Citrus Fortress - Latest Comments

Re: Twitter, community, and the problem of the reverse panopticon

tonyrobots — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:22:42 -0000

testing disqus comments

Re: Twitter, community, and the problem of the reverse panopticon

tonyrobots — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:56:47 -0000

I'm jealous. To try the analogy another way, I feel like we might all be at a big party, but instead of moving to one booty-shaking beat, we're all listening to our own ipods.

I think it's my problem. Makes me curious to hear about how other people make Twitter work for them. Thanks, Gabe!

Re: Twitter, community, and the problem of the reverse panopticon

Gabe — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:30:36 -0000

No, I'm at the party. I'm talking to some funny, interesting people. There are some people who I'm just listening to and other people who are listening to me. Sometimes a bunch of us break off and go watch 'The Bachelor' together. It's all good.

Re: Twitter, community, and the problem of the reverse panopticon

tonyrobots — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:54:38 -0000

Great comment, thanks Gabe. Am thinking about it and will make a more in-depth response, but I think you nailed it when you said:

"The strength of the Twitter architecture is that it creates … not a community, exactly, but a party big enough to accommodate all of us. A really good party is different for everyone who attends."

I think you're right, and you've clearly figured out better modes of interaction with the system than I've managed to. But don't you sometimes feel like you're not really at the party, but rather are watching it from behind a two-way mirror?

Re: Twitter, community, and the problem of the reverse panopticon

Gabe — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:44:33 -0000

Hey Tony—

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, but from what I think is the opposite emotional starting-point. Your interest in Twitter-participation has been diminishing while mine has been increasing. So when you say "every participant’s experience of the product is going to be radically different, dependent on how they’ve structured and maintained their personal network," that feels to you like a weakness: we're not all seeing the same stuff, so we're not going to form a real community. To me it feels like a strength. There are plenty of models (online and off) where groups form around a single point of discussion and everyone has equal access to the same content. But the particular babble of overlapping communities that makes up my Twitter stream feels like something new and valuable.

I think the microcelebrities are important, but not as important as the microcommunities. You talk about following rude comedians and web developers; you probably have other microcommunities that you didn't cite. I follow comic-book people, Mac developers, music critics, British TV writers. I just unfollowed a bunch of health-care wonks. In each of these little circles, the point isn't one @hodgman or @scoble -- the point is five or ten people who are all following each other, responding to one another, and then a few thousand people like me, in the peanut gallery, who are listening in. Getting to listen is valuable, because these are smart people doing interesting work in fields I care about.

This aspect of Twitter doesn't have much to do with what I post to my Twitter feed. The people following me fall into two groups: (a) people I know, and (b) strangers who've decided for whatever reason that I'm worth following. My tweets are basically a performance for those people. Sure, it would be lovely if @gruber or @serafinowicz were listening to me, but, you know, that's how it goes. Every now and then I'll get into an @-conversation with someone semifamous, and that's always a kick. But you can't just flatten out the hierarchy and say, "I'm following @gruber so he should have to follow me." OK, well now there's two choices: either @gruber has to leave, because his stream just became worthless, or I can't listen to him, because he doesn't want to listen to me and his 50,000 other fans.

The strength of the Twitter architecture is that it creates ... not a community, exactly, but a party big enough to accommodate all of us. A really good party is different for everyone who attends.

(A solution that would maybe help solve your problem without breaking the stuff I like is this: Imagine lists worked differently. Imagine I can make a new list -- call it "Brown 94-98" -- and invite you to be on the list, but you have to opt in. Once you're on the list, you're automatically following everyone else on the list, and they're following you. Of course, you can quit the list and choose which of the people to follow -- but by being on the list, you're guaranteed the kind of reciprocal communication that you seem to want. A further refinement would be that when you @-reply to the list as a whole, that tweet only shows up in the streams of list members. Would that work?)

Re: Personae – a proposal for the recognition of our multiplicity in social media

tonyrobots — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:10:00 -0000

Another way to conceptualize "personae" is with the metaphor of "channels." So instead of imaging yourself as multiple, you imagine your (wholly unified) self broadcasting on different channels, each with a potentially different audience.

Re: Personae – a proposal for the recognition of our multiplicity in social media

tonyrobots — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:45:55 -0000

And the world is a sorrier place because of it, Mark. We need your loving acidity, more than you know.

Re: Personae – a proposal for the recognition of our multiplicity in social media

mark lazen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:02:01 -0000

This is why I say so little on Twitter. My Personae are at war. And though I know that the horrible and offensive things I wish to say are offered only with the kindest intentions, not everybody gets that, as I have discovered to my mortification. So rather than be thought a know-it-all, or unprofessional, or a cad, I say nothing. And thereby I am mistakenly thought wise by those that know me. But of course, I don't tweet, so nobody knows me...

Re: Personae – a proposal for the recognition of our multiplicity in social media

tonyrobots — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:36:16 -0000

On Facebook, my friend Rick asked:
Good read Tony. But why limit it to twitter? There needs to be a unifying component that takes the multiplicity and social graphs cross site.

My response:
Totally. Didn't mean to explicitly limit it to Twitter. This is a use-case I was arguing for in conversations about [MTV Networks'] Flux way back when. Twitter is useful in talking about it, though, because it is a) a fairly simple, barebones platform (though getting less so each day), and (more importantly) b) has an asymmetrical relationship model, so you have little control over your audience. (As opposed to a symmetrical system like FB's, in which you can simply categorize each of your friends and thus effectively declare your "persona" vis-a-vis them.)

Re: How Twitter could start making money NOW without f*cking up a very, very good thing.

tonyrobots — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:43:43 -0000

Yeah, of course it's not a panacea -- there are always going to be different tools best suited for different needs. And the conflict of interest problem happens all the time, it's just usually less transparent. All vendors have their specialties, biases, and proclivities. I've yet to meet one that is equally knowledgeable about every approach, and happy to send away business. If you know of any, please send them my way.

And I actually think there are two different functions being talked about here -- one an *active marketing* function, in which the brand is establishing a presence on Twitter, and the other a *marketing intelligence* function, in which a brand is garnering qualitative and quantitative data on what people are saying about a brand, and how it is changing over time. I agree that the former is probably not the best fit in a lot of situations, but the value of the latter is far more universal.

Re: How Twitter could start making money NOW without f*cking up a very, very good thing.

jack — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:02:04 -0000

These all sound like good ideas. With regards to Twitter as marketing tool, I think the hype around Twitter far exceeds it's usefullness for most marketers. While we're speaking in analogies, DR television advertising may be a great way to market the Sham-wow but you wouldn't necessarily choose this channel to market a website or a flat screen television or a whole bunch of other things.

And one problem with Twitter acting as your agency is that they'll be less likely to say "twitter is a waste of your time, money and resources" in those cases when that's the truth.

Re: How Twitter could start making money NOW without f*cking up a very, very good thing.

tonyrobots — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:04:24 -0000

That's a really good point, Seth. But, to continue your analogy, if there were only one car manufacturer in the world, and if they in fact invented the car, I would think that the best drivers would be in something of an orbit around them. I don't mean to suggest that they could provide these sort of services with their existing staff -- this agency I am positing would be a new business unit, requiring new talent. But I have to believe that Twitter itself is better positioned to attract and cultivate this talent than anyone else in the world.

In addition, perhaps I didn't stress this enough, but a big part of the service would be access to deep analytical data. I'm imagining a subscription service, akin to that which someone like webtrends or omniture provides, whereby a brand is receiving monthly reports, both qualitative (what people are saying) and quantitative (how many people are saying it.) This is the sort of reporting that no one else is so well positioned to provide, and which would be of immense value to any brand which cares what people are saying (and thinking) about it.

Re: How Twitter could start making money NOW without f*cking up a very, very good thing.

Seth Madej — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:03:29 -0000

These are brilliant, but w/r/t #1, I wonder if the people who created Twitter really have expertise in how to use it effectively to reach an audience? If I wanted someone to drive a car really well, I'd go to a professional driver, not to the guy who designed and built the car.

Re: Momus is brilliant.

Amber Case — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:54:28 -0000

Yahoo! music player rocks. It is super smooth. Thanks very much.

Re: Momus is brilliant.

tonyrobots — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:10:43 -0000

Informal poll -- let me know if that yahoo music player is working for you...I've been having flash issues in firefox.

Re: C30 C60 C90 Go

tonyrobots — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:04:53 -0000

testing once again, sorry for the newsfeed spam.

Re: C30 C60 C90 Go

Tony Zito — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:59:53 -0000

testing facebook connect integration

Re: "In Your Eyes," but with more cowbell

clark — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:01:01 -0000

that's pretty awesome

Re: Jonathan Schwartz should eat a bag of glass.

Damian — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:42:00 -0000

I think Schwartz ate that bag of glass about 4 decades ago, died, and is now a creepy, melancholy ghost that WNYC puts on the air for some reason. I guess they feel sorry for him.

Re: Telling your companies about your problem might be helpful in case of emergency

Rick — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:55:00 -0000

Tony!!
A belated welcome to Blogger, hombre.