When two broadcasters on Twitter or some other social media connect in the common area and create a discussion is when the magic happens. This is what social media is all about, connecting with each other and talking!

I followed a debate over Bambuser about School 2.0 at Almedalen (a camp/convention for Swedish politics). Using Bambuser was a nice touch to such a debate and the online viewers were at the start included but later on forgotten but we had our own good chat in our channel.  The debate was of varying quality but made me think about some of the things they talked about.

The main thing they seemed to want to change in school 2.0 was a use of social media but unfortunately they missed the debate over what it would be used for. This miss is something I’ve noticed a lot lately, much discussion about social media but not over the uses for it. People need to focus more on the usability and why it’s important instead of just ”the tool”. Using social media won’t be of much use if you don’t know what you plan to use it for.

As someone commented, the debate would have made much more sense if it had been focusing on pedagogy 2.0 and how knowledge should be acquired in a new digital society. With the emergence of the information age less focus needs to be on ‘teaching out content’ and shifted towards more about ‘how to acquire information’. In the past the schools had an important job on passing on information from teacher to student since information was sparse and essential to remember. Today with our easy access to information it’s more important teaching people how to find the right information and filter out the rest.

Don’t focus on social media! Use social media as a tool to achieve something else. Together with a friend I’ve written a thesis about ”Organizational learning through the use of social media – A descriptive study of the feedback role in three Swedish organizations” where we focus on the use of social media and not the tool itself. The essay is available on Scribd for the ones interested in reading more about it.

[img: CC-NC-BY by Richard Cawood]

Found a great manifesto expressing how I feel towards the internet.

The internet is made of people. People matter. This includes you. Stop trying to sell everything about yourself to everyone. Don’t just hammer away and repeat and talk at people—talk TO people. It’s organic. Make stuff for the internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important. Put up more cat pictures. Make more songs. Show your doodles. Give things away and take things that are free. Look at what other people are doing, not to compete, imitate, or compare . . . but because you enjoy looking at the things other people make. Don’t shove yourself into that tiny, airless box called a brand—tiny, airless boxes are for trinkets and dead people.                             -Maureen Johnson

To read more about this manifesto and see how it came to be go to Maureen’s blog post

[pic: cc-by-nc-sa greekadman]

Another interesting aspect of when clusters of people in this size form is the effect it may have on a social scale. One example of a group’s altered properties compared to individuals is the Birthday paradox. An example of how this paradox works is that if one takes 36 random persons and researches if two of them share the same birthday the chance of that is not ~10% (36 persons & 365days) but closer to 90%. This is due to the number of increased combination’s that come with a larger group of people.

Another interesting theory to measure connections people have with each other is the six degrees of seperation. This theory claims that every person in the world knows another person through at the most six connections of ”friends of friends”.  This amplifies that we are much closer each other then what we normally perceive. Twitter has only four degrees of seperation, which partly explains why news travel so fast there.

Keep connecting with each other and enhance this social game we all play!

There’s been several stories of sharing too much information on social media. One example is the case where a British women forgot she had befriended her boss on Facebook.

Another example is the recent case of a Swedish guy who published a picture of himself where he wore a cap with the text ”porn star”. His problem was that parents had seen the picture and the principal called him up and fired him from the childcare center he was working at.

When do people share too much information? I recently found the site pleaserobme.com which wants to make people aware of the risks of telling too much about themself to the world.

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.

The website lists everyone that displays their status on Twitter as being away from home. Not in itself a dangerous feature but coupled with a quick search on the persons name on a site that lists where they live (e.g. hitta.se in Sweden) it’s an easy way to rob them without risk.

Keep being transparent but reflect on how and what you share with the world!

The best tip about how to gain followers on Twitter is probably tweeting tips on ”how to gain followers” since this will attract anyone else ”trying to gain a following” to follow you. Similar people are attracted to each other and will most likely reach their goals together. But why gain a following on Twitter just to ”gain a following”?

One of the ways some people use to measure their importance on Twitter is counting the number of followers they have. This popularity contest is nothing new. A lot of people still play the ”I have more friends then you” game on Facebook as well as in real life. This is a way of measuring their perceived importance and impact based on quantity rather then quality of friends. There is nothing wrong with this in itself, as long as it is what you truly believe. Believing in quantity over quality will always attract like-minded people who give you a pseudo-importance that you have in inspiring them to get a larger quantity as well.

What about quality then? If you want followers that truly interact you need to gain them organically. Posting relevant tweets about what truly interests you and it will bear fruit. Another important part is commenting on others and discussion. When you want to make new friends you need to be more social then usual. Find the people, comment, discuss and praise to gain qualitative new friends. One of the ironic parts is that some of these people first look on your number of followers to see if ”you are important” which means that it could be an idea to build up numbers with ”empty followers” in order to get more quality followers.

What are your thoughts on Followers?

The two interviews were conducted with:
Zana Hussan, who started one of Sweden’s biggest Facebook groups ”Sverigedemokraterna i Riksdagen – Nej Tack!”
Anna Troberg, Vice Vice Chairman of Piratpartiet

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Interview with Zana Hussan
The Facebook group ”Sverigedemokraterna i Riksdagen – Nej tack!” was created by Zana Hussan on August 31st 2009. The group is in response to ”Sverigedemokraterna” (SD), who is an extreme right party trying to get into the Swedish parliament. The aim of the group is to show that SD is not wanted in the parliament according to the group members. The group has no political ties and is open for everyone that wants to renounce the party. The group managed to reach 300.000 members in its’ first five months which is a significant amount compared to the population of Sweden of 9M inhabitants. The ”anti-group” that started in response to this group managed to reach 16.000 members.

”…large groups will remain latent and ineffective if not mobilized by selective incentives” (”Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union” by Karolina Karr, p. 46)

”I had been thinking a long time about there being no organization or movement on internet collecting Sweden against racism, xenophobia and especially against ”Sverigedemokraterna”. Xenophobia isn’t a left or right question but a question for all of Sweden. I wanted to do my part in this which is why I created this Facebook group with an ambitious goal of collecting the broad Sweden with everything from the stockbroker to the assistant nurse”

Zana writes that he wants the group to be a rally point for discussions and actions where everyone is welcome to debate. Members are able and encouraged to share articles, arguments, experiences and strategies. Zana stresses the importance of not being quiet to the members of the group.

”People who are members in the group can achieve something by showing that they refuse to be quiet and thereby actively taking a stance for diversity and against racism. I constantly encourage people to become members of a political party or an organization to have a better influence in society”

Interview with Anna Troberg
Piratpartiet is a Swedish political party that started in 2006 to limit intellectual property and enhance the rights for a private life. Piratpartiet has from their upstart been in the forefront of internet and has had a big presence in social media. Politometern just listed the most influential political blogs in Sweden where Piratpartiet was listed in 10 places in the top 25, this despite that the party has only existed since 2006.

Anna Troberg told us that Piratpartiet uses social media for a lot of their political communication. One of the reasons for them working mainly with social media is that newly started parties in Sweden have very limited resources, the other reason is because of it being an effective way of communicating. She also emphasized that even if they had more resources they would keep using social media to the same extent as today. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter often create a discussion climate where people have an ability to express themselves in a deliberative democracy. Anna believes that through social media the political communication of smaller parties has been simplified but that the traditional parties have a hard time adjusting.

Piratpartiet has an official Facebook group  with 20.000 members and an official Twitter account. Their twitter account is most of the time updated through their Skype channel which is accessible to 70-80 of their members. Piratpartiet also set up a ”live web page” to monitor and inform people about what is being said about the party.

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Some Conclusions
Social media will become more and more important, not only in political communication but also in other areas of society. There is a lot of talk about social media and the effect it will have on this coming election in September and many are inspired by Barack Obama’s campaigning for presidency in 2008. Social media has a big effect as a creator of public opinion which can easily be seen by a group on Facebook managing to rally 300.000 members or by Piratpartiet managing to get 7% of Swedish votes in the EU-election. The ”two step flow of communications” also maintains an important part in the spreading of information through opinion leaders who passes it on to a greater mass.

The importance of having a big network and several channels to reach people is of bigger importance today. Internet makes the line between a political actor and a citizen very uncertain. A user of social media can easily express their opinions and get others to follow their lead. Groups are created between like-minded people that enhance and strengthen their power. Citizens gain more power and politicians must realize the importance and possibilities that this new digital era gives to democracy.

In this digital age we work more and more by ourselves from a distance. We still meet up every now and then, but a lot of our projects and work are done from home. Normally when there’s a group-project we do some of the work by ourselves at home and then meet up (or via e-mail) and compare what we have done in order to merge the texts into one document. This way of working makes us lose a lot of time on catching up and comparing documents to see what to merge.

In this digital age we need to make use of the technology available to make our work more effective. Working from a distance does not have to be ”solo” work anymore. Tools exist that allow us to collaborate in real-time with each other. I’ll here present 3 of the best collaboration tools: Etherpad, Skype and Dropbox.

Etherpad
This tool works as a collaborative real-time notepad. It allows several persons to work on the same word document at the same time and thereby eliminates the need to waste time on merging versions. It also makes the work more effective since you can directly get the input of others instead of having to wait for a meeting. Etherpad also allows chatting and keeps track of the changes you make which means you can go back to a previous version of the document if needed. The bad part about Etherpad is that it creates a tricky address to remember for your pad, BUT this can be solved by using an url shortener and making a custom name for the link. Etherpad recently decided they were going to close down the service but they made the code available which means you can find it at piratepad.net and a few other places now.

Skype
Sometimes it is hard to put your work into writing and sometimes you need a more direct feedback then the written word. This is when Skype comes to use. Skype is basically ip-telephony where you can call each other for free. It also allows transmission of your web-cam which means you can use body-language as well, if needed.

Dropbox
This tool helps you store all your files and documents in a secure way which is easily shareable. Dropbox works just as a normal folder on your desktop BUT it also uploads everything you put into the folder onto your account on the web. Thereby it eliminates the need for you to remember to make back-ups (which we NEVER remember). The other positive side is that you can install Dropbox on a second computer as well and then it synchronizes all the items in the Dropbox between the two computers! You can suddenly reach all the files needed on all your computers (as well as other, more temporary, computers through your account on the web). Dropbox also allows you to share folders between each other which means that ALL files made for the project group can be synchronized between each other.

These three tools are great for increasing productivity and efficiency in a group. Each one of these will help you a lot but the real synergy effect comes when you integrate the tools. An example of this could be:

Calling someone on Skype about the word document they just uploaded in the shared Dropbox folder and suggesting you two can  work a bit on the formulation on the introduction. I copy the text into a pad on Etherpad and start editing it in real-time together whilst talking over Skype, motivating the changes made to the document and discussing which one is best.

Do you have any other good collaboration tools that you use?

Edit: Collecting some more tools here

The problem today is that industries still work under the old traditional economic idea of ‘choice under scarcity‘. When there is a limited amount it gets expensive. We have to choose where to spend our resources (money).

The part that has changed, compared to earlier, is that information no longer is limited in this digital age. We have an abundance of information. Now we have to choose where to spend our resources (attention). One of the ways of reaching peoples attention is using Word of Mouth (WOM), a specific message that is accessible and spread by users.

The cost of copying digital information is reaching zero and we are moving towards externalities and alternative economies. New technology’s deflationary force is nothing new but the speed at which this is happening causes a problem for companies trying to adjust to this new economy.  Unfortunately this fast shift has made a lot of companies try and keep the obsolete economy of ‘choice under scarcity’ by limiting the access to information and thereby causing a shortage. This limiting has mainly been done by lobbying and creating laws to protect their outdated business strategies. We are moving away from traditional economies and towards an attention economy despite the friction caused by some companies.

This new economy benefits from Word of Mouth spreading. Compared to spam the reaching out of information by WOM becomes personal and thereby receives attention. The value is increased by sharing the product and a big mass normally amplifies the effect and usability of the product.

Free is the future of business. A few examples of this employed as business strategies could be giving away free razors (to sell disposable blades), free cell-phones (with a monthly plan), free programs (with an upgrade option) to name a few.

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Business models of the ‘free’ economy:

• Freemium
  Giving away basic model for free. People paying for premium normally pays for other 99% of people
• Advertising
  Free in exchange for some of your attention
• Cross-Subsidies
  Free product that will get you to buy other products
• Zero Marginal Cost
  No appreciable cost to anyone
• Labor Exchange
  Free in exchange for work. E.g. answer questions
• Gift Economy
  Free for everyone, money not only motivator.

sources:
Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business
The importance of viral marketing