Who will control the all powerful?

I’d like you to imagine something for me.

Its a Thursday night and you’re up talking to your friends. You’ve had a great night and say goodnight to them, looking forward to chatting again in the morning.

The next morning, your world is thrown into turmoil. You wake up only to find that your contact with the outside world has been blocked. You’re not allowed to talk to any of your friends, and they can’t contact you. You have no idea why this has happened, and no-one will explain it. All you are told is that you might find out what has happened sometime in the next 30 days. You are cutoff from the outside world.

After three days of nothing you finally are told that you have been cutoff because you have made too many friends in too short a time, which is not allowed. You find out that you will be able to talk to your friends again, but only in a weeks time. You have no way to challenge this,  and no-one who can assist. You are helpless.

The above story happened in the last week to someone I know. Jono Haysom, a colleague of mine at Telstra and an avid user of Twitter (@jonoh is his Twitter id) went to bed on Thursday night last week after chatting with his friends on Twitter, and woke up on Friday morning to find that his account was suspended. He had no idea why and when he contacted Twitter they responded with an auto-response email saying  they would get back to him in 30 days. After much agitation, they eventually came back to him on Sunday and said he could re-apply to open up his account in 7 days time.

The reason they gave for suspending his account was that he had followed back too many people that had followed him in too short a time . That’s right, he followed people that were already following him! Apparently mass followings like this are a trait of spammers so he was blocked.  

Besides this being grossly unfair, the bigger issue here is that as services like Twitter become more and more prevalent, and more and more of our communications with friends moves online,  being cutoff from your social network for a lengthy period of time such as a week would be an extremely unsettling, frustrating and stressful situation for anyone, never mind a person who has done nothing wrong.  If you extend that to a business environment, exclusion like this could affect a persons livelihood in a huge way, especially if the period was not say a week but a month or longer.

The fact is, the above could happen to anyone at any time, and nothing can be done about it.  The administrators of services like Twitter have total control over who can and can’t use their service, and can kick someone off the service at anytime. There is no-one overseeing what they are doing, and no way to appeal against any of their decisions.

Ok, Jono was still able to use email and other services to talk to some of his friends with whom he had established relationships outside of Twitter, but one can easily imagine a time where all communication services are controlled by one group or organisation (look at Google Wave for an example of an integrated service which combines multiple communication mechanisms).

Imagine the power a  group like that would wield then.  Perhaps we should start thinking about that future and considering what checks and balances need to be put in place so that there is always a way to address an injustice such as what was inflicted on Jono.

Its scary when you think about it.

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Update: Well its been a week since @jonoh was suspended and he still hasnt heard anything more back from them. He has sent 7 emails,  many with the same response

“If you feel you’ve been suspended in error, please reply to this email with a short explanation if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to include your user name. We will do our best to get back to you within 30 days.”

This really is an indictment on Twitter and its error management processes . They had a loyal and high-volume user who I only ever saw promote the service, and they have totally disenfranchised him by cutting him off from the outside world.

Lets hope this doesnt start happening to more and more of us across social networking services as they try to crack down on the growing spam problem affecting their legitimate users.

Twitter’s growth and why I dont post (much)

It has been a while since I last blogged. Instead most of my time has been spent on Twitter  interacting with those I follow, or who follow me.

In thinking about why this is the case, I have come up with two reasons, both of which are quite illuminating in perhaps explaining part of Twitter’s success over the last few months.

1. Although Twitter can be used in many different ways, what most interests me, and keeps me coming back, is the conversational nature of tweeting. That is, using Twitter you can easily interact almost in real-time with a large group of people, as well as joining conversations others are involved in. This is diametrically opposed to blogging, which by its nature is much less conversational (yes, comments can be used but these are not a conversation to me).             
2. Tweeting is easy, much easier than writing a blog post. In fact, of all the web 2.0 services, Twitter is probably the easiest to use.  All you need to do is put in up to 140 characters of text and submit, and away you go. This is much easier than writing a post for a blog or setting up a Facebook profile, to give two other examples of popular web 2.0 services.

As mentioned above, these two reasons may actually explain part of the astonishing growth of Twitter recently.

The first point illustrates the fact that humans are inherently social creatures who in most cases enjoy and in fact need to interact with other people. Thus, Twitter is fulfilling one of the basic needs of people everywhere.

The second point above shows that the “barriers to entry” to using Twitter for someone new (or relatively new) to social networking are extremely low, and the lowest of probably all web 2.0 services available.

Combining these two observations, it becomes apparent that Twitter is fulfilling a basic human need, and doing it in a way that is extremely easy when first used. Really, the perfect recipe for viral growth.

Social networks as information sources

I use Twitter a lot while I am at work. I have been feeling a bit guilty about this, as in most large companies doing something like interacting with Twitter rather than focussing on “core” work activities would be viewed as time-wasting and unproductive.

However, what I have realised is that my Twitter network is actually becoming an essential part of my information-sourcing activities, which are critical to my role. Through Twitter I have been able to access many leading thinkers in areas of interest for me in my current role, as well as research reports, case studies and technical information, all of which I have utilised to a great extent, and to great effect to perform the “core” activities of my job.

Whilst there are definitely exceptions to the rule, as mentioned above many large companies are oblivious to the type of benefits that web 2.0 services like Twitter can provide to their employees. Note that I am not referring to Enterprise 2.0 types of services which are generally internally focussed, but open publicly available services like Twitter and Friendfeed. These open systems allow employees to draw on the social networks they have created in the same way they use traditional internal informal networks that are always so beneficial to those who know how to use them.

If only most companies realised the treasure trove of expertiseand information that their employees would be able to access if they encouraged the use of such services. Sadly, its only the enlightened few that do.

Do you say hello?

I am now a pretty addicted user of Twitter. I check my feed regularly during the day and post at least a Tweet or two every couple of hours if I can.

However, one thing I am really concerned about is breaking what seems to be the “unwritten protocols” of social networking and annoying either one, or all of my friends or followers. The fact is, try as I might, I don’t seem to be able to find any written record of how a user should, or shouldn’t interact with others on Twitter, or for that matter any other social network.

I had a bunch of “protocol” type questions when I first started using Twitter, most of which I still don’t have the definitive answer to. These include:

- Acknowledging followers: Are you meant to say hello to new followers?
- Unfollowing: Is it polite to tell someone when you unfollow them, or warn people you are about to unfollow someone?
- Linking to blog posts: If you tweet a link to a new self-written blog post, do you need to specify its a link to a blog post?
- Greetings: Is it rude to not say good morning and good night to those online, or is it over the top to do so?

The fact is, whilst these questions (and others) apply to Twitter, similar questions apply to all social networks. The problem is that most services do seem to have a social norm – in most cases unwritten – associated with their use. By not knowing how to behave new users can quickly alienate themselves from others on the service, thus ruining their experience before they even begin.

This would seem to suggest that publishing these “social network norms” should be something useful for administrators of the services to  do. However, this would go against what I would imagine is the philosophy of most of these companies/founders, that being that the services can be used however the users see fit (within reason and the law of course). This must be an interesting challenge for anyone maintaining a social network!!

Twitter is my sticky mobile application, what’s yours?

Working at a telco and before that an equipment vendor, I’ve had access to the mobile internet in one form or another for a long time. I started using it in the early days of WAP and have been a regular user ever since.

In all that time I’ve never really found a mobile application or service that I used continually day-in and day-out without fail. In fact, I’ve been sceptical that I would ever find an application that would make me want to use it that often on the mobile, both because of

1. the clunky interfaces of most mobiles, and
2. the lack of my coming across any really interesting services.

That has all changed. I now access a certain mobile application probably 4 to 5 times a day on my mobile, not just to passively read it, but also to input as well. It has become what is called a “sticky” application. That application is Twitter. Yes, it has only been a couple of weeks since I started using Twitter, but I cant see this behaviour changing anytime soon.

Why has this happened? There are three main reasons I can think of:

• Devices – Mobile handsets, and specifically “smartphones” are much more suited to mobile Internet usage than any devices have been in the past. I use a Samsung Blackjack which has  a nice screen and full text keyboard, as well as HSDPA access to the internet. Its a breeze to use in accessing the mobile Twitter site, scrolling pages and inputting text.
• Application providers - Companies like Twitter (amongst others) are a lot smarter these days in developing their mobile sites. Whereas in the past most companies tried to base their mobile sites on their traditioanl websites, in most cases without a great result, companies are now taking the time to consider what functions users would want to access on their mobile sites, and building the sites to cater for this. Whilst the Twitter mobile site is not brilliant, it certainly provides me with the functions I need.
• Social Networks – Most social networks encourage frequent access by users to update, view and interact iwth other users. Twitter is no different. When I am not in front of my PC I feel like I might be missing some interesting Tweets and want to see what’s going on in the stream of conversations in the service. It is for this reason I use the mobile to access the site, and keep doing it throughout the day.

All of this would be music to the ears of any mobile telco, all of which strive to encourage their customers to use the mobile internet as much as possible with the hope of charging them for this usage. Whilst I am somewhat of a special case in that I work for one, I can see mobile applications like Twitter significantly increasing mobile internet usage for all telcos, if they get their business models and charging regimes right!!!

Of course, I cant see Twitter being everyone’s sticky mobile application as it probably would only appeal to a certain part of the population. Instead, I foresee a range of mobile applications targetting different market segments being the ones that gain popularity and drive mobile internet usage.

What is your “sticky” mobile application? Do you have one yet?