Streams of Content, Limited Attention - and Twitterwalls

danah boyd (no, its not a typo, apparently she spells her name all in lower case) delivered a paper yesterday at the NY Web 2.0 Expo which, it would seem, did not go down too well with some of the audience, which is a pity as it was quite interesting in a number of ways. I wasn't there, but parsing the Twittersteam it seems like she read it, too fast, and some people got frustrated and vented on the Twitterwall behind her, then her supporters jumped in and...well, I'm not a fan of Twitterwalls while people are speaking (see The Great Twitterwall Hijack bit here) for just this reason, and it shows total disrespect of the speaker. But then, I also think reading badly from notes is a bit disrespectful of a paying audience (and besides, a Social Media Expert should know what to expect - those who live by the twt..... ). I think danah appreciated this, as she later apologised, so kudos to her.

Anyway, the paper itself was really quite intriguing, as it is one of the first I have seen from the coterie of webpeople whom I normally consider the Evangelistii of the Social Media scene about some of its real challenges, and its worth reading carefully therefore. Given y'all are far too busy/lazy/stoned for that , we've done our normal service of expurgating, expostulating and explaining it for you. The paper starts with:

LIVING IN STREAMS

In his seminal pop-book, Csikszentmihalyi argued that people are happiest when they can reach a state of "flow." He talks about performers and athletes who are in the height of their profession, the experience they feel as time passes by and everything just clicks. People reach a state where attention appears focused and, simultaneously, not in need of focus at the same time. The world is aligned and it just feels right.

.......

Those who are most enamored with services like Twitter talk passionately about feeling as though they are living and breathing with the world around them, peripherally aware and in-tune, adding content to the stream and grabbing it when appropriate. This state is delicate, plagued by information overload and weighed down by frustrating tools.

"Flow" is the new Metaphor de Jour of the Web-Set. Of course, many people have written about being "in the zone", "in flow", "letting the force be with you" etc over the last 20 years or so, and it picks up Dave Winer's concept of the "River of News" - but picking the guru with the longest and most unpronounceable name is clearly de rigeur . The problem with this concept of being "In the Flow" is in the last line - "This state is delicate, plagued by information overload and weighed down by frustrating tools". Put it another way - there is too much stuff today for you to have a hope of being in The Flow without drowning, unless there is a vigorous and ruthless filtering process and a hefty use of easy to see metadata.

FROM BROADCAST TO NETWORKED

For the last few centuries, we have been living in an era of broadcast media, but we have been switching to an era of networked media. This fundamentally alters the structure by which information flows.

''''''

Internet technologies are fundamentally dismantling and reworking the structures of distribution. Distribution is a process by which content creators find channels through which they can disseminate their creation. In effect, they're pushing out the content. Sure, people have to be there to receive it, but the idea is that there are limited channels for distribution and thus getting access to this limited resource is hard. That is no longer the case.

As networked technologies proliferate around the world, we can assume that there is a channel of distribution available to everyone and between everyone. In theory, anyone could get content to anyone else. With the barriers to distribution collapsing, what matters is not the act of distribution, but the act of consumption. Thus, the power is no longer in the hands of those who control the channels of distribution, but those who control the limited resource of attention. This is precisely why YOU were the Person of the Year. Your attention is precious and valuable. It's no longer about push; it's about pull. And the law of two feet is now culturally pervasive.

I have a slightly different take on this. The Internet Is Different, but the way the medium is really restructuring the media is not around YOU, its around THEM. Voting YOU as person of the year masked An Inconvenient Truth - ie that in fact the real game is shifting from a set of Broadcasting Aggregators to a set of New Media Aggregators (Facebook, Google, Apple etc) who are all busy trying to build their own monopolistic walled gardens across the entire value chain from content creation through to proprietary user device. At least in the Olde Worlde if I bought a TV set it showed everyone's channels, and it still does on the PC whereas with a Kindle or iPhone I only get what the aggregator chooses to provide me with (AOL 2.0 anyone?). YOUR contribution is not yours either - the T&C of these sites abrogate it to themselves, which is why they can then sell themselves for squillions while YOU get nothing, even though the biggest value component in the sale is YOUR user data and potential attention to Advertising. Privacy is now a fungible good......

Now its gets very interesting, because at this point the paper changes tone significantly - the stuff above is pretty much straight from the Kool Aid 2.0 spigot, but danah's next section on 4 Challenges that need to be solved for this to work are perceptive and practical - and admit to there being problems! Which makes me wonder if the above stuff is just the liturgical form one uses before getting into the real sermon:

FOUR CORE ISSUES

1) Democratization. Switching from a model of distribution to a model of attention is disruptive, but it is not inherently democratizing. This is a mistake we often make when talking about this shift. We may be democratizing certain types of access, but we're not democratizing attention. Just because we're moving towards a state where anyone has the ability to get information into the stream does not mean that attention will be divided equally. Opening up access to the structures of distribution is not democratizing when distribution is no longer the organizing function.

Some in the room might immediately think, "Ah, but it's a meritocracy. People will give their attention to what is best!" This too is mistaken logic. What people give their attention to depends on a whole set of factors that have nothing to do with what's best. At the most simplistic level, consider the role of language. People will pay attention to content that is in their language, even if they can get access to content in any language. This means Chinese language content will soon get more attention than English content, let alone Dutch content or Hebrew content.

Absolutely, and I think it reflects the real organisation of the new media structures as owned by a new breed of aggregator, as I described above. Danah is politely vague here, but in blunt terms it means that the long tail is there for being jerked, and the jerks are more likely to follow a Celebrity on Twitter who knows f*ck-all about X, but take their opinion on X over someone more qualified. She again alludes to this when she notes:

2) Stimulation. People consume content that stimulates their mind and senses. That which angers, excites, energizes, entertains, or otherwise creates an emotional response. This is not always the "best" or most informative content, but that which triggers a reaction.

This isn't inherently a good thing. Consider the food equivalent. Our bodies are programmed to consume fat and sugars because they're rare in nature. Thus, when they come around, we should grab them. In the same way, we're biologically programmed to be attentive to things that stimulate: content that is gross, violent, or sexual and that gossip which is humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive. If we're not careful, we're going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We'll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole.

..........

Of course, there's money here and people will try to manipulate this dynamic for their own purposes. There are folks who put out highly stimulating content or spread gossip to get attention. And often they succeed, creating a pretty unhealthy cycle. So we have to start asking ourselves what balance looks like and how we can move towards an environment where there are incentives for consuming healthy content that benefit individuals and society as a whole. Or, at the very least, how not to feed the trolls.

Social Media as the new Opiate of the Masses! Its hard to think about any supplier driven "balance" working giving the new super-aggregators are all commercial entities, and are far less regulated than the TV, Radio or even print media ever were. If I were to bet on this, I'd say that the pressure to regulate Digital Media - much as media before it - will be a growth industry in the next 10 years or so. We are already seeing very worrying trends - and emerging counter resistance - around privacy and security.

Her next point is about the risky nature of everyone getting this day their own Daily Me:

3) Homophily. In a networked world, people connect to people like themselves. What flows across the network flows through edges of similarity. The ability to connect to others like us allows us to flow information across space and time in impressively new ways, but there's also a downside.

Prejudice, intolerance, bigotry, and power are all baked into our networks. In a world of networked media, it's easy to not get access to views from people who think from a different perspective. Information can and does flow in ways that create and reinforce social divides. Democratic philosophy depends on shared informational structures, but the combination of self-segmentation and networked information flow means that we lose the common rhetorical ground through which we can converse.

Throughout my studies of social media, I have been astonished by the people who think that XYZ site is for people like them. I interviewed gay men who thought Friendster was a gay dating site because all they saw were other gay men. I interviewed teens who believed that everyone on MySpace was Christian because all of the profiles they saw contained biblical quotes. We all live in our own worlds with people who share our values and, with networked media, it's often hard to see beyond that.

As danah points out, the Technology does not inherently disintegrate social divisions. In fact, more often then not, in reinforces them. We have always been able to pick our narratives,(eg you read a left or right leaning newspaper depending on your wont) but the ability to micro-configure is Internet Age. The only people up to now who have had this capability have been recluses and very powerful people with toadies surrounding them. Neither model suggests a happy outcome. "Daily Me" advocated talk of a "Serendipity Switch" - I think an "Uncomfortable News" switch may be more in order. She believes that only a small percentage of people are inclined to seek out opinions and ideas from cultures other than their own, and that these people are and should be highly valued in society. I think she is right on the former and wrong on the latter. The last thing people comfortable with their own opinions value is some outsider telling them they're wrong. Shooting messengers is a time honoured human blood sport

4) Power. When we think about centralized sources of information distribution, it's easy to understand that power is at stake. But networked structures of consumption are also configured by power and we cannot forget that or assume that access alone is power. Power is about being able to command attention, influence others' attention, and otherwise traffic in information. We give power to people when we give them our attention and people gain power when they bridge between different worlds and determine what information can and will flow across the network.

.........

In a broadcast model, those who control the distribution channels often profit more than the creators. Think: Clear Channel, record labels, TV producers, etc. Unfortunately, there's an assumption that if we get rid of limitations to distribution, the power will revert to the creators. This is not what's happening. Distribution today is making people aware that they can come and get something, but those who get access to people's attention are still a small, privileged few.

Instead, what we're seeing a new type of information broker emerge. These folks get credit for their structural position. While the monetary benefits are indirect, countless consulting gigs have arisen for folks based on their power as information brokers. The old controllers of information are losing their stature (and not happy about it). What's emerging is not inherently the power of the creators, but the power of the modern day information brokers.

This is actually quite extraordinary stuff - when one of the Evangelisti starts to talk about the totally non-meritocratic structure of social media, about the lack of balance in the interests of broker, creator and user, that a a totally self selected experience is bad and that all power corrupts, whether its from People we Hate or People We Love. its (almost) a Pauline conversion (or at least a Neo Keensian one ). What does amuse me about the Olde Guard of the 2.0 Webset is that they just...can't....bring....them...selves....to.....talk....about....what...You-Know-Hoogle et al are up to because these were held up in the original Old Testament 2.0 as Prophets of the revolution, even when its becoming increasingly clear that Net Neutrality is less of an issue than Aggregator Neutrality. Countless small time consultants is not the issue here, its a chimera for the real Information Brokers - the walled citadels over the flow of information that the New Media Aggregators are trying to build.

In her section "Making it Work" I think there are two insightful bits - Firstly:

We need technological innovations. For example, tools that allow people to more easily contextualize relevant content regardless of where they are and what they are doing and tools that allow people to slice and dice content so as to not reach information overload. This is not simply about aggregating or curating content to create personalized destination sites. Frankly, I don't think this will work. Instead, the tools that consumers need are those that allow them to get into flow, that allow them to live inside information structures wherever they are, whatever they're doing. The tools that allow them to easily grab what they need and stay peripherally aware without feeling overwhelmed.

And Secondly:

.....we need to rethink our business plans. I doubt this cultural shift will be paid for by better advertising models. Advertising is based on capturing attention, typically by interrupting the broadcast message or by being inserted into the content itself. Trying to reach information flow is not about being interrupted. Advertising does work when it's part of the flow itself. Ads are great when they provide a desirable answer to a search query or when they appear at the moment of purchase. But when the information being shared is social in nature, advertising is fundamentally a disruption.

Figuring out how to monetize sociality is a problem. And not one new to the Internet. Think about how we monetize sociality in physical spaces. Typically, it involves second-order consumption of calories. Venues provide a space for social interaction to occur and we are expected to consume to pay rent. Restaurants, bars, cafes… they all survive on this model. But we have yet to find the digital equivalent of alcohol.

Or we charge entrance fees......

All in all a very useful discussion, even the more so as it marks - in my opinion anyway - a more "official" recognition of The Dark Side of Social Media than has previously been the case. That it was combined with a live demonstration of the downsides on the Twitterwall just puts the bow on the show......

If you liked this post, don't forget to vote for Broadstuff for the British BIMAs 2009 Best Blog Award . If you hated it, vote anyway.....