But I’m left with one question that sounds pretty trivial I admit but surely this network effect works so well for these two notables because they are well known ‘names’? If I were to put out a similar ‘crowdsourcing’ request it simply would not work. The context then of being known is key.

As a larger point it does make me smile sometimes when web 2.0 thought leaders acclaim certain products, without this contextual awareness. In fact you could say you get a better idea of the pros and cons of web 2.0 tools for ordinary users when you’re not a ‘name’ as the bias of noterity does not apply. Hey, I’ll keep on keeping a low profile and see what that brings/does not bring as both results are useful — to compare my observations against the reported results from web 2.0 leaders.

That said after I posted this issue to the UK community manager group e-mint I had a useful response from Mecca Ibrahim underlining the value of Twitter for crowdsourcing, including the following great point on why people often use Twitter rather than Google for finding what they want: “In fact a number of friends say they use Twitter rather than Google sometimes as they know they’ll get an answer from people they “know” rather than an SEO’d response.”

PS: Please don’t comment or highlight this post in any significant way or I’ll lose my hard-earned lack of profile in the world of social media!

Social Media 2009

Talking about relevancy and timing here’s a great example from Laura Fitton of how to alienate people with the way Facebook Ads suck up data from users, unless you remember to opt-out of Social Ads:

“Wow! Leaving the group efactor on Facebook! DO NOT WANT the fact that I joined their FB group to be a part of their Ads. WTH? Repeat: this was NOT efactor’s doing. this is a Facebook-wide issue. it affects you too. Social ads are opt OUT. Privacy>News Feed>Social Ads.”

Facebook Social Ads Permissions

“‘Microblogging’ is the industry standard term for applications like Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku, but many see it as inaccurate and too ‘inside baseball’. We prefer ‘microsharing’ which reflects the nature a little more accurately, and isn’t as off-putting to ‘non web2.0′” (Laura Fitton, of Pistachio Consulting).

I hear that in the UK Plurk are expanding activities with the hire of as senior engagement manager (from a software development background), working with clients like the Guardian. Wonder how he/she deal with the significant cultural issues which lie behind web 2.0 adoption?

Perhaps that’s more of an Enterprise 2.0 concern:

“One has to remember though that even if Enterprise 2.0 technologies such as the ones listed above provide for rapid and agile collaboration and empowerment, there has to be a cultural openness to this within an enterprise for it to truly be successful. So it’s not only about aligning the technology with the business, but aligning the culture with the technology that now becomes the challenge.” (The Future Value Business Blog).

Certainly in conversation with an industry insider yesterday (nice offices near the College of Arms in London) that cultural adoption issue, rather than the technology, was the prime concern of her clients. So in that light too, the language used does help. Not sure if either ‘microblogging’ or ‘microsharing’ are that user friendly in that context?

A small example of how what’s obvious to one person ain’t necessarily obvious to another, from a recent Twitter of conversation of mine with Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research in Social Computing. BHO? It’s obvious when you know;-)

Yesterday’s lunch with Peter Fenton (Benchmark VC) we discussed how: FDR used
Radio, JFK used TV, Obama (BHO) used WWW to win elections about 24 hours
ago from web

@jowyang BHO? about 23 hours ago from web in reply to jowyang

@stuartgh Not sure what “BHO” is? Barack Hussein Obama, even his
name is far different than any before about 23 hours ago from web in reply to stuartgh