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An argument for the opposite of Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed April 22, 2008

Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , 6comments

Don’t get me wrong, there is absolute value in knowing what my friends, colleagues, and people-I-pine-to-be-like are talking about. But not everyone who is in my circle uses an aggregator to follow me. I have friends who see my Twitter tweets. Some people see my updates on Facebook. I’d like to think people see my stuff on MySpace, but I doubt it (except maybe Lola and Cheyenne). I also have this blog, which is how my mother keeps up with me when I don’t call and return emails. Separately updating each social site, morphing the content to fit each format, is painful, tedious, and unlikely.

Inward-Out

Publishing my rich content and messages to all (or just some) of my social destinations in a single post is the opposite of the aggregators. They are Outward-In (not that there is anything wrong with that). MessageDance is Inward-Out.

The Middleware of the Internet

The key to this sexy processing comes from an unsexy tool — email. Email is still the killer-app. It is the most ubiquitous, under-utilized, and abused tool in everyone’s toolbox. When most people think of email, they think of spam. The beauty of using email in the context of MessageDance is that an email inbox is never the final destination of a message or content that has been shared. MessageDance uses the really good part of email which is its ability to transport data in the simplest of fashions. Along its journey, MessageDance transforms the format of the content for its final destination.

Portable and Powerful Email Address

Now there is great power in just an email address. You don’t need to start your sharing from an email client. Start in Facebook and send your extra-facebook messages, blog posts, tweets from the native Facebook messaging app. Stay on YouTube.com and share a video to Twitter by just using your MessageDance email handle. Hell, blog from Amazon.com if you must. Besides signing-up and adding a few settings, you never really need to use MessageDance.com or your email client — and still reap powerful Anywhere to Anywhere sharing.

Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail

The Twitter Demographic February 21, 2008

Posted by geoffwolfe in : Off Topic , 1 comment so far

I was checking out the US presidential candidates presence on various social media. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both have Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook accounts. I don’t think John McCain is on any of them as the ones I found are likely spoof accounts.

As a candidate, you can have your young, hip staff create these sites for you, but the staff can’t make them popular. Clinton’s Facebook profile has 120,000 supporters while Obama’s has 600,000. Definitely a good following for both. Obama’s substantial lead is an indication of his appeal to the Facebook demographic (not sure what this really is anymore but let’s say it’s primarily 21-34 year olds — which I am not a member, sadly). His lead over Clinton gets very interesting when looking at Twitter.

Hillary Clinton has only 473 followers on Twitter. I’m pretty sure this is her official Twitter profile as it is the most popular Clinton one and the tweets seem official (albeit boring as hell). Now looking at Barack Obama’s, he has 6,661 followers (some are pretty interesting)! Clearly, a domination in this demographic. Which leads of course to, what is the “Twitter demographic”? Lonely, Prius-driving, 20-somethings (Barack’s base!) is a popular consensus, but Twitter is becoming pretty mainstream pretty fast. I don’t have an empirical stereotypical profile for the demographic, but it is clearly somehow favored to Obama.

The gap between Clinton and Obama on Twitter really deserves some analysis. One thing I noticed is that if you follow Obama, he’ll follow you back. Clinton doesn’t do this, so maybe Barack’s approach has some appeal for people to tell others that they can have him follow them too. Also, his tweets are inspiring and informative, while Hillary’s sound like a to-do list.

If I were an aspiring intern on the Obama campaign, I’d do a quick research study to find out why he is dramatically more appealing to the Twitter crowd than Clinton. Take the results to the campaign leadership (go over your boss’ head if you have to) and outline a targeted campaign for volunteers and votes. You will be guaranteed a plum position in an Obama administration. And when you figure out the Twitter demographic and get your promotion, please send me the research results so I can target the same people. Thanks and you’re welcome.