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Quick Summary: As conversations become fragmented across social networks, there will be a huge business potential for a killer conversation tracker application that allows you to track and publish all the conversations around your content in one place, on your blog.
Over the last few months, I have noticed a new pattern emerge in how I engage in conversations:-
Step 1: I often use Twitter to pre-test a post idea. I typically tweet the topic I’m planning to write a post on and often get twenty plus reactions and suggested links. This enables me to include multiple perspectives in the post.
Step 2: Whenever I’m writing an involved post, I try to capture the essence of the topic in a graph and post it on Flickr. Typically, five to ten people comment on the graphs on Flickr and Twitter, which further helps me pre-test my post idea.
Step 3: Finally, using the tweets and the graph as a starting point, I write a post on my blog. Most of my posts get five to ten comments on the blog itself.
Step 4: I find that most of the conversation around my posts have moved to Twitter, with some posts resulting in twenty plus responses. Sometimes, people comment on the post, then tweet about it. Sometimes, people don’t comment on the post and directly shift the conversation to Twitter.
Step 5: I also import some of my posts as notes in Facebook. Apart from the comments on my blog, some of my posts get five to ten comments on Facebook.fa
Step 6: Some of these conversations then move to e-mail and IM. Typically, these are conversations about collaborative projects based on the post.
Step 7: Finally, some of these online conversations move offline, onto telephone calls, events and one-to-one meetings.
This is great because having these multiple conversations allows my idea-memes to spread faster and wider than it would have been possible only with the blog post (tweet).
However, the flip side is that conversations are increasingly becoming fragmented (tweet). Very often, if one of my blog posts gets fifty plus reactions, only ten odd of them are on my blog (tweet). This means that in spite of my repeating myself across social networks, people who are participating in the conversation get to see only part of the entire picture. I sometimes try to capture these conversations in a follow-up post, but that isn’t always possible.
While life-streaming services like Spokeo, Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed claim to solve such fragmentation, they, in fact, add to the fragmentation by becoming another place where conversations happen.
In spite of my very active presence on multiple social networks, I still look at my blog as my online home. What I really want back is the ability to host these conversations on my blog. I’m sure there are others who want the same and I think that there’s a huge business potential for a killer application that allows you to track and publish all the conversations around your content in one place, on your blog (tweet).
This is what the killer conversation tracker application will need to do —
Step 1: Aggregate and track my web presence — including blog(s), microblog(s), photo site(s), video site(s), music site(s), book site(s), movie site(s), event site(s), travel site(s), shopping site(s), social sharing site(s), social bookmarking site(s), social voting site(s), personal social network(s), professional social network(s) and e-mail(s) — in one place. This is what most life-streaming services do as of now. Please note that the focus is on tracking my web presence, not my contacts’.
Step 2: Aggregate and track conversations around the content created by me — comments/ linkbacks/ bookmarks/ votes/ reviews/ mentions related to my posts/ photos/ videos — in one place. Please note that the focus is on my content, not on my relationships.
Step 3: Enable me to automatically (or manually) tag or attach these conversations to my blog posts, then publish them on my blog, as part of the post. I’m visualizing a tabbed system that displays: 7 comments, 13 votes on Digg, 12 saves on del.icio.us, 7 reviews on StumbleUpon, 6 trackbacks, 5 comments on Flickr, 4 comments on Facebook, 37 tweets on Twitter, total 91 conversations. This will probably be best implemented by a Wordpress plugin.
Basically, if the analogy helps, the conversation tracker application I’m talking about will be the opposite of CoComment: instead of tracking all your comments on content created by others in one place, you’ll track and publish all the conversations around your content in one place, on your blog.
What do you think? As conversations become more fragmented across social networks, what would you (not) give to get this killer conversation tracker application?
Comments (16)
Nice way of researching a blog post. Very thorough.
On the topic of aggregation, yeah, this is a problem which several startups are trying to solve. With the oncoming semantic web, maybe this goal can be realized fully.
Great post Gaurav..
Did you realize you almost wrote a B-plan
I too feel the need for such an app but now since
u’ve mentioned I’ll just as well considering making it
@Rajiv: Actually, I’m not sure if any startups are trying to solve this problem. Most life-streaming services, for instance, are focused on relationships, not content. I think that the right way to track conversations is to focus on content.
@Mayank: I work on the principle that “an idea in a bank account” > “an idea in execution” > “an idea in public” > “an idea in my head”. If I can’t execute an idea myself, the next best thing to do is to share it.
Nice.
Over a period in time, it would be interesting to also see how many of these ‘exposures’ are duplications and how many are unique. What has your calculation been? Multiple channels, new people? Or, multiple channels but same people (maybe commenting at one or other place that’s most convenient for them to comment upon.
Cheers.
R
@Rajesh: For me, it’s a mix of all three situations –
- Some people, like you, comment on the post itself, on Twitter, or on Facebook, based on what’s convenient, or immediate.
- Since the number of people who follow me on Twitter is higher than the number of people who read my blog, there are some people who wouldn’t even have seen my post, if it wasn’t on Twitter.
- Some people, who aren’t into blogs or Twitter, just comment on my imported notes on Facebook.
So, I would say that about 15 out of 50 conversations are duplicated, but the others are unique.
Excellent post . There is definitely a need to solve this problem however as more and more apps like spokeo and friendfeed came up, app like friendfeedfeed was needed. It might become a vicious circle again in this case
Theroatically it`s all possible and viable (technologically) and it sounds great too at first go, But i feel at the end of day the comments and conversation we have on these different places are just extension to your ideas which help you strengthen or build idea to a different level.
@Shweta: The problem with FriendFeed is that it wants to become a destination. With the ability to search and comment “on” FriendFeed, it just might, and I’m happy for them.
@Gaurav: Ah! We’ll have a fun time sorting out our names.
My point is that social networks are like pubs or coffee shops, but my blog is my online home. While I would like to “participate” in conversations elsewhere, I would like to “host” as many conversations as possible on my blog.
Think about it, don’t you want to do that too?
See, that’s why when I realized Twitter was starting to become popular, I thought “aw, sh*t… another thing to monitor and check… and this one updates so d*mn frequently… do I have to participate if I want to stay on top of the social curve?”
So yes. Bring it.
nice post… i had come across a post sometime ago which spoke about similar stuff not this detailed though. it said “the “current craze” for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace would eventually be superseded by networks that connected all types of things — not just people ” (see this:http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3532832.ece)
Why is the conversation fractured in the first place?
Why not have medium which is ubiquitous and then we can make sense of flow of information in the that medium. I may be dumb here, but I sincerely think that medium needs to fixed and patched by a way of new aggregations.
@Karthi/ @Blue: Conversations are fragmented because conversations happen where people are, & people are split across social networks. Conversations will happen with or without us. We can only choose to participate or not participate. I choose to participate wherever I can.
@Garima: Yes, I agree. Linking up people is only part of the problem. The puzzle is completed only when we link up content, conversations, relationships, transactions and location together. The semantic web is supposed to make it possible, but I’m sure that we aren’t anywhere near yet.
Hi Gaurav
Thanks for selecting my blog as the blog of the day
cheers
I use Tumblr as a blog and for aggregation. It does provide some decent features and aggregates my tweets and Flickr photos. As for e-mail, Gmail provides an RSS feed - maybe use that to aggregate mails?
Hi Guarav!
Here’s how I aggregate and track Twitter conversation to my blog
http://www.andreavascellari.com/blog/?p=385
Hope you’ll find it helpful!
Andrea
@Andrea: How is it different from taking the RSS feed of your vanity search on Tweetscan?
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