Ever Wondered About…Diaspora?

By Kate Spiers

What is it?

In its own words, Diaspora is the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all open source social network. Strapline: Decentralize the web.  This is a timely mission, given current debate around privacy and control online.

It will work like this: Each user has a ‘seed’ which they own and host where they choose. Seeds will be able to connect directly to others, rather than via a mid-way platform where privacy is surrendered in any way.  The seed aggregates all of your information (FB updates, pictures, blog posts, tweets etc) and you can share with whomever you like over a direct and secure connection. More power to you.

So yes, it will snap at the heels of Facebook in particular.  Recent privacy issues with Facebook make this a truly viable alternative for those who have voted with their feet and jumped ship, or who plan to. The promise of full power over your data could surely not have come at a better time…

Why should I care?

So many reasons:

Diaspora goes live on 15 September as an open-source developer release, with the alpha consumer version launching in October, so expect plenty of build up and analysis – there’s no getting away from this baby.

Super-interesting to us on 2 major counts:

1. It’s a Kickstarter project, crowdfunded on a spectacular scale.  The initial $10 000 goal was swiftly surpassed and a total of 6479 backers pledged over $200 000. There is appetite for this in spades.  But backing the project with $50 is different to investing our time, effort and trust in a brand new platform. The rate of adoption will be the true measure.
2. A new way of sharing online comes to the fore.  How will this affect the rest of the centralised web? Is the mood turning? Will Facebook lose users and how will it respond? One way or another, we suspect Diaspora will make its mark.

Anything else I should know?

This is the work of a group of 4 NYU computer science students, Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy.

The group was inspired to create Diaspora by a February 5, 2010 speech by Columbia University law professor Eben Moglen to the Internet Society’s New York Chapter, “Freedom in the Cloud”, in which Moglen described centralized social networks as “spying for free.”

Features will include: Secure filesharing, instant messaging, VoIP, encrypted backups and OpenID.

Ever Wondered About is a new series on the Wisdom London blog, where Kate Spiers and Jill Ruthenberg aim to demystify and explore what’s shaping our social interactions.  Coming up: Ning, Paper.li and PPC.  Wondering about anything else?  Tell us and we’ll investigate!

Have you Ever Wondered About….Audioboo? Click to wonder no more.

Ever Wondered About…..Groupon

By Kate Spiers

What is it?

One daily deal for the masses.  Register your city and check out the daily offer on food, leisure, retail. Some cracking deals to be had, based on the power of collective buying.  Discounts typically around 70%, so if the deal’s what you were looking for, you’re onto a winner.

But the rub is this: The deal only comes through if enough people sign up within a specified period of time.  So sharing is encouraged to boost sign-ups and allow the deal to come to fruition. If not, then the deal is off.

Why should I care?

Well, it’s potentially a game-changer.  Mass action rules once again.  Since launch in 2008, Groupon now operates in 140 cities across the world.  But it’s the model that’s interesting:

-       Marketing a deal has shifted to the consumer.  They do the work in order to benefit and social sharing technology fits seamlessly into that process

-       Defining principles are quality and honesty (we’ll sell you something you actually want and be transparent about the terms)

-       For the businesses participating in offers, it’s a win-win.  The offer only goes ahead of the necessary numbers to make it fly sign up

And where else can the model go?  Well, it’s already come some way. Groupon originated via a social action site The Point, which provides a platform from which groups and individuals can find support for their cause (financial, time or otherwise). Only when the tipping point is reached are pledges called in.  It’s all about collective influence plus technology.

This principle could potentially create shifts in the B2B world too, seeing greater collaboration between disparate organizations in large and complex projects, for example.  In corporates, employees could gain empowerment to effect change if the powers-that-be can agree a tipping point.

Anything else I should know?

• Yelp, the local business review site, is trialling daily coupons based on their reviewed location.
• Groupon currently has over 10 million subscribers
• Josh Stevens is attempting to Live Off Groupon for a full year.  No cash allowed.  He started in May 2010 and if he lasts out til May 2011 he gets $100, 000.

Ever Wondered About is a new series on the Wisdom London blog, where Kate Spiers and Jill Ruthenberg aim to demystify and explore what’s shaping our social interactions.  Coming up: Ning, Audioboo and PPC.  Wondering about anything else?  Tell us and we’ll investigate!

How To Get Twitter-Fitter

Following our post yesterday on the Balanced Twitter Diet, we were inspired to supplement it with a quick plan to help you get Twitter-fitter!

Here’s what we think will give you the equivalent of a Twitter six-pack over time:

15 minutes per day: Cardio

Actively and energetically engage on Twitter (don’t forget your balanced diet of RTs, comment and conversation!) until mildly out of breath.  If you feel like you can do a little more each day, go ahead, but don’t burn out… Rest-days are recommended.

30  minutes per week: Weights

Let’s build up some endurance: Review Twitter stats for your feed and identify where you can improve, aiming to add a little more weight each week. Proactively seek out relevant content to share, questions to ask and seek inspiration. Maybe join a Twitter chat, to add some variety to your regime and work on all of your Twitter muscle groups.

30 minutes every 2 weeks: Stretch ‘n’ tone

Streamline and stretch a little bit further at least every 2 weeks. Check who’s following you, follow back where appropriate, explore who else your followers follow and get inspiration for new people to connect with, cull follows who annoy/don’t engage/are irrelevant.

15 minutes per week: Cool down

Be sure to end your Twitter week properly with a #followfriday list of tweeps you think your followers would like. Don’t skip it!

Kate Spiers is founder of Wisdom London and feels a strange affinity with Sue Sylvester at times like these.

Social Media Revisited (and why SM workshops rock)

Last week I heard an industry colleague soundly dismissing the concept of social media workshops and training, with the view that people should “just do it”.  Well, I’m defending social media workshops because I really, really believe in their value.

There’s the kind of value that some of us recognise as a given – the opportunities these workshops provide to learn, share ideas and focus energies, for example. But the beauty of this activity is the unexpected stuff it brings to the fore too.  Looking at social media through fresh, un-practiced eyes can be very enlightening.

Yesterday, I ran a social media workshop with a brilliant client who have a small, young and very smart team….and they wanted to know how to use social media better for their business. The general level of familiarity and competence in social media in the group as low – these are busy folks who focus, focus, focus on their highly skilled and absorbing roles.  So we started pretty much from the beginning.

Rethinking the concept

Try explaining the concept of social media again, what Twitter is and how it can help business, how the unofficial Twitter ‘protocol’ works, how LinkedIn can provide great benefits beyond straightforward networking, why YouTube is so powerful, blogs and wikis, user groups and discussion groups.

It’s a really interesting exercise.  It makes you think about what is worth spending time on, what you personally get out of social media and what you don’t, what your own personal social media boundaries are, what you share and what you don’t, where you share it and why.

Some of the team at yesterday’s session asked some really searching questions, which I think were totally relevant.  For example, the issue of trusted content – do people mind using shortened URLs? And what’s the ideal balance of content on a company blog (in-depth, short opinion posts, pictures, humour etc)? How personal can you be, and where?  Is Twitter really worth investing time in – won’t there be something newer and better before too long?

What’s my motivation?

For me, it made me consider my social media motivations – and I realised there are many.  For me, it’s a genuine desire to connect with a group of like-minded people, to share what I think is relevant and useful info, to float ideas and gauge feedback, to ask questions and keep up to date with my industry and reaction to news and developments.

It’s different for everyone when we think about our motivation. It might be about personal branding, or to consolidate relationships through frequent exchanges, or to simply observe.  But the unexpectedly great thing about sparking this train of thought was that it caused me to revisit my social media activity and consider whether I really am doing all I can to support my motivations and objectives (needless to say, I was not).

The case for Social Media workshops

Whether engaging with non-users, new users or seasoned users of social media, any opportunity to explore these areas, to question and challenge your current social media behaviours and to look at the world with fresh eyes has to be worthwhile.  Social media changes fast – our approach and attitudes need to keep up. And not only that, much as we’d love to think that social media and beautifully spontaneous and organic (and it can be), in reality we need a bit of a plan because after all, we all have a core business to worry about.

PS: Here’s my gardening / social media analogy

Social media is like gardening.  To get the best results you need preparation, time to nurture and patience.  Find your patch, decide what you want to grow and prepare it.  Plant seeds, see what grows (you might be surprised), and don’t forget to feed and prune.

Kate Spiers is founder of Wisdom London. She is a rubbish gardener, as it happens, but considerably better at social media.  Follow Kate @wisdomlondon