Archive for August, 2009

Twitter is getting more and more attention from traditional media lately. Whether it’s a news-story mentioning Twitter, a Twitter competition between a celebrities, or using Twitter to gather reports on the Iran elections, the average person sees the word “Twitter” more and more often.

But with the Twitter rush a new bubble seems to be forming.

Remember the days of the 2000 Dot-Com bubble, in which every site displaying a million page-views could raise money as though it had already become profitable?
I feel we are repeating the same mistake, only in social media.

The new fashion among some Twitter users, individuals or companies, is to brag about the number of “followers” they have for their Twitter account, or the number of followers their employees have. There is also a new buzz-word: “Reach“. Those self-proclaimed Twitter experts will use tools like TwitterAnalyzer to show others that their Tweets are supposedly read by even more people than their Twitter followers, using a repeat publication (”Retweets”).

And there lies the illusion.

The number of Twitter followers (or reach) is usually meaningless

Twitter usage is based on the magic principle of following/followers. You follow other users that may interest you, and being followed in turn by others who find your updates interesting.
But suppose you just opened an account on Twitter – how do you get followers?

If you are a celebrity like Ashton Kutcher, have a TV show like Oprah, a successful blogger like Robert Scoble, or simply a leading TV channel like CNN, than you have it easy – you just need to mention your new Twitter account and the masses will follow you.
But you need to be well-known to the public prior to opening a Twitter account.

But what if you are an average Joe, looking to become a superstar on Twitter?
You can use an unwritten rule, saying that if someone is following you, it’s polite to follow that person back. Twitter users interested in inflating the number of followers they have simply need to follow thousands of others, hoping those others will follow them back.
The less ethical among them wait for another to follow, and than stop following that person.
To sum it up: such a user has 20000 followers, not because he is THAT interesting to them, but simply out of politeness.

The principle behind “Reach” is similar: if you wrote an update, and one of your 20000 followers repeats it, and that person has another 10000 followers (not shared by you), your message could have been read by 30000 folks. But again, people exploit the technology, and open multiple accounts, each of them having thousands of followers (as previously mentioned), and than repeat that message from all their accounts. Twitter defines this as Spam.

In addition to all that, there is the face that 10-50% of all followers are either dormant/inactive accounts, bots, spammers, or other irrelevant accounts.

Million follower don’t actually read your updates

And suppose Mr. Kutcher writes something on his Twitter account, does that mean all of his million (plus) followers actually read it? Of course not!

On my personal Twitter account I follow only about 200 people. Each one publishes a number of updates during the day, reaching thousands of updates each day. Since I’m not sitting glued to the screen, when I check for updates I usually see only updates from the past 30-60 minutes. Written something when I wasn’t checking for updates? I’ll probably miss your update.

To put it differently, if you wrote an update and have a reach of 100000 users, it’s 100000 of users with the potential to read your update, but most likely most of them will never see it.

So don’t be tempted by false promises from Twitter “experts”. We are light years away from a reliable, measurable advertising model on Twitter.

IMTC Forum, meeting place for experts in video communication and collaboration, is doing this year a virtual conference, as a part of its years long commitment to bring the best thought leaders and technology experts together.  The event, called 2025, Technology, Standards, Work, Life, will discuss the ways video technology and collaboration will change the way we work an live in the year 2025. We expect thought leaders from different industries to share their views on these amazing topic and help us all retool our business and life for the future.

We also decided to do our whole planning process as transparent as possible, empowering the community by sharing our thoughts , decisions, vendors that we’ve reviewed and  lessons we’ve learned.

But, as always, we need the technology to support this event. This is what we are looking for:

1. Ability to have up to 4 video streams (moderator + 3 speakers), with minimum video requirement of a webcam
2. Ability to show slides per presenter
3. Ability to mix video feeds  (meaning, one video player only, but the feed is switched between speakers’ feeds)
4. Authenticated Chat section per session (including Facebook connect and Twitter API)
5. Display Official and hash tag Twitter stream in the sidebar
6. Ability to record all sessions and chats for re-runs and VOD access
7. Simple to use registration page for participants

Are we missing anything? Let us know. Also, we don’t necessarily need one product with all features – mesh-ups are acceptable.

As a non profit organization we have a shoestring budget – but the event will expose technologies to the right audience – and what is better than seeing a technology in action?

Beyond these requirements, we will ask each vendor to write a short post about the value of virtual events, the way that technology is changing business, and their view on the needs of the industry. We will add our own commentary on each post, as well as write about our decision making process regarding this solution.

Huffington Post, the forward thinking media company, released what they called “social news”, and what we will call “Facebook connect integration in a website”. Users can now log in to the site with their Facebook credentials, post their comments on HP article on their wall, and subscribe to their favorite bloggers.

This move is brilliant, as it harnesses reader’s social graph for Huffington Post’s benefit – and increases engagement and exposure to its content. I’ve registered yesterday to the service, wrote a comment on an article, and received responses on this article on my Facebook profile – from people that never read or even heard about Huffington Post.

Gigya, one of my favorite startups, is making this process even easier, with their socialize platform, which provides a unified API to various social networks.

I am still amazed to see that only small number of media companies are harnessing Facebook Connect and Twitter API as a mean to increase exposure and virality of their content. I hope that Huffington Post will publish a study that will show if their latest move increased exposure.

Social distribution, the harnessing of social graphs for media distribution, is the most important opportunity for media companies in the near future. Is your media company ready for the challenge?

Bashing Apple is the new black in the blogosphere. It started with Michael Arrington that announced that he dropped iPhone due to the Google Voice Debacle, followed by a less than accurate  (to say the least) post by  Calacanis where he bashed Apple for reasons starting with Google Voice story to their unwillingness to open iTunes to competing MP3 players.To sum it up, some people believe that Apple is nothing but an evil force  with an awesome design capabilites

Now, I don’t consider myself a fanboy (though I own two Macbook Pros, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPhone, and a life size poster of Jobs in my living room), but a lot of these arguments are lame.

Let’s start with the definition is Evil. Evil is a big green monster eating small children , World War Two otrocities, the guys who let Kevin Costner do Waterworld, and the inventors of hair metal. A company that creates awesome products but doesn’t like to play nice is not evil, but aggressive at best.

Why iTunes doesn’t allow to sync music with other devices? WHY WOULD IT? Does anyone stops Microsoft, Archos, or any other manufacturer to create their own sync application for Mac and PC? NO. Apple doesn’t block other sync applications, they just have the strange tendency not to shoot themselves in the foot.

Why AppStore approval  process suck so much? Cause they weren’t prepared for the amount of apps they need to authorize. iPhone developers know it, so why are they saying that it makes Apple evil? Unorganized at best will be my choice of words.Yes, Apple needs to get their act together, but at the end of the day – if developers don’t like the way things are they are more then welcome to develop for other platforms. Like Windows Mobile. Ha? no hands? why? CAUSE THE iPHONE ECOSYSTEM IS WAY BETTER THAN ITS COMPETITORS. After years of mobile developers eating crap from carriers and aggregators , who leave them with %10 of the revenues, they have the chance to make decent money. True, it is still hard, but at least they keep 70% of the revenues!

Now, the Apple Tax – the strange claim that Apple products cost more than its competitors. Well:

1. Mercedes costs more than Toyota.

2. You pay for quality

3. No one is forcing you to buy Apple

4. Apple doesn’t have low end products at all. Comparable hardware costs the same  in some markets.

5. Don’t buy if you don’t like it

6. The real Apple Tax is iPhone battery life, but that’s a whole different  post

The funniest thing ever is that people are protecting Google from Apple. GOOGLE. The guys who know almost everything about us, starting with our search history, through our emails, documents and even location. If Apple didn’t do the right thing with the Google Voice application, the big guys from FCC will know what to do with them – but, do you really believe that Google needs protection from Apple?

So let’s put things straight – Apple are selling high priced, high quality technology products, and isn’t interested at all in helping the competition. It is a business, not a peace corps branch.  Strange guys, I tell you.

How will video and collaboration technology impact your life and work in 2025?
This is the question we will try to answer on IMTC’s annual event, taking place on the 17th and 18th of November, 2009.
With telepresence, online collaboration, social TV, and standardization advancements, our cubicle and living room will never look the same.

In IMTC we practice what we preach. Therefore, we decided to have a full blown virtual event, utilizing commercially available products and technologies.

Are you a thought leader in visual communication, online collaboration, social TV, the future of the living room, or any area that is relevant to collaboration, video or communication? Come and speak at our event – without leaving your office, via video conferencing, chat and remote presentations.

Here are some of the topics we thought about – but please feel free to contact us with additional relevant topics:
1. HTML 5, standard web video delivery and its effect on the value chain
2. Online collaboration status
3. Metadata and what it means for media companies and users
4. HD voice
5. Democratization of video conferencing and Telepresence in the living room
6. Social TV
7. Triple play in the living room – what’s next?

As a speaker you will be requested to send us your proposal, and write a short blog post about your topic that will be published in relevant blogs.