TechTicker
educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, this week’s Twitter controversy involving the deactivation of the Reply feature is resulting in people moving to FriendFeed.

“So why aren’t people screaming about the feature being gone? Because this time, they’re just heading over to Friendfeed to have those very same conversations. Friendfeed for most users was just a place to bookmarks all their activities on other social networks. Now, more and more, it’s a place that people start conversations. The early adopters got that a while ago. Now, the not so early adopters are using it as a Twitter replacement, too.”

I have to disagree with Mr. Arrington on this one - at least partially.  There are certainly those who have begun to sing FriendFeed’s praises - and no doubt use it as a substitute - but the reality is not nearly the seachange that Arrington quips.

For one thing FriendFeed is still largely only on the radar of the early adopter crowd - and even in this realm there isn’t complete agreement as to its utility or value.  Even amongst earlier adopters there are still those that swear against it as a source of comment fragmentation and excessive noise.  The rest of the internet has arguably not even heard of FriendFeed.

Importantly too it’s equally arguable that later adopters don’t rely on Twitter nearly as much as early adopters do and are therefore far more tolerant of the outages.  As I discovered during my Twitterless week, the implications of moving away from Twitter to something else are a virtually complete loss of one’s social network - unless of course you’re truly embedded in the early adopting tech crowd and can inspire people to follow you anywhere in the way Michael Arrington or Robert Scoble can.  For the rest of us the pricetag is just too high right now.

Furthermore dedicated Twitter users seem to prefer the minimalistic sensibilities that Twitter offers, in which content updates largely revolve arond 140 character posts and perhaps the occasional link.  FriendFeed’s tidal wave of content from a myriad different sources and formats is a far different kettle of fish that won’t necessarily be seen as a desireable substitute.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the tech sector recently - most notably depicted on TechMeme - regarding the concept of Internet “noise.”

Robert Scoble is among those who argue the noise is incredibly valuable and should be embraced. His logic is to the effect that mainstream media (MSM) sites - and even aggregated collections of MSM sites, such as those appearing on Google News - focus on conveying polished, easily digested sources of information which are designed for quick consumption, but are not wholly representative of the complexities and realities of user opinion.

New forms of mass communication such as Twitter on the other hand are the exact opposite. When taken piece-meal you gain an interesting sense of insight into the thoughts and opinions of each individual user. However, when aggregated in bulk the threads merge into a cacophony of voices that is truly overwhelming initially.

As overwhelming as this is on the surface, Scoble and others argue that the noise is indicative of trends - whether established or emerging - however you have to know how to listen, filter, and as importantly, interpret.

For a long time I didn’t understand what they were driving at by saying the noise is good, however in my continued reading of Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral and The Bazaar“, I think I’m starting to understand.

In the section titled “Release Early, Release Often“, Raymond describes the logic behind the Linux philosophy of early and frequent release cycles. Notably this section quips the now famous saying: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” However it also discusses the concept of the Delphi Effect:

“Sociologists years ago discovered that the averaged opinion of a mass of equally expert (or equally ignorant) observers is quite a bit more reliable a predictor than the opinion of a single randomly-chosen one of the observers. They called this the Delphi effect.”

It would seem therefore that the trends inherent in the noise, which Scoble et al are listening to, are in fact a contemporary, publicly visible instantiation of the Delphi Effect - and on a mass scale.

If this is the case it also immediately highlights the value inherent in what Duncan Riley recently anointed the “Blogging 2.0” era. Here conversation and discussion have taken centre stage; and ideas, not content, reign supreme.

The conversations presently occurring on Twitter, FriendFeed, Disqus and the like provide an amazing insight into not just popular culture trends, but the myriad of opinions, and ultimately people that underpin them.

From a sociological standpoint the research potential is truly remarkable - the key question is how to harness this opportunity.

References:

• “Delphi effect“, Wikipedia, accessed 20 May 2008
• “Blogging 2.0: It’s All About The User“, Duncan Riley, The Inquisitr, 18 May 2008
• “The Cathedral and The Bazaar“, Eric Raymond, May 1993

Paul Glazowski at Mashable touches on the subject of lifestreaming today (”Shyftry: Good, Bad, and Potentially Quite Ugly“).

Advocates, he says, have “essentially come to the conclusion that attempts to own or compartmentalize information on the Web are futile, and that any effort to get the global conversation surrounding stories gathered from various places has some measure of legitimacy and is worthwhile to pursue.”

Enter the world of lifestreaming, which is effectively a socialised network of RSS aggregation with with addition of commenting.

I must say, my opinion on this area echoes the quote from the movie Jurassic Park, where Jeff Goldbloom’s character says “You were concentrating so much on whether you could that you never thought to ask if you should.”

From the standpoint of convenience I can see some logic on lifestreaming; however this only extends to the standpoint consumption of information. There’s so much information on the web, and so many different sources of content that a centralised and flexible location for each user’s chosen content streams makes perfect sense.

The issue I take with emerging lifestreaming applications like Shyftr and Friendfeed are they worsen the disconnect between islands of conversation, not lessen it.

As Glazowski explains:

“What Shyftr appears to provide instead [of centralising commenting at the source of the information] is a social commentary platform independent of those information sources. And if we can posit that the audience of blogs is strewn about multiple gateways of Shyftr’s type, we can intimate that a bizarre sort of grand disconnect would result. And then chaos ensues. In that picture, everyone does their own thing, and everyone, whether consciously or not, creates a great big mess of things.”

Advocates are correct in saying that attempts to own or compartmentalize information on the Web are futile. After all, blogs operate largely independently of one another, barring URL references to other articles. What emerges in this are countless parallel and localised conversations. However this disconnect is duplicated - if not worsened - in lifestreaming applications. At least content sources maintain a sense of context. In removing the context, lifestreaming applications devolve conversations to discussions about discussions; and significantly the disjointed pockets of conversation continue at the level of the aggregator instead of the blog.

With more and more people are talking about Collectivism, it’s important that we bear in mind what this  notion entails. Collectivism focuses on the group mind, in which context and content are key, and discussions and dialogue are the vehicles to delivery this content. Lifestreaming seems to be an attempt to capitalise on this notion, but it’s unsuccessful.

As Glazowski implies, the Holy Grail in online discussion is a means of bridging the disconnect between pockets of conversation.  Until that happens, the entry of additional applications that seek to “streamline” the discussion process will only server to deter it.

References:

• “Shyftry: Good, Bad, and Potentially Quite Ugly” Paul Glazowski, Mashable, 12 April 2008

One of the people I follow on Twitter, (jeff)isageek, asked the question today: “With services like friendfeed, twitter, disqus, google reader, del.icio.us, etc [sic] do i even need a ‘traditional’ blog?”

From the standpoint of eLearning and educational technology, my answer is a resounding: Yes.

Sure, it’s important to evaluate new technologies in terms of how they can be used to embetter our online activities - and more importantly our offline activities - however this must be ever tempered by proper investigation and inquiry.  Immediately flocking to the next new trend without thoroughly investigating the last one is detrimental to all technologies involved; not to mention the people that use them.  This is especially critical for education.

New technologies are emerging at a phenomenal pace, and perhaps not surprisingly this has served to whip up an ever-present sense of excitement and anticipation in which people are constantly looking for the next great innovation to top the last one.  In some regards this is a very valuable trend for the industry, because passion and enthusiasm breed interest and uptake, and people who may have once ignored the possibilities offered by eLearning and web technologies may perhaps begin to consider them.

In the same breath though the danger in this is that users may afford new tools an overinflated sense of value fanned by the flames of media hype.  The important task for users therefore - and particularly for educators - is to ensure these technologies are evaluated and analysed according to their own merit, rather than the ever fickle waves of pop culture influence; lest we fall prey to the curse of implementing technology for technologies sake.

In the case of brand new so-called lifestreaming technologies, advocates seem to place a tremdous amount of value on the speed of use and real-time interaction they afford users.  Ideas that were once allocated several hundred words are now crammed into 140 characters.  Speed is being afforded more consideration than thorough contextual elaboration.

This is what blogs facilitate that technologies like Twitter and Friendfeed cannot.  They provide space for carefully considered contemplation and reflection in which time requirements are secondary (if that) and accuracy and thoroughness of information and thought are of the utmost importance.  In keeping with this the comments and discussion that take place on blogs facilitate more considered responses, and are often times vehicles for investigation and reflection in their own right.

For certain industries, or social spheres, blogs may be quaint and passe; but they are not, and should not be perceived as such for education.

This is not to say that the aforementioned “friendfeed, twitter, disqus, google reader, [and] del.icio.us” do not or may not serve valuable purposes.  Real time communication tools, RSS readers and feed aggregators, social bookmarking tools, and discussion tools all have their uses - in fact they can be incredibly valuable.  The importance is to allow sufficient time to realise their true value (or lack thereof) before discarding older technologies.

The point: By all means, try everything; but evaluate them properly and thoroughly.  And remember, ‘traditional’ doesn’t always mean obsolete.