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RSS is Not for People

21 December 2009 by Peter

When was the last time you used an RSS Reader?

I was chatting with some of my peers via email (!) last week about RSS, Twitter and how we get news.

We’ve all noticed that most of us are nowadays using Twitter as the main way to keep up to date.

One of my colleagues likened the situation to what happened to Betamax when VHS arrived: Betamax was better, but VHS won out because that’s what everyone started using, despite the fact that Betamax was better.

This made me think of the audio quality debate when mp3 arrived on the scene. Audiophiles decried mp3’s poor quality, but it won out because of the convenience of the format.

I wrote:

On the the betamax:vcr analogy. It’s not just network effects. I’d say there’s a convenience factor. So I give you another analogy: mp3 vs. cd-quality audio. Like mp3, info streams [such as Twitter] are convenient. Whereas like cd-quality audio, rss readers offer higher fidelity. But convenience wins. (Think I’m actually paraphrasing vinh here)

The paraphrase that I referred to was Khoi Vinh’s post on the convenience of mp3s and the concept of high definition.

The convenience of Twitter and similar streams of updates is that you don’t have to manage them. You don’t have to keep up. The stream just slides past. RSS readers offer higher fidelity in that you can get more detail on each post, you can organize your feeds, etc. But it looks and feels like you’ve got to keep up. That’s more work that I don’t need.

I also added:

Actually, it’s only RSS as an end user format that is disappearing. Under the hood RSS is everywhere still. I wonder if things would have turned out differently if the dominant interface style for the most common RSS readers did not look and feel so much like email?

And today Dave Winer posted a few choice words on the email-style interface of Google Reader and similar feed-reading software.

A final thought. On Friday, I had a colleage ask me, "What’s RSS?" Which again reminded me that RSS is simply not a user-focused technology. It’s not for people — it’s for powering sites and services online. For everyone excepting few hardcore info-junkies, it’s just not a factor.

Posted via email from Peter Smith’s Posterous

Posted in uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Mind The Gap

19 December 2009 by Peter

"Web 2.0? We haven’t even got Web 1.0 right yet!"
- I’ve heard variations on this phrase from my peers many times over the last little while. It’s the lament of the typical digital comms manager in government, feeling the gap between theory and practice. Something I’ve been experiencing rather keenly lately.

I feel that I have a reasonably good handle on the way the web is developing and where my (tiny) team should be taking our web presence. But the struggle it will take to get there? Phew, it can be overwhelming. Some days it feels like trying to step on to a (clue)train that’s rushing by at 200 miles an hour. Other days, it’s like arriving late at the station, and looking down the track to see that the train’s already left without you.

And since it’s the holiday season, it’s tempting to wish for Santa to come and automagically catch us up… yup all I want for xmas is my #gc20.

Ah well, ol’ Saint Nick is probably still trying to decide if the #gc20 folk are naughty or nice…

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On Mobile Again

16 December 2009 by Peter

A quick follow-up to my post yesterday (http://spaghettitesting.ca/2009/12/15/on-the-importance-of-mobile/) on considering mobile in managing government web presences.

When I hopped on to Twitter this morning – via mobile of course – the first two tweets that caught my eye were both about guess what? The increasing importance of the mobile web.

<<mobile-rww.png>>

<<mobile-owyang.png>>

mobile rww1
mobile rww1
mobile owyang1
mobile owyang1

Posted in government, web communications | Tagged | 1 Comment »

On Mobile Again

16 December 2009 by Peter

Whoops. Somehow this was double posted. Read the original post.

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On the importance of mobile

15 December 2009 by Peter

Here’s a personal anecdote from a moment of clarity I had yesterday…

My day was interrupted by an unexpected adventure involving my youngest child and the emergency room. Luckily, everything ended OK, no stitches even, and the hospital staff were wonderful. The whole family was able to go out for Vietnamese soup and fried rice for dinner even.

What’s this got to do with government e-communications? Here’s what happened:

Mid-morning, I got a very terse phone message from my significant other telling me we had to take our son to the hospital ASAP. Of course this set off a panic reaction causing me to fly out of the office grabbing coat and mitts and pulling them on as I was running for the door.

But not before I paused for a moment, to think "where the hell is my Blackberry" – then locate it and slide it in my pocket.

That moment of hesitation was very telling. Mobile communication capacity is *extremely* high on my list of personal priorities.

Well duh. Aren’t we all like this?

Here’s where the link to government e-communications comes in: knowing in an abstract way that the digital channels enabled by mobile devices are becoming more important is vastly different from actually taking it into account when considering how citizens digitally interact with us.

Frankly, I find that in my day-to-day work, mobile is mostly still an afterthought and the decisions we make about our web presences are guided by the desktop experience. We might console ourselves with "the CSS templates fix presentation for mobile browsing," and give it no further thought. However, my "moment" yesterday viscerally hammered the point home for me – this paradigm is going to flip, and we will get to a point where we must prioritize mobile over the PC in our decision-making about our web content. It’s only a matter of time, so we need to get ready for it.

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The Face of Gov is Online

10 December 2009 by Peter

During the past six months, the top five methods the public used to initiate contact with the federal government were:

  1. Websites (41%)
  2. Mail (22%)
  3. Phone (17%)
  4. Part of job (16%)
  5. In person (14%)
via usa.gov

From a Gallup poll conducted in the USA during the summer of 2009.

This reinforces yet again that websites have become the main point of contact that citizens have with government – govvies, your web presence is the face of your org.

Yet in my experience, we’re still in this really weird space within govt, where “the website” is an afterthought — underfunded and under-resourced — despite its importance for our publics.

For instance, in our own communications shops, the centre of gravity tends to lie elsewhere (news releases anyone?). Our IT teams are more concerned with internal systems. Many IM folk still see themselves as the record-keeping function. So “the website,” blending all three functions, tends to fall through the cracks.

Sure we are starting to make a dint in this, slowly growing our web teams and maturing our web management practices. But we haven’t yet caught up to where our citizens are. Will we ever?

Posted via web from Peter Smith’s Posterous

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Apples and Oranges

10 December 2009 by Peter

"Comparing," by Here's Kate on Flickr

In my post on Monday, I wondered at this data point from Forrester’s Social Technographics research for Canada:

The study also found that 79% of Canadians take part in social media at least once a month, whether they’re checking Facebook, uploading a video to YouTube or posting ratings and comments on a blog.

My wondering:

Actually I’m not sure how meaningful it is to say that almost 80% “take part in social media,” since these days, anyone online is reading blog content — whether they realize it or not — and practically everyone online watches video from YouTube. But anyhow.

And cleaning up my email today, I was reminded of that recent Ipsos study which found that 82% of Canadians have Internet access at home. (I’d also forgotten that I had blogged about it here.)

Apples and oranges maybe, but I can’t help but be struck by the fact that 8 in 10 Canadians have some form of regular internet access and also participate in social media.

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Canadians Love Their Social Networks

7 December 2009 by Peter

Forrester finally does social technographics for Canada and guess what? We are extremely social.

Maybe it’s got something to do with all the time we hunkered down and crouched over our keyboards during the cold winter months, but Canadians are the most active social networkers of any country in the Western world, according to the results of a new survey.

More than half of all Canadians (57%) surveyed said they are active users of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace — primarily Facebook –  compared with 51% of the online population in the United States and just 38% in the United Kingdom, according to the report from market research firm Forrester Research Group.

“We know how popular and successful Facebook is in the U.S. and how popular these networks are in parts of Asia, so to see that a higher percentage of Canadian online users were visiting and using social networks every month than any of the other markets, that’s pretty impressive,” said Forrester principal analyst Nate Elliott, the lead author on the study.

via Financial Post

Kinda surprised that we are bigger social networkers than in the US. Dunno if I should be.

More:

The study also found that 79% of Canadians take part in social media at least once a month, whether they’re checking Facebook, uploading a video to YouTube or posting ratings and comments on a blog.

About 18% of Canadians are described as “creators,” because they write a blog or upload videos, while 28% of Canadians are “critics” who post ratings and reviews on things like newspaper Websites. About 64% described themselves as spectators — they only read and watch social media content — while 21% said they don’t take part in any social media activity at all.

Actually I’m not sure how meaningful it is to say that almost 80% “take part in social media,” since these days, anyone online is reading blog content — whether they realize it or not — and practically everyone online watches video from YouTube. But anyhow.

When I sent this news to my government colleagues, one replied back with another quote from the report’s author:

“I can’t imagine a marketer who would ignore something that this many Canadians are using,” said Nate Elliott, principle analyst [sic] at Forrester and author of the report. “If you are not participating in social media right now as a marketer, then you are late.” [my emphasis]

via Ottawa Citizen

Posted in research, social media, social networking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

Final Thoughts on Public Servants and Contact

1 December 2009 by Peter

A final thought on that Osbaldeston Lecture. Then I promise I will move on to something else.

Social media is today’s contact sport and the sooner governments understand this new form of communication the better. What better way to let people know what is happening in your department or Ministry than by posting a blog or creating an interactive information site? How better to receive input and feedback on policies that are being developed or considered? If you question this approach, I beg you to visit a university or college campus and watch what students are focused on, how they process information, access data, and interpret their world. It will provide you with an up-dated definition of “contact”.

You don’t actually have to go to a university campus — rather, you only need to watch Michael Wesch’s classic “Vision of Students Today” video:

Of course, it’s not only about the students is it? Many (most?) people are now moving in this direction, focusing our attention on streams of content via social networks.

Example, in keeping with the Facebook mentions in the video: percentage-wise, what’s the fastest growing demographic on the world’s largest social network? Women over 55, followed by women 45-55 (U.S. data from October 2009). Overall, “nearly 50% of Facebook users in the US today are over 35.”

(Sorry no recent Canuck specific data, is it out there?)

 

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Feeding the #GC20 Tag on Twitter

27 November 2009 by Peter

GC20Last week I put together a little Twitterbot to feed the #gc20 tag. What I was trying to do with this bot was to provide a focused stream of information about the Government of Canada and Web 2.0.

I had noticed that @DBast had put together a feed on his blog, and thought — well, why not plunk that feed right into Twitter itself? So I created the @gc_20 account on Twitter, hopped over to TweetAlert, did what you are supposed to do there, and had the feed thrown together in a matter of a few minutes. I love living in the future.

Noticed afterwards that the TweetAlert service doesn’t operate in real-time, as there’s often a lag between the originating tweet and when it get’s retweeted by the @gc_20 account. There’s probably a way to reduce the lag by using a different set-up, but I do like how TweetAlert alters the tweet content slightly when it issues the retweet so that it doesn’t spam the search results or the original tweeter.

And why the hashtag #gc20? It’s been in common use for a while, and it’s specific to the Government of Canada as opposed to the more generic #gov20 hashtag. And shorter. I also like it because it’s bilingual.

So there you have it — my first experiment with a Twitterbot — so far. More tweaking to follow.

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