by with a little help from 94552 friends

Matt Haughey on the 10th aniversary of Metafilter, the first community weblog (I think). Someone needs to write the book on Metafilter - if they have do let me know - since it's a wonderful case study on how online communities work.

community metafilter mefi internet ash10 comments
july 2009 by peteashton

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Andy Dickinson's Bookmarks for June 5th through July 27th

Usually I shy away from Delicious link-dumps like this (even though I'm just as guilty - I suspect this link will be accompanied be far too many when it gets published) but a quick skim through Andy's indicates it's chock full of goodness, especially if you're interested in online journalism and news.

links andydickinson journalism news ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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How to search Twitter using Google

Interesting, not just for the tips but as an illustration that there's more than one way to access data in a service. I'm reminded of how I used to search for bands on MySpace using Google partly because MySpace's search was so torturous but also because the way Google ranks pages usually bubbled the bands above the non-band pages.

data search twitter google slicing ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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You are not your brand online — and especially not on Twitter

Jon Bounds addresses the issue of people setting up Twitter accounts for their businesses and use them as individuals. He roughly divides it into two problems: <i>1) People that know you will get fed up of constant business tweets (if they aren’t heavy users or fans of your service). 2) People that care about your business are put off by the personal stuff.</i> I'd agree with most of what he's saying but would add this isn't such a problem when the person is the brand, as happens with many small arts companies and organisations. But on the whole some good advice. (Jon's been ill this week so this was written by Grumpy Jon. I like Grumpy Jon.)

jonbounds twitter business strategy ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Fever and the Future of Feed Readers

Thoughtful and considered look at the state of existing RSS readers (Google has killed all), the emergence of new RSS readers that try to deal with the deluge and where this method of getting information is moving. It's worth remembering that reading stuff in an RSS reader is just one use of RSS. The main reason for an RSS feed is to have your content in a machine readable form. That it can also be used for updates is just one benefit of many.

rss googlereader feeds feedreader fever ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Chris Unitt reports from Shift Happens

Shift Happens was an arts/digital conference thingy the other week that I regret missing. It looked to be rather interesting. Chris does a roundup.

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july 2009 by peteashton

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Not Every CEO Needs to Be a Social-Media Star

Bit of a no-brainer but a useful response to the attitude that EVERYONE has to be online socially. Some people simply shouldn't blog or Twitter or whathaveyou. That's not an excuse for those who should but are just scared but it should be taken into account.

ceos socialmedia strategy ash10 business
july 2009 by peteashton

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Twitter 101 for Business — A Special Guide

Twitter have finally written a comprehensive guide to how businesses can use their service commercially. It's geared towards etiquette with some nice case studies the seem to emphasise the conversation and not pissing people off. It's a bit of a tightrope and there are no blanket rules (don't spam people with promotional links, unless people are following you for promotional links, and so on) but I can't see any major problems with this document.

twitter marketing strategy ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Talk About Local grows

Will Perrin's 4ip project to jup start local blogs around the country will start to take shape in August when Mike Rawlins of PitsnPots and Nicky Getgood of Digbeth is Good start working for him full time. The means there's now a funded organisation with the job of getting people blogging about their local areas and supporting them in doing so. Never thought I'd see the day.

talkaboutlocal nickygetgood willperrin mikerawlins localblogging ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Social Media Done Right Means No More Social Media Experts

A nice overview of the role of a "social media expert" in a large organisation. It's all about changing the culture. Two quotes:

my goal was not to create one smaller team of geeks who blog and Tweet all day, but to get all 500+ people on the team to know, understand, and use social media just as they know, understand, and use press releases, email pitches, and town hall meetings.

and

Sure, there will always be a need to call in the “experts” – the people who live and breathe this stuff – but for the most part, every communications professional needs to understand social media and its place in the overall mix of communications strategies and tools. If I hear one more person tell me that they’re “too old for this stuff,” or that “I’m just not ready for that,” all you’re really telling me is that you’re not interested in being a really good communications professional. These types of people won’t last for much longer anyway.

socialmedia strategy ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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The Pushbutton Web: Realtime Becomes Real

Long article by Anil Dash on the emergence of a protocol for, in laymans terms, a decentralised Twitter / Facebook system, which is essential as the centralised model is not sustainable and runs counter to how the Internet works. I'm cautiously optimistic about this and if you think it's above your head would recommend you scroll down to the "What should we worry about?" section, specifically the shift in user understanding and competition from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

pushbutton socialnetworking anildash standards internet protocols rss ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Australian local council starts social media surgeries

It seems the social media surgeries run by Nick Booth in Birmingham have inspired something similar on the other side of the planet. Which is bloody fantastic.

socialmediasurgery podnosh australia ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Art of Digital London – Social Media and the Arts

I enjoyed the live video stream of this panel discussion at the Amb:IT:ion Roadshow last week so while we wait for the recording to make it online here's the liveblog transcript.

getambition socialmedia arts metapodconnect reading ash10 schoolofeverything resonancefm andygibson
july 2009 by peteashton

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Shift Happens by Mark Ball

Mark Ball, previously of Fierce Earth and the RSC and now Artistic Director of LIFT, the London International Festival of Theatre, sumarises how the revolution in digital communication / social media might affect the arts sector.

metapodconnect reading markball arts socialmedia ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Digital Birmingham: A quick tour by a Capetonian

How does a South African see Birmingham when guided through it by Jon Hickman? Here's how. (Marlon's work in Cape Town is fascinating. Hope to investigate it more thoroughly later.)

birminghamuk ash10 marlonparker southafrica mxit
july 2009 by peteashton

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The Superfan Strategy » The Cynical Musician

A long and detailed attack on Kevin Kelly's "1000 True Fans" theory whereby a musician (or similar) can thrive by cultivating a relatively small cohort of fanatics. It's a fairly easy one to destroy but the process is interesting and useful. (I also like the subheading "What the 'new music experts' don’t tell you".)

backlash music ash10 superfan
july 2009 by peteashton

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Towards a listing of useful spaces

Nikki is working on a directory of "useful spaces" where meetups, coworking and adhoc events can take place in Birmingham from cafes with wifi to venues that are friendly and cheap. You can submit spaces in the form on her site and add more details to the spreadsheet. All powered by Google Docs and a nice illustration of collaborative writing and crowdsourcing.

nikkipugh ash10 spaces venues crowdsourcing googledocs birminghamuk coworking
july 2009 by peteashton

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The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online

A couple of years back Andrew Dubber wrote a series of blog posts distilling everything he knew about online music. He turned it into a book and now it's a serious of videos for their forthcoming <a href="http://www.apple.com/education/mobile-learning/">iTunes U</a> podcasts. The best way to download them is to subscribe to one of the RSS feeds on the right in iTunes and download them all.

ash10 dubber music online bcu podcast video
july 2009 by peteashton

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Hyperlocal Labs goes live

Will Perrin introduces the backroom division of Talk About Local where folk play with stuff related to his project to produce interesting new ways to engage with local areas through the web. The first project is Jon Bounds' intelligent blog aggregation and I expect much more to come. Get in touch if you'd like to play.

talkaboutlocal labs mashup willperrin ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Facebook? Up 10%. Twitter? Up 16%. FriendFeed? Flat

Robert Scoble has a look at why FriendFeed isn't taking off as well as it should be. Since Scoble uses FF a hell of a lot and acknowledges his use is exceptional this is a useful analysis of how restrictions and possibilities on different platforms chance the nature of engagement on them. My thought, in short, is that FF does all the things people <i>think</i> Twitter should do (groups for one) and prove why Twitter shouldn't do them.

friendfeed twitter facebook socialnetworks ash10 scoble
july 2009 by peteashton

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Poptimist #23 - Chartopia

Most inspiring and thought-provoking thing I read this week. Tom Ewing uses the British pop charts as a means to explore serendipity. Lots of intelligent criticism of social media and lots of intelligent praise of social media too. I posted some selected quotes <a href="http://ash10.tumblr.com/post/139045958/poptimist-23-chartopia">here</a> and hope to return to this again for a more detailed response soon.

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july 2009 by peteashton

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Google targeting Local Government websites

Interesting move from Google. There's a push for councils to use Google adverts to "connect with your citizens at the exact moment when they are searching for services" and I'm not sure AdSense is of a quality I'd like to see on a government website, but they also list Google's free web optimization tools in a clear and understandable way, which is dead handy.

google localgovernment government council ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Tweeting as play

Interesting attempt to find a middle ground between the cynics and evangelists.

If it is play, why not just say so? Why not just say it’s fun? After all, one of the reasons “play” is always in vogue in certain business magazines is that it really is important to creativity — taking yourself out of the routine makes your thinking less rigid, etc.

twitter play creativity ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Chris Unitt: How useful has social media been today?

Chris goes through five hours of Twitter usage and lists the useful and interesting things that came to him through it. As he says, it works because he's developed a relevant community of people to follow but that's kinda the point. What you get depends on what you put into this stuff.

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july 2009 by peteashton

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RSS and the Greatly Exaggerated Rumors of the Album’s Death « Bandcamp Blog

Interesting observation on Bandcamp of how their artists are using "albums" as buckets into which songs go.

"What exactly constitutes an album is rapidly evolving... Rather than treating albums as immutable collections of tracks, lots of you treat albums as open containers. Containers for song-a-day/week projects, explorations of particular musical styles, or just general works-in-progress."

Reminds me of Flickr photo sets which people either use as one-off collections of photos which will never be added to or themed collections which build over time. Bandcamp have added RSS feeds to their albums, as Flickr have to photo sets. Seems counter-intuitive at first but actually makes perfect sense. Albums are dynamic things.

music bandcamp rss albums containters flickr ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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The Generation M Manifesto - Umair Haque

A manifesto that starts with "Dear Old People Who Run the World, My generation would like to break up with you." Like all good manifestos it's passionate, overblown and full of sweeping generalisations but that's not a problem as it serves to spark thought and discussion. Reads a lot like the Cluetrain Manifesto 10 years later which is no bad thing.

In the comments someone says this is nothing new - every generation felt like this. True but I wonder if the networked nature of this generation makes a difference?

generationm manifesto culture socialmedia cluetrain ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Hyperlocal News Wire - jon bounds

Jon talks through the process of building a Yahoo Pipe to intelligently aggregate local blogs. Amongst other things this helps answer the question "what are all these local blogs good for?"

talkaboutlocal localblogging aggretator bounder yahoopipes ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Blackbeard Blog - You Don't Have To Be A Mentalist To Edit Wikipedia, But It Helps

Respoding to a report of a study entitled "Wikipedians are a bunch of egocentric introverts" Tom Ewing picks up on a straw man and adds this gem:

In fact this is one of the awesome things about Wikipedia - the fact that it’s a project which has yoked a lot of individual bads (egocentricity and pedantry) into a gigantic collective good. Wikipedia is unique in that it’s a community that actually works better the more nit-pickety and humourless its members are! God bless it.

wikipedia introvert pedantry ego community ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Web 2.0/Social Media: Really guys, it's pretty simple

Another bullshit calling article from a few weeks back that says "Social Media is people talking to each other", which is true, but then spends paragraphs and paragraphs explaining why, which kinda indicates "Social Media is people talking to each other" isn't actually that simple when you start digging. Still, I agree with the spirit of the piece.

socialmedia bullshit ash10 criticism
july 2009 by peteashton

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Calling bullshit on social media

I loved reading this as he hits a number of things I've been thinking about, muttering about on Twitter or feeling unable to articulate in case they get misinterpreted (one of the perils of working in an industry you're commenting on...) I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions or opinions but it's a great codification of worries I've been having since SXSWi this year. (There's a counter argument <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/in-defense-of-social-media.html">here</a>.)

socialmedia bullshit ash10 criticism
july 2009 by peteashton

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City of Heroes character Twixt becomes game's most hated outcast courtesy of Loyola professor

Curious story of a professor who played an online game exactly as the original creators intended and was rounded on by the long-term players who'd developed their own social rules. While his methods are questionable to say the least (there are some good rebuttals in the comments linked to here: http://twitter.com/tomewing/status/2544223524 ) it does nicely illustrate the phenomena of newcomers breaking "rules" on social sites which aren't anywhere to be found in the FAQ. (cf "You're doing Twitter wrong!")

cityofhereoes social rules ash10 research twixt
july 2009 by peteashton

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Social Media Champions - Ginevra Kirkland

Short interview with the Community Manager at Six Apart (Movable Type, Typepad, Vox). Not massively illuminating but a do like peeks into the minds of people who work with this stuff on a social level. See also Heather Champ of Flickr whose experience is invaluable.

socialmedia interview sixapart ash10 community
july 2009 by peteashton

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What's wrong with Flips? - The Daily Grind

Nice look at everyone's favourite cheap and simple video camera, the Flip, which occupies that annoying space where it's good but not quite good enough. The Flip is now a good couple of years old and there are a lot of other budget cameras on the market. Should investigate really.

video flip ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Technology Freedom in Metaphor - Acts of Volition

"If Twitter were a phone company, you could only call people who used the same phone company as you." Comments have discussion and links to the OpenMicroblogging standard. If Twitter were to adopt this they might survive and the world would be a better place. Unfortunately survival doesn't appear to be compatible with their investment strategy

twitter ash10 standards openbloggingstandard technology
july 2009 by peteashton

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Telegraph: Iran’s crackdown proves that the ‘Twitter revolution’ has made things worse

Discarding the journalist hyperbole and cynicism this does touch on a couple of useful points - questions about how representative the Iranian Twitter users are and implications for broadcasting controversial opinions in a public space, though I'd argue this is no different to participating in a protest march where you know you'll be photographed and investigated. But the Iranian situation is massively complicated which is why I've been reticent to comment on it.

twitter iran ash10 politics
july 2009 by peteashton

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Let's All Buy Twitter

I suspect his is a hopeless idea and the solution to Twitter's scaling problems isn't who owns it. But you've got to love anything that starts "It's only a matter of time before Twitter is bought by bastards."

twitter ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Creative Open Workshop's blog

Great example of using Posterous as a blog. Posterous is built to be updated by email, taking attachments and formatting them nicely. Check out the mini-photo galleries. If you predominantly use email this is a quick and easy way to run a blog.

ash10 posterous blogging
july 2009 by peteashton

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Newspaper Club - A work in progress

Relentlessly honest blog

metapodconnect reading ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Why marketers have trouble with full-duplex social technology

"The problem is simple. Marketers don't understand channels where you have to talk and listen at the same time. Like one of those maddening not-full-duplex speakerphones where you can't interrupt somebody, this is what drives customers nuts. Think about it. None of those talking channels allows a response. None of those listening channels encourages actual feedback from the company."

metapodconnect reading ash10
july 2009 by peteashton

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Four crowdsourcing lessons from the Guardian’s (spectacular) expenses-scandal experiment » Nieman Journalism Lab

A lot of this article is about the technical stuff, which is interesting, but the universal lesson for any kind of participation is "Your workers are unpaid, so make it fun"

crowdsourcing journalism citizenjournalism participation metapodconnect reading ash10
june 2009 by peteashton

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Share This or Else! – What Makes People Share Content? - Left the Box

A bit blunt and I wouldn't necessarily agree with some of the assertions but hits some key points on why people share stuff. Suspect it's more complex than this though.

sharing psychology socialmedia community metapodconnect reading ash10
june 2009 by peteashton

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Seven steps to great web copy

Some common sense stuff but good to see it in one place. I'd be a little gentle on the link bait though. Too much can give the wrong impression (this prob applies to anything though).

copy writing weblogs Web styleguide metapodconnect reading ash10
june 2009 by peteashton

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Lord Carter: MP3 of keynote speech at Birmingham Digital Britain event.

Audio of the talk from the author of the Digital Britain report. Worth a listen, in my view

metapodconnect reading digitalbritain mp3 audio talk lordcarter ash10
june 2009 by peteashton

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When Word of Mouth Got a Permalink - Companies, Customers and Twitter

"Derek Powazek dropped this little piece of truth on Twitter recently:

'Twitter was more fun when I could bitch about a company without them replying to ask how they can provide me with excellent service today.'

Things have changed since Word of Mouth got a permlink. When I'm complaining about a company to my friends or while walking down the street, no one seems to care. When I'm calling a company and complaining one-on-one, I don't always get excellent service. Boy, but if you mention a company on your blog, or even better, on Twitter, you'll likely get a reply in minutes."

twitter metapodconnect reading customerservice pr ash10
may 2009 by peteashton

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Blackbeard Blog - Discipline And Publish

Tom Ewing's response to the Foucault / Panopticon essay.

socialmedia metapodconnect reading foucault panopticon ash10
may 2009 by peteashton

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Surrender! Foucault and Twitter

"The genius of the current model is that we are self-surveillant, of course. We willingly offer our identity, friends, thoughts and so-forth, to the all-seeing eyes of anyone who can be bothered to set up an appropriate search alert. We’re consequently a bit less likely to say or do things that fall outside the accepted models of political and corporate behaviour."

twitter socialmedia reading foucault philosophy metapodconnect panopticon ash10
may 2009 by peteashton

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