Tracking via Social Media

Recently, a luddite friend of mine, who finds my frequent updated and posts on facebook a bit much, discovered my twitter feed and said:

"I always thought you were a little carried away with the Facebook updates...then I saw what you do on Twitter. Oh my."

It is my guess that he has recently discovered twitter based on what has been what has been in the news (here and here). My response to him was "Yeah I also use Qik, the share feature on google reader, and one or two other social tools. I like being social without the burden of actually interacting with people" but that is not the point of this post. In my new job one of my minor roles will be to help define how the company uses social tools and trying to track what is being said.

There are several ways to track what others are saying about you and any discussions going on. Search.twitter.com has a great feature called "trending topics" which lists out some of the top topics people are tweeting about. TwitterDeck is also a great tool to monitor all things twitter. Robert Scoble talks about how he uses Twitter in this Kyte video (it is a bit long and meandering but it will give you a good sense of how someone super connected keeps up):

I also recently learned about the rooms feature on FriendFeed which aggregates all feedback from several sources. I haven't started using this but will set it up tomorrow and see how it works.

Social media are allowing anyone to easily monitor and respond to anything that is being discussed about you. I wonder what this will do to public relations people I am sure the tech savvy ones will be able to pick up lots of new business, while the ones who ignore all the different tools available to the average person will suffer.

Televison, The Drug of a Nation

This is one of my favorite songs from a very political artist but that is not what this post is about. This post is about what television networks are trying to do to engage viewers this is MTVs strategy while the NBC/NFL is doing lots of interesting things online like watching the game live online with the ability to allow users to view different camera angles. Ultimately, I think these are nice gimmicks but the thing that is going to save television is great content and the ability for viewers to have social experiences with others around that content.  

Television was the first social network everyone would watch MASH, Mary Tyler Moore Show, or Cheers and talk about their collective experiences in the office or with their friends the next day. I really think the cable companies and now telecoms like verizon and at&t have the ability to create a social experience around television viewing. I can imagine an IM like application or netflix like sharing features layered on the viewing experience to create a social experience. One would be able to see what their friends and contacts have DVRed or are currently watching. You would be able to comment on or rate programs and get recommendations from aggregated information as well as your friends.  You could see when your friends come online and you would be able to have a IM or Video chat with them as you are watching a program again having a shared experience across the country. The cable and telecoms need to do a lot in order to have this kind of stuff to succeed (innovation being the biggest) but I think the lowest hurdle for success are consumers, mostly because they are getting used to embracing this type of technology from amazon, aim, facebook, netflix, xbox, etc.

Update: A couple of weeks ago I saw this and it took a bit to find but Joost is definitely adding social interaction with the launch of their web based platform.  About a year ago I had a good conversation with David Clarke at Joost (not sure if he is still there) but he mentioned that this type of stuff was a priority for them and this is what would differentiate them from Hulu, which was then just launching.