Garter says that microblogging is in the period of technology trigger which is defined as “The first phase of a hype cycle is the “technology trigger” or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.”  I agree with this to a certain extent but over the past few months with the Death of Michael Jackson and Iranian Twitter drama, it seems to have skipped straight to the slope of enlightenment (Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.)  CNN, Sky News and lots of user media sources now use Twitter to broadcast news, receive news and questions/thoughts from guests and even my aunt is on Twitter.  A little twitter bird once told me that one major newspaper, projects a giant tweetdeck onto a wall and decides on tomorrow’s news by the most trending topics.

In the hypergrowth that defines social media, it doesn’t take long for something to become obselete and new forms to come in.  I fell out of blogging due to the time it takes to aggregate thoughts and my lack of niche i.e. lack of ability to add value.  In my blogging days, I used to enjoy receiving numerous comments and getting tons of hits but wordpress did alot of the SEO for me.  I was also a power user on Digg so received a plethora of hits that way.  I decided to get back into blogging because it’s good for the research work I’ll be doing into social media and from a disgusting PR perspective i.e. it’s pointless being a social media guy without a social media presence.

I’ve been fairly slow to blog since I set up this site but today Eirepreneur picked up on a hastily written blog post I wrote.  He kindly commented and RT’ed and I received loads of hits and three comments within an hour so I was well happy and am a bit buzzed about it all. Imagine if I posted more and put in more effort :).

The point of this post is Blogging still has value but only if you have something interesting to say and something to add. The majority of Bloggers say “O look at me, I’m mad, I have an iPhone, I know what Twitter is, I’m web savvy,” i.e. I’m an individual just like everyone else *Yawn*  I’ve subscribed via RSS to a lot of blogs in my time but these are the only ones which have remained that I read.  We’re talking of a list of 300 down to about 10.  These blogs all have a niche and add some sort of value to readers.  Hence, they are win.  These include:

Nialler9 – Amazing music blog.  Description here

Twenty Major - Lulz Factory – Satirical Look at Irish society?

Web 2.0 Ireland – Does exactly what it says on the tin and does it very well.

Social Networks are a funny old thing that tend to be segregated by geography, age, gender, interests etc. etc.  Perhaps, the biggest factor in choosing a social network platform is your friends and family as they’re the people you’ll want to link with.  The next factors will probably be the stage you’re at in life; if you are an emo, you may be on myspace, college student or graduate on facebook and professionals might be on LinkedIn etc. (I have yet to see an Emo on LinkedIn :P)

Social Media user bases are hard to come by and most certainly exaggerated when disclosed by the platform in question as they want to attract as many advertising clients as possible.  Facebook professes to have over 250 million active users, Twitter won’t release their user base but I have heard between 6 and 24 million which is astounding to stay the least from a comparison point of view.  If hypergrowth is the distinguishing characteristic of social networks, do we measure by that metric instead of overall users?  For the moment, we’ll let it be.  All you need to know for this post, is that social media and social networks are buzzing right now.

Bebo was the predominant social network in Ireland a few years ago and it swept the country by storm.  Lots of people lost their social network virginity on the platform but the majority of users have grown up and moved onto the mammoth that is Facebook, or so I thought.  For a recent project, I was looking at Bebo and to my surprise, people were still using it despite it being a haven for spam and the whole platform being heuristically vom-worthy.

I decided to take a look at the statistics for Bebo and found that:

• It’s traffic ranked peaked in late 2008 and has been falling significantly since 2009.
• The time the average user spends on the website has dropped significantly over the past three months (from 17.1 minutes to 14.6 minutes.)
• Pageviews per user has also decreased significantly, dropping from 24 to 19.7 over the space of three months and even more significantly over the past year.

Not Good.

If we compare Bebo, Twitter and Facebook in terms of daily traffic rank trend since 2008, we also see that Facebook is growing steadily, twitter is growing the fastest and Bebo is slowly dwindling off.

After looking at Bebo and a plethora of profiles in my address book and onwards, I’ve concluded or it’s my humble opinion that Facebook Killed The Bebo Star.  All that remains on Bebo is ghost profiles of teenagers who have grown up and went to college or traveled the world and made new friends who weren’t on Facebook forcing them to move platform.  The people who still actively use Bebo i.e. teens and pre teens add to it’s heuristic vom-worthiness by using language such as this:

Shakespeare must be spinning in his grave.

It’ll be interesting to see how AOL manage and maintain Bebo over the coming years and indeed whether they’ll keep it or not.  The one thing about social networks is that there are relatively high switching costs, i.e. the longer you spend on a social network linking with friends, uploading photos, tagging etc. the less likely you will change platforms.  It didn’t really matter in the case of the switch from Facebook to Bebo because Facebook is arguably a superior platform but what are the odds that users will swarm back to Bebo as Facebook gets used more?  Slim to none.  The key defining factor for Bebo’s future and it’s success will be if the number of people between 13-18 year is greater than 18-35 year olds.

It’s also interesting to note that as Facebook becomes ubiquitous and it’s current users (fastest growing demogrpahic is 35+) start to have children, will Facebook become uncool i.e. my Mom and Dad are on Facebook, it must be lame, I’m going to go to SocialNetwork2015 instead?

The remainder of the video is here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

(this finale is probably the best part, it’s chopped off in Google Video, seek the whole thing online and you shall find.)

There was another documentary that was being filmed around the time of the infamous Martin Bashir documentary back in 2002 (the one which diminished his career further and landed him in court again.)  Louis Theroux is an amazing documentarist, whose most viewed venture is the time he spent with the Phelps family.  The above documentary never made it big because Bashir/ITV paid more money to that trickster Uri Geller.  If Louis were allowed to interview Jackson, the outcome would have been a lot fairer as he seemed like a genuine fan.  Listen to Geller lie through his teeth, saying that he’s afraid the interviewer will take advantage of Michael Jackson.

In this documentary, Theroux goes in search of an interview with Jackson.  Highlights include:

• Interview with Terry George – An entrepreneur who claims Jackson tried to have phone sex with him when they were teenagers.  The tape of Jackson & George talking is my favourite part.
• Brief appearance of Oliver.
• Uri Geller tell Louis Theroux (from a Jewish background) how Jewish weddings work!
• Clips of E Casanova (terrible Jackson impersonator) & lots of interaction with his daft manager Majestic Magnificent, seriously dodgy character.
• Jackomania in London & Germany.

Perhaps, the most scary thing that happens in the documentary is the interview with Michael’s father, Joe Jackson.  This is definitely the route into understanding Michael in his later years.  It tells more than any interview with Michael ever would.  Can you imagine having to deal with Joe Jackson as a child?   He isn’t one bit remorseful for his actions when The Jacksons were younger and is only interested in his own success. He hints at the fact that Michael enjoyed gaining financially by telling tales of abuse at the hands of his father. Watch his reaction when Louis insinuates that Michael might be a homosexual in the youtube clip.

If you’ve liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS Feed or if you like you can also subscribe via e-mail.

Over the summer I’ve been working on a project to finish my masters, concerning social media.  If you asked me to define social media off the top of my head or from personal experience I would have said Digg or Twitter but wouldn’t have known why as such.  I searched and I searched for academic literature concerning social media but there’s very little so I had to go to every academic’s nightmare i.e. Wikipedia.  Who better than to cite for a definition of social media than one of the leaders in the area?

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

So this got me to thinking about what social media means to me.  It all boils down to the fact that it’s a replacement for traditional media i.e. TV, newspapers & radio.  For some people it’s complementary to these things but realistically why wait for your favorite music video to come on The Box when you find it in a second on YouTube?  Also, why wait to watch what corporations deem news on TV when you can find out what genuinely reflects the topics on the masses mind i.e. Twitter or Digg?

The only time social media can be a pain in the arse is the age old problem of spam which affects all the major platforms.  There can also be a situation of being a bit too involved like myself and suffering major withdrawal symptoms after being away from the internet for a huge period of time like 4 hours.  Also, the fact that web 2.0 gives a voice to everyone is a bit offputting because some people just shouldn’t be allowed to talk :P.

The thing which struck me as being unusual though is how business are suckers for this.  It’s clearly a recessionary thing, i.e. the internet is viral, everyone is on it and we’re talking cents about getting our products and services out there and this thing called Twitter will do the work for us. eh no…..  The fact of the matter is it’s web 2.0, IT’S MADE TO BE EASY.  YOU’RE NOT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING OR DOING ANYTHING WHICH REQUIRES MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES INVESTIGATION OR A QUICK GOOGLE SEARCH. I’m sorry.  Perhaps, the true masterminds and genius’ behind it all are not the Zuckerbergs, Roses or the coders but the ones that charge money for stating the obvious.  They go into business and tell them what Twitter is & what Wordpress is and charge a significant amount for doing so.  Twitter & Facebook will save you money and attract more customers but the price you pay for quick shot consultancy will nearly match the money you save. Rant over.

Moral of the post = Social Media is here, my mother (58) uses it and so do YOU.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video has been floating around the internet for a few weeks now.  I’m trying to get some information about the band online but it hasn’t turned up many results (they obviously never made it as far as The Beatles, I wonder why?)  There’s some banter here about the lead singer who got in contact with the guy who rediscovered the video but I doubt it’s authenticity.

All I know is that they’re a Christian Ska Band who rock.  It’s also spawning parodies.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is how I got to the top of Digg:

1. I have no life presently- I am currently confined to my house because of an illness and can’t move much so have the time to play about on digg.com, whereas before I wouldn’t.

2. Interesting Stories – I have been using Digg for a good few years and I know the type of content that makes it to the front page.  Nothing dull ever makes it to the front page.  If you have something interesting to submit, I guarantee diggers will pick up on it, regardless of the number of friends, shouts, etc.

3. Befriend Active Users and get rid of friends who have 0 diggs, 0 submissions etc.  These people are no good to you.  If you treat people right, they will return the favour and you will quickly be able to weed out friends who don’t return diggs etc.  Also, it is better never have more than 200 friends because it makes shouting awkward.

4. Shout your stories as many times as it takes, to get it to the front page.  I get tons of shouts a day and if I want to really notice one, I need to see it a few good times.   Some may class this as spamming but I always keep within what digg allows (200 shouts every 12 or so minutes.) I have recived alot of hate mail because of this fact BUT this is a factor in how I got to the front page.

5. Optimise your RSS feeds – Set up google reader or another RSS Reader so that when your chosen site is updated, you are informed almost instantaneously and can sumbit it to digg.  I am subscribed to CNN, BBC RSS Feeds etc and can usually submit them first but with cracked.com I can NEVER because someone can optimise their RSS feed reader better than I can or else it’s an inside job.

Some points:

- Making your instant messaging address public and asking contacts to digg content to you via IM, will not work because not only is it forbidden, it is easily recognised because diggers cannot be fooled.

- Your blog is shit (compared to the rest of the internet.)  It is a blip in the scheme of things so don’t just post up the articles you write.  Post up content from other sites.  Advertise your blog on your profile, build up your reputation and you will see your articles being dugg and read more (from people viewing your digg profile.)

- Never whore youself to digg i.e. digg what you want and don’t feel you have to digg articles to befriend people.

- Create bookmarks on your browser for the ‘Submit New’ Digg Page and also the ‘Submitted’ Page, so you can digg and send shouts easily.

- Digg is the only good social bookmarking site.  The rest are tripe.

- There is no need to install the Digg Toolbar.  It slowed down my firefox.

- Don’t Digg at night.  Everyone is asleep.  The most users are from the USA so Digg on their time.

[digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/How_I_Made_It_To_The_Front_Page_of_Digg]

The thing I always love about thepiratebay.org is their sense of humour.  I SWEAR I only use their site for comedic purposes.

Their latest piece of comic work was to rename The Pirate Pay, ‘The Beijing Bay’ in response to a letter the IOC wrote to the Swedish Government in protest of clips of the Olympics posted on the Swedish torrent site.

Taken from here:

“In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing to be shared on The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay, however, does not plan to take anything down, and renamed their tracker to The Beijing Bay.”

On their website, it shows a list of other threats made to the piratebay by massive corporations such as Microsoft,  Dreamworks, EA & Apple.

Their responses are always priceless.  This is their response to Dreamworks:

“As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe.  Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.”

“It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ……. morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.”

My, the Swedes have certainly a good command of the English language.

This is their response to EA:

“Hello and thank you for contacting us. We have shut down the website in question.

Oh wait, just kidding. We haven’t, since the site in question is fully legal. Unlike certain other countries, such as the one you’re in, we have sane copyright laws here. But we also have polar bears roaming the streets and attacking people :-(.“

Then this is their progressed reply to Apple:

“Instead of simply recommending that you sodomize yourself with a retractable baton, let me recommend a specific model – the ASP 21″. The previous lawyers tried to use a cheaper brand, but it broke during the action.”

The folk at the piratebay certainly have some sort of twisted baton fetish.  Their legal site keeps me lol’ing at a postgraduate level anyways.  It boggles my mind that these huge corporations would think that an e-mail (!!!) would make these people, half the world away, shake in their boots.  If Microsoft, Apple, etc. sent the e-mails as a threat of a precursor to further action, then again their efforts are futile.

It seems like nothing can stop The Pirate Bay.

[digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Pirate_Bay_s_Sense_of_Humour]

Olympic Fever is here.  You know it’s important if google changes it’s homepage icon.  I’m now watching the opening ceremony and it’s dragging on and on and on and on…  George Bush must have fallen asleep by now or requesting burgers.  The camera pans to him every other minute but hasn’t recently.

It’s nice to see the Irish team go past but I don’t know any of the athletes.  I’m not one bit interested in sport but I supposed I should have some interest for nationalism’s sake.  Oooooohhhh there’s a full list here.  I wonder will there be any scandals this year and hopefully none arising from Ireland.

I wonder will there be any Tibet related hassle or drama from here on… Only time will tell.

[digg=http://digg.com/olympics/Olympic_Fever_Hits_Google_Changes_Homepage_Icon]

The way I use digg is:

If I like an article, I digg it and if  I dislike an article I bury it because I have read it and it has no relevance to me.  Why bother having it lit up when it could be greyed out and I wouldn’t have to read it again?  I’m sure it makes pages load a lil quicker and saves me from skimming over things I have already read.

I know it has knock on effects for the rest of the site but I’m just one person? or do other Digg users follow suit?  If they do, then digg needs a ‘Mark as Read’ button and soooooon…..

or am I being incredibly selfish?

[digg=http://digg.com/software/Some_people_don_t_like_the_way_I_digg_oops]

I absolutely love Digg.com and spend most of my internet time browsing it but it is without it’s minuscule flaws.

1. It doesn’t work on Safari on the iPod Touch & iPhone well at all.  It has crashed my browser on a few occasions (cos that’s so unusual for Apple firmware.)  This is Apple’s fault obviously but the alternative mobile version that Digg provides just isn’t good enough IMO.  I like to bury my articles and this site doesn’t have that function.  I bury an article if I’ve read it so it’s out of my life.  That’s how I digg.

2. There seems to be the same bunch of users whose articles submitted ALWAYS get dugg most and are always up there.  This is fair enough because they’ve earned their reputation and acquired lots of fans but it would be nice if some more of us got a chance.

3. The Digg Algorithm (which is software which dictates what gets pushed onto the homepage etc.) appears to have no logic behind it.  It seems to be made up out of the same mathematics and methods that Hubert J. Farnsworth would use.

Other than these things, it has completely changed how I browse the internet and I can’t imagine the internet without it.  Digg OWNS the other bookmarking sites and their mom’s.

[digg=http://digg.com/design/Three_Things_I_Dislike_About_Digg_which_I_otherwise_love]