blackrimglasses.com

The utility of any service, I am thinking is directly proportional to the slope of the degree distribution of its network.

To explain:

When Twitter was first getting popular, it followed a power law in its degree distribution. A few people at the head, the rest distributed in an asymptotical curve downward, with fewer and fewer connections. In this type of power structure, retweeting made sense. It was a tool to progressively bubble discourse up the network to reach a wide distribution. A way of taking discourse out of a closed and small network, and open it up for seeding through the larger connectionist networks at will.

But as the power-law curve of connections on Twitter has now started flattening out, with more and more at the head, and more in the middle and a lot in the tail, retweeting is only serving to echo discourse that more and more people have already seen.

Today, nearly three quarters of the tweets I received were retweets. And most of those retweets I had already seen the original of. Just tonight, Facebook reverted their terms-of-service, and Mashable immediately tweeted it. Then four people on my follow list retweeted Mashable. Why? They have nothing to add, nothing to contextualize it, nothing to inform and nothing to say. They just say it.

I understand twitter is casual conversation, but it should be conversation. It should be people saying things, not resaying them. I understand the “collection” mentality that drives this. Here is something interesting: please also find it interesting. It’s the same culture that creates mix-tapes, makes DJ’ing such an amazing experience, makes us want to teach and inform people of things. But there are better ways of doing this.

It used to be people would curate links, provide meta-commentary and then drive quality content through that. Some people (Andy Baio, Jason Kottke) do this to great effect. But more and more, I’m seeing people that used to be noted for the quality of meta-discourse devolving into mirrors. And it’s mirrors upon mirrors.

Mirrors don’t add anything unless the quality of the glass is bad. And I’m afraid its becoming a veritable funhouse in Twitter land.

What I am most afraid of is what will happen during SXSW. I’m pretty much afraid to even look at Twitter:

@blah1: RT: @blah a party at Stubbs!

@blah3: RT: @blah1 RT: @blah a party at Stubbs!

@blah4: RT @blah3 @blah1 @blah a party at Stubbs!

I have a feeling while 2007 was Twitter’s coming out party at SXSW, 2009′s SXSW and the plague of retweeting is going to kill its utility for a lot of people. Me included.

Here are my suggestions then:

1. Twitter – please add a retweet filter at the software layer, like how we choose notification methods
2. Those that feel the need to retweet everything they find interesting, compile them instead into a twice-daily updated blog entry that you then tweet the URL to
3. Anyone who has a retweet ratio greater than 50/50 people should unfollow. Or said people should setup a separate “retweet” account. Make it opt-in.
4. People need to start being original again.

Rant over.

After the G1, I think I’m off Android phones. Android netbooks? Tablet? I might consider.

[From Android G2 Hands On: Close to Perfection]

The issue is not so much the TOS for most people, its the fissure between wanting to share everything and the logical implications. most people can’t reconcile that.

Plus messaging from FB about this wasn’t very good. It should have been a “I drink your milkshake” style explanation.

This warrants more discussion.

UPDATE: Facebook reverted back.

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Read the job description and submit a resume!

I find both Dan Lyons (who, I don’t know, got a big advance for a fucking book deal) and Jason’s response both elitist, on the opposite sides of the equation, and quite annoying. One aggregates and links, with some deep content, one faked in the spirit of Andy Kaufman. Daniel thinks blogging is not a business because his blog only got him a (probably) six figure book deal. Jason, who has made money through donation drives in the past from his readers, feels its a select few that should try professional blogging and the rest can toil in the Twitter or Facebook world’s, like third class citizens. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Oh wait.

[From The business blogging bust]

Oh, so now Facebook flouncing is the “it” thing to do? So glad this is a web exclusive, now we can’t point to this as a reason quality of print journalism is dying.

[From Why I'm Quitting Facebook | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com]

I still remember the first time data reified into something tangible for me. It was when I was 12, and went on to an R.E.M. fan area (surprise) on Prodigy. I remember it still because there was something freeing about finding others like me regardless of geography, and something intrinsically other-wordly about having a tangible connection with others through text, outside of time, space and demography.

Technology has grown since then (1991), and our perceptions of online identity, communication and participation have likewise evolved. In some cases it is the modality that changed, but the fundamentals remain the same (ie, email, discussion boards). Some things have died (Usenet), new things flourished (video chat) and hybrid versions of the old are reborn — what is Twitter other than finger/plan reborn?

But something is missing.

There was an inherent joy to communication, as little as a year ago. Twitter was fresh, Facebook was less populated. The social networks around blogs and the people behind them was rife with competitiveness as well as a mutual respect.

In the past year though, it’s almost as if we’re on a death spiral toward irrelevance. Half the @replies I now get on Twitter are spam bots. Techmeme is recombinant. The quality of the blogs I read are down hill, either toward unrepentant (and unfounded) snark, or simply republishing work others did for them.

The worst I think was last week with the TED conference. I have been invited to TED, but have never been able to make it for various reasons every year. I think the conference is great (and a good friend works on it), with an aim toward quality of discourse. But this year, something was different. Maybe it is tweets like this, or this.

Smug, elitist, exclusionary and in a climate such as we have today (with half a million loosing their jobs lately), nearly irrelevant. I said on Twitter when TED started, it reminded me of a Wall Street junket in Vegas.

I think the fundamental problem right now, and why I think we all lost the plot in some way lately is that these new forms of communication and collaboration were born out of a desire to decenter our world. There was supposed to be no center, and if one formed, was removed from relevance by the adaptiveness of the network and graph.

The twitters about TED (not TED itself) this year I think are illustrative of the point:

We are overly obsessed with our own cleverness, and ability to enable change, without ever executing it.

The blogosphere, Twitter, parts of Facebook, etc are becoming annoying because of this. A lot of people fetishizing the power to wield toys, talking about the toys without doing anything with them. It’s like so many Nero’s, but not in tune.

I’m guilty of this too. I want to do more to help, to change and to take the tools I use and turn them in a positive direction. I think we all have the best intentions (certainly Evan and Biz at Twitter, Mark at Facebook, the creators of Flickr, Blogger, etc).

I just think we lost the plot of why we do this. All of it.

Before we spend $6,000 on a conference, or label ourselves citizens of a conference, I think we need to find that again.

I know I’m trying to.