Ben Barren - Confessions of a Mad Man

Tag Archives: twitter

#The7pmProject Future of Television + Twitter Living Happily Ever After!

Posted by Ben Barren on July 22, 2009 – 11:11 am

Filed under Radio/Podcasting, Social_Networking, TV

If u watch TV intently or with “high engagement” as marketing analytics salespeople will say to war budget levels brand marketers when signing them up, there are some discernible post text message UR_evicted, forensic crime investigationary, or mcwhatever hospital themes that are seeping out, largely in response to these cautionary recessionary times. Let me riff a few insights as I have to go to Melbourne today and see if I can connect trends to commercialism. Then I will tell you the future of Television and Twitter Living Happily Ever After!

As with person attempting to frame an argument, I better start with disclosing the source of my data. Checking my TV snatchlist, VLC Playerlists, Flickrstreams, and (Tweet hashtags eg #the7pmproject), examples of shows capitalising on recessionary drivers are : (Locally) #Masterchef #7pmProject #TalkingAboutYourGeneration #ThankGodYou’reHere #Idont_really_knowany_other_aussieshows + (Globally) #Hung (by HBO, Divorced Gym Teacher’s house burns down, attempts to become straight male escort) #NurseJackie (by Showtime, same channel as Dexter I believe with Sopranos Carmela AKA Edie Falco, hospital drama med-abuser with a Don Draper husband and kids at home, with a pharmaco-enabler boyfriend in hospital)

So my theory, with me quickly running out of time to get to Melbourne, hence expect a very condensed, almost collapsing to simplicity exposition’ere : There are lots of Fruity + Banana connotations to a Paul Keating derived “Recession” - It relates to TV execs trying to be The Player and develop new programming that successfully caters to the times, probably 1-2 years in advance from when the concept is first elevator pitched. So the current trend is lots of talk about an embrace of positivity in new programming... Cant really say I buy that, other than when it comes to death of negative based Gen-Y live in a house / play musical instruments type Reality Television - which now is trying to extricate itself (or milk the last dollars) from the text messaging rivers of gold.

Cut to 2009 in Australia, we have cooking shows like Masterchef and quiz shows like Talking about Your Generation - where enough has been written about how everyone is happy pay, all positive to mothers of 3, Gen Y’s get on with X’s and Baby Boomers, and other implausibly positive notions. So let’s suggest it isn’t all a No Reservations - Anthony Bourdain Kitchen Confidential type world. The Home Cook can beat the Celebrity Chef; Some networks like Ch_7 have tried to connect the growth of “positive programming” to drama, such as their “Packed to the Rafters” which they cited. (so i learn at the gym running on treadmill at 630pm with 8 LCD monitors to choose from) This I do disagree with.

While a show like Masterchef, with Australians going into Winter, will pickup as it hits the Zeitgeist, Hawt Hashtags and ClicksnMortar Water Coolers. But entertainment must always progress forward : One dimensional drama a guaranteed success because it’s positive I dont think so. But shows that were greenlit a few years ago such as Dirty Sexy Money, or even Desperate Housewives, possibly Sex and the City - wouldnt likely hit the Trending Topics hotspot, unless the talent/script etc was timeless and knockout.

HBO, not that the channel is available on Australian monopolist offering overpriced cable, which I also dont have, but a sample of their new shows as they try and find successors to heyday of The Wire, Sopranos, Six Feet Under etc. So we get shows like #Hung (divorced gym teacher money troubles), #EastboundAndDown (kenny powers ex baseball player burnout loser returns to where he grewup)

And it’s not just HBO - Fox’s #Glee (which premiered in Australia after Masterchef) is also about a financially challenged school teacher (who like in Hung married the head cheerleader only to find out down the track major compatibility issues esp around dollars - she wants him to have more for starters) Made by the NipTuck creator.. the #Glee pilot has been very popular around my way. and must say its another starting in September show which is looked forward to…

And then as Showtime try and find a new Dexter, they dont do the predictable and fund a PG tween twilight The Vampire Diaries (which interestingly is going2 show on the new Ch9 Gen Y free digital cable channel called GO!) - Instead they develop #NurseJackie - Now I’m as sick as hospital shows as the next bloke, and even an estrogen’d up femme is going2 have troubles watching the 2nd 18 team of Greys Anatomy. Boring grey indeed; Does any of the cast even want to be on that show… But on the other hand, they also dont want to parody #House.

What Edie Falco has done with NurseJackie to use an Idolism is “make it her own” - As has been mentioned, it’s closest to Don Draper being a nurse in anywhere from the 1980’s to present day : You never see them driving cars / talking or watching tv / using ipods.. it’s like a David Fincher infected vision of grey. And Jackie takes from the bad to give to the good, and clips her own ticket via her boyfriend enabled meds - but like Draper, increasingly finds it hard to keep living the compartmentalised life as it implodes interaction by interaction.

So now that I’m really running late I’m going to add one final point to my unfinished argument. The network television business is most likely a dog of a dead business. But if u look at the most downloaded torrents from the largest bittorrent search engine out there (well now that pirate bay has been neutered) - and TV shows are right up there as the most or equally most downloaded.

As well as being most popular torrentwise, the Australian twitter streams for #Masterchef (#2 trending topic for all of twitter globally Sunday night) + now replaced by #7pmProject -have been the most popular Australian Twitter Trending Topics this week.

Twitter-mobs around topics to jointly discuss in realtime after a days work is where it’s at and the fuson of discussable TV with 140 character iphone/laptop/sms/pc/etc cross platform compatibility is very synchronous if such a word exists. It’s so smart actually that no one Telco or Television or Internet executive could come up with it.

And luckily as Dave Winer would posit, No One Owns this Cross Media 2.0 Vision : Positive edutainment vertical (eg food) programming with group rich text.

What I would like, shock horror, back to my Recession Programming, Money Matters Driver - is more advertising in twitter. Now by advertising - I mean smart creative sponsors driven by smart agencies and/or individuals coming up with and executing LOL nonobtrusive engaging new formats and drive home messages, so clients start allocating $100k-$500K for twitter as part of new product launches and it becomes a standard part of the media schedule.

I dont’t think its a coincidence that close to 50% of the “Talent” on TV is now joining Twitter if they were too late. If they are also on radio and not on Twitter it’s almost too late. Fox Fm Matt + Jo are belatedly starting to post to Twitter and market their campaign on their prime time show because their competitors are so far ahead; Dave Hughes @dhughesy who is one channel across the FM band in the morning has broken well thru 50k followers. And he engages them, as a human being. And he twitters them before and almost during #7pm Project, which has approved 52 weeks at 5 days a week - not a tiny commitment by Channel 10.

Without Twitter, the7pmproject has no chance of success. (ironically their twitter exists but is fairly admin’y not as active as the individuals within it) I think Channel 10 know the importance of twitter. I hope they do. But either way, Ruby @RubyRose1 is also big with 20k+ followers (Aleisha her Melbourne replacement who got good tweet last nite is newish to twiter but what’s the bet she takes off online), Hughesy, Charlie (10% of huughesy following) etc are active and have strong followers, that as a basis will be a good start. I didnt watch the show till the file arrived this morning in off peak download quota (dont ask, its australian draconian isp rules) But last night’s #7pmProject live tweetstream was almost as good as the show. So 1+1 definitely equals 3.

Ironically, the weakest link on #7pmProject was is she meant 2b_Rove funny grrl or str8 newscaster Carrie Bickmore - She is also on Twitter, but still has no Updates; A bigger faux pas there is not on twitter, to join the community, but contribute nothing - yet use Twitter as yer lead story last night due to some breaking terrorism news.

So I reckon Hulu(less) Australian TV just became interesting again, thx in part2 twitter… but which TV network and exec will connect those recessionary dots…

Now I really better get to Melbourne and get feedback on whether products meet market needs or whether they are in the nice, but no cigar bucket. I’d prefer, as in HBO’s to not be in the Happiness Consultants space. Money is a good thing after all… so I’ve heard… I do remember it.. on a planet far, far away..

Trying to Find a Good Tweet on a Friday.

Posted by Ben Barren on July 17, 2009 – 3:17 pm

Filed under Consumer_Internet, Social_Networking

It really is a bit hard to not watch the Prisoner’s Dilemma cant look away Twitter Car Crash whose Feb 12-June 9, 2009 “rough meeting notes” Techcrunch are collaboratively leaking with a gun to the “Nervous (not alert) System’s” 1_Billion_user_target (valued at $1 each) : “that will be the pulse of the planet” SouthParkCo. While it’s nice, in regards to staff, that they want to “Make sure people are happy” it is not 100% that Engineers are at the top of Twitter People Pyramid in the way they are at Google from Founders down. (so said a quote i cant find as it’s not a searchable post!)

Reading thru the longform depositionish Eric Schonfeld post with morning milked espresso + creamed honey toast, I was struck not by the textbook Acquisition targets that have been to fill product gaps (CoTweet for enterprise multiple account login / Twitpic for images / Tweetie for iPhone) - Nor was it the BigCo + Diddy Celebrity partnerships + entertainment advisory positions envisioned or that “How do we communicate to the Board (and investors) to back off” was actually written down. Further, while the acquisition/IPO triggering event meeting points are interesting (they want to keep operational control post event), but what I found most interesting is the centrality and unsolved solution around the classical search problem of Relevance vs Recency which then gives rise to a myriad of product, mission, business model, architecture questions.

It seems Twitter is searching excuse the pun deep into itself.. both at the twitter.com consumer destination + the Commercial API “every tech company is interested in Hosebird” enterprise search + content syndication levels to solve the relevance vs recency issue. Let’s face it most of Twitter search if not all of it is straight boolean search - Pretty much Lucene out of the box - which is becoming more of an issue as the spammers, sextailers, emarketers, get_new_follower_pyramid_bots and all other version of not quite human terminators minus the ability to identify and kill John Connoresque humans are making the product worse (Anyway it seems Twitter is rightly concerned that google with its sizeable search leadership (like apple did by porting OSX to wireless handsets) will do realtime relevance search better than the once Summize small team of PHDs once they have the same 100% of all tweets with no API or latency restrictions- Whether they will give Google a leg up in return for a Google/MySpace or Microsoft/Facebook type 8 or 9 figure revenue deal.. is an interestingtrade-off fo’sure.)

Good vs New : - “Google would kick our ass at finding the good tweet.” : Notion of a “Good” search result - indicating a trade-off between relevance and recency, as well as the authority/insight of the source which is a key objective to offer by year end “Tweet rank.” (possibly similar to the vgood Twinfluence ?) Not without merit, Twitter positioning wise see themselves as “what is happening right now” versus “Google is old news.” Although they recognise “Google has Realtime Content (stocks, weather)”

(GOOG, MSFT, YHOO) Partner vs (Twitter.com) Destination : “Playing with fire here where we know that Google is building the competitive product.” - Does Twitter build out its consumer marketing to get people to Twitter.com - rather than have their content syndicated to the largest websites in the world - Google, Yahoo + Microsoft; “They want to put this on Google.com” Ironically, Twitter is facing a newspapers type dilemma - Receive the traffic and revenue from google, but maybe be neutered by them in the process. But they also dont want to follow MySpace and become irrelevant which being closed is the first step in becoming.

Twitter vs All Microblogs eg Facebook + Friendfeed : “Would facebook be included (?)” + “They are thinking about relevance as more than just chronological.” “Fusion of different types of content, relevancy is key.” “There will (be) some weight on recency.” - Fascinating question at a Corporate Strategy Level of whether the Winner, if there can be such a thing in The Real Time Web - will it be a One Trick Pony such as Twitter that does one thing extremely extremely well - Twitter fulfilling it’s Nervous System Discovery + Sharing vision -

Or will it be the Hosebird enabled, Facebook Connect, Disqus, FriendFeed SUP, gnip piped player (namely google on the search/discovery side and a much more open statusy updated wireless beefed up Facebook possibly with a friendfeedish acquisition on the microblogging side) that is able to suck in all the sources of realtime content with no (noticeable to the second) latency or delay, and then provide a standalone recency (twitter only) filter or an integrated relevancy weighted Social Media realtime search result - that pulls status updates from Facebook, Twitter, Blogs (posts and comments) plus whatever viral video, forums, flickrs are flying around - With the punchline being a contextual self service monetisation adsense like system ?

It’s like a Seesmic.com case study at the multi-billion dollar opportunity level : Seesmic was a realtime video P2P consumer destination, but with a strong ability to raise capital it was able to aquire a leading Twitter centric third party app that also increasingly centrally pulled in your content from your multiple distributed social networking identities/profiles. So does Twitter follow a Seesmic multiple content types centralised model… or keep its 140 character group text message focus - The Techcrunch Twitter documentation makes it appear the team believes pulling in the various related feeds its members have (similar to how friendfeed does it I’m assuming they mean) is a commodity offering. However, it’s #1 Fear Factor coming from the 310 documents is when Google (and Facebook secondarily) receive the Hosebird pipe of realtime comprehensive Twitter content : That when this is bolted into + emulated/extended into the Google Real Time Social Media Offering.

Discovery (as opposed to “Distraction” which they mention alot when referred to Diddy, marissa Mayer + Microsoft hehe - what a combination of bus dev stakeholders) There was one interesting set of bulletpoints about business vs engineering decision making and its negative affect on “happiness” for which a committee was suggested at being formed. Nuthin like a happiness committee.

“Discovery and sharing goes hand in hand.”

“Discovery of tweets and Discovery of People are both Important”

“Discovery of Tweets is more intriguing.. Relevance is the first problem.”

“How do you propogate any tweet or message to the Right Person” - The Hunch which comes thru as The Big Capability that Twitter want to build into it’s offering + shift the cards in their favour is Discovery.

Typically this would mean suggested content; suggested followers; suggested hashtags; and suggested ads the Dave Winer hope of ads which arent ads but business solutions to your consumer problems. The nirvana of a relevant search result before u enter the keyword.

“Maybe Machine Learning, saved search.”

mo’ low_res #rafw ‘bluralism’ less high_res fuddyduddy snail_mail.

Posted by Ben Barren on May 5, 2009 – 11:01 am

Filed under Social_Networking, Urbanwear, blogging

Imagine this post as 800 words of pure insight but fn firefox just ate my browser and didnt retain one of the 800 words, they must have sucked that much. The awesome pics btw are from Blacklodge on Flickr - from pieces that just went up around Northcote, Separation street, schweet. The bulletpoints for the post before it was eaten went along the lines of :

1. Newspapers are dying even quicker than expected. A higher percentage than expected will shift to online only versions, and of these more than thought will not be able to bridge the revenue gap with even less costs. Warren Buffett will not bail out.

2. MSM Atrophy is making for concerned employees, not understanding what is happening.

3. #RAFW was the closest equivalent Australia has had to a Twitter SXSW like event. Much more so than any web 2.0, enterprise 2.0 or journalists vs bloggers.

4. You have to read @pattyhuntington’s piece on #RAFW + moblogged runway realtime media.

5. @pattyhuntington should direct her “bluralism” critics to AVC.com and specifically Fred Wilson (twitter+ previously feedburner, delicious, flickr, geocities, etsy, etc investor) His concept of “Convenience beats quality” which he has been blogging about since 2004 (that is how far behind australian critics are) in relation to camera phone pictures and videos being posted realtime to web trumping delayed high res megapixel’ camera/video pictures.

6.#RAFW is just the start. Last nite Ch10 5pm news and other media used celebrities Logies twitters (about host Gretel) and made a news story out of them. It will become more and more meta as MSM media - TV down - will feed off twitter streams, hashtags and messages.

i always wanted 2b an aesthetic but “your fame game rank is rising, your fame game rank is rising.”

Posted by Ben Barren on March 24, 2009 – 12:01 pm

Filed under BB_or_not_BB, Social_Networking, Viral

Gr8 Melbourne Graff capture by Sauer Thompson

So the ‘good old days of 2004′ are over but with the recession we’d like to have the next fortune favours the destitute bottom there will be the successors to flickr, delicious, youtube and dare i say it some1 new to challenge the holy grail of the massive codependence of the post Google vs (Facebook copying Twitter begat Friendfeed) grouping. Although with the ascent of twitter to faceborg omnipotence, and the personalityless of useful realtime microblogging functionality friendfeeder, the not a 2.0/not quite 3.0 world needs the next top model thang.

Um, thx to Lu-Lu for lettn me borrow this kewl Esquire Twitterati of 1 Flickr Pic, Click to see.. where many more than 1 will be checkn it out! Ta

What’s the Post-Julia Allison Meta 2.0 Conversation ?

Please hope we get smarter over time as we empower the good personal brands of this world : each of us has our own hand not robot selected peers whether they be the the LadyBugs;) ASayers + Lily Laurens, Lulus with her dreaming of workmates Hesa (The Priest in Kings last night said to the effect - ‘dreams are 1/60th prophecies that will happen!’) And of course the national underground brigades of tweetdledumndees ala JosExtrahSharp, pulse following @coliwilso + accounting Li(vixeN)enna, the yonderboyd beth, and so on in the non evil camp. Each of us hopefully follow good enough people not just chase followers for followers sake !

In the other camp - depending if u want the make up on or off - the video will be filming.. usually about meta conversations such as a meaningless unpaid filler on a tv show or that ashton twitters or crybabying on rebloggers. (dont read it already : and having negative fans is better than having no fans, even if having real gen fans would be better again) Anyway the wheels must keep turning and Julia Allison’s application has been rejected. (for dating, business school, investment, reblogger meeting etc) But she’ll be fine… the more negative that happens.. the more meta content there is to remix.

The Z-Grade Will Regenerate Itself : The Almost Arrived.

In terms of preseason drafting of the new meta-Z grade celebrities the latest recruit by The Machine Whose Wheels Keep Turning is the male/female coupling of Adrien and Alexandra. The position was flanked by attaching to Rambin during Fashion week. Julia didnt wear the dress Mary suggested and Checkmate. Ironically, the post Gawker itself GuestofaGuest is fielding comments on Team Julia or Team Rambin ? Of which the latter seems the obvious choice. NonSociety has come true. Like The Knowing u cant mess with predictions. The same GOAG site crowned its new queen and king with a faked spoof post of its behind the scenes of a recessionista, bow tie wearing, once puffy jacket’Face wearing, new name generating, selfdescribed almostarrived.com‘d Rambins manbag Adrien Field :

“Elle Magazine just informed me that “aristocratic Spanish ladies used to carry monkeys on their shoulders to make themselves look more bewitching by comparison”. You’ll be expected to provide your own rhesus suit for black tie galas. Don’t embarrass me. Make it a good rhesus monkey suit… At night, you’ll be in charge of sitting by my side while I sleep and soothingly whispering “your fame game rank is rising, your fame game rank is rising.” If you are so moved, you may also make whale noises. But mostly, stick to the fame game thing.”

So If the answer is there is no centralised answer and that a million little 140 character mini-me’s are goin2 populate the facebook connecting universe of mobile compliant androids, whispering to the children ala Nic Cage/Rose Byrne’s new dud The Knowing ”your fame game rank is rising, your fame game rank is rising” - then the me me memes will keep rising the tides. That is where HipsterRunOff come in;

Hipster Run Off - One of the real tumblrs : “… Thkfully in such tweetful times hipsterrunoff has advice on your memeification, equating every individual’s quest with that of the band :

“Your band must invade the Perception Economy. Your Band must no longer be a band. Your band must be a meme. A Meme Which Generates subMemes. These memes must be compelling, intriguing, and interesting enough for people to ‘follow’ or at least think that you are ‘worth following.’ Your band is a meme is based upon these principles:

* A meme is a unit of information.

* A meme is consumed piece of information.

* Memes are exchanged from human to human.

* There are ways to tap into a meme economy in order to make your memes seem ‘more important than they really are.’

* Your band can be ‘good’ or ‘bad in a good way’, but it must be a followable meme. The modern band is not just about ‘music.’ The modern band must successfully win over fans by finding effective methods to generate themselves into a meme-source worth following. You are more than just your music. You are an aesthetic.”

Without Feathers by Vagabond Sanna

With Polaroid : Without Feathers

Luckily to walk yerself down off the meta ledge, I ingest another fave photogsite : That of Camden’s Sanna, the Vagabond is doing a participatory bird without feathers polaroid exhibition down in Winehouse Shoreditch territory. Love it, from her site - “without feathers is a collection of creations surfacing because of my obsession with birds. I used a base of screenprinted images and layered it with various material and polaroids. the words are stamped, stenciled, handwritten and transferred. the polaroids taken from the rogue bird project and the streets of manchester before being altered with added images. the exhibition was held in the cellar of the legendary conceptual sick which does not only house french bicycles but also two girls transforming the non-pigeon-(heh)-holed shop into a home. i took polaroids of a selection of onlookers and below the image of them disguised with a beak is the name of the bird that they would most like to morph into (sometimes poorly spelled and sometimes in a foreign language) do follow the evolution of without feathers below, (at the exhibition disposables were handed out with strict instructions on the backwhich will be developed and exhibited shortly along with the finished video which was shot on the night)”

Check Out the Vagabond - Without Feathers Exhibition

Sanna : “So ive spent tonight with nico on maximum volume on my headphones making the site for without feathers. you can find pictures from the making of without feathers, the exhibition, the opening night, the sub-projects and a brief pseudo intro. please have a look HERE and let me know what you think.”

The Moral of the Story :

There is no moral. If you try hard enough, climb each mountain… step by step day by day.. taking no more than 13 steps… altho the program recommends 12… u can make it. Publish a book like Adrien. Make an album like Alexandra from Helsinki Idol. But there are kewl parodyists al Hipsterrunoff. And artists like the Vagabond Set. So u can do it, just make it happen.

<Bulimic episode ensues. Dont mess too hard on the post-meta. It can send u pomo.>

<Drops the 1999 Hyundai into second gear as he speeds off to get caffeine in Balnarring. Must plot modelling social media promo schedule in moleskine. Yay, real work. Meta only lasts so long. I liked u meta. But I’m goin earnest.>

Gawker Commenters : ""This kid's real name is Drew Fiedler, we went to high school together, he was an enormous prick, self-hating Jewish kid (hence the name change I suppose), neo-con, and generally the biggest hypocritical, self-aggrandizing, evil person I have ever met.""

Tweeting Poor Man’s Email 2.0 Overtaking 1.0 Luddites Downunder

Posted by Ben Barren on March 16, 2009 – 8:57 am

Filed under Consumer_Internet

Many people for many a year, have got fn pissed at me for not being the most receptive to email or phone. Fair enough : I’m not saying I’m right, as the customer is supposedly always right an MBA will teach u, but a DBA will also posit that customers are often oblivious to progressions forward + much innovation is non-customer led engineering generated. And if u work in social media, it might be an indication that… The most lauded posterchild of non IRL customer service is the leader of the online world - Google, didnt even want to have phones in its offices but had to because of fire regulations goes the xoogler mythology, and that a recorded voicemail message saying ‘this phone number is not checked so dont expect much‘ is in accordance with my views on phone. Now it’s also not to say that google is right.. as it increasingly builds revenue in areas where customer service - even a crappy version of it - will have to be provided. As Bill Gates found, the solution to world hunger was not algorithmic or putting a Windows Vista desktop in every 3rd world person’s hut. But on the flipside, people that call with no warning at a time convenient to them - but not vice versa - Often outside 9-5 business hours - only says in pretty simple action analysis - u r a low priority for me but I expect an immediate cordial response. ahem. Anyway I’m not getting personal just eating the dog food of the industry I work in; Social Media. I’m not trying to sell landlines.

And email, well email is pretty close to busted. With spam, or its antidote spam filtering that creates blacklists which exclude emails with no warning or method of verification etc so yer emails/proposals/invoices/rescheduling invite never arrive, and even worse the CC creating email overload : So u receive mail not to be actioned by you. Either way via my Blackberry-Curve which is where I clear 95% of my “messages” - other than ones where I have to author and send an attachment - In this holistic “One Inbox” Blackberry Messages World : A missed call, sms, email, twitter dm, blog comment, facebook message, new twitter follower, new flickr contact : are all algorithmically treated equal by virtue of being displayed by recency.

But equality of approach by sender ends there. For starters on blackberry u can program the device to only make a noise when it’s an SMS or direct twitter message : Which leads to those 2 mediums becoming the priority message. Emails and missed calls are far behind, except when dealing with old skool people who resort to a 1.0 Luddites Existence. (characterised by lack mobile internet, rely on voicemails, use mobile phone for voice, office desktop landline important, some even have an assistant for scheduling assistance) I’ve been looking 4 awhile to one of those old school voicemail conversion services which takes your audio messages where people ramble for 2 minutes and makes them into 140 character action based text. I wish Optus would bring out a Spinvox type service… Much better. But each to their own, but for me the way to deal with information overload is good filtering and a touch of ruthlessness.

Immersive Blackberry Image by Capture Queen 2009 on Flickr. Click2View.

Poor man’s Email

Venture Beat + SXSW dont seem to disagree with me btw. Even though the way old baby booming, my PA organises my schedule, no im not a txt_addikt Google CEO - Herr Schmidt - who dubbed twitter a ‘poor man’s email’ (just as he was never going to buy YouTube for 10 figures yeah right, he’s not downplaying twitter so they can buy it.. well try to.. for which they will have to hit the 10 figures fo sure, making it geocities/broadcast.com bought by yahoo type deal that made cuban $’sB_rich) - What he’s missing is the different levels of communication that are happening around, driven I think largely by Blackberry + Iphone unlimited internet plans and UI that integrate messages whether they be voice, sms, email, notifications. My Twitter followers for example, are getting close to be as important maybe more than my email contacts. Got a question on anything : Do u do a google search ? Maybe/probably - But u have to navigates billions of dollars of search engine optimisation + algorithmically generated junk. With carefully selected followers and pervasive microsearch filters - the likely answers to my questions can come from tweetpals in 140 characters not the first 10-100 google search results.

Google havent’ yet recognised publicly this, even with Grand Central acquisition + Google Voice launch, that email, texting is all morphing, and layers of communication around the individual are coming in, and the social groups dimension is also being reenergised (Facebook is good for finding old school mates if thats yer kill myself thing… twitter on other hand after initial hurdle - can give people hope, a little microcosm of followers that feel like friends, maybe:) As Dare says : “Where things get interesting is in trying to bridge the gap between active and passive sharing. Sending an email about your latest vacation pics may be too intrusive but you also may not want to just relegate them to being shown in your friends’ feeds to be gone from sight if your friends don’t log-in in time. David Sacks of Yammer mentions Twitter’s @reply feature as one way to bridge this gap. On Twitter, you can push content out into the ether not caring particularly if your friends read it or not but when you do it is just a special character away to send a directed message to them. It will be interesting to see if other services figure out a feature that provides the same functionality as Twitter’s @reply and is similarly lightweight.”

Seeking Alpha also have a made me laugh outsourcing yer life to Google and Apple piece on this : “Google (GOOG) is taking another step towards taking control of more and more of your life. I wonder when the company makes the switch from “friendly giant” to “Microsoft-like scary dominatrix”… not yet at least. The Google Voice is part genius, part scary. Below is an interesting offer from the company; one phone number for your entire life and calls are free.* Now we know why they wanted that wireless spectrum so badly. In 10 years, I will just be napping 22 hours a day, and hand over my life to Apple and Google to run.”

"Spinvox converts your voice to text." So simple. So powerful.

5 Levels of BB Message Importance Thus :

1. SMS : Important, I need to get you now, Late Night Flutters, Directions, Locations, Where are You, I am Here!

2. Twitter DM : I cant get u on email, Ill try a Twitter DM. Only used when vimportant/establishment trust b.w parties etc. Most messages can be @replies.

3. Twitter Replies : I thought u might find this interesting, Im not a stalker

4. New Followers : Have a quick look if possible, decide to follow or not

5. Everything Else : Emails, CC’s, Missed Calls… this is where the google ceo’s rich mans email fits. And I was a hardcore gmail user from daydot, buying an account for $7USD on ebay when they came out. Well now I would pay $7 to get a post twitter client, that filtered twitter and all my messages

Email 2.0

What R U Working on ? Yammer Screenshot

David Sacks not being content to found the kickass trace yer family tree Geni and spinoff the enterprise Twitter Yammer, coined the term Email 2.0 for the microblogging services : At SXSW “Feed Me: Bite Size Info for a Hungry Internet,” - which sounds like it was an awesome panel… Damn if there’s one conference to go to each year SXSW is the one.. Even if Sacks buzzword progression builds on Herr Schmidt’s smugefest poor man’s email comments re twitter to the Morgan Stanley analysts the other week : It still progresses where we position previously microblogging services. But email misses the whole SMS precedence. Anyways.. I’ve gotta run so rest of my points bulletpointed below : May finish/clean up this piece later but I have a proposal to do and a doctor to see first.

What Caused Twitter to Kick Downunder ?

1. First a Pretty Please Request to Sandra Hanchard at Hitwise :

Sandra, I riffed the above on twitter and would be very interested in your thoughts/data/charts/explanation I’m thinking really finite such as certain celebrities/politicians joining… events that occurred and so on, cross referenced by date and ideally traffic, any of the linking activity - previously Facebook helped drive traffic is that still the case ? any smaller trends we can help uncover in terms of referrals ? That would be a kewl A3 chart to track how Twitter really took off downunder that could be compiled amongst every1. Every1 should folow the brilliant Sandra Hanchard at Hitwise (her twitter). The first step was Sandra’s gr8 Mid-January 09 research on Twitter Australian growth which in light of recent hypergrowth, seems out of date, or put more positively I would love to see the daily/weekly uptake trend for the first 2.5 months of 2009 ? Pretty please Sandra.

twitter-downunder-hitwise-jan-09 : "Visits to Twitter had a short term dip between September 2008 and November 2008, but have steadily climbed again to January 2009, and were at an all time high for the week ending 10 January 2009. Twitter has maintained its phenomenal yearly growth rate, increasing year-on-year in web visits by 517.9% (w/ending 10 January 2009 compared to the same week last year). Twitter's recent growth is due to a resurgence in referrals from Facebook, which is also maintaining a strong following amongst Australian Internet users. The linked growth highlights the continued rise in the use of the Internet as a networking tool in social and business contexts vs the consumption of information."

Twitter Downunder from Hitwise 14th Jan-09 : "Visits to Twitter had a short term dip between September 2008 and November 2008, but have steadily climbed again to January 2009, and were at an all time high for the week ending 10 January 2009. Twitter has maintained its phenomenal yearly growth rate, increasing year-on-year in web visits by 517.9% (w/ending 10 January 2009 compared to the same week last year). Twitter's recent growth is due to a resurgence in referrals from Facebook, which is also maintaining a strong following amongst Australian Internet users. The linked growth highlights the continued rise in the use of the Internet as a networking tool in social and business contexts vs the consumption of information."

2. Twitter has hit mainstream.

Well is early in on the cycle of going from many single digit millions to probably double digit millions and maybe more. It’s also as Twine founder points out below (his words, read his whole piece its great) got some scaling issues to deal with if it’s to succeed :

Can Twitter Survive What is About to Happen to It? by Nova Spivack

Hypertweeting. Some Twitter users tweet legitimately, but far too much. Or the content they tweet is just innane. In doing so they market themselves and dominate everyone’s attention with their presence.
Hashtag Spam. For example, an advertiser could easily pump out tweets that market their products, and simply attach popular hashtags to them, thus spamming those “channels” with ads. Similarly, clueless users could do the same thing.
@reply Spam. Another way that spammers could create annoyances in Twitter is by doing @replies to people, with ads for products, or simply to make trouble.
Notification Overload. Another issue is the rise of Twitter bots from various services, whether benign in nature or deliberately spammy:
- It won’t be long before every social network starts pumping updates into Twitter.
- News and content sites are starting to pump updates into Twitter for every article they publish.
- Games and MMPORG’s are starting to pump notifications for things that take place in their worlds, into Twitter (e.g. player x just defeated player y in a battle)
- A variety of other desktop, online and mobile apps will be pumping notifications into Twitter

Darken Rahl vs Caitlin the Confessor in New Zealand made very good Legend of the Seeker is akin to the Facebook vs Twitter showdown. Blood Rage ensues.......

3. The 175m user strong leader, the most engaged site in the world Facebook, now ahead of Yahoo, is totally dropping its pants to Twitter

Sad to see the leader copying The Odeo* Side Project like a Microsoft minority shareholder loon, with its potentially alleged idea steal Harvard facebook user preferring to use Twitter than Facebook for status updates. (i wonder what % of twitter’s users have heard of/know what odeo is/was? hehe : very few i assume) Even Ari a Facebook engineer not talent agent at SXSW sounds a bit twitter_curious : ““You used to e-mail content to people and you had to choose who you wanted to e-mail it to and you didn’t know if your friends even wanted to see it. “Now you can passively put something out there and let people engage with it.”

4. Who doesnt prefer twitter with a bit of friendfeed on the side to facebook for status updates ?

Although the friendfeed founder Paul Buchheit would rightly think they provide some valuable alternatives (which they definitely do especially - message threading, leniency on 140 character limit, embedded picture embedding, private rooms, nice realtimeness n uptime:) via BBC :

Friendfeed RealTime Window is Good Coz there isnt the same latency or API limits as Twitter has when 3rd parties develop (and Twitter obvs doesnt provide a solution themselves (which i think they should) like friendfeed does) I actually have to install their new Notifier, which u can click to read a little bit about.

Paul Buchheit : “I think it’s a new form of communication; not quite e-mail, more lightweight and more real time, often with little bit of a publishing flavour to it,“

That said I do prefer Zebr air app above to view my old school pals gee i miss them not Facebook status updates.. altho I wish there was a one column 2 way publish/read ability to view in one column with a small font:) all my twitter follower updates, twitter search topics, replies, dms, facebook friends status updates + mails, plus friendfeed updates - Currently I run 4-5 air apps on my desktop to view all that (if u include google reader app snackr which i havent thrown my 4k of feeds opml but on 140 feeds for client pitch it was/is really kewl).

Maybe Ill try PeopleBrowsr today as ppl say it does much of above.

Rather than running Tweetdeck (tracking search topics is so important but u need a whole screen coz it doesnt have an fn aggregate 1 column view or ability to reduce font size which is miles too fn huge) + Twhirl (best UI + easy to publish to unlike tweetdeck which is frustrating) for Twitter depending on space i want to allocate, Friendfeed Realtime Window and Zebr for Facebook and Snackr (thx4tip) for Google Reader.

Snackr + Google Reader sitting on a Tree : Every1 needs an air app and Snackr works on google reader as advertised (for the 140 feeds test).. Lets hope it can take my 4k feeds opml:) If u cant see it, its the black strip down bottom running horizontal.. it can also be quickly morphed into a vertical desktop feed.. wonder how its indexing works ? How frequently it pings the source etc. That said, as Fred Wilson suggested eons ago, there needs to be an aggregate air app for all the air apps… does that exist already ?

Are the Pauline Pictures Real or Fake as she says ? Click2read : She Should Twitter.

5. Australians are majorly taking to twitter coz they are so damn good at texting.. now they get to put it to group use.

6. Celebrities Downunder are grokking Tweeting is like Texting :

As well as global mainstream, it is at the start of hitting mainstream in Australia. Dave Hughes @dhughesy has gone from zero to 5k followers in a fortnight. The best interview question today with Kings of Leon came from a twitter user “One of my twitter users wants to know ‘How do u smell?’”

So : Why the heck has Twitter become so big in Australia now ?

What were the trigger points… Why now… What was our SXSW moment ?

I’m still not sure why Twitter has suddenly become big in Australia. It’s simple to say we follow America, because while our business adoption, venture capital and entrepreneurship doesnt.. our consumers are leading edge and take up new services.. I think twitters recent uptake makes sense that once a few thousand non techies get onto it… that are likely very heavy mobile phone texters.. well once they grok twitter… and those in entertainment industry ie celebrities ala the everyday hero Hughesy jumps onto it.. and also being a texter not a techy.. well as PDIddy says its a direct communication to the public tool for a celeb.. no manager needed or even ghost writer like is needed for a blog. With twitter u can go direct if u want to. Anyway. Id still like to be able to trace back the exact inflection points downunder… and identify which celebrities. What events.. What hashtags ? What drivers ? What was retweeted etc.. Oh well that would start needing clients, budgets and thats what we’re not so good at… till the market is mature.. ok ive got work to do.

Back2Work Monday

Super, Alife, Rockstar, Supra, UBoat, Clarks, Clae… u know the drill.

Super, Alife, Rockstar, Supra, UBoat, Clarks, Clae... u know the drill.

Elevator Pitch : “Stocktwits for TV : Tweetable.TV = #showname SeriesNumber.EpisodeNumber”

Posted by Ben Barren on March 2, 2009 – 1:04 pm

Filed under Entrepreneurship, TV, Viral

Tweetdeck - 1 Column Aggregate Followers/Searches + Smaller Font. Easy.

Twitterific followed by Twhirl then Tweetdeck, whats next

I still remember being slower than the absolute cutting edge when it came to using a twitter 3rd party client, where lo + behold u no longer had to press refresh to see latest follower updates. It took noticing Duncan Riley’s setup to finally download twitterific. Which ironically as I’m using my old powerpc gen1 imac 20″ at moment - w/ twhirl not working on it - i’ve been reusing twitterific : It still works well in that its stable, runs smoothly without hogging lots of memory etc, doesnt bounceball freeze altho it does have inherent problems such as inability to quickly reply, twitter search integration and so on.

So like alot of people I moved onto twhirl. Class leading UI, fast ability to reply, dm etc, and ability to change colour layout when bored. However and I may not have been using it to its total capability, I was still heading off to search.twitter.com to track topics/keywords, the persistent ones of which I add to google reader*. (i put everything in google reader, thousands of feeds - so *I WISH some1 namely google or a feedly type company would create an air app for google reader, so I could watch new items refresh while i was working. This would transform google reader the same way twitter clients do 4 tweets.)

What I really want to talk about though in this post is TV : In the next year or two TV networks are going to totally grok the importance of microblogging and hashtags (putting # before a tweet so when others do all these tweets can be aggregated) for the social element of Television. Typically we watched TV together, as families, then talked about it at work, but then TV audiences became more and more fragmented. But the tools and demand is such that these collective experiences can be repacked up so people can learn from + share about the different media they consume, namely film + Tv shows. (BTW, for any TV execs, traditional TV media buyers, even digital agencies looking at microblogging opportunities to integrate with yer clients really big TV budget… well I’m happy to come in and show some live case studies of yer tv shows

Having worked at ninemsn an eon ago, it’s full circle as the collision of the internet and television is happening, and while there are the obvious nirvanas of interactive TV (which the netflixs, cable companies, itunes etc will continue to dominate) the new sharing (that word Facebook now love) based elements (that of the social interaction around television shows we all watch previously referred to as “Watercooler chat” whereby people talk about what they watched last night and voice their opinions) which to a degree underpin the new playboy Boxee, are still yet to be polished up and refined. No1 owns the SocialTV space is my point. Boxee, built on top of open source television on demand, is a beautiful end-end implementation if I bring the TV/monitor, but if I already use Azureus, VLC and Twitter as standalone apps - Boxee is very attractive to me as a FrontRow like presentation layer for my media (which when I get my 120″ projector screen out of storage and have a place with a corresponding wall with a Panasonic HD projector for $1500AUD, by which time there is hopefully a new edition MacMini); But i prob won’t be using Boxee to download. And I’ll probably use twitter to communicate about tv shows with others as it has the mass volume of peeps on it doing so.

Fred Wilson being a Twitter + Boxee investor (gr8 combination btw kudos!) who hopefully can use his 140 character keiretsu clout/cloud to facilitate smart twitter integration/visualisation into boxee. Pictured from Fred is 103" Gizmodo screen, while my screen (in storage is 120"!) but need a wall plus Panasonic HD projector... to which macmini, speakers + receiver can be bolted into! Boxee would be a great UI vs using solely VLC player:) But adding Twitter smarts could be something new esp w/good visualisation. Click for Freds pic on Flickr.

Tweetable.TV = #showname_SeriesNumber_EpisodeNumber

So where should it go from here : When boxee start pulling in twitter hashtagged tv show content and filter it to corresponding show/series/episode, and act in effect like a tweetdeck for tv - then boxee is cooking for gas for me. So via my blackberry I can twitter while watching last episode of brililant bbc3 show #beinghuman S01E06 + that then displays in some kewl visualisation type way to boxee members that are also watching that episode and have opted into show based tweets or those from me. In effect a Stocktwits for TV. That could be a startup in itself. Not to mention the collective harnessing of tweet sentiments (as the Summize team built into advanced search and by extension the API) I wonder what Howard Lindzon, founder of Wallstrip bought by CBS, and then founder of Stocktwits, and keeper of a great blog in these macroapocalypse times! I’ve gotta get his new book : The Wallstrip Edge : How to use Trends to Make Money. How Apt and timely ! Delicious tagged it to purchase when funds allow.

The More I think about this the more I think it could be a good business startup idea. See how well I hide my ideas so NOBODY steals them. Quite the opposite. Realtime market research i much prefer, as well by writing the opportunity up and pressing publish it makes yer brain process the real feasibility likelihood of a TVC station buying as exit or major newspaper media trying to diversify into media as a TV station may have too much bias to its own programming inherently ? Is this a good startup idea ? Ala stocktwits for TV ?

With the #dollhouse for example, one big problem is people’s ignorance of other available substitutes. They are so used to having the limited geographic, free to air + cable tv station programming, that they are rating dollhouse when compared to a limited subset. For example the SciFi Cable channel have a brilliant show called #TheSanctuary (mentioned in last post) that is a very similar concept to #Dollhouse. #BeingHuman as I’ve mentioned ditto is a BBC3 channel, so unless u r UK based and had that channel, without the internet or unless u r a globally travelling TV business development exec, u wouldn’t have the ability to compare #dollhouse to the proper universe of substitute shows. And fact is when u compare dollhouse to these 2007-9 shows and not to the shows creators previous shows from up to a decade ago - it doesnt hold up very well. Even HBO is struggling in current market where the audience expect as good as or better than cinema quality productions. Thats why HBO commissioned/bought Six Feet Under/American Beauty creator Alan Ball’s vampire Sookie Stackhouse played by Anna Paquin True Blood show based on the bookset. It’s a different world, TVwise, very competitive and the internet should allow greater choice for consumers, and their ability to get full information about what to watch. Hence, what is so exciting as a “product guy” is the new types of discovery/recommendations features of television programming that can be invented. And alot of this is about facilitating social TV viewing via Tweetable.TV, domain available hehe (if u love an idea set it free and then see if it returns with funding or tech prototype, ping me if either - got a whole TV recommendations algorithmic idea ie Pandora.com of Television Recommendations + realistically leave any ideas on what u think would work or not)

Social TV is gonna be huge, twitter is the platform, yer mobile is the remote, media players are the distribution, hehe.

So What is the Current Tweetable TV Consumer Process ?

1. Show Debrief : During the week whether it’s #Lost, #Damages, #Dollhouse, #BSG, and so on - there will be episode recaps of the show by blogs.

2. Leadup Buzz to this Week’s Ep : The original night the program goes to air (in America as it is usually first) in the hours leading up people will begin to twitter about looking forward to kicking back on a Friday and watching Battlestar Galactica, Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse. Or on Sunday - Big Love, Damages and Lost. On Monday if u r in Australia it’s Underbelly.

3. IRL - Just Before EP : In Real Life, closer to the show u will see people twitter to their friends asking whether they want to come over to watch, as well as reminding themselves via telling others to program their DVR if they arent going to be able to catch it.

4. Avoiding Spoilers “Turn of all devices please ladies + gentlemen” : Just before commencement for those not watching, some will say they are leaving their phone in another room as they dont want spoilers.

5. Liveblogging : And obvs when show starts, there will be a few liveblogging the show. Sometimes there are spoilers, but so far people’s sensibility of not wrecking it for others is pretty good. I found it invaluable the little tidbits for watching shows like Mad Men.

#Dollhouse search on Twitter.

6. Syndication 2.0 : Once the show is over for its first viewing - here is where the subtlety of Programming Syndication 2.0 kick in :

- First you get timezone differences in time shown between East Coast and West Coast viewers.

- Ditto in Australia, #Underbelly shows earlier in VIC/NSW than WA, w hich means Perthians often stay away from Twitter search streams if they want to not get spoilers.

- Also the HD x264 versions have gone straight into Torrent encoding + distributing DVRs, bringing the show to the masses subscribed to via their trackers/mininovas/piratebay’s show based rss feeds

- And the kicker is the alert that these are available are hashtagged by the show names via twitter to those following #dollhouse #lost #underbelly etc. Why press refresh on a web browser, when u can be opted in already to 140 character alerts + direct hyperlinks to the file.

7. New Consumers 9 minute Download or Real Time Stream leading to New Tweets : Once consumer of show gets ep via legal means eg Ch9 are getting faster uploading Underbelly legally even tho they have awful hyro propietary format/midres: Or they get it via private torrent tracker or public mininova/piratebay type means. The net is within a couple hours of show being first shown it is consumed around the world. This then creates a 2nd generation of fresh tweets where people experience the cycle, blogging about looking forward to watching show tonite, inviting friends around, sharing links, and weeting bout show, possibly then writing an epsiode recap the next day.

8. Regeneration : This cycle keeps regenerating itself. The shows with more velocity get network effect; Sometimes before it has even travelled to the other coast. And certainly hours/days/months quicker if u r in another geographic zone. Dollhouse for example good or bad, because of buzz has a huge amount of downloads and people talking about it online. There was builtup demand due to writers strike, and demand for new material from creator of cult shows Buffy, Angel, Firefly. In pure TV ratings numbers, it would likely look like a dud - as low ratings means less advertising sales. This typically leads to cancelled show. But along with torrentfreak.com ratings where shows and movies can be viewed millions of times, if not commercialised, tomorrow’s TV exec is going to have to start taking a holistic view to internet legal, illegal activity and all the legal viral buzz metrics before during and after showing. It may even help improve the product - and which to keep or cull Dollhouse for example may end up making lots of dollar$ via series/episode downloads on Itunes and hulu.com like channels. (dollhouse is a fox show yeh so being in australia not sure if its on hulu and/or itunes?)

What wil be interesting to see if the data can be sliced n diced so that the different types of tweets can be categorised into audience reactions to specific episodes, and other types of content such as media interviews with the talent/creators, links to media files and so on. This is the technical holy grail. Further, there needs to be a very specific attribution of the tweet to show name, series number and episode. This is same naming convention as exists in the world of bit torrent search and file naming. For example there has been a huge current commotion on Dollhouse and how much of a disappointment it is post Buffy/Angel/Firefly. Similar to some of the issues with getting geocoded user generated content, ideally as Australian/European/etc are watching #Dollhouse S01.E03 there would be the ability filter #dollhouse tweets specific to that episode. (versus in general about show or other show links) Further, assumptions such as someone tweeting about a show without mentioning the episode number at same time other people are tweeting/while the show is on, would ideally be able to be implicitly attributed to the episode so a larger index of structured user content can be stored.

Interesting research in the space is Mike Walsh’s world of Futuretube mentions that in Japan some of the higher reach than Youtube sites show have live social messaging at bottom of screen; (techcrunch reading on this + wired feature on founder vinteresting; GR8 stuff Mr_Walsh : “In Japan, the most popular video sharing site is Nico Nico Douga (Smiley Smiley Video) attracts almost a billion page views a month. The most distinctive feature of the site is an on-screen commenting function, where user messages scroll as commentaries across the video while playing like a form of visual karaoke.” This is where twitter #hashtags are going, and what consumers are in effect creating for themselves already.They could become the currency or language by which WaterCooler 2.0 conversations happen around entertainment programming.

Bigger than YouTube in Japan and look how important social element is according to Founder : ""Even when the videos are boring, the viewers are getting together and entertaining each other.." via Wired

I was meant to mention I now use Tweetdeck, but I ended up writing about Future of TV…

I mainly use tweetdeck at moment other than iMac powerpc not liking twhirl because of the ability to integrate searches, half of which are TV show related.. so I can track what others are thinking about my favourite shows. They r a great source of relevant episode recaps and talent interviews as well. This is the world that Google is so far away from. And ironically by getting rid of professional content, and allowing legal TV sites such as Hulu to expand, even with YouTube Google are not only missing Live Internet Search, they are missing a huge component of Television 2.0 + 3.0. But again I’ve gone off track - All I wanted to say before i got buzzed on Tweetable.tv in this post was Please Tweetdeck can u create a 1 column version that integrates all my follower updates and matches to my search keywords + hashtags. If I could greatly reduce the font size + layout options so I can compress the screen real estate, then even when I get my 24″ intel imac - I will stick with tweetdeck. And if while u r there u wanted to integrate a google reader air app column, heck give me that friendfeed mini-window realtime update scrolling window and like Zebr a facebook option too.. And then I had one column with smaller font that had all my TV/etc twitter searches, friendfeed updates from each of the rooms, my twitter follower updates, google reader updated posts ideally by folder as i have what i tag “Supa-Spesh” folder which is my top 250 feeds : Then I could drop zebr, greader firefox, twhirl, twitterific, etc. K_thx_bye.

Nuthin 2do with TV but Love the Welder K24 - Best watch under $1k AUD @ $456Euro/$900AUD. By Uboat creator.

Sales Pitch at End

If you got this far, u either have too much time and are of no use to me, or for a much smaller % u got this far because we’re related hehe no u got this far as u r spending alot of yer days working on these issues, or u want to. I’m especially interested in the intersection of structured microblogging and television moving online becoming a more social experience.. Additionally, I think such aggregate data + P2p interactions leads perfectly to programming discovery + personalised recommendations So if u r a potential client, or handy developer.. well it would be a roll the sleeves up project I’d love to get involved. Or just leave a comment + tell me whether u think it’s a good business ? Services like stocktwits have proven a very solid business connecting dots between twitter and stocks, the same can apply to twitter and television. Suffice to say it’s a top 5 targeted project of mine, so PING ME already.

Will Boxee Integrate Twitter or Build it's Own Community ?

I’m a Celebrity Tweet_Me Out’of’ere.

Posted by Ben Barren on February 23, 2009 – 3:41 pm

Filed under Social_Networking, TV

@Dhughesy @ Twitter, Australia well Warnabool's Funny Man on Twitter.

So the cue to get out of bed this morning was listening to the met via Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade couple - @andrewsayer + @lilylauren - schooling Nova100’s Hughesy on how to use Twitter. And after selfimposing bans on himself for MySpace first up, and limited public exposure to Facebook, @dhughesy appears to be jumping in to twitter, and doing it himself. Which is a welcome change for celebrity. Let’s see if it can last as he’s rocketed to over 100 updates + 170+ followers. Wouldn’t take much for him to grab the low hanging 140 character fruit + hit the Top 100 Aussie twitterers being covered by Shifted Pixels.

Click to see latest conversation around ‘Dhughesy’ - his username : Within Half a Day of Joining Twitter, Highesy is seeing the power of going to the beach but having his followers tweet him oscars updates following his 140char request

Fiction vs IRL

If we do a little Twitter celebrity segmentation - We have 2 types of users;

1. In Real Life celebrities like Hughesy, esp radio that are Twittering their life. Some tweet themselves, while a larger number utilise ghost tweeterers. For example Prime Minister Krudd’s staff appear to be tweeting for the PM a large percentage of the time, sometimes upon what appears to be quoting the PM other times it has the feel of made… So the hybrid Self/Ghost tweet is very popular for celebrities.. and the

2. Fictional characters that are drawn from popular TV shows and other media (BTW havent seen many film characters have twitter accounts, but that reflects more slow moving digital agencies and their clients - Jointly not seeing or being able to implement the opportunity) So to date (often premium cable) TV shows like Mad Men, Damages and True Blood are the most popular of the ‘made-up‘ celebrity twitterers. (along with politicians, music acts, crossover film stars involved in blah internet biz, not to mention the resurgence of hammer pants on catwalks, techcrunch startup judging + the twittersphere public timeline)

Met Via Twitter Couple @andrewsayer @lilylauren were both on Nova this morning skooling new to twitter Hughesy. Now lily is providing tweetlessons so hughesy can reply. Hopefully Holly wont ban him or that it's just a stint by Nova's digital agency!

Where the Gaps Are

TV show characters on twitter suffer from some pretty major identity crisis. When the Sookie Stackhouse character @sookiebontemps twitters for example are we getting :

A. Sookie from the TV show at the same point of time where the TV show is at. So when there is a cliffhanger at the end of Series 1 is this where the Sookie twitterer is at…or is it…

B. Sookie from the book which consists of 7-8 titles + thus totally different relationships, points of views etc

C. Anna Paquin, The actor, who plays Sookie, could provide a more behind the scenes Sookie insight…

Mad Men which is acknowledged as prob the leader in TV show twittering while overall good/a winner, had some NQR (not quite right) dynamic in that esp Season 2 there would be a huge blowup between Don Draper and his wife Betty where they were basically estranged/brokenup/not talking.. but their twitter activities weren’t consistent.. This actually took away from the tension in between episodes as u wondered what would happen and whether Betty would get back with her husband or continue on her single pathway.. It needed to be played more as an extension of the script and characters not like a cutesy project by a digital agency.

In short, the screenwriters of the tv show need to write/guide/instruct/provide_parameters/approve the developments on twitter. No TV show has done this.. but if the script/stories were actually added to, rather than being a glib excercise in multiplier marketing… then the impact would be powerful.

It's Sookie or Anna Paquin from True Blood or is it the fictional character from the books of which there are 8. Is it Sookie that goes out with Bill or the Sookie that goes out with Eric in later books ? Or is it the actress not going past where the TV series is at ?

What Could be Done

In Australia currently (tonite is Series 2, Episode 4) the (click4latest_tweets) #Underbelly franchise as the creators call it (cast for series 2 is totally different being a prequel set 30 years earlier where some of the underworld gang wars commenced) Underbelly is the highest rating TV series Australia has seen. And series 2 appears to be much closer in quality to The Sopranos and The Wire. (Series 1 was gr8 but more a standard Criminals vs Police Law + Order/CSI type standard) It has a Life on Mars/Swingtown feel being set 1977-1985 : So we get all those great Aussie cars alot of us grew up with - Toranos, Kingwoods, the original Commodore, Falcons etc. How good would some twittering from a Painter n Docker in Richmond 1982 driving around in the Brock HSV Commodore be ?

But does Underbelly have a set of twitter accounts ? Of course not, this is Australia. So with a clean slate, let’s recommend what the shows creators could do :

- Each Underbelly : Tale of Two Cities character to have a twitter account. Within the alpha period the twitter messages should be sent to both the relevant actor (who really knows methodwise what that character would or wouldn’t say) as well as the screenwriter. It should not just be in the hand of the traditiotnal agency’s copywriter or digital agencies junior producer (how many digital agencies have decent writers in them - hardly any esp downunder….) Before beta you would be able to establish a true turn of phrase that is consistent with the character on TV. Matthew Newton’s Heroin Kingpin role for example is a kiwi, Sociopath, Charmer, Painter - who doesnt use drugs or like any of his staff to. And cross him, u will end up going for a ride with him and not returning. He also has a Sydney penthouse apartment for his mistress. Now tell me that isnt a gr8 recipe for some awesome twitters. Ch9 and Ian Law - is it just too obvious for Underbelly cast to have twitter accounts ?

- The Underbelly twitters should be scripted in accordance with the (I assume) 13-ish episode series that I guess will show over 3.5+ months. With a large cast there needs to be some top level outlining, and actual fleshing out of certain themes, and flesh out some of the character’s motivation which is hard to do with so many characters. Last week for example there was no Melbourne/Richmond scenes with Painters/Dockers and The Kane brothers. So twitter could have been used to remind the audience that there is some action brewing in Melbourne. (which is the focus of the episode this week) And again, the pathos of the characters needs to be emphasised to the extreme. Mad Men the show is extremely tense, and much is unsaid. There are some amazing lines. But not on it’s Twitter. It’s like a bad episode of Desperate Housewives. So use twitter to go to the extreme and focus on the little things like the Kane brothers have a boxing ring, they should twitter about their training sessions. In between some of the more violent acts, which like in film do not even need to be explictly mentioned but the background acts come to the fore. U know what I mean. Any1 listening at nine ?

- Twitter isn’t just a text medium. TV shows like Underbelly should utilise ancillary media like Twitpics, behind the scenes/extended shots Video which can be dumped onto Vimeo, even Ustream after the show etc. Heck they could almost go as far as custom branding one of the Twitter air apps like Twhirl - I’m sure Loic would love to do a bus dev deal - and do an Underbelly branded twitterreader, that had all the characters automatically powering the tool with content. U could leave it open and watch the characters unfold in between the weekly episodes. This is why again a script, or at least outline would be needed so there is a narrative, and that it adds to the main story, not be inconsistent like every TV show on twitter.

U cant tell when Kanye does a post as he likes Cap lock, gets emotional and has spelling errors. But these authentic posts r the ones which make the blog authentic/compelling/real/2C the person behind the bravado of the gr8'test artist of this generation. "I am the best I tell you!"

Just my 5 Cents

As u can tell I’m pretty pumped about Twitter and how it can be used for creative projects. It’s potential for “ensemble use” for TV shows and movies (pre and post buzz) with proper scripting and involvement with the actors and screenwriters is pretty bloody exciting. Shows like Underbelly and Mad Men could really add to the storyline, flesh out characters between episodes, rather than having inconsistent cute traffic generation projects by the digital agency. So I wonder what will be the first TV show to use Twitter correctly ? Ping me etc.

It's not a TwitterJam but this is the type of traffic I could handle getting stuck in; Lambo 560s and Ford GTs - These are the creme dela creme of everyday drveable supercars. Gr8 snap by BrandonPerdeck on Flickr. The BMW M5 the best saloon in the world for years (Although with Porsche Panamera vclose that mantle is going to be under challenge, big time) The M5 looks positively boring which is pretty hard to do!

fogies. fogies. fogies.

Posted by Ben Barren on February 16, 2009 – 12:02 pm

Filed under Recession, Social_Networking

Some Adidas ZX Racers Any1?

When Time Magazine says something isn’t kewl, and titles the piece Why Facebook is for Fogies, then either reverse psychology applies (Facebook is for Young Hipsters), or it really isn’t. (Facebook is actually for Fogies as Filmoculous says : “I especially like that he used the word ‘fogies’. If ever there is a fogie word it is fogie.“)

United States of Tara with Toni Collette is rockn. Written by ex-stripping, blogging, twitterer Myspace @Diablo 'Juno' Cody.

U know when on the latest ep of Numb3rs Charlie’s dad is talking about joining Facebook and meeting ppl he went to school with then Facebook investors can luckily know what they have isn’t a fad. It’s just the new Linkedin; A boring necessity. And look how linkedin is kicking goals now there is a recession. (22% increase from Dec 08 to Jan 09 and a doubling of minutes spent if u can believe it, via TC?!) You would think with 175m Facebookers, the company might be able to take a page out of the mid 90’s Yahoo playbook (given they prefer to steal than come up with their own ideas) and gmail up an employment, business networking model, with a new friend of a friend referral twist.

Hustle is a gr8 show and lots of lessons on the Grift ! Otherwise known as Sales/Bus Dev.

@ Bit Twittered or should i just blog or get linkedin ?

I’m also feeling that with twitter’s m@instre@mis@tion it’s becoming a bit on the tired not wired side, even tho it is totally indispensable, but to be more specific and I might use one of those twitter 3rd party followers management tools in that when I look at new followers - I can’t help but feel a cynical quid pro quo which is doubled up if i do follow then get an autogenerated thku message that is meant to sound personal - New Twitter followers, which are no doubt increasing faster and faster : Often appear either slightly spammy, or part of the religious right or affiliate marketing world - Sometimes all three. All of which makes me wonder what is post twitter ? Plurk peaked and dropped quickly; Friendfeed is nice but socio-nerdy - I’d like something that’s a MySpace meets Twitter cross, any ideas ? If indeed social networks are like nightclubs, then where is the new hot place to be ? By extension, I’m also wondering if I should be spending more or less time blogging vs (more constructive possibly devils advocate ?) business/social networking on linkedin, facebook or twitter. In retrospect tho I’ve got alot of work via my blog… but proving that is very anecdotal. When I didn’t blog I got no work as well, which seems to support the blog is important thesis. Not to mention having to calculate the effect of lag. (ie blogging u do now generates work in 3 to 6 months and vice versa - not surprising that not having a blog from Sep 08 to late Dec 08 meant first time in 4/15 years with no work - previously i actually thought the blog had no impact either way on work - we’ll see in 3 months what impact current blogging has on bottom line) In effect : What is the optimal social media mix with an eye on $ecuring work ? That is indeed the $64K question, or as Francis Fukuyama said, is this indeed the End of History ?

Nice Crooks & Castles Highness Letterman Jacket - Cant Stop the Crooks as they say.

Extra Link : I had to laugh actually ROFL which is rare in my world at Duncan Riley’s latest pitch from PR groups + banking prospects, who as mentioned yday got schooled by Coles on how to contribute to the #bushfires and today I heard they want to, no scrap that, they will be charging $2 to check your balance at the ATM - unfnbelievable, anyway back to Dunc : “Got pitched last month to promote a new Australian banking product. They wanted to give me a $10 account in return for a post. Now besides the paid for post argument which can be left for another day, apparently $10 in the eyes of that PR firm at least is fair game for a blog with 1.5-2.5 million page views a month.”

When it's Winter + I have made all this money from using Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin productively instead of wasting my time blogging for no1's benefit, I will reward myself with this Crooks sweatshirt, but in grey which u can see if u click image - Cant believe well I can, that u cant buy CrooksnCastles in Australia. Check out Swedens Caliroots.com and Boston i think Karmaloop.com - both awesome brands, reasonable prices esp if u can get a sale or coupon, and deliver with a week to Australia for no unfair fees. Later, Im goin go be productive now, Promise!