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You remember the first time you swapped your old Nokia for a smartphone, well… this is nothing like that. This is, if you will excuse the obvious analogy, more like switching from iOS to Android. Which is better? It’s possible that WWIII is going to be started by someone saying “iPhone sucks” and cities will crumble to the chant of “Android rulez” so I might skip over that.

You would have to think after Buzz and Wave bombed this is probably Google’s last try at entering the social space, it’s getting a little embarrassing it feels a little like watching a friend strike out with every girl at a party. But you know what they say… the third/fourth/fifth time’s a charm! And from what I’ve seen this time they may just have done it right…

Ask yourself a question… when was the last time that Facebook had a major update that felt like you, the user, were the driving force. It’s been a long time. This is a fact that has, obviously, been keenly observed by Google: “We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests”

So, onward to the features:

The main feature of Google+ is Circles. Based around the idea that people do not want to share everything with everyone and the word ‘friend’ does not mean one thing, it encompasses lifelong friends, university friends and people you barely know so why would you treat them all in the same way.

What is really refreshing about Circles is that you don’t have to be a Google+ member to take part, if someone adds you to a circle you can still interact via e-mail. There’s not a ‘Like’-gate on everything.

With Sparks, Google delivers a feed of content to you based on your interests. Allowing you to read/watch blogs, sites and videos from across the internet and share it with your circles.

I’m unsure how useful the Hangout feature is but it’s certainly very cool and at least based on a real life concept of meeting up with a group of friends unplanned and simply hanging out. “By combining the casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you’re free, and spend time with your Circles. Face-to-face-to-face”

With Google+, mobile hasn’t come as an afterthought, it’s built into the core aspects of the project with features specifically designed for mobile;
Location: With Google+ you can add your location to every post, but only if you want to.
Instant upload: While taking photos on your phone they will automatically be stored in the cloud, so they are always available and ready to share. Again this will only be done with your permission.
Huddle: Huddle is a group messaging service connecting you to your entire circle immediately.

And here’s some initial thoughts from our team:

“This is a pretty exciting development but will surly move towards its full capacity when the Android OS is full optimised to support it. The massive growth in Android phones will give Google a fantastic platform to promote this ‘social network’ as well as the huge audience who already live online through the multitude of Google products.” – Welton

“In all, I think the more Google services one uses the better this will work. Your searches, bookmarks, contacts and people you regularly email/text/chat will more than likely play a huge role.” – Adam

“Initial reports are really interesting and it sounds like Google have put an immense amount of effort into a wide range of areas.

I’m excited by the prospect of it being far easier or quicker to share particular things with different sets of people as opposed to discovering something and then having to log in to Facebook, find a friend and post to their wall or inbox. It sounds like it might be easier to interact with different types of contacts rather than having to get bogged down in Facebook’s limited profile and privacy settings to maintain your social boundaries online.” – Tony

So your next question is… where do I sign up? right? Well slight problem like all of Google’s ventures you’ll need to sign up and wait for an invite, in the mean time you should hit up any friends who have any connection to Google whatsoever to try to get an advanced invite (oh and send one my way while you’re at it!).

There’s a debate that constantly bounces amongst our team here regarding ‘tone of voice’ on Twitter and Facebook, and most of the arguments revolve around overuse of the exclamation mark.

You may or may not know this but many brands, when they issue instructions to agencies about what they perceive their company’s ‘voice’ to be and how it should be relayed, categorically state that they are against the use of smilies. Smilies are the lingua franca of normal internet conversation and the most expedient way of ensuring that your tone is not misinterpreted when hammering out bite-size communications at high speed.

Of course, one of the most important things about conversational platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, is that they are exactly that, ‘conversational’, as opposed to simple broadcast mechanisms. And one of the characteristics of most conversations is that they’re informal.

So what’s a writer to do when they’re required to conduct informal, quickfire conversations with large numbers of complete strangers, yet are not allowed to use the normal techniques, in this case smilies, that offset this weird dynamic?

Well it seems that the default position is to use the humble exclamation mark. A lot.

By way of, (completely non-scientific), research I did some quick back-of-fag-packet analysis of 15 well known UK brand’s Facebook pages, from magazines to toothpaste to chocolate bars. The data was surprisingly consistent across all the pages. Around 2.5% of all words ended in an exclamation mark! Which may not seem like a lot! But when almost 100% of contributing punctuations are typed by the brand (almost every status update!), the overall effect can be quite overwhelming! A little like CCTV cameras, once you start noticing them it’s very hard to stop!

Try it! Pick the Facebook page of a brand and see how frequently their tone is one of excitability! How relentlessly upbeat! How… exclaimed!

The thing about this emphatically constant positivity is that it’s a bit inhuman. It’s unnerving in the same way that those fixed grins and glassy eyes you only find on fundamentalist Christians are unnerving. It’s indefinably creepy.

I’m reminded of the Uncanny Valley Theory, which, in case you’re not familiar with it, describes the sudden dip taken by our sense of empathy when confronted with something that’s almost human but that has something about it that reeks of inhumanity. The uncanny valley explains why we’re able to anthropomorphise and empathise with a non-humanoid robot while a much more sophisticated and lifelike one may inspire revulsion.

“The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The hypothesis holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.”

“The uncanny valley may “be symptomatic of entities that elicit a model of a human other but do not measure up to it.”If an entity looks sufficiently nonhuman, its human characteristics will be noticeable, generating empathy. However, if the entity looks almost human, it will elicit our model of a human other and its detailed normative expectations. The nonhuman characteristics will be noticeable, giving the human viewer a sense of strangeness. In other words, a robot stuck inside the uncanny valley is no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a passable job at pretending to be human, but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person.”

Think about your brand.
Is it coming across like this?

Or more like this?

And which of them would you rather be?

There are now enough brands and agencies who have been typing in this hyper-enthusiastic way for long enough that it’s become a micro-culture unto itself, much like the bizarre linguistic inflections evolved by aircraft cabin crew over the last fifteen years.

But do we really feel that people who connect with brands on these platforms are so dim-witted that they need to hear the enthusiastic tone of a children’s entertainer to keep them engaged? Are we such untalented writers that we’re incapable of communicating a pleasant and professional tone without channeling Adrian Mole-esque punctuation? Is using smilies really such a bad thing? These are genuine questions by the way, not rhetorical. Maybe the answer to all of them is ‘yes’.

Between constant changes imposed by platform owners and consumer behaviour adapting, as people are bombarded with volley after volley of marketing messages, the social media landscape for brands is changing on a virtually daily basis, and the skills required to…

a) be sensitive to it and
b) linguistically adapt to it

…are demanding, to say the least.

While we continue to thrash out the [over]use of the exclamation mark round our table, ask yourself if your brand is slipping into the uncanny valley or whether you’re still a cute and likeable R2D2!

Until next time!

After failing miserably at my A-levels many years ago, I attended South Bank University. One of the most interesting subjects for me was always Organisational Psychology (every Tuesday morning), it’s probably called something far more fancy now. Here we touched on all aspects of how individuals, groups and organisations interact.

Browsing the raft of information from social media experts, I’m always struck by the sheer volume that is written. The shocking aspect, given this volume, is the lack of real debate on any given strata of social media and the subsequent theoretical norms that are created because of it.

I’ve been reading blogs for a while now and, in the main, I ignore the comments. I can’t recall the last time I saw a lively debate or a commenter adding anything of worth to the subject being discussed.

Here’s how it goes… blog post is made, comments fill with people nodding sagely saying that they said the very same thing on their blog (grabbing a bit of link equity and reflected glory). These kinds of replies run into the hundreds on some posts. This is where the Tuesday morning lecture reminiscence kicked in, bear with me.

Irving Janis had a theory that concerned how groups come to poor decisions. He concentrated mostly on US foreign policy – Cuban Missile Crisis is the most (in)famous – analysing the dynamics of the groups’ interactions, coming to a conclusion that poor decisions which seemed ridiculous to an impartial onlooker (i.e. let’s invade Cuba) were, in these cases, borne out of Groupthink. He defines Groupthink as:

“A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”

Where Groupthink occurs the outcome is poor decision-making by the group. I decided to apply this theory about how groups interact to the social media debate. Janis used an eight-point symptom test to determine the presence of Groupthink:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.
6. Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

Clearly the social media debate consists of a massive group, so applying this directly has issues but looking at these eight points some really do hit home when applied to the social media debate, or my perceived lack of.

As an agency we’ve been working in this field for over 10 years now – back then we managed fan clubs, message boards etc, and it was called community marketing. So I’m not here to deride the industry that we’re intrinsically part of. What I think it lacks is any real debate about the key issues. Saying “yes, I agree” and putting a link to your blog in the comments serves no-one other than yourself.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be touching directly on some of the eight points above in individual posts and adding some quantitative analysis so feel free to disagree. No, really, please do.

By Tony, Social Media Manager

This week I tried out a new Twitter tool, TweetLouder, which analyses your iTunes and Last.fm playlists to provide you with a list of your favourite artists that use Twitter.

As a big music fan, I was drawn in and within a few minutes had followed over 20 of my favourite recording artists. Which was followed by an evening of un-following as it quickly became apparent that what makes a great songwriter doesn’t necessarily equate to an interesting tweet stream.

Whilst Twitter is great for reading the ramblings of extrovert rappers and opinionated songwriters, it’s not so attractive to serious musos who would rather dust off their rare B-sides than discover what their favourite artist is having for breakfast. (“Steak & eggs and a belgium waffle w berries and whipped cream….goodnight….” – cheers for that @asherroth)

This is indicative of a brand’s need to consider the appropriateness and direction of their social media activity. Different personalities, services and products require different channels, tones and frequencies. What makes a great washing up liquid doesn’t necessarily make for an entertaining friend you want daily updates from.

How many examples do you see each day of brands who are inappropriately using social media channels? Do you think their fan base is really after a regular, deep and meaningful relationship with their hoover or lawn mower, or are they really just there for the freebies?

This is by no means to say that brands shouldn’t use social media, a lot of brands use social media effectively. There is a place for the majority of product categories and services across social media in some shape or form. But as the murmurs from the boardroom increase in volume to “do social media”, it’s essential that someone, somewhere asks the question “why?” at every decision point. If someone, and often it should be the experts (i.e. us), doesn’t question in this way, a brand can end up with a Facebook wall, blog and/or Twitter stream drenched purely in outward noise, little interaction and lots of miffed faces come project review time.

Here’s some of the better follows resulting from my TweetLouder experience:

@rootsmanuva This pioneer of UK rap is as reliable for tweeting links to frequent U-Stream DJ sets or new releases on his Banana Klan album as your nearest student union is for playing Witness The Fitness tonight.

@Dolly_Parton The queen of country music hits the Twitter frequency as impressively as those high notes on stage with just the one tweet per day, be it her famous philosophical musings or glittery tour updates.

@SalaamRemi is the lesser known (and far superior) producer behind Amy Winehouse’s global success. He’s also helped the likes of The Fugees and Nas along their ways. Whilst he packs a good dose of tweeting into his day, you’ll get humorous jokes, relevant rap re-tweets and video links to his brand new material.

@carlbaratmusic is a must for fans of the Libertine who pops up once in a while to announce a new gig or release, share a photo or just to let his following know he’s still standing.

@ChemBros is a resourceful stream of information, be it news of The Chemical Brothers’ forthcoming releases and gigs, or simply the set they’re about to, or have just played.

I was recently asked to contribute to a piece on customer service and social media measurement for the IAB Social Media Handbook. As usual my piece went way beyond the 500 word limit so you can see the abridged version here or the full one below.

The Customer Service ‘Iceberg’

Consumers are using social media to share, complain, praise and recommend on a daily basis. The vast majority of customer service issues occur and are dealt with via “closed” channels such as the phone, email, etc. These issues are below the water line where the wider public and media can’t see them, and this is where companies currently fix their gaze and resources. This is natural and correct. Who wouldn’t put most of their resources where the majority of the activity is taking place?

However, there is a large opportunity for companies wanting to tackle the above the water line (tip of the iceberg) issues that occur in the “open” channels of social media (Twitter, message boards, blogs etc.)

Publicly helping consumers with issues not only serves the individual, but the positive viral effect to their network and beyond can be tremendous. Most companies, however, are some way behind their consumers’ behaviour. There are several intertwined reasons for this disparity:

1. The plethora of social media channels where a consumer might express an opinion means companies require a tool to capture this conversation and an understanding of each of the media to enable them to converse effectively with customers.
2. Even with an understanding of the breadth of media, getting people to work across departments and tying new customer interaction data in with existing legacy systems still poses significant hurdles.
3. The vast majority of the interaction between the consumer and company happens in the public domain. The enforced transparency and openness of communication forces company cultures to be customer-centric rather than simply say they are. Cultural change takes time to permeate.
4. Customer service as a function has long established metrics and can be input/output driven. For some reason, people are letting social media muddy the waters. Return On Investment (ROI) in this instance is actually fairly simple.

When answering consumers via social media it’s key to remember the dual audience you are playing to. The primary audience is the person with the issue that needs to be addressed. The secondary audience is the network of the person with the issue. With mainstream news consistently using social media for content, this network extends beyond their immediate friends and can be vast in size and impact.

Setting Appropriate KPI’s and Benchmarks

Customer service is not always about handling complaints. Each interaction with a customer is an opportunity for the company to engage and influence, so the objectives of the activity can be varied.

All KPI’s should ideally start with a business objective; something requiring change that intrinsically affects the company’s performance in some way. Without this it will be difficult to make the activity relevant to the wider company.

Below I have placed some typical objectives in relation to customer service in social media, common associated metrics and some ideas on possible benchmarks, these being the key to making the data meaningful within a company, especially within social media. This is not supposed to be an exhaustive list but it should provide a framework to relate your own experience to.

When reporting on any activity it pays to remember who the report is going to and what their frame of reference is. Senior management will want to see the business effect of what you are doing, whilst the PR Manager may be more inclined to see the narrative of conversations. Jeremiah Owyang does a great job of explaining this here.

Customers increasingly prefer to rely on their own networks for advice and recommendation. Instant answers from people they trust being infinitely preferable to a telephone call to a scripted, non-empowered environment. This is a trend exacerbated by the interconnectedness that social media propagates. The key for the company is to replicate this helpful, friendly, open and empathetic approach to their customer service whilst proving its worth in hard financial terms.

How do you want your beans and flour arranged?
by Welton

First up, this isn’t a statement on the quality of the food. Bill Hicks’ damning set on Taco Bell will always be gospel in my opinion; “Why does Taco Bell even have a menu?” This is, instead, about responding to a crisis using social media.

Recently, a lawsuit was taken out against Taco Bell regarding its advertising. Apparently their beef doesn’t meet requirements in the US to even be called beef.

Bad press without question and there’s no doubt that the PR and marketing teams at the fast food brand must’ve freaked upon learning the news.

But let’s give some credit where credit is due. In a world where news travels so fast, Taco Bell were on top form and were in no mood to be bashed left, right and centre without getting their guard up.

Social media can be unforgiving and does not allow for much leeway on responding in a crisis. Inaction is suicide.

For Taco Bell, they went on the offensive and in a typically bold move, shared the news and their response to the lawsuit with their followers on Facebook. They shared a video of their CEO on The Colbert Report discussing the matter – obviously far more fun than some objective news story. They also used ads to draw in people who were trying to find out more about the story (ingenious!)

Why bother keeping schtum on an issue so many of your followers will have been reading about? Users see Facebook as a forum more and more, a place where they can expect an official reply to their queries, and Taco Bell knew its 5+ million fans might want to know what’s going on.

But really, you’ve got to imagine that not all their fans care in the slightest. Does the food taste good? Is it cheap? Fine. Super Size Me didn’t kill McDonald’s.

But what we’re seeing is an approach that has energised and celebrated its community on Facebook. Taco Bell has managed to create an “us vs them” kind of attitude (“Thanks for suing us”) and if shouting about how much they love their fans wasn’t enough, they also gave away a whopping 10 million free tacos!

Form an orderly queue everyone!

This isn’t about trying to influence the outcome of the lawsuit like some have suggested. This is about spotting an opportunity to create an even stronger bond with customers despite all the bad press. Undoubtedly, battle plans are already being drawn up no matter what the result is in court. We’ll be watching intently if they lose… will they continue to front up? Perhaps 20 million free tacos are being made as we speak!

It’s been some weeks since Apple launched their iTunes-based social network, Ping and negative criticism has been quick to fly.

Chief among complaints has been the lack of interoperability with other social networks, caused mainly by Apple’s early falling out with Facebook over terms of access.

While it is undeniably true that increased social portability would aid Ping’s profile, (and therefore iTunes sales), across other platforms, that portability is only as useful as people’s propensity to use it.
Apple may boast a stellar take-up rate but a glance across most arenas of commentary reveals less than glowing reports.

swolfe: So sad that #itunes #Ping won’t let you “Ping” about a track that is not in their store. What an asshole-ish thing to do

rick_wayne: Does anyone really use #ping or is it still a gimmick attempt to increase #iTunes sales?

DjSlickD: iTunes Ping…… Please make this better Steve Jobs!! Us DJ’s & Artists need something incredible an easy to work with!

MKinTO: @Social_Net_Pro I love #apple,but I think #ping is a clear example w/ social media, if you don’t start asap, you will spend 4ev catching up

homeinmyheart: Nah, itunes #Ping, I already got a #lastfm

tantrumbang: Does anyone use itunes’ #ping? What’s the deal, pure marketing or something useful/fun?

ZayTizz: I dnt know y I jus downloaded #Ping like I dnt have enough shit to keep up wit :/

mortennicolay: #TOOL missing from #itunes, #ping equals waste, #art wins

Dean_life: Bye #ping I never used you.

dougdaulton: So, Ping needs a “find friends” feature like FB, Twitter, etc. to become a real social network

chrisduque1: Been using #Ping setting up profiles for clients. Not very impressed….

Michael8192: When #Ping and #Facebook integrate, then I’ll consider using the service on a regular basis.

MzMusicBusiness: I don’t know if I like the new iTunes #Ping thing..

Not wanting to criticise prematurely I’ve given Ping a fair crack since its launch and, aside from the, (fairly obvious), complaints above, it strikes me that Ping’s main fault is that it’s just not much fun.

Given that music is something that enriches our lives to such an enormous extent, (in fact a straw poll of the office revealed that 95% of pollees would rather live the rest of their lives without comedy than without music), it’s surprising how boring it can be simply watching people reel off lists of tracks and albums into Ping. Sure, there’s an element of recommendation, but that alone is too scant to hold one’s interest for very long and encourages no meaningful feedback at all; “it’s like shouting into a well”, as a friend described it. It very quickly becomes clear that the context wrapped around the music postings in other feeds such as Facebook or Twitter enhance and inform the musical content and bring it to life in a way that Ping is simply failing to do. The whole platform just needs to be more fun, it’s as simple as that.

Here’s a free idea, Apple. If you’re not going to allow the usual social media frippery that makes up the core content on other platforms, how about you introduce a simple game mechanic, where iTunes tracks the music that you recommend and rewards you with free downloads when, say, five people buy from your recommendations. This could escalate users to ‘mayorship’ (a la Foursquare) or ‘Guru’ status, with leaderboards etc…. You sell more. People get free stuff. Everyone has fun.

Have that one on us.

A brand is like a Brad Pitt right near the end of Benjamin Button. It’s probably gone through a whole heap over a bunch of time to get there…but it’s a baby that needs to be protected.

And that’s perfectly understandable. It really is. Millions of pounds and countless hours of brainstorming, development and actual work goes into making an effective brand image.

But sometimes it’s just so good, things might slip out of your control.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, this is a post about location services, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Ever dabbled with LastFM? If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a platform that talks to your PC / phone / iPod and keeps a record of all the music that you play. Over time, as it gathers a nicely rounded picture of your tastes, it recommends other music for you to listen to that it thinks you will like, usually very effectively.

In true narcissistic web 2.0 fashion, (or 3.7, or whatever we’re up to now), one of the most enthralling things about LastFM is the ability to look back over your data, seeing which artists you listened to most over the last year, or which tracks rocked your socks last month and so on.

Once you get into the habit of peering at yourself through the LastFM prism it doesn’t take long for you to become a little self-conscious about your listening habits.

Did I really listen to Sophie Ellis-Bexter for 6 consecutive hours last Monday?

Oh god, the ‘Too Fast, Too Furious’ soundtrack is showing up in my stream…

With the knowledge that your tastes are now openly displayed to the world you may well find yourself curating your listening habits to present the most edgy / cosmopolitan / intellectual / clued-up version of yourself you can muster.
Nothing much new there. Who hasn’t hastily rearranged their CD collection in anticipation of impressing that date who’s coming over for the first time?
John Coltrane and Bach mysteriously find their way to the fore, while Linkin Park and Maroon 5 are banished to the outer darkness. A lovingly crafted public image is not a recent invention.

But what if your LastFM page, or indeed your home CD collection, consisted of only two albums? Imagine seeing page after page of LastFM data that consisted of nothing but the same handful of songs endlessly rotating. Showing anyone that your musical taste verged on the binary would put you, in terms of cultural, emotional and intellectual pioneering, somewhere just south of Jim Davidson.

Yet this is almost exactly what a vast swathe of foursquare users are experiencing right now, but with location data rather than music.
One of the best and worst things about the location-based social network is that it demonstrates just how unadventurous life is for the vast majority of us.

Don’t take my word for it, look through your FourSquare friends and see how many of their histories consist of train station / office / train station, day after day, broken up only by the occasional check-in at a Starbucks.
Hell, look over your own history – it’s probably you I’m describing.

foursquare does a really great job of highlighting to us just how mind-numbingly routine our lives can be; the location-based equivalent of listening to nothing but The Lighthouse Family.

An unpleasant truth is that we often change ourselves only when we are suddenly embarrassed by a facet of our lives of which we were previously unaware. There’s nothing like seeing a photo of yourself taken at an unexpected and alien angle to get you into that weight-loss program you’ve been meaning to get on with.

Just like viewing the mundanity of your musical taste with LastFM and taking steps to broaden it using their recommendation engine, there’s a real opportunity for location networks like foursquare, (and let’s not forget the recently-launched, yet currently rather boring Facebook Places), to inject some adventure into our usual routes without our having to become polar explorers.

How nice would it be if, once foursquare gathered enough data on your travels to establish that you’re falling into a routine, it suggested a point of interest based on the path between your two most-travelled check-ins that required you to take a very slight diversion to experience it. Maybe only a ten minute diversion…hardly any effort at all, but enough to introduce a tiny little glitch of colour into the otherwise beige matrix of your daily traipse.

Imagine getting out at Totteridge & Whetstone tube station for the 10th day in row, but instead of heading east and going straight home your location software nudges you and lets you know that just 200 metres west is one of London’s oldest trees, standing at an impressive 2,000 years old.

Worth taking a small diversion for? Yes, probably, when it’s not raining.

By making location services more active and disruptive rather than the relatively passive data receptacles they are at the moment they will be able to combat fatal check-in fatigue and encourage us to have less of a ‘two-album’ repertoire of personal location data.

Why submit data to a service when it’s not going to make much of a discernible difference to your life? Staring at yourself in a mirror is only entertaining for so long – after a while you want to feel like there’s a different person looking back at you.
Many people love LastFM for exactly this reason – they see a real-world, positive disruption feeding back into their lives from the data they submit and, most cruically, it’s personal to them.

Like so many other massively multiplayer online games, the points, badges & mayorships of a network like foursquare are most fun to the people who got in early. For the average adopter, trying to catch up with this elite can appear to be an almost insurmountable task, whereas feedback and positive disruption powered by a recommendation engine defined by your own personal actions remains infinitely, well…personal.

We see it all the time, and now it heads to Twitter : “There’s Too Many People Here Syndrome”.

You know the place, that little bar that was once hip, and then everyone found out about it, it got busy, all the early people weren’t recognised as “being there first”, so they decided it wasn’t very good anymore. And it happens all the time on the net – Usenet groups, IRC channels, forums. And now Social Media Snobs are leaving Twitter in numbers as they believe popularity and credibility are mutually exclusive, and even if they can prove they were “here before you” it doesn’t change the fact that something that was once “their special thing” is now part of the mainstream.

But allow me to offer a counterpoint: what if it’s not snobbery? There have been significant studies in the area – the Dunbar Number, made popular by Gladwell’s Tipping Point, states than around 150 contacts is as many stable personal relationships our brains can manage. So it could be argued that as the number of people visiting somewhere increases, the chance for our brains to process all these people is reduced.

I’d love to know your thoughts – snobbery or science? And could this diagram be bettered in anyway?

(With credit to Diesel Sweeties for the original “Music snobs” idea, go buy his stuff!)