Tagged: Richard Stacy

Twitter is making and then destroying history

The elections in Iran have once again shown the power of social networks and Twitter in particular.  We can say that Twitter is making history.  The content on Twitter is changing the course of events.  However, most of that history lives within tags, such as #iranelection, and these tags will die or be lost in a few weeks time as our ability to retain them and search for them slips beyond the reach of Twitter Search or other search engines.  Twitter Search doesn’t give you access to a tag beyond two or three weeks.  This is a serious problem.

The whole issue of the digital record is one that is becoming incredibly important for the future of social media – and an area that, in my opinion, isn’t receiving enough attention.  If we can’t find a way to create and preserve a relevant digital record we will find ourselves destroying history as fast as we make it.  This record has to work according to the controlling dynamics of social media – availability and accessibility.

It may well be that the individual tweets that collectively are making history in Iran at the moment will still live somewhere in the digital record – in a place.  However, Twitter more so than any other social media tool is defined by space, not place.  The power of Twitter in the Iran issue and all others of historical influence, lies in tags and the creation of tag spaces.  These spaces live only in search or other forms of aggregation.  Lose the ability to search for it and aggregate it – and essentially we lose the information.

In the old days of traditional information, one printed copy of a document or a newpaper article held within a secure archive was enough.  There was a whole institutionalised system for ensuring that this information was held within the collective memory.  Social media doesn’t work like that.  It is defined by its ubiquity, by its ease of access, by its availability.  Restrict any of these things and you kill it.  Restriction of access has almost the same effect as actual removal or erradication of the information.

If ever there is one thing we should worry about – this is it.  Forget social media doing away with cultural gatekeepers, the media and other institutionalised sources of trust and all the other arguments that have been raised against it.  This issue losing or destroying history is what we should really be worried about.

NY Times versus TechCrunch – a silly argument

There has recently been a bit of a flap going on within technology reporting circles between bloggers and reporters.  At issue is the concern that blogs publish unfounded rumours, whereas newspapers publish only the truth (that old chestnut).  At the centre of this curfluffle is this piece in the NY Times.

At heart it is a stupid debate that is founded in the inability (on probably both sides of the argument) to recognise that social media is fundamentally different from institutionalised media.  As I have said before –  truth within social media is founded in process.  It is crystalised in the reception of information.  Truth within institutionalised media is vested in the publication of information.  Or as Clay Shirky has put it publish then filter versus filter then publish.  Jeff Jarvis also hits on the same issue here – although he couches it as product versus process.

It is only when newspapers work out how their world has been changed by social media and what their role is within it, that this debate can become fruitful.  Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

Something rotten in the state of Twitter Search?

Something seems to have happened to Twitter Search in the last month that, to my mind, is incredibly important.  However, I haven’t seen any attention given to it within the broader social media converstaion – especially from the likes of @SteveRubel – an avid Twitter watcher and advocate of social search.  I know I have been tardy in keeping tabs on Twitter and my RSS feeds of late – but I can’t believe that I have missed this whole conversation.  Perhaps I am going mad, but surely I am not the only one who has spotted / is concerned about this.

What is it?  Continue reading →

Andrew Keen’s head – and the shift from institutions to processes

A recent blog post by Andrew Keen has finally prompted me to write a post dedicated to the idea that Big Thing in social media is the shift from institutions to processes as a source of trusted information.  I have referred to this many times in previous posts, but when I get to say “as I have said many times before” I realise I haven’t actually got one place purely dedicated to the saying of it.  Well no more.

Also, the fact that Andrew Keen, of all people, has identified what he calls the emergence of a new inchoate discource and is writing a post about media streams and agreeing with the likes of Clay Shirky about the essential ‘differentness’ of what may replace traditional media has also shown it is time to pull my finger out on this one. Continue reading →

#LRNY – I am an ‘assclown’ and a stalker!

Just when I thought the dust had settled on this one, up popped a tweet to me from someone called Jess Elliot.  This said:

@RichardStacy Seriously Dick, you’re a one trick pony, can’t u come-up with anything else other than talking about #LRNY? You’re so boring.

The tone of this had the ring of some familiarity about it given previous tweets and blog comments from people that seemed to be interestingly close to the agency involved in the #LRNY campaign.

It was also a little at odds from comments such as this from Corrine Weisgerber, Assistant Professor of Communication at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, who has done an excellent presentation on usage of Twitter.  She said:

@RichardStacy Somehow I overlooked your tweet. Great post on #LRNY. I agree:  not authentic & executed with a traditional marketing mindset

So, I wondered who Jess Elliot might be Continue reading →

The sanctity of publication

Thanks to Antony Mayfield (@amayfield) for drawing my attention to a couple of recent  articles.  It has prompted me to finally post on something that has been lurking  in the back of my mind for a year or more – this thing I call the sanctity of publication.

Both articles – one a piece in the Daily Mail and the other a opinion piece by Seth Finkelstein in the Guardian – come from very different people and places but both are essentially the same: cries of indignation from people and/or institutions who see their position as ‘sanctified’ oracles being undermined by the great unwashed. Continue reading →

Three lessons from #LRNY

As you can see from the previous two posts (and also if you check-out the #LRNY tag) the recent Land Rover hashtag campaign has caught my attention.  Initially I thought it was a very good idea – I have been supporting the concept of what I call TagSpaces for a while – but on closer investigation the campaign turns out to be a bit of a disappointment.

I don’t want to beat-up on Wunderman, the agency responsible, or especially Land Rover because I think they deserve congratulation for having the courage to experiment with this sort of thing.  However, I think there are some very valuable lessons that can be learnt – and it is this I would like to focus on. Continue reading →

More thoughts on #LRNY – it didn’t work

Having now had a closer look at the #LRNY tag, its clear that the thing hasn’t really worked.  The reason is that Land Rover have failed to notice that a successful conversation has two mandatories – an ability to listen and an ability to speak.  Land Rover is doing neither – and its paid tweeters are doing nothing more than say “wow- aren’t Land Rovers really nice, please look at this website”. Continue reading →

#LRNY – Land Rover creating a TagSpace

Some time back I wrote a piece about the concept of TagSpace and its importance as a new dimension is social media. Well here is the practice in action.  Land Rover in the US created a TagSpace – #LRNY – to talk about their new model as well as then paying Tweeters with big followings to promote this.  The TagSpace concept is good – although they haven’t really used it to drive real two-way conversation.  Paying Tweeters is less clever – but given this idea comes from a traditional agency its hardly surprising.

Expect more of the same.

Book burying – the new book burning?

Whatever your take on the recent #amazonfail controversy – it does suggest, as this article implies in its concluding paragraph that book burying (or in fact any form of content supression) could be the new book burning. Given that tagging in it various forms is becoming the principal method of information retrieval, this episode shows the importance of being alive to ways in which this process can be manipulated – wittingly or otherwise. Continue reading →