I just read a very interesting article on Facebook negotiating to acquire Twitter.
The analysis of why this deal failed from a business perspective is important and informative - issues such as ad revenue, SMS fees, etc. - as these are important issues related to sustainability (which I still fret are not given enough attention in the ICT4D field). The article is also interesting in the way it discusses differences between social networking (Facebook) from microblogging (Twitter). It's always good to have one more explanation.
From my personal perspective, as a user of both services, I'm glad the two companies are not getting together just yet. I use them for different purposes, and more importantly I think Twitter has gotten better at one particular thing by being focused ... a focus that might get lost in the "bigger picture" of social networking. My hope is that Twitter becomes even better yet staying focused and independent.
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
25 November 2008
09 September 2008
Ambient Awareness - brining a small town feel back to the global village
"Ambient awareness" I just learned this term yesterday in a fascinating IHT article by Clive Thompson. Googling the term there seems to be very little out there, not even a rough new Wikipedia entry...
Ambient awareness is the product of micro-blogging with such applications as Twitter or the status bar on Facebook.
It's tiny shards of information about an individual that are often simplistic, even silly on their own. But taken over time, all those tiny bits of information about an individual add up to something much greater! They can reproduce something like the insights into an individual one gets when in close physical proximity to another.
The article points out that this is a very difficult phenomenon to understand until you have experienced it. I concur with this given my recent experimenting with Twitter. There are also potential downsides and misunderstandings, as with any new application.
My friend Edgar Tan has already blogged about this and considers how ambient awareness might be considered at the organizational level.
What's exciting to me about this is that ambient awareness can bring context and human scale back to the digital world. It gives a bit of that "small town feeling" back to the global village. It has the potential to enhance the human social linkages necessary to improve knowledge sharing and information management. And it can bring together a network that improves problem solving. That makes me smile! Something wonderful is about to happen...
Ambient awareness is the product of micro-blogging with such applications as Twitter or the status bar on Facebook.
It's tiny shards of information about an individual that are often simplistic, even silly on their own. But taken over time, all those tiny bits of information about an individual add up to something much greater! They can reproduce something like the insights into an individual one gets when in close physical proximity to another.
The article points out that this is a very difficult phenomenon to understand until you have experienced it. I concur with this given my recent experimenting with Twitter. There are also potential downsides and misunderstandings, as with any new application.
My friend Edgar Tan has already blogged about this and considers how ambient awareness might be considered at the organizational level.
What's exciting to me about this is that ambient awareness can bring context and human scale back to the digital world. It gives a bit of that "small town feeling" back to the global village. It has the potential to enhance the human social linkages necessary to improve knowledge sharing and information management. And it can bring together a network that improves problem solving. That makes me smile! Something wonderful is about to happen...
Twitter Experiment at IAALD World Congress 2008 a Great Success!
Well, simply put I am now officially a Twitter fan ... is there a term for this? Am I a “Twitterite” or a “Twitteree” or something like that?
You will know if you've read a few of my blog postings from last month that I started experimenting with Twitter, which was an idea that came into my head while taking the CGIAR-FAO Knowledge Sharing workshop earlier this year. Although initially I was quite skeptical that “microblogging” could provide enough information to be truly useful.
As timing would have it (serendipity anyone?) just after I subscribed to Twitter, Nancy White went to New Zealand to attend the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) 2008 Conference and was twittering the event with the tag “DEANZ08”. Suddenly I realized I had insight into a conference that I wasn’t attending and frankly hadn’t even been on my radar. Better yet, even though I didn’t attend the conference through Nancy’s tweets I got some nuggets of interest that I followed up (Googled in fact) to learn more about on my own. Then came the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Congress 2008, for which the tag “aginfo8” was coined by Peter Balantyne, and one of the panels I participated in was to discuss the use of cellular telephones in the development setting, and well, I was inspired. This was my chance to run a little experiment of my own to see if Twitter really was worth my time.
I started by twittering the conference. Just putting up one or two “tweets” per session that I attended, highlighting something I thought was key or interesting. I have feedback from people following me on Twitter that this was appreciated: (an example from my Twitter)
The third day of the conference was the plenary e-Agriculture panel. So that morning (early Japan time) I asked a question on Twitter about the use of cell phones in the ICT4D area. Guess what? I got replies and I referenced one reply (below) as an example while I was on the panel.
Me Twittering during the panel discussion.
(Photo Credit: Shehzaad Shams)
My colleague Gauri was also using Twitter at the conference. When the IAALD web 2.0 team found out about this, they interviewed us and posted the short video clip. (I think the video is a pretty awful image of me – strangely that little camera made me more uncomfortable than a room full of people! But content wise it is pretty good.)
There are some limitations with Twitter, mainly arising from two issues, both of which the Twitter developers are very forthright in addressing on their website/blog. First, the service has gotten popular enough that the servers exceed capacity at times and one has to be a bit patient to get data. Second, there is a limitation on who can receive outgoing SMS based on the country your SIM card is registered in. In Thailand, where I live, we cannot get SMS updates. Those limitations aside, this is a great service, and in time I think (hope!) these limitations will be addressed.
Twitter on!
You will know if you've read a few of my blog postings from last month that I started experimenting with Twitter, which was an idea that came into my head while taking the CGIAR-FAO Knowledge Sharing workshop earlier this year. Although initially I was quite skeptical that “microblogging” could provide enough information to be truly useful.
As timing would have it (serendipity anyone?) just after I subscribed to Twitter, Nancy White went to New Zealand to attend the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) 2008 Conference and was twittering the event with the tag “DEANZ08”. Suddenly I realized I had insight into a conference that I wasn’t attending and frankly hadn’t even been on my radar. Better yet, even though I didn’t attend the conference through Nancy’s tweets I got some nuggets of interest that I followed up (Googled in fact) to learn more about on my own. Then came the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Congress 2008, for which the tag “aginfo8” was coined by Peter Balantyne, and one of the panels I participated in was to discuss the use of cellular telephones in the development setting, and well, I was inspired. This was my chance to run a little experiment of my own to see if Twitter really was worth my time.
I started by twittering the conference. Just putting up one or two “tweets” per session that I attended, highlighting something I thought was key or interesting. I have feedback from people following me on Twitter that this was appreciated: (an example from my Twitter)
- gervis @mongkolroek thank you Michael for keeping us posted by a #aginfo98 report and thank youu @nancywhite for pointing to the JAALD tweets 11:12 AM August 27, 2008 from web
The third day of the conference was the plenary e-Agriculture panel. So that morning (early Japan time) I asked a question on Twitter about the use of cell phones in the ICT4D area. Guess what? I got replies and I referenced one reply (below) as an example while I was on the panel.
- Argentina provides a good case of mobilization of farmers supported by mobiles to organize the strike against govn't in food prices crisis 07:29 AM August 27, 2008
Me Twittering during the panel discussion.
(Photo Credit: Shehzaad Shams)
My colleague Gauri was also using Twitter at the conference. When the IAALD web 2.0 team found out about this, they interviewed us and posted the short video clip. (I think the video is a pretty awful image of me – strangely that little camera made me more uncomfortable than a room full of people! But content wise it is pretty good.)
There are some limitations with Twitter, mainly arising from two issues, both of which the Twitter developers are very forthright in addressing on their website/blog. First, the service has gotten popular enough that the servers exceed capacity at times and one has to be a bit patient to get data. Second, there is a limitation on who can receive outgoing SMS based on the country your SIM card is registered in. In Thailand, where I live, we cannot get SMS updates. Those limitations aside, this is a great service, and in time I think (hope!) these limitations will be addressed.
Twitter on!
20 August 2008
Twitter Trials entry Two
Well I've been using Twitter for several days now ... my initial impression is it is a potentially powerful knowledge sharing tool for those who can make full use of the application, i.e. those who can easily (and inexpensively) send and receive "tweets," particularly real time.
However as I've discovered in many countries, my home base Thailand being one of them, there is no way to receive SMS-based tweets on one's cellphone. It is possible using cellphone apps that take advantage of EDGE or similar data transfer protocols, but this introduces a different cost factor. After reading a bit I decided to install Twitteriffic on my iPhone, which has been easy to use and seems to be a decent application for tweeting. However, I have yet to decide I want to pay for a higher level of data transfers using my provider's EDGE service. This would be necessary if I use Twitteriffic very much.
My iPhone won't work at all from Japan next week, where I will be attending the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Congress. However, I will attempt to tweet from my laptop - I was inspired by Nancy White's tweets from a meeting in New Zealand this week. Just one more element of my own personal "Twitter trials".
However as I've discovered in many countries, my home base Thailand being one of them, there is no way to receive SMS-based tweets on one's cellphone. It is possible using cellphone apps that take advantage of EDGE or similar data transfer protocols, but this introduces a different cost factor. After reading a bit I decided to install Twitteriffic on my iPhone, which has been easy to use and seems to be a decent application for tweeting. However, I have yet to decide I want to pay for a higher level of data transfers using my provider's EDGE service. This would be necessary if I use Twitteriffic very much.
My iPhone won't work at all from Japan next week, where I will be attending the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Congress. However, I will attempt to tweet from my laptop - I was inspired by Nancy White's tweets from a meeting in New Zealand this week. Just one more element of my own personal "Twitter trials".
14 August 2008
The Twitter Trials
OK who out there is using Twitter?
Although I have been aware of it and done some reading about it, I'll admit to being a lagging adopter in this case. I even brought it up in the KS course I took earlier this year to learn more about it, but still didn't join. Then today I read some blogs on Twittering by
So today I signed up for Twitter. My ID is "mongkolroek" if you are interested in following me there...
Really what I want to know is how Twitter will be useful for me and also for the communities I am working with. There is a growing interest in the use of mobile phones in the ICT4D field. The interest in, indeed the use of mobiles in the development field is not new. It seems the frequency of mobile phones coming up in discussions I've had with colleagues and partners, and posts I've seen online here and there have increasingly referenced the use of mobiles. Maybe there's now a wider acceptance of their importance, and/or the service is more widely available/affordable, and/or an expansion of functions beyond managing price data, and/or maybe something else.
If anyone can point me to some good information about the value of mobile phones in ICT4D (in practice or theoretical) that would be great.
Although I have been aware of it and done some reading about it, I'll admit to being a lagging adopter in this case. I even brought it up in the KS course I took earlier this year to learn more about it, but still didn't join. Then today I read some blogs on Twittering by
So today I signed up for Twitter. My ID is "mongkolroek" if you are interested in following me there...
Really what I want to know is how Twitter will be useful for me and also for the communities I am working with. There is a growing interest in the use of mobile phones in the ICT4D field. The interest in, indeed the use of mobiles in the development field is not new. It seems the frequency of mobile phones coming up in discussions I've had with colleagues and partners, and posts I've seen online here and there have increasingly referenced the use of mobiles. Maybe there's now a wider acceptance of their importance, and/or the service is more widely available/affordable, and/or an expansion of functions beyond managing price data, and/or maybe something else.
If anyone can point me to some good information about the value of mobile phones in ICT4D (in practice or theoretical) that would be great.
18 April 2008
Learning never stops!
Some spontaneous thoughts on PLN ... Nancy White's bookmarks on del.icio.us just showed up with something about "PLN"and somehow it occurred to me that I needed to know what this meant. Timely really, as I read this article on David Warlick's blog, because I am just wrapping up a four week online course on knowledge sharing, which I now realize is a clear example of my PLN, my "Personal Learning Network."
Learning is next to godliness ... somehow my PLN of my early years managed to sink that value deep into me. Although caught up in the day-to-day demands of large organizations and professional "carrots and sticks," I think it becomes possible to lose track of this. PLN play a vital role not only for one self, but also for others as:
My mind has already got me thinking of how the Web2.0 technologies will impact our PLN. The article talks about Twitter.
Personally I'm fascinated thinking of the cultural and organizational impact of technology such as Twitter ... an enclosed classroom or meeting room, or a delimited group of individuals, is suddenly opened up to the Global Village. Of course opening up can be good or bad, depending on one's perspective. Not all would be comfortable with, welcome, or find value in this level of exposure. I doubt there will be Twittering in my office's meetings anytime soon!
It would seem there is the potential for too much of a good thing here, although Twitter's website does say it is the "modern antidote to information overload." There certainly is a need for limiting or filtering, and this is why the role of an established, defined networks is so very important.
But the potential for valuable input is phenomenal.
Learning is next to godliness ... somehow my PLN of my early years managed to sink that value deep into me. Although caught up in the day-to-day demands of large organizations and professional "carrots and sticks," I think it becomes possible to lose track of this. PLN play a vital role not only for one self, but also for others as:
- part of our own "continuing education" for professional and personal development
- something to be instilled in others; key role in mentoring and managing
My mind has already got me thinking of how the Web2.0 technologies will impact our PLN. The article talks about Twitter.
Personally I'm fascinated thinking of the cultural and organizational impact of technology such as Twitter ... an enclosed classroom or meeting room, or a delimited group of individuals, is suddenly opened up to the Global Village. Of course opening up can be good or bad, depending on one's perspective. Not all would be comfortable with, welcome, or find value in this level of exposure. I doubt there will be Twittering in my office's meetings anytime soon!
It would seem there is the potential for too much of a good thing here, although Twitter's website does say it is the "modern antidote to information overload." There certainly is a need for limiting or filtering, and this is why the role of an established, defined networks is so very important.
But the potential for valuable input is phenomenal.
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