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next09: Video of "Chief Meaning Officer" Talk

Here's the video of my talk at next09. Note that I changed the title last minute...

next09: From Google Economy to Twitter Economy

I'm still processing the many great insights from the next09 conference in Hamburg, one of Europe's leading digital/creative/marketing forums and one that stands out from the conference circuit because of its unique German-international focus (bilingual program, 80% international participants, many international speakers). This year's theme was "Share Economy," and the 1,300 attendees consisted of European VCs and angel investors, web 2.0 entrepreneurs, media, creative agencies, and execs from German corporations (from BMW to Deutsche Bank to Deutsche Telekom).

Jeff Jarvis: "The Great Restructuring"

The first day, the keynote day, was a little disappointing, maybe because expectations were so high. Jeff Jarvis warmed up the crowd with his trademark "What Would Google Do?" Powerpoint deck. While a terrific thinker and speaker, for some reason he and the audience did not really click although he presented a lot of thought-provoking content. The rather stiff response may be attributed to the fact that the attendees were either too familiar with what they heard or felt slightly overwhelmed. Or maybe they were indeed excited - but too German to show it…

Umair Haque, who followed Jarvis, faced an even tougher, albeit partly self-inflicted challenge: explaining the new paradigm of "Constructive Capitalism" in 45 minutes. That's like asking Marx to walk you through his Communist Manifesto in a Twitter chat. It didn't help, certainly, that Haque used the much gushed-about Prezi presentation software; all the zooming in and out was dizzying and, if anything, exposed the lack of stringency in his outline.

Fortunately, Haque had an opportunity to correct this first impression and reiterate some of his thoughts on a panel with Jarvis a day later, which turned out to be a much more suitable format for his ideas on the transformation of capitalism. He also took the occasion to rebut the attacks of Andrew Keen ("The Cult of the Amateur"), who, on the opening day, had chastised Haque (and all the other thinkers he considers to be under the dark influence of Silicon Valley) for propagating rampant free market liberalism and a dangerous new radical individualism in the guise of the social, consumer-empowered share economy that the conference was celebrating. Keen poignantly remarked that Twitter was getting us back into the 18th century: rather than liberating us from institutional hierarchies, it would reinforce an old power structure and an all too human division of roles: between those who follow and those followed.

Andrew Keen: "Digital Vertigo"

Jeff Jarvis & Umair Haque: "When Money Talks"

Keen accused Haque et al of naïveté and insisted that Google and the other web juggernauts were not "leveling the playing field" through link love (by sharing the scarcest resource on the web: attention), as Haque had claimed, but were rather using it to expand their pursuit of world dominance. In Keen's eyes, Google's openness is nothing but a suave mechanism to foment a monopoly in the attention markets. In the same vein, a party pooper in the audience asked Jarvis: "If free sharing is the future of business, why doesn't Google share its page rank algorithm?" Jarvis' response wasn't all too convincing: concerns over malicious abuse of the data. Hmm. So much for radical transparency and trust as overriding principles in the share economy.

To Google's (and Jarvis') defense, one could counter with Haque's sharp line: "When we're all hyper-connected, the cost of evil goes up." True. Moreover, Google does provide real value as it has created a win-win-win business model (advertisers, consumers, Google) that is vastly different from the toxic chunk Haque bemoaned in the non-sustainable and ultimately value-free products that toppled capitalism as we knew it: the Hummer, fast food, derivatives, etc. And yet, if advertising is the admission that you have a mediocre product, and that it is in fact an expression of "failure," as Jarvis put it, then it is hard to reconcile this view with the fact that advertising remains the main revenue stream in the very Google economy from which Jarvis wants us all to learn.

Despite the flaws in Jarvis' and Haque's thinking, however, I am eager to defend them. It's easy to deconstruct constructive visions of the future as ill-informed descriptions of present realities but it is a much bigger task to actually come up with a positive vision. Keen, the rebel with a good cause, does nothing but throwing a bomb, which he readily admits, but he falls short of offering an alternative to the frameworks Jarvis and Haque and others provide in response to the fundamental crisis of capitalism.

Google wouldn't care about any of this intellectual arm-wrestling all that much. It is fully consumed with doing what it does best: firing out beta-products and services, successfully failing by failing rapidly. One mistake that it made, however, may arguably have lasting implications. It didn't buy Twitter. And so the question, it seems, is no longer "What would Google do?" but "What will Twitter do?" Does Twitter mark the beginning of the end of the Google economy?

Jyri Engeström, who sold Twitter-competitor Jaiku to Google and is now a Google employee, might have a clue. On a panel with social media guru Chris Messina he offered some good insights on micro-blogging trends on the web and defended the new Google Profiles ("you have to opt in"). Messina seconded him and brought up another interesting point that established the context for upcoming business models in the Twitter economy: the "glocalization" of Twitter. He described how Twitter is failing to extend the real-time conversation to the whole world, simply because of time zone differences: one part of the world is always sleeping when you're tweeting. The instant social web conversation is therefore asynchronous, after all, and it is an interesting thought experiment to envision services that bridge the time zone gap and deliver tweets when the recipients can actually receive them (keeping them on the top of the feed), almost like an echo across time zones. What if the real value of real-time was the delivery of tweets when it really mattered?

The whole time dimension of Twitter is uncharted but valuable territory, and there are other add-ins, integrators, and localization services that will emerge in this vibrant new ecosystem. The conversation on the social web is as rich as the human communication (if not richer), and it is just beginning to fully emerge.

What everyone agreed on at next09 is that the next big frontier on the web (and in the Twitter economy) is how businesses talk to their customers. We are witnessing an irrevocable convergence of players. Conversational services such as Twitter and Yammer are moving into the social networking space and are acquiring the credentials of social networks and collaboration tools, while traditional social networking sites such as XING, LinkedIn or Facebook are embedding conversational features to catch up with the irresistible pull of real-time communication.

For both groups, and in fact for all other companies, Umair Haque's advice is golden: Take one of the big ideals (democracy, peace, transparency, equality, etc.) and apply it to an ailing industry that is in need of transformation or at least some serious disruption: healthcare, finance, news, energy, government – you name it. Combine that with the principles of the Twitter economy – transparency, instantification, collaboration, and free sharing – and you have a winner.

Twitter Chats and Sponsored Hashtags - How To Do It Right

(hat tip to Kristina Loring; re-posting from CNET)

With the Twittersphere reaching critical mass, lots of companies are establishing accounts to speak directly with customers, monitor their brand, and respond to questions and rumors. Most of them are using the micro-blogging service to become more transparent and as a trustworthy resource for their followers, while also exposing a more personable aspect of their brand.

Here are some examples, researched by Brilliant Ink, a communications agency specializing in strategic messaging and content development:

- Ford used Twitter to host conversations and answer criticisms during the recent federal loan hearings in DC: http://twitter.com/scottmonty. Scott Monty is Ford's social media manager and often uses Twitter to enable people to ask questions of Ford execs. Ford also held a chat featuring its CEO Alan Mulally at #FordCEO.

- Microsoft is partnering with Exectweets, a Twitter chat room of sorts for executives.

In addition, there are several companies that do a good job fostering customer service and engagement via Twitter and occasionally focus on a particular discussion topic:

- Dell: http://twitter.com/delloutlet

- HR Block: http://twitter.com/hrblock

- Comcast: http://twitter.com/comcastcares

- Zappos: http://twitter.com/zappos

- Marriott Hotels: http://twitter.com/MarriotIntl (the hotel chain used Twitter to communicate with customers in during the recent bombings in Mumbai)

How exactly one is supposed to use Twitter is still up for interpretation, but these companies seem to be doing it the right way, especially in contrast to those that have chosen to use their Twitter accounts as nothing more than a means of self-promotion (essentially using Twitter as an extension of their RSS feed). These companies most often find themselves broadcasting to an absent/vacant audience. A stark reminder was the recent controversy over Land Rover's use of social media in an ad campaign, and the fact that some Twitterers were paid to contribute, sparking discussions about the risks of "sponsored hashtags."

Organized Twitter chats are a particularly effective vehicle to provide entry points for consumers to engage with companies around specific topics, events, or issues that are meaningful to them. More and more companies are beginning to use these kinds of "hashtag conversations" (using the hash symbol (#) in front of a keyword is a familiar convention for Twitter users; it allows people to search for and follow specific conversations).

Brilliant Ink studied to what extent these conversations offer an opportunity for consumers to truly inform the company's priorities and perspectives around specific topics. One of the brands it examined was PepsiCo. At the end of April, the softdrink company began #PepTrends, an organized conversation around global trends. The moderator introduced a number of trend themes to the conversation, and the most popular topic turned out to be "social media and marketing." There were more than 1,400 individual tweets from the participants, and 171 people registered to take part in the chat. This was PepsiCo's first moderated hashtag conversation, following a very successful South by Southwest engagement where the company had used Twitter and blogs to interact with customers.

Another brand that has been able to amplify its voice through Twitter is Growing Bolder, an organization comprised of former journalists and other professionals interested in issues concerning those over the age of 50. The company hosts a chat tagged #ageop and describes the event as a "weekly informal think tank." It is facilitated by a guest host who asks questions to get the conversation going, but the discussion is fluid with participants introducing newsworthy issues of the week. Topics have ranged from President Obama's first 100 days in office to health care to prom memories. Participants also recently called on State Farm to join in a conversation about insurance -- which brings up an interesting dynamic. Will larger companies such as State Farm respond (or not) to activist- and issue-based groups like Growing Bolder? Indeed, can organized Twitter conversations online translate into offline social organization and action?

At frog design, we recently hosted a #froghealth Twitter chat on the subject of mobile health. Participants included our own health care experts, members of the press, and external health care professionals. Originally planned as an internal experiment to explore the use of Twitter, the chat turned into a discussion about a redefinition of health care and a restructuring of the health care system. External participants noted the event on their own accounts and joined in. One participant of the conversation called it "curated crowdsourcing." In the end, the Twitter chat provided a new way to have a frank discussion with our customers and with experts in the field about on-the-ground concerns.

If you want to host a moderated Twitter chat yourself, here are Brilliant Ink's General Guidelines:

- Determine the format (there are three options): 1. Create a free-flowing discussion where anyone can say anything germane to the topic; 2. Establish a structured agenda where the organizer asks questions and gives participants a set time to answer before moving on; 3. Feature a guest speaker, where s/he answers participants' questions and gives advice.

- Use the first 10 minutes for introductions.

- Don't allow pitching of participants' businesses until the final 10 minutes.

- Take banter or irrelevant chat offline ( remove the #) so as not to hijack the conversation.

- Use a specific account to represent the brand for the chat (@frogdesign) vs. a personal account.

- Never disparage or dismiss ideas or comments.

- Participants expect a 1:1 relationship, so the exchanges need to be conversational.

next09: The Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer

(c) next09

I just came back from the next09 conference in Hamburg, one of Europe's leading digital/creative/marketing forums that stands out in the conference circuit because of its unique German-international focus (bilingual program, 80% international attendees, many international speakers). This year's theme was "Share Economy," and the 1,300 attendees comprised of European VCs and angel investors, web 2.0 entrepreneurs, media, creative agencies, and execs from leading German companies (from BMW to Deutsche Bank to Deutsche Telekom).

In talking to many German attendees, my impression was that the German creative community shows no signs of a downturn. The German start-up scene in particular, if that is any indicator, is alive and kicking. There are many new promising web 2.0 firms run by smart entrepreneurs (many of them funded by entrepreneurs who made a fortune during the dot com heyday), and there is a lot of money to go around. Notwithstanding this newly found confidence, however, Germans still look to the US, and in particular to Silicon Valley, for technology trends and innovative business models – this is nothing new but next09 was a stark reminder of how powerful the Valley myth still is. Consequently, there was a large contingent of social media folks from the Bay Area.

I met several great people including Lane Becker, the founder of Adaptive Path and co-founder and president of Get Satisfaction (the "people-powered customer service" that seems to be everybody's darling these days), Natasha Friis Saxberg, the founder of Mentory, a web-based mentoring network, Daniel Reckling from Neckermann.de, Germany's largest online retailer, Stephan Loyen from Simyo (a German discount telco), Darius Miranda from Wells Fargo (which appears to have a pretty sophisticated social media B2B strategy), and many others.

In conversations with Jackson Bond and Johannes Haus from Xing, the European equivalent to LinkedIn, it became evident that for social networks and other web players 'conversations' are the next big frontier. The business world is ready to embrace an enterprise Twitter, and many business communities (social networks and intra-company networks alike) are working on proprietary internal micro-blogging services – micro micro-blogging, if you will, that can be better customized and controlled. Yammer for everyone. In one of the main stage sessions at next09, Stowe Boyd ("Unmarketing") presented the Open Enterprise 2009 study, which predicts that in a few years 80% of knowledge-based tasks in corporations will be happening outside of formal organizational boundaries and be open-sourced, crowd-sourced, social, and conversational.

In this vein, I was invited to speak about "The Shrinking Brand – Marketing in a Small World," a talk I had given before at the eMarketing conference in San Francisco. But after listening to Jeff Jarvis' terrific key note on "The Great Restructuring," Umair Haque's pledge for "Constructive Capitalism," and Andrew Keen's passionate rebuttal of both, I felt the need to change the focus of my talk and approach it from a broader view. It was also more fun to present something new. And so I came up with the "Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer" (I know, I know, ten would have been better, but sometimes there are only seven...), based on a concept I've been blogging about over the past few months. This was the first time I ever shared it at a public forum.

My key points, in a nutshell: As brands face an unprecedented level of competition, transparency, and consumer empowerment on the social web, 'meaning' is becoming the new powerful currency that connects brands with their brandholders in the 'share economy.' The new marketing leader, the Chief Meaning Officer, is a strategic activist, social media entrepreneur, constant innovator, and integrator. The Chief Meaning Officer has the potential to transform business through meaningful marketing – marketing that consistently creates added social value, not as an afterthought but a sine qua non. While marketing has always been the art of turning friends into customers and customers into friends, it is now the art of finding, befriending, and activating the like-minded for a common cause, for the common good – and for profit. Brands that have a reason to exist, an argument to win, will be more appealing than ever.

The Seven Rules:
1. Listen and converse (and converge)
2. Atomize your brand
3. Activate your customers
4. Think and act like a media company
5. Give more than you take
6. Be the change
7. Be yourself

Here are the slides:

Tim Leberecht@NEXT09: The Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer

View more presentations from Frog Design.

More about the other next09 talks – and the emerging 'Share Economy' (that you may also call a "Twitter Economy") – in the next couple of days…

Multimedia 2.0: From Paid Media to Earned Media to Owned Media and Back

Marketers face three types of media as channels of interaction with their audiences: paid media, earned media, and owned media. We know that in today's hyper-relational, atomized micro-markets, paid media's effect is somewhat limited. The days of broadcasting one-way messages via mass media are gone. Traditional advertising is struggling to cut through the clutter in an economy in which attention is the scarcest resource. Most ads are ignored or perceived as spam.

Earned media, on the other hand, has the merit of third-party credibility, and it reaches people when they are opted in and value the information. Media coverage in the right publications is still the single most effective tool to raise brand awareness. But what are the right publications? The big media juggernauts are ailing, and their authority is increasingly undercut by social media whose vibrancy and dialogic nature has turned static information into a constantly evolving conversation. Blogs, social networks, file-sharing sites, and micro-blogging services have reached the critical mass needed to dominate the mainstream agenda. The timeliness of Twitter, the quintessential conversational medium, makes it a direct competitor to traditional news outlets (which is why Umar Haique suggests the New York Times should buy it). Just ask yourself: Would you go to the NY Times, CNN, or to Twitter if a disaster hit the US?

The stark difference between traditional media and social media is that the former provide original content whereas the latter provide an open forum for content from third parties. This has given rise to the notion that everyone is a media channel, and the rise of owned media. With paid media being largely ineffective and earned media facing the growing irrelevance of traditional media in face of burgeoning social media, brands pursue the avenue of becoming media companies in their own right. Bypassing traditional media channels, they either set up their own TV channels, print publications (corporate publishing), or blog networks (McKinsey's What Matters is a recent example), or they actively participate in the social web conversation, shaping and following the meanderings of the status update economy.

Owned media alone, however, is no longer a differentiator when most consumer and enterprise brands have their proprietary media channels in place. No matter how fragmented the new media landscape will look, there will still be a hierarchy based on authority of voice, and there will be winners and losers. Brands still need to find the right balance between talking and being talked about, and they still have to distinguish themselves from others by having a unique voice and perspective.

Smart marketers realize this and embrace a branded content distribution model that spans all three types of media: By producing compelling proprietary content (owned media), they attract the attention of traditional media and extend it to social media (earned media), and can then amplify the exposure via advertising if needed (paid media). Only this three-pronged media approach works. Multimedia, in this sense, does not only mean a richness of media formats (video, text, audio), it means the combined use of multiple types of media to yield maximum brand exposure through sustained cross-media conversations.

Designing Democracy: Videos to Support the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative

In December 2008, in light of the current economic crisis, several U.S. professional design organizations (AIGA, IDSA, and others), design education accreditation organizations, and Federal Government officials seized the historic opportunity and joined forces to launch an initiative to shape a U.S. National Design Policy.

Recently, the group launched a nationwide viral video campaign asking supporters to record a brief "I Pledge" endorsement to be uploaded to the initiative's YouTube page or Facebook page. This forum empowered citizens to express how design can bolster the country’s economic future and have a consistent presence in government policy.

To show their support for the initiative, designers and representatives from design firms were captured on screen, advocating for the potential national policy. Some endorsements morphed into manifestos, calling for the creation of a policy that would radically restructure the U.S. educational system, healthcare services, and energy methods by embedding design into the government's DNA.

Here's my endorsement:

 

Marketing with Meaning: How KLM Activates Dormant Social Networks

I wrote earlier that 'marketing with meaning' has the ability to 'activate' customers. An effective way to activate customers is by activating the dormant social networks they inhabit (often without even knowing it). While social networking has visualized the so-called 'six degrees of separation,' all business transactions have a social component and can be seen as expressions of the underlying social micro-universes, 'the worlds within worlds,' in which – shifting time and place – individuals travel and interact. As marketers face the daunting challenge of connecting with fragmented audiences that are increasingly split into billions of social atoms populating myriad micro-networks, activating dormant social networks is their foremost task.

KLM's Africa and China Clubs, launched in 2007 and 2006 respectively, provide an interesting case study. The Dutch airline offers business customers the opportunity to meet fellow travelers who do business with or in either of these two regions – before take-off or during the flight, online and in person. KLM plays the role of the matchmaker and adds value to the otherwise somewhat value-free hours frequent travelers spend at airport lounges. It is the principle of the social networking site Dopplr, applied to the exclusive crowd of business or first class travelers: Connecting travelers who share the same connections. KLM pre-filters the club members so that travelers who sign up for the exclusive network are warranted a certain quality of contacts.

The clubs are a win-win-win: Trade groups and business offices from the travel regions are provided with a highly targeted way to advertise their services; travelers benefit from a true value-add and a richer travel experience; and, lastly, the clubs bolster KLM's reputation as an airline that cares about its customers. Of course, these networks already exist – they're just dormant. KLM does not make immediate revenue but it generates "social wealth" as long-term equity.

The KLM clubs exhibit all the characteristics of 'meaningful marketing' (see chart below):

- Social: The clubs help people connect.
- Personal: The clubs are relevant for the people they serve, and the service is exclusive and highly personalized.
- Storytelling: The clubs make sense of disparate information, perspectives, and events. They facilitate crossing paths by creating – quite literally – a common goal and therefore a joint narrative.
- Disruptive: The clubs disrupt the usual travel routine; they make it comfortable for business travelers to leave their comfort zone and go 'off the beaten path' to meet new people.
- Responsible: The clubs generate social capital by bringing together business people in pursuit of related goals. The KLM Club Africa, in particular, has helped African entrepreneurs to get in front of influential business executives (investors) conducting business in Africa.

Affluence.org: Befriend a Millionaire

Sign of the times! Hat tip to @csaper for spotting Affluence.org – an exclusive online social network for the wealthy, "aimed at forming a socially conscious, elite, and exclusive community that helps wealthy, influential, and affluent people make life better for both themselves and others."

Now that the "rich are under attack" (The Economist), entangled in a fatal web of Ponzi schemes, excessive executive bonuses, and a monumental destruction of assets (some $10 trillion, around a quarter of the wealthy's assets, has been lost in the financial crisis), their interest in finding new and keeping old friends is understandable.

Affluence allows members to "interact with other affluent people from around the world; receive free access to a dedicated Affluence Concierge; attend the most exclusive parties and events in the world; receive priority access to the world's most exclusive nightclubs, hotels, and restaurants; and find other millionaires, billionaires, and socially elite people to network with." Members can also direct donations to causes or promote their charities.

To become a member in Affluence you need "a demonstrable minimum household net worth of $3 million US; or a minimum annual household income of $300,000; or successful invitation of 5 other people that qualify for membership."

The membership is free.

Gift Economy

While preparing my talk on the "Share Economy" for the NEXT09 conference in Hamburg on May 5-6, I came across this great quote from Gary Hamel ("The Future of Management"), in his article "The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500":

"Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it. The Web is also a gift economy. To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content. And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch—and garner the credit that might have been yours. Online, there are a lot of incentives to share, and few incentives to hoard."

@SXSW: Branded Conversations / Some Quick Thoughts on the Past, Present, and Future of Twitter

Someone blogged that SXSW Interactive is just like the Internet itself – disjointed, decentralized, scattered, fast, aggressive, random, fragmented, and so on. In fact, the main commonality between the two may be that the number of attributes to describe them is infinite. Like the Internet, the annual tech conference in Austin is an echo chamber of an echo chamber, a place where original thought and commentary get mixed up and mashed up in a highly self-referential meta-conversation.

That was already the case before Twitter entered the scene at SXSW two years ago but the micro-blogging service has certainly amplified the effect. It was both comical and frightening to see the uber-individualistic geeksters at SXSW captivated by the invisible rules of an ostentatious behavioral uniformity: Within one mile of the convention center you could observe the strange ritual of groups of people standing or sitting together, chained to their iPhones, twittering instead of talking: “#SXSW. Twittering about SXSW.” The real conversation was often limited to a quick “What’s your name?” or “Where’s the next party?” just to have some input for the next tweet. It is indeed a Read-Write generation that is coming of age in the wake of an all-dominant present, with no particular loyalty to the past and maybe not even an interest in the future (see Peggy Orenstein’s recent piece on “Growing Up on Facebook” in the NY Times Magazine).

Yet the rise of the social digerati is unstoppable. New data by Nielsen Online shows that social networking sites (which encompass social networks and blogs by Nielsen’s definition) are experiencing growth rates of twice as much as any of the main destination sites (search, portals, PC software sites, and email). The time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing at more than three times the rate of overall Internet growth. Furthermore, social networks are gaining traction among new audiences. On Facebook in particular, “the greatest growth... has come from people aged 35-49 years (+24.1 million). Furthermore, Facebook has added almost twice as many 50-64 year old visitors (+13.6 million) than it has added under 18 year old visitors (+7.3 million).”

Of all the social networks, Twitter may well be the most pervasive broad- and narrowcasting channel, propelled by an ever-growing base of users. Every day more sophisticated Twitter business models are popping up that move the service closer into the hands of a mainstream audience: charity campaigns such as Twestival and Tweetsgiving (Robert Fabricant pointed out that there is a natural synergy between micro-blogging and micro-donating), as well as San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s efforts to use Twitter as an official channel for city-wide emergency communications are just two of them. And when even Jon Stewart features Twitter and all major publications run how-to guides, this seems to be a clear sign that Twitter is entering the mainstream.

But is it really? First of all, let’s remember that it took the service, despite all the hype, two years to reach today’s level of attention. And the adoption is primarily happening in the US. Even the Internet population of Germany (40 million), the third largest economy in the world, is still lagging: Twitter has only 27,000 registered German users at this point. Let’s also put Twitter usage in context of the overall digital footprint: Twitter has 11 million registered users and attracted seven million unique visitors in February, which represents a stunning 1,382 percent growth since last year. The total Internet user base, however, consists of 1.4 billion users. The most widely used data application on the planet is SMS text messaging: three billion people actively use it. And compared to Facebook’s 175 million users, Twitter’s numbers are miniscule. In other words: The whole world may be talking about Twitter, but the whole world is not yet talking on it. The next few months will tell us if Twitter is over-hyped or if we’re witnessing a revolution – and if so, if the revolution will eat itself.

That’s exactly the concern of Twine founder Nova Spivack who might speak for many other early Twitter adopters when he warns of the implications of Twitter’s massive growth and the increasing amount of uncontrolled abundance. Let alone potential security vulnerabilities, he flags “Mainstream Adoption” (“Tens of millions of new users are going to flood into the service. It is going to fill up with mainstream consumers. Many of them won't have a clue how to use Twitter”) and “Notifications Galore” (“Every service on the Web is going to rush to pump notifications and invites into Twitter”) as the two main threats. In his opinion, “There is soon going to be vastly more content in Twitter, and too much of it will be noise.” This raises an important question: Will Twitter remain an open-ended, self-organized conversation or will we see the emergence of more filters to make sense (and money) of all this chatter? Or, more philosophically put: Can we handle abundance (the entire Twitterverse) without any scarcity (the filter/curator)?

I’d say we need some scarcity, some reduction of choices. Spivack suggests introducing adding meta-data to save Twitter from its very eloquence, and there is definitely demand for organizing the ‘entropic chaos’ that characterizes the never-ending Twitter conversation. This could be an opportunity not only for Twitter itself but also third-party brands acting as curators. So far, almost all Twitter apps either add value on the input side (Twitterphone, Twitterific), visualize the output (see Pepsi Co.'s Zeitgeist app), or combine both (Tweetdeck). But one dimension is underexploited: accessibility.

“Brand curators” – operating along the coordinates of organization (self-organization vs. curation) and timing (real-time vs. past) of Twitter content could offer just that: making Twitter more accessible. For example, they could provide vertical search feeds (in real-time) plus some additional context. Both could be embedded in a visually rich ‘landscape’ view that features ‘favorites’ (domain experts), most popular (re-tweeted) tweets, and “breaking tweets.” In addition, Twitter curators could compile past tweets within certain categories or topic areas, as editorialized search results. Or they could create some ‘artificial scarcity’ and offer programmed Twitter slots, limited in time and audience (Liz Kelly from Brilliant Ink told me recently about a one-hour panel of journalists on Twitter as just one example). The brand would act as a ‘human’ search filter, as a trusted authority that uncovers and organizes relevant tweets. This could be interesting for media companies or brands that are transforming into media companies.

It’s worth pointing out that this scenario is not identical with just a branded linear Twitter feed. What I’m envisioning is a bias to commentary instead of immediacy. Not just a stream of tweets – a handpicked collage of various adjacent Twitter formats (replies, direct messages, re-tweets, searches). Think of it as Tweetdeck for the more passive mainstream user who wants to read tweets rather than write them. First steps into this direction are Breaking Tweets, Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, and especially MyAlltop, the recently launched customizable version of the news rack. Offering celebrity MyAlltop lists, the service provides a blue print for brands: it creates a dashboard that offers curated content, features star Twitterers and their recommendations, and highlights tweets by categories. MyAlltop demonstrates that the verticalization of the Twitterverse is of most value if it goes along with a presentation that is horizontal.

The biggest opportunity may be something more fundamental, and it may be one for Twitter itself: a public archive of tweets. Have you ever wondered where the huge volume of Twitter-generated content goes? Who owns all your tweets? Are you giving away your data or sharing it? How can you access it (besides going back chronologically through the search function)? Sure, Twitter keeps tweets and doesn't auto-delete them. You can also set up a LoudTwitter account to generate daily blog posts that contain all your tweets from the past 24 hours. Or you can use Tweetdumpr, which creates a .csv file with your last 250 tweets (it used to be the entire record; the fact that Twitter has limited it lately shows that it may have an interest in monetizing past tweets). But all of these services work only for your own tweets and are rather cumbersome. What I’d like to see is a public Twitter archive. There is value in storing and distributing old conversations, the “now” that’s long gone. Clearly, the totality of tweets represents a massive library of human thought that we need to preserve and make accessible. In the future, wouldn’t it be interesting to go back in time to rediscover the SXSW tweets from 2009? Memory is a vital aspect of all communications, a prerequisite of accountability – yes, one could even consider it a human right. With traditional media eventually locked out of the conversation, we need to maintain the ability to revisit past events (even if they were just communicative) – if not to rectify them so at least to reflect on them.

Or is there no need to remember – and we just go with the feed? Can meaning be self-organized – without scarcity, without historians, without interpreters? And are we producing any meaning at all, or is true what the Boston Globe pointed out: Just as technology is giving us the ability to amplify every word we utter we have nothing really meaningful to say? I guess none of these questions can be answered in 140 characters. Let me know what you think – but take your time.