Screw Hitchhiking. I'm goin Twitchhiking!

For my last post on this blog I felt that this article was suiting. It’s about a man named Paul Smith who calls himself the Twitchhiker. He made it all of the way from the UK to New Zealand in under thirty days by only relying on travel and boarding donations from his Twitter network. He amassed over 5 000 pounds from this network. This idea of Twitchhiking is such a perfect amalgamation of so much of what we have learned in class. Quoting Smith,

The Twitchhiker project showed that kindness is universal, that the whole can be infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, and that social media may begin online but it will converge with the real world whenever and wherever you let it.

In just one quote Smith sums up three key theories to an understanding of citizen media. His project showed how collective intelligence, when acting with kindness, can be a great utility. Each participant contributes a small part to the whole in goodwill - it’s why Wikipedia works so well. He is the first example, aside from news and marketing agencies, of someone who willingly set out to harness the collective intelligence of Twitter towards an end goal.

His journey was only possible due to Twitter’s cross platform performance. Instead of having to hulk around a laptop in every step of the journey, Twitter donations could be received on the fly through his cell-phone. Not only do several different technologies converge to make his trip possible, but also the real world with the virtual world merge. He used Twitter to bring about real-world change.

This of course, brings hope to hitchhikers around the world. No more sore thumbs, creepy drivers and walking down a lonely road in the rain. All you need is a cell phone and a Twitter account and you can get a ride to anywhere. You are always connected to a collective of people who are willing to help you. Asking for help has never been so easy.

Facebook the New Twitter? Nawwwww

There was a presentation last week in class on the infrastructure behind social media. I found this article rather suiting as it indirectly focused on the infrastructures behind Twitter and Facebook. As many of you have noticed, Facebook made some changes to their home page. These changes aren’t just visual - much has to do with their function. These changes are,

“meant to change how Facebook users share and follow information, creating a new home page that will show users what their networks have been up to and make those exchanges more current -- news-feeds will now update in near real time, vs. every 10 minutes.”

Wow. Talk about trying to mimic Twitter. As it turns out, this exactly what they’re trying to do, and no wonder, since news about Twitter has been abuzz lately.

“The moves are a "concerted response to the rise of Twitter as a real-time message broadcasting system that goes beyond members' personal circle of friends," wrote Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch. "Facebook doesn't want Twitter to become the way large companies and public figures connect to fans."”

So the question is:

Will it work?

Firstly, I think anything that Facebook changes to real-time will be of benefit to them. The internet has always been about immediacy, and just as the universe will always expand, the net will get faster and faster. Social media has followed a similar pattern. If one accepts this claim then it follows that what Facebook did was adhere to a most basic function of the internet.

Although Facebook has made their site more functional by coming close to capturing the purpose of Twitter, I don’t think it will do significant harm to Twitter. The Infrastructure of Twitter is built upon a very simple notion - sharing what you’re doing with others. A result of this sharing of activity comes the sharing of self with others. Facebook, on the other hand, is firstly about sharing yourself - what you’re doing comes as a result of this. If Facebook aims to capture Twitter’s audience then I think they might be jeopardizing the focus of their site.

For example, Facebook is centralized on the internet, while Twitter expands over other mediums. Although Facebook allows people access from smart phones, Twitter can work on even the most basic phones, as its all about the 140 line question "what are you doing." Because of this, Twitter never needs to be compressed. Facebook always loses value as it shrinks to smaller mediums.

What do you think?

is thinking about a title about status updates

As I stumbled this afternoon I came across this interesting piece from Mark Hendrickson over at TechCrunch. He attempts to dismantle the claim that Facebook is trying to stomp out Twitter - which has come to light recently in a few other blog-posts (here and here) after Facebook made changes to further open up their platform for third-party applications. His argument is as follows:

“Facebook fails to challenge Twitter with this new platform upgrade because the two companies ultimately serve substantially different behavioral paradigms.”

A very interesting proposition, he premises this with:

“While Twitter and Facebook prompt users with eerily similar questions — Twitter asks “What are you doing?” and Facebook asks “What are you doing right now?” — their users don’t answer in the same way. By and large, Facebook users answer the question more faithfully than Twitter users. They actually provide information about what they’re currently doing,..Meanwhile, Twitter users have (by and large) decided to ignore the questioned posed for them. Instead of using the service to post real status updates — i.e. descriptions of what they’re currently doing — they use it as a public broadcasting system of sorts. It’s an efficient way for them to send out thought trinkets to an often ambiguous crowd of friends and strangers.”

From what I’ve experienced on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve come across the opposite. Both Twitter and Facebook users use the update system to post trinkets of thought more often than what they’re doing. In fact, I’ve noticed people on Twitter tweeting about what they’re currently doing more than about what’s on their mind. Now my argument is only from personal experience, but so is Hendrickson’s. Without any statistics both of our arguments have the same truth claims. So I present to you my friend’s Facebook Status’s for the past 2 hours:

is job hunting tomorrow... whatever, i didn't like it
is little wayneee little waynee little waynneeeeee.
had an amazing weekend. cannot wait for reading week!
dosen't like calculus right now.
burned 12 wheelbarrows of leaves today... and only 30% of the yard done. Whew!
Damn you Google Chrome for being such a RAM whore...we had so much potential.
is blink.
Radiohead definitely in my top 5 bands of all time. Yup!
is sleeping way too much.
is lovin the strep throat. nahht.
apparently needs to be more depressed. what? ahaha.
is listening to PandaBass in the mix.
is on a boat motherfucker and don't you forget.
is playing madden 09...of course lol.
is excited she doesn't have to smell french fries until friday. good times.
is glad there's someone constantly pushing and challenging me to be better. It's more work, but I'm better for it . )
___...No Matter What, Die Trying...___.
keeps falling down.
very impressed with Chancellor Merkel, for once.
is performing an exorcism on his dog at midnight.
There is no substance to this content.
¨her biggest strength is her lack of weakness¨ ahhahaaha...
wishes he were home with family.
is spending forever making this one stupid handout. That's my great idea for you...
is waiting for GE to come over, and is then working from 10-12! lame!

I counted 11 updates about what the person is doing, did, or will do, and I counted 13 updates that were just thoughts or quotes.

From this small and rather insignificant study we can see that the ratio between updating about what one is doing and updating about what one is thinking is similar, if not almost exact.

But I’m still slightly right about seeing more updates about what people are thinking : )