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Category: network

Continental Congress: Notes From the Bearhug Underground

Published September 2, 2008 by cgerrish

First Continental Congress

I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts about the terrain unfolding around the politics and technology of real-time microblogging. Here are my notes from the underground.

Sun Tzu said:

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

1.0 Gillmor and Winer have called for a meetup, a camp, to bring the conversation about microblogging into the open.

1.1 As Winer noted, the users are ahead of the developers and product owners at this point in the timeline. That’s a unique opportunity.

1.2 Twitter prototyped an experience of the real-time web, giving us a glimpse of the power of IM and Track. It was withdrawn to attempt to insert a business model and reconfigure their infrastructure to support high volume real time messaging.

1.2.1 Track is the ability to follow keywords rather than specific people. This allows for vision into both sides of conversations happening outside a directed social graph and the ability to discover new relevant connections. When combined with a real-time feed it allows for the discovery of current events and conversations happening right now.

1.3 Previously, Twitter recognized the value of Track by purchasing Summize for a 10% stake in its future valuation.

1.4 When IM and Track were withdrawn, Twitter substituted an illustration of a whale for a user dialogue. Users were locked out of the dialogue and potentially about to be locked in the trunk.

2.0 Identi.ca begins to build a decentralized microblogging model that re-instates the real-time web, when combined with Dustin Salling’s Spy extensions.

2.1 Of the two services, only Identi.ca offers up the full XMPP stream to enable real-time Track. For the moment, this gives Identi.ca (Laconi.ca) the superior feature set.

2.2 To the extent that Laconi.ca deviates from Twitter’s interaction model it will destroy itself. With the exception of decentralization and Track, it has no advantages over Twitter.

2.2.1 It’s about users and network effects, not software features.

2.3 The addition of new features outside the current Twitter interaction model will not create growth. It will create confused users trying to understand the difference between Twitter and Identi.ca.

2.3.1 Some users are confused about the role of Open Source in the competition for users between Identi.ca and Twitter. If Identi.ca manages to grow to critical mass, it will have nothing to do with Open Source. Open Source is a good way to produce and maintain software; it doesn’t motivate users.

2.4 A bridge was extended across the divide between Identi.ca and Twitter. Messages, and half conversations pushed through into the Twittersphere, pointing back to the real-time web.

2.5 A two-way bridge would have the effect of flooding Identi.ca with Tweets and sucking the conversation back over to Twitter.

3.0 Twitter adds the “refers to” meta-data element. This is the piece of the puzzle that begins to radically change the shape of conversations unfolding through the Network. Tweets and Dents now addressable as URIs on the Network. Conversations potentially can be aggregated across platforms.

3.1 Gillmor proposes a three-party system including Twitter, Identi.ca (and other Laconi.ca installations) and aggregation and Track in the client (Twhirl, Gchat, etc.).

3.2 If Twitter has its own brand of Track and Identi.ca has its own brand of Track. Twitter demolishes Identi.ca. Only a three-party system will preserve Identi.ca and the ecosystem.

3.3 If neither Twitter nor Identi.ca have Track and real-time messaging. Twitter demolishes Identi.ca. Identi.ca’s highest priority has to be maintain its real-time Track advantage over Twitter. That window will close soon.

4.0 If you’re wondering why Twitter is winning, it’s because they don’t have to care about establishing a multi-party ecosystem for micro-blogging. They can simply wait until their competitors destroy themselves. (See quote by Sun Tzu at the top of the post)

4.1 All Continental Congresses start as a brawl. But as with Internet Identity, once the vendors understand they can’t, and shouldn’t own the space, cooperation is engendered.

4.2 Winer called Twitter a Corral Reef. Now we’d like the whole micro-blogging ecosystem to be a Corral Reef. It’s an opportunity happening right now in real time.

4.3 A strong bear hug at the right time, with the right players and the right conversation could create a solid foundation, a Corral Reef.

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Switchboard Operators of the Network: Dropping a Link into the Stream

Published September 1, 2008 by cgerrish

Switchboard operator

In reading the profile of economist Austan Goolsbee in the October 2008 issue of Technology Review, there are a lot of things that stand out. I’d like to focus on one quote in particular.

“In 1910,” Goolsbee says, “If someone could have gone back and told people then how many phone lines would exist today in the U.S., they’d have responded that that was physically impossible, because every American would need to be a telephone exchange operator. That few switchboard operators exist today, nevertheless, isn’t a sign that all those people are unemployed.”

Goolsbee is talking about the process of creative destruction with regard to jobs. Job types are constantly being destroyed and created in a dynamic economy. And given the state of maintaining the Network as it existed then, switchboard operators were key to keeping data flowing and connecting through the Network.

But the thing that struck me was the similarity between the job of the switchboard operator and the process of consuming multiple microblogging streams, and other media and lifestream feeds. We can look at the current state of human-computer interaction around micro-blogging, and the real-time web, and say this could never grow because every American would need to be a highly skilled switchboard operator. But maybe it’s easier than we think.

Today the Network is filled with switchboard operators who keep information flowing and inspire discovery as thought objects radiate out through the rings and circles of microcommunites on the Network. Whenever you drop a link into the stream; whenever you pick one out of the stream and follow it; whenever you’re inspired to drop a new link to connect two thoughts; you’re running a new kind of switchboard. New jobs are being created, and the Network is hiring.

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Small World Theory: 6 Degrees of Micro-Communities

Published August 25, 2008 by cgerrish

Six degrees of separation

Just a short thought experiment: picture, if you will, the kind of network graph you’d draw to represent traditional broadcast and print media. Initially a very small set of one to many one-way relationships. All downstream, very little upstream– perhaps the letters to the editor section. Desktop publishing changed the look of that graph, as did the personal video camera, lighting up more broadcast nodes on the network,  but distribution remained a challenge.

Blogs, Podcasting, YouTube and RSS changed the shape of the picture even more substantially. Distribution moved to the common platform of the web and the economics supporting a publishing node changed radically. More publishers light up on the network, but more importantly the means for two-way traffic is established as publishers talk to each other. Two-way traffic expands to a many-to-many relationships and micro-communities begin to form. All of this built on the back of HTTP.

Now think about who has real time broadcasting capability and draw a mental picture of that network graph. Think of the shape of the network, it seems to me the traditional model still dominates. Facebook, MySpace, Dogster, LinkedIn and others concentrated and increased the speed of communication transactions within communities– but they don’t generally achieve real time continuous message flow. Twitter, and more recently, Identi.ca have achieved message flow liquidity and have established themselves as primary markets.  As the XMPP protocol starts capturing the imagination and islands of Laconica instances begin appearing, more real time nodes light up on the network. It’s early days and there aren’t a lot of dots to connect.

Whether or not those dots will be allowed to be connected is currently in question. Our ability to track those XMPP streams is even more fragile still. There’s a real time web emerging and we’ve yet to imagine how it will manifest. It’s something we’ll have to talk to each other about.

The power of real time micro-communities is broader than common wisdom would suggest. Each broadcaster in a real time micro-community is connected and messages to a different circle. We misunderstand the nature and power of micro-communities if we focus on the number of connections in a particular circle. Each circle is embedded in a network of circles, but the network of circles occupies a small world. And you already know this: the whole world is connected through six degrees of separation. 

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These Are No Ordinary Times: Time Becomes Real

Published August 24, 2008 by cgerrish

Bunuel: Chien Andalou

As we may think about the real time web, the image goes in and out of focus. Pieces of the dream materialize for a moment and then are withdrawn. The solid experience of Track and IM on Twitter start to reveal the contours of the possibility of discovery on the real time web– and then in the blink of an eye, they dissolve into nothingness. Twitter pulls the experience back into the darkness, and we set out as a band of gypsies attempting to recreate it from the resources we find in the commons.

“Real time” puts time itself into the frame. In a simple sense, real time means what’s happening right now. It’s the conscious moment that cleaves the past from the future. It’s the thread of our lives being pulled through the eye of a needle.

Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.

We see the past through the future, as it comes rushing toward us, asking us to make a judgment about this present moment. David Byrne and Brian Eno have released some recordings called “Everything that happens will happen today.” I’d go further and say that everything that happens, happens right now. Your only opportunity to act is in the present moment. Your only opportunity to do the right thing is in the present moment. Your only opportunity to connect with another person is in the present moment. Your only opportunity to pick up the thread of the conversation is in the present moment.

As we stand at the crossroads between the past and the future, we must act, and through our actions express a judgement. Do we act in the present moment only for the present moment? Or do we think both of ourselves and our posterity as we make this gesture or that one? There’s a sense in which a person acting in the present moment for the sake of an unknown future is the essence of morality.

As we deepen the questions about the real time web, we uncover the startling fact that underneath all the layers of technology and specialized lingo, we find only ourselves. Human beings, mortals, gathering together to share our joys and sorrows, our dreams and aspirations, our humanity. As we pound out, hammer and tongs, the basic shape of our experience through the real time Network, we would do well to heed the words of that guy who said, “what if all this stuff really matters?”

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