Tag Archives: Erik Hersman

Minds of All Sizes Think Alike

Or «les esprits de toutes tailles se rencontrent».

This post is a response to the following post about Social Network Analysis (SNA), social change, and communication.

…My heart’s in Accra » Shortcuts in the social graph.

I have too many disparate things to say about that post to make it into a neat and tidy “quickie,” yet I feel like I should probably be working on other things. So we’ll see how this goes.

First, a bit of context..

[This “bit of context” may be a bit long so, please bear with me. Or you could get straight to the point, if you don’t think you can bear the context bit.]

I’ve never met Ethan Zuckerman (@EthanZ), who wrote the post to which I’m responding. And I don’t think we’ve had any extended conversation in the past. Further, I doubt that I’m on his radar. He’s probably seen my name, since I’ve commented on some of his posts and some of his contacts may have had references to me through social media. But I very much doubt that he’s ever mentioned me to anyone. I’m not noticeable to him.

I, on the other hand, have mentioned Zuckerman on several occasions. Latest time I remember was in class, a few weeks ago. It’s a course on Africa and I was giving students a list of online sources with relevance to our work. Zuckerman’s connection to Africa may not be his main thing, despite his blog’s name, but it’s part of the reason I got interested in his work, a few years ago.

In fact, there’s something embarrassing, here.. I so associate Zuckerman to Africa that my mind can’t help but link him to Erik Hersman, aka White African. I did meet Herman. [To be exact, I met Erik at BarCampAustin, which is quite possibly the conference-like event which has had the most influence on me, in the past few years (I go to a lot of these events).] When I did meet Hersman, I made a faux-pas in associating him with Zuckerman. Good-natured as he seemed to be, Hersman smiled as he corrected me.

EthanZ and I have other contacts in common. Jeremy Clarke, for instance, who co-organizes WordCamp Montreal and has been quite active in Montreal’s geek scene. Jeremy’s also a developer for Global Voices, a blogging community that Zuckerman co-founded. I’m assuming Clarke and Zuckerman know each other.

Another mutual contact is Christopher Lydon, host of Radio Open Source. Chris and I have exchanged a few emails, and Zuckerman has been on ROS on a few occasions.

According to Facebook, Zuckerman and I have four contacts in common. Apart from Clarke and Hersman, there’s P. Kerim Friedman and Gerd Leonhard. Kerim is a fellow linguistic anthropologist and we’ve collaborated on the official Society for Linguistic Anthropology (SLA) site. I got in touch with Leonhard through “Music 2.0” issues, as he was interviewed by Charles McEnerney on Well-Rounded Radio.

On LinkedIn, Zuckerman is part of my third degree, with McEnerney as one of my first-degree contacts who could connect me to Zuckerman, through Zuckerman’s contacts.

(Yes, I’m fully aware of the fact that I haven’t name a single woman in this list. Nor someone who doesn’t write in English with some frequency, for that matter.)

By this time, my guess is that you may be either annoyed or confused. “Surely, he can’t be that obsessed with Zuckerman as to stalk him in every network.”

No, I’m not at all obsessed with Ethan Zuckerman in any way, shape, or form. Though I mention him on occasion and I might have a good conversation with him if the occasion arises, I wouldn’t go hang out in Cambridge just in case I might meet him. Though I certainly respect his work, I wouldn’t treat him as my “idol” or anything like that. In other words, he isn’t a focus in my life.

And that’s a key point, to me.

In certain contexts, when social networks are discussed, too much is made of the importance of individuals. Yet, there’s something to be said about relative importance.

In his “shortcuts” post, Zuckerman talks about a special kind of individuals. Those who are able to bypass something of a clustering effect happening in many human networks. Malcolm Gladwell (probably “inspired” by somebody else) has used “connectors” to label a fairly similar category of people and, given Gladwell’s notoriety in some circles, the name has resonance in some contexts (mostly “business-focused people,” I would say, with a clear idea in my mind of the groupthink worldview implied).

In one of my earliest blogposts, I talked about an effect happening through a similar mechanism, calling it the “Social Butterfly Effect” (SBE). I still like it, as a concept. Now, I admit that it focuses on a certain type of individuals. But it’s more about their position in “the grand scheme of things” than about who they are, though I do associate myself with this “type.”

The basic idea is quite simple. People who participate in different (sub)networks, who make such (sub)networks sparser, are having unpredictable and unmeasurable effects on what is transmitted through the network(s).

On one hand, it’s linked to my fragmentary/naïve understanding of the Butterfly Effect in the study of climate and as a component of Chaos Theory.

On the other hand, it’s related to Granovetter‘s well-known notion of “weak ties.” And it seems like Granovetter is making something of a comeback, as we discuss different mechanisms behind social change.

Interestingly, much of what is being said about weak ties, these past few weeks, relates to Gladwell’s flamebait apparent lack of insight in describing current social processes. Sounds like Gladwell may be too caught up in the importance of individuals to truly grok the power of networks.

Case in point.. One of the most useful pieces I’ve read about weak ties, recently, was Jonah Lehrer‘s direct response to Gladwell:

Weak Ties, Twitter and Revolution | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Reading Lehrer’s piece, one gets the clear impression that Gladwell hadn’t “done his homework” on Granovetter before launching his trolling “controversial” piece on activism.

But I digress. Slightly.

Like the Gladwell-specific coverage, Zuckerman’s blogpost is also about social change and he’s already responded to Gladwell. One way to put it is that, as a figure, Gladwell has shaped the discussion in a way similar to a magnetic field orienting iron filings around it. Since it’s a localized effect having to do with polarization, the analogy is fairly useful, as analogies go.

Which brings me to groupthink, the apparent target of Zuckerman’s piece.

Still haven’t read Irving Janis but I’ve been quite interested in groupthink for a while. Awareness of the concept is something I immediately recognize, praise, and associate with critical thinking.

In fact, it’s one of several things I was pleasantly surprised to find in an introductory sociology WikiBook I ended up using in my  “Intro. to Society” course, last year. Critical thinking was the main theme of that course, and this short section was quite fitting in the overall discussion.

So, what of groupthink and networks? Zuckerman sounds worried:

This is interesting to me because I’m intrigued – and worried – by information flows through social networks. If we’re getting more (not lots yet, but more) information through social networks and less through curated media like newspapers, do we run the risk of encountering only information that our friends have access to? Are we likely to be overinformed about some conversations and underinformed about others? And could this isolation lead to ideological polarization, as Cass Sunstein and others suggest? And if those fears are true, is there anything we can do to rewire social networks so that we’re getting richer, more diverse information?

Similar questions have animated many discussions in media-focused circles, especially in those contexts where the relative value (and meaning) of “old vs. new media” may be debated. At about the same time as I started blogging, I remember discussing things with a statistician friend about the polarization effect of media, strong confirmation bias in reading news stories, and political lateralization.

In the United States, especially, there’s a narrative (heard loud and clear) that people who disagree on some basic ideas are unable to hear one another. “Shockingly,” some say, “conservatives and liberals read different things.” Or “those on (the) two sides of (the) debate understand things in completely different ways.” It even reminds me of the connotations of Tannen’s booktitle, You Just Don’t Understand. Irreconciliable differences. (And the first time I mention a woman in this decidedly imbalanced post.)

While, as a French-Canadian ethnographer, my perspective is quite different from Zuckerman, I can’t help but sympathize with the feeling. Not that I associate groupthink with a risk in social media (au contraire!). But, like Zuckerman, I wish to find ways to move beyond these boundaries we impose on ourselves.

Zuckerman specifically discusses the attempt by Onnik Krikorian (@OneWMPhoto) to connect Armenians (at least those in Hayastan) and Azeris, with Facebook “affording” Krikorian some measure of success. This case is now well-known in media-centric circles and it has almost become shorthand for the power of social media. Given a personal interest in Armenians (at least in the Diaspora), my reaction to Krikorian’s success are less related to the media aspect than to the personal one.

At a personal level, boundaries may seem difficult to surmount but they can also be fairly porous and even blurry. Identity may be negotiated. Individuals crossing boundaries may be perceived in diverse ways, some of which have little to do with other people crossing the same boundaries. Things are lived directly, from friendships to wars, from breakups to reconciliations. Significant events happen regardless of the way  they’re being perceived across boundaries.

Not that boundaries don’t matter but they don’t necessarily circumscribe what happens in “personal lives.” To use an seemingly-arbitrary example, code-switching doesn’t “feel” strange at an individual level. It’s only when people insist on separating languages using fairly artificial criteria that alternance between them sounds awkward.

In other words, people cross boundaries all the time and “there’s nothing to it.”

Boundaries have quite a different aspect, at the macrolevel implied by the journalistic worldview (with nation-based checkbox democracy at its core and business-savvy professionalization as its mission). To “macros” like journos and politicos, boundaries look like borders, appearing clearly on maps (including mind ones) and implying important disconnects. The border between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a boundary separating two groups and the conflicts between these two groups reify that boundary. Reaching out across the border is a diplomatic process and necessitates finding the right individuals for the task. Most of the important statuses are ascribed, which may sound horrible to some holding neoliberal ideas about freewill and “individual freedoms.”

Though it’s quite common for networked activities to be somewhat constrained by boundaries, a key feature of networks is that they’re typically boundless. Sure, there are networks which are artificially isolated from the rest. The main example I can find is that of a computer virology laboratory.

Because, technically, you only need one link between two networks to transform them into a single network. So, it’s quite possible to perceive Verizon’s wireless network as a distinct entity, limited by the national boundaries of the U.S. of A. But the simple fact that someone can use Verizon’s network to contact someone in Ségou shows that the network isn’t isolated. Simple, but important to point out.

Especially since we’re talking about a number of things happening on a single network: The Internet. (Yes, there is such a thing as Internet2 and there are some technical distinctions at stake. But we’re still talking about an interconnected world.)

As is well-known, there are significant clusters in this One Network. McLuhan’s once-popular “Global Village” fallacy used to hide this, but we now fully realize that language barriers, national borders, and political lateralization go with “low-bandwidth communication,” in some spots of The Network. “Gs don’t talk to Cs so even though they’re part of the same network, there’s a weak spot, there.” In a Shannon/Weaver view, it sounds quite important to identify these weak spots. “Africa is only connected to North America via a few lines so access is limited, making things difficult for Africans.” Makes sense.

But going back to weak ties, connectors, Zuckerman’s shortcuts, and my own social butterflies, the picture may be a little bit more fleshed out.

Actually, the image I have in mind has, on one side, a wire mesh serving as the floor of an anechoic chamber  and on the other some laser beams going in pseudorandom directions as in Entrapment or Mission Impossible. In the wire mesh, weaker spots might cause a person to fall through and land on those artificial stalagmites. With the laser beams, the pseudorandom structure makes it more difficult to “find a path through the maze.” Though some (engineers) may see the mesh as the ideal structure for any network, there’s something humanly fascinating about the pseudorandom structure of social networks.

Obviously, I have many other ideas in mind. For instance, I wanted to mention “Isabel Wilkerson’s Leaderless March that Remade America.” Or go back to that intro soci Wikibook to talk about some very simple and well-understood ideas about social movements, which often seem to be lacking in discussions of social change. I even wanted to recount some anecdotes of neat network effects in my own life, such as the serendipity coming from discuss disparate subjects to unlike people or the misleading impression that measuring individualized influence is a way to understand social media. Not to mention a whole part I had in my mind about Actor Network Theory, non-human actors, and material culture (the other course I currently teach).

But I feel like going back to more time-sensitive things.

Still, I should probably say a few words about this post’s title.

My mother and I were discussing parallel inventions and polygenesis with the specific theme of moving away from the focus on individualized credit. My favourite example, and one I wish Gladwell (!) had used in Outliers (I actually asked him about it) is that of Gregor Mendel and the “rediscovery” of his laws by de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak. A semi-Marxian version of the synchronous polygenesis part might hold that “ideas are in the air” or that the timing of such dicoveries and inventions has to do with zeitgeist. A neoliberal version could be the “great minds think alike” expression or its French equivalent «Les grands esprits se rencontrent» (“The great spirits meet each other”). Due to my reluctance in sizing up minds, I’d have a hard time using that as a title. In the past, I used a similar title to refer to another form of serendipity:

To me, most normally constituted minds are “great,” so I still could have used the expression as a title. But an advantage of tweaking an expression is that it brings attention to what it implies.

In this case, the “thinking alike” may be a form of groupthink.

 

Microblogue d'événement

Version éditée d’un message que je viens d’envoyer à mon ami Martin Lessard.

Le contexte direct, c’est une discussion que nous avons eue au sujet de mon utilisation de Twitter, la principale plateforme de microblogue. Pendant un événement quelconque (conférence, réunion, etc.), j’utilise Twitter pour faire du blogue en temps réel, du liveblogue.

Contrairement à certains, je pense que l’utilisation du microblogue peut être adaptée aux besoins de chaque utilisateur. D’ailleurs, c’est un aspect de la technologie que je trouve admirable: la possibilité d’utiliser des outils pour d’autres usages que ceux pour lesquels ils ont été conçus. C’est là que la technologie au sens propre dépasse l’outil. Dans mon cours de culture matérielle, j’appelle ça “unintended uses”, concept tout simple qui a beaucoup d’implications en rapport aux liens sociaux dans la chaîne qui va de la conception et de la construction d’un outil jusqu’à son utilisation et son «impact» social.

Donc, mon message édité.
Je pense pas mal à cette question de tweets («messages» sur Twitter) considérés comme intempestifs. Alors je lance quelques idées.

Ça m’apporte pas mal, de bloguer en temps réel par l’entremise de Twitter. Vraiment, je vois ça comme prendre des notes en public. Faut dire que la prise de notes est une seconde nature, pour moi. C’est comme ça que je structure ma pensée. Surtout avec des “outliners” mais ça marche aussi en linéaire.

De ce côté, je fais un peu comme ces journalistes sur Twitter qui utilisent le microblogue comme carnet de notes. Andy Carvin est mon exemple préféré. Il tweete plus vite que moi et ses tweets sont aussi utiles qu’un article de journal. Ma démarche est plus proche de la «lecture active» et du sens critique, mais c’est un peu la même idée. Dans mon cas, ça me permet même de remplacer un billet de blogue par une série de tweets.

L’avantage de la prise de notes en temps réel s’est dévoilé entre autres lors d’une présentation de Johannes Fabian, anthropologue émérite qui était à Montréal pendant une semaine bien remplie, le mois dernier. Je livebloguais sa première présentation, sur Twitter. En face de moi, il y avait deux anthropologues de Concordia (Maximilian Forte et Owen Wiltshire) que je connais entre autres comme blogueurs. Les deux prenaient des notes et l’un d’entre eux enregistrait la séance. Dans mes tweets, j’ai essayé de ne pas trop résumer ce que Fabian disait mais je prenais des notes sur mes propres réactions, je faisais part de mes observations de l’auditoire et je réfléchissais à des implications des idées énoncées. Après la présentation, Maximilian me demandait si j’allais bloguer là-dessus. J’ai pu lui dire en toute franchise que c’était déjà fait. Et Owen, un de mes anciens étudiants qui travaille maintenant sur la publication académique et le blogue, a maintenant accès à mes notes complètes, avec “timeline”.
Puissante méthode de prise de notes!

L’avantage de l’aspect public c’est premièrement que je peux avoir des «commentaires» en temps réel. J’en ai pas autant que j’aimerais, mais ça reste ce que je cherche, les commentaires. Le microbloguage me donne plus de commentaires que mon blogue principal, ici même sur WordPress. Facebook me donne plus de commentaires que l’un ou l’autre, mais c’est une autre histoire.

Dans certains cas, le livebloguage donne lieu à une véritable conversation parallèle. Mon exemple préféré, c’est probablement cette interaction que j’ai eue avec John Milles à la fin de la session d’Isabelle Lopez, lors de PodCamp Montréal (#pcmtl08). On parlait de culture d’Internet et je proposais qu’il y avait «une» culture d’Internet (comme on peut dire qu’il y a «une» culture chrétienne, disons). Milles, qui ne me savait pas anthropologue, me fait alors un tweet à propos de la notion classique de culture pour les anthropologues (monolithique, spécifiée dans l’espace, intemporelle…). J’ai alors pu le diriger vers la «crise de la représentation» en anthropologie depuis 1986 avec Writing Culture de Clifford et Marcus. Il m’a par la suite envoyé des références de la littérature juridique.

Bien sûr, c’est l’idée du “backchannel” appliqué au ‘Net. Ça fonctionne de façon très efficace pour des événements comme SXSW et BarCamp puisque tout le monde tweete en même temps. Mais ça peut fonctionner pour d’autres événements, si la pratique devient plus commune.

More on this later.”

Je crois que le bloguage en temps réel lors d’événements augmente la visibilité de l’événement lui-même. Ça marcherait mieux si je mettais des “hashtags” à chaque tweet. (Les “hashtags” sont des étiquettes textuelles précédées de la notation ‘#’, qui permettent d’identifier des «messages»). Le problème, c’est que c’est pas vraiment pratique de taper des hashtags continuellement, du moins sur un iPod touch. De toutes façons, ce type de redondance semble peu utile.

More on this later.”

Évidemment, le fait de microbloguer autant augmente un peu ma propre visibilité. Ces temps-ci, je commence à penser à des façons de me «vendre». C’est un peu difficile pour moi parce que j’ai pas l’habitude de me vendre et que je vois l’humilité comme une vertu. Mais ça semble nécessaire et je me cherche des moyens de me vendre tout en restant moi-même. Twitter me permet de me mettre en valeur dans un contexte qui rend cette pratique tout à fait appropriée (selon moi).

D’ailleurs, j’ai commencé à utiliser Twitter comme méthode de réseautage, pendant que j’étais à Austin. C’était quelques jours avant SXSW et je voulais me faire connaître localement. D’ailleurs, je conserve certaines choses de cette époque, y compris des contacts sur Twitter.

Ma méthode était toute simple: je me suis mis à «suivre» tous ceux qui suivaient @BarCampAustin. Ça faisait un bon paquet et ça me permettait de voir ce qui se passait. D’ailleurs, ça m’a permis d’aller observer des événements organisés par du monde de SXSW comme Gary Vaynerchuk et Scott Beale. Pour un ethnographe, y’a rien comme voir Kevin Rose avec son «entourage» ou d’apprendre que Dr. Tiki est d’origine lavalloise. 😉

Dans les “features” du microbloguage que je trouve particulièrement intéressantes, il y a les notations en ‘@’ et en ‘#’. Ni l’une, ni l’autre n’est si pratique sur un iPod touch, du moins avec les applis qu’on a. Mais le concept de base est très intéressant. Le ‘@’ est un peu l’équivalent du ping ou trackback, pouvant servir à attirer l’attention de quelqu’un d’autre (cette notation permet les réponses directes à des messages). C’est assez puissant comme principe et ça aide beaucoup dans le livebloguage (Muriel Ide et Martin Lessard ont utilisé cette méthode pour me contacter pendant WebCom/-Camp).

More on this later.”

D’après moi, avec des geeks, cette pratique du microblogue d’événement s’intensifie. Il prend même une place prépondérante, donnant au microblogue ce statut que les journalistes ont tant de difficulté à saisir. Lorsqu’il se passe quelque-chose, le microblogue est là pour couvrir l’événement.

Ce qui m’amène à ce “later“. Tout simple, dans le fond. Des instances de microblogues pour des événements. Surtout pour des événements préparés à l’avance, mais ça peut être une structure ad hoc à la Ushahidi d’Erik Hersman.

Laconica d’Evan Prodromou est tout désigné pour remplir la fonction à laquelle je pense mais ça peut être sur n’importe quelle plateforme. J’aime bien Identi.ca, qui est la plus grande instance Laconica. Par contre, j’utilise plus facilement Twitter, entre autres parce qu’il y a des clients Twitter pour l’iPod touch (y compris avec localisation).

Imaginons une (anti-)conférence à la PodCamp. Le même principe s’applique aux événements en-ligne (du genre “WebConference”) mais les rencontres face-à-face ont justement des avantages grâce au microbloguage. Surtout si on pense à la “serendipity”, à l’utilisation de plusieurs canaux de communication (cognitivement moins coûteuse dans un contexte de coprésence), à la facilité des conversations en petits groupes et au «langage non-verbal».

Donc, chaque événement a une instance de microblogue. Ça coûte pratiquement rien à gérer et ça peut vraiment ajouter de la valeur à l’événement.

Chaque personne inscrite à l’événement a un compte de microblogue qui est spécifique à l’instance de cet événement (ou peut utiliser un compte Laconica d’une autre instance et s’inscrire sur la nouvelle instance). Par défaut, tout le monde «suit» tout le monde (tout le monde est incrit pour voir tous les messages). Sur chaque “nametag” de la conférence, l’identifiant de la personne apparaît. Chaque présentateur est aussi lié à son identifiant. Le profil de chaque utilisateur peut être calqué sur un autre profil ou créé spécifiquement pour l’événement. Les portraits photos sont privilégiés, mais les avatars sont aussi permis. Tout ce qui est envoyé à travers l’instance est archivé et catalogué. S’il y a des façons de spécifier des positions dans l’espace, de façon précise (peut-être même avec une RFID qu’on peut désactiver), ce positionnement est inscrit dans l’instance. Comme ça, on peut se retrouver plus facilement pour discuter en semi-privé. D’ailleurs, ça serait facile d’inclure une façon de prendre des rendez-vous ou de noter des détails de conversations, pour se remémorer le tout plus tard. De belles intégrations possibles avec Google Calendar, par exemple.

Comme la liste des membres de l’instance est limitée, on peut avoir une appli qui facilite les notations ‘@’. Recherche «incrémentale», carnet d’adresse, auto-complétion… Les @ des présentateurs sont sous-entendus lors des présentations, on n’a pas à taper leurs noms au complet pour les citer. Dans le cas de conversations à plusieurs, ça devient légèrement compliqué, mais on peut quand même avoir une liste courte si c’est un panel ou d’autres méthodes si c’est plus large. D’ailleurs, les modérateurs pourraient utiliser ça pour faire la liste d’attente des interventions. (Ça, c’est du bonbon! J’imagine ce que ça donnerait à L’Université autrement!)

Comme Evan Prodromou en parlait lors de PodCamp Montréal, il y a toute la question du “microcasting” qui prend de l’ampleur. Avec une instance de microblogue liée à un événement, on pourrait avoir de la distribution de fichiers à l’interne. Fichiers de présentation (Powerpoint ou autre), fichiers médias, liens, etc. Les présentateurs peuvent préparer le tout à l’avance et envoyer leurs trucs au moment opportun. À la rigueur, ça peut même remplacer certaines utilisations de Powerpoint!

Plutôt que de devoir taper des hashtags d’événements (#pcmtl08), on n’a qu’à envoyer ses messages sur l’instance spécifique. Ceux qui ne participent pas à l’événement ne sont pas inondés de messages inopportuns. Nul besoin d’arrêter de suivre quelqu’un qui participe à un tel événement (comme ç’a été le cas avec #pcmtl08).

Une fois l’événement terminé, on peut faire ce qu’on veut avec l’instance. On peut y revenir, par exemple pour consulter la liste complète des participants. On peut retravailler ses notes pour les transformer en billets et même rapports. Ou on peut tout mettre ça de côté.

Pour le reste, ça serait comme l’utilisation de Twitter lors de SXSWi (y compris le cas Lacy, que je trouve fascinant) ou autre événement geek typique. Dans certains cas, les gens envoient les tweets directement sur des écrans autour des présentateurs.

Avec une instance spécifique, les choses sont plus simple à gérer. En plus, peu de risques de voir l’instance tomber en panne, comme c’était souvent le cas avec Twitter, pendant une assez longue période.

C’est une série d’idées en l’air et je tiens pas au détail spécifique. Mais je crois qu’il y a un besoin réel et que ça aide à mettre plusieurs choses sur une même plateforme. D’ailleurs, j’y avais pas trop pensé mais ça peut avoir des effets intéressants pour la gestion de conférences, pour des rencontres en-ligne, pour la couverture médiatique d’événements d’actualités, etc. Certains pourraient même penser à des modèles d’affaire qui incluent le microblogue comme valeur ajoutée. (Différents types de comptes, possibilité d’assister gratuitement à des conférences sans compte sur l’instance…)

Qu’en pensez-vous?

Why Is PRI's The World Having Social Media Issues?

Some raw notes on why PRI’S The World (especially “The World Tech Podcast” or WTP) is having issues with social media. It may sound bad, for many reasons. But I won’t adapt the tone.

No offense intended.

Thing is, I don’t really care about WTP, The World, or even the major media outlets behind them (PRI, BBC, Discovery).

Reason for those notes: WTP host Clark Boyd mentioned that their social media strategy wasn’t working as well as they expected. Seemed like a nice opportunity to think about social media failures from mainstream media outlets.

My list of reasons is not exhaustive and it’s not really in order of importance.

Social media works best when people contribute widely. In other words, a podcaster (or blogger, etc.) who contributes to somebody else’s podcast (blog, etc.) is likely to attract the kind of mindshare afforded social media outlets. Case in point, I learnt about WTP through Erik Hersman because Afrigadget was able to post WTP content. A more efficient strategy is to actually go and contribute to other people’s social media.

The easiest way to do it is to link to other people, especially other blogs. Embedding a YouTube video can have some effects but a good ol’ trackback is so much more effective. In terms of attention economy, the currency is, well, attention: you need to pay attention to others!

Clark Boyd says WTP isn’t opposed to interacting with listeners. Nice… Yet, there hasn’t been any significant move toward interaction with listeners. Not even “letters to the editor” which could be read on the radio programme. No button to leave audio feedback. Listeners who feel they’re recognized as being interesting are likely to go the social media route.

While it’s a technology podcast, WTP is formatted as a straightforward radio news bulletin. “Stories” are strung together in a seamless fashion, most reports follow a very standard BBC format, there are very few “conversations” with non-journalists (interviews don’t count as conversations)… Such shows tend not to attract the same crowd as typical social media formats do. So WTP probably attracts a radio crowd and radio crowds aren’t necessarily that engaged in social media. Unless there’s a compelling reason to engage, but that’s not the issue I want to address.

What’s probably the saddest part is that The World ostensibly has a sort of global mission. Of course, they’re limited by language. But their coverage is even more Anglo-American than it needs to be. A far cry from Global Voices (and even GV tends to be somewhat Anglophone-centric).

The fact that WTP is part of The World (which is itself produced/supported by PRI, BBC, and Discovery) is an issue, in terms of social media. Especially given the fact that WTP-specific information is difficult to find. WTP is probably the one part of The World which is savvy to social media so the difficulty of finding WTP is made even more noticeable by the lack of a dedicated website.

WTP does have its own blog. But here’s how it shows up:

Discovery News: Etherized.

The main URL given for this blog? <tinyurl.com/wtpblog> Slightly better than <http://tinyurl.com/6g3me9> (which also points to the same place). But very forgettable. No branding, no notion of an autonomous entity, little personality.

Speaking of personality, the main show’s name sounds problematic: The World. Not the most unique name in the world! 😉 On WTP, correspondents and host often use “the world” to refer to their main show. Not only is it confusing but it tends to sound extremely pretentious. And pretention is among the trickiest attitudes in social media.

A strange dimension of WTP’s online presence is that it isn’t integrated. For instance, their main blog doesn’t seem to have direct links to its Twitter and Facebook profiles. As we say in geek circles: FAIL!

To make matters worse, WTP is considering pulling off its Facebook page. As Facebook pages require zero maintenance and may bring help listeners associate themselves with the show, I have no idea why they would do such a thing. I’m actually having a very hard time finding that page, which might explain why it has had zero growth in the recent past. (Those who found it originally probably had friends who were adding it. Viral marketing works in bursts.) WTP host Clark Boyd doesn’t seem to have a public profile on Facebook. Facebook searches for WTP and “The World Tech Podcast” don’t return obvious results. Oh! There you go. I found the link to that Facebook page: <http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=2411818715&ref=ts>. Yes, the link they give is directly to the new version of Facebook. Yes, it has extra characters. No, it’s not linked in an obvious fashion.

That link was hidden in the August 22 post on WTP’s blog. But because every post has a link with “Share on Facebook” text, searching the page for “Facebook” returns all blogposts on the same page (not to mention the “Facebook” category for posts, in the right-hand sidebar). C’mon, folks! How about a Facebook badge? It’s free and it works!

Oh, wait! It’s not even a Facebook page! It’s a Facebook group! The difference between group and page seems quite small to the naked eye but ever since Fb came out with pages (a year or so ago), most people have switched from groups to pages. That might be yet another reason why WTP isn’t getting its “social media cred.” Not to mention that maintaining a Facebook group implies just a bit of time and doesn’t tend to provide direct results. Facebook groups may work well with preestablished groups but they’re not at all effective at bringing together disparate people to discuss diverse issues. Unless you regularly send messages to group members which is the best way to annoy people and generate actual animosity against the represented entity.

On that group, I eventually learn that WTP host Clark Boyd has his own WTP-themed blog. In terms of social media, the fact that I only found that blog after several steps indicates a broader problem, IMHO.

And speaking of Clark Boyd… He’s most likely a great person and an adept journalist. But is WTP his own personal podcast with segments from his parent entity or is WTP, like the unfortunately defunct Search Engine, a work of collaboration? If the latter is true, why is Boyd alone between segments in the podcast, why is his picture the only one of the WTP blog, and why is his name the domain for the WTP-themed blog on WordPress.com?

Again, no offence. But I just don’t grok WTP.

There’s one trap I’m glad WTP can avoid. I won’t describe it too much for fear that it will represent the main change in strategy. Not because I get the impression I may have an impact. But, in attention economy, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Oops! I said too much… 🙁

I said I don’t care about WTP. It’s still accurate. But I do care about some of the topics covered by WTP. I wish there were more social media with a modicum of cultural awareness. In this sense, WTP is a notch above Radio Open Source and a few notches below Global Voices. But the podcast for Global Voices may have podfaded and Open Source sounds increasingly U.S.-centric.

Ah, well…