Comments by Alex Schleber

Gladwell's "Tipping Point" had a whole chapter on this phenomenon "5: ... the magic number 150" (Dunbar Number) that is a worthwhile read. It seems that the human brain on average is equipped to handle about that number of social group connections but not many more.

Of course, you Robert have been pushing the envelope on this for quite some time :)

Have our Web 2.0 technologies enabled us to do things that turn out to be unsustainable? Quite possibly. Then again, improved filtering/sorting may be the answer. We're all experimenting with a way that might work for us...

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I have it on my account, and it’s nothing to be excited about. While some eye candy was added, the functionality has actually DETERIORATED:

No more bios shown on hovering over the Username link, block link takes an extra click now (under the cog icon), block behavior with that unneeded confirmation and seemingly random page forwarding NOT fixed, “Direct Message” links on the “Following” page now hidden under the cog icon, so you can no longer see at a glance who’s following you back.

FAIL

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Jesse, the Google search on your Tweet Stream is a very poor substitute, as it still has more holes than a Swiss cheese. So far I've found only piping of (single user) Twitter RSS feeds into Tumblr to be a reasonably simple/sound solution as far as archiving is concerned (tweet frequency can't be too high, else Tumblr will shut it down).

Of course that won't solve Robert's wish for Time-bound snap-shots that can be easily resurfaced: Google itself, even with the recent "Recency Operator" improvements (Last 24hrs/week/month/year), still has a way to go before you can say "give me date range from: ... until: ..."

Sound to me like there are plenty of business opportunities around providing archiving abilities around given real-time queries. I.e. Robert can find what he wants on a given day or recent sequence of days SHORTLY AFTER the event, and then says: "Hoover up" all of this info and archive it for later... e.g. for the recent "140conf" or "140tc" etc.

That implies taking timely action because Twitter seems in no mood to let you back-search past about 30 days (at best, often it's only about 7 days anymore during daytime loads). They may of course already be selling access to the full range to corp. researchers for a lot of money.

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The result is not that surprising, since Twitter users have been "trained" to practice openness, engagement, and most importantly propagation via Retweets (which Facebook "Likes" cannot match as they don't create the same degree of surfacing, largely because FB users don't (yet) expect to interact with other users' Friends of Friends or their "fanned" FB Pages, etc. to the same degree as on Twitter's wide-open platform).

Granted Zuckerberg is hard at work at retraining them...

Nonetheless, smart bit of research using a relatively simple tool like bit.ly. Shows how important it is to get actual confirmation/feedback via stats on how postings to the various communities are received.

I have been arguing this over on FriendFeed for a number of weeks now, as there currently is no good way to measure clicks on either links shown internally on FF, or the shortened ff.im links shown if FF actions/postings are forwarded to Twitter.

Ever since I've been using FriendFeed in an accelerated fashion starting about two months ago, this has been an issue, since I have no real way of knowing to what degree my Twitter followers are engaging with my FF materials. Anecdotally, it seems that click-throughs on ff.im are currently much lower than on bit.ly links, in part simply because fewer users are familiar with them, asf.

Here is the thread:
http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-feedback/481ec...

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Good analysis. One small correction:

The overall distribution still follows expected 80/20 Principle patterns. Most people forget that the 80/20 "Rule" is recursive, and that it also doesn't have to always match the 80/20 AVERAGE exactly, only that there is a LARGE imbalance away from 50/50.

If you take 80% of 80%, and 20% of 20%, you get roughly 64/4, and then 51/1. So it is quite fitting that a small minority, say 1% of contributors, creates around half or more of the content, while the other 99% create the other half.

But it is misleading on the basis of 80/20 formulation to call this 50/50, b/c the Pareto numbers are always about effects and their causes. Comparing 50% of content (effects) to 50% of the other content (more effects), is not following the usage pattern.

And the data will still show that around 80% of the content (could be ranging anywhere from about 65 to 95), is created by 20% of the users. The expected sharp imbalance is still intact.

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Props. This is too strange, I just posted an Advanced Search article including some of the same Twitter tips this Monday. See for yourself:

http://businessmindhacks.com/post/warning-before-you-do-anything-else-search

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Garry, technology isn’t holding back raw (text) publishing anymore, but it is still holding things back in the area of more sophisticated posts with multiple sources, design, branding, SEO, and (for some users) Internet Marketing relevant integration of what is being published, under which heading I’d include ad network integration such (AdSense, asf.).

As in, is the published content likely to be read, is it attractive/professional, can it be found, can there be micro-payments or other easy purchasing options integrated into it, etc. etc.

All of these things still represent significant tech hurdles for the vast majority of users. Posterous so far has only solved the immediate publishing needs, but there is still a long way to go in terms of design customization, asf.

And I say this despite the fact that I am an enthusiastic Posterous user (as you know).

So no, you’re not done technology-wise.

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Well explained, I was truly perplexed by the change. The only reasonably good current work-around is to import as many of your Tweeps into FriendFeed (either if they are already there, or cajoling them to join, or as so-called “Imaginary Friends” FF imported feeds), where you will still get everyone’s complete tweet stream.

Unfortunately there are usability issues there as far as easy replies/RTs/etc. via FriendFeed, though some of us are hard at work lobbying FF to improve some of those aspects. E.g. it would be great if there could be a wholesale or simple 1-click import of non-FF Twitter friends as “Imaginary Friends”. Also, it’s a huge drawback that FF’s automatic ff.im shortlinks are currently without viewable stats.

But again, all better than being cut off from much of the action completely.

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Boris, I really believe we will only be searching more and more, not less, though it is true that that need not only happen on Google. The way I see it play out, Google will acquire Twitter (or maybe indirectly exert influence/control, through an investment, similar to the way MSFT did with Facebook), and so it will be Facebook vs. Twitter in the race for the Real-Time Web.

Facebook has the problem that its info has been a Walled Garden with much higher privacy expectations from the get go, so it’s a bit daunting for them to try and soften that up, though Zuckerberg is certainly trying. Incidentally, I wish Facebook had much better search in regards to my Facebook email, asf.

Google would want to have full Twitter firehose access, and deny it to MSFT (or vice-versa), then add the Twitter real-time search results to the top of Google results (like you can already do in Firefox using a greasemonkey script). As was recently pointed out,

“whoever acquires Twitter will in essence take possession of an army of millions (soon to be tens of millions) of humans who are actively, accurately, and enthusiastically meta-tagging pages. In the arena of human-augmented search, Mahalo is a useful wheelbarrow, while Twitter is a fleet of 747 cargo planes.” ( http://parnassusgroup.com/twit.....e-cesspool )

…and I have written similar stuff in recent months. This is in essence the “nano-bot” method of search. I doubt Google will let it slip away. Of course the individual users first surfacing stuff on Twitter themseves got to the information using various search methods including Google Alerts, Google Blog Search, asf.

In fact, I am just now writing a post I’ve been meaning to write on the ever-increasing importance of “search literacy”. Without it, people will become functionally illiterate in the 21st Century:

Exponentially increasing amount of information = Search isn’t going anywhere.

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Your post assumes too much about Google missing the boat, when in truth they have shown to act faster/more decisively than either MSFT, Yahoo, or most others:

1) Google bought YouTube (”the Web”) when it became apparent that it was the next big wave. While they are still getting dinged for not monetizing it enough, YouTube already has more SEARCHES performed on it than No.2 search engine Yahoo! So when in doubt, they can buy what’s next on “the Web” (and they are typically less clumsy about absorbing than others).

2) While MSFT and Yahoo were wasting most of last year with the Micro-hoo saga, Google has kept tweaking /executing in search and elsewhere with fearsome discipline (see: http://businessmindhacks.com/p.....s-prick-up ).

3) Google is reacting rather rapidly to the rise of the real-time Web/Search as exemplified by Twitter: The first tweak with (recency) Search Options is already in the books for Google, and in fact it’s occuring to me just now that this is a major omission for MSFT’s just released Bing that it is missing a similar RTW feature.

And of course Google may yet buy Twitter (plus I think Twitter would culturally be more inclined to sell to Google than MSFT, provided that the offer is matched sufficiently closely, plus Google stock should be more dynamic than MSFT stock from here).

4) So no, I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon…mostly because Google embraces the Web, while MSFT still secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) longs to marginalize/cripple it.

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Good list of criteria, a good number of which are still applicable for small businesses/solopreneurs as well. I would add the ability to fully manage a “library” of useful/previously approved Tweets, that can then be (re)scheduled for later. TweetLater seems to have rolled out a lot of that capability, maybe not quite in the large brand/workflow/Customer Mgmgt sense that you talk about.

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Great, concise post. Just posted it to Twitter via my FriendFeed “likes”..

I would add that you can actually grab the Google Alerts as an RSS Feed as well once the individual keyword set-up is created, which you can then import into the same FriendFeed room you describe under Step 2. ( I actually just added this to one of my own “listening post” FF rooms.)

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Now you disappoint me, Scott Stratten (@unmarketing). You didn't want to see what your closest 25k friends were writing to others? :)

(Ironically the larger your following/follower set gets for someone such as yourself, the larger the % of @ reply tweets that will surface in your timeline even with the default setting.)

I am now seeing A LOT less of you, is that truly what you are arguing for? See, I used to click through a lot of your little "Well played Sir!" and "...and by XYZ, I mean..." type @ reply banter with peeps. Most of it is GONE now... If anything, Twitter should be integrating MORE conversation threading/visibility into the platform, not less. It already works on Search.twitter.com, so what gives?

The point is, it's better to have access to the full data set (which should also be less expensive database lookup-wise), and then filter down from there as you see fit. Twitter's spirit is openness (maybe a lot more open than its founders foresaw), why deny access to an entire class of Tweets out of hand?

BTW, I find Mashable's lauding here of Twitter's apology as "frank and honest" almost as Orwellian as Twitter's language in all of this from the get-go. They (Biz, et al.) still continue to try (rather clumsily) to tell us what to think. Propaganda that can easily be spotted is... 2nd rate propaganda.

Also agree with people further down that the 3% of users number feels "massaged". If it were % of active users it should be a good bit higher. Don't trust any statistic you haven't forged yourself...

(Wrote a longer retort here:

http://alexschleber.posterous.com/my-comment-on...
)

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Totally agree with you Louis, see what I just wrote here:

http://alexschleber.posterous.com/my-comment-on...

In a word, @Biz explanation is baloney, and the tone of the posts is only getting MORE Orwellian. Plus this latest PR fail has none of all that "aw shucks FailWhale grass roots" cuddliness (which has already had them getting away with A LOT).

Oh, and @Victor, you are wrong: The users are what build the value of SOCIAL MEDIA. So it would behoove the people expecting to (someday) make money from their creation to treat that resource with some care. Anyone can throw up some servers and code, the value is in the USERS.

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This just proves how convoluted things have gotten with this setting. I first figured this out about 6 months ago, and had since recommended to people to go with “all @ replies”. The point is NOT about volume alone as was pointed out further up, the point is that there IS NO TELLING which tweets will contain something valuable.

To dismiss @ replies out of hand as “undesirable” (a tad bit Orwellian, no?) just because we weren’t following the receiver goes way too far, and I agree with AHell and SJMorton that it kind of goes against Twitter’s open architecture/spirit.

Plus, there’s already DMs for private communication. I also don’t see how doing the extra DB lookup for (”is XYZ following both sender AND receiver”) is saving them server load, if anything, it should be adding to it.

Just do a straight look-up by “following” and give us the full data stream, any further filtering can be done from there.

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