MicrobloggingTiny social objects

on the future of participatory media

Jyri Engeströmjyri.jaiku.com

31. Friendster32. BBC Newsline Ticker35. Internet Movie Database39. Go40. Craigslist42. Flickr48. CNN50. ImageShack52. AOL54. PhotoBucket59. Xanga (weblogs)67. LiveJournal70. Geocities73. Adult Friendfinder77. Apple78. RapidShare79. ImageVenueHosting80. Digg81. Alibaba (trade leads)84. Rediff (Indian portal)87. Googlesyndication92. Skyblog94. Adobe96. Starware97. About98. Sourcefourge

Top 100 English Web sites on Alexa1. Yahoo2. MSN3. Google4. YouTube5. MySpace6. Baidu (Chinese search engine)

7. Windows Live8. Orkut9. QQ (Chinese instant messenger)

10. Yahoo.co.jp (Japanese portal)

11. Wikipedia13. Microsoft Corp.14. EBay15. Blogger16. MegaUpload (file sharing)19. Hi521. RapidShare23. Amazon26. TheFaceBook29. Fotolog30. Passport.net

An increasing number of the most popular services are built on user-generated content.

31. Friendster32. BBC Newsline Ticker35. Internet Movie Database39. Go40. Craigslist42. Flickr48. CNN50. ImageShack52. AOL54. PhotoBucket59. Xanga (weblogs)67. LiveJournal70. Geocities73. Adult Friendfinder77. Apple78. RapidShare79. ImageVenueHosting80. Digg81. Alibaba (trade leads)84. Rediff (Indian portal)87. Googlesyndication92. Skyblog94. Adobe96. Starware97. About98. Sourcefourge

1. Yahoo2. MSN3. Google4. YouTube5. MySpace6. Baidu (Chinese search engine)

7. Windows Live8. Orkut9. QQ (Chinese instant messenger)

10. Yahoo.co.jp (Japanese portal)

11. Wikipedia13. Microsoft Corp.14. EBay15. Blogger16. MegaUpload (file sharing)19. Hi521. RapidShare23. Amazon26. TheFaceBook29. Fotolog30. Passport.net

This talk has 3 parts

1. The case for social objects

2. Five principles for building services around them

3. My take on the next wave

butterfly, butterfly fly in the sky butterfly, butterfly flies so high butterfly, butterfly lands on my thigh butterfly, butterfly motionlessly lies butterfly, butterfly gracefully dies

$580M

Is MySpace another butterfly?

The sites that fail are just ‘social networks’

The sites that work are built around social objects

Think about the object as the reason why peopleconnect with each particular other and not someone else

Flickr did it to photos

Delicious did it to bookmarks

Amazon did it to books

The focal object on MySpace is music

How does one build a service around social objects?

5 key principles

1. Define your object

When we first launched Flickr, it was a Flash application that was mainly just a chat environment with real-time photo sharing.

As we started adding features to the site itself, like pages that hosted the photos

so that people could visit them at a unique URL, we had a lot more success with that. People responded to it, and

the site began to grow.

Eric Costello

Think about the objects on these services

2. Define your verbs

Silent selling on Igglo

3. Make the objects shareable

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyri/315809759/

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XhXvlLiVXCo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

E-mailable permalinks

Actual filesThumbnails and widgets

4. Turn invitations into gifts

PayPal example

Skype example

5. Charge the publishers not the spectators

Habbo Japan example

Freemium business model

Quick Checklist

1. What is your object?2. What are your verbs?

3. How can people share the objects?4. What is the gift in the invitation?

5. Are you charging the publishers or the spectators?

What will be the Next Big Thing in participatory media?

Can anything disrupt blogs?

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:

1) Simpler

2) Cheaper

3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

or

or

?

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:

1) Simpler

2) Cheaper

3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

or

or

Jaikus = short posts to the people who follow you

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:

1) Simpler

2) Cheaper

3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

or

or

“Can you talk?”“Where are you now?”

Who you’re with(Bluetooth)

Availability(ring profile)

Where you are(freely named cells)

What you’re planning next(calendar)

Latest Jaiku

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:

1) Simpler

2) Cheaper

3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

or

or

“The Mass-Starbucksization of Nearly Everything”

MicrocontentWeb communities

Social objects “to go”

A river of updates from the people you follow

A river of updates from the people you follow

A river of updates from the people you follow

A river of updates from the people you follow

A river of updates from the people you follow

A river of updates from the people you follow

A river of updates from the people you follow

A river of updates from the people you follow

Blog post 1 per week

Photo 1 per day

Jaiku 1 per hour

Occasional Continuous

Particle Wave

Beat Hum

Videos Blog posts Photos Microblogging Presence

crisis

“The future’s here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

Is it free?

Is it quick & easy?

Is it cross-device & multi-channel?

Is it everyday?

Does it bring people closer together?

Last but not least

an announcement

jyri.jaiku.com

Dankjewel.