Thinking and Working in Singapore and other more Virtual Places

Am I too soft, naive and romantic when it comes to Twitter?

The other day I went to meet someone to talk to them about supporting them in organizing an event here in Singapore.  We’d spoken briefly about this on the phone before and he seemed pleased at my offer to help. 

Practically his first question to me when we met was, however, ‘how many friends do you have on Facebook and how many followers on Twitter?’   Clearly a good part of my perceived worth in helping organize this event was how large my networks were – and not my real world network or ‘sphere of influence’, but my virtual friends and followers numbers.  At least I was able to give him an actual number which I don’t suppose I would have been able to do had he asked me a more pertinent question about what my influencing power was. (That's where the really interesting bit is I think)  He seemed slightly disappointed when I told him and then revealed that he had about twice as many people following him on Twitter and considerably more friends on Facebook.  It should also be noted I think that in both worlds we are very small players when it comes to numbers of followers and friends.

I should not have been that surprised at his question I suppose.  This guy - who is a friend of mine - had recently been involved with an event in Singapore that had been a big success - certainly in terms of the number of visitors.  As a friend of his on Facebook I had received a lot of emails on the run up to the event giving me the latest information and news.  There was an event ‘group’ too of course.   So I suppose if he wanted to adopt the same social media ‘strategy’ in promoting this next event, then having an organizing partner with lots of friends and followers would be a good starting point to a repeat strategy.  But isn’t this a tiny bit like looking for a mailing list?  I say ‘tiny bit’ because clearly there are some big differences – I know or at least have some sort of relationship with my virtual contacts whereas a mailing list may be cobbled together in any which way. 

It still irks me a little that I should be valued by this criterion (at least in some part).  Needless to say the strategy would have involved me being asked to email (within Facebook) all my friends but this is a bit like spamming isn’t it? And it begs the bigger question of course - is social media just a numbers game?

I really really hope it isn’t.  I’m aware that I might be kind of a bit naïve and maybe, in some ways, romantic when it comes to what goes on with Twitter.  My friend, whom I was having the meeting with, sees social media simply (I think) as a marketing gig.   Indeed - almost all (if not all) of his tweets are links to web pages often promoting an event or promoting social media as a marketing tool in itself.  Hey , there’s nothing wrong with this and I think he knows that I think that, but I have, shall we say, a ‘softer’ approach and I love Twitter because I get to, for example,  follow Stephen Fry, someone who  sees and uses Twitter from a position a million miles away from my friend.  I can’t help be reminded of the ‘marketing at’ position and strategy adopted by some companies in Second Life bombed.  Isn’t seeing a bunch of tweets from someone you follow that just point to websites that advertise an event or advertise the marketing medium itself a bit too much like getting direct text (SMS) messages?

I don’t know where Twitter will go when it gets monetized in the future but if it simply becomes a place full of social media marketers then I’ll probably bail – for me, whilst I am happy to see all sorts of people doing and experimenting with all sorts of things, the magic remains seeing what people like Stephen Fry are up to, having a laugh with Will Carling and being part of topics and conversations with some really cool and imaginative people.

Follow up to 'Art - Music and Tears'

I listened again yesterday to Ricky Gervais and his Guide to the Arts.  He did, in fact mention the piece of music.  It is:

Five Variants on 'Dives and Lazarus'

As a collector of English folk tunes, Vaughan Williams was struck by the a tune he discovered in 1893 in a copy of English Country Songs called Dives and Lazarus. Over the next 40 years he found different versions of the same tune, sometimes under different names, such as The Star of the County Down as it was known in Ulster.

And so the Five Variants are not a set of variations in the conventional sense, but “reminiscences of various versions” as Vaughan Williams describes them. They demonstrate his ability to incorporate simple folk melodies into almost symphonic creations.

www.good-music-guide.com

Art - Music and Tears

I was listening to the latest Ricky Gervais audiobook this morning - A Guide to the Arts.  It was hugely funny as usual and the, almost unique, mix of humor, glorious foul language, insight and intimacy.  He mentioned that there was a piece of music )he didn't mention the name) that he couldn't listen to in public because it made him well-up.  Well, for you Ricky and for anyone else who's interested this is a piece that does the same for me.  Ricky said he didn't really know why those chords did that to him.  I feel the same way and would only add that this touches me in ways that nothing else can.

The most horrible sms in the world

This sms/text made me want to go and kill someone - what I ended up doing was contacting the offending company and telling them I never want anything to do with them ever again.  I guess if I was younger I could understand what the fuck I'm supposed to do when receiving it!!!!