Wait.. what?

I’ll break it down.  FriendFeed is a space mountain.

To wit, interacting with FriendFeed is like interacting with a mountain in space, in that it takes an enormous amount of effort to get the mountain to do anything, but once you have it moving, it’s not stopping anytime soon.

In metaphorical terms, that is what is required to really appreciate FriendFeed as an experience. To extend the metaphor further, we could say that the space mountain (or asteroid, perhaps) isn’t frozen out in deep space.  It’s more like a solar comet, spinning about a trajectory closer than Mercury.  This mountain is active.  It is almost paradoxical that a place that is so overwhelmingly active can start out being fairly slow going for the noob.

So, keep this in mind.  We can’t all be Mona — don’t give up if you aren’t a FriendFeed hero overnight.*  It’s best to start putting in your effort steadily, in the form of following interesting people, commenting on entries, showing yourself through stuff you find online via the bookmarklet and feeds.  But most of all, interact.

Comment and like.  A lot.  At first, you won’t get a lot of response from anybody.  But keep plugging away, and people will notice, and the discussion and interaction will start happening.

Consider this:  Even the least liked people on FriendFeed are well known simply by dint of their diligent effort.  Oh, they enjoy their status as underdogs, but the point is that even with many many people blocking them, they still generate conversation due to their notoriety.

So, buckle up, be patient, and enjoy your ride.

* Tamar Weinberg on FriendFeed follower activity level.

I love to explore new software. New social media web applications are no different – I like to learn about them, try them out, and be inspired by them. Some, like FriendFeed, become a tool that I use every day.

Especially in a field named ‘social media,’ most of you are the same as me in what you want to get out of it, but perhaps for different reasons. I am guessing that most of you are more interested in the social side.. you are on FriendFeed because there are interesting people there. And that’s cool. But that’s only half of the interest for me. I also love to explore and understand what makes software tick.

I’m not saying I don’t like people; far from it. I’m not a misanthrope! I’m just saying that my outlook on going to a party, mixer, networking seminar or other social event usually registers somewhere between uneasiness and dread.

The point with all this is to say that I know myself fairly well: I’ve always been a loner. It takes work for me to maintain social contacts and be suitably reciprocal and engaged with a lot of people. Frankly, it wears me out, probably a lot faster than for most of you, where I’m guessing it is more like second nature.

And that is what I mean by the burden of social media. For me, even when it is a joy, sometimes it is also a burden.

Applications like LinkedIn, Plaxo, not to mention social community sites like MySpace and Facebook are all about enabling networking and expanding your community of friends and acquaintances. When I started using these sites in earnest after SXSW Interactive in February, I was positive they would completely fill in the gap where I came up short in networking and socializing.

After 6 months of using one social app or another every day, I can safely say that none of these tools is a panacea for the introverted man. It’s not that they don’t work, they do provide a lot of leverage in different ways for those willing to put in the effort. But they do in fact require effort.

In some ways, the playing field is not leveled by these tools. For example, If I put in effort, that effort is magnified on a social media site. I may go from making 5 or 6 contacts in a certain industry or social circle to making 15 to 20. And that is great. But someone who could easily make 25 to 50 contacts without a social media tool would see their work multiplied ten times or more. They could easily have 250 or more contacts.

My point here is that, I have been putting in a lot of effort, and for a reclusive shlub, I think I’m doing really well in this funny online universe of FriendFeed and Facebook and Twitter. I can’t complain. In fact I want to thank each and every one of you who look for me on a new social media site and make the effort to link to me there! But I need to make sure that I am directing my energy toward creative endeavors as much or more than building a social network.

Therefore, I am going to make some changes to this site, Scribkin. I am going to re-dedicate it more toward writing what I am good at, which is more primers and tech-based stuff, and not fret so much about the social side. If an article warrants linking to an awesome article or other bit of writing that someone else wrote, fantastic. But if I feel like my energy is driving me toward writing something more introspective, I will run with it. My ultimate goal with this site is to become a better writer, to write more proficiently and clearly, and to provide a service to my readership.

So you will be seeing the site going in new directions as I discover new technologies that fascinate me, or topics that I feel I have something interesting to write about. I am also going to try to not worry so much about readership, page counts, etc. I think investing my attention in those things draws energy away from writing.

They say that most book writers are extremely interoverted, and masochists to boot. I believe it. More, I can empathize with it.. I seem to draw more clarity of purpose and more energy when I step back and gather my thoughts together. So, this might mean you will see me less active on FriendFeed especially, but I think in the long run it will be good because I will be giving back more worthwhile and interesting content to my subscribers this way.

I apologize for the personal tone of the article, and I hope you all choose to follow me on my path of self-improvement, but I completely don’t blame you if you do not.

I do my best writing when I’m not in the middle of information overload.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love information overload.  I have mild ADD so diving in to a vast cyclone of links, comments, entries and pictures is like taking a hot bath.  It is amazing and wonderful.

Me the Writer

However, while I am there, my short term memory shuts down and my mid-term memory is impaired.  I know this about myself.  It happens whenever there are a lot of bright, shiny distracting things in my environment.  Now, if I was a stockbroker, this wouldn’t be a problem.  But as a writer, it is pretty devastating to my ability to write anything cohesive.

I’ve been reflecting on my post quality from the point where I started my blog, 4 or so months ago.  At first, quality went up, as I got more comfortable with my writing and I came up with new ideas and new subject matter.  More recently my posts have become less frequent and sometimes lacking critical information, like references to similar posts, even sometimes key observations.

For me, There is definitely a strong inverse correlation between participation on FriendFeed and post quality.  I have to internalize the information I gather and make sense of it.  When I feel it is time, it isn’t hard for me to write a great article.  But if I try too hard, or try to write an article when I am distracted by a thousand other things, my article suffers.

And then, correspondingly, I also feel depressed because the work I have done seems wasted.

Stream or Digest… or Both?

They say there are two types of people in the world, those who organize things into groups, and those who don’t.  With that advice in mind, I am proposing that there are two broad groups of people divided by their ability to process information:

• Stream: Stream folks live in the now, the breathe in the information, they put things together as they happen, they can make use of the information right away.
• Digest: Digest people love to accumulate information, ruminate on what they have learned, and then when they are ready, can push out some quality analysis and insight.

Of course, nothing is that simple.  I’m going to turn this scalar into a vector by adding a different axis: critical thinking.  I believe people’s ability to think critically is also affected by what mode they are in when they receive information.  For example, I personally am not critical when I hear new information.  It is only when I have had a chance to mull what I have learned later that the critical thinking kicks in.

Speaking of modality by the way, I do believe we all have the ability to operate in either mode, or both simultaneously if we are lucky.  But I think we all prefer one mode over another most of the time.

To further illustrate my point, I have tried my hand at one of those popular domain graphs.  See it below.

Thus, I would consider myself a digest personality, at least when I want to write and contribute what know or have learned back to the larger community.  I definitely like playing in the stream mode though, but I’m definitely no editor.  I’m better at being the historian, and occasionally make a decent pundit.

Other People

Everyone is going to see themselves in the chart above differently.  However, I can gamely make a stab at a few standout folks on FriendFeed and in Social Media at large:

• Robert Scoble: Robert is always critically evaluating anything he absorbs.  I would say he’s usually an editor, and switches to pundit to write his blog posts.
• Louis Gray: I think Louis a strong archivist in the stream, and switches to historian or pundit when writing.. though, of all the folks on FriendFeed, Louis can move into direct critical thinking at times.
• Corvida: One of the few folks I really follow outside of FriendFeed, Corvida stays a lot in stream mode and uses her archivist talent to write about new stuff, or pundit when voicing an opinion.
• Mike Fruchter: Michael seems to be in stream mode most of the time, occasionally moving up to editor as needed and writes mostly from a historian persepective.
• Duncan Riley: Duncan stays directly in the pundit zone almost all the time.
• Cyndy Aleo-Carreira: Cyndy is almost always in editor mode, trending toward pundit when she writes.
• Steve Hodson: Steven definitely spends most of his time either as a pundit or an archivist.
• Franklin Pettit: Franklin can be very quiet (at least on FriendFeed) but I know he’s gathering info so I would say he stays in digest a lot, moving up to historian for his blog posts.
• Edythe (Polly): Edythe loves a very broad variety of things on FriendFeed, making her most comfortable in stream.  She will occasionally jump to editor.
• Mitchell Tsai: Mitchell is probably the most pure archivist I’ve seen on FriendFeed.
• Shey Smith: Shey is heavy stream and editor mostly, moving to historian for his blog posts.
• Sarah Perez: Sarah is finely tuned to write in editor mode, sometimes switching to historian, but usually not dwelling in pundit too much.
• Hutch Carpenter (BHC3): Hutch seems to spend a lot of time in stream and will dive into pundit as necessary.
• Allen Stern: Allen splits his time between archivist and editor, and jumps often to pundit for posting or video.
• (Jeff)isageek: Jeff loves the stream, and either hangs out there or archivist.
• Mark Dykeman: Mark comments a lot on things he likes, making him an editor in the stream, and a pundit when writing.

Thanks

I wanted to thank NiceFishFilms (Michael Sean Wright) for writing about different perspectives on FriendFeed and giving me the seed for this blog post.   It’s great to see new faces and new blogs, and I’m definitely going to follow him!

If I didn’t list you above, I’m sorry!  I am really interested on knowing how you rate yourself (whether you are listed or not).  Keep your eye out, I am going to re-post this with the graph so you can rate yourself on FriendFeed.  Thank you!

Writer Wannabe’s

In fact, even bloggers don’t often like referring to themselves collectively as bloggers.  It’s almost too easy to say, he’s not a writer.. he’s a blogger. As if blogging did not call upon the same internal resources as writing.  You could argue the long form, of course… most bloggers will never write a novel by themselves, nor are they especially motivated to.

However, even journalists who write for newspapers or online trade mags and journals tend to look down upon bloggers.  Sure, there are differences to how a journalist and a blogger operates.  For one thing, a journalist has a copy editor and a deadline.  They have to cite sources.  They write for pay, and often need to try to stay unbiased, because otherwise what they are writing is called an editorial.

Blogging for Fun and Profit

But blogging isn’t just about writing whatever the hell you want on your own little piece of internet real estate.  Sure, that’s a perk, but the trade-off is that most of us don’t get paid. If you want to make blogging in to a business (also often called monetization), you have to make some fairly dramatic changes to your approach and motivation behind what you blog and why.

For one thing, you have to put on a lot more hats.  If you look at your standard book or even newspaper or magazine column writer, they prefer to stay on the cerebral or creative end of things, allowing publicists and established media channels promote their stuff for them.  Of course, like most things there are a thousand unknown writers out there for every famous one, but the promotional vehicles and channels have been there for scores of years already, and exist to allow the writer to write.

This is not true in the case of blogging.. it’s a new field, in a new ball park.  Bloggers have to work to be recognized for every part of their art, the writing, the promotion, the recognition.  There are no book tours for bloggers.  There is no talk show circuit for the most part.  Bloggers are having to re-invent all of that stuff from scratch in order to be acknowledged and, in a word, paid.

That means that bloggers are not just writers.  They are marketers, too. And networkers, social connectors.  They are new technology mavens and visionaries, pundits and critics all rolled in to one very tired body.  The cost of admission is low and dropping, but the price for success is staggeringly high.

Just Say .. Yes?

Does this mean a blogger should throw in their hat and go home?  No, not necessarily, but you should be at least acquainted with the realities of being a blogger, and the boulders that lie in the road to success.

For example, even when you get a bit of recognition, you have to deal with a ton of people who think you will work for free.  Just read Michelle Greer’s take on it.  If you put yourself through 8 years of medical school and become a doctor, do people start calling you and asking for free surgery?  Most likely not.  If work your way up to the senior editor’s desk at the New York Times, do you decide to spend half of your day doing work for free?  Hardly.

And yet, along with being constantly reminded that bloggers aren’t actually writers, even when they get a nut they suddenly are expected to share that nut with everyone.

And the Moral Is…

You got me.  I have no moral in this tale.  The ending hasn’t been written.  As I said, we are paving the path, burning the channels that will help bloggers and writers (and I am firmly of the opinion that bloggers by and large ARE writers, just as some writers are great and others suck, so also are bloggers).  I think the momentum is there for bloggers to make their own media channels, via podcasts, new TV, web radio, RSS and other technologies, to become legitimate.

And perhaps, turn Whuffie into something real!

I’m going to try something new in this post.  Aaron Brazell wrote an article on Technosailor recently noting the differences between western and eastern writing styles, especially when it comes to a column or opinion piece.  In my never-ending quest to explore new avenues, I will try my hand at a more eastern-style column.

There is a difference between passive acquisition of knowledge, and active application and sharing of that knowledge.

We all learn, as we grow and explore our world.  We learn by experience, positive and negative reinforcement, and eventually, by the lessons learned by others.  This knowledge serves us to make better decisions and infer indirect connections.

Some people love knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  They love to acquire information, to store it, index it, put it into context, and that is fine.  However, the motivations of these people are only knowable to themselves, and perhaps some future historian or researcher who tries to replicate the mind-set of such an acquirer posthumously.  This type of person does not share what they have learned.

Thankfully, the more common type of person has a more workable approach to information gathering and synthesis.  In order to function in a modern society like ours, a lot of context and historical precedents must be learned to know why things happen the way they do.  Usually growing up in our society does organically get them ready for this, and any additional quests for information are relegated to more specific goals.   They learn to become more proficient or more skilled in a certain knowledge area.  They tend apply this knowledge more, for their own benefit and those around them.  They take a more active social role toward information and knowledge applications.

Our society has grown up with a unique social medium called radio.  Obviously, everyone has heard of radio, it’s been around for over a century at this point.  It has changed its role in relation to American society since its inception, having been relegated as a secondary entertainment medium next to television, and more recently being pushed even further back now with the advent of the internet.

It has, however, always offered a choice to the listener: They can passively listen, humming along to their favorite tune or listening to the news of the day, or they can take a more active role, tune in to a program that allows people to call in and contribute their opinion to a topic in real time.

This idea of opening up radio for the listener to contribute is extremely powerful.  This channel has been around since telephones have become ubiquitous and its popularity still allows radio stations to remain profitable (albeit on the cheaper AM band) even to this day.

With television, society mostly skipped the social feedback loop that exists between AM radio and telephones.  Although forays have been made to make TV more interactive, they have been largely unsuccessful due to expense, or lag, or technical difficulty.

The internet has neatly solved this decades-old conundrum of passive entertainment versus active involvement.  On the internet, there are a myriad of ways to become involved with discussion, knowledge contribution or redistribution, synthesis, and sharing of archived information.  Although the technical hurdles for participating on the global internet culture are high, they are not as disconcerting as those of interactive TV and they are actively being lowered all the time.

The social channel has existed on the internet since the beginning.  Even before what we call the World Wide Web, people were engaging in remote discussions about hundreds of different topics on services such as Usenet.  Unfortunately, when Tim Berners-Lee laid out his hypertext-enabled vision of the web, the intrinsic social element, the ability to mark-up the content of sites, was not universally adopted along with the other technologies.  If this was a result of fears over making web sites too malleable or vulnerable to defacement, or other reasons I can not say.

In the past few years though, there has been a steadily and perhaps even logarithmically growing trend for adding a social channel to more traditional publishing mechanisms that have already existed.  Where once you might have visited a web site to read the news of the day, you now can comment on the news, or read the comments of others.  This once-intrinsic ability is starting to come back into its own, and in a big way.

One such medium that was built from the ground up with an active social element is FriendFeed.  Presented with a mysterious grin perhaps, it bills itself as a social aggregator.  Getting started is simple – you merely feed it some of the other services you already use, such as Flickr or Digg, and it pulls these in to a river of news and updates from your friends and acquaintances.  You are then able to comment, enjoy or even re-share anything that you see.

This simple concept has seemingly been thought out from a small service to a burgeoning community with tens of thousands of folks interacting continuously with it.  It would seem to be a logistical nightmare, but on the surface FriendFeed does a very admirable job of maintaining a simple, responsive and, more importantly, engaging and addictive demeanor.

Forgive me for not providing a link, but recently I read in a FriendFeed comment that the service was no more than an AM radio call-in show for the internet age.  This comment, perhaps meant as dismissive, stayed with me.  The parallels between FriendFeed and talk radio are there – a comment or link is thrown out, the pundits and peanut gallery get a hold of it and provide their two cents.  The conversation turns, sometimes in a wonderful, exciting direction, sometimes darkly negative.

This result, though, is almost secondary to the actual point:  The coversation is there.  The conversation turns.  It breeds more conversation, more sharing of knowledge, and more synthesis.

In this light, I hazard to say that FriendFeed, while perhaps emulating the humble radio call-in show trades the local and redneck nature that tend to mark such shows with a national or even global community, revealing, yes, perhaps narrow views, but also extremely worldly and wise views.  It merges these worlds with apparent ease and a unique mechanism that seems to prevent the quick formation of cliques and walls – silos, perhaps – that seem to happen in other social mediums.

History will tell us if this bold experiment in to social knowledge sharing and synthesis will maintain its momentum, grow, or perhaps result in catastrophic failure.  It is however, quite in fact, unprecedented in its ability and scope.

In conclusion, you may be a gatherer of information, or you may not have a strong social interest, and that’s ok.  However, if you do think such a medium is worth your time and effort, I can virtually guarantee you, in terms of knowledge, information, and social contact, FriendFeed will reward you ten times for the effort you put in.