Stephen Kennedy's musings on the Social Web

Why Twitter Lists are good for People Search

This week I was reading a great Mashable article by Liz Pullen @nwjerseyliz. The article was an FAQ on the new Twitter Lists feature. Twitter lists are essentially an easy way to group or categorise your followers – in effect enabling you to have multiple Twitter streams. Liz identified 3 potential applications of Twitter Lists:

1. Lists as a way of organising your followers – enables you to follow groups of people more easily. At the moment, I have lists on Socialmedia, Tech, Photographers and Microsoft. A quick glance at each list and I can see what is going on in that particular group of Twitter users. Very handy. Indeed Twitter clients like Seesmic and Brizzly already consume these lists – and Tweetdeck is not far behind.  (Having seen the exchange between @scobleizer and Tweetdeck founder @iaindodsworth this week). So the concept of the Twitter sub-stream is with us to stay.

2. Lists as a form of recommendation – if you get listed by someone then that is a vote of confidence in you and the content you peddle – sorry, I meant Tweet. :-)

3. Lists as a way of measuring influence – the more lists you are on, contribute to your overall clout in the Twittersphere. It’s no longer just about number of followers (indeed if it ever was).

These are all excellent uses of the List feature – however, there is also another powerful application of them.

Up until now, the way people on Twitter are categorised are by the information provided in their bio. Bios generally tend to be short, and contain keywords – which help with people searches. However, in some cases a bio can contain no information or indeed someone’s bio could be obscure or humorous, and so doesn’t necessarily outline what the person tweets about.

The introduction of Twitter Lists then is a clever way of tagging Twitter users – clever because it doesn’t rely on the individual necessarily to do it* – as the Twitter community when creating lists, are effectively generating meaningful tags on people.

* Of course by a user creating lists themselves they are providing more meta-data about themselves. Just look at my lists again. Socialmedia, Tech, Photographers and Microsoft – tells people what my areas of interest are.

All of a sudden the People Search capabilities of Twitter have grown exponentially. Not only is there more meaningful keywords on Twitter users now – the number of lists a Twitter user is on, is an indicator of influence – or effectively people rank. People searches on Twitter can return more relevant people search results with this additional keyword data – and the additional data on rank.

Twitter Lists will proliferate, because firstly, it is in our nature to simplify and group the people we follow, and secondly the reputation element is enough of a carrot for people to create lists. The carrot being the possibility of a reciprocated addition to a List – or indeed the opportunity to gaining potentially more followers.

Twitter lists can be both public and private. But, the social nature of Twitter means most lists will be public. Public Lists are indexable links by Search Engines. I’m sure engineers at Twitter, Bing, Google and Yahoo are relishing this new source of people meta-data for people searches – or if they’re not they should be.

10 Years Up for Windows Live Messenger

1999 was some year. It was the year….

• I returned to Australia after a 2 year stint working in the UK.
• I met my now Irish wife, Margaret.
• Big Brother UK was launched. (Okay, less auspicious that one)
• I joined ninemsn, a Microsoft Australia and PBL joint venture - and so embarked on my Microsoft career. My first role was as Program Manager for their online community services. So, I’m 10 years in online.
• The Dot.Com Boom was upon us.
• Microsoft released it’s first online Instant Messaging service. Windows Live Messenger v1 – or MSN Messenger as it was known at the time – or ninemsn Messenger as it was known Down Under.

I remember the launch of Messenger V1 vividly.  A former ninemsn colleague and I tested the product before it’s release into Australia. So, with the 10th anniversary of Windows Live Messenger, it’s made me think “wow” – what a great testament to the value of this service. There has been so much technological innovation over the past 10 years, it feels like a blur. There are technologies we were using 10 years ago, which have since become obsolete, and there are new technologies we have embraced. So, for Messenger still to be here today, let alone have it’s worldwide 330 million user base, it’s an amazing feat. Well, the amazement really needs to be credited to Microsoft engineers, who have constantly been innovating the service, since it’s 1999 debut. In my current role, my team gets to release the international versions of Windows Live Messenger – just one of the many indispensible software and services available within the Windows Live suite. Having a remote team, as is the case for most people at Microsoft – from Sao Paulo to Moscow to Dublin to Seattle - Messenger has been the ultimate and fun collaboration tool. Of course, personally, it helps me connect worldwide with my geographically challenged family too – from Tasmania to London. :-) You can read about all the UK Messenger 10th birthday celebrations here: http://www.messengerbirthday.co.uk  And of course you can download it and the rest of Windows Live Essentials here http://download.live.com/ Here’s to the next 10 years of Messenger and Windows Live innovation then…..

The Social Grail

This morning, a colleague of mine shared this article http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html 

The article notes that 90% of all Tweets are Tweeted by 10% of Tweeters. (Now, there’s a tongue twister you don’t say everyday). Most people it would appear are happy to consume information from Twitter, rather than provide content.

It makes sense really. Those people who have a story to tell, a business to market, a brand to build, a community to finesse or a celebrity profile to flaunt are certainly going to be the most prolific of content sharers and anecdotal tweeters on Twitter.

This statistic might seem like a chink in Twitter’s armour, but I don’t think it is. If most folk on Twitter are happy to consume then that is an incredibly valuable outcome, provided there are plenty of people contributing. And, they are. In some ways, the social behaviour for those publishers on Twitter, the ability to create a brand for yourself and to engage with community is a means-to-an-end. That end, is the Holy Grail, the Social Grail if you will - and that would be Real-Time search.

In my inaugural post on this blog, I attempted to explain what Twitter was, and I coined the one liner: “In short Twitter is your very own online community builder centred around you and your interests!”

This statement still holds, with the caveat that in light of the article above, not everyone wants to build a community, and not everyone has a story to tell. Most people are happy to listen to the story being told. They are happy to follow the Celebrity, the interesting Travel Blogger, the cool photographer, the President of the USA, or the tech geek – and get access to great content.

So I’d like to pivot on the question I asked earlier. The important question is not “What is Twitter”, but rather “What has Twitter become?”

”Twitter has become a user-generated search index of the most valuable real-time content on the internet”

If I think of earlier social-search services, like Yahoo Answers & Live Search QnA. These services attracted many people to provide content, but certainly not with the same take-up rate and as broad a publisher participation as that of Twitter. Providing content to a community can be time-consuming, so it’s important there is a hook there – something for the ego of the publisher. Something that compels them to contribute. In Yahoo Answers, it was a rating system. For Twitter, it’s the number of followers and opportunity for retweeted content. The promise of getting your message & brand out to the broadest audience possible has enabled Twitter to build the most compelling index of user-generated content to date.

Given Search is such a widely proven online business model, then it’s no wonder that there is so much discussion around how Twitter will monetise it’s Twitter Searches.

Yes, Twitter is a compelling social network. But, this is the means-to-the-end. And the end is the Social Grail, Real-time Search.

Twitter and Implications for Web Search

For some time, I’ve been wanting to blog about how the rise of Twitter could have implications for Search. So, when I saw a Tweet today from @socialmedia411 today on this very subject, this inspired me to write this post. The tweet actually referenced an article on Mashable http://mashable.com/2009/05/07/twitter-search-real/ and it touted Twitter’s aspirations to go beyond its current Search offering into the realms of “real” web search, competing with the established search hierarchy of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Is this realistic for Twitter?

Twitter Search currently provides a very powerful way for users to find current topics and discussions happening on the web, but it currently doesn’t allow users to search the entire web - yet. Today’s article on Mashable speaks to the fact that Tweets contain links and so Twitter has a great plethora of link data to potentially crawl. Added to this, is the fact that Twitter could very readily rank the relevance of links, by the reputation of the Twitter user. Reputation can be a function of the number of followers a person has, the number of people they are following, in addition to the number of times a person’s tweet (containing the link) has been retweeted. I actually think, this is the key differentiator that Twitter has over any other search engine.

Traditional search engines make use of “Page Rank” to rank the relevance of web-pages for searches. Page Rank as devised by the Google founder, Larry Page, ranks a page based on the ratio of number of incoming links to outgoing links on a given web page (Very simplified). In a way, this ratio measures the popularity of a page. If your web-site gets a lot of other sites linking to it then the page’s Rank is weighted highly. This has proven to be a good measure of page relevance for web-searches to date.

However, Twitter’s search ranking system could bring an improvement to the traditional Page Rank algorithm. Twitter brings the notion of social or Reputation Rank. By Twitterers posting links in Twitter they are giving a vote to that web-page. And if this person has a high number of followers, then there is a reputation rank you can attach to the ranking of that link. Whereas a Page Rank calculation can be relatively static, a Reputation Rank could be a more real-time metric of how important or relevant a web page is. I say Page Rank can be relatively static, because there exists a lot of static content on the internet for which referring links do not change. Twitter on the other hand, catches all the new and great content, and so potentially has the edge on a main-stream search engine for informing on “what’s relevant now”

But can Twitter really match the scale of searching the entire web, like a standard search engine does?

Currently, Twitter has a snapshot of one segment of the web. Twitter is growing certainly, but it’s a fair assessment that even with all the tweets containing links to date, this would not get anywhere near to all the pages on the web, which is what a  mainstream search engine does. The links made available to Twitter for ranking, are really only a subset of the web. So, Twitter Search in its current form could not provide a reputation rank for all pages on the web. Granted those pages which are available for reputation indexing by Twitter are going to be a great set of relevant content to be consumed by search.

If Twitter is to offer a full scale web search then it would appear then that Reputation Rank should be used in tandem with Page Rank. That way, they could cover the entire web. If a page has a Twitter reputation rank, then this could increase its relevance over a Page Rank alone. Offering a full web search service then presents challenges of scale and other technical complexities, which in my view may defocus them from what Twitter has become.

I guess the real question is, does Twitter want to offer a full-web search, or do they want to offer users a more targeted search service that lights up the web’s most current and popular content. I suspect the latter is more achievable for Twitter on their own, but the former could readily be achieved by a partnership with an established search player. Time will tell.

What do you think?

What is Twitter?

Stephen Fry, the UK comic genius, actor, writer, come Twitter extraordinaire was recently interviewed on The Jonathan Ross Show, a UK chat show, talking about his exploits on Twitter. Jonathan (or Wossy as he is known) described Twitter as a message board.  Stephen more articulately called it micro-blogging, but for want of being labelled a geek simply concluded that some people just didn’t get it. So, what is Twitter?

Quite a simple question really, but perhaps one that has not had a clear answer, especially for the average online user who is struggling to come to terms with the plethora of social networking sites out there at the moment. “Why do I need Twitter, when I can update my status in Facebook for instance?” Here is my stab at making it clear.

First, let’s go back about 15 years to see if we can find an answer. In 1995, I was working for BHP Information Technology, in Port Kembla, Australia, supporting the IT systems that ran BHP’s Steel Manufacturing systems. Real time systems demanded real time technology and I was working on VMS run VAX and Dec Alpha RISC machines cutting FORTRAN and PL/I code at the time. (Okay, you can label me a geek). Now, one of the interesting little apps that was built by the team of programmers there was something called “The Forum”. What was it? Well, it was a place to share short musings, thoughts, questions and ideas between your colleagues. The forum provided a historical conversation stream of the message exchanges between people – everything from rugby, AFL and cricket results, to grievances, to sledging (another Aussie sport I know) to programming questions, new ideas, to jokes were all shared in the forum. In essence it was exactly what Twitter is – well with one major difference. The Forum was a closed system connecting only immediate work colleagues – Twitter however is on the internet and open to all who want to engage in social conversation and sharing of ideas. So the concept behind Twitter is not a new one, and not surprising when you consider that being social and sharing thoughts, ideas, useful information, jokes and banter is as much a part of human nature as is having a beer and a yarn down the pub.

But how does Twitter sit with Facebook? One question I’ve heard loads of times is why do I need to update a Twitter status when I can do this in Facebook. (A status feature is even offered in other mainstream online services like Windows Live too). Well, in actual fact, Facebook, is similar in concept to the “Forum” in the sense it is a closed system. What do I mean by closed? Well, it is open to your immediate circle of friends and their friend of friends. You have to explicitly invite people to join or people request to be your friend. People you don’t know can’t readily see what you are doing in Facebook.  Facebook lends itself very nicely for you to broadcast what you are doing to the network of people you know, i.e the people you have given permission to access your profile. But, what about people you don’t know or friends you are yet to meet?

At this point some folk will grimace at the thought of reaching out to strangers on the web. That is the reserve of online daters, stalkers and all that lark. Well, actually there are great benefits to connecting to people you don’t know, especially connecting with people that share the same interests as you. Ask yourself this! Are there people out there, who you could learn from through the exchange of ideas or sharing information? How can you reach an audience of people to share your thoughts, ideas and questions? How can you build a reputation or a brand about yourself and your area of expertise? How can you drive traffic to your website, blog or online photos? More importantly how can you establish a readership base for your blog – a readership base that is personal – you know who these people are. This is where Twitter trumps the Facebook status feature.

Twitter is an open social messaging service that enables anyone to follow you and your Twitter stream. (A Twitter stream is simply the conversational history of all your messages). The word “open” is key. While Twitter does have privacy permissions, enabling this defeats the purpose of what Twitter is all about. To really exploit Twitter’s power then you really need to have your profile as public and you need to be prepared to really engage with people who are following you. The really cool thing about Twitter is that when people follow you, it’s like an implicit way of someone saying, “I’m interested in what you’ve got to say”. Well, for the most part anyway. Some people will follow you just to build up a big follower base. But if you follow a person and they follow you back then that kind of Twitter handshake is a real vote of confidence in you.

Facebook people are part of your network because they know you. Twitter people are part of your network because you have something interesting to say or share.

So how do I use Twitter? Well, for me, Twitter enables me to engage with people who work in web technology and my two other passions in life, photography and travel. Through Twitter I have connected with really interesting people; from photographers across the globe, to travel enthusiasts to digital media folk. All these people have something to say and have provided helpful information (and hopefully I have in return). This could not have been achieved through Facebook.

Twitter enables true open social conversation and collaboration between people of similar interests. It enables you to build a reputation and brand. It enables you to engage your audience. I say “Your audience”, because Twitter folk are following you and are interested in what you have to say. This is why we are seeing a huge up take in Twitter by bloggers, key technology influentials, celebrities and businesses – small and large alike. They now have an online outlet to engage with their audience – their Twitter followers. Most importantly for me, Twitter enables me to learn through others and that is fun.

Oh but I don’t want to have to maintain different online statuses on different services? Easy solution, simply add the Twitter application to your Facebook profile and whenever you Tweet (the name so given to posting a message in Twitter) it will update your Facebook status. Your latest Tweet and Twitter stream can also be syndicated to other web services like Blogger, Wordpress, Windows Live Space too etc.

In short Twitter is your very own online community builder centred around you and your interests!

That’s what I think! What about you? What do you think Twitter is? Well, you can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sjkennedy and we can chat about it.