Quantity Vs Quality in the Micro-blogging-sphere

I was recently down in Melbourne giving a keynote on the future of social media for Open Connections. In the much-anticipated networking drinks I was asked a question I've heard several times before - "How do I get more followers on Twitter?"

This type of thinking usually shows a misunderstanding as to what Twitter is all about, but there are two solutions to this simple problem:

1) Pay for them.

2) Talk to them.

There are plenty of services out there that will spill 1000's of followers onto your account for a fee. Why anyone would want to do this is beyond me, unless your customers are lifeless server racks somewhere off the coast of Sri Lanka.

Twitter is a tool for connection and conversation. And conversation is part talking, part listening. Spam is not a form of communication, so don't treat Twitter like a soapbox for shouting. Find the niche your brand already fits into, listen in to the conversations taking place, then start offering unique, useful and genuine solutions/comments/ideas. This is no place to force-feed the company line, which is why many brands feel hesitant to engage with customers on Twitter.

You want quality followers, not a mass quantity of followers. It's better to have one follower who might buy your products than a million followers who never will.

Today, this "Quantity Vs Quality" concept has been rewritten for the social media landscape as "Popularity Vs Influence". Where you stand in regards to influencing people's opinions and habits is much more powerful than how many people you're connected to. Being a key influencer is really the goal of every social media manager in any organisation.

So if you're worried you're not performing on Twitter due to a lack of followers, do not be disheartened. So long as you've built a following through engaging and responsive conversation with customers you're in a far more influential space than those who have paid for pointless popularity.

Bring On Micropayments

For a while I've been frustrated at how hard it is to sdhare money around the web. Those of you who have endured one of my "light-on-the-facts-high-on-the-fizz" keynotes will know one of my visions for the future of the web is a payment system that allows us to share our money as easily as we currently share photos, text and video.

Sadly, that day isn't here yet, and we're still at the mercy of clumsy credit card systems, iTunes gated spaces and the profit-destroying PayPal options.

However, I was interested in the recent move by Facebook to sell Facebook Credits at Walmart and Target in the USA.

The current targeting of social gamers is validation of the power and growth of that area of online networking. If Facebook are exploring the territory aggressively, you know there must be some value to be found.

What I like most about this move by Facebook is that it has the potential to be applied across multiple platforms and perhaps become the web currency that we've been waiting for. Facebook has a quorum of users to give the scheme momentum, as well as an established marketplace and quite liberal anti-protectionist positioning. This small step of using Facebook Credits in the social gaming sphere with hopefully be used as a test case to iron out problems and collect consumer feedback.

I'm hoping in the coming months Facebook Credits will become a monetary extension of Facebook Connect, allowing anyone and everyone across the net to embed payment systems on their blogs, apps, websites, forums and pages. This will certainly spell out the beginning of a financial revolution as an online economy is born and raising revenue is a simpler task without being at the mercy of closed shops or expensive alternatives.

Politics & Social Media? Boring? Wait For 2030!

And so finally today Australia has a government (according to my Twitter feed anyways)! After a long election campaign that bored half the nation to sleep, followed by secret talks that scraped in on the lowest rung of news-worthiness, we can now get on with tweeting and posting disgruntled comments about our newly-appointed representatives.

Looking back over the 2010 election there seemed to be a dissatisfied taste in a lot of people's (read: "nerd's") mouths about the limited application of social media in this campaign. The Gillard/Abbott camps seemed to apply social media as an afterthought, without any real sense of influence or excitement about the medium.

It seems politicians are yet to wake up to the digital tools they have at their disposal...

But that's about to change.

Last month when I was speaking in Melbourne at XMediaLab we began discussing convergence in social media, and what the landscape might look like in 2030. Wonderful technologies like facial recognition, predictive search, video tagging and geo-location tracking were all bandied about in a beautiful dream-like conversation. The future seemed so exciting and transparent with all forms of history on a global and hyper-local level at our fingertips.

But transparency and history are the enemy of politicians, who week after week are forced to resign as uncovered truths from the past or present are splashed across ever-widening social networks at ever increasing speeds.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt even came out last month and said:

"perhaps people should change their names upon reaching adulthood to eradicate the potentially reputation-damaging search records Google keeps"

Interesting tactic, but I think it is a realistic vision of the future.

In the election race of 2030, all the teenagers and twenty-somethings blindly posting and passing on their personal history will be around 40-50 years old - prime politician age! And oh how that will come back to haunt them. Any photo you're in (from any point in history) will be automatically tagged by powerful facial recognition software. Even if your face is in a mask, in the shadows, side-on, you're not safe from the computing power of 2030 (which will be on average 64 times faster than 2010). It will analyse a database of locations that match the interior of the room and give the image or video a location. We can then search the corners of the web for blogs, posts, comments or any byte of information that connects to that time and place, and suddenly the world can be pieced together through the countless insignificant comments of a generation.

Essentially the vast pile of decades of tagged social media will provide the public with the drama it has sought in its election campaigns. A Stephanie Rice-esque tweet that may have gone unnoticed in 2010 will be there for all to see and judge when it's scooped up by smarter, more accurate search engines of the future.

The internet never forgets, and the hazy parts of its memory will only be focused and clarified as time and technology march on. This is certain to revolutionise our expectations of political figures, as well as provide some much-needed scandal and drama for the voting public in the years ahead.

Nano App Store?

With the release of the new touchscreen iPod Nano last week, it got me thinking if Apple has its sights on another app store (to compliment the iPad/iPhone stores) with Nano-specific apps?

It would make sense, given that the screen and shape are specific to the Nano, and the sort of apps would probably be more fitness-orientated than the bigger Apple products.

Apple has it in their interests to expand the reach of the app store as far as possible to capture more developer interests and to ensure no corner of the music market isn't left open to penetration by small companies.

I was interested to read the Nano doesn't run iOS, preferring a lighter, more simplified version of the multi-touch software specific for the device. I'll be interested to see how developers respond to this.

It's an interesting time for Apple as the competition begins to catch up on some of their flagship products. The need for innovation has never been greater, but I think this is a smart move by the company to expand their market for touch products, potentially opening up a new market for Nano-specific apps and solidifying their dominance in the music player market.

Goverment 2.0

It's always baffled me why governments and government agencies, the institutions that are meant to lead us and guide us, are always so far behind the curve when it comes to implementing social technology. Now, I'm not going to try and push any political agenda with this article, but I suppose I should just point out I'm usually surprised and scared of any person in a public political office that doesn't understand Twitter, Facebook, or blogging.

The thing that stops me tweeting my lament into despair at this point is that it's clear our governments want to embrace social media, they just need some guidance from the people below.

I was overjoyed a few months ago to hear the NSW Government had begun an initiative to push towards what American policy makers would call "Open Government" - creating a digital environment that is characterised by transparency, citizen participation, and collaboration.

A wonderful example of this is the State of Delaware (check out their website HERE). Their transition from treating government websites as a policy-preaching soapbox and converting it into a digital round table for conversation is a positive step in the right direction. Facebook, Twitter, RSS, YouTube... all the big players are there, ready to be consumed, shared and conversed about.

For me, this is the role of government embodied in a digital space and has implications and applications that are tangible, imminent, and indicate a paradigm shift for the way our local, state, and federal governments can connect with their voters using the internet.

The speed and spread of information possible today is invaluable to governments and residents alike. Beyond gimmick benefits like alerts on your mobile for when the Premier is in your suburb or an email when new health announcements are made, the power of clear and communal comment/feedback loops on government policy can only allow for better decision making and a more informed and engaged voting public.

Licensing Songs For YouTube

It's been the curse of every guerrilla filmmaker with ambitions of social stardom on YouTube - making a kick-ass video only to have the soundtrack ripped from its infant heart by the all-hearing cyber watchdog that monitors the site for copyright infringement. What's left is a modern throwback to silent movies and a certainty viewership won't peak beyond your mum and immediate friends.

For a while there's been talk of building a financial model into YouTube that allows filmmakers access to popular music whilst also remunerating artist for their performances and recordings. It made some bold steps with the introduction of "Click-To-Buy" last year that directs viewers to iTunes or Amazon instead of enforcing strict censorship of the sound. It also had a major victory last week against Viacom which paves the way for a more liberal application of copyright law.

With this in mind there's great news coming out of Portland that a company called Friendly Music will begin allowing filmmakers the opportunity to buy music rights for as little as $3 for movies on YouTube. The license is for non-commercial use, but I think it's an amazing step forward in removing the ambiguity that filmmakers face between "fair use" and "criminal" when it comes to online distribution.

Hopefully the format will take off and provide an additional revenue stream for artists whilst helping to lift the quality of the content posted to YouTube.

Well, in theory anyway. (I'm sure there's still many more "Funny Cat Playing Piano" videos to come).

Check out Friendly Music HERE.