What Does This Mean to Me, Laura?

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Dan Rockwell is a User Experience Researcher at Lextant.

[BACK STORY: I met Dan at BarCamp Ohio and started following him on Twitter. Then I started listening to his soundbytes on Utterli. One of his messages really resonated with me, and I asked him to guest post here on the topic of "getting" social media. Thanks, Dan!]

Anyone who’s watched a few hundred movies (like we’ve all done) knows that feeling of “oh yeah, I know what’s happening…” It’s that twinge of you “guessed it;” you know what’s going to happen next. You’ve seen the pattern, you’ve added it up. You feel a bit smug a first. Sometimes you look to see if anyone else figured it out. It’s a natural thing really and, lets face it, we love that feeling of “oh yes, we get it”.

For anyone following the buzz around social media these days, that feeling is like a constant hum your head, a subtle but noticeable nudge that you, yes, you,.. you get it. Sad part is, it’s often hard to share that joy of seeing the pattern in social media with folks on the outside of it. Folks that don’t get it. You’re right back in that movie theater, trying to convince a friend that in that one scene where the bad guy does X, you knew that was going to happen. Of course if they didn’t get that subtle nudge, that trace of the pattern that you got, well, here comes the debate. At this point, you can’t really win; after all it’s just a movie. However, with social media, you just can’t afford to lose. It’s far too important.

At first, I thought I was a bit crazy. I started seeing all kinds of interconnected events unfolding, small at first, larger over time. Patterns unfolding in my head. Naturally, I’m more drawn to folks that get the same nudge I get over social media. My “ah ha’s” resonate better with them. They get it too; there’s less resistance to the big idea and more of an open embracing arm gesture to bring it on. We iterate on ideas faster, all thinking in the same vein of sharing, learning, expressing, embracing, interconnecting and more.

But then there’s all those folks I know on the sidelines, looking at me as if I’m nuts. It’s understandable at times. It looks like a massive waste of time, all this twittering, blogging, social networking, social bookmarking, media creation, vlogging, super poking?!–for what, what’s the big “ah ah?” Folks on the outside of social media see time loss, that’s the biggest blank in their heads. They need to understand the real value of why are you doing it, because right now, all they see is time… disappearing.

The first mistake you can make when attempting to get a friend or co-worker to see the pattern is to threaten them with weight of it. I call this the “warning;” it never works and it’s a sure fire way to demotivate someone. Giving someone the “this will happen, you can’t escape it!!” mentality never works, you’ve seriously dropped the ball. In general if you back anyone up against a wall they will resist you to no end and logic goes out the window. So you can’t force someone to see what you see–you have to go back to that movie setting. What would the hero do? Well, a smart hero would do his/her research and find connections between your friend and the “ah ha” pattern.

You’ve got to make a bridge over into their world. Find a point where their life could be just a tad bit more interesting if they knew about the pattern. Then jump on that bit and show them how it could really benefit them.

You need to tap into what I call “universal truths,” whereby the pattern of social media helps all. We hear one of these truths all the time right now in social media marketing. Listening is a universal truth. You really can’t go wrong with listening. Today, everyone, and I mean everyone, is connected to the web is some way. Our lives, kids’ lives, businesses, products, markets, you name it, it’s all connected there on the web. You can go for a broad inquiry and collect a ton of data, or you can scale down to see the finer bits in between.

Once you get a taste for listening to the web, the hive mind of the planet connected by a billion bits of fiber, you can start asking it questions. Using tools like Google Insight Trends, Search Twitter or blog search tools, you can veer away from the beaten path of marketing speak buried in websites and plow into the mind of your customer.

So, big deal? Well the big deal is that people are in the system. Tap into the hive, think with it, and you’ll find it. Google is just the start really, the first place you go. If you want more real time knowledge, you go to Twitter or a blog search engine and start getting closer to the source.

Now you’re probably thinking, “oh man, this is work, I’ve already got a job.” Well, wrong again. Social media is smarter than that. The hive mind continually iterates itself and RSS is about the coolest thing fueling that hive mind. TweetBeep uses RSS to bring your twitter to you. Stop visiting 5 to 10 blogs a day and visit one with Google Reader and RSS. Subscribe to what you’re interested in, and it all comes to you.

Listening is very powerful. You start to eavesdrop on a 1000 conversations online. Who are all these people talking about…? Oh that person is reading the same book I’m reading, hey they do what I do, go to the same places I go, wait a sec that guy is from Brazil and he’s into what I’m into. Physical barriers are gone, this isn’t plain jane website exploration…you’re in the hive now–learn, absorb, see the pattern, iterate.

Once you start listening you’re ready for the next step–participation. Then you can roll into validation and tracking, one of my favorite aspects of the web. It’s all recordable, traceable, you can see your net effect online. Did an idea resonate, did a concept stick, change, iterate, improve, try again, all within half the time you’d think.

You have to listen, somehow. Odds are you’re doing it now, but you just haven’t leveraged the web and the hive chatter isn’t part of your iteration process. You may still add it up over time, but a little more data couldn’t hurt. Of course even the researcher in me debates that concept a tad. If you’re all about a vision, you must follow that vision, if you want more ideas, go get more ideas, and that means ya gotta listen.

Start listening, and start seeing the pattern. You’ll benefit and it won’t cost you any more time than you spend wondering what people are thinking with traditional methods.

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I currently know more about the lives and interests of many of my professional contacts than I do about some family members. This isn’t really on purpose, but it is a direct result of the choice many people I know have made, to keep people constantly abreast of what they’re doing via web services such as Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed (which I’ll discuss shortly). Most of my family is not engaged in the social Web, and as a result I’m not as engaged in their lives. Face it; if I’m getting daily/hourly updates from one person and a once-a-week or once-a-month phone call from another, which person do I likely know more about?

Now, this is not an issue with my family¹, but it does demonstrate that the Web has some serious power to keep us not only connected, but constantly connected. For many, this constant connectedness is a good thing that allows them to easily keep up with their friends and industries. For others, it’s like a firehose of information they can’t shut off or filter. “TMI!” (Too Much Information) they cry. Obviously, the truth really lies somewhere in between.

The idea of lifestreaming is really the application of some logic to all of this information we’re putting out there about ourselves on the Web. Essentially, it allows social network users to collate web data about particular people in one place. Think of it this way….

Let’s say that you rate businesses on Yelp, upload or favorite videos on YouTube, post photos on Flickr, tweet on Twitter, update your statuses on Facebook, blog at Wordpress.com, and maybe even have a professional profile on LinkedIn. That’s a lot of stuff you’ve got (actually, ok, not that much for some), and your friends sure aren’t going to go to each individual site to see what you’ve been up to. Enter services like FriendFeed, which aggregate all of this kind of activity for your (participating) contacts and spew it back out for you all in one place or even through a handy RSS feed. So, now your friends can know every time you do anything on any of the many, many web services that Friendfeed supports. Voila! Your friends know every time you review another restaurant in Cleveland on Yelp, or favorite another Obama Girl video, etc etc etc. One source for lots of social data.

Now, remember the firehose analogy? Once you subscribe to enough people on FriendFeed (or just enough very prolific ones), you can easily become deluged by the constant activity. This is the main gripe people have about FriendFeed; there is not truly a good way to filter out what you might consider “noise” and everything is treated equally. If you want to know every time Friend #1 and Friend #2 upload a video but not #3, and also every time only #4 updates her blog, you’re out of luck. Thus, the firehose you can’t turn off.

Does this make FriendFeed useless? No, but it means that you have to understand why you’re using it. I use it primarily as a way to keep up with people I know and what they are doing professionally. However, some argument has been made that lifestreaming could be replacing blogging and that blogging is dead. I don’t really buy that, myself. But it is true that many people are totally replacing their personal blogs with lifestreams, because the purpose of their blogs is to keep people abreast of what they’re up to. That does makes some sense, I think. And many others agree. Thus the rising popularity of lifestreaming, and of new lifestreaming services such as Ping.fm, Profilactic, Socialthing, and many more. This type of service/application is collectively called social aggregators.

What does this mean to me, Laura?

If your library is involved in more than one or two web services, you really ought to get a FriendFeed account. Make getting your social data easier for your patrons. (And I recommend FriendFeed for a library, simply because it is the most popular right now and the most well-known. Not because it’s necessarily the best!)
FriendFeed also provides a way to have conversations about posted items with other FriendFeed users. That’s another reason for libraries to get over there; another way to interact directly with patrons. (Possibly. Just because you build it….you know.)
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by what comes out of this kind of aggregator. Recognize that you will not likely ready EVERYTHING. It’s ok, really.
If you’re really bored, you can subscribe to my FriendFeed. Yes, you need a FriendFeed account. Yes, another #@$! account. Yeah, I know.

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¹All of my immediate family is geeky. I’ve just binged on the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid a little more than the rest. And yes, they’re weird, too.

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RSS icon I am assuming that, by now, you have a RSS reader/aggretator of your own and you now understand why RSS has begun to control information flow on the Web. Because of RSS, many people don’t even have to go to actual web sites any more. And many don’t. When you can get all your favorite stuff served up to you on a metaphorical bed tray with a rose in a crystal vase, why bother going to the grocery store and cooking?

You might think that RSS is still only in the realm of early adopters and geeks. Sorry, folks, it hit the mainstream long ago. How do we know that? At least a couple of worldly clues: firstly, NPR used to hide their RSS feeds at the bottom of the page. They now are in prime viewing territory in the “Services” sidebar (and there are a lot more shows/topics that have feeds than before). Secondly (and maybe this was the biggest wake-up call for me), Ebay created feeds for buyers, sellers and searches. Want to know if that vintage lunchbox comes up for auction? Don’t keep checking Ebay; get the RSS feed of the search delivered to you daily.

Maybe not everyone uses a feed reader or even knows what RSS is yet. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t using it! If you use services like iGoogle or MyYahoo, chances are very high that you are getting newsbytes, horoscopes or other information using RSS. It might not be labeled as RSS or have any cute orange icons…but I can practically guarantee that RSS is the technology behind those services. Information distributed by RSS can be shaped by third-party applications into many shapes and forms. Portal sites like these excel at it.

Back to what I mentioned earlier–RSS enables people to not have to visit a web site. Granted, I’m a geek. But I started to think about this a bit as I was writing. I currently subscribe to over 100 different feeds. And I tried hard to remember the last time I visited any web site on a regular basis (not including those that I work on for OPLIN, and Facebook…yes, I do Facebook. No, I don’t want to be poked.) I couldn’t. I realized that, if a web site doesn’t have an RSS feed, it’s probably not on my radar. I doubt I’m alone in this. I’m busy, and trying to keep up with the flow of information coming out of both the library and technology-related industries every day. If a site can’t make it convenient for me to keep up, I can’t afford the time. And time is the true currency of the Web.

So, you’re a geek who subscribes to a ridiculous number of feeds. What does this mean to me, Laura?

Get a feed for your site, and for all of the areas of your site that update frequently. Don’t give people like me (or who use portal services like MyYahoo) another excuse NOT to get your content.
If you have a dynamically-generated web site (run from a database on the back end), then your system may already have the ability to generate a feed built in. [OPLIN PLUG: Looking to upgrade to a new, dynamically-generated, 21st century web site for free? Contact me at meanlaura@oplin.org.] If you don’t, or are running an older generation static site (see plug, above), you still have some options. Check out services like Page2RSS. They can automatically generate a feed for a given page. It’s not perfect, but better than nothing by a long ways.
Check out this article: Reasons Why Your Site Needs to Publish a News Feed (note the copyright is 4 years old…hint hint.)
Don’t do anything that updates regularly on your site? Are you sure? Do you generate lists of new books or magazines, or new DVDs? Events? Storytimes? All great and useful RSS fodder.

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