Cloud Statistics

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

I admit it – I’m a data junkie; and Tweetclouds is my new drug. It allows everyone to analyze Twitter accounts the way Sam Lawrence of Jive has number crunched to provide the frequency of words used on the blog of 10 bloggers he feels are thought leaders. Essentially the process boils down to creating a cartogram of words used and enlarges them based on frequency. The results are a unique window into the bloggers/tweeter’s mind.

There’s a number of social media metrics I’ve thought about, and I’ll probably blog about it later. I’m having too much fun with this new tool right now to do so. However, here’s two I ran and figured I’d share.

Am I different on Twitter vs. Blog?

My guess would have been yes, and the clouds below confirm my Twittergab is far more colloquial than my blog writing. My blog seems to be where I think and my Twitter account is where I network & socialize. Update: I’m not the only one fascinated with Tweetcloud it seems!

My Twittercloud

My Blogcloud

What’s (fill in a name) thinking?

I figured I’d try entering Lingling’s account into Tweetcloud and see what I come up with. The words that jump out are “Tiger” (her nickname for me), “good” and “happy”. So I guess she’s pretty happy, which makes me happy as well.

I’m going to post some more thought on this at a future point in time. For now, here are some thoughts I’ll tease you with – Will Twittercloud analysis become as common an HR proceedure as a background check for hiring? Will nerds like me run social media metrics prior to doing business with someone? Is this an effective (or ethical) way to get inside a prospect’s head for salespeople? What are the shortcomings and caveats here?

How would you use cloud statistics in business, or in your personal life?

The First Tweetup

Lucky for me the first Tweetup in the bay area happened to be a few blocks from our offices at Socialtext, so I picked up Ling ling and we headed on over to meet fellow tweeters. My thanks to Ryan and Jennifer for kicking it off. Here’s what it looked like after the drinking got started (click the pic to pull up more):

The Tweeters are, from left to right, Martin, Ling ling, Rachel Luxemburg, me, Ryan Kuder, Mukund Mohan, Jennifer Leggio, and Joel Postman. Chris Abad and Leora Zellman also came from a drink and a gab after the above pic was taken.

We mostly had a laugh about some of the recent Twitterdrama as well as how each of us came to get onto Twitter. There’s always a learning or two to take away – Here’s my three takeaways:

1. Twitter turns the acquaintance process on its head. Normally we meet people, exchange pleasantries and start to form relationships based on shared interested. With tweetups, you go in with predefined “tags” for many people you meet. I realize that sounds impersonal, but there is also the benefit of skipping the lowest common denominator conversations (just to be polite) and heading right for conversations both you and the other person find interesting. For life hacks types of people, this is awesome.

2. Tweetups fill the gaps. Like Mukund, I wondered why despite the efficiency of many to many scalable communication, we still meet in person. I think we are programmed to communicate as much via visual queues as we do with words (these are of course missing in Twitter). Hence face to face meetings “complete the picture”. There’s also the serendipity of meeting someone you likely wouldn’t have friended otherwise.

3. Open conversations inhibit more open conversations? Everyone there is well aware that tweets aren’t private, and thus felt free to throw around some good natured jabs at widely known bloggers and tweeters. In other words, they felt more free to share their opinions in a way they never would on Twitter.

Kindle me This

Dear Jeff Bezos,

Congratulations on launching the Kindle reader. I wish you the best and I would love to see this initiative succeed. I’m just one guy with a little known blog, but I’m probably right smack in the middle your target market: educated, bleeding edge tech adopter, and voracious reader with available disposable income. So I should be eager to pick up a Kindle. Heck, I even poured theough Engadget’s review with holiday glint in my eye.

However, I’m ambivalent about Kindle, because it seems the device benefits Amazon more than it benefits me. I’m drafting this open letter to tell you why I won’t be buying one, and more importantly, what you can do to change my mind. Robert Scoble was nice enough to give it a week at least; I don’t think I need that much time.

Here’s why Kindle isn’t going to stuff my stocking this Christmas.

1. The wifi and built in wireless connectivity is awesome, but I already have the ability to punch in a blog or wikipedia entry on my iphone. So I’m not eager to buy yet another browsing device; It has to pack more punch than that.

2. “No more lugging around tons of books” isn’t convincing. At best, I can plow through 3 books on a trans-pacific flight. Not a big deal – give me a real advantage to dead tree format, and I’ll buy into it.

3. Now having an RSS feed of all the blogs I follow would be great, but I can only get to blogs you’ve indexed. Not a problem with Michael Arrington, but what about my fiancee’s blog? Why not just use a generic RSS aggregator?

4. The whole 1980’s Radio Shack vintage flair doesn’t work for me. I’ve held it my hands and I’m not convinced it’s comfortable to spend hours on.

5. I can’t share a book I’ve bought – this is my biggest pet peeve. Now I know what your suppliers are thinking.. “OMGBBQ PIRACY!” Well, here’s a thought – if I purchase a dead tree format book, I can pass it along when I’m done with it without drawing comparisons to Captain Jack Sparrow.

6. As I said before, I’m an iphone user. So I was disappointed when I tapped the screen and nothing happened. Time to evolve. Apple and HP have.

7. While we’re at it, I’m also used to inuitive interfaces with polished pictograms which are easy to interpret. I’m disappointed in the unwieldy Kindle UI.

8. My second-biggest pet peeve: cost. So let’s do a break even analysis here: 9.99 per ebook, competing with an average price of say, $15 per book. That means I have to purchase 80 books to reach cost parity, and that’s assuming you don’t jack up the price of ebooks once we’re hooked. While we’re at it, I expect you will, because it’s smart business.

So now that I’ve told you why you won’t earn my business, what you can do to get me excited about it? I’m glad you asked. Here’s what you can do:

Change the paradigm.

Apply the cell phone model to the purchase of reading content. Provide the device at a reduced cost (perhaps half of what you’re asking now), and charge me a monthly fee. Give me access to your entire library as long as I’m a subscriber. Yes, all of it. Allow me to share “links” to good books with other subscribers, the way I’ve socialized sharing links to blog posts I like. If you’re worried about me “farming” content, limit me to say, 10 books a month. I’ll be ok with that. Then add a legitimate RSS reader, and keep the wifi/mobile network connectivity as part of the membership plan. Finally, make the device as slick as the iphone, both inside and out.

I think you’d have a hit on your hands if you do this. You’d probably sell out – and I don’t mean in a marketing sense, where you ship too few devices and use the “sell out” as a marketing gimmick. I mean you’d really cash in beyond your wildest projections. The biggest reason why you’d succeed is because this model gives me as a buyer a huge benefit: I would be willing to take a chance on books I’d normally pass up if they are only a click away with zero marginal cost. Think about it – you would not only dominate the book selling market, but you would truly open the floodgates for more esoteric authors to reach a wider audience who normally wouldn’t buy their books. Now that would be something.

So how about it Jeff? Are you bold enough to change the way people buy books?

Eric

Blogger Code of Conduct

Looks like the blowup between Chris Locke and Kathy Sierra irked Tim O’Reilly enough to put this together.

As much a rock star as Tim is, I’ll go on record as saying I don’t like it. I’m not referring to the obvious enforceability issue. Nor am I referring to the idea that relatively uncensored, opinionated, gritty publications are “real” and hence more fun to connect to as a reader (give me the economist over newsweek anyday). My issue stems more from the standard itself. Who gets to say what is civil and what isn’t? This feels like the online equivalent of the “thought police”. A better alternative might be to provide indicators as to content, the way we do with movies.

Besides, a more stimulating conversation is always just a mouseclick away.