Jyri Engestrom – Microblogging (Tiny social objects on the future of participatory media)

jyri.jaiku.com

An increasing number of the most popular services are built on user-generated content. Where is this mega-trend going?

Three parts to the talk:

• The case for social objects
• Five principles for building services around them
• My take on the next wave

Part 1

• Many portal sites spring up and die out very fast, much like the life of the butterfly.
• Myspace gets a vast amount of money and now needs to… do what? Grow? Keep going?
• Firefly, sixdegrees, Friendster – all peaked and fell..
• The sites that fail are just ‘social networks’ [Is this why Facebook is trying to branch out]
• The sites that work are built around social objects.
• Think about the object as the reason why people connect with each particular other and not someone else.
• The focal aspect of MySpace is Music – it does actually have one. It’ll thrive if it doesn’t lose the vision of its true social object.

Part 2: Guidelines for developing these services.

1. How quickly can you work out what the social object of this site is?
   • When Flickr started, it was GNE.
   • Only by studying the service did they see that “just photos” could be a good starting point.
2. How quickly can you work out what the verbs are?
   • Add new event
   • Buy/Sell
   • Add a trip
   • Sometimes the technology allows a new verb to emerge.
   • On Igglo (finnish only, igglo.com real estate)... invent the verb “silent selling” – you can put your house on the site as a silent-sell (if you leave an offer, I might take it) rather than (I am actively trying to get rid of this.)
3. Make your objects shareable
   • Emailable permalinks
   • Thumbnails and widegets
   • Actual files
4. Turn invitations to gifts [love it]
   • Paypal: enabling $10 deposit on account of invited-users.
   • But it doesn’t need to be something you can measure in money.
   • Skype providing two CD/headsets per pack… and the gift is saving money.
5. Charge the publishers, not the spectators.
   • Paying not for playlists, but for right to publish playlists…
   • Habbo Hotel originally in Japan – monthly subscription model. But later changed to basic-free-service, pay-for-furniture.
   • “Freemium” business model.

Part 3: What do you think will be next for p.media?

• What could disrupt blogs?
• Something that is:
  1. Simpler
  2. Cheaper
  3. Frees you from need to go to inconvenient place

1. Jaiku – makes sociality simpler. Induces beer, etc.
2. Makes something simpler – do it from more devices (IM, mobile, API)
3. Jaiku provides context of where they are based on where they are, who they’re with, what they’re planning, what their ring profile is.

“The Mass-Starbucksization of Nearly Everything”

“Social objects to go” – making coffee portable, transportable, disposable.

• Flow between the “Occasional” objects – videos, blog posts, beats and particles
• and the “presence” objects – twitters, hums and waves

• Is it free
• Is it quick and easy
• Is it cross-device and multi-channel?
• Does it bring people closer together?