Microblogging Social Network

Two interesting studies on a microblogging social network you may have heard of:

Almost everyone in America has heard of this microblogging social network but just a fraction of them have been compelled to sign up and those who do spend their time listening to the vocal minority and interacting with brands/celebrities. 53% of people don’t  update their profiles…highly troubling for the microblogging social network’s growth.

7 Surprising Statistics About A Microblogging Social Network in America | mobile | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert.

The most common friendship distance on this microblogging social network is five steps. (The average distance is 4.67 steps). On average, about 50% of people on this microblogging social network are only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone is five steps away. After visiting an average of 3.32 people within the friend network, this microblogging social network’s users can expect to find one of their followers.

Microblogging Social Network’s Five Degrees of Seperation via Sysomos.

How to create a Twitter list

…and some thoughts on this new feature.

Twitter lists have been rolled out to seemingly all users and Amy Porterfield has kindly made a video showing you how to create your very own.

Mark Evans has some thoughts on Twitter lists and I agree with him. There’s an overwhelming feeling of “meh” about this new feature although it will be nice to be able to keep track of certain people without necessarily following them. However a “find” and “recommend” feature would have been more useful as would the ability to collaborate on lists. Especially for marketers.

If Sean or Bryan or Lynn or myself are working on an account together, it makes sense that we create a list of influencers for that client. But if I create a list, my fellow com.motioners can follow it but we can’t collaborate on it together, unless we use the shared @causeacommotion account.

Some lists you may want to follow:

com.motion Twitterers

Veritasians on Twitter (this is a work in progress)

MDC Partners on Twitter (MDC is Veritas’s majority shareholder)

Real Time Curated Search From Twitter?

I saw an interesting development on Twitter today. The current Web 2.0 darling has done an excellent job on highlighting the most popular topics being used by its (unquantified but undoubtedly hugely significant number of) users at any one time – see below:

But there have been many a time when I’ve clicked on a particular trending topic to see exactly what this strange hash tag or phrase is – who the heck knows what #heyhey could be – and the spammers have moved in to hijack the terms.

Which is why the below was interesting when I clicked on something called Google Wave:

NOTE: after sleeping on this post, I have some more thoughts which are appended and integrated into this post.

Some more digging from my colleague Sean McDonald shows that this is a crowd-sourced effort with content being produced, in part, by the community over on the What The Trend Web site:

What The Trend:

It’s not flashy or sexy but coupling the wisdom of the crowds (trends divined from volume) with some sort of human curation (see this list feature Steve Rubel uncovered) gives us some sort of directional insight into where the microblogging network is heading.

What is more fascinating for me is how dependent this Web 2.0 powerhouse is on outside innovation. For a company which just announced a $100m (all figures US) round of funding, bringing the total raised to $150m and valuing the company at a cool $1bn, I am surprised how reliant Twitter is on the ecosystem which it has spawned. It is almost like its business plan is to add features through acquisition rather than an internal product development process and strategic vision. It’s fantastic to be the focal point of all this innovation and creative energy but at what point do you become more like Apple and less like Wikipedia – i.e., when do you start to apply your vision to your company or organisation rather than leave it to others to direct you?

I think that, at the crux of it, is a problem many organizations are facing with social media. How much do you start to crowd source your strategic planning and vision to your users? Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Apple could very well let users define its product direction by listening to the community – which is comprised of many (many!) smart, creative, logical people. One of whom works at com.motion. But Apple would not be Apple if it pandered to the legions of fan boys/girls out there. The organization has a clear strategic direction and laser like product focus which precludes engaging the community in the same way that Twitter does.

It is an interesting paradox and the answer for many businesses may be somewhere in between.