The Ed Techie

CogDog's Twitter lifecyle

At the risk of sounding mildly obsessive about Twitter, it was good to see George Siemens blog about his conversion. Alan Levine has created a wiki (back in April 07) where people can plot their Twitter lifecycle which goes from 'that's the dumbest thing' to 'I cannot stop!', complete with a lovely Kathy Sierra homage image. I've added myself in naturally.

More Twitter types

I find the different uses of Twitter fascinating. The complexity of its use derives from its simplicity, people can take it and find their own mode of communication, rather than a specific usage being prescribed by it. So, if we take the over-used (by me anyway) metaphor of an ecosystem of technologies, Twitter is successful because it is highly adaptable, it can occupy different niches in the ecosystem.

In my last post I asked the question whether someone who had lots of followers but didn't follow many was 'misusing' Twitter. I accept 'misuse' was the wrong word, since it implies there is a 'correct' use of Twitter, and of course people are free to use it anyway they like. As Alan Levine says in the comments, one should be wary of rules. What this led me to reflect on though was the various uses people have for Twitter. Over at Read/Write web they suggest three Twitter personalities: Listener (you follow more than follow you), Talker (you have more followers than you follow) and Hub (you have equal followers and followed). Incidentally, I really don't like their 'Twitter score' - the number of followers divided by the number you follow, since this implies it's 'better' not to follow people.

Their three personality types are useful, but it's more complex than this. I've had a go at coming up with some other types of Twitter usage. This is just a way of thinking about how we use Twitter, not implying that people must conform to one of these types (see the point at the end).

• Twitter as added bonus - Stephen Downes says that he has Twitter followers (who get his Facebook updates), but doesn't follow anyone. I'm one of Stephen's 'followers',  so although I know he doesn't use Twitter much, it's worthwhile following him just as part of my network. Stephen makes the point that he reads over 500 blogs and does lots of commenting/linking, so for him Twitter is a very small part of his ecosystem. It is an added bonus for the followers if they wish.
• Selective interaction - users with a large number of followers may choose to only follow a few people, but then use the @ reply function for interaction. For instance Will Richardson and David Warlick   both have in excess of 1000 followers, because they are prominent edubloggers. Faced with this, they only follow a few people, but still manage to be active Twitterers, by putting out calls on Twitter, e.g. getting people to say hi to a live audience. Here the asymmetry of Twitter works well, because if anyone does an @ reply to them, they will see it, even if they are not following that user. So this type of user has the added bonus, plus some of the interaction.
• Small scale social interaction - a lot of my OU colleagues follow each other, some other people they know and not many others. For them Twitter is about maintaining a social interaction with people they know, as Laura puts it, sharing a virtual office with them.
• Wide peer network - with roughly the same number of followers and followed, these users see Twitter as maintaining a wide peer network, both with people they know in 'real' life and those they have come across through online interaction. If I had to be in a category, then this is probably me. I follow roughly the same number as follow me (although the two are not equal, ie there are some I follow who don't follow me and some who follow me who I don't follow back), and I see Twitter as a means of maintaining a social and professional network with these people.
• Large scale users - think Scoble, GapingVoid, et al people who have lots of followers, and who also follow large numbers. These differ from the wide peer network in scale and because theirs is a network built up by fame, not just social contacts. They are similar to the added bonus user, but they are also very active in interaction.
• Listeners - as the Read/Write post suggests, there are people who prefer to follow lots of others, but don't really want to post themselves. They see Twitter as being rather like a blog reader, it's another way of staying up with their subject area.

And if it needs stressing - all of these are 'valid' uses of Twitter, in the same way 'lurkers', 'active posters' etc. were valid uses of forums (remember how people used to agonise over lurkers?). What is also interesting is that you can vary within one user. For example, I am generally a wide peer network kind of user, but I also have a small scale social interaction subset, and the type of post I put up may vary depending on this.  So perhaps this is really a classification of Twitter uses, rather than users.

Twitter etiquette

My general practice in twitter is to follow someone if they follow me, although not if they appear to be a bot, spammer, non-poster or nutter.  So I have around 140 people following me, and I follow 136. There may come a time when I have to revisit this policy - I couldn't follow 1000 people say, or rather if I did, the value of Twitter would start to diminish for me because I would miss too much from the people I like.

But people use Twitter differently, and I noticed one person I follow has over 1,000 followers but only follows around 35. So, I asked the question, is this a misuse of twitter, or doesn't it matter? The general consensus was that it doesn't matter. I think this is right, and misuse was probably the wrong term. After all those 1000+ followers are getting something from following that person. But it does illustrate how people think of Twitter differently - for me it's a dialogue, but this is using it more as a broadcast tool, rather like blogging.

Laura picks up on this, saying:

I’m at a a stage of my Twitter life where I am wondering how many people I can follow. It’s not quite a mid-life crisis but at 30 something (following) it’s already a struggle to keep up with all the good leads.

Which again gets at how people perceive Twitter. I don't feel that I need to read the tweets of everyone I follow. It's a dip-in, take a scoop from the passing river kind of experience. So in that sense it's not like dialogue - I don't interact with everything, and can dip out for long periods.

Erm, that's it, no real conclusion, just interesting to observe how something as simple as Twitter can have so many different uses and interpretations placed upon it.

Disaggregated communication

I was chatting with Tony Hirst the other day and we were reflecting on how varied our communication methods were amongst the Facebook project team (Tony, Stuart Brown, Liam Green-Hughes and me). We sometimes use Facebook itself to have a discussion, or we might have an email exchange. I can't really see any reason for why we use one instead of the other at any particular time, but these tend to be discussions along the lines of 'have you seen this?'

Then there are our blog posts and related comments. Sometimes we will respond to each other's posts in our own blogs, other times we will add a comment, but mostly this type of communication is more ambient - I know what Tony is thinking about or working on, and just as importantly, he knows that I know it, so when we meet we have a shared foundation for conversation.

And then we have twitter - we all follow each other, and so will sometimes send replies or direct messages, but as with blogging Twitter really provides a background to more focused discussion. I will know what they are working on, but also it helps maintain a social bond which is vital in an informal team such as this.

Occasionally we need synchronous interaction, and will use Flashmeeting or Skype.

Lastly, we meet up for beers and cross paths at workshops and occasional meetings.

I've put all this is a compendium mindmap, shown above. It gets more social as you move from work meetings anti-clockwise round to the beer. So, at least from the point of view of this grouping, face to face is both the least and the most socially oriented.

What Tony and I realised was that we didn't really register that we had all these methods of communication. Using them and maintaining an overall track of the dialogue is not difficult, it just feels natural. The reason this may be relevant is that in education we worry an awful lot about communication channels with students and having only one main method. Perhaps this disaggregation of communication is not as difficult to manage cognitively as we once thought and actually allows each medium/tool to be used to its best advantage. This only happens if you're comfortable with the technology though.

The Twitter commandments

(via Alan Levine) Phillie Casablanca issues some Twitter commandments, which are worth looking at. Some people have objected to the term 'commandments' - it's a stylistic device folks! He doesn't really mean them to be obeyed absolutely, it's just that it's meant to be a bit of fun and calling it 'Some practical suggestions on Twitter behaviour' doesn't allow for the same punch really.
Anyway, I particularly like:

1. Thou shalt not tweet more than 20 times a day. This has a detrimental effect on everyone else's ambient intimacy with their group.

3.Thou shalt not tweet more than 10 times in an hour*. That's what blogging is for.

and

9. Thou shalt type people's usernames correctly (e.g. @Casablanca); otherwise the 'replies' function doesn't work.

I'm not so keen on:

6. Thou shalt not forget that the question being asked is "What are you doing?".

I think this is the way in to Twitter, but its use has evolved beyond this. For instance, Ewan Macintosh was giving a presentation to some people at Oxford yesterday and put a call out on Twitter to a) say hello and b) give suggestions for use of Twitter in learning a foreign language. This was during his live presentation I gather. This was a very good use of Twitter, but isn't really answering the question 'What are you doing?'

I'd also add these two commandments:

11. Thou shalt not follow more than 1,000 people (unless thou art Scoble)

12. Thou shalt not use Twitter as a broadcast medium for your website or business - it's about conversation (yes that means you Guy Kawasaki)

Twitter business models - a modern day case study

(Image courtsey Bootload, via diy.despair.com)

Over the New Year there was some discussion about Twitter's business model (naturally I found out about it through my Twitter stream). This isn't particularly new, David Chartier suggested six ways Twitter could make money back in April. Allen Stern started this round of discussion, asking is Twitter F'ed? He argues that the Twitter client, Twitterific makes money by charging for the software, while Twitter hasn't made any money. Given that Twitter is chewing up bandwidth they'll need to find a viable business model soon. Stern argues that going for the approach of eyeballs first, business model later may backfire.

The ever reliable Dave Winer responds succinctly, arguing that Twitterific reaches only a very small percentage of Twitter's overall audience. If you had to choose, you'd want the big free audience over the small fee paying one. He suggests they could make their own client, but more importantly:

there are lots of ways for Twitter to make money once there are enough users. And right now their business is to grow and their first priority is to stabilise their service

Stowe Boyd suggests another method, that of reusing Twitter's social stream in other applications:

if third parties wanted to build other apps that use a twitter-esque social stream, they might make an agreement to reuse the twitter pathway. .. As long as I could push stuff through the pipe, I would be willing to pay a per message bulk deal. And I believe that the notion of a common social stream -- being reused by many apps -- is a big chewy idea.

Whatever the model is, the discussion is a case study in modern day economics. There are a number of interesting elements to it I think. Firstly, it seems that normal economics doesn't seem to apply. As is often stated, economics is the study of scarcity, and we are dealing with abundance. So what is the pricing model that works here? It may be that old school economics triumphs, you can't beat the old dogs, but it does seem here is a service that is hugely popular and useful. If it can't be made to work economically then there is something wrong with the structure of the market and our theories, not with the product itself.

Secondly, it is the ideal representation of the get the eyeballs approach to new businesses. This may be restricted to the US, I think Twitter would have struggled to get funding from UK venture capitalists. The conversation would have gone:

Twitter - "We've got this great idea for a service, we've trialled it and take-up is phenomenal. Here are the projected usage figures" (Shows graph with big staircase jumping off the top of the axis)

VCs - "Woooh, we like it! And so, what's your business model? How do you monetise all those users?"

Twitter - "We haven't figured that yet. Don't worry, we'll come up with something later."

VCs - "Bye"

Lastly, I like the way the community itself is chipping in with suggestions for what would be a good business model. In David Chartier's post he quotes Evan Williams (one of Twitter's founders) saying that "Our top concern when it comes to monetisation will be to do so in a way that does not negatively impact users."  And it seems that the Twitter community is willing to help them do that.

If I was an academic in a Business School, I'd be looking at Twitter as a test bed for how the new economics pans out.

The Christmas Twitter Game

I'm a (not very good) runner, and one of the discussions that often comes up this time of year is whether you will go for a run on Christmas day. The responses tend to fall into 5 categories:

1. Of course, it's just another day and I've got to stick to my training schedule.
2. It's great to get some exercise in before all that indulgence.
3. No, it's kind of showing off, declaring 'look how committed I am, I run on Christmas day'
4. Yes, I like to show off and declare 'look how committed I am, I run on Christmas day'
5. I'd like to but I'm too hung over from Christmas Eve

If we replace running with twittering (or Facebooking or blogging if you prefer), then we have an ed tech equivalent. I wonder who will be up on Christmas day posting tweets such as 'opening a bad jumper from my parents' or 'eating a fifth mince pie'. I'm declaring now that I'm out - no tweets from me on Christmas day.

The Christmas Twitter Game - I'm compiling a secret list of people who I think will twitter on the day itself, and come boxing day I'm going to score my predictive powers. Hey it beats watching the Wizard of Oz on TV again.   

What web 2.0 apps would you least like to lose?

This is sort of web 2.0 desert island discs (I know lots of people have done this before, e.g. here and here). Having heard stories of people having their Flickr or Facebook accounts pulled, I wondered what would be the service I would least like to lose? Here are my top three:

1. Blog - okay, it's not a single service as such and pre-dates the use of the term web 2.0, but it's my list, so I'm bundling it in. As I said in my post of why educators should blog, I see the blog as the base camp for your online world. Everything else spreads from this identity. For me it is the sine qua non of an online existence, and it's also the one I gain the most satisfaction from. If I lost this I would feel truly that my professional life (and personal to an extent) was the poorer for it. Blog - I heart you.
2. Twitter - yes, in at number 2, and the surprise hit over Facebook. I started back in September when I decided I really needed to give Twitter a decent run. And I'm converted. It makes me feel connected to a range of peers, in a non-intrusive way (unlike IM), it is great for finding resources, it offers access to a support network, and is also good fun. If the future is a hive mentality then Twitter is it's waggle dance. If I lost Twitter I'd miss out on feeling part of a broader ed tech community, hell I may even have to go to conferences.
3. Facebook - I still like Facebook, but as my previous post sets out, Twitter has removed some of the motivation to go into it. Facebook is slightly more friend and institution focused. At the OU we have started developing applications for Facebook, which I think will be a very good way for students to enhance their own learning experience (for instance they can find people on the same course, find a study buddy, recommend courses, and soon share their story, swap resources, etc). I'm sure something else will come along and replace FB eventually, but the questions it has raised about how you support learners in this space and take advantage of the community it offers them, without invading their space will be important ones for us to address in education for years to come. If I lost Facebook I'd lose access to some friends who I only have contact through this and I'd also lose a space where we can think about the future of education.

Honorable mention - Slideshare. I do like Slideshare, it's just neat at what it does. And recording bad slidecasts is my new favourite hobby.

And that's it - Flickr, Delicious, LinkedIn, 43Things, YouTube - I could live without them. I like them, but their loss wouldn't be as catastrophic for me as the above.

What are the three you would least like to lose? Remember to focus on what impact their loss would have, not just on why you like them.

Status wars revisited

Back in September I posted about the status wars between Twitter and Facebook. At the time you couldn't get Twitter to update your FB status. A couple of people had cracked it but been told by FB to remove their code. I argued that FB don't want Twitter to update the status because that is the key to stickability for them.

I was wrong in that Facebook does now allow Twitter to update status (I thought they wouldn't allow it). But I was right in that this is a problem for Facebook stickability.  At least that's my experience, and it's interesting to reflect on the subtle difference between your Facebook status and Twitter stream.

I tried going Facebook status to Twitter first, but that meant I wasn't really engaging in what I suppose I must call the Twitterverse. I think you don't post regularly enough when you do this, you don't read as many tweets, and you don't use conventions such as @ for sending replies to users. And I think other Twitterers (Twits? Have we standardised vocabulary yet?), pick up on this.

So I decided that I would go the other way, Twitter to Facebook. This works fine technically - each status update begins 'Martin is twittering:'. But again it's a bit unsatisfactory. A lot of things I Twitter I wouldn't usually put in my FB status. There is a subtle difference between the two. It's not absolute, think of it as a Venn diagram - there is an awful lot of overlap, but there are areas that are unique to each.

In this diagram (courtesy of the marvellous Gliffy), the Twitter circle is bigger, since you tend to update that more. There is an area of overlap, the type of standard status posts you might do 'In a conference call.' Then there is the Facebook only area - for me these tend to be a bit more pithy, aimed at the friends I know in FB and cover a longer period, e.g. 'Martin is working today and definitely not blogging, updating status or twittering.' And then there is the Twitter only area. This will contain the replies e.g. '@mweller - stop twittering and get on with work', the more frequent updates, e.g. 'on a train, stuck in a tunnel' and also those aimed at knowledge sharing 'good post on twitter status here'.

For me then the Twitter only area is larger, so if I have to make a choice between losing one of the two (because I can't be bothered to maintain them both separately), then the FB-only area goes.

The knock-on effect of this is that I use Facebook less, since one of the draws of going in was to update my status, and not to reject 'Be a vampire' notifications. Of course there is nothing about the FB status that means I couldn't use it in the way I use Twitter (apart from the direct messages and replies), but it has to do with the very subtle communication affordances of the two. If I'm honest, I probably prefer the type of updates I do in Facebook, but I'm getting more value out of Twitter, so that's the winner.

If my experience is true for others then the shine is off Facebook.

A lexicon for the virtual/real world intersection

It strikes me that there are a number of new social behaviours that are arising when our online/web 2.0/social network selves intersect with our real, physical, everyday lives. So, while awake with jet lag I started compiling some new terms. I have put these up in a Wetpaint wiki, so you can add to them yourselves:

• Twintle - a knowing look someone gives you when you meet them face to face, who is also a Facebook friend or Twitter follower, where they debate whether they should mention your status updates, or whether that would be impolite. e.g. "I met Kathy the other day, and I'd been saying about how much I hated work at the moment on Facebook, and she gave me a twintle, but didn't say anything."
• Unpoke - the disappointment of meeting someone in real life and finding they are not as interesting or amusing as their online personas. E.g. "I met Psychopony the other day at a conference, he was really dull, definite unpoke."
• BackBacn  - when a post generates a lot of real life traffic, for example every second person at work comes up to you and comments on it. E.g. "I did a rant about the RAE the other day, talk about BackBacn!"
• Twetch - when someone reveals rather too much about themselves online. E.g. "Dave's a real twetch, he was twittering about his operation in graphic detail, I almost fetched my breakfast."
• Friendgap - the awkwardness when you meet someone whose invitation to be a friend you declined.

So have a go yourself - okay, it was an excuse to try out Wetpaint, did I mention I'd set up a wiki?