“we are creatures that model behavior. in a fixed group, such behavior is reinforced, and norms emerge. in an environment like twitter,”
9:55 AM Apr 2nd from Echofon

“…where the people i am following (and hence possibly modeling) are a) diverse (all from diff groups) and b) not the same as the people”
9:56 AM Apr 2nd from Echofon

“…following me, how can norms of behavior emerge? the problem of the reverse panopticon. need more characters to really get into this.”
9:57 AM Apr 2nd from Echofon

Finally, I’ve gotten around to explaining what it is I was thinking about:

Community consists of mutually-reinforced norms and modes of behavior. Within certain groups (e.g. family, peer groups, professional associations) these norms emerge iteratively and collaboratively (which is not to discount the variable power relations inherent in any such system) as behaviors are modeled and then reproduced until a certain equilibrium is reached — what some might call “community values,” but I mean it in a broader way that it’s commonly used in the public discourse. Taken to an extreme in the online space, this can lead to the incestuous “echo chamber” effect found on so many political forums (on both the left and right), and to specialized argot and in-jokes impenetrable to an outsider (as seen, for example, on the discussion forums on woot.com — WTF are those people talking about?) But more often than not, this is where true communities form (as they model real-life communities where groups have a shared meeting place, and everyone is equally visible to everyone else.) Metafilter is a great example of this sort of community; it has a clear ethos and recognizable “voice,” despite being (largely) democratically-governed and the content entirely user-created.

In a loosely symmetrical system of relationships such as that enabled by Facebook, in which all connections (“friendships”) are mutually confirmed, but each individual belongs to a different (if often largely overlapping) peer group, a nice middle ground is established — since everyone you are “following” is also following you (unless explicitly hidden), there tends to be some semblance of normative equilibrium, without the homogenizing and rarefying effect exhibited in completely closed systems. Different people will have radically different experiences of Facebook, depending on whom they’ve decided to surround themselves with (e.g. professional contacts? Friends? Family?), but these differences tend to be incremental based on the number of “hops” away from each node. Put simply, a friend of mine on FB is going to have a different experience of it than I will, but it will likely be less different than a friend of a friend, and so on.

But in a system like Twitter’s, in which relationships are asymmetrical (and therefore only incidentally reciprocal), the notion of a shared experience and mutually-reinforced mores which form the backbone of “community” goes out the window. While there may be 1000s of people viewing a particular tweet, the context of that tweet is completely different for each of the people viewing. What appears to be community, then, is in fact merely a self-constructed simulacrum of a community, in which the people you appear to surround yourself with are themselves surrounded by a completely different group of people, thereby allowing no actual communal norms to develop, except on the most macro-, system-wide level.

But what about the panopticon? In brief, the panopticon is a prison architecture proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century in which a series of cells extend radially around a central observation node. The prisoners can’t see each other, and can’t see their observer (or precisely when/if they are being observed,) but the observer at the center can see all.

Ignoring the social control purpose this architecture was originally intended for, and most theorists have concentrated on, I’m viewing it more simply as a structure of communication and consumption — of who is viewing, who is being viewed, and what is visible to each. Twitter can be viewed as an infinitely overlapping structure of reverse panopticons, with each participant at the center of his/her own universe, with no visibility outward back to the people who are watching them. There is no “conversation” per se (without a tedious, forensic reconstruction process), as each participant is experiencing and responding to a very different messaging landscape. In such a chaotic landscape, shared norms (a key component of a “community”) cannot emerge. For example, if I follow a bunch of dirty-mouthed comedians (as I do), I might easily get the sense that the ethos of Twitter is wild, profane, and uncompromisingly edgy. But then when I comment in kind, I may well shock the sensibilities of (say) the internet development professionals that follow me. Now multiply this dissonance by the number of individual nodes in the network, and you have a custerfluck of epic proportions, with millions of people shouting together, alone.

Now you might say — “that’s not my experience of Twitter! I feel like a part of a strong community, with a generally shared ethos and many, many mutual interactions.” That’s wonderful, but it also sort of perversely makes my point — due to the asymmetrical architecture inherent in Twitter, every participant’s experience of the product is going to be radically different, dependent on how they’ve structured and maintained their personal network. Surely it’s possible to create sub-networks that consist entirely of symmetrical relationships, with all the members of the group following and being followed by all the other members, but this arrangement is counter to the inherent architecture of the system (unlike a simple community forum, where it is the de facto structure,) and one would need to go to great lengths to accomplish it. Given that, one can no more speak of the “Twitter experience” than they could of the “telephone experience,” or the “pencil experience.”

All of this is not to say that Twitter is not an incredibly interesting and potentially useful tool (like the telephone or the pencil.) Just that it is architected in such a way as to make true community very difficult to achieve, and to promote the existence of Twitter micro-celebrities with thousands of followers that they don’t themselves follow. These celebrity nodes are where shared sensibilities might converge, but the followers aren’t themselves sharing a context — they are all observing and perhaps responding to the center (where an @aplusk or a @hodgman or a @scobleizer might sit,) but are invisible to one another.

Is this a problem? If it is, is there anything to be done about it? I have some ideas, but this has gone on long enough for now. Curious to hear your thoughts, and thanks my indulging my rather rambly, admittedly somewhat pretentious, and not-fully-formed post…

At the risk of being immodest, I’m a real catch. Just check out the resume below. (Plus, if you hire me, you’ll have a real-life Emmy award in the building. Yeah, it’s heavy.)

I’ve heard time and again that the Portland talent pool is rich with creatives, but lacking in executives. I’m a healthy mix of both, and I’m here for the taking. Portland, I’m counting on you; don’t make me leave. I have a feeling we can do some pretty great things together.

Tony Zito’s Resume

Or, if you prefer, here it is as a PDF.

“The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. … We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.”

- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Twitter has announced a new “lists” feature, which will grant the ability to users to play curator and create lists of twitter users under an arbitrary (yet presumably relevant) heading. For instance, I might create a “Social TV” list, and feature people like @kenbot, @mikeberkley, and @tomturnbull, and a “Comedy” List with folks like @danharmon, @azizansari, and @scottsimpson. (There, my #followfriday duties are covered for the week.) If you like my taste, you can then follow one of my lists, which I can manage over time, granting the benefits of my (active) oversight to all my (passive) list subscribers. (In that way it’s not unlike a managed mutual fund, but without the fees.) It’s a great move, allowing for a new class of content-creators that never have to issue a single tweet; they can simply contribute by curating. (Any system which is dependent on users generating the content is well-served by creating multiple points of entry for users to be able engage at the level they feel comfortable with — engagement is a slippery slope.) It also provides a simple yet powerful tool for users to increase the signal to noise ratio of their Twitter experience, which is critical, as anyone following more than ~200 people will tell you.

So yes, “lists” are all well and good, but they only address one half of the issue. We are all many. Whether you call them “masks” or “hats” we all have several we shuffle through each day. Not only are we interested in consuming different categories of content, but we are interested in creating content in different categories as well, thereby presenting specific facets of ourselves to the sundry social spaces we each occupy.  To that end, Twitter should implement some notion of “personae”, in recognition of this idea that each of us are (perhaps subtly) different things within different social contexts, and might like to preserve the separation of those spheres in our social media.

At the most basic level, you might want to simply differentiate between “public” and “private,” leaving the public personae open to the world and using it for more professional updates, while protecting the private update stream from unapproved followers and using for much less formal gabbing about your life. Here’s a slightly more complex scenario: You are a magazine editor, a big fan of the NY Knicks, a single father, and a conspiracy buff. For each of those spheres of interest, there is a pool of people who share your interest, and who may be interested in hearing what you have to say on those topics. In fact, people you know from real life from each of those spheres have found you and are now following you on Twitter. But what do you say? For each audience different content is appropriate; trying to be all things to all of your social contexts will lead to a watered-down compromise at best, and complete paralysis at worst.

With a “personae” system, you could create multiple personae and choose which to post under on a per-tweet basis. (Of course, you could always just choose the default of “all.”) Your followers (and list-makers who choose to include you) would actually be adding personae, rather than people, so your Knicks posts could be on a Knicks Fans list, while your posts about Area 51 appear in the conspiracy list. At the same time, your best friend, who is subscribed to all your personae (what a mensch!) sees it all.

Of course you can approximate this functionality now by creating different accounts for each persona, but that seems like a clumsy way to address an issue that affects the vast majority of users.

For any given posting, we have a certain audience in mind, yet inevitably the imagined audience is just a subset of the actual audience. Has this happened to you: Someone responds to something you’ve posted on Twitter or Facebook and you’re stunned: “Whoa, that was not intended for you at all!” Our friends/followers are a diverse group, occupying highly variable levels not only of “closeness” but also of social context, and it’s often easy to forget just how diverse. Or, conversely, have you ever not posted something because it would seem unprofessional, or not funny enough, or would in whatever way undermine the expectations & perceptions of what you consider your ‘primary’ audience? A “personae” system would address both of these issues, freeing up users to express each of their personae as fully and strongly as they see fit, simultaneously honing multiple personal “brands” as it were,  without having to worry about the dilution of the value of their stream for their followers who are only interested in one or another aspect, and summarily improve the quality of content for everyone.

Twitter must not change the basic interaction model they’ve established. No micropayments, no barriers to accumulating large followings, no premium tweets, no subscriptions. And no ads, not yet. (Though I don’t think that one would be a deal-breaker for consumers, ultimately.) It’s a delicate ecosystem, and the number one priority should be its continued growth. That said, there are a few moves Twitter could make that respect this ecosystem, put no barriers in its growth path, and allow it to start generating revenue now:

1. Be Twitter experts: Provide professional/marketing services (including advanced stats and analytics)

Companies are falling over themselves to get onto Twitter, and have NO IDEA where to start. I’m sure Kevin Thau is deluged with requests from Fortune 500 companies who just want to chat, try to figure out how they could “work together.” It’s time to start converting this heat into dollars. Twitter should start an ancillary professional services agency, to which all these requests could get diverted. Want to use Twitter for marketing? Hire Twitter to help you. Sure there are hundreds of “social media experts” out there who would happily take your money, but the EVP of Digital Marketing at Warner Brothers doesn’t have time to sort out the true talents from the sea of hucksters — she wants to go straight to the source, and feel confident that she is working with the foremost Twitter experts in the world: Twitter itself. Plus, only they have direct access to the database — a potential goldmine of brand perception and campaign performance information. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Twitter is the nearest thing to clairvoyance a marketer could have. The insights are raw, real-time, and nearly unmediated. That’s the stuff, and only Twitter’s got it. Now they need to start charging for it.

(Since I drafted this, Kevin Thau has announced that they are indeed pursuing this sort of approach. Excellent!)

2. Open up the vault: Provide access to historical data

Yes, Twitter is the closest thing we have to mind reading, and every single one of those thoughts is being saved, forever. Think about that for a second. As Twitter usage approaches ubiquity (still a long way off, but with 900% growth this year there’s no denying they’re moving in the right direction), their database starts to look like the most remarkable historical and anthropological asset even known to man. Imagine Twitter had existed on September 11, 2001. During the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the U.S. Civil War. Perhaps Historical Tweets was onto something? This is a resource that becomes more valuable each day that passes.

Currently, the search API only allows you to access records up to four months old, and by default prioritizes the newest records. Historical searches are impossible. One can imagine a model whereby Twitter charges for access to this historical archive, ala Lexis/Nexis. Libraries and Universities across the country would be paid subscribers, and this sort of service could demand a healthy premium.

3. Make the secondary market work for you: charge for premium API access

Twitter should not lose sight of the fact that it is not only a consumer-facing service, it is a very powerful open messaging layer and application platform. There is a whole secondary market emerging of clients and web apps built on top of Twitter and the Twitter API. Currently, a developer can request to be “whitelisted,” which raises the API request limit to 20,000 per hour. That’s pretty high — apparently all but the “largest consumers of [the] API” fit under that cap. But Twitter-based apps are still a nascent industry — as Twitter grows, the tide rises, and even the small apps will grow with it. Moreover, if this secondary market is really going to take off, entrepreneurs can’t be worried about their hit applications bumping into that ceiling. Hence, Twitter can keep the 20,000 cap for non-paying clients (remember one of the key philosophies here is to not take anything away that people are already getting — though it could be argued that the 20,000 cap, which was only instituted a couple of weeks ago, represents just such a revocation), and charge for added API requests, much how a CDN might charge per video stream. This way, instead of Twitter suffering as secondary apps achieve scale, and feeling the need to artifically limit them in order to cap that suffering, a mutually beneficial relationship is established: the more successful the secondary market is, the more successful Twitter becomes. Monetize the platform, not just the service.

The Twitter guys are all really smart. I’ve no doubt they’ve already thought of all of these things, and are either working on them, or have come up with good reasons why they shouldn’t. I’ve just been seeing so many really moronic Twitter business model posts (no, I won’t link to any; that would be ungentlemanly) that I felt the need to put in my 2c and hopefully raise the level of discourse. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Well, sort of. Nearby Tweets just uses the location you stated at registration time, but it’s a very cool user-discovery feature nonetheless. I love an app like this — it does one thing, and does it well. It throws a simple user interface on something that was already available in the twitter API (thanks for pointing that out, Carl), and presto: another layer of value/interestingness gets added to the twitter platform.

They just need a way to link to a particular query — I wanted to share my results for tweets from Iraq, but I’m not able to because the query parameters aren’t embedded in the URL. That’s an easy tweak, and I just suggested it to the author, so with any luck he’ll add it in soon.

nearby tweets – instantly find twitterers nearby (or anywhere for that matter).

Updated 2 minutes later:

Brian Cray, the author of the app, responded to my suggestion:

Great idea Tony! For now, you can do http://nearbytweets.com/search/keyword – for example: http://nearbytweets.com/search/iraq — that being said, I don’t have a URL shortcut for locations yet, though that is in the works. ;)

I love this app — can’t wait to see how it evolves! Local is the next big wave of social media, there is no doubt. The race is on between Twitter and Facebook — who’ll crack the location-awareness nut first? My money is on Twitter — their open model will bring an army of independent developers and entrepreneurs to bear again the opportunity, whilst Facebook’s pseudo-open model (in which third-party apps have been relegated to a marginalized ghetto) will require that their own engineers to come up with the killer LAA* (location-aware app.) Not bloody likely.

* We need a better name/acronym for these. Any ideas?

muxtape

Looks like a preview of the new muxtape.com is up, and while it has a certain aesthetic appeal, I’m not quite sure what niche it’s trying to fill. I mean, obviously it’d like to be what myspace has been in the past — a turnkey online presence for artists, simple to use and appealing to consumers. But unlike a site like thesixtyone.com (which I love, and will profile soon), there seem to be no music discovery features, no community features, and it’s unclear how the current browsing-based paradigm (there are currently just 12 artists in the preview, and a “next”/turn-the-page button at the top right of each page) will upscale to handle tens of thousands of artists uploading content (or how they will prevent users from masquerading as artists and uploading unauthorized content, but that’s a matter for another day.) That said, muxtape has retained much of the elegance of its former incarnation, and the user experience it provides is a pleasing one for the most part. (Though I’d love for the music player to be persistent across pages, like thesixtyone.com’s, so browsing around didn’t constantly interrupt the listening experience.) And, it is early days — there’s no need to rush to judgment. I’m wishing the muxtape dudes the best of luck — they’ve showed before that they “get it,” and I wouldn’t want to write them off prematurely.

thesixtyone

That said, I’d sure like a simple way to make and share mixes with people again. Mixes have always been such an important music discovery vector, one of the earliest “if you like this, you might also like that” devices. (Not to mention a critical “i like you, i hope you like me” device.) I can’t see how any artist would object to being included in a mix/mux — it could only lead to greater awareness, a larger fanbase, and ultimately, increased revenue. Sure there’s a service like Mixaloo, but that always felt way too commerce-oriented to me — more about buying someone songs rather than sharing with them something that’s dear to you. Plus, it always seemed to have only about half of what I wanted it to have. Alternately, it would be trivial for thesixtyone.com to spin off their favorites list functionality into a mix feature, whereby a user could maintain (in essence) multiple favorites lists. Since all the content on thesixtyone is artist-uploaded (that’s the idea, anyway, and it seems to be pretty well-enforced), such a mix building service wouldn’t run afoul of the RIAA. Something to think about, James/Sam/Ben? But the problem there, again, is one of song availability. I want to be able to:

• Make a mix of songs I own
• Give that mix a title and some cover art, and maybe some liner notes
• Send it to someone directly, or share it via a widget on my blog or profile

On the other end, the recipient should be able to listen to it in what ever way she likes (e.g. import it into itunes, put it on a portable music player, burn a CD.)

Right now my only option for doing that is to zip up all the files and share them on a large file-sharing service like sendspace. But that’s a dead-end, a terrible waste of a great opportunity to gain knowledge and audience.  What if there were instead a structured system that allowed artist participation (via ad-based rev share, perhaps) and stats tracking? Gave artists the ability to program their contribution, releasing music on a regular basis and getting promotion for it on some sort of hub page? To target fans of similar music with for-barter ad credits? How about music recommendation/discovery features? All these additions would be of immense value to artists, and also to music fans, who are always ravenously searching for new great stuff. Thesixtyone.com is probably our best hope here, but would need to get closer to ubiquitous artist participation (a pipe dream?) for it to really work.

In the meantime, maybe I should just turn off the computer, dust off the old Onkyo, and embrace the warm hiss of the ferromagnetic miracle.

You can see my answer to the prompt “name three songs you’d put on a road mix tape” below. It takes a nice, hand-holdy approach, first simply providing blank fields for artist and song title, then asking for an intro, justifications for each of the songs (which I neglected to provide), and finally asking you to select album art. All highly structured, and simple.

It reminds me a lot of the new defunct  web 2.0 dating site consumating.com, (bought by CNET in 2005) both in terms of style (big type! ajax everywhere!) and in its approach to coaxing interesting responses out of people with highly directed questions and assignments.

It’s a great example of programming the community, and represents the 2nd wave of the user-generated content boom. By goosing the UGC machine with a little prod to expand the producer class by an order of magnitude or two,  the entire ecosystem gets more fun stuff to consume.

Another big learning was that, for most companies, the average cost of moving a customer from the second most loyal to the most loyal category was extremely small while the cost of going from a new customer to the most loyal customer was often a money losing proposition. That is, the costs of acquisition exceed lifetime value, on average. Most companies focus on customer acquisition way too much! Even very early stage businesses are best served by having evangelists amongst their early adopters.

If you’re in the digital media industry, and aren’t reading his blog “Laserlike” regularly, you are a damned fool. I know you’re busy, but just this once, close your door, skip the Team Spirit Meeting and read up; it’s not often ideas this good come free.