The Valley Divide / 04.04.08
Myspace. Facebook. Skype. YouTube. It would be impossible to argue that any of these are unsuccessful and can you think of the one major thing they all have in common? They bypassed the Silicon Valley crowd on their way to fame. Just totally skipped that demographic. Why? You don’t hit it big by chilling with the geeks at the back of the cafeteria.
Whenever a service or site starts to make waves with the Web 2.0 crowd you always have to ask yourself how would someone on the street handle the situation? This was my first thought when I read Scoble talking about FriendFeed.
Why am I doing both of those instead of blogging? Easy: I’m listening to more than 16,000 people there and that starts interesting conversations.
Let us ignore the ridiculousness of believing that you can listen to 16,000 people talking and think about if anyone else you know in your life would honestly believe that keeping track of 16,000 is a good thing. How many people do you care about in your life? How many people do you know add as many Myspace friends as possible just to see the number go up (I’m guilty of it, I like having my fans)? The Valley crowd is fascinated with the ability to reach a large number of people and hold a stupidly high number of conversations that they will never be able to keep track of. Don’t get me wrong, I think the technology is cool, but I leave it at that.
If you are spread all over the web and you want a central location to keep track of things and you can’t do it on your own blog for whatever reason then yes I can see FriendFeed being an option for you. To be honest though I don’t know how many of my digital lives people wish to track. If you read me here then you like the writing that goes on here. If you read me over at Emersian then you are interested in design. If you catch me on YouTube then that is more your style. Maybe you are fascinated with what goes on with me over at Chawlk so you follow me there. However, not for a second have I thought that people want to follow me everywhere. There is a reason all of these areas are separate and a good reason why I like to keep it that way.
Each division represents a different strategy or brand or whatever you wish to think of. If all I was doing was communicating to others would I go on Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Facebook, Myspace and email to blast out my messages? Of course not. I would have a central location like my blog to do it. That is what it is there for. It is crazy to think there is a need to join everything under the sun because how long do we stick with these services?
Also, notice another trend: you are moving your comments over to FriendFeed as well. The comments I’m getting over on FriendFeed are increasingly more interesting and from more diverse group of people than happen here on my own blog. That’s an interesting trend. Some bloggers are getting pissed off because of that (because they think they need the conversation to happen on their own blog). Me? I don’t mind where the conversation happens, I’ll participate there.
Now we are starting to get into Tyme White territory. If you haven’t already I suggest you read her two latest entries on this very subject.
I prefer my central location to be my blog, not a third party site. I do not want to make it harder on my readers to follow me. Thinking about things long-term, spreading myself out amongst sites that may or may not be around a year or two from now does not make any sense. My words, my images, my movies…these all equal my identity and I’m going to be very picky where I place my data. Ultimately, I will not have a strong presence where I do not own the site because essentially, I would be saying that site takes priority over my own.
Basically this goes into direct conflict with what Scoble is saying. Maybe it is because Scoble has the power to go wherever he wants and his core will follow, but can you see his audience growing because of it? I don’t. To break it down a little more simply if someone had five telephone numbers would you keep track of all five or just one, maybe two? How many different email addresses do you use to contact someone?
I have separate email address and screennames because I give different groups of people who have access to them. If I was going to share them all with everyone wouldn’t it just make sense to stick to one? What about reaching larger audiences you ask? Of course it makes sense to signup for these services for that reason, but then why not just signup and point them back to wherever you want your audience to go?
Your old friends miss the more substantial posts. Your twitter stuff is pretty content free. Something reflective and thoughtful instead of shallow and reactive is what a blog is good for. It’s a bit sad to see that dying in favor the effortless.
You see Web 2.0 has forgotten what people want. Web 2.0 has forgotten what makes people want to follow them. People want substance and that will never change. You can catch a viral video on YouTube, but how many viral videos does that one person make? Rappers are infamous for being one hit wonders because many of them lack substance. Why do we think that our Twitter accounts have become more important than our blogs?
I don’t blog that much because I Twitter now makes no sense when your blog was about stocks and your Twitter is about everything else.
As great as it would be to create a servive that the whole Valley crowd jumps on board to I would be a bit concerned because they do enjoy it. They don’t have the best track record of picking successes. There is the Digital Divide and there is the Valley Divide. Understand the difference and you have a chance of success.
I leave you with some choice comments found in this Scoble entry.
I canceled my FriendFeed account. From what I could tell, it’s just an aggregator for folks who don’t already use aggregators. Since I (and pretty much all of my friends/associates) already use aggregators, it doesn’t provide value. And it doesn’t force them to see parts of me they don’t want. If they want my photos, they subscribe to my Flickr feed. If they only want blog posts, they subscribe to that. Not everyone wants to know every single little thing that someone has done online.
Nothing personal, but Mr. Scoble isn’t a friend in the sense that I want to follow is every physical or virtual movement. Wading through Friendfeed is just exhausting. I’m happy to sit raptly close by, waiting for a well considered nugget. But this happens less frequently now because people are spreading their attention so thin. Take a deep breath some time. Panting leaves one breathless.
Good. That will remove some of the useless crap from my feeds. I wish more people will follow your example.
Seems like a good way to lose readers. It’s too much info.
Honestly, how anyone decides to take most of their online identity and continuously fractures it, dumps it, restarts it all the while handing it all over to 3rd parties is beyond me… in the continuous fashion crosses the border of absurd.
Sometimes when we think we are the big picture, we miss the big picture.
2 Responses
Tyme White // April 4th, 2008
IMO, Web 2.0 isn’t about what is best for the end user (which is where I hope it started). Instead it has become which start-up comes up with an idea first, scales it faster and sells out first. The end result are a lot of sites that do not add benefit to the end user. People drinking the koolaid are on the sites because the Web 2.0 people are.
Myspace. Facebook. Skype. YouTube. It would be impossible to argue that any of these are unsuccessful and can you think of the one major thing they all have in common? They bypassed the Silicon Valley crowd on their way to fame. Just totally skipped that demographic. Why? You don’t hit it big by chilling with the geeks at the back of the cafeteria.
I wish more companies realized they don’t need Silicon Valley to be successful. Perhaps the conference war that is going on now wouldn’t be happening.
3by9 » Stop Following Everybody, Stop Information Diarrhea, Start Being Interesting, Start Thinking For Yourself // April 14th, 2008
[...] words past by your head from 16,000 people you follow does not make you a more competent and thoughtful being. It makes your opinions blend into everyone [...]