Twitter beats Jaiku because it's got fle@s

How could I have been so head shakingly, gobsmackingly wrong? In a post last January about how NOT to use Twitter I excoriated the use of the @ symbol to converse with friends proclaiming the service was not for discussion but rather for status updates! I was only parroting the company line but Emmet Connolly set me straight -

"In general, I don't think software (especially on the web) should try to impose its predetermined usage model on the user at all. If someone finds an innovative way of using a tool, why tell them they're not allowed, or worse, prevent them from being able to? If I were one of the Twitter guys, I'd be thanking these "@username" guys for the idea and looking for ways to adapt[2] the software in order to *empower* these users to do what they want to without getting in everyone else's way."

Emmet hit the nail on the head. And probably without realizing it tied down the reason why Twitter beats Jaiku despite the latter's superior set of features. Steve Gilmor provided another clue in his essay about the Gesturesphere -

"We take it a lot more seriously than we let on, but like high school we pretend that it doesn’t hurt when we’re insulted, passed by, snickered at, or worst of all, not noticed."

When Alex Hofsteede told me he was leaving New Zealand next September to come to Ireland for a few months I advised him to join Twitter where I introduced him to my social circle with a public message directed @ him. A number of my online friends subsequently advanced open welcomes to Alex by addressing him similarly, in public.

Ironically Twitter fosters social inclusion by virtue of what it makes difficult - replying to a message (there's no 'comment' link) and directly addressing a response (it's much easier to type '@name' than use the direct messaging system).

Jaiku on the other hand encourages siloed conversation threads simply by providing a convenient comment link at the foot of each message. It's amazing to think that such a minor difference in design could engender such a major different in usage pattern. But it does.

Twitter fosters social grooming, Jaiku kills it. Nobody direct messages Robert Scoble on Twitter right? It doesn't help elevate your standing amongst the tribe to groom the alpha-blogger in private. The gesture must be made openly. And you'd better pray the reciprocation, if it comes, is made in public. Bonus brownie points. Tribal envy.

It's all about fle@s you see, digital fleas, those well known objects of social grooming -

"Many social animals groom each other, an activity known as social grooming, mutual grooming, or allo-grooming. Items removed during social grooming are identical to those removed by personal grooming. Social grooming also takes the form of stroking, scratching, and massaging."

I was very impressed with the recent presentation made by Jaiku's Jyri Engeström's, a sociologist, outlining the future of social media and networking, primarily due to the emphasis he placed on the core social object, the device that brings people together online. But something didn't feel quite right. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

Now I can. Isn't Jaiku itself missing the most basic social object of all, the grooming object, the digital fle@? How can you be socially inclusive when the culture of the service imposes private grooming?

Twitter's got it right. Those LOLcats must have been infested. In Gilmor's Gesturesphere links may be dead but on Twitter the fle@s are alive.... and hopping.

Technorati Tags: gestures, fleas, social grooming

Comments

[copernicus]

There's no reason people can't use '@' on Jaiku while using the comment option to engage in more discrete discussions.

One of the other interesting points Jyri made was that a company developing a social networking project had to allow it to evolve according to the use to which the users themselves saw fit to put it. If Jaiku understands that from the off and Twitter doesn't, that makes it a preferable place to be for me.

Ultimately, Twitter is just too noisy for me. That might be ok for tech types, but don't forget that the civil servants and lawyers etc are using these tools too.

[copernicus]

Just realised that "civil servants and lawyers are using these tools too" sounds like a scary Big Brother threat.

I meant to imply rather that non-techie people are using these tools with a slightly different attitude.

[copernicus]

Although (last comment I promise) the day will come when lawyers and civil servants will soon come looking for the twitterings of the naive.

It's something to bear in mind.

[Robin Blandford]

Love the fle@s idea!! great!

[James Corbett]

It's true you can of course *use* the @ in Jaiku but the problem is it has no meaning attached to it so therefore it serves little (beyond symbolic) meaning to use it. How many people are going to type the name following the @ into the URL to see who it's referring to? Very few I'd imagine which means that those people aren't brought into the conversation, so to speak.

"Twitter is just too noisy for me."

But you have full control of the noise level. If someone is too noisy you can simply remove them. And you can keep removing more as required. It's no different to Jaiku in that respect, except you actually have more control in Twitter because you can choose to leave a person's IM/SMS stream but still follow their web tweets.

[James Corbett]

Thanks Robin, I had to really... er, scratch my head to come up with that one ;-)

[Bernie Goldbach]

And surely you agree that both Twitter and Jaiku have been useful for you and that both of them are more than mouthpieces for the underemployed and lonely.

[James Corbett]

Absolutely Bernie, this is at least my 5th post now I'd estimate singing the praises of the service. By the way, just because I think Twitter beats Jaiku doesn't mean I dislike Jaiku. In particular I love the channels on that service.

[Rob Evans]

"Jaiku on the other hand encourages siloed conversation threads simply by providing a convenient comment link at the foot of each message"

The comments on Jaiku aren't siloed, the comments made on a post are visable to all..it's social inclusion and visable as a spcific comment, thus creating a visable conversations specific to that post.

I can only assume you haven't used Jaiku correctly...so give it more time and you'll see why it's a richer experience.

[walter]

An interesting post James - plenty of food for thought.
but if you're drawing analogies with the animal kingdom, I think social networks are less about primate behaviour (grooming) and more about big cat behaviour (spooring).
Frankly I find the idea of pandering to a-list egos a bit icky. Much of the behavior you describe here (sc08le-baiting and tribal envy) is exactly the kind of behaviour many find off-putting. Just don't try to tell me flea-picking is a higher order activity :-)

[Zach]

My reply to the Jaiku that linked me to this post:

"When I first came over to Jaiku from twitter, I saw people who had 150+ contacts and I thought to myself, "How the hell does this guy keep up?!?" I couldn't understand because I was thinking in terms of twitter.

Jaiku gives you the opportunity to be actively involved with a much more extended community. It's just better organized and more usable, period. Granted I still don't think I could handle 150+ lol, but it's clearly much easier to manage than if you had half as many contacts in twitter.

Jaiku makes it easier to make positive contributions to a much bigger community than twitter, making it more social and much more usable."

[Emmet]

Hate to say I told you so, James... ;)

[copernicus]

"But you have full control of the noise level. If someone is too noisy you can simply remove them."

"Jaiku gives you the opportunity to be actively involved with a much more extended community. It's just better organized and more usable, period. Granted I still don't think I could handle 150+ lol, but it's clearly much easier to manage than if you had half as many contacts in twitter."

Full control over the noise level seems to equate to the nuclear option of removal.

I have to say you tech guys seem to be a bit previous with your analyses at times. Nothing is set in stone at this stage and it is impossible to say how these different platforms will develop. As with the French revolution, it's too early to tell how.

I much prefer to have Jaiku on my phone. Twitter was driving me nuts. And given how amenable micro-blogging is to SMS interaction, that's might well be the direction from which the medium will be driven.

[doug]

a web service like twitter/jaiku must provide a 'value' to the individual users and that of course will vary with different needs/wants. The advent of jaiku channels -public/private with be very powerful. -Peace- dougsmith.jaiku.com

[Master William]

I cant really agree with any of the points to be honest.

- Comments/replies show up in my Jaikus feed.

- removing somebody to eliminate the noise is a bit of an overreaction. Jaiku allows a much more granular approach and lets you *mute* any of the feeds a contact may have (their blog posts, flickr uploads etc), so you have just the content you want coming from your contacts.