« Previous | Next »

Say it: On conversations everywhere

Published on 21/03/08
by Zac Echola

I’ve been following a meme this week regarding the fragmentation of conversations in the blogosphere. I’ve collected some of these posts at del.icio.us.

There appears to be a bit of backlash against conversations moving away from commenting ecosystems within a blogger’s community (his or her blog) and onto systems like twitter, FriendFeed, and other sites.

Blogs use technologies like pings and trackbacks to let other blogs links to one another, unifying the conversations that happen around a given topic of discussion. But Paul Buchheit, of FriendFeed, writes in his blog:

Although comments are one of our most popular features, they are also our most controversial feature. If you believe that there should only be a single, unified discussion, then the extra fragmentation caused by FriendFeed will seem like a step in the wrong direction. In fact, not only is there a separate discussion on FriendFeed, there may be hundreds of separate discussions within FriendFeed on the very same topic or link (because different people are sharing the link, and different people have different friend groups).

Maybe it’s because I work at a newspaper company and watch journalists miss conversations about their content on a daily basis, but this doesn’t seem revolutionary to me. People have always had conversations about content separate from the content itself. Thankfully I’m not the only one not amazed by this idea. Terry Heaton:

It is ironic, to say the least, that the blogosphere — the place where stories were lifted from the mainstream press for “discussion” — is now faced with the same issue that mainstreamers have been fighting for years.

Conversations happen everywhere. My friends and I talk about all sorts of things, as do yours I assume. We talk about LOST, random YouTube videos, books and blog posts and we have no intention on communicating with the originator.

I describe the difference between old media and new media to classes using the following two slides.

With old media, families would sit around reading the paper, watching Cronkite and Jack Benny, listening to FDR’s Fireside Chats. The media would be broadcast to them and these audiences would process this information. Being social creatures, we’d sit around the dinner table and talk to those in our physical vicinity, but we’d have no idea what our neighbors were talking about. Barriers like distance from our neighbors kept us from communicating with each other on a larger scales without mass media tools like printing presses and broadcast towers. People in the left house had no idea what was going on in the right house.

But technology breaks down those barrier. Loud cell phone talkers can broadcast their one-on-one conversations over the phone to everyone around them. People who post on their blogs can talk directly to individuals, but also in front of the crowd.

But now we’re seeing new barriers. Instead of distance, we’re running into “too many places to converse.” It’s harder to keep up with conversations you’re following because they’re happening in nooks and crannies you wouldn’t think to look. Too few opportunities has turned into too many to keep track.

Everybody wants different types of spaghetti. As content fragments, so too should the conversations. Some people like chunky spaghetti and some of those chunky spaghetti lovers also like spicy spaghetti. If you write on your chunky spaghetti blog about a type of spicy spaghetti (that happens to be chunky), of course people will take that single post of yours and incorporate it into spicy spaghetti communities that you may not necessarily monitor.

This is how pollination works. It’s the definition of word of mouth marketing. You want people to take something from your community and jam it into their communities. You want this to happen again and again, constantly bouncing a brand or idea from community to community virally and organically. Fragmentation is good in this regard. However it requires giving up control.

This idea that conversations have to happen in your ecosystem or you will lose page views is silly. You should experience an increase in page views from users unaware of your brand, idea or content in the first place. You’ve made new connections to new markets. Tap it! Don’t bitch about it!

ReadWriteWeb offers some essential tools to help content producers keep up with conversations happening outside their ecosystems.

Use them to follow conversations and to discover new niche communities you may wish to join.

The end. Or is it?

Please leave a comment so I know what you think about this post. After that, check out It's randomonium! Or, if you're so inclined, take a gander at what I'm reading and my del.icio.us links.

Trackback URL: On conversations everywhere.

• No rights reserved
• Upward mobility
• Generosity as a business model
• An open letter to The Grand Forks Herald
• Uh oh Inky!
• Flawed thinking