gregh  2008-04-17 11:26  informationoverload  techcrunch  twitter  web_2.0   

If you're a proponent of ubiquitous, open communication, it can be embarrassing to admit that you don't see much benefit in Twitter. However, it's not hard to note that most of the big Twitter advocates are people who sit around and blog all day. Who else can possibly devote the time to watching a stream of messages scrolling in some window or popping up or hitting your mobile phone all day long? I've already got personal email, school email, work email, blogs, discussion forums, and random web sites to read (not every web site I'm interested in provides me a feed to make tracking easier.)

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch is right on when he declares that Web 3.0 Will Be About Reducing the Noise—And Twhirl Isn’t Helping. More correctly, I'd argue that Web 3.0 must be about reducing noise. Most people can't tolerate the noise level that exists with all of the blogs out there. (Go ask a "regular" user about what feed reader they use. Hehe.)

Here's where I think Erick really got to the crux of the matter:

But if you think it is hard enough to keep up with e-mails and instant messages, keeping up with the Web (even your little slice of it) is much worse. Putting Twhirl on your desktop and hearing the constant “ding” of new messages coming in will make you realize that this is IM on steroids. (You will quickly turned off the sound).
. . .
I need less data, not more data. I need to know what is important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know. People like Mike and Robert can do that, but they are weird, and even they have their limits.

Yes! Show me the information I want, not all the information that might be out there in my world. The current situation is like abusive discovery. "They want documents? Oh, we'll give them documents!" No, no. Relevant information that may lead to admissible evidence.

There may be useful nuggets that come across Twitter, but unless one is doing little more than sitting around looking to be the first to blog on a topic, I can't imagine there's enough useful when broadly following to make it worth the distraction. Until something changes, I'm going to be in Erick's camp.

gregh  2007-08-05 20:50  blawgging  Blogging  feeds  syndication  web_2.0   

Earlier, I posted with a fairly abrasive title, suggesting that a newsletter about blawgging that is available only by email struck me as odd. The newsletter publisher, Sheryl Sisk Schelin, of blawg The Inspired Solo, posted some thoughtful responses as comments on the original.

I bring this back up largely to address the thought more completely.

The title of the post was, "How to convince me you don't get it." (emphasis added.) I completely understand her points. Chunks of my day job have been spent proselytizing on the benefits of syndication and "Web 2.0." Other chunks of my day job have been spent wedging email notifications into products where moderately flexible feed notifications exist. I understand that it's a small community that truly gets feeds.

That it's a small community that gets it is precisely why I feel that those pushing blogs (and blawgs) should be utilizing the technologies to their utmost. That readers may not all use feed readers or even understand what that means, however, doesn't diminish the importance of using feeds for publishing. It makes it more important!

There are tools, such as Feedburner Email, to allow the recalcitrant users to subscribe to feed-based publications via email. There are tools in most publishing platforms to do the same. It's certainly possible to publish by feed and allow subscriptions via email, all without the user knowing what's going on at all. But more importantly, surely part of that publication will be education, and what better way to educate a user about the feed than to give examples of the the precise content they're looking at as a feed?

Obviously, publishers may publish however they want. However, in my opinion, if one truly gets and values syndications and feeds, it only makes sense to publish everything appropriate via feed and to make allowances for others when needs arise.

gregh  2007-07-16 23:10  facebook  socialnetworks  web_2.0   

Scoble's been going nuts over Facebook recently.

He pointed that he's he's been questioned about the value of these networks. I've been playing with Facebook recently, after having long tried to avoid it. On the other hand, I've been gradually building up my LinkedIn network.

My verdict at this point? As a business tool, neither seems to have great value to me right now. However, those people I'm interested in exist on LinkedIn but generally don't on Facebook.

For one thing, the organizational features of Facebook are atrocious. I'm in a group now that I feel would be very useful for networking going forward: my fellow law school classmates. Check out the myriad ways USF School of Law members/alums have listed the fact that they attend the law school. While I'm sure there are wonderful undergrads, I don't care about networking with them. LinkedIn? Very easy to find fellow USF SoLers. LinkedIn strikes me as being much more interested in people with more structured networks. Facebook -- though less so than MySpace -- seems to eschew structure.

Heck. I can't even list my entire technology work history with Facebook. Apparently, more than 5 jobs is no good. Great, great networking tool.

James Robertson points to Dare Obasanjo, who notes the tech bigwigs who are in Facebook. All of those but Steve Ballmer is also on LinkedIn. Of course, none of that necessarily validates either of these tools. Earnest usage is a much better validator.

One problem with Facebook, if Scoble properly described its Roach Motel-like characteristics, is that information checks in, but it never checks out. I haven't gotten involved enough to check out the API, but I have been following Marc Canter's open social networking pleas. LinkedIn is still behind on opening itself up. But what would definitely be ideal is the option to choose the right social network for the right task.

In short, I'm unimpressed by Facebook. I'm not overjoyed with LinkedIn. However, I am excited by the possibilities. Ideally, that could be done by open networks that share, rather than open networks that wall data off. In the meantime, with too many networks, too many people to keep up with, and not much value coming from any of them, I really don't see the added value in switching to Facebook.

Is it possible some people like Facebook better because they like all of the "friends" they get, versus the "connections" of LinkedIn?

Man. I didn't even get to how little value Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce are to me.

gregh  2007-06-24 16:17  Collective  Law_School  syndication  web_2.0   

A recent observation has led me to consider how I think I would put together a law school website. I've discussed some related ideas in the past. At that point, my obvious consumer was the law student. There is, of course, a broader audience for the site as a whole. In addition to students, there are prospective students, professors, prospective professors, staff, and the outside world.

This time around, perhaps I will examine this issue from the perspective of key principles.

Embrace Commentary

Like most businesses, law schools tend to administer commentary very carefully when they can. This overlooks the reality that both good and bad comes from open dialog. Open up commentary and allow the community to share information about what's going on. If it's particularly sensitive, you can always limit it to within the community. However, beyond what's protected by privacy laws, there's little harm in allowing people to talk. In fact, that hardest part is getting people to talk.

How do we get people talking?

• The law school should take on the role of getting people talking. Whether they do so via discussion-oriented mailings lists, web discussion boards, blogs, or, preferably, an appropriate combination, the school has all of the contact information, and the school has the means to get the conversation started.
• Blogs. Yes, it's part of the first point, but it remains important. Get the registrar's office to blog about why it's taking time to post the next semester's schedule. Have the CSO blog about job postings, upcoming events, or just what's happening around the office. Get professors blogging, letting the community know about their research, their publications, their classes, etc. Get the students blogging. Yes, folks will see this as a risky venture, but let the students say what they're going to say. Are they not saying it if they're speaking only amongst themselves? Hardly.
• Polls and ratings. Get people to provide feedback about classes, professors, the sandwiches in the cafeteria, etc.

People who converse with one another form communities. Communities tend to be loyal. Schools need all the loyalty they can get.

Embrace Sharing

Why is it that the bulk of the search requests that bring people to my site relate to the USF School of Law information I've posted? Because I've posted it online, and the school hasn't. A school should make information like the student handbook, grade distributions, status of grade postings from professors, etc., all available online.

Students should be encouraged to share. Yes, law school is competitive; more precisely, the job market leaving law school is competitive. So what? That doesn't mean that the school can't foster sharing among the students. Establish official channels for students to share notes, outlines, recordings of lectures (where professors permit it, obviously), and commentary on courses. Is it fair to students that the only way to find out about a professor's class is to happen upon someone who previously took that professor's class?

Think Wiki. Imagine a student-oriented course catalog, which allowed the students to edit details of the course, add commentary, and comment on the styles of various professors. There's a lot of institutional knowledge in the faculty, who are often quite willing to share their opinions. There's a lot of institutional knowledge in the student body, but that knowledge rotates through every 3 or 4 years. Being unable to harness one or both is a horrible shame.

Embrace Syndication

Communication and sharing are going to get a lot of information flowing around. In addition, members of the community are reading and observing a lot, all of which can be tagged and noted by one of the many social networking systems. That data moves around through syndication, and the best way to get information flowing to the appropriate places is to get into it.

Set up aggregators, get feeds going on everything, and get people used to reading from sources that use those feeds. Make it easy for people to subscribe. More importantly, make it easy for people to generate content back into the syndicate.

I might like to know when a new job has been posted to the careers site. Why don't I have a feed for that? The whole community might like to know when an office might be closed, or when a new research article has been published, or when an important date is fast approaching. It's too easy to rely on email, but email clutters everything up, because it sends out a lot of information a lot of people don't care about.

For instance, most staff member probably wouldn't care for a notification when grades for a class have been posted. In fact, it may well be that only students in that class care. Why not give me a place to subscribe to notices about that class? I'll know if the professor's out, I'll know what the reading assignment is, and I'll know when the grades have been posted.

All of this is just picking at the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of depth in this, a lot more than I've got the time to write up.