Recently I’ve noticed the vast amount of sites collecting all sorts of information from other social networks. Three good examples are FriendFeed, SecondBrain and LifeStream.fm. There is however one thing that strikes me when I use these services and especially when I add my twitter account: Why don’t they connect the dots?

Every time I’m done adding my services I start to think: “what now”. I have no idea how to find my friends and I don’t want to use the “invite your friends services”. They hare here, I know it, I just don know exactly where! They could easily find my friends on twitter and then connect it to accounts at them who are associated to my friends twitter accounts. This way I would already have some of my social network ready when I’m done adding my services.

There could be services that do this already. Since, it shouldn’t really be any rocket science; they just haven’t gotten my attention yet.

Here the other night I was a bit bored for about 5 minutes. Yes, it happens that I am bored even if it might sound strange. I decided to take a look at who was following me on twitter and check them out more carefully. Since I only have about 60 followers the task wasn’t that big of a deal. After all I know who most of them are since I follow them back and know what they are up to.

One of my followers is a guy called Balkhis. When he started to follow me I noticed at once that he was following 14.000 users or something and thus I didn’t pay him any attention. To me it is very clear that when you follow that many, you’re really not interested to listening what others have to say.

Anyways, I decided to check out his blog after all and I found a post called Twitter to increase traffic on your website. In this post Balkhis describes a simple method to how following a vast amount of users will lead to a high number of followers to your own twittering and this having the potential to increase the traffic to the sites you promote, or as in his case, his blog.

The mechanics are quite simple to put it frankly, and I am not the only one with the opinion that when you follow < 1000 users you are no longer paying attention to what others are saying. If you take a look at for example Tim O’Reilly who I follow, he has about 6800 followers, and is only following 170 himself. I guess it’s pretty easy to argue that Tim O’Reilly is a man who has a lot of interesting things to say and thus is worth paying attention to. He also has 170 people that he is listening to. On the other side of the scale we have tradingnothing who follows < 24000 twitterers. Does anyone really think anyone is reading tweets from over 24000 people a day?

Apparently, Twitter themselves take the spam activity seriously. From a post at Getsatisfaction.com I found a post with an answer from the good folks at twitter saying:
We investigate every spam complaint by hand and we’re very serious about stopping Twitter spam on behalf of our community. If more people are blocking an account than following it, you are most likely a candidate for spam investigation.

Needless to say, the topic from the user was: Twitter banned me for Following too many people!

One of the things that Balkhis replied to my comment was the following:
It is called mass advertising. I am not sending anyone any email. Like you said, you got bored and decided to check it, so you were not forced.

And this is exactly what I think is the problem. Its mass advertising on a medium that is so great because it breaks loose from the mass advertising chains. The method is not innovative, nor is it clever. Some does “advertise” on twitter, like Digg. And that is completely okay. I have even set up an account for the media corporation I work for. However, that twitter account does not mass-follow users in order to get their attention.  Twitter is in my opinion a place where you can find what’s actually interesting to you and not be disturbed by other elements. And I did get a mail when Balkhis started to follow me on twitter. One may say that having the “email when someone follows you option” on is my own stupidity. But I am actually interested in knowing who is following me, after all we should have something in common since that person decides to follow me and that is of my interest.

So yes, when the intention to follow someone is just to let them know you are there, and that you have a message, I consider the actions to be spam and thus unethical.

And if you haven’t already, have a look at Ben Lorica’s post On Friends, Followers, and the Top Twitter Users at O’REILLY Radar

I have however been a bit active at Twitter lately. I kind of feel like a “late mover“ when I say that the medium has taken quite some portion of my attention. It has definitely moved up as one of my primary sources for information and new stuff to read. Instead of following numerous blogs and RSS feeds I look to my twitter home when I have a spare minute for some reading. I still have my RSS feeds there, and I do pay some attention to them, however by following my fellow peers I do get a better grasp of the whole sphere. Also, having my colleagues sharing their best reads on their feed has lead to some discussions and greater information sharing at work. But as I wrote, I feel like a late mover writing this, because this is something you already know.

I have also been trying to gather some information about conferences this autumn, and it looks okay so far. I haven’t cleared any of them at work yet, but when I decide where to go I’m sure I’ll post some information about them here. What I really would like is a common site where one could gather a list of high quality media conferences. I’m pretty sure it exists, I just haven’t found them yet. If anyone is interested in sharing such a list with me or setting up one I’m all keyboards. I know some of the people I have in my twitterfeed travel a bit around on these conferences, however I only hear about them when I see the #randomconference twitter in my feed.

In order to prevent an enormous post covering the whole day like Håvard did on his post from Digital Trend Day I have decided to split my coverage of the Record seminar into two posts. The previous post covered the pre lunch sessions and this post covers the lunch and post lunch sessions. The reason for also covering the lunch is that I was so lucky to share a lunch table with Lars G. Teigen from Second Brain. I have to admit that when I was first tipped about them I didn’t have the time to check out their service and I forgot them quickly afterwards. Anyway, they had some media coverage in Norway today which is funny, and it’s always fun when Norwegian companies get some coverage abroad as well. I guess I’ll have to do a more thorough research on their application some time next week.

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The first session after lunch was held by Jon Olav Eikens, a scholar at AHO. He presented a fictive project called Urørt Labs, which is a project Urørt launched together with the Living Labs. I didn’t quite get why they made a fictive project to front some changes they were going to test out, however he showed a pretty neat way to browse for music on the Urørt site. In short – imagine googlemaps in 3d with only Norway as a map, and in stead of balloons you have straws with different colors that display the type of music present from that town and the length of the straws represent the amount of music within that type or category. I kind of liked it, even if it was just a concept and animation so far.

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The second session after lunch was held by Morten Skogly from Urørt. If you haven’t heard about Urørt, its NRK’s MySpace slash demo contest for bands. The whole session was streamed with Bambuser and you may see the stream at his site. He spoke very highly of the Living Lab and the help they had provided Urørt. He was making a thing of being very nervous when doing his presentation but I think he did just fine. The most interesting points from his speech were probably that they run a live beta of the site. As I understood it, the users have access to a live beta that isn’t currently set into production in order to do some testing and so on. Very interesting indeed. The developers then gave support on the beta version through a chat.

What strikes me when listening to both sessions from NRK is how every speaker talks about how hard it has been, and still is, to work with internet in such a large, old and complex organization. Nonetheless, they seem to be doing a lot of good stuff there, only not to the mainstream. In a couple of years I bet they will be a very large competitor to all the internet media sites in Norway.

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The living lab presentation was held by Ola Gaute Aas Askheim since Synne Fonkalsrud was unable to attend. The presentation was however to detailed to summarize in a short post. Nonetheless it was very interesting. The main focus was information about how Living Labs projects work and a bit about this one in particular. There was also some talk regarding their research methods that seem pretty nice and good. You could read more about them here.

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The last presentation for this seminar was held by Petter Bae Brandtzæg from SINTEF. I know some of his work from earlier as he held a survey on one of our former sites. Actually his first slide said something like: “Online communities die”, and on the second slide he had a picture of the RIP page of my former project (image at the top). It made my day for sure. Even if some of his key findings fit to the image of why we had to close the community or to be more frankly lost all our traffic, the image is a bit more complex then that. But I have to say; that if he wants to use that as an illustration its fine by me.
The key drivers he spoke of regarding keeping the users loyal were:
- People/Friends
- Content
- Usability
- Harassment (Not a driver, but there shouldn’t be any)
- Boring (the party is over) (also not a driver, but you get the point, it shouldn’t be boring)

Regarding people, communities are social; if you don’t have the right people there they won’t connect and won’t be social. If there aren’t any people there, the less interesting content there will be. The others are pretty self-explanatory I guess.
An interesting finding he had made was regarding harassment. As some of you know this was the topic of my MTech dissertation to find a way to get rid off. And one of the things that kept repeating was that the victims were mostly female aged 14 to 16 years and it occurred on sites where one could be anonymous. Nice to know, since it gives some more input to the whole “anonymous or open” on communities.

His best approach when designing a community was to achieve understanding of a group of people and develop technology that helps them. That’s pretty much my philosophy as well.

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That pretty much sums up the Record seminar. I did enjoy the speakers very much and I think it was very sad there was such a low attendance. I also think it’s a paradox that they spend so little time marketing the seminar. The main source of information is on a image flyer somewhere at Opinions homepage, they have a blog, but don’t seem to use it much. Take a look at what Eirik Solheim said about it on twitter afterwards when i pointed out that he wasn’t either referring to their blog. They, of all, should know how to spread the word about the seminar through social media. Utterly sad, and I hope they do something about it next year.

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The first part of the seminar is covered here and the whole agenda may be seen here.

Asbjørn Følstad from SINTEF was the host for the conference and he started of with a short presentation of the Record project and that included the first and only reference to their website. Strange…

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Matt Jones was the first speaker and I just have to make a personal remark: What’s up with web 2.0 people having stickers all over their laptops? Anyway, he started to show of a neat little gadget called the Availabot, a small USB device that indicates if you are online or not. The prototype puppet was made to resemble him. Funny.
Some key points to his speech may be summed up as:
- We are spending more and more time grooming our social relationships.
- From supercomputers, to personal computers, and now we are back to supercomputers, where we all share our files and so on (flickr).
- Maps can show us if things are made to easy or to hard, a reference to a map of halo 3 showing what type of weapons is being used where was shown.
- If you change the score you change the game, a remark is made of the dashboard in the Toyota Prius. In stead of showing the Mph, it shows Miles pr Gallon.
- Flickr – The commons. Taking photos from large libraries and let users comment, tag and annotate the images.
- Social software should have some game mechanics or aspects of game theory. (sarcastic)Interesting remark, sad thing the best people I know on game theory lack social antennas(/sarcastic)

I haven’t tested Dopplr yet (until now). I do know what it’s all about, however I rarely go to the same places as the rest of my social network. Nonetheless, it is nice to see how they have included Flickr to handle the photos and so on. The trend of social media connecting together is getting more and more obvious and visible.
Tip: Programming collective Intelligence – O Reilly, a book that I GOT to have!

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Marika Lüders was up second, I have to be honest and say that I got very little from her presentation. She’s obviously an Academic with capital A. I got lost very early with her references going both east and west. And was I walking around thinking I was too academic… Good thing she gave a clear conclusion in the middle of her presentation, we are NOT closing in on the end of professional mass media systems.

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Rune Røsten, CEO of the Norwegian social network Nettby held a very good speech after that. He started of with some traffic figures which were very impressing. It’s actually the first time I’ve heard someone talking down their traffic numbers. He also talked a bit about the design principles they have over at VG.
- Good mix
- No constrictive whitespace
- Different sizes on images and typography
- Curious titles
- Sub titles that create expectations.

He pointed out that it is very important that the article has to deliver to the expectations the title and subtitle create. Its all about creating a trust with the user, if you do this 10.000 times it increases a bit every time, if the article doesn’t deliver you loose. Since they don’t use any constrictive whitespace to keep some order, they use black lines to tighten the design.
When accidents happen, all resources are allocated to the case. Cases like the accident in Aalesund are important to do correctly. When the storm blows off the traffic settles to a higher level than earlier. It was related to an increase in the credibility.
Regarding how they work with their social networking site he made the “used not to few times” analogy to hosting a party. Start with a small venue and a good host. The first guests who arrive need to be taken good care of. Set the tone early. Spend time on commenting the first submissions from the users.
The design is based on the principles of “Womenomics“. Feminine and soft for men. Continuing beta, always in change.

Topics we’ve heard before that has been mentioned were geography and the importance of communication with other users who are “close”. Small towns are better suited than big towns. Letting the users create an identity and displaying it.
Traffic creates traffic, display it. Nonselective event log from your friends. Funny since it should foster information overflow but obviously works well for them.

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In stead of Simen Østgaard who was unable to attend, Eirik Solheim stepped up with Anders Hofstad Hofseth for their presentation. Their speech was mainly about how they use NRKbeta to get feedback on their work of the new front page. They also talked a bit about how the long tail works for NRK, and 10% of their content drives about 80% of their traffic. So related to the new design on their front page they are going to focus on the users who needs help to find the buried content. 75% of their sites pass very little traffic to other content.
They made the same analogy as Røsten regarding hosting a party. And just a short “thank you” to a comment is important to make sure the users come again.

There was also a short discussion right before lunch and I have only made a few points in my notes here:
- Effective communication is more important than effective design, if it is pretty or ugly is subordinate.
- Pretty or ugly design is subjective. Its about understanding some form of order.
- If launching a concept with a partner, do it on a common neutral ground. (yr.no)

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I’ll get back on the second half of the seminar later today.

The second part of the seminar is covered here: RECORD seminar 2008 - Part 2

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I have written a short translation of the program here since it’s in Norwegian. I also didn’t find their official page until late in my preparations for tomorrow since the invitations and so on haven’t mentioned the site at all. Pretty annoying, and I had actually planned to write a post regarding the paradox. I’m not sure yet if I’ll be posting live or if I’ll give a short sum up from my notes through the day when I get back at the office. Either way, you’ll find the posts here.
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From fad to fantastic future
Matt Jones, designer and founder at Dopplr, He was creative director fro the award-winning BBC News Online and Sapient’s London studio in the first boom. Then at the BBC in 2001 for the BBC’s web search and a geo-located social network. From 2003 he joined Nokia in design research, then as a director of the UX design.
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Are we closing in on the end of the professional mass media system?
Media scientist Marika Lüders at SINTEF IKT is going to speak about how a growing culture of participation changes the reality for media actors and what this has to say for the development and design of services in social media. I also happened to find her on Twitter.
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How to make a traffic boosting design?
Rune Røsten, CEO of VG Nettby presents the goals and design strategies that has lead to the enormous growth for VG.no and their social networking site Nettby. These two sites happens to be the most visited sites in Norway.
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NRK Online – ”open for everyone”
Project managers Sindre Østgård Eirik Solheim and Anders Hofseth present NRK’s methods for the new layout of their front page. As a common broadcaster NRK has a responsibility towards the society including to reach all users. Through their blog at NRKbeta their users are invited to a discussion regarding the design and layout.
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Interface in motion – new opportunities and challenges
Scholar Jon Olav Eikenes at AHO presents “navmotion” as a term to understand the increasing use of animation and visual movement within navigation. What opportunities and challenges is linked to this?
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Rock’n’ Roll in social networks
Urørt is a social network site where unsigned Norwegian bands may share their music with others (did someone whisper myspace?). Morten Skogly from NRK is sharing his experiences regarding design of a social network for sharing and exploring music.
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Living lab – A living laboratory and key to deeper understanding
Consultant Synne Fonkalsrud Ola Gaute Aas Askheim from Opinion presents the status of Living Lab, one year after the start. How has Living Lab contributed to a deeper understanding towards social networks?
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Disloyal or engaged – How to shape the users of a community
Scientist Petter Bae Brandtzæg at SINTEF IKT presents science results that shed some light on factors leading to engaged community users. What should be on your attention regarding loyalty?

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The conference were summed up at these two posts:  RECORD seminar 2008 - Part 1 and RECORD seminar 2008 - Part 2

Their goal is to establish tek.no as the best Norwegian portal for technology. It will function as a joint site for editorial stuff across the existing sites, and all traffic will lead to the respectively sites. Besides the editorial content they already co-operates on [in manys opinion] the best price guide Norway has to offer when it comes to hardware, mobile phones and other nifty things.

They had a launch party at Stratos tonight which Christoph attended (he took the picture). With the combination of his Nokia N95 and qik.com (same thing as Bambuser) he streamed some of the tek.no demo.

Finally an objectivity remark:The company behind tek.no, Edda Media, is my employer. However they have nothing to do with from a social perspective.com

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Using his N95 cell phone and qik.com he streamed the whole stroll, commenting the scenery and even took directions where he should walk next (left or right) from the viewers. I found it to be a quite interesting and funny experiment to follow.

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He is currently still out walking when I’m writing this so if you’re quick you might get to follow the rest of the session.