I keep hearing how great Birmingham is at blogging and social media. That's a subjective thing and anyone can say it but I also keep hearing people saying or suggesting we do it the best, we do it the most, and that we're at the centre of it. That's a bit more problematic and I keep saying we need data.

Jason Navon tweeted me about this:

@jonhickman re claim the we do more social media in Brum - evidence in this report doesn't support it: http://bit.ly/1U4e4L #bigdebate

I've only skimmed the report so far (embedded below from scribd), but I'm sure some keen eyes will have concerns over the overall design of their survey and will want to ask what measures are being used to determine if a blog "is highly regarded by other, relevant influential sites". Scholars of network theory might like to ask if the personal networks of the London-based authors lead to a skew of influence to London. We might be concerned too about unevidenced assertions such as:

Consumers who originally used forums and chatrooms as discussion shops in the early days of online communities have graduated seamlessly to writing or consuming blogs on issues close to their hearts (p.6)

I'm pretty sure I've read literature and seen conference papers that suggest the forum is alive and well, so this doesn't make sense. If there's some evidence I'd love to see it. We might also wonder what the value is of a stat such as "London has the highest share of Twitter users in
the UK with 11%". What does that mean relative to city size?

Inevitably my main concerns about the whole thing will be about not the data, but the discourse. This is written from a marketing and communications position, and is measuring things relevant to that audience. That is fine, but it is presented as empircal and conclusive data about social media. In fact it's an interesting attempt to explain the blogging ecosystem for predominantly London based PR and marketing organisations. It's done that job pretty well, so it should be pleased with itself. It shouldn't pretend to be something else.

I still need to get my data.

Social Media Insight 2009 Low-res

(obtained from http://socialmedialibrary.co.uk/index.php?option=com_report_left&Itemid=57 - there is no copyright notice on the document so Im assuming it's OK to embed)

(download)

Click here to download:

newspaper-presenter.swf (10799 KB)

Click here to download:

Movie 1.mov (21298 KB)

BCU sponsored the social media café so it fell to me and Paul Bradshaw to say thank you.

Firstly, credit where credit's due, I have based this on Michael Grimes's Twitter Following Policy (I have lifted a lot of it, I'm sure Mike won't mind: he's a lovely man, please read his blog).

How I use Twitter

I follow a lot of people, possibly too many. I've developed my own ways of making Twitter work for me, so really I'm fine and generally coping pretty well. I use Tweetdeck when I'm on my computer and I use this to segment my Twitter followers into my close friends and colleagues, my students, and everyone else. That means I won't catch everything you say unless you're a close colleague or friend.

What I Tweet about

I tweet about my work and some things that I do in my private life, but I'm more private than you might think from my Tweets. I do chat a lot with people I know, most of whom live in Birmingham, so some of my tweets are a bit cliquey, and irreverant too. You'll only see these tweets if you follow my friends too, or if you're looking at my public profile. Again, don't judge me too much by silly in jokes I'm having with friends, there's some pearls in there somewhere I promise.

My Followers

Please don't judge me by my followers. There's a lot of spam accounts in here. I turned off email updates months ago, and I have stopped trying to tidy this up. So please look at who I'm talking to, not who claims to be following me.

Please say "hello"

As I turned off email notfications I have no idea tha you're following me until you say "hello" with an @reply, so that's a nice way to show me you're there. Who knows, we might get on.

Following back

If you follow me, thank you: I hope you enjoy what you see. If I don’t follow you back it’s because I’m struggling with what I’ve got and don’t want to add to it. It also probably means that you don’t fit the profile of who I want to follow at the moment, but that is entirely arbitrary on my part and not at all a reflection of your tweets: and it may well change in your favour at some point.

Unfollowing

I’ve tried very hard not to stop following people, but at some point I feel it will be inevitable. I occasionaly do try to cut back. If I do unfollow you it is very probably nothing that you have said. Ignore Qwitter, if you use it (Qwitter’s a service that alerts you when people stop following you and tells them which message pre-empted it). If I stop following you it’s simply down to my capacity to stay engaged with other people: please don’t let Qwitter make you think I took umbrage at something you said!

Blocking

If I block you it’s because you’ve followed me purely to promote your product or service with no intention of informing or engaging, and you are very probably a spammer. Take the hint and go away.

Students

Please think carefully about how you talk to staff on Twitter. It's not the place to ask big questions about your course or your life. We have tutorials for that, and email is a bit more private. Do @ reply me so I know who you are, I will follow you, but if we have only just met it's worth pointing out that you're one of our students: remember we're getting several hundred people in an intake at BCU so it's hard for me to know who's who! Oh, and also try to come up with a professional Twitter name.

Sorry if this all seems odd or a bit  Do keep chatting to me though, and do chat to my friends. They're lovely people.

Well, as Monty Python pointed out, the meek have had a hell of a time*. 

I had a thought last night about newspaper pay walls. It's a very lazy thought, and I'm jumping to conclusions (hence why this is on my personal blog and not http://www.interactivecultures.org or http://www.masocialmedia.com).

 

It's a jump to conclusions matt! - If you don't get this you need to watch Mike Judge's movie 'Office Space' - the image is CC licensed

The conclusion I'm jumping to is about the meek. Or more specifically, readers of The Guardian. Looks like they get to inherit the earth pretty soon, and it's all thanks to Rupert Murdoch. Well, I say the earth, that's a bit strong. But the meek will get to win the battle for ideas, and The Guardian will represent the mainstream common sense thinking of the UK. Here's how we can jump to that conclusion in three easy steps:

1. News Corporation has its sights fixed on putting all of their content behind a paywall, and are intent on dragging the rest of the industry in behind them (see this and so many other blogs on the subject or just read James Murdoch's speech to the Edinburgh TV Festival).
2. The Guardian will not put their online content behind a pay wall. In the 30th August 2009 Media Talk podcast from The Guardian a hung over (she hints she's still tipsy) Emily Bell is asked outright about putting content behind a paywall and she answers quite strongly: "No, it's a stupid idea!" (11:45 in)
3. News Corporation's sudden thrust towards paid content flies in the face of the other great media business ideology of our time (and by our time I mean, this summer): Free. Everyone's been talking about Free for a number of years, and Chris Anderson has distilled all that thought into a book called Free where he says "Free" nearly every other word (and if you listen to the free Free audiobook, you can hear him pronounce the capital letter every time he says it!). 

If you're Andersonian in thought, then the logical end point of a free to consumer Guardian and BBC versus a charge to consumer everything else will be that the only voices being heard are The Guardian and The BBC. Do you remember the Yes Minister speech on who reads which newspapers? If you don't remind yourself of what they said:

If Anderson's right, and if News Corp and Guardian Media stick to their guns that speech will be a lot shorter:

"The Guardian is read by everybody, and the rest of the media companies closed"

Even though a meek Britain fits my personal worldview and politics quite nicely, I'm not sure how comfortable I am with pluralism committing hara-kiri so spectacularly. 

If you want a more thoughtful discussion on this, try my colleague Paul Bradshaw's blog: here's his take on paywalls.

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* The cheesmakers are also quite blessed see:

I'm not really sure I care too much about Spymaster either way. I know a lot of people are enjoying it and others are really angry about it. Probably the closer you are to an early majority or later adopter of Twitter the more likely you are to like it.

Anyway, I half signed up for the service, and bottled it when I realised it wanted to send Tweets like "I've just bought an AK-47" on my behalf (as a lot of my Tweets are related to my work at BCU, I have to be a little bit careful, and some people who stumble upon me might not get the basis of these claims).

As a result of being on the beta list, I keep getting odd @ replies that my Twitter buddies have tried to kill me. So as a bit of fun I've decided to start tweeting random spoofs at them and sending them to this page.

Feel free to use this page in your own spymaster spoofs