The issue is that the major blogging platforms do not offer the means with which users can connect their sites in a distributed, decentralized, real-time social network. Thus, Twitter and Facebook continue to dominate the social networking space.

The vision of blogging needs to change. Right now it is an old-school vision, where a blog is a little island of content that is for most purposes unintegrated into the real-time social web.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

What needs to change? For starters, I believe that blogging and microblogging should not occur via distinct, separate platforms. I think these concepts need to be combined. I think that a blog needs to be re-envisioned as a multipurpose communications platform.

It would work like this. People could blab in 140-character (or so) snippets all day long if they wanted. But if they had more to say, they could easily do so without having to fracture the Stream by sending interested parties to their blog, to Facebook, or to another site.

In essence, you would summarize your basic idea on your own blog in 140 characters (maybe make it 200) and let each of your followers decide if they cared to see more. If they did, they could click a little icon to reveal your additional content—that is if you decided to post more content.

What would happen when a user wished to leave a comment? This would not be done via blogging business as usual. User contributions would not be via comments left on your blog, they would not be via the old-school capturing of others’ thoughts onto your database.

Instead, a user would “post” a comment on their blog and then their ideas, their rebuttals, their comments would appear in real time on your personal Stream on your blog. The user, however, would still control their content as it was posted via their site and they did not have to physically visit your site to make the comment. They could delete, edit, or augment their content whenever they wanted and any changes would be pushed to your Stream on your blog.

Think of it this way. On your blog, you should be able to broadcast any idea that you would like to engage others in discussing. If your followers wanted to say a few words about your idea, great, if they wanted to provide detailed rebuttals or contributions, they would be able to do that as well. But for each user involved in the conversation, their contribution would be made via their own communications channel, in other words via their own blog.

Why would this be of benefit? The important point is that each user’s Stream stays concisely organized in short tweet-like excerpts and that users do not have to leave their own Stream to continue more detailed conversations somewhere else. Users would not need to travel to Twitter to make pithy comments, then go to Facebook to check up on friends and view their photos, then go back to their own blog to check if anyone had posted a comment.

All Stream activity for each user would be managed in a single place, would be owned and controlled by that user, and would be located on that user’s personal communications channel.

It is Time for the Next Social Communications Evolution

Why should a user have to have a Twitter, Facebook, Quora, LinkedIN, or other social-networking account? Why can’t their blog be their personal communications channel to which others can follow in real time? Why can’t their blog have a real-time Stream dashboard that shows the updates of all those they are currently following? Why can’t their blog be their plug into the Social Web, instead of having to rely on multiple social-networking islands?

A WordPress or Drupal (or pick-your-favorite CMS) platform should offer real networking capabilities. Currently a WordPress network, as an example, is really a site that is controlled by a single entity—often existing on a single server. It is not a disparate connection of WordPress sites linked up across the InterWebs. It is just another closed data silo, not much different than Facebook.

I think the tools are already available to begin to make this vision come to fruition. With technologies like PubSubHubBub, some creative developers could take the popular blogging platforms and turn them into the next generation social network, into truly user-centric, user-controlled, globally linked, real-time distributed communications channels.

Blogging 1.0 Has Reached its Limits

Whereas I believe blogging is still a powerful, relevant technological paradigm in our socially-connected world (I am a consistent and regular user of a blog platform after all), I also believe that the current model of the blog is becoming less relevant as people migrate en mass to newer forms of communication. WordPress, Drupal, and other platforms, continue to do admirable jobs improving the tools and options available to their users. But Blogging 1.0 can only go so far. I’m afraid that it may have reached its limits.

The irony is that to announce this new article (or post) of mine, I will have to leave my blog, I will have to leave my communications channel, the channel that I truly control, and head on over to someone else’s channel and tweet about it. This is why blogging is losing some of its steam. This is why many of my colleagues who used to post frequently to their blogs have not done so in a noticeably long time. The attention has been drawn away from our personal communications channels. The eyeballs are focused elsewhere. The closed-siloed, mega-social nightclubs are winning the battle.

It is time to change that; it is time to once again leverage the power of the Web, regaining control and rebuilding the power of our personal communications channels. It is time for blogging to evolve once more, for the next stage of the blogging revolution to begin.

My Related Articles

1. How Many Streams Can You Kayak At Once?
2. The Web is Not (yet) Social
3. My original detailed article on the need for decentralized microblogging, the benefits, and some of the basic technological underpinnings that would be required, A Flock of Twitters: Decentralized Semantic Microblogging

Update

July 9, 2011: With the recent unveiling of Google+, a few prominent tech bloggers have decided to redirect their blogs to their G+ stream instead. This has created great debate. To learn more about this issue, read my article, Is Surrogate Blogging via Google Plus a Good Idea?

Outside Resources

1. A short, interesting post on using BuddyPress, a WordPress social-networking plugin suite, to build your own open source microblogging platform.
2. More than 2-years ago, Matt Mullenweg introduced the Prologue Theme, a theme used at Automattic to bring Twitter-like, microblogging functionality to WordPress. The theme has been revamped and is now called P2 (also see the theme’s official site). These three links introduce the possibility of using the P2 theme to create a super blog that could meld a regular blog with a microblog, offering a “pretty effective distributed version of Twitter.” To date, no one has done that.

Whereas Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and other ventures are social platforms, they are not the Web. These entities are only part of the Web—although it’s looking more and more “like” Facebook wants you to think that the Web equals Facebook.

The Web is currently not social. The social-media-driven Web is the metaspace analogy of meatspace nightclubs.

Each of these internally-focused social networks might have a globally-distributed data center, but all the activity occurs within the walls of their private social clubs. The activity in one social club is predominately isolated from the others. The activity does not freely spread throughout the Web. The conversations do not flow throughout the Web. They flow within each proprietary network with a very limited trickle of “conversation” allowed to the outside Web. Of course, this trickle is allowed out to encourage more people to come in to their closed clubs.

There is a monumental difference between social networking occurring on the Web and the Web being Social. Social creatures frequenting social networks does not make the Web inherently social. Why is this the case?

In my article, A Flock of Twitters: Decentralized Semantic Microblogging, I state:

With their closely-guarded data silos, social networks are not full participants in the Web, they are not participants in the interconnected data ecosystem. So, unlike an ecological web (think of a food web), the Web-based Internet is not as much of an intact web as it is a land of social network islands that punctuate an ocean of truly connected websites.

The Social Web, on the other hand, is a fully functioning and healthy ecosystem were all data are globally connected.

There is no disputing the fact that social is a big part of the current Web. Web 2.0 is the realm of social media, but it is also the web of exclusive, social clubs. Web 2.0 is about companies “doing” social media via cloistered social islands (called “networks”) more than it is about making the Web itself a social space.

The Web is currently not social. It’s the metaspace analogy of meatspace nightclubs. It’s filled with private social silos, which are antithetical to the Web’s vision. Each private social island is an internal network consisting of tightly-controlled infrastructure that offers its own vision of how humans should connect and interact.

Web-2.0-style closed social nightclubs are not the epitome of the Social Web. Their existence is a indication of how much further the Web has to go before it will become a Social space.

Metaville: a Non-social City of Social Stadiums

To better understand some of the points presented above, let’s look at the fictitious city of Metaville. In this analogy, the city of Metaville represents the current state of the not-social Web.

Metaville is a city with millions of residents. From the outside, it might look like a regular, American city. People regularly gather in a number of the city’s stadiums. In those stadiums, they socialize, sharing stories, pictures, minutiae of their daily lives.

The owners of each stadium are furiously growing the size of their stadium to make room for more people to join the conversations occurring inside of their stadium. Membership is often free but the two requirements are that the vast majority of your conversation must remain inside the walled colosseum and that you have little control over what the stadium owners do with your conversations.

There are a few upstart, niche arenas struggling to grab people’s attention, but even these smaller gathering spaces mimic the rules of the big stadiums.

Is the city of Metaville social? Well, there are pockets of social activity spread throughout the city but all of that activity occurs in stadiums with each stadium primarily isolated from the others.

Learn more about the differences between the Social Web Versus Social Networks

It is true that social activity occurs within Metaville. But when people leave one stadium and go to work, to home, or even to a different stadium (some of the residents of Metaville are members of more than one stadium), they leave their friends and conversations behind. Yes, sometimes they will check back in with their friends in a given stadium and sometimes they’ll get a ping from a friend within a stadium, but they don’t take their friends and conversations out of the stadiums. When they join a new stadium, they have to assemble a new set of friends, start a new conversation history.

Conversations do not happen in the streets of Metaville, or at cozy little cafes and diners. Conversations do not happen between a resident currently in his house with another resident currently in her condo. Practically all of the conversations occur within the exclusive domain of the stadiums. Sure, a resident at home can chat with one currently located in a private stadium, but the totality of that conversation is made possible by the propriety infrastructure that each stadium offers its members—and even then the conversation still takes place within the stadium’s system.

So the city of Metaville is actually not social. It is a place that has many stadiums within whose walls friends gather and conversations occur. But when a person leaves the stadium, their friends do not and cannot follow them. When a member leaves a stadium, a security guard inspects their belongings to make sure that very little is removed from the stadium.

In the realworld, in our meatspace, this is not the way life works. Our friends can come with us and even join us outside of the stadiums. Our friends can come over to our house, or we can chat with them in cafes, or on the streets, or in parks. We are not prevented from being social where ever we go.

Metaville is the model of the current Web. It has some very large pockets of social activity but the conversations and friendships do not readily travel outside of the stadiums.

This metaphor could be expanded further. Instead of Metaville being populated with a bunch of closed stadiums, it could be Metastate populated with closed cities whose citizens rarely leave to visit other cities, or Metacountry whose closed states have tight boarder-crossing restrictions, or Metaworld with closed countries tightly controlling and limiting the flow of information from its citizens into neighboring countries.

When you look at life in Metaville, you will see that the current Web is no more social than one stadium full of people, that the cafes and diners of the Web are ghost towns, that the stadiums of Metaville are more like dictatorial countries.

But All is Not Dark in the Streets of Metaville

There are a few glimmers of light shinning through the streets of Metaville, a few efforts that are counter to the Web-2.0-styled stadium construction. These efforts are focused on helping to create a truly Social Web, at allowing conversation to happen in the cafes and diners of Metaville, and allowing users to take their conversations and friends with them no matter to what unchartered locations of the city they may wish to travel.

Companies like Status.net, the startup Diaspora, and the research project SMOB all are diligently working at bringing federated services to the Web. There are also some of us that are working on innovating new, foundational technologies that will allow for distributed social interactions across the Web and offer truly user-centric identity control. For instance, instead of the limitations and non-user-centric aspect of OpenID, there is a group of us working at offering a truly user-centric identity protocol called WebID.

The Not-so Fine Line

You might think there’s a fine line between calling the Web a space filled with private social clubs and a Social space itself. You might think that it is not a big deal to call the current Web social. But for Social Web Architects, such as myself, the differences and distinctions are large, not small.

Social Web Architects are fighting for the rights of individuals to own and control their data, to have powerful yet easy to use identity and privacy tools, to freely and easily carry on conversations throughout the Web—not just within the walled sanctums of a few snooty nightclubs. We are building technologies that will link data and allow for the serendipitous discovery of new connections with other datasets and with fellow human beings—no matter where on the Web those connections and people may lay.

The Social Web is the metaspace actualization of a user-centric controlled, globally-connected conversation space across the Web. In essence, the mission of Social Web Architects is to bring the Web’s vision to fruition.

For a vision of the Web’s evolutionary epochs, and humanity’s race toward a Social Web, see my HyperWeb article.

Fortunately, the Web is constantly evolving. What it is experiencing now are the natural growing pains of an adolescent platform. Many of the current social-media nightclubs will eventually give way to a more open, user-centric ecosystem. I believe that they will have little choice as humanity inexorably races toward a truly Social Web.

Outside Resources

For two additional (one differing) perspectives on this issue, see Dave Winer’s, What I mean by “the open web” and and Stowe Boyd’s, Messiness At Scale.

My Related Articles About the Social Web

1. It’s Time for Blogging to Evolve
2. Flowing Your Identity Through the Social Web
3. My five-part series, Web 3.0: Powering Startups to Become Smartups
4. Apple’s Ping Versus the Social Web
5. How the Death of Net Neutrality Effects You
6. Goodbye Google Old Friend: It’s time for the Open-Source Internet
7. Thinking Outside the Privacy Box
8. Regaining Control of Privacy and Identity: It’s up to Each Individual

But there are two issues that I wish to address. First, only one of the six listed most influential topics on my Klout profile make sense. Second, without connecting my Facebook account, I’m significantly penalized.

These two issues have big ramifications for those of use trying to build the Social Web.

Luke, Use the Foci

About three or four months ago, I tweeted the same observation concerning the most influential topics list on my Klout profile. Someone from Klout promptly @replied to my tweet stating that with continued use, the algorithms would more accurately determine my most influential topics. But this list has remained unchanged.

I have not bothered to check this assertion, but I believe that sixty percent of my time tweeting and ninety percent of my time writing is spent on the topic of a user-centric, distributed Social Web. This is divided between generic categories of Internet freedoms (GPL, open source in general, net neutrality, data portability, privacy, identity, BuddyPress) and Web 3.0 (Semantic Web/Linked Data, smartups, WebID, FOAF, RDFa).

Yet my Klout profile does not reflect any of that. In fact, “Indiana” is one of my listed most influential topics when I would guess that fewer than 1% of my tweets have used that word.

Of course, I could be wrong. Klout can scour my backtweets a lot more efficiently and effectively than I can. It may be that fewer of my tweets are about those topics than I realize, that few people retweet any of my tweets that are about my primary foci. Perhaps I engage in conversational chatter on Twitter more often than I think.

Whatever the actual truth held within my Twitter data, I’d be very surprised if “Indiana, SEO, Design, Influence, Google” are my most popular topics. I rarely use any of those words in my Tweets or hashtags.

I do not spend my time within the dungeons of Mordor, I mean Facebook.

But it could quite possibly be that Klout is accurate, that those are my most influential topics. If so, that means that the vast majority of my time has been wasted, that I shouldn’t bother tweeting about #privacy, #identity, #opensource, #Web30, #BuddyPress, #SemanticWeb, #WebID…etcetera.

I’m of course being somewhat facetious. The reality is that I already know for which issues most people retweet and @mention me—and it is not the topics that Klout claims I’m most influential on. However, when the vast majority of my tweeting and blogging foci aren’t reflected in the self-proclaimed “Standard for Influence”, I have to wonder whether Klout’s algorithms need some tweaking, or whether I’ve got a clot in my Klout.

Interestingly, and on a side note, influence is one of my most influential topics! In my mind that evokes the image of a self-referential, infinite-looping, circular-referencing maelstrom.

An Audience with Sauron

Without connecting my Facebook profile to my Klout profile, I’m penalized forty percent—whatever that means, I don’t like the sound of it.

Although I do have a Facebook account, I do not use Facebook. I think I have four or so people whose friendship I’ve accepted and who are obviously waiting with baited breath to see what I’m going to say. To date, I have not made a single wall post. So, they will be waiting for a lot longer as I plan to never post any content in Facebook.

In fact, I think in 2010, I may have bothered to login to Facebook three times and that was only to checkout one or two aspects of its interface.

Why don’t I use Facebook? If you’ve been following my tweets and reading my articles posted to my site, you will already understand why. Facebook is antithetical to most of what I believe the Social Web is about. I’m professionally working on helping to bring the concept and infrastructure of the Social Web to fruition. Thus, I do not spend my time within the dungeons of Mordor, I mean Facebook.

Since I don’t use Facebook, some of you may ask why I use Twitter then, as it too is just another private data island. Simple. Although Twitter is a participant in the closed-silo wars, my posted content is accessible to anyone who wants to see it. In other words, they do not have to be logged in to access my Stream. With Facebook, you must not only have an account but also be logged in and be a friend of that person to see their Stream.

As I’m trying to promote the concepts of an open, distributed, user-centric Social Web, Twitter lets me get the message out to everyone—whether they follow me or not, whether they’re logged in or not, whether they have a Twitter account or not.

An Island of Misfit Toys

If Klout is to become the true measure, source, authority, standard for influence across the online world, then it needs to stop living exclusively within the social-networking private clubs. Why? Because influence occurs across the Web-based and mobile-based Internet. It isn’t restricted to closed social-media silos.

What about all of my online activity that occurs within my various blogs? Many people comment on my articles. What about the activity that occurs on forums, like the BuddyPress support forum where I’m a moderator (albeit a very inactive one lately)? What about on identica, or Diaspora, or the various niche BuddyPress sites that are beginning to pop up?

Conversations and influence flow beyond closed private data islands. Much activity occurs across the decentralized Web. In fact, for those of us fighting for the Social Web, we envision a day when most of the social activity will occur across a user-centric, decentralized, distributed architecture. The exclusive walled gardens of the Web will become a relic of the bygone, archaic Web-2.0 days.

Right now, a Klout score may best be summarized as a subjective measure of influence within a few select groups of data clubs. If a Klout score is to become the “standard measure of online influence” as proclaimed on their Twitter profile, then a user’s influence across the entire Social Web must be objectively calculated.

Shouldn’t my activity across the entire Internet be factored into my influence? Shouldn’t the activity of all of those who spend their time outside the Islands of Misfit Toys count for something? Of course.

Does this really matter? Yes.

As companies are beginning to use Klout scores to assess a potential candidate’s job application, to determine if a particular person has sufficient influence to be awarded a consulting contract, and for other inevitably unknown purposes, the accuracy and integrity of that score becomes paramount to all the Web’s citizens. Presently, too much importance is being placed on a Klout store, most likely to the unfair detriment of some.

As some company is going to win the influence-measurement war, if you care about your clout and how it is determined on Klout, provide them with feedback and the ways in which you think they could improve their service.

Update

December 22, 2010: Less than 12 hours after posting this article, my Klout Most Influential Topics list has changed since the first time I can remember. It’s still very inaccurate, but notice that the topic “Google” has been replaced with “Open Source”. A coincidence? I sure hope so. Otherwise I’m going to have to keep writing articles to get this all straightened out.

December 22, 2010 (Update 2): Joe Fernandez, the Cofounder and CEO of Klout, contacted me via Twitter this afternoon asking if I’d like to talk. We chatted for awhile about the issues I brought up in this article and some of the directions in which Klout will be heading in the near future. After talking with Joe–a very nice guy by the way–it is clear to me that they are thinking about the larger ramifications of their service and what it truly means to be the standard measure of online influence. Their task is very challenging indeed. It’s nice to know that Joe cares enough about their users to take the time to listen to feedback and communicate their dedication to continually evolving and improving their platform.

Related Outside Articles

The Read Write Web article that has brought some visitors to the post and triggered a small discussion, 4 Ways Klout Can Evolve.

An interesting though piece by Justin Goldsborough, Why Klout scares me; Hint: It’s not the tool itself

Music is a big aspect of social sharing. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and even Twitter have launched the careers of fledgling artists, have helped promote established artists, and have been important platforms from which fans can interact with each other and sometimes even their favorite artists. Music and entertainment are one of the major activity hubs in these social spaces.

Now with Ping, Apple has shifted the calculus. Ping will allow all iTunes’ users, whether on a PC or Apple device, to follow other users, to meet new people, and make new friends. Users can see what their followers (friends) are listening to and have recently purchased. They can post comments and participate in any part of the realtime activity stream. They can discover new music and find out when their favorite artists are coming to a town and which of their friends plan to attend the show. They can even purchase tickets to the show all from iTunes.

One of the most compelling features of Ping, however, is that artists will have their own page that allows them to keep fans up to date and to interact with them. I believe that unlike Facebook and twitter, the vast majority of artists will choose to actively participate in Ping as they derive a noticeable percentage of their revenue from iTunes. This one feature alone could make Ping a phenomenal success.

Does this mean Facebook and Twitter are in trouble?

Of course Ping has just launched. So should Facebook and Twitter be concerned? With a userbase of 160-million music and entertainment lovers, iTunes offers Ping an instant userbase that is almost one third the size of Facebook’s user network. That is a substantial foundation from which to launch a new social networking destination.

But a massive userbase does not equal an instant community. A community can only germinate if Ping allows its users the freedom to control the experience, and the tools to interact in a truly social way. If managed properly, Ping could very well encourage a large number of music fans to move their discussions about music away from Facebook, Twitter, and more music-centric networks like last.fm. After all, iTunes is a platform that has always been dedicated to music; iTunes is a platform they already know and love to use—at least for purchasing music.

By fracturing their users’ attention, Apple is seeking to chip away at Facebook’s and Twitter’s success. Jobs even alluded to Facebook’s crummy privacy controls, saying that Ping has easy to use, easy to understand privacy controls. The impact may be small at first, but as Ping builds momentum and the word gets out–via Facebook and Twitter of course–the shift could be seismic. Facebook and Twitter will survive as they are not just about music, but they will not be unaffected. Why is this?

Whereas music is the first target for Ping, it would not be unrealistic to see Ping expand to encompass all of iTune’s digital content genres—movies, TV, books, apps, classroom lectures, etcetera. Ping could become the de facto social network for all media discussion.

What impact will this have on Facebook’s and Twitter’s business model? It could be huge. Since iTunes is already a widely-successful platform for selling and distributing digital media, the addition of a social-networking layer could divert tens of millions of dollars away from those networks. Ping’s success will depend upon whether Apple understands social sharing, whether it can envision a way for its users to have more control over the experience—something Apple rarely grants on its platforms.

But Ping has bigger implications for the Social Web. That is the topic of my next article.

Speak Out

What impact do you think Ping will have on Facebook, Twitter, and social media in general?

I went looking for a solution. The result, 15 lines of PHP you can use to accomplish the goal. No need to mess with plugins. Instead, you pull your tweets from your own Twitter RSS feed using the simpler Twitter Search API, not the Twitter REST API.

Here’s the article I found and used as the basis for my own solution. I’ve made a few modifications to the parsing function that I think provides a better, more flexible outcome. One change is that I add the rel=“nollow” attribute to each “a” tag. Since the content you are displaying (in your tweet) is your own, Why would you want the search engines sending some of your hard-fought link juice back to Twitter?

The second change I made was to parse the array an additional time so as to separate out the body of the tweet from the metadata. I just want to display my tweet. That’s all. But, the new array can be used as you see fit.

<div id="my_tweets">
	<?php
		// Your twitter username; replace below; keep username in quotes
		$username = "blahblah";

		// Content you want to include before your tweet; I'm using this for a quick title
		$prefix = "<h2>My Latest Tweet</h2>";

		// Content you want to include after your tweet
		/*$suffix = "<br /><br />You should follow me on Twitter";*/

		$latest_tweet = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from:" . $username . "&rpp=1";

		function parse_feed( $latest_tweet ) {
		    $tweet_array = explode( "<content type=\"html\">", $latest_tweet );
		    $tweet_array2 = explode( "</content>", $tweet_array[1] );

			$tweet = $tweet_array2[0];

			//No need for search engines to follow twitter links or tags; add no follow
			$tweet = str_replace( "&lt;a ", "&lt;a rel=\"nofollow\" ", $tweet );
		    $tweet = str_replace( "&lt;", "<", $tweet );
		    $tweet = str_replace( "&gt;", ">", $tweet );

		    //some extra tweet metadata you can use if you want
		    $tweet_extra = $tweet_array2[1];

		    return array ( $tweet, $tweet_extra );
		}		

		list ( $tweet, $tweet_extra ) = parse_feed( file_get_contents( $latest_tweet ) );

		echo stripslashes( $prefix ) . html_entity_decode( $tweet );

		// If you want to include more content after the tweet, use this instead
		/*echo stripslashes( $prefix ) . $tweet . stripslashes( $suffix );*/
	?>
</div>

I simply placed this code in a division within my index.php file. You can place the code wherever you like—in a sidebar, the footer, a separate page, etcetera. Of course, you could also add it to your functions.php file and simply call your custom twitter-feed function in your template. It’s your choice.

Also, I imagine this simple code could be adapted for use in BuddyPress as well.

To see how it looks on my site, just go to my homepage.

By the way, it may come as little surprise to you, but I am not a design genius nor even a moderately-skilled designer. I choose to spend my WordPress time either coding or actually creating content for my site. So, you are on your own as far as positioning the output. But, I hear that you can use CSS to do that.

Have fun!

Why do I say this? It’s simple. For those of us that are hundreds or thousands of miles away–which could be many of your followers–tweeting your current location provides zero value. In fact, it is a (big) waste of your followers’ time.

In a recent article, I stated this:

…for absolutely every person I currently follow on Twitter, I don’t care who just booted whom out as the mayor of whateverville. I don’t want that drivel polluting my pleasant paddle down my River. It adds zero value to my day and provides little if any entertainment.

I also rarely need to know (nor care to know) whenever someone has just stopped by a Starbucks, or is eating at this and such restaurant 1000 miles away, or is on a treadmill listening to Kid Rock on their fancy Zune.

I am not against the occasional fun, non-work-related tweet. It is one of the things that makes a social network social. But, at some point, my Twitter stream started to resemble a scrolling marquee of useless drivel and it became clear that the location-based tweets were the big offenders.

The Foursquare, Gowalla, and other location-based auto-tweets are nothing more in my opinion than a form of advertising. They do not fall into the idle chatter that occurs between friends and colleagues. They are not the type of content that makes sense plastering all over your various social networks.

To Follow or Not to Follow

One of the reasons I am not following more people on Twitter at this time is that when I check out many people with whom I do actually have a genuine interest in following, I discover that their Twitter stream is too cluttered with location-based tweets. When I consider how many location-based tweets will be added to my Twitter stream, I quickly decide to pass them by.

Here’s why.

If I follow 150 additional people each who easily auto tweets on average seven Foursquare or Gowalla check ins each day, that is a total of 1050 location-based tweets added to my stream each day. Since I scan my tweet stream at about 1.5 seconds per tweet, only stopping on those that appear to have worthwhile content, that means I will waste more than 26 minutes each day looking at worthless location-based tweets. In a week that adds up to more than 3 hours* wasted!

I don’t know about you, but that is A LOT of time. I sure could use that time more productively. And I do by simply not following more people. It’s too bad because I really would like to follow more tech-centric people.

Now, I am not against location-based services in general, nor the fun-natured gaming aspect of Foursquare. I think Gowalla, Foursquare, and others have created interesting services that provide value when appropriately used.

I’m arguing that it is best for users to keep their location-based check ins isolated within the location-based services they are using. If I want to find out where you are, to discover if anyone in my network is nearby, I’ll simply fire up my Foursquare or Gowalla app on my smartphone. So please turn off the auto updates to your various networks. They truly provide me with little value and zero useful content.

#Nosquare and #Nowalla

I think it is time for those of us that are fed up with having our Streams polluted with location-based check ins to stand up and make a point. Tweet to your network that you’d appreciate the cessation of your followees auto-tweeting their Gowalla, Foursqaure, and other location-based check ins. Post to your Wall that you’re sick and tired of having to wade through updates that provide little value to your day.

In fact, I’m considering unfollowing those whom I deem abuse my time by virtue of auto posting their location-based check ins to Twitter. I’m not going to share what I consider an abuse of my time, but you can get some hint of my criteria above.

Finally, start using these hashtags to communicate that you’re fed up with this nonsense: #Nosquare and #Nowalla.

* ((( 150 people x 7 useless tweets each x 1.5 seconds per tweet ) / 60 seconds per minute ) x 7 days ) / 60 minutes per hour = 3.0625 hours per week. To be fair, it is more than likely that most of those 150 people would not pollute my Twitter stream with that many location-based auto tweets every single week. Some weeks (maybe many weeks), it might be a lot less, some weeks more. But, you get the idea.

UPDATE March 18, 2010:

I found an interesting post that argues for the need for people to manage their own flow: Manage Your Social Network Flow…NOW!

Chris Messina made a Google Buzz post today where he announced an experiment to “remove Twitter and Flickr as connected sites in Buzz” to see how that is received.

…as the number of streams continue to increase and as the flow rate of each stream picks up, people will grow tired of having to subscribe to, having to join yet-another-stream phenomenon (YASP). Does the Web truly need additional stream providers each with their own data silos? Is there a user-centric solution to this rapidly growing, overflowing-stream issue that puts YASP to rest once and for all?

This article answers these two questions in great detail but the succinct preview version is as follows:

1. The Web does not need additional stream providers each who exert significant control over a vast number of individuals, each who require their users to have a separate new user account (a new digital identity)
2. The Web does not need additional closed data islands (data silos)
3. The Web does need a means with which each individual can create, maintain, and control their own identity, efficiently and effectively manage stream conversations, and therefore not be beholden to a few, large data-silo stream providers
4. The only way to accomplish point three is for the emergence of a distributed, decentralized, Open Source microblogging ecosystem that leverages the power of the Semantic Web

Table of Contents

Since some of the following may be too generic for more advanced readers, I’m providing this Table of Contents to help readers navigate to those parts with which they may have the most interest. The first four sections are a general review of the problem and solution. The rest of the article provides my detailed thoughts on this issue.

• A Web of Damned Streams
• A Flock of Twitters
• Why Decentralized?
• Why Semantic?
• Evolving Nova’s Stream Concept
• A Drop of An Idea
• Channeling Your Stream, Seining Your River
• The MicroBlogOcean
• Social Web Versus Social Network
• Anatomy of a Drop
• Some Technical Thoughts
• Some Early Players in This Space
• Conclusion

Although you should feel free to skip ahead, doing so might result in missing a crucial connection.

A Drop of An Idea

In keeping with the metaphor of a flowing body of water, I envisioned a water-cycle like flow from a single idea to an ocean of open discussion. Therefore, I call my model of a decentralized microblogging ecosystem the Meta-Hydrological Model.

With that concept in mind, you can think of a single idea posted by a user as a drop. Just as a user of Twitter adds to a conversation by posting a tweet, and a user of FriendFeed or Facebook makes what is generically called a micropost, a user in this new conversation ecosystem posts a drop. So a drop is equal to a tweet is equal to a micropost.

Here is a simplified, graphical representation of the Meta-Hydrological Model (also called the Meta-Flow for short).

Click to see full size

The aggregation of all of a given user’s Drops is that user’s Stream. Viewed in this way, if a Stream is what a single user produces, then the River is the confluence of disparate users’ Streams. I’ll describe this in more detail later.

Within each user’s Stream, ideas might coalesce into specific topics. I call these Channels (Stream Channels). Channels are Drops that are grouped under a specific topic to form substream categories.

The final part of the Meta-Hydrological Model is what I call the MicroBlogOcean (MBO). The MBO is the sum total of all microblogging activity in the global conversation ecosystem. It is all the conversations, represented by all the Rivers.

Below is a natural, visual representation of this model as seen from space.

Satellite image of the Amazon River delta from NASA's Landsat GeoCover Program

The MicroBlogOcean

As mentioned above, the totality of all microblogging activity is called the MicroBlogOcean (MBO). In this global conversation ecosystem, Drops are constantly being pushed to and pulled from the MBO cloud.

To provide and manage the myriad MBO services, a new type of SaaS model needs to be created. I call this software-based service a Confluence Hub. A confluence is the point where two or more bodies of water meet. Therefore, a Confluence Hub is the place where Drops sent by various users meet up, are processed, and wait for further action.

Notice User has only subscribed to User 3's Channel. Click for full size

This is how the process works. A user’s client sends a Drop to the closest Confluence Hub where an amalgamator combines them for transmittal to all that user’s subscribers. The Drops are organized by Channels, if any, and cached. If a Confluence Hub (CH) is down, then the Drop is automatically rerouted to the next closest hub.

An aggregate is a collection of items that are gathered together from different sources. The role of the client-side aggregator then, is to poll, to query the primary Confluence Hub Server (CHS) of each user Stream to which a user is subscribed, pulling the resultant dataset into their River on a predefined, regular interval.

Only the content the User wants gets through. Click for full size

So, whereas a user’s Drop is pushed to the closest, active Confluence Hub, the Drops of each user that they follow are pulled into their River from the MBO cloud.

Using our hydrological-based metaphor, Drops are created and stored on each owners’ site. This means any Drops that are de facto responses to someone else’s Drop are contained within disparate sites across the Web. Whereas the user’s client would cache all incoming Drops (in their River) and the application might even have an option to save a discussion to disk, the original Drop remains located in the owner’s Stream.

The Meta-Flow concept is not a perfect analogy to a natural hydrological flow. Whereas Drops do travel to Confluence Hubs, copies of those Drops are pulled into each subscribing-user’s client to form their unique River. The MicroBlogOcean therefore contains multiple references to the same original Drop and the Rivers actually flow out of the MBO rather than into it.

Although I personally believe this hydrological-based metaphor does a sufficient job of breaking down and describing the component parts of the overall decentralized microblogging ecosystem, for purposes of user understandability, the terms may need to be replaced with a more generic, globally-recognized nomenclature. Although, what is more globally recognizable than the water cycle?

Social Web Versus Social Network

When talking about the Semantic Web, it’s important to differentiate between social networks and the Social Web. These terms are not synonyms. In fact, the Social Web is not even the sum of all social networks.

Why is this the case?

Today’s social networks are nothing more than the famous walled gardens of the Web—as was previously discussed.

With their closely-guarded data silos, social networks are not full participants in the Web, they are not participants in the interconnected data ecosystem. So, unlike an ecological web (think of a food web), the Web-based Internet is not as much of an intact web as it is a land of social network islands that punctuate an ocean of truly connected websites.

The Social Web, on the other hand, is a fully functioning and healthy ecosystem were all data are globally connected. In my view, the only way to bring to fruition the promise of the Social Web is to embrace the Semantic Web.

The term Social Semantic Web is often used to differentiate between the current social-network based Web and a truly connected Web of Data. Since I believe that the Social Web requires the Semantic Web, I view the two terms as synonyms.

What might a truly connected Social Web look like?

I use this image as a graphical representation of what an open, fully linked, global Social Web would look like (see the caption for the actual description of the image). Imagine that each end point is a user creating their Drops that freely flow down their Stream, into their River, finally ending up in the MBO cloud. Each node, the point were multiple Streams converge, would be a Confluence Hub Server.

This image is a tracing of all the Internet traffic circa late 2006. It is licensed under a Creative Commons License (by-nc-sa/1.0) and created by http://opte.org/

Where would the big social networks appear on this graph?

Twitter would be a single point in this image with a few tenuous tendrils extending out representing the limited access that Twitter allows to their data silos via their proprietary APIs. There would be no lines representing conversations between users as the totality of conversation all occurs within the walled-off Twitter space.

The same holds true for Facebook, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, and many of the other social networks. The lines connecting these services would be nothing more than gossamer strands representing the brute-force pushing of limited duplicate content between these data silos.

You might be thinking that conversations regularly occur between users of these platforms. For instance, I can choose to show my latest tweets on Facebook or LinkedIn, I can choose to display my latest Facebook or LinkedIn status updates on Twitter, and so forth. But these are not conversations. They are just snapshots of conversation that are occurring within other data silos.

Anatomy of a Drop

A Drop contains more than just the visible content, more than just the human-readable layer. A Drop is a packet composed of several layers, each providing additional metadata that makes the management and discovery of data more feasible.

Click to see full size

Content Layer: that part of the Drop that is actually intended to be seen by humans; also referred to as the droplet

Metadata Condensate: when the Drop is being assembled, different metadata layers are aggregated together, which are then deposited into a super-metadata layer. This layer encodes all the supporting data that makes extensibility, management, delivery, and discovery of the user’s Drop possible.

The Metadata Condensate layer is composed of five sub layers:

Rich-media Layer: pointers to associated audio, video, or picture files

Semantic Layer: the machine-readable, semantically-marked up metadata

Rights Layer: the granted usage rights for the Drop

Using the proposed Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data as a model, Drops, Channels, and even entire Streams could be marked with usage rights

Security Layer: WebID to tag Drop to specific user; whether Drop is public, private

Stream Management Layer: unique Drop ID; time stamp; GIS metadata (location-based tagging for mobile microblogging); Channel tag for grouping Drop content (allows filtering by other users); whether Drop is to be broadcast to all, a specific user group, or to one specific user; Drop broadcast delay; Drop time decay (a finite lifespan for Drop if desired); client metadata (whether Drop was sent via Web client, desktop client, via a CHS service, etc.)

Semantifying the Drop addressees several key issues that hinder current microblogging platforms. First, by providing a mechanism where machine-readable metadata can be effectively and efficiently associated with Drops, this unlocks each micro data silo, opening it up to outside services to access via query. Second, organizing, grouping, classifying Drops into Channels allows for meaningful filtering of users content. Third, by using a FOAF+SSL backed WebID, privacy and identity management across the MBO becomes possible.

Whereas users can still add tags (via micro and nanoformats) when composing each Drop–and maybe even some basic html markup, like the “a” link tag–the real benefit accrues from the automatic encoding of semantic metadata into the Drop.

Additional ontological encoding could occur on each Drop via a Semantic Interface Options box on the Drop composition panel.

It’s important to note that although each individual user will have the right to determine how much of their microblogging content is shareable across the Web and even with whom it can be shared, in concept, if a user is wishing to participate in the global microblogging community, it is assumed that they will wish others to see what they have to say.

This is just an initial concept of the structure of a Drop. It may be that one or more of the Metadata Condensate layers (or parts of a given layer) should be included under the Semantic Layer.

Since I’m basically working through Nova’s article archive in reverse chronological order, it may very well be that in the future, I’ll scribe thoughts on some of his even older ruminations. So, if that occurs, please pardon this information time dilation.

The Stream

I read Nova’s article, Welcome to the Stream – Next Phase of the Web, with great interest. With all the buzz about Google Buzz over the past eight days or so, this article made me think about the yet-another-stream phenomenon (YASP). *1

What is YASP? It is that somewhat exciting but ultimately frustrating realization that there is yet another social networking, microblogging, curated, real-time, threaded-conversation service that you might have to join so that you don’t get left behind.

The idea of user streams is interesting. As I read Nova’s article, the imagery of a kayaker navigating down world-class rapids came to mind.

There is a qualitative difference in streams. Some streams may drizzle like a gentle shower, while others furiously flow like class-5 rapids.

Unfortunately, a higher flow rate does not necessarily equal higher quality. In my experience, there is a noticeable decrease in the signal versus noise ratio as the flow of each stream increases. This is why it is crucial to follow only those people with whom you are genuinely interested in hearing their thoughts. Simply following someone (or following them back) to build your follower numbers is a sure-fired way to increase the noise in your stream.

High Flow Is Not Always Healthy Flow

As users begin to tap into more streams, those streams usually start flowing faster. As Nova states, we need to create filters, or gates, that can discriminately select the signal from the noise, that can help to slow the flood of information.

Look at Twitter. As you follow more and more people, the rate of flow increases. In turn, you must work harder to fish the nutritious data from the swollen data stream. Eventually, the stream can become too treacherous to navigate. So, you either drop a number of people, thereby reducing the flow and hopefully increasing the signal to noise ratio, or you portage on over to another stream with more gently moving data.

This is exactly what some people did last year when they tried an experiment, switching from primarily using Twitter to only using FriendFeed. Of course, that stream quickly became a fast moving torrent as well. So, what’s next? Will these users jump ship once again, looking for the next, best, newest, and maybe calmer body of data to sail?

Well, we already have a new test underway with the introduction of Google Buzz. Many Twitterers have Gmail accounts and many of them activated their new Buzz stream. However, the early consensus from Buzz users is that Buzz is a Twitter-FriendFeed hybrid.

I tried using Buzz for several days but found that it was too much information being shared by too few people. It was a lot of noise and not enough signal.

Of course, my impression could also be the inevitable result of information overload. When you have too many concurrent streams to navigate–Twitter, Facebook, Skype, iChat, an IRC channel or two, email, and Buzz–it becomes a little too much to take in. So, what’s the answer?

Taking a Break From and Portaging Your Streams

The key to navigating successfully and safely in any fast moving, constantly changing environment is to get out of the flow every so often to rest and reassess the situation. Let the flow pass you by and take a break. The stream will continue to flow without you.

Even the best world-class paddlers have to get out of the rapids periodically and take a break. When they return to the stream, they concentrate only on what is ahead and never worry about what has already passed them by.

Sometimes, though, you have to take your kayak out of the water and portage to another stream. That’s an important lesson to us all. You cannot successfully navigate every stream at the same time. Pick a few streams to monitor at a time. Then portage on over to another stream or two for awhile, taking a break from the others.

What does this mean for Google Buzz’s future? What does this mean for other microblogging service providers that inevitably will come to the party, trying to get you to put another kayak into their stream?

Well, as the number of streams continue to increase and as the flow rate of each stream picks up, people will grow tired of having to subscribe to, having to join yet-another-stream phenomenon (YASP). Does the Web truly need additional stream providers each with their own data silos? Is there a user-centric solution to this rapidly growing, overflowing-stream issue that puts YASP to rest once and for all?

There is, which is the subject of my next post—A Flock of Twitters: Decentralized Semantic Microblogging.

NOTE

1. YASP: Yes, I just made this phrase and acronym up. Feel free to spread it around the Web, turning it into yet-another-disgusting buzzword (YADB).

It means that you must disclose any financial relationship that you have with a product, service, company, or industry that you tweet about.

To make disclosure easy on Twitter, I’m proposing a set of Twitter-disclosure slashtags.

First My Disclaimer

I disclaim any liability. I am not an authority on this matter. I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice. I am only proposing a possible approach in this article. It is up to each individual or entity to understand fully and to follow properly the FTC’s new disclosure guidelines. You should review the new FTC guidelines and this proposal with your attorney.

Now, the Background Stuff

The newly-revised FTC guideline, “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” is dry and not really a great read. It applies to all forms of advertising, not just online media.

In a nutshell, the FTC’s new guidelines require disclosure when you mention in any online medium:

• any product or service you’ve received as a free gift which you review / test / endorse
• any product or service you’ve been paid to review / test / endorse
• any company for which you work
• any industry in which you work

All of these constitute some sort and degree of financial relationship which you must clearly disclose on any blog, tweet, forum post, or any other social media format that exists.

Hey, I don’t make the rules. You can choose not to follow them at your own peril—up to $11,000 in fines for each infraction.

Examples, Please!

Here are two examples.

Yesterday, Google held a big media event to unveil officially their Nexus One phone. Soon after the event, Robert Scoble tweeted this:

.@gruber everyone at the Google Android event was given a choice. Either take a loaner phone for 30 days or take a free phone.

He then followed that with this tweet:

.@gruber I took a loaner phone because I’m not paying $300+ to cancel my Verizon account that I just bought just to switch to a nicer phone.

Anyone who attended that event and received a free Nexus One is required to disclose that fact if they make any type of comment about that product in any online medium. It does not matter if they were given a “loaner phone” for 30 days. The point is that they were given a product from a company for free. Even if it is for a limited time, there is an implicit assumption that they’ll derive some benefit and their views may be influenced by the gift.

Like Robert, a number of people openly tweeted that they were given the Nexus One at the event. I assume his disclosure should be sufficient in meeting the new guidelines.

Here is another example. Last week, Twitter was aflutter with reports that Kim Kardashian may be getting paid as much as $10,000 per tweet for product endorsements. I missed that because I do not follow her or bother paying attention to entertainment gossip. She has disputed this claim, so take the claim for whatever its worth.

The point is that if she gets paid any amount or is simply given free product or service, then she needs to disclose that fact in her tweets whenever she mentions the product or service.

Now, as tweet real estate is limited, I do not think that every time a person tweets about the company or industry in which they work, that they have to necessarily mention this fact. Although I could be wrong.

I would think it matters how well a particular person is known by the community at large. For instance, if you are well known in the industry, if most people know where you work, you can probably skip disclosing that fact each time. Only use it for new announcements. However, if few people know you, then it is wise to use the appropriate disclosure slashtags when talking about your company or industry. But again, it is up to you to verify this with your attorney.

More Details

I’m sure that you’re wondering which rules specifically apply to your blogging and tweeting. The part of the FTC’s new guidelines that appear to me to be the most relevant to this discussion is Section 255.5—Disclosure of material connections (see Examples 7 and 8 under that section).

Also, these three links discuss the issue in more detail:

• Boston.com article on bloggers and product placement
• New FTC Guides: disclosure comes to the social media masses
• What do the “FTC Guides re: the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” mean for Social Media Marketers?

Disclosing in a Tweet-tight space

For purposes of our discussion, we will use the two example-disclosure statements suggested in the body of the post of the second link:

I work for Acme Widgets

and also

I’m an Acme Widgets customer. Acme Widgets has paid for my travel to attend this conference and golf tournament.

The first sentence is 23 characters long. The second, more verbose sentence, is 112 characters long.

Obviously, this is unacceptable for Twitter usage. You can’t afford to waste most of your tweet’s space with a disclosure of that length. With character space at a premium on Twitter (140 maximum), the first example is 16 percent of allowable message length, the second is 80 percent.

There needs to be a better, universally-recognized way to minimize character count while communicating a disclosure.

Enter the Twitter-Disclosure Slashtag

This set of proposed Twitter-disclosure slashtags is designed to be clear and concise, using only six characters each. The “$” symbol in the slashtag indicates that you have some type of reciprocal, financial relationship with the company, organization, industry, or product about which you are tweeting.

1. /$empl –> I’m an employee of this company / organization; I work at the firm that manufactures this product; I’m in the industry being discussed
2. /$exec –> I’m an executive at this company / organization; I manage the firm that manufactures this product; I’m in the industry being discussed
3. /$paid –> This company pays me to review / test / endorse their products; the company that manufactures this product paid me to review / test / endorse it
4. /$prod –> This product was given to me to review / test

Examples Using the Proposed Twitter-Disclosure Slashtag

Here are three example tweets:

IMO Xbox is the best gaming platform in the universe.

and

Apple just announced this game-changing product that will …

and

I love Stringy’s String Cheese. It’s the best!

In the first example, if you were given the product to test and review, then you should qualify your tweet with the appropriate disclosure slashtag like this:

IMO Xbox is the best gaming platform in the universe. /$prod

In the second example, if you worked as an executive at Apple, you should do this:

Apple just announced this game-changing product that will … /$exec

In the last example, if you were paid to endorse, or review, the product, you should do this:

I love Stringy’s String Cheese. It’s the best! /$paid

Making a Twitter-Disclosure Standard

As Andy Sernovitz states in his blog post:

Disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous”—understandable to the “average consumer.” This has always been the FTC standard. That means that hidden or unclear disclosure doesn’t count, and may even be interpreted as an attempt to evade the rules.

In other words, the use of these proposed Twitter-disclosure slashtags, while arguably conspicuous, may not be sufficiently clear in meaning to the average consumer.

The solution to this potential issue? I’m not sure.

However, there are many idiosyncrasies with Twitter that at first confuse all new users. If enough people blog about, tweet about, and actually use these proposed disclosure slashtags, then I think it could be argued that the FTC’s “clear and conspicuous” requirements would be satisfied.

When using Twitter, the average consumer already is required to learn the rules, quirks, and lingo. So what might confuse a new user should not be viewed as “hidden or unclear disclosure.” It is simply their lack of experience with the platform. A new Twitter user is not the average Twitter consumer.

To help push this proposal to the forefront of Twitter-disclosure debate, please tweet and blog about my proposal.

My Disclosure

For full disclosure on my part, I was not paid by anyone to endorse this proposal. I was not given free slashtags to test or use. I am not associated with the slashtag industry nor employed by any of its member companies.

What do you think

Will the new FTC guidelines change the way you blog, tweet, or participate in social media? Do you plan on following the FTC’s new disclosure guidelines? Do you plan on using these new, proposed Twitter-disclosure slashtags?