Le Web Social de Pierre-Julien Grizel

Scandale ! Christian Estrosi fait des fautes ! Et sur Twitter, en plus ! Un article sur Rue89 me fait penser que, finalement, c’est plutôt rassurant, qu’il fasse des fautes.

Parce que s’il fait des fautes, c’est bien que @ch_estrosi est humain.

Et même si ça m’agace, je préfère largement des tweets humains plein de fautes à des tweets bien policés, revus et corrigés par une équipe de com’ aux aguets.

Voilà pourquoi j’encourage tous nos politiques twitteurs à truffer de temps à autres certains tweets de fautes !

De plus en plus de journalistes utilisent Twitter ou Facebook pour prendre la mesure des réactions à différents événements. C’est hélas une façon d’une part de dévaloriser Twitter, mais aussi de dévaloriser leur propre travail !

En écoutant il y a quelques minutes un reportage sur France Inter consacré au vol spectaculaire du contenu d’un fourgon blindé, la journaliste parle des réactions sur Twitter ou Facebook. Quel intérêt ? Est-ce une nouvelle façon de faire un micro-trottoir sans mettre son nez dehors ?

Si c’est le cas, le procédé est particulièrement déplaisant. Je serais curieux de retrouver le compte de la journaliste sur Twitter et de vérifier si elle se pose en « simple » observatrice ou également en actrice. Mais Twitter n’est pas un trottoir qui se regarde du haut d’une fenêtre !

Twitter a-t-il joué un rôle dans les mouvements de juin dernier en Iran ? Il semblerait que non, ou tout du moins que son rôle ait été grandement exagéré. C’est du moins ce qui transparait des commentaires d’un journaliste iranien, lui-même emprisonné lors de ces manifestations.

Continue reading “[FR] L’Iran, Twitter et la Révolution : ça fait trois.” »

J’ai suivi le procès surnommé (à tort) « Clearstream » sur Twitter. Nous avons entendus quelques commentateurs, au début de l’audience, signaler que des « twitters » s’étaient infiltrés parmi les journalistes. Et, de fait, j’en ai suivi deux : Amaury Guibert (@amaury_guibert) et Olivier Toscer (@obs_clearstream).

C’est à ma connaissance la première fois en France qu’un événement se tenant sur une durée assez longue (plusieurs semaines) et ayant un retentissement médiatique important a été « twitté » par deux journalistes professionnels. C’est une intéressante première, que nous analysons ici.

Continue reading “[FR] Clearstream sur Twitter : Plus loin que le journalisme” »

This week’s Social Network Review is hit by a groundbreaking event: Microsoft and Google’s move into Social Network business. Not by buying Twitter or Facebook as many once imagined. But on concluding contracts about the ability to search within the ever-growing database of status updates.

In fact, many things in this Weekly Social Network Review revolve aroung Google.

Search-time for Social Networks

• Google announced it on 2009-10-21: it has reached an agreement with Twitter to include their (realtime) status updates to its search capabilities. Kind of « instead of buying you, we’ll begin by crawling into your database » move.
• Very interestingly, Microsoft announced the same thing on the same day. Google – 1. Microsoft – 1.
• And… the same day, Microsoft announced a deal with Facebook to have the same update statuses in Bing. Google – 1. Microsoft – 2.
• What does that change? Well, apart from being a groundbreaking move from two players who tryed once to buy Twitter of Facebook (albeit it was anticipated), this lead to a number of concerns from some observers. What is all this for, after all?
• Personally, I find these are clever moves that had to occur. Although I’m not sure the example use-case Google used (having live news from a ski station…) is the cleverest. These new enormous feed should be part of a more general search scope (like images or newsgroups for Google, for example), and the junk has to be heavily filtered. Nonetheless, I’m not very worried about Microsoft’s or Google’s capacities to do so. And quickly.
• Last but not least, this gives a real viability and strengh to both Twitter and Facebook. Which website wouldn’t be glad that the two most important search engines do special procedure to enlight their content?

And now for something completely different: Lines move

• Sorry for this Pythonnesque interlude. But, here, in French, something strange happened: French State invested in DailyMotion (french link ; 7 billion Euro involved). It is part of a more global investment plan, but the move is surprising, though.
• Does Google feel threatened by a newcomer in « a-la-wave » messaging systems? Wave is not even public, that Mozilla Raindrop is becoming a reality. This is a refreshing news from the world of Open-Source. And must remind us that, as « cool » and « we’re not evil » as they could stand, Google is a company, and has a very strong will of taking the lead in many domains. Watch out, other guys…
• …And, about watching out, another « cool » company should fear Google. Apple is said to be faced one day with a new competitor starting Oct, 28: Google is about to launch its own music service to compete with iTunes.

Well, that was TWO weekly reviews in only one week, but there was none last week. And I couldn’t resist doing a little roundup about those search engines / social networks deals that came out these days. Sure the power of social network will now shout out on clean search result pages!

This week in our Weekly Social Network Review, some interesting thoughts about the future of emailing and two stunning twitter stories.

Email Vs. Social Network

• The Wall Street Journal explains that Email era seems to be over. Social Networks now are an unavoidable media used for our electronic communication.
• Meanwhile, Google Wave continues to make the buzz. I still wonder how the « can’t explain, just try » motto can lead so many people to change the way they communicate, but only time will tell.
• Tech Crunch, for example, talk about the passive-agressive communication scheme Google Wave offers. It looks like we’re going to be bound closer to our « mailboxes » (or what remains of our mailboxes) as Wave grows!

How to dismantle a bombe atomique (french inside)

• Interesting times in France where a specific event (nomination of the — young — son of the President to an important function) has lead to an unpredictable result: Twitter bombing. Wanna see? Check #jeansarkozypartout in Twitter. I wonder how it all started (Jean Sarkozy Partout means « Jean Sarkozy (son of Nicolas) everywhere ») but it’s there. Impressing.
• Meanwhile, a french blogger, Christophe Grebert, (@grebert) launched a signing to protest against Sarkozy’s son nomination. Quite a honorable success and an important buzz on the Internet (even outside France).
• That lead to jokes that turn out not to always be very funny. Godwin point reached, of course (an example, another, yet another). Read also a very insteresting study of the phenomena here (in french, partisan view but interesting analysis).
• And, eventually, the buzz becomes one of the most important ones on the french twittosphere. Congrats, Jean!

Balloon Boy In The Sky With Diamonds

• Long story short via @cnnbrk : Officials try to rescue 6-year-old boy who climbed into balloon-like homemade craft, floated into sky over Colorado. A few minutes later, the #balloonboy hashtag raises along with many jokes.
• Sympathy and empathy arise. Poor Balloon Boy… Many many retweets about this story. I must admin I believed it as true — but didn’t think about retweeting it.
• A few minutes later : Runaway balloon lands; police say no one inside; sibling said 6-year-old got in & untied it at Colorado home. http://bit.ly/oDtSK ; Uh ?! And then it appeared to be a hoax : http://bit.ly/3POY6u and http://bit.ly/cnndcl1.
• What can we learn from this? Tremendous News has some clues on it (I don’t agree with all of his points, though).

6,8 Billion people on Earth, 5 Billion tweets

• I was about to forget: Twitter’s got this week its 5 billionth tweet (pentagigatweet — via @cyberpoint).
• Minter Dial (@mdial) ruled a survey to ask what does the future hold for Twitter. Looks like many of its readers are predicting an ugly death for it.
• …And maybe this death will be caused by assassination by upset users who saw some of their private tweets exposed (via @mashable). This may be only be caused to users who made their account private after Google crawled it. But whatever. Who wants to tweet privately anyway?

Depuis quelques mois, un nouveau venu dans le paysage des réseaux sociaux a fait son apparition en France, il s’agit du site ma-residence.fr. D’initiative privée, le service est reconnu Service Numérique & Citoyen par les pouvoirs publics. La nouvelle version a été lancée en septembre 2009.

Basé sur une idée ambitieuse (réunir les habitants d’une ville, d’un quartier ou d’un immeuble au sein d’une communauté virtuelle), le site peine à convaincre pour trois raisons : les possibilités qu’il offre ne sont pas très claires pour les utilisateurs ; il manque quelques fonctions essentielles pour bien tirer parti du concept ; et surtout la difficulté pour un tel service de démarrer avec « peu » d’inscrits — ce qui rend son utilité même discutable.

Mais il s’agit tout de même d’une initiative bien pensée, bien préparée, et qui ne demande sans doute qu’à essaimer.

[UPDATE] : J’ai mis à jour cet article suite au commentaire de Quentin. J’ai eu l’occasion d’être invité par l’équipe de Ma-Residence à visiter leurs locaux… j’aurai donc très certainement l’occasion de reparler de ce site. À suivre de près !

Continue reading “[UPDATED][FR] Ma-Residence.fr : La moitié du chemin vers l’hyperproximité” »

Last monday (oct-12 2009), Twitter updated their Terms of Service — and specifically twitter rules — for twitter’s service. What’s new? Now you can suffer a suspension if you post recurring tweets:

If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account

Now you’re warned. Be careful when copy/pasting the same tweet to promote your blog, or when using tools that repeat the same twit multiple times.

This goes the right way to prevent spamming. But this must remind you that Twitter has the power to change its own rules. This is not democracy, this is what is sometimes called « Benevolent dictatorship » (« Dictateur bienveillant » in french).

Would you rely your business on an entity you have absolutely no power on? French guys will appreciate the Russian Loanings phenomena :)

Last week, nothing very thrilling in the technologic sphere of social networks. Instead, it looks like social networks are coming a little deeper into our lives.

• SCHOOL NETWORKS: French magazine Elle reviews parental social networks (#3328, 09-oct-09, p.208) ; here, not a technical review of social networking platforms (hopefully), but a short explanation of parental network animation with www.cmonecole.fr and www.ma-residence.fr. Nothing thrilling for those who already know about those two sites, but the paper may lead parents to check those platforms.
• PROXIMITY FRENCH SOCIAL NETWORK: That reminds me of the public launch of french proximity social network Ma-Résidence. I did a very quick test in the few first days and, frankly, I found it quite frustrating. I hope to publish a more in-depth review soon (here on this blog). This is the first french-government sponsored initiative towards social networks, though I’m very surprised that Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet didn’t talk about it.
• BUSINESS MODELS: By the way, Ma Résidence provides an interesting (though confusing and quite hidden) social network business model. We’ll check that in our in-depth review of the site. Long story short, they try to keep the site free for end-users but try to let your building syndicate (not sure of the english word, sorry) pay for you. Heck, hope mine will never pay for such a service you can have for free in other places — but that’s another point.
• RETWEET API IN TWITTER: Back to a more technical part ! Twitter is still on its way to implement a retweet API. This API will allow twitter clients to track and manage retweets (remember those are tracked usually via ‘RT’ mentions in a tweet — but not only, hence the difficulty). Egocentric twitters will be able to find precisely who retweeted them. And the twitter homepage will be changed to include retweets from your friends. Not a revolution, but twitter is so simple that any new feature added is an event by itself! No date of availability, though.
• TWITTER BUSINESS MODEL: Techcrunch’s Nik Cubrilovic gives to twitter the advice to publish a Twitter server version for enterprises to make money. Basically, it’s a name-spaced decentralized twitter running inside a company. And that’s merely the project I’m working on right now ;) « A decentralized Twitter would suck the air out of the idea that Twitter needs a decentralized competitor. » — I hope to give you more on that very soon.
• TWITTER FUTURE: And, last but not least, if you’ve not already did it, please read the Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, interview for CBS. He plans, among other things, a reputation system (uh oh, no more equality among tweeters, the end of an era?), a location display of tweets (when « globally » also means « proximity »), grouping of users and tweets (clean-up this mess ; oh well, that’s what seesmic already does very well, isn’t it?) and a mysterious improving of searchability and organization of tweets (what does that mean?). No deadline. Of course.

We’re going to introduce a weekly review of social network news.

• This week, hearthquake in the Facebook universe with the (unofficial) introduction of Facebook Lite. Ironically, as Facebook may have been a source of inspiration for many social platforms, it is now concentrating on one of its main purpose (status updates) and removes all the clutter that’s blurring everybody’s Facebook page.
• Another very interesting article from TechCrunch about Facebook Lite.
• TechCrunch gives us a nice (and visual) report on how Facebook has grown in the mainstream internet since early 2008. No surprise, Facebook is taking over the world. Surprising however that Twitter doesn’t show up in this report – but at second thought it seems very difficult if not impossible to track twitter applications usage. What leads us to…
• Battellemedia issues a report stating that Twitter is not growing as fast as before.

Sure that Facebook Lite have a tremendous impact on social network ecosystem.

Apart from that, some interesting analysis on Twitter.

• Sysomos gives a picture of the Twitter population. Not a surprise, most users are not « power users » and do not follow / are followed by more than 100 persons.
• Quite outdated, but John M Grohol has an interesting psychology of twitter article. It explains where does Twitter stand related to other communication media like blog or IM (Instant Messaging). It recalls us that a good article on Twitter is sometimes a needle in a haystack. Good to remember that, and important to do so when trying to see Twitter as a business tool.

Have a nice week!