Social Networks

Yet another dance of the seven veils for the Twitter Business model:

At a Churchill Club event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams brushed off--again--criticisms that the company is slow to turn on its revenue-generating engines.

At first, it sounded like Williams was a bit lost on the revenue front. "We will make money, and I can't say exactly how because...we can't predict how the businesses we're in will work." As he has before, he hinted at generating fees from sales-related Twitter content and from corporate users.

I would do it another way, which is to replicate the Freemium model that chatrooms have used for a decade - a "Silver", "Gold" and "Platinum" levels that allow deeper visibility of other members' data, and more services (search etc).

I would also broker SMS services - I can't believe its not possible to do attractive bulk deals to allow people to take Twitter as an SMS service and Twitter takes a cut. That imho could be the really big number, in fact you may bundle deals and add services in that way as well.

In addition, I think they have a few other levers:

(i) Add payment plans if one has above a certain number of follows - say 1,000. At least the serious spammers would pay.

(ii) Follow the CyWorld, Habbo, Flirtomatic models and sell little things in bulk that people can give each other

(iii) Have a "give us some love" option so people can donate to Twitter at times of extreme delight.

(iv) Sell Ads on the user landing page - I don't think anyone would object to a Pagetop Ad where the Home etc are now, and on maintenance pages if they knew it was in a good cause (ie their free service). easy on the intrusive datamining, just general stuff for the demographics.

The trick is to not put any friction on the comms flow for the vast majority of users.

No doubt they have thought of these and more, but the point is that one can look to use cases where these do work and users are not p*ssed off by them.

Also, it is clear that making money is a bit more "piquant" than it was:

Williams said, "We're looking at Q1 for revenues." This is a change from the original, pre-economic meltdown plan. "The original plan was to focus on revenues in 2010. That's no longer the case, since I don't want to raise money in 2009."

Here's a hint - Execution is 9/10ths of the law, to mix metaforce - or JFDI as it is known. The loyal audience has stayed with Twitter through multiple fail whale sightings, they realise the world has changed, in my view they will stay with them now.

PS Twitter, if this is of any value, feel free to contribute to our coffers in the best ShareWare tradition

Interesting post re Adult sites on Ning, a sort of Yahoo Groups for SocNets:

As of January 1, 2009, we’ll no longer support adult social networks on the Ning Platform.

We’re not discontinuing the Red Light District because we no longer believe in the freedom to create your own social network for anything as long as it’s legal. We do. Practically though, supporting adult networks no longer makes sense. Here is what we’ve seen in practice to date with respect to adult social networks on Ning:

- Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight. Specifically, they require other social networks to work harder because they don’t generate enough advertising or premium service revenue to cover their costs. Plus, our ad partners aren’t big fans of the adult networks and therefore require us to identify adult networks or risk our healthy advertising revenue. We don’t want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that’s where this is heading.

- By having legal adult social networks on Ning, we’ve seen a rise in volume of illegal adult social networks. We are always going to do the right thing as it pertains to social networks that are illegal or violate our Terms of Service. That’s non-negotiable. However, the time involved in reporting and assisting the authorities on illegal adult social networks is simply too time and cost intensive for the benefits derived by having adult social networks on Ning.

- Adult social networks on Ning receive a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices creating additional work for our team. We respect intellectual property rights and comply with the DMCA. Compared to our other social networks on the Ning Platform, the additional work created by adult networks alleged to have violated the copyrights of others is enough for us to discontinue adult networks in favor of investing time and energy in growing the Ning Platform from here.

Whats interesting is that Ning feel that the economics no longer stack up. Or were they doing it on ethical grounds?

It would also be interesting to know what % of their service is impacted - one of the other interesting trends is that its less and less of the traffic, so less important.

One of the big problems they face in these days of enthusiastic amateur user (de)generated content (like Youporn) is that to titillate they have to be more extreme, and no one wants to host that. Secondly, no one wants to advertise against it.

Look like porn can't survive without subscription, but Youporn et al are dropping that market. Seems like porn is not immune to the travails of the media overall. It will be interesting to see what arises next (as it were) in the porn industry.

Update - fascinating comment from one of the sites impacted in the comments section.

I was thinking about Social Capital and Social Capitalism (its been on my mind a lot since I went to Berlin) when I saw this on Seth Godin's blog:

In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

- If you don't like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change

and

- If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.

You get what you vote for with your attention, money, karma etc.

I was set to thinking about how this applies to the things that money doesn't buy, that, as Joni Mitchell noted, you don't know what you've got till its gone. And I was thinking that Amplified 08 - great that it was - is only the starting point in rebuilding the sort of Social Capital that previous generations took for granted.

The problem with a lot of Social Capital infrastructure is you can't actually buy it, you have to build it, and you have to do that in collaboration with others. And the only way that really occurs is to agitate and campaign, and put up a structure that a community can vote for.

And the one thing, the one new tool we have, is Social Networks. Which is why I was so exasperated by the way Twitter was abused in reporting the Mumbai attacks, and also so energised by the way we used it at Amplified 08. Same time, same service, different usages.

Still, its early days - and if you believe, as I do, that Social Media is the next major comms tool to create non-zero-sum behaviour in our world - and that it will be essential given the crises we face, then there is still so much to do!

There is (to my mind anyway) a rather disingenuous post up on Techmeme today on the use of Twitter as a news service, based on its usage over the Mumbai attacks:

While CNN and other mainstream publications have been slow to credit online services like Twitter in the past for breaking news during times of crisis like earthquakes and wildfires, now they’re definitely coming around. It shouldn’t really be a surprise the CNN is the one saying this either, one of their anchors, Rick Sanchez, has been very active in the Twitter community, using the micro-messaging service to help with his reporting for several months now.

“Yes, Twitter is a source of journalism,” as blogger Mathew Ingram puts it.

But CNN isn’t quite as rosy about Twitter’s “reporting” capabilities as Ingram — after all, they don’t want it taking their jobs. Noting the widespread rumors and inaccuracies that began to pop up on Twitter about the attacks alongside the true reports, CNN warns that “while Twitter remains a useful tool for mobilizing efforts and gaining eyewitness accounts during a disaster, the sourcing of most of the news cannot be trusted.”

That, of course is true, but as Ingram notes, when some wrong information started appearing on Twitter about the attacks, other users were quick to correct the reports — and again, those corrections probably happened quicker than they would have through traditional media.

It’s really a question of speed versus 100 percent accuracy. In many cases you have to take one over the other. In a time of crisis, I would guess that just about everyone would choose speed. And in that regard, outlets like CNN simply cannot match a service like Twitter which has millions of potential “reporters.”

The old adage, “don’t believe everything you read,” is still important to keep in mind when getting information from Twitter. But it’s precisely an “old adage” because it’s been around long before Twitter ever existed and will be around after it’s gone. Twitter is just another source, a very fast one, but it still requires the ultimate filter: Your brain.

I didn't see it that way at all - I think the point Tweetip (who aggregate Twitter signals around a subject ) made about the pattern resonated with what I saw (see the graph above):

- First there is a signal [news], then noise, then the bandwagon.

And in terms of ratios I'd estimate it followed the Social Network standard of 1 : 9 : 90 in terms of percentages - ie c 1% was signal, 9% was noise around the signal. The "noise" I'd classify as the standard stuff you'd see around a terrible event - are people OK, is my friend OK, thats sort of thing - but the bulk, the 90%, was pure cr*p, with stuff such as:

- Wild surmises to gain attention
- Re-tweeting mainstream media in an endless circle jerk
- Mediawhores jumping on the bandwagon with crocodile tears and faux sympathy
- Hatemail
- Hatemail to the hatemailers
- People arguing with any or all of the above

What this means is that this was not news - it was a hose of sewage, in which the few nuggets of real news were virtually impossible to pick out. And the "corrections" were meaningless, as they were just adding to the morass of manure as it all swirled around in unverified retweets. Was the original right? Was the correction right - uh oh, here comes an opinion that the correction was wrong.

The old adage that you shouldn't believe everything you read was built for the days when what you read was at least curated and edited in some form, and you could apply rational judgement to it. When faced with a sewer pipe of cr*p of every imaginable sort, its impossible for anybody's brain to filter out what is "real" news and what is not.

If Twitter's performance on this is the "future of journalism", I don't think CNN has anything to worry about just yet.

What will be needed is ways to filter this - I can see 3 approaches that can be used:

(i) Verification - some way of stopping 3rd parties entering and hijacking the stream. with different agendas
(ii) Increased Transaction costs, ie some form of "strong tell" - only people fairly strongly involved will want to communicate
(iii) Filtering - probably combined algorithmic / empirical - to strip out clear recirculatory or off topic responses. Over the last 2 days I have lost any faith that pure "social media" can self correct fast enough or accurately enough in these situations.

How to do this is a fascinating task in itself, and when it starts to occur then I think we will see real "Citizen Journalism" occur, and at that point CNN can be worried.

Or maybe not - yesterday at Amplified 08, one of the sessions led by the BBC team was on the interaction of "Citizen Journalism" and Mainstream media - and I came away with the thought that at the scales the MSM operate, half baked shamateur systems are just not going to cut it. It will need big iron and serous organisation. The MSM have that. So, of course, do others, but it is MSM's to lose.

Update - not just me who saw it this way:

Update - as a friend noted, the CNN piece was rather a good analysis of Twitter, whereas the reverse was not true

Update - a day later, other people are starting to think about how to make Twitter more useful

I loved this piece on ComputerWorld so much (and it gave me the title to the post) so I've stolen it (sorry, it is of course "research")

I'm going to tell you exactly how someone can trick you into thinking they're your friend. Now, before you send me hate mail for revealing this deep, dark secret, let me assure you that the scammers, crooks, predators, stalkers and identity thieves are already aware of this trick. It works only because the public is not aware of it. If you're scamming someone, here's what you'd do:

Step 1: Request to be "friends" with a dozen strangers on MySpace. Let's say half of them accept. Collect a list of all their friends.

Step 2: Go to Facebook and search for those six people. Let's say you find four of them also on Facebook. Request to be their friends on Facebook. All accept because you're already an established friend.

Step 3: Now compare the MySpace friends against the Facebook friends. Generate a list of people that are on MySpace but are not on Facebook. Grab the photos and profile data on those people from MySpace and use it to create false but convincing profiles on Facebook. Send "friend" requests to your victims on Facebook.

As a bonus, others who are friends of both your victims and your fake self will contact you to be friends and, of course, you'll accept. In fact, Facebook itself will suggest you as a friend to those people.

A prediction from the article - Identity fraud will be so rampant that Cellphone numbers will be required to set up profiles on Facebook by mid 2009

Marvellous...now, who shall I be today

So, a terrorist attack hits Mumbai, killing c 80 people so far and causing mayhem. Having been in a situation like that before, I can imagine the anguish and fear.

But what do the social media techies crow about - why, that the news got through on Twitter first of course! Hooray. We beat the silly old Mainstream media. No one knows the ins and outs, the whys and wherefores of course - that boring stuff we leave to MSM reporters - but we wonz coz we wuz firzt!

Even worse to watch is the faux sympathy treacled out by wannabe Twittermedia personalities trying to mainline themselves into the lifestream of other peoples misery and worry. Digital rubbernecking......

Update - this comment by Tweetip (Twitter stream aggregator) here sums up Twitter as a news system:

1st there is signal, then a bit of noise, then the bandwagon

I think that's it - Twitter will tell you something is up, but soon after that it gets swamped by noise and then people jumping on for their own ends. I know I'd do my Noo Meedja credentials far more good by crying out that Twitter is The Best News since the Ghent from Aix, but the honest truth is it ain't - fortunately the BBC is on Twitter too!

Update 2 - been musing on this - what is needed is a filter so that people who do have something useful to say (the signal) get through, while those who don't (the majority) get stripped out the twt stream. But how to do it....

Update 3 - The Indian government asked people to stop twittering. Says it all.

News today in Boomtown that the officially not happening talks about Facebook buying Twitter had broken down:

So why did the deal break down?

Well, as is usually the case, over price–was $500 million worth of Facebook stock actually worth $500 million?–and the typical concerns about integration and costs.

But, more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth.

Will this be Facebook's Google (Yahoo failed to buy Google early on and was eclipsed by its simpler content finding model). There is a parallel between the Facebook "SocNet Portal" and the Twitter "CommsNet"

Afterthought - how would Facebook handle the issue that many Twitterers use nom-de-plumes, whereas Facebook throws you off if you do (and are not famous enough to complain)

Update - VC Nic Brisbourne shows why at that valuation, for stock, a deal would have been hard.

Building a Consumer Ecosystem but the little bleeders won't pay and Ad Agencies are running a mile? No worries, bleed the suppliers. At any rate, thats the Facebook approach as reported today in TechCrunch. Facebook developers can apply for their Apps to be vefified (ie quality assured) on the platform - at $375 a shot. Three strikes in testing and you're out, come back in 3 months.

What is more interesting is what they are being verified for - its all about rebuilding user trust:

Secure: Protects user data and honors privacy choices for everyone across the social graph. Facebook users are deliberate and specific about which data they choose to share, how they share it, and with whom. All applications must respect users’ choices and the choices of their friends by only accessing, using and sharing data users have explicitly allowed.

Respectful: Values user attention and honors their intentions in communications and actions. Users trust that when they use your application, you will represent their intent and best interests, especially the messages you send about them or on their behalf. ie No Spam

Transparent: Explains how features will work and how they won’t work, especially in triggering user-to-user communications. Nothing is more frustrating than to click a button expecting one thing to happen and having something entirely different and confusing happen instead. Even worse is sending communications to a user’s friends that the user did not intend or want to send.

Its an object lesson in what turns people off on social networks (and also the Games people play).

And besides, Facebook doesn't want competition for its Beacon Ad Targeting (aka datamining) systems, what's the point of setting that up just for other apps to scrape it all away for free

By the way - for the Facebook frat - I still thin my idea of Paying per Poke is the best way - and double for a sheep!

Over the last day or so, a hoohah has broken out on Twitter about Twitterank, a system that ranks your influence. The hoohah was initially the ego-fuel of seeing your name, rank and serial number in lights, and then worries about why is that it wanted your password. The author of the system explains why today on ZDNet:

Similar to how Google’s PageRank algorithm judged a web page based on the number of inbound links and the origin of those links, Twitterank attempts to quantify a Twitter user by analyzing their incoming @replies. In essence, the more people talk to you, the higher your score. So yes, the number you’ll get may not necessarily reflect the number of followers you have, how often you tweet, or even how big your ego is.

That also brings us to passwords. In order to analyze your @replies, I need to make a web service request to Twitter, which requires your user name and password.

Unlike other ranking systems that look at your broadcast noise, Twitterank looks at who is bothering to link to you.

But the really fascinating part is as a measure of the rate of virality of ego-memes, that supposedly savvy geeks would trade their passwords and accept a phishing risk for some strokes:

All in all, from inception to launch, Twitterank took me about 5 hours to build. I finished around 4:30am, posted my Twitterank to Twitter, and went to bed. The next morning, I sent a single tweet to my friends asking them to check out Twitterank, and the beast was unleashed. One hour I had 8 new users. The next hour I had 109. The next 400. Then 1500. Then 2400. All this happened while I was at work, and my primary concern was keeping the site up (my hosting service got overwhelmed, so I eventually switched to a friend’s dedicated server). Unfortunately, it wasn’t until much later that I fully grasped the extent of the rumors, and was able to begin addressing some of the concerns people had.

Ryo Chijiiwa, we salute you

(For the record, I didn't use it - being of even moderate tech skill, it was clear that any system wanting passwords was going to scrape semi hidden data - this use was benign, but one can imagine a lot of other uses of that data that would not be. As to those who did use it, well you have just proven that you are on the PT Barnum end of the Social Media spectrum )

Tom Lehrer was a mathematics lecturer at Harvard, UC Santa Cruz and at MIT, where he taught game theory and related mathematical modelling in the Political Science department. He is also a writer of satirical songs, and here is his ouvre that applies to some of the fluffier stuff going on in Social Media today today:

First, on Social Media:



And then, on Viral media.



One wonders what he would do with todays' Social Media scene....