What’s in a crowdsourcing….

July 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I was going to write an eloquent and heartfelt post regarding everything that’s wrong about the attempt by Golley Slater to rebrand by a hamfisted attempt at ‘crowdsourcing’ – another example why really we should be stricter about how the term is used, and why co-collaboration should probably replace it.

But then I spotted the always interesting Andrea Phillips had beaten me to is on her blog, Deus Ex Machinatio. Worth reading the post if you’re interested in ever trying to actually achieve something productive using crowdsourcing mechanics, and also if you’re interested in transmedia and game design/mechanics etc.

So I’ll get back to working and trying not to lose myself in playing with Google +. Despite being touted initially as a ‘Facebook killer’, it actually seems more and more people are coming round to thinking of it as a potential rival to Twitter in the curation of streams of content. Similar to how Twitter might have evolved lists, or how Tweetdeck used them to create a more workable interface at scale.

 

Filed Under: Crowdsourcing, social networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Users dissatisfied with social networks – are you surprised?

July 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Apparently American consumers surveyed in the 2010 American Customer Survey Index ranked Facebook lower than any other business in its category, but it still managed to beat Myspace by a point. Facebook scored 64 out of 100, Myspace scored 63 out of 100, and by comparison Google scored 80 (A drop of 7 points on last year’s score). (h/t Mashable).

The question is whether anyone is surprised:

a) That social networks can lead to dissatisfaction?

or

b) That social networks are still growing massively despite such dissatisfaction?

(Note – I’m not picking out any specific network here – I’m talking about everything from a traditional forum to the big social networks).

Firstly, social networks in themselves can be immensely frustrating and problematic – knowing how they work, putting up with them when they crash, receiving messages about problems from an anonymous staff member with no route to reply or dispute are just some of the things which can annoy social network users.

As someone who has used social networks for many years, I’ve become accustomed to the fact that quite often you can try for months to get a response on a business-related issue. Sometimes even when you want to spend some budget with the company in question.

But it’s even worse if you’re a ‘normal’ user – when you signed up to the Terms and Conditions, you agreed your account could be deleted, and unless the media or a prominent tech blogger takes up your case, there’s no real recourse.

Secondly, social networks are fantastic and will continue to grow and attract new users, even amongst those frustrated with them. And it’s all because of a simple selling point – other people. Even if a social network is clunky and frustrating to use, you’ll continue to use it if there’s a critical mass of your friends, family, contacts and information.

Unfortunately Twitter wasn’t included, as so many people encounter it via a 3rd party client. And I didn’t see any mention of LinkedIn. Suffice to say, most of the main social networks do a reasonable job until something goes wrong – then you’re at the mercy of a large company which has scaled quickly to deal with massive demand.

Interestingly, Wikipedia topped the Social Media category with a score of 77. In News and Information, FoxNews.com debuted with a score of 82, which is the highest ever for any news site. There’s a little more info at ForeSee Results.

Filed Under: social networks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ingredients missing from Twitter's Blackbird Pie to embed tweets

May 4, 2010 By 1 Comment

Twitter’s message embedding tool, Blackbird Pie, is now live. Well at least it would be, if the application hadn’t already toppled over due to the interest in it:

Twitter's new Blackbird Pie application for embedding tweets crashes on launch day

The above tweet had to be captured the old-fashioned way. But having had a look at the posts about the service before it fell over, I have to admit I’m fairly disapointed so far.

So on the plus side:

  • You just submit the url of a tweet to get the code
  • It picks up the font used in your tags to emulate your blog style.
  • It copies whatever background the original tweeter used.
  • The @tags, hashtags and account itself are all clickable.

But on the downside:

  • It was never that tricky to embed a tweet before – I just used the Aviary plugin for Firefox for a quick screengrab, upload the image, and then manually link to the account or hashtag as needed.
  • I’ve yet to see someone display an embedded tweet, but what happens if Twitter decides to remove that content from their system?
  • The block of code provided is a huge amount to copy and paste just to embed an element. Certainly something I wouldn’t want to have to edit to fit the size of any site/blog.
  • It seems like a hugely missed opportunity so far. Embedding an individual tweet isn’t a problem – but what is more problematic is capturing a few, or a whole conversation between one or more people. I’m sure I’ve seen one tool for capturing conversations but can’t remember what it is, and using my own quick screenshot method or Blackbird Pie it’ll still be a pain.
  • It’s crashed already, despite being built by people familiar with the size and scale of Twitter. And it’s not even showing a Fail Whale (Fail bird?)

Blackbird Pie seems undercooked

I’m really not sure why Twitter has released this now. We’ve had their acquisition of Tweetie, the release of BlackBerry and Android applications, and the launch of Promoted Tweets. Why rush out something which doesn’t actually offer anything particularly beneficial to users? Unless it’s simply there to add control for Twitter (And perhaps promotional partners).

After all, it may help when dealing with DMCA issues with particular messages.

Filed Under: Tools, twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Embed options for Tweets coming tomorrow

May 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

From tomorrow you can display messages from Twitter on your blog or website without having to save the image, edit it, upload it, and then manually add a link.

So rather than all of that, from May 4th, you’ll be able to grab some HTML code which you can then embed without any image editing.

Handy for bloggers, and hinting that more tools for sharing and curating rivers of tweets will be on the way soon. In some ways it’s quite surprising, considering Glam had monetised a curated Twitter feed back in February 2009. Suddenly you don’t need to be an insightful content creator or a developer to do something quite interesting – a new group of curators could now come to the fore to make sense of the streams of information flowing through in realtime. And although mainstream news organisations will undoubtedly give it a try, that’s also got to open up the options for more specialised and niche publications, or niche experts in subjects which journalists don’t always do a great job of covering.

Of course, it also guarantees that every embedded link will carry a (presumably followed by Google) link to boost Twitter’s search ranking for whatever terms are including in it, and it also gives Twitter another platform which is could use to push out advertising or other monetisation attempts.

Presumably it also will mean that tweets can be wiped out at the source – if a tweet was deleted until now, all the embedded screenshot images will remain. If everyone starts using HTML embeds and tweets are removed, all the evidence goes with them.

Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: , , , , ,
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