Microblogging
Tiny social objects
on the future of participatory media
Jyri Engeström
jyri.jaiku.com

Top 100 English Web sites on Alexa
1. Yahoo 31. Friendster
32. BBC Newsline Ticker
2. MSN
35. Internet Movie Database
3. Google 39. Go
4. YouTube 40. Craigslist
42. Flickr
5. MySpace 48. CNN
6. Baidu (Chinese search engine) 50. ImageShack
7. Windows Live 52. AOL
54. PhotoBucket
8. Orkut 59. Xanga (weblogs)
9. QQ (Chinese instant messenger) 67. LiveJournal
70. Geocities
10. Yahoo.co.jp (Japanese portal)
73. Adult Friendfinder
77. Apple
11. Wikipedia
78. RapidShare
13. Microsoft Corp.
79. ImageVenueHosting
14. EBay
80. Digg
15. Blogger
81. Alibaba (trade leads)
16. MegaUpload (file sharing) 84. Rediff (Indian portal)
19. Hi5 87. Googlesyndication
21. RapidShare 92. Skyblog
23. Amazon 94. Adobe
26. TheFaceBook 96. Starware
97. About
29. Fotolog
98. Sourcefourge
30. Passport.net
An increasing number of the most popular services are built on user-generated content.

This talk has 3 parts

1. The case for social objects
2. Five principles for building services around them
3. My take on the next wave

butterfly, butterfly
fly in the sky
butterfly, butterfly
flies so high
butterfly, butterfly
lands on my thigh
butterfly, butterfly
motionlessly lies
butterfly, butterfly
gracefully dies

$580M

Is MySpace another butterfly?

The sites that fail are just ‘social networks’

The sites that work are built around social objects

Think about the object as the reason why people
connect with each particular other and not someone else

Flickr did it to photos

Delicious did it to bookmarks

Amazon did it to books

The focal object on MySpace is music

How does one build a service around social objects?

5 key principles

1. Define your object

When we first launched Flickr, it
was a Flash application that was
mainly just a chat environment
with real-time photo sharing.
As we started adding features to the site
itself, like pages that hosted the photos
so that people could visit them at a
unique URL, we had a lot more success
with that. People responded to it, and
the site began to grow.
Eric Costello

Think about the objects on these services

2. Define your verbs

Silent selling on Igglo

3. Make the objects shareable

E-mailable permalinks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyri/315809759/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XhXvlLiVXCo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
Thumbnails and widgets Actual files

4. Turn invitations into gifts

PayPal example

Skype example

5. Charge the publishers not the spectators

Habbo Japan example

Freemium business model

Quick Checklist
1. What is your object?
2. What are your verbs?
3. How can people share the objects?
4. What is the gift in the invitation?
5. Are you charging the publishers or the spectators?

What will be the Next Big Thing in participatory media?

Can anything disrupt blogs?

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:
1) Simpler
or
2) Cheaper
or
3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

?

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:
1) Simpler
or
2) Cheaper
or
3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

Jaikus = short posts to the people who follow you

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:
1) Simpler
or
2) Cheaper
or
3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

“Can you talk?”
“Where are you now?”

Latest Jaiku
Availability
(ring profile)
Where you are
(freely named cells)
Who you’re with
(Bluetooth)
What you’re planning next
(calendar)

Preconditions of a disruptive innovation:
1) Simpler
or
2) Cheaper
or
3) Frees from need to go to inconvenient place

“The Mass-Starbucksization of Nearly Everything”

Social objects “to go”
Web communities Microcontent

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

A river of updates
from the people you
follow

Blog post 1 per week
Photo 1 per day
Jaiku 1 per hour

Occasional Continuous
Beat Hum
Particle Wave
Videos Blog posts Photos Microblogging Presence

crisis

“The future’s here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
Is it free?
Is it quick & easy?
Is it cross-device & multi-channel?
Is it everyday?
Does it bring people closer together?

Last but not least
an announcement

Dankjewel.
jyri.jaiku.com