Snack Size Sociality:
Attention, Influence and
Identity in the Days of Bite-
Sized Media
Jyri Engeström
Google
Blog: zengestrom.com
jyri@zengestrom.com

Sartre:
“If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.“

Microcontent

Large ecosystem of
Few
social apps on single
proprietary
open platform
platforms
(the web itself)
New crossroads

This talk has 2 parts
Part I: Trends
Part II: Strategies for success

Part I: Trends on the web

Whereʼs the web going?

Conan OʼBrien: web in the year 3 000

The near future (1-3 years out)
Network Devices Software
• Broadband • Netbooks • Web apps
10 -> 100 Mbps • iPhones • Mobile apps
• Mobile • Androids • Cloud storage
2 -> 10 Mbps
• web TVs

Desktop: all apps will run on the web

Mobile: proprietary app stores vs. the open web
Smartphone market share
50 %
Nokia
25 %
Blackberry
iPhone
0 %
Q2/2008 Q2/2009

5 trends on the social web today
1. Discovery is becoming social
2. People are increasingly ʻsnackingʼ on content
3. Microblogging is becoming the pulse of the planet
4. Corporations and brands are getting human faces
5. Location is emerging as a new filter

1. Discovery is becoming social

Mumbai attacks
26 November, 2008

Hudson River crash
January 15, 2009

Iran uprising
June, 2009

Michael Jackson dead
June 25, 2009

2. People are increasingly ʻsnackingʼ on content

3. Microblogging is becoming the pulse of the planet

4. Corporations and brands are getting human faces

5. Location is emerging as a new filter

Part II: Strategies for success

4 strategies for success
1. Go where your customers are
2. Donʼt market, engage
3. Empower your ambassadors
4. Introduce something new every day

1. Go where your customers are

2. Donʼt market, engage

3. Empower your ambassadors

4. Introduce something new every day
5.

Document-centered social web (2003-2007)
• Pages and links
• No machine-readable identity
• No activities
• Based on polling

Proprietary real-time platforms (2007-2009)
• Faces and identities
• Objects, verbs and activities
• Proprietary push systems
• Contained within silos
• Non-standard APIs

The people-centric (real time) web
As a web citizen, your basic rights should be to:
• Host your own identity
• Log into any website with your
identity and immediately see
your friends
• Push your activities to your
friends regardless of the
service you and they choose
for producing & consuming
• Participate in the same thread
of comments from anywhere
• Store a record of your
activities on your own server

Battle is now waged over:
• Peopleʼs identities
• Activity stream routing
• The social inbox
• Real-time search

5 trends
1. Discovery is becoming social
2. People are increasingly ʻsnackingʼ on content
3. Microblogging is becoming the pulse of the planet
4. Corporations and brands are getting human faces
5. Location is emerging as a new filter

4 strategies
1. Go where your customers are
2. Donʼt market, engage
3. Empower your ambassadors
4. Introduce something new every day

1 open platform: the web itself
1. OpenID
2. OAuth
3. Portable Contacts
4. PubSubHubbub (PuSH)
5. Activity Streams (activitystrea.ms)
6. Synchronized commenting (TBD)